US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4596

On August 01 2016 01:53 Thieving Magpie wrote:
Just listen to what their supporters say. For the most part they want to have already pre-supposed values before discussions are made to see what's doable.

Trump says he'll build a wall, that he'll get rid of muslims, to help whites, to cut taxes, etc... The details and what actually is workable is not important to them because they want the general feeling that their emotions have been sated.

The same is true with Bernie supporters.

Bernie says $15 minimum wage while clinton says that $12 was the average they saw but its really different depending on what state you're looking at. Bernie then accuses hilary of being anti-minimum wage. Why? because she didn't throw the biggest number. Its the same with everything else between Hilary and Bernie. They have the exact same platform but Hilary wants to be open to discussion while Bernie has clear statements of who the good guys and bad guys are "supporters good, banks bad, supporters good, non-supporters bad" and the rhetoric does not but make his supporters rabid xenophobes to anyone who isn't on their side (not much different than Trump)

The main difference is that Trump divides by race while Bernie divides by class. But their strategies are not that different overall.

Populists like extreme statements because it makes them feel good. They don't want someone to say that they will work with others, they want to hear their guy say that they will destroy the opposition. Not that the country is having a hard time, but that the country is about to die. They don't like any concessions in anything.

At least trump supporters vote for their beliefs. Its obvious Bernie supporters are happy enough whining but don't actually vote.

Shortly after Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election, the former chair of the North Carolina Republican party wrote an anxious postmortem saying something had to be done about the students and black voters whose unprecedented turnout had turned the state blue for the first time in 32 years.

The alternative, the former state chair Jack Hawke wrote, was that the country would “continue to slide toward socialism”.

That “something” turned out to be a notorious omnibus law – better known to its detractors as the “monster law” – passed by a Republican-majority state legislature in 2013. The legislation gutted many of the progressive voting rules that had contributed to Obama’s razor-thin margin in the state: same-day registration, a lengthy early voting period and out-of-precinct voting by provisional ballot – all favored disproportionately by African American voters and students. The law also introduced a strict voter ID requirement, with the anticipated effect of suppressing Democratic votes even further.

Had the law stood, it could have been the biggest setback for voting rights in North Carolina since the Jim Crow era, a brazen attempt by conservatives to upend the rules of democratic engagement and block access to groups most likely to oppose them. The Republicans have sought to couch their maneuvering in more benign terms, as a form of justifiable partisan warfare. Hawke noted in his postmortem that the Democrats had been motivated, united and well-financed in 2008, and said it was up to the Republicans to respond in kind.

That argument has come crashing down, following a flurry of remarkable court rulings over the past two weeks accusing North Carolina and three other Republican-run states – Wisconsin, Kansas and Texas – of violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act and intentionally discriminating against African Americans and other classes of voters. State and federal judges have struck down laws that could have given the Republicans a significant edge in close races this November, lifting the spirits of voting rights activists who have been campaigning against such laws for more than a decade.

“Winning an election does not empower anyone in any party to engage in purposeful racial discrimination,” the fourth circuit court of appeals ruled in the North Carolina case on Friday. “When a legislature dominated by one party has dismantled barriers to African American access to the franchise, even if done to gain votes, ‘politics as usual’ does not allow a legislature dominated by the other party to re-erect those barriers.”

The omnibus law has been almost entirely swept away and is now unlikely to be resurrected in any form before November, when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will be fighting over every vote in North Carolina, where recent polls show them less than two points apart.

In Kansas, which is not a swing state, a state court pushed back against an attempt by the state’s top Republican elections official, Kris Kobach, to prevent an estimated 17,500 Kansans from voting in state and local races even though they have been recognized as eligible by federal courts. They will now be allowed to participate fully in primary elections this Tuesday.

On July 31 2016 23:19 Chewbacca. wrote:

All I've seen regarding the Khan thing was that two minute interview clip posted earlier, so I very well could be wrong here....but didn't he go after Mr./Mrs Khan, while their son was the war hero, not them? Or was Mr. Khan a veteran as well?

If he wasn't...then the whole "What have you sacrificed for this country" seems kind of ironic, as it was his son who made a sacrifice for the country, not him.

Agreed the McCain thing was stupid though.

On August 01 2016 01:29 stichlasser wrote:


Not really. Would you release yours?

On August 01 2016 01:29 stichlasser wrote:


Not really. Would you release yours?

On August 01 2016 01:29 stichlasser wrote:


Not really. Would you release yours?

On August 01 2016 02:55 KwarK wrote:
That doesn't even make sense. He surely means "the failure of our "leaders" to eradicate it", right?

On August 01 2016 02:57 xDaunt wrote:

Twitter has its limits. He wants to give a cause for the failure.

On August 01 2016 03:06 Dan HH wrote:
Is radical islam even in your country's top 100 issues right now? I reckon not even the next German elections will have the electoral campaigns focused on it this much

On August 01 2016 03:10 OtherWorld wrote:

Did you just claim that incorrectly writing "weakness" (8 letters) instead of "failure" (7) is Twitter's fault?

On August 01 2016 02:57 xDaunt wrote:Twitter has its limits. He wants to give a cause for the failure.

On August 01 2016 03:19 LegalLord wrote:
FP is quite up there this time around. It's a shame that too many people buy into the charade that Hillary isn't god awful at FP, and the Republicans can only criticize Benghazi because they're even worse.

On August 01 2016 03:18 Ghostcom wrote:




Did you just skip the second (2.nd) sentence?

On August 01 2016 03:19 LegalLord wrote:
FP is quite up there this time around. It's a shame that too many people buy into the charade that Hillary isn't god awful at FP, and the Republicans can only criticize Benghazi because they're even worse.

The Commission on Presidential Debates is responding to Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee's complaints about the debate schedule with a message on Sunday: The schedule is set.

"The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) started working more than 18 months ago to identify religious and federal holidays, baseball league playoff games, NFL games, and other events in order to select the best nights for the 2016 debates. It is impossible to avoid all sporting events, and there have been nights on which debates and games occurred in most election cycles. A debate has never been rescheduled as a result," the commission said in a statement.

Donald Trump and RNC officials have complained that two of the three scheduled presidential and one vice-presidential debates overlap with NFL games. Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said their campaign staff would sit down with the Commission on Presidential Debates "in the next week or so" to discuss the debate schedule and RNC chairman Reince Priebus said last week that he believes the political parties should have more say in the general election debate schedule. On Sunday, Priebus added: "Certainly we're not going to agree with anything that our nominee doesn't agree with."

The bipartisan CPD selected the debate dates and locations in September of 2015. The NFL announced their regular-season schedule this April, though there's nothing at all unusual about games being scheduled on Sunday or Monday nights.

In 2012, each of the debates fell on football game days, though each debate had at least 58 million people watch each, with the first debate drawing nearly 70 million viewers.

"As a point of reference, in a four-year period, there are four general election debates (three presidential and one vice presidential), and approximately 1,000 NFL games," the commission said in its statement.

"The CPD selects the debate dates a year in advance in order for the television networks to have maximum lead time and predictability in scheduling these extremely important civic education forums. The CPD believes the dates for the 2016 debates will serve the American public well."

Though the debates were set well before Trump or Hillary Clinton became the nominees of their parties, Trump’s campaign has suggested the Clinton campaign manipulated the process to guarantee the debates would be seen by fewer people. This line of argument was made by Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications adviser, on CNN on Sunday morning in an interview with “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter.