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
Donald Trump calls for debates with 'no moderator'.
Can we be sure of this? I'm not saying he's Satan, but I've never seen him and Satan in the room together.
I agree with you on Stein, but Johnson was a Governor. That seems like a pretty legit qualification to me.
She should have stuck by her statement, or never made it in the first place. Now she's blue-balled progressives, and given centrists another reason to smugly insist that both candidates are equally divisive.
edited 12th Sep '16 3:57:02 PM by Demonic_Braeburn
Any group who acts like morons ironically will eventually find itself swamped by morons who think themselves to be in good company.I'll have to agree. Even the worst of people don't think themselves as evil. It's quite shocking how the human mind is able to rationalize its own atrocities.
I know the truth—darkness beats light. Visit my DA: I'll share my secrets stories with you.I'm really not sure whether he's smarter than most people think or just lucky.
It's moments like this that really remind you that they were kinda friends before all this started. I'm sure Trump thinks they'll be friends after. Remember when he tried to buddy up to Ted Cruz right after accusing his father of assassinating JFK? Trump is exactly the kind of guy who can say the most horrible things imaginable then shrug it off with, "Hey, nothing personal!" and invite you out for drinks just as soon as you stop being direct competition.
edited 12th Sep '16 1:52:39 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Trump isn't the only one. That's how politics work. Nobody is really your true friend when it comes to power. There is no friendship, only connections and power.
Friends stick around at your worst moments. Politicians will leave you as soon as you aren't useful.
Granted they might be different being the scenes. But business is business after all.
I know the truth—darkness beats light. Visit my DA: I'll share my secrets stories with you.Mrs. Clinton said she was “grossly generalistic” when she took aim at Mr. Trump’s backers at a Friday fundraiser in New York, characterizing many as racist, sexist and homophobic.
“That’s never a good idea,” she said of generalizing when describing Trump voters. “I regret saying ‘half.’ That was wrong.”
She went on, though, to call many of Mr. Trump’s actions “deplorable.”
“Let’s be clear: What’s really ‘deplorable’ is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values” she said in the new statement after criticism mounted. “It’s deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people.”
She didn't do a complete 180, but she's pivoting away from attacking Trump's supporters to just attacking Trump. Which might be for the best, but I still fear this will contribute to the idea of Clinton being a flip-flopping pushover .
edited 12th Sep '16 2:03:16 PM by Demonic_Braeburn
Any group who acts like morons ironically will eventually find itself swamped by morons who think themselves to be in good company.Sure, but most don't make it as personal as Trump does. They'll attack your policy ideas, your past history, your qualifications, etc. But the reason the other Republicans in the primary were so flummoxed is that Trump gets really, really personal with his political attacks. His attacks at his rivals have embodied such topics as tiny penises, ugly horse-faced wives, and - again - accusing Cruz's father of assassinating JFK.
edited 12th Sep '16 2:06:09 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Look up narcissistic personality disorder sometime. I don't think Trump can process that others might hold valid emotions. He can understand himself (or so he thinks) — other people he models on guesswork and self-reinforcing assumptions.
And, anybody he extends an invite to have beers with isn't supposed to turn him down because they hold a grudge for him saying what he was sure was true (or convinced himself was the right thing to say in the moment — same difference) at the time. :/
He is allowed actual grudges. Other people are only allowed "grudges" as long as they do it on terms he thinks are normal and make him look good to somebody else.
edited 12th Sep '16 2:16:13 PM by Euodiachloris
It's a kind of stupid, I guess. But, it also isn't. And, it might be fixable. The problem is getting a narcissist to realise they need the help, let alone getting a bunch of the cats herded into studies to work out how to treat it.
In which they don't spin the truth or get too bored to continue vaguely honestly. ![]()
edited 12th Sep '16 2:20:16 PM by Euodiachloris
Also remember that supposedly, the final straw for Cruz and the reason he refused to endorse Trump was not Trumps attacks on himself but on his wife and father.
So with the news of Clinton's illness, the Peso has been hemorrhaging value relative to the dollar.
At least some markets are beginning to look worried about the possibility of a Trump presidency.
Looking at The Other Wiki, Cruz Sr. did initially support "The Revolution" and it actually sounds like he was persecuted by the Batista Regime and fled then as opposed to fleeing after Castro took over. The way things are phrased in the article, it seems like he is kind of an Unreliable Expositor on this point, variously presenting himself as "a Communist who saw the light" or "someone who was never a Communist and was anti-Batista, not pro-Castro". And of course Ted himself makes it sound like his father fled the Castro regime.
In any case though, the basis seems to be some combination of lying based on Cruz being your random anti-despotism intellectual as a young guy and the fact that some Cuban person pictured with Oswald kind of looks like Cruz to the extent that all Cubans look alike.
Okay, so I have a question - why do political news article comments seem to be a haven for right-wing conspiracy theorists? I was reading a few Washington Post articles on Clinton's health (with one of them taking a rather dismissive tone with the conspiracy theories surrounding it), and the comments were overwhelmingly (though not entirely) right-wingers.
Oh God! Natural light!![]()
People on both extreme sides of the political spectrum tend to have major "Someone is WRONG on the internet!" triggers. Also, ra, ra, fight the liberal media, ra ra.
That would actually be inaccurate on the understatement end of things in this case. Pneumonia can be life threatening in some cases (though I doubt this is one unless Clinton is actually concealing other health issues that would compound the effect of it).
I doubt Clinton's pneumonia is life-threatening, because she has the sense to slow down and take care of herself (or her staff made sure that she did.) The only way people die of pneumonia in this day and age is if they don't/won't/cant get proper and timely medical treatment.
For example, Jim Henson's pneumonia ultimately killed him because he kept up with his busy work schedule and (allegedly) "didn't want to bother anyone" with his illness. By the time he agreed to check into a hospital, he was suffering organ failure.
edited 12th Sep '16 5:08:43 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.![]()
Ehhh, as someone with a background in the (research end mind you) medical field, that's not quite true. Clinton's old enough that complications aren't out of the question, and while she's obviously going to try and rest for a few days, I imagine Trump's going to more or less force her back on the campaign trail in short order. If he's clever about it, he'll do it by acting all nice and concerned about it but refusing to stop bringing it up.
That's still an edge case of course, but Clinton still being under the weather when the debate comes around is completely within the realm of plausibility, and if she's barely able to raise her voice and has to remain seated while Trump stands and talks over her (worst case scenario), even if she's back to perfect health the next day, that's going to really hurt her image.
edited 12th Sep '16 5:44:14 PM by CaptainCapsase
![]()
![]()
Henson died of a rare complication from strep throat, not pneumonia.
Also, the mother of a friend of mine almost died from pneumonia a few years ago but part of that was that she's a lung cancer survivor running on one lung. (IIRC it might have been what killed her father, who was a smoker.) Obviously none of that applies to Hillary but like Cap said, at her age it needs to be taken seriously.
Clinton breaks her silence on the pneumonia.
So can we stop panicking for now?

Exactly. However, this isn't a battle for the hearts and minds of those people. They're lost. It is, however, a battle for the minds of the people who see that sort of rhetoric as divisive and may be turned off from the polls by it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"