Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Well, given that his approval rating has been as high as 53% in the last couple of weeks he might not have to deal with any of those things.

 

Perhaps, though his approval rating today is a still-astonishingly-high 42%.

 

1 hour ago, ScottishFox said:

 

I still feel like this impeachment approach is going to galvanize his base and make moderates feel like the left has gone too far.

 

Moderates don't exist and, as you've indicated earlier, his base will vote for him no matter what crimes he commits.  The only question is Democratic turnout.

 

1 hour ago, ScottishFox said:

 

It's going to be Trump 2020 if Democrats don't put forward a winning candidate and support the sh*t out of them.

 

I could not agree more.

[Old Man]

Looks like we can add The Hill to the list of right-wing propaganda outlets.

[megaplayboy]

2 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

Well, given that his approval rating has been as high as 53% in the last couple of weeks he might not have to deal with any of those things.

 

I still feel like this impeachment approach is going to galvanize his base and make moderates feel like the left has gone too far.

 

It's going to be Trump 2020 if Democrats don't put forward a winning candidate and support the sh*t out of them.

It's also gone as low as 37% post-call transcript.  Most impeachment polling recently shows galvanization of the democratic base and significant movement towards support for removal among independents, which is more of a nightmare scenario for the GOP and 45.  Roughly half of Trump's supporters will back him no matter what(24% of the electorate in a recent poll I read), but that means the other half are willing to withdraw support if the facts are bad enough. 

[Pariah]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

Looks like we can add The Hill to the list of right-wing propaganda outlets.

 

John Solomon...weren't we just talking about him?

[megaplayboy]

16 minutes ago, Pariah said:

 

John Solomon...weren't we just talking about him?

Widely Discredited Partisan Hack John Solomon?  Why yes, I believe Widely Discredited Partisan Hack John Solomon's name was brought up once or twice.  

[Old Man]

Yes, but now we have evidence of Widely Discredited Partisan Hack John Solomon working directly with Rudy Giuliani to disseminate disinformation.  There's a difference between being a fan, and being on the team.

[Lord Liaden]

On 10/1/2019 at 2:29 PM, ScottishFox said:

There needs to be dire, slam-dunkable evidence of unambiguous lawbreaking.

 

President Trump has now, on public television, encouraged the government of China to investigate one of his chief political rivals for the upcoming presidential election: “China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine.”

 

I don't know what your threshold for unambiguity is, but this firmly crossed mine.

[Zeropoint]

It's small potatoes compared to that, but Trump also violated federal law (18 USC 2074) on camera by displaying his altered map of Hurricane Dorian as an official weather report. He commits small crimes as well as large in office.

[TrickstaPriest]

43 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I don't know what your threshold for unambiguity is, but this firmly crossed mine.

 

I agree.  A lot of people are going to say 'should' isn't a request.

 

A lot of people have a huge threshold for what they think is acceptable behavior on national television for a President.  They find it fine even though he's unequivocally, literally, trying to stir foreign countries to act directly against his political rivals.  Not for the benefit of the country.  Entirely for himself.  Whether it is a direct request or not.

[TrickstaPriest]

Just now, Zeropoint said:

It's small potatoes compared to that, but Trump also violated federal law (18 USC 2074) on camera by displaying his altered map of Hurricane Dorian as an official weather report. He commits small crimes as well as large in office.

 

It bothers me that we have a government that's not even bothering to try to understand what's legally passable or not.  On the finer points, if not the broad ones.

[Old Man]

So far his consigliere and main enforcer have leaned on Ukraine, Italy, Australia, and China for dirt on Biden.  (There may be more, it's hard to keep track.)  On top of the public extortion and witness intimidation.  Trump also removed the ambassador to Ukraine when she wouldn't play ball on the extortion there.

 

1 minute ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

It bothers me that we have a government that's not even bothering to try to understand what's legally passable or not.  On the finer points, if not the broad ones.

 

It's not that they're not bothering to understand.  They understand perfectly.  It's that they don't care.

[Zeropoint]

3 minutes ago, Old Man said:

It's not that they're not bothering to understand.  They understand perfectly.  It's that they don't care.

 

And it feels to me like we, as a nation, have a narrow and rapidly closing window in which to re-assert the rule of law. Until Trump, we just sort of assumed that the president and his staff would mostly follow the law, or at least try not to get caught. If we don't manage to bring the sword of justice down on Trump & Co., I fear that we'll be entering a new era where it's accepted as the de facto truth that the president and his staff really are above the law.

 

I do not want to see my country go down that road, and I don't know what I can do to help my country avoid it.

[csyphrett]

Megaplayboy is right about the base. Spectrum News was interviewing some farmers here in NC two days ago. They were like oh this trade war is killing my farm. I wish Trump would stop. Would you vote for him in 2020? Sure.

 

I was like Idiot. You're losing the farm because you are a stupid clown that can only make the world a better place by doing one thing. I wish you would do that because you are breathing my air.

CES   

[csyphrett]

On 10/2/2019 at 11:40 AM, ScottishFox said:

I've read the "transcript" that is posted on CNN and I don't see a hard quid-pro-quo there.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript-call/index.html

 

Sounds like he reminds the Ukrainian president of all the great things they do for the Ukraine and then asks him to resume an investigation that Biden was bragging about getting cancelled.

 

There's no way you're going to get a stack of Republicans to agree that this was explicitly criminal.

 

One mental exercise I like to do with these things is to swap in the candidate I want to win (Biden/Hillary/Tulsi for me) and then imagine if they did the exact same thing - would I perceive it in the same light.

 

So, if I swap in Hillary, and read this phone call (besides wondering about her sudden lack of eloquence) - I wouldn't see this being a big criminal act.

 

This is going to flop hard and gift wrap a 2nd term for verbal diarrhea guy.

Every time Trump tore up a piece of paper information on his desk, he was committing a crime. At one point, people were putting that stuff back together for the national archive before they were fired. The fact is that Trump has committed so many crimes that it becomes a thing on what's important enough to impeach on, and what isn't. They should have started impeachment when the Mueller report came out and Bill Barr tried to hand over a redacted report

 

They should have started impeaching Barr too

CES  

[Cygnia]

11 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

It bothers me that we have a government that's not even bothering to try to understand what's legally passable or not.  On the finer points, if not the broad ones.

And it horrifies me that he STILL has supporters who think This Is Fine if only he gets to do it.

[TrickstaPriest]

6 hours ago, csyphrett said:

Megaplayboy is right about the base. Spectrum News was interviewing some farmers here in NC two days ago. They were like oh this trade war is killing my farm. I wish Trump would stop. Would you vote for him in 2020? Sure.

 

I was like Idiot. You're losing the farm because you are a stupid clown that can only make the world a better place by doing one thing. I wish you would do that because you are breathing my air.

CES   

 

I don't agree.  But I think the real culprit here is the radio shows and "news" organizations that were left to prey on them for literally half a century.

[Lord Liaden]

Regarding the effect of the "news" media on people's perceptions, here's a fascinating bit of irony to consider.

 

 

[DShomshak]

Yay! I was able to do a search and copy a link without getting booted offline!

 

Fresh Air For Oct. 3, 2019: Trump's 'Border Wars' : NPR

www.npr.org/.../2019/10/03/766531424/fresh-air-for-oct-3-2019-trumps-border-wars

Fresh Air For Oct. 3, 2019: Trump's 'Border Wars' Hear the Fresh Air program for October 3, 2019

 

Two points stand out in the reporters' results of their interviews with 150 or so members of the Trump administration (including a half our with The Great Man himself) about Trump's campaign to curb immigration and build the wall:

 

* As Old Man likes to say, the cruelty is the point. Trumo kept having ways to make the wall not just a barrier, but punitive: Paint it black so it gets real hot and burns people who try to climb it. Concertina wire to slash crossers, Spikes on the top -- not just against crossers, but to prevent birds from perching on his it and defacing his beautiful wall with their poop. And yes, a moat with snakes and alligators. Plus casual viciouslness such as wanting border agents to shoot stone-throwers.

 

* And Trump is not a secret evil genius with a master plan; in private he's even more of a deranged half-wit than when he seems when in front of the cameras. It isn't just that people have to keep telling him, "Sir, you can't order that, it's illegal." (Which just makes Trump angry.) It's that an hour or a day later he's forgotten and makes the same suggestion. No information penetrates unless it fits his current fit of temper.

 

We already knew most of this, but it's freshly appalling to hear it all laid out in one place, on one focused topic.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Joe Walsh]

17 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

We already knew most of this, but it's freshly appalling to hear it all laid out in one place, on one focused topic.

 

Truly.

 

And, it can't be said enough: 25%-35% of voters think this is all fine.

 

[TrickstaPriest]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

* And Trump is not a secret evil genius with a master plan; in private he's even more of a deranged half-wit than when he seems when in front of the cameras. It isn't just that people have to keep telling him, "Sir, you can't order that, it's illegal." (Which just makes Trump angry.) It's that an hour or a day later he's forgotten and makes the same suggestion. No information penetrates unless it fits his current fit of temper.

 

This is what I keep on trying to tell people.  My 'dislike' of Trump is founded on nothing to do with media, and everything to do with how he conducts himself in the public venue (Twitter especially) and how even the most power-hungry politicians can't work with him.  He's impossible to work with unless you are slavishly devoted to him.

 

Everything else is believable only because he's already established himself (with his own words, and his own constant firings) as completely untenable.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, GM Joe said:

 

Truly.

 

And, it can't be said enough: 25%-35% of voters think this is all fine.

 

 

Perhaps the Trump era has exposed that what we all tended to think is the "extremist fringe" of modern Western society isn't as "fringe" as we believed. It just lacked a spokesman with an inevitable and unassailable soapbox to rally behind.

[Joe Walsh]

8 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Perhaps the Trump era has exposed that what we all tended to think is the "extremist fringe" of modern Western society isn't as "fringe" as we believed. It just lacked a spokesman with an inevitable and unassailable soapbox to rally behind.

 

It would appear so.

 

And fundraising numbers show that there's a heck of a lot more support out there for proposals like Warren and Sanders are making than we've been led to believe.

 

I keep hoping we'll somehow get a silver lining out of this Trump fiasco, and the media will stop portraying anything even mildly to the left of the Washington consensus as laughably insane liberal ravings while lending credibility to even the furthest of right-wing proposals.

 

But I'm not holding my breath.

[megaplayboy]

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More

Economist/YouGov Poll: should House try to impeach Trump?

50% yes 39% no

if House impeaches, should Senate remove Trump from office?

51% yes 39% no

1:00 PM - 4 Oct 2019

 

51% for removal already.  

 

[DShomshak]

On 10/4/2019 at 3:42 AM, csyphrett said:

Megaplayboy is right about the base. Spectrum News was interviewing some farmers here in NC two days ago. They were like oh this trade war is killing my farm. I wish Trump would stop. Would you vote for him in 2020? Sure.

 

I was like Idiot. You're losing the farm because you are a stupid clown that can only make the world a better place by doing one thing. I wish you would do that because you are breathing my air.

CES   

 

This is the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" problem. How can so many people vote against their obvious material interest?

 

The answer is that not everyone values material interest as highly as liberals think they should. Many people value other things more. One thing I hear again and again about Trump supporters is they love him because he enhances their self-respect by attacking the "elites" whom they think sneer at people like them.

 

To try understanding this, several months ago I heard about a study in which people were asked what they would give up to maintain a good reputation. Significant percentages, IIRC, said they would rather lose an arm than be thought a child molester, for instance. (I don't recall the exact examples, but it was stuff like that.)

 

So let's try that. How much money would you need not to care if people thought you were...

* a homophobe?

* a KKK member?

* a rapist?

* Or whatever.

If you can find a reputation so vile that no amount of money could compensate, congratulations, you've discovered transcendent values. You may not like the transcendent values for which Trump loyalists would (literally or metaphorically) lose the farm; you may think they are irrational (I do); but try to consider that they may not be acting from flat-out stupidity.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

On 10/4/2019 at 3:42 AM, csyphrett said:

Megaplayboy is right about the base. Spectrum News was interviewing some farmers here in NC two days ago. They were like oh this trade war is killing my farm. I wish Trump would stop. Would you vote for him in 2020? Sure.

 

I was like Idiot. You're losing the farm because you are a stupid clown that can only make the world a better place by doing one thing. I wish you would do that because you are breathing my air.

CES   

 

This is the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" problem. How can so many people vote against their obvious material interest?

 

The answer is that not everyone values material interest as highly as liberals think they should. Many people value other things more. One thing I hear again and again about Trump supporters is they love him because he enhances their self-respect by attacking the "elites" whom they think sneer at people like them.

 

To try understanding this, several months ago I heard about a study in which people were asked what they would give up to maintain a good reputation. Significant percentages, IIRC, said they would rather lose an arm than be thought a child molester, for instance. (I don't recall the exact examples, but it was stuff like that.)

 

So let's try that. How much money would you need not to care if people thought you were...

* a homophobe?

* a KKK member?

* a rapist?

* Or whatever.

If you can find a reputation so vile that no amount of money could compensate, congratulations, you've discovered transcendent values. You may not like the transcendent values for which Trump loyalists would (literally or metaphorically) lose the farm; you may think they are irrational (I do); but try to consider that they may not be acting from flat-out stupidity.

 

Dean Shomshak