Um, ......yaaaah!
Black voters in US have never had a fair shake.......especially late 19th C. - >1965.......and beyond....and obviously before.
Meaning.....outsize forces messing with elections....
Um, ......yaaaah!
One thing that has struck me about Trump's presidency is that we all always thought that the whole point of that role was to be one of three equal branches of government, with each possessing certain checks and balances against the others. So it never was understood that the President would ever be "like a king", and certainly not like a Hobbesian Sovereign (literally wielding the infinite power of the body politic). But what Trump has exposed is that (with the help of certain pre-existing corrupt forces like McConnell) all it takes to break that system is for elected officials to simply not act, or to act in ways that don't have clear cut and dry prosecutable consequences. One of the first things Trump did that was reported widely was tear up notes into tiny pieces, despite the fact that legally all presidential notes, documents, etc., must be archived. That was the beginning of the press pointing to Trump doing something we call out as "illegal" but there being no clear way to do anything about it. Why not? Because I don't think the founders of the country or the subsequent two centuries of legislators and justices ever thought they'd have to manage so much bad faith in one actor. Worse: the increasing politicization and polarizing of the Supreme Court became a victim of that unpunished, apparently unpunishable bad faith before Trump, when McConnell and co. simply declined to accept Obama's Supreme Court appointee, Merrick Garland. All their rhetoric about "lame duck presidency" had nothing to do with what was going on. They simple figured out that they could get away with not doing their jobs, and not ceding anything to their "opponents".Charles wrote: ↑Sun May 03, 2020 12:06 amHow can one person ever represent a country like the USA? It is and always will be a source or division between us. It seems like an antiquated idea anyway. It's like a king or emperor or czar. One person to represent an entire nation created from people all over the world. No single person should have that kind of power...
Maybe that is the point. Put a stop to the charade.But in practice, he has helped show just how much wiggle room can be found in this.
Can you think of a time when there was reasoned problem solving on a national level that had good results in the last 30-40 years....?
I think this is a mistake. There's a classic work of political philosophy from the last century from David Gauthier, a great Canadian philosopher, called Morals by Agreement. You might enjoy it: https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/ ... 0198249924 It has its share of critics (in fact, quite a lot of them; Hobbes hasn't enjoyed much popularity in Anglo-American politics/philosophy since WWII, when there was a resurgence in interest in Kant, but I think this is a mistake).mockbee wrote: ↑Tue May 05, 2020 7:50 am
You could just as easily slide W, Bush I, or Reagan, even Obama, into this statement. Heck....Nixon, LBJ, etc. Just pick a war/egregious military action...pick among the dozens of options.....
Maybe war adventures are more forgivable than being......grossly and blatantly slippery with the truth. Yes, a despicable quality. But how can this be legions worse than executing illegal wars....? Because the previous presidents were more "respectful" and cognizantly concealing their illegal actions?
Maybe that is the point. Put a stop to the charade.But in practice, he has helped show just how much wiggle room can be found in this.
One of the hardest things to figure out as citizens is how to get more power when we need it, and if we get it, how to use it responsibly. Populist power-grabs almost never end well, yet they're always portrayed as "the people" taking power from "the elites" (that's literally the textbook definition of populism). That doesn't mean that people shouldn't try to figure out how to get enough power to make political changes happen. It's more a question of how to go about doing it in a way that doesn't backfire or lead to things getting much, much worse. Often apparent "grass-roots" or "populist" uprisings are really just a smokescreen for one group of elites using people to take over for another group of elites. E.g., the "Tea Party" movement and its current fallout as a way for harder-right factions and a different kind of corporatists and libertarian wing-nuts to take over the Republican Party; or the maneuvers of the corporatist Clinton-style democrats to take over and exorcise the progressive factions from the Democratic party. Both have had pretty disastrous consequences.Pandemonium wrote: ↑Mon May 11, 2020 5:10 pmYou're never going to get anywhere letting the people in power and their backers who make and re-shape rules that ultimately benefit their own agenda.
Outside of the grocery store, (90% being essentials like cereal milk beans bread eggos ketchup), gas, some small stuff at the hardware store and the basic bills, I have spent maybe $20 total in the last 3 months. My wallet never gets any thinner (mostly use cash, except for groceries). So no problem here.
Totally agree. I think the single biggest anti Trump, anti populist charade bullshit thing we could do as Americans is.... get along.And hype makes a point about NOT ending the charade...and I'd like to take that viewpoint and twist it...because I think in society the charade is society...it's the "I don't agree with you but I don't have to...let's just pretend and be civil".....it used to be common decency...but now it's been stripped bare and people are getting comfortable not being civil....whether it be on social media or in text....on a plane...at Walmart...at the DMV...it's the bullshit lie of being civil that's the bumper between us...so if the charade all comes down...the gloves will come fully off...and then chaos will rule for a while...and most don't want that...I think most would rather just wear the blinders and accept their fate as ants...the system isn't for us...just fucking adapt and be nice to people fuck... the government has way too much power and I'm feeling old and not ready for war....
That's what's happened for the most part so far all along...hopefully it does not falter....courts will fuck trump on this....
The charade of society is aka 'the social contract', broadly speaking: I agree not to kill you and take your stuff if you agree not to kill me and take my stuff, and if either of us violates this, our friends and family agree to take it to a third party arbitrary to solve rather than becoming a murderous mob. Narrowly speaking: it's what Rawls would call "the space of public reasons" -- your private reasons don't count as civil reasons in public unless they're reasons that I could reasonably adopt. So you don't get to shove your religion on the rest of us, and I don't get to force you to have an abortion, or whatever.kv wrote: ↑Thu May 28, 2020 5:20 pmI really don't think he's winning in the fall...of course I didn't think he was winning last time...but I've seen a change...and I think it's enough to tilt this...
What's your guys thoughts on peaceful protest blackout day set for July 7th where no minority spending is to take place ...love it...
And hype makes a point about NOT ending the charade...and I'd like to take that viewpoint and twist it...because I think in society the charade is society...it's the "I don't agree with you but I don't have to...let's just pretend and be civil".....it used to be common decency...but now it's been stripped bare and people are getting comfortable not being civil....whether it be on social media or in text....on a plane...at Walmart...at the DMV...it's the bullshit lie of being civil that's the bumper between us...so if the charade all comes down...the gloves will come fully off...and then chaos will rule for a while...and most don't want that...I think most would rather just wear the blinders and accept their fate as ants...the system isn't for us...just fucking adapt and be nice to people fuck... the government has way too much power and I'm feeling old and not ready for war....
As for Art's point about why more aren't in the streets....covid has me not wanting to take risks...sure a lot feel that way...courts will fuck trump on this....
One can make the strong argument that the whole concept and origin of Police in the US is doing exactly what it was created to do......
https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/4 ... 3famp=true
In fact, the U.S. police force is a relatively modern invention, sparked by changing notions of public order, driven in turn by economics and politics, according to Gary Potter, a crime historian at Eastern Kentucky University.
Policing in Colonial America had been very informal, based on a for-profit, privately funded system that employed people part-time. Towns also commonly relied on a “night watch” in which volunteers signed up for a certain day and time, mostly to look out for fellow colonists engaging in prostitution or gambling. (Boston started one in 1636, New York followed in 1658 and Philadelphia created one in 1700.) But that system wasn’t very efficient because the watchmen often slept and drank while on duty, and there were people who were put on watch duty as a form of punishment.
Night-watch officers were supervised by constables, but that wasn’t exactly a highly sought-after job, either. Early policemen “didn’t want to wear badges because these guys had bad reputations to begin with, and they didn’t want to be identified as people that other people didn’t like,” says Potter. When localities tried compulsory service, “if you were rich enough, you paid someone to do it for you — ironically, a criminal or a community thug.”
As the nation grew, however, different regions made use of different policing systems.
In cities, increasing urbanization rendered the night-watch system completely useless as communities got too big. The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.”
In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves.
In general, throughout the 19th century and beyond, the definition of public order — that which the police officer was charged with maintaining — depended whom was asked.
For example, businessmen in the late 19th century had both connections to politicians and an image of the kinds of people most likely to go on strike and disrupt their workforce. So it’s no coincidence that by the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces. Fears of labor-union organizers and of large waves of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants, who looked and acted differently from the people who had dominated cities before, drove the call for the preservation of law and order, or at least the version of it promoted by dominant interests. For example, people who drank at taverns rather than at home were seen as “dangerous” people by others, but they might have pointed out other factors such as how living in a smaller home makes drinking in a tavern more appealing. (The irony of this logic, Potter points out, is that the businessmen who maintained this belief were often the ones who profited off of the commercial sale of alcohol in public places.)
At the same time, the late 19th century was the era of political machines, so police captains and sergeants for each precinct were often picked by the local political party ward leader, who often owned taverns or ran street gangs that intimidated voters. They then were able to use police to harass opponents of that particular political party, or provide payoffs for officers to turn a blind eye to allow illegal drinking, gambling and prostitution.
This situation was exacerbated during Prohibition, leading President Hoover to appoint the Wickersham Commission in 1929 to investigate the ineffectiveness of law enforcement nationwide. To make police independent from political party ward leaders, the map of police precincts was changed so that they would not correspond with political wards.
The drive to professionalize the police followed, which means that the concept of a career cop as we’d recognize it today is less than a century old.
That was too good!
K-Pop Fans Sabotaged Trump’s Under-Attended Tulsa Rally
They launched a secret campaign to register hundreds of thousands of fake tickets
Coming into Saturday’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Donald Trump proudly boasted that over one million people had signed up for tickets. But when the day actually came, there were plenty of empty seats to be found inside the arena, and literally not one person showed up for the outdoor events. Trump’s campaign blamed the low attendance on protestors who blocked the entrance to the arena. However, as the New York Times reports, the inflated ticket requests may have been the direct result of a prank carried out by K-pop fans.
K-pop fans, along with their allies on TikTok, worked together to register potentially hundreds of thousands of fake ticket requests as a prank. One of the organizers behind the prank, a YouTube host named Elijah Daniel, told the Times that “It spread mostly through Alt TikTok — we kept it on the quiet side where people do pranks and a lot of activism. K-pop Twitter and Alt TikTok have a good alliance where they spread information amongst each other very quickly. They all know the algorithms and how they can boost videos to get where they want.”
Several young activists created video encouraging other K-pop fans and TikTok users to request tickets using fake names and phone numbers, and even offered instructions on how to generate phone numbers using Google Voice and other internet-connected phone services.
“We all know the Trump campaign feeds on data, they are constantly mining these rallies for data,” Mary Jo Laupp, a former employee of Pete Buttigieg’s campaign for president, told the Times. “Feeding them false data was a bonus. The data they think they have, the data they are collecting from this rally, isn’t accurate.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lauded the K-pop fans on Twitter. In a tweet aimed at Trump’s campaign manager, AOC wrote, “You just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID.”
When not helping to propel BTS and other k-pop groups to the top of music charts, the fanbase has become increasingly involved in social activism. Last month, fans banded together to crash an app used by the Dallas Police Department and reclaimed racist hashtags like #WhiteLivesMatter.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-fragil ... 18908.html
Trump in ‘fragile’ mood and may drop out of 2020 race if poll numbers don’t improve, GOP insiders tell Fox News
Richard Hall
The Independent June 29, 2020, 11:27 AM EDT
Donald Trump may drop out of the 2020 presidential race if he believes he has no chance of winning, a Republican Party operative reportedly told Fox News.
The claim comes in a report in the president’s favourite news outlet that cites a number of GOP insiders who are concerned about Mr Trump’s re-election prospects amid abysmal polling numbers.
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, currently holds an average lead of nine points over the incumbent, according to a tracker of 2020 polls by RealClearPolitics.
Crucially, Mr Trump has lost support from older white voters — typically a bedrock of support for the Republican Party and a group that was crucial to his narrow 2016 victory. Mr Trump is also trailing the former vice president in almost all the swing states.
“It’s too early, but if the polls continue to worsen, you can see a scenario where he drops out,” one anonymous GOP operative told Fox News.
Charles Gasparino, the author of the Fox News report, said in a series of tweets that he had spoken to “major players” in the Republican party for the story. One of them described Mr Trump’s mood as “fragile” as his chances of a second-term looked increasingly dim.
Another of the GOP sources cited in the report said of the likelihood that Mr Trump will drop out: “I’ve heard the talk but I doubt it’s true. My bet is, he drops if he believes there’s no way to win.”
Mr Trump has repeatedly hit out at polling that shows him far behind Mr Biden. Last month, he tweeted that Fox News “should fire their Fake Pollster. Never had a good Fox Poll!”
On Monday, he tweeted: "Sorry to inform the Do Nothing Democrats, but I am getting VERY GOOD internal Polling Numbers. Just like 2016, the @nytimes Polls are Fake! The @FoxNews Polls are a JOKE! Do you think they will apologize to me & their subscribers AGAIN when I WIN? People want LAW, ORDER & SAFETY!"
But polls from all polling organisations show Mr Trump consistently behind by similar margins. In particular, they have shown high levels of disapproval over the president’s handling of the coronavirus and mass protests calling for racial justice after the police killing of George Floyd.
A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 36 per cent of American adults approve of Trump’s handling of the protests, while 62 percent disapprove. A New York Times poll returned similar numbers.
The same New York Times-Siena College poll found 58 per cent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the coronavirus outbreak, while only 38 percent approve — the worst ratings since the crisis began.
The Trump campaign called reports that the president would consider dropping out “the granddaddy of fake news”.
“Everyone knows that media polling has always been wrong about President Trump – they undersample Republicans and don’t screen for likely voters – in order to set false narratives,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told Fox News.
“It won’t work. There was similar fretting in 2016 and if it had been accurate, Hillary Clinton would be in the White House right now.”