U.S. Politics - the pre-pre-pre-pre Primary season edition

[lokisnow]

 
Hmm...this is the first time I've seen anyone say that. Every mainstream commentator says the latino vote is the holy grail of winning the Oval Office

Keep in mind I'm a terrible pessimist.

[Hayyoth]

 

The sad thing, buddy, is that in this thread I'm like junior varsity and I still manage to make you look like a fool every single time.  

Absolutely, totally pwned me there. You're an amazing guy and I'm just glad you reminded me of the fact.

 

 

 

1) Bullshit, offer some evidence for the claim that Democrats want an open border or shut up about it.

 

2) Welfare reform under Clinton was extremely divisive in the Democratic Party and, again, supporting programs they created decades and decades ago is not evidence of moving left on them. This is a plainly stupid claim.

 

3) What the fuck are you talking about? This doesn't engage with what I said, at all, it responds to some bizarrely imagined statement I never made. Support the claim that Democrats have closed down the coal industry or shut up about it. Respond to the fact that Democrats have long supported environmental regulations, and greenhouse gases are just the present continuation of this, or back down. Finally, deal with the fact that your party, which created the EPA, has now gone to the right of science, refusing to acknowledge the broad consensus on the reality of climate change. Don't come back with addle nonsense bearing no relation to what I said.

 

And I know I added this late to my last post so I'll repeat it:

 

Let me just go straight to the empirical data here. Congressional Republicans without doubt have moved more to the right than Congressional Democrats have to the left, and that's reflective of the broader state of the parties. Throwing out unsubstantiated conservative-media-spoon-fed responses about Democrats shutting down coal or wanting an open border just doesn't stand up to actual data.

 

 

Also, no, immigration is not a social issue unless your problem with immigration is its effect on American culture. I don't put that past you or many other conservatives, of course, but most arguments which see daylight in political discourse focus on immigration's effect on employment and public services.

Ah we're doing lists again? Great

 

1) Show me one Dem politician who's in favor of shutting the southern border or shut up about it. An open border is what we have now, or maybe you haven't noticed?

 

2) Clinton passed a rollback in welfare reform, a good portion of Dems supported it then. A similar attempt to reform welfare NOW would be opposed by the vast, vast majority of Democrats, that's called a chnage in position  leftwards.

 

3) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/obama-to-unveil-tougher-climate-plan-with-his-legacy-in-mind.html?_r=0
 

 

WASHINGTON — In the strongest action ever taken in the United States to combat climate change, President Obama will unveil on Monday a set of environmental regulations devised to sharply cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants and ultimately transform America’s electricity industry.

The rules are the final, tougher versions of proposed regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency announced in 2012 and 2014. If they withstand the expected legal challenges, the regulations will set in motion sweeping policy changes that could shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of new coal plants and create a boom in the production of wind and solar power and other renewable energy sources.

 

So I guess you're right he isn't shutting down coal mines he's just looking to shut down all their customers. 'Combating climate change' means higher electricity prices, you get that yeah?

 

It's become  SOP of the left, advocate for ever more extreme positions and then claim that Republicans are drifting to the right.
 

[Guest]

An amazing montage of sexist comments on Fox News if you can bare it. 

[Starkess]

I made it to 56 seconds.  :ack:

[Durckad]

An amazing montage of sexist comments on Fox News if you can bare it. 

I feel... unclean.

[Seventh Pup]

An amazing montage of sexist comments on Fox News if you can bare it. 

 

I'm not sure what to make of this, as I am feeling quite scatterbrained at the moment, and my naughty female brain is having a hard time making good decisions on how to use technology...

 

But if I try hard enough I might be able to get a good rational thought out...

 

Nope I just realized I am wearing pants so I do think I am aloud to have an opinion on Fox News.

 

Now let me go back to being totally and completely fulfilled by taking care of my baby and my husband. I literally have no other dreams or ambitions, and if I ever say that I do I am lying. 

[Shryke]

One big reason is Trump. He's not part of the GOP machine and he doesn't follow the script. Trump says whatever he wants to gather attention and support, with little to no regard for the overall electoral landscape for the GOP. But since Trump's message did get traction in the GOP bloc voters, all the other candidates have to triangulate to that so they could stand a chance in the primaries. 

 

Trump isn't the reason. Trump wasn't even on the radar when the GOP said "We need that Latino vote!" and then like the next day said "Fuck them wetbacks!".

 

The problem is that as much as the GOP might want to win the Latino vote, as much as they might want to moderate on immigration, they can't go against the voters that make up their party. And those voters are racist anti-immigration loons. Trump just be shining a light on an already massive existing problem.

 

Like many things with the GOP, the main issue is that they do actually properly represent a large chunk of the American electorate. It's just that chunk, while too big to ignore, is also too small to win the Presidency.

[Shryke]

boom/bust, inflate/crash cycle, when will we learn that central banks controlling interest rates is a bad idea?

 

Uh, this whole issue seems to be another one of those wild swings mostly caused by automatic trading. You know, by a distinct lack of regulation and control of how trading may proceed.

[BloodRider]

 

An important point there

 

So making the process more complex would probably just make things worse.

I thought that was the point I was making.......   :bawl:

[BloodRider]

they don't necessarily need latinos because latinos are the worst voting race block and they vote less every cycle, the amount of Latino voting as a percentage of eligible Latino voters had steadily dropped since the 90s. So although the raw population numbers suggest their numbers should be massively increasong, they are not, because so few vote. This means every percent of the white vote equals 4 percent of the Latino vote. if the Republican candidate gets 59 percent of the white vote, like romney, he only needs like 42% of the Latino vote to win. If the Republican can match the historic maximum of the white vote, 63%, they can lose another 16% from Latino numbers, down to 26%, which is very doable.

It gets even easier if you assume the black vote will drop from 97% dem to the historical 90% dem and black turnout will also probably drop 10% in the next election. Add in the red state vicious John Roberts {tm} voter suppression legislation and you can further reduce the number you need to hit with latinos.

Absent a historic turnaround in Latino attitudes toward voting in presidential elections or unprecedented Latino voter registration drives, the Latino vote probably doesn't matter in 2016.

Beat that horse!

[awesome possum]

Wow, Jeb Bush.  Just... Wow.  This man is starting to make his brother seem like a brilliant orator.

 

Jeb Bush has gotten in hot water lately for using the term "anchor babies" to refer to children born in the US to immigrant parents. After all, the term plays to the anti-immigrant wing of the party Donald Trump has mobilized — not the welcoming, pro-Latino wing that Bush is desperately hoping wins out by the end of the primary. (Heck, in 2012 a Hispanic Republican group Bush co-chaired issued a memo urging Republicans not to use the term.)

 

Now Bush is trying to backtrack: When he talked about "anchor babies," he says, he wasn't referring to Latinos — he was referring to Asians.

 

 

That is just absolute comedy gold right there.  

 

 

Oh and never underestimate the power of GOP candidates from using any opportunity to try to blame Obama for whatever is happening.  This time, the Chinese stock market problems

 

Scott Walker wants Obama to cancel a state dinner with Xi; Donald Trump says that it’s because Obama has let China “dictate the agenda” (no, I have no idea what he thinks he means). And Chris Christie says that it’s because Obama has gotten us deep into China’s debt.

 

 

Chinese stock market crashes?  Thanks, Obama.  

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Ah we're doing lists again? Great

 

1) Show me one Dem politician who's in favor of shutting the southern border or shut up about it. An open border is what we have now, or maybe you haven't noticed?

 

2) Clinton passed a rollback in welfare reform, a good portion of Dems supported it then. A similar attempt to reform welfare NOW would be opposed by the vast, vast majority of Democrats, that's called a chnage in position  leftwards.

 

3) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/obama-to-unveil-tougher-climate-plan-with-his-legacy-in-mind.html?_r=0
 

So I guess you're right he isn't shutting down coal mines he's just looking to shut down all their customers. 'Combating climate change' means higher electricity prices, you get that yeah?

 

It's become  SOP of the left, advocate for ever more extreme positions and then claim that Republicans are drifting to the right.
 

 

You realize you started the numbered listing, right, bud? But if you're going to whine about it now I'm happy to change up the format. I'm nice like that.

 

On immigration, it's astounding how untethered from reality you are. First, you made the claim that Democrats support an open border, it's on you to prove that extreme claim. Next, no, we don't have an open border, no matter how eager you may be to lap up Trumpian bullshit claims that we do. We have, of course, a rather sizable border patrol and a huge chunk of illegal immigration comes in the form not of border crossings but of overstayed visas anyway.

 

I would ignore your infantile demand that I prove the opposite of the point you refuse to bother supporting, if it weren't so trivially easy to find pretty much any politician favoring securing the border, which is the equivalent of favoring hugs and apple pie. Here's a little known Democrat named Barack Obama:

 

"When I took office, I committed to fixing this broken immigration system. And I began by doing what I could to secure our borders. Today, we have more agents and technology deployed to secure our southern border than at any time in our history. And over the past six years, illegal border crossings have been cut by more than half."

 

On welfare reform, it split the Democratic Party under Clinton. A similar reform would not pass now because, obviously, it already passed. You have no idea what stance the Democratic Party would take on welfare were the program the same now as it was then, because it hasn't been and cannot have been at issue since. You're completely talking out of your ass (this is a pattern). And even if a majority of Democrats would oppose it now than did then, it still would not represent a significant shift to the left for it to have been divisive then but merely somewhat less-so now. Finally, I haven't forgotten that your initial claim, which you now fail to defend in favor of honing in on welfare only, was that Democrats had moved to the left because they wouldn't favor reducing any entitlements, entitlements they created and have been in favor of for decades. That claim remains profoundly stupid.

 

On energy, wow do you ever have a way of reading something and taking it to mean whatever the fuck you want it to mean. No, the article does not say he's "shutting down all their customers," it says CO2 regulation "could" shut down "hundreds" of plants. That would not be all of them, and, of course, coal is also exported. So Obama, though certainly keeping with the Democratic Party's longstanding support for environmental regulation, is obviously not shutting down the coal industry or its customers as you ridiculously claim.

 

I'll note in closing that you've addressed not a single point I've made on the Republican Party's sharp move right on several issues, nor have you addressed the empirical data on the sharp move right of Congressional Republicans. This is no doubt because you're incapable of digesting disagreeable facts or speaking in anything but inane right wing talking points that have been fed to you.

[Hayyoth]

 

You realize you started the numbered listing, right, bud? But if you're going to whine about it now I'm happy to change up the format. I'm nice like that.

 

On immigration, it's astounding how untethered from reality you are. First, you made the claim that Democrats support an open border, it's on you to prove that extreme claim. Next, no, we don't have an open border, no matter how eager you may be to lap up Trumpian bullshit claims that we do. We have, of course, a rather sizable border patrol and a huge chunk of illegal immigration comes in the form not of border crossings but of overstayed visas anyway.

 

I would ignore your infantile demand that I prove the opposite of the point you refuse to bother supporting, if it weren't so trivially easy to find pretty much any politician favoring securing the border, which is the equivalent of favoring hugs and apple pie. Here's a little known Democrat named Barack Obama:

 

 

On welfare reform, it split the Democratic Party under Clinton. A similar reform would not pass now because, obviously, it already passed. You have no idea what stance the Democratic Party would take on welfare were the program the same now as it was then, because it hasn't been and cannot have been at issue since. You're completely talking out of your ass (this is a pattern). And even if a majority of Democrats would oppose it now than did then, it still would not represent a significant shift to the left for it to have been divisive then but merely somewhat less-so now. Finally, I haven't forgotten that your initial claim, which you now fail to defend in favor of honing in on welfare only, was that Democrats had moved to the left because they wouldn't favor reducing any entitlements, entitlements they created and have been in favor of for decades. That claim remains profoundly stupid.

 

On energy, wow do you ever have a way of reading something and taking it to mean whatever the fuck you want it to mean. No, the article does not say he's "shutting down all their customers," it says CO2 regulation "could" shut down "hundreds" of plants. That would not be all of them, and, of course, coal is also exported. So Obama, though certainly keeping with the Democratic Party's longstanding support for environmental regulation, is obviously not shutting down the coal industry or its customers as you ridiculously claim.

 

I'll note in closing that you've addressed not a single point I've made on the Republican Party's sharp move right on several issues, nor have you addressed the empirical data on the sharp move right of Congressional Republicans. This is no doubt because you're incapable of digesting disagreeable facts or speaking in anything but inane right wing talking points that have been fed to you.

Who's whining? I love lists.

 

a) Obama has said he'd secure the border (of course he's done nothing of the sort). Trump has said he'd build a wall.

 

2) Any proposed reform of entitlement spending is greeted with howls of outrage from Democrats. So to answer you specifically no I don't think that Clinton's reform of welfare, if it were proposed now, would pass muster with Dems. I doubt more than a tiny handful of Congresional Dems would even look twice before dismissing them out of hand.

 

And c) the EPA regs would make electricity generation derived from coal prohibitively expensive, which is the whole point of them.

 

On those three issues, closing the border, reforming welfare and encouraging the production of cheap abundant power, Republicans and Democrats used to be much closer than they are now. The Republican Party has continued to espouse the exact same positions they did two decades ago, so who's moved where exactly?

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Who's whining? I love lists.

 

a) Obama has said he'd secure the border (of course he's done nothing of the sort). Trump has said he'd build a wall.

 

2) Any proposed reform of entitlement spending is greeted with howls of outrage from Democrats. So to answer you specifically no I don't think that Clinton's reform of welfare, if it were proposed now, would pass muster with Dems. I doubt more than a tiny handful of Congresional Dems would even look twice before dismissing them out of hand.

 

And c) the EPA regs would make electricity generation derived from coal prohibitively expensive, which is the whole point of them.

 

On those three issues, closing the border, reforming welfare and encouraging the production of cheap abundant power, Republicans and Democrats used to be much closer than they are now. The Republican Party has continued to espouse the exact same positions they did two decades ago, so who's moved where exactly?

 

Cool I'll do lists again. I'm still nice like that.

 

a) More bullshit, stand up for your stated positions or shut up about them. First it was 'the Democrats support an open border!' Of course you couldn't prove that so it became, 'they haven't said they're against an open border!' I easily refute that so you just crawl up Donald Trump's ass where you won't be able to hear any facts you can't deal with. You've managed to say not a fucking thing of any significance.

 

2) What you think the Democrats would do today on welfare reform passed 20 years ago doesn't count as evidence of anything. And I see you've again decided to throw out the claim that Democrats would oppose entitlement reform as if I hadn't responded to that repeatedly by pointing out that supporting programs they created decades ago does not count as a shift. It's bad enough to make such a plainly idiotic claim, but to carry on with it after repeated correction without evincing the slightest hint that you can read the words people are responding to you with, digest, and understand them... I'm out of toucans.

 

c) It would make emitting greenhouse gases more expensive, yes. This is not the same as your wildly strident claim that Obama was shutting down the coal industry. You keep having to evade your own words because you can't offer any support.

 

On none of the three issues (which were at first supposed to be social issues until you utterly failed to support that) you picked out has the Democratic Party moved significantly to the left, nor certainly as far left as the Republican Party has moved right. You've offered absolutely no support for either your initial claims or your evasive follow-up claims, just a mixture of Trump-parroting assertion and willful ignorance of the words coming back at you.

 

I'll note again that you've addressed not a single point I've made on the Republican Party's sharp move right on several issues, nor have you addressed the empirical data on the sharp move right of Congressional Republicans. This is no doubt because you're incapable of digesting disagreeable facts or speaking in anything but inane right wing talking points that have been fed to you.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

I really think he's just trolling you at this point Onion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He's either trolling you or he really is completely incapable of basic 6th grade reading comprehension.  

 

I admit it's a toss-up between the two at this point, but with Trump getting ~20% support among Republican voters it's ever more clear that there are people in the world that genuinely believe the shit he's saying. He may really be one of them.

[Sir Thursday]

 

I admit it's a toss-up between the two at this point, but with Trump getting ~20% support among Republican voters it's ever more clear that there are people in the world that genuinely believe the shit he's saying. He may really be one of them.

 

I think Hayyoth has been pretty clear in the past that he doesn't really like Trump and would prefer Walker for the nomination. Not sure where you're getting that he's an actual fan of Trump from. You don't have to support someone to argue their position.

 

ST

[OnionAhaiReborn]

 

I think Hayyoth has been pretty clear in the past that he doesn't really like Trump and would prefer Walker for the nomination. Not sure where you're getting that he's an actual fan of Trump from. You don't have to support someone to argue their position.

 

ST

 

I didn't say he supports Trump, I said he may be one of the people that "believe[s] the shit he's saying." This after he had just spouted some 'Trump will build a wall!' nonsense.

[Lightysnake88]

So, does anyone even consider how much a wall would actually cost? Or the size of the border? How many Berlin Walls, end to end, would that be? Does anyone remember how much a much smaller structure ended up costing? Nevermind the upkeep and personnel all over?

 

Trump is basically tied to nobody now. He's saying whatever the hell he wants with no care whatsoever for how ridiculous or unfeasible it is. He won't build a wall and he can't make Mexico pay for it, but it hits his base where they wanna hear it.

[Frog Eater]

I have heard the number of $4 Billion to build the wall thrown around, but that was on MSNBC, nothing I have seen that really calculates it. 

 

What Trump doesnt mention is that the wall will not help the problem. 

 

I say we need to go the other way completely. Let migrant workers check in at the border, with fingerprints, and whatever and then continue on to wherever they are going to work for the season. Then let them check back out. The cost of a database system that tracks migrants on their way in and out of the country is a hell of a lot better than a "big beautiful wall with a beautiful door".  Also, this way undocumented workers become documented, and can file a tax return. (but not qualify for the EITC). tax revenues go up, and migrant workers dont have to worry about being deported every morning when they go to work. 

[Wise Fool]

It is not that they have swung to the more extreme right (though they have), it's that they've swung in the direction of batshit crazy stupid fantasy world. Hayyoth is going on about how the Republicans have always supported increased, cheap energy. But that's not the whole position anymore. Now it's "cheap, abundant energy that is non-renewable, non-sustainable, highly polluting because fuck the earth, fuck the environment, fuck our descendants, and fuck those climate change cultists, lol!" It's not "secure the borders," now it's "secure the borders and let's build a stupidly large wall, with a moat, and there will be alligators in it too, lol!"

 

And now it looks like the GOP is ready to deem Trump the worthy savior. Donald Trump. Might as well be Sarah Palin with a bad hairpiece. Why? Well, either because people on the right really are becoming crazy (can't imagine why that would be, after years of denying climate change, or basic biological fucking evolution for that matter, or the rights of women or minorities or gays), or for the same reason that most right-wingers post shit here: for the lulz.

 

I mean I can't even.

 

And you know what the stupidest part is. How a lot of right-wingers LOVE how much Trump pisses off [anyone with a brain]. They would elect him, support him, defend him for that ONE reason. It's the bully mentality. It's stupid, it's irrational, but it frustrates and angers other people so HUR HUR HURRR.

 

Rant done.