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CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#195276: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:37:28 PM

[up] From what I understand the same guy behind the Benghazi and Whitewater investigations is involved in this. We'll have to see what happens, but that alone makes me fairly skeptical that this is going anywhere other than the conclusion that Jane Sanders was incompetent and overconfident, especially given the difficulty in proving bank fraud. Either way, this is one of the reasons a politician in the limelight has an expiration date.

edited 24th Jun '17 12:39:45 PM by CaptainCapsase

Hodor2 Since: Jan, 2015
#195277: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:39:39 PM

What is it with Presidential candidates and shady colleges?

Also, have been reading the last several pages and have to ask @Mad Skillz- Is that comment about the parties' respective attitudes toward police just something your quoting of one of your Dad's friends or also your attitude? It reads like the latter, and hoped you could clarify.

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#195278: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:40:39 PM

[up][up]Interesting, if that's true that makes things a tad different. My points though, this is such easy ammunition that I wouldn't be surprised if it hurts him quite a bunch (assuming he runs again).

edited 24th Jun '17 12:40:46 PM by Fourthspartan56

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Ramidel (Before Time Began) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#195279: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:41:37 PM

Eh. At this point I don't really think people care much about political corruption unless it's their enemy's political corruption. Given that Trump was elected on a platform of "I am absolutely gonna profit from being the President..."

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#195280: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:43:24 PM

[up][up] I certainly hope he doesn't; while I like Sanders, he's not a team player and is thus far from the ideal candidate for the democrats, even setting aside the matter of his age. Especially now that Sanders is a noteworthy politician, this sort of stuff is going to keep on coming regardless of validity.

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#195281: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:44:13 PM

Besides, an investigation is not the same thing as a crime. See Benghazi, Whitewater, emails and all the other dramas.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#195282: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:46:27 PM

[up]All of those things hurt Hillary, sure an investigation is less damaging then a crime but "where there's smoke there's fire" is as popular as it's fallacious.

[up][up]Agreed, if Sanders wants to a legacy he should go about shaping heirs instead of running himself.

[up][up][up]Sure in a general election, but I could imagine this sinking him in a primary.

edited 24th Jun '17 12:47:27 PM by Fourthspartan56

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#195283: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:48:34 PM

[up]Considering how those dramas stick on clinton for her entire campain.....yeah.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#195284: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:50:45 PM

[up][up]

Agreed, if Sanders wants to a legacy he should go about shaping heirs instead of running himself.

If he does, hopefully he'll be a bit more careful in selecting them. No more Canovas, please.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#195285: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:54:24 PM
Thumped: Wow. That was rude. Too many of this kind of thump will bring a suspension. Please keep it civil.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#195286: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:56:40 PM

[up] Honestly if there was someone who I see as the "heir" of the Sanders movement, it's Keith Ellison, though even if his career takes a fairly optimistic trajectory from here going forwards, it's going to be a while before he's a credible Presidential candidate.

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#195287: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:58:05 PM

[up]I could see that happening.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#195288: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:58:09 PM

Gave a bit more reading to the Politico article. It explicitly says that the accusations that Bernie himself was involved are thinly grounded and by a clearly partisan source, besides. Also, if this Toensing dude (—>apparently the one who pushed for the investigation in the first place) gets nominated as federal attorney for Vermont, the investigation will immediately get tainted by the aura of political influence-peddling.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#195289: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:58:56 PM

[up]So it may have less effect that I thought, interesting.

"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#195290: Jun 24th 2017 at 12:59:12 PM

[up][up] Yes, that's another issue; the decision whether or not to press criminal charges will be made by a federal prosecutor appointed by Donald Trump, and considering Sanders has been one of his many vocal critics, that's another issue.

[up] It would definitely be a problem, and any primary opponent (or Republican challenger for his senate seat) worth their salt would exploit it to the best of their ability.

edited 24th Jun '17 1:00:20 PM by CaptainCapsase

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#195291: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:02:13 PM

Nota bene that this Toensing dude is not the only candidate for attorney. Also possible that there won't be an attorney, seeing as Trump does not like actually doing any of this appointment work.

I think this might become something, but given that a) Bernie is only indirectly involved, b) the charges are more difficult to prove, c) less serious and d) this investigation has been much lower profile than say Benghazi or the e-mails, I think it will have much less effect than Hillary's emails did (which didn't stop her from winning the primary and the popular vote).

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#195292: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:05:46 PM

IMHO, if this results in a conviction and if Bernie Sanders himself was complicit...yeah, he's definitely done. Especially since his entire image was more or less based on being not like other corrupt self-serving politicians.

That said, those are big "Ifs" and "innocent unless proven guilty" is still a thing in the USA.

edited 24th Jun '17 1:07:11 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#195293: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:10:34 PM

Now, in regards to the belated replies to the opinion I gave on the difference between the two parties being more due to their constituency's expectations than any intrinsic difference; in regards to the criticism that all democrats would simply join the GOP if this were true, what we would call market forces are at work there.

It's the same reason businesses operate in all sorts of different industries rather than exclusively bunching up in the sectors that are most profitable at a given instant; the more people you're competing with for the support of your party's voters, the harder it is for a given politician to be successful, and thus politicians will end up in parties roughly in proportion to the demand for the sort of politics being offered by said parties.

[up] Considering the only known evidence for Senator Sanders' involvement appears to be hearsay, especially given the likely conflict of interest of the state Attorney General who would make the call on pursuing criminal charges.

edited 24th Jun '17 1:13:18 PM by CaptainCapsase

CenturyEye Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign? from I don't know where the Yith sent me this time... Since: Jan, 2017 Relationship Status: Having tea with Cthulhu
Tell Me, Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?
#195294: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:13:13 PM

A new health care debate, Donald Trump, and a spike in breast cancer deaths

Just in time for the renewed, fast-tempo debate over health care in Washington, public health researchers at Georgia State University have produced a pair of studies that help underline just what’s at stake.

The more provocative of the two papers has intriguing national implications: In large swaths of the United States, swing areas that handed the presidency to Donald Trump last year, a white woman’s chances of dying from breast cancer have skyrocketed.

...After much secrecy, Majority Leader Mitch Mc Connell, R-Ky., on Thursday unveiled the Senate version of the Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. There are multiple differences that are still being analyzed, but the Senate plan walks much the same path as the one passed by House Republicans in May.

Protections for those with pre-existing conditions would be weakened. Government-assisted coverage for those with lower incomes would shrink and eventually be subject to a cap.

Obamacare had put us on the road to health care as a right, paid for by the wealthy. The current Republican effort would return us closer to the status quo ante. A safety net would remain in place to help the most abjectly poor, but the rest of us would again have to prove ourselves economically worthy of good health.

Rural Georgia would continue to be a desert of health care, and thus economic development. Earl Rogers, a good Republican and president of the Georgia Hospital Association, referred to the proposed Senate cuts to Medicaid as “devastating.”

Which brings us to that first study by GSU’s School of Public Health. A team led by Lia Scott has discovered a cluster of an aggressive form of breast cancer in South Georgia. It’s one of four in the nation. Inflammatory breast cancer can’t be detected through mammograms and thus is often caught only in its late stages.

African-American women are at greater risk. Poverty may lie at the root of the situation. In that sense, the cluster fits a well-worn stereotype of breast cancer victims.

It is the second GSU study that shatters the breast cancer cliché. Lee Rivers Mobley, the lead author, also had a hand in the first study.

The science of public health is the study of disease and treatment outcomes in community settings. Mobley’s team realized that while many researchers had examined the health care access made available to minorities in largely minority neighborhoods, something was missing.

Mobley looked at “hyper-segregated” communities in which 90 percent or more of the residents are white. Few of them are in the South. We are a racial jambalaya that way. Rather, the 522 counties in 40 states that Mobley looked at stretch from the tip of Maine, run through Appalachia, then shift to the upper Midwest and West.

These aren’t poverty-stricken counties — far from it. But neither are they home to big cities.

What Mobley has found turns breast cancer assumptions upside down.

“If you just look at someone’s race or ethnicity, the white person is less likely to be diagnosed late,” she said. “But if they live in one of these hyper-segregated communities, they’re more likely to be diagnosed late.”

And thus more likely to die from the disease.

“I’m really wondering, what is it about the lifestyle of these females in these highly segregated white communities that is detrimental to their health?” Mobley said.

Mobley isn’t a student of politics, but I am. So let me be the one to say that, Southern states aside, her map of highly segregated white communities in the U.S. looks very much like the coalition of Rust Belt states that Trump united last year to win the White House.

Mobley['s] ... team’s paper hints that a resigned attitude toward breast cancer and its treatment... It is peculiarly limited to white communities. In highly segregated Asian communities, for instance, residents have lower instances of late-stage breast cancer diagnoses.

The comments are... interesting as well.

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#195295: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:13:14 PM

I don't agree on that last point, Capsase. That implies that politicians are extremely flexible with their ideology, but if that were so you'd expect a much larger amount of complete U-turns than actually happen.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#195296: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:13:46 PM

@Mad Skillz- Is that comment about the parties' respective attitudes toward police just something your quoting of one of your Dad's friends or also your attitude? It reads like the latter, and hoped you could clarify.

Actually it's one of my friends although we're not close anymore. It was not my attitude. I was just regurgitating what he said. He's a model cop but his opinions are very pro-gun, pro-police and pro-"law and order".

So from what he told me, his point of view is that the public treats him and cops like lepers and his police department has better relations with the criminals they arrest than they do with the general public. Also that the unjust killings that cops do is a small percentage of them and that while all this does happen, those few ruin the reputation for the majority of them. On top of that, the media sometimes omits the parts that makes the cops look more reasonable and is sensationalized.

And that because he's a white cop, he can't do the same things a Latino or Black cop can do because it's easier to flip that on him as a sign of racist cop behavior.

Sort of related but he also thinks Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization, thinks California needs more prisons and Reagan was the best president in the last 50 years.

edited 24th Jun '17 1:20:20 PM by MadSkillz

"You can't change the world without getting your hands dirty."
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#195297: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:14:29 PM

[up][up] Those kinds of reversal are ultimately quite common, though; Hillary Clinton in 1990 is substantially different from Hillary Clinton in 2016, and the same goes for Sanders, Warren, and any other politician whose been around long enough. Outright changing political parties after establishing your brand as a politician is extremely costly, which is why that very rarely happens, but the specific positions allegedly held by politician seem to change constantly.

edited 24th Jun '17 1:18:21 PM by CaptainCapsase

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#195298: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:17:37 PM

A change in a few political positions does not equal a complete U-turn. Show me were Hillary said that free guns for everybody, zero immigration, mass deregulation are the way to go.

“I’m really wondering, what is it about the lifestyle of these females in these highly segregated white communities that is detrimental to their health?” Maybe because hyper-segregated communities tend to attract racist people and racism is not associated with intelligence. And so probably neither with sound medical judgment. Pure theory, though.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#195299: Jun 24th 2017 at 1:19:17 PM

[up] Complete U-turns are exceedingly rare for the reason I established; it's very costly due to branding to do that rather than incrementally moving your position to triangulate their perceived constituency, in fact it's almost always fatal for a politician's career to completely reverse course.

On those specific policy points, in the tough on crime era harsh rhetoric on immigration in addition to crime was regarded as absolutely necessary, leading virtually all politicians including Clinton, Sanders, and every democrat I know of back in the 90s to take stances on immigration that would not be acceptable in the modern democratic party. The 90s was also the height of neoliberalism, so of course Clinton was pro-privatization and deregulation back then, and the same was the case for most other politicians.

I should note that this position is more about politicians in aggregate (ie entire political parties as an institution) than as individuals; an individual politician who fails to meet the expectations of their constituents will be removed from power.

To put things simply, I am asserting that (perceived or actual) accountability to their constituents is the key factor preventing the democrats as a party from engaging in the same sort of kleptocratic and abusive behaviors as the GOP.

edited 24th Jun '17 1:41:15 PM by CaptainCapsase

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#195300: Jun 24th 2017 at 2:26:38 PM

So, there are several massive wildfires going in the western US.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/24/us/west-us-wildfires-heat/index.html

Anyone here impacted by this? If so, stay safe.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

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