U.S. Politics 2016 Seasonal Hiring Edition: "You're fired"

[Dr. Pepper]

Are you fucking kidding me?  A person who serves an extremely important function in our election system is receiving phone calls and emails asking that he be a decent person and not vote to ruin us all and you call that harassment and intimidation?  What fucking planet do you live on?

 

[Altherion]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Are you fucking kidding me?  A person who serves an extremely important function in our election system is receiving phone calls and emails asking that he be a decent person and not vote to ruin us all and you call that harassment and intimidation?  What fucking planet do you live on?

If somebody is called by strangers after midnight and it is not about something that absolutely cannot wait until the next day, it is almost certainly harassment.

[Dr. Pepper]

4 minutes ago, Altherion said:

If somebody is called by strangers after midnight and it is not about something that absolutely cannot wait until the next day, it is almost certainly harassment.

If he were an average citizen at this moment, you'd have a point.  He's not an average citizen right now.  He's a fucking elector and these are the sorts of things electors can and should expect every presidential election cycle.  These electors should have been prepared to deal with the communication the public would be having with them.  He is either stupid and wasn't prepared or was prepared and is now doing the typical conservative thing where he plays the innocent victim while simultaneously berating liberals for allegedly playing the victim.  Knowing conservatives, it's likely both because idiocy runs deep.  

[DireWolfSpirit]

Omg....this afternoon as I was finishing up the last of my holiday shopping at a Wisconsin Kohls, I could not believe my eyes. There in the crowded parking lot was the ugliest, mudstreaked , dented up, rusting, heap of a pickup, flying a huge Confederate flag from at least a 10 foot pole poking out of those stake holes they have above the wheel wells in most trucks.

This is Wisconsin FFS!! I was thinking to myself. 

So I guess now (The Trump regression era) were going to start seeing white nationalist slithering out of their holes. Whats next for them High School basketball games?

[Altherion]

40 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

If he were an average citizen at this moment, you'd have a point.  He's not an average citizen right now.  He's a fucking elector and these are the sorts of things electors can and should expect every presidential election cycle.  These electors should have been prepared to deal with the communication the public would be having with them.  He is either stupid and wasn't prepared or was prepared and is now doing the typical conservative thing where he plays the innocent victim while simultaneously berating liberals for allegedly playing the victim.  Knowing conservatives, it's likely both because idiocy runs deep.  

Why in the world would they be prepared for something that has never happened before? The electors are ceremonial figures who get together for a day and send the results to Congress. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a campaign to get individual electors to defy the voters of their state and substitute their personal opinions -- not just in living memory, but in the entire history of the current iteration of the Electoral College. Every once in a while an individual elector will defect, but even this is extremely rare.

As far as I can tell, in the past hundred years, there have been fewer than 10 faithless electors and even before that most electors who voted for a different Presidential candidate than they were supposed to did so because the person they were supposed to vote for died between the election and the Electoral College vote. Furthermore, the faithless electors have never had any impact on the choice of President and only once in the choice of Vice-President: in 1796, the votes for President and Vice-President were not distinct causing various shenanigans that ultimately resulted in Jefferson becoming Vice-President to Adams despite running for President against the latter. After this constitutional flaw was corrected by the Twelfth Amendment, faithless electors never had any impact on the results again (although it would be kind of funny if some bizarre confluence of events cause Clinton to become Trump's Vice-President instead of Pence).

[Hereward]

6 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yep, that sucks. Doesn't happen very often in SA, but it does happen, and it sucks. It also sucks that as a woman you can be arrested and convicted for being raped. It sucks what you have to do to simply stay there.

And yet, that does not excuse anything about Russia. Saudi Arabia is far more permissive with free speech, as an example. It's more permissive to outsiders. It has a higher overall quality of life, less crime, less outright corruption. And it still sucks horribly, but that doesn't make Russia better.

And none of that has anything to do with human rights violations. None! And that's assuming I take your propaganda at face value, which I'm not going to. The idea that it is 'infecting the whole middle east' is laughably bad. But again, that has nothing to do with human rights violations.

Perhaps it'd be easier to actually state some of the issues. Namely, Russia is extraordinarily against free speech, particularly against free speech against the government. This is not at all the case in Saudi Arabia. SA has incredibly reactionary, restrictive laws, but they are not particularly repressive against most forms of free speech or expression. Russia still kills press based on them speaking out on the government. Still. 

And again, Russia still has more people in prison than any other country in the world per capita save the US. Russia still kills gay people. Russia still bombs civilians and invades foreign nations on flimsy pretext. Russia still is one of the leading exporters of human slaves in the world. 

I'm afriad you're totally wrong here. Russia is terrible on all these indicators, but Saudi Arabia is worse on every single one. If you don't believe me, ask Freedom House.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

34 minutes ago, Hereward said:

I'm afriad you're totally wrong here. Russia is terrible on all these indicators, but Saudi Arabia is worse on every single one. If you don't believe me, ask Freedom House.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World

Saudi Arabia didn't ruin Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the election though, which I suspect is the real human rights violation he is concerned about. 

The claims about Russia being worse on gay rights especially are downright bizarre. Saudi Arabia punishes homosexuality with floggings, long prison sentences, or chemical castration, and if someone gets caught a second time he is immediately executed. Whereas in Russia it isn't even illegal. 

[butterbumps!]

4 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Are you fucking kidding me?  A person who serves an extremely important function in our election system is receiving phone calls and emails asking that he be a decent person and not vote to ruin us all and you call that harassment and intimidation?  What fucking planet do you live on?

I'm actually most curious about what aspects of this make that elector "proud" to cast his vote for Trump.   Trump's magnanimous unification of all Americans through strong disavowal of the bigoted lunatics in his base, thereby avoiding more than a thousand new hate crimes since the election?   His super presidential behavior in which he totally hasn't been instigating other countries and disgracing the US?    His courageous adherence to truth and tolerance for criticism?    His being completely gracious and not engaging in a petty vengeance parade where he seeks groveling from leaders only to humiliate and ignore them?  His decorous willingness to not create a kleptocracy by fully divesting and disclosing his financial ties, and certainly not engaging in full blown nepotism in bringing in his family in advisory roles?    I mean, there's so much here we should be proud of, and I'd love to know which ones move this elector to feel so.

[Inigima]

Guys, you don't have to countenance harassment. Don't get me wrong, I'm tired of the left being expected to apologize for everything and the right for nothing, but you can just let it go. Yeah, he's an elector and you're welcome to try to persuade him, but don't bombard his house with nonstop phone calls, especially after hours. Also, this guy is a GOP caucus chair, so your efforts to persuade people are probably better spent elsewhere.

[David Selig]

7 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I can connect those dots - but going as vague as 'exporting ideology' is pretty bad of an argument for actually comparing real human rights violations. Especially when said exportation has not 'taken over the Middle East like a cancer'. 

SA is pretty lenient on free speech. 

Lenient? This is a country which actually executes people for blasphemy pretty regularly. Apostasy is punishable by death too. Criticizing the government in any way is dealt very harshly with too - https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/01/11/saudi-arabia-sustained-assault-free-expression

[Xray the Enforcer]

[mod] The Russia-Saudia Arabia dust-up belongs in another thread. Thank you. [/mod]

[Ice Queen]

23 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I think it s a resource grab- companies and people in Trump's circle are going to literally divide the spoils by getting in on oil deals with Russia, and gobbling up water and oil rights domestically.  

I know it sounds like tinfoil hat stuff but the next fifty years is going to be, more than ever, about resource scarcity and abundance on a global level.  China has had an unquenchable thirst for raw materials the last ten years or so to support their growth spurt, iron, concrete, oil.  I think Trump really wants to give the US back to the captain's of industry and robber barons.  I think what he admires about Putin is how he turned Russia into a kleptocratic free for all for his friends.  

/End crazy rant

This isn't crazy at all, IMO. And if it is, I'm crazy right along with you.

Trump craves power more than anything and will do anything to get it. When you supposedly have billions of dollars and are one of the richest men on Earth, what else is there? He wants to turn the whole planet into a world where national sovereignty means nothing--corporations are the new rulers. They want resources because with those, they can bring We the People to our knees. We can't live without water. Everything else we can do without if need be, but not that. 

Putin's end game isn't much different. He wants to re-create the USSR and Trump is the perfect lapdog. Trump is in over his head. Putin is way smarter and politically savvy than Trump could ever hope to be. 

I do believe this is the goal: to turn every nation on earth into a free for all capitalist state with no restrictions whatsoever. They can poison our air and water, take all the water they want. And when nations resist, they'll be put down ruthlessly. 

We're headed for an ecological disaster if that pans out. Maybe I'm paranoid, and I truly hope I am wrong. No matter how I look at it, I keep coming back to this. 

[Dr. Pepper]

4 hours ago, Altherion said:

Why in the world would they be prepared for something that has never happened before?

We've never had a candidate like Trump before where it was so important that electors do the right thing which is why the volume is much heavier this year, but that doesn't mean that electors have never been championed to switch their vote.  Just that along with the fact that Trump is a madman who every decent and intelligent person knows shouldn't be running anything much less a government should have clued these idiots in that they'd be contacted.  

2 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

I'm actually most curious about what aspects of this make that elector "proud" to cast his vote for Trump.   Trump's magnanimous unification of all Americans through strong disavowal of the bigoted lunatics in his base, thereby avoiding more than a thousand new hate crimes since the election?   His super presidential behavior in which he totally hasn't been instigating other countries and disgracing the US?    His courageous adherence to truth and tolerance for criticism?    His being completely gracious and not engaging in a petty vengeance parade where he seeks groveling from leaders only to humiliate and ignore them?  His decorous willingness to not create a kleptocracy by fully divesting and disclosing his financial ties, and certainly not engaging in full blown nepotism in bringing in his family in advisory roles?    I mean, there's so much here we should be proud of, and I'd love to know which ones move this elector to feel so.

Oh you know, he says he's making America great again and he's rich so that works.  

1 hour ago, Inigima said:

Guys, you don't have to countenance harassment. Don't get me wrong, I'm tired of the left being expected to apologize for everything and the right for nothing, but you can just let it go. Yeah, he's an elector and you're welcome to try to persuade him, but don't bombard his house with nonstop phone calls, especially after hours. Also, this guy is a GOP caucus chair, so your efforts to persuade people are probably better spent elsewhere.

I would guess that many people probably don't know that he doesn't have a business line and that they are calling a private residence.  They likely assume they are bombarding a phone number specific to his elector business and reading their prepared phone speeches.

I would think even GOP caucus chairs can sometimes be decent people.  There are plenty of Republican candidates to choose from that may not be wholly palatable but at least aren't promising to burn down the fucking world with every action they take.  

[LongRider]

4 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Omg....this afternoon as I was finishing up the last of my holiday shopping at a Wisconsin Kohls, I could not believe my eyes. There in the crowded parking lot was the ugliest, mudstreaked , dented up, rusting, heap of a pickup, flying a huge Confederate flag from at least a 10 foot pole poking out of those stake holes they have above the wheel wells in most trucks.

This is Wisconsin FFS!! I was thinking to myself. 

So I guess now (The Trump regression era) were going to start seeing white nationalist slithering out of their holes. Whats next for them High School basketball games?

They started coming out with Obama as a response to a black man being Prez (in my state), now with Trump as Prez Elect guess the shy ones now have the courage to come slithering out.  Also you should see the yellow 'Don't tread on me' flags flying and also as bumper stickers and other stickers.

gross 

[Mexal]

Populism in Poland after 1 year. Feels very similar to the road we are going down.

Quote

The new government is also skeptical of the Paris climate change agreement to cut carbon emissions and has pulled support for Polish wind and solar farms. At the same time, it is pumping more money into coal. 

“Who really knows what is causing global warming?” Pawel said. “And Poland needs the coal industry.”

Maria was always more concerned with the spread of liberal values, which Law and Justice has, she said, rightly nipped in the bud. There is no more talk in Poland, for instance, of offering any legal rights to same-sex couples. Earlier this year, the office of a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group in Warsaw was badly vandalized. Police never caught the perpetrators.

“Homosexuality was quiet before, then they tried to normalize it,” she said. “You don’t see that happening now.” 

Already, the new government has taken steps to limit the power of the constitutional court, chipping away, critics say, at checks and balances. A new draft law would also allow government-appointed governors the right to decide on future permits for demonstrations. 

The mother of a 13-year-old daughter, Mizolebska said she is deeply concerned about what sees as an attack on women’s reproductive rights. A near-total abortion ban — women and doctors faced up to five years in jail — was defeated in October after a massive street protest. But she fears it may yet come back.

“The government wants women to be mothers, to be housewives, but my daughter wants to be a writer, maybe a journalist,” she said. “But what chance does she have here? In these conditions?”

 

[butterbumps!]

20 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

 Oh you know, he says he's making America great again and he's rich so that works. 

"America First!"    (Which apparently means avoiding intelligence briefings and refusing to acknowledge or investigate foreign interference in our country.   My heart swells with pride)

eta genuine question:  are the proud trump supporters ignorant of those facts, refusing to believe them, or just don't give A F because it's not Hillary sending emails?

[DMC]

On 12/17/2016 at 7:09 PM, Commodore said:

no empirical evidence that the first two affected the election outcome, and the latter isn't going anywhere

 

Well, first of all, no shit there hasn't been any empirical evidence yet.  Other than trying to analyze opaque trends in the aggregate polls, it will take awhile to analyze survey and/or experimental data on such issues, not to mention going through the review process to get anything published.  And rest assured there will be monsoon wave of research attempting to decipher the how the Russia hacks, Comey, and fake news influenced the election.  Hell, just look at the program for the upcoming SPSA and there's a litany of Trump-related work - and virtually all of those studies were written before the election when everyone thought he'd lose.

That being said, I agree that we'll never really know how much Russia or Comey affected the election outcome.  There are too many endogeneity issues to ever satisfactorily isolate the effects.  The only way to do so would be in an experimental setting which obviously has terminal generalizability concerns.  There will still be barrels of academic digital ink spilled trying to do so, of course.  The impact of fake news on political behavior, OTOH, is a much more promising research avenue - in large part because we don't have to look solely at the last few weeks of the election.

However, it is pretty clear, and plenty of people were saying this at the time, that the primary impact of the Russia hacks and Comey was in causing Clinton to lose a significant number of news cycles (even amongst the reviled mainstream media) simply by diverting attention away from Trump.  When you have the two most unpopular candidates running against each other, whomever is in the news more is likely to lose - which is why even when Comey "cleared" Clinton two days before the election it still hurt her simply by keeping the issue front and center (which very well may have been the intent).  Did either flip the election?  Like I said we'll never know, but considering the razor-thin margins in Michigan/Wisconsin/Pennsylvania, virtually anyone can make a compelling argument for any number of issues having a minimal but decided impact.

Regardless, it does not take any postgraduate degrees nor econometric scrutiny of the data to understand both Russia and Comey damaged Hillary's election prospects, only basic political sense.  And the concern with the former - when a foreign power weaponizes covert information to insert itself in the election process - is something I would hope every reasonable person shares.

 

RE:  Trump's press availability - something a number of you responded to in the closed thread that I'd like to clarify.  I do not expect Trump himself to grant much access to the press.  Presidents have increasingly avoided press conferences since Clinton - it was a fairly loud complaint of Obama from the WH press corps - and I would not be surprised if Trump takes the "unpresidented" route of never holding a true WH press conference.

I do disagree though with the notion that he will not have a traditional communications staff, press secretary, and subsequent daily briefings.  First, because he does understand media and will want to ensure his message is out there beyond his Twitter users.  Second, he has already deployed his close advisors (e.g. Preibus, Conway) on the Sunday morning shows and cable news outlets during the transition, demonstrating at least some traditional presidential public relations.  So, circling back to what the discussion was about, I do expect there to be congressional investigations on the Russia hacks and, consequently, I expect his administration to have to address this eventually.

[LongRider]

David Frum's tweets on Trump's narcissism, Storify'ed

https://storify.com/DemFromCT/david-frum-on-the-consequences-of-donald-trump-s-e

[LongRider]

How people are preparing for Trump's presidency, presidency; Guardian readers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/17/how-people-are-preparing-for-trumps-presidency

Quote

‘Read about how brave people act in impossible times’

I am reading speculative fiction, like The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Ellison, Children of Men, by PD James, Timescape by Gregory Bedford, Liz Jensen’s The Rapture and Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. I find they provide the best set of instructions for how brave people act in impossible times.

These books teach us how to combat sexual violence, climate change, rampant racism, ableism, sexism and the gun violence that enforces them all.

 

[Commodore]

people setting the bar so low for Trump with these impossible times predictions