Not only did he abolish it, but it was one of the highest priorities of the GOP once Reagan came in. Haynes Johnson writes extensively about this in his frighteningly-prescient book 'Sleepwalking Through History'. The GOP was already following the lead of Roger Ailes (later of Fox News) after he polished the turd named Nixon and the GOP understood if they controlled the narrative, they could stay in power. Newt Gingrich, and the shitshow that followed, was the natural extension of Ailes's methodology. Abolishing the Fairness Doctrine will be studied for centuries as one of the single greatest acts of self-destruction in world history.

Right now we are in that position, but it's the minority that benefits unequally. Under Republican rule, how many bills were killed by democrats threatening a filibuster? Certainly less than under Democratic rule, republicans love to kill bills so much McConnell is known as the grim reaper for killing legislation as both the majority and minority leader.
When one party, a party that has millions fewer votes for their representatives btw, has the power to stop all legislation as the majority or minority and abuses that power in a partisan way to the detriment of the nation, it makes sense to rewrite the rule changes that put us in that position.
McConnell has threatened exactly that, scorched earth, destroying the legislative process if he can't call all the shots as the minority leader.
As you mentioned, there are ways around it if the leaders are underhanded and purely partisan....democrats have not shown the spine to do that in recent memory, I hope they do now if they don't regulate filibustering.
Time for the nuclear option, whatever that is so long as it stops obstructionist republicans from controlling as the minority. Republicans use it whenever it's convenient, Democrats don't seem to do that, but it's fine to stop them from starting...but requires a rule change to make it unnecessary. Obstructionism has harmed the nation badly, and is the mantra of Republicans....has been all century.

I also have a thin hope that at least two of Trump's appointees to the supreme court can be removed for perjuring themselves at their confirmation hearings, fbi reports declassified since Trump left prove Kavanaugh and Comey did.

I was riding the bus in Paris, and all the streets in Paris were designed for anorexic horses in the 17th century and fuck you for trying to fit your fat-ass 21st century car down them -- much less a huge city bus. So we're squeezing down this street and we come across a moving truck blocking the road. I, as an America, am awaiting horns, swearing and automatic weapon fire. Instead, the driver stops the bus, turns it off, hops off and goes and has a smoke. The people in the bus were being totally French about it: not a murmur of complaint.

Two years later, I was in Canada and some dude cut off a taxi at a light. Out hops the taxi driver to confront the driver of the other car. I start scanning for my exit once pop-pop-pop / muthafuckas drop gets underway. Instead of a spray of bullets, or at least an amusing fist fight, the taxi driver shakes his finger at the guy and gets back in his cab.

I live in mortal fear of getting shot on the road in America over some stupid bullshit (this actually happened to me once: some asshole in Cupertino cranked off three rounds at my car when I accidentally cut him off). It's so amazing to visit civilized countries and see people acting decent and calm to each other.

The expression on that cat's face at the end is like "Who the hell are you people? Are you from the future? You are! Tell me, oh temporal traveler, how fares a century of unbroken peace and human cooperation and kindness. . . ?
Really?
Shit, thank Christ I die in 1913!"

"Never underestimate the stupidity of American blowhards."

Y'all approproated that from H. L. Mencken.* Thought of that too. But sometimes, folks can surprise a body.

EX: mininum wage ballot ininitive, a few election cycles ago, came up in 5 RED red states and they passed easily. even when the state govenments wouldn't do so at gun point. sometimes folks know what's what and go w/it.

just saying things can go so bad for so long, good things can slip in w/o anyone noticing. progress in america has never came in waves but in sporatic pulses.

heck. the GOP was a progressive movement at conception. some of that progressness flowed into the turn-of-century. got nat'l parks from teddy. (think of that? a Republican supporting land - for everybody - just to look at and not exploited? it's true!)

hope for hope's sake, s'all.

'Lightn' Hopkins said (or close to), "If'n your first though is 'I can't'; then don't even try". I say we should try. It can be done.


*he also said, "On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." spot-on.

It would be more convenient to go with a majority vote to bar him from office if it was that simple, but I don't think it really is. (In reality I think that's maybe not the best move, because if he can run and starts a new conservative party, it will guarantee a Democratic landslide because the liberal vote won't be cut in half)
No matter the method, it's imperative that calling for the overturn of a certified election by any means necessary, and sending a crowd to force trial by combat, instructing them to stop the congressional certification, don't let it happen (which is a a direct call for interference in government proceedings only possible by force) be punished not ignored or it begs for a repeat. It's far from just using the word fight, it's saying if you let them certify this election you lose your country, you've got to get rid of these representatives that won't go along with you, and fight hard, you can't let them install Biden, stop it, he's illegitimate and I won by a landslide but Biden stole it, do not let them certify him or you're country is gone they must elect me, I'll be there with you stopping the steal.

I seriously doubt the American people will see it that way, all polls show a majority agree with his policies over Trump's. The election reinforces that.

It's hard to imagine hurting the economy worse than Trump's disastrous pandemic response that continues to cause more damage today because the distribution part of his "plan" was 1/2 baked and 1/4 implemented. Hundreds of millions of vaccines are being shipped to Europe because he wouldn't commit to buying them when he could, even knowing he couldn't buy them later. Any misstep in the response cost lives and hurt the economy horrifically.
Then there's the 8-9 trillion added to the debt not including last year's unprecedented spending spree during a recession meaning the deficit his last year may be well over $4-5 trillion (I've seen estimates of $9 Trillion). The debt and deficit will be hard to screw up worse, but time will tell.

Let's be realistic that the majority of Americans never wanted Trump, so much they voted for Hillary the most despised politician at the time, 3 million more times...it took nothing but not ignoring swing states and not being the most hated candidate in living memory to flip the electoral vote. Trump becoming the most despised candidate in history helped.

It wasn't a few thousand, my recollection is it was hundreds of thousands in most critical states, only a few were even close, only Georgia was as close as 12000, still more than a few, and Biden won easily without it.

The green new deal, if implemented, should create tens of thousands of good paying jobs. Innovation almost always pays off....again, time will tell. I'm of the opinion that it's too late to avoid climate disaster, probably too late to avoid a near total extinction next century without a miracle, but any mitigation is worth trying if it works. I don't want to live on Venus....and don't want my grand nieces and nephews to either.

I'll agree to disagree about guns. I've heard the same fear my entire life, claims democrats will take guns away, I once believed it. It's never happened even when they had the house, Senate, and Whitehouse. I'm pro gun and pro regulation.....a well regulated militia is what the constitution says. I respect your position even if I disagree.

I am a stickler for not fudging terminology. It makes understanding another person's argument impossible if they use words that are just wrong just because other people are misusing them, and is often used intentionally as a means of escaping one's statements by saying they didn't mean what they said, but only when tightly cornered. That's not an accusation, just a peeve. Bob, to name one, insists Trump's never been impeached.

"The Circassians, also known by their endonym Adyghe, are a Northwest Caucasian ethnic group native to Circassia, some of whom migrated to the Levant areas in exile after the Russo-Circassian War which spanned 101 years in the 19th century."

@newtboy ...LEARN
1. Almost 4 million jobs created since election.
2. More Americans are now employed than ever in our history.
3. Created more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs since his election.
4. Manufacturing jobs growing at the fastest rate in more than three decades.
5. Economic growth last quarter hit 4.2 percent.
6. New unemployment claims recently hit a 49-year low.

7. Median household income has hit highest level ever recorded.

8. African-American unemployment has recently achieved the lowest rate ever recorded.

9. Hispanic-American unemployment is at the lowest rate ever recorded.

10. Asian-American unemployment recently achieved the lowest rate ever recorded.

11. Women’s unemployment recently reached the lowest rate in 65 years.

12. Youth unemployment has recently hit the lowest rate in nearly half a century.

13. Lowest unemployment rate ever recorded for Americans without a high school diploma.

14. Under this administration, veterans’ unemployment recently reached its lowest rate in nearly 20 years.

15. Almost 3.9 million Americans have been lifted off food stamps since the election.

16. The Pledge to America’s Workers has resulted in employers committing to train more than 4 million Americans.

17. Ninty-five percent of U.S. manufacturers are optimistic about the future, the highest ever.

18. Retail sales surged last month, up another 6% over last year.

19. Signed the biggest package of tax cuts and reforms in history. After tax cuts, over $300 billion poured back in to the U.S. in the first quarter alone.

20. As a result of his tax bill, small businesses will have the lowest top marginal tax rate in more than 80 years.

Ah yes, law and order. Breaking laws to avoid legal inspections so they can continue breaking the law.

Dude is blaming the wrong people. Yeah, they can't stay open and he can't pay his staff. He shouldn't need to in a fucked up, once-in-a-century situation like this. The governments in other supposedly civilized countries are paying citizens so they don't NEED to work. So they can stay home and help prevent the spread of this disease. Are they handling it perfectly? Fuck no! But you can't look at the per capita death rate in this country compared to other countries and think our approach is working.

Keeping people home as much as possible and limiting opportunities for viral spread: these are are what's needed in order to get us back to some semblance of normalcy as soon as possible, with as few unnecessary deaths as possible. The federal government could make this happen, but segments of it have chosen not to. THAT is who he should be blaming, and complaining to. Mitch McConnell and his cronies in the Senate are literally killing American citizens, and businesses like this guy's, by refusing to actually help.

Even Trump knows it's over and started the pardon phase of his lame duck session after supporting the transition beginning. You don't do that, give secret info to a guy you claim is an enemy of the U.S., unless you see no choice.

The amount of mistakes, like slight miscounts and lost ballots, was 1/2 that of the last presidential election according to election officials.
All this fraud talk is just that, talk. The administration has presented no evidence, much less conclusive proof of any mass fraud. Are there even cases still being tried? Not many if any.

We had a fair and clean election, the cleanest this century with no meaningful foreign interference, verified by Trump appointed professionals who's job it is to know.

These idiots you keep listening to are liars, and you know it. The people claiming to have witnessed fraud are liars, not one would testify. The Trump team ensured that would be the case by offering a $1 million bribe to anyone who could testify about proof of cheating, no takers but many tried.

Better send your $8K to the legal defense fund before it gets shut down, Donny's counting on you.

Edit: if it's not over, why aren't you taking that bet? Didn't he offer 100-1 odds? And you won't risk $10, but you'll risk lives and the union over your baseless certitude that democrats cheated and trump will catch them.

That was super interesting, particularly seeing SO much commonality between the protestors of the late 60's / early 70's and the last few years. Same shit, different century. I stopped watching a bit early as it seemed to have veered hard into "but of course everyone would be happy if only they Jesus'd" territory, but up to that point was excellent.

Neighbors exist as a fuck you to neighbors.

I deeply enjoy butchering German.

Many Germans believe Czech was created to mock them.

My son has a theory that Polish is a made-up language that they only pretend to use when we can hear them. At home they speak like normal people (us).

Austrian is like Canadian, virtually non-existent, but you know it when they speak it.

Slovakian was basically made up by czech schoolteachers in early 20th century. Joke.

Hungarian, like Finnish, is from another galaxy altogether. Also we last had a border with Hungary 27 years ago, I should get used to that.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

*dead -- "Video unavailable
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp."

Which party just had another 88 paid adds online pulled today for using hate group insignia, specifically for using Nazi symbology AGAIN, this time using the inverted red triangle used to identify political prisoners, Communists, Social Democrats, liberals, Freemasons, people accused of helping Jews, and other members of opposition parties in concentration camps now being used by Trump and Pence to paint Antifa as social democrats- the enemy and instigators of violence, contrary to the actual arrest records that indicates Antifa involvement in riots and vandalism is minimal at most, but right wing hate groups have been repeatedly caught being the real dangerous instigators, with multiple instances of shootings, arson, repeatedly caught with bombs and written plans to instigate riots then blame BLM in their possession (because they are that stupid)? One guess.

Which party has gladly taken well over $40 million from the Mellons, who repeatedly make public, overtly and blatantly racist and derogatory comments about black and brown people? One guess.

Again I ask, how many civil rights leaders are Republicans today, or in this century?
Because I know you're too embarrassed to answer, I'll do it for you, ZERO.

It's undeniably clear during my lifetime which party is the best for unity and which is divisive, which strives for equality and which denies inequality exists, and which pushed and pushed equality more.
If you wipe the orange meconium from your eyes you can tell just by looking at their representatives, one party is full of non white men and is outraged by racism, one party is almost exclusively white men and claims racism and inequality doesn't exist, it's fake news.
*facepalm