American Politics: Discuss and Debate (Page 13 of 57)

In the latest reversal of campaign rhetoric, the Trump administration is not ending the DACA program.  "Dreamers" will continue to receive work permits and be protected from deportation.

One of my favourite games is to keep track of the kinds of people Informant considers to be above reproach. You either have to be the laughingstock of American politics (Sarah Palin), a noted fraudster (James O'Keefe) and apparently, supporting moronic conspiracy theories of zero-evidence but plenty of hatred for black people is also an excellent way to win his approval.

And if you can also be an incompetent US President who blurts out classified information and thinks the best way to avoid obstruction of justice charges is to fire an FBI director in order to obstruct an ongoing investigation, Informant will claim all your problems are someone else's doing!

Leaks to the press are currently one of the few means of holding Trump accountable for his actions given his current hold of the White House, the Senate, Congress, the Department of Justice and his personal wealth. The press is one of the few avenues in which he does not have a high level of control. Furthermore, none of these leaks are in any way illegal because the information is not remotely classified. Is it a firing offense? Certainly. A criminal one? If it were, anyone angsting in a bar about a lousy day at work would be sitting behind bars.

Furthermore, Trump has confessed in one of his random outbursts that he fired the former FBI director to impede the investigation into suspected collusion with Russia. It is illegal to engage in obstruction of justice and to interfere with a criminal investigation regardless of being innocent of the suspected crime. The tradition of the White House and the FBI staying on separate paths is to prevent the executive branch from influencing the Department of Justice for the benefit of the executive branch because it can lead to criminal actions like curtailing proceedings that threatened the commander in chief's legal standing.

As for the complaint that people wanted to impeach Trump before he'd even been sworn into office -- part of it was indeed sour grapes and it'd be silly to think there wasn't a desire to impeach in advance of finding cause. But Trump's behaviour in his business dealings have largely been through fraud: encouraging investors to fund real estate deals designed to collapse with Trump taking their money and running, a fraudulent university, engaging the services of construction and law firms and refusing to pay.

Trump earned his fortune on cheating people and students of his past had a reasonable expectation that Trump take improper advantage of his presidency for personal gain on criminal terms

Shooting Republicans is wrong. Trying to run them off the road is wrong. I'm also uncomfortable with punching Nazis unless it's a time of war. However, it is intriguing that the people who cite acts of Liberal on Republican violence have next to no comment on the burst of hate crimes in the wake of a Trump presidency. The truth is likely a middle ground where anger and partisan rage against either side has led to people revealing their most hateful, volatile and aggressive instincts whether it's on one side or the other.

But regardless of where we stand politically, the US election was subject to a blatant attack on a democratic electoral system by a foreign power that did so to the benefit of a particular individual, possibly in tandem and possibly not, but the truth must be found because this isn't the end. The Russian administration will only increase and further advance their methods of interfering in the process of US government and the consequences will be severe for everyone whether we live in the States or don't. Like it or not, America has led civilization into freedom and progress for over 240 years and it must be defended and protected not just geographically, but ideologically, politically and therefore technologically. I'm not an American, but if you go down, we all go down.

A supposedly innocent President should welcome a full and invasive investigation in order to clear himself and his office, as opposed to firing the former lead investigator and hoping to fire the next one. It's not only the behaviour of a guilty man, it's arguably illegal if evidence can establish the intent to block the investigation. Mueller is a registered Republican who was appointed by George W. Bush as the sixth FBI director. He won universal acclaim from both parties upon his appointment and he should be encouraged to conduct his investigation and find the truth. A person who objects to his investigating Russian interference, potential collusion with Americans and the president obstructing justice is a person afraid of the truth.

The fact that Informant is against a full investigation of the Russian assault on the American electoral process and the potential involvement of the President makes me wonder if Informant loves America as much as he likes to say he does.

The Red Pill. Anyone seen it?

For those who don't know, it's a documentary made by a woman, Cassie Jaye, who came into the project as a feminist who had read some bad things about the men's rights movement, and she set out to investigate. As she made the movie and spoke with several of the activists, as well as feminists and other people, and as she did research into specific issues and cases, Cassie began to question her own beliefs, and while she still believes in a lot of equality issues, she no longer calls herself a feminist.

The movie has been getting a lot of attention lately, both good and bad (depending on who you're reading/watching/listening to). I happened across an interview with Ms. Jaye, from Australia ( https://youtu.be/xvLsslFEv7k ) which I thought was really frustrating to watch, because the interviewers had refused to watch the movie (despite their comments in the interview, Jaye has proven that the full screener was sent to the interviewers three times over the course of about a month, as well as being available on sites like Google Play, etc), yet they were criticizing her approach to making the movie. She was constantly telling them that she had addressed their points in the film, but they kept pressing the matter as though she hadn't... all without having seen the movie.

I see this all over the place, and not just with politics. People comment on issues, or TV shows, or movies, or articles, all without having actually looked at the piece itself. They base their opinions on preconceptions and third-party talking points, and then argue those opinions to the death. It annoys the crap out of me, which is why I have a general policy against criticizing things that I haven't personally looked into/watched/read/etc. (there is a lot of criticism of The Handmaid's Tale now, but I haven't seen it, so I won't criticize it... but I do plan to sit down and watch it when I get some time. I did the same with Dear White People a while back.)

So, I saw that the movie was available on Amazon Prime. I have Prime, so I decided to take the couple of hours to sit down and watch the movie. I wanted to see what was so scary and offensive about what Ms. Jaye was saying.

The movie is actually really interesting. It says a lot of stuff that I've known for a long time. There's no support for men who are sexually assaulted or who are victim of domestic violence. I've read stories where the police will actually laugh at the men who seek help. I've looked up the statistics on male rape in the past... basically, none of the major points were really news to me. I don't necessarily agree with everything that the men's rights activists say (I have no problem with a policy of women and children first in an emergency, and I don't want women drafted into combat situations... though I probably wouldn't mind them being drafted for other wartime roles. Stuff like that), and I don't know that Jaye did either. However, I found her personal journey throughout the making of the movie to be really interesting. You can see legitimate change coming over her as she actually talks to people, from both sides.

The thing that is annoying is the concept that in order to give an inch to one person/group, you must take away from someone else. This is all over the place in our culture. There are no shades of gray. There is no nuance of opinion. History is often more processed than canned cheese products. I don't buy into this. I don't think that in order to want to help female victims of domestic violence, you must turn a blind eye to the male victims.

There's this thing with the Black Lives Matter movement, where if you don't support #BlackLivesMatter, you are a racist. If you say that all lives matter, or that police lives matter, you are a racist. However, Black Lives Matter isn't a simple sentiment, it's an organization. It's an organization that has proven to be racist, divisive and violent. So while I might believe that black lives matter, I don't support Black Lives Matter. However, that distinction will have me labeled as a racist, alt-right, neo-whatever.

I've even seen this pop up with stupid TV show or movie arguments. It's not just politics.

At some point, the groups, which essentially becomes competing teams, cause more harm than good. Gender equality shouldn't be about supporting one and bringing down another.

An interesting part about the movie was in watching the different approaches that interviewees took. The men's rights people (often considered to be the evil, sexist ones) were basically just fighting for causes like custody rights, support for male victims of sexual assault or domestic violence, and stuff like that. Meanwhile, the feminist interviewees were fighting against the men's rights people, insisting that they were the hateful, sexist ones, while those men never actually wanted to take anything away from women.

You will tell me that the documentary was obviously skewed, and you're right. Documentaries are all skewed, and all have a message that they're trying to get across (though several of the points they made can be backed up with my own experiences and observations). The thing that made this one interesting for me to watch was the journey for Cassie Jaye herself, who didn't come into this planning to change her own beliefs. Her history shows us that she's not some wacky conservative stooge. And I think that ultimately, the point of the movie isn't about men's rights or anti-feminism. It's about what happens when you stop being defensive, and make an honest attempt to understand the other side of an issue (even if you don't agree with them).

You don't have to be anti-women's rights in order to be pro-men's rights. You don't have to support everything these groups say in order to agree on certain points. You don't have to take from group A in order to give to group B. This has always been my point of view, which is why I don't talk about "cops killing black people" as much as I talk about specific cases, or why I don't support politicians as much as I support points of view (and believe me, the republicans are pissing me off plenty right now).

I see a lot of very angry people who are totally incapable of explaining why they're spewing venom and breaking windows. At some point, it stopped being about any real point of view and started being about whose team can scream the loudest.

Anyway, good movie. Definitely more relevant to politics than to a normal status update or random thought, so I posted it here.

Well, you get an A+ for saying exactly what you're supposed to say.

The problem is that you didn't actually read what I wrote or respond to what I said. You saw keywords, which triggered pre-programmed responses, filled with lots of flashy words and phrases which have probably been put through hundreds of focus groups on Madison Avenue, but which don't really apply to the conversation at hand. You don't have opinions, you have algorithms. And to top it all off, you demonstrated what I actually did say perfectly.

If you had actually read my post, you would have seen that I was talking about the fact that people don't even listen to what the other side says, and this is the problem with our culture. What I was saying was that the movie highlighted the fact that you can agree with a little bit of what someone says without agreeing with everything they say. You would have seen that I specifically stated that I don't agree with everything that the men's rights people said in the movie, but I did agree with some of it. (mostly based on years of my own research, not any group website or slogan)

____ from this point on, I'm just responding to you. None of this is even what I was talking about in my original post ___

You also contradicted yourself. If I must consider myself a feminist because I believe that a woman should have the right to work or vote, or whatever, then you too must be a men's rights activist if you believe that a woman shouldn't be allowed to beat the shit out of a man without facing any legal ramifications. If men's rights groups are perpetuating rape culture, then the women who deny the significant number of male victims of sexual assault would also be guilty of perpetuating rape culture.

But of course, rape culture isn't really about all rape against all people. It's about certain kinds of rape, committed against the right kinds of people.

By your own standards, you are a hypocrite. But, good news! By my standards, you're not! By my standards, you don't have to label yourself a feminist or a men's rights activist just because you believe in some common-sense issues that they put on their posters. Neither of these things are philosophies, they are organizations. Much like cults, they use the sensible, common-sense ideas to draw people in, and the next thing you know, they're using you to march in favor of Sharia Law (guess which group did that... seriously, guess). Feminism is just another means by which people can be grouped together, for easier herding. And this is why I'm not a feminist, nor a men's rights activist, nor a black lives matter activist, nor a Tea Party activist, nor a member of any other organization that will pin my name to whichever belief they feel like supporting at any given moment. I don't even belong to a church because I got tired of this crap. I don't even have a real political label... I'm certainly not a republican. I call myself a conservative, but I also have libertarian views on some subjects.

I don't get how liberals can believe in a hundred and fifty genders, but their view of complex issues is so incredibly binary.

No, I'm not a feminist. I don't give a crap what some half-rate comedian declares to be true. Seriously, why are liberals taking all of their life philosophies from comedians these days? Y'all are following the court jester into battle there.

I'm no expert on the whole system or how it works. I'm not a part of it, nor is Cassie Jaye. I know what she spoke to Men's Rights Activists about in her film, and I agree with a lot of it, but disagree with some of it. I also know that there isn't one "men's rights movement", so when you say that it's made up of a bunch of crazies, you're going to have to specify which group you're talking about. I know there's a Reddit group that sounds crazier than other groups.

No, Paul Elam is not the star subject. You need to stop getting all of your information from angry articles that have obvious bias. Elam was interviewed, but it was just on of many people interviewed. Jaye did not ask him many hard hitting questions, but she also didn't do that with the feminists that she interviewed. She took the approach of letting them speak for themselves, which I think works best for a documentary. It's not a hard-hitting interview.

That said, when it comes to Elam's comments that you mentioned about, one of four things is happening:

1. You are willfully misrepresenting what the man was trying to say.
2. I am looking at the wrong videos/articles written by him (I only looked at two of the three that you mentioned, due to lack of time and my back killing me)
3. You're getting your information about these comments from third or fourth hand sources who are distorting what he said in order to misinform people.
4. This is like one of those optical illusions where we can look at the same thing but see totally different pictures.

In regards to Asian women, the video that I watched with Elam had him responding to comments made by some rather stupid sounding men in his comments section, where they declare that they're going to go get them some Asian women, because they're more submissive. Elam spoke about how there are basic cultural differences when it comes to relationship dynamics in some areas of Asia, which mean that these men might be expecting a 1950's American wife, but that's not what they'll be getting. He also spoke to the fact that those cultures are changing, so these men could very well end up with a radical feminist. And he said that anyone wife that you get from shopping around on the internet is probably going to be a bad idea (typically, we refer to Russian mail-order brides, not Asians, but I guess it's the same concept). The moral to his video was that these people need to stop being stupid and be realistic about women. You find a mate by meeting people and getting to know them.

And in regards to "all rapists should go free" thing... not remotely what you said it was, if the article that I looked at was correct. It was an article discussing how many men have been cleared of rape charges since their DNA could be checked against evidence, and how there are an alarming number of false allegations of rape around the country. There are also laws that are meant to protect victims of rape from further stress, but these laws are sometimes used to prevent relevant evidence from being seen, and often present the man accused as being guilty in the courtroom, despite the fact that he is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

He talked about how this is an incredibly complicated subject, but if you are on a jury and can't be sure that you are being given all of the information needed to decide a case, how are you supposed to decide that someone is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?

And... that's a good point. Sorry, but it is. We've had a shit-ton of rape allegations that have been proven false, and in most of those cases, the life of the man (or men) accused is still ruined. This is a very, very complicated subject because nobody wants to do more harm to a victim, but we also can't work under the assumption that the person that is being accused is actually guilty until a verdict is reached. Which means that any action taken against the accused in order to shield the accuser is going to be biased.

The article was written with a deliberately startling concept, but it wasn't presented a great option. It was presented as a need for a real examination of this issue to take place, because a lot of officials are more interested in getting a conviction than getting the truth.

So, did I read the wrong article and watch the wrong video? Or did you get your impressions from articles written about the comments? Or do you look at the same thing as me and just see something completely different? Because I'm sure as hell not a supporter of rapists, and I have no dog in this race of feminists vs. men's rights activists. I'm sure there are plenty of loons on both sides. So... I don't get where you're coming from here. If you wouldn't mind making some actual comments about the issues, rather than vague references to things that don't seem to fit what you're saying, maybe I could see your view more easily. (I realize that that sentence could be read as snarky, but I didn't mean it to be snarky)

I'm not alt-right. Nor am I a Trump supporter.

Maybe I should write an erotica trilogy based on that experience...

Or not.

Transmodiar, you are public enemy number one of this Bboard, I should at least get a few laughs out of it.

**

In the past, due to Informant's comments asking me to try to see things from his end, I've read PRIMETIME PROPAGANDA  in which Ben Shapiro asserts that TV shows featuring gay characters and a belief in equality and tolerance for difference indicates hostility towards Republicans (whom he apparently considers against truth and justice). I've rewatched Sarah Palin's interviews and James O'Keefe's videos and these people come off as alternatively deceitful or deranged with their only redeeming virtue being that they claim to be on Informant's end of the political spectrum. 

Long before this thread, I encountered Elam's hate speech. One of Elam's more disturbing essays includes the view: "I have ideas about women who spend evenings in bars hustling men for drinks, playing on their sexual desires … NO, THEY ARE NOT ASKING TO GET RAPED. They are freaking begging for it. Damn near demanding it."
https://www.scribd.com/document/2346962 … ce-for-Men

I just don't have anymore energy left to look into Informant's experts of choice. And I am not watching a documentary that tries to legitimize this man nor would I trust his statistical analysis of rape reports. I'm also not going to worry about convincing Informant. I just want it on the record that I consider Paul Elam a women-hating loon and I cannot stress enough in the name of all that is holy that Informant's views do not represent the views of Sliders.tv.

Informant's opinions are welcome here; I just don't want them mistaken for a Bboard consensus. Not that there is a consensus. I mean, we can't even agree on the correct episode order for Season 2.

I can't agree with that. You are free to watch it in production order, of course, but I feel that "As Time Goes By" is, as Ian McDuffie put it, the unplanned series finale of SLIDERS.

I got it! I know how to explain it! Finally!

Think of world views as Sliders. Yes, I identify as a fan of Sliders, however, my actual position is much more nuanced than that. I am a fan of some episodes, but probably not a fan of most episodes, and saying that I'm a fan of Sliders technically puts me in the same corner as some people that I'd rather not be associated with. So saying that I'm a fan of Sliders could lead people to a lot of wrong conclusions about my tastes in general, while still being a true statement. The only way to actually know what I think on the specific Sliders-related issues would be to ask me.

And Jerry O'Connell would be a good representation of politicians and commentators. While I generally think he had the talent to be on the show, I do not always support the way he behaved while working on the show, the character choices that were made, and even today... Jerry kinda annoys me. His sense of humor reminds me of one of those embarrassing dads who is always trying to be "on" and funny, but just comes across as lame. Seems like a nice guy and he appears to have embraced the Slider within, but there's just something that irritates me when I'm watching him on talk shows.

In general, my views tend to be all shades of gray, rather than the on/off switch approach that is so popular today.

It's a story. Honestly, that's it. It's a story that was created by all sorts of activists and journalists, and each added something new before passing it on. Trump's a rapist! Trump's a sexist! Trump's a racist! Trump's a Russian spy! Trump's a homophobe!

Flashback to:

The primaries. There were about seventeen thousand republican candidates. Most of them were probably more capable of doing the job of President (there are one or two that I'd put at about Trump's level). Most of them could be mature, but strong. Most could work with the other side, while not betraying what the people elected them for in the first place.

But what fun was that? None. A bunch of old white dudes (ignore the black guy, the woman and the hispanics, who count as white in certain situations anyway) are boring! And what's worse, they're the kind of boring that could actually beat Hillary, because she's the devil and just about nobody in the world would want to have her in office.

This is why the media started focusing on Trump. He was insane, and they loved it. Probably 90% of their coverage of republicans went to Trump, because during the primaries, the media was pulling for Trump. It was a joke within the media, because it would stick republicans with a moron, and Hillary could glide right on through to the Oval Office.

They failed to consider a couple of things, like the fact that most people hate Hillary Clinton, and also, Hillary is senile. Putting her next to Trump didn't make him look more crazy. If anything, it made her look slightly less crazy.

So, Trump is the republican candidate, and that's when the press starts attacking him (remember, they were building him up before this). Next thing you know, it doesn't even matter what Trump says or doesn't say. They pin every label on him, from "racist" to "Hitler".

And... he still wins the election. Because people f***ing hate Hillary Clinton. The more they made him the anti-Hillary, the more people bought a ticket to that crazy train.

Now he's in office. The activists and journalists are flipping the hell out, because he isn't just crazy, he's uncontrollable. He doesn't care if they say mean things about him. He doesn't seem to care about the appearance of caring about all of their causes. And the louder they scream, the more he just doesn't care.

The mistake here is in assuming that Trump is the only one who is crazy and childish. Everything he does is matched by the press and the activists, and the other politicians, and the celebrities. This isn't *because* of Trump. It's just that Trump was one of them and now he's on the other side. Now their crazy is on full display for all the world to see.

They want him gone, so they're just making stuff up about him. They're ignoring actual stories, in order to focus on more sensational stories. They are creating the narrative of a dictator.

And now it's gotten to the point where people are cosplaying oppression ( http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/handma … 202479843/ ). Why? Because it's romantic (like any other cosplay). It makes them feel like they are righteous about something. Like their lives mean more than they actually do. The idea of being oppressed makes them feel empowered. It's sick, but that's what happens when a group of activists live in a place that simply isn't holding them down.

It's a horror story. It gives people a monster to be afraid of and a bad guy to fight. The truth is, Trump's not remotely fascist for calling out news outlets, and none of the people who supporting those outlets gave a damn when Obama did it to Fox News or others.

I'm watching The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu, and then I see articles talking about how timely it is and how relevant it is to the current administration. And it's all just a big giant role playing game. I can't think of any other way to view it, because that view is so incredibly detached from reality that it's unbelievable to see it popping up in "reputable" publications.

Trump is crazy. Trump's a liar. Trump is a manipulator. Trump is many, many things that I don't like, and I would rather have someone else in that office. But he's ain't the only crazy one. Hell, he isn't even the only one to have that job within the past year. And he's still less scary than Hillary.

The story is comforting. It allows people to disconnect from reality and throw an epic tantrum in a way that makes them feel connected to other people. It's cosplay.

Yeah, that's bad (if it's true), and unacceptable. But let's not act as though Trump is the first President to do something like this. Are we going to suddenly start acting shocked and outraged when a President targets his political enemies? (That is not me condoning it or excusing it. But I ran out of pearls to clutch a long time ago)

Bright side: at least he didn't use a federal agency to do his attacking! Using a tabloids must have saved taxpayers a ton of money!

Well, that sorta goes into what I was saying.  The guy is a kid, both mentally and emotionally.  If he wants to spend all day tweeting and golfing and being mad at people who were mean to him....isn't that exactly what we want?  If he's a bad leader....shouldn't we want him wasting his time?  It's embarrassing but he's going to be an embarrassment either way.  Wouldn't we rather he be an embarrassment that gets nothing done?

Agreed 100%, and at that point, we have to hope that the other 99% of politicians in Washington are doing their jobs.  More positive change can happen out of Congress anyway (I believe Trump would sign/veto basically anything they told him to do as long as they told him he'd be a great president because of it).  Trump's incompetence actually is highlighting the issues in both parties as far as I'm concerned.  The Republicans should be able to push through their legislation with control of both houses (and they've been doing a terrible job of that). and the Democrats don't seem to be doing anything but focusing on Trump.

The DNC suffered major losses in the last election (way beyond the presidential race), and they've done just about nothing to clean anything up.  It's why I 100% expect Hillary to be the Democratic nominee again in 2020.  They've made zero changes that would delay it, and Hillary's going to keep trying until either she's president or she's dead.

I hate to sound like I'm dismissing something that is obviously not good, but I have to say once again that Trump isn't even unusual for a President, aside from the fact that he's less graceful in dealing with the press. Obama's ego easily matched Trump's. It became such a joke that people started keeping count of how many times he mentioned himself in every speech he gave. He was petty. He was more interested in himself than any part of the general population. He went after his enemies, and used government departments to do it... sometimes quite illegally. And to make matters worse, the press was totally cleaning up after him, keeping all of his big stories buried down as far as possible. By the end, you had them praising him for going eight years without a scandal, which is ridiculous to anyone who has actually been following the news.

It's not just Obama. I mean... this is just politics. They didn't base House of Cards on Donald Trump, after all.

Like I said, I'm not dismissing the fact that this is bad, but people are acting as though Donald Trump is somehow the worst that there's ever been, and he's not. While he is very undignified in terms of how he presents himself and how he deals with people, his actual actions as President aren't even that bad when compared to others. Some part of me even appreciates the fact that there is absolutely no filter on him, because it saves me the time and effort of having to figure out the normal political double-speak.

I know that to people who just got off of eight years of having someone they liked in office, it must seem like a train just went off the rails. Not only do you have to deal with someone who has the personality of a Brillo pad, but you disagree with him on every issue, and then you have the press doing its best to make people feel like Dr. Evil was just elected and the world is doomed... it would suck to be a democrat these days. But, aside from the press creating stories and trying to cause panic in the public, you're pretty much just dealing with what the other side had been dealing with for eight years prior.

I'm not a fan of Donald Trump. I don't like him at all, actually. But I'm coming from a totally different direction from you. At times it might sound like I'm defending him, but the truth is that from where I'm sitting, Donald Trump is still a step up from where we were, and a hell of a lot better than where we could have gone.

Sorry to tell you this, but that sick feeling in your stomach isn't going away anytime soon. Believe me.

Trump's comments are very odd to say the least; but whenever I think of Mika, I think of this:

I have no sympathy or respect for someone who allowed themself to be marketed as a piece of meat on a butcher block.  I mean, literally - a butcher block.  This is supposed to be some kind of journalist or respected authority on women's rights?

I have no respect for them, but just based on their work.

As for Trump, there are plenty of Presidential day-to-day things that are being done, but the press doesn't cover them. They want the ratings. Ratings come from his tweets and the Russia fanfic that they're publishing. It doesn't really come from economy, or jobs, or environmental stuff, or any of that.

I do hope that having Trump in office makes everyone think hard about what they want next time. But while that's happening, I hope that he continues to highlight the fact that the press is a circus, so they can't sway the election next time. Trump is their monster and now they can't control him. It's horrible, but not entirely un-awesome to watch.

People say that he isn't acting Presidential. As though the presidents are royalty and bound to some rules of etiquette. In reality, they've been all over the place. Some have been blindingly stupid, some have been douchebags like Trump, some have been cold manipulators, and a few have been really swell guys. It's the nature of the beast.

(I left out the ones who were quite probably murderers)

The current healthcare system is a bomb. I don't like what the republicans have offered so far, don't get me wrong. They should be doing much more to get rid of Obamacare entirely.

The thing I find hilarious is that the democrats are complaining about the republicans working on it behind closed doors. This is funny because the republicans are being way more open than the dems were with Obamacare, and the fact that there is any conversation happening at all is way more than we got when they were running things.

And then they all go on TV and talk about how many people are going to die. It's a friggin comedy routine.

I agree with that. That's the problem with our system right now, and why we need term limits. I think that there are some who would actually work to make a difference, but they don't have the power to do it.

Yeah, everyone basically has to be willing to do away with their own money and power. It is a messed up system. But at this point, it's pretty clear that anyone in long-term political office (think Pelosi or McCain) is useless to the American people and more interested in themselves.

It would probably also help if these politicians actually had to live in the communities that they represent, instead of just passing through every once in a while.

CNN... Oh, CNN

I am starting to wonder if this network has a future at all. Over the past year, they've been hit by one scandal after another. Leaking debate questions to Hillary, running with fake news stories about Russian hookers, or tying Trump to Russia interference in the election despite having absolutely no evidence... they've just been petty and childish. And now this political gif that Trump tweeted, which is so benign that nobody would have even noticed it if the press (mostly CNN) hadn't tried to turn it into a huge story. Now that it is a huge story, it's turned on CNN because they pursued the gif's source and threatened to dox him. And for what? Posing a harmless gif that the President then tweeted?

CNN isn't just looking like a joke anymore, their corruption is showing through more and more every day, and it's getting harder to just shrug it off.

I know, ireactions is probably rolling his eyes at the James O'Keefe of it all, but O'Keefe's videos aren't revealing anything that we didn't already know. There was no Russia story, so every time they hit that angle, it was a lie. We knew that. There was no Russian prostitute story, so when they reported it, it was a lie. We knew that. We know that it's all about ratings. We know that they're betting on the American people being stupid, and the fact that we have them directly saying it isn't very shocking.

The part where they're attacking private citizens and threatening to dox them because of a stupid gif is a little surprising. And I don't know about the guy who posted it. I don't know if he is a racist or a sexist or whatever, but it also doesn't matter. He could post racist stuff every day and that doesn't mean that he doesn't have the right to do it. It doesn't mean that he doesn't have a right to privacy. Most of us don't put our names or home addresses on the internet, including the people who work at CNN. Their threat to start doxing anyone they don't like or who says mean things about them is going to backfire. Every employee and every anchor could have their info posted online, because there are people who are not going to react well to these threats.

We also have the reveal that CNN edited interviews with Trump supporters, to reframe their comments and make them look bad. Since ireactions has been so outspokenly opposed to the practice of releasing edited video that could change comments or context, can we all agree that it's just as bad when a major news outlet does it?

Any one of these stories or scandals would blow over easily. I'm just not sure how many more of these scandals CNN can handle before they're ruined forever. Their credibility is shot, and while this isn't shocking to any of us who actually pay attention and have recognized their false reporting for years, it's so blatant now that even casual viewers will find it harder to ignore.

People say that Trump hasn't accomplished anything, but I think this shows that he has. He has shown the press for what they are, more than any President that I know of. And yeah, it made Trump look bad along the way, but it's not like we had high standards and expectations for him to begin with.

With regards to CNN, I completely agree with Informant and it's a lengthy pattern of what alternates between journalistic malpractice and journalistic bullying that cannot be allowed to stand. The Intercept has a fairly good overview of recent media recklessness at https://theintercept.com/2017/06/27/cnn … ia-threat/ and their outrage over CNN threatening citizens at https://theintercept.com/2017/07/05/cnn … ddit-user/ is how I feel about it too.

forgot to reply to this.

I can see this happening. CNN is going to have to change, one way or the other. Producers, on-air talent and online "journalists" have all been exposed as being incredibly unreliable, so there's no way to go on with business as usual. (he said, right before this whole story was forgotten and people went back to quoting CNN articles about Trump's relationship with Russia)

But does the world need another E! News? I suppose they could go by way of MTV or The Learning Channel. Reality shows, etc.

I feel like the political connection to this narrative is going to be overlooked though. It's not simply a corruption of journalism here, it's the fact that journalists were working to push the agenda of certain politicians. All of those Russia stories were created to serve a political purpose and to undermine the office of the President. There is a much larger, much more disturbing picture here, and it's not just about ratings.

+1

I watched a ton of CNN during the election, and they were all so anti-Trump that it started to be noticeable.  I think they realized that a) they weren't going to get many conservative viewers who were already firmly at Fox News and b) they could get stronger ratings if they stopped trying to be unbiased.  I think it simply started with hosts like Wolf Blitzer and Ashleigh Banfield leaning slightly left, but I think it's gotten more targeted since then.  I remember the Republican Convention had a mostly-even panel between Republicans and Democrats, and then Democratic Convention panel was about 9 Democrats and 1-2 Republicans.

If they want to respond to Fox News and take the other half of the country, that's fine.  The problem is that CNN still means something to some people.  It used to be a name you could rely on.  To suddenly become Fox News under the guise of something that's better than Fox News is upsetting to me as a former journalist myself.  I almost wish they'd started a new network if that's the direction they were going to go.

Where is Will McEvoy when you need him?

We had this conversation the other day.  We compared it, actually, to ESPN.  ESPN used to fill their programming with stuff like the World's Strongest Man competitions.  The Outdoor Games (lumberjack events).  The X-Games.  Maybe classic sports.  Then, at night, they'd do some live sports (if they could).  Then SportsCenter....which was their money cow.

Then two things happened: the Internet made SportsCenter much less relevant (if you wanted to watch a sports clip, you could watch it whenever you wanted...you didn't have to wait to catch it on SportsCenter) and ESPN got rights to big-named sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, etc).

With their big moneymaker much less powerful, they focused more on their newest toys.  But they felt they were cheapening their "legitimate" sports when they showed the "odd/quirky" stuff like World's Strongest Man.  So that disappeared.  Since they were a legit sports network that only showed legit sports, they needed to fill their time with legit sports news....and that's when opinion shows started to creep in.  They couldn't show legit sports all day, but they could talk about it all day.  So that's what they did.  Sports and politics are very similar - you pick your team and you live and die with it.  There's a clear hero and a clear enemy.  If someone talks the way you think, you tune in.  If not, you either hate-watch or don't watch at all.

It's the same with cable news.  You'd tell the news and it was fine.  But it was repetitive.  You'd tell the same 8 "mundane" news stories over and over again.  Then stuff like 9/11 happened and ratings went through the roof.  They could talk about one thing all day and cover tons of new angles.  They could bring on experts to talk about it.  To keep "breaking news" alive, more stuff had to be considered "breaking news."  Breaking news brought ratings, and they needed ratings.

With politics, they found another moneymaker.  People loved to tune in to hear people that thought like them.  And, in some cases, loved to tune in to hear people that they hated who thought differently.  Elections brought big ratings.  So how can they talk about elections when there isn't an election?  Make the elections last a year!  Even more!  Spin everything politically.  Bring in people who are there for their opinions.  Let the hosts give a few more editorials.

It's a slippery slope but they're similar.  Being big fish in small pools wasn't enough.  Once they had access to bigger pools, they had to evolve to grow.  But they stopped being who they were, and they evolved into something that was unrecognizable and counter to everything they started with.

The issue isn't being discussed in the media in any real way. It's democrats win, republicans lose, and moving on to the latest baseball scores. The truth is, we're all losing. Obamacare shouldn't have passed to begin with. It was never debated or discussed, or revised or even really planned for. It did a lot of damage to a lot of people, and there is no way that it can survive. It will collapse, because it was a house built without a foundation. It was a show that was put on for the public.

Repealing Obamacare is difficult, because there are only so many times that you can change the entire system in one decade. Repealing anything is always harder than passing it. But the truth is, most of the politicians don't want to repeal it. They don't have to live by it, and it doesn't hurt anyone they love, but it serves their political purposes. Republicans who ran on grand promises to repeal Obamcare are now showing that they have no desire to touch the damn thing. They're cowards and liars, and shouldn't be in office.

However, this isn't a win for democrats. The general public still wants it gone. So while this crop of republicans may lose their jobs, that doesn't mean that the democrats will take them over. Obamacare is still failing. People are still hurting.

Liberals tend to think that the more a government controls something and hands things out to the people, the more stable the world will be and the more people will be provided for. I obviously disagree with this philosophy, and I think that you can observe it failing all over the world.

The truth is that, as with most things, a more competitive market with less government involvement would probably help more than anything that the government would do. It would drive down prices for insurance. It would drive down prices for treatment and medication. Opening the market would force competition, and when companies are competing for our business, the consumer usually benefits.

But the politicians are politicians. It would be a mistake to think that they're debating the best course of action for the American people. The truth is, they're doing what's best for them and the careers that should have been over decades ago for most of them. This isn't even about healthcare for most of them, it's about putting on a show about healthcare.

Well the Democratic Party is a mess too.  Recently, a poll came out, and the Democrats don't seem to stand for anything but "not Trump" which is weird because the Republican Party has recently just been "not Obama"

(This is probably a good time to say that I think both parties are spinning their wheels).

And a lot of this is more people I see talking on social media.  There were a handful of somewhat-prominent liberal celebrities saying stuff like "well, John McCain wants to take away people's health care, I guess it serves him right that he got brain cancer"  There's just so much hatred toward people who have (slightly?) different beliefs.  It's really crazy to me.

The healthcare issue is a farce. Most of the people arguing over it don't really care either way, and just want to line their pockets while exempting themselves from anything that might happen. The few who do actually want to put some work into figuring out what works best are screaming into the wind.

Obamacare isn't an option. It never was. It will collapse, and it will do a lot of damage on its way down. Universal healthcare (sometimes called "free" by people who  are slow) will be great if we want higher taxes, lower quality care, and the inability to make our own medical decisions. I don't view that as a good option either. Then again, the old system didn't work either. It drove the cost of healthcare up to ridiculous levels because of the negotiating methods of insurance companies.

The best solution is to lessen the government's role (when do they ever help anything?) and create a competitive market for healthcare. There are places now that don't accept insurance and just perform surgeries with up-front payments, with prices clearly listed on their websites. Those prices are much lower than what you get through normal methods, there is less bullsh-t to deal with, and some people choose that option because they end up spending less than they would if they went through their Obamacare insurance.

Supply and demand. Healthcare isn't a right, it is a business. The problem is, too many people who aren't in that business are trying to control the market. This never works out well and as long as insurance companies are paying politicians to make sure that every citizen must buy a crappy version of their product, this problem isn't going anywhere.

That wouldn't happen. Nobody is going to be turned away. The problem is that before Obamacare, it was easier to work with hospitals, negotiating prices and payments (costs are wildly inflated because of insurance companies).

No business is a business like any other. The key to any of them is finding a way to make the business work. That needs to happen on much more local scale, and the federal government really doesn't have a large role to play. The more they get involved, the more expensive it will be, and the standards of care will drop. Obviously, there would be regulations on what can and can't be allowed, but the VA has proven that the government can't run healthcare.

After my father had his stroke in 2009, we did all kinds of negotiating for his care and rehab. He had insurance, but it didn't cover everything. The companies involved had programs for people whose insurance didn't cover the full cost of their equipment, so we ended up paying nothing. This is because the price of the equipment was inflated because the insurance companies paid a lot. The same thing happens with hospital fees. Once you get down to a patient talking to the hospital, costs go down.

The system was messed up for sure... But now the companies that we were working with don't have those programs anymore. They're out of business because they couldn't make the new system work. And these were well known, big companies.

I've been for that for years.

So to those of you adamantly anti-Trump....what's your best case scenario for a Trump presidency?  Do you want him to make / have made a greivous enough mistake that he has to be impeached before 2018?  Or just after 2018 when the Democrats might have more seats in Congress?  Do you want him to do enough damage to ensure a win in 2018/2020?  Do you want him to mess up and make mistakes so you have something to make fun of?  Or do you genuinely want him to succeed, knowing that his successes would be conservative ones?

It's really hard for me to tell.  The "resistance" loves to make fun of Trump's mistakes ("The Mooch" being the latest, but there have been tons) while also being "horrified" by them.  But when things run smoothly and stuff gets done (say, the travel ban) then that's also horrifying.

Understanding your hatred for him at a personal and professional level, is there anything he could do that would make you happy? 

Because, from my vantage point, the Trump presidency has actually been pretty optimal.  He's not doing a ton of damage, the rest of the world seems to be holding everything else pretty steady, we aren't in any wars, and there's an investigation to see if anything he's done to get elected is shady.  He's not doing anything outlandish or fascist (he's too incompetent for the latter), and he can't get anything pushed through a Republican-majority Congress.

And the revolving door of people in and out the White House is actually good in my eyes.  If Trump is constantly trying to work through chaos, he can't be instigating North Korea or doing anything stupid.  If he spends 90% of his time in office hiring and firing people, then that's only 10% of the time he has to do anything else.  To me, that's a win.

(This is why I feared Hillary more than Donald.  She would've actually governed, but poorly, for probably 8 years.  Donald is going to keep the country in neutral for probably less than four.  And standing still is better than going backwards).