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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I am pretty sure I've seen cartoons with Nero comparisons already. But, this thread's commentary on Trump's personal flaws is often disproportionate to their actual importance.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanTobias' summary was pretty good, but I would add that Senate Conservatives do want change, but they want to hide it in the minutia of other, more symbolic bills. Anyone remember that study which documented how much time they spend on finance deregulation vs. the social issues they get elected on? Democrats tend not to block those, because it confuses the voters, so they get through. A filibuster probably doesn't help much in those cases.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.The fact that they don't want to. The filibuster solely benefits the minority party in the Senate. Bringing it back requires the party who controls the Senate to decide, of their own volition, that they don't want to have the power to pass all of the bills they want with no restrictions.
It survives now only because it's always been a thing. It's traditional for it to be there, and Republicans take advantage of it during Democrat-led Senate sessions just as much as Democrats do during Republican-led Senate sessions. But it's actually kind of asinine?
It sticks around because it's always been a thing, but neither party would voluntarily make it a thing if it wasn't. Having majority control and abruptly declaring, "I'm going to NOT PASS ANYTHING for the next two years JUST 'CAUSE!" would be a really weird fucking thing to do.
And, keep in mind, once Democrats have shown a willingness to end the filibuster, there's no guarantee that they would go along with Republicans restoring the filibuster. So even if they did that, then we would only have a filibuster during Republican-led Senate sessions. The Republicans would grant Democrats exclusive obstruction powers that Republicans themselves do not receive. Why would Mitch do that?
Like. There's shooting yourself in the foot. And then there's taking very careful aim, lining up the shot, and deliberately shooting yourself in the foot for no reason. That's what restoring an ended filibuster is.
The best case scenario for Republicans is shaming Democrats into leaving the filibuster where it is. But the worst case scenario for Republicans is trying to restore the filibuster during their sessions and Democrats refusing to play ball during ours. So once it's gone, it's gone.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 12th 2020 at 8:04:01 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Put this in the wrong thread before
Bidens lead over Trump keeps climbing, now at almost 11 points above him in the National polls.
I don't think I've ever such a lead over an incumbent president ever at this point in a presidential election.
Watch SymphogearI'd like to see a lot of leads in the states Trump one four years ago before I think he'll lose again. Also Biden needs to up his game on You Tube I keep getting adds for Trump on there despite watching no Right Wing channels, Biden does need to appeal to first-time voters too. Hope he gets a lead in both of those things.
Biden will win in a fair election. The Republicans are doing everything in their power to guarantee one does not happen.
Right now, Amy Barrett is planning on killing my wife since she only survived because of Obamacare. She has numerous preexisting conditions and no decent insurance will take her.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 12th 2020 at 8:42:06 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.That's deliberate. Conservatives like to buy ad space on left-leaning channels. They're able to do this because content creators aren't able to control what kind of ads appear on their channel; only whether or not ads appear and where those ads are slotted. It's one of many ways YouTube disempowers their creators in favor of corporate interests.
One YT personality I like to follow, Mack, talks about this sometimes. He's openly, proudly gay and conservative Christian groups like to buy ad space on his channel to condemn LGBT people in a space they're likely to see. He once mentioned seeing one ad pop up on one of his videos that seemed to actually be a direct response to him, specifically. Which is weird because, like, due to the nature of buying ads, they're literally helping him pay his rent and buy food for the sake of calling him dehumanizing slurs.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 12th 2020 at 8:46:28 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Yes and no. There's a reason the executive and the legislative branches are "co-equal". They're very good at blocking each other, so without control of both, it's very hard to get anything done unless the other side approves of it. In the past, this has led to negotiation between opposing parties so that legislature that got passed was a compromise position, but starting about ten years ago on precisely January 3rd 2011, the GOP preferred to stonewall absolutely everything proposed by Democrats rather than compromise on anything. This is part of a pattern where the GOP has increasingly treated Democratic elected officials as inherently illegitimate — blocking everything Democrats did simply because it was Democrats doing it, and bypassing Democratic objections to everything they wanted to do, even if it means blowing up norms (filibustering every judicial nominee Obama appointed) and changing rules (removing the filibuster when Democrats used it against them) to do so.
With the GOP so dead-set against allowing the Democrats to do anything, in effect, one party must hold the White House and the Senate in order to nominate any Senate-confirmed positions, must hold those plus the House to pass any legislation, and must hold those plus the SCOTUS to get any major policy changes to stick without being struck down or neutered by the courts.
If a party can only hold one institution, the White House is probably the best to have, as at least they can do executive orders by themselves, while the Senate has very little power to actually do anything without at least the White House on board.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.It's survived this long mostly because both sides knew that they'd eventually be the minority party again. There was something of a gentleman's agreement to play nice with the filibuster and only use it judiciously as the minority party — because everyone knew that the majority party could just get rid of it if they were serious about passing something. That's why getting rid of the filibuster is commonly called the "nuclear option" — getting rid of it was a form of mutually assured destruction, since (for all the reasons you point out) once it's gone it's not coming back, and now the minority party has virtually no power to stop anything.
What remains to be seen is whether or not a GOP minority will push it to that or not. They filibustered all of Obama's judicial appointments, so Democrats removed the filibuster for judicial appointments except SCOTUS nominees. Then the GOP gained a majority and blocked all of Obama's judicial appointments without needing to filibuster... and immediately removed the filibuster for SCOTUS nominees when Democrats filibustered their pick. The GOP didn't manage to pass any major legislation while they held both the House and the Senate, so the Democrats didn't need to filibuster anything (other than SCOTUS picks) in the Senate, so the GOP never got rid of the filibuster for legislation. And the Democrats haven't held the Senate since all these rules changes, so they haven't been in a position to change the rules themselves.
Which means we'll have to see what a GOP Senate minority does before anything else. If the GOP continues to just filibuster everything, then the Democrats have no reason not to get rid of the filibuster, since the GOP has already demonstrated that they'll remove the Democrats' ability to do so whenever it's convenient for them. But if the GOP is more judicious in using it, then the Dems might keep it around because they don't need to remove it to get things done.
Personally, I don't think Mitch McConnell has that much restraint. Assuming he ends up Senate minority leader, I'd be surprised if he doesn't filibuster everything he can, force Democrats to end the filibuster entirely. Fortunately, the 2022 Senate election map is pretty bad for Republicans — they're defending twice as many seats as Democrats, and if midterm elections are generally better for Republicans than Democrats, we can hope that a Biden administration passes voter rights reforms in their first two years that take effect in 2022. So just in general, if Democrats take the Senate in 2020, they're unlikely to lose it in 2022.
But now I'm well and truly reading tea leaves. We've still got to win in 2020 or else all this speculation is a moot point.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.All morning, You Tube bombarded me with ads for Trump. Funny thing is that the ads didn't even list any qualities of Trump, positive or negative. They literally only said "Vote early for President Trump!" Which would be good advice if you ignored the second half.
Somebody once told me the world was macaroni, I took a bite out of a treeStrangely, I haven't been bombarded with with political ads too much (knock on wood), but what's stranger is everytime I use the You Tube app on my TV, I get multiple Cornyn ads.
Edited by tclittle on Oct 12th 2020 at 11:55:35 AM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."I get Trump ads pretty regularly, but they're the kind that show up as autoplaying videos, which isn't so bad because I can just scroll past.
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my TumblrI'm curious how confidence in election integrity is going to be after all of this.
Both Democrats and Republicans are unsure of how fair all of this will be, but Republicans more so. That's not surprising given Trump has been crowing about things being rigged for months. But I'm wondering what the fallout from that is going to be. Because even though Republican worries have been clearly established to be unfounded, it doesn't change that they're there.
So it leaves me wondering even if there aren't major rights or uprising or anything (which I'm not assuming there will be) what repercussions this might have.
I've gotten several ads from the Georgia race, both pro-John Ossoff (alongside a handful for the other Dem candidate) and anti-John Ossoff.
For the national race, I've gotten a handful of Biden ads[1] and a few detestably idiotic Trump ads[2].
[1]= Emphasizing his time advocating for affordable housing and some other subject that I've forgotten.
[2]=Yes please tell me, a person with a pre-existing condition, the merits of a man who wants to take away my healthcare. Ugh, they're the worst.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Oct 12th 2020 at 10:26:34 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangIf Trump loses spectacularly, I wonder how it will affect the Republican party...they dropped the veil more than one with him in the lead and said the quiet part out loud.
Will it be back to euphemisms and winks and nods from them? Pence and his VP performance suggest so.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesI've heard a lot of pro-forma Trump ads, like some lady unenthusiastically explaining how Trump has given us all jobs, so vote for Trump because jobs. I subscribe to YouTube Premium so I get to skip all the ads there. Most of what I get is on the radio (on those occasions when I have it on while driving) or on TV streaming platforms like MSNBC's app... ironically.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Bernie effectively said, paraphrased down to its root, "If we don't take the Senate then Executive Orders are the only thing we'll be able to do anything for in the next four years."
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.