Ding Dong.....the US Politics Thread (Part 1)

Sturgeon politely told him to fuck off.

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Does look fucking chilly in DC. I was there in January once, my god it was cold.

:cold_face:

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Weekend at Biden’s

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I saw that Trump has, at least, left Biden a letter as is tradition. It made me think of this though…

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I think a lot of the reporting has dropped out the important modifier of ‘sitting’. Only three sitting Presidents have not attended the inauguration of their successor. In cases of death and resignation, the Presidency is vacant and the powers vest in the temporary chain of succession until a new President is inaugurated. So there was no President to attend Ford’s inauguration, for example.

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Thanks. Out of interest, who were the previous three? Do you know? (Silly question ;))

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Ha, not off the top of my head. I missed Andrew Johnson, but remembered the fact that both Adams (father and son) did. The father despised Jefferson, and it was barely a norm at that point. The son was in the odd position of having won four years earlier by a single electoral vote but lost the popular vote by a massive margin - Jackson who beat him was as close to a Trump figure as the 19C had.

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I recently read about Jefferson getting annoyed that his initial drafting of the Declaration of Independence was watered down out of concern it would offend the British too much :joy:

As if we wouldn’t have understood that declaring independence was a “fuck off” anyway. Haha.

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Not entirely true, because the Americans were definitely playing a game informed by British politics. Many were acutely conscious that in an all-out conflict, the British could simply overwhelm the nascent United States, so there was a definite attempt to position themselves as having reasonable grievances with the Crown. Recall that despite Edmund Burke’s more famous condemnation of the French Revolution, he was a strong supporter of the American cause - though not in favour of outright independence. Equally, many of the American revolutionaries really saw themselves as continuing English political traditions and demanding the rights won in 1688 in particular.

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Ted Cruz…you smug cunt…

I am no hard man either, not by any stretch, but I bet he is a fucking pussy…

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Yes, that’s a fair point. And not just Burke but the founding fathers drew on the thinking of Coke, Blackstone, Locke, Hobbes and, my favourite, Paine.

Interesting too how the issue of slave-ownership was also redacted for similar reasons but also hinting at what was to come domestically.

I went down a rabbit hole of looking at the life of Charles Carroll, which led me to the stuff on the Declaration of Independence. Really interesting. My starting point was Stoneyhurst College which listed him as an alumnus but his own bio on wikipedia didn’t mention him going there. Arthur Conan Doyle did though, as well as someone who was four years above him and went on to become a prominent lawyer and judge. Someone by the name of John Moriarty…

ADD and its wonderful ability to take me off on tangents

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Lady Gaga, J-Lo and Garth Brooks…

No Ted Nugent?

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That’s the part I’m on about.Sometimes violent, sometimes forced,(enslaved) sometimes going against what they believed in but all nations of the world took some part in building America,in creating what it has become. There may be pockets where nations have settled but to make America the force it had become they had to work together, they now have to do the same in order to get back some of what has been lost these past 4 years.

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It’s kind of weird that they all prayed at the inauguration. Not dunking on anyone’s religion but the fact that almost everyone there is over 40 years old and all pretend to each other that they believe in God is a bit odd really.

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One nation under God and all that…

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Wait til they thank their agent

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It definitely feels anachronistic but it’s worth remembering what a massive step forward it was for a nation to guarantee freedom of religion through its constitution. I’m not surprised it remains such a prominent part of US politics given the origins of its colonisation. There’s a strange dichotomy between ostensible US secularism and the prominence and influence of religion (predominantly christianity) within its politics.

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That’s about right. The only good bit from God Save the Queen is the drum roll and cymbal crash at the beginning. It’s downhill after that.

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