There seems to be a sizable number of people who do not feel represented by the narrow range of options that the political establishment has deigned to offer them, and who are tired of having to accept what the powers that be have declared inevitable.
Because of the way the American political system works, this dissatisfaction seldom finds expression ("what, are you going to waste your vote?"), but when an outsider with deep pockets appears, suddenly it can coalesce around him.
Therefore, I suspect that the question of Trump's competence is moot for many voters. If you just want to break the way the system works, four years with an ineffective president may not seem like a high price to pay.
OTOH, I find it curious that the article found no room for a very obvious real-world parallel amidst all the fictional characters Trump was likened to. Twenty years ago, another first-world country saw a political void filled by a boisterous tycoon who paid for his own campaign. It didn't turn out well, nor was it over quickly.
Exactly. Despite what media wants people to believe, may are sick and tired of political correctness and bending down to everyone's demands for anything. And Trump caught on to that and just throws vague remarks here and there in that direction. And desperate voters say "fuck it, he might just be crazy enough to not go back to the same line all the other presidents come back to after they are elected".
Same with Sanders. Just on the opposite side. He found a niche where he can cater to extremely politically correct liberals and minorities, who also feel misrepresented and feel that america is actually not liberal enough. He has to actually make an impression that he is listening to the voters if he wants to get any attention at all, since he is not getting that much media attention.
Both cases I think shows people are tired of lack of options. Main party candidates seem to be utterly incompetent, like Hilary, others seem to just continue what has been done before, so there's dissatisfaction and search for something to shake up the system. Trump fits it well.
It seems a natural consequence that people would be less satisfied by any single candidate. We've certainly grown more diverse in our opinions over the last century. Why should it be a surprise that people can't come to an agreement that satisfies everyone? It seems more and more that we ought to let people agree to disagree and give individual states a freer hand.
This post got flagged and killed. Daniel kindly unkilled it at my request. I'm not a Trump fan (and neither is the article) but I agree with its counter-intuitive observation.
> In the short time since Trump declared his candidacy, he has performed a public service by exposing, however crudely and at times inadvertently, the posturings of both the Republicans and the Democrats and the foolishness and obsolescence of much of the political culture they share. He is, as many say, making a mockery of the entire political process with his bull-in-a-china-shop antics. But the mockery in this case may be overdue, highly warranted, and ultimately a spur to reform rather than the crime against civic order that has scandalized those who see him, in the words of the former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, as “dangerous to democracy.”
It's no surprise that Michael Gerson labels Trump "dangerous to democracy." Trump is actually dangerous to the GOP establishment and Gerson stands for that establishment.
What does it say about American democracy that it takes a self-aggrandizimg billionaire to speak openly about buying politicians and offers to be bought in a presidential election debate? It's the job of the moderators to force such an issue into the open, but they don't dare anger the party for fear of never hosting again. If you watched the first debate, you can see that Fox News was tough on Trump (as they should be), but nowhere near as tough on the rest (as they should have been). Even CNN seemed to be a proxy for the Republican establishment in the second debate.
EDIT: Ross Perot was was the last candidate to truly upset the political establishment, and he also was a billionaire. Hmmmm....
It's a good call. I thought about posting it yesterday but was uncertain about the political content. I think it's interesting to hackers insofar as it identifies some meta-trends in politics that are characteristic of systems disruption. Other organs such as the Economist have also observed that Something is Amiss when the three leading candidates are all non-politicians and easily outpoll candidates with experience in governance (even if you dislike their policies).
I've said for some time that the world is drifting back towards a place of deep political instability, and this election has the unpleasant air of looming disaster about it. Whoever is elected president is almost certainly going to be regarded as illegitimate or intolerable by a large segment of the population, due to a mix of the internet and demographic sorting a lahttp://www.thebigsort.com/home.php
I feel we underestimate the influence of the internet on social dynamics. It's much easier to get near-immediate social validation for any given identity group, and something about the combination of anonymity and depersonalization in discussion forums provides psychosocial rewards for antagonistic/oppositional behavior when viewpoints collide.
Well there is Larry Lessig, who raised more than his $1MM goal from smaller donors to run as a referendum candidate with the sole purpose of getting money out of politics. That being said, he has zero name recognition when compared to Trump and is certainly not going to be as "entertaining".
This story was killed by user flags, whereupon another user emailed to plead the case for the article as more thoughtful and substantive than it sounds.
The median Donald Trump article is obviously off topic for this site, but arguably his rise is also "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon" [1]. So let's try turning flags off on this post as an experiment and see if everyone can keep the discussion thoughtful.
Edit: I read the article. Trump is a natural subject for Rich, a political journalist with a (much longer) background as an entertainment critic. What makes the article good is that he takes Trump seriously and uses him to make 'serious' politics look buffoonish, reversing the usual trope. If anyone knows a better analysis of Trump, please post the link in this thread—I'm sure many readers would like to see it.
You could argue that the rise of Trump is not really anything new; Italy has had Berlusconi in politics since the early 90ies, and there are a lot of similarities:
“Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens.
This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F#ck Hope.”
Dan Carlin proposed the theory that Trump understood that only trying to win the GOP primary is a winning strategy for the primary.[0] Basically the primary caucus is a lot more radical than the general electorate and normal candidates have to run on a just a little bit more conservative platform than the next leading candidate, while preparing to turn around as soon as they have secured the nomination. A candidate like Trump can run on a platform that is much better suited for the primary election, because he is not planning to win the presidential election.
As an outside observer ( I am German), I think that the theory sounds interesting. However, it is possible that he tries a different maneuver to win the general election. His refusal to found a PAC may mean, that he plans to run on an anti-corruption, Washington outsider platform and basically form a analogous coalition as Syriza did in Greece. Syriza's coalition partner is a right wing populist party, they basically formed a anybody but the old boys club coalition. And my guess is, that assuming Hillary wins the Democratic nomination, there are quite a few moderates who find such a candidate attractive, even if he is a reality TV star.
Interesting theory. It's overtaking my currently conspiratorial feeling that he is a Jeb stooge who is hogging to spotlight from anyone who can't afford to fight a billionaire... only to putter out over the winter as everybody embraces the newly "pro-hispanic" Republican establishment.
On a similar note: http://imgur.com/gallery/qpNZ7
While NYMag seems to be more about Trump revealing the ridiculousness of our political system in general, the imgur guy focuses on how he's attracting republicans by showing off specifically how useless their own leadership has been for the last several years.
Both seem like valid points, which need to be understood by everyone who hates the idea of Trump as president and hopes to find a way to defeat him (myself included).
> he’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not
Trump will definitely make a full run at the Presidency if he believes he has a chance - and it appears he does. This guy wants to be the President. This is not a publicity stunt, if it ever was.
Continuing to pretend he's a cartoon character will just make the hangover worse.
I don't want to believe this. Had to be a 4chan raid on the polls, right?
> It took a village of birthers to get Republicans to the point where only 29 percent of them now believe that Obama was born in America (and 54 percent identify him as a Muslim), according to an August survey by Public Policy Polling. Far from being a fake Republican, Trump speaks for the party’s overwhelming majority.
The best news about Trump is that he is wreaking
this havoc on the status quo while having no chance
of ascending to the presidency.
You can’t win the Electoral College in 2016 by driving away women,
Hispanics, blacks, and Asian-Americans, no matter how
large the margins you pile up in deep-red states.
This whole clown show lets people express their dissatisfaction with the status quo, yet the risk of the US going full retard politically is pretty slim.
I'm standing by my prediction that Donald Trump will withdraw himself from the nomination prior to the Iowa primaries (and it will take these poll numbers continuing past Christmas for me to think otherwise) [1].
If anyone has a chance at derailing my beliefs so far, it's been Scott Adams (of Dilbert) and his ongoing series of blogs posts about the 'Master Wizard Hypothesis' [2]. He's essentially arguing that linguistic wizardry can trump (sorry) policy and credibility, and that the Donald is a master. Likely for entertainment purposes only, but he's been right on this matter more than Nate Silver so far! Every time you see 'low energy' Bush, 'nice guy' Carson, or 'that face' Fiorina in the press, Adams makes more sense.
I've been following Adams and the Trump thing with amusement. Aside from the 'Master Wizard' bit Trump's been against lobbyists, tax breaks for hedge funds and the Iraq war, all which could work in his favour. He even beat Clinton in one poll although it was a bit of a blip http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/donald-trump-beats-hillary...
I love how the media missed both Kelly and Fiorina jabs. Especially Fiorina - do you want someone with the stern face of an bureaucratic principal, ready to discipline you, to look you from the white house for 4 years.
And thanks to another unintended consequence of the GOP 's Citizens United victory, the PACs it enables will keep hopeless presidential candidates financially afloat no matter how poorly they are faring in polls and primaries, thereby crippling the party 's ability to unite early behind a single anti-Trump alternative...When Trump 's presidential rivals attended a David and Charles Koch retreat, he tweeted: I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc...
Auto Extracted Ranked Tags
(Algorithm: Tuatara GS1)
In one word, the OP plays with the
accusation that what Trump says
isn't real. Okay, let's consider
what in the OP is/is not real.
Here I am not talking for/against
abortion but about eighth grade civics
on the SCOTUS and US Constitution:
"But the party’s real stand
on the sanctity of female biology
had been encapsulated in
the debate by Walker’s and
Marco Rubio’s endorsement
of a ban on abortions for
women who have been raped or risk dying in
childbirth."
Real? That's about where I want to
stop reading the OP.
Why?
I know that for me eighth grade
civics was a long time ago, but
as I recall (1) the SCOTUS case of
Roe v Wade that made abortion legal
is now 40+ years old; (2) to change
that decision need (A) a lot of what
would be, say, unlikely new SCOTUS
nominations or (B) a Constitutional
amendment that would take 2/3rds of
the House, 2/3rds of the Senate,
and 3/4ths of the states. So, first-cut,
intuitively, IMHO, for either (A) or (B),
any way to have "a ban on abortions"
is decades away. Considering how often
we have Constitutional amendments,
maybe centuries.
Real? Talking about "a ban on abortions"
is real? I don't think so.
Uh, no, although I'll admit it wasn't taught in my 1085 9th grade civics class. The Founders profoundly distrusted the Supreme Court, and in Article III, Section 2, there is a provision that's been used more than a few times, including in the last few decades, to remove something from the Federal Court's remit:
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
There are other examples of intentionally silly candidates abroad, including the UK's famous "Monster Raving Loony Party", Icelands's "Best Party" (several seats in parliament) or Germany's "Die Partei" (1 seat in EU parliament).
But you really need someone who's supposedly in it for real for things to look really, really weird. A case of the Uncanny Valley effect?
What I find so fascinating about the Trump candidacy is that it is more a conversation about the current cultural climate of America than any specific policies. It seems that we are more interested in talking about how we become so PC than actual policies.
I, for one, have given up on hoping the government will enact forward thinking policies.
It's interesting and confusing to watch. I have long thought we need far less lawyers and professional politicians in government and a lot more (a LOT more) people like us. In this age of technology it is truly sad to see dinosaurs who would be challenged to use a scientific calculator running our country (all parties, all ideologies).
I do believe there's something fundamentally wrong with politics as it exists today. This is heresy in some systems but I am someone who believes texts written hundreds of years ago cannot possibly remain viable, current and applicable. Certainly not in their entirety.
Yes, I am daring to suggest that the US Constitution might need some tweaks here and there. And, of course, the problem is this is just about as impossible as me flying using two feathers.
You have people in Congress who simply will not go away. If we gave them one or two terms and somehow encouraged young/er people to come to the forefront things could look very different.
Then there's the question of how our form of government might very well have devolved into something that conspires against the very progress we need to make. The last few decades have been characterized by not being able to do much of significance other than wage war. We do that very well. And it is sick. Yes, yes, I get it. But, fuck me, when is the world going to figure out how to coexist?
Yes, part of the problem is we still have whole regions operating from the mentality of pre-medieval humans. That's a huge problem. I am not smart enough to know what the solution might be. It could be somewhere between total isolation and total intervention. Don't know. These things ultimately lead to wars. I wish someone would come forward with the one genius idea to bring some stability to this planet. As intelligent as we are we seem want to prove we are a species that is content allowing a very small percentage of our people to just fuck things up beyond recognition. Most people are good. Yet, most people do nothing when the assholes piss all over what's been built for centuries.
Back to Trump. I have long contended that we, the US, need professional accomplished business people running the show. Contrary to what some might want to believe, business people, even those running large corporations, are not evil. Yeah, some are. The vast majority, by far, are not.
What Trump is putting on the table in no uncertain terms is the difference between "normal" people and politicians. And, to go farther, entrepreneurs or business people in general and politicians. When you listen to the two dozen professional politicians in the presidential race it isn't hard to see everyone is playing back the same old recordings. Sometimes I wonder if they have a pull-cord on their back like Woody that plays back the same old shit over and over. They say the same things, with the same neutered-human tone they've been saying for the last 50 years or more.
Trump comes along and their brains short-circuit. They have no clue. There's a general approach to business and entrepreneurship that does not jive with the way politicians work. The idea of attacking problems head on, proposing and testing solutions, quickly discarding what doesn't work, throwing fuel at things that do, being fiscally conservative yet not being shy about making large investments that will pay off with time and, in general, operating from the idea that we don't have to know everything before we get going.
How many of you started your businesses knowing absolutely everything there was to know about that business and having it all planned out before you even launched? Right. The more likely scenario is that you launched without fear, wearing your ignorance as a badge, and figured it out as you went along. Some things you just can't know or plan.
I am not proposing Trump is the solution. For me he still sits somewhere between a clown and a genius. I have no clue where this is going. Right now, it's interesting. I wish he'd spend more time showing the world how things are done outside of politics rather than lobbing insults at people. I sometimes secretly hope this is part of his media plan. One where, once half the herd has been killed off will have him get in front of the camera to spend a solid hour or two explaining his plans and theories as one might expect from someone who came out of Wharton and has as much real-world experience as he does.
Yes, I am disgusted with politics in the US. We are going nowhere. We are certainly not moving forward. With every passing year we fail to change our ways it will become exponentially more difficult for anything to have an effect. One has to be in awe of what a country like China has accomplished during the last, say, 25 years. Without really bold action we are all living through an era that is producing a massive industrial, financial and intellectual shift in the world.
I am convinced that not one of the professional politicians running today, regardless of party, has the ability to do a darn thing about anything. They are in it to win for their own sake. Once in, they'll be gutless and powerless. Not saying Trump is the solution. Yet, "they" are not the solution either.
Nah. A good president really only needs just one skill: Knowing how to hire good people.
Other than that the president himself can be just a figurehead for entertainment.
Trump clearly knows how to hire good people, so while I would not vote for him, I'm also not really worried about what will happen if he does win.
If you think about it, the skillset needed to win an election, is not the same skillset you need for making good calculated decisions.
So IMO we really should not be evaluating candidates on their personal qualifications, but rather on how good they are at hiring good people to do the real work.
Boastful, bombastic, etc yes.
But Trump was against the Iraq war while Hillary and Biden voted for it. Most of the Republicans running also supported it.
Zhirinovsky would not even want to be a president precisely of this. He has established a comfortable spot of "entertaining borderline crazy bigoted warmonger" and that is a spot only possible while he is relatively not influential, at least in the eyes of the voters.
[+] [-] Camillo|10 years ago|reply
Because of the way the American political system works, this dissatisfaction seldom finds expression ("what, are you going to waste your vote?"), but when an outsider with deep pockets appears, suddenly it can coalesce around him.
Therefore, I suspect that the question of Trump's competence is moot for many voters. If you just want to break the way the system works, four years with an ineffective president may not seem like a high price to pay.
OTOH, I find it curious that the article found no room for a very obvious real-world parallel amidst all the fictional characters Trump was likened to. Twenty years ago, another first-world country saw a political void filled by a boisterous tycoon who paid for his own campaign. It didn't turn out well, nor was it over quickly.
[+] [-] cLeEOGPw|10 years ago|reply
Same with Sanders. Just on the opposite side. He found a niche where he can cater to extremely politically correct liberals and minorities, who also feel misrepresented and feel that america is actually not liberal enough. He has to actually make an impression that he is listening to the voters if he wants to get any attention at all, since he is not getting that much media attention.
Both cases I think shows people are tired of lack of options. Main party candidates seem to be utterly incompetent, like Hilary, others seem to just continue what has been done before, so there's dissatisfaction and search for something to shake up the system. Trump fits it well.
[+] [-] dropit_sphere|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linkregister|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eevilspock|10 years ago|reply
> In the short time since Trump declared his candidacy, he has performed a public service by exposing, however crudely and at times inadvertently, the posturings of both the Republicans and the Democrats and the foolishness and obsolescence of much of the political culture they share. He is, as many say, making a mockery of the entire political process with his bull-in-a-china-shop antics. But the mockery in this case may be overdue, highly warranted, and ultimately a spur to reform rather than the crime against civic order that has scandalized those who see him, in the words of the former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, as “dangerous to democracy.”
It's no surprise that Michael Gerson labels Trump "dangerous to democracy." Trump is actually dangerous to the GOP establishment and Gerson stands for that establishment.
What does it say about American democracy that it takes a self-aggrandizimg billionaire to speak openly about buying politicians and offers to be bought in a presidential election debate? It's the job of the moderators to force such an issue into the open, but they don't dare anger the party for fear of never hosting again. If you watched the first debate, you can see that Fox News was tough on Trump (as they should be), but nowhere near as tough on the rest (as they should have been). Even CNN seemed to be a proxy for the Republican establishment in the second debate.
EDIT: Ross Perot was was the last candidate to truly upset the political establishment, and he also was a billionaire. Hmmmm....
[+] [-] anigbrowl|10 years ago|reply
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21665014-party-f...
I've said for some time that the world is drifting back towards a place of deep political instability, and this election has the unpleasant air of looming disaster about it. Whoever is elected president is almost certainly going to be regarded as illegitimate or intolerable by a large segment of the population, due to a mix of the internet and demographic sorting a la http://www.thebigsort.com/home.php
I feel we underestimate the influence of the internet on social dynamics. It's much easier to get near-immediate social validation for any given identity group, and something about the combination of anonymity and depersonalization in discussion forums provides psychosocial rewards for antagonistic/oppositional behavior when viewpoints collide.
[+] [-] jonathanjaeger|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dang|10 years ago|reply
The median Donald Trump article is obviously off topic for this site, but arguably his rise is also "evidence of some interesting new phenomenon" [1]. So let's try turning flags off on this post as an experiment and see if everyone can keep the discussion thoughtful.
Edit: I read the article. Trump is a natural subject for Rich, a political journalist with a (much longer) background as an entertainment critic. What makes the article good is that he takes Trump seriously and uses him to make 'serious' politics look buffoonish, reversing the usual trope. If anyone knows a better analysis of Trump, please post the link in this thread—I'm sure many readers would like to see it.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] davidw|10 years ago|reply
https://medium.com/conversations-with-tyler/watch-a-conversa...
[+] [-] peterwwillis|10 years ago|reply
This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F#ck Hope.”
-- George Carlin
[+] [-] sid-|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yk|10 years ago|reply
As an outside observer ( I am German), I think that the theory sounds interesting. However, it is possible that he tries a different maneuver to win the general election. His refusal to found a PAC may mean, that he plans to run on an anti-corruption, Washington outsider platform and basically form a analogous coalition as Syriza did in Greece. Syriza's coalition partner is a right wing populist party, they basically formed a anybody but the old boys club coalition. And my guess is, that assuming Hillary wins the Democratic nomination, there are quite a few moderates who find such a candidate attractive, even if he is a reality TV star.
[0] http://www.dancarlin.com/product/common-sense-295-trumping-t...
[+] [-] flycaliguy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gliese1337|10 years ago|reply
Both seem like valid points, which need to be understood by everyone who hates the idea of Trump as president and hopes to find a way to defeat him (myself included).
[+] [-] brandonmenc|10 years ago|reply
Trump will definitely make a full run at the Presidency if he believes he has a chance - and it appears he does. This guy wants to be the President. This is not a publicity stunt, if it ever was.
Continuing to pretend he's a cartoon character will just make the hangover worse.
Disclaimer: I am not a Trump supporter.
[+] [-] hga|10 years ago|reply
He was playing quite a "role" when he was the first president to try to end, rather than contain, the Soviet Union, and then achieved that.
[+] [-] kelukelugames|10 years ago|reply
> It took a village of birthers to get Republicans to the point where only 29 percent of them now believe that Obama was born in America (and 54 percent identify him as a Muslim), according to an August survey by Public Policy Polling. Far from being a fake Republican, Trump speaks for the party’s overwhelming majority.
Edit: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2015/08/trump-suppor...
someone please tell me that is a joke.
[+] [-] alkonaut|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrcii|10 years ago|reply
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/21/donald-trum...
The idea that all minorities hate him probably sits well with your wishes and that of the author of the article but it's not necessarily true.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] JacobAldridge|10 years ago|reply
If anyone has a chance at derailing my beliefs so far, it's been Scott Adams (of Dilbert) and his ongoing series of blogs posts about the 'Master Wizard Hypothesis' [2]. He's essentially arguing that linguistic wizardry can trump (sorry) policy and credibility, and that the Donald is a master. Likely for entertainment purposes only, but he's been right on this matter more than Nate Silver so far! Every time you see 'low energy' Bush, 'nice guy' Carson, or 'that face' Fiorina in the press, Adams makes more sense.
[1] https://twitter.com/jacobaldridge/status/632163459388432384 [2] http://blog.dilbert.com/
[+] [-] tim333|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joezydeco|10 years ago|reply
What if he parlays this into a VP position? Every other candidate would fall over themselves to grab his market share.
[+] [-] venomsnake|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meeper16|10 years ago|reply
And thanks to another unintended consequence of the GOP 's Citizens United victory, the PACs it enables will keep hopeless presidential candidates financially afloat no matter how poorly they are faring in polls and primaries, thereby crippling the party 's ability to unite early behind a single anti-Trump alternative...When Trump 's presidential rivals attended a David and Charles Koch retreat, he tweeted: I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc...
Auto Extracted Ranked Tags (Algorithm: Tuatara GS1)
trump, republican, candidate, gop, campaign, party, clinton, american, political, grand, bush, debate, presidential, politic, voter, run, actor, guy, story, women, money, billionaire, conservative, man, america, bulworth, day, comic, fiorina, president, television
http://52.11.1.7/TuataraSum/app/tuatarasum
[+] [-] graycat|10 years ago|reply
"But the party’s real stand on the sanctity of female biology had been encapsulated in the debate by Walker’s and Marco Rubio’s endorsement of a ban on abortions for women who have been raped or risk dying in childbirth."
Real? That's about where I want to stop reading the OP.
Why? I know that for me eighth grade civics was a long time ago, but as I recall (1) the SCOTUS case of Roe v Wade that made abortion legal is now 40+ years old; (2) to change that decision need (A) a lot of what would be, say, unlikely new SCOTUS nominations or (B) a Constitutional amendment that would take 2/3rds of the House, 2/3rds of the Senate, and 3/4ths of the states. So, first-cut, intuitively, IMHO, for either (A) or (B), any way to have "a ban on abortions" is decades away. Considering how often we have Constitutional amendments, maybe centuries.
Real? Talking about "a ban on abortions" is real? I don't think so.
[+] [-] hga|10 years ago|reply
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
ADDED: See this for extensive discussion of the practice of "jurisdiction_stripping": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurisdiction_stripping
That national level Republicans have never tried in the abortion domain suggests to me how much they really care about the issue.
[+] [-] zimpenfish|10 years ago|reply
Presumably, then, you'd expect any serious competent candidate to know this and not make statements suggesting that such a thing could happen?
(I'm in the UK, we have our own flavour of crazy.)
[+] [-] mhd|10 years ago|reply
But you really need someone who's supposedly in it for real for things to look really, really weird. A case of the Uncanny Valley effect?
[+] [-] interesting_att|10 years ago|reply
I, for one, have given up on hoping the government will enact forward thinking policies.
[+] [-] rebootthesystem|10 years ago|reply
I do believe there's something fundamentally wrong with politics as it exists today. This is heresy in some systems but I am someone who believes texts written hundreds of years ago cannot possibly remain viable, current and applicable. Certainly not in their entirety.
Yes, I am daring to suggest that the US Constitution might need some tweaks here and there. And, of course, the problem is this is just about as impossible as me flying using two feathers.
You have people in Congress who simply will not go away. If we gave them one or two terms and somehow encouraged young/er people to come to the forefront things could look very different.
Then there's the question of how our form of government might very well have devolved into something that conspires against the very progress we need to make. The last few decades have been characterized by not being able to do much of significance other than wage war. We do that very well. And it is sick. Yes, yes, I get it. But, fuck me, when is the world going to figure out how to coexist?
Yes, part of the problem is we still have whole regions operating from the mentality of pre-medieval humans. That's a huge problem. I am not smart enough to know what the solution might be. It could be somewhere between total isolation and total intervention. Don't know. These things ultimately lead to wars. I wish someone would come forward with the one genius idea to bring some stability to this planet. As intelligent as we are we seem want to prove we are a species that is content allowing a very small percentage of our people to just fuck things up beyond recognition. Most people are good. Yet, most people do nothing when the assholes piss all over what's been built for centuries.
Back to Trump. I have long contended that we, the US, need professional accomplished business people running the show. Contrary to what some might want to believe, business people, even those running large corporations, are not evil. Yeah, some are. The vast majority, by far, are not.
What Trump is putting on the table in no uncertain terms is the difference between "normal" people and politicians. And, to go farther, entrepreneurs or business people in general and politicians. When you listen to the two dozen professional politicians in the presidential race it isn't hard to see everyone is playing back the same old recordings. Sometimes I wonder if they have a pull-cord on their back like Woody that plays back the same old shit over and over. They say the same things, with the same neutered-human tone they've been saying for the last 50 years or more.
Trump comes along and their brains short-circuit. They have no clue. There's a general approach to business and entrepreneurship that does not jive with the way politicians work. The idea of attacking problems head on, proposing and testing solutions, quickly discarding what doesn't work, throwing fuel at things that do, being fiscally conservative yet not being shy about making large investments that will pay off with time and, in general, operating from the idea that we don't have to know everything before we get going.
How many of you started your businesses knowing absolutely everything there was to know about that business and having it all planned out before you even launched? Right. The more likely scenario is that you launched without fear, wearing your ignorance as a badge, and figured it out as you went along. Some things you just can't know or plan.
I am not proposing Trump is the solution. For me he still sits somewhere between a clown and a genius. I have no clue where this is going. Right now, it's interesting. I wish he'd spend more time showing the world how things are done outside of politics rather than lobbing insults at people. I sometimes secretly hope this is part of his media plan. One where, once half the herd has been killed off will have him get in front of the camera to spend a solid hour or two explaining his plans and theories as one might expect from someone who came out of Wharton and has as much real-world experience as he does.
Yes, I am disgusted with politics in the US. We are going nowhere. We are certainly not moving forward. With every passing year we fail to change our ways it will become exponentially more difficult for anything to have an effect. One has to be in awe of what a country like China has accomplished during the last, say, 25 years. Without really bold action we are all living through an era that is producing a massive industrial, financial and intellectual shift in the world.
I am convinced that not one of the professional politicians running today, regardless of party, has the ability to do a darn thing about anything. They are in it to win for their own sake. Once in, they'll be gutless and powerless. Not saying Trump is the solution. Yet, "they" are not the solution either.
[+] [-] sandworm101|10 years ago|reply
@18:39 "With all due respect sir, are you running for president just to meet women?"
I was going to provide a youtube link, but this isn't the place for piracy. Feel free to find it yourself.
[+] [-] bra-ket|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|10 years ago|reply
Other than that the president himself can be just a figurehead for entertainment.
Trump clearly knows how to hire good people, so while I would not vote for him, I'm also not really worried about what will happen if he does win.
If you think about it, the skillset needed to win an election, is not the same skillset you need for making good calculated decisions.
So IMO we really should not be evaluating candidates on their personal qualifications, but rather on how good they are at hiring good people to do the real work.
[+] [-] bruceb|10 years ago|reply
Little evidence Trump is a war monger.
[+] [-] cLeEOGPw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeris|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anon8764|10 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] hvoiiita|10 years ago|reply