So you don’t care about the Republican majority’s continuing effort in Texas to restrict the right to vote. Already one of the strictest regimes in the country, now made even more difficult while using the baseless excuse of “voter fraud,” fraud that does not exist in any meaningful way. You found an exchange between 3 individuals posted on “The Glittering Eye,” a source I have heard of only because you have quoted it before. An exchange consisting of the mildest possible opinions amounting to nothing worthwhile, in my opinion. Why you couldn’t just write your own opinion is your own affair, but I am not impressed by a gabble of “Casper Milk-toasts” opining on the actions of the extremist majority currently in control of our Texas state government. With all due respect.
I don’t really have an opinion on Texas politics. I live in NY, it’s hard enough following politics here.
The "center of the universe" is purely based on our perception of the center of the universe, which is formed from the specific location of our heads. So if we're physically in Texas, and our minds are reading a texas politics thread within a texas sports team forum, then it kind of is the center of the world for us, man. http://nyyfansforum.sny.tv/forum/forum/community-forums/just-conversation
what I really care about are "vs tinman" threads, and I see by my morning's perusal that at least two of them--TWO!!--have slipped from the first page. This crisis will require my full and immediate attention
I did notice this this morning https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/06/the-dems-lies-of-texas.php
Except these laws are specifically designed to create a systemic advantage. Also again marginal differences when things are so close are magnified. Consider bicycle racing. There are many factors such as weather, road conditions etc.. that can affect a bicycle race. Blood doping marginally improves a racer's performance and blood doping wouldn't make a recreational rider like me into a Tour de France winner. At elite level athlete levels that marginal difference could be tiny of a only a few seconds of improvement in time but is magnified because elite athletes are already very close. Again with many of our races and winner take all votes those marginal differences are magnified and it's obvious the authors of these laws no that too otherwise they wouldn't tailor them so specifically, such as moving Sunday voting to 1PM. Finally again the ability of state legislatures to overturn elections isn't a marginal difference.
If you don't see why Blacks like Biden then you are blind. If you are at a loss about why the policies he's supported over the years help the black community you don't have more than a surface level understanding of those policies or what his policies have actually been. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/03/opinion/why-black-voters-support-joe-biden/ Thank god for Biden.
This is BS and shows either you do not have a clue what Biden did behind the scenes ( He was very instrumental in getting the ACA across the finish line) or you just have a Bias against Biden. The fact that you are here trotting out that BS that he could basically not complete a sentence shows you are not seriously debating anything. But hey once again somebody telling black folks they don't know what they are doing. I thought this was somebody's alt account but I was on the fence, thanks for reassuring me that I don't need to take what you post seriously.
Since your universe’s center seems to be the state of New York, perhaps you will give this from my morning’s New York Times your attention. I’ll add, however, that you manage to “notice” Texas politics often enough to make a claim implying that you “really don’t have an opinion on Texas politics” just a tad disingenuous. How Joe Manchin Could Make the Senate Great Again June 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET By Ira Shapiro Mr. Shapiro, a Senate staffer from 1975 to 1987 and a former counsel for Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, has written extensively about the U.S. Senate, including in two books. The United States urgently needs a functioning Senate, which operates, in the words of the former vice president and senator Walter Mondale, as “the nation’s mediator.” Unfortunately, what we have instead is a body that, among other things, cannot pass a bill to create an independent commission to examine the Jan. 6 insurrection or to defend national voting rights. Senators must confront what has proved to be a debilitating obstacle: the legislative filibuster — more precisely, the minimum 60-vote supermajority requirement for most legislation. This problem has fallen to Senate Democrats, who hold a narrow majority, and Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia will be a decisive vote for any reform of the arcane rule. Mr. Manchin has defended the need for the filibuster, often citing the legacy of his predecessor Robert C. Byrd. Mr. Byrd was the keeper of the Senate flame: The longest-serving senator and its foremost parliamentarian and historian, he never stopped believing that the Senate was “the premier spark of brilliance that emerged from the collective intellect of the Constitution’s framers.” He might be an inspiration to senators like Mr. Manchin as they consider the filibuster, but that inspiration should push against devotion to an outdated, often abused and damaging rule. The filibuster should not shape the workings of the Senate, but the other way around. For Mr. Byrd and other senators of his era, the overriding goal was to ensure not that certain rules were respected above all else but that the Senate could deliver for the nation — even if it meant reforming rules like the filibuster. The arc of Mr. Byrd’s half-century career in the chamber is instructive. In the deliberations around the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he conducted one of the most disgraceful filibusters in Senate history, joining a two-month effort by Southern senators to derail the landmark legislation. But about 13 years later, Senate Democrats showed their confidence in his changed attitude by making him majority leader. He repaid their trust by becoming one of the greatest leaders in Senate history (and later expressed regret for that filibuster). Mr. Byrd once said that “filibusters are a necessary evil, which must be tolerated lest the Senate lose its special strength and become a mere appendage of the House of Representatives.” But his later actions clearly demonstrated a changed view of the uses and potential abuses of the filibuster. The nightmare scenario of a paralyzed Senate that could not pass urgent legislation was always on his mind. When he became Senate majority leader in 1977, Mr. Byrd confronted an ingenious form of obstruction utilized by Senator Jim Allen, a conservative Democrat from Alabama — the postcloture filibuster. Mr. Allen found a way to delay the passage of bills by filing numerous amendments and requesting attendance calls even after 60 senators had agreed to invoke cloture, meaning that debate was coming to an end. Mr. Byrd recognized this obstruction as a mortal threat to a functioning Senate. Working with Vice President Walter Mondale, who was presiding in the Senate, Mr. Byrd moved forcefully to crush the next post-cloture filibuster in 1978 (this time brought by two liberal Democrats). At the beginning of the next Congress in 1979, Mr. Byrd and the minority leader, Howard Baker, created a bipartisan group that worked out a major revision of the rules to curb the use of postcloture filibusters. In the 1980s, Mr. Byrd orchestrated a series of parliamentary rulings to further restrict the filibuster. Filibusters used to be real but rare, reserved for truly major issues. The constant use of the filibuster as a partisan weapon is a product of the past two decades, particularly the last 12 years, correlating with the Senate’s downward spiral into bitterness and gridlock. When the Senate was at its best — from the 1960s through the 1980s — it regularly had intensive debates and passed major legislation without filibusters. The Senate often approved landmark legislation with fewer than 60 votes, including the loan guarantees needed to rescue New York City in 1978 and the Chrysler Corporation in 1979. Each passed with 53 votes, because the senators were satisfied that the issues had been debated fully. It is fundamental to the distinctive nature of the Senate that the minority party must have its rights protected. But the best way to do that is through regular order — a legislative process that involves public hearings, committee work in which bipartisan understanding of issues develops and principled compromise occurs, and a vigorous amendment process and serious debate on the Senate floor, leading to a final vote, with the majority prevailing. Moreover, there is no convincing rationale for establishing two classes of legislative action. It should be unacceptable that the $2.1 trillion tax cut in 2017 or the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act could be done by majority vote (through reconciliation) but that 60 votes are required before helping the Dreamers, requiring background checks for guns, combating climate change or protecting the right to vote. A Senate that operates by majority vote empowers Mr. Manchin and other dealmakers from both parties because their votes become decisive. A minimum 60-vote requirement empowers obstructionists, particularly one named Mitch McConnell, who has turned the Senate into a partisan instrument to block Democratic presidents from governing. This year, Mr. McConnell disabused any naïve observers who thought his long relationship with President Biden would change his behavior, getting every Senate Republican to oppose the president’s popular American Rescue Plan. Mr. McConnell more recently stated that he was “100 percent focused” on stopping the Biden administration. He deserves to be taken at his word but not permitted to hold the Senate, and our country, hostage. Today’s Senate includes many able public servants on both sides of the aisle. They should give themselves the opportunity to work with the Biden administration to hammer out the laws that America needs rather than lock themselves into preordained paralysis and failure. Ira Shapiro, a former Senate staffer, is the author of “The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis” and “Broken: Can the Senate Save Itself and the Country?” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/opinion/joe-manchin-filibuster.html?referringSource=article
Hypothetically, if instead of putting some new restrictions on voting we added new permissions that drove up voting turnout in future elections, would that mean the playing field we have right now delegitimizes our present elections? Many people see flaws in our current process and lobby for changes, but we apparently think the system is fair enough right now that we continue to participate in and respect them. We're going the wrong way, but I think I'm making the pretty uncontroversial argument that this reform isn't actually the end of democracy.
One day he got irritated by woke kids on the internet and decided that Trump wasn't that bad, the real threat to the country was private entities managing their IP as they saw fit, and that serving as Tinman's butt boy was a productive use of his time.
I just think Os has a self serving sense of humor which I understand completely and enjoys whatever elements of chaos he posts that get posters on here riled up. Also he's a college professor right? Probably has to self censor IRL quite a bit and this is an outlet to be a dork on the internet. I also kinda look at it as a backlash to thinking discussion of politics on a basketball forum will change the world. I don't think anyone who posts here believes that either but that's the impression I'm left with when he's trolling. He's a good poster when he wants to be and can share some good links I would otherwise be oblivious to. Even the trolling conservative blog posts are informative in that there's a good chunk of the U.S. population that sincerely eats up that stuff and it helps me better understand perspectives I'd otherwise remain ignorant to.
You "centerless?" Say it isn't so! My significant other and our kids are the center of mine, although they would claim that I am the center of my universe. Can't exclude the dog, of course, who is orbiting our universe in some fashion or another. A very smart Labradoodle. Not recognized by the AKC, however. Not terribly different from the effort by the "majority" party in this state not to recognize voters as voters.
That sucks for Os. He probably has to hold his tongue and spread communist propaganda as a proffesor or get canceled. Can see why he needs an outlet.
I mean I live in Texas and am considered pretty liberal probably and often find myself holding my tongue around family and friends who I find to have fringe politics. I imagine being a professor with college students, some who think they know the world already, he's probably heard some **** that might make even your liberal eyes roll. So he can't troll his students like he might prefer lest he receives real world consequences. What do you do instead? Troll strangers online. That's just my intro to psych hot take. Could be entirely wrong.
