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US Elections - From Russia with Love


The Anti-Targ

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Just now, Tywin et al. said:

It's repatriated, not unpatriated. ;)

But they're US citizens being sent away. If they're being repatriated, they're being sent to their own country...which is the US. 

Again, I know of no way for the government to remove US citizenship from a US citizen currently. A citizen can by changing their citizenship (there is no way to get dual citizenship if you are already a US citizen - once you claim another citizenship you volunteer to renounce your US citizenship) but the US can't do it by force.

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

That said, it's scary that he would even suggest it. I think it could be the most provocative thing he's said, and he's said a lot of troubling things over the course of his campaign. Idk how it could actually happen, but I have no faith that the other Republican leaders would stand up against him with any force or conviction. 

The civil servant thing is the scariest thing to me, as it basically means you can be fired for not believing in the official viewpoint. This in a government system is a very, very big autocratic disaster.

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After all this anti establishment talk this year and last year, looks like nothing has changed at all and nothing has been learned. It's actually sad to see Bernie as a turncloak, he took so much money from people promising change and then goes and supports Hillary even after the recent email leak. Even Trump pretty much became pro establishment to get votes. I guess people will wonder again in 4 years why someone like Kanye is the front runner. 

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30 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Trump ending the US electorate system is a very remote possibility. It is in line with his goals and ideals, but it's unlikely. Here are things that are likely:

  • It is likely that he'd end the EPA.
  • It is likely that he would say that he wouldn't support NATO if the Baltic states were invaded, which would encourage adventurism with Russia.
  • It is likely that he would attempt to destroy ACA, and cost at least 18 million people insurance.
  • It is likely that he would attempt to deport 11 million people.
  • It is likely that he would nominate at least 2 supreme court justices who are strongly anti-abortion rights
  • It is somewhat likely that he would end all campaign finance laws (he would need a filibuster-proof majority)
  • it is somewhat  likely that he would significantly lower taxes on the rich (he would need a filibuster-proof majority)

Those are all things that he can either do with the power of executive order or do with the help of a friendly congress. And most of those terrify me. 

It is somewhat likely/likely that 2-3 justices of SCOTUS will die/retire for health reasons and therefore, it is somewhat likely/likely that Trump, through the nomination process, could affect legal decisions long after his 4-8 year reign of terror. 

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18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

But they're US citizens being sent away. If they're being repatriated, they're being sent to their own country...which is the US. 

Yeah I realized that I misread your post right after I replied. I went back and fixed it. And for what it's worth, exile would probably be the correct term. 

18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

 Again, I know of no way for the government to remove US citizenship from a US citizen currently. A citizen can by changing their citizenship (there is no way to get dual citizenship if you are already a US citizen - once you claim another citizenship you volunteer to renounce your US citizenship) but the US can't do it by force.

Trump has suggested that the 14th Amendment could be altered or completely gutted through the courts. I doubt that could actually happen, but as far as I can tell that's the route Trump might go if he actually wanted to act on it. But yes, it looks like it can't be done by force unless you want to argue that being born here to a non-citizen is an act of treason. 

http://bmkllp.com/newsletters/immigration/loss-of-citizenship-for-u-s-born-citizens/

18 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The civil servant thing is the scariest thing to me, as it basically means you can be fired for not believing in the official viewpoint. This in a government system is a very, very big autocratic disaster.

That would certainly be near the top.

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Quote

It is somewhat likely/likely that 2-3 justices of SCOTUS will die/retire for health reasons and therefore, it is somewhat likely/likely that Trump, through the nomination process, could affect legal decisions long after his 4-8 year reign of terror. 

With the advice and consent of the senate.

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4 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

With the advice and consent of the senate.

Well, with a Trump presidency chances are good said senate will also be in Republican hands, and it's not like the democrats can block it or refuse to hear it. But yes, I suppose a 'silver lining' is that we could have a massively deadlocked government for the next 4 years and have something like a SC of 5-6 people. Yay?

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5 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

With the advice and consent of the senate.

Yes, with the Senate in its current makeup, Trump will have an easy process shepherding through his nominees.  His chosen ones will not suffer the fate of Merrick Garland. 

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2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Well, with a Trump presidency chances are good said senate will also be in Republican hands, and it's not like the democrats can block it or refuse to hear it. But yes, I suppose a 'silver lining' is that we could have a massively deadlocked government for the next 4 years and have something like a SC of 5-6 people. Yay?

Really, really scary, right?

I can barely sleep at night.

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5 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Really, really scary, right?

I can barely sleep at night.

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic, but personally? Yeah, I am very scared. I don't want my kids to grow up in a nation where we condemn people because of what they believe in without due process, or can deport 10 million people who have been living here peacefully for 5 years and who have American citizens as children. I don't want my daughter to be discriminated against because she's bi. I don't want women's rights to be further eroded. I don't want the possibility that my son, who has cancer, is going to lose his health insurance and be forced to be bankrupt his entire life. 

These are real, present, scary things that affect me, personally. 

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4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Lost in all the uproar over Trump calling for Russia, or any other foreign government, to release Clinton's deleted emails if they have them:

http://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/07/trump-crimea/493280/

Yeah...seriously. One of the only policies that Trump has coherently pushed forward is appeasement of Russia. The only plank that they removed from the RNC platform was the knocking of the Ukraine. Seriously - that was the only thing they had any comment on. His comments on NATO not being backed if Russia attacks the Baltics, of allowing the annexation and recognizing it, of praising Putin on multiple occasions - this is literally the only thing that he's been consistent on from a foreign policy perspective, and one  that he's actually doubled down on. 

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7 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Har!  Using your random "I'm a straight white dude and therefore know best" response generator I see.

I miss the good old days, when progressives were all about judging people by the content of their character, and not attacking them for the (assumed, over the internet) color of their skin of their gender. 

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1 minute ago, NestorMakhnosLovechild said:

I miss the good old days, when progressives were all about judging people by the content of their character, and not attacking them for the (assumed, over the internet) color of their skin of their gender. 

It's all pretty interrelated.  The content of one's character in this context and particular conversation is quite clearly informed by one's privilege which, with few exceptions, can not be divorced from one's race or gender.  

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4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

What? It's not really difficult to predict at all. Clinton may or may not be a good president, but Trump is almost guaranteed to be an utter disaster. 

4 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

This is nuts. I think it's safe to say that an unstable, dishonest, egomaniacal bigot with no political experience is going to be a worse president than someone who is not. I'm just crazy that way.

I understand where you are coming from, but I disagree. Try to think a little bit outside of the media-prescribed box. What do you really know about Donald Trump? Unless you're one of the few people who have met him before this election season started, your impression is derived almost entirely from the mass media. In the US, the mass media is, with rare exceptions, a for-profit business and, worse, owned by a relatively small number of corporations. Because of the former, it seeks out his most sensational moments and makes them even more sensational simply because that's what people will watch. Because of the latter, it generally tries to portray him negatively because most of these owners are not interested in him being President.

Furthermore, Trump knows this because he's been dealing with the media for most of his life. He appears in the media as a nativist, demagogic buffoon with authoritarian leanings and possibly worse (instability, egomania, etc.) depending on whom you ask. Do you think that this is really how he is or is it just an act calculated to win votes without spending the money typically spent for this purpose? Remember, Trump's opponents in the Republican primary outspent him by factors of 3-4 individually and more than an order of magnitude combined -- and lost. Clinton has likewise outspent him by at least a factor of 4 and more in some areas. He has little staff and not much of a ground game to speak of... but he's currently quite competitive.

Of course, because this persona is all we have to go by, Trump is certainly a wildcard. It is entirely possible that he is very similar to the buffoon we see on the media and this whole election is a real-world reenactment of the fairy tales wherein the supposedly foolish third son somehow comes out ahead... but I don't think it is likely. It's far more plausible that the buffoon persona is indeed an act, but despite having enough of an understanding of the problems to use them as a means of propelling himself to power, Trump lacks either the desire or ability to fix them and would govern as a typical neoliberal. Finally, it could also be that he may do something to fix the problems. I have no idea which is true -- it's a roll of the dice -- but the media's portrayal is almost certainly deceptive to some extent.

Incidentally, Slate has an interview of Glenn Greenwald with some interesting ideas about Trump, the media and society in general:

Quote

OK, so, I am glad you asked about that because this is the conflict that I am currently having: The U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president. I don’t have an actual problem with that because I share the premises on which it is based about why he poses such extreme dangers. But that doesn’t mean that as a journalist, or even just as a citizen, that I am willing to go along with any claim, no matter how fact-free, no matter how irrational, no matter how dangerous it could be, in order to bring Trump down.

So, literally, the lead story in the New York Times today suggests, and other people have similarly suggested it, that Trump was literally putting in a request to Putin for the Russians to cyberattack the FBI, the United States government, or get Hillary Clinton’s emails. That is such unmitigated bullshit. What that was was an offhanded, trolling comment designed to make some kind of snide reference to the need to find Hillary’s emails. He wasn’t directing the Russians, in some genuine, literal way, to go on some cybermission to find Hillary’s emails. If he wanted to request the Russians to do that, why would he do it in some offhanded way in a press conference? It was a stupid, reckless comment that he made elevated into treason.

...

Do you think the people voting for Donald Trump because they feel their economic future has been destroyed, or because they are racist, or because they feel fear of immigrants and hate the U.S. elite structure and want Trump to go and blow it up, give the slightest shit about Ukraine, that Trump is some kind of agent of Putin? They don’t! Just like the Brexit supporters. The U.K. media tried the same thing, telling the Brexit advocates that they were playing into Putin’s hands, that Putin wanted the U.K. out of the EU to weaken both. They didn’t care about that. That didn’t drive them. Nobody who listened to Trump could think that was genuinely a treasonous request for the Russians to go and cyberattack the U.S. government.

...

Just take a step back for a second. One of the things that is bothering me and bothered me about the Brexit debate, and is bothering me a huge amount about the Trump debate, is that there is zero elite reckoning with their own responsibility in creating the situation that led to both Brexit and Trump and then the broader collapse of elite authority. The reason why Brexit resonated and Trump resonated isn’t that people are too stupid to understand the arguments. The reason they resonated is that people have been so fucked by the prevailing order in such deep and fundamental and enduring ways that they can’t imagine that anything is worse than preservation of the status quo. You have this huge portion of the populace in both the U.K. and the US that is so angry and so helpless that they view exploding things without any idea of what the resulting debris is going to be to be preferable to having things continue, and the people they view as having done this to them to continue in power. That is a really serious and dangerous and not completely invalid perception that a lot of people who spend their days scorning Trump and his supporters or Brexit played a great deal in creating.

 

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11 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

It's all pretty interrelated.  The content of one's character in this context and particular conversation is quite clearly informed by one's privilege which, with few exceptions, can not be divorced from one's race or gender.  

This can get out of control sometimes though, especially on the internet.  My 68 year old mother was amazed at how many times she was labeled as a "Bernie Bro" while on the internet during primary season. 

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