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
I'll also stick around for the same reasons as Fighteer and adding that the Commonwealth needs spies if they're going to reclaim the States.
Eight years under Trump will make us yearn for the Bush administration.
And yes, I said eight, because if we're dumbf*ck enough to elect him, we're dumb*ck enough to do it twice. We're Americans! We never admit we were wrong, we double-down on our bad choices. Even Bush managed to get re-elected despite an approval rating somewhere between a bar of soap and Carrot Top.
edited 10th Sep '15 11:48:39 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.@Fighteer The floating defense Igloo (FDL) is a core component for the Great Lakes portion of the fence.
I do like how Scott Walker, in his attempt to out Trump the Trump, forgot that the Canadian-American border includes stuff like massive lakes and a few goddamn mountain ranges. Seriously, with the Colbert Report off the air, it's amazing how the GOP primary has filled in the niche.
I like soap. It keeps me clean. Please do not insult soap.
edited 10th Sep '15 11:56:42 AM by Aszur
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesI like soap too but I'm not sure I would trust it with running my government.
I will vote for the bar of soap before Trump, however.
My BFF and I were watching FOX News yesterday because the motel I live at always plays FOX News in the lobby so we inevitably wind up catching glimpses of it every time we renew our room. There was a big GOP rally going on speaking out against the Iran Deal.
Lots of criticism of our administration for "helping Iran acquire nuclear weapons". Speeches from not only Donald Trump, but Sarah Palin and a member of the Tea Party. I found myself very conflicted. I knew nothing of the Iran Deal but I agreed with the general principle that Iran should not possess nuclear weapons. However, between FOX News, Trump, Palin, and the Tea Party, I felt reasonably confident that the hypothetical selling of nuclear weapons to Iran had little or nothing to do with the Iran Deal. Finding myself in agreement with idiots is generally a red flag.
So I looked it up. As it stands now, I understand the deal as this: We and several other countries will remove sanctions against Iran over their nuclear program, Iran will comply with international restrictions intended to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons, and the GOP will continue ranting and raving over imagined scenarios that sound good on paper but are thoroughly divorced from reality. Is that correct?
edited 10th Sep '15 12:08:21 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Yes, you have the gist of it. I've been seeing a storm of ads on You Tube and other social media sites proclaiming the apocalypse to come if we approve the Iran deal. /sigh
Is this the new GOP thing? Assume the exact same stance as the opponent, but use Insane Troll Logic to reconcile it with actions intended to hurt it?
"If gay marriage is legal, then gay people will experience the same miseries of married life as straight people. Lesbians will be exposed to bitter, nagging housewives. Gay men will be forced to deal with obnoxious husbands who don't listen.
Protect the gays from the horrors of marriage. Criminalize gay marriage. The gays deserve better."
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.This started going off the rails with the rise of the Tea Party, which was originally an astroturf movement designed to keep the fringe even more firmly under the thumb of the plutocrats by forcing Republican candidates further to the right, preventing them from compromising on moderate positions. This has Gone Horribly Right and taken on a life of its own, to the point where agreeing with a Democrat that says water is wet and fire is hot can be used to demolish a Republican candidate for being insufficiently conservative. Things like anti-environmentalism and climate change skepticism (which were originally championed by the plutocrats, who didn't want additional regulation to deal with those issues) became full-blown anti-intellectualism. The sorts of give-and-take compromise that's utterly necessary for effective governance became so demonized among the voter base that any Republican attempting to actually do their jobs were quickly voted out of office. This polarization caused moderates to abandon the Republicans in droves (see Charlie Crist for a representative sample), but the increased fervor of the remaining base (plus fun things like gerrymandering and voter suppression) has allowed the newer, farther right Republican party to maintain power.
Then along comes Trump. He's filthy rich and funding his own campaign, so he doesn't need to appease the plutocrats. As a result, he speaks directly to the bigoted fringe, and the results are scaring the shit out of the current crop of "establishment" Republicans. They've spent decades training their voter base to accept plutocrat-designed policies in order to get their dog whistle wink-wink bigoted policies when they can. The big money has always been the driving force behind the modern Republican party, with rhetoric driven by the need to keep ex-Southern Democrats happy since the Civil Rights movement drove them into the arms of the GOP. Now Trump is giving those people exactly what they want to hear and he's not at all beholden to big money interests.
If this continues, it's only going to hasten the Republican party's drive to the right. While the bigoted fringe gets ever louder and more excited, everyone else is going to defect to the Democrats, or else just stay home. If that continues, then the Republican party is doomed. The demographics don't support them. The bigoted fringe is too small to carry the party by themselves, but they're driving the party to a position where they're the only ones who support them.
Bernie Sanders' candidacy is a result of this. As the Republican party drifts right, "moderate" Democrats also drift right (hell, Obamacare was originally a Republican proposal back in the 90s). That opens up space for an actual left-wing candidate like Sanders to emerge, as there's now sufficient ideological space for him to differentiate himself from moderate Democrats like Hilary.
Whether this signals the "establishment" factions of both parties having diminished power depends on how the election turns out. It's early days yet — the primary voters may well reject Trump and Sanders and select more moderate candidates. If one of them does make it to the general election, then they may get solidly defeated by their "establishment" opponent, signalling that the country doesn't care for extremist candidates and discouraging primary voters from voting for that sort of person again. If both of them make it through the primary and the general election ends up being Sanders vs Trump... well, in that case, things are going to be mighty interesting.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Native Jovian: That is as detailed and accurate a summation of the current political situation as I could have hoped to write. Well done.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"So, on the matter of Kim Davis, apparently the Oath Keepers are wanting to intervene
and prevent her from being arrested again.
Keep in mind that the alternative interpretation to the events of these primaries thus far is that we're still so far out from the actual election that the only people normally paying attention at this point are the most interested, which is also fairly likely to overlap with those who are most likely to want major changes and/or be the most extreme. And, in this particular case, those pulled in by all the talk about Trump.
Of course the candidates making the most extreme statements, (Trump and Carson) or promising the greatest changes, (Sanders) are riding high right now, they're selling what the relatively few people who are paying attention on their respective sides want to hear at the moment. (And coincidentally it's also exactly what the for profit news wants, because they desperately want to have topics like this to fill their airtime, and the David vs Goliath, outsider vs insider storylines are right up their alley.) Add in the deepening polarization of left and right and it's no surprise that the candidates with the early lead are farther along on the spectrum than might be expected.
What we have right now is the same thing that happens every election; some non-mainstream, or at least non-establishment candidate comes along, starts grabbing attention and imagination, and then have to race to try to build enough momentum before the people who ignore all this until right before they get into the voting booth just push the button for the establishment candidate. If they can get critical momentum behind them they can break through and change from being a popular candidate for a certain subsection of their side and become the popular choice. Obama pulled that off, more or less, in 2008, but election cycles are full of candidates who don't manage that and burn out or fade away long before it gets that far.
I'm not going to guarantee that Trump won't be the Republican candidate during the general election, because after all you never know, (especially with how the Republican party and conservative movement is going off the rails) but history certainty argues against it. And how long can Trump maintain his current popularity under constant media scrutiny despite being... well, Trump?
edited 10th Sep '15 1:19:31 PM by TheWanderer
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
Yes, it has happened before. This is something of an unusual situation, though, at least in recent memory: a relatively popular, moderate President leaving office without a major catastrophe or scandal hanging over the country's head (knock on wood). The field is wide open for ideas to compete in the public opinion marketplace, rather than the election being a foregone conclusion due to unrest or dissatisfaction with the incumbent party.
![]()
I am now wishing fervently that Obama has the balls to send a special forces unit to snipe all the Oath Keepers who try to interfere with Davis' arrest.
edited 10th Sep '15 1:52:27 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Yeah, there's enough controversy over the use of drones to "kill US citizens" even after they've openly defected to Terrorist cells - I can't even begin to imagine the shitstorm that would be unleashed if government troops sniped protesting civilians, armed or not.
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"Not to downplay the issue, but the Oath Keepers need a better name. Its like they picked the first words that came to mind. Seriously even the Klan and the Black Panthers came up with actual threatening names.
Oath Keepers is about as non-threatening you can get, unless that was the point.
x5: Trump is the very definition of a political cockroach. No matter how many times you flush him down the toilet, he'll always crawl back up.
edited 10th Sep '15 1:46:27 PM by Skycobra51
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.I imagine the progression goes something like this. The sheriffs or whoever go to arrest Davis and a bunch of folks intervene. Interfering with the execution of a warrant is itself a criminal offense. Either they accede, or the police attempt to charge them as well. At that point, if they draw guns, then it's resisting arrest and armed assault on a police officer, the latter of which is a de facto summary capital crime in most places around the world (corollary: especially if you are an ethnic or racial minority).
edited 10th Sep '15 1:56:09 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"(Johnathan Chait @ NYMag) "Jeb promises to govern like W but even more so"
Bush, unlike Romney, does not promise revenue neutrality. But he is offering essentially the same goodies to high-income taxpayers. So his huge tax cut for the rich would — as a necessary, arithmetic outcome — result in some combination of higher taxes for the non-rich and reduced revenue — ergo, higher debt. Bush has not explained what spending he would cut in order to offset the higher deficits his tax cuts would usher in. He has proposed to raise the Social Security retirement age, but the savings of these cuts would be minuscule in comparison with the revenue loss…
The Florida economy under Jeb Bush was the American economy under George W. Bush, but more so. His tax plan is the same thing…
edited 10th Sep '15 2:02:20 PM by PotatoesRock

My family already fled to Canada to escape the Bush administration (very exaggerated, but not completely inaccurate), so I'm covered either way.