The General US Politics Thread

What there is to really worry about is that Trump is highly successful at turning politics into a reality show. He knows how to make big claims that sound great without any inspection, but secretly toss in the hardest of hard right ghouls and cronies while everyone's looking at his latest publicity stunt. The American voter loves being entertained and hates having to think, so this strategy could work out since Democrats would have to react to his every stupid tweet and then explain just what he was doing besides that. Truth means absolutely nothing to Trump: all he wants is attention, money, and power so he'll have no qualms about devaluing policy so thoroughly and the voters are sure to eat that up for as long as he'll demand. His supporters are all robber barons and/or zealots, so anything taking the eye off them lets them get a little further in grubbing everything they can.

Unless something big changes, I don't see this failing him given the sheer volume of bullshit he speaks.

I wouldn't count on that. Expect Trump and his band of thieves.

edited 10th Dec '16 10:16:38 PM by iflewaway

If Russia interfered in the election then Obama is a failed president by allowing national security to be so catastrophically compromised.

Then again when in doubt, blame russia

If you're being serious, I have to ask if there is there any evidence Russia did any interfering in our affairs prior to the election? If not, then I can't really say it's fair to put that on Obama.

there's no evidence. It's about as dumb as trump saying the election was rigged.

edited 10th Dec '16 10:55:25 PM by animefan1

When seventeen intelligence agencies, several U.S. senators and House members, countless esteemed journalists, and common sense say blame Russia, blame Russia.

So if there's no evidence are the CIA, NSA, and FBI lying then or?

People who hacked politicians like Guccifer have known direct ties to Russian intelligence operations. Occam's Razor says it's the damn Russians.

No evidence of anything prior to the election, if that's in response to my question. It seems there's plenty for the moment.

edited 10th Dec '16 11:04:33 PM by sgamer82

No it's for animefan who's claiming there's no evidence.

edited 10th Dec '16 11:07:50 PM by LeGarcon

No evidence of it happening in previous years while Obama was in office. I got tripped up too by the poor wording, but that is what he said.

Maddow's show did a bit on Friday about how the CIA or something did, in fact, come to Obama with proof of Russian meddling, and in fact reported to a group of representatives from both parties. The Republicans were the ones that were split on going public with the knowledge during the election. So yeah, it's not like this is something new, or something that we can blame Obama for not doing when it wasn't, apparently, just his decision. I kind of wish he'd just ignored it and gone ahead.

In other news, the SNL cast appears to have doubled down on their mockery of Trump, and in the Weekend Update directly addressed him with the line "I know he's watching." And a bit that was titled something like "Through Donald's Eyes" That was uh... pretty weird and also very much a huge dig.

Summary of what's happened so far regarding the investigation into Russian influence. Apparently the wife of the Republican who blocked it is potentially going to wind up on the Trump cabinet?

So much for trying to reach across the aisle.

animefan: Any attempts to shore up US governmental cybersecurity have been stymied by Republican obstructionism (funny how that didn't affect surveillance efforts). Yeah, yeah, I know your dank meme stash doesn't tell you stuff like that.

Also:

Graham, McCain, Reed and Schumer more or less indicate desire to investigate any Russian attacks or hacking involved with manipulating the election. Citing it as a non-partisan issue that both sides should be dedicated to investigating.

This is also par for course as Graham and McCain are both relative moderates/aisle crossers, and national security is their wonk issue.

edited 11th Dec '16 6:36:54 AM by PotatoesRock

Trump says he does not require daily intelligence briefings because he's a "smart person"

This man is a parody of a satire of a mockery of himself.

edited 11th Dec '16 7:14:55 AM by IFwanderer

Pumpkinhead doesn't know what "intelligence" means — by any definition of the word.

How much did other leaders learn about him during those phone calls?

Ah well, might post this while I'm at it.

I figure if the CIA had something really damning they'd release it. I'm sorry, the report will be "leaked" by "hackers".

And outside of direct evidence of tampering with the vote itself I'm not sure it'll mean much outside of a moral victory. The GOP has leader who (they think) will do anything they want and he gets to soak up all the bad vibes instead of them so even if the CIA has evidence that Russia hacked the DNC and other shenanigans its too good a political tool to pass up.

@Diamond joe's speech: Merkel then proposed a burkha ban like a day later. She's currently trying to figure out which pieces she can sacrifice to maintain her government.

Ooop here things are mostly okay. A trump fangirl's in the running to head the conservatives but we aren't nearly as angry as yanks. We just announced a pan-canadian carbon tax...that is missing two provinces. Well, one is holding out for some federal goodies and the other is going to take the issue to court. The feds just had a hard drop in popularity in the polls but that mostly seems to be because they aren't being progressive fast enough.

By all accounts, the leaders of Pakistan and India have figured out that Trump is nothing but hot air, and that he has nothing of value to say. The President of Taiwan probably thinks he's a moron as well.

I really want to see what happens when Trump tries to expand his business "empire" into Singapore. Especially since Trump accused Singapore of stealing US jobs. Singapore's government is infamously difficult to bribe, and they wield out-sized influence for their size and population. If Trump even knows that Singapore isn't at all part of China.

One thing I've seen pointed out about the alt-right in Canada is that to succeed, they'd need both Quebec and Ontario. Ontario is unlikely to go alt-right because way too much of the population is in the cities in Southern Ontario, which hold a full third of Canada's population, and Quebec's insane fringe is incompatible with the Alt-Right, if only because they're insanely resistant to anyone trying to bring fringe ideas in from outside the province.

edited 11th Dec '16 7:51:00 AM by Zendervai

I wouldn't get complacent. Perhaps the most unusual thing about the wave of neo-nationalism sweeping the west is the contradictory internationalism of the movement; Brexit's hardcore supporters were pushing for Trump, whose supporters are in turn now pushing for other far right politicians like LePen, Gert Wilders, and so on.

Has Trump stopped taking calls with world leader son open lines yet? Or is Putin getting to listen to every call Trump makes. Russian intelligence must be patting themselves on the back for this, they've got four years of basically open access to US diplomatic communications.

I hope somebody taps these calls and leaks them. After all the email bullshit Hillary had to deal with I want Trump to be in the news constantly for his security blunders.

The reason I'm not super worried about it is because lePen actually visited Quebec last year. She wanted to spread her awful ideology...but absolutely no one talked to her unless they were forced to and there were even protests asking the government to kick her out. It's kind of telling that when lePen talks about groups she sides with, she does everything she can to avoid talking about Canada.

As far as I can tell, there was no meaningful support for her. Granted, she started out by immediately saying that multiculturalism is a failure, when that's what Canada is built on.

edited 11th Dec '16 8:24:44 AM by Zendervai

It seems more and more like we're in a world war between most of the west vs Russia and the right wing extremists installed demanding total control. Like life is becoming a Tom Clancy novel crossed with Back to the Future Part II.

We can only hope that Canada stays more true to that than the USA did. The White Revolt of 2016 doesn't need any more victories.

edited 11th Dec '16 8:28:38 AM by Geostomp

The USA was largely built on it, too. Didn't stop Donald from getting large crowds and winning our bizzare and arcane system that refuses to consider all votes equal.