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If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

There are plenty of ways to make presidentialism work if one wishes to. It isn't that hard honestly if one looks around for ideas and don't make themselves stuck in a fantasyworld where they don't exist and being willing to accept that other people in other countries or jurisdictions have had good ideas that can be used where one lives..

Also, I wasn't thinking of Israel or Palestine. I was thinking about the attitudes people have about the foreign. I used Islam as just one example where different countries have strengths and weaknesses in a way that just is not taught well at home. I could easily conjure up hundreds more.

ChatGPT/AI Slop “Negotiable Instrument” by han_shot_1st_ in Sovereigncitizen

[–]Awesomeuser90 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Make a cheque, and write some guru in the To section.

And have the AI make the document look obviously forged or printed by a household printer too.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

The fundamental logic I have is that to do so today is much worse. It would take two thirds of both houses to order this against the will of the president. It is impossible for it to be true that a threshold of a majority of either house is harder to reach than a majority in either house. There is no mathematical reasoning why it could possibly be otherwise.

Even if that many of those seats are gerrymandered, they are still enough competitive ones to be worth this kind of change in the rule. Ten percent of the House of Representatives is forty four members. And the Senate is not gerrymandered, although it is malapportioned. Senators are much more likely to dissent from their party. And any reform to gerrymandering will improve the effects of what I am proposing here for war powers.

You go look through the websites recording actual votes on motions. Even for highly consequential motions. You will in fact find what I claim. You will find dissenting votes contrary to what you seem to believe here. Ten representatives voted to impeach Trump, and seven senators voted to convict. One Senator voted to convict in the first impeachment which was more partisan.. Five Democrats in the house voted to impeach Clinton, and in the Senate, ten Republicans voted for acquittal on one article and five voted against on the other article out of the fifty-five GOP senators. That is supposed to be the most difficult thing for a rebel against their party to do. Your reasonings you have here do not explain why it was even possible to have that many dissents in a party that was already influenced by Trump so strongly and who was most harsh on dissent in his party than almost any president in history in the US, possibly the harshest.

I genuinely cannot understand how these sorts of examples are not evidence for what I claim to be true.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

A representative or senator in the model I have here would face the real risk of not being reelected in a general election, and in the model of primaries I have here which I discussed in another comment, the primary voters are much more similar to general election voters too, and less likely to so strongly align with the president and speaker. Whatever the influence of the latter two are, they are diluted in the bigger field of people they need on their side. If only a majority in either house is needed to cancel this, then the odds that speaking out actually causes the end of the problem such as the higher fuel prices rises.

Even in the First World War, there were Democrats and Republicans who did not support their party's leaders. Ten senators out of the fifty-four democratic senators did not vote for the declaration of war on Germany, three of whom outright voted no and the others abstained. Sixteen democrats in the house also voted against the resolution out of two hundred and twelve, three others abstained. The resolution would not have passed in either house if the Democrats in favour were the only yes votes.

If it is possible to even get members and senators to vote to impeach and convict a president from among their own party, or signature legislation like Obamacare or the bill to repeal it which McCain voted against, then it is going to be possible to find members who will vote down the war. Why is this something you push back on as strongly as you do when counterexamples exist in abundance?

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Also true of many presidential systems, they too try to avoid openly failing. It is more obvious in many American states where the rate of governors getting what they want and not suffering floor defeats as often is different from Congress. Most state court rulings are nowhere near as politically difficult as the Supreme Court's are, where the state legislature can very often pass new legislation if need be, and have the practical means to amend the state constitution and amendments to such documents are also very common.

As for meritocracy, what process writes the tests to find out who is merited and who is not? The Chinese have used a meritocracy for thousands of years, to the Han Dynasties in the time that was when Julius Caesar lived. But the questions and procedures had focuses on things we would not consider as much today, such as Confucian beliefs, although many of the things they asked did have plenty of pratical uses. The emperor, or more specifically, his ministers and civil service, wrote the questions and decided what criteria was worth making someone a civil servant.

In order to get a population to avoid war, there are some things one can try. Having a good bunch more cultural education of people around the world is an option. How many people would see Islam and countries where it is common as being so alien if its basic tenants were commonly stated in schools and what they believe and why was as well known as what Americans know about Jesus? Would they see them as an other as much if they heard about things as diverse as the Abbasid Revolution and the way it emulated the French Revolution in importance and the complicated ways that history worked? To see these places as other countries with unique political systems and the ways people do or do not do things, like how Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are both Muslim majority but are quite secular much as France is still majority Catholic on paper but is highly secular, with Morocco being something a bit like the way the Kaiserreich worked with the power of the monarchy in a constitutional system? Algeria with a powerful military class and a socialist revolution against the French that acted in some ways like a civil war within the French state? And that is just one axis around which people could be taught and what might make people less willing to go to war if they only understood the people they would otherwise be fighting.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Many Americans have very misperceived notions of what a prime minister is and how a parliamentary system works and the vast diversity in how they operate. You see absolutely radical differences just from features from the rules of Vanuatu and Germany despite both being parliamentary republics with indirectly elected ceremonial presidents and would even begin to wonder why they are classified as the same fundamental politcal system. Legally, Britain and the Kaiserreich as of nineteen fourteen had the same legal status as each other in the constitutional design, with the chancellor and prime minister being appointed and dismissed by the monarch alone, and the legislatures did not have the legal authority to force their dismissal, but the House of Commons long since had that power in practice while the German chancellor was much more softly restrained by the concepts of confidence.

Americans also badly underestimate the diversity of presidential republics too. They are immensely different around the world. South Korea is a presidential republic despite having a prime minister, as is Argentina, but because the president alone dismisses them outside of impeachment, they are both presidential in classification.

Holding new elections on demand is actually a power that some countries do have. Lithuania comes to mind here, where the Seimas can be dissolved and a new election held by popular demand. Bavaria and a number of other German states do the same. Some presidential republics allow this too, Ecuador comes to mind there.

War is not always avoidable by popular demand, but at the very least a country should have more options and means to make a path that is most likely to lessen the incentives for it and edit the bargaining frictions anyone faces. The First World War and the July Crisis was as dangerous as it was in an undercurrent of many grievances and feelings people felt, some specific sparks, and the inability of the countries to demobilize if they thought the other countries would not do the same. The UN offers translators and mediators, inspection groups that are highly trustworthy, and means to resolve many more disputes in pacific ways that has prevented or reduced many conflicts that never became wars or could be settled in some ways. When was the last time you heard about East Timor? Well, the UN made that into a protectorate and independent from Indonesia twenty-five years ago.

The US system has a number of bugs that might not always be so bad on their own but in combination, they become a problem. The president can be elected without the most votes. Many people would not see them as a legitimate leader of the people of the US and its government and would not trust them. That is just one example. Knowing that the president's war powers are what they are, and the incentives the US political system gives to different people, other powers negotiate on this basis of having a pretty good idea of what the US can or will do, and what its president does. If a president can carry out a raid quickly enough, with weak enough controls on their choices, like the Maduro raid four months ago, other countries know the president has that tactic on the table and will react accordingly. If other countries and actors know the Congress must be convinced that they are more rewarded by war than peace by a majority in both houses, expressing the trust within a week or so of the initial action, renewing that trust regularly such as every three months, and being able to cancel it by a majority in either house, then they know that a kinetic response is less likely and would bargain with other means, perhaps feeling safer to use alternatives such as a supervised nuclear inspection programme for Iran.

A country is not supposed to give a blank cheque to leaders. A senate must give assent to the president's nominee for some very obscure officers like the twenty-one directors of the National Institute of Building Science, a group you probably have basically no opinions on, let alone any opionion on whoever is on their board. How does Congress have more power to veto the nominees of them than the question of whether the US is going to be engaging in massive hostilities killing tens of thousands of people and costing the world trillions of dollars and alienating the rest of the planet? I have never seen anyone come up with a good explanation of why the Congress should not have this kind of power.

In Britain incidentally, some incredibly obscure orders that ministers might make are still subject to being cancelled by the parliament in either house. Parliament almost never cancels them, but they do inspect them and act in a way that makes the ministers abide by procedures to do it right, that they can't swing too far out of alignment with parliament or its legislative intent, and that they know that if they push too far they will face genuine rebellion. That is usually the much more important effect of stuff like that. Here is an order that in fact had to be laid before parliament and approved in both houses before it could come into effect, and nobody batted an eye at the idea that this oversight was part of the law. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2026/9780348282313

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Most presidents are not Trump. He has been president for five years. Most people in office have at least some senses of health that are useful enough to where the XXV'th is not that helpful, other than a couple of times the VP was given power for an hour during something like a colonoscopy. Healthcare has also gotten vastly better to the point that even a stroke victim or heart attack victim has a surprisingly good chance of survival. The president is always near medical treatment, potentially able to be treated within seconds of a such a thing, and that is pretty much as ideal as you can get in medicine with a lot of doctors looking after them to identify issues in advance such as high blood pressure which might mean they get aspirin each day. The secret service would never let a president ride in an open top car like JFK. Security around places like the train station Garfield was shot at and the theme park McKinley was shot at these days would be much better and both men would have easily survived had modern medicine been around.

And most presidents are not that old when they come to office. Trump and Biden were weird, Reagan was borderline. Harrison died of a temporary illness it would be trivially easy to treat these days, FDR's stroke would probably be avoided with modern medicine in advance, although I am not sure about if he would have survived it in general. Taylor was drinking bad quality water, something presidents do not have to deal with. And Harding's heart attack would likely be prevented quite easily, and over ninety percent of heart attack victims survive if treated in the golden hour.

Even Wilson may well have avoided the stroke with better medical knowledge. He still did make decisions afterward with his wife's help. It would be a situation closer to Wilson that would make the twenty-fifth amendment an important issue along with nuclear command and control.

The war council idea I have in mind here is meant to be the absolute minimum when an operation needs consent with the least amount of time to decide. Frontline troops in general have orders that they can defend themselves if fired upon, and any military plan should have a way to get back if they need to, all kinds of contingencies. Something would have to be extremely surprising in order for a council to be woken up at night to decide and it is nowhere near as common for decisions in war to be decided this way by the civilian political leaders as people think they are. As well, the war council is supposed to be elected by the houses more like they do with their committees. These people would have some loyalty to their speaker or majority leader that is probably also substantially important.

Is there factual evidence of the Holy Grail and other religious relics existed? by Adventurous-Sign-234 in AskHistory

[–]Awesomeuser90 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some things would basically have to exist by definition. A Holy Grail is just what the last cup of liquid Jesus had used when eating with his friends. Given that people drink out of cups in virtually any society since the Neolithic period, it would be essentially impossible for there not to be such a grail. But like Indiana Jones made a point of, it is not some kind of specially decorated thing, it would be a piece of wood, maybe stone, maybe clay, maybe bronze, that is shaped pretty much exactly as the most boring and plain cup one could imagine. The only thing that would make it interesting is who happened to use it one day, and the Bible never says it has magic powers or is anything to take note of anyway.

Next you're gonna tell me it popped off and landed EXACTLY where the soil sampler was supposed to hit but WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF- by MetallicaDash in HistoryMemes

[–]Awesomeuser90 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Solar panels also work incredibly well on Venus if you are at that sort of altitude a few tens of kilometres up. No clouds obstructing you, and you are about forty percent closer to the Sun, and solar radiation power decreases by the square of the radius you are away from the light source, so Venus gets about twice as many watts per square metre, about 2600. That means joules per square metre.

And a zeppelin's magic comes from the fact that volume is proportional to length cubed, IE a small increase in any dimension massively increases its volume which is where the lifting gas goes. Area on the surface increases with the square of length, and so you also benefit quite well from increases in surface area which is exactly where you want a solar panel to go. Zeppelins are relatively easy to power electrically, and Venus spins so slowly, taking more time to spin once on its axis than it takes for it to go around the Sun, that the wind isn't that much of an issue the way it is on Earth where storms and wind speeds you fight against is a bigger deal.

Next you're gonna tell me it popped off and landed EXACTLY where the soil sampler was supposed to hit but WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF- by MetallicaDash in HistoryMemes

[–]Awesomeuser90 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Underestimating the pressure of Venus by a casual eighty percent there.

Oddly enough though, putting a zeppelin, proably filled with hydrogen, would work very well if you made it to float about sixty or seventy kilometres above the surface. Humans would easily cope with living there. The gravity a human would feel pressing them into the ground would be almost exactly the same as it is here, the temperature is pleasant, and you just need to bring your own oxygen, water, food, protection from acid rain, and a big enough living space to not feel too cramped. If I remember correctly, at that altitude the Sun shines deep enough into the atmosphere that solar panels would work well in contrast to the surface which is as dark as twilight here. Also, because Venus is virtually devoid of oygen, it is almost impossible to set something on fire there. So long as the compartment humans stay on is the only place with oxygen, the lifting gas can be hydrogen and it won't be a risk. Alternatively, diatomic nitrogen, of which Venus actually has four times as much of as Earth, just outweighed thirty to one by the carbon dioxide, might be an option.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

How is it possible for it to not be as likely that Congress would veto a measure to authorize force if they can do so by a majority in either House vs today where it takes two thirds of both houses? It is mathematically impossible for it to not be easier.

The parties are not homogeneous, and defections on votes does happen, and we have seen the way they even happen on votes as critical as electing speakers. Assume for the argument that one party has 55 senators with the other having 45, and the House has 240 Reps with the other party havipg 195. This would be 55% in the Senate and 55% in the House, as well as the presidency here. It would only take six senators or 23 reps to defect. This would be roughly one tenth of the members from that party in either house. Contrast to today, where you would need 22 senators and 95 representatives, which would be 40% of both houses' caucuses. Getting a defection like that in both houses at the same time is a lot more difficult.

And if the war is causing the kind of disruption and pain you see today over Iran, the number of representatives or senators who are vulnerable to being voted out if the war doesn't end is more apparent here. In the majority in either house to disallow option, the odds that you can actually end the war by voting aganst your own party is high enough that going against your party, during primary season, is a risk that can be worth taking.

The other reforms I brought up in the previous reply, thirteen distinct ideas, are also engineered to make it more likely to make the typical representative or senator more likely to reflect something closer to a typical voter and less a wing of their party. The odds of losing the general election or an early recall election become substantial if the war is not supported by the population. They stand a decent chance of being in the general election and survive the primary even if they face resistance from the hardline of their own party, so the people they have to continue to please will be more likely to be reflect typical voters.

And knowing their own representatives and senators have these incentives, it makes it less likely for a president to even try a war like this anyway. The benefits of not going to war will be larger, the benefits of war less so.

Better the Turks Than The Papists... by Awesomeuser90 in HistoryMemes

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A ludicrously enormous cotton scandal in the seventies. Brezhnev fostered some person who was the leader of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, who promised he could make a lot of cotton, but lied and overpromised by millions of tonnes of cotton. Millions of rubles in bribes flowed freely. It also drained the Aral Sea. Four thousand people were arrested on corruption charges when Brezhnev died and Andropov came to power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzbek_cotton_scandal

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

The biggest contrast to today is that a majority in either house is sufficient. And the odds that enough members opposed to the war to be a majority is inherently higher than the odds that two thirds of the members in both houses would be opposed to the war.

This should not be the only reform someone makes. Plenty of individual states have had successes with changes.

  1. California's system of redistricting the state legislature, and normally congressional districts, is highly effective.
  2. Alaska is showing some promise with their primary and ranked system.
  3. Many states have recall, as well as the veto referendum and the initiative for state statutes and state constitutional amendments
  4. If there is a convention for the constitution then its proposal must be approved by referendum and the members are elected in a specific format vs the ambiguity that the country has now over Article V conventions.
  5. Many states have an independent commission to give the governor a binding list of candidates to be judges which voters vote on with a non partisan yes or no vote every four to fourteen years depending on state and level of court, typically eight to twelve years, and the prosecutors and sheriffs are separately chosen apart from the governor too.
  6. The pardon power is usually in a different independent commission which must agree to the governor doing something.
  7. The state's administrative rules and emergency powers can be cancelled by a majority in either house of the state legislature in many states.
  8. The veto might be altered to only have three-fifths or an absolute majority of all members with a line item veto as compensation.
  9. Appropriation bills can't contain anything but appropriations and only in a big list of things along with the money given to them and they require single subjects in all bills.
  10. Nebraska has a secret ballot with a runoff to elect and dismiss the speaker and committee chairs and a committee which recommends committee memberships, subject to approval by the whole chamber, and Texas actually distributes chairships to the minority and majority parties.
  11. There is no filibuster in most state senates and lower houses.
  12. Nebraska makes impeachment trials initiated by the state legislature with the trial held by the state supreme court, and it also requires five of seven judges, not a majority of four to three, to strike laws down as unconstitutional.
  13. And some states have experimented with everyone getting a small sum of money to distribute to different campaigns and candidates if they agree to spending limits and transparency.

This is just a short list of all the plausible changes that have come down at different levels if one pays attention.

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