U.S. Politics

This is right, but the sort of people who have clawed their way to the top in politics, are generally different type of person than the rest of the population, so they are unlikely to listen to anyone else as they are only interested in the sound of their own voice.

This was the problem with Thatcher.
She wasn’t going to listen to anyone and it proved her undoing but she was supported by the right wing of her party and they weren’t interested in unity, they were only interested in lining their own pockets.

This is what Trump has done.
He has surrounded himself with right wing lunatics who he knows will back him, and there will be no listening to people with opposing views, no matter how much he says.

The man is a proven liar, why would anyone trust him?

Why it would actually be democracy in action, everyone’s vote counting instead of the 1/3. There’s no reason why elected members shouldn’t side with their elected position on an issue. If the majority side on elected positions then democracy is seen to be done. The Lib Dems could have sided on issues with The Torries that they believed in and sided with Labour on other issues. It would have made parliment incluses of all MPs opinion rather than a party leader using a whip to get his/her agenda across.

Oh and ‘working together with the opposition’ ummm wait a minute aren’t they meant to be the opposition anyway?

I’d also be happy and back any Labour and Torrie rebels to defeat any moves at removing us from the single market. If they’ve ran on being pro-EU they rightfully should vote in that manner.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Can anyone simply explain the 60 votes to confirm a supreme court justice and how they can get around that?

They can’t that’s why Trump chose a conservative who they think they can get some Dems to vote for. There were much more whacko conservative choices he passed on. Dems might dig their heels in now though because them pubs cock blocked Obama’s choice at every turn.

Admittedly I’m getting this ‘knowledge’ from The West Wing but I thought Senate confirmations were simple majorities?

I’ve read they can get around that, and use the majorty they currently have, but I don’t know the ins and outs of it.

My bad, I shouldn’t have used the term “vote for”. Basically the Democrats can filibuster the vote and debate endlessly on the subject. At that point to bypass the filibuster they’ll need 60 votes. Because Trump nominated a less whacky conservative the idea is that enough dems might just lay down and let it happen. The idea that they might not even filibuster is floating around as well. In that case a simple majority vote would get it done.

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Honestly, after a tweet like this Trump really needs better consultants or to be taken off twitter completely for the time being. That’s just asking for problems and worrying coming from the fucking president.

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Have you been living under a rock for the past months? He’s been calling reporters and journalists “scum”, “liars” “dishonest” and so on for months. He’s called the acting AG a “betrayer” for putting a stop on his EO and now he’s doing it again. This is part of his modus operandi, and I’m sure his supporters have been whipped up into a frenzy so much, they actually love this.
He is killing civilized discourse, and at an extraordinary speed.
Of course this is completely destroying democracy in the US, which does not work without a press and an independent judiciary, and this is precisely the point. Add to that the flat out lies he, his press secretary and Mrs Conway dish out (Bowling Green massacre?), and in just a few weeks he has made the press an absolute enemy for his supporters and stripped them of all their credibility.
So when he fills his cabinet with Goldman Sachs and Exxon and repeals Dodd-Frank by openly admitting he does it for his business friends, when he’s not distancing himself from his businesses (as he’s promised to do in a big show of a press conference), when he’s appointing a known torturer as dputy chief of the CIA, it is either hardly reported at all, or will be dismissed as fake news by his supporters.
This is shock and awe in full effect and his twitter antics are a major part of it.

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I haven’t been living under a rock, thank you very much. I just think that this is a step above his usual bullshit he puts out on twitter, which is why I’m posting it.

Justice has saved him 6 times, tbf. He should just thanks it.

Ok. I don’t think it is a step up at all, “betrayal” is much stronger, especially considering he’s fired the person who “betrayed” him. It is also most certainly not the most shocking thing he’s done.
Opinions will differ, though.

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Surely this can’t go on for another 4 years

This is equally scary and funny at the same time.

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Question is who’s the biggest joke, he himself or the ones who actually voted for making this farce a reality. Still they step up in social medias making excuses and ‘explaining’ what this clown really meant. I wonder how long they can persist. Knowing the longlivety of certain AKB’s though I guess the skies the limit.

I really enjoyed his press conference the other day.

I took pleasure in a leader/politician finally talking to the press like that and not mincing their words.

Globally the overall quality of the media has been in serious decline turning into nothing more than partisan political squabbling trying to further their own agendas or sensationalist clickbait, so to see someone go on the attack like this is really entertaining.

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You really confuse me, man. Some days you write something like the truly excellent post on the electoral system, one of the best things I’ve ever read on the OA, and sometimes you come up with atrocities like this.
Yes, the media has been in decline. This is due to them being conglomarized into bigger and bigger corporations. The main point of critique of Western mainstream media is that they have become too close to power, too familiar and too sympathetic with the policies of those they should critically report on.

Yet, it is absolutely important that the population has access to a variety of different sources of information and that these sources are reliable because of thorough journalism. Without this, we can dispense with democracy altogether, as people who don’t have access to a broad spectrum of sources can’t form an opinion based on their own critical thinking and therefore can’t make rational choices in the voting booth. We’d have a situation like in Russia, where the vast majority of the population gets their information from a few state-owned tv channels, who feed them pro Putin propaganda.
Apparently, this is what Trump and the Republican party have in mind for the US:


If you don’t want to watch the whole clip, Lamar Smith’s last sentences are: “Better to get your news from the president. In fact it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.”
So what they are doing is discredit all the media outlets that are not reporting favourably and then suggest the so-called president is the sole wielder of truth.

It is also important to note that Trump does not attack all media. He openly endorses Fox News and Breitbart. Whatever you think about outlets like the New York Times or CNN, they are so infinitely better than Rupert Murdoch’s Republican propaganda channel and a right wing nutjob conspiracy website, it is not even worth mentioning.

So what you’re endorsing here is not only an attack on “the media”, it is an attack on citizens as well, as it aims to limit the sources they get their information from. It is also a promotion of Fox News and Breitbart.
I really can’t understand how someone as intelligent as you could be in favour of this.

And for what? For the entertainment of an watching an ignorant (and he is an absolute idiot, make no mistake. He might be dumber than Bush even) bully attack others? You righly lament the media’s “partisan political squabbling trying to futher their own agendas or sensationalist clickbait”. Well, this is EXACTLY what Trump does, is it not? “You’re either with me, or you are the enemy, period.”

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He’s really coming across as someone that’s out of their depth.

He speaks like a child. He just goes on random tangents that I would imagine make his speech writers sit there facepalming and he’s continuously bigging himself up and talking about how shit everything and everyone else is.

I wouldn’t mind “not a politician” if he was telling the truth but I don’t believe anything he says. It’s all scare tactics to throw everything that isn’t him into doubt. So far he’s going to expand and re-equip the whole military and police force, build roads and factories all over the country, build a thousand mile wall, end international terrorism, fix the economy, make friends with every other country in the world… like no other president has ever thought of doing any of those things.

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The man who benefited most from fake news is now complaining about them. Oh the irony!

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Thanks for the comments.

Look, I get where you’re coming from and why my comment might have taken you surprised but I think there might have been a misunderstanding between my comment, my actual stance and your interpretation of it.

At the end of the day, I’m neither left or right - I’m very centrist. However, for the last several years, like I pointed out, I have noticed a drastic fall in the quality of journalistic and the level journalistic integrity showed by American and British media outlets.

I’m sick to death of constantly being bombarded by newspapers that are trying to force me to take a Leftist or Rightist stand-point with almost no regard for the complex nuances of the current political spectrum. The only newspaper I ever bother with any more these days is The Financial Times and sometimes The Economist, because I genuinely don’t feel that I can trust The Independent, The Observer, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph etc. to actually tell the truth. Hell, even the Wall Street Journal has lost credibility in my eyes after the whole PewDiePie debacle (it sounds ridiculous, and I’d never heard of it until I saw a random VLOG about it yesterday but it is actually ludicrous to find the WSJ stooping so low for clicks and ad revenue).

Anyway back to the matter at hand: I think we’re both arguing the same point - that currently it is extremely hard for people to actually gain relevant, newsworthy facts from most of the mainstream media outlets without it being coloured by whoever the owner wants to support.

I’m not saying I support Trump or that I stand by his policies or that he’s going to make America great again BUT I appreciate the way he spoke to the press. For me, there has long been an air of smugness, arrogance and elitism surrounding journalists and the media outlets, in the way they approach and write about politicians and to the effect that they believe they can affect political outcomes. I haven’t seen a Western leader be so candid or abrasive to journalists before and actually call them out on the way they have been conducting their business. I just thought it was refreshing to see a President actually just go for them like that, rather than stand there and take it or give your usual, roundabout “answer without saying anything” politician responses that we usually get.

Again, I don’t think Trump is any better and I don’t like Breitbart or Fox any more than I like CNN, but literally from Day 1 the mainstream media were savaging and brutalising Trump and his campaign before he had even really started talking policy or anything. So I’m just enjoying watching a politician give as good as he got during the election, more from an entertainment perspective though. I obviously don’t believe having such a caustic relationship with the media is going to help anyone but I feel like the media has become far to self-important and self-indulgent, with a lack of quality investigative journalism. No-one has spoken like this to the media and the journalists before.

I don’t want things to become like they are in Russia or Belarus or Iran, that’s not what I’m saying, I’m just saying that I enjoyed watching a President drop the standard politician approach and go toe-to-toe. I do NOT want Breitbart to become the number one, state-certified purveyor of news just like I don’t want CNN or the Murdoch’s or anyone else to have a monopoly on it either.

My deepest wish is that everyone was just a bit more moderate and sensible, but until then I’ll enjoy all the drama and outrage unfolding.

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