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GoonSquad
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09 May 2017, 11:44 am

Russia and China are anti-democratic, authoritarian countries who actively menace their neighbors right now. If left unchecked, they will be global menaces in the future.

IT IS in the interests of the American people to see that this does not happen. Therefore, we should take every opportunity to strangle them both while we still can. You cannot appease rising aggressor nations.

If you don't believe me, just ask Neville Chamberlain


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Jacoby
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09 May 2017, 11:55 am

If you believe that about China then I think a relationship with Russia is the pragmatic thing to do, we opened relations with the Chinese to change the equation with the Soviets so now perhaps we should change the equation with Chinese and come full circle. How can a rising China be contained? If they are adversarial and allies with Russia then it's big trouble for the USA, the US + Europe+ Russia + SK + Japan however might be enough. Personally I don't want to raise any s**t in China since that would hurt the US, they are a power we have to respect. It's not our place to decide who rules other countries, not unless we want unending perpetual war.



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09 May 2017, 1:17 pm

The short answer is Putin is a scorpion who cannot be trusted.

We still have significant advantages over Russia and China and we need to maintain them by any means necessary.

You want real American first, that's it.


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09 May 2017, 5:12 pm

By Jingo! :lol:


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10 May 2017, 10:18 am

When the social contract no longer provided for a stable family, with a male at it's nucleus, Trump put women on a golden pedestal. Over what.

Trump said,"When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice." Is it an empty platitude. The Obamaphone lady gave up her cause, and black people would complain that their president let them go without shoes. The collapse of radical Reconstruction led to black separatism.

There is no way you can prove yourself to be a real American, and no way America can prove itself to you. There is no universal ideology, because that would be obliging. You would be well oriented and have reasonable expectations, in terms of social acceptance and living standards. One ideology means you give something, and you get something, and deserve it.



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13 May 2017, 4:11 pm

Jacoby wrote:
I agree that democracy is looking more and more corrupted by the day, the only way it can work is with reciprocation where the opposing sides recognizes the other's right to participate and govern in a democratic government. There can't be a democracy with without respect for rule of law and reciprocation, there can't be an elite unelected deep state. I see western democracy more and more as a facade for what really is an interconnected multinational dictatorship set up to serve/protect international business interests. What is the solution to this, how do we remove the parasitic new world order?


Figure out where its HQ is and destroy it.



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13 May 2017, 4:14 pm

GoonSquad wrote:
K_Kelly wrote:
I am concluding that America and Western democracy is decaying and is unsaveable. I don't want this to be about left-right anymore. Why are we in such decline? Is it some type of divine punishment?

No matter what we try to do, the elites are always going to win, which is why I believe our punishment must be divinely-influenced. How else can you explain stuff?


Yeah, I think this round of democracy may well be doomed. It always happens when cultures forget how/why democracies work.

That's what happened in the Roman Republic--people forgot how and why their system was supposed to work. The Gracchi came into power and abused the office of Tribune. Then their opponents (feeling backed into a corner) killed them--before this, even touching a Tribune was considered treason.

But after the Gracchi, Roman politics was full of Tribune-Demagogues, violence, hyper-partisanship and the Republic failed within decades...

Today people have forgotten that our system was designed to work on compromise. That's why we have gridlock and nothing gets done, because no one is willing to compromise.

Hell, Trump and others are criticizing the Senate and how slow its processes are. What they have forgotten here is that the Senate was designed to be slow and difficult, as a check on populist passions.

I think that soon, Senate rules will be changed to make it just like the House (already started with Supreme Court confirmations), and we will be on our way to tyranny of the majority.

After that, its only a matter of time before the oppressed minority (left or right) gets so frustrated that we will have open, violent civil conflict.


The Senate became like the House when they passed the 17th Amendment. Before that, the state legislators picked the Senators, so that the states would have a voice. The 17th Amendment was definitely a dark turning point in American history.



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13 May 2017, 4:23 pm

DinoMongoosePenguin wrote:
The Senate became like the House when they passed the 17th Amendment. Before that, the state legislators picked the Senators, so that the states would have a voice. The 17th Amendment was definitely a dark turning point in American history.

Repealing the 17th is getting a lot more attention. One editorial from just yesterday:

http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/12/del ... amendment/


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13 May 2017, 4:24 pm

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Democracy isn't the issue, it's the structure that's built up around it. Especially America, because you only get two choices. If both choices suck, then you're f****d!

Reform is needed in the structure of running the country, not democracy itself. But you can also have a better democratic system. In France, Le Pen went up against Macron in a second round, rather than just giving it to Macron as the first round front runner. This is good. But 1st to 4th were separated by a razor thin margin in relative terms. Macron got 24.01% while 4th place Melenchon got 19.58%. Less than 5% separated 1st and 4th! If you'd had five rounds instead of two, it could easily have been third or fourth which ultimately prevailed.

The easier it is for new parties to rise and challenge the status quo, the better. The more choice, the better.

A trickier problem is continuity. Trump is tearing apart Obama's work, and no doubt the one that follows Trump will tear apart what he did, and so on. If a company operated in such a way, it would get run out of business wasting so much energy and money and constantly replacing employees with new employees by another company that was a well oiled cohesive machine, continually striding forward and expanding.



There is hope there of changing the system. It seems the Founding Fathers realized that one day there might be a problem that threatens the country and that the federal government would not act, likely because it was part of the problem. Thus, they put in a system for the states to call an amendments convention to get around DC and fix the problems that plague the country. I am involved in such an effort. Yesterday, we got our 12th state to pass an application to reduce the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, term limits for federal officials (I myself am a bit undecided on that one, as I have see valid arguments for and against it) and fiscal restraints (greatly needed). We need 34 states to call a convention. We have Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas passed so far. Hopefully, we can get North Carolina and Nebraska and the Illinois House this year (We have 49/71 needed to get through the Illinois House and may have even more as those are just the sponsors).



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13 May 2017, 4:26 pm

Darmok wrote:
DinoMongoosePenguin wrote:
The Senate became like the House when they passed the 17th Amendment. Before that, the state legislators picked the Senators, so that the states would have a voice. The 17th Amendment was definitely a dark turning point in American history.

Repealing the 17th is getting a lot more attention. One editorial from just yesterday:

http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/12/del ... amendment/


Another issue with the 17th Amendment, and this is a biggie too, is that it has someone elected from a larger population (the whole state) than the House and serving three times as long (6 years) as the House. And with the Senate having the power of impeachment, to confirm justices, and to make treaties (along with the President), that's a recipe for disaster.



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13 May 2017, 4:32 pm

DinoMongoosePenguin wrote:
Darmok wrote:
DinoMongoosePenguin wrote:
The Senate became like the House when they passed the 17th Amendment. Before that, the state legislators picked the Senators, so that the states would have a voice. The 17th Amendment was definitely a dark turning point in American history.

Repealing the 17th is getting a lot more attention. One editorial from just yesterday:

http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/12/del ... amendment/

Another issue with the 17th Amendment, and this is a biggie too, is that it has someone elected from a larger population (the whole state) than the House and serving three times as long (6 years) as the House. And with the Senate having the power of impeachment, to confirm justices, and to make treaties (along with the President), that's a recipe for disaster.

In parallel, I have heard a lot of talk about dramatically increasing the size of the House as well. I believe the US is the least representative major democracy after India. The only one of the original twelve amendments to the Constitution that is still technically pending is the Congressional Apportionment Amendment that would have kept us at something like one Representative per 50,000 population; we are now closer to one Representative per 700,000. It's a very interesting case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressi ... _Amendment


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jrjones9933
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13 May 2017, 4:49 pm

Jacoby wrote:
GoonSquad wrote:
^ But it isn't just politics. With all this talk about "the deep state, fake news, and voter fraud" people are actively trying to undermine the public's trust in fundamental institutions like the professional civil service, the mainstream press, and our election process.

This is extremely dangerous, because these institutions form the foundation of our system. If people don't think these institutions are legitimate, they really have no reason to participant in the system or accept its authority.

Once enough people get to that point, we're screwed.


What if these institutions are corrupted and no longer worthy of the public's trust? The looming threat of tyrannical government is inherent in the American mindset, as the saying goes the liberty tree must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. The only reason to participate and accept authority is if the system is fair and there is reciprocation from the other side, if voting doesn't matter then the life of that democracy is dead and need be torn down so it can be replaced with something new.

Those institutions were never perfect, and as do all institutions, they tend to work for their own interests. Public Choice Economics has some very useful insights in that regard.

Where the rubber hits the road is what do you intend to replace the institutions with? As far as I can see, DJT works strictly for the glorification of DJT, and has no idea what a president even does. The Republicans can't put together any ideas beyond defunding Planned Parenthood and promoting discredited supply side economics that's no more sophisticated than their leader's mercantilism. No progress yet toward the massive infrastructure spending which the ASCE says that we absolutely need.


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Jacoby
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13 May 2017, 5:10 pm

Democrats will have to stop 'resisting' and actually want to better the country to get infrastructure done

if we're depending on Paul Ryan for it then yeah, we're screwed. I would not have voted for Paul Ryan for president, I wouldn't of even voted for him for congressman.



GoonSquad
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13 May 2017, 5:38 pm

Jacoby wrote:
Democrats will have to stop 'resisting' and actually want to better the country to get infrastructure done

if we're depending on Paul Ryan for it then yeah, we're screwed. I would not have voted for Paul Ryan for president, I wouldn't of even voted for him for congressman.

What about all the resisting the GOP did for 8 goddamn years?

:roll:


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Jacoby
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13 May 2017, 5:44 pm

Obama was given plenty of chances to be an effective leader, not the GOPs fault he failed at all of them and sold out his own supporters. When he was elected he had supermajorities in the house and senate, he could of accomplished a lot more than he did. Republicans never acted outside the legal means of government to 'resist' however, the 'intelligence community' didn't actively work to undermine and overthrow his presidency so it's not really comparable.



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13 May 2017, 5:47 pm

Darmok wrote:
DinoMongoosePenguin wrote:
Darmok wrote:
DinoMongoosePenguin wrote:
The Senate became like the House when they passed the 17th Amendment. Before that, the state legislators picked the Senators, so that the states would have a voice. The 17th Amendment was definitely a dark turning point in American history.

Repealing the 17th is getting a lot more attention. One editorial from just yesterday:

http://thefederalist.com/2017/05/12/del ... amendment/

Another issue with the 17th Amendment, and this is a biggie too, is that it has someone elected from a larger population (the whole state) than the House and serving three times as long (6 years) as the House. And with the Senate having the power of impeachment, to confirm justices, and to make treaties (along with the President), that's a recipe for disaster.

In parallel, I have heard a lot of talk about dramatically increasing the size of the House as well. I believe the US is the least representative major democracy after India. The only one of the original twelve amendments to the Constitution that is still technically pending is the Congressional Apportionment Amendment that would have kept us at something like one Representative per 50,000 population; we are now closer to one Representative per 700,000. It's a very interesting case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressi ... _Amendment


Sure let's go back to appointing senators, and let's pick congressmen by lottery.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/ ... story.html



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
Quote:
In governance, sortition (also known as allotment or demarchy) selects political officials as a random sample from a larger pool of candidates.[1] The logic behind the sortition process originates from the idea that “power corrupts.” For that reason, when the time came to choose individuals to be assigned to empowering positions, the ancient Athenians often resorted to choosing by lot. In ancient Athenian democracy, sortition was therefore the traditional and primary method for appointing political officials, and its use was regarded as a principal characteristic of true democracy.[2]

Today, sortition is commonly used to select prospective jurors in common law-based legal systems and is sometimes used in forming citizen groups with political advisory power (citizens' juries or citizens' assemblies).


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