The General US Politics Thread

The battle may be over, but the war still goes on...

And yet he he wont support our allies around China at all.

edited 26th Sep '16 9:36:03 PM by Memers

[hasn't been able to watch the debate, looks at tweet]

....what the fuck kind of xenophobic conspiracy bullshit is this? That sounds like a parody of what a politician would say.

...oh right, it's Trump.

edited 26th Sep '16 9:42:28 PM by Draghinazzo

Sick burn.

edited 26th Sep '16 9:41:23 PM by BearyScary

@Elle: Yeah, I'm kinda aware of that stuff. The "ability to sue foreign governments" thing isn't necessarily that bad though, as merely suing doesn't mean that the act goes through/the accused party is punished. From what I've heard, the process is more or less supposed to ensure that one country isn't producing laws and stuff that favor businesses within their own country above those from other places. I don't remember what the exact wording is for how the process is implemented, but I don't think these processes are supposed to be out of the ordinary for trade deals (though I haven't checked as to which other deals, if any, have this feature). I think it's more or less we are now aware of what these things are, and at a glance, they look frightening to those of us not versed in these matters/don't work with them directly. Also, the independent arbitration court thingy is supposed to ensure that it's not biased in favor of one particular country/party over another.

The intellectual property stuff isn't exactly stuff to write home about, but I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes it out to be. It more or less ensures countries/authorities involved can use criminal/civil procedures/law stuff against people for copyright stuff so it's somewhat standardized, though not necessarily to the extent we'll see mass trials for minor infringements, as there's also the onus one gets from making a claim in the first place along with how much damages one can extract from the potentially infringing party/costs of getting lawyers to do stuff. Aside from possibly being used as an excuse for trialing/jailing/censoring people in other places that might not have good fair use stuff, I don't think we'll be seeing too much in the way of bad stuff/lots of people being automatically being charged/tried for infringement.

There's also the secrecy and stuff, but I think that's supposed to be standard for these sorts of agreements, as that's supposed to ensure that any party's position isn't compromised by some news source reporting on the crap/compromises involved to reach the agreement, such as the leaks we've seen in this deal.

"Sorry, Argentina: you've not paid up, so we're going to sue you into the ground because our private companies are waaaaaay more important than your school teachers, civil servants, police officers, emergency service staff and public health workers and need the money more. Thanks. Oh, and stop whining about thousands of attributable deaths, your horrible debtor, you."

edited 26th Sep '16 10:17:23 PM by Euodiachloris

the biggest problem most people had with TPP was that it had SOPA in it, and that it, in general, continued to exacerbate old copyright laws that have been stretched and abused by big businesses for awhile now. which is something many people, especially online content creators, are getting tired of. anything else in it was irrelevant to people's opinions

at least, that's my thoughts on it, as someone who admittedly knows little of TPP beyond that.

My opinion is that IP Law is currently broken since it is not designed for a world where everyone effectively has a printing press. To connect it to something in recent news... The EpiPen thing is patent law in action, in that the company that owns it is enforcing its government-granted monopoly on EpiPen devices. There needs to be an overhaul of the IP Laws so they can work more effectively for creators and allow less abuse from corporations.

edited 26th Sep '16 10:31:26 PM by GameGuruGG

yeah, unfortunately that seems unlikely. at least in the immediate future.

in a normal election, I'd expect that point to be brought up and examined, but this one is such a loony election, half of it is spent on damage control, and making sure everyone is up to speed on what a real president looks like, to what a cartoon super villain looks like.

Trump makes only makes it difficult in one way: when every iteration of Lex Luthor in every medium has a better hairstyle than you, you're letting villainy down.

My Facebook feed was besieged by Trump trolls this evening when I shared my opinion on, of all things, his MacArthur comparison. Apparently my thoughts on nuclear Armageddon being bad make me an evil liberal pacifist. It's been an experience.

Is Hannity a hack?

So... How did the debate go? The Yahoo! headlines more or less say that Hillary had "put Trump on the defensive", which seems to mean that she won this round.

edited 27th Sep '16 1:58:07 AM by MarqFJA

She picked apart everything he said, he was caught lying multiple times, she handled the email scandal questions well, she absolutely hammered him on his tax returns, and she called him on his sexism and racism.

Trump had a few mini meltdowns as well. Hillary won by quite a lot.

So... She stands a good chance of taking the next two debates as well unless Trump somehow gets a monumental stroke of luck?

... Shiiiiiiit. The debate is over two hours long?! I can't spare that much time! I thought it was supposed to be about 90 minutes tops.

Didn't watch it live as it airs at 3AM here, a time where I prioritize sleeping, but it looks like Hillary performed well. Which was what everyone predicted three months ago, and what no one predicted one week ago, funnily enough.

I get pessimism though, because I can't really imagine a debate hurting Trump's numbers. His entire motto is to con and BS his way whenever something goes against his headcanon of the world, and it seems like his fans share that attribute. So I can't really see any potential Trump voter being swayed down by a bad performance, which he will probably blame on the moderator being biased or Hillary being disrespectful.

Mean and unfair.

Yeah, Trump is already claiming that he "clearly won" this debate. There should be psychological testing to block out such extremely and blatantly mind-addled people from even running in the first place.

Didn't he basically admit to full-on tax evasion during the debate?

@ Media & The Debate: The Debate has been the lead news item over in the UK (and no doubt almost everywhere else), with plenty of coverage over the day and coming days dissecting all that has been said.

edited 27th Sep '16 3:31:44 AM by Greenmantle

Actually the current lead item on the BBC news site is a theme park operator being fined for H&S breaches that lead to an accident.

It was this morning before I left for work .

So. Saw last night's The Daily Show on the coverage on the debate, and damn. Noah did a better bit on Trump's sniffling than I was gonna do.

By the way, I was going to do a twist on Will Smith's bit in I, Robot when he said "Sorry, I'm allergic to bullshit," but rework it as something as how he was becoming allergic to his own.

"Sorry, I'm allergic to my own ballooney." "An autoimmune reaction?" "You're damn right I'm immune. No one's more immune. I'm the immunest. Believe me. And drink cactus juice. It'll quench ya."

Holy shit that's frighteningly appropriate.

edited 27th Sep '16 5:10:19 AM by TheHandle

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