John Adams

You can't even condemn this disgraceful behavior? Try to do it. What do you think of the president of the United States trolling a teenager?

Our president. Shameful.

Thanks for policing me. It's our thread, our board, our country, our planet to improve.

No, but I beat you to it citing Obama's overreach. That's not the point. Discuss how we all can help solve the problem for America. KRC said maybe.. "Don't point a finger until you realize three are pointing back at you." This is not meant to be a partisan hackery thread. 1 or 2 threads already here for partisan BS. Go find them and roll around.

There is no way Nancy wants defectors. None.

Because the remainder was the partisan crap KRC was hoping to avoid. If you're going to use examples, try some from both sides. No, but people who get busted breaking pledges like that usually pay the consequences.

Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. Applaud the defectors, especially when they do the right thing.

I'd like open primaries, but that's a state issue. I registered D for the first time so I could vote in this primary. Registered R last time to vote in the R primary. But it's ***** annoying to have to switch back and forth like my say as a registered I doesn't matter. - Get rid of gerrymandering, which could help people live with the "other" instead of segregating voting blocks. I hate a lobbyist too, but there are some reasons for them that make sense. Take some group affected by a health issue. As individuals, it's hard to get heard. Hire a lobbyist and they might get someone's ear. This is one of those freedom ain't free things to me. I think a better way to skin this cat is to try to get elected officials to sign a pledge not to take meetings or money from lobbyists.

The same story at WaPo is "House Democrats brace for some defections among moderates on impeachment of Trump." Lawmakers and senior aides are privately predicting they will lose more than the two Democrats who opposed the impeachment inquiry rules package in late September, according to multiple officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly. Two senior Democratic aides said the total could be as many as a half-dozen, while a third said the number could be higher. So... Politico says "no more than a half-dozen" and WaPo has 2 sources who say that and one who says "could be higher." . Good. Showing some backbone vs the party machine.

Congress's ineffectiveness is mostly due to the unwillingness to work together across the aisle. Biden, McCain, Boehner to pick a few hot button names from this board could do it. The current group lacks the political skill and backbone. Hell, one of the landmark pieces of legislation in the Civil Rights Act was passed because Johnson, a 100% racist SOB, made it happen by twisting a lot of arms, but those arms could still be twisted in that era. Contrast them with: Mitch McConnell, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Obama ramming though the ACA with a Congress following the marching orders that "elections have consequences. Pelosi impeachment. Etc. It's hard to be effective at pushing back, let alone writing helpful legislation, when you can't work across a party line. That doesn't mean it's going to be clean and kumbaya in Congress--but a two-party Congress won't get it's mojo back unless the parties stop demonizing each other and show America it can still do good work. BUZZ! Take it to another thread. That's not the intent here. Plus, go fix your own broken country.

Like where I said "regardless of party" and mentioned no Congress or Executive by number or name?

Thanks for introducing your own bias into this. No. Obama and Bush were far guiltier of executive overreach than Trump. It's a branch of government issue, mostly stemming from Congress's failure to do its job in legislating and pushing back on the Executive. So please try to keep this productive.

Of our very few generations in this experiment, there have always been governments broken beyond fixing, especially when you think of how corrupt our government and election processes have been. We can and should be diligent fixing the things we can. Adding to my original list. X. Encourage Congress and Executives to stay in their lanes, especially encouraging Congress to push the Executive back into its, regardless of party. Via activism and voting.

And that's just FISA. But there's always a trade between our freedoms and the ability of bad actors to use them against us. See Russia and our freedom of the press (not picking that as a hot button issue but we know it's real). See crazy people and our right to bear arms. And many more. Freedom is better than the alternative but freedom is not free of pain.

That's just tossing out the elected officials, a massive minority of the government. I don't know the local statistics (and suspect they mirror the federal) but at a federal level, Americans don't vote out incumbents and incumbents are unlikely to limit their terms.

You can't say Trump technically committed a crime. Clinton did. Trump allegedly did, though the groupthink here thinks not. Right.

(Productive topic KRC. You should run for president.) 1. From the halls of Congress and the Executive needs to come leadership where elected officials get credit for working with those on the other side, and represent the constituents who didn't vote for them. Trump is ALL OF OUR president. Congress is our Congress. Hold elected officials accountable (at the ballot box, in social media) for demonizing the other side and also the people they represent, even if those people disagree with them. 2. Elect people who respect and obey the rule of law. 3. Ask your elected officials to focus on dinner table issues, as well as those dinner table issues that affect people in 30 years (spending and social security, I'm looking at you). 4. Stop thinking in good vs evil. It's just dumb. Nothing is so simple. My D and R neighbors are not good or evil. They are people, with people problems. This idea that there's a darkness in the world and a hidden war going on is utter crap. To the extent there are a few underbellies, sure of course. But that's not the norm and it doesn't control the world, especially yours. This thing we do here at PPP of making the other side into a name and meme is unproductive, bad for America, and stupid. Yeah, I just called people calling people stupid, stupid. I get it! I'm an offender too. Color me hypocrite, color me human. 5. "It can only be fixed with a constant turnover of the perpetual bureaucracy" says GG. There's the elected bureaucracy, and then there's the rest of the leviathan. I'm not sure term limits solve as much as people hope. You can end up with people who suck at their jobs or rise in populist waves. But I'm not against trying. The rest of the leviathan will always be there. So legislate the leviathan's rules well and enforce them. For example, if you create a FISA court that will be used by agents whose job it is to find things, create laws that make it hard for them to convince judges to allow for spying on Americans. 6. Engage in a meaningful dialog about freedom vs not. If we create a FISA process (and others), we sacrifice freedom. People will die in horrible ways because we aren't watching as much as we could unfettered by laws. There will always be a tension between spying on citizens and preventing crime. It's OK to play tug-o-war about that line but neither side is wrong, except at the extremes.

You sound like a 4 year old.

This is a "we" problem. It's not a Trump, Republican, or Democrat problem. Can we fix America without pointing a finger? Like, just fix things. Make compromises and changes? There's no conspiracy. There's no evil cabal. I know most people on this board can't but I'm trying a different tactic today and asking you since you're on the other side.

I mostly like to push against the tidal wave of closed minds on the right, but you can't honestly think that the system for getting an easy FISA application, driven if not by political bias, than at least by successful-investigation bias, is a good thing. Can't it be possible that curbing easy surveillance on Americans is a good thing? I mean, even the ACLU is troubled by the Horowitz report.

The science that human behavior modification reversed the ozone depletion changed in the last two years? double moran Just because you want to march in a lockstep with a conclusion given to you by your peers doesn't mean that I do. Think for yourself. You might find yourself agreeing with the left and right.

It does bother me. And I don't hate Trump.

No, moran. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2017GL074830

I make fun of the conspiracy obsession GG. And will continue to mock its stupidity. Mocking the other side is a bore because it's already outnumbered 26-1 on this board.