The 2016 presidential election proves (to me at least) that you may be the only person in America who still holds these values.

The argument I've made before is that if you're a good (or better) Senator, you're more valuable to your party's goals spending 20 or 30 years as one of the hundred or so most powerful people in the country. You can shape legislation for a generation if you're charismatic enough to earn your peers' support as Majority Leader.

Presidenting is different. You're the Commander-in-Chief, so you have the last word on things cogent to the national defense. There are other responsibilities in that vein that are more about the well-being of the country than any one in-the-moment issue.

But when you circle back around to legislation, your time as President is limited. In that context, the role is more about legacies than anything else. Protect your ideological predecessors' legacy; build your own. Maybe dismantle your immediate predecessor's legacy if you're a petty fuck who holds a grudge because you got made fun of once upon a time.

But you're in the office for, at most, around ten years. And in those ten years, you'll either be signing the legislation your ideological peers send you, vetoing the stuff your ideological opposites send you, or tiptoeing through a bipartisan minefield on stuff that's not as clear-cut. Yeah, you can lean on Congress and say "This is what I would sign, and that is what I would not," but ultimately what lands on your desk depends on Congress more than you.

If you're a kickass Senator, stay in the Senate. If your Senatorial legacy isn't that clear-cut but you're a charismatic sonufa who can charm babies and woo voters, sure, chase that brass ring. But Presidents basically never re-enter government after their time in office is over. If a kickass Senator leaves the Senate to chase higher office (or try to burnish a resume for a future run), he or she should be damned sure there's nothing more they can accomplish in the Senate, IMO.

May have been true back in 2016 but I think many people will think this way in 2020 after the Trump mess.

Why? 2016 proved that Independents and Democrats didn't learn that lesson after third-party votes and "I just can't vote for Gore" got W. elected.

What makes you think 2020 will be the "you can't get fooled again" moment for them?

Can we please end this nonsense discussion? Nancy Pelosi is going to be 81 in 2020 and is not going to run for President.

Herding cats, dig.

I wasn't even making the argument that she'd be an ineffective President. She has the right kind of pragmatism that I like for someone in that role. I just think she's terrible as a candidate.

Trump’s golf course employed undocumented workers — and then fired them amid showdown over border wall

Not a surprise, as I think it was known the clubs have been staffed with undocumented immigrants. But as one poster says:

"So, in short, club management has knowingly employed undocumented immigrants for years, and knew exactly who they were."

I guess at least they didn't arrange for ICE to be there.

She seems to be of sound mind. Sounds like age discrimination/prejudice to me :)

She just needs to propose a good VP for just in case.

Yeah, keep it up you ass.

Mueller's got all the cards and your only way out is a Trump pardon (if possible) and Trump is not someone you want to depend on.

Roger Stone mocks Mueller after indictment in Instagram post

So in the past week, we’ve had 10 people killed in mass shootings by WHITE AMERICANS.

Yet, Trump and his cronies are once again banging the Build the Wall drum behind false and/or completely misleading information :banghead:

Trump accidentally admits he's not the smartest.

Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2019

One thing is clear from the dysfunction of Washington over the last few weeks: we need term limits NOW!

RT 🔁 if you agree that career politicians are part of the problem in Washington. #TermLimits

— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) January 27, 2019

Imagine getting to Congress and somehow deciding that the problem is that the lobbyists don't have ENOUGH power, so we'd better make sure that the actual legislators are neophytes who need to rely on their institutional expertise.

I've been coming around more and more to this line of thinking, but there has to be a happy medium in here where we can cap influence on leadership, while limiting leadership terms at the same time. Or making it much, much harder for leaders to continue to hold onto power the longer they are in office. At this point though, I think you're right about lobbyists frothing at the mouth over new people to 'show the ropes' to and how to get things done. We can kiss any manner of representation away if that's the case.

YES. There is a place for some reforms/improvements. But term limits are like burning down your house to get rid of ants in your kitchen. It causes way bigger problems than it solves.

Sometimes I wish this board had a like button. Progressives shooting themselves in the foot by over thinking their cause and pouting because they don't get their way is large part of why we're in this mess in the first place.

You think Brexit would have blown that "strategy" up for everyone.

One of my favorite lines from The West Wing is, "We have term limits. They're called elections." And I totally agree with that. If people in a district want a career politician representing them, then that's their right.

People are fooling themselves if they think term limits will get the crooks out and bring in the good guys. There's an endless amount of cynical, partisan politicians to rotate in. My favorite example of this is when the GOP finally ousted Rostenkowski (only because he was indicted), the Democrat who came to replace him two years later was none other than Rod Blagoievich.

yup

Yay. I really don't care either way but am slightly disappointed that Pelosi didn't make him wait until after the 3 weeks to see how negotiations were going. But I guess this is Pelosi being a grown up.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/28/polit...y-5/index.html

IMO a great move. Anything to the contrary would have been looked upon a being petty,

Completely agree, she leveraged this situation well throughout and would have undone all that if she had continued to delay it.

It is absolutely astounding that the UK has gotten itself into this position.

Agreed.

When the country was asked about signing up for the EU (then the EEC) in the 1970s it was billed as a trading & customs opportunity.

Nothing was mentioned about EU parliament, COJ, etc taking precedence over or shaping/dictating UK laws.

How we ever got into this position is indeed astounding, but at least we are close to getting out of it now.

The one thing that I really do wish they could sort out is the customs and trading agreement though - that will be a complete PITA for some time by the looks of it

You are aware that none of that is true? - the UK had right of veto over laws and regulations introduced in the EU (UK Voting/Veto rights) and when they had been passed we still could have passed laws to remove their effect or contested them (European / UK Law), however a series of UK Governments have preferred to accept such things and blame the EU rather than take responsibility for them even when they have often had good reason to come to pass (other countries haven't been so willing to do so, despite having weaker positions in the EU than the UK).

But hey, don't let facts get in the way of screwing up the country - Brexit is a total cluster fuck imho, it was granted through a referendum full of false statements and even when that came to light its supporters have continue to bang a drum harking back to a time in history they believe will come again ... it reminds me a lot of Trump supporters wanting to drag the US back to the 1950's in all honesty.

Roger Stone appearing in court now-they had to get him local repesentation at the last second because his lawyers were not part of the local bar and did not file correctly or some such legal lunacy :)

Roger Stone pleaded not guilty as expected.


Meanwhile in Trumpville, we have a weather report:


In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!

Jeff Flake will not run against Trump is 2020-joins CBS news though so at least we will get to see him not back up anything he says for longer.

The stupidity is amazing

So people know, at this stage of the proceedings, everyone pleads not guilty. This does not preclude a "Change of Plea" hearing to guilty later.

Of course, Stone does not appear at all like he's gonna plead guilty. But this wasn't some defiant move on his part. It was routine. It just got the speedy trial clock running.

Of course he’s stupid, but it’s kind of beside the point.

Trump is like one of those animals that’s so perfectly adapted to their environment that they stopped evolving 500 million years ago. Crocodiles have pretty small brains, but they eat well. They just have to float around in the watering hole and eventually dinner comes to them.

Trump doesn’t know anything, just that when he tweets out something he heard on TV everyone talks about him. It satisfies his most primal need, so he keeps doing it.

He's honestly just a high profile internet troll...

oh, who has access to the world's most powerful arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Don't claim to understand the intricacies. In a way I understand the pro-Brexit but I also see the upheaval in leaving the EU.

My one small, personal data point is I remember touring Rome and seeing the EU flag over Castel Sand'Angelo. I don't know the background behind that but it just struck me as wrong and I wondered it Italy was giving up too much sovereignty.

I used the phrase shaping/dictated specifically. Estimates range between 13% and 62% of UK laws are shaped/dictated by EU laws. Not dictated ‘as in you must do xyz, but shaped/dictated because of our agreement with the EU parliament

You are right that in many cases we have an opt out, abd also right that many other countries do not follow EU directives as closely as we have done.

However, why would we not want the ability to shape/dictate 100% of our own laws?

One of the issues with Brexit is that many people on the Leave/Remain sides refuse to acknowledge there is anything good/bad about either opposite viewpoint, or that both campaigns were horrendously run two years ago, with lies, exaggerations and scaremonger from all - it’s as if Remain were shining white lights of virtuosity throughout!

Respectively, the trading side of the EU is great, wouldn’t change much if anything at all; if you’ve ever been to Brussels and the Parliamentarium, and still think the EU parliament is a good idea, we found the place to have different characteristics. In brief, trade good, government bad.

On the campaigning the bus was extremely misleading, but so was all the scaremongering on the other side.

To give you an idea of where I stand, in order of preference to what I hope happens in the next two months:

1. The backstop gets removed, and the revised exit deal goes through
2. No deal exit, which in essence shoul lead to the above fairly quickly as it will not be starting from a blank sheet of paper - there is largely agreement on most areas already. Short term this would be difficult though
3. Remain in the EU under current terms
4. The deal gets voted through with the backstop - the current deal would leave us as a vassal state

There are different measurement ciriteria, but in all of those that i have seen through standard media reports, the UK economy is ranked as the 6th - 9th largest in the world. Nobody has thus far been able to explain to me how one of worlds top ten economies cannot stand on it’s own two feet?

I think that it is disingenuous to compare the campaigns in this way.


I would recommend reading Simon Wren-Lewis:

mainly macro

Thanks for the link, but not exactly an attempt at a balanced, or even unprejudiced, piece

Edit to say I’m happy and keen to discuss, but let’s try and at least use sources that are not so partisan, on either side of the argument

Double edit to say, isn’t there a Brexit thread somewhere rather than derailing this one?

If you mean the ones I included in my post they're from an independent non-partisan fact checking organisation and purely state the facts of the situation? ...

With regards to your hope about the 'backstop being removed' - that is a stupid situation and has huge ramifications which it is incredibly short sighted to remove there has already been more unrest in Ireland than has been the case in decades ... if the backstop is removed there is unfortunately a very real chance of a resurgence of such activity.

Brexit possible effects on Ireland

No, not your link, the one from Super Ugly. Is this best in the Brexit thread?

Edit now the thread’s cleared up: I don’t think the links you posted don’t necessarily say what you think they say: theoretically the UK has a veto, but in practice the issue would have to be so egregious that the ramifications afterwards need to be worth it. We’re talking semantics to a degree, but if your part of a family you compromise more than if you are out if it.

And the second link explains exactly what I had stated: EU law, EU Human Rights, supercedes UK law.

Both links can be summed up by a paragraph in the second link

And just confirm people always like being called stupid and short-sighted, and always maintain civil dialogue in such cases. Your points wouldnt have been any less clear if you had left out the sly phrases, and generally people will engage more to debate instead of insult or insinuation.

I just thought I’d mention it, as removing the backstop is commonly known to mean ‘and replacing with’ something definitive - what that something is has to be agreed, but it can’t be beyond the wit of man to work out a system.

Every lorry has a taco, a license plate and a load list, so as long as the politicians work out a trade agreement, it should be simple with ANPR technology and random weighbridge checks, just like happens in the UK now, and probably more so with systems that a short sighted stupid person like me can think of.

But tbf I didn’t make that 100% clear, so have clarified in the Brexit thread.

Thanks guys, good to be distracted from the "troubles" in the US for a short while!

AlexB, I will say that I have my differences from Marc (e.g. unauthorized immigration, dual citizenship) and I personally never thought of him being "sly". Just my 2 cents worth.

I haven’t either, which is why I was surprised

To be even more fair, he said the situation was "stupid" and the potential solution "short-sighted". He didn't direct either of those at you personally.

If you are going to have debate, at least identify when you are being personally attacked or not, because thin skin won't get you too far.

Edit - You know, what forget about it. I haven't got the strength or time right now. This was just an explanation of why I asked Marc not to use phrases like that, but I've reminded myself why I usually don't engage on this topic: all sides are too entrenched, and facts don't seem to matter.

So let's all get back to Trump.

So back to Trump then. His Intel chiefs testified before Congress yesterday, contradicting much of what Trump believes. But Trump knows best of course, so he had to blast them in his tweets:


https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/30/polit...rea/index.html

Just to clarify I wasn't aiming stupid or any other reference at yourself - just at the entire Brexit situation and the current scenarios being mooted. Apologies if you took it a way I hadn't intended.

Ok that makes sense - I'm sensitive about the backstop because I get the impression a lot of people (in England let alone elsewhere) don't understand the importance of it in Ireland (and I'm half-Irish, as the saying goes - I'm half Irish, half English so I hate myself ;) ).

Foxconn's Wisconsin cash grab just keeps getting better. Now they may not have even 1000 jobs by 2020 and an executive said that you can't look at the Wisconsin investment as a factory.

"investment."

Scott Walker gave them $4 billion dollars to build the incredible shrinking whatever-it-is.

That's not an investment. That's a grift.

I guess that doesn't make the 18 million KY passed out for an Ark, seem quite so bad then.

I hope they can sue Walker/Foxconn

Were there any safeguards at all in this deal for the taxpayers?

And the Republican Assembly leader said the reason is because we got rid of Scott Walker.

Not many. Looks like it just gets prorated down. So the state will pay $230,000 per job and Foxconn doesn't have to create the number of jobs they promised. A sweet deal.

Amazon sort of did something similar when they split their HQ2 up. They got the subsidies for say 50,000 new jobs and then told the state they'll only make 25,000 but get the full subsidy.

This is going to be a common tactic by companies going forward. Promise a ton of jobs, get huge subsidy, scale back what they planned to do and pocket the massive subsidy that was based on the original job number.

I should add that Foxconn pulls this shit all the time. They've been doing it for a decade now. Only the dumbest fucking people on the planet fall for it. So I guess congrats to Scott Walker and people who voted for him. You couldn't run a simple Google search.

He also said that giving Walker the authority to do deals like that independent of the legislature was a mistake because they don't trust Tony Evers so they need(ed) to take that authority away before he could use it.

Shameless.

Now FoxConn isn't just changing focus of what they are doing in WI, they are suspending all work on the project.

Blast that Tony Evers for ruining this project!

Aaron Rupar on Twitter: "Trump downplays the national debt increasing under his watch: "Well, the trade deals won't kick in for a while."… "

sigh

Regarding the deficit, it's hard to figure out if he's running a con or if he's the one being conned.

Along similar lines -- topics that piss off someone like me and presumably not too many others:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...c-rss_20190131

Holy shit does that fire me up. It's possible there's more to the story, but the first impression is a putrid one.

The initial EEOC complaint was over height discrimination because she's a dwarf? Did not see that twist coming, but maybe that odd detail will help this story gain or maintain traction.

And considering "two officials who did not want to be identified confirmed Klein moved the files to a high shelf" I can assume they're not done trying to plug leaks...

Glad to know publicly available testimony on video from the Intelligence Chiefs was completely manipulated and altered by the Deep State Fake News.

Can we just skip to the part of the film where everyone needs to greet the orange clown with Heil Trump?

Per Trump, they told him they were misquoted, taken out of context etc. Should be interesting what Coats and Haspel say in public next (to the inevitable questions)

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/31/polit...pel/index.html

The Adelsons gave $500,000 to pay legal expenses for Trump aides. The following month, Trump awarded Miriam Adelson the Medal of Freedom. pic.twitter.com/eOqn4RR6hF

— Brandt (@UrbanAchievr) February 1, 2019

Another thing that would be a huge scandal for any other president but will be lost in mountain of Trump's corruption.

Holy hell

BREAKING: Gov. Ralph Northam yearbook page shows blackface and Klan photohttps://t.co/6A89ejp5Ho

— The Virginian-Pilot (@virginianpilot) February 1, 2019

Heh.

Live footage of Gillespie’s head of Oppo... pic.twitter.com/ceRh7eqzwy

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) February 1, 2019

"we had huge surpluses with Mexico. With NAFTA, we have huge deficits. We lose $100 billion a year on trade with Mexico. Does that sound good? And this has been going on for many years. So I stopped it. I stopped it a lot."


"I stopped it a lot" is just such a mind numbing stupid thing to say. I know Trump says mind numbing stupid things every single time he opens his mouth, but even with my expectations as low as I thought they could go when reading an article about things the man said, that made me stop and shake my head.

The reason you have a trade deficit is because you are a more prosperous country. We had trade surpluses during the Great Depression. During the last big recession our trade deficit dropped a ton.

It also completely ignores foreign investment. Something that goes up when you have a trade deficit.

This is basic economics.

What in the actual fuck was going on in yearbook publishing in the 1980s?

This.

What happens when the VA Gov resigns? Who even is the Lt. Gov.?

The first polling on Schultz is out. Over half don't know him, but among those that do he has a 4% approval rating. Even more amazing is that it's 4% for Dems, 4% for GOPers and 4% for independents.

dola

And Northam is toast now as the NAACP has just called for his resignation.

This wasn't even a HS yearbook, it was a Medical School one?!?

Wife and I were wondering what colleges (let alone med schools) even HAD yearbooks.

I had the same thought

My college had a yearbook

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/o...athy-tran.html


My wife (steadfastly R) watched clips of Northam's interview and immediately said that no, what he was talking about wasn't abortion but palliative care (she's a NICU nurse).

Wow, there's a lot of apathy here. No/hardly mention of Booker or Harris recent announcements.

Not apathy, there is a lot of time before that election-enough to see how they are going to handle Trump in the meantime. There's a couple unexpected running like Marianne Williamson, author and Oprah's spiritual advisor


Marianne Williamson, Oprah’s spiritual adviser, is running for president - Vox


not holding out much hope for her getting far, but I would have said the same for Trump too.

Our country is a fucking joke. Jesus Christ.

Literally every member of the Democratic party is running, so I expect each announcement will get little interest unless there's a big surprise.

That is the way I am feeling. Some who have announced are interesting. and all of them have their flaws. It is going to be sometime before we can even so who will gain traction, and who will almost immediately run out of money and drop.

nvm. Article I read was incorrect. It is Justin Fairfax.

That was the strangest part for me. Why does a medical school have a yearbook and why would you put that in it?

Also this is the kind of headline that lets you know its a bad day for your political career.

Now Northam is saying he isn't in the picture. But yesterday he apologized for being in the picture. Was he involved in so many racist photo shoots that he can't remember when he was a character and when he wasn't? That doesn't seem like a helpful defense.

Yeah, this is a textbook example of how NOT to handle a PR crisis.

Apparently he had a 1 PM press conference scheduled to announce his resignation and then he scrapped that. What an absolute dumpster fire.

I bet Trump is loving this. He could shoot a white person on 5th Ave and the media would give it very little coverage.

Rip Van Winkle I presume and you been sleeping the past three years? I get your point, but terrible analogy. Trump can't sneeze and not have it over-covered by all media.

I just have a hard time believing he didn't see the picture before he apologized, and I also don't think I would have to ask friends to make sure it wasn't me in the picture. If he did, then he should resign anyway as a complete moron.

Judge much guys?

Like you all never got black out drunk in college and dressed in KKK garb?

:devil:

Yeah, next they'll be saying dressing as Michael Jackson (including darkening your face) is wrong.

I guess I am of the era where you could dress up like Michael Jackson without using blackface and you'd be just fine. he must be thriller era?

I lack the capacity to really understand what it must’ve been like to be an African-American man in medical school—the pinnacle of our educational system—in the 1980’s and to have to excel academically while this culture was going on all around you.

‪Would you be completely shocked if at least one Dem 2020 contender’s campaign has reached out to Northam’s people asking him to hold off on resigning until the candidate can issue a statement demanding his resignation?‬