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 Frazzled wrote:
That's why Trump won. The left calls literally everyone less left than them racist. It's just a given at this point.

Trump won because 62,984,828 people voted for him, and that was enough to give make enough swing states basically coin flips, and then Trump was lucky enough to win most of those coin flips.

Exactly why 62,984,828 people chose to vote for Trump will be a question asked for generations. There was certainly some element of people wanting to spite the left, you're right there. What you're wrong about is thinking that means the left is doing something wrong - all the fault there lies with the people who cast their votes based on petty cultural war nonsense.

I think "Republican=Racist" shorthand is used so much because the National republican party has been using racial dog whistles for a while now.

Are we ignoring the "Liberals=Commies" rhetoric as well?

Heck, identify a Democrat that hasn't.

Democrats just get told they're anti-white, not anti-black/Hispanic.

The term has been thrown around so often it's become meaningless.

 Frazzled wrote:
If you say so. Please identify a Republican that hasn't been called a racist.

Everyone, this is called seahorsing or sealioning. It's a debate technique where a person pretends to engage in a good faith discussion, and asks for evidence from the other side to substantiate their claim. Typically the thing they ask for evidence for has a lot of well known, readily available proof, that the seahorser could go and see if they were actually interested. When someone provides that evidence, the seahorser either ignores it, demands more evidence or switches to something else they can demand evidence for. The game is for the seahorser to keep demanding more and more work from the other side, without ever giving credit for that work or considering the evidence provided, until the other person gives up providing that evidence, at which point the seahorser claims victory.

Here Kanluwen stated Trump had made his racism clear from past conversations. Frazzled began the seahorsing, asking "As soon as you can find one, post it." Spinner came in and acting in good faith gave that evidence, mentioning Trump being taken to court for refusing to rent to black people, and Trump saying a judge was unable to rule on Trump's university suit because the judge is Mexican. At which point fraz shifted, first giving a dismissive reply 'if you say so', and then shifted to asking for evidence of something different, a list of Republicans who've never been called racist.

The really insidious thing about seahorsing is it doesn't take conscious effort at bad faith like most other bad faith techniques. I highly doubt frazzled decided to use a manipulative technique just to jerk around other posters. What it takes is just for someone to come wandering in with their mind already made up on an issue, and a lazy, kind of defeatist attitude that there's no point trying to lay out reason and evidence for one's own position, instead all you need to do in debate is just avoid admitting you're wrong long enough for the other person to get annoyed and leave, and that counts as winning.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
No... he didn't call immigrants "animals"... he was talking about MS-13.

You fell for it man... hook, link, sinker...

I know exactly what he fething said, and it isn't clear exactly who Trump was referring to, because it's generally not very clear who or what Donald is talking about because the guy is fuzzy brained idiot.

Which actually works for him, because it allows people like yourself to interpret his comments to suit yourself. Which in turn leads to a stupid debate parsing Trump's exact comment, which means we're not debating things that actually matter. Thing like SARs reports on Cohen disappearing from a federal database, or Trump's financial disclosures being referred by the OGE to the FBI.

It's very clear.

Unless, you think the AP is wrong in correcting their account?
The Associated Press
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@AP
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AP has deleted a tweet from late Wednesday on Trump’s “animals” comment about immigrants because it wasn’t made clear that he was speaking after a comment about gang members.

11:35 AM - 17 May 2018

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 whembly wrote:
Whoa nelly!

Oh look. So when I told you that the FBI started their investigation because of Downer's evidence, and you claimed that it was because of the Steele dossier, then I was completely right and you were completely wrong. You need to start admitting how wildly you have been misled by Nunes and the rest of the liars.

Uh... we have congressional testimony where Comey/McCabe said the FISA warrant wouldn't have been granted without the dossier.

As for Downer... how about you stop taking things as gospel as much of that is in dispute. The story FBI/DOJ regarding this keeps fething changing.

As to your other accusation - it's trash and you should feel ridiculous for ever suggesting it. FBI counterintelligence was used in response to foreign agents working in a major political campaign, and the same foreign powers operating propaganda efforts to influence the election in favour of that candidate. There is nothing contraversial about investigating that, and it's plainly absurd you're trying to claim otherwise.

It's not an accusation... it's a goddamn fact that the Obama administration used its counterintelligence powers to investigate the opposition party’s presidential campaign. That's what this NYT article is "easing" into the going narrative. Unless you think they're full of it... it is the NYT after all.

It's a BFD, because a criminal investigation involves the full might of the DOJ toolbox...namely subpoena/indictment power. But, they didn't have a strong enough rationale to trigger a criminal investigation... so, they chose a completely different method by invoking counterintelligence process, which is supposed to be used to surveil foreign entities, that were instead used on American targets.

So... please, with tears in my eyes, think about this for a bit - is that this is looking like an abuse of power to use counterintelligence powers, including spying and electronic surveillance, to conduct what is actually a criminal investigation on an opposition political campaign.

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 whembly wrote:
The article is clearly spin in attempt to give plausible cover for those DOJ/FBI officials in previous administration for actively monitoring a political campaign of the opposition party at the time.

The FBI, opened a counterintelligence investigation in the absence of any:
1) incriminating evidence, or
2) evidence implicating the Trump campaign in Russian espionage.

They had a report from a trusted ally that a Trump campaign staff member was bragging about Russian support for the Trump campaign. But you claim there was no evidence.

Which means dick. It shouldn't even be no where near enough rationale to trigger a full scale counterintelligence investigation. The DOJ actually has department regulations mandating what to do in the event of possible monitoring of political figures. The bar *is* fething HIGH, which obviously were ignored.

And a drunken low-level staffer trying to impress your ambassador shouldn't even merit a radar ping.


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 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
That's why Trump won. The left calls literally everyone less left than them racist. It's just a given at this point.

Trump won because 62,984,828 people voted for him, and that was enough to give make enough swing states basically coin flips, and then Trump was lucky enough to win most of those coin flips.

Exactly why 62,984,828 people chose to vote for Trump will be a question asked for generations. There was certainly some element of people wanting to spite the left, you're right there. What you're wrong about is thinking that means the left is doing something wrong - all the fault there lies with the people who cast their votes based on petty cultural war nonsense.

Okay... that doesn't compute man. Some of *the* reasons why people held their noses and pulled the lever for Trump was:
1) Judges. Mainly because of the leftward pull that Democrats & Obama done during the last administration.
2) The blue state vs. red state divide is a thing (and more granularly, the City v. Rural divide).
3) The Media... non-political junkies tune out most of this stuff, but they recognize the dishonesty that much of the media does... hence why the #FakeNews mantra Trump spews out resonates.

Culture - really is downstream from politics.

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
If you say so. Please identify a Republican that hasn't been called a racist.

Everyone, this is called seahorsing or sealioning. It's a debate technique where a person pretends to engage in a good faith discussion, and asks for evidence from the other side to substantiate their claim. Typically the thing they ask for evidence for has a lot of well known, readily available proof, that the seahorser could go and see if they were actually interested. When someone provides that evidence, the seahorser either ignores it, demands more evidence or switches to something else they can demand evidence for. The game is for the seahorser to keep demanding more and more work from the other side, without ever giving credit for that work or considering the evidence provided, until the other person gives up providing that evidence, at which point the seahorser claims victory.

Here Kanluwen stated Trump had made his racism clear from past conversations. Frazzled began the seahorsing, asking "As soon as you can find one, post it." Spinner came in and acting in good faith gave that evidence, mentioning Trump being taken to court for refusing to rent to black people, and Trump saying a judge was unable to rule on Trump's university suit because the judge is Mexican. At which point fraz shifted, first giving a dismissive reply 'if you say so', and then shifted to asking for evidence of something different, a list of Republicans who've never been called racist.

The really insidious thing about seahorsing is it doesn't take conscious effort at bad faith like most other bad faith techniques. I highly doubt frazzled decided to use a manipulative technique just to jerk around other posters. What it takes is just for someone to come wandering in with their mind already made up on an issue, and a lazy, kind of defeatist attitude that there's no point trying to lay out reason and evidence for one's own position, instead all you need to do in debate is just avoid admitting you're wrong long enough for the other person to get annoyed and leave, and that counts as winning.

Huh, I didn't know that technique had a term. I'll add it to the surprisingly long list of surprisingly useful things I have learned in Dakka OT.

 whembly wrote:
It's very clear.

Unless, you think the AP is wrong in correcting their account?

You're missed what happened there. Again.

That Trump made his comment after MS-13 was raised, that's important context and so any report that goes in to detail of the conversation should include that part. This doesn't mean it is provably about MS-13, because seen in its full context Trump could have been referring to MS-13, to all deportees or even to all illegal aliens. So AP messed up in not giving that context and allowing the reader to make their own call, but that doesn't mean it is proof it was absolutely about MS-13 alone.

Uh... we have congressional testimony where Comey/McCabe said the FISA warrant wouldn't have been granted without the dossier.

Nunes claims that's what McCabe stated in his testimony. McCabe rejects that, saying he said no such thing and that the dossier was one of many important pieces of intel used to get the FISA warrant.

Of course, you believe serial liar Nunes, and present that claim from Nunes without even noting it is rejected by the person who supposedly said it. Because of course you do. It's how you roll.

The story FBI/DOJ regarding this keeps fething changing.

The right wing bs story keeps changing, as they have to keep making up new interpretations while the old versions are repeatedly proven false by new intel.

The actual set of events understood by sensible people working on a basic assumption that the FBI is a secretive evil cabal plotting to destroy Trump has been perfectly clear for some time now. Because there's real power in starting from a base assumption that isn't bonkers crazy.

It's not an accusation... it's a goddamn fact that the Obama administration used its counterintelligence powers to investigate the opposition party’s presidential campaign.

That's a manipulative, dishonest summary. The investigation was started by the FBI, without the knowledge of the DOJ or anyone connected to Obama.

Shame on you for spreading such nonsense.

Which means dick. It shouldn't even be no where near enough rationale to trigger a full scale counterintelligence investigation.

It didn't trigger a full scale operation. At that point it was five people, working as quietly as possible. The expansion happened as further evidence was found.

Stop lying.

In a shining example of how dysfunctional and dangerous the republican party is, this is a member of the house science committee: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/388161-gop-lawmaker-says-rocks-falling-into-the-ocean-is-causing-higher

"Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up," Brooks said at the hearing.

Falling rocks, FFS. This is what happens when you have a party whose guiding principle in appointments seems to be having everything run by people with the greatest contempt for their job and complete ignorance of everything they deal with.

I think that one beats the snowball, honestly. They have at least admitted that sea level rise exists, and used an explanation based off an effect that does happen. Still pitiful that such mind-bending stupidity is an improvement.


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 sebster wrote:
*corrects blatant lies for the 40,000th time*

You should get a public service award at this point.

Hey, if you guys want you can request annexation by the Dominion of Canada. Trudeau might be a bit of a clown, but I imaigne its better than what you have now.

Think about it.

But seriously, blaming the ocean rising on erosion? What.

 Peregrine wrote:
In a shining example of how dysfunctional and dangerous the republican party is, this is a member of the house science committee: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/388161-gop-lawmaker-says-rocks-falling-into-the-ocean-is-causing-higher

"Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up," Brooks said at the hearing.

Falling rocks, FFS. This is what happens when you have a party whose guiding principle in appointments seems to be having everything run by people with the greatest contempt for their job and complete ignorance of everything they deal with.

So the solution is simple, for every rock dropped in you take a bucket of water out. Boom, Republicans just fixed rising sea levels, genius isn't it

Manafort's son in law Jeffrey Yohai has flipped and taken a deal from Mueller's team. Yohai was charged with the banking offenses that peripheral guys always get charged with. When you add this to Rick Gates already having flipped, the case against Manafort starts looking pretty imposing.

The human drama in the background of this is one reason Manafort was scrambling for money in 2016 and 2017 was Yohai made horrific mess of a real estate deal, and ended up being sued by Dustin Hoffman, among others. Now a year later, Yohai is divorced from Manafort's daughter, and now cut off from Manafort's money Yohai had his public defender cut a deal with Mueller. Must be pretty weird around the Manafort dinner table these days.

President of the United States, ladies and gentlemen.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/skbaer/bill-gates-says-donald-trump-asked-him-twice-if-hiv-and-hpv?utm_term=.snkop1VBO#.omBdaoN5D

Trump Twice Asked Bill Gates What The Difference Was Between HIV And HPV

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
President of the United States, ladies and gentlemen.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/skbaer/bill-gates-says-donald-trump-asked-him-twice-if-hiv-and-hpv?utm_term=.snkop1VBO#.omBdaoN5D

Trump Twice Asked Bill Gates What The Difference Was Between HIV And HPV

Sounds to me like he's worried he earned a Purple Heart from his personal Vietnam...

Well, HIV and HPV are pretty similar.

Days since Trump was a national embarrassment:

You'll all be pleased to know that I'm continuing my quest to understand the future by looking at the past.

Looking at the writings of Alexander Hamilton, one of the reasons why he wanted the electoral college was to stop a demagogue from seizing power. Mob rule as it were.

Mr Hamilton, if you're looking down on us from heaven, something went horribly wrong, because the demagogue only won because of your electoral college

The lesser of two evils won the popular vote but lost the election.

As somebody said earlier, I don't think the founders predicted such a weak and feeble party controlling all the levers of government.

I think they had this naïve belief that people would take the business of government very seriously...


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 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
That's why Trump won. The left calls literally everyone less left than them racist. It's just a given at this point.

Trump won because 62,984,828 people voted for him, and that was enough to give make enough swing states basically coin flips, and then Trump was lucky enough to win most of those coin flips.

Exactly why 62,984,828 people chose to vote for Trump will be a question asked for generations. There was certainly some element of people wanting to spite the left, you're right there. What you're wrong about is thinking that means the left is doing something wrong - all the fault there lies with the people who cast their votes based on petty cultural war nonsense.

There are millions of Americans still alive who voted for Richard Nixon, and we'll never know why they cast a vote for Tricky Dicky.

We've no chance of finding the reasons for people voting for Trump.

If I were American back in 2016, I wouldn't have voted at all - the candidates were awful.

The biggest change that is currently possible would be to set term limits for congress. We already have them for the POTUS. The original idea that the founding fathers had is that you would come, do your duty to the country, and then go back to what you were doing before. Our modern congress critters have no such controls, and some of them have been in office longer than I have been alive. Congress should be in office for 12 years max. That's 2 terms as a senator, or 6 as a congressman, or a mix of the two. This way we don't have the same people doing the same things for an entire generation. That's part of how we got to this current situation with our government and the election.

Nixon was a pretty competent and effective politician. That's why people voted for him.

After his unfortunate brush with the law, which no-one knew about until it was exposed, he was never in another election. Thus, we can't say people voted for him knowing he was a crook.

The strong contrast with Trump is that obvious. Trump's venality, grifting, stupidity, and general awfulness has been plain for years except to people who deliberately turned a blind eye.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Looking at the writings of Alexander Hamilton, one of the reasons why he wanted the electoral college was to stop a demagogue from seizing power. Mob rule as it were.

It's important to note that the Electoral College has in practice never functioned in the manner intended.

The College was supposed to be made of independent electors who could veto the popular vote if they thought the popular vote was brain dead stupid, but almost from day its been an unwritten rule that as the popular vote goes so do the electors and some states have made it law. Only once in US history have electors ever voted against the popular winner and that was back in the Antebellum years when the electors for Virginia decided that a slave owner openly flaunting his black mistress wasn't classy enough for the office of Vice President.

In fairness, it's really kind of an idiotic idea, and super elitist. Pretty much everyone realized it was a stupid idea from day one, but the college makes national elections easier to game so we keep it around. Showcases that all out bluster about the founder's having a great vision for a nation of equals is kind of post-Founding hogwash. The Founders were a bunch of rich white guys who wanted to ensure that even if all else failed rich white guys would always be okay.

Now that part of the plan worked splendidly

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
The biggest change that is currently possible would be to set term limits for congress. We already have them for the POTUS. The original idea that the founding fathers had is that you would come, do your duty to the country, and then go back to what you were doing before. Our modern congress critters have no such controls, and some of them have been in office longer than I have been alive. Congress should be in office for 12 years max. That's 2 terms as a senator, or 6 as a congressman, or a mix of the two. This way we don't have the same people doing the same things for an entire generation. That's part of how we got to this current situation with our government and the election.

A good idea

But sadly, will never happen. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas as the saying goes.

America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

That famous historical quote should never be forgotten

Sometimes it takes an outsider to come in and say this is gak, get it fixed.


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 LordofHats wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Looking at the writings of Alexander Hamilton, one of the reasons why he wanted the electoral college was to stop a demagogue from seizing power. Mob rule as it were.

It's important to note that the Electoral College has in practice never functioned in the manner intended.

The College was supposed to be made of independent electors who could veto the popular vote if they thought the popular vote was brain dead stupid, but almost from day its been an unwritten rule that as the popular vote goes so do the electors and some states have made it law. Only once in US history have electors ever voted against the popular winner and that was back in the Antebellum years when the electors for Virginia decided that a slave owner openly flaunting his black mistress wasn't classy enough for the office of Vice President.

In fairness, it's really kind of an idiotic idea, and super elitist. Pretty much everyone realized it was a stupid idea from day one, but the college makes national elections easier to game so we keep it around. Showcases that all out bluster about the founder's having a great vision for a nation of equals is kind of post-Founding hogwash. The Founders were a bunch of rich white guys who wanted to ensure that even if all else failed rich white guys would always be okay.

Now that part of the plan worked splendidly

Eh? John Adams barely had two pennies to rub together. Hancock never had more than the clothes on his back, him being a poor farmer and all.

Tom Paine came to the USA with no more than a crust of bread in his pocket.

They weren't all as rich as Jefferson

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
The biggest change that is currently possible would be to set term limits for congress. We already have them for the POTUS. The original idea that the founding fathers had is that you would come, do your duty to the country, and then go back to what you were doing before. Our modern congress critters have no such controls, and some of them have been in office longer than I have been alive. Congress should be in office for 12 years max. That's 2 terms as a senator, or 6 as a congressman, or a mix of the two. This way we don't have the same people doing the same things for an entire generation. That's part of how we got to this current situation with our government and the election.

This is really a double-edged sword. Term limits prevent bad incumbents from sticking around, but they also prevent good incumbents from staying and accumulating the experience necessary to run the government effectively. And they likely increase the level of campaigning far beyond even the absurd point that it's at now. If you take away the ability to relax a bit and enjoy the incumbent advantage you increase the proportion of time where a new representative is forced to campaign as hard as possible and reduce the attention they can spend on their actual duties. Finally you have to face the question of where these people are going to go if they can't be full-time career politicians. And the likely answer is right into the industries whose lobbyists have the strongest ties to them, encouraging corruption even more than the lobbying and campaign system already does.

Now, perhaps term limits are still a good idea, but it's important to recognize the fact that they are not a purely good thing.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Eh? John Adams barely had two pennies to rub together. Hancock never had more than the clothes on his back, him being a poor farmer and all.

Tom Paine came to the USA with no more than a crust of bread in his pocket.

They weren't all as rich as Jefferson

Yet none of the men you list actually ended up running the country in any meaningful way except for the rich one and Adams. It's notable that Adams was wildly unpopular even with his Presidential wins which were mostly grudge victories he got by not being other people. He also was in fact quite well off. He didn't own a plantation or anything, but even in the 18th century being a lawyer paid well. In fact he ranks middle of the pack in terms of adjusted net worth for US Presidents (the comparatively poorest US president for those interested was Harry Truman).

Hancock never held office under the Constitution (only the Articles of Confederation) and was mostly irrelevant by the time the Constitution was being worked on. While the signers of the Declaration of Independence were indeed from of diverse background, they were a very different group of men compared to the one that actually ended up running things in a meaningful way. The overwhelming majority of the founders, even before accounting for that, were rich white guys like Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Rutledge, Blair, Shippen, Jay, Brown so on and so forth. And it's the rich ones who actually ended up running things for the most part.

 sebster wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
That's why Trump won. The left calls literally everyone less left than them racist. It's just a given at this point.

Trump won because 62,984,828 people voted for him, and that was enough to give make enough swing states basically coin flips, and then Trump was lucky enough to win most of those coin flips.

Exactly why 62,984,828 people chose to vote for Trump will be a question asked for generations. There was certainly some element of people wanting to spite the left, you're right there. What you're wrong about is thinking that means the left is doing something wrong - all the fault there lies with the people who cast their votes based on petty cultural war nonsense.

I will re-post this link as it was an interesting interview with some folks who tried to dig in and answer that question on a person by person basis, especially people that voted for Obama twice and then flipped to Trump.

https://the1a.org/shows/2018-05-16/the-great-revolt-in-the-voting-booth

I am not a fan of the technique they used, as it draws more from the Journalist side than the Quant side, but it did lead to some interesting discussion and a better perspective on Trump voters. The problem with just using interviews as the basis of yoru analysis is that.... welll... people are really, really good at self-delusion and rationalization. We all wear masks, and many times you simply can not take what some one says at face value without digging in much deeper with a lot of follow-up questions.

To be honest, the people I'm more annoyed at isn't the true Trump believers or even those who voted Republican in 2016.

No, I'm more annoyed at all those people who supported the actions of the Republican party but then didn't vote for Trump and seem to think that absolves them of blame for Trump. Trump is the inevitable endgame of the politics that they supported. He is the inevitable outcome of a party pushing facts aside.

You couldn't have got to Trump without the anti-reality stances of the Republican party on issues such as climate change, economics, etc. pushing the party into the position where it cannot use facts or legitimate research anymore as nobody worth their salt in an academic field can support their arguments as the evidence shows they don't work.

The Republican party adopting positions in stark contrast to the evidence, and their membership and voters willingly going along with it rather than calling them out on it are the cause of Trump. That primed people to be willing to eat up Trumps bs as it was only a step from the bs the Republican party had been pushing for years.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
The biggest change that is currently possible would be to set term limits for congress. We already have them for the POTUS. The original idea that the founding fathers had is that you would come, do your duty to the country, and then go back to what you were doing before. Our modern congress critters have no such controls, and some of them have been in office longer than I have been alive. Congress should be in office for 12 years max. That's 2 terms as a senator, or 6 as a congressman, or a mix of the two. This way we don't have the same people doing the same things for an entire generation. That's part of how we got to this current situation with our government and the election.

This is really a double-edged sword. Term limits prevent bad incumbents from sticking around, but they also prevent good incumbents from staying and accumulating the experience necessary to run the government effectively. And they likely increase the level of campaigning far beyond even the absurd point that it's at now. If you take away the ability to relax a bit and enjoy the incumbent advantage you increase the proportion of time where a new representative is forced to campaign as hard as possible and reduce the attention they can spend on their actual duties. Finally you have to face the question of where these people are going to go if they can't be full-time career politicians. And the likely answer is right into the industries whose lobbyists have the strongest ties to them, encouraging corruption even more than the lobbying and campaign system already does.

Now, perhaps term limits are still a good idea, but it's important to recognize the fact that they are not a purely good thing.

I think all of the negatives you allege aren’t bad at all. If a candidate lacks the experience and/or knowledge to do the job they’re running for then they’re a bad candidate. Voting for somebody so they can hopefully gain enough experience to eventually do their job well sometime in the future sounds like a horrible reason to keep electing somebody to me. Most of us get a 90 day probationary period to demonstrate our ability to perform our job well enough to keep it, Congress isn’t such a difficult job that it requires multiple 2 year terms to figure it out. There shouldn’t be a seniority system in Congress to be abused by incumbents in gerrymandered districts. Instead of usin merit or subject matter knowledge to determine congressional leadership positions we just give them to whomever has managed to stick around for a few decades and then those representatives use those positions as leverage to keep running for more terms creating de facto life long terms for representatives that only get older and more insulated and out of touch with their constituencies every year while amassing disgustingly large personal fortunes.

How do term limits increase time spent campaigning? Incumbents like Nancy Pelosi have been in office for decades. How would limiting her to 6 terms make her campaign more than she has in running for 16 terms? Term limits would require that Congress actually work to solve problems within the time they had instead of constantly kicking problems down the road and running on the same unresolved issues over and over again. Politicians would either work to enact solutions or ignore problems and be forgotten once their terms are over.

We already see more former congress members becoming lobbyists now then ever before and the deliberately vague anti lobbyist laws are exploited and the loopholes are obvious and egregious https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/tom-daschle-officially-lobbyist-221334
Voting for incumbents just to keep them in office to prevent them from becoming lobbyists sounds like a crazy idea to me. Why don’t we just demand that Congress fix the lobbyist laws instead?

Poor seb, i dont know why you or anyone else still engages whemly, he has never debated in good faith.

In other news, how many does this make this year? And apologies if this isnt the appropriate topic for this

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/santa-fe-texas-shooting/index.html

Interesting note on politically related firearms news today.

Looking at the BBC front page, there are three US firearms related stories in a row, sadly yet another school shooting in Texas with apparently 8 fatalities, a woman bringing an AR10 to her college graduation as a statement, and apparently an armed and rambling South African living Florida was shot by police at a Trump golf course there.

An interesting spread of stories on that topic.

It does seem as though modern day USA is doomed to have a gun massacre every few months, so the issue will rarely be out of the news.

The political aspect of the Sante Fe mass shooting is that it will inject more fire into the bellies of the student protests against guns. I think demographically the situation is moving away from the hardline NRA position.

With the House, the issue for me is less about the term limit and more about the term length. Out of a 22 months between being sworn in and the next election, at least 12 months are spend campaigning for your next term rather than focusing on the current term.

With elections in general, there is something to be said about the “couple months of campaign and you’re done” model.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It does seem as though modern day USA is doomed to have a gun massacre every few months, so the issue will rarely be out of the news.

The political aspect of the Sante Fe mass shooting is that it will inject more fire into the bellies of the student protests against guns. I think demographically the situation is moving away from the hardline NRA position.

Indeed, and I think the NRA itself is acting as the catalyst for that, theyre doubling down on *really* stupid sound bytes filled with classic partisan dogwhistles in ads and features that are Goebbellian in nature that turn off most people under 60, and largely failed to deliver anything on a Federal level to the gun rights expansion people even when a perfect vehicle presented itself (such as the WH petition on repealing the NFA getting six digits worth of signatures before Trump shut the page down), and just broadly pushing a very partisan political message instead of attempting to expand and incorporate younger groups and different ethnic and social demographics.

Basically theyre acting like an attack wing of the Republican party and not a civil rights and education organization.