The General US Politics Thread

Man fuck Mcconnell, he's just a cunt.

And someone inform poor Scott that they're the same thing. Or don't. Whatever's funnier.

x5 Add to this the congressthing (forget the name) who is promoting fear of the kids bringing Ebola into the country despite the fact that it's an African disease and there has never been a case of it originating on this side of the Atlantic.

Reposting for context of what Garcon' mentioning:

Fun from the August 28th Morning Plum

• Scott Brown wants to replace Obamacare in NH with Romneycare
• Mitch Mc Connell at a Koch donor network admits he plans to dismantle the president's successes by defunding departments running healthcare, financial services, the EPA, etc, if the Republicans take the Senate.
• Yes, Mitch Mc Connell and Steve King are basically suggesting Shutdown 2: Electric Bugaloo if Obama does something about immigration.

Yes, do another shutdown so close to election season, people won't forget this time.

Yeah, shutdown would be insane at this point.

Do it!

Dying political parties always double down. At least in the US they do.

They are probably planning it for after the election, so they'll have a year and a half or so to live it down.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) campaign manager Jesse Benton resigned Friday amid growing speculation over his involvement in a vote-buying scandal when he led former Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) 2012 presidential campaign.

If McConnell is found guilty of buying votes do we get to kick him out?

If the Senate can get its 2/3 of votes together they can boot him.

Was Benton working for him at the time? Even if he was you'd have to prove that McConnell knew about it.

edited 30th Aug '14 4:00:42 PM by tricksterson

Query, is it common place for criticism of Republicans to be equated to criticism of white people? I know on certain websites that those two things would be equal (one of many reasons I don't regularly browse Dailykos anymore), but on the whole, I doubt most people do that.

Though, I've seen a few Republicans make that argument.

Never heard that before. Especially since the majority of democrats are also white. less so than the republicans but still well over 60%.

edited 30th Aug '14 7:43:15 PM by joesolo

I remember in high school, my Civics teacher once asked the class what they thought of when they thought of Democrats and Republicans. One of my (black) classmates wrote "old white guys" for both Democrats and Republicans. Of course, this was pre-Obama.

that's what allot of people think of all politicians. and to be fair, it's not inaccurate. Especially if you exclude the "white" bit. most of the "diversity" is just old guys of other races.

edited 30th Aug '14 8:22:41 PM by joesolo

Whites are still over-represented in politics, just as they are in business. But if you really want a lesson in diversity, compare the racial makeup of Republican politicians to Democratic politicians.

well part of it's the fact that "whites" do make up over 70% of the population, so they're going to be a bit over represented because they are the majority. we have an election system where 51% of the vote wins it for you after all.

This is true, but it doesn't mean that whites aren't over-represented. See here.

I know that, what I'm saying is by having more population it snowballs into over representation.

That makes the situation sound rather more benign that it is, though. White privilege (for want of a better term) in the United States has been artificially engineered as much as it was a "natural" consequence of the numerical minority of whites. See redlining, segregation, and the root from which a lot of this flows: slavery.

Well you could look at it as an evil conspiracy, or you could look at our electoral system and see that this is mathematically what will happening with that kind of election.

Whites are the majority in virtually every electoral region in the country. this is generally going to be the result with winner-take-all elections.

This doesn't make it RIGHT, but it's why it happens. Personally I really think how we vote's overdue for reform in a big way.

edited 31st Aug '14 8:56:16 AM by joesolo

White privilege doesn't mean an evul conspiracy of old white men scheming to keep dirty minorities down, more simply a consequence of how people work and more specifically politics. Power derives from wealth and until very recently only white men had that. Inroads have been made and old fashioned racism is basically finished as respected belief but at the end of the day the power brokers are all old white men.

This effects both parties fairly significantly but the GOP is simply unmatched in its whiteness. 89% vs 60% is a fairly stark racial divide.

Also, there's a bit of a self perpetuating cycle, with so many black men getting locked up and turned into criminals.

Of course the entire Prison Legal complex is a disaster, regardless of your race.

edited 31st Aug '14 10:53:51 AM by storyyeller

Switching drug use to something that gets you mandatory treatment instead of jail time would be a good place to start, I think. Lock up the dealers, but the "consumers" need help.

aren't most prisoners locked up for drug charges?

edited 31st Aug '14 11:20:23 AM by joesolo

I think so but it's extremely easy to get hit with Intention to Distribute.