American Politics III: New President, Same Old Country

[The Alma Mater]

Gotta admit, I'm not sure if a Biden Presidency is going to be anywhere near as entertaining to talk about. We'll probably be a bit more divided here than we were about Trump, but I don't think Biden has the sheer capacity for discussion-worthy antics as Trump did.

Considering that is why the democrats chose him - a candidate that on paper is "not great, but acceptable" to both parties, that is probably true.

[Nejii]

I'm no longer interested in anything you have to say, about anything. Bye.

Foe's List, you know. I blocked him a long time ago because hearing repetitive, tedious arguments played over and over again melts my brain.

The only people I've blocked/added to my foe's list are the petty childish types. By that I mean the one's who resort to direct personal insults, "neiner neiner", and "got eem!" tactics. I disagree with many people on here but I don't add them to my crap list until the high school and pampered college kid crap starts.

[Greater Miami Shores]

Watch the Video of Biden saying and admitting, there is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the Virus pandemic in the next several months.

So I guess everyone will be blaming Biden for the deaths of Americans due to the virus, that kills persons in the USA and all over the world. GMS.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021 ... al-months/

[Nejii]

Gotta admit, I'm not sure if a Biden Presidency is going to be anywhere near as entertaining to talk about. We'll probably be a bit more divided here than we were about Trump, but I don't think Biden has the sheer capacity for discussion-worthy antics as Trump did.

Much like how late-night comedians and journalists are going to have to put a lot more effort into their jobs now.

Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert will still make multi-millions off of Trump and Republican jokes. I'll be honest I never found any of those guys funny.

[Picairn]

Gotta admit, I'm not sure if a Biden Presidency is going to be anywhere near as entertaining to talk about. We'll probably be a bit more divided here than we were about Trump, but I don't think Biden has the sheer capacity for discussion-worthy antics as Trump did.

Much like how late-night comedians and journalists are going to have to put a lot more effort into their jobs now.

Yay, politics are dull again! When politics are dull you know it's a good time.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Trumpism: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes.

Probably gonna be some political scientist's magnum opus.

This is going to be epic levels of academic study. Political Science is just the beginning. How information spreads, how belief is formed, what 'media' even means in the 21st century, the effects of chaos in information. Like, Q didn't even try to be believable. This actually taps into a thing I've been really curious about, the desire to believe overwhelms and overrides critical thought or skeptism...that's sort of wrong and inarticulate because I have a dumb persons degree, but something like the History of Consciousness, those guys would have one of those paragraph long paper title that pins it all down.

Like look at our persistent and intractable friend who so often leans on the community of belief to assure himself over evidence, in fact despite evidence. I think that this is beyond sort of hacky notions of 'tribalism' or partisanship, those would be lanes that people end up on from that need for a belief regardless of veracity.

I don't know, I'm making a butcher of this because I went and studied shit like how the lydian mode works and dramatic theory of visual narratives.

tl/dr: Poli Sci is only half of it.

Psychology, Computer Science, Sociology, Anthropology ... going to be so many departments getting in on it.

So how do you know a piece is in the C Lydian mode rather than in G major, they both just have an F sharp?

[Odreria]

There's going to be entire fields of study about the last four years.

Trumpism: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes.

Probably gonna be some political scientist's magnum opus.

You’re a liberal, shouldn’t you be talking about how it was caused by Harry Potter?

[Cannot think of a name]

Nah, it's too indirect I guess is the way to say it. Like, you can't really ding people for being full of shit and as long as Qanon never said "you need to start killing people and breaking shit"...we're going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how you inoculate people from bullshit.

Are you sure ? Saying "person X is part of a satanic pedophile cult that drinks babyblood that stole the election and is planning to take all your rights away" is pretty easy to follow up with "and therefor should be taken down".

It should be considered slander/defamation at least.

That last one, probably. I'd defer to lawyer types for it, though. Basically every thought I'd have on that I'd have to look up just to see if I was even close to on base and since there are lawyers and law students here, I'll just not make an even bigger ass of myself.

[Kowani]

Michivang Republican Party moves to replace GOP board member who voted to certify election

[Odreria]

Nah, it's too indirect I guess is the way to say it. Like, you can't really ding people for being full of shit and as long as Qanon never said "you need to start killing people and breaking shit"...we're going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how you inoculate people from bullshit.

Are you sure ? Saying "person X is part of a satanic pedophile cult that drinks babyblood that stole the election and is planning to take all your rights away" is pretty easy to follow up with "and therefor should be taken down".

It should be considered slander/defamation at least.

Yeah let’s prosecute all the critics of hillary Clinton, great idea

[Herador]

In the greatest court filing I've ever seen, Blacks For Trump and Latinos for Trump ask a Federal Court to establish "Trump's Cabinet as the Stewards of Gondor in the Absence of Aragorn"

they also want the entire congress and biden barred from doing anything

Page two has to have one of the greatest footnotes on any legal document in recent memory.

[Albrenia]

Watch the Video of Biden saying and admitting, there is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the Virus pandemic in the next several months.

So I guess everyone will be blaming Biden for the deaths of Americans due to the virus, that kills persons in the USA and all over the world. GMS.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021 ... al-months/

You are correct that there's no magic bullet for COVID, and there would be many deaths even with perfect handling of the crisis. Most of the claims of fault falling on Trump's shoulders are due to his response being so lackluster and at times directly counter-productive. It's unfair to burden Trump with all of the US deaths of COVID, but a good case can be made that he is partially to blame for the sheer amount.

[Albrenia]

Are you sure ? Saying "person X is part of a satanic pedophile cult that drinks babyblood that stole the election and is planning to take all your rights away" is pretty easy to follow up with "and therefor should be taken down".

It should be considered slander/defamation at least.

Yeah let’s prosecute all the critics of hillary Clinton, great idea

Pretty sure most of the critics of Hillary Clinton were critical of corruption, lies and potential trouble with Russia. The people who think she literally eats children are... not comparable to them.

[Picairn]

You’re a liberal, shouldn’t you be talking about how it was caused by Harry Potter?

What does Harry Potter have to do with Trumpism?

[The Alma Mater]

Are you sure ? Saying "person X is part of a satanic pedophile cult that drinks babyblood that stole the election and is planning to take all your rights away" is pretty easy to follow up with "and therefor should be taken down".

It should be considered slander/defamation at least.

Yeah let’s prosecute all the critics of hillary Clinton, great idea

If I tell your whole community that YOU are a blooddrinking pedophile because I do not like you, and as a result some people beat you up - would I share blame ?

[Nejii]

Trumpism: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes.

Probably gonna be some political scientist's magnum opus.

You’re a liberal, shouldn’t you be talking about how it was caused by Harry Potter?

I hope this is a joke.

[Cannot think of a name]

This is going to be epic levels of academic study. Political Science is just the beginning. How information spreads, how belief is formed, what 'media' even means in the 21st century, the effects of chaos in information. Like, Q didn't even try to be believable. This actually taps into a thing I've been really curious about, the desire to believe overwhelms and overrides critical thought or skeptism...that's sort of wrong and inarticulate because I have a dumb persons degree, but something like the History of Consciousness, those guys would have one of those paragraph long paper title that pins it all down.

Like look at our persistent and intractable friend who so often leans on the community of belief to assure himself over evidence, in fact despite evidence. I think that this is beyond sort of hacky notions of 'tribalism' or partisanship, those would be lanes that people end up on from that need for a belief regardless of veracity.

I don't know, I'm making a butcher of this because I went and studied shit like how the lydian mode works and dramatic theory of visual narratives.

tl/dr: Poli Sci is only half of it.

Psychology, Computer Science, Sociology, Anthropology ... going to be so many departments getting in on it.

So how do you know a piece is in the C Lydian mode rather than in G major, they both just have an F sharp?

I may have over answered this question.

The easiest way is to determine that is frustratingly stupid. What chord/note did it begin or end on. If the key signature has a single sharp (F will always be the single sharp) but it ends on C or a C chord, then it is in Lydian. All Lydian is doing, really, is saying "G major, but start on C." If you consider starting on G is just as arbitrary as starting on any of the other six notes in that major scale it sort of makes sense. If you make the tonal center C with F being sharp, it will be Lydian. You'll feel that center by resting there, generally by that being your last note.

When you get into more complicated experimental stuff (like my impossibly pretentious 20th century harmony final that was one sheet of manuscript with no bar divisions or time signature, relying on relation to notes before and after and accents to determine length and speed that was in lydian...look, man...half of everyone else's finals were just hammering an open piano with mallets...) you can either look at chord progressions, combinations, or how the melody line favors a tonal center.

With your ear you'll react to Lydian differently, there's a wistful element to it, kind of leans forward without a true feeling of resolution because a chord built on the C of the G major scale is still a major (C-E-G-B) but it's but it's IV (F#-A-C-E) is a half diminished. and its V is Major as well. So if you take regular chord progression combinations like, for arguments sake the jazz progression 2-5-1, in Major or Ionian it would be a minor, a dominant 7, and a major. In Lydian it would be a dominant 7, major, major. So that's going to sound and feel different.

[The Alma Mater]

There's going to be entire fields of study about the last four years.

Trumpism: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes.

Probably gonna be some political scientist's magnum opus.

The scariest thing is that, deep down, the whole conspiracy angle ofc has grains of truth in it.

The media IS biased.
Great organisations HAVE been systematically abusing children and covering that up - Q started amongst victims of the Catholics after all.
The US election system IS susceptible to manipulation

Etc. etc.

[Comerciante]

Watch the Video of Biden saying and admitting, there is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the Virus pandemic in the next several months.

So I guess everyone will be blaming Biden for the deaths of Americans due to the virus, that kills persons in the USA and all over the world. GMS.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021 ... al-months/

Gee if only there was an administration with access to hundreds of billions of dollars and significant manpower and advanced warning about the possibility of a pandemic that had done something about all this.

Perhaps something could have been done.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Psychology, Computer Science, Sociology, Anthropology ... going to be so many departments getting in on it.

So how do you know a piece is in the C Lydian mode rather than in G major, they both just have an F sharp?

I may have over answered this question.

The easiest way is to determine that is frustratingly stupid. What chord/note did it begin or end on. If the key signature has a single sharp (F will always be the single sharp) but it ends on C or a C chord, then it is in Lydian. All Lydian is doing, really, is saying "G major, but start on C." If you consider starting on G is just as arbitrary as starting on any of the other six notes in that major scale it sort of makes sense. If you make the tonal center C with F being sharp, it will be Lydian. You'll feel that center by resting there, generally by that being your last note.

When you get into more complicated experimental stuff (like my impossibly pretentious 20th century harmony final that was one sheet of manuscript with no bar divisions or time signature, relying on relation to notes before and after and accents to determine length and speed that was in lydian...look, man...half of everyone else's finals were just hammering an open piano with mallets...) you can either look at chord progressions, combinations, or how the melody line favors a tonal center.

With your ear you'll react to Lydian differently, there's a wistful element to it, kind of leans forward without a true feeling of resolution because a chord built on the C of the G major scale is still a major (C-E-G-B) but it's but it's IV (F#-A-C-E) is a half diminished. and its V is Major as well. So if you take regular chord progression combinations like, for arguments sake the jazz progression 2-5-1, in Major or Ionian it would be a minor, a dominant 7, and a major. In Lydian it would be a dominant 7, major, major. So that's going to sound and feel different.

Thank you, I've been trying to get my head around this for years.

[Agarntrop]

So warnock just straight up lied then

Compromise is how anything gets done. If everyone stuck to their corners and said I won’t budge on anything and only accept what I want to do you’d have total gridlock and nothing would ever get accomplished.

He lied.

Just because you have a cult-like dedication to the DNC that would mean you would vote for a cup with a blue D on it doesn't mean the Democrats are a perfect party.

[A-Series-Of-Tubes]

Trumpism: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes.

Probably gonna be some political scientist's magnum opus.

The scariest thing is that, deep down, the whole conspiracy angle ofc has grains of truth in it.

The media IS biased.
Great organisations HAVE been systematically abusing children and covering that up - Q started amongst victims of the Catholics after all.
The US election system IS susceptible to manipulation

Etc. etc.

That gives me a bad idea.
Rewrite a bunch of HUD documents to support Q theory
Add some spicy but untrue (and unverifiable) content
Classify and then leak the corrupted documents
"Find" Q and prosecute them for previous leaks
Find QAnon and prosecute for leaking the fake documents

Estimated cost: $50 million. Bad guys locked up: about a dozen

[Picairn]

The scariest thing is that, deep down, the whole conspiracy angle ofc has grains of truth in it.

The media IS biased.
Great organisations HAVE been systematically abusing children and covering that up - Q started amongst victims of the Catholics after all.
The US election system IS susceptible to manipulation

Etc. etc.

Half-truths make the best propaganda.

[The Archregimancy]

In slight fairness - and I resent having to write a half-arsed grudging defence of these people - this is in fact the very reason why the only previous precedent for impeaching a Federal office holder after they'd left office failed.

Grant's former Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached in 1876 even though he had resigned when it was clear that impeachment was inevitable. When the impeachment was sent through to the Senate, enough Senators objected to the principle of holding a trial for a former office holder that the Senate first had to vote on whether it had jurisdiction. The Upper Chamber voted 37–29 to declare that it indeed did have jurisdiction, thereby setting the necessary precedent to try Belknap.

However, following the trial, the Senate voted 35-25 to convict; though this was a majority, 40 votes were required for the necessary two-thirds majority, and Belknap was therefore acquitted. From what I understand, the Senators unanimously believed that Belknap was guilty, but those 25 Senators who voted against conviction were resolute in their belief that the Senate shouldn't have the power to try former office holders.

So while there's an established precedent for putting a former office holder on trial in the Senate following their impeachment in the House, there's equally an established precedent for the impeached individual to be acquitted because enough Senators believed that they shouldn't have jurisdiction.

Of course, I don't know if the motives of the Senators making that case in 1876 are comparable to the motives of the Senators making that case in 2021; but even if majority opinion is that the Senate does have jurisdiction, the Senators arguing that they don't aren't totally talking out of their arses, either. Or their asses, if we understandably prefer American English in this thread.

The Belknap precedent potentially works in both directions; it offers a precedent for the trial going forward, and it also offers a precedent for a minority acquittal on the basis of a disagreement over jurisdiction.

I see what you're saying, but I would argue that that's not how precedent works. Precedent helps guide for issues of law, and not of facts. The legal question was whether Belknap could be impeached after leaving office, and that was answered when the Senate concluded that he could. That's the precedent set. (And that's what Republicans today are arguing against.)

To quote Jonathan Turley:

The most important aspect of the Belknap case was not his narrow escape but the trial itself. Members of both parties ultimately concluded that a trial of Belknap was needed as a corrective politicalmeasure. If impeachment was simply a matter of removal, the argument for jurisdiction in the Belknap case would be easily resolved against hearing the matter. The Senate majority, however, was correct in its view that impeachments historically had extended to former officials, such as Warren Hastings.

Impeachment, as demonstrated by Edmund Burke, serves apublic value in addressing conduct at odds with core values in a society. At a time of lost confidence in the integrity of the government,the conduct of a former official can demand a political response. This response in the form of an impeachment may be more important than a legal response in the form of a prosecution. Regardless of the outcome, the Belknap trial addressed the underlying conduct and affirmed core principles at a time of diminishing faith in government. Absent such a trial, Belknap’s rush to resign would have succeeded inbarring any corrective political action to counter the damage to the system caused by his conduct. Even if the only penalty is disqualification from future office, the open presentation of the evidence andwitnesses represents the very element that was missing in colonial impeachments. Such a trial has a political value that runs vertically as a response to the public and horizontally as a deterrent to the executive branch.

Now, when it comes to the question of what it takes to convict, a question of fact (which Republicans today have yet to say anything about), there is no legal threshold they need to clear, and precedent doesn't carry any weight. There is no standard of proof they have to adhere to, and each senator must, as Charles Black has formulated it, "find his own standard in his own conscience, as advised by reflection”. That's also what arguably happened during the Belknap case, so it didn't set any new precedent when they disregarded the facts of the case and declined to convict on grounds not found in the material evidence presented. That had always been allowed in this political process, though some senators like to pretend otherwise.

My use of language was perhaps imprecise here, for which apologies. It's similar to the confusion caused when someone uses 'theory' in the informal everyday context when it would have been better to use it in its narrow scientific context.

For clarity, I entirely accept that the legal precedent set by the Belknap case is that an impeachment trial can take place after a Federal official is no longer in office.

My use of the word 'precedent' in noting the circumstances of his acquittal was in the looser informal sense of 'there's a precedent, in the non-legal sense, for senators disagreeing with the trial going ahead'.

So I mixed the formal legal meaning of precedent with the informal everyday meaning of precedent, which lead to some lack of clarity. Clearly the trial can constitutionally go ahead. At the same time, I think that the senators disagreeing with the circumstances have just enough historical cover so as not to be completely talking out of their arses, even if they're manifestly in the wrong.

[Odreria]

Funny how conservatives claim to love small business but got mad at hillary clinton for successfully operating an abortion clinic pizzeria