At the time the US Constitution was written, it was illegal for black people to vote. Clarence Thomas should resign from the Supreme Court, and should not be voting for anything--let alone SC decisions, as he himself is illegal by his own reasoning.
Virginia outlawed miscegenation in 1661 n the United States, Maryland became the first state to ban same-sex marriage in 1973 when it passed a law that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Other states soon followed, with Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma passing similar laws in 1975, and Florida, California, Wyoming, and Utah passing them in 1977. By 1994, almost all US states had banned same-sex marriage.
Thomas would ban gay marriage, but not miscegnenation. One thing about right wingers is that they are not at all embarrassed by their hypocrisy.
IMHO, they will ban inter-racial marriages, but not adultery. To many of them commit it and gamble and drink alcohol, those won't be banned, as well as machine guns. Alcohol is their courage and excuse when serving evil.
By Clarence Thomas’ reasoning on machine guns not being illegal at the writing of the Constitution, then marijuana, LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA, etc should all be legal. So should a lot of other things (both good and bad things). The point is, our contemporary society of 2024 bears little resemblance to US society in the 1700’s. ‘Originalists’ know this; they use ‘originalism’ as a smokescreen to achieve their partisan goals.
It calls into question why we even need a Constitution, or the government it establishes, if there is nothing post-1789 that said government is allowed to respond to. Why, then, do we need a Supreme Court, or Clarence Thomas?
The Constitution is a ‘living document.’ It has been updated by Congress. It should continue to be updated to adjust to conditions not anticipated or known of by its creators. That would maintain its relevance. As to the Supreme Court, we do need it, however it is currently operating outside of the role it was designated. It was originally created by Congress and can be modified by Congress. And Congress needs to do so. But we definitely do not need Clarence Thomas, or any other corrupt Judge or Justice.
I don’t use this term lightly, the GOP leadership needs to be sent into a four-year re-education program: (1) Isolation from cable news and social media, (2) non-union, low paying, backbreaking jobs, (3) no health care (4) a kitchen table stacked with bills for camp services that must be paid before leaving the camp, and finally (5) a survivor field trip to the Darién Corridor. I can think of more, but it might be too cruel for them.
It still resonates with me that some of the people I spoke with before Trump’s election wanted to burn Washington DC down ( in the sense that they were totally dissatisfied with the federal government). Perhaps Trump embodied that sentiment. Of course, along the way, he ruined so much else . It is difficult for me to understand the mentality of the people that still support him . Certainly Trump has taken a wrecking ball to some of the traditional Republican cornerstones like trade issues and NATO . But will this Trump Publican Party implode even if he is soundly defeated in November? And , what will it look like in the aftermath? If the same mentality that went along with Trump persists, I expect we might get someone even more ideological and potentially as dangerous as Agent Orange .
It would be better if we could all just get along
as Rodney King famously stated and put Trump in the ash bin of history. But we need to hear that from the people that wanted to burn down democracy in the first place .
My question is "What does 'the federal government' mean to the people who say they're dissatisfied with it?" For some it's probably the equivalent of "the Great Satan" -- a construct to which all otherwise inexplicable evil can be attributed. Others may have a particular agency (or two or three) in mind: it's doing something they *really* don't like and/or not doing something they *really* think it should be doing. Next time you run into someone who says they want to burn Washington DC down, ask them why they think so -- or at least ask them where they'd like to start.
Paul, any hint as to why the right wants to burn down the government>
Could it be because of DEI, gay marriage, civil rights, anti abortion. It is not economics, it is the culture war. They want things to return to the idolized 1950's, when father new best and the Brady family was the ideal.. a patriarchal society, where queers were quiet, hid intheir closests and didn't have parades, when women puttered around the kitchen in sundresses and the only thing on their feeble minds was making hubbie his favorite meal, and "now where did I put his pipe and slippers"
I think the “ Culture War “ had a lot to do with it . There were always the Grover Nordquist types that just wanted to starve the government of tax receipts and drown it into the toilet . But I think many were convinced that nothing the federal government did could positively impact their lives . They didn’t believe reform would work so they advocated a “ burn it all down “ philosophy.
As I said , I don’t understand the mentality.
I can’t describe it very well . Yet it is out there .
As a professor, I often outlined many of the positive things in the public interest that many of us take for granted. Like schools , roads , electricity- food and drug inspections ( the list is long ) but it doesn’t seem to matter to people when all they get is hate news / hate radio /
and feel left behind. There certainly is room for improvement in the public sector- but the Reagan model of removing the spark plugs ,
Were they to continue on their current path, American Nazism would be the next phase, with Mein Kampf/Project 2025 laying out their plan to a horrifying degree. The fictional series “The Man in the High Castle” is almost as prophetic as 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. The pendulum needs to get back to the center. My biggest concern is what these brainwashed cultists are going to do now that they have been called out from under the rocks and caves that they previously inhabited, especially if and (most hopefully) when Kamala is elected as President.
I don' believe it is possible to get the cult to snap out of it! They are addicted to dishonesty, delusional thoughts, blaming others, being conscience haters and weak minded, especially with the billionaires backing them, using them for protection from feeding the rest of the planet while it burns in flames!
We must get Merrick Garland out of there! Can Kamala use her new influence and tell Biden to fire Garland? Trump recently talked to BeeBee and asked him to extend the length of the war, like he has asked Jerome Powell to keep interest rates high, to screw up the economy for us! Those are felonies. We lost control of the congress due to Garland! So far Biden has not convinced me he is on our side yet! Many of you may love him, but his actions are lacking to protect democracy! The election is probably rigged this time around for sure by the gop.
With the family unit, phony faith based religions and unlimited greed, don't relax and be prepared, more than ever! The fascists will not leave without a fight and Biden better start fighting! Prepare for another civil war!
At the same time, MAGA is disintegrating. Haley Voters for Harris is encouraging voters across the political spectrum, and Haley voters in particular, to vote for Kamala Harris in November. https://www.haleyvotersforharris.org/
I think it one is really, really, really drunk at a bar (not that I've ever been that really, really drunk) in you are really mean-minded and someone asked you what you wanted, might say, "Burn the whole thing down!" And that's what these idiots are saying, drunk on rage and possessed of very limited reasoning power.
What if a court decides that if a weapon did not exist in the 1790s, it is not covered by the 2nd Amendment? That way, if you want a muzzle-loading Brown Bess musket, fine - anything invented after that is open to such laws and regulations as the country desires.
I see the GOP’s extremist social policies as mirrors of its version of free-market economics. We’ve been warned about the social harms that come from this economic model if they are not addressed by protections such as regulations, and the GOP’s #1 purpose is to prevent any such protections. Economist Karl Polanyi famously explained how a free-market system without any safeguards would end up “annihilating the human and natural substance of society.” It would physically destroy human beings and transform our “surroundings into a wilderness.” We’ve created agencies to buffer these harms to society since 1887, but the normalizing of profit-over-everything-else free-market economics has practically slowed protective regulation efforts to a halt. As a result, our lives are increasingly threatened by climate change and the devastating amount of misinformation in social media--and the GOP wants to kill off pollution laws so companies don’t have to spend money on safe practices. And our kids are psychologically and emotionally harmed by Facebook and Instagram--it’s very well documented--because Congress refuses to regulate these companies. The GOP’s prime directive to support the profit-over-all-else economic model results in its relentless assault of personal freedoms. If we are free to thrive in every way, we will not only have the clarity to criticize the unsustainable and inhumane model of the unregulated free-market system, but also to reject the GOP that supports it above all else. Enough people understand this already (making “woke” a bad word), which is why the GOP has to cheat--strip away voting access and lie about our free-and-fair election system--in order to get any votes.
The Republican Party is no longer a political party. It is a well-funded gang. And it is hardly the first time a group of gangsters tried to take over a country. In the Third Reich, one succeeded. The Republicans refused to hold their own accountable for malfeasance, and that kind of "Republican" took over their party.
Every time a Democratic Party operative tries to shush another Democrat for bringing up the party-backed genocide or holding the likes of Wasserman-Schultz accountable for rigging a primary election, or Cuellar, and Menendez accountable for corruption, the operative is leading Democrats down the same path to a gangster takeover.
The "big tent" that includes such Democrats is too dam--d big.
Ed, you just stepped over the threshold by claiming the party backs genocide, and you do violence to the word genoide.
Per art II the UN Convention of prevention of genocide, intent is requried, and there is no intent on the part of the Israeli government, I am not talking about the individual Israeli, but the government and as horrible as what is happening in Gaza it all likes in the lap of and on the head of HAMAS, which brutally and up front and person raped and murdered over 1,200 infants, toddler, women, elderly and disabled in their own genocidal gesture. yes genocidal gesture because that is the intent of HAMAS to genocide the Jews, it is in their covenant and their sacred scriptures.,
On the other hand you,like so manyother liberals, (and I am one) completely ignore the actual genocide going on in Ukraine , a genocide declared by the dictator who said the the Ukrainian culture, language and identity is artificial and needs to be replaced by Russian.
Now tell me why you get your undies in a wedgie over Palestine but blithely ignore Ukraine.
Hell's bells, there is a worse genocide going on in Sudan, 1 million children and women are starving to death, and nary a peep from erstwhile liberals, could it be because there are no jews involved.
Call out your party for Ukraine if you are registered as a Democrat or Netanyahu's party if you are an Israeli voter. This discussion is about an AMERICAN political party that needs to be torn down that became a gang through not holding its own accountable and reigning in malfeasance. Stop the whataboutism that is transparently obvious as intended to divert from the topic of conversation.
WTF is that. Registered democrat, Netanyahu's party Israeli voter?
I am not so idiot to eat the whole pie and swallow everyones bullshit.
I have my bitches about the Democratic party , for sure, but right now there are only two choices. Two choice. Either Trump or Harris. A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump, unless you are an RFK voter, then it is a vote taken away from Trump.
There is only one topic of conversation at the moment, and that is whether we will be a full on theocratic right wing dictatorship and a Putin ally, or not.
There is no choice, in my opinion, time for kvetching and moralizing and druthers is after the election. Any disturbance in the force until November 5th, only benefits the theocratic fascistic Trump Putin cabal.
Not getting sucked into a diversion of this discussion and a redirecting of it onto Israel. If you don't think of what is happening in Gaza as a genocide or an ethnic cleansing, fine. That is your right. I believe it is both and am calling it out because I protest being represented by those supporting both. That is my right, so you have to live with it. Here is a person holding his own party accountable. THIS is what holding your own looks like--refusing to be "shushed."
I tell you what Ed. Go ahead and protest to your hearts content, if it makes you feel righteous and superior, but also be aware that your protests can lead to a division of the left, resulting and the victory of Bibi's butt buddy Trump, and boy won't the Gazan's for whom your herart bleeds be sorry.
Trump and his base could care less about your Gazan's.
And you talk about dividing the the base, you and yours are doing a damn good job of it.
Me I am pissed, because the real threat to freedom and democracy, isn't coming from Israel but from Ukraine, and I don't see, and never have the left give one shit about the genocidal imperialism of Putin, nor are you hypocrites concerned and protesting the genocide in the Sudan where millions are being starved to death.Oh no, it is Gaza, because HAMAS has skillfully used reporters, cell phones, video cameras and the internet.
Fools and tools.
Meanwhile Khameini present Putin with one hell of a birthday present on October 7th,Yes that was his birthday., And like that attention and sentiment was switched from Ukraine to Gaza and the Jews, and latent left wing anti semitism was activated, as was the old guard Marxists, who have a lingering affection for a mythical Russia, who is in their fevered dreams a bulwark against imperialistic capitalism.
Their ideological blinders don't allow them to see that Russia is the very epitome of imperialistic capitalism. and oppression of the masses.
The neo-cons and traditional conservatives should each start their own parties and the Maga clan should crawl back under the slimy rock they came from. The current Republican Party should dissolve. Their name is forever tainted.
My parents were Eisenhower Republicans, and I voted Republican until the mid-1990s even though I protested the Vietnam War and supported the civil rights movement. I consider myself an Independent, although I have not and will not vote for a Republican until—if ever—a Republican returns to Eisenhower values. Can you make that happen?
Sharon I was a Gold water Republican. My first vote ever was in 1960 for Nixon. I was brainwashed by the Readers Digest, mostly. I stopped voting after I voted for Goldwater because I was convinced and to a degree still am, that the two parties were both sides of the same coin.
That changed in 2016 when Trump came down the escalator and opened his mouth, the next day i went to the courthouse and registered Democrat and have voted every election since, for a straight blue ticket I( have no choice because I love my freedom and don't want to live in the 4th Reich of the Rich and a right wing dictatorship.
A two party system can only result in one thing: opposition. One must be necessarily against the other - eventually. Opposition creates opposition.
Now, that's the system we currently have. So as grown up people, we need to vote within those limits. At the same time, we would be wise to adopt a less combative model which encourages the emergence of real options - instant run off voting or ranked choice are two good examples.
For the present moment, Jill Stein and Cornell West will hopefully find the courage, common sense, and decency to get behind Harris.
The inevitable is a hot civil war, it is cold right now with occasional skirmishing, but they have the upper hand, they have arsenals while we have pea shooters, and if they steal the election then they will have LEO and the military as well as the arsenal, and we, well we will be game.
Good to see you in Northbrook yesterday. I think that the Opus Dei majority on the Court is about arming the insurgency. Thomas comment and his bump stock decision make that clear. One would think that the R’s would be reaching to the Center to win the election, but drumpf ia saying that he doesn’t need the votes. Is there another plan with MAGAt Mike, the Republican State Attorney Generals and election officials in red states.
While a good part of the population is lost in the lies, disinformation and the NFL, a small minority whose only source for news is the right wing echo chamber, are being brought to a fever pitch through the rhetoric of cruelty as you so ably point out. To what end? This is not just a domestic problem, trump and his cosigner, putin, and xi have their own plans to carry out should America be destabilized. Is the DOJ on this?
I am sure the Republican party will not change the substance of their beliefs; but they won't be so obtuse as Trump is in expressing themselves, and their lies won't be so blatant. They have too much invested in their messaging apparatus (and in public officials) to give up their awful social philosophy and faith-based bigotry. They will just fine-tune it into what George H. W. Bush called "compassionate conservatism". Never has there been a clearer contradiction in terms.
Nothing can change in either party until the pipe dream can be realized: Elimination of Major Money in politics! Then let the Republican be the people's party of business .finance,and retrenchment and the Democratic the people;s party of people, tolerance and progress.
At the time the US Constitution was written, it was illegal for black people to vote. Clarence Thomas should resign from the Supreme Court, and should not be voting for anything--let alone SC decisions, as he himself is illegal by his own reasoning.
And Catholics and Jews couldn't take an oath of office in most states....
You are right. I wrote this to show the absurdity of Thomas' reasoning, and to bring to light the obvious can of worms that he opened...
Yep.
Virginia outlawed miscegenation in 1661 n the United States, Maryland became the first state to ban same-sex marriage in 1973 when it passed a law that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Other states soon followed, with Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma passing similar laws in 1975, and Florida, California, Wyoming, and Utah passing them in 1977. By 1994, almost all US states had banned same-sex marriage.
Thomas would ban gay marriage, but not miscegnenation. One thing about right wingers is that they are not at all embarrassed by their hypocrisy.
IMHO, they will ban inter-racial marriages, but not adultery. To many of them commit it and gamble and drink alcohol, those won't be banned, as well as machine guns. Alcohol is their courage and excuse when serving evil.
By Clarence Thomas’ reasoning on machine guns not being illegal at the writing of the Constitution, then marijuana, LSD, Psilocybin, MDMA, etc should all be legal. So should a lot of other things (both good and bad things). The point is, our contemporary society of 2024 bears little resemblance to US society in the 1700’s. ‘Originalists’ know this; they use ‘originalism’ as a smokescreen to achieve their partisan goals.
It calls into question why we even need a Constitution, or the government it establishes, if there is nothing post-1789 that said government is allowed to respond to. Why, then, do we need a Supreme Court, or Clarence Thomas?
The Constitution is a ‘living document.’ It has been updated by Congress. It should continue to be updated to adjust to conditions not anticipated or known of by its creators. That would maintain its relevance. As to the Supreme Court, we do need it, however it is currently operating outside of the role it was designated. It was originally created by Congress and can be modified by Congress. And Congress needs to do so. But we definitely do not need Clarence Thomas, or any other corrupt Judge or Justice.
I don’t use this term lightly, the GOP leadership needs to be sent into a four-year re-education program: (1) Isolation from cable news and social media, (2) non-union, low paying, backbreaking jobs, (3) no health care (4) a kitchen table stacked with bills for camp services that must be paid before leaving the camp, and finally (5) a survivor field trip to the Darién Corridor. I can think of more, but it might be too cruel for them.
I agree, the rightwingers need a parent!
It still resonates with me that some of the people I spoke with before Trump’s election wanted to burn Washington DC down ( in the sense that they were totally dissatisfied with the federal government). Perhaps Trump embodied that sentiment. Of course, along the way, he ruined so much else . It is difficult for me to understand the mentality of the people that still support him . Certainly Trump has taken a wrecking ball to some of the traditional Republican cornerstones like trade issues and NATO . But will this Trump Publican Party implode even if he is soundly defeated in November? And , what will it look like in the aftermath? If the same mentality that went along with Trump persists, I expect we might get someone even more ideological and potentially as dangerous as Agent Orange .
It would be better if we could all just get along
as Rodney King famously stated and put Trump in the ash bin of history. But we need to hear that from the people that wanted to burn down democracy in the first place .
My question is "What does 'the federal government' mean to the people who say they're dissatisfied with it?" For some it's probably the equivalent of "the Great Satan" -- a construct to which all otherwise inexplicable evil can be attributed. Others may have a particular agency (or two or three) in mind: it's doing something they *really* don't like and/or not doing something they *really* think it should be doing. Next time you run into someone who says they want to burn Washington DC down, ask them why they think so -- or at least ask them where they'd like to start.
Paul, any hint as to why the right wants to burn down the government>
Could it be because of DEI, gay marriage, civil rights, anti abortion. It is not economics, it is the culture war. They want things to return to the idolized 1950's, when father new best and the Brady family was the ideal.. a patriarchal society, where queers were quiet, hid intheir closests and didn't have parades, when women puttered around the kitchen in sundresses and the only thing on their feeble minds was making hubbie his favorite meal, and "now where did I put his pipe and slippers"
William ,
I think the “ Culture War “ had a lot to do with it . There were always the Grover Nordquist types that just wanted to starve the government of tax receipts and drown it into the toilet . But I think many were convinced that nothing the federal government did could positively impact their lives . They didn’t believe reform would work so they advocated a “ burn it all down “ philosophy.
As I said , I don’t understand the mentality.
I can’t describe it very well . Yet it is out there .
As a professor, I often outlined many of the positive things in the public interest that many of us take for granted. Like schools , roads , electricity- food and drug inspections ( the list is long ) but it doesn’t seem to matter to people when all they get is hate news / hate radio /
and feel left behind. There certainly is room for improvement in the public sector- but the Reagan model of removing the spark plugs ,
distributor , battery and carburetor from the
vehicle - then claiming it is a piece of junk
isn’t going to move us down the road .
Were they to continue on their current path, American Nazism would be the next phase, with Mein Kampf/Project 2025 laying out their plan to a horrifying degree. The fictional series “The Man in the High Castle” is almost as prophetic as 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. The pendulum needs to get back to the center. My biggest concern is what these brainwashed cultists are going to do now that they have been called out from under the rocks and caves that they previously inhabited, especially if and (most hopefully) when Kamala is elected as President.
In the past they drank kool aid. This time they may be drinking bleach.
Trump is hosting a J6 awards Gala. He is doing his best to continue the insurrection.
I don' believe it is possible to get the cult to snap out of it! They are addicted to dishonesty, delusional thoughts, blaming others, being conscience haters and weak minded, especially with the billionaires backing them, using them for protection from feeding the rest of the planet while it burns in flames!
We must get Merrick Garland out of there! Can Kamala use her new influence and tell Biden to fire Garland? Trump recently talked to BeeBee and asked him to extend the length of the war, like he has asked Jerome Powell to keep interest rates high, to screw up the economy for us! Those are felonies. We lost control of the congress due to Garland! So far Biden has not convinced me he is on our side yet! Many of you may love him, but his actions are lacking to protect democracy! The election is probably rigged this time around for sure by the gop.
With the family unit, phony faith based religions and unlimited greed, don't relax and be prepared, more than ever! The fascists will not leave without a fight and Biden better start fighting! Prepare for another civil war!
Need Hopium.
We can make the blue wave the blue tsunami. https://www.fieldteam6.org/
At the same time, MAGA is disintegrating. Haley Voters for Harris is encouraging voters across the political spectrum, and Haley voters in particular, to vote for Kamala Harris in November. https://www.haleyvotersforharris.org/
Republican voters against Trump. https://rvat.org/
This election will not be decided by votes if the gop gets its way and they are not locked up first, imho.
Great points all!
I think it one is really, really, really drunk at a bar (not that I've ever been that really, really drunk) in you are really mean-minded and someone asked you what you wanted, might say, "Burn the whole thing down!" And that's what these idiots are saying, drunk on rage and possessed of very limited reasoning power.
What if a court decides that if a weapon did not exist in the 1790s, it is not covered by the 2nd Amendment? That way, if you want a muzzle-loading Brown Bess musket, fine - anything invented after that is open to such laws and regulations as the country desires.
I see the GOP’s extremist social policies as mirrors of its version of free-market economics. We’ve been warned about the social harms that come from this economic model if they are not addressed by protections such as regulations, and the GOP’s #1 purpose is to prevent any such protections. Economist Karl Polanyi famously explained how a free-market system without any safeguards would end up “annihilating the human and natural substance of society.” It would physically destroy human beings and transform our “surroundings into a wilderness.” We’ve created agencies to buffer these harms to society since 1887, but the normalizing of profit-over-everything-else free-market economics has practically slowed protective regulation efforts to a halt. As a result, our lives are increasingly threatened by climate change and the devastating amount of misinformation in social media--and the GOP wants to kill off pollution laws so companies don’t have to spend money on safe practices. And our kids are psychologically and emotionally harmed by Facebook and Instagram--it’s very well documented--because Congress refuses to regulate these companies. The GOP’s prime directive to support the profit-over-all-else economic model results in its relentless assault of personal freedoms. If we are free to thrive in every way, we will not only have the clarity to criticize the unsustainable and inhumane model of the unregulated free-market system, but also to reject the GOP that supports it above all else. Enough people understand this already (making “woke” a bad word), which is why the GOP has to cheat--strip away voting access and lie about our free-and-fair election system--in order to get any votes.
The Republican Party is no longer a political party. It is a well-funded gang. And it is hardly the first time a group of gangsters tried to take over a country. In the Third Reich, one succeeded. The Republicans refused to hold their own accountable for malfeasance, and that kind of "Republican" took over their party.
Every time a Democratic Party operative tries to shush another Democrat for bringing up the party-backed genocide or holding the likes of Wasserman-Schultz accountable for rigging a primary election, or Cuellar, and Menendez accountable for corruption, the operative is leading Democrats down the same path to a gangster takeover.
The "big tent" that includes such Democrats is too dam--d big.
Ed, you just stepped over the threshold by claiming the party backs genocide, and you do violence to the word genoide.
Per art II the UN Convention of prevention of genocide, intent is requried, and there is no intent on the part of the Israeli government, I am not talking about the individual Israeli, but the government and as horrible as what is happening in Gaza it all likes in the lap of and on the head of HAMAS, which brutally and up front and person raped and murdered over 1,200 infants, toddler, women, elderly and disabled in their own genocidal gesture. yes genocidal gesture because that is the intent of HAMAS to genocide the Jews, it is in their covenant and their sacred scriptures.,
On the other hand you,like so manyother liberals, (and I am one) completely ignore the actual genocide going on in Ukraine , a genocide declared by the dictator who said the the Ukrainian culture, language and identity is artificial and needs to be replaced by Russian.
Now tell me why you get your undies in a wedgie over Palestine but blithely ignore Ukraine.
Hell's bells, there is a worse genocide going on in Sudan, 1 million children and women are starving to death, and nary a peep from erstwhile liberals, could it be because there are no jews involved.
Call out your party for Ukraine if you are registered as a Democrat or Netanyahu's party if you are an Israeli voter. This discussion is about an AMERICAN political party that needs to be torn down that became a gang through not holding its own accountable and reigning in malfeasance. Stop the whataboutism that is transparently obvious as intended to divert from the topic of conversation.
WTF is that. Registered democrat, Netanyahu's party Israeli voter?
I am not so idiot to eat the whole pie and swallow everyones bullshit.
I have my bitches about the Democratic party , for sure, but right now there are only two choices. Two choice. Either Trump or Harris. A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump, unless you are an RFK voter, then it is a vote taken away from Trump.
There is only one topic of conversation at the moment, and that is whether we will be a full on theocratic right wing dictatorship and a Putin ally, or not.
There is no choice, in my opinion, time for kvetching and moralizing and druthers is after the election. Any disturbance in the force until November 5th, only benefits the theocratic fascistic Trump Putin cabal.
Not getting sucked into a diversion of this discussion and a redirecting of it onto Israel. If you don't think of what is happening in Gaza as a genocide or an ethnic cleansing, fine. That is your right. I believe it is both and am calling it out because I protest being represented by those supporting both. That is my right, so you have to live with it. Here is a person holding his own party accountable. THIS is what holding your own looks like--refusing to be "shushed."
https://theintercept.com/2024/08/22/biden-harris-israel-ceasefire-gaza/
Holding our own accountable looks NOTHING like supporting Trump. Partisan stooges simply try to use that red herring to try to shush people.
Their objective is just to keep their PARTY in power. Responsibility for good, ethical governance isn't even on their radar.
I tell you what Ed. Go ahead and protest to your hearts content, if it makes you feel righteous and superior, but also be aware that your protests can lead to a division of the left, resulting and the victory of Bibi's butt buddy Trump, and boy won't the Gazan's for whom your herart bleeds be sorry.
Trump and his base could care less about your Gazan's.
And you talk about dividing the the base, you and yours are doing a damn good job of it.
Me I am pissed, because the real threat to freedom and democracy, isn't coming from Israel but from Ukraine, and I don't see, and never have the left give one shit about the genocidal imperialism of Putin, nor are you hypocrites concerned and protesting the genocide in the Sudan where millions are being starved to death.Oh no, it is Gaza, because HAMAS has skillfully used reporters, cell phones, video cameras and the internet.
Fools and tools.
Meanwhile Khameini present Putin with one hell of a birthday present on October 7th,Yes that was his birthday., And like that attention and sentiment was switched from Ukraine to Gaza and the Jews, and latent left wing anti semitism was activated, as was the old guard Marxists, who have a lingering affection for a mythical Russia, who is in their fevered dreams a bulwark against imperialistic capitalism.
Their ideological blinders don't allow them to see that Russia is the very epitome of imperialistic capitalism. and oppression of the masses.
I
Well said as usual, William.
The neo-cons and traditional conservatives should each start their own parties and the Maga clan should crawl back under the slimy rock they came from. The current Republican Party should dissolve. Their name is forever tainted.
My parents were Eisenhower Republicans, and I voted Republican until the mid-1990s even though I protested the Vietnam War and supported the civil rights movement. I consider myself an Independent, although I have not and will not vote for a Republican until—if ever—a Republican returns to Eisenhower values. Can you make that happen?
Sharon I was a Gold water Republican. My first vote ever was in 1960 for Nixon. I was brainwashed by the Readers Digest, mostly. I stopped voting after I voted for Goldwater because I was convinced and to a degree still am, that the two parties were both sides of the same coin.
That changed in 2016 when Trump came down the escalator and opened his mouth, the next day i went to the courthouse and registered Democrat and have voted every election since, for a straight blue ticket I( have no choice because I love my freedom and don't want to live in the 4th Reich of the Rich and a right wing dictatorship.
Sharon ,
Do you think Ike would be let within a thousand yards of the current GOP establishment?
And , for his part , I believe Ike would refuse to try to join a party that wouldn’t have him for a member .
What would the procedure be for overturning Supreme Court decisions made by court majorities proven to be arrived at by malfeasance?
The Buck Stops at Justice Roberts. That said, Congress can write new bills and the Pres can sign them into new laws.
Rinse and repeat.
Indeed, what is the process for removing Justices for the same reason?
Ans. 1. Impeachment. 2. If by bribery or another crime, jail.
A two party system can only result in one thing: opposition. One must be necessarily against the other - eventually. Opposition creates opposition.
Now, that's the system we currently have. So as grown up people, we need to vote within those limits. At the same time, we would be wise to adopt a less combative model which encourages the emergence of real options - instant run off voting or ranked choice are two good examples.
For the present moment, Jill Stein and Cornell West will hopefully find the courage, common sense, and decency to get behind Harris.
The inevitable is a hot civil war, it is cold right now with occasional skirmishing, but they have the upper hand, they have arsenals while we have pea shooters, and if they steal the election then they will have LEO and the military as well as the arsenal, and we, well we will be game.
Good to see you in Northbrook yesterday. I think that the Opus Dei majority on the Court is about arming the insurgency. Thomas comment and his bump stock decision make that clear. One would think that the R’s would be reaching to the Center to win the election, but drumpf ia saying that he doesn’t need the votes. Is there another plan with MAGAt Mike, the Republican State Attorney Generals and election officials in red states.
While a good part of the population is lost in the lies, disinformation and the NFL, a small minority whose only source for news is the right wing echo chamber, are being brought to a fever pitch through the rhetoric of cruelty as you so ably point out. To what end? This is not just a domestic problem, trump and his cosigner, putin, and xi have their own plans to carry out should America be destabilized. Is the DOJ on this?
I am sure the Republican party will not change the substance of their beliefs; but they won't be so obtuse as Trump is in expressing themselves, and their lies won't be so blatant. They have too much invested in their messaging apparatus (and in public officials) to give up their awful social philosophy and faith-based bigotry. They will just fine-tune it into what George H. W. Bush called "compassionate conservatism". Never has there been a clearer contradiction in terms.
Nothing can change in either party until the pipe dream can be realized: Elimination of Major Money in politics! Then let the Republican be the people's party of business .finance,and retrenchment and the Democratic the people;s party of people, tolerance and progress.