Senate The US Politics discussion

Don't think so much, Evan.

 

EVANAROLA

 

now do the ship of state

 

It's worse than that really. Trump doesn't believe the plane itself is good for anything. He thinks he can dispense with all that complex machinery and simply engulf all the passengers in his flabby embrace and hold them aloft through the sheer buoyancy of his own ego.

 

So Dennis Rodman thinks he can save us all from nuclear annihilation.

 

He and Donald Trump are about equally skilled as negotiators in the realm on international politics, and being reality stars/shock jocks both have about the same level of prior background. Neither of them listen to the State Department or other professionals. I'm struggling to see the difference, honestly.

 

I don't think J-Rod is completely wrong. Remember when the Skokie Nazis marched in Chicago? ACLU, a liberal institution defended their right to free speech. These were liberals defending Nazi's rights. Times have changed, now I see videos every other day of teacher's throwing kids out of class for wearing MAGA shirts, or liberals arguing we should suspend Nazi's "hate speech." Youtube shuts down extreme channels, or channels that document extreme violence.

I completely recognize that this is definitely a minority of people on the left, but the "historically right-wing" book-burners have always been a minority as well. We are seeing people on the left attacking Nazis' and white supremacists' free speech. Book burning is in that same vein. I could see them burning books like 'Imperium' and 'Mein Kampf.'

Obviously, the Neo-Nazi's and white nationalists are a scourge on our country, but we can't lose ourselves and sacrifice our country's principles in fighting them.

 

Game3525

Yes, 93% of Bernie Sanders’ voters technically voted for Clinton…but so what? It was the only viable way to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. I would’ve voted for Mitt Romney to keep Trump out of the White House. Hell, I would’ve voted George W. Bush a third term to keep Trump out of the White House.

I don’t like Clinton…at all. I think she would’ve been a mediocre President at best, and, more realistically, a pretty bad one…but she was still, by far, the lesser of two evils compared to Trump (and yes, she was an evil). As far as I’m concerned, I did not vote for her. I did not endorse her nor did I embrace her. I simply did everything within my power to keep Trump out of the White House.

appleseed

Kamala Harris has been in the Senate for less than a year and, in my opinion, hasn’t really proven herself. I’m undecided on her at this point. I’m glad that she supports single-payer healthcare, and I don’t really care whether it was out of sincere belief or our of cynical political calculation. I’ll take it. If she decides to turn against it later, then I’ll criticize her.

However, I don’t like doing this thing that television pundits like to do where they babble about “what’s in Senator X’s heart”. I don’t even remotely care what’s in Harris’s heart. As long as she supports and votes for single-payer, I’ll take it. A win is a win, regardless of what’s in her heart. Similarly, I don’t really care what was in Lincoln’s heart when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation or what was in LBJ’s heart when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Actions matter, not what’s in your heart.

 

You're ignoring one important thing here in your rant which basically can be summed up as "But... freedom of speech". Hate speech is.... well, hate speech. If someone or a group of people promotes the killing of people based on their race, that's hate speech. "Mein Kampf" promotes the extermination of Jews and was rightfully put on a black list of forbidden books in Germany.

That's the problem with the American definition of freedom of speech: According to you guys, every opinion should be treated equal. That's complete and utter nonsense. Humans should be treated equal, but not the opinions they hold because some opinions - like racism, fascism, nacism and white supremacism - do not deserve any respect as they are a threat for a modern, open society. Ever heard of Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance? Zero tolerance against intolerance to protect a tolerant society because, if we tolerate the intolerant, it could mean the end of all tolerance.

I can only shake my head about Americsn liberals defending the right of Nazis to promote hate speech.

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All opinions are equally protected under the law. The idea that we should allow the government to declare certain opinions illegal (no matter how repugnant) is where totalitarianism and fascism begin. What’s then to stop them from making it illegal to criticize or question the government? When does it become illegal to criticize or mock government officials? When does it become illegal to say anything negative about the President? All in the name of national security, of course.

That doesn’t mean that we, as individuals, have to give all opinions equal (or any) respect. I certainly have no respect for neo-Nazism or white supremacy. However, I say that we let the neo-Nazis and white supremacists out themselves. Then you defeat them in the marketplace of ideas, rather than through censorship.

Censorship is always and inherently a form of political oppression, and I oppose it wholeheartedly under any circumstances. If you believe in censorship, you believe in oppression, and I have no respect for you. Period. You are certainly not a liberal if you support censorship, as political oppression is antithetical to liberalism.

 

This could be helpful

I don't expect results, but it's nice to see.

Breaking ranks with many of their fellow Republicans, a group of prominent politicians filed briefs on Tuesday urging the Supreme Court to rule that extreme political gerrymandering — the drawing of voting districts to give lopsided advantages to the party in power — violates the Constitution.
The briefs were signed by Republicans including Senator John McCain of Arizona; Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio; Bob Dole, the former Republican Senate leader from Kansas and the party’s 1996 presidential nominee; the former senators John C. Danforth of Missouri, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming; and Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former governor of California.

 

Michael Moore on if Trump is a one-term president:

“It’s delusional,” he says. For him, the only hope is activating a real movement directed at the polls. “That’s why I’m on that stage every night.” But even that seems like a long shot: “Impeachment,” he says, “people don’t even know what that means. Or there’s that clause in the 25th Amendment where if the president goes insane, a majority of the Cabinet can remove him, or at least turn the powers over to the vice-president. People talk about that like it’s a real thing. Like they’re really going to do that. By now, most Republicans — because they’re only a year away from their election in the House, and a third of the Senate — they have done polling in their districts, and they have learned that being associated with Trump or having Trump as the standard-bearer of their party will not cost them their seat next year. They’ve done such an excellent job of gerrymandering their districts that even though people may not like Trump that much by this time next year, it will not affect them. It will affect a few, in some of the purple districts. Democrats will pick up a few seats, that’s just true historically, but … He just has to win his Electoral College states, and he doesn’t need to win all the ones he had, because what did he have, 304? And you need 270? He’s not going to lose 35 electoral votes.
“You know everybody’s saying, ‘Russia, Russia, that’s going to do it!’ Here’s what’s going to happen: People like Paul Manafort are probably going to be indicted. Don Jr. might be indicted. But it’s all going to be people around him. It’s not going to be him. This man has always made sure he’s never in the wrong. He doesn’t drink. He’s very careful. It doesn’t look like it, but on the things where he needs to be, he’s careful. With all of the shenanigans we have read over the years about Trump and the different things he has done to abuse workers, to skid past regulations, the man has never been indicted. He has never spent the night in jail. Anybody who is thinking he is going down on any of this Russian stuff clearly hasn’t paid attention to the adventures of Donald J. Trump over the last three or four decades. I’m not saying those things didn’t happen, but I can guarantee you he always made sure he wasn’t there and there was no witness to him being there. That’s why he waited for everyone to leave the room before he had that conversation with Comey. He’ll never be indicted for that, because it’s one person’s word against the other. There’s no witness, and there’s no tape. Because he is an evil genius. And he’s such a malignant narcissist that he’ll never resign or take the fall for his kids or his close friends or associates.
“So I don’t think Trump’s going anywhere. Not next week, not next month, and not next year. It’s like, you can hope and dream, or you can deal with the reality of it. It’s a wonderful thing to have, but, I mean, at some point, you have to wake up. Right?"

 

Rodman actually seems more sane than Trump at the moment.

 

Ah, now it's going to be the old slippery-slope argument again that a country is in danger of becoming totalitarian and authoritarian once it bans hate speech.

I invite you to look at countries like Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Belgium etc. All those countries do have laws against hate speech for many years and none of them have slipped into totalitarianism. Your argument is as weak as American gun-nuts saying "Once the government removes our guns that God gave to us, it will start to oppress us".

So let me get this straight: There's a guy who yells "I can't tolerate the existence Blacks/women/LGBTQs/Jews/[insert any other non-white male group here] so they must be killed" and you think you're doing a liberal decision by saying "I do not have any respect for this, but you have the freedom to express your violent hate speech"?

It's actually not a liberal decision. It's backwards and regressive. And "fighting those ideas openly on the marketplace of ideas" sounds good on paper, but hasn't shown to work in practice. This was one of the reasons why the Weimar Republic failed and why Heather Heyer was recently killed in Charlottesville.

Note that I do not support authorianism. When it comes to freedom of speech, I think everyone should be able to criticise the government. One should also be allowed to criticise the actions or behaviours or beliefs of another person. But there's also this thing called human dignity. It's definitely not OK to openly promote the idea that other groups of people don't have the right to live. That is crossing the line. Such ideas should not be tolerated and should by considered a crime by law.

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I will still maintain that any book worth burning is a book worth reading. Seriously. No matter how ****ed up it is.

 

Went to see David Axelrod give a talk last night. As always, he's thoughtful and inspiring. Low point of the evening though he doesn't give the dems much chance of winning back the house in 2018 and feels the Senate Republican majority may grow.

 

Jesus, why is this so hard to understand? Free speech is something the government cannot **** with. So if a bunch of nazis want to protest then the government can't stop them. That's why the ACLU gets involved to ensure that the government does nothing to deny them their constitutional right to free speech. In Charlottesville the ACLU got involved to ensure the nazis got their permit.

But that doesn't mean that we the people can't shout those ****ers down. We can be there shouting over the top, making sure their "free speech" is never heard. We can do that and we should do that because nazis spread hate, fear and bigotry. They deserve no respect from their fellow citizens and censorship from fellow citizens is to be encouraged. There's nothing noble about letting senseless hatred get airtime. But yes by all means let them gather and let them protest. That is their right and we all agree that the government shouldn't ban them or censor them. But we can.

 

I agree with him. Democrats are placing too much stock in the idea that 2018 will be a 'wave' election. At best, I expect a 'reversion to the mean', where traditionally-Democratic areas--along with some purple ones--swing back to being blue. This may translate into slightly-higher-than-average gains for the Dems, but not enough to swing the House. And the senate will give the GOP even more seats, based on map alone (and the fact that Trump's voters will still turn out for him).

The one area where I think the Democrats may significantly over-perform is at the state and local level. There is the potential for them to make substantial gains in state-houses and governorships, which is equally important IMHO to winning national races re: reversing gerrymandering. Speaking of which, oral arguments begin in the US Supreme Court case challenging Wisconsin's maps on October 3rd. John McCain, along with at least one Democratic Senator, have filed an amicus brief asking the SC to uphold the lower court's ruling striking down the map as unconstitutional. So there's maybe a sliver of hope yet...

 

SuperWatto - Axelrod seconded that point of view last night though perhaps a bit less bombastically. i don't think a two term Trump presidency is inevitable, first of all because that massive stroke may be just around the corner, but also Moore is right that few Republican leaders have anything to gain by not falling in behind Trump.

 

Us. It's always on us. It's on us right now.

Yes, we're perfectly capable of declaring that hate speech is not okay, while criticism of the government is. We make distinctions like this all the time.

I don't care if you have any respect for me, or if you think I'm a liberal, or if I actually am a liberal. A liberal identity has zero value to me.

How do you feel about child pornography? Uh oh, you believe in censorship, you believe in "oppression", you have no respect for yourself, period, and you're certainly not a liberal.

Now you'll respond by making an exception based on the harm caused. Welcome to our side of the debate.

I don't.

 

Massive stroke, you wish. The bugger will outlive us all. In his shelter with his family and a couple of yesmen.
I like how Moore paints Trump's character, I don't think it's very wide off the mark. He will not be implicated.

 

Trump publicly implicated himself in the coverup. I'm not saying he will be impeached or anything, but he won't escape it because he's "very careful." Like, he doesn't drink because of his alcoholic older brother who died at 42, not so he can be crafty or whatever Moore is trying to imply.

 

You do realize the average amount of seats lost by the presidents party is 33. If Democrats do slightly-higher then average, then they are winning about 40 seats, which is a wave election. As for the Senate, I would be surprise if the GOP wins more seats. The map is bad for Democrats, but historically incumbents senators of the opposite party of the president tend to do well in the mid-terms.