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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Let's hope that Pizzagate isn't one of those cases...
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
@Kelly and Bolton Fight: According to that same article, Kelly still doesn't plan to leave.
Edited by kkhohoho on Oct 18th 2018 at 6:06:33 AM
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Trump is telling his supporters to go vote in the Congressional elections to ensure the Democrats don't make any gains, and they're telling him "No!". WTF is going on???
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Simple. Most of Trump's voters don't give a fuck about Congress. They only care about Trump. If Trump's not running, then they could care less.
The fact that the Republicans in Congress have really low approval ratings with Trump’s base, is actually something worth remembering, as we go into the mid-terms actually, as it’s to our advantage.
Edited by megaeliz on Oct 18th 2018 at 8:51:12 AM
It's another of those things Mitch and GOP is fucked over by, which I appreciate. The one bright spot to the Trump administration.
- Trump doesn't have any interest in the Republican platform. He has interest in the Trump platform.
- His base also is also not their base. So they have to toady up to him.
- They have to kowtow and beg for his support which is mercurial at best.
- Any plan they have which relies on him will fall apart as he doesn't care beyond a few minutes at a time.
So, yes, by hook and by crook—Trump is truly the outsider candidate!
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 18th 2018 at 6:29:50 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Don't forget that he has the best people.
Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.
A procrastination in of itself
On the gentrification thing a few pages back, there is another solution to poor areas where people are stuck in a cycle of povert that reinforces crime and drags the neighbourhood down.
Instead of dumping the poor people somewhere else, what if we helped them stop being poor?
I’m talking giving extra money to failing schools, investing more money in local infrastructure (particularly cheap public transport), finding local efforts to address poverty and giving them the funding to succeed, rooting out the corruption in local police departments so that they can better address crime and help the community.
Instead of shoving the existing poor people elsewhere and replacing them with rich people we could turn the poor people into rich (okay middle-class), people.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
RE Congress: Wait, so besides gerrymandering and voter suppression, how did the GOP manage to gain enough seats in the few years leading up to the 2016 election to secure majority control over both chambers?
... Or have enough of the GOP-supporting voters who were responsible for said control switched parties out of disgusted realization of just how horrible the GOP has become that the GOP is now dependent on Trump's supporters for holding on to their majorities in Congress?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
The problem with giving money to failing schools is that, well, they're failing. If they're failing only because they lack money, that's one thing...but sometimes giving them more money just means they have more money to waste.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
She/Her Pronouns
![[awesome]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/minis/award_star_gold_3.png "[awesome]"){kind=small}
They kinda always were reliant on Trump's base, they just weren't called that yet.
Edited by AzurePaladin on Oct 18th 2018 at 10:05:54 AM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
The best I can tell, the main point of the pro-gentrification side is "fixing poverty would be better, but if not that dispersing it so it isn't as concentrated is still something."
Not really sure how I feel about that, but I think that's how it can be summed up.
Oh, bother.
I should mention that my opinion on this matter is informed by me being from California.
Disgusted, but not surprised
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
A procrastination in of itself
The GOP took control of a number of state leglistlators and the House back in 2010, that’s when gerrymandering and voter suppression took off big time.
The win in 2010 comes down to the natural midterm rebound, Obama won in 2008 and then didn’t fix things magically overnight, so a large segment of voters either didn’t vote in 2010 or voted for Republicans.
With the Senate the problem is that because there are a lot of rural states and not many urban states the Senate is naturally favoured for the Republicans (who get a lot of support from rural areas), I think 538 actully ran the numbers and determined that the Democrats are punching above their weight in the senate if they ever get a majority because of how unbalanced senate numbers are between areas with urban populations and areas with rural populations.
Voter suppression also got a massive boost in 2013 when the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act.
Edited by Silasw on Oct 18th 2018 at 2:30:26 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Trump pretty much beat the entire GOP and made it is bitch in 2016 and when he won the election it pretty much bonded into a kinda of unbreakable curse to him, they thing they are a republican part with trump atach to him when in reallity they are trump party with republican as guess.
The thing with Trump is that as much as they're liable to deny it down the line, Trump really just represents what was underneath the Republican party's rhetoric for years: white supremacy, plutocracy, amoral pursuit of power, and misogyny/control of women. He removed the mask so that every Republican had to make a choice, either accept the truth and leave the party or deny it in order to seize power.
The Bronx + Manhattan have a population of slightly over 3 million added together, the entire state has a population of 11 million, when you round it off that is 1/3rd of the entire states population.
Also here is an election map of the south part of the city
, Staten island sure is blue in it... Brooklyn is on the right for good measure.
Its north of that, the Bronx + Manhattan that are Solid Blue, not to the East where queens is, that is a chunk of blue followed by continually more red as you hit richer and richer districts.
Hearing and Reading alone give you a widely inaccurate picture of the situation, New York is not a homogeneous blue blob.
Edited by Imca on Oct 18th 2018 at 8:04:48 AM
Oh, bother.
He is the GOP's id. They didn't become the party of Trump — they were the party of Trump and people like him all along.
Um... the population of New York state is nearly 20 million.
And stop putting words in my mouth. At no point did I say there were no red areas in New York.
But, no, Staten Island is not "as red as the bible belt" even while obviously being the most red part of New York City (which isn't the same thing as being the reddest part of New York).
Refusing to acknowledge what a person is actually saying doesn't make your incorrect statements correct.
Edited by LSBK on Oct 18th 2018 at 10:09:56 AM
Woops, I got the population of the New York metro and New York state confused, my bad on that one.
3 million is still incredibly significant though, especially compared to the rest of the districts.
And it looks to be the same red/blue mixture to me, if slightly less extreme in the polarization
TBH I am more surprised at the amount of blue down there on that one though.
Edited by Imca on Oct 18th 2018 at 8:12:04 AM
@Silasw: Ideally, both would be options. See, gentrification is mostly a problem because America's safety nets are weak, and therefore the poor have to bend over and take it when gentrification comes, instead of being able to count on aid in finding new housing.
The idea of dispersing poverty has merit, but only if you can make sure that the poor land on their feet in their new locations (preferably excessively rich locations, the better to depress overinflated and NIMBY'd property values).
And? Manhattan and the Bronx are definitely the most blue parts of New York (city and state). That doesn't change that both Brooklyn and Queens are mostly blue, and even Staten Island isn't super solidly one or the other.
When Staten Island is mostly pinkish red, while places like Alabama are mostly blood red (in the non-Black Belt areas), yes, there is a significant difference between the two.
I'm not claiming New York is some conservative free liberal utopia, and I roll my eyes when people try and make that argument but the reputation, while exaggerated, exists for a reason.
Edited by LSBK on Oct 18th 2018 at 10:16:11 AM
Trump's base is what we called the Tea Party in 2010. Basically, the Koch Brothers donated massive amounts of funding to the (initially) grassroots uprising against traditional conservatives and created the Far Right libertarian socially extreme vaguely white supremecist (back then) movement that hit the Republicans like a ton of bricks.
The Republicans went hard(er) right to court them, relying on Newt Gingrich and Buchanan politics.
And then found a lot of the more moderate Republicans kicked out.
Then Trump took them ALL and then some.
Basically, by the time of Mc Cain's presidential run, there was already a ticking time bomb of racial panic in the country from the fact not only did Obama get elected but he won a second term and people actually seemed to like him. That became the anti-intellectual, anti-experience, anti "insider" Tea Party's beginnings.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 18th 2018 at 8:16:03 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Pay close attention to whatever Republicans accuse others of doing, because more than likely it's something they do themselves.