Mad_Machine76
Mad_Machine76's JournalHave no idea
A former Democratic Indiana House Speaker (John Gregg) came *close* to beating him in 2012 but the Democratic Party has been whittled down to almost nothing in Indiana since the last elected Democratic Governor, Frank O'Bannon suddenly passed away around 2004 and Mitch Daniels got elected. Republicans currently have a strong supermajority in the State Legislature and Democrats basically have no power to do anything. As to why we keep electing Republicans here 
I was initially happy that Pence was not running for re-election (he was deeply unpopular by 2016) and thought that him hitching his wagon to Trump would finish him off because there was *no way* that Trump would be elected POTUS (or so I thought).
If Dems take House, they *could* vote to impeach
The Senate is a longshot and even if we win it by a bare majority, I doubt that there will be enough votes to convict, even among Democrats. For Trump to be removed from office, a good number of Republicans will have to be persuaded to vote to do so by incontrovertible evidence of serious wrongdoing. Unfortunately, I don't see it happening. Many Republicans seem to be hitching their anchor to him and who knows how tied up in the Russia investigation some of them may be, so they will be fighting for their own preservation as much as Trump's. Hopefully, at the bare minimum, Democrats will put a screeching halt to the Trump/GOP agenda in Congress for the last half of Trump's Presidency and we make him a single-term President in 2020.
Can sombody explain to me how this is a story?
Story after story about Trump's "base" voters seems pretty much the same I can practically tell somebody what they are about without even reading it: Trump voters' problems haven't been solved yet and, despite Trump's obvious gross incompetence and lack of actual substantive policy prescription for their particular issue(s), they still support him and maintain their unwavering/blind faith that he will come through for them in the end.
Have I got that about right?
Trump voters realizing that they've been duped and planning to support Democrats and/or non-Trump loyalist Republicans (are there actually any left in Congress) in the next elections, now THAT would be a story.
I think that it's just the general concept of it
I'm Agnostic, so I'm not a "believer" and don't really care much about organized religion and, at the end of the day, a bizarre ritual by members of one religious sect doesn't really amount to anything per se, but a lot of people do take their faith seriously and if I were a relative/ancestor of one of these people, I'd be somewhat perturbed. The idea of posthumously "converting" people to your religion just seems distasteful, if not disrespectful to the dead. It seems to me sort of like vandalizing somebody's grave or digging up their corpse. Or as somebody who is Transgender, it would sort of be like me dying and having a family member(s) dress me up as a guy and "deadname" me at my funeral.
Here's my wishlist then (in no particular order):
1. Election Integrity/Voting Law Reform (fix VRA)
2. Enact into law all of the Obama-era regulations Trump has gutted
3. Repeal Congressional Review Act
4. Enact ACA fixes and enhancements (especially to prevent so much executive branch meddling)
5. Repeal Tax Bill just passed by Congress
6. Study/Enact Congressional reforms that prevent rampant obstructionism that Republicans have been using (esp. in terms of SCOTUS appointments, which shouldn't be able to be blocked/withheld like with Garland)
7. Restore full CHIP funding
8. Enact DACA & comprehensive immigration reform previously passed by Senate but blocked by House in 2013.
9. Repeal Trump's "Travel Bans"
Those are all I can think of off the top of my head.
"Don't you feel better that you're getting a few more dollars (crumbs) in your paycheck?"
"Pay no attention to the the mind-boggling amounts of money corporations will be taking in and how much we're pumping up the deficits behind the curtain!"
Supply-side economics is like a Zombie monster that just won't die no matter how many times it's tried and no matter how many times it ultimately fails. It would be nice if somebody can just figure out some way to kill it once and for all. I mean, you'd think that the "boogeyman" arguments for why your life sucks (i.e. liberals, immigrants, minorities, welfare queens, queers, et. al) would cease to be effective.......eventually?
Republican/American voters have easily forgotten this as well
So much so that they re-elected them to Congress in droves in 2010 and 2014 to help ensure that President Obama wouldn't be able to do anything too much progressive and then capped it all off in 2016 by electing a doofus and possible foreign agent to the Presidency along with a Republican Congress.
I just can't even.
And people wonder why we can't have nice things.
If history is any judge, no
Fox will blame Democrats in Congress, President Obama, and, of course, Hillary Clinton for the mess and their viewers will eat it all whole. Then look for the formation of a new, "improved" Tea Party to help take back Congress and dig us deeper into a mess.
If we survive the Trump Presidency
We need a special commission appointed to figure out how to shore up the Constitutions/checks and balances in our Constitutional system and close some of the loopholes that have been used to damage how Congress and the Presidency function in the pursuit of political power. It is shockingly frightening how so much of how our government has been operating for decades through a series of seemingly unenforceable norms and traditions. Up until the last few years, politicians on both sides of the aisle have respected a series of norms and traditions but, bit by bit, piece by piece, many of these norms and traditions have been chipped away at, particularly by Trump rather aggressively just in the past year alone.
Did anybody else notice when the GOP started becoming Pro-Putin?
I know that we're all starting to realize that it's not only Trump who appears to be in thrall to Russia/Putin but also several Republican members of Congress but did anybody else start noticing Pro-Putin attitudes start to filter into the GOP over the past few years as well? I remember right-wingers start to develop a bit of a love-fest with Putin when they started comparing him favorably over President Obama in terms of how he conducted foreign policy. I remember some people weirdly obsessing over the idea that Hillary was going to pick a fight with Russia and using that as their justification for voting against her last year. What did everybody else observe over the past few years?
Profile Information
Name: Mara Alis ButlerGender: Female
Hometown: Indianapolis, Indiana
Home country: USA
Current location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Member since: Sat Feb 28, 2004, 01:13 AM
Number of posts: 24,399
