Author Topic: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington  (Read 387475 times)

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Offline dpareja

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #180 on: December 11, 2016, 03:23:24 am »
In my opinion, nonsense like that should in all honesty be called the utter tripe it is and forced out of focus by the media.

However it appears Clinton said something you deemed unfavorable, thus in a topic about a potentially very dangerous fascist you felt compelled to bring up Clinton (again) as if what she did was somehow equal to something Trump is out to do.

...Why?

Because she should be calling that dangerous fascist what he is and calling him out for his terrible policy proposals and appointees, not calling for unconstitutional laws. It speaks very ill of her that she should lose to a joke like Trump, go away for a month, then come back, pretending as if she has any remaining claim to relevancy, and say something like this that proves she doesn't rather than giving a speech on important matters.
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Offline LeTipex

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #181 on: December 11, 2016, 04:23:23 am »
pretending as if she has any remaining claim to relevancy

You are talking about Clinton, right? aka the candidate who won the popular vote in a fucking landslide, right?

Because that doesn't sound like you read that particular memo...

Offline dpareja

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #182 on: December 11, 2016, 04:57:53 am »
pretending as if she has any remaining claim to relevancy

You are talking about Clinton, right? aka the candidate who won the popular vote in a fucking landslide, right?

Because that doesn't sound like you read that particular memo...

She won the popular vote, yes, but lost states that Democratic candidates hadn't lost in almost thirty years. (Bush Sr. was the last Republican to take Michigan or Pennsylvania, and Reagan was the last one to take Wisconsin.) Her wing of the Democratic Party fell out of touch with what voters in those states think, and they remember all too well that it was Bill Clinton who did NAFTA and Hillary Clinton who called the TPP "the gold standard." As far as many of them are concerned, NAFTA shipped half their jobs out of the country and TPP would do for the other half, and they were not going to vote for someone who supported NAFTA and flip-flopped on the TPP.

She lost the Rust Belt, probably also costing the Democrats the Senate since Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had Republican incumbents, and if the Democratic Party has any designs on getting back into power, they need to ditch the corporatist wing of the party that can't credibly speak to those voters. Hillary Clinton, at this point, is to many voters the personification of that part of the Democratic Party, and as such for the party to have any hope she has to go away. Her clinging onto relevance only hurts the party at this point.
Quote from: Jordan Duram
It doesn't concern you, Sister, that kind of absolutist view of the universe? Right and wrong determined solely by a single all-knowing, all powerful being whose judgment cannot be questioned and in whose name the most horrendous acts can be sanctioned without appeal?

Quote from: Supreme Court of Canada
Being required by someone else’s religious beliefs to behave contrary to one’s sexual identity is degrading and disrespectful.

Offline Askold

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #183 on: December 11, 2016, 03:11:45 pm »
I have started seeing a meme on the net claiming that Jill Stein's recount discovered voter fraud by the Democrats. But most websites that talk about the recount say that there has been no evidence of fraud. Are sites like this one reliable? http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/jill-stein-recount-finds-voter-fraud-hillary-supporters/
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Offline Eiki-mun

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #184 on: December 12, 2016, 12:38:07 am »
I have started seeing a meme on the net claiming that Jill Stein's recount discovered voter fraud by the Democrats. But most websites that talk about the recount say that there has been no evidence of fraud. Are sites like this one reliable? http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/jill-stein-recount-finds-voter-fraud-hillary-supporters/

I usually go with a good rule of thumb: if the website refers to the liberal, currently minority part of the USA as the "Democrat Party", they're probably not a reliable source.
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Offline Id82

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #185 on: December 12, 2016, 09:29:35 am »
So Donald Trump's excuse for not getting daily security briefings is because he's like totally smart you guys.

"I'm, like, a smart person. I don't have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years."

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/donald-trump-talks-policy-conflicts-calls-idea-russians-helped-him-n694581
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Offline Lana Reverse

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #186 on: December 12, 2016, 03:13:57 pm »
I have started seeing a meme on the net claiming that Jill Stein's recount discovered voter fraud by the Democrats. But most websites that talk about the recount say that there has been no evidence of fraud. Are sites like this one reliable? http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/jill-stein-recount-finds-voter-fraud-hillary-supporters/

When it comes to accusations like this, I'd advise skepticism. Be willing to look at the evidence, if the source provides it, but don't just assume they're guilty unless there's some kind of smoking gun.
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Offline The_Queen

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #187 on: December 15, 2016, 11:26:41 pm »
And get two thirds of both parts of Congress to ratify it, which is borderline impossible.  Plus, the people can petition their state governments to pass another Amendment to undo it which, again, would require a two thirds majority in the resultant convention.

Trump won't take over and become our new emperor.  That's fearmongering bullshit and not how the god damned government works.  He'll be another Bush, Jr. and that's going to be pretty much it.

I wanted to take a few days to think over what I was trying to say because I think you raise a very valid point. To clarify, I am speaking out of two sides of my mouth to an extent. On the one hand, I repeat my prior statement that I think it is the worst form of American exceptionalism to believe that we are somehow immune to falling prey to an authoritarian leader. We have a Constitution, but so have several European nations that fell to fascism in the 40's, and so have many modern African nations that fell prey to dictators more recently. At the end of the day, the Constitution is a piece of paper that outlines division of powers and political institutions and not some magical panacea for the preservation of democracy.

On the other, Trump represents something fundamentally different than our previous presidents: he has a complete disdain for the facts, glorifies himself above all else, openly discussed curtailing civil liberties during the election season, has no policy experience, has no respect for division of powers of the institutions within government, is probably the most authoritarian president in our history, and largely got elected due to bigotry, xenophobia, and fear.

To clarify, I cannot quantify in terms of percentages the risk that Trump poses, because this is novel territory that we are treading on. That said, I think Trump represents a sort of stress test to our government, the institutions within it, and our separation of powers. He talked about religious tests for entering the United States and for citizenship, he talked about databases and registries for those same religious groups, he has repeatedly called for curtailing the freedom of the press and appears to be taken steps in that direction before elected (threatening the press off the record, threatening to remove access to press that won't say what he wants, going so long without a press conference), he has called to remove jus soli and to be allowed to strip citizens of citizenship, he has showed complete disregard for the 4-6th Amendments and the rights of the criminally accused, and he doesn't understand the divide between state and federal powers as he has several times called for things that violate the 10th Amendment, among other Constitutional provisions. All that said, while he may not be able to achieve every unconstitutional thing he wants, he will achieve some of them because our Constitution's best safeguard is the separation of powers, which is purely hypothetical today as the Republicans in Congress have no interest in standing up against him.

I have started seeing a meme on the net claiming that Jill Stein's recount discovered voter fraud by the Democrats. But most websites that talk about the recount say that there has been no evidence of fraud. Are sites like this one reliable? http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/jill-stein-recount-finds-voter-fraud-hillary-supporters/

I usually go with a good rule of thumb: if the website refers to the liberal, currently minority part of the USA as the "Democrat Party", they're probably not a reliable source.

A very good rule of thumb.

pretending as if she has any remaining claim to relevancy

You are talking about Clinton, right? aka the candidate who won the popular vote in a fucking landslide, right?

Because that doesn't sound like you read that particular memo...

She won the popular vote, yes, but lost states that Democratic candidates hadn't lost in almost thirty years. (Bush Sr. was the last Republican to take Michigan or Pennsylvania, and Reagan was the last one to take Wisconsin.) Her wing of the Democratic Party fell out of touch with what voters in those states think, and they remember all too well that it was Bill Clinton who did NAFTA and Hillary Clinton who called the TPP "the gold standard." As far as many of them are concerned, NAFTA shipped half their jobs out of the country and TPP would do for the other half, and they were not going to vote for someone who supported NAFTA and flip-flopped on the TPP.

She lost the Rust Belt, probably also costing the Democrats the Senate since Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had Republican incumbents, and if the Democratic Party has any designs on getting back into power, they need to ditch the corporatist wing of the party that can't credibly speak to those voters. Hillary Clinton, at this point, is to many voters the personification of that part of the Democratic Party, and as such for the party to have any hope she has to go away. Her clinging onto relevance only hurts the party at this point.


She lost those states because they have a high level of uneducated, white voters. If you take a chance to read The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer, you will see that those people are most susceptible to voting for an authoritarian wanker like Trump (hence why I remain skeptical that they'd vote Bernie over Trump). Also, just because they believe that free trade killed their jobs does not make it so: the CBO did a study in 2003 that found its effect on jobs was negligible while growing the economy by about 3%. What is more, if you look at when most of those jobs were lost, it was following NAFTA, but after the dot-com bubble burst, indicating that free trade is not the jobs killer that so many idiots like to make it out to be.

Further, if Bernie were the nom, while he probably would've won Wisconsin and Michigan, maybe Pennsylvania to a lesser degree of certainty, he would've handily lost Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona. He also probably would have lost Virginia, Nevada, and Ohio, meaning that Trump would still likely hit 270. The trade off was that Bernie did better with whites, but he did not do as well with Hillary's more racially diverse electorate that make up a sizeable population in each of the six states listed. And, if the Superdelegates took the election from Hillary, whom most of them voted for, I can only imagine them feeling pissed that the Supers stole the nomination from their candidate in favor of the White-Man's candidate (as women, racial minorities, and maybe even LGBTQ voters went Hillary, the last one being that the only poll I looked up on LGBTQ voters showed a close race in March, with them favoring Hillary). This circular firing squad that certain Democrats are trying to create, calling to end things like "political correctness" and "identity politics" (as you have done and as Bernie has done) in favor of catering to uneducated whites who don't know the fucking cause of their problems is asinine as it won't win any elections, but it will throw away the larger voting blocs that the Democrats have relied on for almost half a century. Not to mention that "political correctness" caused Pat McCrory to lose North Carolina after trying his whole transgender bathroom bullshit. Tangentially, it is also worth noting that in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Bernie or Bust got Jill Stein more votes than the difference between Hillary and Trump.

Truth be told, I'm really over you going after Hillary like a dog chasing a car. She lost, it sucks, but give her a break dude. Cracking down on fake news is not a threat to the first amendment as the two are easily distinguishable. And her weakness was not due to being "establishment" or "corporate" (facts indicate she's not nearly as corporate as people like to believe, but I've posted those articles almost a dozen times now) and the selective call for purity with regards to Clinton (but not say, Obama 4 or 8 years ago) for her corporate ties is sexism, plain and simple.* Her weakness was due to a lack of trust, which was borne of 30 years Conservative media smears, two dozen Congressional investigations totaling almost $250 million by the GOP, and good ole fashion sexism, all of which Bernie was more than happy to fan the flames of during the primaries. The Comey letter played on this weakness in the waning days of the election, and as FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver has said, if not for the Comey Letter, Clinton would be president-elect today. Seriously dude, give it a break.

*Now, that is not to say that every individual who has a problem with Clinton's corporate ties is a sexist. However, if those people did not have a problem with Obama's corporate ties (not today, four and eight years ago when he ran), or didn't care enough about the issue to research it and educate themselves, then I have no problem saying that they are sexist. That is also not to say that you could not favor Bernie for having fewer corporate ties, but to hark on it as some sort of disqualifier or big knock against her (yet not Obama) is.
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Offline Cloud3514

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #188 on: December 16, 2016, 02:25:05 am »
I partly agree with dpareja. People just don't like Hillary Clinton. I'm not her biggest fan for a few reasons and those reasons are part of why I was squarely in the Sanders camp and I do feel like the Democrats could have found a more likable candidate, but I also believe that the vast majority of the reasons people dislike her are utter horseshit. Remember that we just had an election cycle where the media spent the better part of two years constantly reporting on a manufactured and politically motivated e-mail scandal.

My reasons for disliking Clinton are things like despising the idea of legacy presidency and disliking her corporate ties (disclaimer: I had this same problem with Obama, but fully believe that, at worst, a Hillary Clinton presidency would be basically four more years of Obama, which isn't a bad thing). She isn't even near HALF as bad as people think she is, let alone the meme perpetuated by the idiots that still think Clinton would be just as bad as Trump. However, regardless of how things are in actuality, the appearance is that Hillary Clinton is a warmonger, quick to change her views when politically convenient, corrupted by corporate interests, out of touch with the people and thinks she is entitled to become president (this, I almost agree with, but I can't say for certain if I think it's the reality).

However, I stand by my opinion that there isn't a simple reason Clinton lost, but rather numerous reasons. The media has been an absolute embarrassment for the last two years, treating Trump with kid gloves, while constantly harping on Clinton's fucking e-mails, there is a demonstrable trend among Trump supporters to be racists or sexists emboldened by Trump's complete disinterest in calling them out on their bullshit, the Bernie or Busters that voted Johnson (oh, the irony) or Stein because of worthless principle, the rigged primary conspiracy the same still try to cling to (and this is coming from someone who thinks the DNC did have a bias against Sanders, even if the conspiracy is pure tinfoil hat territory).

But let's also address Sanders. Do I think he would have won had he won the primary? Honestly, as Sanders himself has put it, it doesn't matter. It's pointless to cry about what could have been. Sanders was behind in the popular vote from day one and he couldn't get the black or latino vote, who were squarely in the Clinton camp from the beginning. While it may make for an interesting thought experiment someday, right now, the focus needs to be on what can be done to minimize the damage Trump and the entirely Republican controlled federal government, not just can, but WILL do.
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Offline The_Queen

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #189 on: December 17, 2016, 01:47:19 am »
Because I'm still not done beating the dead horse of the democrats' circular firing squad regarding "political correctness" and "identity politics," it turns out Hillary did not focus her campaign on either, but focused mainly on jobs and the economy. You know, that nice little thing that those white people in the midwest cared about. In fact, she talked about jobs six times as often as she did Muslims, which was her most talked about political identity.The article also analyzes words used to describe both Trump and Clinton in the media, and found out that most of Trump's coverage focused on policy whereas Clinton's focused on dishonesty and corruption.
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Offline Tolpuddle Martyr

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #190 on: December 17, 2016, 06:04:54 pm »
Best summary yet I've heard of Trumps method of hiding consequential news inside a torrent of bullshit.

Quote
And if you dig into Trump's tweets, as I've had the misfortune of doing, you'll notice that this is a trend. He says one or two things that are stupid, irrelevant, or even offensive (to people who already don't like him), and once that becomes the story of the day, something more important but boring quietly gets announced. It's a strategy dudes use in sitcoms to distract their girlfriends from bad news. ("How was your day, honey?" "Oh, you know, I had a great lunch, fixed Steve's mistakes at work, and, uh, crashedyourcar. You know, same old.") And it's being used by a man who's about to be the goddamn president.

Expect when World War Three is announced it will in between ten tweets boasting about his steaks, yelling at the New York Times, scolding the cast of Hamilton and musing about his new golf course!

EDIT: And buried somewhere in the torrent of BS spewing forth from the Trump campaign was the announcement that they'll move the US embassy to "Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem,". Oh. Fuck.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2016, 06:46:01 pm by Tolpuddle Martyr »

Offline Askold

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #191 on: December 18, 2016, 12:17:17 am »
Sad that Bernie Sanders learned the worst possible lesson he could from Trump winning. "War on political correctness" is mainly an excuse to be rude and/or to lie about minorities.
No matter what happens, no matter what my last words may end up being, I want everyone to claim that they were:
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Offline TheContrarian

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #192 on: December 18, 2016, 10:05:14 am »
Best summary yet I've heard of Trumps method of hiding consequential news inside a torrent of bullshit.

Quote
And if you dig into Trump's tweets, as I've had the misfortune of doing, you'll notice that this is a trend. He says one or two things that are stupid, irrelevant, or even offensive (to people who already don't like him), and once that becomes the story of the day, something more important but boring quietly gets announced. It's a strategy dudes use in sitcoms to distract their girlfriends from bad news. ("How was your day, honey?" "Oh, you know, I had a great lunch, fixed Steve's mistakes at work, and, uh, crashedyourcar. You know, same old.") And it's being used by a man who's about to be the goddamn president.

Expect when World War Three is announced it will in between ten tweets boasting about his steaks, yelling at the New York Times, scolding the cast of Hamilton and musing about his new golf course!

EDIT: And buried somewhere in the torrent of BS spewing forth from the Trump campaign was the announcement that they'll move the US embassy to "Israel's eternal capital, Jerusalem,". Oh. Fuck.

It's not exactly Trump's fault that progressives on social media are a bunch of hysterical, screechy and easily manipulated dickholes.

Knowing how and when to whip them up into a windowlicking frenzy is just good messaging.


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Offline Tolpuddle Martyr

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #193 on: December 18, 2016, 02:29:56 pm »
So it's the "lefts" fault that the Donald is being manipulative, including his attempts to manipulate conflict in the already burning Middle East?

Naughty left for paying attention to the President elect of the United States I suppose.

Are his followers also foolish for being manipulated into voting for him-what with the non-existent wall he got them all so excited about?

Offline TheContrarian

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Re: Mr. Trump Goes to Washington
« Reply #194 on: December 18, 2016, 04:15:25 pm »
So it's the "lefts" fault that the Donald is being manipulative, including his attempts to manipulate conflict in the already burning Middle East?

Naughty left for paying attention to the President elect of the United States I suppose.

Are his followers also foolish for being manipulated into voting for him-what with the non-existent wall he got them all so excited about?

Er, your initial complaint was about the lack of attention paid to things he was saying later in the day. 

Do try to keep up.

The point is, if you garner a reputation for flying off the handle and go into full-on progressive SCREEEEEEEEE mode the moment the man says anything, any competent politician is going to structure their messaging so the more unsavoury bits get drowned out by the histrionics you've already had going on since earlier in the day.

If your view is obstructed because of the amount of saliva you've deposited on the bus window, there's a very simple solution...


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