Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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dillon
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Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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On CNN at 8 pm eastern.
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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Sorry. That’s MSNBC, a close-up on the GOP lies about the immigration “crisis”. Starting now.
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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I didn’t see this, being in the UK. However, I had to laugh at the alleged national emergency and the building of a big wall to stop drug trafficking. The humour was driven by the fact that the overwhelming majority of inbound drugs come through recognised entry points into the USA and not over the border from Mexico.

We - you - live in interesting times...
dillon
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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Ray wrote:I didn’t see this, being in the UK. However, I had to laugh at the alleged national emergency and the building of a big wall to stop drug trafficking. The humour was driven by the fact that the overwhelming majority of inbound drugs come through recognised entry points into the USA and not over the border from Mexico.

We - you - live in interesting times...
Luckily we do have courts with the ability to sort out intent, and it’s pretty clear that the border data does not support “Agent Orange’s” contention. Illegal crossings have been falling since 2008 and are presently at a fifty-year low. And AO didn’t declare an emergency for the two years he had both houses of Congress in his party. See, the Republicans wouldn’t fund that lame wall either. It was a silly campaign promise that only a liar would make and only a fool would believe.

And...if the partisan Supreme Court upholds “Twitler’s” scheme, then it establishes a precedent for the use of the Emergency Powers Act of 1976. So when the Democrats have the White House in 2021, we can declare a “national emergency” to address climate change or school shootings, and bypass GOP objections. What goes around, comes around...
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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dillon wrote:And...if the partisan Supreme Court upholds “Twitler’s” scheme, then it establishes a precedent for the use of the Emergency Powers Act of 1976.
s/ if / when /g

The overt farce of the "confirmation" of the latest Supreme Court Justice -- a high-school jock with no other qualifications and no attainment of higher mental status -- got me to pondering the question of, "In a post-Constitutional State, what role does a Supreme Court play?" I have not been able to come up with a reasonable answer to that one because without an operating Constitution anything goes and thus the institution has no meaning, and, hence, no power (or legitimacy).

Is this where we veer from oligarchy to autocracy? [1] I hate "interesting times".

As far as climate change goes, that ship has already sailed. We're beyond the "knee" and it's highly probable that there's nothing that humankind can do to prevent its own extinction. It's already been postulated that we're right in the middle of a mass extinction and we just haven't noticed it yet. These things take time. Study the big one at the Permian boundary; that did for about 85% of the species on the planet, and recall that extinction is the rule not the exception on this insignificant rock. We had our chance, and we blew it for a fatter "bottom-line" on Standard Oil's spreadsheet.


[1] My guess is "no". The oligarchs will sort this out to their profit one way or the other.
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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crfriend wrote: of the latest Supreme Court Justice -- a high-school jock with no other qualifications and no attainment of higher mental status -- got me to pondering the question of, "In a post-Constitutional State, what role does a Supreme Court play?" I have not been able to come up with a reasonable answer to that one because without an operating Constitution anything goes and thus the institution has no meaning, and, hence, no power (or legitimacy)
CR ponder this . You actually think that Sotomayor and Kagan are more qualified than Kavanaugh. In their initial reports the bar gave him higher ratings than both of them Do me a favor keep your crying towel out because I don't wish her any bad but Ruth ain't got much longer. Replace her with another women how about AC Barrett

[
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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oldsalt1 wrote:[ of the latest Supreme Court Justice -- a high-school jock with no other qualifications and no attainment of higher mental status -- got me to pondering the question of, "In a post-Constitutional State, what role does a Supreme Court play?" I have not been able to come up with a reasonable answer to that one because without an operating Constitution anything goes and thus the institution has no meaning, and, hence, no power (or legitimacy)

CR ponder this . You actually think that Sotomayor and Kagan are more qualified than Kavanaugh. In their initial reports the bar gave him higher ratings than both of them Do me a favor keep your crying towel out because I don't wish her any bad but Ruth ain't got much longer. Replace her with another women how about AC Barrett
What I'm saying is that the thing has outlived its usefulness. AC Barrett? How about Judge Judy? Stormy Daniels? Roseanne?
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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No but Pirro would be great I was hoping she would be Attorney General
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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crfriend wrote:... without an operating Constitution anything goes...


True, too true. Without hard and fast rules, the ones at the top can make it up as they go along. Just look at us on the right hand side of the Atlantic. Chaos ensues.
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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skirtyscot wrote:Without hard and fast rules, the ones at the top can make it up as they go along. Just look at us on the right hand side of the Atlantic. Chaos ensues.
At least you folks allegedly have a brake built into the mix with the monarch. The monarch is generally supposed to stay out if the day-to-day muck, but if things start to go too badly off the rails ought to be able to step in and make the children behave. That was theoretically the function of the Supreme Court here, but that's been a useless (or, worse, a pernicious) organ for decades and has rubber-stamped all of the assaults on the Constitution to date -- to the point where it's made itself as meaningless as the original document -- and we have no backstop to that sort of failure.

Depending on how the dice roll in the next few weeks, we in the US of A are about to get a first-hand taste of what totalitarianism at home looks like. Other than dice, it'll be what the money says.
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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The Constitution is an amazing document, but I think it’s authors and signatories are rolling over in their graves to see that we have left all modifications and interpretations to the courts, when the document lists the means for its own alteration. It was meant to evolve; the founders were not as naive or insecure as politicians today seem to be, to believe that times and societies never change. This faulty thinking is a major weakness of American conservatism, ala Scalia, whose so-called “judicial philosophy” of “orginalism” was merely a sham designed to enable the entrenchment of theocracy.

It’s time to have a Constitutional Convention and drag the USA, kicking and screaming if necessary, back to the position it held in 1790. The New Republic was, despite our dreadful colonial inheritance of genocide and slavery, at the forefront of representative equality on the face of the globe. The founders had more faith in the enshrined principles than we do today. The one revelation of their somewhat misanthropic distrust of the loyalties of the electorate was the Electoral College, an institution designed to prevent the 13 states from slipping back under the dominion of a foreign king.

The EC outlived its purpose by 1865, when the Civil War secured our identity as a nation. It’s current employment is as an “equalizer” of large and small states and their presumed divergent interests. That purpose is not Constitutional; it does not exist in the document. The EC should be abolished, and direct election of the President and Vice President provided for instead. Only the Senate exists Constitutionally to limit “the tyranny of the majority.” By 2050 70% of our population will be concentrated in 15 states, while the other 30% will hold 70 of 100 Senate seats. That is enough legislative parity between large and small states.

If direct Presidential election threatens us with the idea of an overpowering majority, it does so only because we have allowed too much power to be concentrated in the office of POTUS. It is patently wrong that a vote cast for President in Wyoming counts as much as 3.1 votes from California, or that a vote cast in Vermont counts as much as 2.5 votes in Texas. The idea of “one person, one vote” is but the most obvious of upgrades and reforms the Constitution needs.
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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dillon wrote:It’s time to have a Constitutional Convention and drag the USA, kicking and screaming if necessary, back to the position it held in 1790.
I shudder to think what the result would be. Today, we have an electorate that's so ignorant of reality -- by design -- that no rational consensus would be possible, and the overall outcome I suspect would an overt codification of an oligarchy (rather than an aristocracy as strongly hinted at in the original). Yes, for its time, the US Constitution was an astonishing piece of work, but if one dissects it carefully it's a good example of a system designed to keep those who created it in power and if anything is left over for that rest, that's OK. Times change. Note how passionate some of the original framers were about universal literacy and learning -- they got the fact that the only way the place could survive was to have the best intellect available, and to foster that for future generations. This does not mean a steady and unending diet of Fox "News" (or NPR "News" for that matter) leavened with a large portion of evangelical bile.

The Republic of the founders is dead. Not just dead, but buried as well. This is not the country that they founded, it's not the country our grandfathers, and their grandfathers fought and died for, heck it's not even the country I grew up in and I'm not all that old.

I concur on the idea of abolishing the Electoral College. It's a backward scheme and is entirely prone to tampering.
If direct Presidential election threatens us with the idea of an overpowering majority, it does so only because we have allowed too much power to be concentrated in the office of POTUS.
Power concentrated in the office of the president because Congress and the Supreme Court didn't jealously guard their parcel when it mattered, and it thus was subsumed by the Executive. One of the things we desperately need is a meaningful mechanism for recall, and a meaningful balloting system in which a blank vote indicates a vote on the part of the elector that "none of the candidates are acceptable" -- and if there are more blanks than marks then the election is declared null and void, and a new one -- with different candidates -- is called with a short lead-time. That would not have worked in the 18th Century; however, by the late 19th Century (thanks to the telegraph) it would have, and in this day and age it's inconceivable that a fast turnaround would be impossible.

We need diverse sources of news about current events, not two or three that control all thought -- and we need a level of intelligence that's not just free to make up it's own mind but also to ask the hard questions when hard questions need asking. We have none of that now thanks to a wholesale dumbing-down of the populace (and hence the electorate). Until we have a majority of the population that's capable of taking in information and formulating independent opinions of what's presented will we even have a prayer of a good outcome in a Constitutional Convention.
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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I think a “none of the above” ballot option would make sense...if we didn’t have Primary elections. That is the opportunity for voters to make sure that an acceptable candidate is on the ballot. That has been a tricky proposition since the Citizens United decision which allows those willing and able to throw money at the system to dominate it. Hence the Clinton nomination. The next needed Constitutional reform should be to mandate Congress to regulate not just campaign spending but to ensure clarity in issue advocacy as well. Many will dispute my opinion but there should be no anonymity in political donations or issue spending. If one feels strongly enough to put substantial money into politics and advocacy then one should be brave enough to own that fact. No major finder or donor should be free of possible boycott or disinvestment for his onerous politics. If one isn’t prepared to take the economic heat, then one should stay out of the political kitchen.
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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crfriend wrote:Until we have a majority of the population that's capable of taking in information and formulating independent opinions of what's presented will we even have a prayer of a good outcome in a Constitutional Convention.
That's easier said than done. I might consider myself a pretty rational and intelligent person, but even the most basic political discussions have a way of humbling me to the point where I often don't even feel fit to cast a vote, much less formulate an opinion on anything. It seems all the answers are wrong!

There is so much chatter going on these days, with the struggle just to survive, how does the common Joe find the time to contemplate solving the world's problems much less actually attempting it?

When everything is billed as "fake news" by 50% of the populous who do people like myself trust? Trust my own gut? Well my gut tells me where f--cked no matter what. Just enjoy the ride while you still can man....

Oceana is not at war with Eastasia....
Oceana is at war with Eastasia....

*shrugs*
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moonshadow
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Re: Watch Beto O’Rourke tonight

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What really scares the ever living hell out of me is... this government is starting to resemble the insides of my own brain and thought patterns....

Run for your lives gentleman.....
-Andrea
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