Current or modern politics in the United States

[scoundrel]

In the case of Ted Cruz, the motives for his pattern of behaviour are interesting, perhaps, but it is his pattern of behaviour which is the salient point about him. Wanting to make America ungovernable for the sake of a poxy healthcare reform is a huge warning sign that there is a wire down somewhere in his head. Being constitutionally conservative is not the same thing as being loyal to the country or to its people, as Chief Justice Roger Taney, he of the Dredd Scott decision, or for that matter Jefferson Davis could tell us, if they were both still alive and sufficiently self-aware.

Ted Cruz is destructive and self-absorbed to the point of absurdity. Mr Cruz may have more IQ than President Trump, who, after all, is a dolt. But Mr Trump is actually more pragmatic and sensible than Mr Cruz, in the same way that my pet cat is more pragmatic and sensible than Mr Cruz. It is possible to be quite intelligent and very well educated and still be an imbecile, as Mr Cruz has shown.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

In the case of Ted Cruz, the motives for his pattern of behaviour are interesting, perhaps, but it is his pattern of behaviour which is the salient point about him. Wanting to make America ungovernable for the sake of a poxy healthcare reform is a huge warning sign that there is a wire down somewhere in his head.

As always, I have great respect for your knowledge of US politics . . . you'd be very hard pressed to find an American with an equivalent grasp of the subtleties of British politics.

That said, I think Cruz is more than a nut. He genuinely believes in a very different understanding of the role of the Federal government, and he's hardly alone. There's a very big movement against the flexible interpretation of the "Commerce clause", and he's part of it . . . his views might strike you as extreme, but he'd say that he's standing for a traditional interpretation of the Constitution.

Cruz is a confluence of right wing traditions-- Texas' states' rights, Cuban emigre anti-communism, the Federalist Society. He's not a dumb guy-- graduated Princeton and Harvard Law School . . .

[Devius]

The Democratic Party has been united and energized by its shared disgust for Trump.
But Philip Elliott from Time magazine argues that the party has continued to neglect the heartland voters Trump successfully courted, and he lays out the numbers behind the party's crisis:

Now, eight months into the Trump presidency, the party looks to face its toughest odds since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in 1984. The Democrats are in their deepest congressional rut since the class of 1946 was elected, and hold the fewest governors' mansions—15—since 1922. Of the 98 partisan legislatures in the U.S., Republicans control 67. During Barack Obama's presidency, Democrats lost 970 seats in state legislatures, leaving the party's bench almost bare. The median age of their congressional leadership is 67, and many of the obvious early presidential front runners will be in their 70s by the 2020 election.-

full story here.
http://time.com/4951191/divided-demo...&pcd=hp-magmod

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Cruz is a confluence of right wing traditions-- Texas' states' rights, Cuban emigre anti-communism, the Federalist Society. He's not a dumb guy-- graduated Princeton and Harvard Law School . . .

Has anybody heard more about the challenge to Ted Cruz's citizenship? My understanding is that he was born in Canada. His father was a Cuban national and his mother had been born in the U.S. but had renounced her U.S. citizenship in applying to be a Canadian citizen.

It would be kind of funny if ICE grabbed him up and deported him to Canada.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Has anybody heard more about the challenge to Ted Cruz's citizenship? My understanding is that he was born in Canada. His father was a Cuban national and his mother had been born in the U.S. but had renounced her U.S. citizenship in applying to be a Canadian citizen.

It would be kind of funny if ICE grabbed him up and deported him to Canada.

I don't know who would have standing to challenge. Cuban refugees have a special immigration status, so I think his dad legitimately was a citizen. Cruz' claim to citizenship doesn't seem to me in question so much as the issues that come from being born in Canadian soil-- this would presumably have been an issue had he been the Republican candidate

It's ironic that the Rs care so much about Obama's alleged birth in Kenya, and so little about Cruz. But you can say that the Rs are consistent in their hypocrisy, so I suppose there's no real surprise

[scoundrel]

I seem to remember that when many Republicans were thinking in terms of "anyone but Trump" as the illness of their nomination contest approached the terminal phase, the second place candidate (a distant second) was none other than Ted Cruz. This alone was enough to make many registered Republicans vote Trump, albeit with rage in their hearts. No doubt there were some who questioned Mr Cruz's entitlement to be treated as a "natural born citizen". But had I been eligible to vote in any US election, my biggest doubt would have been whether Ted Cruz is fit for office; or if Mr Cruz is even fit for prostitutes to piss on, as was briefly suggested in CNN about Mr Trump.

At best, Mr Cruz has devoted his career to civil disobedience and has been systematically disruptive to the well being of others. I think it is lot worse than that; I think he is motivated by malice and invidia. If some really crushing and humiliating misfortune were to strike him, such as being caught red handed on CCTV stealing women's clothing from washing lines, or frequenting a house of ill repute, or cheating on Heidi in the company of a goat, this would give me a great deal of pleasure. He makes Donald Trump seem like a good chap, and that is in itself something of an achievement.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

I seem to remember that when many Republicans were thinking in terms of "anyone but Trump" as the illness of their nomination contest approached the terminal phase, the second place candidate (a distant second) was none other than Ted Cruz. This alone was enough to make many registered Republicans vote Trump, albeit with rage in their hearts. No doubt there were some who questioned Mr Cruz's entitlement to be treated as a "natural born citizen". But had I been eligible to vote in any US election, my biggest doubt would have been whether Ted Cruz is fit for office; or if Mr Cruz is even fit for prostitutes to piss on, as was briefly suggested in CNN about Mr Trump.

At best, Mr Cruz has devoted his career to civil disobedience and has been systematically disruptive to the well being of others. I think it is lot worse than that; I think he is motivated by malice and invidia. If some really crushing and humiliating misfortune were to strike him, such as being caught red handed on CCTV stealing women's clothing from washing lines, or frequenting a house of ill repute, or cheating on Heidi in the company of a goat, this would give me a great deal of pleasure. He makes Donald Trump seem like a good chap, and that is in itself something of an achievement.

Checked it out. The suits were tossed as judges ruled the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. The SCOTUS declined to hear appeals in May 2016. Thus, it would appear that suit could be filed by someone with standing, but many legal experts believe that Cruz would be deemed a citizen by virtue of his mother being a native born U.S. citizen.

Cruz is widely hated by his fellow Republicans by his attacks on the party leadership and willingness to campaign for Tea Party challengers for their seats. He is widely viewed as being driven only by his own ambitions and only marginally concerned with the well being of the country by his fellow senators.

From a Washington Post article of June 1, 2017:

"He has been publicly called a “wacko bird” and a “jackass” by senior lawmakers. His fellow Texas senator, Republican John Cornyn, said it was a mistake for him to show up at the Republican National Convention last year. “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) once opined."

This was shortly after Al Franken stated in his book that Senator Cruz is "the guy who microwaves fish in the office."

[TheBare]

Al Franken LOL!!

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by Devius

The Democratic Party has been united and energized by its shared disgust for Trump.
But Philip Elliott from Time magazine argues that the party has continued to neglect the heartland voters Trump successfully courted, and he lays out the numbers behind the party's crisis:

full story here.
http://time.com/4951191/divided-demo...&pcd=hp-magmod

Its a good story.

My two cents' is this:

The Rs courted and won the Dixecrats-- Southern Democrats committed to segregation. Although there was, briefly, a "New South" Democrat -- Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore-- who won white and black votes, for reasons that I don't understand this is now an impossibility. Think of someone like Fritz Hollings, a Democratic Senator from South Carolina for 40 years . . . that's now an impossibility.

What happened?

Part of the story is demography. White Christian America was a comfortable majority in 1970, but in 2017, White Christian America is aging-- 70 year old America looks at 30 year old America and says "they're not like me"; this demographic shift has opened up the political fissures that Elliott notes.

The other thing that happened, that's hard to figure, is that White America began a downward social spiral. Charles Murray was the first to notice this in "Falling Apart"- that the social and health indicators of poorer whites were looking very bad. This trend has accelerated into a crisis around substance abuse and early death.

That has created a legitimate sense of alarm -- if your neighbor's 25 year old daughter just died of an OD, you're clearly not feeling "everything's great".

With a very few exceptions, Dems didn't look for nor did they channel that angst. For the most part, the institutional Republican party didn't either-- it was the Tea Party, really a third party within the Rs, that did it for them. When Trump talks about "slaughter", he likes to label it with reference to a largely black city (Chicago, Detroit); but actually most of the cities in the US are doing very well, NYC's homicides will be about 250 this year, compared with 1200 a generation ago. The "slaughter" that Trump voters are vibrating to is the death toll in their own communities-- not necessarily murders, more often ODs, suicides.

That battle inside the Rs is being fought today in one of the most interesting election contests, Luther Strange vs Roy Moore for Senate in Alabama. Note that this is a Republican primary-- Tea Party vs Institutional, and amazingly Housing Secretary Ben Carson has come out for Moore, while Trump supports Strange. (The Democratic nominee will be irrelevant; Alabama politics is now the Republican Primary).

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/0...a-trump-243035

[tsunamiSD]

I was reading a blog about soccer and came across mention of Richard Rorty. I searched this thread and couldn't find mention of him, so here goes:

Argument for National Pride

In the days leading up to and following the Presidential election, a seemingly prophetic passage from the late philosopher Richard Rorty circulated virally on the Internet. The quote, which was subsequently written about in the Times and the Guardian and on Yahoo and the Web site for Cosmopolitan magazine, is from his book “Achieving Our Country,” published in 1998. It is worth quoting at length:Members of labor unions, and unorganized and unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. . . . Once the strongman takes office, no one can predict what will happen.

This seems eerily prescient - to think that someone saw that far ahead back in 1998...