Donald Trump and US politics

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

What we have is a sitting president who ran the most flagrantly dishonest campaign in recent history essentially deciding that his next big move is to attack any press outlet that doesn't exist first and foremost to moisten his taint. Who is essentially conditioning his supporters to ignore the most substantial watchdog groups responsible for ensuring he doesn't cock everything up.

I think one would need to have ignored the most substantial watchdog group for the last six months to claim that Trump ran the most flagrantly dishonest campaign in recent history.

Still, I will not reverse course and say that leaks are bad just because "my guy" is now in power. I think it's a net good that the people learned that Team Trump was wrong about what Flynn discussed with Russian officials. It was up to Trump whether to fire him or not; if Flynn was worth keeping, then Team Trump was wrong twice. While I do question why PRISM is pointed at Trump officials — and hate PRISM for existing (thanks Snowden!) — and I'm pretty confident the motive for the leaks was ignoble, effect is separate from intent. Transparency in government is good.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

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Something your side seems to miss, that I'm able to pick up on is that Trump is absolutely trolling the media. So "looking bad" is based purely on the perception of his intent.

Actually, we get that. We understand perfectly well what he's doing, and it is fucking terrifying. Do you understand why it's such a problem for a politician to attempt to convince people that the only person they can trust is him, and also maybe media which is explicitly sycophantic to him? Because if it works, then that politician can lie with impunity, because his base will never call him out on it. Why would they?

Why indeed? Did the Democrats ever call out Obama when he lied? What about Bush, did he get called out by Republicans? Sorry, but ignoring all the flaws in "your guy" when he's in power has nothing to do with trolling the media; it's caused by partisanship, this false dichotomy of D or R, left or right.

If a troll is trolling, say, a forum, it is incorrect to say the troll is trying to make it so the only person trusted is themselves. Has that ever been the effect upon you? Have you ever seen trolling and thought, "gee, that guy sure is trustworthy?" No. The point of trolling is to entice responses which negatively impact the credibility of likely responders, at the cost of one's own credibility. Successfully executed, trolling sends the message "trust no one, think for yourself," and it does this by revealing argumentum ad verecundiam for what it is. It seems you are wrong; you don't understand perfectly well what he's doing. You're just fucking terrified by it.

The left in a nutshell:

"NAACP requires photo ID to attend anti voter ID protest march"

https://www.hermancain.com/naacp-requires-photo-id-to-att

Yes, he is a conservative, and was once a GOP candidate for President, but the fact in the article speak for themselves - and the left's continual hypocrisy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain

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sarahaustin wrote:

Im not left leaning, im just pro LGBT and pro minorities and poor and working class.

Oh, we are all pro-poor and pro-working class. The difference is in how do you think the poor should be helped. If you believe in a big government that has control over everything and "solves" issues by handing out money, then you are pretty much a leftist.

If you believe in social responsibility, as opposed to personal responsibility, then you are a leftist.

If you think that at your young age (are you in school, do you have a job?) the society (aka the rest of us) owes you free things, then you are a leftist. The only people society owes something are people in pension - cause they already contributed with a life's worth of work an paying taxes. And now the social contract requires us to pay for their pensions, which is only fair.

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DalaiLama wrote:

The left in a nutshell:

"NAACP requires photo ID to attend anti voter ID protest march"

https://www.hermancain.com/naacp-requires-photo-id-to-att

It's extremely puzzling there would be people protesting against voting transparency, less possibility of fraud and equal rules for everyone.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I think one would need to have ignored the most substantial watchdog group for the last six months to claim that Trump ran the most flagrantly dishonest campaign in recent history.

Not really. We counted how often he lied. While this may not say everything, when the numbers are this disjointed, it's pretty clear something's gone wrong. Trump lied nonstop. From big, campaign-defining issues (claiming that syrian refugees are incredibly dangerous) to the kind of inconsequential bullshit there's really no reason to lie about (that the NFL wrote him to apologize for the debate schedule). He lied about things of public record; things he had said mere days ago on live TV. He lied with such brazen frequency that it was next to impossible for the news media to keep up. This really isn't reasonably disputable.

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Why indeed? Did the Democrats ever call out Obama when he lied? What about Bush, did he get called out by Republicans? Sorry, but ignoring all the flaws in "your guy" when he's in power has nothing to do with trolling the media; it's caused by partisanship, this false dichotomy of D or R, left or right.

Well, I don't know. Do you consider the entire news media "democrats" the way many here apparently do? Because if so: yes, they did so regularly. Just for example, Politifact had no qualms about naming "you can keep your healthcare plan" lie of the year. But what I'm talking about goes well beyond that. It's not just "republicans won't call out Trump when he lies". It's "Trump goes out of his way to attack and smear the news media". Obama never did this. Bush never did this. This is new, and it's pretty scary how well it's working. The goal here is pretty straightforward: ensure that the only trustworthy source of news about the president... is the president. And Breitbart, whose editorial line on Trump, as previously stated, has less to do with "critical watchdog" and more to do with "taint moistener". And if you look on this forum, you'll find just how effective this has been. People have stopped trusting the media. And with the media out of the way, well, who's to say if what Trump said was a "lie" or not?

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If a troll is trolling, say, a forum, it is incorrect to say the troll is trying to make it so the only person trusted is themselves. Has that ever been the effect upon you? Have you ever seen trolling and thought, "gee, that guy sure is trustworthy?" No. The point of trolling is to entice responses which negatively impact the credibility of likely responders, at the cost of one's own credibility. Successfully executed, trolling sends the message "trust no one, think for yourself," and it does this by revealing argumentum ad verecundiam for what it is. It seems you are wrong; you don't understand perfectly well what he's doing. You're just fucking terrified by it.

If you're willing to cut "trolling" this simplistically, then perhaps we shouldn't minimize his actions as "trolling". Just like we shouldn't call what happened to Leslie Jones "trolling". Let's call it what it is: propaganda. What Trump is doing is not just intentionally pissing off the press. He's not just looking for a response. He's intentionally trying to destroy the fourth estate, to marginalize the news media in an attempt to make people believe what he says over what they say. Again, if he can pull that off, he can lie with impunity, and nobody can call him on his bullshit. Case in point:

http://www.vox.com/2017/2/17/14651208/trump-budget-forecast
(alternative source, for those who distrust Vox: https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-teams-growth-forecasts-far-rosier-than-those-of-cbo-private-economists-1487356278 )

My favorite line from the article: "Another part is that most presidents would worry that if you order CEA staff to make up fake numbers, they will leak that to the Wall Street Journal."

Trump is demanding an unreasonably rosy growth forecast, based first and foremost not on the actual data, but rather on what he needs the data to be. Now, we know this, so we can be cautious when said growth forecast seems unreasonably high. But if we don't trust the media to accurately report it... Well, Trump can say whatever the hell he wants, and as long as it sounds "truthy", he'll get away with it. Who's gonna challenge him? The news media, sure, but if he can undermine trust in them, we end up in a situation where a large portion of the electorate just takes the president at his word, regardless of the facts of the situation. This is part of how he got elected - he ran a "tough on crime" campaign, pretending that crime was rampant. Never mind that actual crime rates are among the lowest since the 90s, people believed him. And they certainly didn't believe that "fake news" pointing out the actual statistics.

Do you understand why this scares me so much?

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morbo wrote:

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DalaiLama wrote:

The left in a nutshell:

"NAACP requires photo ID to attend anti voter ID protest march"

https://www.hermancain.com/naacp-requires-photo-id-to-att

It's extremely puzzling there would be people protesting against voting transparency, less possibility of fraud and equal rules for everyone.

Well, the North Carolina law, as it turns out, was overturned in court. Because it was demonstrably racist.

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/29/12328550/north-carolina-voting-laws-racist

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"In particular, African Americans disproportionately used the first seven days of early voting," Motz wrote. "After the receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/

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In particular, the court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. "This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV)," the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. "With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans," the judges wrote. "The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess."

Emphasis mine.

That's not to say that all photo ID laws are necessarily racist (although they remain a solution in search of a problem, given how rare the only kind of voter fraud they prevent is). But this one? Yeah. This one was definitely racist.

Sounds like an overly messed up bureocratic system.

In my country there are three documents that are valid IDs: personal ID card, passport and driver's licenese. You can use any of these, whenever you are required to prove your identity. I use my driver's license for everythng: from opening bank accounts to voting.

Simplify your messd up system and it wont be "racists" anymore. A person has to have at least one form of identification and all forms of identification should be valid for voting.

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morbo wrote:

Sounds like an overly messed up bureocratic system.

In my country there are three documents that are valid IDs: personal ID card, passport and driver's licenese. You can use any of these, whenever you are required to prove your identity. I use my driver's license for everythng: from opening bank accounts to voting.

Simplify your messd up system and it wont be "racists" anymore. A person has to have at least one form of identification and all forms of identification should be valid for voting.

I don't disagree. I live in Germany at the moment, and here we have what's called an "ausweispflicht" - you are legally mandated to have some form of government ID. On the flip side, the government actually does a lot of work to ensure that you can get that ID free of charge and with minimal hassle. In Germany, we have voter ID laws, but it makes sense, because everyone has photo ID.

In the US... Well, where I used to live in the US, the nearest place I could get photo ID was 30 miles away. Between traffic and the wait at the DMV, I would be looking at about half a day to get ID, and that's assuming I have all my documents together and the DMV's computers are working (no, really, this has been a problem at times), that I have transportation (if I don't have photo ID I'm probably not driving anywhere), that my name matches my birth certificate and that I have my birth certificate and that every document I need is something I can get... Given all this, it should come as no surprise that some non-trivial portion of the populace just doesn't have photo ID. According to the Brennan Center, it's about 10% of the voting-age populace, although this may have gone down slightly since the passage of so many voter ID laws, and the larger push to get more people photo IDs - spearheaded not, I might add, by the same people pushing for voter ID laws.

This is fundamentally the problem here. There are a lot of Americans who don't have photo ID. There are almost no demonstrated cases of in-person impersonation voter fraud - not least of which because it's extremely risky, carries huge penalties, is hard to do, and the advantage of one fraudulent vote is virtually meaningless. Voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem, and the problems they cause do far more to tilt election results than the problems they assert to solve.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I think one would need to have ignored the most substantial watchdog group for the last six months to claim that Trump ran the most flagrantly dishonest campaign in recent history.

Not really. We counted how often he lied. While this may not say everything, when the numbers are this disjointed, it's pretty clear something's gone wrong. Trump lied nonstop.

How could you possibly take that article seriously? Fuck it, I'm going to go over these point by point; if you're still linking stuff like this post-election, apparently winter never comes for these weeds, and must be done manually.

But first, some common sense: even saying it's a list of lies shows immediate bias. "Error" is a significantly different concept from "lie;" the latter actually has a substantially higher burden of proof, as one must prove the speaker knew their statements to be false. To simply assume this intent tells us we're reading a biased article before we even research the points.

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Falsely said, of Clinton’s abortion views, “a day prior to birth you can take that baby.”

"I have said many times that I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected. I’ve met women who faced this heart-wrenching decision toward the end of a pregnancy. Of course it’s a horrible procedure. No one would argue with that. But if your life is at stake, if your health is at stake, if the potential for having any more children is at stake, this must be a woman’s choice." — Hillary Clinton, October 8, 2000
"I have met with women who have, toward the end of their pregnancy, get worst news one can get. That their health is in jeopardy if they continue to carry to term. Or that something terrible has happened or just been discovered about the pregnancy. I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions." — Hillary Clinton, October 19, 2016

Clinton's abortion position is consistent with, say, discovering a child has Down's Syndrome and aborting it just prior to birth.

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Falsely said, “Hillary Clinton wants open borders.”

"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with
open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere." — Hillary Clinton, May 16, 2013

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Falsely said of Clinton, “She’s for open borders.”

The "open borders" thing doesn't count as one lie on the article's list, but several. They don't count it as just a single lie he happens to tell often. Numerous other entries, including some actual errors (more likely lies by repetition), follow this pattern. (Of course, this one isn't a lie at all.)

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Falsely said, “She wants to go to a single-payer plan, which would be a disaster. Somewhat similar to Canada.”

“So we’re in a learning period as we move forward with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And I’m hoping that whatever the shortfalls or the glitches have been, which in a big piece of legislation you’re going to have, those will be remedied and we can really take a hard look at what’s succeeding, fix what isn’t, and keep moving forward to get to affordable universal healthcare coverage like you have here in Canada.” — Hillary Clinton, January 1, 2015

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Falsely said, “And now you want to approve Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

"This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world's total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment." — Hillary Clinton, November 15, 2012

Clinton did withdraw support for TPP during the campaign; however, the Trump narrative was that she did this disingenuously, due to pressure from the Sanders and Trump campaigns.

I could go on; I might later. But just simply Googling the claims as you read them should have established an early "truth in reporting" rating of below 50%, and unlikely to significantly improve. Essentially, you linked fake news.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

Do you consider the entire news media "democrats" the way many here apparently do?

No. I'd say the mainstream media is overwhelmingly left-leaning, but not entirely. I consider FOX mainstream news, and even it wasn't without its NeverTrumpers. And there's a vast, diverse ecosystem of alternative media out there on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc, which mirrors the MSM-FOX pattern; the majority of alternative press leans right, but there are notable left-leaning exceptions (ex: Debbie Lusignan, H.A. Goodman; I guess the Young Turks too, even if I think they're shit).

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

It's not just "republicans won't call out Trump when he lies". It's "Trump goes out of his way to attack and smear the news media".

You mean the MSM. Good. They deserve it.

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

with the media out of the way, well, who's to say if what Trump said was a "lie" or not?

You cling to mainstream media fundamentalism. As I said earlier, the mainstream media isn't the entire press, but the mainstream media has a vested interest in fostering the illusion that they are. And no, the alternative press does not consist entirely of Trump supporters with taint fetishes; there are outlets like Lionel Nation more than willing to call out Trump for real things he's actually doing wrong (yes, Ray, there are some).