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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Clarste One Winged Egret Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
One Winged Egret
#289126: Sep 2nd 2019 at 4:56:31 PM

How about we just fine companies more so it's no longer profitable to break laws with the fines being budgeted for as "the cost of doing business"?

Edited by Clarste on Sep 2nd 2019 at 4:56:39 AM

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#289127: Sep 2nd 2019 at 4:57:06 PM

Now that I can get behind. Especially when it comes to environmental and safety regs.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#289128: Sep 2nd 2019 at 4:59:07 PM

Fines would make sense. Hell, seizure of any assets or resources could be useful as a deterrent on big business' malpractices.

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#289129: Sep 2nd 2019 at 5:33:44 PM

Mind you, civil forfeiture is now constantly used by police to line their pockets.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
HailMuffins Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#289130: Sep 2nd 2019 at 5:35:08 PM

How comes every solution only seems to create a new problem?

Imca (Veteran)
#289131: Sep 2nd 2019 at 5:49:38 PM

Because the world is complicated like that, and if it didn't most problems would have been solved long ago. :/

MorningStar1337 The Encounter that ended the Dogma from 🤔 Since: Nov, 2012
The Encounter that ended the Dogma
#289132: Sep 2nd 2019 at 6:14:46 PM

Always the question of Who Watches the Watchmen?...

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#289133: Sep 2nd 2019 at 6:35:18 PM

Here's John Oliver's take on basically why you should never take large amounts of cash anywhere in case the police pull you over.

It's been noted by minorities that police will outright rob people sometimes, particularly if they find cash in your home—even if they never charge you with a crime.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 2nd 2019 at 6:37:32 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#289134: Sep 2nd 2019 at 6:46:41 PM

With fines, civil forfeiture, etc, they have a problem with conflict of interests. It makes 'guilty' verdicts profitable for someone, which in turn ultimately incentives something other than justice.

This is essentially the mechanism of the prison-industrial complex, actually. Theoretically, putting people who commit crimes to work and give back to society is, in my opinion, a great idea. I technically wouldn't even say it's directly a problem that some people get rich off of this (though it is what causes the actual problem). The complication arises when the people who receive the monetary fruits of prison labor have a degree of control over what's considered a crime and how crimes are punished.

Basically, it means the prison-industrial complex can lobby the government to throw more people in jail. More people in jail means the PIC gets more money, which they then redirect back into lobbying. It's an endless feedback loop that's more or less left the goat in charge of the grain.

Leviticus 19:34
TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#289135: Sep 2nd 2019 at 9:12:11 PM

With regards to companies and fines and such, I've said a few times that I think these efforts need to include greater liability and more personal responsibility for figures at the top end of corporations. Tell someone on the C level (CEO, COO, etc.) of a company that their company will be fined millions if they dump pollution in a river and they'll laugh as they pay it. It's not their money, and an alarming percentage of executives are looting their own companies for what they can get, while either being on the board of half a dozen other companies as a fallback plan or looking to jump ship entirely before the company goes completely under.

Tell them that the company will be fined millions and everyone at the C level will be paying fines or facing jail time too due to negligence, violations of law, etc., and suddenly the behavior will change real fucking quick.

Couple of stories that caught my eye:

Hate has no home here! The KKK began regularly coming to a North Carolina town after they removed the words "Confederate Memorial" from their local history museum. The locals responded by forming an online/text based group that let townspeople instantly respond and show up by the hundreds to counter protest the couple of dozen KKK members raising a fuss and waving Confederate flags.

When I moved to North Carolina from San Francisco in 2004, a friend teasingly asked, “Why are you moving to Appalachia?" In fact, I’d moved to Chapel Hill, and as I assured my friend, Chapel Hill is “not only home to the University of North Carolina, but boasts a Whole Foods Market, an Aveda salon and a James Beard-nominated restaurant just down the road in Hillsborough.” Then I quipped, “It’s just like the Bay Area — without the views.”

Actually, I kind of believed that.

Not so fast. Last week, roughly 20 members of the Ku Klux Klan — yes, complete with white robes and pointed hoods — drove down from near the Virginia border to stage a protest on the steps of our historic courthouse in Hillsborough, where I now live. Like Alice in Wonderland, I felt I’d tumbled through the looking glass, where time had been reversed. As in those haunting black-and-white photos from the last century, the Klansmen waved Confederate flags while two held high a banner that read: “Loyal White Knights. Yesterday, Today, Forever! Ku Klux Klan.” Right below its website address (yes, the Klan has moved into the digital age) was this now familiar line: “Help make America great again” with a suggestion on how to do that: “Join the Loyal White Knights,” reportedly the largest active Klan group and one that participated in the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

We’d had no advance warning — the Klan protesters didn’t apply for a permit — but their rally was really no surprise to many of us. “Rebel” flags had made sporadic appearances for several years, but the tide really turned in 2015 after Hillsborough decided to remove two words — “Confederate Memorial” — from the local history museum. Soon after, hundreds descended on our town to protest that change, many of them waving Confederate flags. They gave “heritage not hate” as their raison d’etre, but that claim was undermined afterward, when two rainbow flags outside the United Church of Christ were torched.

In the past month, Confederate flag-wavers have been back in town, this time focused on our adorable Willy Wonka-style chocolate shop, whose proprietor — Matthew Shepherd — is gay. “They’re blocking people from crossing. They’re calling people names,” Shepherd told the ABC TV affiliate about the protesters. The chocolatier tried to take it in stride, with a tongue-in-cheek blackboard message that invited customers to “Burn a Rebel Flag . . . Get a Free Chocolate!” Three Confederate flag-bearers had their picture taken with it and posted it online, where it went viral. Once again, the “rebels” claimed no hate in their hearts, but Shepherd started to receive death threats.

Our Nextdoor online community — usually the place to find a pet-sitter or a handyman — was consumed with the topic. One neighbor posted: “We all know what the flag stands for.”

...

For now, there’s a brighter chapter to this dark tale. Last week when the Klan showed up, Hillsborough stepped up. Community organizers activated a recently created text-messaging network for mobilizing a rapid response to white supremacist and Confederate rallies. Supporters rushed downtown, quickly outnumbering the KKK contingent — “maybe 10 to 1,” Mayor Tom Stevens told a reporter. “People dropped what they were doing — neighbors, shopkeepers, parents — just stopped and went to the courthouse to stand and be present and let the world know that the KKK, neo-Confederate, white supremacist message is just not going to be welcome here and it’s not part of our community.”

A local therapist described the town’s response on Facebook: “Family and friends [were] trying to engage in dialogue with these cowards in hoods, trying to understand and maybe, inspire some love for our fellow humans. That is the silver lining that I have been trying to hold onto.”

She ended her post with a warning: “If you do not live in a place where hate is waved and shouted so blatantly, do not be fooled. It is happening.” Yes, it’s happening — not in faded black-and-white photos from the 1960s, but here and now, in living color. Yes, in 2019.

The Klan has announced plans to return to Hillsborough this weekend. Our rapid response network is ready to be deployed, again, and town folk have planned a march against racism on Saturday. We are ready to stand together for what we believe in as a community: Hate has no home here.

Showing that, as always, the best response is to organize.


Cherokee Nation uses section of an 1835 treaty for the first time to send a delegate to Congress, chooses Obama advisor for role

The Tribal Council of the Cherokee Nation has unanimously approved the newly elected chief’s selection to be the tribe’s first-ever delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Tahlequah, Oklahoma-based tribe says its 17-member council approved Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr.’s pick of Kimberly Teehee during a special meeting on Thursday.

Hoskin announced earlier this month he intends to exercise for the first time the tribe’s right to a congressional delegate, which is outlined in treaties with the federal government.

A Cherokee Nation citizen and former adviser to President Barack Obama, Teehee currently oversees government relations for the tribe and its business arm.

Legal experts say the path to secure a tribal delegate would likely require congressional approval and be similar to those of island territories like Puerto Rico.


The longer Trump stays in office, the more he seems to turn people against his views

One of the most enduring descriptions of presidential power comes from Teddy Roosevelt, whose description of the office as a “bully pulpit” reflected his conclusion that its true worth was not its constitutional powers, but the ability to speak with and persuade voters. A century later, political scientists had largely debunked Roosevelt. It turns out, Ezra Klein wrote in The New Yorker in 2012, that presidents don’t actually possess much power to sway public opinion.

But maybe Roosevelt was right after all. Recent polling shows that Donald Trump has managed to reshape American attitudes to a remarkable extent on a trio of his key issues—race, immigration, and trade.

There’s just one catch: The public is turning against Trump’s views.

A Reuters poll released today contains a trove of interesting data on race. Trump has long sought to use racial tension to gain political leverage, but this summer he has become especially explicit about exploiting and exaggerating racial divisions, with a series of racist attacks on four Democratic congresswomen, and then on their colleague Elijah Cummings, as a strategy ahead of the 2020 election.

But the Reuters poll casts doubt on that strategy: “The Reuters analysis also found that Americans were less likely to express feelings of racial anxiety this year, and they were more likely to empathize with African Americans. This was also true for white Americans and whites without a college degree, who largely backed Trump in 2016.”

Among the details, the number of whites who say “America must protect and preserve its White European heritage” has sunk nine points since last August. The percentages of whites, and white Republicans, who strongly agree that “white people are currently under attack in this country” have each dropped by roughly 25 points from the same time two years ago.

It isn’t entirely clear what is motivating these changes. As Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at Duke, told me recently, there has been a 10 percent drop in the number of Americans who espouse white identity politics since Trump entered office. Many members of that group interpreted the election of Barack Obama, the first black president, as a threat to their group, and with Obama out of office, they may feel less threatened. Jardina also noted, though, that Trump’s most explicit racist rhetoric turns off voters who may feel threatened but don’t exhibit classical racial prejudice.

But the Trump era has also radicalized Democrats, and especially white Democrats, who by some measures are actually more liberal on race than fellow Democrats who are minorities. Reuters found that more Democrats say blacks are treated unfairly at work and by the police than in 2016—remarkable given how coverage of police violence toward African Americans has dropped in the past few years—while Republican attitudes have remained unchanged.

Meanwhile, opinion shifts like the ones on race appear elsewhere. Consider immigration, which is Trump’s signature issue—though it is also inextricable from race, especially given Trump’s focus on and rhetoric about Hispanic immigration.

Reuters found that white Americans are 19 percent more supportive of a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants than they were four years ago, and slightly less supportive of increased deportations. Other polls find related results. A record-high number of Americans—75 percent—said in 2018 that immigration is good for the United States. Although the Trump administration took steps last week to limit even legal immigration, the Trump presidency has seen an increase in the number of Americans who support more legal immigration—not just among Democrats, but even slightly among Republicans.

Trump, like other presidents but arguably more so, exerts a special type of gravity by virtue of his ability to set the topic of conversation. His fearmongering on immigration has led even Trump critics to argue that if moderates and liberals do not limit immigration, it will embolden hard-liners like Trump. Yet far from suggesting a large appetite for greater immigration restrictions that’s being unmet, the polling data suggest a large appetite for more immigration that’s going unfulfilled thanks to Trump’s aggressive rhetoric. Moreover, there’s been evidence of a backlash against the president’s invective since the first months of his term. Trump has managed to force a national conversation around immigration, but rather than bring people to his side, he has convinced them he’s wrong.

As always with polls there are questions of how much to believe them and the devil is always in the details in terms of exactly what they asked, how, and who they asked, but those who feel so inclined can follow links in the article and feel free to investigate the various polls being linked to.

My first thought: there's a reason why Republicans used to say those parts quietly. But Trump has gone and blown that up rather nicely. Too bad it also encouraged all the true believers in that bullshit to come out from under their rocks as well.


A local city council candidate in Michigan vowed, among her various promises that she wanted to keep the town of Marysville "As white as possible"

Within a few days of her comment she dropped out of the race amid pushback and backlash

From the first article:

By all accounts, Thursday night’s council forum in Marysville, Mich., was supposed to be about moving the city forward.

Discussion ranged from new housing projects to enhancing parks and recreation in the small community 50 miles north of Detroit, where five candidates are lobbying to fill three council seats in November, the Port Huron Times Herald reported. When the forum’s moderator raised a question about boosting the city’s diversity — more than 95 percent of its 10,000 or so residents are white, according to 2010 Census data — candidate Jean Cramer’s response confounded her peers.

“Keep Marysville a white community as much as possible,” she replied.

Cramer moved to Marysville within the past decade and is considered a newcomer to politics, according to the newspaper. She did not return an email requesting comment Friday evening, but reportedly expanded on her contentious statement when approached after the forum.

A “husband and wife need to be the same race. Same thing with kids. That’s how it’s been from the beginning of, how can I say, when God created the heaven and the earth,” she told the Times Herald. “He created Adam and Eve at the same time. But as far as me being against blacks, no, I’m not.”

Immigrants and other foreign-born residents have provided steady economic growth in Michigan, which has faced years of population decline, according to a 2017 report from Global Detroit, a nonprofit that seeks to bring international talent to the region. In the 15 years leading up to the report, Michigan’s immigrant population grew nearly 25 percent. In contrast, the population of native-born residents in the state decreased by 1.5 percent.

At Thursday’s forum, council members and candidates characterized Marysville as welcoming. They moved quickly to condemn Cramer’s remark.

...

Perhaps the most poignant response came from the city’s Mayor Pro Tem Kathy Hayman, who said she took Cramer’s response to heart.

“I don’t even know that I can talk yet, I’m so upset and shocked. My father was a hundred percent Syrian, and they owned the Lynwood Bar,” she said. “It was a grocery store at that time. So basically, what you’ve said is that my father and his family had no business to be in this community.”

But according to the Times Herald, Cramer had a response for Hayman, too — “What Kathy Hayman doesn’t know is that her family is in the wrong,” the candidate said later.

From the second article:

A city council candidate who drew criticism after saying she wanted to keep her town in Michigan a "white community as much as possible" has dropped out of the race, the City of Marysville said Monday.

Jean Cramer, 67, submitted a written notification to the city saying she wanted to remove her name from the November ballot and withdraw from the election, according to a Facebook post from the City of Marysville. However, Cramer's name will stay on the ballot because the official withdrawal date, mandated by the State Elections Bureau, was April 26, the post said.

Cramer could not be reached for comment on Monday.

The city's mayor, Dan Damman, said he was thankful Cramer withdrew from the race.

"I had publicly asked her to withdraw the day after she made the initial statement, and public sentiment from our residents was swift and bold as they rejected her ideology," Damman said in an email to CNN. "It is my sincere hope that she withdrew because she recognized that her belief system and ideology have no place in public service; not in Marysville, not anywhere."

Cramer's racist remarks came at a forum last week when she responded to a question about bringing more diversity to Marysville, which is 95% white.

Other candidates gasped at her words, as heard in a recording posted on the website of radio station WPHM. Asked by the moderator if the community's diversity needed to be addressed, perhaps by attracting foreign-born citizens, Cramer said: "My suggestion, recommendation: Keep Marysville a white community as much as possible."

She continued: "Seriously, in other words no foreign-born, no foreign people because of what, in our past, we've experienced it's better to have ... simply American-born. Put it that way and no foreigners. No."

I wonder if after the era of Trump people are going to relearn the lesson of keeping that part quiet or if they're going to try to replicate Trump's "success" with it.


Lastly, this article is old and out of date, but I thought it served as a quick and easy illustration of how easily China can outmaneuver the US in a trade war thanks to Trump's belligerence towards everyone and his insistence on throwing his weight around everywhere in the world. While rising tariffs on the US, China was also cutting them for everyone else

Basically, China encouraged trade with other nations than the US by lowering tariffs with them, allowing them to get the sort of goods the US sells to China cheaper somewhere else. Meanwhile, Trump's multiple fights with allies while attempting to embrace dictators who either will not or cannot match the economic power of the allies he insists on snubbing means that the US robbed itself of potential leverage and pressure it could use against China.

Lobster is Maine’s top export. Like many Americans with something to sell, Maine’s trappers benefited from positive turns in China’s economic development. The movement of tens of millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class increased demand for a source of protein—and a Chinese New Year delicacy—that Maine could happily provide.

Yet in the wake of President Donald Trump’s trade war, American lobster sales to China have decreased by 70 percent. China’s 25 percent retaliatory tariff on American lobster was only the start. Beijing has actively helped Chinese grocers and restaurants by also reducing the costs of their finding new, non-American suppliers. It has cut the Chinese tariff on lobster bought from Canada, Maine’s fierce rival in the lobster business. As a result, Canada has seen its lobster exports to China nearly double. Maine may never recover its previously dominant position in this export market.

This story is not singular. Trump started the trade war by levying new taxes on $250 billion worth of Chinese exports. China retaliated both by increasing the duties Americans face and by decreasing the tariffs that confront everyone else: It has cut tariffs on thousands of products from the rest of the world’s fisheries, farmers, and firms.

Even as Tariff Man, as Trump likes to refer to himself, focuses only on disruption, Beijing is evidently operating on a higher level. China is outplaying the United States on two fronts.

First, while Trump is on the verge of slapping tariffs on almost everything the U.S. imports from China, Beijing is picking and choosing wisely. It went to town on American soybeans, in part because it knew that Brazil and Argentina could provide ample alternative supplies. But it has left untouched other American exports that are more difficult to replace. China could, for instance, force its state-owned airlines to immediately shift from buying Boeing to European-based Airbus, but those companies would run into trouble accessing the parts and services needed to keep their costly existing fleets running. Beijing has therefore mostly spared the aircraft sector from retaliation thus far.

Second, Trump has no real mitigation strategy to help the Americans facing the entirely foreseeable costs of his policies. Yes, he’s giving out tens of billions of dollars in agricultural subsidies—but that is, of course, a cost borne by Americans, not international rivals. His separate trade restrictions on nearly $50 billion in steel and aluminum imports have only worsened the effects of his fight with China; these restrictions have burdened American farmers by raising the cost of the equipment needed for harvesting or storing the crops they are now unable to sell abroad. And he’s compounding this short-term pain with possible long-term damage to previously healthy international relationships: Those steel and aluminum tariffs have mostly targeted trade from allies such as Europe, Canada, and Japan—not China. He also conducted a needlessly contentious renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and has threatened tariffs on tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Japanese and European cars.

By contrast, China is helping its citizens by making new friends. One way to offset the rising prices to Chinese consumers otherwise stuck buying American is to lower their costs if they switch. On average, it is now 14 percent cheaper in China to buy something from Canada, Japan, Brazil, or Europe than it is to buy something from the United States. Beijing is making it worthwhile for its consumers to develop new commercial relationships. And once those new ties are formed, the Chinese may not bother to switch back.

When Trump first began imposing tariffs in early 2018, his key trade strategist, Peter Navarro, infamously said, “I don’t believe any country in the world is going to retaliate.” Navarro was wrong, of course, as foes (China, Russia) and friends (European Union, Canada, Mexico) alike all immediately retaliated against American exports.

More worrisome than Navarro’s rhetoric was how it revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of how trade works. In each of its provocations, Trump’s team sees trade through the narrow lens of a two-country world: America versus whomever the administration has chosen to antagonize that day.

America can easily lose even when there is no retaliation at all. Anytime another country lowers its tariff to someone else—but not the United States—the global economy leaves America one step further behind.

"Only an idiot would fight a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts."

It's a good thing trade wars are so easy to win, or the whole country would have to be worried about the future of its trade for a generation or more. [/sarcasm]]

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#289136: Sep 2nd 2019 at 9:35:51 PM

So that's why lobster has been getting pricier here...

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#289137: Sep 3rd 2019 at 7:13:14 AM

Heck, I'm iffy on the prospects of making white collar crime laws harsher as well. Not only would it likely not be used on the big wigs, the simple fact is that retributive justice is a failed model for anything other than getting some sense of satisfaction from revenge.

Purely hypothetical question that just popped into mind: What if the penalty for white-collar crime was to raise taxes?

Got caught insider trading? That's going to be +5% to your income tax for the next seven years.

You caused the opioid epidemic?! Yeah, we're putting a +12% on your corporate tax for the next ten years. And if you were receiving whatever that thing is where companies get to just not pay taxes (yet still collect tax rebates on the taxes they don't pay), that's gone. Kicked out of whatever that program is.

Not only would it be a boon for government funding that could potentially help take the tax burden off the poor, but it would give the IRS an incentive to ravenously hunt rich people with the exact same fervor that the prison-industrial complex has for minor drug offenses.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#289138: Sep 3rd 2019 at 7:18:58 AM

You can raise taxes but they'll find a way not to pay them,like they currently do

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#289139: Sep 3rd 2019 at 7:20:27 AM

Senator Joe Manchin will not be seeking West Virginia's governorship.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#289140: Sep 3rd 2019 at 9:07:48 AM

If he ran and won the governorship, could he have appointment his successor?

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#289141: Sep 3rd 2019 at 9:38:26 AM

Thank god, without Manchin in his Senate seat taking the Senate would've been extremely difficult if not outright impossible.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
LordYAM Since: Jan, 2015
#289142: Sep 3rd 2019 at 9:41:55 AM

Honestly that's still eating a shit sandwich. Hopefully the rumblings about Mc Turtle pissing off his base in Kentucky are true; if the republicans fuck up enough with the trade war the senate may be flipped. In which case we won't need Manchin

tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#289143: Sep 3rd 2019 at 9:42:31 AM

[up][up][up]Based on what I'm seeing, yeah he could have.

Edited by tclittle on Sep 3rd 2019 at 11:43:52 AM

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#289144: Sep 3rd 2019 at 9:49:26 AM

If the GOP fucks up enough with the trade war it means we'll almost certainly have a recession. That's not a good thing.

Disgusted, but not surprised
fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#289145: Sep 3rd 2019 at 10:31:05 AM

I’m grateful Republicans are retiring left and right but it seems like it’s a way for hem to be mad at trump without risking their careers, fucking cowards.

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#289146: Sep 3rd 2019 at 11:12:13 AM

Honestly that's still eating a shit sandwich. Hopefully the rumblings about Mc Turtle pissing off his base in Kentucky are true; if the republicans fuck up enough with the trade war the senate may be flipped. In which case we won't need Manchin

If we take Kentucky we'd have more Manchins, I don't think you've thought through the implications of who exactly Kentuckians are going to elect.

Based on what I'm seeing, yeah he could have.

Yes, but his replacement would be highly unlikely to be as strong a politician as he is. Ergo, it would be demonstrably worse for no gain.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#289147: Sep 3rd 2019 at 11:43:29 AM

Just saw a headline that says Wall mart is ending the sale of handgun ammo and asking people not to bring weapons in their stores,and as someone pointed out,the people buying the guns will take their business elsewhere,I think they know this which is why i think its a temporary measure until the heat dies down

Article

Edited by Ultimatum on Sep 3rd 2019 at 6:43:47 PM

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#289148: Sep 3rd 2019 at 11:53:41 AM

Its difficult to explain but the short version is that Mitch is loathed in Kentucky but impossible to remove. His approval rating is something like 36% and that's Republicans. The problem is this is a state where the Party Machine TM is in control over the media, government postings, and well-oiled from top to bottom with lots of support from Washington D.C's Republicans. If you are a Republican politician in Kentucky, Mitch owns your ass and can overrule you even if you support legislation as a GOP whole (he crushed the marijuana legalization supported by his own party).

Mitch is the Party Boss in Kentucky and more or less has absolute control over who runs, how much money they get, and veto power informally so he runs with everyone in the government's support. The Democrats have a self-defeating prophecy about wasting money and time in Kentucky so the local candidates get no support.

Allison Grimes was very well liked and popular but still lost by a plurality. Our current DNC candidate, an ex-fighter pilot, is using the lunatic campaign strategy of saying that Mitch isn't loyal enough to Trump's policies.

...

Yeah, that's a thing here.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 3rd 2019 at 11:55:17 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
NativeJovian Jupiterian Local from Orlando, FL Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Maxing my social links
Jupiterian Local
#289149: Sep 3rd 2019 at 12:05:04 PM

Centrist Democrats are better than Republicans. Unseating McConnell in Kentucky would be a huge win for the Democrats, even if the person that beats him is a moderate centrist blue dog DINO.

The Democrats only need 50 votes (51 if there's a GOP president) to pass things in the Senate. Depending on how large a majority they have, that means they can afford to have a handful of right-leaning Democrats that don't always vote in lockstep with the party, as long as they vote when it counts. Also important: even if a Democrat senator literally never votes with the party, if their being in office gives Democrats the Majority Leader position back, that's huge.

Nevermind the fact that there's a ton of stuff (like expanded health care and improved gun control) that's actually wildly popular among voters, it's just being held back by GOP leadership, so centrist Democrats would be free to support those sorts of things as well.

tldr, don't count out centrists just because they're not as progressive as you'd like — they're still a huge advantage to have if we can get those seats.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#289150: Sep 3rd 2019 at 12:10:45 PM

Besides, the Evil Turtle is evil incarnate. And extremely dangerous, to boot. Even a Trump-friendly Democrat would be a massive improvement.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

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