Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
When they get news from Fox News what do you expect. Propaganda in America is successful on a level that even Stalin couldn't dream of.
As for Trump-Taiwan, I am most worried about Tsai Ing-Wen, her career and tenure in office could be damaged by Trump's stupidity.
Trump will remember tomorrow that he's deep in debt to the Bank of China, and those guys do not f—k around.
edited 2nd Dec '16 6:40:07 PM by JulianLapostat
On Thursday afternoon, senior members of the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigns met again face-to-face to look back on the race. That’s when matters descended into the kind of chaos fit for the kind of reality TV the Republican president-elect once starred in—this time between Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri.
As is now a tradition every four years, the Harvard Kennedy School invites the influential players of a presidential election to speak and debate on panels, and mingle with eager, inquisitive grad students and professionally nettlesome reporters.
This year, most of the participants in Harvard’s “Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 2016,” which took place on Wednesday and Thursday, were left to grapple with how each and every one of their failures was a brick laid on the path to a Donald J. Trump White House. Managers and veterans of the White House runs of Trump, Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee had traveled to Cambridge for what amounted to the political equivalent of the worst, most starkly painful and tense class reunion imaginable.
And the bitterness and resentments still simmering in these professional political operatives was on full display on Thursday during an afternoon roundtable discussion in the fifth-floor conference room at the university’s Taubman Building.
The intention of the panel, moderated by journalists including Buzz Feed’s Katherine Miller and MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell, was to gather six senior members of Team Hillary and six from the Trump camp, have them sit directly across the room facing one another, and have a calm, collected conversation about the behind-the-scenes moments of the 2016 race. Instead, the moderators had trouble even keeping the panelists focused on the questions at hand, because the two sides would not stop sniping at and taunting their political rivals during the event.
“I would rather lose than win the way you guys did!” Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for Hillary for America, shot at the Trump team seated a few feet away.
“How exactly did we win, Jenn? How exactly?” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway fired back, noting that “I have a smile on my face at all times.”
Palmieri proceeded to bash the Trump campaign and its chief executive (and Breitbart News honcho) Stephen K. Bannon as a vehicle and emboldening power for America’s “white supremacists and white nationalists.”
“Are you gonna look me in the face and say I ran a campaign that was a platform for white supremacists?” Conway angrily responded.
Palmieri told her, plainly, yes.
I hate this American obsession for above-the-fray politics. And I am grateful that this election ended that. Let's identify white supremacy as the monster that it is, and the Republican Party as the Death Cult and anti-democratic cabal that has perpetuated and repeatedly re-legitimized it.
This 2012 Political Attack Ad on Paul Ryan..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGnE83A1Z4U&feature=plcp
Still accurate.
Easy with the rapid posting man, it's generally not cool to quadruple post.
Oh really when?Sorry for that.
It's worth noting that Nate Silver was something of an outlier in that he rated Trump's changes that highly. People started talking about how his model had been favouring the Republicans a lot more than other models all year, and he kept publishing articles saying 'yeah, HRC's ahead in the polls, but she's not ahead by that much in the swing states and there are a lot of undecideds. If there's a minor polling error in Trump's favour, he could totally win this'.
So, really, rather than call his credibility into doubt, everyone should let Nate Silver give out a big round of I-told-you-so's. This result has certainly made me trust him a lot more.
Taiwan? Seriously?
What's next he's gonna proclaim Jerusalem as the capital of Israel?
We really are going to have world war three aren't we...
"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"That ship sailed already. He said in one of his campaigns that he aimed to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And one Israel politician said that Trump's election meant the end of Palestinian statehood...well we'll see what happens when the demographic shift kicks in that region.
If China becomes the "great enemy", a new cold war starts with them, and the US and Russia Soviet Union patch up relations with one another we're basically living in a prelude to the Fallout universe. Which is terrifying.
Generally speaking, the GOP is more favorable to that claim than the Democrats have been. I wouldn't be surprised.
It's been fun.Russia has no reason of picking sides with either the USA or China. Just like China in the OG Cold War, or the USSR during the various Israeli-Arab Wars, Russia will just continue to be buddies with both sides and won't say jack about anything unless it affects them.
edited 2nd Dec '16 7:19:13 PM by DingoWalley1
And adding to his batshit crazy National Security Advisor, his hide-it-better-than-everyone crazy Sec. of Defense, and completely unqualified racist Sec. of State...
We're in for a goddamn train wreck
New Survey coming this weekend!China is not going to start World War III. Their interests are making money and developing economy to bribe their middle-class and make them Les Collaborateurs to keep people asking for democracy. It's working so far because the middle-class is fairly easy to bribe in general. Starting a war will ruin that. China will merely raise a few eyebrows and ask the Taiwanese to make a stand about these Trump statements and then talk to their boys in the Bank of China and send Trump a message.
These guys aren't born yesterday. Trump will only help China, once TPP collapses, they will step into the vacuum and become more important for Taiwan. TPP would have helped Taiwan far more than his stupid phone call did.
But you know Pakistan/Taiwan/Israel...Trump looks set to start border issues in three big quagmires in the world. That's something.
China isn't the one I'm worried about starting shit.
edited 2nd Dec '16 7:23:38 PM by CaptainCapsase
I'm with Captain Capsase.
"Coffee! Coffeecoffeecoffee! Coffee! Not as strong as Meth-amphetamine, but it lets you keep your teeth!"We are in the chamber pot, and are about to be shat upon.
—French General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot
He said that about the Franco Prussian War going badly...but I think its apropos about USA after Trump.
To be honest, things have already started badly and it is going to get worse.
I know that we're generally supposed to respect other people's opinions, but I think it's becoming more and more apparent that not all of them should be so tolerated. What your favorite color is doesn't really matter, but when someone has an opinion based on lies and hatred, that is a BAD opinion and should not be respected.
Trump has emboldened homeland terrorism. No matter how you spin it, he IS now the face of white supremacy because white supremacists look to him as their leader. They use him as an excuse to go out and brutalize people because with him as president they feel as though their hatred is justified and protected.
The more I think about this stuff, the more I wish I could fight it directly. The high school I went to in North Carolina had issues with racism, a lot having to do with the Cherokee who still lived in that area. I never saw it directly, but I could feel it, and I always heard about the things that happened. I wish that people like that would be punished, but it feels like they never are.
I sincerely believe that there are more good people in America than are bad. I also believe that we have more intellectual and overall smart people. I believe that the uneducated and narrow minded groups are a malignant tumor on this country. I'm tired even pretending to respect their point of view, and I'm tired of letting the disease that they are grow and fester because of people's apathy. I hesitate to call the alt-right Nazis, but seeing the kinds of things they've done and said, I can't think of anything more appropriate.
I really want to believe in the freedom of speech and belief, but I can't tolerate this much longer. I don't want to respect the Confederate flag because of some bullshit about Southern heritage, because what it really is is a symbol of traitors to the Union. Asking me to respect it is asking to respect slavery.
Sorry, I guess I'm letting my anger get to me. I don't want to hurt or kill anyone, but I feel like people who believe in truth, justice, and the American way need to show some backbone and step up. I'm sick of redneck hicks thinking they can hurt whoever they want because they see everyone else as being too weak to fight back. Politicians say we need to heal and come together, but I can't compromise with bullies and thugs. If they want to attack and do harm to others, then they better be read to face some consequences and take what they dish out.
Nah, plenty of opinions are worthy of nothing but ridicule. Though you have to be careful of the folks being Innocently Insensitive lest you alienate potential allies in the quest to metaphorically cave in the skulls of the white supremacists.
I really, really want to believe that people can change when they learn the truth, but they need to be willing to open their minds to it. We've seen how hard that is for people, and their minds won't change unless there's some huge, earth shattering revelation personal to them. You can't go around giving those to people so easily.
There is an American history of protest and defiance that goes way back. This is a culture war so that is the field of battle. Battles lies with truth, and never give an inch to this "elite" crap.
The real elite is Trump....and he won this time, because the system was rigged to keep and his feudally entitled ideology in power.
Mass media as in the stuff available to the public was always about entertainment. Let's be clear when talking about media about whether or not we mean the news, or the stuff that is entertainment. It's easy to go off on unrelated tangents complaining about movies and comics when we should be discussing the NEWS media in this thread, as was just demonstrated.
Yeah, the idea that all opinions deserve equal airtime and respect is a complete crock. An opinion based on complete lies and a disdain for someone just because of their religion or ethnicity is worthless and doesn't deserve any sort of legitimacy.
And that's the weird position we find ourselves in now. A lot of american culture (and the culture in many other places) at least pays lip service that opinions should be heard and discussed, and that you should respect people even if you disagree with their opinions. Such a platitude has some degree of truth to it, but only insofar as that opinion has SOME factual basis and isn't morally repugnant. A lot of people take issue with "liberal elitism" and how one would be "quick to insult and assume someone is ignorant for holding a different opinion", seemingly ignoring what the opinion they're defending actually is. How far does something like that extend? Do flat-earthers deserve to have their opinion validated too?
Going forward people will have to accept that some opinions simply have no place in a civilized society. The tolerance of intolerance has gone on long enough.
Well the British Media is an entirely different situation. It's incredibly hostile and partisan mess. I read the Guardian mostly and its good but even it has a very anti-Corbyn bias that's quite visible. And from reading that it's clear that they don't want to listen to the people who kept him in charge of Labour repeatedly after many challenges.
The UK at least had some respect for intellectuals to start with. Americans have never had any serious respect for them. The respect billionaires and generals more than they do intellectuals, artists and scientists.
How else can you explain the monstrosity of creationism which is this perfect American absurdity, one that began with quote-unquote progressive William Jennings Bryan?