US Politics: Everyone's Manipulating Everyone

[Commodore]

18 minutes ago, Fez said:

They have been. But at the same time, thanks to partisanship I think most Republicans would say they would approve of any current Republican president.

it's not a binary proposition of either full-throated condemnation or support

that being said, if in general he's moving the ball in the direction you want, you would be less inclined to harp on areas of disagreement

for me, between Gorsuch, Mattis, McMaster, ACA/tax/regulatory reform, I can tolerate his many defects of character, because I think pros outweigh cons and the country is better off than the status quo (or  if Hillary were POTUS)

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

21 minutes ago, Fez said:

They have been. But at the same time, thanks to partisanship I think most Republicans would say they would approve of any current Republican president.

Pretty much. The poll that kept getting cited over the weekend had 86% of Republicans supporting Trump compared to just 37% of Independents support Trump and 9% of Democrats supporting Trump. 

[Gertrude]

16 minutes ago, Commodore said:

for me, between Gorsuch, Mattis, McMaster, ACA/tax/regulatory reform, ...

The regulation reform things confuses me. Sure, he's signaling that he wants to deregulate, but isn't that pretty easy to game? I want to introduce this regulation that does A, B and C, and in return we'll remove the old regulations concerning B and C. So in practice won't it just result in regulations that are wordier to try to get more bang for the buck?

[IheartIheartTesla]

38 minutes ago, Ormond said:

I would, however, like to see if there are any figures on how many people there out there like George Will, who would have called themselves Republicans a year ago but now tell pollsters they are Independents. 

There are also a bunch of lifelong Democrats (particularly in PA and MI) who voted for Trump this election, so I wonder how they are counted. It could explain some of the 9% support for Trump in that group.

Some of this is hard to check, since many states dont require party affiliation for registering to vote.

[OldGimletEye]

 

17 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Reading Ayn Rand not only does not make you smart, it will most likely make you dumber.  

Rand's objectivism and its closely related libertarian cousins are kind of like the mullets of political philosophy. To wit,

"It has an economically conservative business front end, but it's got a socially liberal party in the back!"

[aceluby]

5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

 

Rand's objectivism and it's closely related libertarian cousins are kind of like the mullets of political philosophy. To wit,

"It has an economically conservative business front end, but it's got a socially liberal party in the back!"

I'm having a hard time even accepting that since their 'socially liberal' stance really only extends to 'letting' people sleep with who they want to and occasionally ok with abortion rights.  Other than than it's a line of Fuck You's, I've got mine.  Discriminated against?  Too bad.  Fired for being gay?  Too bad.  Education?  Only if you can afford it.  Health care?  Homelessness?  Literally any social contract held up by the government?  Those need to go.

[Commodore]

18 minutes ago, Gertrude said:

The regulation reform things confuses me. Sure, he's signaling that he wants to deregulate, but isn't that pretty easy to game? I want to introduce this regulation that does A, B and C, and in return we'll remove the old regulations concerning B and C. So in practice won't it just result in regulations that are wordier to try to get more bang for the buck?

 at a minimum as long as the net number of pages in the federal register goes down, I don't care how it's sold

[Commodore]

14 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Rand's objectivism and it's closely related libertarian cousins are kind of like the mullets of political philosophy. To wit,

"It has an economically conservative business front end, but it's got a socially liberal party in the back!"

for some reason Rand provokes an intellectual schoolyard bully mentality to shun/ridicule her out of consideration at all

"Only idiots read this stuff. You're not an idiot are you?"

 

[aceluby]

6 minutes ago, Commodore said:

 at a minimum as long as the net number of pages in the federal register goes down, I don't care how it's sold

What a ridiculous standard.  This is why the GOP is known as the party of stupid.

[Commodore]

2 minutes ago, aceluby said:

What a ridiculous standard.  This is why the GOP is known as the party of stupid.

I said at a minimum

it matters what gets cut of course, but at a minimum we should not be adding to the size of the pile

[Red Tiger]

15 minutes ago, Commodore said:

for some reason Rand provokes an intellectual schoolyard bully mentality to shun/ridicule her out of consideration at all

"Only idiots read this stuff. You're not an idiot are you?"

 

Which is completely fitting and deserved, as that was what Rand herself liked to do best.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

6 minutes ago, Commodore said:

I said at a minimum

it matters what gets cut of course, but at a minimum we should not be adding to the size of the pile

Of course it matters.  And honestly, there is a complete difference between legislative and interpretive regulations.  Furthermore, just willy nilly cutting legislative regulations (or not promulgating regulations) in areas where there was a Congressional mandate to do so is equally stupid.  I can disagree with the Congressional mandate all I want (and I do), but they did it, and now people need to know how to organize their lives.  I'm really talking for my area, but there are areas of the Code where interpretive regulations are desperately needed, but can't be promulgated right now.  Finally, isn't a better thing to do to roll back Chevron deference (which actually, Gorsuch seems to be on board with)?  Honestly, that's half the problem - that there is very limited reviewability of regulations - to the fact of regulations themselves.

[Fez]

Leaks say that Trump's initial budget request (which isn't getting sent to Congress for a while yet; among other things, the agencies still need to review it and offer their input) will cut domestic discretionary spending by $54 billion and increase military spending by $54 billion. It doesn't touch entitlement programs, which may be dealt with on their own.

Worth noting, in the past Congress has voted down Republican spending bills that cut domestic discretionary spending by less than $54 billion because the cuts were already too deep for more moderate Republicans to support. We'll see if that still holds true now; assuming none of the agencies convince the White House to change anything.

[Weeping Sore]

1 hour ago, Commodore said:

for some reason Rand provokes an intellectual schoolyard bully mentality to shun/ridicule her out of consideration at all

"Only idiots read this stuff. You're not an idiot are you?"

 

I read Ayn Rand as a teen and found her very convincing, as it was my first exposure to any kind of strident, totalistic worldview. Eventually if you continue to read more political thought, you find people who look to real history and world events to support their ideas, rather than fictional worlds filled with straw men.

Her only strength as a writer is her unwavering fidelity to her central political idea; I'd submit that apart from that there are scant literary merits to what she is doing. So if you find you disagree with her political idea (i.e., you think compassion and co-operation just might have something to do with human progress and well-being) there is little left to admire.

 

 

[Ormond]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

There are also a bunch of lifelong Democrats (particularly in PA and MI) who voted for Trump this election, so I wonder how they are counted. It could explain some of the 9% support for Trump in that group.

Some of this is hard to check, since many states dont require party affiliation for registering to vote.

You can ask people if they have changed their self-identification from a year ago. That would not be 100% accurate, but would still give a good indication as to whether or not part of the huge Republican support for Trump is because people who were really turned off by him will no longer tell pollsters they are Republican.

And self-identification in a poll is a different issue from how one is registered. I am registered as a Democrat myself so I can vote in someone's primary, but I will almost always tell a telephone pollster that I am an Independent if they ask. 

[aceluby]

6 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

People of 65+ years were the highest represented age group of leave voters. I could understand middle aged Facebook users but in general people's grans are still not that tech savvy 

plus there is no way they made their minds up over night. The past decades in the U.K. have been filled with news stories about immigrants and the curvature of cucumbers 

First off, my grandparents are in their 70's and both sets of them are heavy Facebook users with most of their communication to both family and friends through it.  My racist grandfather gets all of his news from either FB or Fox.  You simply don't need to be 'tech savvy' to be a heavy facebook user, it's a social norm for everyone.

Secondly, it's not about making your mind up over night.  It's an issue of sourcing and confirmation bias.

You're the one saying these types of campaigns didn't sway a close election.  I think there's a lot more data supporting the claim that it does than it doesn't because 'those people probably don't use facebook'.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

3 minutes ago, aceluby said:

First off, my grandparents are in their 70's and both sets of them are heavy Facebook users with most of their communication to both family and friends through it.  My racist grandfather gets all of his news from either FB or Fox.  You simply don't need to be 'tech savvy' to be a heavy facebook user, it's a social norm for everyone.

Secondly, it's not about making your mind up over night.  It's an issue of sourcing and confirmation bias.

You're the one saying these types of campaigns didn't sway a close election.  I think there's a lot more data supporting the claim that it does than it doesn't because 'those people probably don't use facebook'.

Well the stats show that while elderly users have gone up they are still using it less than any other group.

sure I'll give you it might have had some effect but I think it diverts from the real issues that brexit threw up, that people have genuine grievances about EU. Blaming a Facebook campaign is just a distraction: 

[Fragile Bird]

I only brought up the Brexit stuff because of the revelation about the unreported donation. But in the US, Mercer's company has data mined information on 220 million Americans, and you can be sure they have done detailed analysis on the information they've collected.

Mercer is a computer genius who first worked at IBM where he did groundbreaking work on AI.  Every time you click on something on the internet, his company collects information about you.

He's the guy who gave Breitbart $10 M to continue their work. He also runs a company dedicated to undermining the 'false news' being reported by the mainstream press. And he started a branch of his company in the UK before the last election, and is setting up branches in France and Germany.

If you think his work had no influence in the UK, I think you're being very, very naive.

[Fez]

Ya know, there is a separate UK politics thread.

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Leaks say that Trump's initial budget request (which isn't getting sent to Congress for a while yet; among other things, the agencies still need to review it and offer their input) will cut domestic discretionary spending by $54 billion and increase military spending by $54 billion. It doesn't touch entitlement programs, which may be dealt with on their own.

Worth noting, in the past Congress has voted down Republican spending bills that cut domestic discretionary spending by less than $54 billion because the cuts were already too deep for more moderate Republicans to support. We'll see if that still holds true now; assuming none of the agencies convince the White House to change anything.

So, a bit of good news I saw is that if this request is true (and it looks like it is), Democrats actually do have some leverage and don't need to rely on hoping more moderate Republicans won't support domestic cuts that deep. That increase in military spending would break the caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, and since the Act is permanent law any bill to change it could be filibustered. Democrats could force Trump to decide if that military increase is more important to him than cutting domestic spending.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

First off, my grandparents are in their 70's and both sets of them are heavy Facebook users with most of their communication to both family and friends through it.  My racist grandfather gets all of his news from either FB or Fox.  You simply don't need to be 'tech savvy' to be a heavy facebook user, it's a social norm for everyone.

Secondly, it's not about making your mind up over night.  It's an issue of sourcing and confirmation bias.

You're the one saying these types of campaigns didn't sway a close election.  I think there's a lot more data supporting the claim that it does than it doesn't because 'those people probably don't use facebook'.

Yeah, I'd say that one of the biggest downsides to the internet age is the instant confirmation bias that it can (and does) provide. It's so much easier now to find a point of view that supports yours that it's that much easier to block out any information that opposes yours.