US Politics

So do people think it is Ted Cruz that has flown to Cancun whilst the issues in Texas continue?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/twitter-speculate-ted-cruz-cancun-b1804084.html

He needs a break after all that inciting

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/18/ted-cruz-cancun-flight-texas-storms-holiday-senator-reports

So he was just being a good father and chaperoning his daughters on their flight to see their friends on holiday in Cancun. He’s flying straight back to get back to work 👌

Ignore that he had originally been planning to return on Saturday and has now changed his flights. Also that he took so long to get the statement out.

He is so weaselly sounding.

Genuinely amazing that he couldn't get his head around how bad it looked and also that he doesn't employ anyone who could tell him that either. He even got police assistance to get him through the TX airport.

He's now withdrawn the first statement and copped to planning to staying till Saturday so everything is just completely Cruz-y.

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Bet Teds even still got electicity!

Away from the shithousery of Ted Cruz (my family and friends are mostly home again with power) - it's nice to see how these "hard men" Proud Boys are now very contrite and very cooperative.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/18/proud-boy-trump-impeachment-guilty-470046

Still full of shit though.

Pezzola’s lawyer now says he never had any intention of committing violence against other people, has no criminal record and was likely asleep during a car ride when other Proud Boys discussed plans to return to the Capitol to commit additional violence on Inauguration Day.

Enjoy prison life.

Is now a good time to remind those tough guy Texas Republicans about their often promised intention to secede?

Full disclosure, I am not Ted Cruz.

Of course, that’s exactly what I’d say if I was Ted Cruz.

Fuck.

Change your username to 'Big Tex' and no-one will suspect a thing. :)

I’m digging a dazzle camp/hide in plain sight vide #letsCruz

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If The Lincoln Project material always felt odd ... like it’d be a miss with actual Republicans, it’s because it was never aimed at them. And Andrew Cuomo is a shit.

Guardian opinion piece:
https://tinyurl.com/4fkabcjv

This ended up being a long procrastination post, so.......

I found the whole Lincoln Project thing vaguely curious, but I never trusted it. Figured its time would come and just hoped it wouldn't damage the anti-trump movement too badly.

Regrading cuomo, he should definitely resign.

The notion in the opinion piece that "With the end of the Trump presidency, we’ve been told that we are entering a new era of accountability" is sadly laughable. Not a sliver of a chance. Zero. Unfortunately you can file this opinion piece under another fart in the wind section.

I've heard lots of discussion on NPR these days on how to help Washington. NPR is liberal, but tries at least it tries to be objective. One idea is to make racing to the center and working together politically advantageous. This isn't an old idea, but I never gave it much thought because I loved Obama and before that I was basically a teenager and after that.... well.... I was busy being disgusted.

Actually it wouldn't be so hard in the House to do, for example. As it stands, you need only 50% of the votes to be Speaker I think. If you increased that to 60% then you'd need to please people on both sides of the isle more frequently, but you'd still have the advantage of the majority.

With regard to the Presidential elections, partisan behavior is encouraged by the primaries. The way you get the party nomination is by motivating the base, and that usually involves running as a candidate who is pretty far from center. I don't really know how to get around that. someone probably has ideas. I'm sure there's a well informed political science article somewhere out there on this very subject matter of racing to the center.

but anyway I think that's the answer.

Two party politics is bullshit. Party politics is pretty much a sham. The notion of voting for one person or party to represent all your different views or beliefs is just weird and is an illusion of democracy. With the internet a revised version of Athenian democracy could be achieved, everyone has a right to vote but would probably only exercise it on issues that concern them.

With the internet a revised version of Athenian democracy could be achieved

Yeah, and we’d have the death penalty, number plates for bikes and all forrins sent home by the end of next week.

Because the Internet has done so well at solving all our social problems.

Because current form of democracy has done so well at solving all our social problems.

You would do better picking a random noun from the dictionary than nominating something that's been an active factor in the current disaster capitalism and fascist revival.

Because fascism and exploitation of disasters never occurred before the internet.

Keep digging. There were holes long before there were shovels.

There’s several suggestions for making use of the tech. One that springs to mind is replacing or complementing human representatives with algorithms. Sounds bizarre but so is thinking a single human or a even a few thousand humans are able to identify which policy decisions are most beneficial for tens of millions of people.

Advertisers and bankers in the west already have online profiles for us, detailing our preferences and habits, our network connections, and myriad other pieces of info to give them a view into our minds, and to predict our preferences. Why not harness this tech to inform policy decisions?

One that springs to mind is replacing or complementing human representatives with algorithms.

Jesus wept.