Not compared to his predecessor.
He’s your president….hardly a has been when he’s the current leader of the free world. 🤦‍♂️
He appears presidential to me, and our allies, in stark contrast to xenophobic insecure bunker baby, temper tantrum throwing Trump.

So sadly delusional, bob. Keep telling yourself he was popular with 36.4% approval, lower than Biden’s lowest, that he couldn’t be beaten, that you have no evidence after a year looking under every rock, but you just know it was rigged because the least popular president ever who personally exacerbated a pandemic that was preventable, caused a recession, and was floundering in every direction couldn’t lose.
🤦‍♂️

The left NEVER claimed fraud as sore losers, most blamed Clinton and the DNC. Liar. The left didn’t say Trump was an illegitimate president, just that he only won by quirky outdated technicality, not by votes. The left didn’t try to overthrow democracy because they lost an election they ran.

Cheating is the only method used by the right now, vote suppression, Gerrymandering, voter purges….all Republican dirty tricks. America will never forget which party tried to overthrow democracy. More info on how complicit the Republicans were comes out daily.

Trump removed the pandemic response team that would have identified the virus earlier and maybe stopped even the first outbreak in China, because Obama instituted it. Trump allowed 40000 people from China in with no screening, no quarantine, no tracing. His “stopping flights” was only stopping Chinese people, so WAS racist, blatantly, and useless, obviously.
🤦‍♂️

Trump whining, on every subject every single time. Never took responsibility for a single of the multiple daily failures of his administration. You loved it. Suddenly you don’t like it, because Joe wears the wrong jersey.

Lol. Pole numbers. Thanks for being our jester. You can still make me laugh. Every site needs a clown.



Not some future infrastructure week, but real infrastructure funding. That’s success.

Edit: 39%, your lowball number, is still higher than Trump at this point who had 37% 283 days in, and he inherited an economic boom, a stable nation and healthy democracy, and no pandemic….unlike Biden.

I'm always unsure why people seem to have a problem with this. I suspect it's tort-reform-propaganda at work.

The amount of civil cases filed, aka access to the court system by the general public, should be considered an integral part of a healthy democracy.

"How often plaintiffs sue will also turn on the predictability
of the courts. Recall the standard model of litigation and settlement.

Litigation is more expensive than settlement, so disputants do best if they settle their quarrels out of court, all else equal. Suppose they know what a court will do. If so, they can settle their dispute by that expected litigated outcome and pocket the fees they would otherwise have paid their lawyers. The point is simple: if they know what a judge will do, they have no reason to ask him. Under this model, disputants primarily litigate rather than settle only when they each hold optimistic estimates of their prospects in court."

"Coffee spills, Pokemon class actions, tobacc o settlements. American courts have made a name for themselves as a wild lo ttery and a money machine for a lucky few lawyers. At least in part, however, the reput ation is unfounded. Ameri can courts seem to handle routine contract and to rt disputes as well as th eir peers in other wealthy democracies.

More generally, Americans do not file an unusually high numb er of law suits. They do not employ large numbers of judges or lawyers. They do not pay more than people in comparable countries to enforce contracts. And they do not pay unusually high prices for insurance against routine torts. "

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Ramseyer_681.pdf

@dystopianfuturetoday

i think i got my argument down to one word.
took some time because you know me..
i comment like i think:rambling and incoherent.

the word is transparency.

if this dragnet is SO needed and SO vital to national security and catching brown people.
then lets allow this giant pig into the courts and lets discuss the value of this particular intelligence gathering.
lets shine a bit of light in those dark corners yea?

a healthy democracy needs sunlight and fresh air the breathe.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

In some countries, the government fears the power of the people - I would like to posit that this is a *good thing* for a healthy democracy. Increasingly, in the United States, it's much the other way around. The people cower in fear before the enforcement arm of their government. IMO, this is what these people are fighting against.

The earlier protest may have been for a pretty lame reason, but they could have been issued citations without the bodyslams.

Impeachable offense is a high crime or misdemeanor.

War Powers Act of 1973 allows the President to use US military power for up to 90 days without a declaration of war or mandate by Congress.

This is not an impeachable offense. It's perfectly legal as laws stand. Even if you argue the War Powers Act is unconstitutional, you can't impeach a President for doing what's legal now.

Disagreeing with his decision to intervene in Libya is fine. That's a part of a healthy democracy - to question and dissent. A lot of people however need to understand an offense is NOT impeachable just because they disagree with it. I thought getting involved in Iraq was a bad idea, but that's not an impeachable offense.

I thought Bill Clinton having an affair with an intern was pretty horrible, but it's also NOT an impeachable offense. His lying about it under oath, which I honestly didn't really care about, IS impeachable because it is perjury.

The Bush administration could have been impeached for outing a CIA operative, which is treason.

The living conditions in these places, and the utter disregard for basic human rights and a working healthy democracy, are obviously at the root of all these protests we're seeing, and I do hope start spreading like wildfire into neighbouring countries where the same problems exist.
The conditions are the motive.
But I do believe that the internet/social networks/wiki leaks/television are the tools that are helping these revolutions take place. Go new media/information transparency.

> zombieater
I agree with you zombi and that's just the thing, privatized news as it stands today is completely consumed with making profits rather than actually fulfilling their role in a democracy by informing the public. In my opinion the responsibility of gathering and reporting news should never be given to those that are more concerned with the profit it might make rather than its societal impact. Most definitely the role should never be given to anyone who would purposely manipulate or obscure facts to push a preexisting agenda. Does that mean socializing it? I'm not sure, the government surely can't be trusted as they would most certainly use it to promote their own agendas and biases. On the other hand it might be the only solution to escape problem. Obviously no program is going to be perfect but many do actually work. Our police and firemen are socialized and while far from being perfect they most certainly are doing more good than harm. Our criminal justice system is most certainly flawed but if lawyers were held to the same ethical standards that current journalists are imagine how much worse it would be. As for doctors I believe that having a free press is no less important to the human condition than the care of ones health. They are both integral to having a happy and healthy democracy.
It's frustrating that we as a society can agree on things such as a standardized alphabet, or laws for the sake of maintaining order, or anything else that is imperative to maintaining a society yet something as important as the press falls to the wayside.
bah!...

>> ^MrConrads:
I fail to understand why if it is so imperative to have a free and unbiased press in order to have a healthy democracy why we do not fight, nay, DEMAND such a thing. If nothing else the last 8 years have proven this need. In my opinion it has been clearly shown that a country becomes more divided and obtuse rather than informed when living under a press that operates like it has here in America. We need to trust those who work in the field of journalism to uphold the ideals of the Constitution and do their duty just as much as any president or senator. So why does there seem to be this lack of oversight into one of the most important aspects of a democracy? Lawyers must swear an oath to the Constitution to uphold the law as it is written, and if they violate that oath they are disbarred. Presidents, Senators, Police, Doctors, and many other professions that are given the duty of upholding the common good must all live by similar ethics, so why not journalists and reporters? I believe that any and all who wish to work in such a profession should be sworn in to uphold the constitution, inform the public to the best of their abilities, and remain completely unbiased. If they cannot uphold these ideals they should be replaced by someone who can, that is if we want this grand experiment to work.


I agree with you in theory. However, I think it gets a bit touchy when private corporations are involved. All of these news outlets are privatized, so they all have their own agenda - their own spin on issues to target and reach a specific segment of the population. One of the main problems is that these private institutions see news as just another tv show/article/blog - it's all about ratings and corporate sponsorship (i.e. money). It's no surprise that the most unbiased news media out there is socialized (NPR) - they don't bow down to the mighty dollar coming from the fist of a corporation.

Notice also that your other examples of professions that are given the duty of upholding the common good are either government institutions or socialized (public officials and police officers). The doctor example is a touchy one, and in most industrialized nations, these would be socialized too - the reason they are held to such a high ethical standard in the US as opposed to journalists is that they're job is seen by the public as a more integral part of the human condition (protecting life). It's interesting though that most Americans support nationalizing health care in the US - in effect removing a majority of the greed, corporate motive, and lack of ethics out of the system.

Setting up any kind of ethical institution based on capitalistic principles is counter-intuitive. Ethics are only followed by corporations as long as it improves the bottom line.

If we're going to expect journalists and the private news media to hold themselves to an 'ethical standard', then we're going to have to:

a) reduce the privatization of the news media,
b) remove the rating system / corporate sponsorship from news programs,
c) realize that our society must start taking the news media as a serious ethical issue in the line of doctors/surgeons holding an ethical standard.

However, its a very fine line between preventing unethical behavior in an institution and upholding the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. Lawyers and government officials lie all the time and get away with it. So do journalists, reporters, and news corporations. Unfortunately, it's not illegal to be biased in these professions. That oath of which you speak seems to be less and less followed as privatization increases more and more.

</rant>

I fail to understand why if it is so imperative to have a free and unbiased press in order to have a healthy democracy why we do not fight, nay, DEMAND such a thing. If nothing else the last 8 years have proven this need. In my opinion it has been clearly shown that a country becomes more divided and obtuse rather than informed when living under a press that operates like it has here in America. We need to trust those who work in the field of journalism to uphold the ideals of the Constitution and do their duty just as much as any president or senator. So why does there seem to be this lack of oversight into one of the most important aspects of a democracy? Lawyers must swear an oath to the Constitution to uphold the law as it is written, and if they violate that oath they are disbarred. Presidents, Senators, Police, Doctors, and many other professions that are given the duty of upholding the common good must all live by similar ethics, so why not journalists and reporters? I believe that any and all who wish to work in such a profession should be sworn in to uphold the constitution, inform the public to the best of their abilities, and remain completely unbiased. If they cannot uphold these ideals they should be replaced by someone who can, that is if we want this grand experiment to work.

Big upvote. The media and a healthy democracy are deeply linked.

And I don't think "grumbling" is always a bad thing. A healthy democracy relies on grumblers too. So let it be with VideoSift. Now I'm NOT saying that you're accusing all grumblers of being hopeless curmudgeons, dag. I'm just saying this to differentiate between good grumbling and bad grumbling.

Someone has to do it.

Well, yes, but this could also be seen as a guy being an arsehole and not really having any respect for other people. People should have *freedom* of speech, but that doesn't mean it's totally cool for them to exercise their right in absolutely any way possible. Just because it's "legal" to shout "fuck the jews" doesn't mean it's a nice thing to say, or it's helpful to a healthy democracy. I think some people confuse freedom with a lack of responsibility.

That translation:
"awesome and unique stuff indeed.The clip is a few years old,
and from the dutch comedian-duo "Muntz en Van de Wint" http://www.muntzvandewint.com
It was shot in Austria, and in a time when the leader of the right-winged party FPÖ,he is called "Haider", came into power.
When i'm not wrong, this is basically what is said:

(Hitler) One, Two, One, Two .....Give me a "Sachertorte" and hurry up, otherwise i'll have to gas everyone.Faster.
(Old Woman) What a cheek.I'm going to call the police.
(Policeman) I told you to shut it off.Done, huh?
(Hitler) There you go, missy.
(Missy) Thanks a lot.
(Hitler) One, Two, One, Two .....Do you know who i am,
do you know who i am, hello ?

The second video from another thread is also great.
http://www.reloadus.com/mvdw/video/hitler.html
The guy he's talking to is obviously a FPÖ-politician,and the translation:

(Hitler) One, Two, One, Two .....OPEN UP!
And, do you have a solution for all problems ?
(Politician) We have proposals for many problems.
(Hitler) And all foreigners out of here, now, today and forever.
Sieg Haider.All for Austria.Sieg Haider.Sieg Haidaaaaargggh.

Hope this helps :-).