Donald Trump is the President Mark IV (Read Mod Warning in OP)

Captain Obvious wrote: »

Yeah but the winning side is the one to make these decisions and they don't want to fix something that gives them an advantage.

It's more than that.

Here's an article breaking down gerrymandering in the US from fivethirtyeight:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hating-gerrymandering-is-easy-fixing-it-is-harder/

It's an in depth look at it with a series of different algorithms displayed and what sort of results they'd bring up, but it still works under the assumption that their current system of districts is in itself a valid and representative form of democracy, and it seems to be a fundamental failure on that level to me.

Perhaps there are legal barriers to changing the system, and obviously the Republicans would oppose them because a representative system prevents minority-supported right wing parties from maintaining the unfair advantage they have, but it would be more difficult to fight politically than fighting against the Democrats' own gerrymandering.

FPTP is making a balls of democracy on both sides of us.

It is a major issue with trying to run a united gathering (be it the US or the EU etc) whilst giving plenty of free reign to the individual states. IMO, the thinking was that in overall terms it would be relatively balanced, but if a particular party can take over certain states, or indeed counties within certain states, it allows them almost free reign to do whatever they want.

The idea, again IMO, was that each state would operate individually, yet the parties have driven certain actions across the states (so a federal management) whilst the actual federal bodies have no ability to stop it. So each state would make decisions based on what best suited them, but the reps in the Houses would compromise based on what was best for the country. What we now see is that the state reps are doing what they believe best suits the party and the reps in the Houses are doing the same.

Sarah Huckabee's Comical Ali statement on the Bob Woodward book was all I've heard as an attempt to downplay the significance of the fact that the USA is being ruin by a man-child with an 5th grade grasp of geopolitics.

The Trumpists have been notable by their absence here, apart from the odd Republican studiously ignoring the issues raised.

Has anyone ventured into the fetid depths of r/theDonald to see how the Basket of Deplorables are trying to put a brave face on things?

oscarBravo wrote: »

Part of why I believe the USA to be irredeemably broken is that there don't seem to be any independent third parties.

Everything appears to be partisan. Even Judges are labeled with D or R - in what civilised country do you see that? Can you imagine someone predicting how a judge in Ireland will rule based on whether he or she is a FF or FG appointee?

We don't have gerrymandering in Ireland because constituency boundaries are drawn by an independent commission. The problem with trying to do something similar in the USA is that the ruling party will try - probably successfully - to pack the "independent" commission with its cronies. And, remember, the conduct of federal elections is at the discretion of the states, so there's very little the federal government can do about it, even assuming it wanted to.

There's a very different requirement, and one could argue we have our own problems with the functions of our different houses of parliament.

In Ireland, constituencies are something in the 100k person ball park, and there's varying levels of parochialism that go along with that.

And that's not an issue in itself - someone needs to represent people at the local level, but the weakness of the Seanad perhaps means there's a lack of big picture thinking in our system.

In the US, the constituencies are huge - millions of people - and there's only so much you can do for the local community at that stage. But there doesn't need to be, because there's so much devolved power to states that they can look after their own affairs to a large extent.

So then the question is, why have constituencies at all? What purpose do they serve when representing an entire state at a federal level?

It would be far easier to represent different types of people rather than different geographical groupings of people, which I would argue is more relevant in a federal house of government, if there was a communal pool of candidates.

everlast75 wrote: »

Or the "chemtrails made my frog gay" one...

It's a fun one for sure but I don't recall seeing it in here. Not that I would be too surprised if it did.


In other news, Birther and former infowars "journalist" Jerome Corsi has been subpoenaed to appear in from of a grand jury this Friday by Mueller.

The lawyer, David Gray, said that he anticipates that investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, plan to ask Mr. Corsi about his discussions with Mr. Stone, who appeared to publicly predict in 2016 that WikiLeaks planned to publish material damaging to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
“He fully intends to comply with the subpoena,” Mr. Gray said, adding that the subpoena was not specific about the topic but that he and his client anticipated “it has to do with his communications with Roger Stone.”

I do wish he'd hurry up and indict Roger Stone, especially since he was identified in the last round. I'm sure that there's a good reason for Mueller taking his time, for example, allowing time for others who may by exposed to come to him.


It's worth noting that Stone associate Randy Credico has also been subpoenaed and Andrew Miller, another associate is being chased down, legally speaking at the moment.

This is mad. A senior official in the white house has published an op-ed in the New York Times. He/she is anonymous but the gist of it is that Trump is a thick cnut and that they're preventing his worst excesses.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

If Trump wasn't paranoid enough after the Woodward revelations, he sure will now.

Water John wrote: »

The writer indicates that there is a core of resistance (numbers), within the WH.

And yet, his supporters love him. The whole thing is bonkers. He is so obviously unfit for the job and even his own staff think so. But some people look at this guy and think "This guy's good". It's baffling.

UsedToWait wrote: »

Rick Wilson's 'Everything Trump Touches Dies' does a great job of lifting the rocks to show the various crawlies that have been drawn to the Trump swamp.

I get the impression that Rick Wilson has no problem with the Swamp, he just doesn't like that its Trump who's in charge of it now.

AbusesToilets wrote: »

The State government in North Carolina is profoundly corrupt, The Depths that the majority Republican rulers will go to to rig things in their favor knows no shame

In 2016 a report found it was no longer a democracy and compared it's voting procedures to Cuba, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/north-carolina-not-democracy-elections-cuba-iran-venezuela-gop-a7494561.html

mcmoustache wrote: »

This is mad. A senior official in the white house has published an op-ed in the New York Times. He/she is anonymous but the gist of it is that Trump is a thick cnut and that they're preventing his worst excesses.

If Trump wasn't paranoid enough after the Woodward revelations, he sure will now.

You know what, if the administration are operating a mini coup d'etat because they think that is preferable to allowing the elected president use the powers that were vested in him, they need to assume responsibility for that and to hell with "precipitating a constitutional crisis". How is there not a constitutional crisis already if the president's staff are acting according to their own opinions to disobey him?

And I'm not a fan of Trump - but I think this moral cowardice and dishonesty at all levels of US politics are a large part of the problem now, and possibly the reason he got there in the first place.

Video here

https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1037449851414487040

26000 Elephants wrote: »

I get the impression that Rick Wilson has no problem with the Swamp, he just doesn't like that its Trump who's in charge of it now.

UsedToWait wrote: »

Sure, he's a self-confessed Republican flim-flam merchant.


But he neatly skewers the ragtag band of racists, chaos-mongers, incompetents and patsys that make up this administration.

He's a pro-gun, small government, free market, free trade, low tax neocon from what I gather. He's a sane US conservative and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I'd agree with him on a lot of topics but I lean more to to the right when it comes to Irish politics.



What makes Wilson and others such as Max Boot, Evan McMullen and other NeverTrumpers different from those on the Trump Train is that they at least live in the same factual reality that most sane people do. They have different ideas about how things should be done but they agree on the same facts as someone coming from the middle-left would.


You can debate with people like that. You can't with people who get their facts from actual Fake News or with people who think actual news is Fake News.



It's a shame really but here we are.

strandroad wrote: »

WH staff are Republicans. They prefer to keep Trump on life support to introduce their Republican policies rather than walk out or dethrone him and risk losing the White House to Democrats. They make it clear in the NYT essay: they prefer him and to be able to cut taxes to the alternative.

What has been described in the essay and detailed in the Woodward book is basically a coup d'etat. A non-traditional one if you like, but a coup all the same.

In that regard, it doesn't matter that Trump is a mentally unbalanced man-child and ignorant unworldly simpleton, he was elected to office and the constitutional duties and responsibilities of that office are very clear. The fact that staff are manipulating his information flow and intervening in his decisions so they become something other than his intent (for however long his intent lasts) is essentially a subversion of the office.

The fact this may have been done in history with other presidents, for reason of mental or physical infirmity and never disclosed or prosecuted is irrelevant, whats going on now is a violation of the constitution and/or law and I guarantee you that some more noble people in Congress and the FBI are agonising whether to intervene on that basis.

The White House is down folks.