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It's crazy to me that a country can be considered a democracy when all votes aren't of equal value. Let alone a situation like in the states where only a fraction of votes matter in the first place.

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13 minutes ago, Azure in a Roundabout said:

@Shoblongoo Then which direction should we take voting?

Also, what problems were he electoral college meant to fix?

So the original idea behind the electoral college--and you have to remember this is a system was put in place when America was a pre-industrial agrarian society--is that if you elected presidents by a simple majority of the popular vote in a nationwide election, only presidential candidates that had popular support in and around big cities like New York and Philadelphia and Boston (i.e. the major population centers where most voters actually live) would ever win.

The result would be that in a country split primarily along the political dividing-line between "traditional values" in rural countryside communities and "urban values" in the more multicultural and liberalized cities, urban values would win every time. And the rural countryside communities would have a government entirely unresponsive to their policy preferences.

And so the electoral college was put in place to ensure that states with small rural populations would be over-represented. While states with larger urban populations would be under-represented. And national elections would skew towards small rural populations having a magnified voice.
__________

Flash forward 200+ years and the system is functioning--more-or-less exactly as intended. 

Which is to say that it gives a disproportionately large share of voting power to small rural communities and magnifies their voice in government well beyond the segment of the population that they represent.

Democrats have "won" the popular vote in four (4) out of the last 5 presidential elections, but only WON via the electoral college in two (2) out of the last 5 elections.   

To the extent Republicans today are an "agrarian party" representing rural communities and rural values and Democrats are an "urban party" with majority support and popular policies in the places where most people actually live: thats exactly how it was supposed to work. 

The electoral college is solving the "problem" it was intended to solve.

Now the obvious question is: Is it really a 'problem' if small rural communities don't have extra influence in government disproportionate to their population size, don't get preferential treatment in national policymaking, and urban preference controls national policy by sheer practicality of the fact that most of the voting population lives in or around big cities. 

To which I answer:  No. No, it is not. Thats how a functioning representative democracy should work. The 'problem' the electoral college was put in place to fix is no problem at all.

This is also a problem with the way we've structured Congress by the way--the whole reason we have "the Senate" as a lawmaking body separate from "the House" is to over-represent small rural communities. 


...but hey...the bolded is just my opinion...

I could be wrong. 

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20 minutes ago, Azure in a Roundabout said:

@Shoblongoo So what is the best way to solve this then? 

I don't think there is one atm. You'd need to amend the Constitution, which would require a majority of states to support the change. Which would require them to vote against their own interest of keeping in place a system that over-represents their voters.

There's some precedent for it--passage of the 17th amendment inf 1913.   

Originally Congress was set up so that only House Representatives were voted for by the people; Senators were appointed by state representatives.

Well after about 125 years of doing it that way people got to thinking thats a stupidly undemocratic way to select lawmakers. People should vote for their Senators. 

And the passage of the 17th amendment did just that: changed the Constitution to require the popular election of Senators. 

It took decades of campaigning on the issue and calls for progressive reform to get to a point where that amendment had enough popular support to pass.

MAYBE we get there one day on a campaign to abolish the electoral college and switch over to popular election of presidents--we're not there yet.

There's gonna have to be some pretty major movement on public opinion and awareness of the issue before anything happens. Best you can do right now is probably just tell anyone who will listen to you that its an issue. (the first thing you have to do when trying to solve a problem is recognize that there's a problem) 
 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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8 hours ago, BrightBow said:

It's crazy to me that a country can be considered a democracy when all votes aren't of equal value. Let alone a situation like in the states where only a fraction of votes matter in the first place.

The cherry on top is and always will be that there ARE states whose electors can vote against what the people vote for.

7 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

And so the electoral college was put in place to ensure that states with small rural populations would be over-represented. While states with larger urban populations would be under-represented. And national elections would skew towards small rural populations having a magnified voice.

Nowadays there are people in the GOP who want to keep it that way for racist purposes, literally wanting to subvert non-white voters.

In other news, I shouldn't be surprised about this but it annoys me so fucking greatly that in 2019 we've got a moron with such blatant ignorance of the 1st Amendment. The amendment was literally made for people to speak out against those in power without repercussion from them.

Then there's the Supreme Court allowing Trump to hold migrants indefinitely

9 hours ago, Azure in a Roundabout said:

Do I still vote Democrat or third party?

As mentioned above, your vote most likely will not matter. If you're still looking to vote, the go for Democrat on the off-chance it ends up close.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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17 hours ago, Azure in a Roundabout said:

@eclipse Where does Alabama fall into play in this?

Alabama will probably go with the Republican candidate.  Assuming that this isn't what you want, I'd vote Democrat anyway.  At least you can say that you didn't vote for the Republican!

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On 18-3-2019 at 4:03 PM, Shoblongoo said:

I spoke to my conservative uncle who voted for Trump in 2016. He told me I'm going to vote for Trump again if the Democrats put up Warren or Sanders or Harris. I will not support a leftist. Biden is reasonable. I will vote for the Democratic ticket if they put up Biden.

...then I spoke to one of my leftist friend who didn't vote in 2016... 

He told me I'll stay home again if they don't put up Warren or Sanders. Centrist Democrats act like they're better than Republicans, but they're the same corporate shills.

There's the double-bind.

Put up a candidate who can get the leftists that refused to vote for Hillary, and you lose the center. 
Put up a candidate who can get the centrists that flipped for Trump, and you lose the left.

What to do?

 

Enjoy Trump 2020

 

 

A more serious take would be this: realize that the primary is when you have the discussion about which direction to take, politically. Realize that Barack Obama veered to the right as a result of the primary, and Hillary Clinton ended up taking more leftist stances. They will try to compromise and be acceptable.

Also be aware that about 40% of the population is a dyed in the wool republican of some stripe, and that through electoral hijinks, their vote is worth more than yours, and they're willing to all get out and vote for their own compromise candidate. 

And if you aren't capable of accepting compromise, then you'll just be ruled by republican shitheads ad infinitum. 

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Barr's letter to congress

So it seems that "No Collusion" is true and Trump is just so stupid he makes himself look more incriminating by opening his mouth.

On the subject of Obstruction of Justice, it seems Rod and Barr decided not to consider him guilty of it. Are they correct in their assessment? Are they simply not making the conclusion because they don't want to see the country's President being considered a criminal? Who knows.

What is certain is that the Republicans are going to be really stupidly obnoxious in their attitude of undermining the existing investigations and criminal implications just cause the Mueller report specifically looking at "collusion" ended up being a dud.

It still doesn't make sense though, what the hell did Mueller make of that meeting for dirt on Hillary?

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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2 hours ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

On the subject of Obstruction of Justice, it seems Rod and Barr decided not to consider him guilty of it. Are they correct in their assessment? Are they simply not making the conclusion because they don't want to see the country's President being considered a criminal? Who knows.

Considering that Barr was in favour of and was consulted on the Iran-Contra pardons by Bush, I don't trust his conclusions at all and the full report should be released to the public.

And if I can get partisan for a second, if the President is able to:
-Ask an FBI director to drop an investigation, and then fire them when they don't and explicitly state that's why they were fired
-Attempt to get the investigator removed from the case
-Publicly attack the credibility of the investigators

And somehow not be guilty of Obstruction of Justice, then either the law is so finicky and specific about what is obstruction that the law is essentially worthless, or Republicans are officially above the law.

2 hours ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Especially considering that they're STILL bringing up Hillary after the FBI didn't recommend prosecuting her.

Edited by Time the Crestfallen
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48 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

You waste political capital when you put all your eggs in one basket.

Yeah, the Dems are in an awful spot right now. Not only does this validate the Fake News rhetoric for Trump and his supporters, but now Dems and especially the Centrist/Liberal media have a lot of egg on their faces for focusing so hard on the Russia aspect of it and Trump supporters now have impetus to dismiss refocusing on potential obstruction, finance crimes, and other such crimes comitted by him and those around him as 'shifting the goal posts' as it were.

Not to mention that this is occuring when the Primaries are going to be getting started, and this will be a huge boost for Trump's reelection bid.

Edited by Time the Crestfallen
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Well, I would say this is a disappointment. On the surface it certainly looks that way and it doesn't help that media are likely to take that surface look and run with it.

However, there's a particular thread discussing the conclusions raised in this summary from Barr I want to link here. This seems like a solid discussion of the report Barr gave and I recommend taking a look. Whatever else, I don't think the lead is dead and buried. What's more, there's a good bet that further investigations will be dragged out for some time. It doesn't help that there's enough red flags around Trump from other people in various stages of legal hot water that innocence would require him to be absolutely out of the loop with nearly everyone.

Begun, the Collusion Wars have.

Edited by Dayni
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Friendly reminder Mueller was 1 of 17 active criminal investigations into Trump World, and DJT was narrowly absolved on the issue of colluding with a hostile foreign government to defraud the United States.

Money Laundering through the Trump Organization, Tax Evasion, and any other incidental crimes discovered along the way are unresolved + in the hands of the Southern District of New York.

Edited by Shoblongoo
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1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

Friendly reminder Mueller was 1 of 17 active criminal investigations into Trump World, and DJT was narrowly absolved on the issue of colluding with a hostile foreign government to defraud the United States.

Less than that, cleared of colluding with a Russian troll farm (this is what is brought up specifically in the summary) and other hackers. And even then it only really says they couldn't confirm it. I know, you could say I'm being overly specific, but that's pretty small scale for what will be claimed as No Collusion.

Everything else, now that's left in other's hands. Trump will really want the 2020 win if those start building.

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I mean--w

22 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Less than that, cleared of colluding with a Russian troll farm (this is what is brought up specifically in the summary) and other hackers. And even then it only really says they couldn't confirm it. I know, you could say I'm being overly specific, but that's pretty small scale for what will be claimed as No Collusion.

Everything else, now that's left in other's hands. Trump will really want the 2020 win if those start building.

Again--friendly reminder--because its easy to lose sight of this 2 years out and there's some people in this thread who might not remember this.

The investigation started because Trump in 2017 refused to accept evidence presented to him by his intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election + publicly rebuked them for reaching this conclusion. Then met with the FBI director in charge of investigating Russian interference and demanded a pledge of personal loyalty. Then fired the FBI director when he refused him.  Than met with Russians in the oval office and told them: "the pressure's off" + did a televised interview where he publicly claimed he fired the FBI director because the Russia investigation was bothering him. 

In some sense we know today what we knew 2 years ago. That being:

The President is either a fucking moron, or completely compromised by the Russians.

What everyone thinking the collusion narrative was a slam dunk may have missed is just how small and stupid Trump really is (i.e. what in any other public figure would have been conduct that could only indicate consciousness of guilt + attempts to conceal criminal wrongdoing, for Trump, was just his regular course-of-conduct to lie pathologically about everything + lash out at someone he perceived as personally slighting him. And he did this heedless of how it looked or what kind of legal exposure he was opening himself up to because--well--fucking moron)  

Edited by Shoblongoo
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I just read this article on Ady Barkan. It is inspiring and sad at the same time. He is dying from ALS, the same disease that Stephen Hawking suffered from. Despite his condition, or rather because of his condition, he decided to be an activist and championed for health care and other left wing issues.

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On 3/25/2019 at 4:15 PM, Shoblongoo said:

I mean--w

Again--friendly reminder--because its easy to lose sight of this 2 years out and there's some people in this thread who might not remember this.

The investigation started because Trump in 2017 refused to accept evidence presented to him by his intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election + publicly rebuked them for reaching this conclusion. Then met with the FBI director in charge of investigating Russian interference and demanded a pledge of personal loyalty. Then fired the FBI director when he refused him.

3

so what's different now? mueller didn't pledge loyalty--shouldn't (isn't?) the fbi be competent enough to discover collusion?

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5 hours ago, Phoenix Wright said:

shouldn't (isn't?) the fbi be competent enough to discover collusion?

I think that particular investigation is done unless new evidence emerges. (i.e. someone with very close and very specific knowledge of high crimes whose hereto-now been ardently protective of Trump decides to flip, and starts handing over damning recordings and documents that were never produced to Mueller before he compiled his report)

For some this was purely political: there were rightwingers who just wanted a rubber-stamp that the president and his men had done no wrong, and were smearing Mueller when he was uncovering serious wrongdoing. Now they're praising him as honorable--not because they care about the content of his character and won't flip on a dime again if in the future he finds something incriminating--but because they like the conclusion he reached. Thats petty and dishonest.

Likewise: there were lefties who just wanted the president impeached and were waiting on the Mueller report to give them the foundation to do it. They were praising Mueller's good work and professionalism when he was uncovering serious wrongdoing. But now that the report is 'out' and it (allegedly) doesn't give them the foundation they were looking for, they're throwing shade on it and back-peddling that Mueller didn't REALLY do a full investigation. The fix was in. Thats also petty and dishonest.

For me it was never about that--it was a question of rule-of-law and fair process and confidence that whatever conclusion was ultimately reached was the product of thorough investigation + well-reasoned decisionmaking. Not partisan quackery.

I say today what I've said for the past 2 years: Mueller is an honorable and professional public servant who puts the serious duties of his job above the petty politics of the day, and has done so under Republican and Democratic presidents for decades now. He put together a team of ace attorneys with experience prosecuting corporate conspiracies, mob bosses, corrupt politicians, and military dictators.

I am confident that his report + his decisions on who to indict and who not to indict were the result of thorough investigation and well-reasoned decision making. That there was a fair process put in place for subjecting allegations of criminal misconduct in the 2016 election to prosecutorial scrutiny. That we can accept the conclusions reached by that process as accurate and reliable, without wondering what the investigators buried and who they were trying to protect and what really happened that they aren't telling us. (as opposed to--say--the sham investigation in the House Oversight Committee conducted by Devin Nunes)

And at the end of the day, thats what really matters. 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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7 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:


For me it was never about that--it was a question of rule-of-law and fair process and confidence that whatever conclusion was ultimately reached was the product of thorough investigation + well-reasoned decisionmaking. Not partisan quackery.

I say today what I've said for the past 2 years: Mueller is an honorable and professional public servant who puts the serious duties of his job above the petty politics of the day, and has done so under Republican and Democratic presidents for decades now. He put together a team of ace attorneys with experience prosecuting corporate conspiracies, mob bosses, corrupt politicians, and military dictators.

I am confident that his report + his decisions on who to indict and who not to indict were the result of thorough investigation and well-reasoned decision making. That there was a fair process put in place for subjecting allegations of criminal misconduct in the 2016 election to prosecutorial scrutiny. That we can accept the conclusions reached by that process as accurate and reliable, without wondering what the investigators buried and who they were trying to protect and what really happened that they aren't telling us. (as opposed to--say--the sham investigation in the House Oversight Committee conducted by Devin Nunes)

And at the end of the day, thats what really matters. 

But is it actually sufficient?

The letter itself says that the Mueller Report does not exonerate Trump which leaves so many questions regarding the Obstruction of Justice. For example, it has been said before that FBI investigations do not arrive at conclusions, they just present the facts. The letter doesn't arrive at any conclusion and suggests that there is evidence of such, leaving the conclusion up to someone else. Is that person supposed to be Barr or Congress? If It's Barr, are he and supposedly Rosenstein also telling the truth? If they are and Trump's not guilty of anything, then then there's little reason to hide the report from the public.

McConnell has blocked it twice and his stated reasoning is because it may be advantageous to one party which is a load of hypocritical crap given that keeping things as is with that summary is literally what the Republicans are using to declare victory and continue to feed lies to their base. If their victory is as secure as they claim, they'd have no opposition to releasing it and many of them are saying they're fine with it but it means shit if McConnell can just block it with such a bullshit reason.

I'd wager McConnell is blocking it out of fear of there being evidence backing up the claims that Obama sought a bipartisan declaration to the public of Russian interference in the 2016. It's insulting that this piece of shit could withhold such information just to score a presidential election win for a party that's destroying its own voters and get away with it.

Then there's Barr's history of cover-ups for Bush and the fact that he has family working under Trump. I don't believe it's far-fetched to say there's a conflict of interest here. 

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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On 24-3-2019 at 10:36 PM, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Barr's letter to congress

So it seems that "No Collusion" is true and Trump is just so stupid he makes himself look more incriminating by opening his mouth.

On the subject of Obstruction of Justice, it seems Rod and Barr decided not to consider him guilty of it. Are they correct in their assessment? Are they simply not making the conclusion because they don't want to see the country's President being considered a criminal? Who knows.

What is certain is that the Republicans are going to be really stupidly obnoxious in their attitude of undermining the existing investigations and criminal implications just cause the Mueller report specifically looking at "collusion" ended up being a dud.

It still doesn't make sense though, what the hell did Mueller make of that meeting for dirt on Hillary?

Barr's summary of the Mueller report is most likely intentionally deceptive. There's no offenses that the president can be indicted for because he can't be indicted. He's cleared of conspiracy charges at this moment because those investigations are still ongoing. There's no normally prosecutable offenses because he's the president. Remember that Bill Barr is a trump shill and got his job by writing a bogus legal opinion that if the president does it, it's not a crime.

https://openargs.com/oa264-the-barr-summary-of-the-mueller-report/

Edited by Excellen Browning
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18 hours ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

But is it actually sufficient?

The letter itself says that the Mueller Report does not exonerate Trump 

 

2 hours ago, Excellen Browning said:

Barr's summary of the Mueller report is most likely intentionally deceptive. There's no offenses that the president can be indicted for because he can't be indicted.


Yeah I agree. I trust Mueller not to be a partisan hack and to cut straight to the truth of the matter asserted. I wouldn't trust Barr as far as I could throw him.

We know Mueller doesn't think he has legal authority to indict a sitting president (that's an open question of Constitutional Law that's never actually been tested in Court, but hey, details). So Barr summarizing the Mueller report as "no new indictments--nothing to see here--move along" is not an acceptable resolution of this matter. That doesn't really tell us what we need to know. 

The report has to be made public and people need to see what Mueller found. Congress needs to see what Mueller found.   

Notably absent from Barr's summary is the answer to the question that really needs to be answered:  Did Trump commit criminal acts that Mueller does not believe he can indict because Trump is president? And the correct venue for trying a sitting president is not a grand jury indictment: its impeachment. 

Maybe Mueller reached that finding. Maybe he didn't. Again--what matters more than the ultimate conclusion itself is fair process and rule-of-law; public confidence that the resolution of the matter was the correct and just outcome, and not a criminal cover-up.

As long as the report is being withheld by the White House  and all thats being publicly disclosed is the Barr Summary, this still smells like a cover-up.

Edited by Shoblongoo
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On 3/27/2019 at 3:01 PM, Shoblongoo said:

I think that particular investigation is done unless new evidence emerges. (i.e. someone with very close and very specific knowledge of high crimes whose hereto-now been ardently protective of Trump decides to flip, and starts handing over damning recordings and documents that were never produced to Mueller before he compiled his report)

For some this was purely political: there were rightwingers who just wanted a rubber-stamp that the president and his men had done no wrong, and were smearing Mueller when he was uncovering serious wrongdoing. Now they're praising him as honorable--not because they care about the content of his character and won't flip on a dime again if in the future he finds something incriminating--but because they like the conclusion he reached. Thats petty and dishonest.

Likewise: there were lefties who just wanted the president impeached and were waiting on the Mueller report to give them the foundation to do it. They were praising Mueller's good work and professionalism when he was uncovering serious wrongdoing. But now that the report is 'out' and it (allegedly) doesn't give them the foundation they were looking for, they're throwing shade on it and back-peddling that Mueller didn't REALLY do a full investigation. The fix was in. Thats also petty and dishonest.

For me it was never about that--it was a question of rule-of-law and fair process and confidence that whatever conclusion was ultimately reached was the product of thorough investigation + well-reasoned decisionmaking. Not partisan quackery.

I say today what I've said for the past 2 years: Mueller is an honorable and professional public servant who puts the serious duties of his job above the petty politics of the day, and has done so under Republican and Democratic presidents for decades now. He put together a team of ace attorneys with experience prosecuting corporate conspiracies, mob bosses, corrupt politicians, and military dictators.

I am confident that his report + his decisions on who to indict and who not to indict were the result of thorough investigation and well-reasoned decision making. That there was a fair process put in place for subjecting allegations of criminal misconduct in the 2016 election to prosecutorial scrutiny. That we can accept the conclusions reached by that process as accurate and reliable, without wondering what the investigators buried and who they were trying to protect and what really happened that they aren't telling us. (as opposed to--say--the sham investigation in the House Oversight Committee conducted by Devin Nunes)

And at the end of the day, thats what really matters. 

hmm, right, but i suppose my question was a direct response to your assertion that trump is either stupid or compromised. the question was: shouldn't the fbi be competent enough to prove that? why do you still feel he's compromised when the evidence (or lack thereof i guess) says otherwise? why is your conviction so strong?

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