BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

stochastic

Actually the USA is a Representative Republic, not a democracy (where the majority always rules).

Are you accusing Chas_P of being a racist?

If damphools like Jeremy and John can be classified as a race unto themselves I plead guilty.

With that said, I think I will follow Ken’s lead and exit this forum. I’m not going to change your mind and you aren’t going to change mine. And when you get right down to where the rubber meets the road nothing that either of us says on an internet message board will have any more effect on the great scheme of things than a fart has on a tornado. So I bid you adieu and wish you well with your future endeavors.

Actually the USA is a Representative Republic, not a democracy (where the majority always rules).

What's the point? All countries that call themselves democracies have some kind of constitution that prevents 51% of population to decide to turn the other 49% into dog food, or to nuke Greenland.

Whether they are also republics or not is a matter of whether the head of state is elected or not.

I have a suspicion (correct me if I am wrong) that the cliche that USA is "a republic, not a democracy" is a word play intended to make it sound as if the Republican party is more loyal to the constitution than the Democratic party is. (Of course, they may well be, but that's another issue, since both parties are pro democracy and pro an elected head of state).

Wasn't there a lot of whining about the 2016 election not being decided by national popular vote? The argument is that the US wasn't really democratic since the Electoral College determined the winner and not the popular vote.

well, let's start at 2nd grade level with you. Reread your original post. By implication the wording assumes Chas_P is a racist. I suggest you learn a little bit more about writing before posting further.

If damphools like Jeremy and John can be classified as a race unto themselves I plead guilty.

yikes. ldrews, were you ever diagnosed with a learning disability?

I have a suspicion (correct me if I am wrong) that the cliche that USA is "a republic, not a democracy" is a word play intended to make it sound as if the Republican party is more loyal to the constitution than the Democratic party is.

Wasn't there a lot of whining about the 2016 election not being decided by national popular vote? The argument is that the US wasn't really democratic since the Electoral College determined the winner and not the popular vote.

Apparently you have Dennison's disease and can't remember that you quit this forum. Or maybe you just don't have any integrity and your word means nothing.

My friends, I've done the unthinkable and resigned my position at a company some of you may be familiar with; I've moved in with my girlfriend and her 2-year-old son. This is my formal goodbye.

Let’s talk about President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the INF treaty.

Unlike, say, the Paris climate pact, or the trade deals Trump has criticized, the INF treaty wasn’t something the president particularly seemed to care about. (It’s an agreement with Russia to ban mid-range, ground-based nuclear weapons.) What’s going on instead is the increased influence of National Security Adviser John Bolton who, as Dan Drezner puts it, “never met an international agreement that he did not want to depart.”

I’ll leave the pros and cons of the decision to the experts. What’s interesting to me is the process, because it perfectly embodies something I expected to see from this administration: random results based on personnel decisions.

For most people in government, Bolton was a known quantity. He would have predictably hawkish policy positions (which haven’t served him very well in the past) and he’d be an experienced bureaucratic warrior. Choosing him to replace H.R. McMaster, then, amounted to a fairly major change in the administration’s national-security outlook.

Yet there’s no evidence Trump thought of it that way. By most accounts, Trump chooses officials based on his impression of the person, not on the policies they’d pursue if hired. He is said to mainly value superficial traits, such as whether the potential hire “looks the part.” Trump is also susceptible to flattery and has blacklisted most people who have criticized him. As a result, the applicant pool for any top opening is far shallower than it would normally be – both because so many governing professionals have criticized Trump and because he seems to be less tolerant of past slights than most presidents.

Bolton’s hire was one result of this unusual process. And so now, more or less at random, the Trump administration is exiting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (Or at least announcing that it intends to do so.)

Granted, there are limits to how random things can get. Any nomination that needs confirmation must be acceptable to Republican senators, for one thing. Although it may seem like they’re willing to go along with anything Trump does, it’s quite likely that they’ve shut down many potential picks behind the scenes. Even those high-ranking positions that don’t require confirmation may still be subject to a party veto. And veteran party operatives within the White House are most likely controlling the pipeline of personnel, so the president generally sees only candidates who are within the party mainstream.

For all his distance from the formal Republican Party, Trump has turned out to have too few people loyal to him personally to really run an old-style personal presidency – and those who are personally loyal to him, such as his daughter and son-in-law, aren’t exactly known as masters of office politics.

So Trump winds up with a weird hybrid of a personal and a partisan presidency. From a limited set of partisan options, he selects personnel according to his somewhat arbitrary personal criteria. And because Trump doesn’t have strong feelings about many areas of policy, and appears to be easily rolled by his staff, his presidency is even more dependent on personnel than normal. That generates a lot of fairly random policy outcomes.

...Yet at a moment when the stakes were high — Republicans needed six seats to claim a majority — the firm had come out of nowhere to become the NRA’s top election contractor.

Acquiring business of this magnitude would be an incredible feat for a firm with no reputation. The question is whether it was really accomplished by Starboard, or another outfit called OnMessage Inc.

Perhaps that lapsus was apt as well. An effort to terrorize AND school your opponents ... uh, no bombs actually exploded? No horrible injuries and maimed bodies? Kinder and gentler terrorists that just want to show you what they can do? I wonder when was the last time that such a thing happened? Should be interesting to see who the DHS and the FBI end up blaming.

Agents who took Cesar Sayoc into custody in Plantation, near Fort Lauderdale, also hauled away a white van that was plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan "CNN SUCKS" and images of Democratic figures with red crosshairs over their faces.

According to public records, Sayoc is a registered Republican and has been arrested numerous times over the years including one case in which he was accused of making a bomb threat.

Next to the pro-Trump stickers plastered all over the white van that authorities believe belongs to Cesar Sayoc are the names and photos of dozens of prominent Democrats and media figures — former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former first lady Michelle Obama, former attorneys general Eric Holder and Loretta E. Lynch, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, filmmaker Michael Moore, “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd.

Several of them are framed by gunsights.

Authorities on Friday arrested Sayoc and identified him as a suspect in the sprawling mail-bomb scare that included at least a dozen suspicious packages sent to political and media figures, including many pictured on the van.

Sayoc, a 56-year-old registered Republican, lives in Aventura, Fla., near the facility from where many of the packages were mailed, authorities said.

I assume you are parroting Fox Propaganda Channel airheads whose first thought, without any evidence to remotely support their ridiculous fantasy, was that the bombs were a false flag operation by Democrats.

The question the right fringe talk show hosts...

Florida man arrested in probe of bombs mailed to Dennison critics

From the article:

The FBI has arrested a Florida member of Criminals for Trump for sending pipe bombs to prominent democrats:


But will this stop the 'false flag' idiots? Fat chance...

to be fair...



For anyone keeping score at home, we're no longer together and I now live in California. Life is weird, you know?