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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#161976: Dec 12th 2016 at 7:10:07 PM

Mitt Romney has confirmed that he will not be Sec of State.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#161977: Dec 12th 2016 at 7:13:35 PM

Nothing much I think. I mean Hillary's Emails didn't really have a lot of juicy information either...except for John Podesta's culinary inclinations.

I think the really juicy stuff is mostly spoken in private, or you know one of those things where it's all nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Emails are mostly just filled with quick day to day missives, and kind of online doodling.

We shouldn't expect anything earth-shattering in the RNC emails. Maybe at best some casual racism or sexism here and there, and some office gossip.

[up][up]

Trump is loathed by most New Yorkers, as the election result attests.

He got 2 million voters in New York State, not a lot by the standards of the population of that city...but well a lot more than I expected from there.

He's an opportunist, and a charlatan before anything else. If you're looking hard enough for patterns in history, you'll undoubtedly find them, but especially in the modern period where we have concrete data, materialistic explanation is far more consistent in agreeing with observational evidence

Hmm...no offense but my data is pretty materialistic and observational too. I base it on geographic distribution and demographics. Most of Trump's voters are white, across class and educational levels. Many of them come from the South, in addition to this there are other visible symbols of continuity with white supremacy. The slogan "make america great again" is the same one used by Reagan in his 1980 Campaign which began in the South and reignited white revanchism, there is the backing and support of the KKK, online racists, neo-nazis and others.

I don't couch it in numbers because the fact is it is a social-science based approach and it's important to not dress that up with misleading data.

...the intrinsic nature of a particular culture you are proposing.

The fact is we are products of our society and our environment. And environment and society shapes our mentalities, our choices and values to a great deal, and it's certainly absurd to ignore or dismiss the idea of continuities with the past.

I'd argue it's far more common for archaic political or economic institutions to be the cause of so called "zombie systems" when it isn't just a coincidence.

But the fact is that the modern political and economic institutions can co-exist side by side with the ancient. In America, white supremacy is ancient as Ta-Nehisi Coates mentions here and it has resisted and in some sense twisted modern institutons for its own benefit.

edited 12th Dec '16 7:27:00 PM by JulianLapostat

Krieger22 Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018 from Malaysia Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
#161978: Dec 12th 2016 at 7:28:35 PM

Wikileaks still succeeded at spinning the DNC'S proposals for opposing Sanders as collusion, and fucking tankies Bernie or Busters had their opinions permanently biased as a result. Even those who claim to have actually read the emails.

Granted, I'm skeptical of the Democrats' ability to do the same should the boot be on the other foot (something something connection to reality and empathy), but that doesn't apply to the Russians - they're not above planting some stuff that would grant them tons of leverage.

edited 12th Dec '16 7:29:24 PM by Krieger22

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#161979: Dec 12th 2016 at 7:55:18 PM

[up][up] My issue is that you seem to ascribe these things to a sort of immutable "spirit" of a nation's culture with rather vague ties to demography, economics, geography, and of course the all important institutional structure of a society. Many of the things you say about American culture's intrinsic white supremacy is pretty universal; all cultures regard themselves as superior to outsiders, and belief in the superiority of a particular ethnicity is, if anything, more common in Europe than in America, and certainly very prevalent beyond the western world.

The reason these universal tendencies towards tribalism are taking hold in certain countries and facing major resistance in others is better described in terms of America's archaic political institutions which, by privileging acreage over population, gives a disproportionate voice to voters in rural areas, which by virtue of their insulation from the hubs of cosmopolitan society, are usually the places where such regressive ideas tend to thrive. That system has not been changed because it's deeply embedded in the way our political system is run, and thus extremely difficult to actually change; constitutional amendments are ridiculously difficult to pass in the American system, and several would be necessary to renovate the archaic institutions responsible for this.

Even that would not have been enough to sway the election had it not been for current economic trends squeezing rather hard on the middle class in traditional manufacturing areas, whose standards of living and more recently life expectancy has been steadily declining over the past 25 years. Some of them supported Trump, but many simply stayed home, having lost faith in the American political system which they see (quite rightfully given how undemocratic our political system is) as "rigged".

These people would not be relevant electorally speaking if we didn't have leftover elements of an 18th century political system in modern day America.

edited 12th Dec '16 8:10:59 PM by CaptainCapsase

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#161980: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:12:06 PM

I never really understood why some people in the USA think that the person who sits in the Oval Office should be a white guy.

Maybe it's because I was born in the eighties, so my views of white male Presidents were informed by that.

H.W. Bush: among other things, raised taxes after promising "no new taxes" Guy was a one-term POTUS for a reason.

Bill Clinton: Scandals galore, including that infamous dress and cigar. Was popular at the time, but the long-term consequences of some of his policies were not good — the 2016 election turned out the way it did in part because it was also a referendum on his time in office. Bill signing NAFTA in particular didn't do HRC any favors in the Rust Belt.

"Dubya" Bush: Geebus, where to begin?

Barack Obama: First non-white President ever, and well...there's a reason he's got a pretty good approval rating now

Maybe it's unwarranted, and maybe it glosses over the many mistakes he made...but Barack Obama was the first President in my lifetime who made me feel proud to be an American.

edited 12th Dec '16 8:13:58 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#161981: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:12:19 PM

but many simply stayed home, having lost faith in the American political system which they see (quite rightfully given how undemocratic our political system is) as "rigged".

The only people who have a real right to say that the system is rigged in America are black folks, women, LGBT and immigrants from places people look down upon. Nobody else gets to say that. And I mean nobody else because the system is truly rigged against them...uppity women who doesn't kowtow to the diktats of society are treated with disrespect, a flaming misogynist can escape rebuke, and then you have voter suppression laws, religious freedom laws all of which tackle and atack America's minorities.

These Rust Belt fools don't have any right to claim any system is rigged. Because the system is always rigged in their favour...the media blathered endlessly in the campaign for their plight, castigated Hillary for calling them deplorables (a rather mild word for what they should be called in my view). If they decided that there's no difference between Trump and Clinton, in the face of all evidence, and say that the system is "rigged", these stay-at-home voters (except for the ones who are suppressed, mostly POC) are beneath contempt.

As for their economic plight...they lost most of their jobs to automation, not to neoliberalism. It was Obama, Biden and Gang that brought back manufacturing jobs to Michigan, it was Obamacare that provided many of these regions with health insurance, it was Hillary Clinton who was proposing real policies to help them. They decided instead to ignore reality and go with their time honoured feelings of white butthurt. So yes, I will emphasis white supremacy over economics because there was no rational economic reason for these morons to vote for Trump. The economy was doing very well, unemployment rates are very low...

Aside from turning into a Communist classless society and commencing the Marxist withering of the state, I don't know what the Democrats were supposed to do.

MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#161982: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:13:31 PM

“Donald Trump was interviewing Mitt Romney for Secretary of State in order to torture him,” Stone claimed on the program. “To toy with him. And given the history, that’s completely understandable. Mitt Romney crossed a line. He didn’t just oppose Trump, which is his democratic right, he called him a phony and a fraud. And a con man. And that’s not the kind of man you want as Secretary of State.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/12/donald-trump-interviewed-mitt-romney-to-torture-him-roger-stone-says.html

RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#161983: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:14:34 PM

I never really understood why some people in the USA think that the person who sits in the Oval Office should be a white guy.

The reason for that belief starts with "r" and rhymes with "pacism." No two ways of looking at it.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#161984: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:15:49 PM

[up] There's also sexism. Probably a factor in why HRC lost.

I wonder if we'll ever reach the point when an openly homosexual/bisexual/asexual transgender mixed-race atheist woman can run for POTUS without anyone giving her crap over anything but her political platform.

edited 12th Dec '16 8:18:45 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#161985: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:17:40 PM

Oh, definitely.

Although as we saw when the majority of white women turned out for Trump, most white women apparently love racism more than they hate sexism.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#161986: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:19:34 PM

[up][up][up][up] I don't know if I trust someone from Trump's campaign staff to be the most polite when it comes to Anti-Trump appointee's. We already have Bannon's "News Source" complaining about his current Sec. of State and Education because of their ties to Common Core, and Miss Conway has been very critical of Romney as well.

I wouldn't put it past Trump to do that, but until Romney himself says it, I'm not sure I believe Trump just toyed with Romney.

[down] Someone mentioned that earlier, actually.

All I can say is: Goodbye Turkey, Hello Independent Kurdistan.

edited 12th Dec '16 8:22:47 PM by DingoWalley1

RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#161987: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:21:59 PM

Rachel Maddow says that Kurt Eichenwald is about to break a major story - that Trump may be compromised by the president of Turkey over business interests.

Sweet mother of Christ, how many foreign tyrants are pulling Trump's strings? One was already too fucking many!

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#161988: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:22:24 PM

[up][up] Mitt Romney will deny it in public to save face, but I wouldn't be surprised if Trump did do that. Trump's a bully. He does not handle power gracefully.

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." — Abraham Lincoln

[up] The answer? All of them.

I really hope that was just a joke and not the truth.

edited 12th Dec '16 8:23:11 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#161989: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:27:40 PM

[up][up]The question is, will this be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Or does the camel have a back that can hold up for 4-8 years or so?

RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#161990: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:31:42 PM

Pretty much the only hope we have left of preventing a Trump/Putin regime is the Electoral College. And that simply ain't gonna happen. It's a pipe dream.

If this is true, it's just another scandal, and one that will pale in the face of the Putin one. How many scandals has Trump already had?

If he can survive seventeen intelligence agencies accusing him of being a Russian puppet, he can survive anything. He's like a cockroach. Exactly like, in fact.

edited 12th Dec '16 8:31:54 PM by RBluefish

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."
DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#161991: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:34:05 PM

[up][up][up] Why? What does Romney have to gain by saying "Oh yeah, Trump didn't bully me" when he did? To make Trump look good? Romney hates the man with a passion. He's as Anti-Trump as they come. Trying to save the Republican Party? He has no reason to save a Party that may (or may not) become irrelevant, and supports a Candidate he actively hates and who actively toyed with him. Hell, if Romney was smart, he'd leave the Republicans and become the most powerful Libertarian in the United States (and this is still a good possibility).

If Romney was really toyed with, I see no reason for him to cover it up.

[up][up] Sadly, this will mostly be ignored or be claimed as "propaganda", even by moderates I don't think this as damaging as the Russian Ties. Really, it will take bad policies to take effect before the Non-Deplorables who voted for Trump out of desperation to wake up and realize Trump sucks.

edited 12th Dec '16 8:34:28 PM by DingoWalley1

tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#161992: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:35:17 PM

the Texas Education Agency is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education over the state's abysmal (read: ranked last in country) special education.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#161993: Dec 12th 2016 at 8:36:22 PM

For background, the guy Turkey wants extridated from the US is the cleric Edrogan is scapegoating for the failed coup earlier this year. Said coup also led to Edrogan and Putin opening discussion about resolving the traditional antipathy between their countries.

Geostomp In the name of the POWER, I will punish you! from Arkansas, USA Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: What is this thing you call love?
In the name of the POWER, I will punish you!
#161994: Dec 12th 2016 at 9:00:56 PM

It's amazing just how many ways Trump is proving that he should be utterly disqualified from the presidency in just the time since the election. Yet his dumbass supporters still cannot fathom it being anything other than us being "sore losers."

So has the "evil brown terrorists hating FREEDOM" narrative started yet?

"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all" Futurama, Godfellas
AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#161995: Dec 12th 2016 at 9:03:53 PM

Something nice to share.

The Economist: Why Republicans hate Obamacare

Why is the Affordable Care Act so despised by so many conservatives?

IT HAS been called “the most dangerous piece of legislation ever passed”, “as destructive to personal and individual liberties as the Fugitive Slave Act” and a killer of women, children and old people. According to Republican lawmakers, the sources of each of these quotes, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, is a terrible thing. Since it was passed by a Democratic Congress in 2009, it has been the bête noire of the Republicans. The party has pushed more than 60 unsuccessful Congressional votes to defeat it, while the Supreme Court has been forced to debate it four times in the act’s short history. Obamacare was also at the heart of the two-week government shutdown in 2013. Why does the ACA attract such opprobrium from the right?

Republican distaste exists for ideological, economic and historical reasons. Start with the ideological. The fundamental mechanism behind Obamacare—that Americans who can afford to buy insurance directly from a provider are charged higher premiums to help to pay for the subsidies provided to those who buy their coverage from government-run marketplaces—is the sort of redistributive economics that is anathema to the party of small government. Many conservatives, including Tom Price, Donald Trump's pick as health secretary, see the drive for universal insurance as evidence of government meddling in the private doctor-patient relationship.

Next, they argue that the economics of Obamacare do not stack up. This is contentious. On one hand, the proportion of Americans without any sort of health insurance has declined from a high of around 16% in 2010 to 11% in 2016. New numbers from Gallup, a pollster, suggest that the uninsured population among low-income white people without a college degree has dropped from 25% in 2013 to 15% this year. A large group that voted for Mr Trump is also among the biggest beneficiaries of Obamacare. On the other hand, premiums are set to shoot up in 2017, by an average of 22%. Many insurers have lost money on the exchanges as customers have been older and sicker than they expected. Insurers are, in turn, passing on this cost to better-off Americans. Republicans argue that it represents the beginnings of market failure: higher prices will deter healthy, young Americans from signing up, which means insurers will make further losses, which means prices will rise again and so on, until the system collapses. The government maintains that premiums are what the Congressional Budget Office expected they would be, prior to the launch of Obamacare.

Lastly, many on the right view the ACA as the latest round in a multi-generational fight against state-proffered health care. Early in his presidency, in 1945, Harry Truman called for an “expansion of our existing compulsory social insurance system” to include health care for every American. The American Medical Association led the charge against it, and its PR firm coined the perfect phrase to sink it: “Socialised medicine”. It was political dynamite in a furiously anti-communist age. When the Republicans seized control of Congress in 1946, the policy was dropped. The government used tax breaks to encourage firms to offer private insurance plans. Workers took them up and health-care provision became entwined with employment. Subsequent Democratic presidents—Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton, Mr Obama—have pushed the government further and further towards universal health-care provision, but the resistance has been strong. The label of socialised medicine stuck as fast to Obamacare as it did to Truman’s plan. Mr Price may well resurrect it again in 2017.

edited 12th Dec '16 9:06:29 PM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges
Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#161996: Dec 12th 2016 at 9:10:10 PM

Yeah, so much freedom one has in a state governed by a petty manbaby autocrat who reacts to any criticism of his person like a spoiled thug.

Obviously I know they don't care about being consistent or principled but it's just so depressing seeing this election's aftermath. He isn't even president yet.

edited 12th Dec '16 9:11:31 PM by Draghinazzo

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#161997: Dec 12th 2016 at 9:13:33 PM

So much for giving him a chance. tongue We tried that. And this is what he did with it.

Disgusted, but not surprised
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#161998: Dec 12th 2016 at 9:25:56 PM

He's pretty much proven himself to be everything the GOP accused Clinton of being, but moreso.

People called Clinton a corporate/wall Street shill, Trump is lining his Cabinet with corporate CEOs.

People worried Clinton's email endangered national security, Trump's calling foreign leaders on unsecured lines, having his daughter sit in on meetings, and is potentially compromised by at least two foreign powers.

People feared Clinton would start a war with Russia, Trump's already caused an international incident with Taiwan and China.

I'd ask "need I go on?" but I'm already preaching to the choir.

edited 12th Dec '16 9:26:40 PM by sgamer82

FluffyMcChicken My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare from where the floating lights gleam Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: In another castle
RBluefish Since: Nov, 2013
#162000: Dec 12th 2016 at 9:30:54 PM

As bad, my ass. Politically speaking, this might be the worst situation in modern American history, and it's only going to get worse.

We're in uncharted waters, people. There is no precedent for this.

"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

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