Good Morning America
Posted by: Bruce Woodhouse on 08 November 2016
...and goodnight?
Hate to be smug but I seem to recall mentioning after the Brexit vote that US contributors should be careful as one day in November they may wake up to a bad feeling too.
So many thoughts. How wonderful that anyone can become President. Liars, racists, serial philanderers, bullies, people with no experience of politics or government. You just need a shed load of money, a high media profile and an electorate that is so p~~~d off with the political class they they will respond to a simple message and vote for you in their droves. it helps if your opponent is so unappealing of course, albeit somewhat more qualified.
With Republican control of both Houses is he now going to actually do some of the things he said he would do? Can he be stopped?
Or maybe the election was rigged after all, Donald certainly felt this was the case. I wonder if he will change his mind now?
Bruce
Eloise posted:Geoff C posted:Wenger, I really beg to differ - as I said, he has already proved himself.
Geoff... I beg to differ ... that is a news piece and the headline is misleading - what people say (in a strategic way to gain votes) and what they believe and how they ultimately act may be, and often are, very different things.. So yes, he has said all those things ... but what he said is not irrelevant. How he acts is what is important now!
Eloise, agreed we can but hope that his actions will be more considered.
Nevertheless, he has said many a stupid thing, why would any woman vote for him after the comments he made?
wenger2015 posted:Correct me if I am wrong, but he had 55..60% of the vote, approximately, hence over half of all Americans that voted, voted for him....they have what they wanted.....
...as of 11:50ish UK time on Wednesday morning (just using Google): Trump had 48% of the popular vote; Clinton 48% of the popular vote with Gary Johnson and Jill Stein taking 3% and 1% respectively and less than 1% for the remaining candidates.
wenger2015 posted:Correct me if I am wrong, but he had 55..60% of the vote, approximately, hence over half of all Americans that voted, voted for him....they have what they wanted.....
Aside from a question mark about your figure, I am certainly not arguing about the result of the election. The great uneducated white in America, brought up on a diet of Judge Judy and Reality TV, have lurched to the extreme right to join the out and out rednecks, and have got what they think they wanted. Another parallel with many who swayed the Brexit vote in the UK.
According to the just updated numbers on the ABC Australia website 50,000 more voters voted for Hilary than for Trump. Unfortunately the location of those votes resulted in many more college votes ( i think thats the right term) for Trump. In Australia we call that a gerrymander. If it was one vote one value then Hilary would have won and Trump would be calling for a recount or for vigilantes on the streets.
Trumps presidency will be about Trump. Its potentially not all bad. He wants to increase the minimum wage and he suspects underemployment is an issue ( or at least he does not belive the unemployment numbers).
Part of me wants to believe that his freshness to the system is a good thing, but that assumes that he wants to get good things done. Most of his policy is very bad. Its clearly his policy however, not a party thing. I wonder what happens when he starts getting political pressure. Lobby groups will be trying to pull him every which way and he might act surprisingly when the salvation army or other welfare groups get his ear 0one on one across the table (if they ever find themselves at the whitehouse).
Briz Vegas posted:According to the just updated numbers on the ABC Australia website 50,000 more voters voted for Hilary than for Trump. Unfortunately the location of those votes resulted in many more college votes ( i think thats the right term) for Trump. In Australia we call that a gerrymander.
In the UK it would be called a lack of proportionality in the winner-takes-all electoral college system.
However, the system has delivered a result.
Chris
wenger2015 posted:Trump, love him or hate him, has actually made politics interesting again.....
It might be interesting to see how he gets coached on his "speech" hand gestures, most of which are just plain meaningless as well as annoying, but one in particular he needs to be told about before goes meeting people around the world, in some countries it's used to call someone a homosexual, a*hole, *anker and FU.
Briz Vegas posted:According to the just updated numbers on the ABC Australia website 50,000 more voters voted for Hilary than for Trump.
The Guardian now show similar with 47.6% for Clinton and 47.5% for Trump. Though the last few results from the last few states might tip the balance back to Trump winning the popular vote as all are Republican states.
Mike-B posted:wenger2015 posted:Trump, love him or hate him, has actually made politics interesting again.....
It might be interesting to see how he gets coached on his "speech" hand gestures, most of which are just plain meaningless as well as annoying, but one in particular he needs to be told about before goes meeting people around the world, in some countries it's used to call someone a homosexual, a*hole, *anker and FU.
...or OK!
Hmack posted:wenger2015 posted:Correct me if I am wrong, but he had 55..60% of the vote, approximately, hence over half of all Americans that voted, voted for him....they have what they wanted.....
Aside from a question mark about your figure, I am certainly not arguing about the result of the election. The great uneducated white in America, brought up on a diet of Judge Judy and Reality TV, have lurched to the extreme right to join the out and out rednecks, and have got what they think they wanted. Another parallel with many who swayed the Brexit vote in the UK.
So are you saying 50% of those who voted are mentally deficient????
Mike-B posted:wenger2015 posted:Trump, love him or hate him, has actually made politics interesting again.....
It might be interesting to see how he gets coached on his "speech" hand gestures, most of which are just plain meaningless as well as annoying, but one in particular he needs to be told about before goes meeting people around the world, in some countries it's used to call someone a homosexual, a*hole, *anker and FU.
I just hope that when May meets him she's grown up and doesn't start giggling about his name ... Mr President ... a trump ... giggles ... snickers ... giggles!
wenger2015 posted:Hmack posted:wenger2015 posted:Correct me if I am wrong, but he had 55..60% of the vote, approximately, hence over half of all Americans that voted, voted for him....they have what they wanted.....
Aside from a question mark about your figure, I am certainly not arguing about the result of the election. The great uneducated white in America, brought up on a diet of Judge Judy and Reality TV, have lurched to the extreme right to join the out and out rednecks, and have got what they think they wanted. Another parallel with many who swayed the Brexit vote in the UK.
So are you saying 50% of those who voted are mentally deficient????
I don't think that is what Hmack is saying ... but Trump HAS appealed to a certain section of the population like Nigel Farage and the Leave.EU promises / claims did.
'A diet of judge Judy and reality TV ' in other words mentally deficient....... Difficult to take the comments any other way.... ?
wenger2015 posted:Hmack posted:wenger2015 posted:Correct me if I am wrong, but he had 55..60% of the vote, approximately, hence over half of all Americans that voted, voted for him....they have what they wanted.....
Aside from a question mark about your figure, I am certainly not arguing about the result of the election. The great uneducated white in America, brought up on a diet of Judge Judy and Reality TV, have lurched to the extreme right to join the out and out rednecks, and have got what they think they wanted. Another parallel with many who swayed the Brexit vote in the UK.
So are you saying 50% of those who voted are mentally deficient????
No, I am not.
However, I am saying that a large number of people who voted for him have absolutely no idea of what the they actually voted for, and were gullible enough to buy into some of Trump's more outrageous rhetoric and lies.
wenger2015 posted:'A diet of judge Judy and reality TV ' in other words mentally deficient....... Difficult to take the comments any other way.... ?
Thats your definition not Hmack's.
Well I obviously need to get my crystal ball re-capped...
Glad to see the neocons lose, and have this harridan's s**t political career end in ignominious defeat. She is absolute human garbage of the first order, and was very ready to start WW III and hold it on the European continent. She was backed by the EXACT same cabal that everyone hated Dick Cheney for - she is Cheney in a pant suit.
Nuclear weapons is the only reason I even cared about her losing, that and an intense personal dislike for her as a (sub)human being. The latter isn't even important, but the former is VERY important.
Not glad to see the bloviating buffoon standing there. He can't find his @ss with 2 hands and a flashlight. He's not even a businessman - he's a deal maker - big difference, especially since so many cite his business acumen as the reason for voting for him.
He is going to be a terrible president.
For the record, I did not vote for either of these pieces of excrement. She is already a murderer, and he will have to become one, because it is now part of the job description of POTUS. While she is much more of a war-monger than he is (at least out of the box), he has talked about increasing the military budget, which is already WAY too high, so who knows - trying to take over the planet is expensive.
During the late Reagan years (and I consider him to be a HIGHLY overrated president) the neocons started to infiltrate. They grew in scope and influence during Clinton's 8 years, then absolutely took control of things during Dubya's two terms - responsible for the start of the state of endless war. Used 9/11 and blatant lies about WMD, and now here we are 16 years later with no end in sight to the killing. Young Americans wasting their lives not for "freedom", but for corporate interests and global hegemony.
When Obama got elected, he ran on a "hope and change" platform. Problem is, neither happened. All he did in economic and foreign policy was continue Bush's foreign policy, and double down on printing money. Like Bush, he has been a perfect neocon puppet. No less of a dyed in the wool progressive as Barbara Walters has stated that when he got in office in 2008, the thought was here is the progressive messiah. But she (and others who are honest and not just playing home team politics) have found that Obama delivered nothing - it was just more of Bush.
Obama borrowed more money than all other administrations in the history of the US combined - we haven't had a recovery; all we did was take out the credit card. Trouble is, the bill will come due. Nothing there reflects hope or change.
And don't even bring up social politics, because in the big picture they are not that important - that is the stuff they let the sheeple squabble over so they think elections matter. Just tools to emphasize our differences and not what unites us...divide and conquer.
It's a damn shame that when an alleged outside finally was able to corral the public's sense that things are seriously wrong (and they are) that it had to be an idiot who really doesn't know how to fix anything. So he will serve one misguided, ineffective term and flame out because he hasn't a clue. Then thing s will return to the status quo and the end of Western civilization as we know it will continue unabated.
So in a desperate effort to just get something different, we now have this TV show clown in the Big Chair.
I think it is a reaction to the corruption in US politics. We in the USA are fond of pointing at everyone else and crying "Corruption" - Russia is corrupt, Nigeria is corrupt, India is corrupt. But not us...because we cut the little guy out of corruption and have laws that make high level corruption legal - we are no less corrupt - we just won't allow the little guy to play.
But regardless of Brexit, and regardless of Trump - an economic crisis is coming that will dwarf 2008 - and everyone will blame these 2 events for it, when in fact it in already baked into the cake and unavoidable - the bond markets are in serious trouble.
All you need to see is whether Victoria Nuland loses her job (which she has kept through both Bush and Obama administrations) - if she is still there, then nothing substantive will change in US foreign policy. And since Mike Pence is very acceptable to the neocons, don't rule out Trump getting "Kennedy'd" - but i am sure they power brokers will have a "come to Jesus" meeting with the Donald, and largely get their way.
He isn't going to build any damn wall, and he isn't going to do 90% of the bullcrap he blathered about in his campaign rhetoric.
Most depressing thing I have ever seen in current events ever.
I guess politics just naturally attracts the worst kinds of people, because I see very few good ones in that field.
Irrespective of how you feel about the results of the US election and the BREXIT referendum, one conclusion is inescapable.
The divisions between people in both the US and UK are more profound and more vitriolic than ever before in my living memory. This is not just because of the ultimate results of the election and referendum respectively. Rather, to a large extent, it is down to the vitriolic rhetoric and the unfettered policy of outright lying, adopted (I would argue primarily by the winning side in each case) by those conducting the respective campaigns.
... on the upside, seven more states just voted for marijuana legalization.
They're going to need it.
I believe that the divisiveness and vitriol comes from the pervasiveness of social media.
There are no barriers to self-publication; no editors and no financial cost. Thus all the idiots in the world can publish their views and gather followers from the unthinking, unknowing and sometimes just plain evil in the population. Mainstream publication media seems to feel they have also to lean towards a more extreme viewpoint orpresentation in order to "compete".
Thus the general populace gets more extreme views put in front of them and, what is worse, they can now avoid looking or listening to any views that they don't agree with, further reinforcing their position.
At least old-fashioned newspapers had the filter of editorial policy and would (at least sometimes) provide alternative views.
I think the role of social media in generating a more fractured society has not been recognised by the governing classes and I weep that there is no real debate on issues, just entrenched positions.
Allan
This is fatigue with the Obama agenda. Plain and simple. Fatigue with his lawless regulating and over reaching agreements on climate and trade and Iran. Remember Obama ignored the rebuke of last national election. And it is fear of what an avenging army of Democrats would do to press their advantage in a third Obama term.
Obama gave you Trump in much the same way as Bush gave you Obama. I don't think it is that much about Hillary
It will be fine. Just go with the flow.
At the end of Day, the polls, the newspaper endorsements, really doesn't matter.
It's about the heart and soul of the people!
"The demographics are changing, Blacks, Latinos, and now Women!
The deck is stacked against the Donald, and The Republican Party.
Hold on, the Donald, has an Ace up his sleeve.
The uneducated, The Donald loves the uneducated, perhaps he will make American great again, King Cotton, and Queen Sugar!"'
Perhaps this is good for America, 4 years of the Donald, no tax increases for the Rich, and Austerity for the Norm!
Sounds like a path towards mending and healing the United States Of America!
Look at the Map, looks like the Civil war!
The Klux Klan former member, Duke & Russia's Putin Congradulated the Donald on his Victory!
Poor Hillary, first Obama, and now the Donald!
America was not ready for an woman President!
Allante93!
Skip posted:This is fatigue with the Obama agenda. Plain and simple. Fatigue with his lawless regulating and over reaching agreements on climate and trade and Iran. Remember Obama ignored the rebuke of last national election. And it is fear of what an avenging army of Democrats would do to press their advantage in a third Obama term.
Obama gave you Trump in much the same way as Bush gave you Obama. I don't think it is that much about Hillary
It will be fine. Just go with the flow.
Alternatively, you could say that Obama was a president with a two term democratic mandate trying to work with a legislature whose default setting was to 'wreck'. It is truly worrying what will now happen to the carefully worked through global climate control agreements.
Clive
Mike-B posted:wenger2015 posted:Trump, love him or hate him, has actually made politics interesting again.....
It might be interesting to see how he gets coached on his "speech" hand gestures, most of which are just plain meaningless as well as annoying, but one in particular he needs to be told about before goes meeting people around the world, in some countries it's used to call someone a homosexual, a*hole, *anker and FU.
What leads you to believe he is unaware?
Hmack posted:Irrespective of how you feel about the results of the US election and the BREXIT referendum, one conclusion is inescapable.
The divisions between people in both the US and UK are more profound and more vitriolic than ever before in my living memory. This is not just because of the ultimate results of the election and referendum respectively. Rather, to a large extent, it is down to the vitriolic rhetoric and the unfettered policy of outright lying, adopted (I would argue primarily by the winning side in each case) by those conducting the respective campaigns.
+∞
and that I find very worrying, as I voiced in the build-up to Brexit.
Allante93 posted:Poor Hillary, first Obama, and now the Donald!
America was not ready for an woman President!
The USA may be ready for a woman president; but they weren't prepared to vote for Hillary (well those in the relevant places weren't prepared to vote for Hillary).
I was reading the opinion earlier that basically Hillary wasn't the right person to take on Trump ... she was very much a career politician and part of the establishment and came with a lot of baggage (real and perceived). The core of the Democrats were happy for her to be their candidate as it moves everyone else up the list. Someone without baggage and who would have been seen as not part of the establishment would have been in a much better place to challenge Trump.
I'm truly ashamed and horrified at my own country. I went into a bit of shock last night as the returns came in.
It's not so much his policies (those would have been bad from any of the GOP candidates) but that he is so truly unqualified for the job and sets such a truly morally bankrupt persona to the world and our children. Really freaking 'effed....