American Politics from 2019 on

[Tero]

Local officials fiddled woth votes?
https://apnews.com/press-release/access ... 516b365caf#

As stated in the complaint, more voters have sworn they voted for independent U.S. Senate candidate Diane Sare than the Rockland County Board of Elections counted and certified, directly contradicting those results. Additionally, the presidential election results exhibit numerous statistical anomalies. The anomalies in the presidential race include multiple districts where hundreds of voters chose the Democratic candidate Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate, but where zero voters selected the Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

[Tero]

Elsewhere, on our primary system:

Even in the US, while the primaries were originally a progressive and democratic reform over caucuses and conventions, they were mostly used by the parties to figure out which of the potential candidates could actually appeal to the people. They weren't really how the parties chose candidates until the IDK, 70s or 80s.

This is correct. I have an old copy of the classic political science book, The Making of the President: 1960. You would think you were reading about another country. The idea of the primaries was not to win a bunch of them, it was to win enough to prove to the party bosses that you could get people to pull the lever next to your name. Then you went to the convention and the deal-making began, because nobody went to the convention with enough delegates. So-called "favorite son" candidates (a state's governor or senator) would control all his state's delegates, and thus any hopeful nominee would need to appeal to multiple parts of the country, ensuring moderate candidates.

The system fell apart in 1968, when LBJ decided not to run. Humphrey decided not to contest the primaries, relying on his strength with the party bosses. The anti-war candidates (McCarthy and RFK) had won all the primaries, but in the end Humphrey, who more or less pledged to continue Johnson's policies, got the nomination. However the anti-war folks spent the next four years ensuring that the primaries would be more important in 1972, and they got their way.

Since then it's been more or less a tug of war between the moderates in the party and more liberal base; for awhile the mods tried "superdelegates," but that proved too unpopular. Having early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire probably helped to moderate (and whiten) the candidates as well; we'll see if Biden's effort to move South Carolina to the front of the line stands.

[JimC]

Their petty vindictiveness knows no bounds...

[L'Emmerdeur]

Their petty vindictiveness knows no bounds...

It's a reaffirmation of one of the central tenets of Trumpism: Those who defend and champion civil rights (other than the right to carry guns) are certainly not to be celebrated. Too woke by far. Sort of bad people, really--troublemakers.

Meanwhile we need to change the names of certain military establishments back to honor generals who fought for the Confederacy. We'll do it in a clever way though.

[JimC]

Arseholes...

[Tero]

This Musk revolt could well go badly for Trump, like a casino. Someone has to figure out some kind of "deal" for him so it does not look so bad when he fizzles into a dark lump and only is seen golfing to the "end."

[Tero]

When does tha president get to use National Guards? What was the worst?
it was not one sent by Nixon, the governor sent them.

At Kent State University, a demonstration with about 500 students[18] was held on May 1 on the Commons, a grassy knoll in the center of campus traditionally used as a gathering place for rallies and protests. As the crowd dispersed to attend classes by 1 pm, another rally was planned for May 4 to continue the protest of the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. There was widespread anger, and many protesters called to "bring the war home." A group of history students buried a copy of the United States Constitution to symbolize that Nixon had killed it.

Further issues arose following President Nixon's arrival at the Pentagon later during the day.

"You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, storming around this issue. You name it. Get rid of the war there will be another one."

"You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, storming around this issue. You name it. Get rid of the war there will be another one."

Satrom met with Kent city officials and a representative of the Ohio Army National Guard. Because of the rumors and threats, Satrom feared that local officials would not be able to handle future disturbances.[9] Following the meeting, Satrom decided to call Rhodes and request that the National Guard be sent to Kent, a request granted immediately.

Wiki

Kent State student protest leaders called for a May 4 rally at noon at the Commons on campus to further protest America's involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as the presence of National Guardsmen on campus. By noon that day, there was reported to be at least 3,000 people on the Commons, with 500 or so core protesters around the Victory Bell, and another 2,500 spectators standing around the perimeter.

Many of the guardsmen pointed their guns toward the ground or fired in the air, but it was reported that a few fired 60 to 67 shots into the crowd during a period of 13 seconds.
Four Kent State students standing as far as 390 feet away from the National Guardsmen were killed, and nine others were wounded.

President Nixon created the President's Commission on Campus Unrest in June 1970 to take a look at the Kent State shootings. The report, published in September 1970, said that the shootings were "unnecessary, unwarranted and inexcusable."

https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/new ... 326965007/

[Tero]

Trouble Every Day

[Tero]

Lawyers and bureaucrats since 1940! The agencies can't really be all that independent, other than the treasury. The constitution does not really list any cabinet posts even.

"The administration’s war against the bureaucracy didn’t emerge from the mind of Mr. Trump or Mr. Musk alone. Nor is it the product of traditional conservative preoccupations with shrinking government and reducing spending. Its roots and motivations are far deeper.

"It is the culmination of a once marginalized, now transformative strand of political thought about who really holds power in the modern American system. Namely, that our democracy has been usurped by a permanent ruling class of wholly unaccountable managers and bureaucrats.

"Anti-managerialism is back. Well positioned to answer decades of frustration with mainstream conservatives’ failure to deliver results, this old idea has become the central principle of the New Right."

"The idea’s intellectual history begins with the political philosopher James Burnham, who argued in his seminal 1941 book, “The Managerial Revolution,” that the aristocratic capitalist class was in the process of being overthrown by a revolution — just not, as the Marxists predicted, by the working class."

"The book made an especially significant impression on George Orwell, who remarked that a managerial class consisting of “scientists, technicians, teachers, journalists, broadcasters, bureaucrats, professional politicians: in general, middling people,” hungry for “more power and more prestige,” would seek to entrench “a system which eliminates the upper class, keeps the working class in its place and hands unlimited power to people very similar to themselves.”
"This is what the Trump administration set out to do, embracing Mr. Buchanan’s view that “only the White House has the discipline and resources to conduct siege warfare against the bureaucracy.” Hence the administration’s determination to reassert presidential authority over the administrative state, seeing this as an urgent restoration of democratic accountability. It has had some success, including in a recent case in which the Supreme Court tentatively sided with the administration’s challenge to Humphrey’s Executor, a New Deal-era precedent establishing the notion that agencies could operate independent of executive control."

"Nonetheless, the managerial class continued to grow, regardless of which political party controlled the government. Cold War defense budgets drove a relentless expansion of the security-state bureaucracy and the military-industrial complex. The advent of Great Society welfare programs and the Civil Rights Act demanded a re-engineering of social relations, prompting a significant proliferation of lawyers, regulatory bureaucrats and corporate compliance officers in much of public and private life. An ever-greater proportion of Americans began funneling through the credentialing machinery of higher education, inflating demand for yet more upper-middle-class managerial jobs."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/opin ... crats.html

[Tero]

The cars torched in LA were Waymo driverless cars.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nat ... 110837007/

[Tero]

Minnesota went out of control with Floyd riots. May 2020.
https://www.threads.com/@nastynatasha__ ... -eGnQj4-vg

[Sean Hayden]

So, is parade day when he's going to have democrats thrown in jail and declare himself king?

[Sean Hayden]

—sweet bike, hope the rider’s safe.

[pErvinalia]

Radical leftie lunatic.

[JimC]

The minority of protestors who are burning cars etc. are playing into Trump's hands...