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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Requiring senate confirmation could be a simple way to reduce the partisanship, you could legaly require them to be an independent, you could require that the chair be agreed unanimously by the other four partisan members, you could change it from a four year fixed term to say 10 years (thus meaning the chair isn’t replaced by every new president), there are plenty of options.
The way to stop another Trump resetting everything is to stop another total system failure, Trump couldn’t do half the shit he’s doing if he didn’t have cable news (including the likes of CNN) backing him up and a hyper partisan congress that will do anything to protect him. Remember he wouldn’t even be president if it wasn’t for those two things, foreign meddling, FBI medling, and the Obama’s administration being convinced that it wasn’t going to happen.
edited 10th May '18 1:49:30 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt seems for Trump that anything is "fake" news if bothers to say anything less than praising him 100%.
Also, I get the impression he wouldn't like the idea that the media "helped" him win, because that's implying he didn't win on his own awesomeness. The same reason he's so insistent he actually won the popular vote if you take out all the millions of illegal votes that totally exist.
Trump's personal narrative is that his campaign was a mighty, unstoppable force that triumphed despite the hordes of brown people directed by the news media trying to stop him.
The truth is that he won narrowly, through highly decisive distributions of votes that are unlikely to be repeated, with the news media giving him millions of dollars in free advertising and downplaying the policy implications — social, political, economic — of his platform, along with Russia bankrolling his campaign in various ways behind the scenes.
His hatred of the news media is entirely consistent with his overall narrative: the media has always been his enemy, never the useful idiots they actually were.
edited 10th May '18 2:17:43 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."CNN and Trump’s relationship looks from the outside like that of an abusive relationship, with Trump constantly abusing CNN while CNN do everything they can to please him and get him what he wants.
That isn’t the truth of it however, the truth is that while Trump does give zero shits about CNN, CNN doesn’t actully care about Trump, it cares about the views that Trump brings in, if Trump ever become boring that they’d ditch him in a heartbeat, if someone more crazy and interesting came along you bet they’d fight to make them appear on Trump’s level for horse raise railings.
They very much deserve each other, two destructive monsters willing to burn everything else down in the pursuit of profit, CNN and Trump were made for each other.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranAny publication that doesn't kiss Trump's ass and write glowing reports about him, he badmouths — his usual spiel is that "So-and-So is failing, and nobody reads it." Yeah, right... The only fake news is whatever comes out of Trump's mouth.
As I've said before, the man lives in a State of Denial, and is Divorced From Reality.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank."It will be hilarious one day if we learn that getting elected president was all that saved him from bankruptcy."
You joke but I seem to remember reading an article before the election that stated such a thing was actually true. That is, he had a lot (financially) riding on getting elected. I'll see if I can dig that up again.
Not on getting elected, but on getting nominated, at least. Indication seems to be that everyone, including his own campaign, including Trump himself, expected him to lose. The plan (again, for basically everyone involved) was to ride the notoriety to bigger, better, more lucrative things. Naturally, Trump would never admit that he lost fairly, so his plan was to rant and rave about how the rigged system stole the election from him.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Trump administration looks to relax child labor laws.
...
“When I started doing this kind of work 20 years ago, we were losing 70 kids a year at work, and now we are losing usually 20 or less. We’ve made substantial progress, and I think that the tightened hazardous occupations rules have played a role in the lowered death tolls for teenage workers. So I would not be in favor of relaxing any of these standards; I think it would be a tragic mistake and would lead to the death of teenage workers,” Reid Maki, coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, told Bloomberg Law.
Also, doublepost, and this one is from the Huff, but I feel like it really deserves its own piece:
Fox Business Guest Defends Torture: It Worked On John McCain.
“The fact is those methods can work and they’re effective as former Vice President [Dick] Cheney said,” Mc Inerney continued. “And if we have to use ’em to save a million American lives, we will do whatever we have to.”
...
Not only are “enhanced interrogation techniques” immoral, according to Mc Cain and many other lawmakers, but they do not extract accurate information.
On Wednesday, Mc Cain urged the Senate to reject President Donald Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel to head the Central Intelligence Agency, given her reported role in overseeing the torture of an al Qaeda terror suspect in 2002 at a clandestine base in Thailand.
“Like many Americans, I understand the urgency that drove the decision to resort to so-called enhanced interrogation methods after our country was attacked,” Mc Cain said in his statement. “But as I have argued many times, the methods we employ to keep our nation safe must be as right and just as the values we aspire to live up to and promote in the world.
edited 10th May '18 4:50:01 PM by SciFiSlasher
"Somehow the hated have to walk a tightrope, while those who hate do not."
This is what the party of Lincon and Theodore Roosevelt has come to Folks!
So, once we get Trump out, I feel like we're going to simply be doing a lot of Damage Control.
So what are your top priorities for what can be done to fix the mess that the Republicans have got us into? Nothing crazy, just trying to fix this and ensure that it never happens again?
edited 10th May '18 4:56:42 PM by megaeliz
I was thinking more like what needs done to keep the actual Civil Service from falling apart, and what actual things need to be done.
Like rebuilding the State Department and EPA, reappointing federal prosecutors, investigating public corruption, sending Fruit Baskets to everyone we've pissed off, etc?
edited 10th May '18 5:13:23 PM by megaeliz
The Republican party is going to impressive lengths to make Neutral Evil a real world phenomena.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.![]()
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The list of things we need to do to fix civil service and repair our standing with the rest of the world is far too long and we would somehow need to do everything on it all at once if we wanna get anywhere near where we were three years ago.
And even if we did them all, it'd all be moot if someone like Trump gets elected again, which brings me back to extreme vetting for would-be presidential candidates.
I don't know what a Lannister is, one. Two, this is bigger than Trump. If someone like him won once, someone like him can win again, and we need to prevent any way we can if we ever wanna repair this country.
edited 10th May '18 5:26:47 PM by PhysicalStamina
i'm tired, my friend@megaeliz: Yeah, those things will surely work when in the following 4 years the Republicans could decide to nominate Alex Jones or Richard Spencer, undoing all of it and again wreaking havoc on previous agreements and alliances with other countries. Sorry for the sarcasm, but that is a cycle I don't want to see happen for even the third time.
edited 10th May '18 5:28:26 PM by Grafite
Life is unfair...Remember, there were guys like Trump running a decade ago. They usually lost after winning primaries, were condemned by the party, or were contained to the Reddest of districts. Now, they have nearly taken over the party.
Now you've got open neo-Nazis in the same position. Whose to say where they will be in the GOP by 2030 or so?
edited 10th May '18 5:30:11 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.The analogy is that on Game Of Thrones/in a Song of Ice and Fire, there's a horrible murderous little 14 year old shit of a king who spends his time doing dramatically evil stuff like cutting out a man's tongue or killing crowds of people for jeering him. Everyone thinks joffrey is the worst king in the world except his family and is glad when he's gone.
HOWEVER, the actual problem was never Joffrey (though he did awful awufl things) but the fact his family propped him up as king along with their horde of cronies. Trump is NOT THE PROBLEM because he's just rubber-stamping endless horrible things created by a much larger, much nastier more corrupt system.
He's not in charge of the Republican party, he's just their figurehead and tool.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

edited 10th May '18 1:14:31 PM by TrashJack
"Cynic, n. — A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." - The Devil's Dictionary