US Politics

Raoul said:
I was there every step of the way in 92. Perot’s campaign was personality driven (I’m all ears!) in a similar way to how Trump’s was. It had nothing to do with the Reform Party, which iirc was a Perot invention. Not coincidentally it folded back into irrelevance when Perot predictably imploded. Thus we are back in the two party grind. When a third party emerges to win the White House then we can chat further.
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Mate, I was a Perot volunteer in 1992. I personally talked to hundreds of Perot supporters and potential supporters. I believe I am in a far more qualified position to talk about why people supported Perot (at least among Californians in 1992). And it wasn't a personality driven at all. That was not why he was drawing the support he did. The fundamental driving factor from the people aged 18-80 that I spoke with was frustration with both political parties and distrust of both political parties.
 
Grinner said:
Wasn't it Perot who chose that nutter for VP?
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Admiral James Stockdale was actually a highly competent person and a down to earth person. He was a POW for 7 years and won the National Medal of Honor and Silver Star for bravery.
Problem was he was extremely uncomfortable in front of the cameras and was about the worst public speaker ever up for office. The ridicule he received from the Bush and Clinton supporters was cruel, inappropriate and lacked class and respect.

In a business book by James C. Collins called Good to Great, Collins writes about a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during his period in the Vietnamese POW camp.[18]

I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.[19]

When Collins asked who didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:

Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.[19]

Stockdale then added:

This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.[19]

Witnessing this philosophy of duality, Collins went on to describe it as the Stockdale Paradox.

Popular spiritual guru Eckhart Tolle has also discussed Stockdale's time as a prisoner of war, noting that during his imprisonment the vice admiral had concealed a small book of the teachings of the stoicist Epictetus that he said allowed him to survive his torture and confinement in Hanoi.[20]
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oneniltothearsenal said:
Admiral James Stockdale was actually a highly competent person. He was a POW for 7 years and won the National Medal of Honor and Silver Star for bravery.
Problem was he was extremely uncomfortable in front of the cameras and was about the worst public speaker ever up for office. The ridicule he received from the Bush and Clinton supporters was cruel, inappropriate and lacked class and respect.
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Yeah I know. Unfortunately the Perot campaign was great for SNL and late night hosts.
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
Mate, I was a Perot volunteer in 1992. I personally talked to hundreds of Perot supporters and potential supporters. I believe I am in a far more qualified position to talk about why people supported Perot (at least among Californians in 1992). And it wasn't a personality driven at all. That was not why he was drawing the support he did. The fundamental driving factor from the people aged 18-80 that I spoke with was frustration with both political parties and distrust of both political parties.
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Being a volunteer is great. I'm sure you knocked on your fair of doors to promote your guy, but it doesn't make you any more qualified to discuss the campaign. Perot was a nut who rode a wave into relevance then quickly imploded due to his own lack of political sophistication. He would've been an awful President and his subsequent disappearance from the political stage illustrates how devoid of substance his so called "movement" was.
 
Oh and James "Why am I here" Stockdale was a terrible choice. Being a decorated military vet means little when you show up on the big stage with a deer in the headlights performance.
 
Raoul said:
Being a volunteer is great. I'm sure you knocked on your fair of doors to promote your guy, but it doesn't make you any more qualified to discuss the campaign. Perot was a nut who rode a wave into relevance then quickly imploded due to his own lack of political sophistication. He would've been an awful President and his subsequent disappearance from the political stage illustrates how devoid of substance his so called "movement" was.
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How many people do you estimate you spoke with personally regarding why they supported Perot?

You made an unsupported assertion that it was just a cult of personality. That assertion is about 180 degrees from what I heard from actual people, hundreds of people, on why they supported Perot.
So I am saying your unsupported assertion is nothing more than your personal opinion as an single individual. You can't speak for why people supported Perot. Your assertions definitely don't represent the people I spoke with and why they supported Perot.
I don't believe you are in a position to tell other people why they supported Perot. I believe those people are better able to express for themselves.
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
How many people do you estimate you spoke with personally regarding why they supported Perot?

You made an unsupported assertion that it was just a cult of personality. That assertion is about 180 degrees from what I heard from actual people, hundreds of people, on why they supported Perot.
So I am saying your unsupported assertion is nothing more than your opinion as an individual. You can't speak for why people supported Perot. Your assertions definitely don't represent the people I spoke with and why they supported Perot.
I don't believe you are in a position to tell other people why they supported Perot. I believe those people are better able to express for themselves why they supported Perot.
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How many Trump supporters do you think would admit their support for him is due to a "cult of personality" ? Very few. They would instead wax poetic about draining the swamp, MAGA, bringing jobs back, reducing taxes, and a slew of other things they heard Trump say in campaign speeches. That's broadly applicable to most campaigns where people can't see the forrest from the trees because they are too busy rationalizing their own support based on campaign rhetoric.
 
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Raoul said:
How many Trump supporters do you think would admit their support for him is due to a "cult of personality" ? Very few. They would instead wax poetic about draining the swamp, MAGA, bringing jobs back, reducing taxes, and a slew of other things they heard Trump say in campaign speeches. That's broadly applicable to most campaigns where people can't see the forrest from the trees because they are too busy rationalizing their support.
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I told you I spoke with hundreds of people and unless you are insulting my intelligence, I think I am qualified enough to understand what people were saying when I spoke with them for a conversation. If you heard the hundreds of stories of why people actually supported Perot, you would understand it was hardly a cult of personality. Heck Slick Willy's Democrat boosters were more Cult of Personality c.1992 than Perot's!
Clinton is the one who had people saying they were going to vote for him because they "liked that he played a saxophone on Letterman". That is far more cult of personality than anything I heard from Perot supporters.

When numerous people on the left, right and center were frustrated with events like Iran-Contra, Savings and Loan scandal, etc and how power hungry politicians like Bush and Clinton can't be trusted, there is no real cult of personality.

What there was was frustration and massive distrust of both political parties and the power hungry career climbers like Bush and Clinton. Perot stepped into that void. It was drastically different in Perot meetings and Perot rallies than Trump rallies. As I said, back in 1992 Clinton was the biggest cult of personality with his cheesy appeals to hipness.
 
the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) Rules and Bylaws arm voted overwhelminglyon Wednesday to drastically curtail the influence of superdelegates by barring them from voting on the first ballot of the presidential nomination.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has long criticized the party's superdelegate system as undemocratic, congratulated DNC chair Tom Perez and the Rules and Bylaws Committee for the move in a statement following the 27-1 vote, saying the "decision will ensure that delegates elected by voters in primaries and caucuses will have the primary role in selecting the Democratic Party's nominee at the 2020 convention."

"This is a major step forward in making the Democratic Party more open and transparent, and I applaud their action," Sanders added.
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Here is a rather fun, uncharitable look at Anthony Kennedy's ignoble career as a jurist. He was no Sandra Day O'Connor.

Justice Kennedy was a Cadillac’s intellect in a Lamborghini’s job. His writing ranged from needlessly flowery to completely incoherent. And, while his views sometimes placed him to the left of men like Scalia and Bork, his “liberal” opinions were frequently his most incomprehensible.

Kennedy could have been a perfectly adequate lower court judge, but he was in over his head at the Supreme Court. And, for that reason, his most celebrated opinions will be very easy to dismantle.

Most of the time, of course, Kennedy was also no friend to liberals. He authored the Court’s Citizens United decision, joined its decision hobbling much of the Voting Rights Act, and he voted to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act. The entire presidency of George W. Bush might have been avoided but for Kennedy’s vote inBush v. Gore. And, in a moment when liberal democracy itself is threatened by an authoritarian president, Kennedy decided that it would be a good idea to give that president another seat on the Supreme Court.

And Kennedy’s inadequacies were most visibly on display when he crossed over to join the Court’s liberal bloc...

And Casey also fits into another common pattern with Justice Kennedy’s opinions. When Kennedy cares about an issue, he can demand that the law remake itself overnight in his image. Just think about his vote to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act. Or his Citizens United opinion which, as the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin reported, came about after Kennedy rejected Chief Justice Roberts’ incremental, more modest approach to the case.

Yet, when Kennedy cast his lot with the Court’s liberals, he was typically far more parsimonious. Casey purported to preserve Roe, for example, but it stripped abortion of its status as a fundamental right and applied a vague “undue burden” standard that gave very little guidance to lower court judges regarding when an abortion restriction violated the Constitution. Many judges who oppose Roe took this vague standard as a license to unwind the right to an abortion.
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https://thinkprogress.org/kennedy-was-a-bad-justice-76e464024d78/
 
calodo2003 said:
Sanders and Nader have not helped the country this millennium. If only their supporters had not wasted their votes in 2000 and 2016...
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I struggle to understand why Sanders is being placed alongside Nader. He campaigned on his own very specific platform, which he was entitled to do, and then fully backed Hilary after his primary defeat because he was aware that's the way it works. Unless you believe primaries shouldn't be open, democratic ballots in which a diverse range of views are represented within both parties, then there isn't any problem with this at all. Obama faced a strong challenge from Hilary in 08 and was the underdog for much of the race. But he still won. Because he was a strong candidate.

And, as some people have tirelessly pointed out, the number of people who voted Bernie but didn't vote Hilary is relatively small. More Hilary supporters in 08 eventually voted for McCain.
 
Carolina Red said:
How exactly would you suggest they de-pussify their political discourse?
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People like Pelosi, Schumer and others need to leave. The party needs to become more progressive and learn to draw battle lines. I don't know about you but Republicans have been very successful at being in government and being hypocrites all at the same time. Meanwhile, you have people like Pelosi who are more than happy to make deals with these hypocrites, even when they know they're getting screwed.
 
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The establishment Dems in Congress still seem to have their heads buried in the sand. The likes of Gillibrand, Pelosi, Booker and others seem oblivious to the new wave of progressive candidates.
 
Il Prete Rosso said:
People like Pelosi, Schumer and others need to leave. The party needs to become more progressive and learn to draw battle lines. I don't know about you but Republicans have been very successful at being in government and being hypocrites all at the same time. Meanwhile, you have people like Pelosi who are more than happy to make deal with these hypocrites, even when they know they're getting screwed.
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I agree with that, they need to step aside because if they stay they will just continue to get their asses kicked by the GOP
 
Eboue said:
hes not in any way a progressive. gillibrand is blatantly opportunistic but at least she can see the wind blowing
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I know what you mean but if you look at his record he's hardly an ideologue and is willing to change his position on issues. I know it seems like he's a walk the line Democrat but most people who know him has said that he's very much a progressive type of politician.
 
Il Prete Rosso said:
I know what you mean but if you look at his record he's hardly an ideologue and is willing to change his position on issues. I know it seems like he's a walk the line Democrat but most people who know him has said that he's very much a progressive type of politician.
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hes in the pocket of wall street
 
Il Prete Rosso said:
I know what you mean but if you look at his record he's hardly an ideologue and is willing to change his position on issues. I know it seems like he's a walk the line Democrat but most people who know him has said that he's very much a progressive type of politician.
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Are you sure they didn’t mean that on a personal level he aligns politically? As in, “has progressive views”?

That’s obviously an entirely different kettle of fish to a “Progressive Politician” as a Politician can’t really be judged on anything other than their voting history.
 
I'm assuming every union will be in bankruptcy by the end of the year.

Supreme Court revives lawsuit seeking union agency fee refunds
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday revived a proposed class action filed by Illinois home health aides who were not union members and are seeking a refund of about $32 million in so-called “agency fees” they had to pay to a Service Employees International Union affiliate, a day after it ruled that requiring public sector workers to pay those fees is unconstitutional.
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berbatrick said:


Remember that civility is essential.
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I realise being a libtard I’m not allowed to say this but I’d love to wrap a baseball bat across that horse face cnut’s disgusting face.
 
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