SergeantMatt

Lets look at all the elections.  
 

 
With the exception of 1976, which was a year that pitted a Democrat from the Deep South vs a Republican from Michigan who was saddled with post-Watergate baggage, the South has pretty consistently gone red.  The other exceptions predate Nixon and his Southern Strategy.  Clinton, had some success grabbing some of the Southern states had the advantage of 1) being from the South, and 2) having Ross Perrot split off some of the electorate from Bush.  In 1996, you can see that Clinton still was not able to win most of the South, with the notable exception of Florida. 
 
Look at 1952 and 1956.  All red except the deep South, which was Democrat.  By 1964, its the total opposite, the map is a sea of blue other than the deep south.  What was different about 1964?  Well, republican candidate Barry Goldwater was opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  

what is this crap? 
 
Anyhow, it's a well documented historical fact that the Southern Dixiecrats largely switched allegiance to the Republican party in the civil rights era.
 
Here is the electoral map during the election of 1920
 

 
 
Here is the electoral map in 1964
 

 
 
I'm pretty sure this complete reversal didn't happen by accident.

Colli, these are what we call "lies."  Politicians make them all the time to appeal to their base for the sake of winning election.  Do you really think W was all like "I want a humble foreign policy" and the state department was like, "NO!, you must invade the axis of evil!"  Or perhaps W got his dander up after that whole 9/11 thing and then listened too much to the likes of Dick Cheney and John Bolton.  As to Obama and Guantanamo Bay, he made lots of promises to his progressive base back in 2008.  And once he was in office, he showed that he was a pretty typical politician in that he shit-canned most of his promises if they appeared to be too costly politically. 
 
I do not doubt that the State Department is a giant bureaucracy that has a very great deal of institutional inertia built into it.  Which actually proves my point in regards to this whole UN delegation on breastfeeding.  If policy under the previous administration was to vote in favor of the resolution, then it stands to reason that the bureaucratic inertia would continue on in that direction.  The fact that an abrupt change in policy was made would indicate that those in charge of the institution decided to change course.  And since I haven't seen any statements from the current administration denouncing their own delegation to the UN for voting in this manner, I am going to, like a rational person, assume that the current administration is cool with this idiotic stance against breast feeding.  

I will say this about Trump, I like that he opposed the merger of AT&T and Time Warner.  I suspect his motives were based on trying to hurt Time Warner and their subsidiary CNN, a frequent target of his.  For me, I just think there is too much consolidation of media in this country.

Did you not read the actual report?  Democrats were the ones that got hosed by Comey's inappropriate actions, not Trump.  Unless you think that the FBI bringing up the Hillary email two weeks before the elections somehow helped Hillary's campaign rather than hurting it.  So actually, liberals are the ones that should be most upset by this report.  Anyhow, the report notes that while they found that errors were made in judgement and procedure, they note that they did not find evidence of bias.

I find it amusing how Trump supporters seem to have two very different standards by which they judge the actions of their beloved Trump and anyone they perceive as opposed to Trump.  As Trump himself said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters."  So Rosenstein is a "corrupt scumbag."  Honestly, I don't know if he is or not.  But I am not going to take it on the word of someone that can't seem to notice that Trump regularly wipes his ass with the US Constitution and legal code.

I fucking despise the guy.  I wasn't a fan of the Wynnebag but Ford is a whole different bag of shittastic. He's a one term city councillor who had the worst attendance record of any Councillor when he was on council. I know people who used to by hash off him back in the 80s, so he's a former drug dealer. He's taken a moderately successful family business and appears to be running it into the ground to fuel his political campaign, along with looting the estate of a former mayor of Toronto for the same purpose.  I will not be surprised if a year or two down the road it turns out that Ford was responsible for Patrick Brown's political assassination.
 
The odds of me ever voting conservative are vanishingly small, to be clear.  But Patrick Brown or Christine Elliot would have been vastly preferable to Dougie.  I would at least trust them to have the benefit of the province in mind. I expect Doug will lead an administration that will be even more corrupt and scandal plagued than the Wynne government. And that is saying something.
 
I can only hope he doesn't fuck things up too badly.

This just makes it worse.
 

That was not my point.  The point was that Trump gets attention for criticizing current athletes who protest while talking about a pardon for Ali, who was one of the most famous protesting athletes of all time.  It's hypocritial.  Not that Trump cares, he only cares that Ali popular now, everyone having forgotten why he was such a controversial figure during his fighting career.  

After spending a year bashing NFL players for engaging in the rather mild form of protest of kneeling during the national anthem, our President now says he is considering a pardon for Mohammad Ali.  Anyone notice the inconsistency here?
 
Also, Ali's conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1971 so there is nothing to pardon, but oh well.

Presidents working out shady deals with Iran is a long standing US tradition!  Remember when Eisenhower had the CIA hire organized crime in Iran to start protests in 1953 to help get the Shah back in power?  Or when Reagan sold them weapons to support the Contras?  Sounds like Obama didn't have good enough operators to get his shady ass deals done right.  

Anyhow, it all comes down to this.  We have a president who is claiming he has the power to pardon himself.  Basically, he is saying that he cannot be held accountable for any crime, that he is above the law.  If you don't see this as fundamentally opposed to the most basic ideals on which the USA is supposed to be based on, I really don't know what to say to you.  We elect presidents, not kings.

Yeah... ok. Don't feel the need to engage with you if you are going to take that tone Jeeps. Dial it back a bit... or not. Whatever.
I watch enough media, and follow enough people on both sides of the spectrum to get a decent read on things. I try pretty hard not to echo chamber myself.  My experience was that I didn't see it as a matter of serious conversation amongst any of the politically active liberal folks that I know from the states.  And I know and follow a bunch, and I consume a pretty wide variety of media. 
YMMV.
 

Every single one of these is dated Nov 7, 2016.  Apparently it was a hot topic for all of one day.  No wonder I don't remember it.  Looking at these sources, they are not particularly liberal.   Lets go through them.
 
1.  The ABA Journal.  This is the official journal of the American Bar Association.  I'm guessing it does not have a strong political bent other than being pro-lawyer
 
2.  The Telegraph.  Pretty much the paper of record in the UK, generally considered conservative.
 
3. The Wall Street Journal.  Generally pro-business and conservative, very conservative editorial page.
 
4. Quora.com -  this does not even count as a news source.
 
5. Canada Free Press -  I was not familiar with this one, but according to their own description they are "Espousing Conservative viewpoints, cornerstone of which focuses on love of God, love of family, love of country."  
 
6. Valuewalk.com - I don't know much about this site but it looks like its mostly business news.  
 
 
I would not call any of these sources "liberal".  To me, it looks like this was a news story that ran for about a day in centrist and conservative media sources and was mostly speculative.  These are not news articles, they are mostly op-ed pieces or legalistic theory-making.

I'll go along with Walt on this one. I never heard anyone that I follow who is on the left seriously talking about it.
And holy fuck, I'm Canadian, and I've never heard of that CanadaFreePress blog before. Where did you find that drivel? Jesus what a load of dreck.
 
 

So some guy's legal blog constitutes "The Left?"  I don't remember anyone talking about Hillary having to pardon herself.  Certainly, I don't remember anyone within her campaign or the Obama administration talking about it.  This is just some lawyer speculating.  Totally different situation than now, where the president is tweeting about it himself.  

Now you know how many on the left felt when we had to endure 8 years of Fox news and their ilk making up bullshit controversies over innocuous things that Obama supposedly did.  Remember the scandal of the light brown suit?  Or how about the time he put Dijon mustard on his burger? Or the dreaded terrorist fist jab?  Or the time he introduced a Jobs Act that was held together by (gasp!) a binder clip?  Or when Michelle went sleeveless?  Don't act all shocked and surprised when all of a sudden the "media" start picking on the president you happen to like for silly and stupid shit.  I doubt you were complaining when they did it to the president you didn't like.  
 
 

1) How did you get the laws in the first place?
2) How is this different to people claiming you don't need the second amendment, as the government will never need overthrowing?

I said it was an extremely close election.  How is this not true?  Look at the razor thin margins that Trump won those key swing states.  I'm not talking about California.  I was making a statement of fact.

Donward reminds me our Putin fans who belive that everything Putin does is part of a Big Cunning Plan, that he plays multidimensional chess or something.

 
   i don't think that all this was planned. Maybe Trump have dog nose, but from my couch this all looks as a failure. NK survived way more than Trump twitter dick measurement contest and managed to get nuclear weapons and delivery system in attempt to secure itself. They can wait for sometime, IMO.
 
It is a little thing, but if it was all planned, why would people bother with organising summit that would not have been happened anyway?  
 

I don't understand the silver platter reference.  If anything, Trump got the biggest unexpected boost when the FBI reopened the whole Hillary E-mail affair in late October.  Combined with Hillary's terrible campaign strategy.  Trump was a weak candidate with limited appeal outside his core group, which is why he lost the popular vote.  I'd say the Democrats handed him the election by running such a shitty candidate.  
 
As to the larger discussion:
 
I don't think Trump is all that complicated.  He's a sociopath.  I mean that in the clinical sense.  I don't think he has any real regard for anyone other than himself.  He also has no sense of humor, other than to make fun of others.  His ego is such that he will never admit a mistake, which he sees as weakness.  He lies without any apparent shame or even awareness that his is lying, it comes so naturally to him.  Based on observations of those around him, he hardly reads and is genuinely incurious about the world around him.  These are not good qualities for the leader of a Democracy (or Republic, or whatever you consider the US to be.)  Everything we know about this man, whether it be his personal life or his business dealings point to the undeniable conclusion that this is a man of the worst sort of character.
 
His understanding of how a leader operates is based on the model of the King or the Mafia don.  It's all about loyalty and family, not the rule of law.  It's a world view fundamentally at odds with what the US is supposed to be about.  It is hardly surprising that his two favorite targets are not political opponents, but the free press and the Department of Justice.  These are institutions vital to a functioning democratic state, so of course he views them as the enemy.  
 
As far as I can tell, he started his campaign as a bit of a publicity stunt to market his brand and to see how far it could go.  Once it gained traction, he kept going with it, the adoration of the crowds feeding his ego.  It became a vehicle for him to show all those that looked down on him over the years that he was going to beat them.  And the people at his rallies can sense that, and relate to it.  Winning is not about advancing an agenda as much as it is a way to stick to those snobby coastal elites/liberals/snowflakes/etc.
 
And so, beyond the expectations of even Trump's own campaign, he manages to eek out an amazingly narrow win and suddenly has a job he is not prepared for, nor that he understands.  His transition team, such as it is, was caught completely off guard and the first year of his administration is one of chaos and confusion, compounded with scandal and just outright weirdness.  Looking at it objectively, how can one not come to the conclusion that this President has no idea what he is doing?  It's a much simpler explanation than that he is somehow conducting fourth dimensional chess that we all can't understand.
 
I consider him a very dangerous man.  Some critics have taken to comparing him to Hitler, I don't like that comparison.  Hitler was motivated by an ideology and had a political agenda (an evil one, of course)  Trump is just all about Trump. I would consider Julius Caesar a more apt comparison.  Like Caeser, he is a man of unlimited ego and greed and would gladly trash the already damaged structure of US democracy to get what he wants.  Trump wouldn't just cross the Rubicon, he was build a fucking gold plated bridge over it with his name written in giant letters. 
 
That is why you will never get me to accept Donald Trump as President.  I don't now how I can say it any clearer.   

Yes, I understand there is a lot of anger out there and a lot of it translated into Trump votes.  It's been obvious for a long time that both parties are essentially corporate whores, that the middle class has been losing ground for decades, and that on average, most people from Gen X onward cannot expect to have the same level of prosperity as their parents had.  There is anger on social issues as well.  It doesn't help that Liberals seem to have lost the script when it comes to biological realities such as the difference between men and women. 
 
Trump was really effective at taking advantage of that anger, using his celebrity status and the fact that the well of resentment had been primed by 20 years of conservative talk radio and Fox News.  His opponent was also spectacularly bad, ran a shitty campaign and truly inspired very little of her base.  I don't think I met a single person who was excited about voting for Hillary, even though many of them did.
 
As to the mid-terms:
 
Elections are won by who turns out their base to vote, not who has the bigger base.  Will Trump voters turn out for the mid-term?  History suggests no.  The party with a sitting president almost* always loses the midterm election in their first term.  Look at Obama.  Despite the fact that Obama had about a 505 approval rating after two years, the tea party movement really galvanized the energy of conservatives unhappy with his presidency and they knocked the ever-loving shit of the Dems in that election.  It's because Dems were complacent, they had "their guy" in the White House.  For the Tea Party, the midterm was a chance at revenge, and they turned out at the polls.   
 
I think the same situation will play out in reverse this November.  Midterm election voter turnout is always much lower than in Presidential elections (usually by about 20% points), so having something to galvanize the base is essential.  And right now, Trump sure as fuck has the Democratic base motivated.  As to his own base, he is slipping.  If you look at the polls, his overall approval rating is holding steady, but his number of "strongly approves" is low.  If you look at the data, only about 24% of the population strongly approve of Trump, 20% somewhat approve, 12% somewhat disapprove and 42% strongly disapprove.  Those are not good numbers, essentially Trump has almost twice as many people that hate him as love him. The handful of special elections that have taken place so far do not bode well for Republicans.  Sure, there were some mitigating factors in some of them, such as the Republicans nominating an accused child molester in Arkansaw, but still, the trend is not positive for Republicans right now.  The other issue they face is that candidates from the fringes keep winning primaries.  Roy Moore was not an aberration.  The Tea party movement was responsible for a number of Republican candidates over the last ten years that were unelectable in a general election, and it hurt the Republican party. Remember Christine O'Donnell?
 
Right now, as I see it, the conservative movement is eating itself.  While there is always tension in any political party between the centrists and the fringes, it seems to me that this phenomenon is particularly apparent in the current right wing in the US.  The constant complaints about Cuckservatives and RINO's is not constructive to actually moving forward an agenda.  Politics is about the art of compromise (something American's used to pride themselves in, believe it or not).  When there is no room for compromise or for being able to find common cause around issues, a political party is in bad shape. Yes, there is division in the Democratic party as well.  However, Trump has given the Democratic leadership a powerful tool with which to unify their voting block when the time comes.  At the same time, he has managed to split the conservative movement, separating the traditional small government fiscal conservatives, aka, the Never Trumpers, from the rather ludicrously mis-named "basket of deplorables."
 
But anyway, I understand that everyone is angry.  We have a media system that feeds off it, amplified by the internet and social media.  The economy is shit for the average person, and activists seem more concerned with social issues such as gay rights and abortion than they do with actually helping people get access to decent jobs, medical coverage and education.  Instead, everyone is living in their own little media bubble, whether it be liberals who live off a diet of Rachel Maddow and Huffpo, or conservatives safely surrounded in a Fox News and Limbaugh cocoon ( or worse, Infowars.)  People don't talk anymore to those they don't agree with and that's a problem.  For me, I like to come here and argue with all of you about this stuff, it keeps me on my toes.  
 
As to the gun issue, I don't have any answers.  I will say this though.  To the average non-gun owner, people like Ted Nugent and Dana Loesch come off as crazed lunatics.  And that's who they think of as representing the pro-gun side.  Strictly speaking from a perspective of optics, when one side is represented in popular culture by teenage school shooting victims and the other side by Ted Nugent, that's not good news for the pro-gun side.  Again, I'm not taking a side here on the issue itself, I'm just saying the pro-gun side is in trouble if this is their media strategy.  
 
Also, the Democratic party is not "my" party.  I've always considered myself a left leaning independent.  
 
* I added the "almost" to clarify based on Sturgeons post further up the thread.

Well shit.

Ok so yeah, you clearly have no right to free speech. 

This right here to me translates to "You have freedom of speech until you start talking about a subject we don't want to talk about".  I find laws on holocaust denial stupid.  Why make it illegal for someone to make a fool of themselves saying something stupid?  I would imagine that the social backlash a person would face would be a more proper punishment.  Banning people from talking about topics also only will serve to encourage people to talk about it, just maybe not in the public sphere. 
 
Religious hate seems very overreaching as well.  I think we can all agree that certain parts of some religions are fully worthy of our hatred, yet where is the line drawn there?  I don't like the idea of needing to worry about whether or not some religion or its practice is deemed bad enough that it is now OK to hate.  It's not illegal over there to hate violent jihadists sects of Islam like ISIS, is it?  Hate speech laws to me just feel ripe for abuse.