Well good Monday morning to you, Wonkers! Here's some of the stories we might be talking about later today! It looks like Donald Trump really is trying to start his own teevee network so other people can peddle his verbal diarhea 24/7. Turns out Trump's son-in-law has been in talks with an investment bank with a history in media dealmaking.
He absolutely is. Russia Today is to news what Trump is to investment. They write fake news and claim bizarrely yooge viewership to justify the yooge funding; contesting their viewership figures is considered treasonous. The Donald didn't invent ego-inflationary scams, you know.
And Putinists luuuurve citing "Western geopolitical experts" who are actually conspiracy theorists with a geocities page (when they're caught faking quites from actual experts, or when they need one on-location). Putin doesn't mind killing a couple million taxpayers to put the Trump name on his bullshit.
(This last bit is not rhetoric: the total healthcare funding for 2017 - 150M people, remember - is only three times the direct funding of Russia Today.)
I remember asking this exact question during the Lewinsky scandal when I was in the 7th grade. None the adults I ask ever answered...
I know I'm not a prude, but if I were a parent with a kid in the car driving behind that mess, I would have very negative feelings about the owner. If anything reeks of desperation, that Subaru sure does.
Well. To get local candidates on the ballot as members of a political party, the rules differ state to state, but there are institutional obstacles placed deliberately in the way, adopted by Republicans and Democrats, often forty to sixty years ago. They were passed, often enough, when the radical left born of anti-war and civil rights protests seemed powerful enough to challenge the two major parties (in NC, the laws were passed by Democratic majorities in the eighties, to get one of the socialist parties off the ticket).
The most common technique is to require that a party win some percentage (typically from five to fifteen percent) in a statewide race (so, governor or senator, mostly) in order to be allowed on the local ballots statewide. There's generally an out, which involves gathering signatures on petitions (in NC, with language that makes it sound like you're buying a pig in a poke: you promise you'll vote for the party's candidates before you know who they are).
The goal is to prevent these parties from building local bases. It's pretty effective in most states. Add the poison of cash since Citizens United, and getting anyone who can't put (R) or (D) after their name is incredibly difficult. For R and D candidates, it's often enough to just announce (sometimes there's another candidate running against you, but often enough there isn't; getting on the ticket is easy, though, if you've got one of the major parties handling the deets for you).
So: supposing you're fed up with the Rs and the Ds, where do you put your energy? Changing the institutional obstacles? Trying to reach the magic number in a statewide race? Gathering petitions? All of these are different skill sets (some more related, some less) than the skills needed for governing. Actually running means you have to go through all the hoops of running as independent or unaffiliated, and do it on your own (or somehow build up a party to back you from nothing, just to win a council or board or commission seat), running at a deep disadvantage because voters find it much more difficult to learn about people running in local races, and are apt to vote straight down the ballot with an R or a D.
All of that defense said: yes, the only way to make the change is to somehow build a grassroots movement designed to win local seats, to find people who have won those local seats who can then be plausible regionally, and to go from region to state. And then got national. That's probably decades of work, with probably little reward for much of the time. How to motivate it? Hard problems.
And then you get fucking idiots with charisma showing up and fucking the whole thing up. It's really hard to keep people focused on long-term, incremental, low-reward stuff, when you can get some damned clown up in front of everybody to dance and draw attention.
Me? I'd say first get the money back out, and get us back on the track toward low-money campaigns that we were on in the early 2000s. Then leave it to the people who care to figure out the next steps. Meanwhile, hold your nose and vote for whichever D or R seems least terrible. Celebrate those occasions when you get to vote for a truly outstanding candidate (like Hillary).
Getting somewhere in one state doesn't mean getting somewhere in another state.
He absolutely is. Russia Today is to news what Trump is to investment. They write fake news and claim bizarrely yooge viewership to justify the yooge funding; contesting their viewership figures is considered treasonous. The Donald didn't invent ego-inflationary scams, you know.
And Putinists luuuurve citing "Western geopolitical experts" who are actually conspiracy theorists with a geocities page (when they're caught faking quites from actual experts, or when they need one on-location). Putin doesn't mind killing a couple million taxpayers to put the Trump name on his bullshit.
(This last bit is not rhetoric: the total healthcare funding for 2017 - 150M people, remember - is only three times the direct funding of Russia Today.)
I just don't understand why people think she's so wooden. And she does pour poorly - that wasn't anywhere near a full shot.
Nor would he have, had the GOP even the most fundamental management skills. Would you hire an employee who said, "By the way, don't read my resume"?
Oddly enough, here in Ontario it is going to hit that the next couple of days. But no, there's no such thing as global warming.
I remember asking this exact question during the Lewinsky scandal when I was in the 7th grade. None the adults I ask ever answered...
I know I'm not a prude, but if I were a parent with a kid in the car driving behind that mess, I would have very negative feelings about the owner. If anything reeks of desperation, that Subaru sure does.
She wouldn't have been my gym teacher, would she???
Maybe saner, but not as shrewd. He's a pencil neck geek (see The Wanderer below) in congressman clothing.
Since a bicycle is involved here, I *have* to share my favorite commercial of all time. It makes me want to BUY A BIKE, like, RIGHT NOW!!!!
https://youtu.be/1BwnuBVUBsQ
The Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes. And Bronies.
Gary Johnson? I knew a Gary Johnson in high school. He was kind of a doof.
OT (sort of): It is raining in Southern California! And not metaphorically.
Well. To get local candidates on the ballot as members of a political party, the rules differ state to state, but there are institutional obstacles placed deliberately in the way, adopted by Republicans and Democrats, often forty to sixty years ago. They were passed, often enough, when the radical left born of anti-war and civil rights protests seemed powerful enough to challenge the two major parties (in NC, the laws were passed by Democratic majorities in the eighties, to get one of the socialist parties off the ticket).
The most common technique is to require that a party win some percentage (typically from five to fifteen percent) in a statewide race (so, governor or senator, mostly) in order to be allowed on the local ballots statewide. There's generally an out, which involves gathering signatures on petitions (in NC, with language that makes it sound like you're buying a pig in a poke: you promise you'll vote for the party's candidates before you know who they are).
The goal is to prevent these parties from building local bases. It's pretty effective in most states. Add the poison of cash since Citizens United, and getting anyone who can't put (R) or (D) after their name is incredibly difficult. For R and D candidates, it's often enough to just announce (sometimes there's another candidate running against you, but often enough there isn't; getting on the ticket is easy, though, if you've got one of the major parties handling the deets for you).
So: supposing you're fed up with the Rs and the Ds, where do you put your energy? Changing the institutional obstacles? Trying to reach the magic number in a statewide race? Gathering petitions? All of these are different skill sets (some more related, some less) than the skills needed for governing. Actually running means you have to go through all the hoops of running as independent or unaffiliated, and do it on your own (or somehow build up a party to back you from nothing, just to win a council or board or commission seat), running at a deep disadvantage because voters find it much more difficult to learn about people running in local races, and are apt to vote straight down the ballot with an R or a D.
All of that defense said: yes, the only way to make the change is to somehow build a grassroots movement designed to win local seats, to find people who have won those local seats who can then be plausible regionally, and to go from region to state. And then got national. That's probably decades of work, with probably little reward for much of the time. How to motivate it? Hard problems.
And then you get fucking idiots with charisma showing up and fucking the whole thing up. It's really hard to keep people focused on long-term, incremental, low-reward stuff, when you can get some damned clown up in front of everybody to dance and draw attention.
Me? I'd say first get the money back out, and get us back on the track toward low-money campaigns that we were on in the early 2000s. Then leave it to the people who care to figure out the next steps. Meanwhile, hold your nose and vote for whichever D or R seems least terrible. Celebrate those occasions when you get to vote for a truly outstanding candidate (like Hillary).
Getting somewhere in one state doesn't mean getting somewhere in another state.
But that song...
As delivered by Judd Hirsch doing his Old Groucho schtick. "They hid the aliensh becaush...Chico needed the money!"
"I'm a yooge fan of the Papists. Some of my best friends are bigly mackerel eaters. Frank has a funny hat though."
Actually, he concelebrated a funeral I was at this summer, and that is one impressive hat.