American Politics: Discuss and Debate (Page 12 of 57)

This is the problem. Republicans and Democrats who are more interested in putting on a good show than representing the interests of the people who voted for them. It isn't Trump that's incompetent. It's the fact that he is highlighting the incompetence of everyone else too. Most of the people in Washington are just con artists.

Info, this is not about politics.  This is about the LAW and the CONSTITUTION.  Barack Obama like George W. Bush before him, were not perfect, but they were decent, good men with morals, and were capable of deep thought and KNEW the definition of justice.  They did not lie constantly.  This is a totally different animal.  Republicans are sick of this scumbag.  This has NOTHING to do with Washington's "swamp."  This is 100% about a maniac now running the country.

Donald Trump has fired the acting AG Sally Yates, US Attorney of NYC Preet Bharara, and now FBI Director James Comey.  How many more law enforcement officials will this con artist get rid of before the GOP finally do what they are PAID to do, which is to provide oversight and checks and balances?  Would I personally want a President Pence?  Of course not, but this guy needs to go.

I honestly don't understand this sentiment.  Is Trump doing damage to the country?  Probably.  Is it potentially dangerous across the world?  Probably.  I can't answer "yes" to either of these questions because I don't consider myself well-read enough to definitively answer either way.

But unless someone launches nukes, nothing is irreparable.  Trump is a shitty president.  But we've had shitty presidents before.  Loads of them.  We've had a celebrity president before (Kennedy and Reagan, in their own ways, were celebrities like Trump).  We've had crazy presidents (Andrew Jackson was ten times crazier than Trump, and I won't allow an argument to be made for the contrary).  We've had presidents who didn't know what they were doing and just wanted to be president because it sounded cool (Warren G. Harding just wanted to play poker with his friends).

The Republic survived.  And it will survive Trump. 

People always want to believe that we live in the X-est time in history.  For millennia, people have believed that they're living in the end times.  But, more these days, we want to talk about things in hyperbole.  "2016 was the WORST YEAR EVER" "Race Relations are the worst they've been since the CIVIL WAR"  "Bush/Obama/Trump is HITLER"  When, in all those cases, it's hyperbole.  2016 probably isn't in the worst 1000 years ever, race relations are much better than they were in a lot of people's lifetimes despite everything that's happened, and there was one Hitler and he's dead.

http://jezebel.com/tennessee-woman-atte … 209243/amp

Too far.

Roaming Millennial recently posted a video on YouTube that caused a stir. In it, she makes the case against vegans (not veganism as a practice, just the actual vegans) who tend to have a d-bag complex. The point of her argument isn't that being a vegan is wrong, it's that those d-bag vegans aren't going to do anything to further their cause, because nobody likes a d-bag.

I agree with her, and I don't think that it's limited to vegans. I think that people who are concerned with the environment have the same issue. Whereas most people would agree that we want less litter and less smog, just for the sake of living in this world, and that we'd all love some sustainable alternative source of energy, the environmentalists tend to go a little crazy, betting all their chips on man-made climate change. They enter an unnecessary battle with people.

The same idea is true with many other activist groups as well. If they cared more about the change they want to see, and less about the cause that makes them feel like they're a very special warrior of justice, the world would be a much less dickish place to live. Nobody wants to eat lunch with the crazy Christian who is telling everyone that they're going to Hell. Cuz that guy's a dick too.

It's true. It's become entertainment, in a way. People have their teams, just like with football. They cheer when their team scores, and they throw a fit and call the ref an idiot when they don't get their way. It has nothing to do with any actual issues (in fact, I've seen some loud Hillary supporters who I'm pretty sure don't realize that they're actually conservative in terms of beliefs). It's just teams. You never question your team. You never consider cheering for something that the other team did.

The real world has been suffering ever since the line between entertainers and politicians was crossed. I don't mean entertainers who become politicians, I mean treating politicians as though they're entertainers. Rubbing elbows with actors and musicians at swanky Hollywood parties, because they're all rich and famous, with huge egos. You eventually blur the lines between Kimye, and the people who control the nation's stash of nukes. Issues that should absolutely be debated and discussed in great detail are reduced to which team you're on. Too many people have no idea what they're actually supporting. You see people who support something when they're told that Hillary Clinton said it, and then turn around completely when they see that Trump actually said it. You see government officials saying that they'd support something if Hillary's name were on it, but it's criminal for Trump to propose it.

It's all disturbing.

Exactly.  You hate everything your rivals do, even if it's probably something you'd love for your team to do.  I honestly think that a good percentage of the problem with the health care debate is that each party wants credit for it.  I think the Republicans could pass an identical bill to ACA, and the Democrats would try and vote it down.  Because each party wants to campaign with "we fixed health care"

It isn't really about helping people or anything.  It's about the appearance of helping people to get votes next time.  As someone who doesn't identify with either party, it's infuriating.

And what's crazy is I don't think I'm that different from most people.  I'm liberal in certain areas and conservative in others.  In the last election, I voted for nearly the same number of democrats and republicans and went with 3rd parties (left and right) a few times.  Siding unilateral with either party is confusing to me.

I was debating whether this was a Marvel comment or a political comment. Finally settled on political.

I was reading an interview with the producers of AoS on TV Line (a site which is growing insufferable quickly) and they made a comment about the actor who plays Fitz wanting to wear his hair a certain way for this alternate reality storyline (or whatever it is. I haven't seen it yet). They joked that he is a Nazi now, based on the hair. So I looked it up, and saw that it's actually a pretty traditional hairstyle, so I was confused by the comment.

More Googling showed me that this is actually a thing now. Hipster millennials are freaking out because of this "Nazi" hairstyle that they suddenly realized they were using. Some people are trying to push the idea that it's some secret symbol for white nationalists.

Seriously. The derangement is getting out of hand. Having a man's hair cut short on the sides and longer on top isn't a Nazi thing. If they wore the style, it's because it's a pretty old style for men. The actual styling changes from person to person. Some just have messy spikes on top, some have a center part, some have the neat side part with slicked back hair... But the actual cut is pretty standard. Mostly because it's simple and doesn't require much fuss.

People need to stop looking for Nazis as though they're Waldo. They're not exactly a secret society that's known for being subtle. The hairstyle thing is ridiculous.

Watergate took over two years to reach Nixon resigning, at which point formal impeachment proceedings had barely started.  And that was with the opposing party in charge of both houses of congress.  If there's anything to this, it will take a while before it's resolved.

The ride would be so much smoother for republicans with pence or ryan but they need the political capital to get rid of trump or the citizens in their communities will have bone to pick with them.  it doesn't hurt that trump is losing supporters, i guess. at some point it may reach a tipping point, and republican congress acts.

Well, this is my next big concern.  People were talking about impeaching Trump before anything happened.  Before he took office.

And I'm worried about two things:

1. Is this going to be the new political world?  If we don't like a president or didn't vote for him/her, we're just going to demand impeachment at every turn for any reason?  Not just "I don't approve of the president" - "HE/SHE HAS TO GO!"

2. What if they get Trump on some sort of technicality?  Not necessarily a crime...something light and flimsy.  Doesn't that set a terrible precedent for future presidents?  Wouldn't hardcore republicans try the *exact same thing* with *whoever* the next Democratic president is?  Put pressure on them from day one....wait for any mistake...and strike?  Trump's awful....but wouldn't any president make a mistake under 24/7 scrutiny?

Any politician is motivated significantly by the ability to move their agenda. With all the chaos going on, which I think is disrupting getting things done, surely at a certain point if they feel there's enough of a smoking gun AND they won't get too much flack from their constituents, I think they will make their move.

We don't know anything legit about the Comey memo, except that if Comey took anything Trump did as an attempt to sway an investigation, he was obligated to report it. He didn't.

A lot of what we are working with here is wishful thinking and anonymous sources. There isn't any actual evidence so far. So discussing an impeachment at this point is just an attempt to get to the result you want, whether or not Trump actually did anything.

As I've said before, Trump isn't the one (or the only one) acting immature and foolish, nor is he the one (or only one) putting our entire system at risk over pettiness and greed. What we learned from those released emails is that Hillary and the DNC actually took steps to manipulate the election. Should I assume that everyone is equally outraged by that?

I certainly think that's an issue.  I'm not sure what he was planning, but it should be addressed if this escalates.

Okay, I have a question. Say there's no evidence of Trump messing with the election or working with the Russians, or any of that stuff that people have been going crazy over. Undoubtedly, there will still be speculation and all sorts of anonymous sources full of mysterious references to documents that we will never see, but let's say that there is no actual evidence.

Now say that despite this lack of evidence, political machines manage to turn these accusation into an impeachment and boot Trump from office (this is hypothetical, so don't ask me to explain how).

At that point, do you celebrate Trump being gone? Or do you protest the corrupt and underhanded method by which it happened?

Hypothetical question aside and moving on to a different topic, I think that the media is getting dangerously close to "boy who cried wolf" territory. One minute, people in the media are throwing around words like "treason" and "impeachment", and the next, they're backing away from such words, because there's no actual evidence of wrongdoing. They really should hold back on the speculation and outrage machine-fueling until they have something factual to report. I've seen so many stories today with comments like "President Trump is denying allegations...", when the real story is that there really wasn't a story when the press ran with it.

I think that there may very well come a time when there is something legitimate to report on Trump, but members of the media, from "legit" journalists, to late night comedians have been so gung-ho, focusing on one narrative and one endgame since election night, that there is a real risk of people ignoring a real story if it should actually arise. The bias is already undeniable. The lack of professionalism is obvious. We're getting to a point where, as Trump once said, he could shoot someone in Times Square and get away with it, because he's told some version of the truth more often than the press has.

Makes me wonder if this isn't a strategy of some sort. Is Trump making the press look crazy, so anything they say later won't be taken seriously?

I'm basically just asking if evidence actually matters anymore, or if it's more important to get rid of someone that you don't like.

The fact is that at this point, there is no evidence to suggest that Trump actually tried to interfere with an investigation. We say "Comey's notes" are third-hand tellings from anonymous "sources", based on documents that may or may not exist, about an event that possibly didn't even happen, and if it did, could have been a completely innocent comment.

Basically, at this point, they're as relevant as a figment of a reporter's imagination. We can't even take them into consideration, because we can't even see what they actually say.

I'm sure that Trump's not happy about it. I'm sure that he's tired of the democrats and the press trying to discredit his election (which they're absolutely doing). And I think that Trump and his team need to work on their communication, because they often contradict each other. People who need to be in the loop don't seem to be in the loop. I get that Trump has no love for the press, and I don't blame him, but he needs to have a coherent message for the American people. Right now, he doesn't.

That said, I don't think that Comey's firing is the smoking gun that people are hoping for. The man was bad at his job and deserved to be fired a long time ago.

James O'Keefe didn't just tell someone about a portion of a video that he saw once. He releases videos. Some of them I find interesting. Some I do not. Again, it's not about putting me weight behind any person. I'm not a Sarah Palin fan. I think she did some good things early on, but she got a big head. I like her compared to McCain, but that's like saying that I prefer Trump to Clinton. It doesn't mean that I necessarily like either.

The fact is that we don't have a Comey memo. We don't even have a full telling of what's in that memo, if such a memo exists. We have someone else's interpretation of a fragment of a retelling about an event that Comey apparently didn't see as a big deal... if it happened at all. Therefore, I can't take that half-baked concept of a memo and consider it evidence. I consider what we have and weigh it accordingly. As I said, I think that Trump's team isn't working well together, but that doesn't make anything he's done illegal. Did he give the Russians information? Maybe. Was that illegal? No. He's the President. It's only a scandal because it's Trump.

As endearing as it is that you find it to be your responsibility to assign me some easy-to-digest ideology that you can quickly dismiss, your assessment of what you think I believe is not an accurate representation of what I actually believe. I think Trump is scum and has probably broken a million laws in his career as a businessman. I think that if he's breaking laws now, odds are, he's smart enough to not strong-arm the FBI director who is taking notes during their conversation, and who is leading an investigation into corruption. I think that if that happened, Comey probably would have reported it, because not doing so is a crime.

When did it become a bad thing to actually want to see evidence? There were any number of accusations and rumors surrounding Obama that I didn't get on board with, because those reports lacked actual evidence. What you guys are doing is taking a rumor about something that might exist, but for which we have no proof, and holding it up as though it's a solid piece of the "get Trump" campaign.

To be clear, I don't want Trump as President. I would love for him to be replaced by someone who was more capable of doing the job. If an investigation comes up with evidence of wrongdoing, I'm all for him being booted. I'm just not willing to believe anything that anyone says about him, just because it sounds like something I'd imagine him doing. And while he's in office, I think that the constant undermining of his role as President is doing none of us any good. Sabotage and shadow governments are a very dangerous precedent to establish.

Very interesting writeup from a friend of James Comey sharing Comey's account of Trump.
https://lawfareblog.com/what-james-come … nald-trump

And Informant raises an excellent question: why should we trust the anonymous sources of the Washington Post and the New York Times? WP supported the war in Iraq with bogus information. NYT had to fire Jayson Blair. And so on.

My attitude is that the White House response to the assertions made by the anonymous sources are so incoherently self-contradictory, so reactively defensive and so quickly undermined that it makes the unattributed claims all the more credible.

Reports that Trump had fired Comey over the Russian investigation were met with Trump's surrogates saying it was due to the deputy attorney general's memo, that it had nothing to do with the investigation, that Comey's handling of the Clinton email case was poor -- only to be overturned by Trump himself declaring that he had planned to fire Comey for ages over being a "showboat" and a "grandstander" and, indeed, for the Russian investigation.

Trump claimed Comey asked to have dinner together and to keep his job at the FBI, an absurd claim as the FBI and White House traditionally stay separate. Comey had many more years left on his term of duty. Trump's ridiculous account lends greater credence to the report of Comey's memos saying that Trump insisted on their meeting to demand a loyalty pledge. The claims from the anonymous sources make coherent sense.

The White House's responses to these accusations are inconsistent, self-contradictory, overturned shortly after their delivery -- which are all the hallmarks of people running scared from the truth, grabbing whatever lie comes to mind before throwing it away in favour of another lie, ricocheting from one flimsy denial to the next. At least that's how it looks to me.

Comey will testify publicly to the Senate, so those questions will be asked.

If O'Keefe's targets responded with a series of contradictory denials, each more self-incriminating and ludicrous than before, I'd find O'Keefe's assertions credible as well.

Seems like I'm not the only one having to explain their views as someone who voted for Trump. In this instance, I more or less agree with Roaming Millennial... https://youtu.be/rt1Wx97WYiI

Once the President decides to hand over information, it's no longer classified. He has the ability to declassify information if he wants. For example, if Obama wanted to share information about British nuclear weapons with the Russians... actually, he did do that. Which seems worse to me than Trump telling the Russians about an ISIS plot to put bombs in laptops.

Why are people so shocked and upset about this sort of thing, unless they haven't been paying attention until now?

Trump has done and said any number of things that I disagree with, but as far as I can tell from the evidence that we have, he hasn't broken any laws or done anything that justifies impeachment.

And Trump revelations continue to bear an uncanny resemblance to President Lex Luthor's ousting from the White House...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na … c0049f1ebe

Off the top of my head, I haven't been happy with Trump's willingness to settle on a half-assed Obamacare repeal, just so he can say that he got it passed. I would rather see a longer process with a better result than a quick process that makes more of a mess.

Also, I didn't like the situation with the Turkish guards beating protesters in the US and thought that Trump should have stepped up and taken a firmer stand on that when it happened.

I think he has failed to pull his team together and communicate with his own people, which results in different people speaking without knowing all of the facts.

I'm sure there are other things, but I'm watching something while I type this, so my brain isn't all here.

Crazy week in news.

Black Lives Matter awarded a peace prize...

The mainstream media turns a Twitter typo into an espionage conspiracy.

Kathy Griffin starts a sh*tfire and then holds the most hilarious press conference ever in order to manage the backlash (exclusive footage available here: https://youtu.be/aUFdnPLHX-g )

And another terrorist attack. I've run out of ways of expressing sympathy and outrage. I'm sure that the hashtags and apathy will put an end to terrorism eventually though. If they don't work, maybe I'll change my Facebook profile pic. That'll show them.

I don't mean to make light of these attacks, but I find it absolutely baffling to see people carefully stepping around the extremist elephant in the room as they discuss how we should be addressing terrorism going forward. Some have the nerve to say that we should get used to it, or we should have sympathy for the hardships that the terrorists have faced. Screw that. All of my sympathy is tied up elsewhere.

The world has cancer and far too many people are putting their faith in happy thoughts and well wishes to eradicate that cancer.

You're projecting onto most religions. Clearly, one of these things is not like the others.

For rational people, maybe. But there is a big problem with people who are completely unwilling to address the problem of terrorism and the community that is stems from. Obama wouldn't even reference Islamic terrorism because he was afraid of offending the nice Muslims. We have first-world politicians who are more likely to be outraged by a Trump tweet than to be outraged by the fact that entire communities in Europe are turning into third-world style no-go zones, run by largely-Muslim gangs that rape, kidnap and assault people who enter their territory.

Not talking about people on this board, but I have been called "literally" a Nazi sympathizer, because I voted for the "racist", "fascist" and "dangerous" Donald Trump and his "Muslim ban", by people whose response to these endless terrorist attacks is to post a hashtag and insist that we must support the Muslim community, or else the terrorists have won. My mind is officially boggled. People will physically attack people over relatively small political differences, and then turn around and demand sympathy and tolerance for communities that believe in honor killings.

I am not saying that every Muslim is evil. I am saying that there is a clear and dangerous problem in the Muslim community, and it reaches beyond those who plow down crowds of people at a time or shoot up night clubs. A lot of these communities are made up of people from nations that do not live by the standards of the modern world, and pretending that they are the same as the rest of us, just because we don't want to sound racist, is insane. You can't just grab people from one land and throw them into the middle of a foreign and fundamentally different community, and expect it all to go swimmingly.

There is a huge issue here that people are not discussing, because it requires being blunt and potentially offensive. In other words, it's a grown-up conversation about real world issues. Until that issue is addressed and dealt with, there is not going to be an end to these attacks. London, France, Australia... and these are just the ones that are still in the current news cycle.

People have a right to free speech (in the US. In London, saying that you want to end terrorism will have you investigated for hate crimes) and the right to practice their religion. I'm not saying that they don't, and I'm not saying "every middle eastern person..." I am saying that there are *cultures* that are simply not compatible with our culture, and we can't pretend that they are. The comes a point where trying to be inclusive just gets people raped and/or killed.

It's amazing how much of this post is made up of me trying to explain a rather obvious opinion in a way that doesn't set off "racist" alarms in peoples heads. It should  have been a three sentence post!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na … fd6f98a8b7

This is only the beginning.

I just want it to all be over, one way or another.  I feel like both sides are so petty about this, and it's accomplishing nothing.  Trump is an idiot, but he's an idiot that no one on either side really wanted.  I'm sure the Republicans are happy to have control of the White House, but I'm sure they wished it was by some other means.  And the Democrats are so focused on what they feel was stolen from them that they can't do anything else.

If Trump committed any crime at any point....sure, get him out of there.  But I'm still worried about the next domino.  No matter what, the next democratic president is going to be under insane scrutiny.  It doesn't matter who it is, but if the democrats thought the republicans were hard on Obama and Hillary...imagine all the insanity that will happen when they try and retaliate for Trump's dismissal.

Yesterday's shooting should've been more alarming.  A shooting that was exclusively "us vs. them" politically motivated.  No one died, but blood was shed in a (becoming-literal) war between republicans and democrats.  As someone who doesn't identify as either, it's sickening to see how people are acting.  Neither side has any interest in the high road, and both are de-humanizing the other to the point where I'm worried that events like this are going to be more common.  If the people on the other side are just brainless monsters that are trying to destroy everything you have, why not just kill them all?

It's terrifying.