Trump

[TheGlyphstone]

See, this would be why I didn't want to play the "it isn't news" game. Just because it came off of facebook, doesn't mean it isn't news. I get CNN and several others off of there as well. Are they fake or less credible because they are on facebook as well?


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/03/nunes-house-intel-will-make-criminal-referrals-to-ag-barr-on-fbi-doj-officials-who-perpetrated-this-hoax/

One of the links... now lets see what's wrong with this site....


Now that is very true and I totally agree.

Exactly. Facebook is not a news site. It is an aggregate medium for other people to share sites they find, with zero credibility filters at best and questionably accurate accusations of negative credibility via the algorithms i mentioned, which select for stuff that is more likely to be shared and consequently cause false data ( 'fake news') to spread faster than real data. Only the actual sites themselves can be evaluated for their accuracy, so when you make assertions of fact backed by nothing but a half remembered facetweetagram, its going to be met with skepticism. its unavoidable.

[Skynet]

No, I would not. But the defunding of one program that wasn't working up to its full potential and moving those funds to another to stop the sex trafficking isn't a bad thing. As for the people he hired, you can only go on what that person says. You can't do an random in-depth background probe into someone with out just cause. Don't know anything about the faith between the law and government branch thing so I will refrain from commenting. The illegal children, he is only following guidelines that were already there. You just can't walk in a place like that and fire people without just cause. Plus, I am sure the man isn't still working there, if he was then yes, I would have a problem with it also.

Except that given the man's associations and the fact that most trafficking victims, sex workers, and quite a few law enforcement officers have criticized FOSTA-SESTA for not being as effective as it should be or even counter-intuitive, it is a bad thing. Various human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have supported initiatives such as decriminalizing prostitution as a means of combating sex trafficking and the various struggles of sex workers. Decriminalization cuts out a big blackmail tactic of slavers who go "if you go to the police they'll arrest you for prostitution" Sadly this is threat is true, and happens even to women who did nothing but be chained in rooms and raped repeatedly.

Our anti-prostitution laws are FUBAR, and evangelicals and their allies such as Pence and Trump are not their allies.

To the second bolded claim: nope. The Trump Administration's policies in this regard are novel.

Also interning Japanese-Americans was legally sketchy, but not outright illegal due to the use of loopholes in getting the US Army to round them up. We're repeating the same mistakes of the past.

Again, Trump isn't the only person in charge. He is just the mouth piece that the people chose to represent us, yet he is the only one taking blame for everything wrong with the country.  None of the other presidents took as much blame for the actions of the previous problems in the country/world that was there before they came into office. Other political people are to blame as well, not just Trump. Spread the hate if you have to hate and spread the blame as well.

I don't just blame Trump. He is definitely an enabler, and can be judged based on the company he keeps. As just one example, he vowed to protect LGBT people from hatred, discrimination, and violence as part of his campaign. He later signed legislation to ban transgender people in the mililtary from serving their country.

A man who has a track record of signing shitty bills, saying shitty things, and associating with shitty people such as white supremacist Steve Bannon is deserving of a lot of blame.

For the others that want "proof", TheGlyphstone is correct on the wiretapping that I was referring to. I have read many articles from many different sources that I do not recall all the sites or pages. However, the one that I did pull from in another thread, was torn apart due to what site it came from. Sites do not hold a lot of clout with me, I am just interested in the articles. That being said, I do not wish to play the "that site is fake news site because" (fill in blank here) game. I would also like to point out that even the major media sites have been caught lying and posting fake news. Sites like CNN, Fox, MSNBC and so on. So with that in mind, how can you prove facts on anything when all the news site have been busted for lying?  Answer, you can't. You need to take everything with a grain of salt. I am sorry if this answer doesn't satisfy you, but people can have conversation all the time without quoting from sources to make their points. It is done on here everyday, right?

While you're right that the mainstream media is heavily biased and dishonest, there are many ways to ascertain legitimate info. Such as researching court records of his signed bills, legislation done by Republicans and supported by him, etc. Or cross-referencing stories across multiple platforms. Chances are if the New York Times, Fox News, Vox, and Snopes are all in agreement on something, or the majority of them are (looking at you Fox), and their parent companies have little incentive to lie about an incident* it's likely true.

*sometimes companies in the United States will just refuse to air footage on an issue rather than be caught doctoring. For example, none of the mainstream cable news companies covered SOPA/PIPA because their CEOs benefited from it at the expense of common websites and web media consumers.

Another example is something I like to call sousveillance. Basically mass reports by average Janes and Joes on the street who have film footage from smartphones and such of an event in the making. A single video can be doctored, but thousands from many different angles, perspectives, and social media accounts less so.

[Vekseid]

Man, the people supporting investigation of the investigators sure were loud about investigating the bullshit investigations Hillary was put through.

Oh wait.

Crickets on that front.

Summary of the Mueller report- no conspiracy and no coordination. The evidence of obstruction is inconclusive, although Barr and Rosenstein ruled against obstruction.

I think this is a win for Trump. I also think that congressional Democrats need to tread very carefully now, lest they be perceived as overreaching on this matter, while Trump yells "no collusion, no obstruction" over and over again.

James Comey may very well have given us the first four years of Trump, and now it looks like Mueller, Barr and Rosenstein may have just given us another four. I think I'm going to be sick.

1) This is Barr's summary. Not the report itself.

2) This summary only discusses two investigations out of a score of them. He is outright labelled as a co-conspirator in charges Manafort is going to jail for.

3) We know for a fact that Donald Jr. colluded with a Russian official. Because he himself admitted to this collusion. Why this confession was not considered collusion will need to be inquired by Congress if it isn't expanded on in the report itself.

4) Barr's summary declares that Russia intervened on two fronts to support Trump's campaign. Fun thing to ignore.

5) Above and beyond all of this, is the shaky situation in which an organization (the Executive branch) is allowed to investigate itself. That needs to go away.

6) The report is going to be out of the news cycle long before November 2020.



Finally, Trump's approval is consistently 20 points behind where the economy says it should be. We just had a 'proper' yield inversion a couple days ago (as opposed to the blip in December).  There is going to be a recession starting a few months before - after election time. The Republican tax plan and Trump's tariffs are directly implicated in this.

In any case, start saving money.

538 gives Trump a 50/50 odds of winning in 2020, if the economy is still functioning by then, all else being equal. Given his advantage in the electoral college, this seems fair.

The Virginia elections will be something of a bellweather. If Democrats assume control of the state, that is not good news for the Republicans come 2020 in general no matter what happens.

If we enter a recession before October, then Republican enthusiasm is going to fall off a cliff even if his approval rating manages to stay above Bush's.

Except that given the man's associations and the fact that most trafficking victims, sex workers, and quite a few law enforcement officers have criticized FOSTA-SESTA for not being as effective as it should be or even counter-intuitive, it is a bad thing. Various human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have supported initiatives such as decriminalizing prostitution as a means of combating sex trafficking and the various struggles of sex workers. Decriminalization cuts out a big blackmail tactic of slavers who go "if you go to the police they'll arrest you for prostitution" Sadly this is threat is true, and happens even to women who did nothing but be chained in rooms and raped repeatedly.

A couple of things need to be said:

Decriminalization alone isn't enough. There's no 'forbidden factor' involved like the drug trade - everyone wants sex, and if the trade is not tightly monitored and regulated, sex trafficking will not be reduced just because of legalization. The Netherlands has been struggling with this - it would need to be a combined enforcement-educaion system. Discourage people from visiting illegal brothels, etc. as well as keeping a tight watch on the legal ones.

Of course, FOSTA-SESTA is kind of the worst of all worlds here. The United States plays host to an incredibly disproportionate share of web hosting.

There are several reasons for this. Hosting in the US is the cheapest, the most reliable, and has by far the strongest guarantees of the freedom of speech of any nation in the world.

Trump sparked a call to move hosting outside of the US (I was even asked to move Elliquiy and Blue Moon). In the case of FOSTA-SESTA, it is far worse - people will end up going to shadier sites outside of US jurisdiction.

Signing that bill was just another in a long list of mistakes.

[Skynet]

A couple of things need to be said:

Decriminalization alone isn't enough. There's no 'forbidden factor' involved like the drug trade - everyone wants sex, and if the trade is not tightly monitored and regulated, sex trafficking will not be reduced just because of legalization. The Netherlands has been struggling with this - it would need to be a combined enforcement-educaion system. Discourage people from visiting illegal brothels, etc. as well as keeping a tight watch on the legal ones.

Of course, FOSTA-SESTA is kind of the worst of all worlds here. The United States plays host to an incredibly disproportionate share of web hosting.

I believe that decriminalization is a step above what we have now, but is not the end or ideal result in and of itself. I do feel that regulation which is done with protecting the workers is ideal, but as a means of cooperation between prostitutes and law enforcement  rather than the paternalism attitude of "we need to save you from yourselves" that Nordic Model countries do. Secondly, encouraging cultural change and societal attitudes towards sex and consent is key: the porn industry in the US is legal but still has creeps and predatory types ("if you want to be a porn star, give me a blowjob and I'll judge if you're good enough to quality").

[Oniya]

Regarding the 'Gateway Pundit' site - this took me the two second of typing the name into Google to find:

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-gateway-pundit/

[Teo Torriatte]

Thank you Vekseid, those are all valid points. I've just been letting myself assume the worst because I and so many others were so sure before the last election that there was no way someone as obviously unqualified as Trump could be elected, and we all know how that turned out.

Regarding the bullshit allegation of wiretapping that loki brought up, that was just an angry tweet by Our Dear Leader with no basis in fact whatsoever. Just because it's parroted on some alt right website does not constitute whatsoever as proof.

TRUMP WAS NOT ILLEGALLY WIRETAPPED.

[legomaster00156]

I do not think a recession will influence Trump's approval rating more than 1-2%. He will shout, "There is NO RECESSION!" and his followers will eat it up.

[TheGlyphstone]

That 2% could still matter if it comes from the independent/ambivalent voting block. A recession wont impact his party line numbers, but the grey zone of independent voters is not as small as some people think sometimes. A recession by itself isnt going to matter, but its another potential weight to swing the scales in a close fight like 2016.

[Roleplay Frog]

I feel like people forget that 2016 wasn't considered a close fight. It was considered by most as a near impossible loss for Hillary and it still happened. It the polls now give him a 50-50, as Vekseid stated, that to me is akin to an easy victory, unless they've improved their methodology to a large degree.

[Orval Wintermute]

I feel like people forget that 2016 wasn't considered a close fight. It was considered by most as a near impossible loss for Hillary and it still happened. It the polls now give him a 50-50, as Vekseid stated, that to me is akin to an easy victory, unless they've improved their methodology to a large degree.

Most polls gave Trump a less than 5% chance of winning.
538 gave Trump about a 20% chance of winning, it was a very narrow path and everything had to right for him.
So if 538 is saying the 2020 election is 50/50 then given the huge number of unknowns it seems like it's a sensible estimate and not a huge lowball.

[Regina Minx]

I feel like people forget that 2016 wasn't considered a close fight. It was considered by most as a near impossible loss for Hillary and it still happened. It the polls now give him a 50-50, as Vekseid stated, that to me is akin to an easy victory, unless they've improved their methodology to a large degree.

....no. No the polls in 2016 did not show an impossible loss for Hillary. Nate Silver's website 538 got a lot of grief on November 4th for writing an article titled “Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton” in which this was written:

“Four years ago, an average of survey results the week before the election had Obama winning by 1.2 percentage points. He actually beat Mitt Romney by 3.9 points. If that 2.7-point error doesn’t sound like very much to you, well, it’s very close to what Donald Trump needs to overtake Hillary Clinton in the popular vote.”

Earlier than that, on November 4th, on Halloween Silver himself wrote that the odds of a split between the electoral college and the popular vote was increasing:

[A]s of early Monday evening, our polls-only model gave Hillary Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning the popular vote but just a 75 percent chance of winning the electoral college. There’s roughly a 10 percent chance of Trump’s winning the White House while losing the popular vote, in other words.

The polls indicated that something (popular/electoral college spllit) that ended up happening had a 10 percent chance of actually happening. And that something with a 29.6 percent chance of happening (a Trump victory in any form) ended up happening.

People have a probability problem. Most of the time, we don't recognize that a 71.4 percent chance of winning is not the same as a 100 percent chance of winning.

As long as you agree that 71.4 is a bigger number than 50, you cannot possibly be arguing that Trump's chances are as good or better based on polling.

[Roleplay Frog]

That's exactly my point. He made it through a narrow path almost no one expected him to take. Now that there's not a narrow path, but a wide open road going in both directions, I'd tamper my expectations.
Of course, the inverse of 2016 could happen, with his higher changes now mobilizing more democratic votes but lots of things -could- happen.

[Regina Minx]

That's exactly my point. He made it through a narrow path almost no one expected him to take. Now that there's not a narrow path, but a wide open road going in both directions, I'd tamper my expectations.
Of course, the inverse of 2016 could happen, with his higher changes now mobilizing more democratic votes but lots of things -could- happen.

I really don't understand how you go from "71.4% is not a sure thing" but "50% is an easy victory."

[Vekseid]

Nate Silver specifically called out the lack of polling in the states Trump had an upset in, and gave him 30% odds of winning. His 50/50 estimate for 2020 doesn't come from polls, but from the fact that incumbents usually win, but Trump is seriously underperforming.

Polling is generally showing Trump losing 2 to 10 points depending, but it's important to remember this is extremely early and Trump lost by 2 points in the general in 2016.

It's not necessarily that ~2% will matter. It's the risk of Republicans not being excited to vote if a recession begins in earnest. 2018 saw the largest midterm turnout since before women could vote. 2020 is probably going to be similar. If 2/3rds of the voters are Democrats, it doesn't matter what the people sitting at home think.

[gaggedLouise]

....no. No the polls in 2016 did not show an impossible loss for Hillary. Nate Silver's website 538 got a lot of grief on November 4th for writing an article titled “Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton” in which this was written: 

Also, it has to be said that the news media were fairly heavily on Clinton's side, and tended to run with her, even couch her. They more or less deliberately hid the weaknesses of her campaign - not least the lack of popular enthusiasm for her - because the contrast with Trump was so overwhelming. And this helped cast Trump as the underdog he wanted to be seen as.

[Roleplay Frog]

I really don't understand how you go from "71.4% is not a sure thing" but "50% is an easy victory."

Propably because I never made that statement. I'd make a statement more in favour of my position, like:

He's won 1-9 odds, I don't believe minor factors can indicate at all that he'd lose 5-5 odds.

But I'm not arguing the odds in the first place, because I'm not knowledgable enough about 'em and frankly, don't care enough about the topic either.

I am merely pointing out that.. yeah, he won when most people didn't expect him to. Now that most people think it reasonable, I think it very likely.
He knows how to game a broken system based on a personality cult rather than political merit, he's not a good politician, but he is sucessful at politics. Quite fascinating, really.

It's not necessarily that ~2% will matter. It's the risk of Republicans not being excited to vote if a recession begins in earnest. 2018 saw the largest midterm turnout since before women could vote. 2020 is probably going to be similar. If 2/3rds of the voters are Democrats, it doesn't matter what the people sitting at home think.

That I definitly see, I heard some interesting theories about why Trump won, but basically, it was akin to 'the people that cared about Hillary didn't care -that- much, for a large part, whilest the people that cared about Trump -really- wanted him as president' If we see the inverse of that in 2020, as I hinted earlier, we might well see Trump as a 1-Term.. but I am not making any bets for or against, now or later. :P

[Regina Minx]

Propably because I never made that statement.

I’m not trying to beat a dead horse here I swear. But you literally said:

It the polls now give him a 50-50, as Vekseid stated, that to me is akin to an easy victory, unless they've improved their methodology to a large degree.

[gaggedLouise]

I’m not trying to beat a dead horse here I swear. But you literally said:

I suspect Frog may have been confusing "the polls weeks before the election tend to close in around a projected 50-50 mark" and "candidate has a 50% chance of winning". Those two are not at all the same.

[Various]

I can not even conceive of a day when President Barack Obama's White House was celebrating that it was determined that there was not enough evidence to merit an obstruction of justice charge due to a reported close call made by Eric Holder.

[Teo Torriatte]

I can not even conceive of a day when President Barack Obama's White House was celebrating that it was determined that there was not enough evidence to merit an obstruction of justice charge due to a reported close call made by Eric Holder.

And then turn around and threaten to investigate the people who dared look into their incredibly suspicious behavior.

WE ARE NOT TRUMP.

[Sara Nilsson]

I just find it rich that republicans are complaining about an investigation after how many into Benghazi?

[Muddy Waters]

I just find it rich that republicans are complaining about an investigation after how many into Benghazi?

I too find it amusing.   Speaking as a non-Hilary fan, the poise she put up with during that compared with the Cheeto sitting in the office right now.  Tell me again how emotional women are!  LOL

[Teo Torriatte]

I too find it amusing.   Speaking as a non-Hilary fan, the poise she put up with during that compared with the Cheeto sitting in the office right now.  Tell me again how emotional women are!  LOL

I'm not saying you are wrong, as she did indeed show a lot more composure. But she also knew that if she got even slightly upset she would get shit for it because she is a woman. While Our Dear Leader can spaz out all over the fuckin' place and no one bats an eye.

[Muddy Waters]

I'm not saying you are wrong, as she did indeed show a lot more composure. But she also knew that if she got even slightly upset she would get shit for it because she is a woman. While Our Dear Leader can spaz out all over the fuckin' place and no one bats an eye.

That is very true.  If she'd even blinked an eye wrong they Trey Gowdy would have birthed an elephant.

[Vekseid]

Can you imagine if she blew up like Kavanaugh?

I hope when the history of women becoming a direct force in American politics gets written, what Hillary did to sacrifice her personality gets noted as paving the way for the likes of Tlaib and Cortez to speak so freely.

Clinton couldn't, but the next generation is under no such limitations.