American Politics

[shionoro]

Yeah I read what kkck linked to. They're saying it and Trump's campaign is denying it...so I'm not sure what one could take from that. IMO it's rather cynical propaganda given the environment post-election.

Well, it IS no secret trump benefitted a lot from russian help.
There is a reason why propaganda tools like RT and trollbots tried to create a good athmosphere for trump.

I can only interpret the action now as the Kremlin rubbing salt into the wound while trump wants to deny it to not fuel further allegations of being a russian pet.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 14, 2016, Original Post Date: Nov 14, 2016 ---

Yeah I read what kkck linked to. They're saying it and Trump's campaign is denying it...so I'm not sure what one could take from that. IMO it's rather cynical propaganda given the environment post-election.


I saw the numbers earlier today. McCain got 59.9m in 2008, and Romney got 60.9m votes in 2012. Obama got 69.4m votes in 2008, and 65.9m votes in 2012. Trump got 60.3m votes and Clinton got 60.9m votes. That's just a huge drop-off for Democrats, especially with there being more voters now than there were 8 years ago by default. Trump didn't "win" this election, the Democrats "lost" it.

We may not forget that a lot of the people voting trump now were Obama voters before, simply because Obama won the 'change' crowd.

 

[kkck]

From a demographics perspective the republican party is in as much trouble as it was years ago. Unfortunately hillary was such an uninspiring candidate (running literally a status quo campaign) that she didn't get people out of their houses. And even then she won the popular vote (at least it seems to be that way so far).

As for russia supporting trump.... Isn't it worrying that the kremlin itself is saying it? I am not so sure of how much he said she said this is. I could understand this being a lie on russia's part if they were saying, say, that they were in contact with clinton's campaign all along but given what we know it makes perfect sense that such a tie would be there. What gain could russia get from this anyways if its not true? I guess it's technically plausible that they are "attacking" this way so as to create further divisions in the US government. They got the pro russia president they wanted and via praises they aim to divide him from the rest of his party which might not be so inclined to have a pro russia position...

 

[shionoro]

From a demographics perspective the republican party is in as much trouble as it was years ago. Unfortunately hillary was such an uninspiring candidate (running literally a status quo campaign) that she didn't get people out of their houses. And even then she won the popular vote (at least it seems to be that way so far).

As for russia supporting trump.... Isn't it worrying that the kremlin itself is saying it? I am not so sure of how much he said she said this is. I could understand this being a lie on russia's part if they were saying, say, that they were in contact with clinton's campaign all along but given what we know it makes perfect sense that such a tie would be there. What gain could russia get from this anyways if its not true? I guess it's technically plausible that they are "attacking" this way so as to create further divisions in the US government. They got the pro russia president they wanted and via praises they aim to divide him from the rest of his party which might not be so inclined to have a pro russia position...

I see it like this: They gain power over other unruly states.
If they can do it in the US, they can do it everywhere, that is the logic.
We saw 2 countries just lately to get a russian friendly government: Bulgaria and the US.
Even worse, we saw lots of european countries lately get an anti EU government or their leaders becoming more EU sceptical.

And in all of those things russian propaganda played a big part. They perfected the game of trollbots and getting their poison to frontpages of important newsmagazines. Many people complain the media was biased for clinton, but it's not like the people who voted trump watch or read those media.
And on social media, this kind of russian propaganda is absolutely dominant (and of course its national offspring, which goes hand in hand with it).
The situation is even worse in europe, where many countries got significant russian minorities.

The kremlin openly admitting to it is a symbol of power. It tells the weaker european leaders who fear for reelection to not take it too far.
And we got quite a few of these. It simply means that if you are not tightly in power over your extremist voter groups, you can be taken down.
Will the next french president risk to let FN get even stronger with a focussed russian campaign against him? I doubt it.

The EU as a whole has to react to this before it is too late. And america would do well if they start fighting propaganda (from which way ever) in social media.
This is not only about rightwing and left wing. It is about america becoming a pet.
Even if Trump would suddenly feel the need to do something about an outragous thing putin did (and trump defended the crimea annex, so it is doubtful), you can pet the russians have gathered enough shit on him to REALLY hurt him. Or they dont even need it, they could just switch the channels who loved him before against him and he'd be done for.
And i bet trump knows that, which is why he will be obedient.

 

[xi0]

We may not forget that a lot of the people voting trump now were Obama voters before, simply because Obama won the 'change' crowd.

I think I said as much on election night actually. If it wasn't former Obama districts themselves flipping red for Trump, Trump got higher percentages of votes compared to last two elections even in districts that Clinton retained.

 

[Onyx Darkmatter]

I saw the numbers earlier today. McCain got 59.9m in 2008, and Romney got 60.9m votes in 2012. Obama got 69.4m votes in 2008, and 65.9m votes in 2012. Trump got 60.3m votes and Clinton got 60.9m votes. That's just a huge drop-off for Democrats, especially with there being more voters now than there were 8 years ago by default. Trump didn't "win" this election, the Democrats "lost" it.

Wow... the Democrats does need to rebuild the party from scratch. For them to lose that much population (on top of losing this election), there's definitely something wrong with the Party.
I suppose that would be one of the few good things that Trump wins. Shattering the Democratic Party into pieces and even made the Liberal Medias resonate badly should definitely tell them something's wrong with them.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/harry-reid-keith-ellison_us_58287caee4b0c4b63b0d16bb

I don't know a lot about Keith Ellison yet. I do recall some controversy about using the Holy Qu'ran for his oath when I was taking an American Government class (and how tinfoiled nutjobs are pulling the Sharia Law card). But outside of that, I do know Sanders endorsed him, and now Harry Reid is doing the same thing.

Meanwhile, on Trump's side: Reince Priebus is now Chief of Staff and Stephen Bannon as Chief Strategist. I don't think it was a good move for Trump to pick Bannon...

 

[kkck]

I see it like this: They gain power over other unruly states.
If they can do it in the US, they can do it everywhere, that is the logic.
We saw 2 countries just lately to get a russian friendly government: Bulgaria and the US.
Even worse, we saw lots of european countries lately get an anti EU government or their leaders becoming more EU sceptical.

And in all of those things russian propaganda played a big part. They perfected the game of trollbots and getting their poison to frontpages of important newsmagazines. Many people complain the media was biased for clinton, but it's not like the people who voted trump watch or read those media.
And on social media, this kind of russian propaganda is absolutely dominant (and of course its national offspring, which goes hand in hand with it).
The situation is even worse in europe, where many countries got significant russian minorities.

The kremlin openly admitting to it is a symbol of power. It tells the weaker european leaders who fear for reelection to not take it too far.
And we got quite a few of these. It simply means that if you are not tightly in power over your extremist voter groups, you can be taken down.
Will the next french president risk to let FN get even stronger with a focussed russian campaign against him? I doubt it.

The EU as a whole has to react to this before it is too late. And america would do well if they start fighting propaganda (from which way ever) in social media.
This is not only about rightwing and left wing. It is about america becoming a pet.
Even if Trump would suddenly feel the need to do something about an outragous thing putin did (and trump defended the crimea annex, so it is doubtful), you can pet the russians have gathered enough shit on him to REALLY hurt him. Or they dont even need it, they could just switch the channels who loved him before against him and he'd be done for.
And i bet trump knows that, which is why he will be obedient.

Well, they have been doing it everywhere and this year we can see quite clearly that russia's propaganda campaigns are nothing short of extraordinarily effective. And whatever the scenario here the issue remains that their propaganda is basically made up of true things. It's not like the clinton leaks were fake emails or anything of the sort. In the end everyone has to react to this. However doing this is incredibly difficult... The US and EU would have to clean house as far as politicians go (so that they can't keep attacking with truth at least) they would have to get leaders to actually focus on this issues. However the US is barely trying to figure out how to handle trump and meanwhile trump has already spread his legs for lord putin and the EU is still trying to recover from this whole brexit thing. So...... it's open season for russia right now and there is not a country on earth with even remotely the means to do anything about it. Heck, it's not like the EU and US didn't know what russia was doing, they just didn't know how to handle it.

 

[shionoro]

Well, they have been doing it everywhere and this year we can see quite clearly that russia's propaganda campaigns are nothing short of extraordinarily effective. And whatever the scenario here the issue remains that their propaganda is basically made up of true things. It's not like the clinton leaks were fake emails or anything of the sort. In the end everyone has to react to this. However doing this is incredibly difficult... The US and EU would have to clean house as far as politicians go (so that they can't keep attacking with truth at least) they would have to get leaders to actually focus on this issues. However the US is barely trying to figure out how to handle trump and meanwhile trump has already spread his legs for lord putin and the EU is still trying to recover from this whole brexit thing. So...... it's open season for russia right now and there is not a country on earth with even remotely the means to do anything about it. Heck, it's not like the EU and US didn't know what russia was doing, they just didn't know how to handle it.

My assessment is very different. Russian propaganda does not use mostly true things.
It mixes truth and lies so that noone gives a fuck about what is true.
Clinton's email have been a problem for her before. But the completely outlandish claims about her assassinating people or being involved with childpornography were not, and they played a part. Or the nonsense claims about her wanting to bring WW3 or whatever.

Exspecially in europe, the russian propaganda does nothign BUT lie. For the ukraine war, u can look at this page for starters:

http://www.stopfake.org/en/news/

That is the kind of propaganda they feed eastern europe with every single day. With botnetworks, with paid trolls and with news outlets like RT.
It has nothing to do with truth, it is like the trump campaign: Throw enough shit so that something sticks.

Even the cleanest house does not help you a lot. I agree that it would have been harder to bring someone like sanders down as an individual. BUt it would just take more time. Let him make one or two big decisions, and he is establishment in the eyes of the people who are easy victims.

What would help would be countermeasures in social media.
A good idea i heard recently was about facebook, youtube and google bringing media outlets or blogs which adhered to a code of ethics to front pages.
This can be called censorship, but in my opinion, it isnt. It simply means outlets who lie less get more spotlight, which is a good thing.

There are some european countries who can still stand up to this, if they, hopefully, get their shit together.
Scandinavia, the balticum, germany, Benelux and poland (while sadly also led by anti eu populists) are not very corrupted by that propaganda yet and it is not like the rest of the EU (with some exceptions like orban) is completely intimidated yet.
If they were, there hadn't been sanctions (which were much harder to pull off for europe than the US).

I think that the trump win will wake up a lot of more liberal people to be more vocal.

 

[kkck]

My assessment is very different. Russian propaganda does not use mostly true things.
It mixes truth and lies so that noone gives a fuck about what is true.
Clinton's email have been a problem for her before. But the completely outlandish claims about her assassinating people or being involved with childpornography were not, and they played a part. Or the nonsense claims about her wanting to bring WW3 or whatever.

Exspecially in europe, the russian propaganda does nothign BUT lie. For the ukraine war, u can look at this page for starters:

http://www.stopfake.org/en/news/

That is the kind of propaganda they feed eastern europe with every single day. With botnetworks, with paid trolls and with news outlets like RT.
It has nothing to do with truth, it is like the trump campaign: Throw enough shit so that something sticks.

Even the cleanest house does not help you a lot. I agree that it would have been harder to bring someone like sanders down as an individual. BUt it would just take more time. Let him make one or two big decisions, and he is establishment in the eyes of the people who are easy victims.

What would help would be countermeasures in social media.
A good idea i heard recently was about facebook, youtube and google bringing media outlets or blogs which adhered to a code of ethics to front pages.
This can be called censorship, but in my opinion, it isnt. It simply means outlets who lie less get more spotlight, which is a good thing.

There are some european countries who can still stand up to this, if they, hopefully, get their shit together.
Scandinavia, the balticum, germany, Benelux and poland (while sadly also led by anti eu populists) are not very corrupted by that propaganda yet and it is not like the rest of the EU (with some exceptions like orban) is completely intimidated yet.
If they were, there hadn't been sanctions (which were much harder to pull off for europe than the US).

I think that the trump win will wake up a lot of more liberal people to be more vocal.

Well, I was thinking mostly of the US election considering how they went about it this time around. My post didn't rule out russia making up stuff (I am well aware they do), just that the objective here should be to make it at least so there isn't truth they can use.

Well, it would be censorship.... Rather than that it would be better to give more spotlight to what russia does. I don't think most people really have a grasp of how far russia goes in regards to its fake news and propaganda and the overall information war it has led for the past several decades. Or rather simply get the EU and and US to do a massive DDOS (or whichever other they prefer, I just think this one would be fun) attack against russia until they cut their crap.... It's not like sanctions do anything but embolden them...

 

[shionoro]

Well, I was thinking mostly of the US election considering how they went about it this time around. My post didn't rule out russia making up stuff (I am well aware they do), just that the objective here should be to make it at least so there isn't truth they can use.

Well, it would be censorship.... Rather than that it would be better to give more spotlight to what russia does. I don't think most people really have a grasp of how far russia goes in regards to its fake news and propaganda and the overall information war it has led for the past several decades. Or rather simply get the EU and and US to do a massive DDOS (or whichever other they prefer, I just think this one would be fun) attack against russia until they cut their crap.... It's not like sanctions do anything but embolden them...

I do think the sactions did a lot. At least their advancement in Ukraine was stopped.
The problem is that a lot of EU states are already against the sanctions (due to own economical reasons or due to political reasons).
If the EU was willing to make the sanctions more severe every time russia did s th, i think they would stop it.
But the opposite is true: The direction is to abandon the sanctions rather than making them more severe, and that tells russia that the worst they could exspect is over.

It is a good idea, as you said, to call out russians fakes and make them a topic, because so far i only hear 'WELL MAINSTREAM MEDIA LIE TOO' about it, even if it is absolutely incorrect to even remotely equate some rare incorrect news articles to willful lies every day.

The sad thing is: For all i can foresee it, the US is out of this fight by now for the next 4 years.
There is no action trump would or could take against russian interests. And while i know his power is not as big as some people think, it means a lot.
The EU is to fend for itself here without the most important nato member.

 

[xi0]

I suppose that would be one of the few good things that Trump wins. Shattering the Democratic Party into pieces and even made the Liberal Medias resonate badly should definitely tell them something's wrong with them.

I would go farther and say that liberals in general need a "come to jesus" moment (the irony is real, I know ) in regards to the current state of the left in this country, and maybe having the rug pulled out from under their feet last week is that moment. But I'll willingly admit that I'm not certain how much of this was a factor in this election at the end of the day. I've heard some people on the left seriously blame this loss on the "Alt-Right", as if the average voter even knows what the hell that even is. Or deny the fact that single-issue voters could even exist in the first place.

 

[Aonori]

And it seems mr. Priebus and Bannon are getting promoted "as equals in power", according to the US's new president.

Spoiler: Bannon

got quite a bad rep according to some sources

 

[shionoro]

As a first effect from the lose of trust in the US as Nato ally:

Poland plans to build up a paramilitary force consisting out of civillians who get military training under the commando of actual soldiers.
They wanna build up a force of 53.000 civillians getting that kind of training as preventive measure for a scenario like in Ukraine.

And I hope i dont need to tell anyone that this can be hella dangerous if more measures like that come into place and eastern european states get more militarized (sames goes for other nato states like israel or nato allys like south korea and japan).

The world is not going to be more peaceful without US involvement. The power vacuum which is unleashed unto us in that case can be potentially devastating.

 

[kkck]

I wonder if trump really is on his way to being the most hated president in US history. He is already hated plenty (he lost the popular vote for a reason) but his path to finally starting his term seems increasingly rocky. Washington post commented on trump's education plan being surprising liberal which basically means his supposed congress allies should on principle hate it due to spiting in the face of fiscal conservatism and whatnot and then you have his appointment of bannon (to the best of my knowledge, world class human garbage), and then a number of flops. His only consistent stance (perhaps even predictably) is mass deportations. Though 500k more deportations than obama did is not much. Unless I read that wrong and he plans on doing the 3 mil deportations in a year which seems kinda impossible. Unless he deports people via catapult or something.

For those who know more about immigration than I do, why doesn't the government crack down on companies that hire illegal immigrants? It seems like a far more straightforward solution than going after illegal immigrants anyways.

And yet another spit to the face of the sorry folk who voted for an "outsider", apparently trump wants to appoint someone from goldman sachs to an important position (can't recall which one right now). For an outsider who wants to shake up washington he is appointing a surprising number of insiders who will die before letting trump shake anything at all. With that alone wallstreet must have started counting how many mountains of cocaine they can buy....

 

[shionoro]

I wonder if trump really is on his way to being the most hated president in US history. He is already hated plenty (he lost the popular vote for a reason) but his path to finally starting his term seems increasingly rocky. Washington post commented on trump's education plan being surprising liberal which basically means his supposed congress allies should on principle hate it due to spiting in the face of fiscal conservatism and whatnot and then you have his appointment of bannon (to the best of my knowledge, world class human garbage), and then a number of flops. His only consistent stance (perhaps even predictably) is mass deportations. Though 500k more deportations than obama did is not much. Unless I read that wrong and he plans on doing the 3 mil deportations in a year which seems kinda impossible. Unless he deports people via catapult or something.

For those who know more about immigration than I do, why doesn't the government crack down on companies that hire illegal immigrants? It seems like a far more straightforward solution than going after illegal immigrants anyways.

And yet another spit to the face of the sorry folk who voted for an "outsider", apparently trump wants to appoint someone from goldman sachs to an important position (can't recall which one right now). For an outsider who wants to shake up washington he is appointing a surprising number of insiders who will die before letting trump shake anything at all. With that alone wallstreet must have started counting how many mountains of cocaine they can buy....

In my opinion: Yes he is. The thing is: The people who actually liked trump were the conspiracy nutjobs and anti establishment radicals.
And those people tend to stop liking someone when he actually IS in power.

What is the truth is that trump cannot follow up on the more outlandish plans he had.
He can do bad things like his tax plans and his nato plans, but instantly after the election he said clinton was actually a fine woman.
He is not going to build a wall, he now thinks some of obamacare parts are fine and so on.
He also assured israel that he has no problem with their settlement policy.

He is not going to do any of the things they thought he'd do. He is going to do things which normal politicians do partially advocate for, too (even if they are bad unreasonable politicians, but still 'established')

 

[Onyx Darkmatter]

For those who know more about immigration than I do, why doesn't the government crack down on companies that hire illegal immigrants? It seems like a far more straightforward solution than going after illegal immigrants anyways.

It might be the same reason why you're not allowed to film in a private sector without permission (that, or they might not want to tamper with "Capitalism" despite the U.S. being Corporatism). It might also be because the companies are paying taxes and aren't necessarily violating any laws (I mean, I don't know if there's any about hiring illegal immigrants, but I could be wrong).

 

[kkck]

It might be the same reason why you're not allowed to film in a private sector without permission (that, or they might not want to tamper with "Capitalism" despite the U.S. being Corporatism). It might also be because the companies are paying taxes and aren't necessarily violating any laws (I mean, I don't know if there's any about hiring illegal immigrants, but I could be wrong).

I am not sure of what you mean by filming in the private sector. Well, if they aren't violating any laws my question would still be: why? Realistically speaking it makes a lot more sense to simply make it harder or impossible for illegal immigrants to get jobs that to focus on mass deportations. If they restrict jobs for illegal immigrants then immigrants would basically go back home instead of having to deport them. On the other hand if this is simply impossible to regulate then it makes more sense....

 

[SharkBait]

The problem is that many people know they benefit from obamacare but still dont like it.
They rather have a few more dollars and not be able to go to the doctor.
But it will lead to many people suffering, that should be clear.

I dont benefit from Obamacare, in fact, I had to pay more for the same healthcare. Its terrible and a waste. Employers should continue to sponsor healthcare for benefits for those who work, or else everyone else can just use private healthcare. Government should not touch it.

 

[shionoro]

I dont benefit from Obamacare, in fact, I had to pay more for the same healthcare. Its terrible and a waste. Employers should continue to sponsor healthcare for benefits for those who work, or else everyone else can just use private healthcare. Government should not touch it.

That means you are off well and pay for someone else who cuoldnt afford it elseways.
Do you really want that one to not be able to afford healthcare?

 

[SharkBait]

That means you are off well and pay for someone else who cuoldnt afford it elseways.
Do you really want that one to not be able to afford healthcare?

They should be able to afford it in their well paying job. If they cant afford healthcare then they should get a good job. Its not my desire for people to have bad jobs. Bad jobs ought not exist.

 

[xi0]

For those who know more about immigration than I do, why doesn't the government crack down on companies that hire illegal immigrants? It seems like a far more straightforward solution than going after illegal immigrants anyways.

It's different in the major farm states I suppose, but the hiring of illegals where I live is usually related to manual labor involved in construction or doing grunt work in the food industry or janitorial services. The reason it's tough to enforce is that these people aren't usually on the books. It would require law enforcement to regularly visit all of the places illegals might work on a regular basis to actually catch businesses in the act. And even if we had the manpower to do that, they would just find employment at the next place, etc. Penalties would have to be after the fact and harsher than hell, and for most politicians this looks "anti-business". For an area like mine, another issue is metropolitan areas called "sanctuary cities" that do not prosecute individuals solely on the basis of them being undocumented. There's so many layers to this issue really. Like, even if you could penalize any business that hires them, would it make up the difference of the money businesses save by not paying citizens in the first place? Even if you could prevent all of it, where is the assurance that jobs done by illegals would be filled by citizens?

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 14, 2016, Original Post Date: Nov 14, 2016 ---

They should be able to afford it in their well paying job. If they cant afford healthcare then they should get a good job. Its not my desire for people to have bad jobs. Bad jobs ought not exist.

So then you agree that "bad" jobs can be made better by raising the minimum wage?