monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Free speech? Not for Democrats like Tliab


https://thepoliticalinsider.com/ny-dem-forcibly-removed-from-event-featuring-rashida-tlaib-after-he-asks-about-her-anti-semitism/

It isn't as black and white as some would have it. Maybe the push for electors was lead by non-slave states, but that doesn't negate the fact that the interests of the slave states were relevant in the adoption of an electoral college. Their interests as well lead to its adoption.

You aprently know little bout the constitutional convention. The interest of the slave states was served by the three-fifths compromise. It had nothing to do with the Senate or the Electoral College. You can read about "the Great Compromise" by clicking here.

The left's phony concern over voting rights is pretty silly. Where was this supposed concern over voting rights when Barack Obama and the Democrats conspired to disenfranchise Michigan in the 2008 primaries?

If the trivial disparity over voting weights is really such a big deal, the disparity can be easily eliminated by ratifying the Apportionment Amendment. That would not only eliminate most of the disparity, it would also make the House much more small-d democratic, as we'd then have thousands of congressman, each representing a much smaller group of people.

We'll see.

No it isn't.

And it's not like progressives actually care about disenfranchisement in any case. Progressives are the primary perpetrators of disenfranchisement in America.



It's purpose has changed from the original purpose, but the Electoral College still does an outstanding job of preventing Democrats from cheating in elections.

Progressives can't argue using facts or logic, so they resort to childish name-calling.

Why is that a problem?

I'm not opposed to changing from winner-take-all to a different system, but I really don't see the problem with winner-take-all.

America's fatal flaw: The founders assumed our leaders would have some basic decency
Our democracy was founded on optimism about human nature. Amid the Trumpian wreckage, that looks like a bad bet

DAVID MASCIOTRA
FEBRUARY 8, 2020 5:15PM (UTC)

No historian or political scientist has better explained the fragility of American democracy than a poet. When I interviewed the poet Rita Dove three years ago, she offered the following assessment of exactly how a sociopathic president like Donald Trump could inflict irreparable damage on institutions of governance, and the norms — written and unwritten — that have directed them for centuries:

Much of our government seems based on trust, the assumption that people will behave like decent human beings. Yes, the founders implemented checks and balances and limits on power, but there are these loopholes that betray a belief that people will be decent. That optimism on human ethics is something I love about this country. Now, it threatens to harm us.

Decency, in other words, was a bulwark against the corrupt impulses and wicked instincts of men in power. Even Richard Nixon, who had no compunction when persecuting citizen activists or illegally bombing Cambodia, recognized that he was a participant within an important system of laws. Eventually, he was forced to surrender to those laws. Fealty to American order has also motivated unwise and harmful behavior, such as Al Gore agreeing to accept the results of an election under suspicion of fraud for the "good of the country." The erosion of faith in American institutions and their democratic objectives, Gore and Nixon appeared to believe, would create chaos — a fracturing of the public, and a collapse of the government's ability to preserve societal stability.

Faith, like decency, is intangible. It will disappear the second that people no longer honor i or act on it. As Dove explained, decency was essential to the maintenance of the rule of law and governmental functionality in the United States. The election of the most indecent man to ever hold the office of presidency in the modern era was a warning shot across the country. After mocking a disabled reporter, routinely denigrating women and providing encouragement to his "Second Amendment people" if Hillary Clinton became president, he put decency on a gun-range target. What's even more frightening is how quickly his fellow Republicans in Congress and his supporters in the media got in line, rifles in hand, to shoot holes in it.

The recent events of Trump's acquittal in the Senate, his State of the Union address and his spiteful, rambling monologue at the White House on Thursday have collectively acted as the flatline on the heart monitor of decency. As decency dies, American life becomes ever more precarious.

It is a cliché to invoke the aspirational wisdom of John Adams, who said, "We are a nation of laws, not men." The enduring relevance of Adams' elevation of the rule of law is not to say that no prior president has ever broken the law, or that no president, acting within the law, has ever committed an egregious act of cruelty or exploitation. It is to say that the rule of law is all that separates a democratic form of government from dictatorship. Senate Republicans' refusal to punish an outlaw executive for his brazen violations of law offers a hideous display of American decline, one that Alan Dershowitz, a former Harvard law professor, defended with an invitation to monarchy. The president cannot abuse his power, Dershowitz seemed to suggest, if he is the president.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah argued otherwise in explaining his vote for the conviction of Donald Trump. He was the only Republican to do so. Romney not only honored American law, but in referring to his religious faith and the legacy he will leave for his children, eloquently spoke of the importance of decency. He alone in his party acted as if virtue still has any role to play in the stewardship of government, or in arguments about civic life.

For his trouble, Donald Trump Jr. has called Romney a "pussy," and issued a call for his expulsion from the GOP. Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity and other right-wing commentators have echoed the emperor's son with the brilliance of an empty can rattling in a closet. The vulgarity, immaturity and dangerous conformity evident in the rebuke of Romney will earn applause from Republican voters. For half of the electorate, decency is now a third rail.

Worshipful pundits are taking their instruction from the godfather of indecency, Rush Limbaugh. During the State of the Union, Trump awarded the right-wing talk-radio hero with the Presidential Medal of Freedom — a perfect illustration of this administration's willingness to get down on all fours and crawl in the sewer of racism, sexism and mean-spirited degradation.

Limbaugh is a shameless hypocrite who demanded his maid go out to buy dope for him while he broadcasted demands to imprison drug addicts. But what's far worse than his own personal failures is the influence he exerted on American conservatism. He routinely belittled black people and women, telling one African American caller to "remove the bone from her nose" and calling Sandra Fluke, an attorney and women's rights activist who testified before Congress in support of the birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act, a "slut."

Limbaugh has been a cancer on American culture, not unlike the one that is currently eating through his lungs. When Melania Trump clasped the medal around his neck, she proved that the Republican Party will not only tolerate crudeness and hatred, but reward it.

One of the most famous admonishments to take place in the U.S. Senate was Army lawyer Joseph Welch's rhetorical question to Sen. Joseph McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency?"

When it comes to President Trump, the overwhelming majority of Republican officials and the right-wing media system that propagandizes America on their behalf, the answer to Welch's inquiry is a definitive "no."

The consequences, as Rita Dove warned, will manifest far beyond Trump's acquittal and even the election of 2020, regardless of the outcome. The threat is here. The lasting damage to American government, and to the people it is intended to represent, is real.

DAVID MASCIOTRA

Good grief.

That's a common progressive fantasy.

Fortunately, as each new generation grows older, more and more members of that generation become conservatives.

Facts are not nonsense no matter how inconvenient they are for progressives.

The only reason why progressives dislike the Electoral College is because it makes it harder for them to cheat in elections.

If progressives actually cared about democracy, they would have spoken out when Barack Obama and the Democrats conspired to disenfranchise Michigan in the 2008 primaries.



No it wasn't. The Electoral College was designed to put a little bit of the choice of our president in the hands of the people (the people would choose the choosers), while still keeping the decision removed from the common rabble.



A political decision about setting up a political system was purely political?

Why is that a surprise?



No it didn't. The system was changed to account for those changing values. Now electors mostly vote according to the wishes of the people they represent.



That is silly. There is hardly a huge disparity.

And the small disparity that does exist could be easily remedied by simply ratifying the Apportionment Amendment. That would also make the House much more small-d democratic.

Don't be silly. Where was this concern for voting rights when Barack Obama and the Democrats conspired to disenfranchise Michigan in the 2008 primaries?

Besides, we already have one person one vote. As previously noted, modern electors tend to vote according to the will of the state that they represent.

It's the Democrats who have a history of disenfranchising people. Note again Barack Obama and the Democrats conspiring to disenfranchise Michigan in the 2008 primaries.



There is nothing anti-American about preventing Democrats from cheating in elections.

Agreed with every word. Great piece. It hit the nail on the head of what exactly we are living with. The state of our nation is shameful and depressing.

Why can't Democrats just accept that people disagree with them without conducting witch hunts against them?

You are doubly wrong. First, the electoral college is not gimmickry. Many modern democracies are similar.

Second, "one person one vote" certainly doesn't beat it. Why doesn't the EU elect the President of the European Commission via direct popular vote?

So why isn't the President of the European Commission elected by direct popular vote?

For that matter, why isn't the Prime Minister of the UK or the Chancellor of Germany elected by direct popular vote?

The disparity in the weight of their votes is not all that great.

But if you want to fix the problem, ratifying the Apportionment Amendment would eliminate the disparity. It would also make the House much more small-d democratic.

Our Constitution is what makes our system of government so much superior to all of the other systems of government.