US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6387

On December 09 2016 04:02 Nyxisto wrote:
Pretty crazy article in the NYT concerning the Duterte situation.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/07/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-drugs-killings.html

And this guy is being invited to the White House.

President-elect Donald Trump pulled off a stunning upset victory on November 8. And now, right under the media’s noses, he is maneuvering for another surprise: he is making sure that conservatives, not Democrats, lead the congressional opposition.

In meetings at Trump Tower, Trump is casting a wide net, holding forth olive branches to GOP moderates and even to the Democratic establishment, as represented by leaders like former Vice President Al Gore and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.

His prepared speeches have also adopted a more unifying and optimistic tone. The liberal Hollywood blog Deadline.com noted, with some degree of surprise, that Trump’s “thank you” speech in North Carolina on Tuesday was “villain-free.”

Yet in his impromptu statements to the cameras, and on Twitter, Trump has goaded the haters into the usual hysterical fits. His tweet about punishing flag-burners, for example, prompted his left-wing critics to reach, panting, for the nearest Constitution (a document whose value they have belatedly discovered). And his threats to Boeing, and to U.S. companies who move jobs offshore, irritated many conservatives, who rose valiantly to defend the “free market” in Department of Defense contracts.

Critics on both sides have a good point. The First Amendment exists to protect speech we don’t like. And Trump’s comments on Boeing — “We want Boeing to make a lot of money but not that much money” — sound eerily similar to President Barack Obama’s own infamous argument for govenrment intervention: “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

Why would Trump irritate these critics, both left and right? The answer is he wants to provoke them, even as he schmoozes the establishment.

And his reasons for doing so go far beyond petty point-scoring in the media, or the sheer fun of the fight.

On the left, Trump wants Democrats to keep doing what they have done for the past several months, and years — namely, obsessing over shiny objects and embracing identity politics. He wants to avoid them re-discovering some kind of ideological foundation, or popular constituency, for opposition. He wants them to stay inside their media bubble, talking to themselves.

By the looks of things, Trump is succeeding. Democrats re-elected Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), rewarding her failure again. They also elevated Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to Senate Minority Leader, affirming the popular caricature of Democrats as a “bi-coastal” party. The only leader they have found from “flyover country” happens to be Minnesota’s Rep. Keith Ellison, formerly of the Nation of Islam. That triumvirate can only take Democrats further into the political wilderness.

On the right, Trump wants conservatives to be agitated. Yes, he is courting Mitt Romney. But he is also is poking the smoky coals of NeverTrump to stir their fire. He wants them — not, say, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — to be the loudest voices.

Trump prefers conservatives as adversaries at the negotiating table for two reasons. First, unlike left-liberal Democrats, who are already vowing to say “no” to almost everything Trump proposes, conservative Republicans actually want to make deals.

Second, conservatives already agree with Trump on the fundamental issues — the Supreme Court, for example. As Democrats learned over decades of “negotiating” with public sector unions, it’s easier when the other side is also on your side.

So when Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon (on leave as Breitbart News Executive Chairman) gives his first interview to the Hollywood Reporter and says, “The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan,” there is a method to the madness.

Unlike Obama, who quieted internal opposition and marginalized the right, Trump is stoking internal criticism and letting the left marginalize itself.

He is not yet governing, but he is already re-framing the debate.

On December 09 2016 04:02 Nyxisto wrote:
Pretty crazy article in the NYT concerning the Duterte situation.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/07/world/asia/rodrigo-duterte-philippines-drugs-killings.html

And this guy is being invited to the White House.

On December 09 2016 06:06 xDaunt wrote:
Here's an interesting take on what Trump's doing from Breitbart:



Source.

Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines won his presidency with a promise of a brutal crackdown on drugs. But six months and more than 4,000 deaths later, a troubling picture of the profile of those being targeted is emerging.
Duterte's landslide victory came after a campaign during which he vowed to kill 100,000 criminals in his first six months in office and told drug pushers and others: "I'll dump all of you into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there."
But, beyond the fiery rhetoric, did the people of the Philippines ever consider the human and personal cost of their new president's anti-drugs campaign?
Maria sits in a wet, cobbled alleyway outside her three-room corrugated tin home in an overcrowded neighbourhood, looking at the body of her slain son as children play nearby.
It's wet because it's rainy season in the Philippines. It's overcrowded because there are several thousand people in this low-income urban village in Manila. And Maria's son Ferdie is the latest victim in President Duterte's War on Drugs.
The adults stay away from the wake, Maria tells me, because they're afraid. Association with Ferdie may be deadly: they don't want their sons to end up like him...

There are no official numbers yet on the type of people being targeted. The Human Rights Commission told me that, of more than 4,000 people killed in this "war", only 400 deaths are under investigation.
And, although there have been female victims, and high-profile ones, the vast majority of those killed are men from urban slums.
They are "the country's poorest, most marginalised, most vulnerable citizens", says Phelim Kine, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "The victims have been unemployed or underemployed urban poor who eke out subsistence existences as street vendors or tricycle taxi drivers."

On December 09 2016 06:50 On_Slaught wrote:
Trump said nice things about Dutrete in the past but I would that my car he was completely ignorant about the situation in the country when he said them. He has no excuse now. What he says when he meets him this time will be very telling.

From everything I've read and heard the dude is seriously in the running for one of the most evil people on planet Earth.

On December 09 2016 07:10 xDaunt wrote:
As far as I can tell, Duterte has very high approval ratings in the Philippines, so he must be doing something right.

On December 09 2016 07:10 xDaunt wrote:
As far as I can tell, Duterte has very high approval ratings in the Philippines, so he must be doing something right.

On December 09 2016 07:24 Liquid`Drone wrote:


Approval ratings seems to have more to do with how authoritarian a regime is, how strong the opposition is and how friendly media outlets are than about how well a leader serves his country. According to people who fled north korea, Kim Jong Il had positive approval ratings. Mugabe as well. Several African presidents have approval ratings in the 70s-80s - I think you'll have a hard time finding any western leader with similar numbers. Honestly pretty certain that if you have one selection of heads of state where they have approval ratings of 75%+, and one selection between 40% and 60%, I'm gonna vastly prefer living in the latter countries - and under the latter group of heads of state.