https://twitter.com/mrbenwexler/stat...20081320816641Originally Posted by Ben Wexler
facepalm
Last edited by neanderthal; February 7th, 2017 at 06:56 PM.
Did you confuse slm for billi?
Tom Swervo, follow Jesus with all your heart and be the light and salt of the world..., and you'd be able to melt all the snow!!!!
Last edited by Crazed_Insanity; February 7th, 2017 at 06:55 PM.
No. Because protests against the Trump "administration" are not like Protests against Hitler might have been.
Because as you say, we have a 241-year-old Democracy with stable institutions and we have an economy in pretty good shape.
Germany in 1933 had been a succession of different states, monarchies, principalities, and democracies for years, had been devastated by a major war in which a huge number of Germans were killed only 15 years earlier, and had then been in a state of economic collapse for more than a decade.
There is more chance of protest succeeding in a functioning society than in one that genuinely is torn to pieces.
But again, a LARGE majority of people in the United States do not want to live in a dictatorship or a country without the rule of law - probably 60-70% of them, even people who supported Trump but now may regret that decision (and really, who wouldn't). So protest here and now is, as I said above, not like protest in 1933 Germany.
But again, protests now prevent revolution later. And most people don't want revolution or civil war.
Don't hold your breath.
Arne Duncan served from 2009 to 2015, and he was honestly terrible at that job.
If Republicans had focused on criticizing things of substance rather than freaking out over Obama's skin color, perhaps that would've been a legitimate area to criticize Obama and try to fix the problem of an inadequate or poor performing secretary. There were plenty of legit things to criticize under Obama's tenure - almost all of which were totally ignored by Republicans in favor of high-profile wastes of money like the Benghazi hearings or absurd discussions of death panels and Kenya.
Some of them like her because they believe in Charter Schools, which of course siphon off good students from regular schools and make those schools even poorer performers.
Some of them like her because they understand she will be terrible for Public Education and they're okay with that because they want to destroy public education.
Some of them like her because she's all about forcing Religion on kids. As long as it's Jesus.
It's not at all like healthcare.
But many people do want a functional, high-quality, public education system. Because EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRY HAS THAT, and also BECAUSE THAT SHIT WORKS.
I'll also say that "letting the free market handle it" has generally failed to deliver cheaper, higher quality services, or better outcomes where it has been tried in most areas that were formerly public. Private Prisons, for example.
"Both Sides" don't want the same result. One side wants an educated, capable workforce. The other side doesn't see the value in education at all, because the more people learn, the more they question the world views that Conservative politicians rely on. It's why Conservative pols are so hostile to education of any kind.
That is how Conservatives work. They break the apparatus' and institutions of government on purpose, and then claim those institutions don't work. They've been doing it for years, but it got much more pronounced after the 1994 mid-terms.
Every time the census is taken, congressional districts are redrawn. They can also be redrawn at other times, but generally that's when it happens. Republicans have controlled congress and statehouses at key times during the census process, and they've made a point to specifically redraw districts after capturing state legislatures - ensuring that they sit in gerrymandered majorities. Democrats do this too, but to a lesser extent. The Republicans made a specific plan of doing this in the late 2000s and have used that plan to effectively disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters, who may outnumber Republicans but who's numbers are not reflected in the makeup of state legislatures, who then hold the keys to the district maps.
This warrants a separate post in and of itself.
Except for the highly partisan way in which voting rights were restricted in key states, the blatant interference at the FBI by Trump partisans, particularly Rudy Giuliani, that led to James Comey’s huge Hatch Act violation, and the Russian meddling in terms of putting out propaganda that influenced low-information voters. He was not Elected fair and square. He’ll always have an asterisk.
Except for the fact that she donated, collectively, several million dollars directly to the Senators that confirmed her. She’s a major donor to more than 30 of them and in particular those who got her advanced from committee to the full Senate.
Those she donated to ignored hundreds of thousands of calls, e-mails, and letters from their constituents begging them to vote “no.”
It’s a bought and paid for seat. Period.