US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4590

On July 31 2016 04:36 TMagpie wrote:


"I believed X when I was younger, but after contenplating on it for the past decade I've come to better conclusion" is not a flip flop either.

On July 31 2016 05:06 xAPOCALYPSEx wrote:

Sure, but Hillary hasn't said that. In fact, she's said "I've been very consistent over the course of my entire life", and that's laughable. She's vehemently denied that she ever held anti-gay marriage positions.

She's not changing her mind, she's saying whatever the audience wants to hear, regardless of whether or not she's advocated the polar opposite at the previous rally. I don't know how people can trust her any more than they can trust Trump honestly. What an election

On July 31 2016 05:55 LegalLord wrote:

Do you change because your perspective changed, or because you want to switch to a position that is more in line with the shift in public opinion?

On July 31 2016 05:27 zlefin wrote:

On trust; it's because people interpret the events differently than you, and/or they have a different recollection of events. Most people have different memories of how things went down, so that's really not surprising. (I'd also say it depends on which kind of "trust" you're talking about, trust them to what?).

I went through this article that concluded she flipped:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/17/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-change-position-same-sex-marriage/
but I have to say, that to me it feels less like a flip, and more like a stance that consistently claims the most lgbt-friendly position that can be claimed while remaining mainstream. I note the long-term support for civil unions, which is marriage without the name.

Given that a mainstream politician would, by their nature, try to say things so as to stay within the mainstream, I wonder how different it would look if I was examining the record of someone who (by assumption for this case, regardless of what hillary believes in her case) always believed in the correctness of gay marriage. Especially since politics is all about words; and most people aren't precise and careful in their thinking; so a statement that's thorough and correct, but can be easily soundbited to sound bad, would cause trouble, so I'd imagine many politicians would avoid it.

A deadly blaze near California’s Big Sur coast could widen to more than five times its current size and has destroyed some 60 homes, threatened hundreds of others and spurred mass evacuations, authorities said on Saturday.

The so-called Soberanes Fire, which started on July 22 and is burning just south of the oceanside town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, has roared through nearly 32,000 acres (13,000 hectares) of drought-parched chaparral, grass and timber in the Los Padres National Forest.

The blaze is estimated to have a final size of 170,000 acres (265 square miles), according to California Interagency Incident Management Team 1, which is comprised of federal, state and local authorities. The cost of fighting the fire is now at about $6 million a day, it said on its Twitter feed.

The estimated final size of the blaze is roughly equivalent to the size of Singapore.

More than 5,000 personnel were fighting the blaze that has so far destroyed 57 homes and 11 outbuildings, with at least five other structures damaged, officials said on Friday evening. Some 2,000 other structures were threatened, officials added.

More than 500 fire trucks along with 14 helicopters and six air tankers have been deployed to fight the blaze. Containment stood at 15 percent on Friday, up from 10 percent in the previous few days.

Mountainous terrain combined with extremely hot, dry weather has hampered efforts by firefighters to hack buffer lines through dense vegetation around the perimeter of the blaze, officials said.

On July 31 2016 05:55 LegalLord wrote:

Do you change because your perspective changed, or because you want to switch to a position that is more in line with the shift in public opinion?

On July 31 2016 06:59 Mohdoo wrote:I don't tjink Clinton gives a shit about gays or religious people. I don't want her to. I just want her to do what makes sense.

On July 31 2016 07:09 LegalLord wrote:

Of course, if social policy is all you care about then sure, being passably progressive is acceptable. The problem comes with other issues, like economics and foreign policy, where solid, effective judgment is necessary and wishy washy flip flopping is going to fuck everyone over. Hillary has had a bad record on that front.

Not to mention trust issues, and whether or not you could even trust her to make choices in the nation's best interest in the first place.

On another note: conventions over. Hillary and Trump are currently tied by most poll aggregators.