TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

The General US Politics Thread

Go To

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

Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#176751: Mar 2nd 2017 at 5:44:34 PM

Doublethink is not a sufficient explanation for what we're talking about. If they were aware they prosecute her without putting themselves at risk, they were aware they couldn't make it a campaign issue without putting themselves at risk.

Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#176752: Mar 2nd 2017 at 5:49:19 PM

That Session's lied to Congress is without a doubt, but is there anything to his claim that he only talked to the ambassador in relation to his Senate committee role at the time?

If he's a liar and a Putin stooge, then by all means let's pounce on him. But if he's one and not the other, then the main focus should be on his deceit.

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
#176753: Mar 2nd 2017 at 6:18:11 PM

[up][up]The bogus prosecution is on the Go P because they knew it would tarnish Hillary even further and was something useful to make her and Obama look bad and at the same time hiding the amount of crap the Republicans were up to like Flint water crisis.

The Lock Her Up campaign promise was more Trump and his team riding along the amount of people calling to lock her up, because it was something they knew it would draw voters. Though the Republicans should have at least tried to have Trump and his media team to shut the fuck up about it but they didn't, specially because the sights weren't on them, yet.

Inter arma enim silent leges
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#176754: Mar 2nd 2017 at 6:28:22 PM

Only a fucking idiot or someone with severe Moral Myopia (IOKIYAR) would launch a smear campaign based on their opponent doing something they are also doing.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#176755: Mar 2nd 2017 at 6:34:06 PM

So, Newt Gingrich?

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
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?
#176756: Mar 2nd 2017 at 6:46:30 PM

I don't know if it was so short-sighted. They might just know their base and sources like Fox "News." I imagine one would see the story as something like:

  • Crooked Clinton exposes government documents and puts millions of Americans at risk! Story at 2!
  • The grandfatherly Vice President Pence endeared himself to the classic internet users in our government with a retro AOL account. In unrelated news, disloyal unamerican fascist liberals continue to undermine democracy and precipitated a government hack that unfortunately affected our beloved Vice President...
and no one would bother to connect the dots.

edited 2nd Mar '17 6:52:24 PM by CenturyEye

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
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#176757: Mar 2nd 2017 at 6:50:59 PM

[up][up] Yeah, he got the ball rolling on the hyper-partisanship and hypocrisy that is now prevalent in the GOP.

And all because Bill wouldn't let him sit in one of the good seats on the plane. tongue

edited 2nd Mar '17 6:52:33 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#176758: Mar 2nd 2017 at 8:06:56 PM

Bill and the airplane came later. Gingrich started consolidating the power of the Speaker and demanding loyalty/ideological tests of anyone he appointed to a plum position years before that.

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#176759: Mar 2nd 2017 at 8:25:29 PM

[up] True, but I still think the plane thing was made it really personal for Newt and so he really threw himself into the smearing, demonization, and obsession with Party loyalty.

edited 2nd Mar '17 8:25:44 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
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
#176760: Mar 2nd 2017 at 8:51:35 PM

The WSJ is reporting that Jeff Sessions used campaign funds when meeting with the Russian envoy.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#176761: Mar 2nd 2017 at 10:59:59 PM

Bannon is clashing with Tillerson and Ivanka over the Paris Agreement:

WASHINGTON — The White House is fiercely divided over President Trump’s campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris agreement, the 2015 accord that binds nearly every country to curb global warming, with more moderate voices maintaining that he should stick with the agreement despite his campaign pledge.

Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s senior adviser, is pressing the president to officially pull the United States from the landmark accord, according to energy and government officials with knowledge of the debate. But, they say, he is clashing with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who fear the move could have broad and damaging diplomatic ramifications.

Mr. Trump vowed on the campaign trail to tear up President Barack Obama’s global warming policies, and on the home front he is moving aggressively to meet those pledges with deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and a new E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, who is a skeptic of climate science.

Next week, Mr. Trump plans to sign an executive order directing Mr. Pruitt to start the lengthy legal process of unwinding Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations for cutting greenhouse pollution from coal-fired power plants. Those regulations are the linchpin of the last administration’s program to meet the nation’s obligations to reduce climate emissions under the Paris agreement.

While the president cannot, as Mr. Trump suggested, unilaterally undo a 194-nation accord that has already been legally ratified, he could initiate the four-year process to withdraw the world’s largest economy and second-largest climate polluter from the first worldwide deal to tackle global warming. Such a move would rend a global deal that has been hailed as historic, throwing into question the fate of global climate policy and, diplomats say, the credibility of the United States.

But it would also demonstrate to his supporters that Mr. Trump is a man of his word, putting American coal interests ahead of a global deal forged by Mr. Obama.

On one side of that debate is Mr. Bannon, who as a former chief executive of Breitbart News published countless articles denouncing climate change as a hoax, and who has vowed to push Mr. Trump to transform all his major campaign promises into policy actions.

On the other side are Ms. Trump, Mr. Tillerson, and a slew of foreign policy advisers and career diplomats who argue that the fallout of withdrawing from the accord could be severe, undercutting the United States’ credibility on other foreign policy issues and damaging relations with key allies.

Although Ms. Trump has not spoken out publicly for action to combat climate change, proponents and opponents of such action see her as an ally. Former Vice President Al Gore met with her during the Trump transition, and was ushered in by the “first daughter” to see the president-elect. The actor and activist Leonardo Di Caprio even slipped her a DVD copy of his climate-change documentary.

“President Trump Must Not Wobble on Climate Change — No Matter What Ivanka Says …,” blared a Breitbart post on Monday written by James Delingpole, who is close to Mr. Bannon and who leads the website’s coverage of climate-change policy.

Mr. Trump wants to make a decision by next week, say people familiar with the White House’s debate on the climate pact, in order to announce his executive order to undo Mr. Obama’s climate regulations in conjunction with his plans for the Paris deal.

According to leaked budget documents, the president will also propose killing off nearly two dozen E.P.A. programs, including the Obama-era Clean Power Program, climate partnership programs with local governments, Energy Star grants to encourage efficiency research in consumer products and climate-change research. Those would be part of a broader budget submission that would cut the E.P.A.’s funding by 25 percent, to around $6.1 billion from $8.2 billion, and its staff by 20 percent.

“If the goal is to fulfill the president’s campaign promises and implement his agenda, there is no value in staying in Paris,” said Thomas J. Pyle, an adviser to the Trump transition and the president of the Institute for Energy Research, an organization partly funded by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, who have worked for years to undermine climate-change policies.

Mr. Trump has cited Mr. Pyle’s group as being influential in shaping his energy and climate proposals, including his campaign pledge to withdraw from the Paris deal.

“The two greatest obstacles to a Clexit (climate exit from U.N. Paris agreement) are probably Ivanka and Tillerson,” wrote Marc Morano, a former Republican Senate staff member who now runs Climate Depot, a fossil-fuel-industry-funded website that promotes the denial of climate science, in an email. “Tillerson with his ‘seat at the table’ views could be biggest proponent of not withdrawing the U.S. from the agreement.”

Mr. Tillerson is a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, which, like many major global corporations, endorsed the Paris agreement. While his former company once denied human-caused climate change, it has more recently publicly acknowledged the threat posed by burning oil and supported proposals to tax carbon dioxide pollution.

Asked during his Senate confirmation hearing about the Paris accord, Mr. Tillerson said, “It’s important that the U.S. maintains its seat at the table about how to address the threat of climate change, which does require a global response.”

Under the Paris agreement, every nation has formally submitted plans detailing how it expects to lower its planet-warming pollution. The Obama administration pledged that the United States would reduce its carbon pollution about 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. However, that pledge depends on enactment of Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations on coal-fired power plants, which Mr. Trump and Mr. Pruitt intend to substantially weaken or eliminate.

But under the Paris deal, those numerical targets are not legally binding, and there are no sanctions for failing to meet them. The only legal requirements of the deal are that countries publicly put forth their emissions reductions targets, and later put forth reports verifying how they are meeting the targets. It would be possible for the Trump administration to stay in the deal and submit a less ambitious target.

Even senior Republican voices in the foreign policy debate have said it may be wiser to stay in but keep a low profile.

“There’s really no obligation,” Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview. “It doesn’t require us to do anything. I think they may take a little time to assess whether pulling out makes sense now.”

Foreign policy experts say withdrawing from Paris would have far greater diplomatic consequences than President George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the world’s first global climate-change accord, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

“I think it would be a major mistake, even a historic mistake, to disavow the Paris deal,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a retired career diplomat and under secretary of state under Mr. Bush.

“In international politics, trust, reliability and keeping your commitments — that’s a big part of how other countries view our country,” Mr. Burns said. “I can’t think of an issue, except perhaps NATO, where if the U.S. simply walks away, it would have such a major negative impact on how we are seen.”

The Paris deal is more consequential than Kyoto. Unlike that pact, which required action only from developed economies, the Paris agreement includes commitments from every nation, rich and poor, to cut emissions, including China and India, the world’s largest and third-largest polluters. Also, the science of climate change has become far more certain and the impact more visible in the 20 years since Kyoto. Each of the last three years has surpassed the previous one as the hottest on record.

Some of the United States’ closest allies are urging the Trump administration not to pull out. In a letter to Mr. Trump after he won the election, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany wrote, “Partnership with the United States is and will remain a keystone of German foreign policy, especially so that we can tackle the great challenges of our time.” They include, she wrote, “working to develop farsighted climate policy.”

As Mr. Trump and his advisers weigh their Paris options, one proposal is gaining traction, according to participants in the debate: Mr. Trump could declare that the Paris agreement is a treaty that requires ratification by the Senate. The pact was designed not to have the legal force of a treaty specifically so that it would not have to go before the United States Senate, which would have assuredly failed to ratify it.

“If there are camps forming in the White House, then let the people decide, the elected representatives,” Mr. Pyle said. “Let’s put the question to them.”

Proponents of that idea say it could shift some of the weight of the decision from Mr. Trump to Senator Mitch Mc Connell of Kentucky, the majority leader, at least in the eyes of some foreign diplomats, and of the president’s daughter.

Luigisan98 A wandering user from Venezuelan Muscat Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: I <3 love!
A wandering user
#176762: Mar 2nd 2017 at 11:07:28 PM

[up] Now I feel that the Conservatives are more divided...

The only good fanboy, is a redeemed fanboy.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#176763: Mar 2nd 2017 at 11:18:30 PM

[up][up] Pissing off every other country who signed on to the Accords...that's a great idea.

When even the oil magnate with no actual diplomatic experience is arguing that leaving it would be a bad idea...

Disgusted, but not surprised
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#176764: Mar 2nd 2017 at 11:53:30 PM

Technically he does have diplomatic experience, he's just gained a lot of that experience undercutting American interests in favor of Exxon's interest. It's the reason a lot of conservatives were saying he was qualified for this position. So he's got some idea that if you want someone to continue dealing with you you have to not leave the conversation.

edited 2nd Mar '17 11:54:01 PM by AceofSpades

Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#176765: Mar 3rd 2017 at 2:07:25 AM

Tillerson might get solid backing from Rick Perry. I get the distinct impression he's had a lot of eye-opening happen to him during the past few weeks.

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
#176766: Mar 3rd 2017 at 2:31:14 AM

Bannon deserves every single nano gram of hate he gets.

The only thing worse than having Trump in the WH is that Bannon is inside it advising Trump.

Inter arma enim silent leges
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#176767: Mar 3rd 2017 at 4:28:34 AM

Yeah, if the Trump administration gives the US a reputation for pulling out of deals that took years or even decades to set up because the treaties aren't 100% beneficial for the US, from the point of view of a stupid child, no one's going to want to make deals with the US, at least not until the White House and Congress aren't in the hands of blithering idiots who are clearly making it a priority to screw over their own people so that they can...claim an ideological victory over the Democrats?

I really don't understand what the Republicans are even trying to do. Sure, to some people, a libertarian government that doesn't regulate anything domestically might look like a good idea, right up until everyone's dealing with food poisoning, and no one wants to trade because your goods are total garbage and don't work.

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#176768: Mar 3rd 2017 at 4:42:28 AM

What has Bannon done that makes Trump want to keep him around as his Numero Uno advisor?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#176769: Mar 3rd 2017 at 4:58:45 AM

[up] I'm guessing Trump thinks Bannon's advice and media savvy helped him win the election. Bannon might also be good at pandering to Trump's ego.

edited 3rd Mar '17 4:59:49 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#176770: Mar 3rd 2017 at 5:39:17 AM

[WaPo]New EPA head told Congress he never used personal email for government business. But it turns out he did. Uh... I know you guys are tired of the joke, but seriously, between this and Pence I have to say it:

BUT HER EMAILS!!!!!!!!!!

In other news: Trump achieved a record: a whole day without lying or making misleading claims!

edited 3rd Mar '17 5:39:45 AM by IFwanderer

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
Pseudopartition Screaming Into The Void from The Cretaeceous Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
Screaming Into The Void
#176771: Mar 3rd 2017 at 5:39:47 AM

Even senior Republican voices in the foreign policy debate have said it may be wiser to stay in but keep a low profile.

“There’s really no obligation,” Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview. “It doesn’t require us to do anything. I think they may take a little time to assess whether pulling out makes sense now.”

Honestly... I think this has the potential to be more damaging than simply starting the withdrawal process. If other countries in the agreement are resistant to cutting back emissions, they could simply follow America's lead here, instead of just waiting for the next administration to sign back on. Then Paris becomes another nearly useless agreement like the rest of them. I can certainly see Canada going this route, given the backlash to the new carbon tax.

Past experience means I'm skeptical, but maybe - like the article says - the last few years of record temperatures have been a wake up call to people. It certainly hasn't been here. note 

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?
#176772: Mar 3rd 2017 at 5:42:14 AM

Well, I'm not sure they were quite right to say Tillerson has any weight on this. He may have a strong opinion, but it doesn't look like Trump has ever asked his advice and his department still exists in name only.
Although, I'm sure the other states knew what they were doing, taking on a country with a 50-50 chance of a GOP victory the next election. The withdrawal process is four-years long after all...

edited 3rd Mar '17 5:46:41 AM by CenturyEye

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
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#176773: Mar 3rd 2017 at 5:54:53 AM

I can't help but feel like climate change is a lot like religion. Even if you don't believe in it, is there any really good reason but to be a good person/take precautions against climate change anyway?

Antiteilchen In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good. Since: Sep, 2013
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
#176774: Mar 3rd 2017 at 5:56:31 AM

I can't help but feel like climate change is a lot like religion.

It's primary function is to control female sexuality?

Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#176775: Mar 3rd 2017 at 6:07:18 AM

At the very least...there's a limited amount of coal and oil. There's a lot, don't get me wrong, but we use oil for so much that it would be a genuinely good idea to limit the amount we use in fuel if possible. Coal, on the other hand...we should have phased coal out entirely long ago.

It is smart to create alternatives to a strictly limited resource.

edited 3rd Mar '17 6:07:48 AM by Zendervai


Total posts: 417,856
Top