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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'll say this to whembly and every other dakka member: the Western world is going through a gakstorm right now.

Trump in 1600, Brexit talks going off the rails before they've even started, trouble in the Middle East as always, climate change, unrest, and so on...

Ordinary folk like us need to batten down the hatches for 5 years, and hopefully, If we're lucky, we'll come out in one piece at the end of it...

I'm reading about the Battle of the Somme right now.

The attack started at 7:30am and by 8:30am, the British had suffered 30,000 casulties...

Did they die in vain? I think the sad answer to that is yes...

That's all well and good, but didn't you vote for brexit and were one of the proponents here on dakka? You can't just go along with the populist vibe and then shrug your shoulders when it doesn't work. That is a pretty wishy washy washy non position to take for someone who is constantly talking about how much they learn about history.

 sebster wrote:
But in terms of Russia's operations actually helping Trump, I think the case is pretty weak. It as certainly meant to help Trump, but in a campaign where both candidates were buried in scandal, real and otherwise, with voters almost universally burned out on the whole disaster, what was one more bunch of email leaks? It was certainly nothing compared to the email nonsense, even before Comey's late email blunder. In that environment, with voters dismayed at the whole process, well then Republicans show greater discipline and get out and vote no matter how horrible their candidate is. Democrats don't.

What I meant to say (and I suspect this is the sentiment of others as well) is that its possible the cumulative effect of Russian interference overall was enough to tip the election. We'll have to wait and see though.


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 Gordon Shumway wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'll say this to whembly and every other dakka member: the Western world is going through a gakstorm right now.

Trump in 1600, Brexit talks going off the rails before they've even started, trouble in the Middle East as always, climate change, unrest, and so on...

Ordinary folk like us need to batten down the hatches for 5 years, and hopefully, If we're lucky, we'll come out in one piece at the end of it...

I'm reading about the Battle of the Somme right now.

The attack started at 7:30am and by 8:30am, the British had suffered 30,000 casulties...

Did they die in vain? I think the sad answer to that is yes...

That's all well and good, but didn't you vote for brexit and were one of the proponents here on dakka? You can't just go along with the populist vibe and then shrug your shoulders when it doesn't work. That is a pretty wishy washy washy non position to take for someone who is constantly talking about how much they learn about history.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems entirely reasonable that someone could be pro-Brexit and still be distressed that the negotiations are going poorly.

Yes, it's called buyers remorse. Usually brought on by a lack of thinking ahead and being caught up in the moment. I once got a wife that way, so I can totally empathize. But it is brought on by a lack of reason, so not "entirely reasonable"

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I agree with this sentiment, but I still feel its important to remember that Trump/GOP supporters are not only a minority of the population, but a shrinking one. If every American showed up to vote, Repiblicans would get crushed.

Rosebuddy wrote:
That is really rather simplistic. Many people didn't vote for Trump (many didn't vote at all) and out of those that did vote for him, not all are 100% supporters of his. Hold back on the misanthropy.

Well, he has a 40% approval rate, no?
If so, I rest my case .

 Ouze wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
If Trump did collude with the Russians to skew opinion (something no evidence has indicated happened), how would that be worse than the Clinton campaign colluding with members of the media to influence the election (something for which there IS evidence)?

And again, this is why we totally deserve Trump: an otherwise smart guy claiming there isn't any real difference between a campaign staffer improperly passing information between a media outlet, and possible collusion between a campaign and a hostile foreign power attempting to weaken our democracy in the pursuit of installing a puppet who will loosen sanctions on them.

Good job, America!

In other slightly disturbing news, today's release of Vault 7 showed the CIA's spoofing capacity. Turns out the CIA owns a nice little app called Marble Framework which would easily disguise any hacking attempts as originating from either Russia, China, North Korea or Iran.

I swear this techno-drama is getting to be even better than last season of Mr Robot.

Our thick-skinned leader held a ceremony today to sign some more executive orders, only to get mad at the media and leaving without actually signing any of them.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/31/politics/donald-trump-executive-order-signing-walk-out/index.html

Well, that's officially my favorite thing he's done so far...

I honestly just wish that Trump supporters would accept criticism of their dear leader rather than replying to every criticism with "kek you're just triggered"

It is difficult to put this thought into terms that might be capable of being rationally considered without immediate rejection, but I will try.

Perhaps when someone criticises Trump or his policies, it is because Trump is actually a bad president with bad policies, rather than simply because he isn't on the right team.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'll say this to whembly and every other dakka member: the Western world is going through a gakstorm right now.

Trump in 1600, Brexit talks going off the rails before they've even started, trouble in the Middle East as always, climate change, unrest, and so on...

Ordinary folk like us need to batten down the hatches for 5 years, and hopefully, If we're lucky, we'll come out in one piece at the end of it...

I'm reading about the Battle of the Somme right now.

The attack started at 7:30am and by 8:30am, the British had suffered 30,000 casulties...

Did they die in vain? I think the sad answer to that is yes...

That's all well and good, but didn't you vote for brexit and were one of the proponents here on dakka? You can't just go along with the populist vibe and then shrug your shoulders when it doesn't work. That is a pretty wishy washy washy non position to take for someone who is constantly talking about how much they learn about history.

Not buyers remorse from me - I'd vote for it again tomorrow, but I still have the right to rail against the incompetence of my government and its handling off this crucial issue.

Similarly, I've said many of Trump's foreign policy ideas were sound, but poorly executed by a man out of his depth. That doesn't make them bad ideas.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 sebster wrote:
But in terms of Russia's operations actually helping Trump, I think the case is pretty weak. It as certainly meant to help Trump, but in a campaign where both candidates were buried in scandal, real and otherwise, with voters almost universally burned out on the whole disaster, what was one more bunch of email leaks? It was certainly nothing compared to the email nonsense, even before Comey's late email blunder. In that environment, with voters dismayed at the whole process, well then Republicans show greater discipline and get out and vote no matter how horrible their candidate is. Democrats don't.

What I meant to say (and I suspect this is the sentiment of others as well) is that its possible the cumulative effect of Russian interference overall was enough to tip the election. We'll have to wait and see though.


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 Gordon Shumway wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'll say this to whembly and every other dakka member: the Western world is going through a gakstorm right now.

Trump in 1600, Brexit talks going off the rails before they've even started, trouble in the Middle East as always, climate change, unrest, and so on...

Ordinary folk like us need to batten down the hatches for 5 years, and hopefully, If we're lucky, we'll come out in one piece at the end of it...

I'm reading about the Battle of the Somme right now.

The attack started at 7:30am and by 8:30am, the British had suffered 30,000 casulties...

Did they die in vain? I think the sad answer to that is yes...

That's all well and good, but didn't you vote for brexit and were one of the proponents here on dakka? You can't just go along with the populist vibe and then shrug your shoulders when it doesn't work. That is a pretty wishy washy washy non position to take for someone who is constantly talking about how much they learn about history.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems entirely reasonable that someone could be pro-Brexit and still be distressed that the negotiations are going poorly.

What I wanted to say but better


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 DragonRaptor wrote:
I honestly just wish that Trump supporters would accept criticism of their dear leader rather than replying to every criticism with "kek you're just triggered"

This has actually been an issue in US politics since day one of the Republic.

George Washington was exasperated by the criticism he often received when in office. From his point of view, he's the man that lead the nation to victory and independence. Why is the press so hostile to me?

The press reaction was to say, tough, and wave the 1st amendment at him...

So yeah, Trump needs to realise that it is a long and time honoured American tradition and is nothing personal.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I agree with this sentiment, but I still feel its important to remember that Trump/GOP supporters are not only a minority of the population, but a shrinking one. If every American showed up to vote, Repiblicans would get crushed.

Rosebuddy wrote:
That is really rather simplistic. Many people didn't vote for Trump (many didn't vote at all) and out of those that did vote for him, not all are 100% supporters of his. Hold back on the misanthropy.

Well, he has a 40% approval rate, no?
If so, I rest my case .

Up from 35% the other week and which also means he has a 60% disapproval rate.

Rosebuddy wrote:
and which also means he has a 60% disapproval rate.

That's like saying “60% of US citizen believe in evolution” or something. Yeah, it's more than 50%, but it's such a baseline thing that having any less than 99% is bad…

60% don't like Trump and of the 40% that currently do at least some would be open to better alternatives. Let's not discard over 300 million people because they live in a system designed to create bad leaders.

So that means 120 million people that support Donald Trump. And you are telling me this isn't a terrible embarrassment?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
So that means 120 million people that support Donald Trump. And you are telling me this isn't a terrible embarrassment?

The entire fething US political system is an embarrassment. It working as intended in the conditions it's designed to create is what has put everyone in the current situation.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
So that means 120 million people that support Donald Trump. And you are telling me this isn't a terrible embarrassment?

The entire fething US political system is an embarrassment. It working as intended in the conditions it's designed to create is what has put everyone in the current situation.

well, part of the problem is that it's set up to balance separation of powers between different branches of government and different states, but the actual politics has evolved around a binary political party environment that none of the creators ever wanted to see. Separation of powers works great when it's the different branches struggling against each other, not so much when it's political parties doing so and one or the other captures multiple branches.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
I'm reading about the Battle of the Somme right now.

The attack started at 7:30am and by 8:30am, the British had suffered 30,000 casulties...

Did they die in vain? I think the sad answer to that is yes...

The comparison I'd make between Brexit and WW1 is that in both cases it was inflicted on young people disproportionately by the older generations.

Rosebuddy wrote:
So how did the Russians get Clinton to not campaign in Michigan?

No. You have had this explained so many times. The screw ups of the Clinton campaign don't make it okay that a hostile foreign power did what they could to manipulate the election. Stop going back to that same gakky argument.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
What I meant to say (and I suspect this is the sentiment of others as well) is that its possible the cumulative effect of Russian interference overall was enough to tip the election. We'll have to wait and see though.

And what I'm saying is that Russia's actions had nothing like the impact that the email nonsense had, certainly not once Comey gave his nonsense briefing 11 days before the election.

It was a very close election, granted. So Russia's actions probably didn't have to get many people to switch votes or stay home to impact the result. But really, once we saw 90% of coverage fixated on mudraking and scandal for months, with people draw in to hating both candidates, anyone who was going to be turned away by scandal was already gone long before Podesta's emails revealed not very much.


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems entirely reasonable that someone could be pro-Brexit and still be distressed that the negotiations are going poorly.

It seems to me to be quite unreasonable that people should have assumed that negotiating an exit would have ever been a simple practice that would leave Britain with everything it wanted. It also seems a lot of people might have assumed that, but rather just didn't think far enough ahead to consider those complications.

This is somewhat like the last 6 years of people who fell for the Republican line on healthcare, that ACA could be dumped and replaced with some vague, unknown thing that is just assumed to give better healthcare to more people for less money. People were then just shocked, shocked I tell you, that Republicans were lying the whole time and never had any idea how to improve cost, quality or coverage other than trading off one or two of those things for the other.

 sebster wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
So how did the Russians get Clinton to not campaign in Michigan?

No. You have had this explained so many times. The screw ups of the Clinton campaign don't make it okay that a hostile foreign power did what they could to manipulate the election. Stop going back to that same gakky argument..

The Democrats had orders of magnitude more impact on Clinton's campaign than Russia leaking emails did. The incessant repetition of "there's totally an investigation now" despite no evidence for Trump being some kind of Russian state agent ever surfacing is straight up deranged. It's a transparent cynical ploy. It's also fething rich that the political elite which has never shown qualms about outright toppling other governments and installing death squads is now clutching their pearls that a country that they do everything to treat as a rival and enemy tried to snoop on the US election. I don't for a moment trust that the Democrats have any kind of sane endgame for these accusations, if they have one at all. So ok, they replace Trump. With whom exactly? How is []that[/i] going to go over with the population at large? Most dislike him but would they like him getting thrown out over dubious accusations rather than for any harm he actually did? Ok, they do something to Russia. And what would Russia feel it necessary to do in return? What is the US even capable of sustaining? If the declining EU joins in, what response might that trigger?


Clinton could have done something so simple as actually campaign in key states but instead of reflecting on their historical failures the Democrats prefer to scream about Russians.

It's amazing that he just explained, again, that Clinton loosing has nothing to do with Russia interfering and right away you go back to the "Clinton could have done something to actually win" argument.

I suppose if you hang around dakka long enough, the same conversations repeat themselves.

With a sense of deja vu as I type this, I'll say again:

The USA has EVERY right to feel annoyed, angry, and to take steps against Russia for sticking its nose into US elections.

I have zero problem with that.

However, to me, as a neutral, there seems to be this naive disbelief from some sections that a) nations do this to each other and b) the USA has never in its history ever stuck its nose into another nation's election process.

Clearly these people have never heard of South Vietnam, South Korea, Italy, Chile et al...

A bit of honesty from the USA and an acceptance that the Russians won this round, but the USA will be back, would go a long way, rather than this pure as the driven snow horsegak.

The USA is a superpower. Superpowers make their own rules. Always have. Stop pretending to be the wimpy kid.

Rant over

You're on a drone strike list now, lad.

Not only is no one denying that the US has stuck it's nose in other countries' government, but I don't believe anyone has in the history of the Dakka US politics threads. I don't see it as a sentiment in the political or media sphere at all either. It's so completely irrelevant to the point that even the GOP doesn't bring it up.

How I feel about Trump, and why I (sadly) voted for him.

I think we can all agree that both candidates were giant piles of steaming horse poo. For a very short while I did actually consider sitting out this election, but that just seemed wrong to me.

There were a number of issues I actually liked about both candidates. I much preferred Clinton's experience, and hated Trump's lack of it. I hated both sides for being in bed with big business, but hey, at least Trump half-way admitted it.

No matter who I voted for, I knew I wasn't really going to like it. All I could do was hope that no matter who got elected that this would be a one-term Presidency and they wouldn't screw up too bad. I'm mostly on board with previous posters in fully chastising Trump for his asinine policies, and some of his questionable appointments. I will admit, that a couple of the people he appointed to weren't horrible, and one or two of his choices were actually pretty good.

The one group of deciding factors that got me to vote Trump (even if it did make me taste vomit) was the legacy of the Presidency that would far outlive the 2020 elections, most notably the Supreme Court pick. I'll admit, Obama's man got the shaft on that one. While what was done was technically legal, it wasn't right either. However, that has nothing to do Trump's pick.

What I wanted was a balanced Supreme Court. Frankly, the 9 judges we had were pretty good and well-rounded group and made some pretty good decisions. Having the SC politically swayed too far in EITHER direction results in some pretty derpy rulings. By my count we currently have two hard conservatives, one soft conservative, on middle-ground flip-flopper, two hard liberals, and two soft liberals. I felt that the open spot should be filled by a moderate conservative to bring the most balance to decisions.

Hypothetically, had we been in a situation where Scalia lived and Ginsburg died, I'd have wanted a moderate liberal in there instead and likely would have voted Clinton.

Thats pretty well reasoned. FWIW, I would agree with a lot of that rationale even though mine led me to a different path (I didn't think both candidates were equally bad - I didn't like HRC much but I agreed with her policy generally).

So far as cabinet, I would say Mattis seems like a great pick, Nikki Haley and Elaine Chao are qualified, and while I wouldn't have picked him, Ben Carson seems to be taking his job seriously and attempting to do it well. I'm not sure it quite balances out the F-U stigginit picks like Perry, but it hasn't been all bad, either.

Merrick Garland did get a royal screw job. If they chose not to vote for him, thats absolutely cool - that's the game. Not even holding hearings was such deep bs I suspect even the people who defended it sort of knew in their hearts it was bs.

Sorry if anyone has mentioned this yet, but I have a theory of what was going on with Garland. I think they wanted a Conservative pick, but that Garland was okay.

They were just waiting until they knew the results of the election before doing anything with him. If Trump won, great, don't appoint Garland. If Clinton won, anyone she'd pick would be worse, so they do a rush-job to put Garland in.

 Ouze wrote:
Thats pretty well reasoned. FWIW, I would agree with a lot of that rationale even though mine led me to a different path (I didn't think both candidates were equally bad - I didn't like HRC much but I agreed with her policy generally).

So far as cabinet, I would say Mattis seems like a great pick, Nikki Haley and Elaine Chao are qualified, and while I wouldn't have picked him, Ben Carson seems to be taking his job seriously and attempting to do it well. I'm not sure it quite balances out the F-U stigginit picks like Perry, but it hasn't been all bad, either.

Merrick Garland did get a royal screw job. If they chose not to vote for him, thats absolutely cool - that's the game. Not even holding hearings was such deep bs I suspect even the people who defended it sort of knew in their hearts it was bs.

Except the turtle is now trying to say the dems not voting for their guy is not okay

 d-usa wrote:
It's amazing that he just explained, again, that Clinton loosing has nothing to do with Russia interfering and right away you go back to the "Clinton could have done something to actually win" argument.

That isn't the narrative that's being pushed. The reason I keep repeating that Clinton's poor campaigning is why she lost is because liberals keep going on about Russia or Comey or Bernie Bros and pretty much everything other than the Democrats' own failures. Sebster keeps characterising it as voters being whiny idiots who forgot what's good for them and who will all come crawling back to the Democrats who don't have to change a thing because losing like this is simply a part of the Law of Cycles to which all politics are eternally bound.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
It's amazing that he just explained, again, that Clinton loosing has nothing to do with Russia interfering and right away you go back to the "Clinton could have done something to actually win" argument.

That isn't the narrative that's being pushed. The reason I keep repeating that Clinton's poor campaigning is why she lost is because liberals keep going on about Russia or Comey or Bernie Bros and pretty much everything other than the Democrats' own failures. Sebster keeps characterising it as voters being whiny idiots who forgot what's good for them and who will all come crawling back to the Democrats who don't have to change a thing because losing like this is simply a part of the Law of Cycles to which all politics are eternally bound.

This "narrative" seems to be something you've fabricated entirely inside your own head.

And as things are going now, Democrats don't have to change a thing to win next election. Whether we think they should change, in order to be something more than just "at least they're better than Trump and the Republicans" is another matter, but they most probably don't need to in order to just win. The constant feth ups of Trump and the republican party does the work for the dems

Rosebuddy wrote:
The reason I keep repeating that Clinton's poor campaigning is why she lost is because liberals keep going on about Russia or Comey or Bernie Bros and pretty much everything other than the Democrats' own failures.

No, none of that matters. Clinton did not lose because she ran a poor campaign, she lost because ~60 million people thought that, contrary to all available information, Trump was a good idea. The blindingly obvious truth was that, whatever Clinton's flaws may have been or what campaign she ran, she was clearly the better option and the only rational choice was to vote for her. Put the primary blame where it belongs, on the people who made the spectacularly poor decision to vote for the worst (mainstream) presidential candidate in history.

Sebster keeps characterising it as voters being whiny idiots who forgot what's good for them and who will all come crawling back to the Democrats who don't have to change a thing because losing like this is simply a part of the Law of Cycles to which all politics are eternally bound.

Yes, and Sebster is entirely accurate about this. Republican turnout over recent history has been stable, the only variable is how many democrats show up to vote. And the obvious trend is that democrats are motivated to show up when the republicans are in power and reminding everyone how horrible they are, but get complacent when their own people are running things and stop showing up as much. That leads to more republicans in power, which inevitably leads to poor governing and the democrats remembering that yes, it's actually important to keep voting against republicans.