The Trump Presidency: Part 18

[Cabbage]

Think it is best for me to avoid US politics threads for a bit.

Am actually genuinely interested, and the whole Trump thing is interesting as he is just an idiot,

But realise I am probably just being an idiot as don't know enough about the history

Apologies if I offended anyone and will still read with interest,

Maybe still make the odd dim post, but not for a while

Just don't act like your opinion is the truth and I think you'll be fine.

 

[The Don]

Think I will leave it there, as you obviously have more indepth knowledge of parties destroying themselves while winning.

Well, there's winning and there's winning.

The GOP lost the popular vote in 4 out of the last 5 Presidential elections. George W Bush's second victory was while he was riding the wave of "success" in the "War on Terror^TM" and whilst we can never know how things would have turned out without 9/11, his poll numbers were hardly stellar before it.

The GOP is actively pursuing tactics to ensure that they have a chance of clinging onto power with a diminishing share of the vote. Gerrymandering (for House and state elections), voter suppression, roll purging are currently effective.

Appealing more and more to a diminishing demographic doesn't seem like a long-term strategy for success to me but who knows ?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Appealing more and more to a diminishing demographic doesn't seem like a long-term strategy for success to me but who knows ?

Hey, it's working for Assad !
All you need is Russian backing.

 

[a_unique_person]

Agree.



Trump is the result of what the GOP has become, not the other way around.

The GOP created an expectation for a certain type of politician but didn't provide it. Then Trump came along and said "Here I am".

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump Tweets

And the Do Nothing Democrats want to impeach President Trump?

The Hill
@thehill
Poll: Majority of Republicans say Trump is a better president than Lincoln http://hill.cm/IPxeu0U

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump Tweets

I will be representing our Country in London at NATO, while the Democrats are holding the most ridiculous Impeachment hearings in history. Read the Transcripts, NOTHING was done or said wrong! The Radical Left is undercutting our Country. Hearings scheduled on same dates as NATO!

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump Tweets

An incredible experience!

The White House
@WhiteHouse
President @realDonaldTrump spent Thanksgiving with some of our amazing troops in Afghanistan!
"As long as America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines are on the mission, our nation’s adversaries do not have even a small hope of victory."

"The men and women of our military are totally loyal to our country. And every day I am President, America will always be totally loyal to you."

 

[Ladewig]

Trump Tweets

And the Do Nothing Democrats want to impeach President Trump?

The Hill
@thehill
Poll: Majority of Republicans say Trump is a better president than Lincoln http://hill.cm/IPxeu0U

Hey President **** head, impeachment proceedings are not meant to be referenda on popularity, they are meant to be inquiries into crimes. How much you party loves you is irrelevant to whether or not impeachment proceeding are appropriate.

ETA
and for the thousandth time, referring to yourself in the third person for years is a sign that one does it have a firm grasp on mental stability.

 

[Aridas]

Think it is best for me to avoid US politics threads for a bit.

Am actually genuinely interested, and the whole Trump thing is interesting as he is just an idiot,

But realise I am probably just being an idiot as don't know enough about the history

Apologies if I offended anyone and will still read with interest,

Maybe still make the odd dim post, but not for a while

Pretty much everyone makes mistakes, especially while learning. There's nothing to be ashamed about there. What matters more is how one handles having made a mistake.


As for the topic of voter suppression - the Republicans have been engaging in quite the variety of tactics for quite some time now, with varying and sometimes hard to quantify effects. To poke at some of the direct methods...

First, Republicans have been engaging in lots and lots of deeply flawed voter purges. Crosscheck, for example, was strongly pushed by Republicans and was absurdly bad (over 99% wrong - heavily skewed towards disenfranchising Democrats, of course) and ended up with the courts ruling that it was totally banned, but that is hardly the only case of such horrendously bad accuracy that it pretty much had to be intentional. Voter purges that have about 25% of those purged having been wrongfully purged (the "mistakes" always being heavily skewed towards removing legitimate Democratic leaners, of course) without even notification are almost not even a surprise anymore. Rules for purging the voting roles are not uniform, even within a state, and the Republicans have abused that like crazy. For Bush's "win" against Gore, for example, one of the various notable contributing factors was that they carried out voter purges of anyone with a name sorta similar to a felon's - but only in very Democratic Party leaning areas. Somewhat similarly, they've made laws related to purges to allow them to purge people who didn't vote in the last election or couple and have used them to pointedly target Democratic leaning populations. Brian Kemp in Georgia, for example, took about half a million legitimate Georgia voters off the rolls over a couple years with that as an excuse quite recently (given Ohio's recent one in six "error" rate for similar as an example, there's a very good chance that a huge number of those people were wrongfully purged), overwhelmingly Democratic voters, of course. Plenty more could be gone into there, but that's just one of the general tactics.

Voter ID laws were supported specifically because of the calculations that they would lead to more loss of Democratic Party leaning voters - and that was pretty well admitted by them at various points. To poke at a link that came up on a quick search -

“You wanna know why I left the Republican Party as it exists today? Here it is; this was the last straw: I was in the closed Senate Republican Caucus when the final round of multiple Voter ID bills were being discussed. A handful of the GOP Senators were giddy about the ramifications and literally singled out the prospects of suppressing minority and college voters. Think about that for a minute. Elected officials planning and happy to help deny a fellow American’s constitutional right to vote in order to increase their own chances to hang onto power.” - Todd Allbaugh

That link pokes at a few of the other things, too. Before this gets too long, though, I'll poke at several other things. Broken/nearly broken voting machines in heavily Democratic Party leaning areas and extremely slow replacements when they became completely unusable - sometimes with accusations of Democratic cheating because of numbers not adding up quite right specifically because the machines provided were broken/nearly broken. All that despite having lots and lots of unused good voting machines available. Meanwhile, machines in heavily Republican areas were good and if there was a little backup, nigh immediate additions to help those people vote as fast as possible. Voting places being removed at a ratio of what, 9 to 1 - 9 in heavily Democratic areas for every 1 in a heavily Republican area. Dodge City, Kansas literally had 0 voting places in the city after Republican messed with such - and gave reasoning that was quite easily shown to be a brazen lie. Gerrymandering, of course, to make the votes of Democrats be effectively worth much, much less than Republican votes. After checking who used different forms of early voting, the GOP in a number of states worked to completely shut down the forms of early voting primarily used by Democratic leaning populations and favor the forms primarily used by Republican leaning populations. Plenty more direct things could be listed, but... moving on.

Then, of course, there's the indirect ways. The propaganda distortion and lies. The continual attempts to convince voters that the government doesn't care, won't help, that politicians are all corrupt, that your vote doesn't really matter, the various attempts at adding burdens to poorer people and Democratic Party leaning groups so they will have less time and energy available to engage and vote, etc., etc., etc. to get them to disengage - never mind that the Republicans are the ones actively sabotaging everything, which is why much got as bad as it has. Note: things do get murkier the further one goes back and Democrats really aren't angels even today, nevermind once gets back far enough that the Southern Strategy realignment hadn't effectively been completed at that point. With that said, of course, most of the Democratic Party of today is actively working to try to let every legitimate vote be counted and equal - and the Democratic Party is largely managing to uphold principles over partisanship. So not angels, but mostly decent people, which is a huge contrast from much of the current GOP politicians.

 

[Aridas]

Hey President **** head, impeachment proceedings are not meant to be referenda on popularity, they are meant to be inquiries into crimes. How much you party loves you is irrelevant to whether or not impeachment proceeding are appropriate.

Hate to say it... but they sorta are about popularity to a fair extent, unlike an actual criminal trial. Impeachment is fundamentally a political tool and does not actually require crime to have been committed to be used. Jackson's abuse of the pardon power that pretty well destroyed Reconstruction, for example, had him a hair away from being impeached. There was nothing actually illegal or criminal about what he did there, though, IIRC, however wrong and harmful his actions were. That impeachment is not a criminal trial, incidentally, is one of the things that can be easily pointed towards to show that several of the recent GOP defenses are imbecilic.

 

[Tero]

Hate to say it... but they sorta are about popularity to a fair extent, unlike an actual criminal trial. Impeachment is fundamentally a political tool and does not actually require crime to have been committed to be used. Jackson's abuse of the pardon power that pretty well destroyed Reconstruction, for example, had him a hair away from being impeached. There was nothing actually illegal or criminal about what he did there, though, IIRC, however wrong and harmful his actions were. That impeachment is not a criminal trial, incidentally, is one of the things that can be easily pointed towards to show that several of the recent GOP defenses are imbecilic.

Not even criminal! Bill Clinton was impeached for a blow job. If he had been a CEO of a buniness, he would have been fired. With a golden handshake.

 

[Dragon]

Not even criminal! Bill Clinton was impeached for a blow job. If he had been a CEO of a buniness, he would have been fired. With a golden handshake.

I think you'll find that he was impeached for lying under oath about said BJ.
That is a criminal offence.

Very small beer compared to what Trump appears to be guilty of though.

 

[Segnosaur]

I think you'll find that he was impeached for lying under oath about said BJ.

That is a criminal offence.



Very small beer compared to what Trump appears to be guilty of though.

Lying about sex under oath is illegal, but it was about a personal matter.

Compare that to Trump's various crimes (obstruction of justice, bribery/extortion, perjury), many of which stem from his efforts to illegally influence elections, which are very much relevant to national interests.

Sent from my LM-X320 using Tapatalk

 

[acbytesla]

Not even criminal! Bill Clinton was impeached for a blow job. If he had been a CEO of a buniness, he would have been fired. With a golden handshake.

You're absolutely wrong. No CEO is going to have a special prosecutor investigate a real estate deal and then switch to asking questions about a possible consensual sexual affair.

 

[The Shrike]

Lying about sex under oath is illegal, but it was about a personal matter.

Personal, except that the holder of that office has a special responsibility to the Republic. Was it a personal matter of sufficient gravity that the President could have been effectively blackmailed to keep it a secret? Yes. Could such blackmail have come from a foreign (or for that matter, domestic) adversary? Yes. Therefore, impeachable. The impeachment hearings could then focus on any such blackmail that might have taken place. In the end none did, and Clinton escaped with a wrist-slap for lying about it.

Can you imagine the chaos today if we had a president subject to blackmail from enemies and grifters, etc.? Thank heaven our dear leader is unassailable!

 

[Stacyhs]

Agree.

Trump is the result of what the GOP has become, not the other way around.

I also agree. Trump could not have taken root if the ground wasn't already fertile.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I think you'll find that he was impeached for lying under oath about said BJ.
That is a criminal offence.

Very small beer compared to what Trump appears to be guilty of though.

I feel America passed up a great opportunity to define, in law, whether blowjobs count as actual sex. I was a teenager at the time and having that question settled officially would have settled a great deal pf interpersonal drama going on in my school.

 

[acbytesla]

Personal, except that the holder of that office has a special responsibility to the Republic. Was it a personal matter of sufficient gravity that the President could have been effectively blackmailed to keep it a secret? Yes. Could such blackmail have come from a foreign (or for that matter, domestic) adversary? Yes. Therefore, impeachable. The impeachment hearings could then focus on any such blackmail that might have taken place. In the end none did, and Clinton escaped with a wrist-slap for lying about it.

Can you imagine the chaos today if we had a president subject to blackmail from enemies and grifters, etc.? Thank heaven our dear leader is unassailable!

Throwing in wild hypotheticals I see. That didn't happen to your knowledge.

Trump lies non-stop. What would he do to stop embarrassing news? Like maybe the Russians have much more than two hookers peeing on a bed. Maybe they peed and crapped on his face.

You're argument that because Clinton lied about oral sex it means he migbt betray his country to a foreign power is amusing considering Trump's bending over for Putin.

 

[Dragon]

Lying about sex under oath is illegal, but it was about a personal matter.

Compare that to Trump's various crimes (obstruction of justice, bribery/extortion, perjury), many of which stem from his efforts to illegally influence elections, which are very much relevant to national interests.

Sent from my LM-X320 using Tapatalk

Indeed. Trumps many crimes are of a completely different order.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

They say that the cover-up is worse than the crime.
Trump and his henchmen know that's not true in their case m