Gerrymandering is what broke US politics. The Congress has such an absurdly short term length because it is meant to be hyper-reactive to the electorate, and so calcifying it as they have done is just madness.
Personally I’d anti-gerrymander the districts (state and federal) so as to be maximally competitive. Making every seat unsafe. Apart from being really good for democracy, I enjoy the idea of the political caste having a collective heart-attack immensely.
I can be petty sometimes.
That’s absolutely what it should be.
That’s very cute, but I’m speaking about a man who was elected partially on his promise to specifically NOT have any Goldman Sachs execs in his cabinet, constantly lambasting his opponent for her Wall Street connections. I’m not saying Hillary wouldn’t have done the same.
“Drain the swamp”?!? He never said that! /s
It was opinion and clearly labeled as such. And I was not the one who brought him into the conversation.
Yes, the Sec. of the Treasury is the one of those 3 that is not like the others. Except all 3 neatly exemplify Trump’s respect for power uber alles, and his contempt for public institutions more generally. A Goldman Sachs executive at the Treasury will continue it’s tradition of regulatory capture. Pruitt at the EPA or Perry at the DoE is a much bigger change. They are being put in place to destroy the organizations they’re charged with overseeing. Rather than simply subverting them.
It was not “clearly labeled” because it’s a claim about which you have no doubt. And, yes, you brought Mel Gibson into the conversation. I never said otherwise but then you have a habit of lying about what other people have said. And Gibson was a nice way of drawing attention away from your lack of an argument.
If you were trying to make a point though you failed.
I believe this qualifies as “bringing Mel Gibson into the conversation”
That was a mention of Mel Gibson’s name but you’re the one who made a ridiculous claim you were, by your own admission, certain was true but which you then tried to walk back as merely an opinion. All of which you’re too dishonest to admit.
But I’ll concede the point that someone else brought up Mel Gibson first. But if this was yet another attempt to make a point you failed again.
Keep trying, though. Maybe you’ll get something right eventually.
I prefer conversations where people do not stoop to name calling. But I guess that is related to the topic at hand.
“I have no doubt” = I am certain of my opinion.
MB out…
You went off the topic some time ago and there has been no name calling. It’s a fact that you’ve been dishonest. Take some responsibility and quit blaming others for your own mistakes. You were clearly certain enough of your opinion to try and pass it off as fact.
You’re welcome to deny it but that merely reinforces the point.
…except in California. And New York. And Oregon. And…
And most importantly, Chicago
You are trying to boil this down to a single comment. Sessions has said a lot of things to a lot of people. Even just reading the wikipedia account gives you the back and forth on what was said, who denied it, who said, “I didn’t take it seriously.” The consensus seems to be that Sessions sometimes says things (like the Klan and pot smoking comment) that strike some people as just-crazy-stuff-Sessions-says and that strike some black people around him as racist.
So if I’m kind to Sessions, (if I ignore, for example, his defense of racist unconstitutional laws as a state attorney general) then I could say, “He’s just a clueless white guy who doesn’t realize how racially insensitive some of his comments are.” But that’s a pretty bad quality for a national attorney general even if I give him the benefit of that doubt.
Seriously, what is their obsession with Chicago? It’s not without its problems, but it’s not the post-apocalyptic war zone Fox News makes it out to be.
Because black people live here, including the current POTUS and FLOTUS.
Ok, here is my process: I read a headline somewhere that refers to Sessions as an unrepentant racist, White supremacist throwback from the old south. Being a halfway decent human being, I think “That is terrible. we don’t need a George Wallace clone anywhere near the DOJ”. But this being 2017, I do not think that headline, even if it appeared in mainstream news, is reason enough to form a strong opinion without some skepticism. So, I look for exactly why he is believed to be a racist. For Sessions, that includes his 1986 hearings, and the Perry county vote tampering case. If I had wanted to reassure myself that he is or is not a racist, according to my personal politics, I could have read Slate or National Review, and come away feeling that I had done some research, and I an now informed.
But what I did was look at the source material, including the Subpoenas and rulings on the Perry case and the confirmation hearings. Also interviews and testimony of Sessions colleagues, and principals of the Perry county case. And I did read Slate and BB and National Review and much more. If a new detail appeared from one of those sources, I went back to the source material to see if it could be confirmed.
The end result is not that I am an expert on Sessions. I don’t know what is in his heart. he has a long career of trials and actions of which I am uninformed. But I did have a pretty good look at a few of what his opponents believe are primary evidence of his racism. in those few instances, it is pretty apparent that his opponents are trying to deceive through omission, addition, and modification of important facts. If the man is the monster that he is portrayed to be, it should not be necessary to use deception to show that he is so.
Also, I am not even saying that the man is definitely not a racist. Or that I agree with his politics. To a significant degree, I do not. But the proof given for his racism does not seem to hold up, or at least puts a reasonable amount of doubt into my mind.
So from there I look to the testimony of those who know or work with him. These will all be somewhat partisan sources, so that needs to be kept in mind while reading them. For sessions, there are quite a few Black people who have known him for decades, in some cases worked with him on civil rights legislation, and who are fairly explicit about denying that he is a racist, or has racist motivations. On the other hand, there is the testimony of Thomas Figures, who worked in session’s office. He made some pretty damning accusations. But Figures is a literal crazy person, and no other person in session’s office could be found to corroborate the claims. So I am very hesitant to put much faith in his Figure’s claims.
There are lots of other voices speaking out against Sessions. Some of them are just repeating the DNC talking points, often word for word. Very few seem to be speaking from firsthand knowledge.
Many people, here and elsewhere, believe that republican policies are generally part of an institutional racist value set. That is a reasonable conclusion, but does not make each republican a racist, White supremacist. Especially since some of them are verifiably not so.
This was a long post, and I am sorry if I have wasted your time. I did want to say something about the process I use to come to the conclusions that I do. i am at least willing to explore different viewpoints, and to change my conclusions with new data.
MB
Boy, I would love it if that were the case. The stated ambitions of Pence and McConnell (I shudder pondering what their unstated ambitions are) however suggest that the Republican party advocates a smaller federal government only when they’re not running it.
Because Detroit is empty.
The last time I was in Detroit was a couple years ago. It has its nice areas, but overall it’s doing way worse than Chicago.
