2025 Political Thread

[Central Ohio Wx]

We all want to see America great, and the Honorable Taylor Greene's sacrifice has given me better understanding of and affection for those who unite under that as a slogan that is currently called MAGA.

I don't know if I'd call her "honorable", as she still is a QAnon conspiracy theorist and Christian nationalist who has no place in politics (although I am glad she's taken a decent stance on the Epstein issue).

 

[Mike S]

The House expanded?

We have arbitrarily decided that 435 is the number of representatives that we have as a country, and states gain and lose representatives as the populations shifts.

I don't remember the exact numbers, but the Founding Fathers intended the number to grow as the population grew, and the House should probably be 10 times larger than it is now.

I'm not sure the FF could have imagined a country with hundreds of millions, but they never intended a finite number of representatives.

 

[Mike S]

I don't know if I'd call her "honorable", as she still is a QAnon conspiracy theorist and Christian nationalist who has no place in politics (although I am glad she's taken a decent stance on the Epstein issue).

I'd say the same about any pro-abortion politician.

 

[andyhb]

He is doing this evil s*** on Thanksgiving night? Are you F*CKING kidding me right now? Calling Walz a r******?! "Reverse migration" is Nazi terminology, period.

 

[bjdeming]

Oh no.

 

[andyhb]

Pete Hegseth is a war criminal and a mass murderer.

 

[bjdeming]

What about everybody in the chain of command who either approved (top) or followed the order of the US Secretary of Defense?

What about us, in this democratic republic -- the ultimate authority?

 

[bjdeming]

Reuters: Trump orders airspace over Venezuela closed.

 

[bjdeming]

I can't help thinking that the most realistic way our bloody business off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America is going to end -- since we are not the world's "600-pound canary" any more (and for the brief time that we were after WWII we were great, helping a shattered world rebuild) -- is either by us giving Venezuela and Colombia and whoever else had nationals among the flies that we swatted with our railgun million$$$ in reparations, perhaps enforced by international boycotts, etc, or by us earning back the world's respect by enforcing our own laws.

As I understand that long dry read I linked to, the actions quite likely are illegal under the...well, read the article It's complicated: Illegal under US laws as described there.

And since the buck stops in the Oval Office, and those are high crimes, we should impeach, convict, and perhaps even imprison Mr. Trump and any other high-level decision-makers responsible for the actions.

Unfortunately, service members too must follow US law as well as orders. That might be painful for us all in the short term, but following the law is always best in the long run.

And at least 80 people, perhaps more by now, are dead, for no other reason given than their killers' saying that they were bad people.

Were they? And even if some were, who and what are we to do what we did?

By enforcing our own laws on our own people, we'll regain the world's respect, as mentioned, and maybe some self-respect, too, which is an entirely different thing from bullying those who can't fight back.

Though after Mr. Trump's Do-Si-Do's with Putin, I think it will be a while before anyone refers to the US again as Leader of the Free World.

 

[bjdeming]

PS: There is nothing special about the above -- I'm just reacting as I was conditioned to react by all the mass media in my younger life.

Such shenanigans would have sparked an uproar -- read Mike Royko's columns on various long-ago issues, and there were many other commentators -- the pols knew it and no such criminal shenanigans occurred openly (thus limiting what could be done secretly).

And it's not just me. As Reuters notes on another issue:

...Nixon’s plotting remained a secret until the Watergate hearings exposed it, turning his enemies list into a symbol of presidential abuse. The secrecy reflected a political culture in which retaliation was whispered, not broadcast, and where institutional checks blunted many of Nixon’s ambitions.


Trump’s approach reverses that pattern, historians say. He has openly named his perceived enemies, urged prosecutions in public and framed vengeance as a campaign vow. Some say today’s “enemies list” politics are in that sense farther‑reaching than Nixon’s, possibly signaling a shift toward a normalization of retribution in American political life.


Corey Brettschneider, a political science professor at Brown University who has written a book on power grabs by American presidents, said Nixon was ultimately checked and forced to resign by Congress, including members of his own Republican Party. “That's just not happening now,” he said...

The times, they do change.

I'm just an old lady flappin' my gums, basically, and will not have to live long with the results of ALL decisions made today by the citizens of this democratic republic. (Doing nothing is decisive, too, as is the act of looking the other way.)

Younger people will.

 

[bjdeming]

Speaking of decisive...not:



Sometimes, during this awful year, I think we have too much time for shenanigans between elections. There are times when heads need to get out of the way and let the people lead via a snap election after some sort of no-confidence vote.

But then, people, even well-intentioned, organized ones, do turn into mobs and this country does need a head as well as heads.

The time lag in between US elections is protection against mob rule, and it gives us a chance to assess the true effectiveness and reliability/benefit of those we elected.

It's a good compromise, and currently it is showing us some major problems that were not apparent to everyone when we all voted last year.

My biggest question now is whether the Democrats have learned NOT to do things that just give us more Trump. Judging by the push behind Mamdani, that's a big "No," but there are centrists, too: enough to make a difference and move the party underneath the same bell curve around the center that I truly believe We The People have always occupied?

 

[Mike S]

I'm wondering if the up-to-now spineless Republicans who are challenging Trump after the boat bombing will stick to their guns? They probably won't, but this *could* be a turning point.

 

[andyhb]

 

[bjdeming]

Oregon is a big 7734 NO! on this from the getgo.

 

[andyhb]

Pure unadulterated racism.

 

[bjdeming]

And/or dementia.

5 things to know about the Somali community in Minnesota after Trump's attacks

Almost 58% of the Somalis in Minnesota were born in the U.S. Of the foreign-born Somalis in Minnesota, an overwhelming majority –- 87% — are naturalized U.S. citizens. Of the foreign-born population, almost half entered the U.S. in 2010 or later, according to the Census Bureau.

www.pbs.org

There is a converse to "this is how you get more Trump" and it is "this is how you get more PBS & Co.": it has been a long, long time since I have ever turned to their sociopolitical stuff (the nature content often is good).

Where are the leaders who show us the big tent, the America we all live in?

 

[Central Ohio Wx]

Pure unadulterated racism.

Welcome to Trump's 2025! We're the terrorists for protesting against an evidently-corrupt system but he's freely allowed to be extremely racist, homophobic, anti-abortion, you name it. Heck, he's even sided with terrorists.

 

[bjdeming]

I had to stop following Rupar -- he's doing great work but it was so terribly depressing.

This isn't exactly upbeat, either:

Palantir CEO and Trump ally Alex Karp is no stranger to controversial (troll-ish even) comments. His latest one just dropped: Karp believes that the U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean (which many experts believe to be war crimes) are a moneymaking opportunity for his company...

Palantir is the company involved in playing "hackathon" with our IRS records.

All this outrageous stuff now, including that ridiculous comment above, distracts people from the incredibly serious ongoing abuses of power that began soon after Inauguration Day.

 

[andyhb]

I had to stop following Rupar -- he's doing great work but it was so terribly depressing.

This isn't exactly upbeat, either:



Palantir is the company involved in playing "hackathon" with our IRS records.

All this outrageous stuff now, including that ridiculous comment above, distracts people from the incredibly serious ongoing abuses of power that began soon after Inauguration Day.

Palantir is Peter Thiel's doing. Guy is one of the worst people in this country and that's a long list to be at the top of.

 

[andyhb]

Um, this is really, really bad. Straight up caught in a cover-up operation.