Politics over Religion at MD&D

[_Uncle Ed]

That’s just horse puckey, Ed. The Democrats supported GWB on many pieces of major legislation during his time in office. The Reps’ complete obstruction during the Obama presidency is the complete opposite of how the Democrats in Congress worked with Bush.

It's a matter of degree, a worsening situation. It began under Bush? Nope, it began under Clinton? Nope. Reagan? Carter? Come on. This has been going back and forth for most of my life. The Democrats are the more guilty of obstruction. The GOP have followed suit, and here we are.

[_Res Ipsa]

I’m having a hard time understanding why “popular vote” is meaningless but “vote by county” means something.

So did I for most of my life.

The Electoral College reduces the impact of a majority in selected areas, e.g. huge metro areas. That was a threat even in colonial era times, but is exponentially more a threat now.

To engage in so-called pure democracy only works in small numbers. To resort to it on a national scale would tip representation only to the huge population centers and their states would always elect the "chief magistrate of the whole Union"; and win any and all proposed national referenda. Can you see the danger?

That doesn’t answer my question. Voting by county is a phony metric. We don’t use it. But it’s what you use to describe the election results as if it were a real thing. Meanwhile, you dismiss popular vote, which we use for every elected office with the exception of the final step of the presidential election, as imaginary. That’s what I don’t understand.

I do understand why the framers chose to elect the president by state. That doesn’t mean that talking about the popular vote is irrelevant. It also makes it hard to justify to residents of California why their vote for president counts for some fraction of a vote by a guy in Wyoming.

[_Res Ipsa]

That’s just horse puckey, Ed. The Democrats supported GWB on many pieces of major legislation during his time in office. The Reps’ complete obstruction during the Obama presidency is the complete opposite of how the Democrats in Congress worked with Bush.

It's a matter of degree, a worsening situation. It began under Bush? Nope, it began under Clinton? Nope. Reagan? Carter? Come on. This has been going back and forth for most of my life. The Democrats are the more guilty of obstruction. The GOP have followed suit, and here we are.

“Come On” is not evidence. You claimed it was worse with the Democrats under Bush, which is 100% demonstrably false. So, evidence? And I always scratch my head at the folks for whom self responsibility is supposedly a core virtue when they offer “but the democrats started it” as justification for their own bad behavior.

[_Uncle Ed]

The "popular vote" is meaningless since there is no such thing. That too is a Medía creation. And Clinton's vaunted "wide margin" came almost entirely from Cali. You are right not to diss the Electoral College, since that organ is what protects smaller states from the huge metro areas and the states that contain them.

It's not meaningless, because it signals the extent to which the electoral college is translatable into broad public support. If you believe in the principle of one-person-one vote, it's real because individual votes are actually counted before determining the electoral college. It's not determinative of the outcome, but that's not the same thing as meaningless, unless you have a simplistic understanding of politics in a democratic society, or an authoritarian's view of elections, where they are used as a one-time stamp of legitimacy.

I meant (I say again) on a national level, the popular vote is only a meme to show that the winner in the Electoral College actually "lost", if we were indeed a "pure democracy".

Over what other issue was Obama holding your neck under his heal?

Gun control. "Group rights are better than individual rights because the Gov't can do more for you." National "Health Care" (forced penalties for not joining up, a 3% jump in my taxes). Promoting racial division/favoritism (for whatever bepoxed reason?!). Doing everything in his power to pull the US downward while taking from us and giving to "developing" nations. Being a woose. Enough.

I know, right? Why can't they just follow what the Constitution says about telecom mergers instead of trying to interpret it?!

Ah, the literalist when it suits to deflect a point made. Same holds true for anti-gun lobbyists: "I am willing to allow every citizen to bear flintlocks as his 2nd Amendment right".

You can't even make a pedophilia joke anymore or use racial or ethnic slurs, not like in the old days, when you could do that on TV and on the radio. You can't grab women by the pussy without people calling you bad names. We had values back then when we weren't cobbled by the PC police.

Flip away. We had more freedom back then. You are conflating behavior with rights/freedoms. Trump has always been a coarse ass. But now he can be asked to resign over it, the new standard put in place by the losers.

The socialist judges are used against you?

Socialists pass judgment based on un American principles. The proliferation of liberals and socialists in the "judgment seats" at all levels has been the single most effective way to do end runs on the Constitution. So believe it they are against me and you.

You might be surprised to learn that this problem has less to do with particular presidents than with the challenges of running a modern post-industrial state and the fact that Congress is not up to the task, or at least has shrugged its responsibilities.

No surprise. The President is the least powerful of the three branches, or is supposed to be. Trump is not going to get nearly as much done as he promised because of interference by the other two, thank God. I thanked God every day that Congress thwarted Obama on nearly every hand.

But the President does color the midterms and withal how Congress shapes up politically. That's why Trump is a big deal.

It worked on the Apprentice, why wouldn't it work in the Middle East?

I didn't even know who Donald Trump was until he ran. So I don't know what you are talking about. Context would indicate that his own show was some kind of disaster?

Orrin Hatch likes a bill he is championing, therefore reputable economists support it?

What are some of those big deductions, by the way? And how do you feel about the fact that the corporate is permanently slashed, whereas the few thousand dollars you believe will go back into my pocket will stop doing so after three to five years?

Also, how do you feel about the graduate student tax? Right now, a graduate student usually receives 1) tuition waiver and 2) a stipend in exchange for teaching course professors don't want to do. An average stipend is around $20k. This bill would include their waiver as taxable income, even though graduate students never see that money. In other words, someone making $20k would be taxed as if they were making about $50k. Do you know how much in real tax dollars that translates to? About $9k. So, the result will be that someone who right now generally is not taxed because they make so little will see nearly half their income gone with this bill. Does it make you feel like you have more liberty?

Explain to us how that helps the little guy. Explain to us how not being able to deduct your medical bills two years after this is passed will help the little guy. One could go on, but we don't need to, because it's not hard to anticipate your response: Trump is breaking the system!

On that we can agree.

Forget the aspirations of the American systems: let's all just hope we're useful to the demagogue's purposes!

The deductions for individuals are significantly increased. Families are favored. I don't recall other improvements/reforms. But nothing sounded iffy.

Is what Trump doing worse than "Obamacare"? I doubt it. That 3% penalty adds up very fast. That's just one thing. The Fed intruding further into private enterprise, pushing us further toward fascism is the big one. The Fed has no right to dictate medical care decisions, limitations, penalties, etc.

On the face of it, no one has to take the Gov't student subsidy. Students can work their way through college "old school" style. Some will benefit from the subsidy, others are better off not taking it.

What does talking about tax reform have to do with defending individual liberty? None of us has the liberty to not be taxed without the legal consequences.

Let us hope, rather, that most Americans can tell when they are being enslaved. Demagoguery of itself, I repeat, is not the revealing quality of a tyrant.

[_Uncle Ed]

The Electoral College reduces the impact of a majority in selected areas, e.g. huge metro areas. That was a threat even in colonial era times, but is exponentially more a threat now.

To engage in so-called pure democracy only works in small numbers. To resort to it on a national scale would tip representation only to the huge population centers and their states would always elect the "chief magistrate of the whole Union"; and win any and all proposed national referenda. Can you see the danger?

That doesn’t answer my question. Voting by county is a phony metric. We don’t use it. But it’s what you use to describe the election results as if it were a real thing. Meanwhile, you dismiss popular vote, which we use for every elected office with the exception of the final step of the presidential election, as imaginary. That’s what I don’t understand.

I do understand why the framers chose to elect the president by state. That doesn’t mean that talking about the popular vote is irrelevant. It also makes it hard to justify to residents of California why their vote for president counts for some fraction of a vote by a guy in Wyoming.

I think that you are not getting something here. Voting by county is absolutely the real deal where a vote is a vote, everywhere across the whole Union. Counties are organized into districts, which are represented by the Electors (all but Maine and Nebraska are, however, "winner takes all" states: I am in favor of the shared Electors system in those two states).

I dismiss the "popular vote" only on the national level because it is meaningless. It wouldn't matter if California voted one hundred percent for Clinton, overpowering the total votes nationally to Trump by over twenty million. The outcome would have been exactly the same: 55 electoral votes to her from Cali. If each of the states that went for Clinton had voted one hundred percent for her, overpowering the total national tally to Trump by fifty million the outcome would have been the same.

Why is this a good thing? Because States Elect Presidents, Not Popular Voting. I don't care if so many people moved to the huge metros so that only one hundred inhabitants were in each of those counties that popularly sided with Trump, the outcome would have been the same: the puny populations would have a literal say in choosing the President: and more importantly, in any theoretical future national referenda (for example amending the Constitution) where the outcome is settled the same way by States voting and not total "popular" votes.

The setup of the Electoral College gives the smallest of states enough voice that a few thousand can offset millions. In this way the minority is never de facto tyrannized by the majority.

This Nation is a representative of States, not a pure democracy. The States demand representation as part of the "whole Union". If they don't get it, they will pull out. That was true from the beginning. To avoid another civil war the States must be fairly represented.

Which addresses your last point: in order to give smaller states a voice they must have more Electors to offset their smaller populations. Weaker voices must be given power.

[_Uncle Ed]

dupe

[_Res Ipsa]

What are you talking about? Counties administer the elections, but they aren’t organized into Congressional Districts. Sometimes CD boundaries follow county lines, sometimes they don’t. There is no organizational connection between the two. You’re simply cherry picking an irrelevant metric that exaggerates Trump’s performance.

I don’t need the civics lesson. I understand why we set up the EC the way we did. That still doesn’t help explain to a voter in CA why her vote should count less than the vote of someone in Wyoming. Long term, I don’t think election of the President by a minority of voters is sustainable.

[_Symmachus]

The basic premise of Ed's views are what disgust me about the Republicans in general: they don't like Trump, but they are willing to look the other way as long as it is politically expedient.

I meant (I say again) on a national level, the popular vote is only a meme to show that the winner in the Electoral College actually "lost", if we were indeed a "pure democracy".

Again, you don't seem to grasp the issue, but Res Ipsa is showing that much better than I.

Gun control. "Group rights are better than individual rights because the Gov't can do more for you." National "Health Care" (forced penalties for not joining up, a 3% jump in my taxes). Promoting racial division/favoritism (for whatever bepoxed reason?!). Doing everything in his power to pull the US downward while taking from us and giving to "developing" nations. Being a woose. Enough.

Ignorant blather, saying nothing about Obama's presidency but much about your own limited understanding.

Ah, the literalist when it suits to deflect a point made. Same holds true for anti-gun lobbyists: "I am willing to allow every citizen to bear flintlocks as his 2nd Amendment right".

So where in the constitution are telecom mergers mentioned? The point, which shot right over your head, is that the Constitution necessarily entails interpretation.

We had more freedom back then.

Specifically, what freedom did you have in 1960 that you don't have now (and of course taxes were exorbitantly higher then, so don't even waste your time with that one).

Socialists pass judgment based on un American principles. The proliferation of liberals and socialists in the "judgment seats" at all levels has been the single most effective way to do end runs on the Constitution. So believe it they are against me and you.

Everything in this is not just false but nonsensical. You can't name one socialist judge, and I'm beginning to have doubts that you even know what's in the constitution you claim to be so concerned about.

I didn't even know who Donald Trump was until he ran. So I don't know what you are talking about. Context would indicate that his own show was some kind of disaster?

Again, you don't get the point, which is that Trump's policy is amateurish and can only be designed—to the extent it is designed—by someone who knows nothing about the region and the history of the conflict. Next I'm sure you'll tell me that his ignorance is a virtue.

The deductions for individuals are significantly increased. Families are favored. I don't recall other improvements/reforms. But nothing sounded iffy.

Sounds like you don't really know what it's in it.

That 3% penalty adds up very fast. That's just one thing. The Fed intruding further into private enterprise, pushing us further toward fascism is the big one. The Fed has no right to dictate medical care decisions, limitations, penalties, etc.

On the face of it, no one has to take the Gov't student subsidy. Students can work their way through college "old school" style. Some will benefit from the subsidy, others are better off not taking it.

Absolutely disgusting the way you have framed this Ed. You should be ashamed. Here's what I wrote:

Also, how do you feel about the graduate student tax? Right now, a graduate student usually receives 1) tuition waiver and 2) a stipend in exchange for teaching course professors don't want to do. An average stipend is around $20k. This bill would include their waiver as taxable income, even though graduate students never see that money. In other words, someone making $20k would be taxed as if they were making about $50k. Do you know how much in real tax dollars that translates to? About $9k. So, the result will be that someone who right now generally is not taxed because they make so little will see nearly half their income gone with this bill.

I though what I wrote was pretty clear. See, these are graduate students, and I'm talking about their paltry stipends and tuition waivers. The tuition waivers aren't government grants. They are granted by the institution. There is no government subsidy involved. And let me emphasize that they are getting paid a stipend—around 20k—in order to work while taking classes. In other words, they are already maxing out the maximum hours in a month. Someone making $20,000, with 0 hours available to get a third job—graduate school is effectively two jobs—will be slammed with a $9,000 tax bill for money they never saw, and which has never counted as income. The Republicans went after them because they know these people are too young and too diverse ever to vote Republican and they need to get that money for the tax cuts from somewhere. They're scrounging for all the loose change under the couch, and they found some here. Why not get it off the backs of poor graduate students?

Now, here comes Mr. Ed, with fond memories of the Partridge days when even undergraduate education was heavily subsidized by state governments and the federal government, which used to pour massive amounts of money into research and education when Ed was that age. Boy Ed, I sure wish I went to school when you and Orrin Hatch did. Sure, Ed can imagine it requires nothing more than summer job to make up the difference, working on the dairy say, or at old man Joe's pharmacy (or as he called it growing up in the innocent days of high taxes, "druggist") down the road from the old Elk Lodge and the barn where they used to chew gum and trade baseball cards. From that totally and abysmally ignorant position, of course it would just as simple as getting another job "old school." But that's not how it works today. Not even close.

It's bad enough that your views, Ed, are so divorced from the reality people face that you can casually assume it's just a question of government subsidy and laziness, forgetting the fact that in your day, the government largely subsidized through indirect means what people today after go into years of debt to acquire. No, what is truly appalling is the root cause of Ed's hang up: “F” those people working their assess off for 20K, and let them pay half their actual salary (upward of 50%) because, at the end of the day, "That 3% penalty adds up very fast." If you think 3% adds up fast, then I'm sure you can imagine how quickly nearly 50% adds up.

In Ed we have another example, dear readers, of the sentiments of a member of the greediest generation.

The system is broken because of ignorant and greedy voters like yourself who've had decades of indirect and direct support of government help and who are in or are about to enter the last phase of your lives, where you will be living off the backs of the younger generation to pay for your medicare and social security, and you old idiots just don't mind damned over everyone because you want to feel better telling ethnic jokes. If you want to blame the dysfunction in the political culture on anyone, quit looking at Obama and take some damned personal responsibility for a change: look in the mirror, Ed.

[_Brackite]

If the popular vote in over ninety percent of the counties of the US voted for The Donald it is a simple fact of life.

Not quite. Trump won the popular vote in about 84.3 percent of the counties nationwide.

The "popular vote" is meaningless since there is no such thing. That too is a Medía creation. And Clinton's vaunted "wide margin" came almost entirely from Cali. Not a good recommendation

Clinton got 13.3 percent of her vote total within California while she got 86.7 percent of her vote total outside of California. She got more votes from Florida and NY State than she did from California.

[_Kishkumen]

Gosh..we may never ever know for sure because they don't get served for anything..deleted emails..using bleach...sexual stuff from good ol' Bill? If it is on any actual record pertaining to law...it was bought and paid for..or just plain deleted somewhere..surely you watch the news???

News is a pretty broad category these days, filled with all kinds of nonsense. Add to that America’s love affair with conspiracies, and you have all the ingredients for perpetually simmering paranoid fantasies. If you had started out with Bill’s perjury, which seems like the strongest example, and then followed it up with the likelihood of him committing sexual assault, I would go that far with you, but beyond that we get into the realm of conspiracy theories, and I have no interest in wasting my time with the theories or the people who indulge them.

The endless investigations of the Clintons, but especially Hillary, have been nothing more or less than a cynical political strategy. I am not going to whine about it because I don’t like the Clintons. The noblest thing Hillary might have done is decline to run because of the high degree of hatred against her in a large portion of the populace. Her inability to recognize that handicap and insistence on being a grand historic figure are partly to blame for Trump.

I get angry with Democrats who fail to see the reality of the Clintons’ impediments and weaknesses. They feel the Clintons are persecuted and that, if only people were better than they are—and they really should be, right?—then they would have done the right thing by ignoring Hillary’s unpopularity and lack of charisma to embrace another capable technocrat.

I was long concerned that this was a losing proposition. I was concerned about it back when she ran against Obama in the primaries all those years ago. I was deeply relieved when Obama came out on top, especially after McCain had Palin thrust on him. But the farce of multiple Benghazi investigations sealed Hillary’s fate in my mind. Now, anyone with a lick of sense will see pretty quickly that not only do these kabuki plays come up with nothing, the GOP congressmen who waste our money on them find a strategic moment to admit that, only to dredge up the same baseless accusations later, if needed.

If you want to choose someone who will win, you do not bet on the person who ignites irrational panic in 40% or more of the population. In their minds, Hillary might as well wear a pointy black hat and ride on a broom. There is no reasoning with this kind of stupid.

Don’t fall for this garbage. I can see disliking Hillary. But for the love of Jebus, you do not choose Biff from Back to the Future to run the largest economy and greatest nuclear arsenal in the world because you suspect the competent female candidate doesn’t love Jesus the right way.

Holy crap, people.