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'm sorry, but didn't you have a brief defense of fracking there just a bit ago?
I remembered the quakes that were almost certainly caused by fracking in certain areas and such.
All I can say is, if HRC wants any hope of re-election, her administration should do what it can to find a way to fill our society's energy needs without something that could literally make the earth swallow us whole.
Disgusted, but not surprisedRubio has a point here https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/788704783590981632
Exactly. Wikileaks has demonstrated a total lack of integrity and a willingness to falsely represent the material it's leaking, and as such has lost any trust it might once have earned.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"A Bloomberg poll has Clinton up by 9 points (she has 47% to Trump's 38%, with Johnson and Stein grabbing 8% and 3% respective. Most notably is that the poll has her doing better among men and whites without degrees, with normally go heavily Republican. Now this could be an outlier but the source is good and if its true....
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/19/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-presidential-polls/index.html
Clinton supporters are also more afraid than Trump than Trump supporters are of her.
edited 19th Oct '16 5:58:12 AM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Fear is the appropriate response to trump until he's lost then we can get back to ridicule and mocking.
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?So, I heard on the radio this morning that new polls have the Rubio-Murphy race for Florida's senate seat as neck-and-neck — Rubio is showing a slight lead, but it's within the margin of error. Given that polls up until this point have shown Rubio in the lead, this is definitely a good sign. They also said that Rubio and Murphy are damn near even in terms of both courting independent and motivating their respective bases — which suggests that the race may come down to voter turnout. That tends to benefit Democrats in Presidential election years.
Here's hoping.
edited 19th Oct '16 6:17:07 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.I wonder if there's a chance that Trump turning on the GOP will cause his supporters to not vote in the downballet races? Or that his whining about election rigging will depress their turnout (God-Emperor Donald says the race is already over cause crocked Shillary, what's the point of voting?)?
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Saw Anderson Cooper on CNN covering O'Keefe's newest thing last night, which sounds pretty bad (Cooper himself seemed to think so). I probably should watch the video to get an idea of exactly how bad, and although I do assume editing (as Cooper also noted), not sure about just handwaving things away.
What I would say though is that given the propensity of Trump supporters at rallies to react violently to protesters, I'm not sure it's really "provoking" them to violence just by showing up or even by making critical comments. Like at least from the coverage, I don't get the idea that if Democratic groups were sending in protesters, they were having them say things (i.e. personal insults) that would provoke otherwise peaceful Trump supporters. It seemed more like the correct assumption was that those supporters had a Hair-Trigger Temper that was set off by he presence of protesters.
One of the Trump-supporting commentators also claimed that the video showed voter fraud, which I'm much more skeptical of. What he cited as an example was discussion of driving people to polling places. Unless the discussion was of those people voting more than once (was it?), that's obviously not illegal and is even praiseworthy. I think Republicans have the idea that facilitating voting, especially if done for minorities is voter fraud, whereas people should really only be allowed to vote, especially minorities, if they jump through a bunch of hoops first.
Unless those protestors initiated violence, or made threats, Trump's supporters are accountable for any violence. It is not legal or moral to respond to someone loudly disagreeing with you by sucker punching them.
How Clinton can take heat for this but Trump can get away with dog whistling for riots, hand waving assaults (where the preps cited him as an inspiration) and calling for assassinations is utterly ridiculous.
edited 19th Oct '16 6:53:49 AM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Maddow discusses why Congressional term limits (a new-old proposal by Trump as his campaign sputters) are a terrible idea.
This isn't new, but it's a great read for anyone trying to explain the issue to doubters.
Fundamentally, Congressional term limits increase the power of outside influences like lobbyists, because inexperienced new legislators will be forced to rely more heavily on those experienced operatives instead of on veteran lawmakers who've got a solid grasp on the workings of the system. One would, therefore, expect more boilerplate legislation to be introduced and passed from such notable bodies as ALEC, and more gumming up of the system among ideological lines, as the constant rotation of new Members of Congress will destroy the lines of power and communication that allow for things to work.
Also, why shouldn't Democratic groups organize protests at Trump events? Is there some law against this, which would be blatantly unconstitutional if passed?
edited 19th Oct '16 6:56:38 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Obviously, the multinational banks she's shilling for.
538's latest weekly chat
touched on whether the Clinton campaign should go on the offensive and try for traditionally red states. Consensus: being so late, maybe those that are now borderline like Arizona and Missouri (individuals also threw in Utah, Indiana, and Alaska); Texas or Kansas might be a bridge too far for 2016.
From the short clips I've seen it was more theory then practice stuff like (paraphrasing) "If a few of us showed up with planned parenthood shirts and were really insulting we can pretty much guarantee getting assaulted right in front of the cameras"
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?Term limits aren't a terrible idea, they just need to be generous, like 13 terms for congress (or 26 years) and 5 terms for Senate (or 30 years). That way you could be in office for as long as a whole generation, because there's a point after which anybody starts to fall out of touch with what the world is really like and new blood would be needed, but you do need a good long time to get accustomed and accumulate institutional knowledge.
But, why? Why should we force someone like Bernie Sanders out of Congress just because he's hit an arbitrary limit of time spent in office? There's no rational basis for claiming that X terms are "enough" for any particular value of X. It's just change for the sake of change, because we want to be seen to "do something to fix the broken system".
edited 19th Oct '16 7:11:04 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Thatguythere and Fighteer-That's my sense of it too, which is why I didn't quite get the accusation of essentially False Flag Operation. If valid at all, it would really depend on what if anything nasty was said off-camera.
But as it is, I think it's a safe assumption that you are more likely to be subjected to physical violence from protesting (or being non-white) at a Trump rally than showing up in a Yankees jersey at a Red Sox supporting bar.
The objection here kind of reminds me to the fact that it's considered "shocking" that Rosa Parks deliberately sat in the front of the bus as an act of civil disobedience rather than because she was simply physically tired that day. As if there's something inherently unclean about politically-motivated actions.
edited 19th Oct '16 7:15:17 AM by Hodor2
![]()
![]()
Certainly there needs to be evidence for it, but there's a lot of evidence outside of government that institutional sclerosis is a bad thing, the flip side of institutional knowledge coming from people who have been around a long time. We know that incumbents tend to have advantages and we know that sclerotic institutions tend to be less responsive, although we don't know if the loss of one is better than the loss of the other, because it's a hard phenomenon to analyze objectively.
It would need to be studied and carefully crafted, but i think there could be value there. I agree that it's just populist wharblegarble in Trump's incarnation.
edited 19th Oct '16 7:15:04 AM by Ogodei

That said, it's a lot easier for me to be neutral about this since I don't live anywhere near a nuclear power plant.
edited 19th Oct '16 2:34:54 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised