SCOTUS stops the election interference....cold!

What authority would those states have over Idaho or Texas? Only the federal government would have that authority, and that would depend on federal courts interpreting the Constitution (e.g., the privileges and immunities clause) to give it that authority. Meagain brought up the Civil War, which is an admittedly extreme but apt example of the back and forth over states rights. If the Yankees don't like slavery, they don't have to have it in their states and southerners who don't like it are free to move up north. Problem solved? I don't think so, and apparently others back then agreed and went to war over the issue. Because we're actually one nation and one humanity, not 50. And when some of the states abuse some their citizens at the behest of local majorities , it's an issue for all of us. The Supremacy Clause of Art.VI makes the feds, acting within the scope of their delegated powers, supreme over the states. Not long after the Civil War, local majorities in the Southern states took measures to restore white supremacy. The rest of the country looked away until the fifties and sixties, until folks like Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall. and Martin Luther King jogged our consciences enough to do something about it, and the Warren Court provided legal backing to challenge it thru the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause, the Fifteenth Amendment, and yes, the commerce clause.

Of course, it only becomes a "two sides' matter where a "baby" is involved. I'm unable to think of a zygote or blastocyst as a baby, because it's unlikely to feel anything or have the slightest awareness of its existence. Those qualities seem to come later, about the third trimester, which is about the time Roe identified as the point of viability outside the mother. My state decreed that life begins before pregnancy (implantation), at the point of fertilization. I don't see any "baby" involved at that point.

As I said, that's not always feasible for many, and they continue to be Americans, under the protection of the Constitution and federal law. with full protection of the Bill of Rights. For the most part, states do their own thing with little interference, which is good. But some were happy to deny racial minorities their rights for nearly a century after the Civil War. I'm glad we decided no longer to tolerate that.

 

Catherine The Great and Gregory Orlov invaded Ukraine and Crimea in 1770. They also partitioned Poland. I am sure that Putin gets hard each time he thinks of The Empress.

 

It appears as though you can argue that a person should not be denied any right or equal treatment due to the color of their skin but need not be afforded the right to life based upon whatever YOU believe is the appropriate developmental milestone.

Since you’ve brought racial issues along into your discussion of abortion, would you care to tell us the history and philosophy of Mrs. Sanger?

 

It can't be said that it's been stopped dead when, yesterday, Trump stated it was alive and well - that the court cases emanate from Biden.
I think that's rubbish btw, but if the initial statement on this thread were correct, things wouldn't be as they are today.

My point is that to try to make each step in political progress out to be a win or a lose is futile and immature.
There's no such thing as 100% in politics so, in one single instance, one person may be edging in front and in another they may be lagging behind.

However, it seems to me, the US electoral mechanism needs improvement and I don't understand why there aren't loud calls for the system to be changed.
What is the electoral college (EC) for if not to subvert the will of the people, i.e. the number of votes cast by the people for each candidate?
( I understand the reasons given for having the EC but, IMO, that's just a mask for subverting democracy).


Surely those numbers don't need to be manipulated to achieve/deliver a final result?
As for the UK, it's bad enough here with a minority being the group in the population that elects the next party to government.
Even without that 'electoral college' aspect, a minority usually wins in a first-past-the-post-system (FPTP).

There's a better way and it seems to make the politicians work harder and more effectively and it also seems to diminish the power of lobby groups.
That system is called PR, proportional representation and, of course, the party in government seemingly won't ever introduce it because they're in power because of FPTP.

Afterthought, for clarity, I'm not suggesting UK is better than US.
We both have weaknesses in our democratic systems and they need to be resolved to prevent the current shit-show that's going on in both regions.

 

A more direct form of democracy may well be more desirable. One problem with this in a territory as large as the us is that differing states, and certainly differing regions, have differing economic and cultural interests. Legislating those things from a central power, with a strictly democratic system, would mean that the most population dense cities/states would determine the economics and cultural outcomes for all and they would naturally favor their own interests at the expense of the rest.

Having such decisions made on a more local level, closer to the people they affect, would allow the policies to align more closely with the interests and values of those people.

 

I happen to agree with the concept of localised government.
I wasn't so much considering increased central governance.
I was considering the making of representation more, um, representative in the two DC houses. Just that bit.
On from there, shouldn't the number of reps per state be determined by population size? (Maybe it already is, IDK)
And State legislature to remain to apply localised economic and cultural laws?

Interesting that the UK is sort of following because the four nations, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each has it's own devolved government, to apply localised government and to be (supposedly) more accountable at a local level.
It's far from perfect but then, in politics, what can be perfect?
Maybe the goal should be 'fair and equitable', rather than perfect?

 

The house is proportional representation while the senate is equal representation for every state. Kind of a check against the most populous states running roughshod over the lesser. Kind of.

“Fair and equitable” is too dependent upon who gets to define those terms. Even if we were all able to come to a consensus on the matter, I strongly suspect we’d end up finding Squealer at the bottom of the ladder, in the middle of the night, covered in paint.

The beauty, to me, of 50 different experiments in values and policy is not only that the outcomes can easily be observed and compared, but also that people can vote with their feet.

 

Ridiculous. Every man with that much money has women throwing themselves at them. Just like every star basketball player. Take Kobe Bryant for instance. Those that hate on Trump will automatically believe he is guilty no matter what the facts are. Sure he said comments about being able to grab a woman by the pussy because that was true for him. That was his reality. There are many woman that would jump at the chance for a multi billionaire to grab them by their pussy. That says nothing bad about either party it is just true. Everyone has different assets that they use to work their way through this experience we call life. Brains, brawn, money, power, sense of humor, great looks, great in bed….etc etc We all use what we have going for us to find our mate and have a life together. For Trump, it was money. For the women, it was great looks. So what. There is nothing wrong with either one of them except when 20 or 30 years later trying to say he took advantage of her or whatever. The women that want to flaunt themselves in front of the men with money hoping they will do something “inappropriate” and the. They got their meal ticket. My brother had that done to him and he was just an engineer. The woman bragged that she got herself a meal ticket. She was pregnant within a couple months. Sad he got caught up in all that, but at least he is finally free of it now.

 

"those that hate on trump will automatically believe he is guilty no matter what that the facts are."

The prick is beneath my contempt. He paid 25 million dollars to keep from having to testify in court over a phony real estate school.

He stiffed contractors after having work done by them affecting not only the companies , but the working men employed by them.

He told over 30,000 documented lies during his time as president and he is STILL LYING EVERY TIME HE OPENS HIS UGLY FUCKIN' PIE HOLE.

Those are a few of the reasons --facts--why I detest the lying, crooked son of a bitch. Why don't you tell us what you think is admirable about the motherfucker, JH93022.

 

Oooh, oooh! Pick me! Pick me!

I’ll tell you what is so admirable about him. He upsets the people who have told the rest of us that we are morally and intellectually inferior, repeatedly, for decades. He’s uncouth. Obnoxious. A detestable human being and probably worse. And he doesn’t care what you think of him. He never apologizes. You hate him. You have many good reasons to hate him. We love him BECAUSE you hate him.

Now, to be fair, we actually do like the effects of his policies like REAL wages rising for the first time since the early 70s. We liked the increased jobs and other economic opportunities. We liked his refusal to invade the world for the neocons/neolibs. We liked his insistence that trade deals be in the best interests of Americans rather than international finance. We liked his desire to secure our southern border before those of say the Ukraine.

We liked all of those things but even if we never got to see any of those benefits from his policies, the fact that you and people who think like you and look down on others like you do, absolutely hate him, are why we love him. If you want to know what caused the rise of Trump, stare for a very long time into a mirror.

 

Of course T is all about hate, the celebration of ignorance, and selfishness. That is why more than a million people died in America from Covid. Tried any bleach injections lately? Or veterinary medicines? Real, compassionate human beings don’t feel “morally and intellectually superior”…..they just believe in a world where everyone matters. They don’t tell jokes about disabled people, put women down, or believe in self aggrandizement at others expense.

It’s about believing the concerns about climate change based on evidence rather than the selfish nonsense from the fossil fuel lobby. T and his cronies would go to Vegas and bet future of humanity, their children, an our very existence holding a pair of “2’s”.

Responsible people believe everyone should share the economic benefits of our economy, not just the wealthy few. I have worked with economic statistics since 1974 and your analysis is just plain wrong. There have been extended periods real income growth since 1970 and the current period of job growth and increasing real income is post T and a Biden administration occurrence. What is indisputable is the increasing concentration of wealth by the few since RR….kept in place by Republicans.

A lot of Americans envision a future without hate, without poverty, without discrimination, shared by everyone. We’re not there yet.

 

And there you are. Displaying both your true moral and intellectual superiority over “the great unwashed”.

“We’re not there yet.” Got some news for you: we never will be. You will never achieve your or anyone else’s version of utopia. It doesn’t exist and it never will. And the rest of us have come to notice that your version seems to benefit you and your ideological and demographic brethren a whole lot more than it does everyone else. Kind of like how all the communist revolutionaries always end up with a whole lot more of everything, after the revolution, than the proles they claimed to be “fighting” for.

As to my economic analysis being wrong: are you using the government’s own numbers on CPI and wages, by chance? Reminds me of that punchline where the statistician goes to the window, pulls down the blind, turns back to the men at the boardroom table and says, “What do you want these numbers to say?”

 

List any “statsics” you care to. To use a phrase that seems to mean more in your ideology, our “lived experience” during trumps presidency bared no resemblance to your numbers.

As to my supposed intellectual/moral superiority: I’ve made no such claim. I simply reject yours. And it appears to bother you that your claims to such no longer have any power over us.

 

Let’s give Covid some credit. It did quite a bit of good. For that whole year or two, it almost completely eliminated deaths from the flu, heart disease, emphysema, COPD, etc.. All other cause mortality dropped as well. That’s a pretty amazing feat for a virus that totally wasn’t manufactured at all and miraculously crossed the species barrier due to people putting exotic meats in their soup.

And besides, covid was necessary to get rid of orange-man-bad. The economy was booming, Americans were more optimistic than they’d been in decades, and ballots would have had to be cast largely in person if it weren’t for covid. Covid did us all a favor didn’t it? As a good communist once said, “a million deaths is a statistic.” A small price to pay to eliminate a significant obstacle to your utopia, don’t you think, comrade?

 

Boy, do we need George now!! And right in here!!

 

Let’s assume that all of the things you just listed were true. The perspective I’m expressing is that your side has lost us “normies”/politically center/indifferent. The left has lied so many times and threatened us with loss of our livelihoods if we don’t accept, support, and adopt your absurdities.
The right fucks us over but they don’t lie to us about it and make us repeat things that we know are not true. Well, not as much anyway.

They don’t expect us to believe that a man can be a woman and vice-versa. They don’t tell us that violent criminals are just misunderstood and that we’d all just be happier and live in peace if us non-criminals just handed over all our guns. They don’t tell us that we’re racists if we do, say, or think the wrong things and that we’re also just clever racists if we don’t. They don’t tell us to abort or sterilize our children. They don’t tell us we’re evil for existing and driving to work in a car. They lie to us plenty. They fuck is over plenty. But they don’t try to make us believe that two plus two equals five.

And trump is hated by both the left and the right wings of the uniparty. Despite his many grievous flaws, that single fact sells him more than all his braggadocio ever could.