[Winstonm]

 barmar, on 2023-January-04, 10:43, said:

They used to say that about the Presidency. I'm sure he could figure out a way to fit it into his golf schedule.

Trump is a hard worker. Trouble is the only work he does is self-promotion. There is no room in his schedule for non-transactional concerns.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2023-January-04, 16:08, said:

It's embarrassing. In addition to everything else that can be said, it's embarrassing. I have been critical of Democrats but at least they could elect a Speaker. PBS had a Republican on the Newshour explaining that negotiation is a good thing, and the expression of opposing views is a good thing. Well, yeah. But the election was in November. Did the Republicans just realize yesterday that they have to elect a Speaker? Maybe they could have prepared? Discussed? Negotiated? Sometime before yesterday?
This goes way beyond what I think of Republican positions or Democratic positions. The House is now led, if "led" is even remotely the word, by a bunch of incompetent jerks. Nothing good will come of this. Nothing good for anyone.
We desperately need 218 people in the House who think the future of the country is important. No luck so far.

These are people who worked to overthrow the election and want to do away with the government as is. It may come to the point where the Democrats will have to form a coalition with some Rebulicans to elect a speaker..

The January 6 insurrection continues.

[thepossum]

I'm not cynical or anything but is the Speaker issue due to be sorted today (tomorrow my time)

[pilowsky]

 thepossum, on 2023-January-06, 04:48, said:

I'm not cynical or anything but is the Speaker issue due to be sorted today (tomorrow my time)

Were you thinking of standing?

[thepossum]

😂
I came back to edit and say that strictly it will be sorted out yesterday our time but it feels like tomorrow

The Jan 6 solution. The great healing moment 😂

[Winstonm]

For a democratic republic to work, the legitimacy of opposing opinion must be admitted; that these 20 are preventing governance to begin shows not an interest in greater inclusion but that they hold only their values sacrosanct to the point of destroying any opposition regardless the cost.

Totalitarianism hidden behind a mask of democratic demand.

[barmar]

 Winstonm, on 2023-January-04, 19:54, said:

These are people who worked to overthrow the election and want to do away with the government as is. It may come to the point where the Democrats will have to form a coalition with some Rebulicans to elect a speaker..

The January 6 insurrection continues.

McCarthy and most of the Never-Kevins are election deniers. So why doesn't McCarthy just say that the Speaker election is a fraud and declare himself the winner? His opponents would be hypocrites if they refuse this, and we've never known politicians to be hypocrites.

[Winstonm]

 barmar, on 2023-January-06, 14:21, said:

McCarthy and most of the Never-Kevins are election deniers. So why doesn't McCarthy just say that the Speaker election is a fraud and declare himself the winner? His opponents would be hypocrites if they refuse this, and we've never known politicians to be hypocrites.

They would first have to allow mail-in ballots claim victory before any of them were counted.

[pilowsky]

If you think this is chaos go to Taiwan.

[pilowsky]

In his words:

K. McCarthy said:

If we row in the same cadence together, there is no obstacle this body can overcome for this nation.

Yep, there's nothing Kevin can do.

[Winstonm]

 pilowsky, on 2023-January-07, 00:41, said:

In his words:



Yep, there's nothing Kevin can do.

“Row” can also be pronounced with an “o” sounded like “ow”, which oddly is more fitting. They had a row but made up later.

[kenberg]

When I was 13 or so I was away at camp and a tornado came in from across the nearby lake. We could see it coming. They got us out just in time. The next morning, a tree was lying across a tent that a couple of kids had been in. Before they got us out lightning struck a tree about five feet from the tent my friend and I were in but the tree did not fall. Whew.

Some rescue plans are "just in time" and others are "too late". I have lived in the USA for all of my life, I am thinking we might well have reached the "too late" stage. I have no idea what to do.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2023-January-07, 09:56, said:

When I was 13 or so I was away at camp and a tornado came in from across the nearby lake. We could see it coming. They got us out just in time. The next morning, a tree was lying across a tent that a couple of kids had been in. Before they got us out lightning struck a tree about five feet from the tent my friend and I were in but the tree did not fall. Whew.

Some rescue plans are "just in time" and others are "too late". I have lived in the USA for all of my life, I am thinking we might well have reached the "too late" stage. I have no idea what to do.

This may well be Gordian’s knot. The answer is to restore and respect norms of democratic governance, to vote for the best candidate regardless of party; however, when one party insists on ignoring norms and the constitutional order that party’s candidates are automatically invalidated, even the rare decent one. That means the solution is straight party voting but that is precisely what the other side does and wants as it allows them to claim Democrats unwilling to negotiate in good faith.

Unfortunately, change is personal and cannot be coerced; however, it can be encouraged by skillful presentation of the truth over and over until cognitive dissonance overwhelms the ingrained resistance to change.

Or we can always move to Portugal.

[kenberg]

 Winstonm, on 2023-January-07, 12:52, said:

This may well be Gordian's knot. The answer is to restore and respect norms of democratic governance, to vote for the best candidate regardless of party; however, when one party insists on ignoring norms and the constitutional order that party's candidates are automatically invalidated, even the rare decent one. That means the solution is straight party voting but that is precisely what the other side does and wants as it allows them to claim Democrats unwilling to negotiate in good faith.

Unfortunately, change is personal and cannot be coerced; however, it can be encouraged by skillful presentation of the truth over and over until cognitive dissonance overwhelms the ingrained resistance to change.

Or we can always move to Portugal.

Perhaps the above is a plan but I read it more as an acknowledgment that we are at the end. I guess "skillful presentation of the truth" has been tried. Or at least "skillful presentation of the truth as the presenter sees the truth". And it helped some. The Red Wave didn't happen, not on the predicted scale. Still, I have trouble seeing a way out.


Portugal? No. I didn't run off to Canada in the 1960s when I was young and frisky, I'm not going to Portugal now. I suppose I could open a gin joint in Casablanca. Maybe Ingrid Bergman would come by, and she and I could pick up where we left off with our relationship in Paris. No. Becky would object. I guess I will stay where I am.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2023-January-07, 16:12, said:

Perhaps the above is a plan but I read it more as an acknowledgment that we are at the end. I guess "skillful presentation of the truth" has been tried. Or at least "skillful presentation of the truth as the presenter sees the truth". And it helped some. The Red Wave didn't happen, not on the predicted scale. Still, I have trouble seeing a way out.


Portugal? No. I didn't run off to Canada in the 1960s when I was young and frisky, I'm not going to Portugal now. I suppose I could open a gin joint in Casablanca. Maybe Ingrid Bergman would come by, and she and I could pick up where we left off with our relationship in Paris. No. Becky would object. I guess I will stay where I am.

We may well be at an end. Even salvageable it will take generations. In the meantime vote Democratic and hope.

[kenberg]

I have gone through life without pledging unconditional support for one party and I won't be changing now. I was provided with an early example, In 1952 my parents, who would normally vote D, Liked Ike. Meaning that they voted for Eisenhower. A good president, I think. More recently, Larry Hogan, a Republican, finished his second term as governor of Maryland. I voted for him both times. In 2022 the Democratic Association spent money and effort to see to it that the Republicans nominated a truly awful candidate. I find this unforgivable. I probably would have voted for the Democratic candidate anyway, but a Democratic strategy of helping the worst of the Republicans win the primary? I would hope for a better approach.

Politics is a rough game, I get that. But to use an expression that might be just Minnesotaese (I haven't heard it for a long time), things have gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to vote for a candidate that I respect, rather than vote for a candidate because he is not as thoroughly awful as the one that the DGA helped the Rs to put on the ballot.

We are in a mess. The way out is not clear, not remotely clear. But I hope the Dem leadership will ask themselves why they so often lose elections that they should have won, and I hope they will come up with something other than "We did everything right, but voters are just so awful, so stupid, so whatever, that there is nothing we could have done."

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2023-January-09, 08:44, said:

I have gone through life without pledging unconditional support for one party and I won't be changing now. I was provided with an early example, In 1952 my parents, who would normally vote D, Liked Ike. Meaning that they voted for Eisenhower. A good president, I think. More recently, Larry Hogan, a Republican, finished his second term as governor of Maryland. I voted for him both times. In 2022 the Democratic Association spent money and effort to see to it that the Republicans nominated a truly awful candidate. I find this unforgivable. I probably would have voted for the Democratic candidate anyway, but a Democratic strategy of helping the worst of the Republicans win the primary? I would hope for a better approach.

Politics is a rough game, I get that. But to use an expression that might be just Minnesotaese (I haven't heard it for a long time), things have gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to vote for a candidate that I respect, rather than vote for a candidate because he is not as thoroughly awful as the one that the DGA helped the Rs to put on the ballot.

We are in a mess. The way out is not clear, not remotely clear. But I hope the Dem leadership will ask themselves why they so often lose elections that they should have won, and I hope they will come up with something other than "We did everything right, but voters are just so awful, so stupid, so whatever, that there is nothing we could have done."

I don't think your take on the Democratic party is realistic. There are times (New York 2022) when what you say might be right, but more than that it is the concerted efforts to de-democratize the U.S. that is creating the election havoc. Gerrymandering is the primary method, but having a SCOTUS that is pro-Republican and helps to allow voter supression is also something unhelpful. There are states where the Democrats have virtually zero chance due to gerrymandering - no amounth of good candidtes fixes that.

We are in for a horrific time because the SCOTUS has been packed with Federalist Society judges. I'm not sure we will survive these time with an intact democratic republic.

[pilowsky]

People - like me - that have only voted for one party their whole life do so because in a party system we are voting for a belief system that we think will provide better governance.
This is a completely different choice spectrum to the good/bad person method.
From the outside, the USA appears to have a one-party system founded on a bedrock of individualism.
American 'heroes' almost never involve a group of people getting together to work for the betterment of all society.

Then we run into the problem of what 'betterment of all society' means.
One thing I believe betterment of society means is access to fundamental human rights.


Access to decent health care for everybody is a fundamental human right.
Access to tertiary education is a fundamental human right.
Access to lethal weapons isn't


Under a system of individualistic authoritarianism there are no fundamental human rights that I would recognise, just the right to be able to acquire as much of human and economic wealth as possible.
The people that are unable to do this are Trumps 'suckers and losers'.

The one positive feature of Trump-ish (or Santos-ish) style politicians is that the flame of naked self-interest burns so bright that you can easily see what you're getting.

[Winstonm]

 pilowsky, on 2023-January-09, 15:43, said:

People - like me - that have only voted for one party their whole life do so because in a party system we are voting for a belief system that we think will provide better governance.
This is a completely different choice spectrum to the good/bad person method.
From the outside, the USA appears to have a one-party system founded on a bedrock of individualism.
American 'heroes' almost never involve a group of people getting together to work for the betterment of all society.

Then we run into the problem of what 'betterment of all society' means.
One thing I believe betterment of society means is access to fundamental human rights.


Access to decent health care for everybody is a fundamental human right.
Access to tertiary education is a fundamental human right.
Access to lethal weapons isn't


Under a system of individualistic authoritarianism there are no fundamental human rights that I would recognise, just the right to be able to acquire as much of human and economic wealth as possible.
The people that are unable to do this are Trumps 'suckers and losers'.

The one positive feature of Trump-ish (or Santos-ish) style politicians is that the flame of naked self-interest burns so bright that you can easily see what you're getting.

I think you are quite perceptive and have us explained better than we know ourselves, It is a fantasy we admire, fits in well with beliefs of gods and devils.

[kenberg]

This got me to thinking about different political systems. In 1968 I voted for Charles Mathias, a Republican, to be a senator from Maryland. I also voted for Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat, to be president. I am right, am I not, that the analogous thing can't happen in a parliamentary system. Voters choose the members of parliament, parliament chooses the prime minister. I can see how this could work to encourage party loyalty. A voter's choice for member of parliament influences who will become prime minister.

I am a registered Democrat in Maryland but I can vote as I please in the general election. I am pretty sure that in Minnesota in the mid-1960s, I just registered as a voter, no party affiliation was expected. That was quite a while ago but still, I think I am remembering correctly.

At any rate, Democrats, a great many Democrats, voted for Eisenhower in 1952. They probably voted for Democratic candidates for the House, for the Senate, for governor, etc, but they voted for Eisenhower for president. And the same thing again in 1980 with Democrats voting for Reagan. In my earlier post I recommended that Democratic leadership ask themselves how this happens. Well, Korea played a big role in 52, And Carter was ripe for the picking in 80. But that's not the whole story of course. Being able to say "Hmm, I think I made a mistake" is a very useful approach to doing better the next time around.

Here is a place to start: Accept that while I do not believe in gods and devils, I do believe what I said above. Voting for the occasional Republican and conducting devil-worship services are actually different things. Really, they are.