The Politics Thread

[quartermainefan]

"I love the poorly educated!" is something like a line you would hear from Ted Baxter.   I think the republican race is over.  Cruz is cooked and Rubio is a lightweight they are all rallying around out of desperation.  The governor would have been a better choice except he comes off as this weak, ineffective, old drip.   It's fascinating that the republicans have had their party hijacked and stolen.   I wish Max was still here to give us his thoughts on this, because I don't see how a true republican can vote for Trump.   Hillary is more conservative than he is.   She will at least keep the wall street, lobbyist game going they all make money from.   They know what they'll get with Hillary--centrism and pragmatic angling and maneuvering.   Isn't that a safer bet than Trump?

[DRW50]

I could see some Republicans voting for her (although I think party unity will always win out - that and the Supreme Court), but I can also see a lot of Democrats voting for Trump.

[DRW50]

Marco Rubio IS Bill Clinton. This man could lose every state and would still get the Beltway all horned up.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/24/marco-rubio-keeps-losing-so-did-bill-clinton/

[Soapsuds]

I found that damn hilarious even though I am not a fan of Trump. Cruz's campaign is pretty much over and Marco didn't even stay around to make a 2nd place victory speech..he is so good at them….LOL. Btw…Trump's winning speeches are so bad….cringe worthy bad…..he doesn't even know how to speak….LOL

Edited February 24, 2016 by Soapsuds

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

I'm probably on the authoritarian side of the electorate if I'm honest.

 

and every single one of Trumps victory speeches has me cracking up in laughter 

[Juliajms]

The thing about Trump is he's exposed this thread of nationalism and authoritarianism among Americans that I find surprising. I think is taken a lot of people by surprise. Trump is slightly hobbled by age, the trophy wives and the fact that he isn't the greatest speaker, as Soapsuds said. Now that we see this nationalist streak exists, I dread the rise of someone who leans in that direction, but isn't a buffoon.

 

It's really sad how many people really don't understand that America isn't "losing". If anything we have disproportionate amount of power on the world stage and the last thing we need is a leader trying to hammer home the idea that we are entitled to it.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Juliajms

[Soapsuds]

I keep thinking is there an Olympics going on right now that we should be winning? And now we have Trump supports yelling USA USA USA

[ThePrinceOfSunspear]

I agree that America isn't technically losing but try explaining that to the yoyos who've lose their manufacturing jobs and refuse to go get retraining for jobs of the future or believe that illegal immigration is taking other jobs away from them.

 

What appeals to me about Trump is that he projects absolute strength and confidence. I like Obama but I have to admit it feels like America is just another generic player on the world chess board. This whole Guantanamo bay move or his just reeks of weakness. Nothing we do now is going to make the terrorist hate us any less. Nothing is gonna change their recruiting techniques. So why exactly do we want to release all these bad guys. Frankly i agree with Rubio....we should be find ISIS and sending them to Guantanamo. Anyways people want strength....they want security.

 

im just worried about the absolute train wreck we're heading towards with this Trump-Rubio ticket versus Clinton-Phoenix...

[DRW50]

It's easy to feign strength, like media darling Marco, but what exactly does that mean? Look where W's "strength" got us. And how exactly are we going to put ISIS members into Gitmo? Does he have any idea how resilient and dangerous they are? Oh wait - he doesn't give a damn anyway. He's too busy looking for the camera.

 

Trump isn't really strong either, he's just that drunk guy at the party who shouts the loudest. And that appeals to the media and to many people. He's basically a broken down Reagan.

Edited February 25, 2016 by DRW50

[DramatistDreamer]

What I'd like to know is when will Guantanamo go back to Cuban control?  The Panama Canal eventually went back to the Panamanians.  Is Cuba not a sovereign country?  I've never understood this.  Years ago, supposedly Fidel Castro allegedly said he wanted the Americans out of Guantanamo yet the situation is still what it is.    To me, this proves that the U.S. still has outsize influence regardless what Trump says.  Russia wants to fly over the U.S. and people are up in arms- could you imagine if they wanted to house prisoners in say, Alaska?!

[Juliajms]

Last night was the first time in my life that chant scared me.

[Juliajms]

Truly the tip of the iceberg.

 

I like to read Noam Chomsky

https://chomsky.info/articles/

and Arundhati Roy when I start to forget how much damage the American government does to people around the world, largely for corporate interests. Here is an interesting John Cusack wrote about a meeting between him AR, and John Snowden:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33664-things-that-can-and-cannot-be-said-a-conversation-between-john-cusack-and-arundhati-roy

I consider myself a patriot, but we have had and do have our fingers in so many pies it's not funny. Just look at the middle east, we destroyed Iraq with impunity. Not just physically. For all intents and purposes Iraq as a functioning nation no longer exists. Our wars there not only killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, but it reignited sectarian violence leading these people to slaughter each other. I won't say we are completely to blame for Syria, but we certainly played our part.

 

Then you have idiots like Ted Cruz suggesting that we carpet bomb these people like it's nothing. The blatant disregard for human life is appalling. No thought of the babies that would be murdered in that kind of action, but he wants to control the reproductive choices of American women. F*ck you, Ted Cruz.

[quartermainefan]

That video last week of the plant shutting down in Nebraska for no good reason to move to Mexico is what Trump means by losing though.    It's 15 years later and we still can't get a win in Iraq where once we won world world II in four years.   It's ego deflating things like that he means.  The fact the waterfronts along our big cities are dead or being renovated into condos because we have no manufacturing anymore because companies like apple ran to China to save a buck.    Some things can't be dismissed as your lying eyes deceiving you, Apple the american company ran to China to set up its factories because it was cheaper.  There was a time when if you wanted an American car, it came from Detroit.  Now nobody even wants an American car.   It's just an ongoing narrative he is referring to. 

Last century was the American century, when we built highways , won world wars and went to the moon.   Now the country can't do anything even remotely as impressive as any of those things.   I will say one thing for Trump, there has been a couple of instances in NY where the inept and incompetent city government couldn't get a project completed after years.   Trump came in and just did it in no time.   He would be an excellent Secretary of the Interior or Transportation in charge of creating all our new highways and bridges. He would excel at that.   If they had it where the government could haggle for drug prices, he would be a good one to go in there and do the actual haggling.   Trump isn't dumb at all, he is a little crazy but he isn't dumb.   And the truth is I would vote for him over any of the other republicans.   Crazy is Jeb Bush running to take advice from the very same people who got us into Iraq in the first place.   Trump knows better than that at least. 

[DramatistDreamer]

Can we get real about WWII, please?  The Russians took the brunt of the fighting.  The Russians don't fight (and die) WWII doesn't get won.  It's an unsavory fact because, it's Stalin and Stalin was a horrible human but it's reality.  If the Russians weren't integral to the Allies winning WWII, Churchill and Roosevelt wouldn't schlep all the way to the Crimea to meet with him but they knew that as unsavory and boorish a character as Stalin was, they needed him because they needed the Russians to fight.  So much so that they actually allowed documented proof of that meeting:

http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/yalta-conference

 

I thought that people were over the notion that the Americans and British won WWII by themselves.  By the way, there were also Africans (Kenyans) and Indians and people from the Caribbean (Jamaica) who fought for the British Commonwealth during WWII.  Victory was hardly a one-man show.  It truly was more of a Worldwide effort, which contrasted greatly with what happened with Iraq where Bush and the neocons believed that the U.S. could basically 'go it alone' with a meager "coalition of the willing".  Well, maybe to the surprise of no one (except maybe the neocons), this did not work.  Ironically, the Russians warned against fighting what could turn out to be an endless war in the Middle East after the Russians, ten years fighting against the mujahedeen (which the Reagan administration trained, by the way) in Afghanistan, were shoved back to Russia after suffering heavy losses and ultimate defeat.  

 

If anyone has read How to Win a Cosmic War by Reza Aslan, they'd know that in certain parts of the world, in particular the Middle East, war is fought over decades even into the century mark, time is not a concern.  How can you fight (and win) a war against people who will fight for a century and lose millions of their own lives and not care?  You win by not fighting the war in the first place.

Edited February 25, 2016 by DramatistDreamer

[Juliajms]

I don't think anyone suggested that we won WW2 on our own. Russia's part in that war is well known and accepted by pretty much everyone, but WW2 is our last clear victory. Being on the winning side makes it a victory, even if you have allies. WW2 is also the last war where we were clearly on the side of right. Since then we've been fighting proxy wars and trying to change regimes that we have no business trying to change. 

Now we're at it again in Syria, in the middle of a proxy war between Iran and the Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile our brilliant, never tried before plan to fight ISIS/ISIL is to arm and train rebels. I'll vote for whoever is ready to stop this nonsense.