Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
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GasBandit
Staff member
I'm willing to concede that's more coercive, yes, but what I was trying to point out was it's a different ballgame than, say, Juanita Broddrick being left raped and bloodied in her hotel room, or armed state troopers escorting Paula Jones home afterwards to make sure she understood things would go badly for her if she didn't stay quiet, or Leslie Millwee begging him to stop as he did as he pleased with her after cornering her alone in an editing room.
I said her to be fairer since I was at least alive for it.
Kavanaugh was a real attack dog on Clinton, funny enough.
GasBandit
Staff member
It's not about what they did, or even what they think is right. It's solely about what they think is politically useful at any given moment. That's all that matters inside the beltway.
Can you Canadians come re-enact 1812 for us?
GasBandit
Staff member
I'm not sure what you want me to do, stop voting libertarian? Because I'm not going to do that.
Democrat policy IS ruinous.
Yes. I understand you won't, but my god yes. However, I'd at least settle for you being honest about the fact that you don't really give a shit about anything bad that the government does to anybody besides you.
GasBandit
Staff member
That's not true, it's just how you like to demonize anybody who doesn't agree with you so that you are spared the onus of considering opinions you don't already hold.
A large part of the problem here, IMHO, is the tendency for people to abandon things they don’t like rather than trying to fix them. Whenever you hear about someone who “resigns in protest,” that also means that person has removed their voice/influence from within that group. So if some group has a subset of racist, xenophobic, and lascivious assholes, and this pisses off some other members who then resign in protest, what this REALLY means is that the RXLA% of that group has now increased, that future actions taken by that group will be more RXLA-y, and that they will be more attractive to, and therefore take on more members who espouse and promote RXLA agenda (and continue to lose the ones who don’t), until such time that they de facto become the RXLA party, no matter what the placard on their door might say.
And yes, I believe this tumor should have been excised back when it was still small, when removing it would not probably have meant the death of the host, but at this point not removing it could literally mean the death of us(a), and doing so would’ve been so much easier if only so many of the smart ones hadn’t bailed.
If anything, it’s like the Republican Party got taken over by a private equity firm, and is now suffering the same erosion as what Toys R Us went through.
—Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
Which is why a two party system is inherently broken.
The last line of this Laws and Sausages has stuck with me: http://lawsandsausagescomic.com/comic/704
I agree with the conclusion but I loathe the idea of joining any party right now, since they all seem like bullies or at least overly pushy. I am not sure how to reconcile those feelings yet.
figmentPez
Staff member
The difference between your proposition and reality, is that people who stop voting for Republicans now, can go right back to voting for Republicans as soon as the party puts forth acceptable candidates. They won't put forth better candidates as long as people keep voting for them out of party loyalty. The way to fix the Republican party is to refuse to vote for them as long as they continue to be the disgusting lump of putrescence that they are.
This seems the obvious corollary to my assertion, and for so long as joining a party does not require mandatory purity checks, it seems like good advice.
—Patrick
My husband bailed on being Republican and re-registered independent years ago, but the state party apparently never got the memo, so we still get all the fund raising robo calls. I will tell you that the calls are becoming more desperate, calling for "emergency donations so President Trump doesn't lose Congress" and that gives me hope.
Also, I firmly believe that no President should have an agreeing party in Congress, but politics has become so segregated since the 80s, and now it's turning into just cockblocking everyone that isn't in your party, and I just want the two party system to burn. I thought the Dems were going to splinter first, but maybe it will be the Republicans.
Also, I firmly believe that no President should have an agreeing party in Congress, but politics has become so segregated since the 80s, and now it's turning into just cockblocking everyone that isn't in your party, and I just want the two party system to burn. I thought the Dems were going to splinter first, but maybe it will be the Republicans.
Too busy electing our own even dumber Trumps.
As orange as yours is, ours have creepy, inhuman smiles and the greasiest, sweatiest complexions.
B
BErt
Flake just called for a 1 week delay to allow for an FBI investigation
I guess he realized how bad he looked in that video.
figmentPez
Staff member
Yeah, and they went ahead and voted to proceed to a full senate vote anyway.
GasBandit
Staff member
Heh, oh how the decades have changed the Political Thread.
The Dems won't splinter as long as the continued survival of it's membership depends on them sticking together. The Republicans have no real threat of suddenly becoming targets of state-sponsored violence, but large swaths of the Democrats (like the entire LGBTQ+ wing and all the minority membership) have a gun to their heads as long as the conservative crowd is allowed to make legislation based on scripture and an imagined version of what the South was before and during the Civil War.
Dave
Staff member
Figures. I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up that he'd be, you know, moral or ethical.
B
BErt
He’s a coward until proven otherwise. I think the women in the elevator DID get to him in some fashion, but this motion could only be an effort to try to save face. Everyone left at the “mandatory 2pm” confused as hell about what happens nexr. What a debacle.
figmentPez
Staff member
No one is at all clear about what the FBI investigation is going to be allowed to investigate, who need to authorize the investigation, or even if the investigation will happen at all.
B
BErt
Mcconnell will in no way approve the investigation, so we’re all just trusting Flake’s word now. I am not confident.
figmentPez
Staff member
That's assuming those witnesses are included in the investigation. Flake's wording implied that only those accusations already before the senate would be considered. That might only be Christine Ford, not anyone else. I'm thinking Flake pulled a fast one.
figmentPez
Staff member
WHY is the FBI investigation being limited in scope? Can someone tell me why we don't have FULL investigations into the complete background of EVERY Supreme Court nominee?
Dave
Staff member
They do background checks, but this didn't come up until after. Background checks wouldn't have picked up something unreported like this.
You know, back when I started to work at the Securitas national dispatch, I had to agree to a full background check by the secret service (because that job brought along knowledge of certain pass phrases and locations of NATO nuclear weapons). They confronted me with my membership of some fraternities, called up people in my surroundings including people I hadn't talked to in years, etc. Some of those had no paper trail at all - I helped manage some of those fraternities in later years and we genuinely didn't have full membership lists - we sold membership cards for cash, what did we care who bought some?.
I would assume the FBI to do a better job than that for a SC justice pick.
figmentPez
Staff member
They wouldn't? I'm skeptical about that. I saw an interview talking about the background checks done for FBI agents. They talk to everyone you've ever lived with, everyone you've ever been in a group with, and they ask a lot of questions of all those people. This isn't a background check where they look up what's already in your file, they investigate. If they had done that kind of investigation on Kavanaugh, they'd already have known what his drinking habits were before questioning even started, and chances are they'd have already known how he behaved at parties.
The simple fact is that we investigate the backgrounds of FBI / CIA / NSA agents to a much greater degree than we investigate the history of Supreme Court judges, and I want to know why.