US Politics Thread 2016-2020

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by u crank

Maybe it's time to look offshore. I am available.

I have but one question: Would you recognize the right of Texas Independence by self-determination?

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

I have but one question: Would you recognize the right of Texas Independence by self-determination?

Sure.





What's Texas?

[vienna]

Originally Posted by u crank

It seems like the President hardly breaks a sweat keeping the 'derangement' crowd busy. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Yes, I agree: the crowds at his rallies are an amusing deranged lot and as long as he keeps them busy at the rallies, well, at least they are not free to roam the public streets...






<O>

[u crank]

Originally Posted by vienna

Yes, I agree: the crowds at his rallies are an amusing deranged lot and as long as he keeps them busy at the rallies, well, at least they are not free to roam the public streets...

I rest my case.

[vienna]

I didn't know you had a case to rest...






<O>

[JU_88]

And here is the non republican half of the problem....

[Mr Quatro]

You only have three choices to vote democrats or republicans or not to vote at all ... I know, I know someone will run as a third party and the losing party will blame the third party for taking their votes.

Right now the mood is don't let America go down the drain as a Socialist State, which leaves the GOP a clear path to another four years in the 2020 run for the WH

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by JU_88

And here is the non republican half of the problem....

https://translate.google.de/translat...F24683218.html

[August]

An interesting article from the Orange County Register.

A class guide to the 2020 presidential election: Joel Kotkin

America’s electorate in 2020 has been dissected by race, region, cultural attitudes and gender. But the most important division may well be, in a nation that has become profoundly unequal, along class lines. All politicians, from Donald Trump to Elizabeth Warren, portray themselves as “fighting for the middle class” and “working families.” Yet our increasingly neo-feudal America is best broken down into four broad groups — the oligarchs, the clerisy, the yeomanry and the serfs. The oligarchs dominate the economic realm, including control of information media. Below them are sometimes allied members of the clerisy, the well-educated middle class who set the country’s intellectual and cultural context.
Below them are the two most numerous classes — the property-owning yeomanry and, most numerous of all, expanding the new serfdom. Understanding these groups provides a valuable insight into 2020’s realities.

https://outline.com/SKpqpm

[Onkel Neal]

That article lost me when it tried to force medieval terms onto our society.

[August]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

That article lost me when it tried to force medieval terms onto our society.

Yeah I was wondering if that would be a detraction. If you can try and see beyond the stupid tags I think he makes some excellent points.

[BrucePartington]

Originally Posted by Platapus

The quandary is that anyone who wants to be president is most likely not a person we want as president.

I touched this issue in the past (you may remember it).

Leadership without ego really is the rarest commodity.
Nobody runs for office out of selflessness. All candidates expect some kind of reward: power, prestige, money and business connections, you name it. What we wish we had is candidates that would take pride in doing a good job while in office, rather than just take advantage of it for self-serving purposes.
One can always dream.

[Bilge_Rat]

old news, but read an interesting article on the downfall of Al Franken.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...-of-al-franken

Reporter Jane Meyer investigated all the sexual complaints which came out in 2017 and found they were either baseless or flimsy or riddled with inconsistency. If Franken had been given a fair hearing, he probably could have weathered the crisis.

However, since this was at the height of the "MeToo" movement, he was thrown under the bus by Senate Democrats who were more interested in potentially picking up a Senate Seat in Alabama than protecting their colleagues.

An interesting angle is that apparently, pro-Trump groups were behind the original accusation.

A big part of Franken’s political problem was the way the story broke. KABC-AM released Tweeden’s material on its Web site, giving it the look of a proper news story. In reality, the station, which is owned by Cumulus Media, was a struggling conservative talk-radio station whose survival plan was to become the most pro-Trump station in Los Angeles. Three top staffers there had been meeting secretly for weeks, after hours, with Tweeden to prepare her statement, but it hadn’t been vetted with even the most cursory fact-checking.

McIntyre emphasized that Tweeden and KABC-AM deliberately chose not to break the story with Hannity, or on Fox, because they didn’t want it to be tainted with charges of political bias.

Tweeden had also taken some controversial political stands. In 2011, in an appearance on “Hannity,” she sided with “birthers,” calling on President Barack Obama to produce a birth certificate to prove his citizenship, and praised Trump, who had been stoking racist suspicions about Obama’s identity. “I think Donald Trump is brilliant,” she added. “Who knows how far he could go?”

Sean Hannity exulted when the news broke. Tweeden called in to his radio show live, and Hannity described her as “a longtime friend.” Hannity, who, when Ailes died, celebrated him as one of America’s “great patriotic warriors,” pronounced the Franken photograph “disgusting”—and declared that Franken had been accused of “sexual molestation.” Trump joined the fray on Twitter, insinuating that the photograph documented an assault in progress: “Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6?”

I feel bad for Franken who I thought was a good Senator, but he was too nice a guy to last in Washington. As Harry Truman said: " You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog!"

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

Reporter Jane Meyer investigated all the sexual complaints which came out in 2017 and found they were either baseless or flimsy or riddled with inconsistency."

Wait, lol, there were photos.



He should return to SNL, he's still pretty funny, intentional or otherwise.

[em2nought]

So that was the great Robert Mueller? Where's the guy behind the green curtain?