American Politics

[SonOfDaws]

If redistributing wealth is seen as "centrist" by the majority of people nowadays, then we're pretty damn lost as a nation.

 

[kkck]

Redistributing wealth is not really a term that means anything without being clear on what specific policies you are talking about. Clearly there is a difference between redistributing wealth via collecting taxes to pay for education, infrastructure and medicine and redistributing wealth via, say,just arbitrarily taking land from people and giving it to others. As for yang.... I suppose he is at the left but he doesn't exactly fit with other leftwing people. Policy wise he seems to be campaigning on ideas which are just barely being discussed by economist as thought experiments. universal basic income is something which is being discussed but it hasn't been applied anywhere yet. Though politically of course the idea has traction in some places. I'd characterize yang as a fringe leftwinger rather than as a centrist. With the context being that his economic proposals are not quite tested and tried. On another note, I doubt people in the US would be willing to pay the taxes they would need to pay for others to have an universal basic income... to begin with you have people that object to paying for taxes for stuff they would use like health care...

 

[xi0]

Yeah, and I'm trying to remember if there's any more such instances. He seems to be centrist enough

There is no instance of him "defending racism". He said he was willing to meet with him because thinks we need to be "more forgiving and less punitive". If he was "defending" Gillis he would have made excuses for what he said and he didn't do that, he did the opposite.

universal basic income is something which is being discussed but it hasn't been applied anywhere yet.

Alaska has it in effect. There have been "experiments" with it in the past in other states as well.

His whole point is that automation is going to cut down on available jobs, particularly in unskilled labor. Our population is only going to get larger as well. We may reach a point where there simply aren't enough jobs for people. His system of UBI would replace the sort of welfare that the government already pays out.

 

[M3J]

There is no instance of him "defending racism". He said he was willing to meet with him because thinks we need to be "more forgiving and less punitive". If he was "defending" Gillis he would have made excuses for what he said and he didn't do that, he did the opposite.

If it was years ago, and the person changed since then, then yeah I agree, but otherwise we need to be harsher towards racists.


Redistributing the wealth is a great idea, but in a way that helps people, like providing people with insurance, fixing infrastructure, increasing grants and money for education, and UBI or whatnot where people can make ends meet more easily. Otherwise what's the point if the 99% don't benefit in making their lives easier?

 

[xi0]

If it was years ago, and the person changed since then, then yeah I agree, but otherwise we need to be harsher towards racists.

Harsher how exactly? He lost his job, no one is defending his actions. Having a conversation with someone directly affected by his comments can be way more constructive than anything else.

 

[SonOfDaws]

Some good news for a change:

 

[SharkBait]

and one more drops out

 

[M3J]

#GoJonStewart

 

[kkck]

The Democrats’ Impeachment Witnesses

Democrats have a couple of weeks and a handful of public hearings to present their case for President Trump’s impeachment to the American people. And in the lea…

fivethirtyeight.com

For anyone interesting in what has been going on in the trump-ukraine hearings-investigations.

--- Double Post Merged, Nov 22, 2019, Original Post Date: Nov 13, 2019 ---

Do Americans Support Impeaching Trump?

FiveThirtyEight is tracking polls that ask whether respondents support impeaching President Trump.

projects.fivethirtyeight.com

Ok so.... that was unexpected. A bunch fo witness from trump's staff and even trump donors testify that trump used US foreign policy to try and benefit his campaign over an unhinged conspiracy theory and... support for impeachment goes down? Alternative facts for the win!

 

[Charlie]

Giving this a bump due to the fact whilst at work so many peeps and radio hosts just ramble on how much they hate Trump. Want his impeachment, etc.
Kind of annoying though since im not into politics much but can't escape the conovs smh.

 

[M3J]

And in the meanwhile, we can't escape his stupidity or his cult members' racism.

 

[Newkerzy]

So, be honest with me y'all. Is this impeachment even going to succeed? I mean, I could see this working if the Senate composition was tighter, but considering how he's effectively brainwashed and scared the GOP to fall in line, I don't see this happening. Like, what is even the point for Dems to go through this? If this is a way to undermine him in 2020 elections, I don't really see any upsides to this situation.

 

[kkck]

So, be honest with me y'all. Is this impeachment even going to succeed? I mean, I could see this working if the Senate composition was tighter, but considering how he's effectively brainwashed and scared the GOP to fall in line, I don't see this happening. Like, what is even the point for Dems to go through this? If this is a way to undermine him in 2020 elections, I don't really see any upsides to this situation.

As for the impeachment going through.... personally I don't think democrats will succeed. Either through their own incompetence or through the senate simply taking trump's side. McConnell has even said he is working with the white house...

As for the point of this... At this point it's just basic decency. During the house investigations you had a dozen trump staffers testifying under that to the best of their knowledge trump withheld aid to ukraine because he wanted to get the biden investigation out of them. Add to that trump ordering people not to comply with subpoenas and those people not complying with those in spite of the fact that in the past people have done jail time for not complying with subpoenas before.

 

[Newkerzy]

As for the impeachment going through.... personally I don't think democrats will succeed. Either through their own incompetence or through the senate simply taking trump's side. McConnell has even said he is working with the white house...

As for the point of this... At this point it's just basic decency. During the house investigations you had a dozen trump staffers testifying under that to the best of their knowledge trump withheld aid to ukraine because he wanted to get the biden investigation out of them. Add to that trump ordering people not to comply with subpoenas and those people not complying with those in spite of the fact that in the past people have done jail time for not complying with subpoenas before.

Except at this point the GOP has already thrown out any sort of decency and sold their souls. The impeachment process doesn't even seem to affect theirs and Trumpty's re-election chances either, and that's without getting Russia involved. It'd basically take someone to get Trumpty to gloat about how dumb his supporters are on the record to get him kicked out.

 

[kkck]

Except at this point the GOP has already thrown out any sort of decency and sold their souls. The impeachment process doesn't even seem to affect theirs and Trumpty's re-election chances either, and that's without getting Russia involved. It'd basically take someone to get Trumpty to gloat about how dumb his supporters are on the record to get him kicked out.

But... what's the alternative? To not do anything? I would argue the healthier thing to do here is to not think about this in terms of whether trump actually gets impeached and then kicked out or in terms of elections. Both of them are important but in a different context from that of a trial where the issue should be a legal process and the substance that is brought up. The validity of a trial of any type doesn't depend on there being exclusively guilty verdicts. Add to that this being a political trial...

Trump has already gloated about how stupid his supporters are. Like when he said he could shot someone on fifth avenue and he wouldn't lose a vote... Or when he said his supporters cared about locking hillary up during the election but not after...

 

[M3J]

So, be honest with me y'all. Is this impeachment even going to succeed? I mean, I could see this working if the Senate composition was tighter, but considering how he's effectively brainwashed and scared the GOP to fall in line, I don't see this happening. Like, what is even the point for Dems to go through this? If this is a way to undermine him in 2020 elections, I don't really see any upsides to this situation.

It'll fail, and Trump will get away with his lying, bullshit ways because the republicans don't give a shit about the country, they just want to have power. If anything, this could get Trump more votes from those who didn't even support him initially. It did cause a Democrat to switch sides.

 

[Newkerzy]

But... what's the alternative? To not do anything? I would argue the healthier thing to do here is to not think about this in terms of whether trump actually gets impeached and then kicked out or in terms of elections. Both of them are important but in a different context from that of a trial where the issue should be a legal process and the substance that is brought up. The validity of a trial of any type doesn't depend on there being exclusively guilty verdicts. Add to that this being a political trial...

Trump has already gloated about how stupid his supporters are. Like when he said he could shot someone on fifth avenue and he wouldn't lose a vote... Or when he said his supporters cared about locking hillary up during the election but not after...

If I get what you're saying, then all this amounts to is trying to get a moral victory out of this? Moral victories rarely mean anything in politics nowadays.

My beef with the whole thing is, the Dems should know better than anyone else after the Clinton scandal the timing just wasn't going to work. The best strategy they could've executed was to keep playing dumb until next year, and once the impeachment process goes underway midway through next year, that could end up in huge voter turnouts for both the Senate and Representatives going the Democrats' way.

It wouldn't matter if Trumpty won, because as soon as he is sworn into office, the legislative branch can impeach him.

 

[kkck]

If I get what you're saying, then all this amounts to is trying to get a moral victory out of this? Moral victories rarely mean anything in politics nowadays.

My beef with the whole thing is, the Dems should know better than anyone else after the Clinton scandal the timing just wasn't going to work. The best strategy they could've executed was to keep playing dumb until next year, and once the impeachment process goes underway midway through next year, that could end up in huge voter turnouts for both the Senate and Representatives going the Democrats' way.

It wouldn't matter if Trumpty won, because as soon as he is sworn into office, the legislative branch can impeach him.

No, not a moral victory. They should do it simply because its the correct and decent thing to do. What's the alternative? To let a crime slide simply because they are afraid of what the opposing party will think? That's absurd, cowardly and plainly wrong. If democrats genuinely believe that trump genuinely tried to extort ukraine then they simply can't wait until the timing is convenient, they have to proceed in the moment... Can you imagine the whistleblower complaint coming out and democrats not acting on it? That's absurd.

 

[Sanity Check]

Let it be known that I've been a massive supporter of Donald John Trump since 2016 when I first saw his proposed taxation reform plan to cut income taxes.

 

[M3J]

Our dumbass president decided to attack Iraq or Iran, which led to Soleimani's death and a possible war with Middle East, which in turn will kill so many innocent Middle Eastern lives. We really have no right to whine about refugees when we literally create them with our shitheaded ways, jfc