- luv-talk - luv.asn.au

Political parties in the USA (are different)
by Rick Moen 18 Mar '18

18 Mar '18

As an addendum to the earlier long rundown about how the United States has been unraveling, I should further clarify what political parties _are_ in the USA, because my European friends from parliamentary countries (not sure about you with your 'washminster' hybrid model) are continually astonished when I explain the matter. A UK voter, to be a member of a political party, pays a fee, fills out an application, and then can cast votes for the party's 'list' of candidates for the Parliament in Westminster. The party has the prerogative of ousting individual voters as members in extreme cases of unsuitability. Parties have official recognition, and form coalitions following each major election to seek enough seats to support a stable government, embodied in the Cabinet and the PM, approaching the Queen in her capacity as head of state to propose a new 'government' (cabinet with PM) when a working coalition has enough votes to survive vote-of-confidence polls. In the USA, voters often speak of being 'members' of some political party, but that is entirely misleading. No party _really_ has official recognition at all. The Founding Fathers had no idea they would arise after independence and drafting of the Constitution. When parties spontaneously arose as an emergent effect of the government framework adopted, the Founding Fathers were dismayed and condemned them as the sin of 'faction', which of course did nothing to dismantle them. A USA political party is a self-governing and self-perpetuating private association that backs and helps raise funds for certain candidates affiliated with the party. Once in office, a politician may drop that affiliation if he/she wishes. Some such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Joe Lieberman have disaffiliated themselves with their original parties and declared themselves 'independent', yet generally 'caucused with' (voted and worked with) their former parties. My state, California, has lately had better (in the sense of less misleading) official terminology than most: In registering to vote, I can (and did) declare a 'party preference', in my case the Democratic Party. By doing so, I pay no fees to the Democratic Party or anyone else, and have no obvious power to contribute to setting California Democratic Party policies or priorities. (They'll happily accept my money, but I'll get only 'trust us' in return.) My declaring a party preference permits me to vote in 'primary elections' for 'partisan offices' among Democratic Party candidates to choose which of the set of Democrats for a given 'partisan' office (e.g., governor of the state of California) shall become the party's standard-bearer to advance to the subsequent 'general election' competing against the standard-bearers of other parties. Currently and for over 100 years, the only two USA political parties with significant potential to hold office have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party (the latter nicknamed the Grand Old Party aka GOP). Minor parties exist in many states, e.g., in California _four_ other parties routinely generate enough primary election votes that California is willing to pay for ballots for them in primary elections, but none is strong enough to win any office except extremely rarely, hence affiliating with them (declaring a 'preference' for a minor party in primary elections) is an ideological statement rather than a pragmatic choice. (This is because of a phenomenon called Duverger's Law, http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/lexicon.html#duverger, 'The simple-majority single-ballot system favours the two-party system.') Minor US parties tend to be laboratories for development and promotion of ideas, lacking as they do the ability to (normally) win offices. California's arrangements to de-facto 'recognise' political parties if they have recently roused enough primary votes (and to gain initial recognition upon submitting enough voter names on a petition) is an uneasy compromise in recognition of political reality even though the parties are NOT, when all is said and done public institutions but rather private committees. The parties predated California's formation as a state in 1850, so they had to be accomodated. The rationale of how the state treats them is that primary elections occur anyway for reasons having nothing to do with the parties, e.g. for non-partisan offices and voter initiatives, so adding ballot support for 'recognised' parties effectively costs almost nothing more, and if enough voters wish a given party to have such a de-minimus subsidy, why not? Under California's election regulations, each party may decide whether or not 'no party preference' or other-party-preference voters may elect their primary ballots and participate in selecting the party's candidates advancing to the general election. Each party can adjust its policies in this area before any given primary election. For the June 2016 primary election, California's Republican Party permitted ONLY voters with registered Republican Party affiliation to vote in its primary. The Green and Peace & Freedom minor parties adopted parallel policies (only our voters may vote in our primary). California's Democratic Party permitted its own and no-party-preference voters to participate in its primary races. Minor parties American Independent and Libertarian adopted parallel policies (our own and unaffiliated voters may vote in our primary). Few California voters really understand that odd setup. I documented it as part of my comprehensive guide to the June 2016 primary election, here: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/election-2016-06-07.html#primaries Each of the 50 USA states regulates and almost-sort-of-recognises political parties in its own idiosyncratic way, but California's is the one I know best and care about, so it's the one I've studied and documented. I as a Democratic Party-preference voter remain entirely free to vote for the Republican candidate for a 'partisan' office (e.g, governor, state treasurer, and many other state, Federal, and local offices) in the general election following a primary election -- or in theory for the Libertarian, Peace & Freedom, American Independent, or Green candidates, too. On occasion, I have voted for a Republican Party candidate over the Democratic Party one in a general election, specifically in cases where the Republican candidate was the 'clean government' option and the Democratic candidate's history was more suspect. (This has happened often enough to mention, but not often.)

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Re: [luv-talk] [skeptic] Another rat flees the rapidly-sinking SS Trump
by Rick Moen 18 Mar '18

18 Mar '18

[same thing, except better copy-edited to expunge some possibly confusing gaffes] In which I recap Yank political follies for you, my Oz friends, once more. In case the jibe is unfamiliar, 'Faux News' is a US-familiar taunt denoting Murdoch-owned far-right mouthpiece cable television's supposed news organisation Fox News. They have long claimed to be 'fair and balanced', a cheeky claim that fools nobody except perhaps the 27.2% of the Nov. 2016 electorate who voted Trump/Pence. (28.4% voted Clinton/Kaine, and 3.4% voted third-party, but the decisive faction was the 41.0% who didn't vote.) ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 14:15:56 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: Re: [skeptic] Another rat flees the rapidly-sinking SS Trump Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting Wade T Smith (skepticus(a)earthlink.net) > So, here it is, March 17th (amateur night, doncha know), and that’s > two days after the Ides of March. > > Obviously, no Brutuses amongst us. > > Bruti? Many Bruti with many knives would be required, not just one, _if_ that non-democratic remedy were ever the solution -- a second civil war -- because The Toddler-in-Chief and his Administration are, when all is said and done, irritating and continually boggling (and corrosive to the Republic), but a mostly ineffective reality-TV chaos sideshow, and not the real problem. (Say I, at least.) Which is to say, you're about to hear my What the Hell Happened to the United States quick-take. (I will also review some basics, as I have a mind to forward this to a group of my Australian friends.) It all traces back to way, way too much money in politics (thank you, Citizens United Supreme Court decision for turning a small trickle of corruption into the Johnstown Flood of corruption), and the plot to 'get' Bill Clinton through both Special Prosecutors (thank you, Ken Starr), and the weaponising of Congressional politics and poisoning of Congress's Executive Branch relations under any GOP majority with any Democratic President (thank you, Newt Gingrich). Under Gingrich, the House of Representatives (in particular) GOP majority was incredibly upset that Bill Clinton's ability to grab the centre of American politics empowered him and permitted him to start fixing Reagan's twisting of institutions and, worse, start appointing Supreme Court justices to have a lasting effect. Gingrich was the first of a new and growing breed of GOP leaders who want to overpower all opposition at all cost, and to have discarded compromise and democratic values. You may recall he was so determined to destroy the Clinton Administration that he literally defunded and shut down the Federal government for the first time ever. His intellectual heirs are the detested Ted Cruz, and Mitch McConnell the traitor. The government shutdown backfired in the short term, but showed GOP extremists they could conduct sabotage without being removed from office and pointed to the outer darkness. Meanwhile, the GOP extremists supported Special Prosecutor Ken Starr in his futile and stupid effort to remove Bill Clinton from office, settling for a consolation goal of reducing his administration's effectiveness while under attack. Although the Faux News propaganda narrative of moral equivalency between GOP extremism and (supposed) equal and opposite Democratic Party extremism is a barefaced lie, the Democrats have not had clean hands through this corrosion of politics. Honest and endearingly old-time conservative analyst David Frum listed some of the ways the Democrats have acted to worsen the partisan divide in his recent book _Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic_, which I recommend highly. I would add the extreme politicising of hearings for Supreme Court appointees, which started with the 1987 hearings over Reagan-appointed extremist ideologue Robert Bork. Bork was a disaster, but was totally, clearly _qualified_ for the post, and so it was a jarring and destructive break from all of American tradition for Democrats to deprive Reagan of his (foolish) choice. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/the-sad-legacy-of-robe… There were never ideological litmus tests in Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court appointees _before_ that. Since then, always and every time. The avalanche of money created the lunatic Tea Party as an astroturf (faux grassroots) far-right organising effort (and a branding concept rather than a party). This was actually just cover for finding gullible & trollable citizens and siphoning their donations money, hence was shut down when the targets _ran out_ of funds (I'm not joking), but was a harbinger of lunatic combines and astroturfing to come (Faux News, far-right believer online forums, the Freedom Caucus). The Democratic Party remained, throughout this process, a diverse coalition with modest goals, still aligned with pluralist democratic values, civil rights, and support for (and by) labour unions, but also undisciplined and gutless. To the best of my recollection, the only significant shift in its carefully moderate agenda was a late embrace of marriage equality (same-sex marriage) after the tide of public opinion already lurched in its favour. By contrast, the Republican Party became by degrees more militant and ideologically purist, with moderates (and principled conservatives such as David Frum) being forced out. Worst of all, top leadership became fixated with gaining and perfecting single party rule at any cost. After eight years of right-leaning but surprisingly steady by current standards (other than the horrible war thing) George W. Bush -- who at least, for all his faults, would not tolerate anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant idiocy -- the Republican aspirations for one-party rule were set back horribly by the surprising emergence of Barack Hussein Obama, who trounced GOP standard-bearers John McCain in 2008 and then Mitt Romney in 2012. In response, yet more dirty money poured in (especially from the toxic Koch Brothers) and the GOP turned in desperation to attempting outright sabotage and de-legitimising the new President, far _more_ than they did with Bill Clinton. Their near-total failure to destroy Obama drove the GOP and its craziest voters into greater psychosis including open racism and anti-religious bigotry (Obama's middle name didn't help), not to mention anti-immigrant demagogery. In the latter regard, to their credit, GOP leaders attempted to prevent that specific craziness, as reflected in their remarkably thoughtful 2013 97-page report on the Romney defeat, 'Growth and Opportunity Project', popularly called the GOP 'Autopsy Report'. This is where the GOP mandarins noted gravely the ongoing demographic shift where a massive number of legitimate citizen voters who are children of recent Hispanic immigrants, among others, were making the United States for the first time _truly_ multiracial and multicultural, to a degree it never has quite been before. In particular, it was no longer the case that Caucasian voters were an absolute majority, but just one huge ingredient in the melting pot among many. The Autopsy Report strongly urged reform of GOP policies towards immigrants lest all these newer voters create a permanent Democratic Party majority, and leaders began adopting all of its wise recommendations. But then, a low-cost but accidentally effective sabotage effort changed everything: This was Project REDMAP, Redistricting Majority Project, created in 2010 to take advantage of a unique, historic opportunity occasioned by decennial redistricting for both state and Federal offices _combined_ with unprecedentedly effective computer modeling, to do gerrymandering an order of magnitude more effective than ever before. This project cost only $18m, a pittance, was effective beyond Republicans' wildest dream, and has (ironically) made them captive of their own success. For reasons I'll explain, this plot twist forced them into extremism, killed the Autopsy Report reforms, and enabled The Toddler's bizarre takeover of the GOP. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-red… But first, the unplanned success of Project REDMAP didn't _merely_ give Republicans artificial, undemocratic dominance in dozens of states and the US House of Representatives, but also created a deep reservoir of _crazy extremist_ GOP politicians in state houses and Congress's lower house, by making their newly gerrymandered districts 'safe' against non-GOP challenge: When a seat is so protected against Democratic and independent challengers that moderate policies aren't necessary to win, the looniest, most far-right, least pluralist GOP candidate tends to gain and hold that office. This emergent effect, more than anything else, made the Autopsy Report policies a dead letter, starting around 2015, as the GOP, while knowing this would be a long-term catastrophe, was forced by Freedom Caucus loonies to abandon the report's wise recommendations and about-face against them. Captive of its REDMAP-enabled lunatic fringe, the GOP still greatly feared being swept away by the future Democratic Party wave the Autopsy Report warned against and tried to avert, but now it was forced into stronger measures in place of Autopsy Report reforms. First up was outright appeal to (previously latent) racism and xenophobia, the best weapon against Obama; and misogyny, the best weapon against Hilary Clinton. The GOP tried and failed to sabotage Obama's first term, and he managed to pass an overhaul of health insurance (directly copying GOP Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's 'Romneycare' health insurance reform that originated in the right-wing Heritage Foundation) despite GOP refusal to participate. By now, REDMAP had transformed enough House districts that a large House GOP majority joined a bare Senate GOP majority in 2012, and the effort to neuter Obama's Executive Branch redoubled. Obama kept trying fruitlessly for a while to work out a bipartisan relationship with Congress, and eventually gave up and attempted reforms through Executive Branch orders _only_, having been left no other options. In this, he further enraged the GOP power-politics supremacists by transgressing norms and infringing on Congress's prerogatives. For example, the pre-2012 Obama had honestly admitted that he alone had no constitutional power to give relief against deportation to 'dreamers', American young people born abroad and brought to the USA by unauthorised immigrant parents, thus in violation of immigration law through no personal fault and knowing no country but the United States. (Congress alone could enact the necessary reforms.) The post-2012 Obama reversed course and decreed 'DACA', Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, through an Executive Order despite his earlier statement that this would unconstitutional, because the extremist-controlled Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act or take any other action. (Even with the justification of empathy towards enormously admirable, blameless young immigrants, Democratic President Obama, though this wrongful action and others, drove the militant GOP further into psychopathy.) The money-corruption problem continued to worsen. Koch Brothers money was now joined by that of radical-right billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca, who saw a chance to disassemble the regulatory state through the right extremist presidential candidate. Their standard bearer was the hated Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. When his campaign imploded, they switched to bizarre junk-television celebrity, multiple failed businessman and spectacularly failed business owner, one-time slumlord, and conduit for ex-Soviet money-laundering money Donald John Trump. Trump promoted himself with the tired, stupid line that he'd run America 'like a business' -- and some people failed to notice that his business was a _family_ business empire in which enforced secrecy (strong NDAs) covers up criminality and incompetence, with the sole sacred duty being personal loyalty not to the business but to The Toddler himself. GOP mandarins were appalled by The Toddler's multifaceted severe failings -- he's a malignant narcissist, he's a-literate and cannot even read a one-page memo or be taught the basics of his office, he has no policies (only intuition-driven urges), he drives away all but third-raters willing to abase themselves and show total loyalty (that is never returned) (this being why competent lawyers will not work for him) -- but the GOP by this time was carried along, hostage. The point is that The Toddler isn't _competent_ evil, but rather spastic and borderline self-defeating evil. If Mitch McConnell and Robert Mercer are Vito Corleone, The Toddler is merely Fredo. Trump's damage to the Executive Branch has been severe and ongoing, but amateur. In computer-security terms, it can be compared to a fuzzing probe of a codebase, trying semi-random nonsense inputs to government processes, to find unsuspected avenues of attack. The GOP in Congress, haunted by the prospect of being swept away by a Democratic wave driven by both revulsion and demographic shifts, in desperation crossed the Rubicon into outright treason with Putin and his captive oligarchs and well-funded hacking teams -- as did, of course, to a much greater and less well-concealed degree, The Toddler. One of the few areas The Toddler has done competent damage is by packing Federal judgeships solely with far-right loons whose names were tendered by the extremist Federalist Society. That will be a long-term problem. Fixing this situation, preferably without knives, will require a large purge of traitors, correcting the REDMAP 'ratf*cking' of district boundaries (the GOP apparatchiks' own term), and somehow overturning Citizens United. This repair, I fear, will take depressingly long, even if the traitors are swept away. But my point is, The Toddler is just a psychotic blip, madly waving his tiny little hands and distracting from the larger problem. My view, yours for a small fee.[tm] _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- End forwarded message -----

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(forw) [skeptic] Cambridge Analytica Suspended From Facebook
by Rick Moen 18 Mar '18

18 Mar '18

Another case in point. Note that they don't even _try_ to avoid looking like Bond villains. Pity that Japanese volcano used as the supposed location of SPECTRE headquarters in 'You Only Live Twice' just blew up, or they could have moved there. ----- Forwarded message from Ben Avery <bavery715(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 16:53:21 -0400 From: Ben Avery <bavery715(a)gmail.com> To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: [skeptic] Cambridge Analytica Suspended From Facebook Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica (the Trump campaign's data firm) and its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories because they acquired user data in way that violated Facebook's terms of service (and likely violated British privacy law) https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-analytica/ Facebook is trying really hard to minimize this. While the release says 270,000 people used the app, data of friends of those people was also acquired so the number affected is likely in the hundreds of millions. When Facebook found out that CA/SCL had this data they asked for certificate of destruction...and that was the entirety of follow-up until they recently heard the data wasn't destroyed. The guy who created the app us to get the data is one Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, who is a Russia/American dual national who in addition to a postion at Cambridge University is also a professor at St. Petersburg University. He also, I kid you not, changed his name to Dr. Spectre for a while. https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/ak823%40cam.ac.uk The New York Times has more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-trump-ca… The Guardian has a profile on Christopher Wylie, the data nerd who helped built CA and now regrets it: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christo… -- Ben Avery bavery715(a)gmail.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> Virus-free. www.avast.com <https://www.avast.com/sig-email?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campai…> <#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2> _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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(forw) Re: [skeptic] Another rat flees the rapidly-sinking SS Trump
by Rick Moen 18 Mar '18

18 Mar '18

In which I recap Yank political follies for Oz friends, once more. In case the jibe is unfamiliar, 'Faux News' is a US-familiar taunt denoting Murdoch-owned far-right mouthpiece cable television supposed news organisation Fox News. They have long claimed to be 'fair and balanced', a cheeky claim that fools nobody except perhaps the 27.2% of the Nov. 2016 electorate who voted Trump/Pence. (28.4% voted Clinton/Kaine, and 3.4% voted third-party, but the decisive faction was the 41.0% who didn't vote at all,) ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> ----- Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 14:15:56 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick(a)linuxmafia.com> To: skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com Subject: Re: [skeptic] Another rat flees the rapidly-sinking SS Trump Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. Quoting Wade T Smith (skepticus(a)earthlink.net) > So, here it is, March 17th (amateur night, doncha know), and that’s > two days after the Ides of March. > > Obviously, no Brutuses amongst us. > > Bruti? Many Bruti with many knives would be required, not just one, if that non-democratic remedy were ever the solution -- a second civil war -- because The Toddler-in-Chief and his Administration are, when all is said and done, irritating and continually boggling (and corrosive to the Republic), but a mostly ineffective reality-TV chaos sideshow and not the real problem. (Say I, at least.) Which is to say, you're about to hear my What the Hell happened to the United States quick-take. (I will also review some basic, as I have a mind to forward this to s group of my Australian friends.) It all traces back to way, way too much money in politics (thank you, Citizens United Supreme Court decision for turning a small trickle of corruption into the Johnstown Flood of corruption) and the plot to 'get' Bill Clinton through both Special Prosecutors (thank you, Ken Starr), and the weaponising of Congressional politics and poisoning of Congress's relations under any GOP majority with any Democratic President (thank you, Newt Gingrich). Under Gingrich, the House of Representatives (in particular) GOP majority was incredibly upset that Bill Clinton's ability to grab the centre of American politics empowered him and permitted him to start fixing Reagan's twisting of institutions and, worse, start appointing Supreme Court justices to have a lasting effect. Gingrich was the first of a new and growing breed of GOP leaders who want to overpower all opposition at all cost and have discarded compromise and democratic values. You may recall he was so determined to destroy the Clinton Administration that he literally defunded and shut down the Federal government for the first time ever. His intellectual heirs are the detested Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell the traitor. The government shutdown backfired in the short term, but showed GOP extremists they could conduct sabotage without being removed from office and pointed to the outer darkness. Meanwhile, the GOP extremists supported Special Prosecutor Ken Starr in his futile and stupid effort to remove Bill Clinton from office, setting for a consolation goal of reducing his administration's effectiveness while under attack. Although the Faux News propaganda narrative of moral equivalency between GOP extremism and (supposed) equal and opposite Democratic Party extremism is a barefaced lie, the Democrats have not had clean hands through this corrosion of politics. Honest and endearingly old-time conservative analyst David Frum listed some of the ways the Democrats have acted to worsen the partisan divide in his recent book _Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic_, which I recommend highly. I would add the extreme politicising of hearings for Supreme Court appointees, which started with the 1987 hearings over Reagan-appointed extremist ideologue Robert Bork. Bork was a disaster, but was totally, clearly qualified for the post, and it was jarring and destructive break from all of American tradition for Democrats to deprive Reagan of his (foolish) choice. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/the-sad-legacy-of-robe… There were never ideological litmus tests in Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court appointees before that. Since then, always and every time. The avalanche of money created the lunatic Tea Party as an astroturf (faux grassroots) far-right organising effort. This was actually just cover for finding gullible citizens and siphoning their donations money, hence was shut down when the targets ran out of funds (I'm not joking), but was a harbinger of lunatic combines and astroturfing to come (Faux News, far-right believer online forums, the Freedom Caucus). The Democratic Party remained, throughout this process, a diverse coalition with modest goals, still aligned with pluralist democratic values, civil rights, and support for (and by) labour unions, but also undisciplined and gutless. To the best of my recollection, the only significant shift in its carefully moderate agenda was a late embrace of marriage equality (same-sex marriage) after the tide of public opinion already lurched in its favour. By contrast, the Republican Party became by degrees more militant and ideologically purist, with moderates (and principled conservatives such as David Frum) being forced out. Worst of all, top leadership became fixated with gaining and perfecting single party rule at any cost. After eight years of right-leaning but surprisingly steady by current standards (other than the horrible war thing) George W. Bush -- who at least, for all his faults, would not tolerate anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant idiocy -- the Republican aspirations for one-party rule were set back horribly by the surprising emergence of Barack Hussein Obama, who trounced GOP standard-bearers John McCain in 2008 and then Mitt Romney in 2012. In response, yet more dirty money poured in (especially from the toxic Koch Brothers) and the GOP turned in desperation to attempting to outright sabotage and de-legitimise the new President, far _more_ than they did with Bill Clinton. Their near-total failure to destroy Obama drove the GOP and its craziest voters into greater psychosis including open racism and anti-religious bigotry (Obama's middle name didn't help), not to mention anti-immigrant demagogery. In the latter regard, to their credit, GOP leaders attempted to prevent that specific craziness, as reflected in their remarkably thoughtful 2013 97-page report on the Romney defeat, 'Growth and Opportunity Project', popularly called the GOP 'autopsy report'. This is where the GOP mandarins noted gravely the ongoing demographic shift where a massive number of legitimate voters who are children of recent Hispanic immigrants, among others, were making the United States for the first time _truly_ multiracial and multicultural to a degree it never has quite been before. In particular, it was no longer the case that Caucasian voters were an absolute majority, but just one huge ingredient in the melting pot among many. The autopsy report strongly urged reform of GOP policies towards immigrants lest all these newer voters create a permanent Democratic Party majority, and leaders began adopting all of its wise recommendations. But then, a low-cost but accidentally effective sabotage effort changed everything. This was Project REDMAP, Redistricting Majority Project, created in 2010 to take advantage of a unique, historic opportunity occasioned by decennial redistricting for both state and Federal offices _combined_ with unprecedentedly effective computer modeling to do gerrymandering an order of magnitude more effective than ever before. This project cost only $18m, a pittance, was effective beyond Republicans' wildest dream, and has made them captive of their success, forced them into extremism, killed the Autopsy Report reforms, and enabled The Toddler's bizarre takeover of the GOP. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-red… But first, the unplanned success of Project REDMAP didn't _merely_ give Republicans artificial, undemocratic dominance in dozens of states and the US House of Representatives, but also created a deep reservoir of crazy extremist GOP politicians in state houses and Congress's lower house by making their newly gerrymandered districts 'safe' against non-GOP challenge. When a seat is so protected against Democratic and independent challengers that moderate policies aren't necessary to win, the looniest, most far-right, least pluralist GOP candidate tends to gain and hold office. This emergent effect, more than anything else, made the Autopsy Report policies a dead letter starting around 2015 as the GOP, while knowing this would be a long-term catastrophe, was forced by Freedom Caucus loonies to abandon its wide counsel and about-face against them. Captive of its REDMAP-enabled lunatic fringe, the GOP still greatly feared being swept away by the inevitable Democratic Party wave the Autopsy Report warned against and tried to avert, but now it was forced into stronger measures in place of Autopsy Report reforms. First up was outright repeal to (previously latent) racism and xenophobia, the best weapon against Obama, and misogyny, the best weapon against Hilary Clinton. The GOP tried and failed to sabotage Obama's first term, and he managed to pass an overhaul of health insurance (directly copying GOP Governor Mitt Romney's 'Romneycare' health insurance reform that originated in the right-wing Heritage Foundation) despite GOP refusal to participate. By now, REDMAP had transformed enough House districts that a large House GOP majority joined a bare Senate GOP majority in 2012, and the effort to neuter Obama's Executive Branch redoubled. Obama kept trying fruitlessly for a while to work in a bipartisan effort with Congress, and eventually gave up and attempted reforms through Executive Branch orders only, having been given no other options. In this, he further enraged the GOP power-politics supremacists by transgressing norms and infringing on Congress's prerogatives. For example, the pre-2012 Obama had honestly admitted that he alone had no constitutional power to give relief against deportation to 'dreamers', American young people born abroad and brought to the USA by unauthorised immigrant parents, thus in violation of immigration law through no personal fault and knowing no country but the United States. The post-2012 Obama reversed course and decreed DACA, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, through an Executive Order despite his earlier statement that this would unconstitutional, because the extremist-controlled Congress refused to pass the DREAM Act or take any other action. (Even with the justification of empathy towards enormously admirable, blameless young immigrants, Democratic President Obama, though this action and others, drove the militant GOP further into psychopathy.) The money-corruption problem continued to worsen. Koch Brothers money was now joined by that of radical-right billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca, who saw a chance to disassemble the regulatory state through the right extremist presidential candidate. Their standard bearer was the hated Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. When his campaign imploded, the switched to bizarre junk-television figure, multiple failed businessman and spectacularly failed business owner, one-time slumlord, and conduit from money-laundering Donald John Trump. Trump promoted himself with the tired, stupid line that he'd run America like a business -- and some people failed to notice that his business was a _family_ business empire in which enforced secrecy (strong NDAs) covers up criminality and incompetence, with the sole sacred duty being personal loyalty not to the business but to The Toddler himself. GOP mandarins were appalled by The Toddler's multifaceted severe failings -- he's a malignant narcissist, he's a-literate and cannot read a one-page memo or be taught the basics of his office, he has no policies only intuition-driven urges, he drives away all but third-raters willing to abase themselves and show total loyalty (that is never returned) (this being why competent lawyers will not work for him) -- but the GOP by this time was carried along, hostage. The point is that The Toddler isn't competent evil, but rather spastic and borderline self-defeating evil. If Mitch McConnell and Robert Mercer are Vito Corleone, The Toddler is merely Fredo. Trump's damage to the Executive Branch has been severe and ongoing, but amateur. In computer-security terms, it can be compared to a fuzzing probe of a codebase, trying semi-random nonsense inputs to government processes, to find unsuspected avenues of attack. The GOP in Congress, haunted by the prospect of being swept away by a Democratic wave driven by both revulsion and demographic shifts, in desperation crossed the Rubicon into outright treason with Putin and his captive oligarchs and well-funded hacking teams -- as did, of course, to a much greater and less well-concealed degree, The Toddler. One of the few areas The Toddler has done competent damage is by packing Federal judgeships solely with far-right loons whose names were tendered by the extremist Federalist Society. That will be a long-term problem. Fixing this situation, preferably without knives, will require a large purge of traitors, correcting the REDMAP 'ratf*cking' of district boundaries (their own term), and somehow overturning Citizens United. This repair, I fear, will take depressingly long, even if the traitors are swept away. But my point is, The Toddler is just a psychotic blip, madly waving his tiny little hands and distracting from the larger problem. My view, yours for a small fee.[tm] _______________________________________________ skeptic mailing list skeptic(a)linuxmafia.com http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/skeptic To reach the listadmin, mail rick(a)linuxmafia.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > Matthew 28"19 j <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote1>Go > therefore and k <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote2>make > disciples of l <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote3>all > nations, j <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote3>baptizing > them m <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote4>in2 > <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote5> n > <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote6>the name of the > Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them o > <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote7>to observe all that > p <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote8>I have commanded > you. And behold, q <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote9>I > am with you always, to r > <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2028.19-20#footnote10>the end of the > age.” > > Romans 10:13-14 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be > saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And > how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are > they to hear without someone preaching? > > Mark 16:15 > <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+16%3A15&version=ESV> And > he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the > whole creation. What the fsck is this, a witnessing? {sigh} OK, the Mark 16:15 bit is at least getting there. Context is this is (pardon my irreverence) zombie Jesus speaking after the tomb got reopened. However, please note that he said 'Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation' as an instruction to the eleven remaining disciples. (I guess at this point Judas Iscariot had been voted off the island.) Jesus is NOT quoted as saying this shall be a task for all future co-religionists. He said 'Go...' to the eleven blokes. Note that a couple of verses before, he'd ghost-hullo'ed to Mary Magdalene but didn't tell _her_ to wander the globe being a religion salesman. So, all told, why are you cocluding that Jesus was saying everyone in the future (but oddly not Mary Magdalene) would be so charged? And, getting back to my earlier point, if this is a critical instruction incumbent on all future devotees, why did only Mark think to mention it? Hmm? (But wait, I've just cross-checked.) Actually, I see that one of the other links you hurled out, Matthew 28:19, covers the same zombie Jesus speech to the eleven remaining disciples. (Would it have hurt you to have mentioned this?) Interestingly, the two accounts clash about where this was. Mark just says it was where they were eating. That would logically be in or really near Jerusalem, as people didn't just casually get on an interurban bus, back then. Matthew says it was in Galilee. Take the word of someone who's driven on the still-awful roads from Jerusalem to northern Israel, that's a pretty serious trip. But once again, Matthew gives this oddly specific instruction _very_ directly to the remaining eleven. If he'd meant '...and also I charge this upon all future followers', wouldn't he have logically said so? Now, I also have to back off and review our differrent perspectives. To you, holy wisdom verbatim of your god; to me, a book. Specifically, a book about which it's abundantly clear its text was nowhere near contemporaneous, and shows very clear signs of tampering to support later institutional politics. IMO, there has been backfilling of both myth and later doctrine, and I see in these passages among others the hand of the one-eyed Jew who couldn't get laid, Saint Paul the politicker and noted misogynist. You would of course greatly disagree, but that's what makes horse races. Romans 10:13-14: That is NOT Jesus speaking. You are deciding to move the goalposts. I didn't ask you what the one-eyed Jew who couldn't get laid, Saint Paul the politicker and noted misogynist, had to say. If memory serves, didn't I ask you where _Jesus_ asked this thing of all future followers? Also, say... Didn't I just get through asking you if you were claiming I was lying? You certainly seemed to be. As I said, I would much rather think well of people, but if you are going to wander around attempting casual character assassination and then ignoring polite queries about whether you are _sure_ you mean that slur, then there really is absolutely no future in our conversing, and we would be better off disengaging pending the heat death of the universe, right now. I'm serious, dude. You have started down a path on which nothing good can ensue.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > Rick, you've made many comments, then told me to shut up, so which would > you like? My answers, or my silence? My goodness, I don't believe I asked you to shut up. I believe what I said was that I was confused about you taking personal offense at my comments that -- as you agreed -- were about a variety of Christian entirely unlike you, in a conversation I was having in no way addressed to you. If you wish to clarify your claim that (paraphrasing) there is an active requirement for all Christians to evangelise, I would be interested. If you don't, there is certainly no obligation.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > Here you go, Rick....just a few references. I've said before that you need > to take them in context, but you rejected that WTF? No, that is absolutely nothing like anything I said. Right, that's twice in a row you attempted that idiocy, _plus_ calling me a liar and ignoring being called on that. I am done with you. Have a great life. We will not interact again. I have just reached and passed 'fed up'. Bye.

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Trent W. Buck 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Russell Coker wrote: >> OK, but WHY are you focusing solely on the anglophone community? > Because they are the ones that are connected to us. That's a depressingly "White Australia Policy" attitude to take. e.g. one in four Australians speak a LOTE at home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#cite_ref-50 e.g. one in four Australians was born overseas, of which the biggest contributing nations are UK, New Zealand, and China. We've more Sri Lankan immigrants than US immigrants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_Residents_by_Country_of_Birth… e.g. our biggest trading partners are in East Asia, not North America (nor UK). UPDATE: I'm wrong; the top bilateral partners in decreasing order are CN, US, JP, KR, UK, NZ, SG, TH. http://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/trade-at-a-glance/Pages/default.aspx Comparing exports and imports separately presents a different picture https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/#Destinations https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/#Origins

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Re: [luv-talk] Reading the Bible
by Rick Moen 17 Mar '18

17 Mar '18

Quoting Michael Scott (mds(a)inoz.net) > The citation you've provided is pretty clear, I would have thought. OK, if you are asserting that the extremely weak and indirect (and metaphorical) statement included in _one_ Gospel (Matthew) and curiously nowhere in the other three means Christians are abjured to find converts, then that is an answer. Thank you.

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Reading the Bible
by Russell Coker 16 Mar '18

16 Mar '18

https://www.politicalorphans.com/the-article-removed-from-forbes-why-white-… This article explains why most Americans don't read the Bible. -- Sent from my Huawei Mate 9 with K-9 Mail.

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