Good question. I've been posting here for almost 11 years and I'm proud to say I have NEVER put anyone on Ignore, even after they've crawled down into the sandbox and gotten themselves banned for hurling ad homs at me because they couldn't hold their end of a debate. What I find amusing in this case are the incessant lectures about how this is a debate forum, and discretion being the better part of virtue (and our TOS) I think I'll leave it at that. I've known you long enough to know you're smart enough to fill in the blank yourself.
You are incorrect. It rose significantly before Trump. Lobbyists from the food and drug industry are powerful and no politician is willing to stand up to them, regardless of party.
Were they moderate enough for you? More importantly, what is your opinion on the current crop of politicians in office? Particularly the ones not likely to be about to join the ranks of the unemployed... are they moderate enough for you?
They are all very moderate, a bit too moderate for my taste. There are certainly some extremes on the D side with the likes of Sanders and Warren and Joe has been pulled left to accommodate the base of the party. But there were a couple moderates who ran, they just didn't gain the support needed. On the R side neither DT nor Cruz were wanted by the party establishment so players can rise to the top who don't conform to the party mold. I believe our current system accommodates a wide variety of candidates, including very moderate players.
Those who prefer extremists of either flavor over moderates are of a minority, despite election results to the contrary. Likewise, there are many politicians on the right who get pulled towards their base's extreme fringe. What I'm suggesting is that there ought to be more of a balance with any individual politician, they shouldn't just get pulled primarily in either one direction or the other, … but the way our current system is set up ensures that such balance if difficult to achieve, leading to an overall political body which is much more divided than it should be or needs to be. Of course not. They ran in a system which makes it increasingly difficult for moderates to win, even those with large amounts of support. If we had a more sensible system that didn't unfairly favor candidates from the two establishment parties, one that actually gave others a fair shot at winning, mark my words, moderates, as well as independents, would suddenly start to become a lot more popular. While variety is important, simply having variety should not be the main point of an election system. The main goal should instead be to create outcomes which accurately reflect what the populace as a whole actually wants. Presumably, a very large populace would already have variety built into their desires to begin with... Bottom line though is that if the election system is producing outcomes that most of the populace don't want, then something about such a system is flawed and needs to change. In a hive of insects, if the majority want the hive filled with moderate bees, and it instead gets filled with mostly extremist wasps, it doesn't matter if one or two bees still end up getting thrown in along with them (ensuring "variety"), such an outcome is still inherently unfair, wouldn't you agree? -Meta
I get the desperation. We had better either take the Senate by a large margin or get Trump out if we expect the republic to survive. But you have to realize that your broad based reform bills have to have bipartisan support if they will last long. If you replace all those Senators like Collins with Dems, and you perchance get lucky enough to come up with the votes to shove your reform bill down republican throats, no moderate republicans have any skin in the game and won't defend it as good compromise bill and it will fall apart just as Obamacare did. You have to have bipartisan buy-in and that means you have to have the kind of republicans in office that will buy in. Getting rid of centrists and moderates has left us with total partisan warfare and stagnation. Even if one side squeaks out a partisan legislative victory , it is built on political sand.
The Replicants have been in the minority in both chambers of Congress before. It part of the "game" played in LaLaLand on the Potomac. All the country needs to is to address its pathetic aggregate mediocre lifespan and face the fact that Tertiary Education must be free just like Secondary Education. Both are historical imperatives and they are both central to our Standard of Living. Who gives a damn about how many billionaires the country has if the average American cannot live beyond the 80 years of age because it was too damn expensive to see a GP (and they did not have HC-insurance). That they were paying for anyway when they bought almost anything manufactured and/or sold in the US because that is how corporations were paying for the healthcare their private-insurance provided! Talk about Gross Unfairness, which is estimated at nearly 14% of the population (see here) - which historically looks like this: Why should generalized healthcare of the nation be a variable depending upon the state in which one lives? And if so, why is the FBI a national police-force but not Healthcare? Why do we call upon Federal resources to fight-crime (FBI) across the nation but not to provide adequate Healthcare? Crime is a more important consideration than an individual's lifespan ... ?
As regards the Opiate Death-rate across the nation state-by-state, see this infographic here. Note that Death Rates given are deaths per 100,000 population (age-adjusted).
Powerful? Why? Because the rich have got the money to help Replicants get elected? And that's how they keep drug-prices out of the purview of government regulation? Lotta good that did to all those people who died of Opiate Overdose Deaths! I call it Colossal Stoopidity of any country that would allow it to happen - there is nothing more important to lifespan than adequate healthcare ...
That doesn't mean much. She is dependent upon Replicant money to get elected. So, she votes Replicant on major issues. That's no help whatsoever in a country that needs severe changes in many, many aspects of government intervention that impact the way we live. Which is expressed in the US by the fact that the Replicants have always had a depressive effect on government spending. Which is why privatized healthcare and tertiary education are so damn expensive. And that wont change anytime soon given the fact that Americans keep voting for Replicant candidates. PS: And if I thought that money spent on healthcare and free post-secondary education was a Great Waste, I'd say so. But just the opposite is true from the factual evidence.
I have never heard of anyone voting for or against a senator based on a supreme court pick or confirmation. Sure it could happen but not likely. What people miss is that most saw the Kavanugh condfirmation for what it was. An attempt to launch a witch hunt using uncorroborated smear with no credibility. Regardless of her Politics Susan Collins stood for a higher principle and most will remember that. As for the rest I think everyone knows that you think you are smarter than the men who wrote the constitution so no surprise there.
So is college when the degrees are in womens studies or other useless subjects Teach engineering, science, medicine, even plumbing or machine shop and make the students pay so that they appreciate what they are learning
If you are willing to ignore when Dems do it, you condone with repubs do it. Two sides of the same ugly coin.
straight ahead is talking about actual baseless allegations and you respond with what amounts to name calling. The classy left on display.
Ok everybody, here's yet another post AJ won't respond to. Why should Kavenaugh not have been approved?
That's the problem, the judicial branch of government isn't supposed to be politicized where activist judges legislate from the bench. Still three more activist judges on the Supreme Court who legislate from the bench that need to be replaced. Ruth Bader Ginsburg Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan
You consider a meeting between a candidate and 15 voters to be a current event? Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel.