davos Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Carry on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martell Spy Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/lessons-from-putins-russia-for-living-in-trumps-america.html Russia: Life After Trust Once you lose faith in one institution, you start to lose faith in them all. Lessons from Putin’s Moscow. By Michael Idov Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rorshach Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 This been linked yet? Made me laugh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hereward Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 May need a bit more simplification, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ser Scot A Ellison Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 The Fallen, Regarding your Trust in German pacifism: if Germany makes a move to start building Nuclear Weapons it's no longer behaving like a pacifist State, is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongRider Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Quote OGE from the previous thread said: I don't just don't know about these "celebrity" candidates. I'm just not real confident they can go down in places like Detroit and Pittsburgh and in rural counties and get the Democratic base back. I'm just not real confident they can really connect with lots of these people. Obama could do that. Zuckerburg could probably win California. But, we need Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania back. And probably Ohio too. Also, I think at this point it also extremely important for the Democratic Party to start recruiting good candidates, to include a lot of women and minority candidates, and start grooming them for leadership. Which also means concentrating on local elections too. And then of course, the Democratic Party needs to figure out just what in the hell it wants to say. Would California vote for Zuckerburg? Don't know, but Calif had a hell of a time with their last celebrity gov, the Gropenator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. After Arnie tho, the state went deep dark blue. While Cali is a big state, huge state, some might say a bigly state, it's only one state so Arnie couldn't do as much damage as Prez Orange Shit Thing can. And there's the rub. We need politicians to run for office, not movie hacks or ultra rich businessmen. So yeah, the Demos, if as OGE correctly notes above, can figure out what it wants, they, we, need to cultivate the younger talent. Like yesterday. In other news, seems Prez has decided a federal hiring freeze would be in order. Oh really? One of the issues that dogged the Gropenator in Cali was he picked on the state workers to balance his budgets. Didn't work. Looks like a similar tactic is being tried here plus, could be attempts to begin to privatize various agencies along with really reducing or eliminating parts of agencies. Somewhere there needs to be an account kept of how many jobs lost by federal rank and file employees due to his polices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGimletEye Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Just now, Nasty LongRider said: We need politicians to run for office, not movie hacks or ultra rich businessmen. So yeah, the Demos, if as OGE correctly notes above, can figure out what it wants, they, we, need to cultivate the younger talent. Like yesterday. Yeah, I think the idea that the Democratic Party should run Cuban, Bloomberg, Zuckerburg, The Rock, Lassie, Mr. Ed, Old Yeller, or Flipper or whatever famous celebrity for the next presidential election is akin to trying to put a band aid on a gaping chest wound. It may be a temporary fix, but it wouldn't seem to fix some longer term issues. And it does really need to start grooming good candidates in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
butterbumps! Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Isn't it more likely that the next 4 years causes us to lose our taste for inexperienced-celeb leaders? I kind of think the "the government should be run like a business, so let's elect the businessman celebrity" line of thinking might be purged from our collective system too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 @Manhole Eunuchsbane, @OldGimletEye, I didn't mean to suggest that the Dems would actually nominate Cuban. I was just using him as an example. @Fez, If we're nominating a pro wrestler, we should go with Mankind. Wouldn't you love to see him shove that dirty sock down Trump's throat? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGimletEye Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Just now, butterbumps! said: Isn't it more likely that the next 4 years causes us to lose our taste for inexperienced-celeb leaders? I kind of think the "the government should be run like a business, so let's elect the businessman celebrity" line of thinking might be purged from our collective system too. Herbert Hoover was a successful mining engineer and businessman. He had little frickin clue about how to solve the Great Depression. His Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, ran several different businesses in Banking, Timber, Coal, etc. He too had little frickin clue about what to do. Back in 2011 or so, Carly Fiorina said something along the lines "that everybody agrees the deficit needs to be cut" or something like that, when a lot of smart people wouldn't have agreed with that. Bernie Marcus claimed that cutting income taxes for people like himself is necessary for growth. We have very good reasons to believe that's bullshit. So Republican Party stop saying "the country should be run like a business" with businessmen in charge. More here: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/24/14346270/government-business-chaos Quote Despite widespread discussion of the idea, the United States has never before had a president whose background is primarily in the business world. To many people this seems like a good idea, both in the sense that Trump’s business acumen seems to have led many voters to believe he’ll steer the broader economy to prosperity and also because many observers believe a corporate-style decentralized management structure would be a good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IheartIheartTesla Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 It doesn't matter what type of person the candidate is (celebrity, businessman, military general) as long as the perception is that he/she speaks to the common man. I think that is the takeaway from this election. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mormont Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Well, I think previous fame helps. I think voters feel a strange reassurance voting for someone they feel they know, even if it's only from seeing them on TV. And I think also that voters like someone with a track record of success, regardless of what field that was in. But yeah, the 'speaks to the common man' thing is important. For all that Trump was born rich, the way he speaks is extremely simple. He rambles sometimes, but the vocabulary he uses and the sentiments he expresses are very straightforward. I don't think you can overestimate the importance of that manner of speaking to his success. It's worth noting also that this isn't about speaking to the actual common man. Working class voters voted for Trump in fairly high numbers for a Republican, but overall he lost among those voters. But there's a certain percentage of the middle class that like to think of themselves as 'the common man', and those people appear to be an important demographic in US elections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fez Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 Seems to be growing talk that Neil Gorsuch is the leading candidate to get nominated to the Supreme Court by Trump. SCOTUSBlog had a profile on him earlier this month. Sounds like he's almost exactly Scalia 2.0, except a little more intellectually honest about what his stated beliefs mean (he upheld a clean energy program in Colorado because he dislikes the dormant commerce clause and didn't appreciate a conservative group invoking it to try to get rid of the program) and even more skeptical of Chevron deference. 36 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said: If we're nominating a pro wrestler, we should go with Mankind. Wouldn't you love to see him shove that dirty sock down Trump's throat? To be honest, I know very little about wrestling, but that does sound great. I only know The Rock pretty well because of his breakthrough into acting. I have seen a few people suggesting he should run, based mainly on the fact that he's very charismatic and has had some vague statements that could be pretty easily read to be criticism of Trump. He's also explicitly said, both before and after the election, that he'd considering running in 2020; but not under what conditions. Far as Mark Zuckerberg goes, he might be the one candidate Democrats could put forth who could end up being a worse President than Trump. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rippounet Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 I think the fact we (in the Western world) still elect "leaders" rather than voting for programs or track records is at the source of many of our problems. That so many people really care who is in charge and want to trust them seems increasingly primitive to me. I'd much rather we had to choose between detailed and realistic programs for our country and have a better chance of seeing them actually implemented. Instead we have a sort of cult of personality around our so-called "leaders" and sometimes get buffons as president because they are able to appeal to those who are too dumb to study a political or economic program. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mormont Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 It's natural, though. Even fairly engaged voters like those on this board struggle to really get to grips with 'detailed and realistic programs' for their country. Ultimately, for most voters, they don't have a real grasp what the best policies might be, and there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is expected to be an expert on everything: that's not being 'dumb', it's being realistic. So it makes perfect sense to pick a leader, someone who will make those decisions for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rippounet Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 5 minutes ago, mormont said: It's natural, though. Even fairly engaged voters like those on this board struggle to really get to grips with 'detailed and realistic programs' for their country. Ultimately, for most voters, they don't have a real grasp what the best policies might be, and there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone is expected to be an expert on everything: that's not being 'dumb', it's being realistic. So it makes perfect sense to pick a leader, someone who will make those decisions for you. This is all true, but we live in an era of information now. It's increasingly reasonable to expect voters to know and understand some basics about economy and politics. In fact, such knowledge is essential to a democratic system and acquiring it is -on paper- part of the duty of a citizen. Of course, it's not all on the voter. In theory we are taught some basics about politics -at least- in high school, which is supposedly free -in most if not all Western countries. And it's theoretically up to the politicians to provide us with a detailed program/vision for our country. But when a guy like Trump wins the US presidency with the vocabulary of a six-year old you have to assume there are many factors at work. And one fundamental issue that's been raised again and again lately is about "trustworthiness" (of politicans, of the media... etc). Our current "representative democracies" require a lot of trust to be placed in leaders. I'm merely saying perhaps that's part of the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 WTF??????? Little hands signed a bill that makes his inauguration National Day of Patriotic Devotion. Guess national day of Thanksgiving is already taken. It sure sounds like North Korea and other totalitarian dictatorships. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/23/trump-names-his-inauguration-day-a-national-day-of-patriotic-devotion/?utm_term=.4c5d238cdf3e https://twitter.com/search?q=National+Patriotism+day&ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^search Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Queen Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 19 minutes ago, Zorral said: WTF??????? Little hands signed a bill that makes his inauguration National Day of Patriotic Devotion. Guess national day of Thanksgiving is already taken. It sure sounds like North Korea and other totalitarian dictatorships. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/23/trump-names-his-inauguration-day-a-national-day-of-patriotic-devotion/?utm_term=.4c5d238cdf3e https://twitter.com/search?q=National+Patriotism+day&ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^search Sounds to me like he's deifying himself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PrettyPig Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 13 minutes ago, Zorral said: WTF??????? Little hands signed a bill that makes his inauguration National Day of Patriotic Devotion. Not only that, "his" day is inevitably going to coincide with MLK Day and the civil rights celebration weekend. (2020 will be the first year that Jan 20th is actually the 3rd Monday). Trump trying to steal the thunder of a successful black man by piggybacking off of his legacy - imagine that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fragile Bird Posted January 24, 2017 Share Posted January 24, 2017 13 minutes ago, PrettyPig said: Not only that, "his" day is inevitably going to coincide with MLK Day and the civil rights celebration weekend. (2020 will be the first year that Jan 20th is actually the 3rd Monday). Trump trying to steal the thunder of a successful black man by piggybacking off of his legacy - imagine that. I actually think it's more insidious than that. Trump intends to run for a second term (he already has his campaign slogan trademarked, I read in the previous thread, Keep America Great). January 20, 2021 is a Wednesday, meaning more people will likely make an extra long weekend and attend the inauguration, AND BREAK OBAMAS INAUGURATION CROWD RECORD! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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