taoist

Comment Threads

• JH commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
  2132: "Most ordinary Americans would oppose confiscating capital by force." Well, there hasn't been much polling on that so it's hard to say. Best indications are that the fairly large swathe of Americans who own capital would. As for the others, I see no reason to believe that. Granted, "communism" is widely disliked, but that's because of the association with gulags and whatnot. Given the vast wealth divides in America now, "sharing the wealth," that old Huey Long slogan that would probably have elected him as President had he not been assassinated, is quite popular. And Long was quite definite...
• JH commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
  2132 again (one of the more interesting posts. Question asked, how can you make capitalism work if you are confiscating capital by force? Answer is that you can't of course. The question is whether you can make socialism work through confiscating capital by force, and the answer is that is the only way. Granted that didn't work too well in the USSR, but we Americans have a saying, "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again."...
• JH commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
  2418: The Democrats can certainly impeach Trump in the House, though the talking heads in the media, remembering the Clinton fiasco, mostly think that would benefit Trump during the 2020 election, and House Republicans as well. But the idea that a Republican Senate might vote to convict is utterly absurd. Yes, they'd quietly prefer Pence as President. But if they did, the Republican party would immediately break into two quarreling pieces and quite possibly cease to exist, and few of the Republican Senators would have much chance of being re-elected, whichever way they voted. This ain't Watergate. Nixon wasn't impeached...
• JohnS commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
  Robert Prior @ 2458: "I'd read he was spending big bucks on Facepalm in anti-impeachment ads, as his "strategy" to stop the impeachment, as though it were a political campaign...." As I understand American politics, it is a political campaign. He has to persuade enough senators not to convict him, and ideally make enough congressmen scared of electoral consequences that they vote against impeachment so that it doesn't reach the senate. It's certainly not a criminal trial conducted by a trained and impartial judiciary. (Although with what I've heard about how judges are elected and/or appointed I wonder how impartial...
• Rick Moen commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
  Robert Prior @ 2458: As I understand American politics, it is a political campaign. I think of it as an employment performance review, one conducted by the Legislative Branch. The intent of impeachment (synonyms: accusation, indictment) by the House and possible subsequent conviction by the Senate is to decide whether or not a Federal officer has been fulfilling his/her oath of office, either doing the job or screwing up and failing. Federal officers judged to have woefully failed get sacked (and sometimes also told 'and also you are blacklisted for future employment'). That's what it's about. It's frequently been clarified...