US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3764

On May 08 2016 02:05 LegalLord wrote:

I'm sure that that has everything to do with Trump and nothing to do with people who are independently stupid and superstitious.

This is really depressing: Sanders claiming that there will be a contested convention, and suggesting that the nomination fight was rigged. Can someone tell Bernie that he’s in the process of blowing his own chance for a positive legacy?

Here’s how the narrative could have run: although he fell short of actually getting the nomination, Sanders did far better than expected, giving him and his movement a good claim to have a big say in the Democratic agenda for 2016 and perhaps setting the movement up as the party’s future. But to take that position — to turn defeat in the primary into a moral victory — he would have had to accept the will of the voters with grace.

What we’re getting instead is an epic descent into whining. He dismissed Clinton victories driven by black voters as products of the conservative Deep South; he suggested that his defeat in New York was unfair because it was a closed primary (you can argue this case either way, but requiring that you identify as a Democrat to choose the Democratic nominee is hardly voter suppression — arguably caucuses are much further from a democratic process); then, with the big loss in the mid-Atlantic primaries,he has turned to a sort of fact-free complaint that any process under which Bernie Sanders loses is ipso facto unfair, and superdelegates should choose him despite a 3 million vote deficit.

At this point it’s as if Sanders is determined to validate everything liberal skeptics have been saying all along about his unwillingness to face reality — and all of it for, maybe, a few weeks of additional fundraising, at the expense of any future credibility and goodwill. Isn’t there anyone who can tell him to stop before it’s too late?

On May 08 2016 02:17 Gorsameth wrote:

So why call it 'Trumps America' when 'Bush's America' is a much better description since it was under his term that America started a campaign to keep its citizens scared in order to take away their freedom.

"I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them."

On May 08 2016 02:39 Gorsameth wrote:
We were not talking about dividing the population but about unrealistic Muslim fears and while Trump certainly plays off of them the exact same feeling have been very prevalent ever since 9/11.
The math teacher getting pulled off a plane could have just as easily happened in 2002 and similar cases have happened repeatedly over the last decade.

On May 08 2016 02:22 LegalLord wrote:

Rare enough that you shouldn't assume everyone who looks Muslim is a terrorist and should be treated with a massive degree of suspicion. Not so rare that it wouldn't be wise to keep an eye out and have a reasonable degree of scrutiny of those who support an ideology that all too commonly leads to terrorism.

On May 08 2016 02:50 LegalLord wrote:

So you're trying to say that in a nation with rather significant security measures with a very small Muslim population, it's best not to have security measures because of a low occurrence of terrorism?

You can also look at Iraq which has thousands of incidents of terrorism each year. Not exactly comparable, but no less meaningful than your own number.

Is your point that there shouldn't be a degree of scrutiny applied to individuals who are expected to be more likely to support ISIS and domestic terrorism? Certainly it's fair to wonder what that degree should be, but to say that it's best not to even pay attention to that is just straight up irresponsible.