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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
We can't effectively judge that from current trends- a lot can happen in the two years between then and now.
Suffice to say that it's rare for a president not to win a second term, but most of the times when a sitting president have lost were similar to how things are going now.
Edited by Gilphon on Aug 2nd 2018 at 6:03:59 AM
Yeah, in 2017 I would have said Pence is preferable to Trump- Trump has very little opinions of his own beyond hurting the most vulnerable, so he's right on board with persecuting women and LGBT Qfolk and non-white people. His only policy is whatever the last the person he spoke to said. Pence would obviously be terrible, but I thought he would have tried to preserve NATO and avoid starting a war on fucking Twitter.
It's 2018, and I've still only just realized how depraved the Republican party is. I thought they'd be worried about losing money due to trade wars; I was wrong. I thought they'd be embarrassed by Trump cringing like a whipped dog around Putin; I was wrong. Now those pricks the Koch brothers are being pushed out of the Republican party, of all the goddamn things (assuming they don't come crawling back). I still think the less-popular Pence- compromised by Putin he may be- is less dangerous than Trump, but that line is thinner than ever.
Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did
The Ring of Fire have put up a video where the Trump administration that cutting fuel emission policies and making cars burn more fuel, make them as gas guzzling as possible, would mean less death because only the rich would be out and about.
That's Tasmanian Green logic.
Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than YoursDeVos Family Money Is All Over The News Right Now
:
Over the years, the parents, in-laws and husband of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy De Vos have given hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative causes. And many of those causes are front and center of policy initiatives and goals of the Trump administration right now.
Those foundations include the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation (founded by the education secretary and her husband); the DeVos Urban Leadership Initiative (formerly the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation), founded by Betsy DeVos' in-laws; and the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, founded by her parents.
Betsy and Dick DeVos support free-market conservative organizations "because of their mainstream, common commitment to freedom, the most universal civil liberty," said Greg McNeilly of the Windquest investment group, one of the family's for-profit financial holdings, in response to inquiries about Betsy DeVos' giving. "This commitment to protecting and promoting freedom is an animating core of their worldview."
And, he added, the family supports humanitarian organizations, because "helping the poor and disadvantaged is a driving principle of their worldview and it's reflected in the history of their foundation."
Betsy DeVos oversaw some of this giving personally, as a member of the board of directors of the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation since 1989. In a disclosure form prior to her confirmation as education secretary, DeVos reported resigning her position at the foundation as of December 2016.
During her confirmation hearing, DeVos denied making decisions for the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, which is on record giving to many anti-LGBT groups, despite being listed as a board member for 17 years; she said this was a clerical error.
Lonnie Scott, who tracks the family's philanthropic giving as head of the progressive advocacy group Progress Michigan, noted that conservatives have been more aggressive than liberals in promoting favored policies through philanthropic giving.
"I think what we see overall is really the purchasing of political power that crosses the spectrum of political and foundation giving," he said. "The right is very quick to use foundation funding in a way that the left does not in supporting specific policies."
Here's a rundown of recent events with DeVos money connections.
Edited by rmctagg09 on Aug 2nd 2018 at 8:07:25 AM
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.@archon: Your more optimistic than I am about Trump’s (lack of) prospects. While initially it seemed the United States’ political institutions were holding fast, the most precent iteration of the v-dem expert survey are considerably less optimistic
about the state of politics here, with a drop from 7th to 31st place in terms of liberal-democratic norms since the last iteration of the survey.
This perceived drop has, interestingly, been far more on the “liberal” side than the “democratic” side, but the implications are increasingly worrying; experts are losing confidence in the willingness of congress or of the US’s opposition party to restrain the executive branch. Even in the best case scenario for 2018, impeachment (followed by conviction) is off the table, and Trump’s incumbent status gives him a better chance at winning in 2020 than he had in 2016 so long as the US economy remains in good condition.
RAICES offered a $20 million dollar check to the government to pay the bail of all the families and release them.
Since most bail is usually about $1000, this is $2500 per person.
They were turned down.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/10/us/raices-bonds-separated-mothers-trnd/index.html
@Captain Capsase: He’s been damaging in domestic politics, but less so in foreign politics. The military and diplomatic establishments are more or less doing their own thing.
They should have sent a poet.

In other news, Donald Trump is still a complete f***ing idiot.
Oh, wait, that's not news at all. My bad.
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