@Enchantress

Are we really so propagandized that no one sees reality.

That's how the will of the people is subverted. It's insidious, and it works.

Around 25 years ago I was working at a call center for Directv. This was when Bush pushed through all that Patriot laws garbage. I remember telling someone there that we were losing our rights. The reply was that "but they attacked us." One thing has nothing to do with the other. We've been attacked before this.

Here in Florida, these idiots voted to make it 60% to amend the Florida Constitution instead of a simple majority. That way it's harder to pass anything which actually helps people.

I've been going to PT most mornings. Todays was cancelled because they are putting in a new system. Most mornings I have to listen to these old men complaining about politics. So far, I've learned that the U.S. has abandoned Israel, that the reason V.A. benefits were cut so that they could give more money to "The Welfare," and that California is giving everyone a "free house."

Sometimes I feel like I'm either on the wrong planet or a different species. Does anyone actually read, study, or investigate anything anymore? Are we really so propagandized that no one sees reality.

@wokkamile

1) the Electoral College. Go to straight popular vote like every other country in the world.

2) the Senate -- needs to be more proportional in representation like the House. Absurd situation today of a tiny pop state like WY (576k) having the same number of senators as CA (39m) with 68x greater population.

4) Age limits for P -- 75 yrs old.

5) Scotus -- 18 yr term and that's all.

I disagree:

3) Constitutional amendment process. Hurdle is set way too high. Bring it down to 55-60% needed in both chambers of Congress, not the super-supermajority of two-thirds in the document.

I would suggest not leaving that up to a Congress that has shown disregard to the wants of the people. That should be determined by direct vote by the people, leave the grifters out of it. They're supposed to reflect the will of their constituents, but time after time, they prove that they don't. Lobbyists and corporate money are their masters.

that we are still using a 234-yo document to run our affairs of gov't and the rest. Most countries freshen theirs up more frequently or redo them completely to meet modern needs. Not so the US, which over-venerates the Framers making them into demigods of wisdom and making their document unamendable except in rare circumstances.

Then we get the further absurdity of 5-6 Scotus geniuses, not exactly unbiased, who claim to also be historians as they cherry-pick their way into discerning what the Framers were thinking 2 centuries ago to dictate how we should govern ourselves today.

Just getting one substantive constitutional amendment today is near impossible. This is in part due to the high hurdle set up in the document, and in important part due to the increased partisan divide today which devalues compromise for the greater good in favor of preserving party political power.

That said, the main structural areas of the Constitution that need reform or outright scrapping would be 1) the Electoral College. Go to straight popular vote like every other country in the world. 2) the Senate -- needs to be more proportional in representation like the House. Absurd situation today of a tiny pop state like WY (576k) having the same number of senators as CA (39m) with 68x greater population. 3) Constitutional amendment process. Hurdle is set way too high. Bring it down to 55-60% needed in both chambers of Congress, not the super-supermajority of two-thirds in the document. 4) Age limits for P -- 75 yrs old. 5) Scotus -- 18 yr term and that's all.

Some changes I'd like to see, but of course most are impossible w/o a constitutional amendment, which it itself is impossible these days.

@enhydra lutris
of the Constitution, Congress's abrogation of the war powers:

Why the Founding Fathers Would Object to Today’s Military

Today, we live in a state of constant, potentially endless war -- always, without exception, undeclared; invariably by choice (rhetorically disguised as necessity); frequently in secret (to increase the license to act, while minimizing oversight and accountability); often labeled war (to engender fear and urgency), but just as often labeled something other than war (for reasons of expediency, convenience and legal circumvention); initiated and prosecuted by a now permanently imperial presidency, largely devoid of congressional consultation and consent before the fact, sometimes even with minimal congressional notification after the fact.

Such concentration of executive power, such abrogation of legislative authority and responsibility, such marginalization of popular consent would seem to be the ingredients of tyrannical government the founders said the people had the right and the duty to overthrow.

The founders also, we well know, had a pronounced fear of and antipathy toward standing armies -- large, permanent, professional military establishments -- because of the dual temptations for domestic oppression and international adventurism by those in power, the drain on public resources, and, not least, the not-infrequent aberrant behavior of those in uniform.

This fear led them to invest Congress with specific power to determine the size and composition of the armed services, make rules to govern those forces, mobilize and oversee the federal use of the militia, control the size and distribution of the military’s budget, and, most importantly, declare war.

These enumerated congressional powers and the designation of the president as commander in chief of the armed forces were designed to ensure civilian control of the military -- ultimate direction, oversight, and decision-making authority over the military in the hands of properly elected and appointed civilian officials -- a concept that has become a cardinal precept and precondition for democracies everywhere. And it was this fear of standing armies that led the founders to prefer the citizen-soldier to the professional. “When we assumed the Soldier,” said Washington, “we did not lay aside the Citizen.” And from Jefferson: “Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.” They were not anti-military; far from it. Rather, they were anti-militaristic and anti-interventionist, preferring active, regular commercial and diplomatic engagement, not military involvement, with the rest of the world.

Today, we have much of what the founders would have feared most: a totally professional force, largely unrepresentative of American society, increasingly alienated from the public it is supposed to serve, huge in size, gluttonously expensive, more heavily and lethally armed than any other force in the world, deployed all across the globe all of the time, a source of recurring provocation and adventurism, principally prepared for a preferred American way of war that is no longer relevant, continuously guilty over time of socially and politically irresponsible behaviors (from combat atrocities to internal sexual assault), and singularly at the forefront of both global and domestic militarization (not least by virtue of America’s place as the world’s leading arms dealer).

Only the executive has troops. Allegedly they are not to be used as police, but who has the power to enforce that? The states have Polizei, and highly militarized ones at that, but since when are they gonna stand up for the rights of the individual? Some corporations have troops, but which side are they on?

be well and have a good one