Update - American Politics · 5:56pm Mar 23rd, 2016
I've got a review set which is going to go up later today, but I thought I would remark on the new lows that American politics have brought us this year.
For those of you who don't know (I assume you are either not American, or live under a rock - or possibly both, judging by my increasingly worried Canadian friends), in the US, the two major political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, each hold a series of primary races in each state in order to determine who is going to be their party's nominee. This is used to determine who is running in all levels of races, from local sheriff to president of the United States. The parties' nominees then face off in the November election to determine who actually wins.
This year, the Democratic (left-leaning party) primary has been relatively competitive, but mostly issues-focused; the two candidates have not really gone after each other personally very much, and it has generally been pretty polite. Right now, it is looking like the Democrats are going to nominate Hillary Clinton, who would be the first major party female presidential nominee; if it isn't her, then it will be Bernie Sanders, who would be the first major party Jewish nominee (and also the oldest nominee ever).
This... is not the case for the Republican (the right-wing) party, to put it mildly. No strong contender jumped into the race this year, resulting in 17 potential candidates, all of whom were polling in the teens for support at best, and often in the single digits. Plus Donald Trump, reality TV star and multimillionaire (he claims to be a billionaire, but that claim is disputed by many people, who suggest his net worth is "merely" hundreds of millions of dollars. He's rich either way).
Donald Trump is, essentially, really good at trolling the media into paying attention to him, by saying things like he wants to torture terrorists (and kill their families), build a wall between the US and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it, ban Muslims from entering the United States, and... well, lots of silly things. The net result has been that the other Republican candidates have struggled to get airtime. Combined with his "off-platform" positions (he has said nice things about Planned Parenthood, an abortion provider, and is opposed to free trade, which the Republican Party supports), his endorsements by the KKK and neo-Nazis, and Trump suggesting that it was good that his supporters got in fights with protesters (including punching them in the face), the Republican party is (understandably) worried that he might win their party nomination, only to lose the general election in November by a margin not seen in 30 years, dragging down other Republican candidates in the process, causing them to not only lose the presidency, but also lose control of Congress (our legislative body, which passes laws). A recent poll suggested that Trump might actually lose the state of Utah to the Democrats in the general election - a highly-conservative state which the Republicans have won in every election since 1964.
The net result of this is that the Republican "Establishment" is deeply unhappy and is fighting back against him tooth and nail in hopes of denying him the nomination. He's presently ahead in terms of delegates, but at his present rate of accumulation of delegates for the convention, wouldn't actually have enough to win the party nomination outright, which would result in a so-called contested convention, where the party has to decide who their candidate is just a few months before the election - something else which hasn't happened since the 1960.
Trump himself is more than happy to get down in the dirt with people, and has suggested that there would be riots if he wasn't the party's nominee.
Early on, Donald Trump implied that Megyn Kelly, a Fox News debate moderator, was menstruating when she asked him questions during the first Republican primary debate. He ended up picking a fight with Fox News - a right-leaning news network which is seen as respectable and trustworthy by many on the right - and has since been portrayed rather unflatteringly by the network, which is unusual for the right-leaning network.
Later, Marco Rubio, one of the other Republican candidates, said that Donald Trump has "small hands", and "you know what they say about people with small hands". This resulted in Rubio and Trump getting into a fight over how big Trump's genitals were on national television during a Republican debate.
The most recent episode was touched off in Utah (a state which voted overwhelmingly against Trump yesterday). A group supporting Ted Cruz, a very religious candidate, aired an ad in Utah featuring a picture of Trump's wife, posing naked on a magazine cover (something she really did do).
Being the temperate individual that he is, Donald Trump immediately tweeted a threat about saying something nasty about Ted Cruz's wife.
He deleted the tweet about seven seconds later, making people believe he had, for once, thought better of doing something... before, of course, revealing that, no, he was still Donald Trump. His first tweet hadn't been angry enough, you see:
Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!
So, at present, the two leading candidates for the Republican nomination are in a fight over showing naked pictures of one of their wives on television, and threatening to "expose" something about the other's wife.
Meanwhile, the third remaining Republican nominee (John Kasich) is getting almost completely ignored by the media because he's trying to run his campaign on things like hope and good feelings, and that doesn't put butts in the seats. He is so far behind right now he'd have to win north of 120% of the remaining delegates to become the party nominee, but is staying in in the hopes of denying Trump the majority he needs to win at the convention.
American Democracy at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.
Of course, The Onion has its own take on all this.
As a Dirty Furrin' Person I am under the impression that Trump is at least to an extent popular because voting for him is the most efficient way to tell the Establishment (a.k.a The Man) to go take a long walk off a short pier. Is my impression correct? Like, people might not see him as terribly presidential but at least he isn't one of Them.
Who is really to blame here? Donald Trump for his trolling and general irreverence? The 24-hour news media outlets for giving in to Trump's attention whoring? The DNC and RNC for not putting forth better candidates?
Or the millions of Americans who genuinely believe that Trump is the best possible candidate for President of the United States?
Yeah, "dysfunctional" doesn't begin to cover this country right now. Sigh.
I'm glad Trump came about.
For a long time, the Internet had been bitterly denying that racism was real; hell, most Internet personalities had been insisting that Black people were the real racists for talking about racism.
Then...Trump comes along and proves what all those annoying Black people and SJWs had been trying to point out, whilst bringing to light the hard core of American racists (real, swastika-toting, sheet-wearing racists, not "I mentioned European Slavery once" 'racists').
Donald trump bought out The Onion, didn't he?
Trump is a racist, sexist, bigoted asshat. he's done so many things that would take other presidential candidates out of the race, yet he is still going. he even made remarks of wanting to sleep with his own daughter. incest. that's just sick. besides, he won't get the nomination. all his voters are white men. he pissed off women, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, mentally challenged (Like me)- basically everyone who isn't a white male. and even then, there are half of those who hate him, like me.
I certainly am not endorsing Trump, but as far as I am concerned all politicians are like Trump, Trump is merely the only one not bothering to filter.
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To be fair, the DNC has absolutely no control whatsoever over who the RNC has running for president. Frankly, it is obvious at this point that not even the RNC has control over who the RNC has running for president, which is kind of how they got into this mess - both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are unacceptable nominees.
The DNC actually put forward two pretty good candidates this cycle - Hillary Clinton is broadly popular amongst the Democratic party (the Republicans hate her guts, but that's pretty much the case for any prominent Democrat at this point) and Sanders is pretty well-liked as well. They also put up two nobody candidates who dropped out before it mattered and no one even noticed because they were polling at 1% or less most of the time.
Nobody really wanted to run against Hillary this time around other than Sanders, and no one was really expecting him to do as well as he has done.
The really sad irony of all this is that if the Republicans ran their campaign under Democratic party rules, Trump wouldn't have a ghost of a chance of winning the nomination (he hasn't even gotten over 50% of the vote in a single state so far). They, ironically, implemented this year's "winner take most" rules mostly in order to get a clear nominee. Which will be doubly ironic if they end up with a contested convention anyway.
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1.) A few Black people claim to be Trump supporters, but they may be receiving money to make these outrageous claims. Other Black people sold us into slavery, though, so I'm not surprised that some of my people are collaborating with The Enemy. It's a curse that follows us throughout the centuries.
2.) Trump Bros like to say that White males like yourself who hate Trump are "cucks" who let Black men have sex with your wives and daughters and whatnot.
This is merely indicative of how far removed Trump Bros are from Reality. I'm a Black male IRL, and I'm just at work, messing around on the Internet, not having sex with anyone's wife or children.
My life is very boring and dull, and not an endless parade of illicit sex with White women, as Trump Bros imagine.
Eh, I've long since given up on American politicians actually fixing thing before it all goes in the crapper. At least this election is providing some amusement. I mean if they're gonna fiddle while Rome burns, it should at least be a catchy tune.
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Oh, certainly. I wasn't trying to imply the DNC had control over Republican candidates. For the Democrats, I guess my point was that Clinton is a solid choice but lacks a bit of that "wow" and "engage the youths" factor; I see her as a bit of a Democrat version of Mitt Romney. Bernie Sanders has his "zomg socialism 2spooky" beliefs, so he's a love-him-or-hate-him sort of candidate, like a Ron Paul. There's not a lot of across-the-aisle appeal here. (Granted, your points about Republicans hating all Democrats on principle, plus the debacle currently happening with Supreme Court nominee Garland, the Party of No, etc). Republicans still hated Obama eight years ago, and there's a lot to discuss about how many of his campaign promises came to fruition, but he unquestionably energized the voting masses with the whole "Yes, We Can" platform. As such (IMHO) he had better pull on moderates/undecideds than Clinton or Sanders currently do, which would pull some sway from Trump.
That's precisely my point. The RNC hates them (and is reacting in a hilariously too-little-too-late manner). They're both poised quite poorly to win the general election against Clinton. Allegedly (though this could be rubbish), foreign leaders are asking Clinton (who served as Secretary of State for 4 years and therefore potentially has a relationship with them) if they should campaign for her to lower the odds of a Trump presidency. And yet, Trump and Cruz are the clear Republican front-runnings in spite of all of this, because of the American people—because of the poll voters and caucus attendees and rallyists and campaigners. There are Americans out there watching Trump and Rubio getting into actual dick-measuring competitions and thinking to themselves, "Yeah, this is the man we need leading the free world."
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This is a comforting thought, but not really, no. Most of Trump's supporters do genuinely like him; really, Ted Cruz is more the "put the thumb in the eye of the people running the country" type candidate, given that he threw a temper tantrum a few years ago and shut down the government for a few weeks. But his supporters genuinely do want that as well, and like him - he's not just a protest candidate. The same goes for Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side, which is particularly ironic, given that he's been a member of the US government longer than anyone else running, including Hillary Clinton.
This is why the RNC hates Ted Cruz, incidentally; the RNC likes having a functional government. Ted Cruz doesn't. The choice between Donald Trump (who acts crazy) and Ted Cruz (who they know is crazy) is very much a Morton's Fork for them. They actively hate both of them, and I'm pretty sure would consider it a victory if a meteor fell on the next Republican debate, making it one of the very few times that they'd agree with the Democrats about anything at this point.
This hatred of Ted Cruz is part of why they haven't been helping Cruz against Trump as much as they might have otherwise, because they can't actually decide who they loathe more.
Donald Trump's support is complicated. He's supported by authoritarians and white nationalists, as well as a lot of generally poor, uneducated white people, to whom he is basically a self-insert power fantasy, being able to insult people on national television and say that he'll do all these great things to save America. It isn't that they don't WANT to put their thumb in the eye of the Establishment, but that they see HIM as being an eminently reasonable person who is clear-eyed about keeping out those dirty foreigners, particularly Muslims and Mexicans, who are taking their jobs and murdering and raping people. Not necessarily in that order. Also, they hate the corrupt rich people who have been running their party. Which is terribly ironic, because he is a corrupt rich person presently under investigation for fraud.
Also, it should be remembered he's saying he'll bring them good jobs, even though he has absolutely no plans for actually doing so. To people who have few realistic prospects, that probably sounds nice.
All of this is causing severe damage to the Republican party. For many, many years, polls have shown that the Republican Party is in many ways tribal rather than ideological; if you ask them if they're in favor of socialized medicine, and say that Obama is for it, 20% of them will support it. If you ask them the same question, but say instead that Donald Trump is in favor of it, support goes up to 50%. Indeed, many of the "conservative" positions that the Republican Party ostensibly holds are not, as it turns out, all that popular with the Republican voting base. Donald Trump does not embrace a large number of the traditional Republican Party values, and about 40% of the Republican Party doesn't care.
The problem is that the economic liberals, the hawks, and the conservatives have been basically making promises to the white nationalist and fundamentalist voters and poor white people that they had absolutely no intention of delivering on (and/or absolutely no ability to deliver on). In fact, they look down on them as backwards, bigoted hicks and ignorant religious nutjobs. The net result of this is that white Southern voters - who have long been the unwanted child of American politics - have basically been voting for the Republican Party based on the premise that they'd give them things that they wanted, and the Republican Party has not. This year is basically a full-scale rebellion, with the "shut down the government" types (Ted Cruz's folks) and the "we're mad and won't take it anymore" (Trump folks) basically rising up and overwhelming the Establishment. The party is basically split into thirds, with the Establishment, Trump folks, and Cruz folks each commanding roughly a third of the base, and it is more or less obvious at this point that none of the three groups actually want the same things at all, and in fact have diametrically opposed positions on many issues (you know, between the arguments about whose genitals were larger and showing dirty pictures of their wives on television).
It is very ugly at this point, as the party is really basically disintegrating. None of the leading candidates are people who even half the party suggests they'd be satisfied with (compared to previous years, where it is typically around 70%; this year, for Hillary, about 80% of Democrats suggest that they'd be satisfied with her being the nominee, despite her only getting a little over half the vote in primaries). Some Republicans are already openly plotting for a third-party run if Trump wins the nomination so that a "real conservative" can run for president (and so that senators don't have to endorse Trump if he wins. And possibly Cruz; it isn't entirely clear).
Lindsey Graham, who was one of the 17 people running for president this year, has openly said that he thinks Hillary is going to win the election because his party has gone "batshit crazy", and has, in fact, preemptively said he'd work with her as long as she goes after ISIS. Mitt Romney and John McCain (the last two Republican presidential nominees - thus, the two most broadly respected Republicans still active in politics) have been attacking Trump, and Trump has been attacking them back. Indeed, Trump attacked McCain's credentials as a war hero.
It is bad. The last time this happened was around the time of the American Civil War, when both the Whigs and the Democrats fell apart. Unlike the Civil War, however, this time only one party is falling apart, and it isn't really clear if they're going to be able to pull it back together again because the various factions' open emnity towards each other has been clearly exposed.
The most amusing effect of this is that the National Review, a far-right magazine/website which represents a faction of the Establishment, has seamlessly gone from talking about how awful poor black people are to talking about how awful all poor people are. It wrote an entire issue about why Trump is the worst thing ever and no one should vote for him. Fox News has been running unfavorable stories about Trump for months, and basically everyone is fighting everyone right now. A number of Republicans have suggested that they would stay home or, worse yet, vote for Hillary if Trump (or possibly Cruz) wins the nomination. And they've spent the last 25 years or so saying that Hillary is the evillest, most untrustworthy woman who has done nothing but stuff her pockets with money and assassinate anyone who stands in her way, which makes it slightly awkward.
Which of course makes you wonder how they're all still alive, sometimes. And Obama, for that matter. Though some people have joked that the reason that Obama didn't make her his VP was because he was afraid he'd need to hire like, three food tasters and a bunch of invisible ninjas to protect him at night.
Apparently, some major Republican donors have been sending feelers towards the Clinton campaign. And, as noted, Trump might actually put Utah in play in a presidential election, which would more or less indicate that Trump is doomed - in 2012, Romney won 72% of the vote in Utah, despite winning only 47% nationally. It was, in fact, literally the most Republican state in the country in 2012.
The greatest fear of many in the GOP is that Trump is actually going to win the nomination, despite only winning about 40% of the Republican vote overall, and turn the party into the party of Trumpism, which would mean that they'd more or less not have a party anymore and have to consider either making a third party (which would more or less render both them and the Trump supporters irrelevant third parties, and give the Democrats permanent electoral dominance) or ally themselves with the Democrats, which would be hard because the Democrats have no reason to help them.
Incidentally, this is why Chris Christie and Sarah Palin jumped onto the Trump Train; they know that they're done in the party, and they're hoping that they can ride on the Trump Train back into prominence, if Trump wins and takes over the party.
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Hey, Putin endorsed Trump.
Because, you know how much Americans love the leader of Russia.
In addition, politicians have finally found a way to deadlock the judicial branch of government in addition to the legislative and executive branches!
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Yay!
To be fair, it isn't really clear that is actually going to happen (there's some signs that some of the Republicans might crack on it because they're afraid that if they're seen as obstructionist, they'll lose reelection), and in any case, there has only been one 4-4 decision so far as far as I know (and that would have happened anyway; Supreme Court nominations generally take about 3 months to play out). Most SC decisions are unanimous anyway.
It's fascinating to see what the dissolution of a political party that is no longer internally coherent looks like, especially in the internet age.
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It's less a matter of being directly anti-establishment and more a matter of the GOP being completely incapable of delivering the social and economic platform they've been promising for the entirety of the Obama administration. Trump's riding a wave of economic populism to "victory", while Cruz is carrying the voters who care about the social side.
A decent chunk of Sanders' supporters are the only voters this cycle who I'd consider to actually care about the establishment itself as an institution.
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Putin has his limits, too.
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Some context for the international folks: in American legislature, it is legal to fillibuster—to get up on the floor and ramble for hours upon end, as a way to block legislation from being discussed or passed, as a form of protest. There's some historical context of why this was allowed, but nowadays it's heavily abused and very unpopular amongst the layman.
Back in 2013, when the "Obamacare" health care bill was put before the Senate, was discussed at length, and when it seemed clear that the votes would land in favor of passing the legislation, Cruz took to the floor and fillibustered for 21 hours and 19 minutes, shutting down discussion of Obamacare and indeed preventing the Senate from accomplishing anything during this time.
This man is one of five remaining candidates for President of the United States.
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The irony is, Trump's wave of economic populism has almost nothing to do with the generally regarded as official Republican economic platform.
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He and a group of his associates (including Marco Rubio, incidentally) actually participated in shutting down the US government for 16 days in an attempt to stop the bill from taking effect by refusing to pass a budget.
81% of the American public disapproved.
you didnt even mention the zodiac killer thing
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That's because I completely forgot about it.
For reference to everyone else:
Back in 2013, someone made a joke about Ted Cruz being the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who is old enough to be Ted Cruz's father. This ended up becoming a meme online, and "respected" news agencies decided they needed to debunk it. The result? A poll of Florida voters earlier this year found that 10% of them believed that Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer.
That said, I suspect that 10% of Americans will believe pretty much any random implausible lie if you ask them over the telephone.
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Well, that's the establishment's whole problem, right? For all that they don't mind making noise about immigration and globalization, they know how the economy actually works and aren't going to risk kneecapping it, while Trump's just out to get elected and can say whatever he wants. Deport everyone! Raise tariffs until manufacturing comes back! Tough on China! It's everything the GOP likes to imply but won't touch.
It'd be a complete disaster, but he'd be in the big seat.
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Thank you for the extremely thorough response. I remember the shutdown well. Pure madness. There is also the occasional Debt Ceiling Dance which is a _particularly_ turgid bit of American Political Kabuki, since it's congress grandstanding about a debt limit they themselves have breached given that they (barely) vote in a budget.
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Dear Diary, today I learned that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. Of course! IT ALL MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!
I'm a Greek so uh, as far as politicians go there is not much ground for me to stand on. What little is there is pretty shaky as it is. However, from what little I've seen of Trump I can't help but be reminded of Stephen King's novel "The Dead Zone" (published in 1979). I'm not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the antagonist is a politician who wins a large part of his voters by being so outrageous and semi-clownish? Maybe it has to do with the antagonists claims that he will make America great and stuff and proposes some outrageous stuff like sending garbage to space (perhaps King thought building a wall to block off Mexico and making them pay for it was too ludicrous)? Whatever the mysterious reason is, I am terribly, terrible reminded of it.
Oh, and the book's protagonist? He is a psychic who gets a vision that when that guy becomes president he starts off a world war or something. So he tries to shoot him.
P.S. On a completely random note, have any of you read about that novel where a cruise ship named Titan is called unsinkable but crashes with an iceberg and its passengers die because there are not enough lifeboats? You know, the novel that came out like 20 years before the Titanic happened.
Trump makes me laugh whenever I hear about him in a 'I can't believe he just said that' fashion. He won't get my vote, I don't support either parties's platform, but at least the election cycle is entertaining this time around. In fact, that might be why a lot of people are voting for him. It's like misaligning the train tracks so you can film the crash.
Thank you for the explanation of what the hell is going on in that piece of the world.
Me? I'm busy trying to follow what is happening in Brazil while I'm traveling. If you like reading about politics, I suggest reading some recent news.
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There's actually an article from Cracked which show how Trump may be positioning his campaign to achieve that in the future.
Basically, what would happen is that Trump would make Peter Kirsanow as Vice President, use him to cover his ass from accusations of blatant racism, then shift his rhetoric to show that hey, those jobs that the Mexicans are stealing?
They're stealing them from young people and black people!
(and young black people too, I guess)
And then he'd promise to make a "job bank" (no, I have idea wtf this is) that would help inner city youths find easy employment.
Your thoughts?
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Oh, it makes me mad. It's a very well-developed problem, actually; a subset of woefully misinformed Black people actually antagonize and make enemies out of other minorities, under the loving guidance of racist white people like Trump, while failing to realize that they are, in fact, just useful idiots, and that they are severely undermining their chances of forming a racial consolidation with the aforementioned minorities.
By rebelling against other minorities, they are, in fact, merely voting against their interests; do these Black people not realize that the same weapons they empower racist Whites to use against the feared 'Mexicans' will then be used against them?
They also post bullshit memes like these on their Facebook page, to rounds of applause and 'likes'.
s14.postimg.org/4yc2g7nbl/10280_1161650210545949_1837955885479302026_n_jpg.jpg
The tacit implication in this image; indeed, their entire ethos is that Asians, Mexicans, and so on are secretly plotting to destroy us.
I don't understand why the Black people that make these images don't know how to .png and prevent artifacts from mucking up their images.
This is, of course, complete bullshit. It enrages me that this manner of thinking carries any weight among my people.
I frequently admonish other Black people about this phenomenon you have described. You see, some of them fall for the bullshit rap people like Trump hock at them, and I catch them complaining about "chinks and beaners" (Asians and Hispanics, pardon the terminology, I just wished to quote them verbatim), and how we, as black people, need to band together and fight back against the Asians and Hispanics; throw them out of our neighborhoods, fight back against them, and whatnot.
And I always fly into a rage, and scream at them 'No! No! Do NOT do this thing! Do not do it! You are falling for some very obvious bullshit here!"
Then they scream at me and call me a chinkloving beaner-humper (yes, seriously) or whatever. This is an actual thing that certain black people do; because I defend Asians and Hispanics from their wrath, this means, of course, that I hate myself and am a slave to all things non-black.
It's my belief that we all have to band together and unite if we're going to make it out of this pinch alive; yes, this includes the dreaded White People as well. I am willing to accept anyone - White, Minority, etc., - who is my ally, regardless of their race, for, as King Henry said, he, or she, who sheds their blood alongside me is also my brother or sister.
I complain bitterly about the wrongdoings of White people; does this mean I wish to rebel against them or eliminate them? Nope. As I tell some of my Black comrades, what exactly do you plan to do once you get rid of all the Whites, all the Asians, all the Hispanics, all the Arabs, and so on? Fucking kill ourselves? End the world as we know it? Sit on top the pile of White carcasses and laugh maniacally, like some kind of storybook menace?
It's my belief that racist White People do enough damage without us getting a wild hair up our collective asses about them. Really, some of my people have totally lost the thread, and have taken to accusing White People of things they don't actually even do, like this here Facebook meme that is highly popular at the moment:
s13.postimg.org/k4y091wev/1915671_1160989843945319_2159034986135912819_n_j.jpg
Yes, because White people have nothing better to do than to spend time telling the FBI when last I brushed my teeth.
Besides, the FBI, CIA, and the like have a robust enough surveillance apparatus in place that they do not require the aid of citizen informants, to be perfectly honest.
That in turn has led to this. Yes, that is a betting market on the size of a candidate's manhood.
3822901 "... Most SC decisions are unanimous anyway...."
Not quite. Most seem to run 5-4. Generally, it doesn't get to SCOTUS unless the appeals courts clash on it, and that means very few 9-0 decisions. (although they do happen, and normally in cases where the SC just wants to hammer in a point.) FYI: 4-4 decisions from here on simply mean the appeals court ruling stands. Shoving through a SC nominee in the middle of presidential/senate primary season is just dumb. (Edit: The Quorum for the SC is six. We currently have eight. The Judiciary Act of 1869 set the maximum at nine, although it has been as high as ten and as low as six through the years)
3822911 "...The irony is, Trump's wave of economic populism has almost nothing to do with the generally regarded as official Republican economic platform...."
No arguments here.
3822772 "... voting for him is the most efficient way to tell the Establishment (a.k.a The Man) to go take a long walk off a short pier. ..."
In a word, yes. Both Trump and Bernie are anti-establishment 'Throw the bums out' candidates, while Hillary *is* the establishment, and Cruz is about as good of a Republican Conservative as you're going to see in Washington lately. The GOP establishment (frequently written 'GOPe') started this election season all eager to push Jeb Bush, and when he flopped, they went to what'shisname the Ohio governor, and when he could just barely pull his home state, were really pulling for Rubio, and now... they're looking at Cruz and Trump, trying to figure out which one they hate more, or if they should throw their lot in with Hillary to really screw up the works (and they wonder why conservative republican voters tend to hate them so much).
Kansas had a very similar governor's race in 2002. Sebelius(D) ran against Shallenburger(R), who was a strong conservative in favor of things like cutting taxes and reducing the size of government. The moderate establishment republicans stampeded to Sebelius, spiked any chance at getting the budget under control, and generally waffled like crazy while the economy went up and up... until 2008 when it crashed and all the checks they had written came due. In 2010, Brownback easily took office, and although the libs foam at the mouth when they talk about him, the state has been slowly pulling itself out of the hole ever since.
I hope that's not a foretaste of things ahead.
Trump is bombastic and confident,
evenespecially when he doesn't have a plan, which fools many people into thinking he'd be a competent politician. This election cycle has been crazy. I feel like I'm living in a reality TV show. I keep expecting someone to run up, tap me on the shoulder and point out the cameras.I like to watch American politics, it is way less depressing than anything coming from my country. Just recently, our president rush-appointed the previous president to a Secretary position, in order to prevent said ex-president from being jailed – and the exchange that lead to that was actually recorded thanks to a wire-tap. There is a real chance that, given the amount of government officials with corruption charges, our next president might be a literal clown who got voted into a legislative seat as a protest vote.
But anyway, if you live in planet Earth, you should be wary of whoever gets elected on the USA. A Trump presidency will have a significant (and disastrous) impact on the global economy.
You've posted before about how today is probably the best time ever to be a human being. Never before this election cycle have I agreed more.
Trump rallies are amazing entertainment. Professionally hired protesters, cosplay, protester connections to NGOs funded by former Nazi collaborator George Soros, and occasional rants about Oreo cookies.
Bit of a step up from Joe the Plumber, to be honest.
I mean come on, where else are you going to see a guy paid to protest against racism dress as a member of the KKK and get punched out by a black guy serving in the military?
State sherrifs giving a smug shrug after a Jeep drives through protesters? Thankfully no one was injured.
Honestly TD, I think you're just jealous. This is better than all the times you called Palestinians and black criminals human garbage.
Based on this trend, the primaries in eight years will be the most highly televised in history: two candidates enter the cage, one comes out
3823375 Film Theory did an episode on that actually. Trump is using game show tactics to stay in the news. Here, see for yourself:
Meh, still better than Hillary.
3823750 That's a low bar. Subterranean, even.
3823427 Well, it's a mixed bag of nuts.
A) It will be an entertaining next several months
B) At the end of which, one of these (censored) will be carrying around the nuclear football for the next four years.
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Last I heard, I think like one in five of their top-level politicians is presently under investigation for corruption.
Good times.
Though in all fairness, that's actually kind of a good thing, as it means that the people there actually care enough not to have horrible corrupt people in charge.
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I wish. Half my Facebook feed is of people calling the corruption charges a coup, with all kinds of spurious justifications, including the idea that the members of the Labour Party (who are in power since 2002, and are the ones that orchestrated the scheme) are necessarily innocent. All the proof is swiped away as a conspiracy by the right and the "elites", who hate the fact that they are champions of the people.
3822939 For those of you not in the know, here's a quick video explaining the debt ceiling.
3823361
That article you linked to is misleading. In 2014, 2/3rds of Supreme Court decisions were unanimous.
The press just loves to create controversy because that puts butts in the seats. Knowing that most Supreme Court cases are decided unanimously makes it look less like an adversarial contest between liberals and conservatives and more like, you know, a court of people who know what they're doing. If the SC rules 9-0 on a case, the press will often simply not report on it very much.
Moreover, the whole "liberal vs conservative" thing often confuses people, because they're actually wrong in their understanding of a lot of things. Did you know that Justice Thomas is one of the foremost defenders of freedom of speech on the Supreme Court? Probably not. But he is. He's voted on the side of freedom of speech more consistently than any other SC justice currently on the court.
That's a liberal position.
The reason that people get confused is that people conflate liberalism with leftism. Liberalism is about being in favor of civil liberties - and, generally speaking, most of the SC is in favor of those (yes, even the conservatives). One of the major divides between them is over what power the Constitution gives them (and Congress).
For instance, a lot of people think that Citizens United v FEC was a victory for conservatism. But it wasn't. The Citizens United decision was a free speech decision, and the ACLU - a liberal organization - was on the side of Citizens United, not the FEC. Scalia, Thomas, ect. - the "conservative" justices - took the liberal position in the case, while the "liberal" justices took the authoritarian position in the case.
A lot of people don't know this because the press falsely reports this stuff as being about liberalism vs conservatism, but a lot of the arguments on the Supreme Court are over what the government is and is not allowed to do and what the Supreme Court is and is not allowed to compel people to do.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas rule on the same side the least often of any two justices on the Supreme Court, ruling together a mere 66% of the time.
Those are the two justices which agree with each other the LEAST frequently.
3822797 not Bernie Sanders!
3822863 Sanders actually draws far more independents and even Republicans than Clinton with his honesty and populist message.
3823361 wait, you think Brownbacks tenure has actually been a good one? What with the millions of dollars in cuts to education and pretty much everything else and the incredibly shitty job growth?
3824339
I think part of it is that any race-based group is likely to encourage other people to try and do the same thing because, hey, they're doing it and getting attention, why can't we?
You have the wrong Onion link. I think you wanted this one
(actually, it's rather funny how that hasn't proven to really be true in America, but in the recent Canadian federal election, candidates were dropping out like flies over social media posts up to a half decade old. But then, Canada is a Westminster system with candidate and party far more tightly bound than in the U.S.)
3824424
It's all very well to say that BLM is a racial clade comprised of troublesome black people...
...up until you realize it is comprised of many different races, and, yes, even white people.
http://blacklivesmatter.com/macklemores-white-privilege-and-the-role-of-white-allies/
Let me just preface this by saying I do not belong to BLM. I was down with the Black Liberation Movement long before those newbies came along.
As it is, I am a Website Manager for a political activist website specializing in the interests of African-Americans and African citizens of other countries. We've been open for years before BLM came along.
Some Black people actually hate BLM due to their inclusive nature, which I find to be tremendously ironic - the altright racist white people bitterly hate BLM for existing, and some black people hate them for being sellouts who allow white people in their spaces.
Are they? I, for one, have no real issue with white people who want to start an all-white group. It's their business. Besides, there are many whites-only organizations; nobody really says anything about them. You can go on Stormfront.org and find lists of them. It ain't hard.
People tend to hold misconceptions about BLM: it's not a Black Power group, it's a group formed to protest the slayings of black people by law enforcement. That is the mission statement of the group. You can read it on their website.
It isn't even a race-based group. That's the funny part. Any white person can go join BLM (and then get called an SJW). I'm not sure what's racial about BLM; because they talk about black people? They don't really have much of a choice there because it is the black people who are being slain by the police the most.
I have heard a great deal of people say, "Oh, the police victims deserved it. Oh, Michael Brown walked in the general direction of Officer Darren Wilson; Wilson was totally justified in slaying him. Eric Garner shouldn't have been on the street selling cigarettes. He was being a nuisance."
Therefore, according to these pro-police narratives, we should have Death Squads of police officers roaming about, slaying citizens for any perceived infraction, like in Salazar's Portugal, or Yugoslavia in the early 1990's.
So, BLM is calling attention to this rash of police officers slaying black people over relatively minor infractions.
Yes, when you corner a rabid animal it becomes more vicious and angry. That's how these things usually go.
3825773
The problem with BLM is that it isn't really a unitary group or movement, but a bunch of subgroups, all without any meaningful central leadership. Anyone can claim to be a member of BLM, so you've got everything from anti-police brutality folks to black nationalists all claiming to represent "BLM", and everything from people being okay with "All Lives Matter" to people who will attack people for saying that.
The BLM in Nashville, after being told that they would have to allow people of all races into their meetings, moved their meetings out of the public library to avoid having to abide by anti-segregation laws (which, ironically, were put in place to prevent whites from excluding blacks). They claimed it was white supremacy to prevent them from doing this.
Crazy, crazy people.
Any "group" that includes both black segregationists AND a bunch of non-racist people isn't really much of a "group". Making blanket statements about BLM is basically impossible.
I'd argue that, much in the same way that GamerGate became basically synonymous with misogyny to the greater public, BLM has become synonymous with rioting and racism, despite the fact that many people who are involved are not for these things.
When you have groups doing stuff like blocking freeways and bridges and disrupting Donald Trump rallies, it is hard to think of them as anything other than crazy people.
That's really the problem with a vaguely defined movement; without clear leadership, structure, and heirarchy, it becomes impossible to control the movement or the message, and you end up with a bunch of people doing whatever.
There is a subfraction of them who are fundamentally the same as the nastier Trump supporters - losers who blame everyone else for their problems. Indeed, that's a lot of what modern-day racism is - people who cling to their race as a means of giving themselves value because they have no value.
Viewed through this lens, "white privilege" and "they took our jobs" are very similar ideas - it is a means of blaming people who are not part of your in-group for your problems.
Uh, yeah, they exist. They're called hate groups.
Civilized people look down on them.
3825811
As I said, some black people go full Pinkie Pie and decide to do extraordinarily stupid things. Take this image:
s13.postimg.org/k4y091wev/1915671_1160989843945319_2159034986135912819_n_j.jpg
I'm pretty sure white people aren't actually listening to me brush my teeth; yet that is exactly what some black people think. Besides, people have only been misusing good ideas since, oh, about the dawn of time.
BLM is a great idea, in my opinion. Can it be co-opted like the idiots you describe? Absolutely. Will people misuse it for their own twisted agendas? They certainly will.
Yet, as that other guy said, they're swelling in number.
Nobody is really preventing white people from joining them. I know a lot of people like to say that they would be roflstomped by a gang of raging black people if they did so, but that isn't always the case, as you can see here:
i.imgur.com/4VLdDpy.jpg
These black people thought it was great that the white dude was doing a white power rally.
assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1501152.1383140061!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/keshia-thomas.jpg
This black woman defended a KKK dude.
On an aside, black women are great. They'll protect anyone. The media implies that they're horrible harpies, but they are great allies and will help anyone - even white people - in a pinch, and I respect that.
Similarly, I have no qualms about defending white people.
3825815
To be fair, there's very little evidence that the number of people actually in hate groups is going up. The number of hate groups has gone up, but they appear to be smaller than they were in the past.
A lot of it is a moral panic; the media, in a desperate attempt to fill 24 hours of programming, is trying to find increasingly crazy things to get people to pay attention to it.
Cable News is basically a reality show at this point. Al Jazeera simply couldn't compete because they weren't just running stupid bullshit all the time, and actually ran serious news stories instead of just random crap to put butts in the seats.
Almost nothing on it is actually important.