Wait...your post didn't contain your argument? ;-)

If you read that as a mere partisan argument, you fail to grok my position.
As I wrote, I do not choose terrible vs less terrible, but for those who do, I suggest it's clear which is which.

As I often reiterate, finance reform is the number one issue that must be tackled in order to make any other political reform. That's why I backed Sanders, and still do but less so. I just wish he would leave the democratic party.

"[I] didn't watch the Ted talk, sorry. Too long to make a point for me."

Then you missed the entire argument.

Everything you said is moot in the face of Lawrence Lessig's talk.

This kind of thinking: "Granted, neither choice is usually good, but one is definitely less bad....and far more sane and rational."Is completely missing the point.

If you are continuing to see this this as a partisan problem, you do not grok this issue.

You should not be choosing between "terrible and slightly less terrible." You should be choosing between "good and better."

I reiterate: The roots of this issue in the US go deeper than partisan "Dems vs. Reps" politics. This issue is money in politics.

"I want you to take hold, to grab the issue you care the most about. Climate change is mine, but it might be financial reform or a simpler tax system or inequality. Grab that issue, sit it down in front of you, look straight in its eyes, and tell it there is no Christmas this year. There will never be a Christmas. We will never get your issue solved until we fix this issue first."

Here's a video referencing a Princeton study that backs up Lessig's arguments pretty well.



As an aside, Lawrence Lessig tried to run for president last year...

I agree, Time has been clear that it's about amount of impact, not who made the biggest positive impact.

I could certainly be wrong, it happened that one time before, but I think you underestimate how disillusioned Americans are with both parties and how ready we are to abandon them both. I really hope I'm not wrong about that.

Remember, Sanders was holding his own in funding without any corporate donors....astonishingly. No other candidate has had that kind of finance reform credentials that I recall, certainly not recently, and imo, that's step one for any reforms there.

I don't know what you mean if you're talking about the electoral college. I agree, it's outdated and it's time to toss or rewrite it, but I don't think it's so rigged that he couldn't win.

On the contrary, my good sir. I recognize it's the lack of historical context possessed by so many Americans that allowed him to successfully re-use failed nationalistic slogans and ideas.

I don't disagree about corruption. I think step one must be campaign finance reform, and we've got our work cut out for us, getting corrupt people to vote against filling their pockets.

The Republicans don't do tax reform (or math), they just raise taxes on the poor and middle class and give handouts to rich and corporations.

FTFY.

Keep in mind he told us he would run the country like one of his business, which means run it into the ground and embezzle funds until bankrupt and he gets barred from running things. His first likely legislation adds over 1 trillion to the debt so his kids can keep an extra billion of his money. That pretty much destroys any fiscal argument you could have had against democrats permanently.

Your right Dems don't do tax reform-- They just raise taxes

Tax reform? You mean the Republican tax plan which will raise taxes for families making between $20k and $40k, while cutting an average of $37K a year for those in the top 1%?

Is this what Jesus taught you? To give to the rich and fuck the poor?

"Your side (Dems) are not so fortunate. The Democrat / Liberal list grows by the day. The party of debauchery."

The leader of the Republicans, the president YOU voted for, is responsible for this, and you dare to pretend to to have the moral high ground? Have you no shame you spineless hypocrite?

Dems don't do tax reform where only the rich get richer or schemes to jump start the economy that are predicted to increase it by .1% while adding over a trillion to the defecit so that later they can cut safety net programs

when 1 woman comes out and says something, I'm a bit skeptical; in moores case there's the women, shop owners, security guards, business associates, ... all saying that he was a creepy bastard and would try to date highschool girls when he was in his 30s; that's sick shite

and good old trump has 20 women accusing him of being from inappropriate up to and including rape; are all of them lying??? I sincerely doubt it; legally he's innocent, but in truth I believe he's a serious scumbag and guilty... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/nov/30/donald-trump-sexual-misconduct-allegations-full-list

Dems had 8 years to do tax reform and did nothing.

Roy Moore?? We will see when his accusers have their day in court. Till then Roy is innocent.
Your side (Dems) are not so fortunate. The Democrat / Liberal list grows by the day. The party of debauchery.

This from Trollboy Newt. thanks

Who cares - Even if they had a week to look at it.- No Dem would vote for it-- They are obstructionists.

At least Democrats had an hour to bitch ..

The AHA ( Obama Care) had to be passed to see what was in it.



To be fair. Democrats controlled most of the last 8 years and did nothing about tax reform. Shame on them. Sucks sitting at the back of the bus. --That"s what happens when you fuck Americans and heap 8 Trillion onto the debt. YOU LOOSE.

Republican will save the day , again.

How many of those fact checking organisations would have flagged Judith Miller's Iraq pieces in the NYT as "deliberatly misleading content"? Or what about the 16 hit pieces on Sanders within 24h at Bezos' rag of a newspaper? And let's not even start about the reporting on the recent night of the long knives in Saudi Arabia ("reform", really? fuck off)...

Point is, the effort to curtail "fake news" regularly goes hand in hand with the suppression of non-establishment views while leaving the main sources of deliberate misinformation untouched. Remember PropOrNot and how Bezos' rag, amongst others, jumped on it? That list included prominent left wing/anti-war sites such as TruthOut, Counterpunch, TruthDig, ConsortiumNews, etc.

Want some examples of "misleading content" or "deliberate misinformation"? Just browse through the articles at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting for a few minutes.

It wouln't be funny even if you weren't working directly for Putin and against America, just sad that you would do his bidding for free.

Working with Russia in your official capacity as Secretary of State to create international treaties, even bad ones....that is not collusion, it's diplomacy.
Working with Russia to reform American policy before you're in office...that's subversive collusion, and admitted to by Trump's cabinet.

Who's colluding with Russia? Apparently at least Manafort while he ran the Trump campaign according to the indictment....oh, and Flynn who's eventually admitted (when his lies were proven false after the tapes surfaced) that he illegally made multiple policy change agreements in December with Russia contradicting the government's positions, like a promise to remove sanctions, which is a crime called subversion and could be/is treason.

Edit: Before you try to trot out the DNC partially paying for the 'Trump dossier' as some form of collusion, remember it was conceived and created by the RNC and only later sold to Clinton's camp after Trump took the nomination, and it's not even nearly as bad as what Jared thought he was going to buy directly from the Russian government in his meeting that he falsely claimed was about adoption until the email surfaced proving that was another lie.

Politico has a long piece on Boehner. It includes this little gem:

On Sunday, July 17, it appeared they had a deal. Boehner and Virginia Representative Eric Cantor—whom the speaker had reluctantly brought into the negotiations, knowing the majority leader’s distrust of Obama could poison the talks—worked out some final details that morning at the White House. When the president returned from church, Boehner says, he invited them both into the Oval Office and shook their hands. Some fine-tuning remained, but in Boehner’s mind the so-called grand bargain was done. The framework included reforms to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; $1.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending; and $800 billion in new revenue. “I was one happy son of a bitch,” Boehner tells me.

The next 48 hours changed everything. On Tuesday morning, the so-called Gang of Six—three senators from each party who had been discussing their own sweeping fiscal agreement—announced a briefing for their colleagues at the Capitol. They unveiled a separate framework, totally unaware of what Obama and Boehner had agreed to. This deal included significantly more revenue. Chambliss, by then a senator, was one of the GOP Gang members and had no idea—because Boehner had been negotiating with the president in private—that their announcement would kill the speaker’s deal with the White House. Obama saw that Republican senators were endorsing a deal that included far more revenue, and knew there was no way he could sell the grand bargain to his liberal base. When he came back with a counteroffer, seeking a higher revenue number, it validated Cantor’s warnings about not trusting the president. And by that point Boehner’s members had heard enough about the grand bargain to know they didn’t like it—with the $800 billion revenue figure, much less something higher.

So the deal fell apart, and the two sides peddled their competing versions of events: Boehner’s team said the White House moved the goal posts, while Obama’s allies said the speaker couldn’t sell his own members on the deal.

Hmmmm....so, these same lobbyists that have convinced congress to keep it confusing for so long will do the same to halt Trump's tax reform, right? A flat tax would put them out of business instantly.
Won't Trump be surprised to find that tax reform is also complicated...more complicated than anyone knew (anyone except for the people who actually have a clue).

New York Times article https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/us/prison-reform-steve-prator.html

Here is the full press conference. https://youtu.be/qbI_wz1iXQA