Thought for the Day

[Stavros]

From a country that has given us world class achievements in the arts, sciences, engineering, medicine, philosophy -the list goes on- comes the bleak reality that this President prefers to take advice from people who have achieved nothing, but promote ideas so remote from Christianity as to be something else, and to be garbage. This is not a cure for flu, but voluntary euthanasia -maybe that is the true aim of these dangerous people?

“Jesus himself gave us the flu shot. He redeemed us from the curse of flu and we receive it, and we take it, and we are healed by his stripes.
“Get on the word, stay on the word, and if you say, ‘Well, I don’t have any symptoms of the flu’, great, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
“Just keep saying that ‘I’ll never have the flu, I’ll never have the flu’. Put words, inoculate yourself with the word of God.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a8197801.html

[trish]

Jesus Himself gave me these black lace Van Jonsson panties.
Praise be to Jee-YAY-sus!

[buttslinger]

A large portion of Trump's base come from Smalltown USA. In the town where my sister-in-law grew up people thought you were crazy to drive 25 minutes to the next town for a better job. I'm not sure if they still have TV Evangelists, but I know in the rural part of the country, College is for people that are very rich or very smart. For the most part, the smalltown group dynamic sees being different, or exceling past your peers, or trying to change things as uppity, or citified. Everybody knows their neighbor, nobody locks doors.
I'm kind of surprised Trump didn't have Mike Pence lay hands on a cripple and make him walk again at his rallies, once the sinner casts out Satan (gay sex, porn, abortionists, touching yourself, and most of all, TRANNIES!!!!)
I'm pretty sure the whole reason they got Trump to put Pence on the ticket was to reel in the Evangelicals, scarier than Trump being a phony Believer is Pence as a true Believer. I hope Mueller's net is big enough to snare Pence or we'll have another problem on out hands, President Mike Pence receiving marching orders from God.

[Stavros]

If you are still wondering how someone so obviously unfit for public office was selected by the Republican Party to run for the highest in the USA, questions must be asked how someone unfit for public office can be nominated to run in a race [no pun intended] he cannot win. Does this party actually have membership rules that determine who can and cannot run for office in its name?

ILLINOIS Republicans should have paid closer attention to the state’s third district, a Democratic fiefdom that includes a part of Chicago and its southwestern suburbs. Arthur Jones, a notorious neo-Nazi, will almost certainly win the Republican primary for the third district’s seat in the House of Representatives on March 20th because he is unopposed by any other Republican candidate. Mr Jones is a former member of the National Socialist White People’s Party and a variety of other Nazi groupings. He calls the Holocaust an “international extortion racket” and proudly displays racist and anti-Semitic bile on his website and blog.
https://www.economist.com/blogs/demo...2/nazi-nominee

[flabbybody]

We all learned in civics class that a party affiliation, even one as distasteful as Neo-Nazi, does not disqualify someone from running or holding public office. If the seat is unwinnable the GOP must feel it's a waste of scarce resources to challenge the lunatic. Why give him attention with a primary contest?
And what's your campaign strategy against a holocost denying Nazi? "My opponent is wrong, the holocost definitely occurred...now how do we fix Obamacare?"

[broncofan]

We all learned in civics class that a party affiliation, even one as distasteful as Neo-Nazi, does not disqualify someone from running or holding public office.

Fair point but I wonder whether parties should have procedures for excluding individuals from membership if they bring the party into disrepute or express views that are inconsistent with the party line. With such rules they can force someone like Arthur Jones to run as an independent or form his own party but never force him out of a race or off a ballot etc.

[broncofan]

My guess from the little I've read about the subject is that the different treatment of party membership in the U.S v the UK is that parties don't have as much intrinsic significance in our system. They do not have to form a majority of our legislature or form coalitions and so there is very little government standing to enforce rules of membership.

As for the parties doing so themselves, the question might be to what extent a private organization can prevent someone from using their name or attempting to affiliate. They can deny funding and resources but maybe there is no easy legal mechanism (I can think of causes of action but would a party really want to sue?) to preclude someone from saying they are a Republican even if they express views the party disagrees with. One thing to consider is that we never actually register with the party. We state an "affiliation" when we register to vote with our state. I don't know how this impacts the analysis.

[trish]

I feel that a lot of political change in the U.S. (for good or ill) is due the possibility that political parties are up for grabs. Is the Democratic Party the party of civil rights, or of economic equality etc. because those issues are represented in the party platform, or are they in the party platform because individuals who care about those issues decided to make them the issues of the party?

I sitting here trying to wake up, morning coffee in hand, and trying to think of examples of how the Republican and Democratic parties have changed faces over the decades because of pressures within the party or because of energized people joining them and changing them from within.

[Stavros]

My guess from the little I've read about the subject is that the different treatment of party membership in the U.S v the UK is that parties don't have as much intrinsic significance in our system. They do not have to form a majority of our legislature or form coalitions and so there is very little government standing to enforce rules of membership.

As for the parties doing so themselves, the question might be to what extent a private organization can prevent someone from using their name or attempting to affiliate. They can deny funding and resources but maybe there is no easy legal mechanism (I can think of causes of action but would a party really want to sue?) to preclude someone from saying they are a Republican even if they express views the party disagrees with. One thing to consider is that we never actually register with the party. We state an "affiliation" when we register to vote with our state. I don't know how this impacts the analysis.

Your last comment about registering to vote as a Democrat or a Republican has initiated some thoughts on why your party system is so different. If I were asked when filling out my registration form to register a political preference that would be because I lived in a dictatorship or some sort of police state. I understand why it is done in the US, yet the explanation -to enable registered Democrats to vote in the nominating procedures for Democrat candidates- is itself weakened if someone registers as a 'independent' whereupon they too, in an Open Primacy can vote for the Democrat candidate, which is absurd since it may allow a swivel-eyed lunatic to vote for or against someone just to spoil the ballot or select another extremist candidate.

My understanding now is that because States rather than the Government run elections, the rules are different in each state and thus the national organizations are in effect managing local decisions and that Americans believe this to be democracy in action. An alternative would be for a central committee in Washington DC to approve candidates in California or Vermont that local people might resent.

In addition, historically, parties in the US, including the two main ones, have emerged and changed radically over time, the most obvious being the Democrats as the party that replaced slavery with segregation in the South before becoming the party of the northern industrial working class, and the Republicans which once opposed slavery yet these days seems to lament its loss. Whereas in the UK the two main parties in the 19th century, Tories and Liberals emerged from within the ruling elites and were thus imposed on the electorate until Labour emerged from the streets, the mines and the factories in 1900, in the US it seems to me parties are local affairs that are not integrated into a nationwide organization. But that doesn't mean even local parties should not have a mechanism for ensuring that someone with a proven past that is opposed to the party now seeks to represent should be approved not least when it is clear his views have not changed.

Is this a strength or a weakness? In the UK, you can run for local office or Parliament if you want to, forming your own party or standing as an individual championing some cause, but you must get the endorsements of local residents and pay the fee to do so. But in the major parties you have to be a paid-up member of the party with a party card to prove it. Moreover, in the Tory, Labour and Liberal-Democrat parties there is usually a time constraint that means you cannot join the party on Friday and seek nomination on a Monday. When I knew these things better than I do now, it used to be a minimum of two years membership before anyone could run for the local council, either the same for Parliament or maybe it was five years but the rules have changed since then anyway. In addition, the examination of your past and the assumption your party colleagues know who you are is a major source of support, as I believe it must be in the US. Mavericks do get through sometimes but most of the time the system works, the one issue of recent vintage being 'women-only' shortlists in selection processes for local council and Parliamentary seats to give more women the chance to be elected.

The absence of an annual membership fee and a roll of members and of any restrain on who can step forward and seek the nomination for a party is in my view a major flaw in the US precisely because it gives an opportunity to individuals with no proven skills in politics or even coherent ideas 'the right' to seek election, which they should do as independents if they are so keen. I would go so far as to suggest that the nomination of a man utterly incapable of political leadership, who can barely read and write and has not a shred of interest in either the rule of law or the Constitution validates my position, but the fact is you just don't do politics our way and there is nothing other than the vote on the day to prevent one of those ghastly Kardashian or Jenner people from receiving the nomination to be President. Maybe the point is that the norms we have seen erased in the last year suggest you do now need a reform or tightening of the way in which people seek the nomination of the two main parties or the selection process will turn into a farce.

I found the contributions here to be of interest-
https://ask.metafilter.com/22753/Why...ion-in-America

[Stavros]

We all learned in civics class that a party affiliation, even one as distasteful as Neo-Nazi, does not disqualify someone from running or holding public office. If the seat is unwinnable the GOP must feel it's a waste of scarce resources to challenge the lunatic. Why give him attention with a primary contest?
And what's your campaign strategy against a holocost denying Nazi? "My opponent is wrong, the holocost definitely occurred...now how do we fix Obamacare?"

Such things in Germany are illegal, indeed Arthur Jones would by now either be in prison, or live in exile- in the USA (?).
German democracy does not suffer by banning representations of the Third Reich, and Holocaust Denial is illegal there and in 15 other countries in Europe and again democracy has not suffered because of it.

Free speech is a precious right, but it appears in the US to enable speech whose only purpose is to insult, or provoke, or even to incite violence though there must be limits even on that. You could of course argue that Arthur Jones will always be a loser because his views are so extreme and the manner in which he presents them so hysterical, but Alex Jones is also hysterical and has directly or indirectly damaged people's lives.

What does one do? In the UK most of the time we confront them. When the English Defence League or Britain First gets permission to march, a counter-demonstration is organized to confront them, even though that is what they want -to cause trouble and get free publicity. It is for the most part a tedious exercise, but the reality is that these people have little or no support in this country. Even in the case of UKIP, Nigel Farage appealed to neo-Nazis, racists, anti-Muslims and the assortment of nationalist and right-wing weirdos to 'hold your noses and vote UKIP'. The result: rejection at the last election. Now Farage spends his days bleating about the 'betrayal' of Brexit and backing the break-up of California, while urgently waiting for the €70,000 golden goodbye from the European Parliament.

I guess you will be spending the rest of your life shaking your head in disbelief at the rubbish people believe. You don't need candidates in election to broadcast it, and should be able to stop it, at least in the Democrat and Republican parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_a...locaust_denial