US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Catfish

@ u crank: You misunderstand. Just listen to one of his speeches, or read one of his tweets. This is the US president?

Frankly I don't care what he says on Twitter. I'm not interested in what he says but what he does and doesn't do. Talk is cheap. And as I have said here in this thread in the past, I am not a fan of Mr. Trump. But he is the President and will be until Nov 4 2020. Please don't confuse my criticism of Biden with an admiration of Trump. I can criticize some of what he has done policy wise but I agree with some of what he has done as well. Much of what you say about him and his bad habits is true. I'm not disagreeing with you.

But here is something he has yet to do. He has not used the powers he has with the DOJ, FBI, CIA and the IRS to go after his political enemies including a Presidential candidate. Obama used those powers to derail a Presidential candidate and then to interfere with the incoming administration. To me that is the line that can't be crossed. And everyday we are finding out just how much that line was crossed and who was involved. And it appears that almost everyone in that administration was involved, including Joe Biden.

..look i am not really interested in pointing out the obvious, you only see what you want to see, fine, your funeral.

The previous President likely checked all the boxes for you. Eloquent and well educated. Suave and a smooth talker. So what? We now are seeing what he was up to and and it is shocking. What do you think of that? These people and there is a long list of them were quite happy to use the power that they had to go after their political enemies. They used those powers to seek revenge on a guy like Michael Flynn. It wasn't bad Twitter habits and it wasn't silly name calling. They wanted to put this man in jail because he dared question Obama's policies. I don't know about you but I think that is an abuse of power that should be called out. When Mr. Trump crosses that line I will join the OrangeManBad crowd. Until then I am just an interested observer.

The old adage is that there is the party of stupid and the party of evil. I'll take stupid over evil anyday.

[Catfish]

When will you just come down from your (Trump-initiated) conspiracy tree and look at facts or evidence? You say you do not "like" Trump and know that he is lying, why do you quote or believe him then? I do not care if "not liking", stupid or evil or moral pretext, lies are lies.

"Spygate" or "Obamagate" are Trump's own inventions. Wiretapping used against Trump, ordered by Obama. "Shocking"? BULL.
Trump does not hold back at all when it comes to blaming others; that anyone cold even consider this as founded or take it serious for a second, when it is presented via twitter and on such a low and ridiculous level, is "shocking". More of a welcome bait and distraction of T. to blame others for the virus and get more votes. It is shocking how much seem to fall for this nonsense.

"The White House press corps often gets accused — and sometimes deservedly so — of tossing softball questions at President Trump, but last Monday the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker threw one at the 45th POTUS that looked like one of Jamie Moyer’s late-career 60 mph “fastballs” that hung right over the plate, middle-in.

“You appeared to accuse [former president Barack] Obama of a crime yesterday — what did he do?" Rucker asked.

Instead of slamming it into the second deck, Trump whiffed, badly. For several days, the never-too-busy-to-tweet-while-90,000-Americans-are-dying president has been on the warpath about a scandal that he called “Obamagate” — or more typically, “OBAMAGATE!” — that he insisted was “the biggest political crime in American history” and that also “makes Watergate look small-time.”
Now if he could just explain what the darn thing is! "

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/wha...-20200517.html


Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN22Q1JL

Some of a hundred articles, though "probably" and "astonishingly" not to find in such "respectable" media like Breitbart, American Thinker, Daily Caller or Fox News.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52622038
https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/t...close-election

[Onkel Neal]

Meanwhile, the Democrats are praying that the economy stays crashed until after the election, but experts are beginning to suspect we may see a startlingly robust recovery.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...mocrats-281470

In early April, Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama administration and now a professor at Harvard, was speaking via Zoom to a large bipartisan group of top officials from both parties. The economy had just been shut down, unemployment was spiking, and some policymakers were predicting an era worse than the Great Depression. The economic carnage seemed likely to doom President Donald Trump’s chances at reelection.

Furman, tapped to give the opening presentation, looked into his screen of poorly lit boxes of frightened wonks and made a startling claim.

“We are about to see the best economic data we’ve seen in the history of this country,” he said.


The former cabinet secretaries and Federal Reserve chairs in the Zoom boxes were confused, though some of the Republicans may have been newly relieved and some of the Democrats suddenly concerned.

“Everyone looked puzzled and thought I had misspoken,” Furman said in an interview. Instead of forecasting a prolonged depression-level economic catastrophe, Furman laid out a detailed case for why the months preceding the November election could offer Trump the chance to brag — truthfully — about the most explosive monthly employment numbers and GDP growth ever.

Since the Zoom call, Furman has been making the same case to anyone who will listen, especially the close-knit network of Democratic wonks who have traversed the Clinton and Obama administrations together, including top members of the Biden campaign.

Furman’s counterintuitive pitch has caused some Democrats, especially Obama alumni, around Washington to panic. “This is my big worry,” said a former Obama White House official who is still close to the former president. Asked about the level of concern among top party officials, he said, “It’s high — high, high, high, high.”

And top policy officials on the Biden campaign are preparing for a fall economic debate that might look very different than the one predicted at the start of the pandemic in March. “They are very much aware of this,” said an informal adviser.

Furman’s case begins with the premise that the 2020 pandemic-triggered economic collapse is categorically different than the Great Depression or the Great Recession, which both had slow, grinding recoveries.

Instead, he believes, the way to think about the current economic drop-off, at least in the first two phases, is more like what happens to a thriving economy during and after a natural disaster: a quick and steep decline in economic activity followed by a quick and steep rebound.

The Covid-19 recession started with a sudden shuttering of many businesses, a nationwide decline in consumption, and massive increase in unemployment. But starting around April 15, when economic reopening started to spread but the overall numbers still looked grim, Furman noticed some data that pointed to the kind of recovery that economists often see after a hurricane or industry-wide catastrophe like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Consumption and hiring started to tick up “in gross terms, not in net terms,” Furman said, describing the phenomenon as a “partial rebound.” The bounce back “can be very very fast, because people go back to their original job, they get called back from furlough, you put the lights back on in your business. Given how many people were furloughed and how many businesses were closed you can get a big jump out of that. It will look like a V.”

[Catfish]

^ but Furman is umm was an "Obama economist"

Seriously that would be good news, and probably not only for America

[skidman]

Originally Posted by u crank

And everyday we are finding out just how much that line was crossed and who was involved.

Nope. Nobody is finding out anything. William Barr is not interested. Durham is chasing lower-level FBI attorneys. The POTUS knows exactly who he is mad at but unable to explain why. Nothing but hot air and nothing but cotton wool between Trump's ears.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Catfish

When will you just come down from your (Trump-initiated) conspiracy tree and look at facts or evidence?

"Spygate" or "Obamagate" are Trump's own inventions.

Evidence.

2017 interview on PBS’s News Hour between Judy Woodruff and Susan Rice U.S. National Security Advisor in the Obama Administration.

“We’ve been following a disclosure by [Chairman Nunes] that in essence, during the final days of the Obama administration, during the transition after President Trump had been elected, that he and the people around him may have been caught up in surveillance of foreign individuals and their identities may have been disclosed. Do you know anything about this?” anchor Judy Woodruff asked Rice.

“I know nothing about this,” Rice answered. “I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.”

From the recently declassified email that Rice sent to herself on January 20, 2017.

On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.

From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.

The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.

We now know that they did gather evidence on Trump campaign people. Four FISA warrents on Carter Page. Rice is one of many Obama officials who have lied in public.

And here we have an outgoing administration discussing keeping intelligence secrets from an incoming administration. And there is pretty good evidence that they did just that. Comey's meeting with Trump about the Steele dossier is an example.

If this kind of stuff doesn't disturb your sensibilities about political abuse of power I don't know what to say. This is banana republic kind of behavior, not the stuff of a Republic like the USA. I know that some people on the political left are not at all disturbed by this. In fact they encourage it if it fulfills their OrangeManBad fantasies. You know it is possible to be a critic of both sides of the political divide.

I didn't write that email. Donald Trump didn't write that email. Susan Rice the U.S. National Security Advisor wrote it. It is a matter of public record.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Susan...E-mail_to_Self

[Skybird]

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/...-16782949.html


Many people consider the out-of-control culture of disputes on the Internet as a consequence of technology. It is primarily concerned with the country of origin of the network companies.

When you fly to America for the first time as a tourist, you experience an eye-opening moment. He sees the streets, the taxis, the people and understands: the world he knows from American evening series is not an artificial, over-the-top television fantasy. It is the ordinary American everyday life.

It is similar with our discussion culture on the Internet. Many Germans see the way people argue on the Internet as something artificial. They believe that this is due to the technology. On the net, they say, things are just wild and uncontrolled. Others believe that hatred arises because we hear speech files on the Internet without context. What an anonymous tiradeur pounds into the keys after a third glass of red wine at night shakes his head at breakfast in the morning. It is far too rarely noticed that the ultra-liberal culture of disputes that American companies create on the Internet has something to do with their country of origin. The network is not simply the network. It is deeply American.

In America, a citizen must not only publicly deny the Holocaust, assert the superiority of the white race, and call for the establishment of a one-party communist dictatorship. He can also count on his fellow citizens to answer his suggestions in a very open manner. America is a confrontational society in many areas. The prosecutor speaks against the accused, who defends himself with everything he has. The doctor sells the most expensive treatment, the patient changes his practice indignantly. Young people practice the greatest possible confrontation even in school debating clubs. If one roars, it is roared back.

Freedom of speech also has limits in America. Calls for direct violence, the spreading of nude photos, copyright violations and - keyword Corona - lies are forbidden, which put people in immediate danger. Germans know this as a Facebook rule: Liberality is great when it comes to agitation, but female nipples are strictly prohibited. It is the values ​​of the American Republic. Not all of them fit Germany.

At Corona, too, Facebook, Google and Twitter follow these American values. There they act brutally against false news and conspiracy theories. Your algorithms suddenly prefer reputable sources. It is difficult to find conspiracy theorists via Google under “Covid-19”. An invisible hand sorts information into good and bad. This is not the end of the propaganda, but it is more than the companies have ever tried. You only try it because it is about health. They would not be so keen on political extremists. This is not common in America.

German and American democracy are not defensive in the same way. In America, the citizens theoretically do this on their own initiative. In Germany they are more likely to wait for authorities. Who is cut off depends on whether and when the authorities classify someone as extremist. Those who prefer American must allow sedition and let neo-Nazis run free. Otherwise it is not consistent. The Corona period should therefore lead us to think about how American our network culture should be.
Justus Bender

Justus Bender, editor in the politics of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

The American differences to Germany both have positive and negative aspects. Both countries in my view represent extremes, and extremes in themselves hardly ever cause moderation and modesty.



Trump is a destructive, hyperaggressive agitator, his aggressiveness is bred by his inborn extreme narcissism; no rethoric trick is to cheap, no lie to obviously a lie and no rumbling behaviour too indecent as if he wpould not bring it if he sees a personal advantage - its always about his personal advantage, not necessarily the country's advanatge. Now this enfant terrible, further encouraged by his intellectual deficits and lack of education, performs on a stage like the Americna culture as outline din that article above, a culture that is extrenely focusse don competition, fightign for the purpose fo fighting, and winning so that the winner can, must and is expcted t always take it all. Two parties: not three, not four. The election system again takes no prisoners. Everythign seems to be desoigned for maximising polarization and a "dualization." How could have thigns gone any different than they have in the past decades? Notice, I say decacades, not just "the past three years". I repeatedly said that I see Trump not as the cause and origin of the deep division in American politics and society, but as a symptom. He is a logical result of the cirucmnstances.



Where the winner always takes it all and only Black and White, Ones and Zeroes, exist, there is no middle ground left left anymore where one could meet and talk.



America is an ill-tempered power-giant on steroids. Thats what makes it an unpredictable danger and completely unreliable actor for everybody else. When things do not go like it wants, this aemrica now stomps its feet in blind rage, and kicks and beats and yells around blindly. It hurts itself that way, it hurts other,s and it does not care.



Because the looser has to fall.



The extreme fixiation of America on "cxomeotitipon" I compoare to an auto-.immune n reaction. A stroign immuhne system is all nice and well, but it could start to bite at an invading bug so strn gly that it starts toattack its own body, and its organs. And then it is becoming a problem for the whole organism.


This attitude makes communicaiton impossible. And the political debate here shows it, since long time. It snot about arguments, its nto about provavbly truths and confirmed untruths, but.lies are acceptable and cheating is fully respectable, becasue it is no loner about all this. Its just about winning for the purpose of seeing the other loosing.



This is what Trumps depends on to secure his power, to feed the masses' craving for this: their gladiator standing tall and triumphantly in the arena, and the other's blood in the sand.



This is not the death of reason. Reason was assassinated already long time ago.


That are all the reasons why I think that if Trump one day leaves office, not much will change. Hardly anything. And many, many people will even demand that it shall be like that.

[mapuc]

I haven't changed my mind on Trump as your President.

I have however a real wish that he may win the upcoming Presidential election, this has to do with all these awful attacks on the voters who had put their vote on Trump or are supporting him.

On that occasion I truly hope he will win a second term.

I know, I know it's also the same the other way around.

But their candidate isn't the President and they would most likely not be exposed to such an verbal assault as Trump is....(sorry my famous memory-door, just closed)

Markus

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Meanwhile, the Democrats are praying that the economy stays crashed until after the election, but experts are beginning to suspect we may see a startlingly robust recovery.

How sweet that would be perhaps even gain the House back and keep the Senate too

Funny how this all works ...

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Catfish

When will you just come down from your (Trump-initiated) conspiracy tree and look at facts or evidence? You say you do not "like" Trump and know that he is lying, why do you quote or believe him then? I do not care if "not liking", stupid or evil or moral pretext, lies are lies.

Actually, there is a strategy behind all this. We are in the middle of an election campaign which will be very close and in which every one will fight very dirty. I only give Trump a 50/50 chance of re-election, as of now.

What a lot of people tend to forget, even though it has been reported often, is that Trump only writes some of his tweets, most are written by a team behind him. All the tweets are writtten for the same purpose, to micro-target some group which may tip the balance in certain swing states. That is the same strategy Trump used in 2016.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...cavino-1327921

Are the tweets true or false? That is not important, the only thing that matters is whether it motivates some group to support and vote for Trump. The whole election will be decided by some independent/undecided voters in swing states representing at most 5% of total voters.

Of course, the MSM keeps falling into the same "outrage" trap and wind up amplifying the actual tweet instead of trying to figure out what group Trump is targeting.

[Bilge_Rat]

..and if you are interested in Trumpology, there was an interesting article in WIRED sharing tips on how to figure out which tweets Trump probably wrote himself:

https://www.wired.com/story/tell-whe...aldonaldtrump/

[Bilge_Rat]

And since we are on the subject, if anyone is wondering why Twitter will never ban Trump or remove his tweets, it is because of "Parler":

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...witter-1345357

"Parler" is a competitor and Twitter like social media, still relatively small and unknown, but works as well as twitter. If Twitter ever bans Trump, Trump and his followers and many other users will move to "Parler", instantly creating a real threat to Twitter.

like everyhting else in life, it all comes down to money...

[MaDef]

Are the tweets true or false? That is not important, the only thing that matters is whether it motivates some group to support and vote for Trump. The whole election will be decided by some independent/undecided voters in swing states representing at most 5% of total voters.

FYI: Independent voters make up about 35-40% of registered voters, they are the ones that generally decide elections.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Actually, there is a strategy behind all this. We are in the middle of an election campaign which will be very close [...].

I did not quote all, but this was a most interesting post, well worth thinking about.

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

And since we are on the subject, if anyone is wondering why Twitter will never ban Trump or remove his tweets, it is because of "Parler":
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...witter-1345357
"Parler" is a competitor and Twitter like social media, still relatively small and unknown, but works as well as twitter. If Twitter ever bans Trump, Trump and his followers and many other users will move to "Parler", instantly creating a real threat to Twitter.
like everyhting else in life, it all comes down to money...

Seems it will soon happen..

Link: "Twitter labeled Trump tweets with a fact check for the first time"

"….Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2020"

[Skybird]