Messages

51

General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 18, 2016, 01:09:53 PM »

A party, group or club are all "groups", as in, organizations. And I don't see how someone can found a 'movement' that is not based in at least an activist group. If a movement comes to exist as a result of or based on someone's example, that is still not what a "founder" is. Ron Paul did not "found" the Tea Party, for example, even though I think a lot of them drew inspiration from his economic ideals and even saw him as a sort of role model for the movement.

Was Bernie Sanders not the founder of a movement?  What group did he found?  Here's a long list of other movements that were "founded".  Are they also groups?  My favorite is the "Hippie Movement".

52

General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 18, 2016, 12:10:54 PM »

BTW, I didn't say "group", you did.

That's interesting, because by citing "alt-right founder" you were directly insinuating that this pertained to your previous post. Are you now retracting that and saying your comment about Spencer was a non-sequitor?

And yes, when citing a "founder" one implies a "group".

No, when one "cites a founder" the reader infers a group if that is their inclination.  It could be a movement, party, group or club, wot?  It's not a group and doesn't have meetings, but it is a mindset shared by a number of white nationalist, racist and xenophobic people and groups.  FWIW, the KKK was originally founded to defend Protestantism against Catholicism and elected a number of people on that agenda, but those who attacked the religion were also just offering an opinion.

Nobody is claiming ALL of the events that happened were "false flag." A LOT of the reported events ARE turning up to be either false reports, or otherwise staged or (deliberately?) misconstrued all the same.

I confess that I was being a tad sarcastic, but I would expect Cherry to be nodding in full agreement with the remark.  There are few truths about politics and political action that are universal or absolute.  As TheDrake and Fenring pointed out in another thread, it's both what you say and how you say it that count.  But lies do matter, as well as spreading provably false information.  Michael Flynn (father, as well as son) has done it, but nobody does it better than Trump and the new official White House news outlets, FOX and Breitbart.  If you get your news from either of those places, wipe your screen with a moist towelette after reading to guard against infection.

53

General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 18, 2016, 09:04:29 AM »

And is this "alt-right" group a formalized society with registered membership? Will you additionally assert the same attributes to one person you claim is in this "group" that appear to be in another?

No, he's the only person who feels the way he does.  Since all attacks on Muslims and blacks are done under false flags, we don't have to worry about that, either.  BTW, I didn't say "group", you did.

54

General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 18, 2016, 08:47:14 AM »

i heard an interview with Richard Spencer (alt-right founder) on NPR yesterday.  He sees no harm in people wearing KKK robes or a swastika.  After all, they're just expressing their opinion. He doesn't think people of different races ever really get along, just tolerate each other's presence when they have to.  Nothing wrong with that, either.  As to how the sun rises, flat-earthers might give you an argument about whether it rises in the east for everyone, too, or if everyone should get their own sun.

55

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 18, 2016, 08:37:51 AM »

As I've said, nothing would give me more pleasure...

56

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 18, 2016, 12:25:53 AM »

Al,

I would still like WS to respond, but since you are engaging me; Who do you think the aggregate news establishment wanted to win the Republican primary, and why?

I don't think they pick winners; they go for eyeballs.  They would have been fine if Trump had not won the nomination, as long as they got good ratings.  That doesn't apply to FOX, which clearly wants a Republican to win and liked Trump because he would liven up their puny reportage.  They had an uneasy time adjusting to him, but that they gave him $$billions in free air time says it all.

57

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 17, 2016, 05:02:54 PM »

By the way regarding your last statement, you're saying blue collar workers never had good jobs or prosperity?

With the unions from the end of WWII until the late 70's, yes.  Otherwise, not so much and certainly not before WWII.

I think the media may well have been attempting to help sabotage some of the other candidates, more so than outright trying to help Trump win

When you use the word like ‘the media’ is it global as in all forms of media conspired to sabotage ...
What about social media?

Who is this media?

The right wing media certainly gave Donald every bit of fawning attention it could, but I will admit that so-called reputable right wing media tried to reject him, but Trump ran over them. 

It goes without saying, which means I have to say it, the people who voted for Trump wanted him and they got him.  So did we.

Do you believe the "media" had any preference regarding the outcome of the Republican primary?

Yes.

58

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 17, 2016, 11:30:20 AM »

Did "the media" hurt Hillary?  In as much as she allowed them to by avoiding them... ya.  But only because they feared being boring news because everyone knew who the next president would be.

Another reason that the media was NOT favoring her is that she presented something like 200 different detailed policy positions on her web site and in speeches, but I can't recall a single one of them being reported in any depth by any online media.  The media made it a fashion and beauty contest, which she couldn't win against even a 72 year old rival in her own party and an airbrushed orange colored opponent in the other party.

The media was slow to pick up on Sanders for reasons we've discussed many times, but the narrative that the media was somehow in her corner doesn't stand up to scrutiny.  That they were complacent about her even they now admit.

59

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 17, 2016, 09:38:50 AM »

I'm amused by the emerging narrative from people on the far right that the media was on Hillary's side (lie #1) and that "real Americans" were too smart to be fooled into believing that Trump was dishonest (lie #2).  Therefore, they voted for the only honest candidate (lie #3) and will take American back from those fascist-communist-socialist deceivers (false hope #1) and return it to the people (false hope #2) who will make America great again (false hope #3) under a President who will bring good wages, jobs and prosperity back to the blue collar workers (false hope #4) who actually never had any such thing (true statement #1). 

More likely the federal government will become more like the seemingly effortless reality TV spectacle that they ultimately believed in than the complicated and messy process that it actually is.  Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, EPA, Energy, Education will all become things seen receding in the rear view mirror of their lives.  Believe in whatever phony facts you want, but those are things you will feel directly.  Then say, "I'm glad I voted for him."

60

General Comments / Re: Zucker admits... Something?

« on: November 16, 2016, 08:19:44 PM »

One is that Christie was shown the door because he prosecuted the father of someone close to Trump. The other is that Trump saw Christie did something outrageous and threw his aides to the wolves to get away with it, and was disgusted.

You can of course insist that only one narrative is the correct one, but there is equal evidence either way, and our biases tend to point us towards the one we like best.

Sure, let's split it 50-50.  He may have had two reasons and won't admit to at least one of them, maybe both.

So let me get this straight, the Orthodox Jew(Jared Kushner) decided to use his influence with Trump to bounce out Chris Christie, who was likely to be largely be irrelevant in a few weeks anyway, and decided to let the anti-semite stick around? Something does not compute here.

Trump likes his son-in-law and loves his daughter.  His son-in-law can probably chart his own course as long as he doesn't disrespect his father-in-law or his daughter.

To be clear on sourcing of that claim on Kushner:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37986429

Which it should also note his Grandparents are described by the BBC as being "holocaust survivors" from Poland. Which tends to suggest he probably wouldn't have much sufferance for anti-semites if he's like most people of Jewish descent who personally knew holocaust survivors.

Does that  trump (or Trump) his relationship with Trump?  After all, as your article points out, Kushner is himself vastly wealthy from real estate, so he and Trump are kindred spirits in different and perhaps stronger ways than with his impoverished holocaust survivor grandparents. I'll especially note Jared's ties to money as an influence on his thinking:

The young Jared won a place at Harvard despite poor grades, according to Daniel Golden, author of The Price of Admissions: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges. The year of his admission, according to Mr Golden's book, Charles Kushner donated $2.5 million to the university, along with similar one-off donations to Cornell and Princeton.

His father donated a total of $7.5M to colleges to ensure his below-average student son would get into a top school.  Money buys a lot of love if you have a lot of it.  Christie busted his father for his money.  I would say that could lead to a measure of revenge, wouldn't you?

If the issue is about how much free press Trump got for himself we also should admit that Hillary basically avoided the press like a person who owes someone money and she went into virtual hibernation for extended periods during her campaign to recover from allergies and cram for debates, or something.

I suppose you could put it that way, but you could also say that Trump got $billions in free advertising and said whatever he wanted without suffering any consequences while Hillary was vilified and pilloried for everything she said by people who think like you.  Imagine if she had said that she could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes.  Instead she tried to protect herself from being attacked for coughing but was attacked anyway.

61

General Comments / Re: Zucker admits... Something?

« on: November 16, 2016, 03:59:16 PM »

Think about that for a moment. America chose a wild card over Hillary, who was very well known. What does that say about the DNC's choice of candidate?

It was a responsible, competent choice.  Look what we ended up with instead.  What exactly are the priorities of people who elected a President who wants to live "part time" in the White House and favors cronyism and nepotism over those other qualities. 

For instance, his son-in-law Jared Kushner was instrumental in getting Christie out of a prominent transition role in revenge for Christie prosecuting his father for tax evasion and witness tampering.  Giuliani has major conflicts of interest with other countries involving his business dealings, including Iran, yet he may become the Secretary of State.  Bannon, among many other deplorable qualities, has a long published history of racist and anti-semitic statements and will become his strategic advisor.  Ted Cruz may become the AG but was willing to shut down the government as a Senator over the opposition of his Party leadership.  Vice President-elect Pence is fighting his own legal battle to keep his emails secret to hide their contents from the public.  Just the tip of the iceberg...

Trump was the better choice?

62

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 16, 2016, 10:34:02 AM »

Al, if Donald follows Barry's template he has at least four years before he must take responsibility for anything that goes bad during his tenure. Wasn't it WJC who said Obama needed to start acting like he was responsible for the result of his policies, including the "craziest thing he had ever seen... Obamacare."

http://freebeacon.com/politics/bill-clinton-takes-shot-obama-economy/

Welcome back, Noel.  As ever, nothing would give me more pleasure than responding to your typically deprecatory comments drawn from your vast store of misleading information, so I will say nothing.

63

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 15, 2016, 10:05:56 PM »

Cherry, you are beating a tiny drum,  but don't give up hope that every bad thing Trump does can be blamed on Obama. You could get lucky.

64

General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 15, 2016, 10:04:17 PM »

Wayward, I think you nailed things well, though you left out a few.  He and the Republican House will hobble medicare and the Department of Education will become vestigial.   More failures amid dour predictions to come as the picture becomes more clear. The only glimmer of hope is that even the Republicans in Congress appear ready to oppose some of his proposals.

65

General Comments / Re: Worst Job in the New Administration

« on: November 13, 2016, 10:02:17 PM »

Interesting and a measure of truth. They chipped away at her surface enough to devalue her without touching her core, made her seem like a used car.  Meanwhile Trump played the new car salesman and enough people bought the act and what he was selling.

Kate McKinnon did an interesting take on the song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen on SNL last night.  She sang it in the character of Hillary, but offered it as an tribute to both of them.  The best lines about her were the verse,

“I did my best
It wasn’t much.
I couldn’t feel
So I tried to touch.
I told the truth
I didn’t come to fool ya.”

Anyone who isn't tone deaf will see that there's a lot loaded in those few words.  It may be one of the best elegies she could have.

66

General Comments / Re: Worst Job in the New Administration

« on: November 13, 2016, 08:09:46 AM »

Give it up, Al.

She was a crappy candidate. Qualified, definitely, but not even close to what was needed to win this election.

Liberals got arrogant because Obama won two terms without realizing that he came into the whole thing as an outsider who promised to mess up the system that had failed so many. You just can't win an election these days with people who have lived in that system for 30 years.

I understand the words, but can't find a way to agree with your point.  The only reason I can think of for her being "crappy" is because she isn't edgy enough for today's world where you have to capture eyeballs by changing things up in ways people don't expect.  Maybe she would have won if she had told Trump to go *censored* himself or his mistress instead of attacking him for fat-shaming Miss Universe 20 years ago.  Or if on the day before the election in her last appearance she gave Trump the finger and screamed out what her supporters were thinking, "You're going down, you piece of *censored*!"

Otherwise, you want to wedge apart "qualified" and "good" to make the case that she wore pant suits and climbed and clawed to the top of the political heap, because that itself is somehow suspect.  She wasn't nearly as exciting as the 72-year old man who also spent 30 years in obscurity as a politician, but who lit himself on fire at the start of the campaign and kept burning until he was doused at the convention.  You won't be hearing that much from him in the future but for squawking and then he'll retire and disappear altogether.

She wasn't exciting, but in its way I am invigorated by her example.  I've been a liberal for almost 50 years, but willing in recent years to let others gain traction measured by the inch for causes I agree with through their hard work while I have "done other things".

So I'll make my first prediction of the post-election period, that liberals are waking up to the new reality that we'll all have to work to put things back on track harder than those who snatched it away from us all did.  My guess is that once Trump starts doing some of the things he said he will that there will be a lot more people on "our side" than there are now; everyone with children or grandchildren should want to help.  We won't be able to undo all of the destruction he does, like Iraq can't reconstitute the national monuments that ISIS knocks down, but we can rebuild and move forward.

I'm going to try to stop whining about things that happened before 11/9 and focus on what might happen over the next two years culminating in the next Congressional election.  Then we'll see what happens after that.

67

General Comments / Re: Worst Job in the New Administration

« on: November 13, 2016, 12:26:02 AM »

Right, won the popular vote by more than Kennedy or Nixon (1968), but not even close, eh? 

This election will be remembered as 11/9 for the debacle that we woke to on that day.

68

General Comments / Re: Worst Job in the New Administration

« on: November 11, 2016, 07:26:46 PM »

I've got it, food taster.

69

General Comments / Re: Worst Job in the New Administration

« on: November 11, 2016, 10:51:59 AM »

Here, for example.  I may (probably will) have other warnings, but I admit the weather is nice this time of year in Mycenae.

70

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 11, 2016, 10:48:46 AM »

According to the dictionary, the definition of "disaster" I am using is: "an event or fact that has unfortunate consequences."  That seems too mild.  As I recall you are Canadian, so none of what happens will affect you (directly).

71

General Comments / Re: Worst Job in the New Administration

« on: November 11, 2016, 10:45:37 AM »

My comment about Cassandra applies here.

72

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 11, 2016, 08:21:46 AM »

Also, and I really can't stress this enough, she lost to Donald Trump.

And as I sit in my office this morning the room is bathed in light coming in through the west window.

Jason:

I mean for me when I think of "unimaginable disaster" that's a mighty high bar - zombie apocalypse, asteroid impact, alien invasion? Then again, I suppose I have imagined all those things before. So what are we talking about then? Well I wouldn't want to imagine it for you - I'm trying to give your prophecy at least a tiny sliver of chance to come true.

I imagine that Giuliani will head the DoJ, so the department won't interfere with state attempts to disenfranchise more non-white voters, stop and frisk won't be challenged and hate crimes will increase without interference.  Other henchmen will take over other departments of the Executive branch and similarly lay off enforcement of environmental laws, BLM oversight, education, energy, health (ACA, CDC and Planned Parenthood), NIH, IRS, etc.  Why do we need those departments, anyway?  They just interfere with people's lives and you have to pay for the yuge tax cuts somehow.

73

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 11, 2016, 12:21:39 AM »

Al

There is a difference between *good* candidate and *qualified* candidate.

Semantics, mostly.  Hillary was both qualified and good, as well as willing and able.  The only one of those things that could count against her character is the "willing" part, but since I sincerely believe she has given her entire adult life to public service that is an excusable fault.  Even Mark Twain would have some charitable thoughts about her.

74

General Comments / Re: How should we assess differences between polls and voting results?

« on: November 11, 2016, 12:18:23 AM »

Another cause for discrepancy between exit polls and actual votes was what was seen in Florida in 2000, when the infamous "butterfly" ballot was confusing in the way it was aligned, and led thousands to vote for Patrick Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Al Gore. In that case the exit polls accurately revealed how the people THOUGHT they had voted. That was enough to flip Florida for Bush, which was enough to give Bush the election nationwide.

That's a good point.  We could blame about half a dozen different things that if taken in isolation could explain why Gore lost.  My thinking is that Gore lost because Bush got more votes (where they counted the most), just like Clinton lost because Trump got more votes (where they counted the most).

75

General Comments / Re: The result of flipping 1 voter per 100

« on: November 11, 2016, 12:09:02 AM »

Weird, this is the first time I've noticed that it says AI Wessex rather than Al Wessex. It's all coming together...

Quite honestly I give it a 70% chance that you never noticed with a 95% confidence rating. At least I have that satisfaction.  FWIW, I'm thinking of dropping the AI Wessex forum identity, which I picked for a variety of reasons including that Aelfred, Lord Wessex was an early English monarch who was a champion of literacy during his reign in the 9th Century.  If I do leave and come back I will take the moniker Cassandra.  The scholars among you will understand.  The rest of you will assume I am female and will try not to offend me.  If that happens I will sharpen my avatar's voice into a dominatrix tone, which will excite some of you I imagine.  AI can do amazing things, most of them bad.

76

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 11, 2016, 12:02:03 AM »

Al

You talk about noone with credibility calling it, but I've been saying for a while that this whole thing reminded me of Brexit. Liberals living in their bubble assuming that it was the whole universe. And here we are.

I have to plead guilty to that kind of thinking, because the political system seemed to work that way my whole life up til now.  That doesn't mean that I thought every President was the right choice or did everything the way I wanted it done.  But all of that pales in comparison to what electing Trump means.  This is a disaster of almost unimaginable scope, worse for the US than Brexit will be for the UK.  By that I mean that in the UK all of your government functions today just as it did before the Brexit vote and will continue to do so.  Here Trump will dismantle the institutions of government.  Some people will cheer at first, but the cold hard reality will set in and those who voted for him will become as afraid as the rest of us, but as with Brexit there will be no recourse.

77

General Comments / Re: The result of flipping 1 voter per 100

« on: November 10, 2016, 06:09:28 PM »

Basically, if someone is working a job where they're living in fear of a robot or AI taking over their job in the foreseeable future, be it next week, or 5 to 15 years from now. They were very likely to vote Trump.

I can't imagine people were sufficiently worried about Wessex to have factored in his ability to replace them into their electoral calculations...

I've worked hard to destabilize some people's view of the world, but have regrettably come up short.  Time for some new algorithms...

78

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 10, 2016, 06:06:19 PM »

Al come on.

For a year or more you've dismissed any criticism of Clinton with all the zeal of a Trumper. You and yours *censored*ed up. Own it already. You had liberals and moderates telling you the entire time that, no matter how qualified she was, she was a godawful candidate. And you and yours ignored it. You went along with it because you lived in your bubble and forgot that other people's votes count just as much as yours.

And now we're all going to suffer for it.

A ham sandwich could have beaten Trump. And you chose Hillary *censored*ing Clinton.  Thanks, bro.

I have defended her from an onslaught of attacks on her character and record, but have also pointed out that she was a far from perfect candidate.  It was as if any hint of a stain on her disqualified her, and now we have Ron Lambert coming back to remind us that she has had over 90 people killed over her career.  Ron is an outlier in many ways, but it's that kind of vilification coupled with relentless probes and investigations that have not once turned up criminal wrongdoing that really pisses me off.

I don't agree that she was a godawful candidate, but I do agree that she was made to seem that way.  I honestly think she was highly qualified, highly motivated and has a strong sense of purpose that would have been good for the country.  Instead we have Trump, for whom nobody can stand up for his character or record.

I also said several times that I agreed with most of Bernie's positions and if he were the Dem candidate would have voted for him with some enthusiasm.  But I also said that IMO if he was elected he would have gotten virtually nothing done by insisting on his principled stands.  Politics is about practicality, so Clinton was a better fit for the office.

You are right that I didn't see the outcome coming, and I'm still puzzling how it could have happened without anyone with credible standing predicting it.  That's going to take a while to figure out.

In the meantime we have the worst of all possible worlds and will have to live in it.  I don't worry for myself, as I'm semi-retired and not dependent on the government except for SS and Medicare.  Instead, I'll get involved in political action again after many years on the sidelines because of my daughters and granddaughters.  They'll suffer from the election outcome for far more years than I will.  If I owe anyone an apology for helping make this mess, it's them rather than you.

79

General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 10, 2016, 05:56:25 PM »

It's just a very sad situation, like when you have Muslim terrorists infiltrated amongst good hearted law abiding Muslims and you can't tell which is which so end up being suspicious of them all.

I feel that way about redneck yahoos who wear their pistols so that everybody can see them.  Many of them are ass-holes waiting for a chance to shoot somebody, but I suppose some of them are good people, too.  If my memory is working, we haven't had a mass shooting in this country committed by completely non-citizens in quite a while.  According to this site there were about 40 or so shootings involving multiple victims in the last 30 days.  It's too tedious to look up the details for each one, but since I didn't hear about any of them on major news outlets (including FOX) I would guess that all or nearly all were committed by US citizens, and none by Muslims.  Feel free to dig into them and prove me wrong if you want.

Clean your own house.

80

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 10, 2016, 05:48:33 PM »

Sanders would have won this election hands down. Anyone denying that is still swimming in the bubble that had liberals in a circle jerk the day of the election.

I hope we don't have too much certainty about things that didn't happen, but that's just another price to pay for things turning out badly.  If only...

81

General Comments / Re: Worst Job in the New Administration

« on: November 10, 2016, 04:22:27 PM »

It could have been a lot worse for the Secret Service if Hillary had won.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424927/hillary-clinton-secret-service-treatment-abuse

"Good morning, ma’am,” a member of the uniformed Secret Service once greeted Hillary Clinton. “**** off,” she replied.

"... Within the White House, Hillary had a “standing rule that no one spoke to her when she was going from one location to another,” says former FBI agent Coy Copeland. “In fact, anyone who would see her coming would just step into the first available office.” One former Secret Service agent states, “If Hillary was walking down a hall, you were supposed to hide behind drapes used as partitions.”

Secret Service “agents consider being assigned to her detail a form of punishment,” Kessler concludes. “In fact, agents say being on Hillary Clinton’s detail is the worst duty assignment in the Secret Service.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And she gets lifetime Secret Service protection. Which is fine, just a nightmare for the people who put their lives on the line for her despite her abuse.

My god, she is evil!  Imagine if she refused to pay her workers or skipped out on hotel bills or accused soldiers of not having the right temperament to be soldiers because they suffered from PTSD.  Imagine if she wandered into locker rooms just so she could have a peek.  Imagine if she was having an affair while she was married and tried to get her boyfriend to pose naked for $1M that she would split with him.  Trump did all of those things and a whole lot worse.

But imagine them if you can.  In the meantime, keep coming up with stories about her that give you a warm tingly feeling but don't have to be true.  Don't forget that she may have killed over 100 people and made them all look like suicide.  There's no proof about any of them, but how good it would feel to pretend. 

In the meantime a couple of pieces of friendly advice.  Don't work for him; don't sign a contract with him; if you have daughters who are pretty, don't let them near him.  Stay tuned for extra freedoms that you'll have.

82

General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 10, 2016, 04:11:13 PM »

Al Wessex: "One wonders why Hillary was the one seen as too cozy with Wall Street..."

I heard it was because of all the money Wall Street paid out in legal political bribes, Hillary got 90% of it and Trump got only 10%. My figures could be way off though but that's kind of what's going around.

Cherry, stop for a second and think.  Which of Clinton or Trump would be more likely to roll back regulations that those companies have to obey?

83

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 10, 2016, 01:07:54 PM »

Blame the other side all you like, but the DNC made their own bed.

Sure, but you're claiming that the DNC made the other side's bed, too.

84

General Comments / Re: No more cold war

« on: November 10, 2016, 01:04:36 PM »

Like Sheriff Clarke who has said that the anti-Trump protests should be "quelled"?

85

General Comments / Re: The result of flipping 1 voter per 100

« on: November 10, 2016, 01:01:22 PM »

Basically, if someone is working a job where they're living in fear of a robot or AI taking over their job in the foreseeable future, be it next week, or 5 to 15 years from now. They were very likely to vote Trump.

Perhaps, but they took it out on the wrong villain, since it is the businesses that are introducing robots/AI and replacing human workers. 

The more I think about it the more this election was a case of misdirection, misinformation and misunderstanding on the part of the cohort who were Trump's base.  He won't be able to "fix" the economy any more than Obama did/didn't, since the private sector is where jobs are created and lost.  Immigration, illegal or otherwise, is a small factor that actually made many domestic goods more affordable.  Cheap goods from other countries with far lower wage bases accounted for a major portion of the rest.

Cutting federal income taxes for the lower-middle class (which he won't do, btw) won't help since many of those people don't pay those taxes already.  He plans to eliminate a big part of the social safety net supported by the federal government, which will also have negative knock-on effects on their lives and well-being.  All he'll do for them is basically establish a federal policy of looking the other way and saying it's not the government's job to help them.

Good luck, y'all.

I already played with growing the Electoral College by implementing the "Wyoming Rule" in regards to allotting seats in the US House of Representatives. The outcome still came out in favor of Trump, with an even larger Electoral Margin at that--thanks in large part to Michigan and Pennsylvania. So that wouldn't have resolved the issue of "the electoral president" by itself.

Since this was the second election in the last five where the candidate who won the popular vote failed to win the electoral mandate, I'm beginning to think the EC has outlived its usefulness.  Time for the popular vote to elect the President, as it does every other office.

86

General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 10, 2016, 12:04:01 PM »

Hillary was first lady of Arkansas. That's why the phenomena of half a dozen people who were about to blow the whistle on Clinton corruption and suddenly turned up dead and were ruled "suicides" (even when some had multiple bullet holes in the back of the head), are called cases of "Akancide"--just Google that term to see all the discussion and documentation of this.

Ron, check out this site for an important bit of information.  I did take a look at the site and glanced at an article that listed over 90 so-called suspicious deaths and saw the comment that there is no record of some of the people anywhere on the internet .

87

General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 10, 2016, 11:03:05 AM »

The stock market posted a huge gain yesterday and today looks like it's on its way to closing at a record high.  This is likely a reflection that Trump has promised to fulfill the Republican agenda of rolling back laws and regulations governing how big business operates and getting rid of consumer protections.  One wonders why Hillary was the one seen as too cozy with Wall Street...

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General Comments / Re: Predictions for the Trump Administration as of October 2018

« on: November 09, 2016, 01:36:26 PM »

LR, your list, if those things come to pass, will hurt everyone in this country, but will hurt Trump's core demographic first and hardest.  I know why I voted against him, but I can't figure out why they voted for him.  I'm not sure that many of them did.

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General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 09, 2016, 07:00:54 AM »

My hotel room faces west.  I'm going to watch to see if I can see the sun rise out the window.  Good night.

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General Comments / Re: Holy......

« on: November 08, 2016, 10:46:42 PM »

It's much closer than I expected.  I'll be stunned if Clinton loses Michigan, which would be the bellwether.

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General Comments / Re: How should we assess differences between polls and voting results?

« on: November 08, 2016, 05:19:54 PM »

I'm trying to be consistent in the face of your constant denials.  You could do your own checking, but if you don't want to you also don't have to respond if you are tired of it. 

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General Comments / Re: How should we assess differences between polls and voting results?

« on: November 08, 2016, 01:14:23 PM »

So, NC closed 27 voting sites this year, and that's evidence of something nefarious?

Actually, yes.  Would you like me to look it up for you?  You'd be amazed how much reliable information you can get on even the first page of a google search.  I'll even give you the search request: "north carolina voting site shut down".  Obviously, a more extensive search will give you even more good information about this problem.

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General Comments / Re: Voting Stories

« on: November 08, 2016, 12:05:21 PM »

My wife and I voted absentee last week at City Hall.  Short wait, helpful staff, brought my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter and gave her a sticker.  It was no different than early voting, which I would like to see become even more popular.  Maybe one day election day will just be the aberration for people who couldn't get there earlier and when the results are announced.

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General Comments / Re: How should we assess differences between polls and voting results?

« on: November 08, 2016, 11:54:10 AM »

Now I have a friend who waited over an hour and saw no signs of getting to vote so she left.  I think we have a very high turnout, which means even reasonable people who made adjustments to polls based on historical trends are going to be surprised with lines.  If you add on top maliciousness, I think you'll get your wish of being able to point to some very long lines.

You say this as if it doesn't bother her or you.  I'm thinking that your argument is that an anecdotal case where a friend of yours (a "good guy") didn't vote because of inadequate voting facilities cancels out everything that anyone else has said about intentional disenfranchisement and lines where people did wait possibly for hours to vote.  I guess reports of problems therefore don't amount to anything to worry or think about.

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General Comments / Re: How should we assess differences between polls and voting results?

« on: November 08, 2016, 07:01:53 AM »

You have to close your eyes to pretend not to see that the reduction in voting places is partisan for the most part.  Here's one article with examples:

Consider North Carolina, the epicenter of GOP voter suppression. Just days after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder—thereby allowing the state to restrict voting without federal oversight—the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature requested data of voting preferences by race. The legislators then promptly passed an omnibus bill that, in the words of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision.” A key provision of the new law slashed early voting, including several days of Sunday voting, which black voters favored. As the state explained in court with startling candor, “counties with Sunday voting” were “disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic”—a fact that persuaded the Legislature to severely cut back early voting.

In July, the 4th Circuit blocked this legislation from taking effect this election cycle, holding that it violated both the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause as a race-based voting restriction. But Republican-controlled county election boards implemented the early voting cuts anyway. (These boards retain power over county-level voting practices and claimed they had decided independently to roll back early voting, not implement the now-blocked law that did the exact same thing.) The boards colluded to cut early voting—and Sunday voting especially—in Democrat-heavy areas, as GOP election board chairmen urged each other to follow the “party line.” When one Republican chairman agreed to open a Sunday voting site where black voters could cast ballots after church, his fellow GOP chairmen called him a “traitor.” The transparency of these suppression efforts is staggering: On Sunday, the North Carolina GOP boasted that black early voting is down this year, when that fact is almost certainly attributable to Republicans’ own attack on black voting.

Ultimately, North Carolina counties cut an astonishing 27 voting sites altogether this year and dramatically reduced early voting hours in many of the remaining sites. The result was entirely predictable: monstrously long lines that force voters—many of them elderly—to stand outside for hours upon hours just to cast a ballot. As the Nation’s voting rights expert Ari Berman has reported, the story is similar in other states previously covered by the Voting Rights Act, including Texas (403 poll closures since Shelby), Louisiana (103), and Alabama (66). The problem is especially acute in Arizona, which, as Berman reports, “reduced the number of polling places by 70 percent from 2012 to 2016, from 200 to just 60—one polling place per 21,000 registered voters.” And in Ohio, GOP-instituted cuts to early voting in Cincinnati created a half-mile line of 4,000 people that snaked under an interstate and through a public park.

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General Comments / Re: Trump on National Security

« on: November 07, 2016, 12:33:20 PM »

I don't think anyone can seriously deny that there has been a media blackout against Stein. The media is doing everything it can to get Hillary elected and they don't want any more liberal Democrats like Susan Sarandon getting peeled off because their conscious gets in the way.

You can make that case about her and every other candidate who didn't get the airtime they thought they deserved.  You can also make the case that organizations who support the candidates don't get enough airtime, like the KKK and other white nationalist groups, including the Daily Stormer, David Duke, the National Policy Institute, American Renaissance and the League of the South, among others.  They're all legitimate, so how come the mainstream media doesn't give them more attention?

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General Comments / Re: Trump on National Security

« on: November 07, 2016, 12:25:14 PM »

OK, if we start with this:

Hillary brought us Libya almost singlehandedly

we can dismiss whatever else that follows.

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General Comments / Re: Trump on National Security

« on: November 07, 2016, 11:53:17 AM »

http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/11/07/jill-stein-agrees-trump-hillary-clinton-presidency-nuclear-war-mushroom-cloud-waiting-happen/

The two things wrong with that reference are highlighted.  Breitbart is an alt-right activism site and Jill Stein has proven to have a remarkably shallow understanding of both foreign policy and political practicalities.  It suggests to me that you are getting desperate when you have to reach so far out of the mainstream for an argument you want to agree with.

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General Comments / Re: Trump on National Security

« on: November 07, 2016, 09:36:52 AM »

AI, you are wrong about the people who will stick by Trump.  I know several that don't fit into your categories.  I can't explain them, but I know them.  It MAY be fair to say they are mostly against Hillary and Democrats in general, but they aren't necessarily treating Trump like bad medicine necessary to prevent an illness.

Fair enough, I was stretching to make a point.  But to continue what was on my mind, it would be fascinating to do a deep analysis of the people who actually voted for both Clinton and Trump after the election.  Cherry has pointed out what he strongly believes Trump would accomplish in his first four years.  What percentage of his voters actually believe he will build the wall he promised at the start of the campaign, since he no longer seems to talk about it.  Likewise, how many of Clinton's voters believe she will accomplish what she has campaigned on.  There are lots of other interesting questions that could be asked, as well, including as a sample:

* Do you accept the outcome of the election as legitimate?
* Did this election cycle inspire you to join an organized group to work toward the objectives promoted by your candidate?
* Given the new composition of the Senate and House, should they work cooperatively with the new President or withhold all support except for what they want?
* Should the House investigate the President for possible crimes committed before s/he was elected?
* ...

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General Comments / Re: Trump on National Security

« on: November 07, 2016, 08:57:40 AM »

No, but you can assume that they have shared interests.