American Politics: Discuss and Debate (Page 34 of 57)

Correct.  But if the choice is "leave things as they are and hope enough people show up and everything goes the way it's supposed to" or "work your ass off to get everyone a voter ID in an election that will be systematically fair otherwise", why would you select the first one?

If you end the filibuster and you don't hold the House or the Senate, any legislation you pass is dead before 2024.  If you don't offer the Republicans anything, you won't get the votes and you'll have wasted your opportunity.

Find the best worst plan and pass it.  Or you better be right that the system will hold.

Oh I know.  I'm just saying voter ID is a hot button issue for Republicans.  It's trending on twitter right now.  If you add voter ID to a bill, Republican voters will make sure it passes as long as there isn't anything overwhelmingly negative or socialist in it.  You have to give them what you want and make the rest of the bill clean and on topic.

But these days, no one thinks about the compromise even though, again, this is an issue that both sides say they want.  So do it.  And once the election is secure, you can worry about getting people IDs.  But if the election isn't secure, who cares about anything else?  You could get 100% of the vote and they'll legally overturn it.

Yeah.  There's a somewhat-reasonable Republican that I follow (we were connected via a non-political common interest) that I *long since* muted but still follow because I like to know the hot button issues that are making people like him mad.  And he's somewhat reasonable so it's not yelling at clouds.  But he and people like him are constantly yelling about voter ID.  If the Democrats offered it in the form they want, it'll get done.  No Republican would be able to survive voting down a bill that hardcoded voter ID (again, as long as the Democrats' ask is reasonable).

And, along with it, at least *something* that Democrats could use to secure elections would pass.

To me, it depends on how dire you think the situation is.  Would you be willing to take one minor step back to potentially fix elections for the foreseeable future?  Or we can just trust that, even with the stuff Republican state legislatures are doing, the system will hold.

We can get voter IDs to everyone.  It might be hard or take Stacey Abrams-like activism in every state.  But we can get it done.  It's already the law a lot of places.  In my opinion, it's a very simple price to pay

I understand that thinking. Crypto isn't regulated, so the rich can use it to avoid the normal regulations that would come with putting their money into stocks.

There is also no way to get your money back if you lose it.

Very much like the stock market. Also, the energy footprint is massive and can cause a significant strain on the environment.

It has also been banned in 42 countries worldwide.

https://fortune.com/2022/01/04/crypto-b … September.

Don't get paid in bitcoin.

Never get paid in crypto unless you don't need that money. There are zero guarantees that it will be worth what it was when you made the deal.

WR Odell Beckham Jr. of the Rams provides a cautionary tale.

https://twitter.com/darrenrovell/status … 15456?s=20

I was carefully noncommittal and neutral on the subject of cryptocurrency until Temporal Flux said he thought it was stupid at which point it became clear that cryptocurrency is the most obvious scam ever perpetrated on a public that should know better at this point.

Reportedly, one bitcoin transaction requires 1,173 kilowatts of energy and creates half a ton of CO2 emissions (907,185 grams).

One email requires maybe 0.3 kilowatts of energy and creates about four grams of CO2 emissions.

Cryptocurrency is highly volatile and insecure, easily inflated by its perpetrators to an artificial high to sell off at which point its value will crash. There is no regulation whatsoever. And it represents nothing beyond how much energy you can waste in pumping electricity through an array of computers.

Although it does make me wonder how Quinn Mallory would use blockchain technology productively, maybe to perfect Rice-A-Roni.

All those systems are POW proof of work. Which consumes and incredible amount of energy. The majority of blockchains will move to a POS proof of stake system. It removes 99% of the power vs POW. However crypto being used as a steady payment system is a joke. The 'coins' or 'tokens' are basically owned by 1% or 2% of the population. It is leaving everyone else out. It has to be distributed evenly and fairly. Most cryptos are just useless 'stocks' that have little to no use that piggy back on Ethereum and Bitcoin which are dinosaurs. I believe certain proof of work systems will have some type real use in the future.

I think the consensus thought is that the Democrats are going to lose both chambers of Congress.  Biden is not polling well, progressives feel lied to, Republican enthusiasm is higher than Democratic enthusiasm, and the president's party tends to lose at midterms.

I think there's plenty of time, and I think Democrats can maybe muster up enough "Democracy is on the Ballot" concern to get Democrats to the polls.  But I think the Breyer retirement is a signal that the Democrats don't feel good about 2022, just like the Barrett speed-confirmation was a signal that the Republicans didn't feel good about Trump in 2020.

IRS will require facial-recognition to access online system

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2022/01 … 642779267/

I believe they are doing this to cut down on fraud and I am sure coming up with solutions can be difficult but this strikes me as completely irresponsible of them and potentially infringing on rights.

I do not trust the incompetent government or IRS to be able to protect that database of photos.  Either it gets into the wrong hands... just like all of our addresses, social security numbers, addresses etc regularly do with other data leaks or the govt themselves even misuses it.  Or the tech doesn't even work and doesn't let people in their own accounts.

If there's a leak of a database of photos with other sensitive info then identity theft will be even easier.   And people do have a right to be able to access their tax info... they shouldn't have to risk identity fraud to be able to do it.

Do you have a link?

My wife, mother, and I all wear our masks still (mostly due to my insistence, probably).  I still see masks down here in a pretty red part of Texas, which feels good.  But for the most part, it's looking like most people are back to normal.

It's very weird.  I'll get my 4th dose when it's time (and my wife asked me about getting her 3rd), but I'm genuinely curious how the more cautious among us get back to normal when it's time.  When it's officially an endemic, will we still mask?  When the deaths stop?  When cases drop enough?  Or will we still do it, either seasonally or all year?

I don't know how to feel about that.  Obviously, I would like to get back to normal at some point, but I also want to do the responsible thing for my family and myself.

To me, normalcy will be wearing a mask. I started wearing a mask in February 2020 and haven't had a single cold since then. So long as we wear masks and get our boosters, we can resume our normal activities. It's a mask. It's not a scuba suit.

I don't know if it's helpful to direct a someone living in Austin, Texas, United States to a retail store called Canadian Tire which exists in the Commonwealth of Canada.

It looks like you could get surgical ASTM Level 3 masks in the States here: https://bonafidemasks.com/black-surgica … s-per-box/

They filter about 3 per cent more than ASTM Level 1 and cost more, but $17.50 USD for a box of 50 isn't bad.

The problem with surgical masks, including these ones, is a poor seal around the nose and cheeks. However, if you put the earloops through cordlocks with a toothpick, you can tighten up the fit.
https://www.amazon.com/OCEANTREE-Adjust … 08C7CRBPP/

That said -- I wore the surgical mask with cord locks for one day at the office and it wasn't that convenient because I was constantly taking my mask off in my private office and putting it back on when leaving my office. Each time, I had to adjust the cord locks to tighten up the earloops.

In contrast, my bifold KN95 mask can come on and off with almost no adjustments because of the firm, tight fit. I think even in the summer, when I switch to a thinner ASTM L1 mask, I'll need to keep bifold KN95s for the office.

This morning, I hung some masks outside my office door with the unwritten implication that if a co-worker wants to speak to me in my office, I would like them to wear a mask for the duration of our conversation.

My co-worker who said she wasn't going to wear a mask has decided to resume mask-wearing anyway because most people in the office are still masking.

I spoke with her and told her that if she doesn't want to mask any more, it's nobody's business to demand that she do so or to criticize her because she has the right to not wear one. There is no legal requirement and no one should be pressuring her to wear a mask. We have to defend people's rights even if we don't agree with how they use them.

She said she appreciated that, but she has changed her mind because she thinks wearing a mask will make everyone feel safer and she assured me that nobody pressured her and it is no trouble.

A friend of mine recently told me that he was no longer going to wear a mask because the law said he didn't have to and that it was time for him to live a "normal" life again. It is beyond me what activities, tasks and responsibilities he or anyone could possibly have that are in any way impeded by taking three seconds to put on a face covering before entering high capacity public gathering spaces.

Yes, vaccines protect from hospitalization and death, but I've had several fully boosted friends lose a month of their lives to COVID. They weren't sick enough to need ventilators, but they had to stay home for two weeks coughing and fevered and sore followed by two to three weeks of brain fog and sleepiness.

My province has *completely* given up on fighting COVID. The vaccine requirement for public gathering places is gone. The push for third dose boosters is gone. The mask mandate outside of transit and health care facilities is gone. The testing and recording program to track how many cases we had per day is gone. As a result, our case counts are rising. These rising case counts eventually cause the health care system to become overloaded. As a result, patients with cancers and heart conditions and lung issues can't get life-saving chemotherapy or surgery or transplants and die.

On a personal level, I think my three doses and my 95 per cent face-sealed mask will protect me from the worst of it, but if I should break my leg or need heart surgery or trauma care after a car accident or a fall, I'll be in serious trouble.

The whole thing is a mess.  People are (rightfully) annoyed that they worked so hard to get Democrats the power they said they needed, and nothing is happening.  Trump is still in control of the Republican party, no one with any power has been punished for January 6, Covid is still a problem, and nothing has been done to make 2022 or 2024 more secure.  I'd love for Beto O'Rourke to win the governorship of Texas, but I have zero confidence that he'd ever make it to the governor's mansion even if he got enough votes.  Abbott would claim fraud and the Texas legislature would overturn it.

And then there's inflation and high gas prices and the war in Ukraine and all that stuff that makes things worse for everyone.

The fact remains that there's just not enough interest by career politicians in Washington to make any real change.  The media is too segregated for anyone to be on the same page.

I guess the only saving grace in my mind is that the Republicans haven't shown any ability/intention of doing anything either.  So they'll come in, inflation and gas prices won't get any better, and maybe Democrats can do better in 2024.  Either way, Biden shouldn't run.  In all seriousness, they need him to step back and let there be a wide-open primary with new blood.  No Biden, No Bernie, no Warren, no Hillary.  Because all those guys steal votes from better candidates on name recognition alone, and it ends up being the same boring races.

What the Democrats need is Obama.  A young, charismatic guy who can come out of nowhere and unite different segments of the party.  Biden is better than Trump but he's way too old to inspire anyone.  And just not being Trump won't be enough. 

I asked my friend what he'd prefer:

- Ron DeSantis destroys Trump in a primary and wins the presidency, ending Trump's political career forever
- Trump wins the primary and goes up against Biden, result of the election unknown

He picked Trump.  I do worry more about Trump 2.0 than Trump, but I also thought losing would push Trump out of power.  While his power has waned a tad, his control over the party hasn't.  And unless he dies before 2024, unless the Democrats make a move, I don't feel good about 2024.

Yeah, that'll bring people to the polls.

The answer is to rewrite the constitution and create a parliamentary system.

Democrats did not receive the power that they said they needed. To govern, a US President needs a filibuster-proof majority in Congress. A 50-50 split in Senate with only the VP as a tiebreaker and two Democrat senators who vote against the president is *not* the power that Democrats sought, nor is it the power that the previous president had in his hands.

Democrats seem resigned to losing even their slight, near-non-existent advantage. They aren't trying to sell the story that to accomplish more, they need more power.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote in 2016 that the presidency isn't actually that powerful an office. That's only true when the president doesn't have a strong congressional majority. President Biden is not a powerful president due to his weak majority, and it looks like a Democratic president will never be very powerful while a Republican president will be extremely powerful.

That's correct, so I'll add some nuance: Trump's Senate majority wasn't as weak as Biden's where Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema stop any and all legislation -- although Trump's majorities had infighting and failure and he failed to take out Obamacare which is a leveller. pilight says the weak majority is non-existent downticket campaigning and that a more vigorous effort could have won Democrats a stronger hand. That's probably true, but I have this terrible feeling that electoral game is so rigged at this point that Democrat votes will count for less in Congress and that Republicans have to win far fewer voters to win a majority in Senate and the House.

I shared this before, an interview with James Carville Jr. where he says Democrats are obsessed with "stupid wokeness" that's unsellable to the American populace and that they sink money into hopeless races and court defeat when their work should be in trying to elect more Democrats to get President Biden more power than he has right now as a figurehead president.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics … atic-party

As a hopefully woke person myself, I'll say that Carville Jr. may have a point that there's no sense in selling what people won't buy.

The Corsi-Rosenthal air purifier craze is interesting, but it sounds exhausting and painful to buy four fan coil air filters and a fan, assemble them into a cube, ensure it doesn't fall apart, and then change all four filters of this six-sided contraption every few months.

I just bought a couple air purifiers (Honeywell HPA064C with filters to be replaced annually) although they only cover 75 square feet compared to the average Corsi-Rosenthal covering 680 square feet. But I also replaced the dust filters in the two fan coils in my home with MERV-8 filters and put the two air purifiers near the intake vents, ensuring that my home air systems now have a direct line of clean air which goes into the fan coils and gets further circulated through the home.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl … House.html

You know who doing his best to recreate the "California Reich"

The back and forth on America vs China is the same old story; but I post this because I had never heard these batteries existed?

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/11149642 … a-vanadium

Through recharging, it can fully power a house for 30 years before the battery burns out?

The FBI would not raid the home of a previous president unless they had probable cause, a boatload of probable cause.

It's possible Trump was warned, but given his lack of poker face and visible agitation, he seems scared of what the FBI found. The reason Merrick Garland has been criticized in the press and online: the Department of Justice has taken almost no publicly visible action against Trump. This is standard practice to avoid giving the targets of their investigations any warning before they secure warrants and crack open safes.

**

I wanted to say: anyone who is an anti-masker or an anti-vaxxer should stop watching TV and movies. TV and movies were possible pre-vaccine and possible now because of pandemic protocols and employer mandates for vaccination.

Without pandemic protocols and mandates, cast and crew would get sick and no production can afford to be paused indefinitely. Without pandemic protocols, there would have been no series finale for SUPERNATURAL and no new episodes of CW superhero shows or of THE ORVILLE.

THE ORVILLE took three years to produce its third season because it was necessary to retool itself on its already strained budget for distancing and masking; it had to retool again to loosen up a bit (but not entirely) once vaccines became available.

Without masks and vaccinations, the cast and crew would get sick and continually reinfect themselves until there would be no one to perform scenes or film them or edit them or make the costumes or dress the sets or scout the locations. Any production without pandemic protocols would be unable to keep filming and eventually become too expensive to keep paused and fail to produce any content to broadcast, stream or present in cineplexes.

Anyone who attacks masks and vaccines should not enjoy the media that is only possible through the safety of masks and vaccines.

It's not just 2 or 3 years, but could extend well beyond 2024 and Trump could see the darkest depths of the U.S. federal prison system for years.

Oh, this is all leading up to the charge that Merrick Garland has for all January 6th participants:

Seditious conspiracy to overthrow the United States government by force.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384

This crime, which violates 18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy, carries a penalty of up to at least 20 years in federal prison.

"If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both."

Trump "possessing any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof," where nuclear weapons documents are concerned, is in very deep doo-doo.

The golf tournament backed by the Saudis at Trump golf courses...the $2 billion given to Eric Trump by the Saudis...not looking good for Trump.

Technically yes, but not if convicted of certain crimes that include prohibitions on holding office.

I'm starting to feel a little bit of optimism regarding this DOJ stuff.  It sounds like they have a pretty solid case, and it sounds like Trump's own legal defense is a disaster.  At least one of his lawyers might have to drop him as a client because she'll be a witness (or another defendant) in the case.  And from the looks of things, he's having issues finding anyone but extreme loyalists to even work with him.

The DOJ wins 95% of their cases.  They don't tend to bring these cases to trial unless they feel really good about winning.  From talking to a friend who's a defense attorney, he claims that it'll depend on how many MAGA people get on the jury.

That is, if it goes to trial.  Would Garland do it?  Would there actually be riots if he was indicted?  I don't see how it's possible that people would riot when Trump is charged with a crime but not riot when they truly believe an election was stolen? 

Or would the Justice Department be willing to do some sort of plea deal with Trump to avoid the whole circus and spare Trump any jail time?  I don't know.  I can see it being in the best interests of the country if Trump was willing to do some sort of public confession of his many crimes and frauds and scams.  If he officially declared that he lied about the election being stolen, that he colluded with the Russians, that he did have a quid pro quo in Ukraine, that he did incite his followers to storm the Capitol.  That everything he's been accused of is true.

But even then, I think a lot of people would think the Deep State was mind controlling him or that he was lying.  Or that he wouldn't walk it back on OAN the next day and dare them to come after him.

So prosecute him.  Get the national guard ready and send him to jail.  And then campaign on electing a Democrat to the White House so that the next Republican doesn't immediately pardon him.

Well, there is something I’ve expected, but it’s getting worse.  I’ll give an example from where I live.

Sunday night, a group of men in Louisiana broke into someone’s  home to burglarize it, but the home owner was there.  The home owner began shooting at them with his gun, and the criminals ran to their van and sped away.

End of story?  No.  The homeowner jumped in his car and chased them for 20 miles into my state; the homeowner still shooting at them along the way.  The van finally wrecked.  The homeowner came to a stop, jumped out and was still shooting at the criminals as they spilled out of the van running on foot for their lives.  Blood in the van and on the ground suggests some were hit, but they managed to scramble away out of view and haven’t been located yet to my knowledge.

Bail reform.  Being softer on crime.  Defund the police.  It all seems good on paper, but the reality is that nature abhors a vacuum.  Everyday people are becoming more and more willing to act, and their actions even endanger other everyday people.  It’s a spiral of revenge that ends in anarchy.

People may not like the police, but they have a structure.  Look at your neighbor.  Would you rather him enforce his own personal law?  That is what’s happening more and more

It won’t be about politics.  It’s personal.

And the police have been broken because few want to do the job any longer.  Our department used to have over a thousand applications for a school, and the last school had a little over 200 (around 30 of which were ultimately hired).  As a state police, we often have one man covering 5 counties (approximately 50 square miles). How effective can that be?

I’m telling you it’s going to hell - worse than you’ve known.  But ignore it.  Lots of people are.

We are never going to be short on stories where police were needed, where police were heroic, where police were incompetent or where police were abusive.

The necessity of police to protect civilians does not erase the systemic abuse of power. The institutionalized corruption of police in North America does not erase the police officers who have served with honour and compassion.

We need police, but police in North America are shockingly unaccountable due to qualified immunity, toothless internal policing and access to discarded military hardware designed for war but repurposed for towns and cities. The average person isn't psychologically equipped to be handed this level of power without abusing it; it's fortunate that some of us have known and worked with and been aided by exceptional human beings who were police officers, but the fact that they were and are exceptional also means that they were the exception.

We need police who are recruited through strict psychological evaluations, police who answer to civilians who have the power to enact consequences for abuse of power, police who de-escalate and use only the force that is required and no more, police who are held to account should they use more than that force, police who are held to an exceptional standard that becomes the standard rather than exception.

(Please note: I cannot stress enough in the name of Quinn's sneakers, Wade's old boots, Rembrandt's new boots and the Professor's dress shoes that the opinions of ireactions do not represent the opinions or any consensus of Sliders.TV as a whole.)

I don't think defunding the police is the answer, but I don't think Democrats (as a whole) think it's the answer either.  The police need to be reformed, and I think part of that reform is designed to ease some of their burdens.  The most effective argument I've heard/read is to take away the functions that police aren't equipped to handle.  If a mentally ill person is causing a non-violent scene, the police shouldn't show up.  Someone educated in handling that kind of situation should.  That frees up two officers (or more) to do something else that they're more qualified to handle.

And that doesn't even mean "defunding" the police - it just means funding differently.  Maybe it means funding police exactly the same and diverting other funds to handle social work or something like that.

I think certain police are overfunded when they have military equipment that they barely use.  I think certain police are absolutely underfunded and understaffed.  There should be a way for staff and resources to be diverted from departments that have too much to departments that don't have enough.  Maybe young officers in big cities could be paid to move to smaller, rural areas to work for a certain amount of time with the promise of advancement in their career when they've come back (which now just sounds like the plot of "Hot Fuzz" to me).

I don't think "the police" is the issue, but I do think individual officers are.  It's clear in the last 6 years that police are populated by a lot of far-right people that either are white supremacists or at least sympathize with them.  We need to clean up police departments and get people that truly want to protect and serve.  I think getting the right people is crucial.

But TF is right. People don't want to do the job anymore.  If you do the right thing, you still might be hated because of your peers.  It's a thankless job for some.  Every time there's a white cop shooting a black man in a mostly-black neighborhood, you see police *begging* more black people to apply.  Not only so that racist white guys don't have to patrol mostly-black neighborhoods but also because studies constantly show that peoples' attitudes change when they interact with people that are different.  More black officers will lead to less racist white officers.  But when you stress "all police are bad", no one wants to do the job.

It's part of the reason it would've made me uncomfortable if Brooklyn Nine-Nine had switched to a post office (and why I was a little uncomfortable about how many people left the force by the end of the show).  We need positive role models on TV so that people might look up to them.  Of course, I don't know if 20 years of Law and Order shows has led to an increase in recruitment so maybe that doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, I think the answer is more money to police (which, to be fair, is what Biden has said).  Higher salaries would bring in more people.  More money would pay for psychological training and testing.  And I think it could help create/establish programs where money is efficiently used across states so that the departments that need money get it.

Yeah, I know.  I said it's become clear in the last six years because there's been more uncovering of that (and cops being more open about their stance on that).  It's been a problem since policing began.

See, I don't know if that's true.  We always talk about how representation matters.  We need a black Spider-Man so that little black kids can look up to Miles Morales.  A black Ariel for little black girls to see themselves.  I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be the same for cops except that a black kid can grow up to be a cop and can't grow up to be a mermaid.  We know this stuff works - kids see Jurassic Park and want to be archaeologists.  Kids see the Martian and want to be engineers.  So I think the more Raymond Holts there are on TV, the more gay/black kids will want to grow up and be cops.