US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8243

On July 29 2017 05:20 WolfintheSheep wrote:

From the perspective of human traffickers, this is technically true.

On July 29 2017 04:57 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
found this gem

https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status/891004732470431745

On July 29 2017 06:08 Falling wrote:
So I know he has the reputation of firing people because of his TV show, but did he actually run his businesses like that? It seems like it would be difficult to gather together a team of competent and enterprising staff, or maybe he can one-man-show his businesses? Like, I know in certain industries there is a group of basically unemployable labourers that cycle through many many jobs because until they won't stop stealing, lying, being lazy, and/or taking drugs while on the job. On the otherhand, there's certain small businesses where there is a revolving door of employees and none but the most stubborn survive. At that point, you start thinking, it's probably not the employees, it's probably the boss. (Particularly once you hear the horror stories from the surviving employees- that the business actually runs better when the boss isn't around.) A reputation for firing isn't a good thing perse unless you also have a reputation for finding and keeping the best of the best and these best of the best of the best stay with you forever. I'm not convinced we've seen the latter part in Trump's cabinet as of yet.

On July 29 2017 06:05 xDaunt wrote:
Hopefully the firing of Priebus means that Trump is ready to stop playing footsies with the GOP Establishment and actually start pushing his agenda.

On July 29 2017 05:38 mozoku wrote:
But anyway, Gorsameth's post and you both begged the question: what can we do besides point to "human nature" and call it a day? I hadn't discussed this until now because you don't propose a solution until the person you're talking to understands the problem (i.e. criticizing individual politicians is useless in most cases). I don't claim to have "the answers", but here is where I think a productive discussion might start. Others may disagree and that's fair.

1) It's well understood that society is not a bunch of un-influence-able, independent, rational actors, and that media has a gigantic effect on how society as a whole thinks and perceives things. Clearly, Fox News, Breitbart, internet echo chambers, the NYT taking sides in an election outside of their editorials, etc. are not good things for society. We can start by thinking of how to manage the massive media problem that America is currently facing.

2) The two-party system, and FPTP.

3) Perhaps campaign financing?

4) This is getting radical, but does the system that our Constitution established over 200 years ago even make sense anymore? The Founders wanted to have elected officials accountable to their constituents, but feared making them "too accountable", which is why they made the Electoral College and the Senate the way they did. The changes to those institutions to make them more electoral were maybe good ideas at the time, but with the current Twitter and 4-hour news cycle, does the current system still maintain the right (if any?) balance between politician independence and the whims of his constituents? Maybe analytics has made politics too efficient.

And there's a host of other productive discussions that could be had along those lines.

On July 29 2017 05:54 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

Point is, that with the FDA gone, you'll get people prescribing and selling opiates as a cure to opiates. This happened at the turn of the 20th century. Doctors were prescribing cocaine to get rid of cocaine addiction. FDA was the result of that. As was stated previously, the process and institution could use an overhaul and streamlining effort, but to wish for it to be disbanded makes no sense.

On July 29 2017 06:14 IgnE wrote:



i never said get rid of the FDA . . .