U.S. Politics. Next?

[Sivin]

10 minutes ago, Mexal said:

And the President responds to Bannon...

 

And I thought that the plot of House of Cards was disjointed and nonsensical... 

[Guy Kilmore]

1 hour ago, WinterFox said:

Hey, if the offense I'm offering is being too optimistic I'll accept whatever sentence you deem fit for such a transgression. 

I'll just point out that the Women's march was composed of literally millions of Americans who recognize that there are powers attempting to steal their inheritance and want to do something about it. 

I'm offering my best contributions as well, one of which I hope is boosting a little confidence in this thread. 

We've already won, you were born into victory. All that's left is to never let demagogues and thieves threaten our Republic again. 

I don't know about you, but that's a fight I'm happy to bleed for. 

This is the hope I have.  Demographics are shifting and I hope they continue to shift the way that they are.

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, aceluby said:

"The most talented field ever assembled by the Republican Party"

Maybe there was a typo and it was supposed to be "The most prolific field of clowns ever assembled by The Republican Party." 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

I think it's fine to say that Trump is worse than Dubya, so long as no impression is left that Dubya wasn't that bad, or we get into this thing where we look sentimentally at the sky, with misty eyes and whisper "Dubya", because his presidency was a train wreck.

I mean I can say the sinking of the Titanic was worse than the Hindenburg, and maybe that's true, but let's not leave any impression that the Hindenburg was not an utter disaster.

Oh I by no means am implying that. Bush is probably one of the five worst presidents in American history. I just worried about him starting WW3. Trump almost seems like he’s trying to.

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

And I think we should be rather amazed that we've managed to elect the Hindenburg and the Titanic to the presidency in less than a generation.

To quote one of my political mentors, “I can forgive people for voting for Bush in 2000. I cannot forgive the people who voted to reelect him.”

[Sivin]

Goddammit, why does Nikki Haley have to actually give a damn about democracy? Even if its viewed through a horrible and twisted ideology, it's the surest way to my heart. I fear that if even someone like Mike Pence were to abet the singular achievement of humanity I would have to offer at least a polite nod as I refused to piss on his burning body. 

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

To quote one of my political mentors, “I can forgive people for voting for Bush in 2000. I cannot forgive the people who voted to reelect him.”

And it would appear that the same people that voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, are largely the same crowd that voted for Trump.

Remember way back when, before the rise of the alt right, when you had the Tea Party clowns. They tried to act like, "oh no, we didn't like Bush. We're against big gubment. By golly we're 'libertarians'!". Uh yeah, what a bunch of flamin' horseshit. They mainly were Bush supporters that decided to spaz out, because rather than dealing with the fact they supported a clown, they decided to just go completely ape shit.

[Dr. Pepper]

Every time someone says they miss Dubya, I remember an interview Laura Bush gave right before he left office. Someone pointed out that he was hated across the spectrum for all these things he did and she said with a straight face that she thought the future would look back kindly on his presidency and that it would hold up to scrutiny over time. 

Lol

[Fez]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Oh I by no means am implying that. Bush is probably one of the five worst presidents in American history. I just worried about him starting WW3. Trump almost seems like he’s trying to.

Hmm, I think my list would go:

Buchanan, Trump, Pierce, Hayes, A. Johnson, Harding, and maybe then W. Bush. Though Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Fillmore, and Grant were all pretty terrible as well. Frankly, we've had a lot of really terrible Presidents.

As terrible as Trump is, I'd listen to arguments that Pierce and Hayes are also worse than him (in most regards Hayes was an average-to-bad President, but his ending of Reconstruction is the single most destructive, long-lasting decision any US President has ever made).

I'd also listen to arguments that some of the other mid-19th century Presidents I listed are worse than Bush. There is always a recency bias with these kinds of things (also, Bush did create PEPFAR, which, despite it's problems, has done an enormous amount of good in Africa; not saying it outweighs any of the bad, but it's an accomplishment unlike anything many of our other failed Presidents have had).

[Sivin]

Rick Wilson is kind of tearing it up on CNN right now.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, Fez said:

Hmm, I think my list would go:

Buchanan, Trump, Pierce, Hayes, A. Johnson, Harding, and maybe then W. Bush. Though Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Fillmore, and Grant were all pretty terrible as well. Frankly, we've had a lot of really terrible Presidents.

As terrible as Trump is, I'd listen to arguments that Pierce and Hayes are also worse than him (in most regards Hayes was an average-to-bad President, but his ending of Reconstruction is the single most destructive, long-lasting decision any US President has ever made).

I'd also listen to arguments that some of the other mid-19th century Presidents I listed are worse than Bush. There is always a recency bias with these kinds of things (also, Bush did create PEPFAR, which, despite it's problems, has done an enormous amount of good in Africa; not saying it outweighs any of the bad, but it's an accomplishment unlike anything many of our other failed Presidents have had).

 

Hoover and Nixon don’t even make the honorable mentions list?

Anyways, I got Buchanan, Hoover, Dubya, A. Johnson and Harding in no particular order, though admittedly my knowledge of mid to late 19^th century presidents is lacking compared to other time periods. Trump doesn’t make the list yet, but I’m sure he will in time.

[Trebla]

[Paladin of Ice]

Paul Manafort is trying to sue Justice Department to get clear of Mueller. Yes, really.

Quote

President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has filed a lawsuit challenging the authority of special counsel Robert Mueller.

In a court filing, lawyers for Manafort argue that the order establishing Mueller's investigation is overly broad and not permitted under Justice Department regulations.

“The investigation of Mr. Manafort is completely unmoored from the Special Counsel’s original jurisdiction to investigate ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,’ ” the complaint reads.
“It has instead focused on unrelated, decade-old business dealings—specifically, Ukraine political campaign consulting activities of Mr. Manafort.”

Gotta give him credit for audacity, I guess.

15 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

LOL. 

Just in case somebody doesn't know where I got that verse:

Thanks for that, I've never actually seen Strangelove

[OldGimletEye]

23 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Thanks for that, I've never actually seen Strangelove

If you get a chance, watch it. It's pretty good, like most Kubrick films.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hoover and Nixon don’t even make the honorable mentions list?

Anyways, I got Buchanan, Hoover, Dubya, A. Johnson and Harding in no particular order, though admittedly my knowledge of mid to late 19^th century presidents is lacking compared to other time periods. Trump doesn’t make the list yet, but I’m sure he will in time.

Hoover and Nixon are also very bad, but I think not quite at the level of the worthless 19th century ones, Bush, or the truly awful bottom 5. Nixon was a bad person and damaged the office of the Presidency (hey, just like Trump), but he also signed quite a lot of good legislation (unlike Trump). Hoover was about as terrible as any President in the bottom 5, but unlike them he at least did quite a lot of good after his Presidency (though he waited until Truman to get started).

I am ready to put Trump on the list because I think he has done permanent and serious damage to the image of the Presidency in the US and the image of the US to the world. He has weakened democratic norms and institutions in ways that will take years to repair, if ever. He's only signed one significant bill, but it's a bad one; and meanwhile has allowed a host of important legislation to expire without pushing Congress to renew them. Meanwhile, almost every significant rule-making action his administration has taken, other than a handful of non-controversial ones started in the final days of the Obama administration, has been terrible for most of the people affected by them.

And that's just what he has done, I'm not even considering the potential of what more he could do.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Cuomo's state of the state was a pretty good speech, he presented himself as the anti-Trump, laying it on pretty thick.  I don't particularly care for the guy but he definitely sounds like he's running for President in 2020.  He breezed through a list of progressive issues too, seems like he's trying to pay the expected lip service to minimize a challenge from the left in the primary.  

 

[James Arryn]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

To quote one of my political mentors, “I can forgive people for voting for Bush in 2000. I cannot forgive the people who voted to reelect him.”

To me, the re-election has always been tied to what people here are saying about admitting being wrong. The world was pretty carte-balance to the US for a bit after 9-11, and supported dubious actions, etc. Then the world began to see where that was going wrong, started being less unconditional in supporting US actions and finally drew a line at Iraq. Not even saying ‘no’, just saying ‘not enough evidence yet’ and the US got really righteous and shining city and told the world to fuck off, we got us, no Freedom Fries for you, and contrary to how people want to revise it, at the time this was a VERY popular stance in America. If it hadn’t been so popular, in fact, I doubt he’s re-elected, because there woukdn’t have been so many people still hoping to prove the world wrong. I mean, it would be a massive embarrassment for Canada or Belgium or w/e to tell the world to fuck off and start an illegal war only to be proven wrong, and Canada/Belgium doesn’t go around believing in Canadian/Belgian Exceptionalism.

So for many people Bush losing, Kerry pulling out of Iraq etc. would have been admitting a huge neon blinking We We Wrong and Everyone Else Was Right kind of signal. And not about triviality, but about war and freedom and torture and terror and the deaths of countless tanned folk. In some ways a return to the post-Watergate pre-Reagan period where self-doubt was actually on the American options list. And the people who comprised the ~ %85-90 who believed in made up WMDs, backed the war and later pretended they hadn’t* were, on Election Day, kind of like those guys at the track who just lost their kids’ rent money and are now desperate to reclaim their life/pride /money on one last bet. Otherwise it’s facing a hard cold reality, and the consequences of your having been really wrong. And as someone mentioned earlier, look how many reacted when Obama tried to do even a little bit of that...’he hates America’. 

 

*edit: psychologically, to me, the HUGE gap between polls of people supporting W/invasion at the time and those who remembered/admitted having done so even 5 years later is an incredibly significant indication of how many Americans deal with critical reality vis a vis American foreign policy. 

[Zorral]

14 hours ago, WinterFox said:

Jesus man, sensationalize much? 

Flights would be cancelled, the markets would tank, and the political landscape would be in extreme upheaval. For a few weeks or months. 

The United States has the capacity to provide basic functions to every person in this country in perpetuity, including in the event that its infrastructure, or a large portion of it, were targeted by nuclear attacks. 

We have the capability to produce food at a rate unheard of in the rest of the world, we produce so much that the government gives massive subsidies to food producers because there isn't nearly enough of a demand to meet the supply. 

There isn't a resource on the world that could be denied to the United States should her eye fall upon it, and the greater the damage inflicted upon the continent the more aggressively its occupants will pursue mammoth tasks of civil engineering to combat new challenges. 

 

The unsexy truth is that life will pretty much just go on. A lot of people will die, and the world will look different afterwards, but the foundations of democracy and freedom will endure. 

The challenge is to make sure that as few people are hurt in the coming years as possible. I.E. do something about the Korean crisis. 

If this is all true why is Puerto Rico, whose people are citizens of the United States, still in a state of devastation, without power, without water, without food, without work, without recovery?

You seem not to understand that nuclear fallout travels.  It poisons water supplies and land too, all of which goes into the oceans, from where again it enters the atmosphere.  This stuff poisons for generations.  Your thinking about nuclear destruction is, frankly, silly.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Hmm, I think my list would go:

Buchanan, Trump, Pierce, Hayes, A. Johnson, Harding, and maybe then W. Bush. Though Harrison, Tyler, Taylor, Fillmore, and Grant were all pretty terrible as well. Frankly, we've had a lot of really terrible Presidents.

As terrible as Trump is, I'd listen to arguments that Pierce and Hayes are also worse than him (in most regards Hayes was an average-to-bad President, but his ending of Reconstruction is the single most destructive, long-lasting decision any US President has ever made).

I'd also listen to arguments that some of the other mid-19th century Presidents I listed are worse than Bush. There is always a recency bias with these kinds of things (also, Bush did create PEPFAR, which, despite it's problems, has done an enormous amount of good in Africa; not saying it outweighs any of the bad, but it's an accomplishment unlike anything many of our other failed Presidents have had).

 

Grant himself was a pretty darned good and effective president considering the many accomplishments of his administrations.  What he was not good at was judging people's capacity for disloyalty, betrayal and dishonesty, particularly if he knew them.  All his life he was constantly taken advantage of and screwed by such people.  It was no different with the members of his cabinet -- far too many of them.  The scandals were real, but Grant himself didn't have a part in them.  And by then, it was full blown gilded age and corruption and cronyism was the name of all the games and all the players.

[Martell Spy]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hoover and Nixon don’t even make the honorable mentions list?

Anyways, I got Buchanan, Hoover, Dubya, A. Johnson and Harding in no particular order, though admittedly my knowledge of mid to late 19^th century presidents is lacking compared to other time periods. Trump doesn’t make the list yet, but I’m sure he will in time.

Probably want to add Jackson somewhere on the list, too.

We don't really know where Trump will end up, yet. On a day to day, living with it experience and feeling depressed, he ranks pretty high though. The endless tweets, the daily embarrassments for Americans, the various openly chaotic evil government figures, the nuke threats. It's exhausting and depressing,. somehow at the same time.

Paul Manafort’s Ridiculous Lawsuit Against Robert Mueller Is a Pure Publicity Stunt

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/manaforts-lawsuit-against-mueller-is-a-publicity-stunt.html

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Hoover and Nixon are also very bad, but I think not quite at the level of the worthless 19th century ones, Bush, or the truly awful bottom 5. Nixon was a bad person and damaged the office of the Presidency (hey, just like Trump), but he also signed quite a lot of good legislation (unlike Trump). Hoover was about as terrible as any President in the bottom 5, but unlike them he at least did quite a lot of good after his Presidency (though he waited until Truman to get started).

Just out of curiosity, when analyzing the 19th century presidents, are you being extra harsh on them because of their advocacy for advancing slavery? Because if so I can see why they dominate your list. Personally I've never known what is the best way to judge a person from a different time period who engaged in what we now view as horrific behavior, but was common for the day. 

Nixon is one of the hardest presidents to rank (LBJ is probably the hardest, at least for me). As you say, Nixon did a number of good things and a number of bad things, but in the process not only did he damage the office of the presidency, he destroyed the government's credibility with the American people. He doesn't need to be in the bottom five, but he should be pretty low on most people's lists. I'm not sure you can make a strong case for Hoover not being in the bottom five though. I don't care if he did good things in his later years, so did Nixon. Hoover was a modern day Nero.

2 hours ago, Fez said:

I am ready to put Trump on the list because I think he has done permanent and serious damage to the image of the Presidency in the US and the image of the US to the world. He has weakened democratic norms and institutions in ways that will take years to repair, if ever. He's only signed one significant bill, but it's a bad one; and meanwhile has allowed a host of important legislation to expire without pushing Congress to renew them. Meanwhile, almost every significant rule-making action his administration has taken, other than a handful of non-controversial ones started in the final days of the Obama administration, has been terrible for most of the people affected by them.

And that's just what he has done, I'm not even considering the potential of what more he could do.

I totally get your reasoning, I just want to wait until his (hopefully) one term is over with. You never know, he might accidentally stumble into doing a few good things (though that's as likely as Jace winning the Experts league next year ).

ETA: Also, when listing the terrible things he's done so far, I'd probably have to rank pulling out of the Paris Agreement as the single worst thing he's done so far.

One side note, I always have to chuckle when I hear people discuss how bad of a president Buchanan was. I haven't read a ton about him, but what little I have suggest that he was one of the best politicians in American history up until he became president. Funny how that goes.