The other half is pretty bad at governing, but at least they try to govern. So when they're in power, the first thing they have to do is try to build back up the institutions that have been disabled or dismantled by the party of government-cannibals.

Don't ask me which half is which. You know.

Yes, they spend a lot of energy on obstructing the government from functioning, and creating a naked kleptocracy to use the government to funnel money into their own pockets. But they are also moving openly towards a fascist dictatorship with very specific ideas about how society should function, and how (and when) people should be permitted to live.

1. Installing a conservative super-majority to the Supreme Court. [Criminalized abortion in half the US. Blocked student loan relief. Gutted voting rights. Environmental protections. Health mandates. Firearm restrictions.]

2. Indiscriminate obstruction. [Months of crucial Ukraine aid. Blocked voting rights bill. Immigration reform. Firearm safety. Tax relief.]

It's honestly difficult to pick the Greatest Hits, given how much damage they've done.

Basically I find a good rule of thumb to be: if comcast is against it, it's probably going to improve the lives of everyone via some form of competition between businesses.

Democrats have been calling on Biden to increase his power through just writing Executive Orders to act on their platform, and bypass all other branches of government...but THAT's not dictatorship?

I don’t think executive orders are that concerning when the legislative body has problems getting shit done. It’s a normal political tool that both parties use (relatively) evenly. What is concerning is gravely anti-constitutional movements to overturn the results of democratic elections.

Executive orders are one instantiation of what's literally the job of the executive branch: executing the law.

Executive orders operate within the authority granted by the legislative branch as judged by the judicial branch, and that authority can also be removed by the legislative branch.

You can say an order is unconstitutional or unlawful, but it's still not dictatorship.

Biden has written 138 in 3.25 years, averaging 42 EOs/year

Every executive order by every President is an abuse of power, as far as I'm concerned.

55/yr for Trump? 44/yr for Biden? No one should be proud of their side.

1. Since the opposition seeks progress in many forms, blindly obstruct them in all cases.

2. Legislate the country back to 1953. When that is accomplished, legislate the country back to 1853.

The only part I'm unsure about is whether they're interested in renaming the nation "Gilead."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

The GOP wants fascism everywhere

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/us/arizona-abortion-ban.h...

The reason that Democrats find all of this unacceptable is that Republicans have either failed to anticipate the chaotic consequences of their actions, or -- as they argue in court in support for jail terms for people who have abortions, and that doctors should not have exception in the case of life of the mother or rape -- that they intend the chaos and resulting harm to women. As people suffer and die due to their actions, it's not hard to see why rolling back laws to 1864 is objectionable to Democrats.

I appreciate you bringing up EU countries, but if we are striving to emulate them, we should strive to match their maternal mortality rates by providing adequate healthcare to pregnant people [2]. Instead, by upending abortion rights in this country, we are worsening these trends. You can't use the EU as a benchmark if you're not willing to implement EU-like healthcare and social services in the US.

[1] https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/a-revie...

[2] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

Also, you are wrong. The week-number cutoff for abortion for example can EASILY be used as a benchmark for what should be allowed, regardless of what other healthcare is available. I am not from the US, nor am I a supporter of the republican OR democratic party, but it is blindingly obvious that the democrats are WAY less willing to compromise on anything than the republicans, and attempts to use emotion and misrepresent to extreme levels, and on this particular issue, its very obvious that democrats are the obstructionists and extremists, and 100% unwilling to go out of their reality distortion field. On other issues, republicans are insane, but it is a different insane (and different does NOT mean less). And more importantly, NONE of these parties are good for the people, both are abominations that only serve their own agenda

how many americans know who the vice president is? how many can even point to DC on a map?

What is a party? I think there still is a Republican Party that fits your description. I meet them in every day life all the time. They are reasonable, agree on many things, and are willing to seek compromise. I hope they are the majority, if not the voting majority.

But they are not well represented by 90% of the current Republican office holders.

Nothing will change until average Americans are fed up with the status quo, and force change - that goes for basic things like making the parties work together.

I do not believe the majority of Republican politicians today are trying to improve the country. I think the majority are self-serving, self-interested, and corrupt. This isn't the party of George Bush—who I disagree with about virtually everything, but seemed genuinely interested in trying to do a good job. This is now the party of Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, James Comer, Ted Cruz, and so on. There is no equivalent to any of these characters on the left. There is no compromising with obviously bad-faith actors like this.

It's a realistic view.

> The party or parties you disagree with may not share your views, but they do have many things in common with you. In

The major party I disagree with least doesn’t share my most of views but has many things, in broad focus, in common with me.

That’s very much not true of the major party I disagree with most.

> In order to build bridges with other parties, it’s important to believe that the majority of people who get involved in government, regardless of party, are motivated primarily by the desire to serve their neighbors and their country

Why would “building bridges with other parties” be a goal? A lot of people seem to have gotten ideas that the long realignment period from 1930s to the 1990s when the salient political divides were not along the same axis as the divide between the major parties (though they were approaching alignment at the end of the period) was a norm and not an aberration, and thus have fetishized bipartisanship which was simply a result of ideological factions crossing partisan boundaries rather than generally being contained within major parties. When that applies, you don't need to build bridges between parties, the factions inherently provide it; when it doesn't, you don't have a commonality to build on.

And, in any case, this is the fallacy of argument to the consequences of belief – you are justifying a belief in a fact claim not by any evidence that it represents the actual facts, but by the notionally desirable consequences of believing it independent of its truth. > Without that belief, it will be near impossible to form agreements across the aisle.

I actually think that its a lot easier to achieve agreements across the aisle, where there is utility in doings so, by observing the actual things that the specific goals the other side has in concrete terms and appealing to them, rather than fantasizing a distant abstraction like “serving the neighbors and their country”. The latter is only useful once you determine a concrete operationalization that comports with the actual behavior of the individuals involved, but that offers nothing between a low-level concrete model of interests that avoids any high-level abstractions.

Now, to the extent that its often a concrete low-level interest that they want to be seen as motivated by the desire to serve their neighbors and their country, that may be useful, but that’s different than believing that that is their actual motivation.

Neither party wins elections based on which candidates are more suited to the job, they win based on who can out-trash-talk the other side. If this was not true, negative campaign ads would not be the main form of advertising during election season.

I predict that if one of the parties fails and dissolves due to severe missteps, there will be a period of severe democratic instability, followed by a split of the surviving party into two major factions, each of which settles out at around exactly 50% of voter mindshare again.

I actually see this too. The Republican party is on the verge of collapse not because of anything Democrats have done, but because of what Trump has done to the Republican party apparatus. He's redirecting all funds to his legal bills instead of electing candidates. He's causing them to lose in red districts because of abortion by previously unseen margins. He's telling everyone that voting is fraudulent so Republicans aren't voting.

I mean, Trump has never been the head of a non fraudulent, successful company in his entire life. Why would we not expect him to similarly destroy the RNC?

So if the Democrats are left standing, I see them cleaving in two, with one half being the Biden/Manchin/Romney axis. The other party would be more like the Warren/AOC/Bernie axis. MAGA types would be left in the political wilderness.

I would actually be fine with either of those parties in power.

Conservatives sincerely believe that government bureaucracies are less efficient than a free market economy. That's not a cover or a motte and bailey, it's legitimately and literally true. Conservative politicians dismantle government when given the opportunity because that's what their base wants them to do because, again, their base sincerely believes that the government is bad at most things it does.

It's true that Republican politicians (like most politicians) are mostly charlatans who are intentionally creating circumstances that reinforce the belief in the ineffectiveness of government, but OP's stereotype of conservative voters as simply wanting a "daily dose of other people suffering" is baseless, wrong, offensive, and extremely counterproductive.

This stereotype is a misrepresentation of the other core tenet of conservative philosophy, which is that what is right and wrong is not up to humans to decide, it comes either from God or from long-standing and proven traditions. Conservative opposition to LGBT rights and similar have nothing to do with wanting to see people suffer, they have to do with their deep-seated belief that some things are simply wrong because something greater than us has said so.

They can be wrong in that deep-seated belief, but it's unfair of OP to characterize it as sadism.

Before the Internet, people talked politics in person and nuance was included. Communication was synchronous, with instant feedback, and basically required engagement. You couldn't just walk away without upsetting social norms.

But the Internet (and especially Twitter), changed all that. People don't want to discuss, they want to "win", so you get 1-sentence "owns" that are just straw men. Nuance gets thrown out the window. If someone you're arguing with comes up with an excellent point that you can't counter, it's easier to just not reply. You're not on the spot, facing a human, and having to admit out loud that they've got a point. Nope. Much easier to just ignore it and remain entrenched in whatever bullshit you believe.

The other half of the blame is 24-hour cable news that has to constantly come up with shit to show, and now entertainment and news have become intertwined with a disastrous result.

They used to have a a coherent positive viewpoint and policy to support it. And they sought to advance that policy through normal democratic means: convincing a majority of voters.

That has stopped being their approach. They no longer seek a genuine popular majority. They are turning inwards, adopting ever more extreme positions disconnected from genuine ideals. They seek only the power to impose their worldview on others.

They no longer feel constrained by long standing traditions and institutions. Any act is justified in their minds.

The decided exactly the opposite -- they elected Trump and decided to become a party based on white Christian grievance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_%26_Opportunity_Project

The Republican party is the party of unification and engagement. The Democratic party is the tent for everyone else. The presence of the former demands the existence of the latter.

The anti-LGBT party with a well-known track record of racism is the party of unification?

No...no it's not. They're the party, that when asked to NOT be anti-LGBT and not be racist, cries about their freedom being repressed.

The Republican party is the party of authority, tradition (Which is not necessarily a virtue), and conformity. They're the party of freedom, but only if you're a white Christian male, bonus points if you're rich.

The Republican seeks to oppress minorities, and then when asked to not be hateful, act like they're a victim of thought policing. They spew hateful messages on social media, get rightfully banned for it, and then pretend they got banned for their conservative views, which of course is pretty telling.

No, they're anything BUT the party of unification. They USED to be, but they let some loudmouth idiots become the face of the party.

Take for example the words, "In God We Trust; United We Stand." A christian conservative can read those words as a call for compromise around a shared identity; but the rest of us can read them for the threat that they are: either you are in the in group, or you are selfishly standing against it.

If the unification of the Republican voterbase wasn't working, Utah would have put 20% of its 2020 vote into an independent candidate, just like we did in 2016. That didn't happen. Instead, those voters became Trump supporters.

The sincere Conservative electorate had every opportunity to choose a less-sadistic option. They chose. OP's characterization is perfectly valid.

It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in this time. He barely beat one of the least popular candidates in decades and then got crushed the next election cycle. Opposition candidates tend to do well when the economy is doing poorly, but he’s got a lot of baggage and the poles are dead even right now.

And so they vote for the party that is against rent controls, against expanding food stamps, and against raising the minimum wage?

Make it make sense.

"Think of it like a riot. What does smashing windows have to do with anything? Yet one follows the other."

Very few people have any idea about the causes of their suffering.

AKA, a lot of this is the result of generations of poor education, an education system that is strongly biased propaganda based on provably wrong economic models that tell k-12th graders that the best and only choice is the one where the free market runs roughshod over anyone who can't afford the rent, etc because that's simply "capitalism" and all the other choices are worse.

Remember, Trump successfully pressured the Fed to lower interest rates while the economy was strong. Think that contributed a bit to the inflation we've been dealing with?

Are they recommending corporate tax increases? New marginal tax brackets? No? Did they add tax loopholes for private jets and yachts while they were last in power? You bet!

No, what they're doing instead is trying to scapegoat things like "woke" college students and immigrants.

My parents don't want trans people to suffer: they want trans people to find happiness through the impossible avenue of just not being trans anymore. My parents don't want illegal immigrants to be incarcerated or murdered by border authorities: they want illegal immigrants to find liberty through the impossible process that is just becoming a legal immigrant, or living peacefully in whichever failed country they were born. My parents don't want people with substance abuse disorders to live and die on the streets: they want people with substance abuse disorders to overcome them through the impossible avenue of simply curing their own addiction without any outside support, safety, or encouragement whatsoever.

I cannot convince them that any of this is the case. On the other hand, people like Tucker Carlson, Rush Limbaugh, and Glen Beck can convince them of just about anything. Why? Because right-wing talking heads have a foot in the door: belief. They abuse every belief that a conservative holds dear, and turn it into engagement. Critical thought has no air to breathe in a world made of belief.

It doesn't matter what people want. It matters what people do.

This is an unfair analysis, and is either naive at best or disingenuous at worst.

I'm not a registered Republican, but I AM strongly against an all-powerful centralized body of government that continues to expand exponentially. I would rather focus powers in a more decentralized direction closer to the individuals and the States themselves. e.g. "Think globally - act locally."

The parent's comment is the EXACT problem that comes with a central government that is too powerful: you have to be mindful that "your party" will not be in "charge" about ~50% of the time.

For a concrete example, I don't like expanding Presidential powers nor extensive use of Executive Orders because likely there will be a president I don't support in that position, and I'd rather her/him NOT have that type of power.

States and local communities are more knowledgable about what their constituents need, and the more local you go, the more homogeneous that group becomes - leading to a higher degree of success for those policies. For example, I have never lived on a farm, nor have every lived remotely _near_ a farm...so how can I properly empathize with their needs or considerations in a fair way?

States and more local forms of government also provide solid grounds for the greatest real-life A/B test of policies in the world: if you are living in an area that doesn't align with your values and/or needs, you have _so many_ other options to consider settling. e.g. if you like living in California where virtually all the policies and politicians are left of center, then great! You can live there and it doesn't impact me in any way over in where I live.

The implication of the way you wrote your comment is that it's unfair and naive or disingenuous to say that the Republican party has no policy, because what you outline is their policy. But the rest of your comment just ... isn't their policy. (Which is, presumably, why you aren't a registered Republican.)

For instance, you say you don't like expanding Presidential powers. But the leader of the Republican party has a suit in front of the Supreme Court, right this moment, attempting to expand Presidential powers all the way to "immune from the rule of law".

Now, it could still be true that the policy of the Republican party is in disagreement with the desires of that person who is the leader of their party - that totally happens! - but unfortunately at this specific moment in time, "the desires of that person who is the leader of their party" is exactly as close as you can get to defining the party's policy.

It's a sad state of affairs! But I seem to frequently see this kind of wishcasting based on what people think the party's policy should be, except it has nothing to do with the clear policy of the party in actuality. (Note that this wishcasting thing is not actually unique to the Republican party.)

Government grows because what we do grows. We didn't need legislation on airspace and radio waves and net neutrality and cyber bullying when our Constitution was written. In many cases, powers simply come into existence, and I'd rather the government have those powers than a monopoly or oligopoly of private rich entities.

Rather than limited Government, I'd rather see an Open Government -- one that is accountable to, accessible to, and made up of us. Then why does it matter if government gets big? Government is us, after all. At least we can work toward that. Maybe?

I discriminately support my family more than my neighbors. You probably do too.

I also discriminately support my circle of friends more than the random stranger. You probably do too.

I also don't think a random stranger can come into my home and get equal footing with myself as the homeowner simply because the other person was "out". You probably do too.

Hell, even at the broad government level, US citizens are prioritized over non-citizens - like literally every single country that has ever existed.

This isn't a real problem.

As an example, the cost of natgas on the east coast after California's rules limiting coal for power generation. People in nearby states with different COL pick up part of the tab.

Great example & case study for the beauty of the US Constitution's "interstate commerce" clause, and one of the areas the federal government _SHOULD_ focus its attention.

I wish more people had this perspective.

The topic of packing the Supreme Court comes to mind. There are people who want Biden to do this, but if does it, what’s stopping the next Republican from doing it too… back and forth until the court is so big it can’t function. These easily won “victories” can just as easily work against a group as they can work for them. It’s very short-sighted.

The only reason the courts are getting involved as much as they are, is because Congress can’t get anything done. They make the law, the court interprets it. We need a functioning Congress to avoid the courts needing to give their best guess on what the law currently is for issues that aren’t well defined, or not defined at all. Packing the court as a solution is solving the wrong problem.

As far as people’s opinions of the court goes, it really grinds my gears how most people assume the Supreme Court is there to essentially make or strike down laws on their own whims. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. I’m no judicial scholar but it seems to me the current court is doing the best job of what they’re actually supposed to do than they have in a long time.

> This is an unfair analysis, and is either naive at best or disingenuous at worst.

It's fair given that the party literally produced no platform ahead of the last presidential election.

And that worked, but then the next generation of elected party members seemed to be obstructionist only. So much so that in 2017 when they held the executive branch and both houses of congress, they couldn’t get anything done.

We’re all sleeping in that bed that they made.

The GOP isn't some weird guys who can't govern, but an incredibly powerful group that works almost exclusively for the capital owning class and uses social issues to empower that class. The GOP caters a bit to the workers class but not a lot and is actively radicalizing them to believe they have the same interests as the capital owning class. The culture war is by accident. If the GOP could do this all without the culture war, selling hate, etc then it would. These are merely tools for an end.

The Democrats are almost as bad, but also are beholden to some level of will of the working class, but generally default to the whims of the capital owning class as much as practically possible. The Dems need to get the working class on its side to continue to exist. The pure capital owner party is the GOP and they can't compete against them without this rhetoric. Hence, a lot of Dem ideology being lip service for populist worker issues and actual change from Dems is very rare, and when it happens, its under the approval of the many/most capital owners (see Obamacare being a mandatory private insurance program instead of a Euro-style socialized medicine program.)

The better governing of the dems is by accident. If the dems govern better its only by accident due to the strong influence of the middle-class dependent on good government to survive, and if the dems could maintain power with more corrupt governing, they would.

This is your classic conservative vs liberal divide that defines nearly all modern capitalist nations.

The difference between the two parties isn't that strong. Under capitalism, the government is a capitalist government and is nearly fully corrupted by it, regardless of party. The only real fix is to replace capitalism with socialism, but neither party will allow that, so here we are with the usual back and forth and hiding issues with workers class and capitalism under whatever social issues of the day best distract.

That's the kind of thinking that led to Bush in 2000. Say what you like about Gore, but his administration would have done a great number of things differently from how it worked out.

Additionally, you wouldn't see e.g. Trump's EPA turning up the pressure on coal power plants. In fact hundreds of effective EPA staffers left (/were purged from) the EPA in 2017/2018.

To the working class who labors under inflation with no guaranteed vacation or maternity or pension, its a cold comfort that the one guy "likes ice cream and is friendly." To the working class who can't buy a home, its a cold comfort that one guy has better diction and vocabulary than the other. To the working class that can't retire and will die at their desks, its a cold comfort that one guy said something nice about labor unions. To the working class who are watching the global south be exploited and the pollution there blowing upstream to the "clean EPA driven USA" its a cold comfort. To the working class who can't afford to have children, its a cold comfort that one guy has given lip service to LGBTQ issues.

etc, etc.

Neither can or will address the fundamental problems of capitalism that causes nearly all these issues. The working class will continue to suffer under any pro-capitalist leadership. One guy just has nicer window dressing than the other.

In the South they are banning DEI, queer books, and trans participation in public life. This is not happening in Democratic controlled places, and that's not just lip service, that's for real. People's jobs are being impacted by this, teachers are fleeing Republican controlled states.

You look at rate of infant mortality, pregnancy complications, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, opioid addiction, childhood poverty, poverty in general, and it all looks better in Blue versus Red states. That's real data we can look at which tells us the parties are different. Under Democratic administrations, access to healthcare is expanded. Under Republican control, it contracts. I know it's not your preferred solution, and I'd like a better one too, but when it comes time to vote I'm damn for sure voting for the party that causes healthcare access to expand.

And Trump's problem isn't that he has poor diction or vocabulary, it's that what he says is literally insane and psychopathic. The SC case today was evidence of that, where he argued in court that he deserves the power to assassinate his rivals and to order the military to stage a coup without fear of prosecution. Democrats are not arguing this position in court.

Yes both will not address the fundamental problems of capitalism, and the working class will continue to suffer under both, but the data say they will suffer more under Republicans compared to Democrats.

We are not talking about window dressing we are talking about measurably less suffering. I understand that's not the "no suffering" benchmark you'd like to achieve, but how about we not let perfect be the enemy of better?

And that would be a first, because no one has tried "real socialism"(tm) before, right?

They don't cater to them as much as they convince them that they could one day be a member of the capital owning class.

The whole "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" line.

Instead we have a crusade against the number of Doritos in a bag https://news.yahoo.com/elizabeth-warrens-shrinkflation-rant-...

I don't agree.

I think particularly at the federal level a deadlocked government that is only able to accomplish a few things that can achieve broad consensus is preferable to one that governs badly and will invade the autonomy of the public who is, by the large part, capable of governing themselves.

Political gridlock is, from that perspective, a feature. Not a bug.

In terms of revealed preferences, clearly the bulk of the US agrees. :)

I think a point that gets missed is that in terms of capacity for causing great evil, money hardly moves the needle. People do-- of course-- intentionally perform minor evils for money, or negligently do somewhat greater evils because of money. Worse than money in terms of ability to do evil is shame and gross incompetence combined with power. But to do grandiose evil, the kind of evil that murders tens of millions, requires someone who wants to "do good".

So to many, a party that wants to "do good" but is transparently incompetent or beholden to irrational views is a lot more troubling than someone who wants to sell things off to the highest bidder and otherwise keep themselves out of trouble. Selling things off to the highest bidder is evil, but evil in bounded, largely predictable, and often recoverable ways.

If you really think that the public in general are rooting for other people's suffering in a meaningful way then I think you need to get offline and go spend time in person with the people who you believe are doing that. I am confident you will find that they aren't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Without earmarks there is no incentive to compromise. Compromise is actually a liability now, because there is always someone who will challenge you in a primary and promise to be more "ideologically pure." Without the ability to point to money and public works to defend yourself both during a primary and an election the best you can do is point to a record without compromise.

Perhaps earmarks were the result of an electorate that wanted more purity in decision-making (at the cost of stability). In other words, earmarks didn’t break cooperation. Corrupted cooperation led to the end of earmarks.

Earmarks probably do grease the wheels, but it’s important to remember a step existed before the compromise: a member of the congress could hold out until they received something, often unrelated to the matter at hand. That is wasteful and, to some, dishonest.

Now, did a removal earmarking result in more financial efficiency? Surely not. The budget deficit continued to grow, mostly because of Obamacare, Covid, wars, tax cuts.

So what of compromise? One might think compromise is dead, and yet we live in a world where Ukraine aid is tied to social media ownership.

Shruggy dude.

Multi-party governments function largely because some subset of the parties agrees to compromises to gain a combined majority on a specific topic; none of them can do anything in isolation.

Congress could have drafted this anytime if they had seen fit, but they are "too busy" fighting ideology wars.

The reality is, they just don't care about net neutrality. I'm still mad that they haven't passed the bill that gets rid of DST (or rather, gets rid of standard time). Everyone wants it in both parties. Just get it done.

Even more annoying is the whole Section 174 debacle. Completely killing the field of software engineering in the US.

The debt ceiling is Congress’s own creation, and Congress itself approves the budgets that cause the increase in debt. There isn’t another parliament on the planet that behaves so absurdly, fighting shadow puppets set up by itself.

I didn't keep track and don't have a good list, but a guess is that Trump did push through a lot of regulatory changes. If the media would publish a well documented list ...!!

From all I've seen, I like Trump, but apparently a lot of people don't. I wonder where am I going wrong.

Why do some people not like him? A guess is the now old collection of video clips from the MSM (mainstream media) still at

https://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908

Sooo, recently I watched several videos (still at YouTube) of episodes of Trump's old TV show The Apprentice. (1) From the business world I've seen, this guy was definitely, uh, different! In a way, tough to criticize since apparently he was very successful. (2) A surprise was the propensity of mess ups, in fighting of the apparently carefully selected candidates. When I think back, yup, I did see a lot of that but guessed it was incidental and would go away and wasn't too bad -- I was wrong, and Trump's TV show was closer to right. How Trump handled (2) was good to see, although maybe some of it was just "TV".

But I don't know if the statement you quoted is correct either. Trump isn't the politician who has people tracking their stock trades because they so consistently outperform the market (that would be legislators, including Democrats, who trade on insider information, but face no consequences because the arbiters of such judgment are... themselves). Unfortunately, I'm not sure that even a second Biden term will save us.

This is the first I've heard of her. So, just did a Google search on her: She has written a lot of stories for the "news" on a lot of subjects. Maybe ~10% of the stories are about Trump.

There were some lists of story titles with URLs, but the URLs didn't point to the stories -- apparently were old and now broken.

Her stories on Trump I could find didn't seem like they were on important issues. Then I saw her story on the "Russia" issue. Sorry, I long ago concluded that Trump did nothing wrong and, instead, the whole Russia Gate issue was a cooked up, made up, pile of nonsense trying to get Trump.

Her thesis is that "Russiagate" wasn't cooked up; that Trump is, in fact, simply an agent of a class of wealthy oligarchs who don't have loyalty to anything but their own money; that people are drawn to him because their correct instincts about the dysfunction in DC are being misdirected to him as a savior, in a way that is identical to the way autocratic, kleptomanic strongmem have been put into power in the past in other countries.

Give her work a chance. If you come out of it still supporting Trump, then I suppose you've made the right decision. But see why she's come to her conclusions first; I personally think that they're compelling. Otherwise, it's kind of weird to disagree with an argument you don't even understand.

...

> weird to disagree with an argument you don't even understand.

To me, from all I have seen, the "cooked up" part was real and well documented. If not cooked up, then some of the media did a really big trick on me, after trying at first to do the big trick of trying to convince me that Russia Gate was real. Peeing in the bed with women in a Moscow hotel??? Naw.

> in a way that is identical to the way autocratic, kleptomanic strongmem have been put into power in the past in other countries.

Hmm .... Tough to take that very seriously when I disagree with the not cooked up assumption. But, interesting, fits some of what is easy to see about Trump: He is a strong personality. He is rich and powerful. He is not, "leading from behind", waiting until the polls says he should take action X but, instead, looking at X well in advance and making decisions then -- so, e.g., he is not merely representing the voters but is charging in some directions he likes and, if not a nuts strongman, competently thinks will be good for the US and that voters will like.

It's a judgment each US citizen has to make: Is he nuts???? For an answer, that's part of why I watched some of his TV series The Apprentice.

From some that's easy to see about him, even if he is nuts, he works hard to appear not to be and, instead, to take actions to appear to be sympathetic, empathetic, generous, etc. with people in need. E.g., in The Apprentice he flew the Rhodes Scholar candidate down to Pennsylvania for a family funeral. That said, maybe working for him could be tough, need 25 hours a day, 8 days a week, and a quart of sweat an hour.

And as voters, we can see that we have to be careful, i.e., once a POTUS is in office, super tough to get him out, no matter what the heck he does.

But for Trump, we do have 4 years of his time as POTUS. There I didn't see a nut case. It looked like in business he was a darned good CEO and as POTUS was the same as it can be appropriate for a POTUS instead of a CEO to be.

We will see in November and, then, likely again, starting in 2025.

Thanks for the book review: "autocratic, kleptomanic strongmem"??? Naw.... Watched him for 4 years, Naw.

Of course, the books go into more detail. Unfortunately, if you don't read them, your opinion that the issue was "cooked up" remains baseless and bereft of value. :)

Are you being sarcastic? Did you miss the part where he waged an attempted coup against the US government to remain in power?

I mean... he was just found by a court to have committed rape. You don't see why people don't like him? Be for real.

I never understood that: I watched his speech. All I saw looked reasonable, appropriate, prudent. It seemed he was careful to advise no violence. That there was an "attempted coup" makes no sense to me. I watched his speech and saw nothing wrong.

> I mean... he was just found by a court to have committed rape.

I didn't and don't see that.

But, if what you say is correct, then that would explain why some people don't like him.

From your post, it looks like there is some deep bitterness about Trump. I don't see why, but okay. For one explanation there is that old collection of media video clips

https://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908

Apparently the media was totally convinced that those clips would doom Trump; maybe those clips are why some people don't like him.

Watch the clips -- if anything, by now they are entertaining! They have much of the largest of the MSM (mainstream media) doing a big gang up, pile on of "bombshell", "done, no question about that", etc. that never happened.

Maybe in low level town and city politics nearly everyone interested in politics at all has some really strong reasons to like the Democrat Party. If my startup works, maybe I'll discover that the local Democrats will do good things for me but the Republicans won't. Hmm.

You should probably inform yourself about the coup, the speech wasn't it. Here is some actual info to start:

The J6 commission report: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-J6-REPORT/pdf/GPO-J6...

The Federal indictments: https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/08/trump-i...

The Georgia indictments: https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2023/08/CRIMINA...

The Arizona indictments: https://mcusercontent.com/cc1fad182b6d6f8b1e352e206/files/fa...

The finding of rape: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.59...

“The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape,’ ... Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

Yup, but maybe it and related media stuff is responsible for much of the anti-Trump opinions there are. I thought the collection was outrageous, insulting, and dirty politics but settled on it being entertaining.

> rape

A NY jury found Trump guilty of WHAT with his fingers?

If Trump entered Carroll's dressing room, she was supposed to scream loudly enough to blow the roof off the store. Every girl over the age of 12, 9, ..., 5 knows this.

I just looked quickly via Google and found:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-car...

with

"Despite Carroll’s claims that Trump had raped her, they noted, the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense. Instead, jurors opted for a second option: sexual abuse."

and the article quotes some judge saying that the act really was rape. Hmm. If we are going by a jury trial, then it's "sexual abuse". If we are not going by a jury trial, then it's made up, cooked up, porn star and Democrat Party political dirt to "get Trump" -- Trump with a "porn star". Naa .... While married to Melania??? Naa!! While planning to run for POTUS, take a risk of being extorted??? Whatever Trump is, he's NOT bonkers, brain-dead stupid. Besides, in US culture, what happens between a male and female alone is unknowable, and that's why US females over the age of 12, 9, ..., 5 are strongly advised never to be alone with a male. So, likely we can never know for sure about such things.

As I recall, there is a document signed by Carroll that no rape ever happened.

Uh, maybe Trump was guilty of the bad judgment of being in the women's department of a high end NYC department store ....

Or, maybe it's about "defamation" of a porn star?

Maybe it's about getting $130,000 to keep quiet.

> Arizona

Seems to have to do with Kelli Ward and nothing directly with Trump. As I recall, Ward has been fighting in Arizona.

> Georgia

I would trust any homeless person in a plastic shelter on a street in NYC more than the Georgia legal system.

> J6

Maybe some day we will have access to and an objective review of all the actions of and evidence presented to the J6 committee. (A) From watching Trump's J6 speech, I don't believe he did anything wrong on J6 -- he didn't even have an opportunity to do anything wrong. (B) The J6 committee looked like a kangaroo court, not at all objective, just to sow doubt about Trump. It was not a real court and was just a committee of Congress, and apparently they are permitted to do whatever they want. So, they wanted to dump on Trump -- we can believe that.

> Federal

That's a bunch of DC stuff saying that, yes, Trump has rights, e.g., 1st rights, but still from his words within those rights did something illegal. Nonsense. On troops for J6, there are claims that (a) that decision is up to the Speaker, Pelosi, (b) within plenty of time Trump offered a big force from the military, (c) the Mayor of DC also turned down both Trump and the DC Chief of Police. Besides, what I saw of J6 was (a) US citizens legally petitioning Congress for redress of grievances, (b) some guy in a Buffalo costume, (c) a police officer assuming his "tactical stance" and killing some citizen for no good reason, (d) some small fraction of the people misbehaving in ways that should get them arrested.

As I saw the 2020 election, in some of the "swing states" (a) the local Democrats had a long standing, non-trivial, and effective machine to create votes, at least as mail-in ballots, as necessary and, in a close election, sufficient and (b) the state governments declined to exercise their authorities to investigate the situation. Sounds like machine politics.

Rape. I linked to the court's opinion stating this. What the judge makes clear is that "rape" as a matter of law in NY is with a penis only. That Trump raped was with his fingers does not make his rape any less rape.

  The jury’s unanimous verdict in Carroll II was almost entirely in favor of Ms. Carroll. The only point on which Ms. Carroll did not prevail was whether she had proved that Mr. Trump had “raped” her within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law – a section that provides that the label “rape” as used in criminal prosecutions in New

Do I need to make this more clear? Putting a part of your body into another person's body without their consent is rape. A court found Trump did that, and now people don't want him to be president for that among other reasons. Not hard to understand.

> maybe Trump was guilty of the bad judgment

No. The jury found he's guilty of rape, not bad judgment. Trump is a rapist.

> Seems to have to do with Kelli Ward and nothing directly with Trump

Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment, so it relates directly to him. The acts under indictment are the various frauds the defendants underwent in service of Trump's coup plot. They are also Trump campaign surrogates. This is another reason people don't like Trump -- he surrounds himself with people willing to commit crimes, and asks people to commit crimes for him.

> I would trust any homeless person

You don't have to Trust the legal system, you have to trust Georgia's Republican SoS and Republican Governor, who felt so pressured by Trump to overturn the election that they started recording and leaking calls with him doing exactly that. Another reason people don't like him.

> he didn't even have an opportunity to do anything wrong. (B) The J6 committee looked like a kangaroo court, not at all objective, just to sow doubt about Trump.

See, this is how I know you didn't read any of the information I linked to nor did you watch the hearings. Because if your had you would know the speech was not the coup. That you keep trying to deflect to it shows me you didn't even consider the vast array of evidence laid out by the committee. They show the effort that went on months beforehand which culminated in the J6 insurrection was the coup attempt.

> Besides, what I saw of J6 was...

This has been litigated in court for years. The opportunity to petition was prior to December 14, the date states certify their elections. Trump, appropriately, brought 60+ challenges in court and lost all but 1 due to lack of evidence. Since then, he has not brought any proof of fraud. He had none at the time, and after plenty of forensic audits in the intervening years, fraud at the alleged scale has not been found in any of the disputed states.

So it was all a lie at the time, and we know that now. By Dec 14, since Trump did not have that evidence, he should have dropped his challenge.

> As I saw the 2020 election, in some of the "swing states" (a) the local Democrats had a long standing, non-trivial, and effective machine to create votes

This is not what happened at all. What really happened was that many states had affected CVOID emergency measures to allow people to vote by mail who wouldn't usually have permission to. In my state, PA, it was Republicans who passed a measure allowing no excuse ballot access in 2019.

But either way, state governments have not in any way declined to exercise their authorities to investigate the situation. All elections have been audited several times by now with no anomalies on the scale alleged detected. Nevada results were even opened up to a third party, the Cyber Ninjas, who were a right wing group intent on proving that some ballots came from China by examining the paper they were printed on. They found nothing. Actually what they found through their audit was Biden had more votes on their recount.

Anyway, it seems you have a very cursory and surface-level understanding of these matters and of US politics generally. I linked you those sources so that you would read them, in the hope that you would become more informed. Since you can't discuss these topics past your casual observations, I would suggest just read some actual primary sources before instead of spending hundreds of words replying to me with confident ignorance.

"Despite Carroll’s claims that Trump had raped her, they noted, the jury stopped short of saying he committed that particular offense. Instead, jurors opted for a second option: sexual abuse."

So, sounds like the jury didn't say "rape", with either penis or fingers and only "sexual abuse".

Finally, the whole Carroll thing, I don't believe it -- Trump is not that stupid. What I believe is the $130,000.

For Georgia, sure, in principle and thankfully, it is up to the Georgia Secretary of State and the Governor, in principle. But it sure looks like that hate Trump prosecutor and her boyfriend are 99% of the reality there.

For the Arizona case, right, there are the charges that somehow near the end of his term, he went around the country doing something illegal complaining about the integrity of the election. So, he went around complaining. And maybe he had some coffee with Kelli. That should be no crime. And, with the Judge Merchant and Bragg case, there is a lot of lawfare going on. Trump did something illegal in Arizona???? Naw.

Again, the J6 committee was 99 44/100% Democrat propaganda.

The recounts, etc. -- if it was just counting again some crooked ballots, then that doesn't mean anything. The Chinese paper thing, then the changes for Covid thing, all looks like maybe something valid. I saw more accusations, e.g., trucks of fake mail-in ballots arriving late at night, but the information is too thin to take seriously. So, if there was cheating, I don't know how it was done.

Maybe the bottom line is "Politics is dirty business" and differs mostly only in how dirty. At this point, with the lawfare, the Democrats look like the dirty ones and look especially dirty since 2020.

Thanks for your materials. Apparently you believe those materials mean more than I do, but maybe they mean something.

For the 50:1 case outcome, looks like NO ONE in power wanted to open that possible Pandora's Box.

With the current lawfare Florida to Maine, it looks like the Democrats are going after Trump any way they can. That makes the legal cases you referenced questionable. The Democrats have a lot of power and money, and they can file lots of lawfare cases, and it looks like that's what they have been doing. I expect that some judges will retire, some higher courts will jump in and hose out the crap, some lawyers will be disbarred, and Trump will win all the cases. Why? In the lawfare, the main goal is not to convict Trump but just to tie him up in court, cost him a lot of time, money, and energy, sow doubt among some voters, and keep him off the campaign trail until 11/5/2024. The Democrats are calling the fire trucks. For that there doesn't have to be a fire or even smoke, and there isn't.

For 2024, Trump promises to have enough lawyers, poll watchers, etc. to have high election integrity. Maybe we will get some more information on how the Democrats try to cheat.

Look, there is something in this whole mud wrestling ring more certain and wrong than any of the actual legal accusations against Trump -- the Democrat's lawfare attack on Trump.

I was glad to get your references -- the DC one is a riot, a scream: As the PDF explains, he was fully within his rights to object to the 2020 election BUUUUUT: They are going to charge him anyway with, what, confusing the politics, the public????? Gads. That's not even up to the kangaroo level.

There is nothing to stop the Democrats from executing lawfare, but we don't have to grant that the objections are valid or that Trump did anything wrong. The Bragg case is a new low in the US justice system. Same for the 1/2 $billion fine.

As sometimes said in courts, there is a "pattern" here.

Actually, Trump is not even accused of doing anything seriously wrong.

Good to see, I'm not making a serious error in judgment liking Trump.

Thanks.

Sorry but it’s your critical thinking that’s impaired here.

This is a nation of laws, and under the law, Trump is a rapist. If you refuse to admit finger rape is rape, which it is, then you at least have to admit that Trump was found guilty under NY law of sexual abuse. Are you saying sexual abuse is not seriously wrong?

If you think you have good judgement for supporting a convicted sexual abuser, well, good luck to you dying on that hill.

Have a nice life.

PS: you seem like the kind of person who needs to have the last word so I’ll let you have it. But you should answer this: so you don’t trust the judicial system, and you don’t trust democrats. Fine. But why then is his former VP not endorsing him? He’s not a leftist liberal out to get Trump. He’s ride or die Trump. And yet he’s not endorsing, and had this to say:

  I believe anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States and anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again

Is your opinion of Trump as well informed as his?

Thanks for your references and remarks.

Okay, from some of the news, I concluded that the J6 issues were from what Trump did on J6 and some role for him in the disturbance that day at the Capitol building. But your claim is that, instead, the issue is about some things Trump did in 11/5/2020 to 1/6/2021 as claimed by the J6 committee and that constitute an attempted "coup". (A) I can't trust the J6 committee even for the time of day. (B) If Trump did something illegal (jay walking doesn't count) in 11/5/2020 to 1/6/2021, then we should have some actual credible legal actions instead of just the J6 committee of Congress. (C) Just from common sense, tough for me to believe that Trump intended anything like a "coup", but is dreaming of a "coup" itself actually illegal?

Trump may have strongly suspected that (a) he actually won the the 2020 election, (b) the election was stolen by illegal means, and (c) he wanted to defend himself. Sounds reasonable, okay, and not surprising or at all illegal. He has a right to defend himself? Right?

For the DC lawsuit, the PDF file seems to make clear that (A) Trump said some things that were well within his rights of freedom of speech but (B) as in the first actual charge in the PDF, Trump was still being charged with some consequences of that free speech? Looks like law-fare.

For Carroll, if Trump did something she didn't like, she should have, was supposed to, scream in which case there would be lots of objective, credible witnesses from that department store.

As I understand the legal results, Trump was convicted of "sexual abuse". Inserting fingers, sure, would be a case of sexual abuse, but just breast fondling may also be. All we have from the jury is "sexual abuse" and that's not necessarily "rape". That Trump is a convicted rapist seems to have poor support; seems to be false.

Also a porn star who did not scream is not credible; that is, if not consensual, then scream. That Trump, married, running for POTUS, and not stupid did anything wrong with Carroll is not credible.

NY AG Letitia James, out to "get Trump", and Judge Engoron and his 1/2 $billion fine are not credible and instead, just obvious via common sense, look like Democrat Party law-fare. Trump's loan application had a disclaimer, and the loan companies are all happy. The area in square feet of part of Trump Tower or the value of Mar-a-Lago seem irrelevant; claiming that those two are relevant looks like more law-fare.

(A) NY DA Bragg's many felony charges based on some goofy issue about some tiny accounting issue past statute of limitations and some goofy accusation about Federal campaign law and (B) Judge Juan Merchan and his efforts to keep Trump in court and quiet look like kangaroo court, election interference law-fare.

In Georgia, Fulton DA Fani Willis and her boyfriend got, what, $600,000 reasons to go after Trump? Looks like more Democrat Party law-fare.

There is a pattern here: Democrat Party law-fare against Trump.

Sorry, so far I don't see anything seriously wrong with Trump and don't understand the anti-Trump people.

We will have to agree to disagree and look forward to the election.

You mean they passed a bill that was necessary for them to get their paychecks. I fail to see how this is even remotely surprising.

Of course, there's no difference between permanent DST and abolishing DST but having everyone agree to shift their schedules forward by 1 hour. So abolishing DST altogether isn't really a better option.

I used to think DST was stupid. Now I think it's actually the best we can do.

Standard time is what we should be on. Anything else makes it way too cold for kids in the morning in the winter, it’s better for our sleep cycles (especially teenagers), and it just makes sense as far as the sun’s position. If you want to go into work an hour early so the “sun is still up when I go home at night,” feel free.

And DST is demonstrably good during the summer. It lowers crime and improves mood and productivity. It's just not good in the winter, because people in northern latitudes wake up in the cold and dark. It kinda does make sense to have seasonal shifting.

So, unfortunately, the best solution in my opinion is in fact to just lie to ourselves about what time it is for half the year. AKA Daylight Saving.

DST is annoying but it's far from the worst.

My what a low bar

Elaborate?

https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/tax-and-accountin...

That's just three different ways of saying, "Wrote checks to fill the pockets of monied interests, the bill for which will be paid for by the generations which explicitly oppose such policy."

Talk to me when they pass Medicare For All, the Green New Deal, campaign finance reform, and a border/immigration bill that finally puts that issue to rest. Until then, it's just another round of avoiding addressing the issues that are easiest to run on if they haven't been fixed in a prior term.

You do realize that half (and maybe a little more than that) of the elected folks in Congress do not support such things. That those folks represent less than half of the electorate is a different discussion -- but until you have clear majorities that support those initiatives (I and those I voted for certainly do), clamoring for everything all at once is a waste of time.

The idea that "I'm not getting everything I want right now means that government is irreparably broken," is ridiculous on its face.

That's not to say we shouldn't have better governance and more focus on making the world a better place rather than maintaining power. We definitely should. But asserting that unless all our elected representatives support our own beliefs/policy ideas and pass them post-haste is both unhelpful and not very realistic.

It's weird that you would put those words in my mouth when the actual reason for the dysfunction

>That those folks represent less than half of the electorate

is readily apparent to you.

The point is that Congress is terminally dysfunctional. Avoiding shutdowns and passing grift doesn't change that. I don't want to hear all the reasons why things can't be done (perhaps the most unhelpful thing to do). I just want them done. And I have every right to be pissed abot the state of things until that happens.

Aaaannnndd?... You're just going to leave out the banning of TikTok while claiming a victory for sending my money to other nations for wars I do not want to fund?

And another thing </Andy Rooney>, government shutdowns are problems created ENTIRELY BY CONGRESS for never operating under a proper budget since 1997. All they're doing is fighting each other over a massive shell game of sending the right amounts of money to their donors' interests to guarantee reelection.

"Infrastructure projects" is just another term for crony capitalism. Just look at funding for telcos to build out infra, or EV charging stations, or solar panels, or anything else they fund as "infrastructure." It's always just a massive kickback scheme, and nothing gets built.

They're doing work alright, just not any that I want. Our system is nakedly and brazenly corrupt, and we don't seem to be able to do anything about it.

This is the most baffling one. Everyone seems to forget that they also failed to pass the bill that contained the provisions that most working and middle-class Americans wanted. I've had multiple conversations where the counterargument was, "Well, at least they got part of it passed." No, that's actually worse. We got all of the expensive giveaways without any of the mitigating funding and policies. We literally would have been better off if nothing had passed.

I thought that, with our democratic structures, it would be really easy "to do" a lot about it, but you seem right:

I don't get it and have been guessing that

> It's always just a massive kickback scheme,

is correct.

A first problem is some basic vote counting: A politician does something, e.g., a "kickback scheme", that pleases < 10% of the voters by essentially stealing from > 90% of the voters. Soooo, at the next election, the politician should lose by at least 9 to 1, but apparently not and I'm wrong and the politician, correct?

Uh, maybe the politician partitions the voters into 10 parts, has 10 schemes, and for each of the 10 steals from the other 9 to please the one, and everyone is happy even though everyone gets stolen from 10 times?

My guess was, if a good majority, 80%, maybe as low as 55%, of the voters would write their Members of Congress objecting to the scheme, then Congress would STOP it, in a few minutes. But, nope. Apparently tough to get > 20%, maybe > 5%, of the voters to write their Members of Congress about even a "brazen" scheme.

In simple terms, Congress is awash in powers, e.g., that massive one, "power of the purse". So, I have to believe that in any 10 minutes, Congress could have gasoline under $2 a gallon and falling, but Congress declines to do that.

The blame is the media that wants eyeballs for ad revenue and, thus, creates divisions, grabs people emotionally, avoids exposing the schemes??? Or the voters are "apathetic"??

Politics is goofy, inscrutable, and the media is right? Uh, ABC, CBS, CNN, ... WaPo are short on money so are not really "right"?

Back to something that makes sense.

The euphemization in this subthread is a bit out of control. In fact these are 100% partisan issues. The "pro shutdown" and "anti aid/infrastructure" camps who had been blocking progress are uniformly sitting on one side of the aisle, and the progress you are celebrating happened when their party split under duress and aligned with the other side briefly.

That's not "congress" doing some work. That's a "pro work" and "anti work" partisan argument whose answer flips due to intra-GOP drama.

Also consider that this works both ways: If something is passed into law by Congress, it's going to take monumental effort to undo it just like getting it passed was. An example of this is Obamacare, where getting it passed was difficult and revoking it has been difficult.

Likewise, the flippant nature of orders authorized by the Executive Branch is also by design. Such orders are meant primarily to address short-term concerns requiring immediate or expedient attention, not long-term concerns that require thorough deliberation.

No, the 118th Congress was not how anything was designed to operate. This is hand waving mixed with Founding Father fairytales.

Congress as a whole does not support net neutrality, and the reason they have not drafted a simple house bill to do it that doesn't include 99 other things is because they had no desire to. It has nothing to do with "ideology wars."

https://constitution.congress.gov/resources/decisions-overru...

The big exception to this was the drafting of the Constitution itself, which arguably was easier to ratify than it is to amend. The problem of the practical impossibility of undoing past policies applies very much here.

The problem started IMHO with Republican obstructionism under Clinton, but got out of control with Obama’s shift to using executive orders over legislation after the affordable care act nonsense. It’s definitely a both sides issue.

At it's core, it is a technical issue - primarily network management. Under NN framework, ISPs would adhere to minimal straightforward rules that would disallowed them from prioritizing, throttling, capping, purposefully degrading, etc wireline networks. For most of 2 decades, this is where NN lived.

In apparent response to NN becoming reality, ISP funded representatives began echoing the talking points of ISP lobbyist groups and contention was born.

Americans love to think political parties are inherently bad, but seriously when are mere individuals reliable? How the hell am I supposed to tell who all these down-ballet no-names are and what they actually believe in? Much of the rest of the democratic world functions fine with parties that are not all 150+ years old and ship-of-theseus-ed beyond recognition.

Multi-party in particular democracy has some significant pitfalls, including the tendency of marginal and extremist parties to play kingmaker. The historian Hannah Arendt made some salient points about how the multi-party structure of Weimar Germany contributed directly to the radicalization and eventual total control of the state by the Nazis.

Politics will always involve factions forming around shared interests or values, but in a situation without those factions being calcified into formal organizations, or even identities, we'd expect them to be much more fluid and ephemeral, and for politicians to be much more willing to reach across ideological divides without worrying about institutional discipline or being ostracized by the party establishment regardless of their constituents' opinions.

Ranked-choice balloting wouldn't eliminate parties per se, but it would reduce their influence in the electoral process significantly.

> How the hell am I supposed to tell who all these down-ballet no-names are and what they actually believe in?

I'd expect a reasonable voter to investigate the actual candidates on the ballot and make an informed choice, and not merely rely on party affiliation as the only criterion for casting a vote.

The same argument cuts both ways. Individuals can be corrupted by personal ambition versus sticking to a mission too.

> With formalized parties, we often see the strategic concerns of the party as an organization eclipse any coherent policy goals that are the ostensible reason for the party existing in the first place.

This is because there is no marketplace of parties. There is are just two, and we are stuck with them --- they are more akin to coalitions to parties in a multiparty than individual parties in a multiparty system. The monopoly/incumbency problems this creates are the same ones we see in commerce when there is a dearth of firm creation/failure, and the zombies live on.

> Multi-party in particular democracy has some significant pitfalls, including the tendency of marginal and extremist parties to play kingmaker. The historian Hannah Arendt made some salient points about how the multi-party structure of Weimar Germany contributed directly to the radicalization and eventual total control of the state by the Nazis.

There is that risk, but it is not like the US's system has protected us well from extremism either. When politics as usual gets discredited, we see both the rise of radical non-partisanship and parties shifting to the extreme.

I would not expect multiparty democracy to protect us from stupid as colossally stupid as the Treaty of Versaille, and neither should Hanna Ardent. US policy towards West Germany and Japan is the much better model of dealing with defeated enemies.

> Politics will always involve factions forming around shared interests or values, but in a situation without those factions being calcified into formal organizations, or even identities, we'd expect them to be much more fluid and ephemeral, and for politicians to be much more willing to reach across ideological divides without worrying about institutional discipline or being ostracized by the party establishment regardless of their constituents' opinions.

Again this all sounds nice in principle, but we are not seeing that in any extent political system. Large parties and small parties both have plenty of rhetorical dogmatism and inflexibility. But at least small parties can outflank large incumbents, bringing together constituents in hitherto unexpected ways. Stuff like YIMBYism, for example, which doesn't neatly fit into either US party is really screwed over by having to win through the "long slow march through the primaries", rather than create a nimble new party with cross-spectrum appeal.

> Ranked-choice balloting wouldn't eliminate parties per se, but it would reduce their influence in the electoral process significantly.

You need to provide more evidence for this. Campaigning is expensive. The returns on consistent messaging increase with scale (e.g. ingraining strains of through, moving the Overton window, etc.)

> I'd expect a reasonable voter to investigate the actual candidates on the ballot and make an informed choice, and not merely rely on party affiliation as the only criterion for casting a vote.

With enough work, one can learn about individual, but what enforces that those individuals are consistent? Firstly. The incentives for politicians, especially minor ones, are to avoid making enemies more than make friends --- they don't want you to know how they feel. Secondly, and more importantly, they have zero incentive to consistently feel anything as the political landscape and space of compromises shape-shifts.

You talk about reaching across the aisle as an unvarnished good thing, but as a voter there some deals are really worth it, and some deals are not worth it --- not all deals/compromises are good.

When individuals are fickle and nebulous, there is no way to vote on individuals that adequately conveys this sort of information. We can say "vote for good character", but that is feel-good dribble.

Because agencies receive considerable deference to their interpretation of the law, even when that interpretation flip-flops every four years, we never get a definitive ruling on what the law says. The Court seems likely to greatly reduce this deference, leading to more consistency.

Consistently bad I guess? The agencies may flip-flop but at least they're capable of sometimes acting in the public interest. It's useful to have some kind of counterbalance to corporate power.

When the right wing supermajority SCOTUS strips them of their regulatory power, though, who is going to actually do anything then? Congress? You know who lines their pockets already.

This is an unbelievably slanted and misleading description of the lawsuit. The lawsuit is about stripping federal agencies of the authority that Congress has vested in them, shifting power to the courts. It's an attempt at a judicial power grab, nothing more.

For starters, your claim that "we never get a definite ruling on what the law says" is categorically false. The agency's rules are law. Changes in the rules are no different from Congress passing laws and then repealing them, something which happens all the time. (Agencies are actually more predictable than Congressional legislation, because they are required by law to broadcast proposed changes well in advance and solicit input through a formal process, something which Congress does not have to do.)

There is almost no universe in which this lawsuit, if successful, would "increase consistency". Instead, we'd get even more ambiguity, because the law would be "whatever a court decides", something which is not knowable until a lawsuit is filed (and sometimes even then).

That ambiguity is, of course, the exact motivation of the people backing this lawsuit in the first place.

That being said, I don't think Chevron deference has a part to play when it comes to Net Neutrality flip flopping all the time - these are not ambiguous regulations. In that sense I don't agree with the person you're replying to - Loper Bright won't help here. Now, if you want to say that the FCC doesn't have the authority to issue this rule, that's something that was always reviewable by the courts.

The concept that would actually attempt to strip power from agencies is the nondelegation doctrine. While I suspect that has support among a few justices, it would be a very radical change and there is no case on the horizon that I'm aware of that would be a vehicle to implement it.

If Loper Bright had been decided ten years ago we would already know today whether the FCC possessed this authority or not and it would be settled. Instead, we are about to embark on another round of litigation because the FCC just unsettled expectations again.

Case 1: agencies reinterpret the law ever four years in each new administration until the end of time.

Case 2: we figure out what the law means once and apply it going forward until Congress changes it again.

Case 2: Waiting until every single individual aspect of every single law is litigated means for years to decades the actual meaning is ambiguous until each court case finishes.

Which half?

I think everyone seems to largely agree that the government should definitely have a big role in Americans' lives, but they differ significantly on what issues they think the gov't should be involved in. Relatively few people seem think the gov't should largely leave people alone (although it is popular for some folks to say they feel that way while simultaneously agitating for the opposite).

    def decide_position(position)
      case position.party do
      when GOOD_PARTY
        cheer()
        return true
      when BAD_PARTY
        boo()
        return false
      else
        shutdown()
        raise InvalidPartyError.new "Warning: Logically impossible situation detected. There are only two parties, and one is good and the other is bad.  System shutdown initiated to avoid potential memory corruption"
      end
    end

1. Why is decide_position returning a boolean? The function signature, even without types, doesn't really indicate that it should return a true / false value. Perhaps a better name would be "is_position_good"?

2. Why would the memory get corrupted? Most operating systems should be able to handle such a case.

3. Why do we shut down the entire application? Surely there's a better method rather than killing the entire application due to a single boolean check.

The idea that the behavior of the government is ever a consistent reflection of the aggregated intentions of the electorate is something of a fantasy. No one is intentionally voting for bad policy -- they're getting bad policy in one area as a consequence of voting for good policy in another.

This is a fundamental issue with the American form of government. Parliamentary systems which have the executive made up of members of the legislature have way less flip-flopping, finger-pointing, and paralysis.

The governments they produce are more reflective of current public sentiment, end up with more than two parties, and are thus less stable. Minority rule and coalition rule is very common... which actively forces either compromise, or a new election.

Before that it spent billions of dollars on covid aid.

Throughout that time it has appropriated billions of dollars to keep the government running.

This "paralyzed" narrative is something the press and politicians like to push because it serves their ends, though for different reasons. It's false.

In no other country is it considered an accomplishment for a government to debate a budget, agree on it, pass it, spend it, and then three quarters of the way through the year refuse to pay for the spending it agreed on, manufacturing a crisis that sometimes gets resolved at the eleventh hour, and sometimes results in a multi-week disaster and government shutdown.

If a company had a department that ran that way, every single director and manager in it would be fired after the first time it happened. It has so far happened three times (Including once when the Republicans fully controlled congress), and has been threatened every year.

At no time did this happen.

It has meant lots of controversial legislation being forced through, but to many that's better than just letting the issues simmer for decades. Especially since many of those issues had no uncontroversial solution.

Trump came in promising similar action, but in hindsight did absolutely nothing besides further divide the country. Unfortunately at the moment neither side seems to have a candidate that's actually willing to do something similar. Biden will continue to make excuses about not being able to do things, and Trump will continue to focus more on PR and dominating the news cycle than actual work.

---

> [1] I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.

I assume those are the guys who are voting for the party opposed to one you're voting for, correct?

> actively stifling progress is not actually funny

Another thing that is less than funny is assuming that there's some universal definiton of "progress" and those who disagree are just doing it out of stupid stubbornness, unwilling to concede the obvious truth.

> It is not possible for me to base my legislative direction on “everyone that is not cis white is bad”.

It's not possible to anybody. Literally nobody does that. It's a crude caricature. By perpetuating this caricature as if it had any bearing to reality, you are a major part of the problem.

Except that it wasn't the same way one or two decades ago. And the republicans have changed a lot more than the democrats on that front.

Only if you're looking at it from the Democratic perspective. From the Republican side they look at Democratic policies from the last decade and see a group that suddenly decided to throw all previous social norms out the window and upend social order. They see themselves as reacting to that change in the Democratic Party.

I think the truth is that both parties simultaneously escalated, but that perspective usually gets shouted down pretty hard by both sides who each really want to perceive themselves as the consistent one.

That's a different front, though.

Even if it's a response to those things, the level of "don't cooperate even on issues where you agree/used to agree" has not been the same between parties.

> when half the populations entire political identity is “whatever we think will make the other side angry”?

The idea here is that Republicans are somehow out to spite the Democrats more than vice versa, and I frankly don't see it. Both sides believe the other to be acting in bad faith, and honestly from my perspective it certainly looks like both sides are acting in bad faith.

We've had more than our fair share of close calls to government shutdowns the past four years, but let's not forget that Congress actually did fail to fund the government twice during Trump's presidency. The current Congress flirts with the line but has always ended up actually finding something that can pass.

> And the republicans have changed a lot more than the democrats on that front.

Of course, your team have always been standing for the common sense but the other team is just crazy now. Long gone are the times of Bush presidency, where the parties lives in almost perfect harmony, and the worst thing the President could be called by the opposing politician is "this esteemed and honorable man is sometimes mistaken". If only would could go back to those golden times.

I don't know why you think this is relevant to what I'm saying.

> Of course, your team have always been standing for the common sense but the other team is just crazy now.

That's not what I said at all. I said both teams used to be more similar in a specific way.

And neither one was very good.

I visit alt-right circles A LOT, and I have literally never once heard “the other side does these things out of spite”. The vast majority of the time, they don’t have anything to say on a topic beyond repeating some stupid meme.

Additionally, I would also like to point out that people on the right actually demonstrably DO have zero conviction for their beliefs. It is a tested fact that on the whole people on the right will absolutely flip flop on a topic the moment they find out that the left supports it (some 90% of right wing voters in tests), however, on the whole, people on the left are *far* less likely to flip flop (only some 10% of left wing voters flip on a topic upon learning the right supports it).

That the right actually votes out of spite is not just something people assert, it’s a tested fact.

Mitch *blocked his own goddamn bill upon finding out that dems supported it*.

They're constantly saying that the other side "hates you and wants to destroy the country", exactly the same thing left-wing circles are constantly saying about them. If they're laughing when they're saying it, it's either because you're failing to read the room and arguing with someone who's just sharing an edgy meme rather than actually talking politics (I see this very often on the fediverse), or they're doing it in a cynical "haha, we're so screwed" manner.

You from earlier:

> It is not possible for me to base my legislative direction on “everyone that is not cis white is bad”.

Both sides are totally guilty of repeating stupid memes instead of engaging in intelligent discourse. You just don't recognize your stupid memes because they seem like factual statements since you've heard them so much from your circles.

You hear someone say something that you disagree with and you immediately interpret it using the memetic pigeon hole that you've adopted for that "kind of person" instead of actually listening to what they have to say. Get out more and actually listen (really listen!) to what conservatives have to say. Why do they repeat the memes that they do? What do those memes say about their inner life?

As a rule, conservatives are no less thoughtful and caring than you are, they just have a very different set of axioms governing their ethics. Until you understand those priors their words will sound as irrational and foolish to you as your words do to them.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457289.2019.15...

"these results suggest that Trump was able to leverage populist anger for political advantage in ways that other candidates were not and that such anti-elitism played an important and underappreciated role in explaining the outcome of the [2016] presidential election."

*Edit - added year in brackets for clarification.

Do you think "owning the liberals" is a completely made up thing? How do you think it compares to the phrase "owning the conservatives", a phrase nobody uses nor seemingly aspires to?

> Do you think "owning the liberals" is a completely made up thing

No, I don't think it's completely made up. I think it's by far not the main driver, and claiming like everything the right does, or even most significant driver for what the right does is this is nonsense.

> "owning the conservatives", a phrase nobody uses nor seemingly aspires to

A brief search (not using Google since their results are garbage now) provides ample proof otherwise. But my point is that spite in not a primary motivation neither for the right nor for the left. Since the right is by its nature more reactionary (I don't use it here as pejorative but as a description of action caused by another action), their actions can looks spiteful in more cases, but that's not the primary motivation, whatever the forum trolls say. For the trolls, on both sides, yes, this is a primary motivation, sure, and they obviously exist, but they are not the main or the only force by far.

By design, Congress is unable to do anything. It's either one party (always the same party) being completely obstructionist, even other presidential appointments, or if a rotating villain who defects and stops any meaningful legislation.

Power has moved to the courts and to the states. Again, entirely by design. In the current term, there is an inocuous sounding case called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo [1], which is expected to overturn a longstanding (~40 years) precedent called Chevron [2]. This would gut Federal agencies. Chevron set a precedent that in areas of ambiguity courts would give deference to Federal agencies. The argument for this is that Congress has to be explicit but Congress cannot possibly explicitly regulate, for example, salmon quotas and inspections. The goal here is deregulation for profit. That's it.

For the last 30+ years, every president issues an executive order on day 1 either banning or allowing recipients of foreign aid to provide counselling on abortion, depending on the party.

The real question here is why did this take 3 years into Biden's regime for the FCC to act? The FCC is an appointed position. This could've been done in 2021.

> Maybe it's always been this way though and I'm just getting old enough to be bothered by it?

No, it's now more obstructionist than it ever has been but it's always been more difficult to make changes than not. Previously there was more respect for institutional norms. For example, if the president nominated someone for a position, that person would always get a Senate hearing regardless of who controlled the Senate. There is no law that required that but people previously accepted the president had a mandate for appointments. Now? It's way more scorched earth.

[1]: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/loper-bright-ent...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_U.S.A.,_Inc._v._Natura....

Don't pretend like the Democrats wouldn't be just as obstructionist if it suited their political objectives.

What we actually have is lack of consensus, and excessively polarized factions that are unwilling to budge to create a consensus (or rather waste their energy making a great deal of noise on non-consensus issues and nonstarters and bickering with each other).

So if someone throws a stone at you, you might reasonably be tempted to throw a stone back. If called up on this, you might be tempted to say "he started it". Legally speaking, that might or might not be a defense.

What if instead you throw a stone at someone and justify it with "he was going to throw a stone at me"? Would you consider that a sound defense?

Take it further. Your defense becomes "he would've thrown a stone at me if he had the option so I had to throw the stone at him". No reasonable person would respect that argument.

So why is the hypothetical "Democrats would block a Supreme Court nomination if they had the chance" reasonable to you?

And this is exactly what they did when Trump was in office! Their motto was “#resist” for crying out loud. Sheesh, right now TikTok is on the verge of being banned, something that they were completely against when Trump wanted to do it. Bad idea when Trump wants it, good idea when Biden does.

Just be honest folks, it’s truly a “both sides” thing. And honestly, political gridlock is a good thing. Most of the people here on HN quickly forget how valuable it is when it’s the side YOU don’t like ramming legislation through.

FCC commissioners must be approved by the Senate. Biden nominated Gigi Sohn in 2021. Republicans blocked her. Biden nominated Sohn again. I don't think he said why. But other Democrats believed Republicans would block anyone who would restore net neutrality. Republicans blocked Sohn again. Democrats took control of the Senate in 2023. Joe Manchin said he would block Sohn. Sohn withdrew. Biden nominated Anna Gomez. The Senate approved her in September. The FCC started the process for this vote a few days later.

Democrats controlled the Senate in 2021. Republicans didn't block the nomination. Democrats allowed the Republicans to block the nomination. The process by which that block happened could easily have been eliminated by a Senate rules change. There were attempts to do this on other issues (eg voting rights) but the rotating villains of the Democratic Party at the time (ie Sinema, Manchin) blocked it.

Joe Liebermann was previously the rotating villain. He is singlehandedly the only reason why 55 year olds can't buy into Medicare to get health insurance coverage.

I reject the rotating villain conspiracy theory. 1 scapegoat would have been enough. Sinema's choices ended her Senate career. Manchin and Lieberman didn't change suddenly.