904
Trump exempts himself from ethics pledge as watchdogs sound alarms
(www.independent.co.uk)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
904 points (99.3% liked)
politics
19241 readers
2111 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
it usually takes 4-6 years or so for democrats to fix most of whatever republciants screw up.
donvict part 1 will take a generation, at least.
donvict part 2 will take a lot longer and require practically-impossible coordination and commitment to get non-republicants to the levels of representation needed for amendment ratifications and impeachments.
The "United" States of America is over.
We're gonna end up with the "Blue States of America" and the "Republic of Jesusland"
you see that's the thing, its not exactly blue stats. its blue city's, islands surrounded by hundreds of miles of red oceans
Mostly empty oceans
Lets be honest, average iq of the red ocean is negative, theres no "people" there. And for the record i live in red ocean
I'm in the purple ocean! But our laws are very very red
Rural/urban divide is not unique to the US in any way whatsoever. Also, expect polarization to self perpetuate as blue voters move to blue states and red states to move to red states.
Turkey is very similar in this regard. Progressive cities, backwards countryside.
It’s also roughly the size and population of Texas alone. Does it have a wildly unfair Electoral College?
Whoa, lets call it like it is. There will be blue states, and there will be welfare states.
Me in Europe for the first time a long time ago asking the same question in every country and getting the truth from a woman in Rome: "oh, we don't hate the Jews. You're fine here.... But leave the cities.... Yeah, it's like anywhere"
That red ocean is like 3 people on a fucking farm or in a trailer.
An ocean of empty land.
I saw a post about that the other day, it showed a map of all the states with populations smaller than LA county. Almost every single red state was highlighted. Really shows you how silly the electoral college system is.
Liberals never actually fix what conservatives screw up. We never closed Gitmo and we still have troops based in Iraq. We never actually ended the War on Drugs (which has left Republicans a loophole to ban contraceptives by listing them as controlled substances). We never truly repealed Jim Crow and much of the country still relies on forced labor even in liberal bastions like California or New York.
Trump's just pulling back the curtain on how much has rotted.
Clinton fucking balanced the budget.
The real problem is Republican spend 4-8 years screwing everything up. Over the next 4 years, with the slimmest of margins, Democrats roll back 80% of it. Then you come in and say "both sides".
If we want things to stop racheting to the right, we have to elect Dems more than half the time.
For what? A few months? And largely by balancing off the SS Trust, a trick you can only do once (as Bush Jr discovered when he was too far in debt to privatize it).
Half the Democratic Party was along for the ride on the Bush agenda. Kennedy embraced NCLB, Clinton and Kerry fully endorsed the AUMF, Joe Biden authored much of the Patriot Act Hell, Graham-Leech-Biley was signed under Clinton, queuing up the financial crash of 2008.
This isn't just Republicans. The problem is broadly bipartisan.
They do, it's just they mostly concern themselves with the economic screw ups, less-so the rights ones.
Think 'gay people can marry and have kids to give us more economic slaves' vs. 'gay people can't marry, can't have kids, and we're going to use them as a scapegoat for our issues.'
Liberals (which I'm taking to mean Democrats) didn't "fix" gay marriage. Right up until the Iowa Supreme Court decision, in the early 2000's, the argument in Democratic circles was that gay-rights organizations should pipe down, settle for civil unions, and stop making gay marriage an issue. They were afraid of handing the Republicans a weapon. It was the gay-rights organizations that pushed it through the courts, and prominent Democratic politicians like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden "evolved" their positions to support it. I mean no criticism by the use of quotes. Kudos to them for changing their minds, but it wasn't liberals that made it happen.
I'd say it was liberals that made it happen once there was overwhelming public support, which again, is performative, but drastically different from actively suppressing it. Someone has to pass the things into laws, and in the US it's either Republicans or Democrats, and across the board any services those poor people do have was introduced through Democrats.
Again, under duress, I don't argue otherwise. Up here in Canada it was the Liberals being forced to put Healthcare as a 'universal'* right by the NDP (our Left wing party), then the NDP again to force Liberals to put Dental care through. But they actually did it, and the Conservatives don't.
Gay marriage was legalized under a majority conservative court system way back in 2003. When it went to a poplar vote in the bright blue State of California in 2008, Prop 8's plan to kill it passed by a healthy margin
This was the same year Obama was tiptoeing around full legalization of gay marriage for fear of pissing off too many swing voters in the Midwest.
Gay marriage wasn't fully legalized into 2015, again by the conservative courts. Efforts to legislate civil rights for LGBT people have largely failed even when the Pres and Leg were fully in Dem control.
Again, under a Liberal government. And I keep saying over and over -- I know they phone it in and constantly give bigot 'swing voters' things they want. I've never said anything against that. It had a 60% approval by the public in 2015 when it was fully legalized. So again, for like the fifth goddamn time -- Liberal governments can be forced to do these things by popular will. Conservatives won't (I'm sure there's like two examples someone will bring up, again, exception proves the rule.)
To sum: Liberals have to be forced to allow LGBT rights by popular opinion. Conservatives do this.
The Republicans controlled every branch of government in 2003, as well as a majority of state legislatures and governorships.
What broke for gay marriage in 2003 was a libertarian strain of conservatism defecting from the mainstream. Liberals accepted the change with the same passivity as they accepted the status quo.
Again by a majority conservative court. The Obama legislature dragged its heels.
They can be forced to do things by powerful socio-economic interests. In this case, a big chunk of the legal community broke for gay marriage and Obama didn't try to get in the way.
But they didn't do anything. They just let the change happen.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/3758652-here-are-the-gop-senators-who-voted-against-the-same-sex-marriage-bill/
https://newrepublic.com/post/169392/full-list-republicans-vote-against-same-sex-marriage
https://www.cpr.org/2020/02/14/why-4-colorado-republicans-tried-and-failed-to-ban-gay-marriage-in-2020/
and here's some anti LGBT-youth stuff https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb20-1144
You'll notice that in each and every case, the anti LGBT stuff is all Conservative, because Conservatives have that 'call to the past' or whatever; where 'the way things were' in the past is always better, and in the past women didn't have rights, LGBT people couldn't marry, etc.
Liberals don't actively fight against rights unless it's an overall popular voter opinion. Conservatives do regardless.
I say this as someone who's about as far left as one can go. I think you're A. grossly underestimating how useful 'letting change happen' is when it comes to popular opinion on rights, and grossly underestimating how much damage Conservatives clawing and gnashing at allowing rights for more people is.