The Politics Thread

[Juliajms]

^ That's about what I would expect from him. 

[ReddFoxx]

It terrible how hard it is to feel safe anymore. And this arm everyone nonsense is just irritating.

[Khan]

But that's always their response to tragedies such as these, isn't it?  "Hey, this could all have been avoided, if more people had more guns!"  Seriously, white men would LOVE it if this country were more like a rerun of "Gunsmoke" or "The Rifleman."

[Bright Eyes]

 

Until a major tragedy only effects heterosexual white men who are not allies of equality, those responses will continue. And honestly, even afterwards I wouldn't have any faith that sordid group of people would learn their lesson.

[Juliajms]

It did and they didn't.  Remember when those Congressmen got shot up at a baseball game? I know there are too many shootings to keep up with, but that was a year or two ago.

[Bright Eyes]

 

You right about they're being too many to keep up with. Did any powerful men die?

[Juliajms]

No, I think just a few Republican congressmen got shot. Let me see if I can find an article.

 

I take it back, only one got shot.  I doubt even a massacre would change their minds though. It's hard to get through to extremists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting

Edited October 27, 2018 by Juliajms

[Vee]

[DramatistDreamer]

Trump is such a compulsive, pathological liar and the standards in the U.S. have been lowered so drastically in a year that he continues to face no repercussions as a result of his dangerous rhetoric and constant lies.

 

How the f*ck was Wall Street/NYSE going to open immediately after September 11th, when two planes hit the Twin Towers that were located in The Financial District!!!  When will some Americans start to use their heads?  

[Max]

 

Jane, thank you so much for your kind words.

 

Regarding Maine, I should have been clearer in stating that I also think it is not a Republican state. The point that I meant to convey was that (based on recent election results) it seems to be trending to the GOP. Because of this rightward trend, Maine can no longer be seen as the liberal stronghold that it was perceived to be even as recently as five or so years ago. Rather, I consider Maine to be a state that's only slightly more Democratic than the country as a whole.

 

Digging a little deeper, while Maine as a whole is a light blue state, its two Congressional districts are very different in their politics. Maine's 1st Congressional District, located in the southeastern coastal portion of the state, is still a liberal stronghold (similar to many other places in New England). Obama won the district by 21.39% in 2012 and Hillary won it by 14.81% in 2016. But in recent years, Maine's 2nd Congressional District--which covers the vast geographic area of the rest of the state--has become undoubtedly the most conservative area of New England. It's big shift to the right is very reminiscent of what has recently occurred in Iowa (which is similar demographically to Maine's 2nd Congressional District). In 2012, Obama won the district by 8.56%, yet Trump carried the district by 10.29% four years later. (For reference, the numerical shift in Iowa was as follows: Obama won the state by 5.81% in 2012 while Trump won it by 9.41% in 2016.) Since the two Congressional districts have roughly equal population, the net result is that Maine has recently moved from being a dark blue state (giving Obama a 15.29% statewide victory in 2016) to one that is light blue (as HRC won a statewide victory of only 2.96% in 2016).

Edited October 27, 2018 by Max

[Juliajms]

Damn.

 

[Vee]

He sounds like he's trying to convince himself.

 

 

[Juliajms]

Even now they don't stop.

 

[Max]

 

It really baffles me why so many NeverTrumpers like Nikki Haley. During the primaries, she was very critical of Trump, and she could have shown true leadership by refusing to have anything to do with him. Instead, she frequently came to his defense over the past two years.

 

It's important for me to add that I don't begrudge anybody for joining Trump's Cabinet if their primary motivation was to curb Trump's worst instincts for the good of the country. In fact, I think that American people owe a big debt of gratitude to individuals who joined the Cabinet for that reason. To give you some examples of current or former members of the Trump Cabinet who would fall into this category, I would cite James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and even Rex Tillerson. (Granted, Tillerson was a very odd choice for Secretary of State. However, I do think he tried his best during his tenure and recognized what a global threat Trump posed.) However, I believe that Haley joined Trump's Cabinet primarily as a way to further her naked ambition to one day become POTUS (and her frequent pubic defenses of Trump, which I mentioned earlier, reinforce this belief).

 

Conversely, I never understood why so many liberals believe that anti-Trump Republican members of Congress such as Ben Sasse and Jeff Flake deserve criticism because they vote for the Trump agenda a large portion of the time.  The way I see it is as follows: if Trump proposes a bill that pretty much any Republican POTUS would propose, why wouldn't Sasse, Flake, et al. support that bill? (After all, there was a reason why these people became Republicans in the first place.) Sasse and Flake have both gone on record opposing the policies of Trump's agenda--such as tariffs--that are deviations from what the GOP as a whole believed in prior to the Trump Era. IMO, Sasse and Flake don't have to vote like Chuck Schumer, or even like Heidi Heitkamp, in order to be genuine in their opposition to Trump.

 

As a bit of an aside, I do think that the left has a valid criticism of Sasse and Flake when it comes to their support of Kavanaugh. Out of all the votes that they cast, this is the one instance in which I had a hard time understanding why they voted as they did. My guess is that they (and Susan Collins as well) supported Kavanaugh because they wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and also felt that there wasn't enough evidence to prove that Kavanaugh was guilty of the accusations against him. However, that one vote doesn't change my belief that Sasse and Flake are good men who try their best to do what is right. And for those who knock Sasse and Flake for being "all talk and no action," keep in mind that it takes a lot of courage for any Republican to publicly criticize Trump to the extent that Sasse and Flake have. Because of his "talk," Flake will be out of a job come January. And I don't see how Sasse can possibly win re-election in 2020, either.

 

In short, I think there's a huge difference between Republicans like Nikki Haley and Republicans like Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, and John Kasich. Those in the former group are total cowards who have put aside their one-time opposition to Trump in order to further their own ambitions, while those in the latter group have continued to criticize Trump at a tremendous cost to their political careers.

Edited October 28, 2018 by Max

[DramatistDreamer]

 

 

Apparently, the father abandoned the family when he was a boy so he was raised by his Italian mother.  As preposterous as it sounds to us, he may very well believe that he's white.