Thought for the Day

[filghy2]

You still don't get it, do you Stavros? All problems will be solved by the magic Brexit fairy, who can be summoned by uttering the appropriate incantations - "take back control","Britain for the British", "fuck the establishment" etc. Any problems must therefore due to 'traitors' and 'neo-liberals' who refuse to believe in the magic fairy.

Seriously, why don't you do as everyone else does and just ignore his outpourings of bile? He only posts here to feed his need to nurture resentments, so why give him oxygen?

[peejaye]

Nice thought

[peejaye]

You still don't get it, do you Stavros? All problems will be solved by the magic Brexit fairy, who can be summoned by uttering the appropriate incantations - "take back control","Britain for the British", "fuck the establishment" etc. Any problems must therefore due to 'traitors' and 'neo-liberals' who refuse to believe in the magic fairy.

I just laugh my cock off at you little fucking men trying to be big men!

[Ben in LA]

Millennials blame boomers for ruining their lives, and when you look at the big picture they’re partly correct.

[peejaye]

Life is what you make it Ben. Make the most of it, you don't get as long as you think.

[Jericho]

What, independence from sanity?

Nice thought

[buttslinger]

My thought for the day isn't that ignorance is bliss, in fact I would say it's far worse than it seems, and there is no solution.

[broncofan]

My thought for the day isn't that ignorance is bliss, in fact I would say it's far worse than it seems, and there is no solution.

Signals don't look good right now but I'm not sure it's time for despair either. Though there isn't a ton of activity on this side of the forum these days, I am curious what people think will happen in November with the mid-terms. I think if Democrats win the House Trump will be impeached but that it would require a smoking gun for him to be removed from office.

We are all notoriously bad when it comes to seeing what's around the bend. I posted a thread a couple of months before the election in 2016 asking what people thought would happen if Trump would win given that the polls gave him almost a 50% chance. The answers were mostly half-hearted because people thought he almost certainly wouldn't, and one person said he wouldn't answer because he didn't think he would have to worry about it.

I am reading a book by Cass Sunstein on the history of the impeachment clause in the Constitution and how the founding fathers saw it as being essential to a republican form of government. It is not a purely legal book, but spends more time discussing the early history of impeachment in the colonies and even its roots in England against the King's ministers who were accountable to the Parliament. It is an extremely breezy read, and discusses the history of impeachment, which of course is not to overturn an unfavorable political result, but to remove a President when he begins to abuse his authority and how essential it was seen by the founders who did not think term limits and electoral accountability were sufficient to prevent creeping despotism. I am only one-third of the way through, but it appears that Trump's daily behavior is the type of misconduct and self-aggrandizement that impeachment was designed to check (maybe that's wishful thinking). I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about how impeachment operates, what standards are relevant for determining impeachability, and just a general tour of its discussion at the constitutional convention.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073X3DV2M...ng=UTF8&btkr=1

[blackchubby38]

I truly believe that its time for the black community to give white people, especially kids, who listen to hip hop a pass when it comes to saying the n-word. This way we could put an end to outrage that ensues whenever someone goes back in time to dig up six or seven year old tweets.

[filghy2]

I am reading a book by Cass Sunstein on the history of the impeachment clause in the Constitution and how the founding fathers saw it as being essential to a republican form of government. It is not a purely legal book, but spends more time discussing the early history of impeachment in the colonies and even its roots in England against the King's ministers who were accountable to the Parliament. It is an extremely breezy read, and discusses the history of impeachment, which of course is not to overturn an unfavorable political result, but to remove a President when he begins to abuse his authority and how essential it was seen by the founders who did not think term limits and electoral accountability were sufficient to prevent creeping despotism. I am only one-third of the way through, but it appears that Trump's daily behavior is the type of misconduct and self-aggrandizement that impeachment was designed to check (maybe that's wishful thinking). I highly recommend it to anyone who is curious about how impeachment operates, what standards are relevant for determining impeachability, and just a general tour of its discussion at the constitutional convention.

What I always find paradoxical about the US is that your country was founded as a reaction against autocracy, and the founding fathers clearly intended a fairly limited presidency. yet you have ended up with a powerful imperial presidency. The same thing has happened in parliamentary democracies to a degree - the executive has increased its power at the expense of the legislature. But the critical difference in a parliamentary system is that it's much easier to remove a leader who proves unsuitable. Leaders are often removed by their own party when they become too unpopular.

The founding fathers seem to have assumed that there would be enough people of good conscience on both sides of Congress to constrain and, if necessary, remove Presidents who abused their power. They did not envisage a situation in which a President's party would largely continue to support him whatever he did. I suspect that may prove to be the fatal flaw in the US system in the long term, and possibly in the short term.