US Politics: Stormy Weather Ahead

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I am not sure that applies to the PA-18 race.  In general, Democratic voters are more motivated but fewer in number than Republican voters* in PA-18.  So I would actually think that Lamb could benefit from bad weather.  No way to be sure, obviously, but it definitely seems possible. 

* weird voter registration patterns notwithstanding.

 

1 minute ago, Mexal said:

I'm not so sure. Bad weather seems to favor GOP normally but in this case, I think it favors the Dems, just like VA. They're more energized so more likely to fight it to vote.

Fair points about the enthusiasm gap favoring Lamb, I just doubt that enthusiasm overrides really shitty weather - especially in terms of having to deal with really bad conditions after work in Allegheny County.  Of course as I type this it just cleared up outside my window.

[Mexal]

Just now, dmc515 said:

Fair points about the enthusiasm gap favoring Lamb, I just doubt that enthusiasm overrides really shitty weather - especially in terms of having to deal with really bad conditions after work in Allegheny County.  Of course as I type this it just cleared up outside my window.

Lots of enthusiasm this morning. Not sure how long the weather has lasted but people were waiting in line at 7am which is abnormal from what I understand.

[Shryke]

5 minutes ago, Yukle said:

This may not be a bad thing because the thing that Trump most wants to do is literally NOTHING!

He wants to lounge about all day, watching TV, listening to stories about himself, meeting other famous people and eating cheeseburgers. It's the expectation that he actually has to do work that is most irritating for him. He isn't accustomed to doing much at all.

No, Trump has lots of wants beyond that. He wants to start trade wars and start actual wars and destroy US alliances.

[Which Tyler]

2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

They have sacked the people responsible for sacking the people responsible for the titles!

I just want to acknowledge, and give credit, to a great Python reference

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, Which Tyler said:

I just want to acknowledge, and give credit, to a great Python reference

Ahhhhh, thank-you, I couldn’t place it!

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Lots of enthusiasm this morning. Not sure how long the weather has lasted but people were waiting in line at 7am which is abnormal from what I understand.

Yeah while I wasn't awake at 7, the weather was fine this morning, so shouldn't have an effect then.

[GAROVORKIN]

14 minutes ago, Shryke said:

No, Trump has lots of wants beyond that. He wants to start trade wars and start actual wars and destroy US alliances.

Someone needs to explain to Donald Trump  the history of the  Smoot Hawley Tariff  act of 1930 and how beneficial that one proved to be for the US. 

[Yukle]

This is a lot of effort to expend on a seat that is, for all intents and purposes, going to be vacated almost straightaway and isn't required for a working majority.

Also interesting: Alabama remains the only flip that the Dems have managed, and that was a gigantic 31% swing against a candidate who was a paedophile. The next largest swing was the massive 23% swing in the Kansas 4th, which was still nowhere near enough to flip the seat.

This is a sad sign of how badly drawn the districts are in the USA. That the norm is for such massive gains needed to flip everyday seats is absurd. Double-digit leads are common in most representative models, but having so few competitive seats is disastrous.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, runs a significant risk of spending the rest of his life in prison and the evidence against him by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office seems strong, a federal judge declared in an order made public on Tuesday.

Manafort could face ‘rest of life in prison,’ judge says

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/13/judge-manafort-could-face-rest-of-life-in-prison-460302

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

22 hours ago, Shryke said:

I recommended it like a month or something back, but I would again suggest How Democracies Die as a good read that really helps clarify the forces at work here. And it's pretty dangerous for the health of the democracy. America has been at situations this bad before though and it gets way worse from here if it gets to that.

That one is definitely on my to read list, I've just got a lot in front of it. I've read some really summaries though. Certainly looks like its worth checking out.

Quote

The main issue/"issue" I find with the two authors is well they are good at identifying the problems, they don't offer really good solutions. They talk about the danger of this kind of hardball but nothing they suggest really allows a unilateral solution. You need all sides to agree to return to norms. And the Republican party is just extremely unlikely to do that. Because what they are doing works and they don't care about the consequences, up to and including collusion with a foreign power.

I don't think you can fault them too much for that. It's easy to identify problems in government, but it's quite difficult to fix them, even when everyone is on board. As you said, the Republican party is unlikely to be willing to pursue reform before their party crashes and burns, so in the mean time Democrats will just have to do what they can to keep the ship afloat. 

[Yukle]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

... the Republican party is unlikely to be willing to pursue reform before their party crashes and burns, so in the mean time Democrats will just have to do what they can to keep the ship afloat. 

It's optimistic to assume that the Republicans are indeed headed for a crash, rather than this being the beginning of a near-complete domination of the US political system.

If they can do this with Trump imagine what they can do with a competent leader who shares his views and can actually enact them.

[Shryke]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

That one is definitely on my to read list, I've just got a lot in front of it. I've read some really summaries though. Certainly looks like its worth checking out.

I don't think you can fault them too much for that. It's easy to identify problems in government, but it's quite difficult to fix them, even when everyone is on board. As you said, the Republican party is unlikely to be willing to pursue reform before their party crashes and burns, so in the mean time Democrats will just have to do what they can to keep the ship afloat. 

I don't fault them for it too much. And mostly only because in some interviews I've seen them suggest that it's bad to reciprocate the actions, which is both true in that it's bad for democracy as a whole and irrelevant in that not reciprocating doesn't actually solve anything and democracy can fail, as seen in the US, fairly unilaterally.

[Kalbear]

Well, it's not an issue with the authors so much as it's a warning. The reason they didn't say how to solve it is that short of a massive war, it has never been solved. Once a democracy goes that direction - where people start overusing their power and demonizing the opposition - those countries have all fallen into autocracies, and the only solution that has ever worked was at the point of a fairly large gun - and to my knowledge, that gun was always external to the country. 

That might be okay for Europe. That's a real problem for the US, where invasion is essentially a nonstarter. 

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Yukle said:

This is a lot of effort to expend on a seat that is, for all intents and purposes, going to be vacated almost straightaway and isn't required for a working majority.

The race is important for Lamb because if he wins he'll likely start out as a slight favorite in the new 17th district.  It's important for the GOP because a loss in such a district will further depress donors and activist enthusiasm.

[Yukle]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Well, it's not an issue with the authors so much as it's a warning. The reason they didn't say how to solve it is that short of a massive war, it has never been solved. Once a democracy goes that direction - where people start overusing their power and demonizing the opposition - those countries have all fallen into autocracies, and the only solution that has ever worked was at the point of a fairly large gun - and to my knowledge, that gun was always external to the country. 

That might be okay for Europe. That's a real problem for the US, where invasion is essentially a nonstarter. 

Hmm... as a hypothetical possibility, what if the USA fractures into civil war again? It wouldn't be hard to raise internal militia, especially in the gun-toting South. The prospect of having some of its states splinter from the union may be a bargaining chip.

No one seems too serious, of course, but there is always academic discussion especially in California and Texas of just seceding. The USA might not bat an eyelid at the loss of Guam or Puerto Rico but the threat of losing key states in independence movements maybe a means of righting the ship.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Notone said:

Somehow I've got questions.

a.) Wasn't Tillerson supposed to be one of the adults in the room to keep Donnie Dipshit somewhat under control

b.) wasn't there supposed to be that suicide pact among the saner members of his cabinet, that if one of them gets fired the others will resign. (I am not sure, wasn't it Tillerson, McMaster, and Matthis (?)). So will the others resign now? And who will be their replacements?

 

a). That was the understanding at the beginning, but it quickly became clear that many of the people we thought would be the adults weren't and the few that are spend very little time directly interacting with Trump. Just look at CoS Kelly. Many thought he would be one of the adults. As it turns out, he's kind of an idiot (at least when it comes to politics, I'm sure he's a very smart man in other areas).

b). It was Tillerson, Mattis and Mnuchin, though McMaster will be out the door soon. I wouldn't be shocked if Mnuchin resigned soon. He accomplished his main goal, the tax cut, and he doesn't seem to enjoy government work. He'll go back to making tons of money by the end of 2018. Mattis is harder to peg. There have been reports that he will leave soon too, but they're less reliable. And I think he loves his job, plus he sees it as his duty to not let Trump use the military to destroy the world. There have been countless reports of him stopping Trump from making horrible mistakes. My guess is that of the three who remain that I listed, he's the last to go.

On that note, there have been multiple reports that more shakeups are to come. Here's a short article predicting who might be next (number one is not surprising at all):

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/tillerson-fired-trump-cabinet/index.html

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, Yukle said:

Hmm... as a hypothetical possibility, what if the USA fractures into civil war again? It wouldn't be hard to raise internal militia, especially in the gun-toting South. The prospect of having some of its states splinter from the union may be a bargaining chip.

No one seems too serious, of course, but there is always academic discussion especially in California and Texas of just seceding. The USA might not bat an eyelid at the loss of Guam or Puerto Rico but the threat of losing key states in independence movements maybe a means of righting the ship.

We'd get the Jesusland split like in Morgan's Black Man.  I know others speculated about it before him but that's the one that comes to mind, basically split the country up into the two coasts and then the fly-over states.  

Then we can build two more walls!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, Yukle said:

It's optimistic to assume that the Republicans are indeed headed for a crash, rather than this being the beginning of a near-complete domination of the US political system.

If they can do this with Trump imagine what they can do with a competent leader who shares his views and can actually enact them.

Eh, I'm of the opinion that the Republican party was already coming apart, and that Trump's victory is only delaying the inevitable. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Clinton had won. 

22 minutes ago, Shryke said:

I don't fault them for it too much. And mostly only because in some interviews I've seen them suggest that it's bad to reciprocate the actions, which is both true in that it's bad for democracy as a whole and irrelevant in that not reciprocating doesn't actually solve anything and democracy can fail, as seen in the US, fairly unilaterally.

That's fair. 

21 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

That might be okay for Europe. That's a real problem for the US, where invasion is essentially a nonstarter. 

One day the Canadians will grow a backbone, and then we are all doomed. Doomed I say!

28 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Manafort could face ‘rest of life in prison,’ judge says

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/13/judge-manafort-could-face-rest-of-life-in-prison-460302

 

As I've been saying all along, it's only a matter of time until he's:

 

[Yukle]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

On that note, there have been multiple reports that more shakeups are to come. Here's a short article predicting who might be next (number one is not surprising at all):

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/tillerson-fired-trump-cabinet/index.html

Maybe Trump just gets off on firing people. That was, after all, the only real part of The Apprentice. People have pointed out, after working on the show, he didn't actually own much any more, having been bankrupt so many times. He would hire you to do not much at all, same as him. He just got a thrill from saying, "You're fired!" Much as he did on the campaign trail.

I sometimes wonder if, no matter what, he will end up firing a staff member for whatever invented reason because it's such a power trip for him.

[all swedes are racist]

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