Our political system can't solve problems anymore

[Drazzil]

If you can’t see the Democrats would do more if they had more votes, you’re clueless, Drazzil.

Am I? If Kristen Scienema and Joe Manchkin were not opposed to everything the Dem's are "trying" to do, how many other Democrats would develop "concerns" about the Dem's supposed agenda?

Ooh ooh, I know. None.

You're lying to yourself. Scienema(sp) and Manchin(sp) are just the two who can most afford to take flak for those who can't. Its all Kabuki.

[hepcat]

You're lying to yourself if you think government is the problem. People are the problem. And if you burn it all down and start fresh, those you saw as the victims will just end up being the new fat cats who will victimize everyone else.

You really wanna cause significant change? We need to figure out a way to get rid of humans. They're at the root of everything awful.

[Unagi]

Its all Kabuki.

This is at the core of where you are wrong. While there are some very strange 'friendships', most of those have been massively strained or entirely broken over the last 4 years - and if you honestly think Mitch and Nancy are working off a shared script or even a rehearsed script - you have gone into the deep end. There is general, sincere animosity between them, and they do indeed want two (or more) different things.

[Unagi]

Scienema(sp) and Manchin(sp)

Let's break this down.

It's Manchin... like Man and then he has a Chin.... Manchin.
And then it's Sinema.... like her name is Ema, and she is full of Sin. Sinema.

Sinema and Manchin


You spell them as many ways as the Lewis and Clark party spelled mosquito.

[Jaymann]

I took his misspellings as some type of obscure mockery.

[malchior]

Well since this is a pile on might as well throw my nickel opinion in. The big framing mistake is thinking that burning it all down is even possible. It's not. This isn't ancient Rome. No horde is going to climb the walls, sack the Temple of Aphrodite, and carry away the gold in the treasury. This system is transforming. There are a lot of reasons why and we are on a road to potential even likely radical transformation. However, if the idea is that there will be some great underclass uprising that'll tear it all down or fix all these economic problems we face that is just not reality based. There is almost no real support for that at any level. It isn't going to happen absent a plague, nuclear war, civilization level event. Even a civil war isn't going to produce that result.

[Carpet_pissr]

Everyone involved in the ‘burn it down’ kerfuffle needs to go watch Mr. Robot before coming back in here. That’s your homework.

[hepcat]

It isn't going to happen absent a plague, nuclear war, civilization level event.

So what you're saying is that my creating a Lord Humungus outfit may not have been in vain?

I just spent 48 bucks on a sharpened boomerang for Kraken to complete his Feral Kid look, so hopefully that pays off too.

[malchior]

It isn't going to happen absent a plague, nuclear war, civilization level event.

So what you're saying is that my creating a Lord Humungus outfit may not have been in vain?

I just spent 48 bucks on a sharpened boomerang for Kraken to complete his Feral Kid look, so hopefully that pays off too.

I have a line on good stuff too. I don't remember if I posted it here or not but early in the pandemic when shortages were at their worst here some jackass started screeching down our streets in a modified dune buggy. The only thing that could have made it worse for folks here is if he was huffing spray paint as he terrorized the neighborhood. I've since seen it in his garage. It'll be my first stop in the case of a purge or apocalyptic level event.

[Drazzil]

Scienema(sp) and Manchin(sp)

Let's break this down.

It's Manchin... like Man and then he has a Chin.... Manchin.
And then it's Sinema.... like her name is Ema, and she is full of Sin. Sinema.

Sinema and Manchin


You spell them as many ways as the Lewis and Clark party spelled mosquito.

Thanks for that. Sincerely. Let me seriously take another week off of this stuff. Its depressing. And I want to concentrate on the good that's unfolding in my life.

[Jaymon]

It isn't that people don't believe the government is broke. I truly believe that most Americans understand the American government is broken. The problem is, the people are fairly evenly split on deciding which half of the government is broken. And thats why we are still stuck.

[malchior]

How's it going out there? This entire year has been a master course on how our system can't solve problems and it is sapping the strength from Biden's Presidency. FWIW some pollster experts think that suddenly one of the highest quality pollsters has broken bad. These polls have been worse for Biden than Rasmussen for instance. Maybe that's true or it really could actually be this bad.

[El Guapo]

Adam Schiff Says ‘There’s No Magic Button To Push’ To Protect Democracy

This is a podcast interview with Adam Schiff, focused on democracy protection. FWIW I thought the host (Galen Druke) did a good job pressing Schiff on "ok, well, what exactly are you doing about it?" questions, and exposed pretty well (especially for an interview that's not much more than 30 minutes) that Democrats' approach mostly boils down to a couple long shot bills plus an electoral strategy ("elect democrats or Democracy may die").

Pretty depressing honestly, as Schiff is I think one of the Democratic leaders who gets the danger more than some others seem to. But then, maybe the person I really want to see grilled on this is Schumer, because the reality may be that you're never going to get both Sinema and Manchin on board with any of the democracy protection bills, and maybe there are no good options other than hoping that Democrats manage to hold on to one or both chambers of Congress in 2022.

[Carpet_pissr]

Duplicate

[Carpet_pissr]

Adam Schiff Says ‘There’s No Magic Button To Push’ To Protect Democracythe reality may be is that you're never going to get both Sinema and Manchin on board with any of the democracy protection bills

FTFY

And As much as I dislike him, Schiff has a point. Do WHAT exactly? I’ve been attacking and sulking about the sitting D’s for inaction on this point, but at the same time it feels a bit ‘game over’ already.

The liberal/progressive ‘side’ of the country lost, at least this round, and it will likely be a long time, if ever, that we get another real chance.

Speaking nationally, as a whole of course. Obviously there are pockets of progressives, and blue entire states, but game over, generally, man.

If there ever was a window of opportunity to prevent what we’ve watched unfold the past 4-8 years, it’s now closed, which is why you see Schiff basically shrugging and saying “WTF can I do?!”

[malchior]

I think the dispiriting part for me at least is that these useless bureaucrats like Garland are just laying down for it. What we've seen as these old institutionalists don't have the guts to do the right thing. They haven't shown us that rule of law is for anyone but the small people. That they've limited all the Capitol Riot activity to the cannon fodder? Preposterous. Costa/Woodward/Rolling Stone seem to care more than Biden or Garland. That said, I agree it is game over but man is it disappointing to see democracy die like this.

[Zarathud]

It all comes down to voting nationally.

The GOP would not tolerate Trump except he motivates their base. The Democrats need to motivate everyone else.

[Carpet_pissr]

It all comes down to voting nationally.

The GOP would not tolerate Trump except he motivates their base. The Democrats need to motivate everyone else.

I may be missing your point, but it's not just national elections. It's the Supreme Court. It's the gerrymandered states. It's the DOJ apparently. It's the state legislatures and judges and ....and...and....etc. It's why the Biden victory felt SO damn hollow. At some point before the actual election, I guess I had the naive assumption that 'everything would be alright again" if only Trump would lose. Didn't really matter WHO he lost to, just that he lost.

I've learned that Trump wasn't just some fluke, like I WANTED so desperately to believe. He was real. He happened (are we in therapy? ) and he represented a world view that a LOT of our fellow citizens subscribe to, which a LOT of people with a little or a lot of power are trying to implement. It happened, and it's still happening, and Trump is not in office.

"We" won, but we lost.

[Drazzil]

Adam Schiff Says ‘There’s No Magic Button To Push’ To Protect Democracy

This is a podcast interview with Adam Schiff, focused on democracy protection. FWIW I thought the host (Galen Druke) did a good job pressing Schiff on "ok, well, what exactly are you doing about it?" questions, and exposed pretty well (especially for an interview that's not much more than 30 minutes) that Democrats' approach mostly boils down to a couple long shot bills plus an electoral strategy ("elect democrats or Democracy may die").

Pretty depressing honestly, as Schiff is I think one of the Democratic leaders who gets the danger more than some others seem to. But then, maybe the person I really want to see grilled on this is Schumer, because the reality may be that you're never going to get both Sinema and Manchin on board with any of the democracy protection bills, and maybe there are no good options other than hoping that Democrats manage to hold on to one or both chambers of Congress in 2022.

If it means anything to you at all, America's last chance was prolly with Obama being an actual firebrand reformer. Not a lukewarm corporatist. It's really all been over since 2008.

[hepcat]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

[disarm]

A generally apolitical friend of mine posted this on Facebook yesterday... pretty well sums up the overall situation...

[Carpet_pissr]

When I see stuff like that, I have to work hard not to post something like ‘no shit!! That’s the whole point!”

I mean I’m grateful that more people are seemingly being pulled into politics who avoided them before, but it’s too fucking late now.

FWIW my brother is one of those people.

[LordMortis]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

I would say it's been a fight since then, yes. I have to remind myself of that when the doom and gloom hits me, which is all too often in the last decade or so.

[malchior]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

I would say it's been a fight since then, yes. I have to remind myself of that when the doom and gloom hits me, which is all too often in the last decade or so.

I'm pretty sure Hepcat was saying that in jest but this is a fair take too. Any system of government is a 'civilized fight' until it is not. Democracy is supposed to be the fairest way to avoid the last part. That seems to be holding up when you look at things wide scope. Eventually though they tend to break down too and we seemingly are facing one of those moments again.

[hepcat]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

I would say it's been a fight since then, yes. I have to remind myself of that when the doom and gloom hits me, which is all too often in the last decade or so.

I'm pretty sure Hepcat was saying that in jest

This

[Blackhawk]

It wasn't doomed. It was a beta. The problem is that we started of version 0.76, and while we had a few minor updates, we never had any major revisions to address the bugs. Now we're just abandonware. It's time to either hire a new team of devs to bring us to 1.0 gold, or we'll have to scrap the project and do a complete reboot.

[Unagi]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

I would say it's been a fight since then, yes. I have to remind myself of that when the doom and gloom hits me, which is all too often in the last decade or so.

I'm pretty sure Hepcat was saying that in jest

This

I’m fairly certain that Lord Mortis understood the sarcasm.
He said “I would say it’s been a fight since then, yes.”, which includes the “yes”, and is just Lord Morris agreeing with the sarcasm in Hepcat’s post.

[El Guapo]

It wasn't doomed. It was a beta. The problem is that we started of version 0.76, and while we had a few minor updates, we never had any major revisions to address the bugs. Now we're just abandonware. It's time to either hire a new team of devs to bring us to 1.0 gold, or we'll have to scrap the project and do a complete reboot.

Yeah, this is it. A lot of the problems that we're having were seen at the time (Madison to his credit opposed equal state representation in the Senate for a lot of the reasons we're seeing lived out), but they weren't as big problems at the time (the Senate's a much bigger problem when the difference in state populations is 50x as opposed to 2x).

But in any event we're stuck with a first draft constitution, when we (as humanity) have learned a lot about how to organize democratic systems in the last 200+ years. We really need to go back and revise our political structures root and branch, but that's not going to happen unless and until we go through some really bad shit.

[El Guapo]

Raffensberger was interviewed on the 538 politics podcast

First I appreciate what Galen Druke at 538 seems to be doing lately, focusing more on democracy erosion and protection issues.

Second Raffensberger overall was pretty disappointing. He's solid in stating and rearguing that Trump lost 2020 in Georgia, full stop no questions caveats or exceptions. But on almost everything else he's an apologist for the modern GOP, including giving in general a strong defense of the election law revisions in Georgia (including the provisions allowing the replacement of county election boards by the state legislature).

Which maybe shouldn't be surprising. While he showed real courage in doing the right thing in resisting post-election Trumpist pressure, he's very much a believer in the pre-2020 GOP strategy of voter suppression via election law procedural changes. Plus he does need to win reelection in a GOP primary election in Georgia in 2022 (and it's important that he does win) so he can't go hard against the GOP. Still, though, pretty frustrating.

[hepcat]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

I would say it's been a fight since then, yes. I have to remind myself of that when the doom and gloom hits me, which is all too often in the last decade or so.

I'm pretty sure Hepcat was saying that in jest

This

I’m fairly certain that Lord Mortis understood the sarcasm.
He said “I would say it’s been a fight since then, yes.”, which includes the “yes”, and is just Lord Morris agreeing with the sarcasm in Hepcat’s post.

This

[Blackhawk]

But in any event we're stuck with a first draft constitution, when we (as humanity) have learned a lot about how to organize democratic systems in the last 200+ years.

We've also learned a lot about how humanity works in that time.

[El Guapo]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

I would say it's been a fight since then, yes. I have to remind myself of that when the doom and gloom hits me, which is all too often in the last decade or so.

I'm pretty sure Hepcat was saying that in jest

This

I’m fairly certain that Lord Mortis understood the sarcasm.
He said “I would say it’s been a fight since then, yes.”, which includes the “yes”, and is just Lord Morris agreeing with the sarcasm in Hepcat’s post.

This

That

[hepcat]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

I would say it's been a fight since then, yes. I have to remind myself of that when the doom and gloom hits me, which is all too often in the last decade or so.

I'm pretty sure Hepcat was saying that in jest

This

I’m fairly certain that Lord Mortis understood the sarcasm.
He said “I would say it’s been a fight since then, yes.”, which includes the “yes”, and is just Lord Morris agreeing with the sarcasm in Hepcat’s post.

This

That

There

[El Guapo]

I would say it was all over right around 1776.

I would say it's been a fight since then, yes. I have to remind myself of that when the doom and gloom hits me, which is all too often in the last decade or so.

I'm pretty sure Hepcat was saying that in jest

This

I’m fairly certain that Lord Mortis understood the sarcasm.
He said “I would say it’s been a fight since then, yes.”, which includes the “yes”, and is just Lord Morris agreeing with the sarcasm in Hepcat’s post.

This

That

There

The other thing

[hepcat]

[malchior]

I'm typically not a WSJ fan but credit where credit is due. This is why the downward spiral is continuing. It's almost like Facebook profits from it...

[Pyperkub]

It isn't that people don't believe the government is broke. I truly believe that most Americans understand the American government is broken. The problem is, the people are fairly evenly split on deciding which half of the government is broken. And thats why we are still stuck.

PS that's the way the oligarchy likes it. Short term thinking over long term health.

[El Guapo]

Yeah, although getting Congress to do nothing isn't the most epic of achievements these days.

[malchior]

[YellowKing]

Even if 1%, 2%, 5% actually used it for drugs, isn't it worth getting the other 95% of kids out of poverty?