tumbleweedt
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Posts posted by tumbleweedt
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12 minutes ago, Raider of the lost Ark said:
One can only hope you never get into legal problems. Your lack of knowledge how the justice system works and the basic principles it follows is shocking. There is one simple principle in the legal system: "Innocent until proven guilty". You and team Trump have turned that around to the McCarthy principle "Guilty by suspicion". Until today not one single allegation has been proven. Yet you run around and pretend they were. You are basically telling lies and expect people to accept them as facts. I am not surprised a all, that "guilty by suspicion" is used by team Trump. People should make themselves acquainted with the name Roy Cohn. You will see how much many things said and done by Trump make perfect sense all of a sudden. He obviously was a very good student.
THE MCCARTHYISM IS PRACTICED BY YOU. You twist words. I said worthy of investigation. You better take back those words.
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1 minute ago, pjcowley said:
Those sources are inexhaustible.
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6 minutes ago, Kim said:
Well the only "it" I'm referring to is this (not so) sudden rise in right-wing rhetoric that's managing to establish a foothold in what was once liberal or left wing heartlands. Do people really know that they're being hoodwinked by the very establishment they think they're rallying against as they vote for a "non politician" like Trump in the US or to "take the country back" in the UK? I imagine some do and some don't. In five years time when these people are scratching their heads, will they think back... that there might have been another option? I don't know. I know that some people at least see it for what it is and some don't. This thread itself being a microcosm of that.
Talking about Europe, personally, I don't see other options than those two (BAU versus "populists"). Miracles won't happen, but "populist" agenda items may get more serious policy attention and resources, such as de-Islamization and halting the dilution of national sovereignty.
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1 minute ago, Sloane said:
So what. The first lady is supposed to look fabulous and that takes money. We're not barbarians
She'll be good for the economy.....
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3 minutes ago, Sloane said:
See he's doing good so far! I'm actually kinda proud of my government today and that includes Obama. This couldn't have been easy for him.
Trump looked a bit shaky. Or maybe it was me. I found myself tensing up when he spoke. "High flying assets"? Thought he almost spilled some classified stuff.
Surreal.
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1 hour ago, Moka said:
Well, she was extremely popular when she left the State Department (65%). The real question is : how did she became so unpopular since she declared her candidacy?
Now look at the republican witch hunt committees, the "Clinton Cash" book (paid by republicans), the "crooked" nickname, the "email" madness in the medias, the leaks, the FBI letter... I'm starting to believe that in order to win an election in the US, you have to be the most unsuspected candidate, since your opponents won't have the time to plan a long witch hunt to discredit you. That's what is sad, really.
Most of these subjects are legitimate issues worthy of investigation. You may not like the intensity and spin (I don't either) of the scrutiny and attacks, but ignoring the existence of HRC's actions on which they are focused and HRC root issues of deceit, fraud, pay for play, is simply not credible. Just as cartoonish as the Trump camp spin that you decry. By the way, both sides fought dirty.
The Clinton scandals go back decades, to Arkansas and beyond. In the end even your analysis leads back to the same conclusion: the Democratic Party machine rolled out the red carpet for THE WRONG CANDIDATE.
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47 minutes ago, Kim said:
But you seem to look at every issue through your own eyes instead of stepping back and seeing the bigger picture from the perspective of that particular place/people. This isn't about what you or I would do, or how our political establishments work.
Yes, the US presidential elections have always been largely personality- led, that's just a fact. That's why this race has been Clinton vs Trump as opposed to Dems vs Reps, that's why we were hard pressed to hear ANYONE talking about party politics in that shameful joke of an election campaign. Why every single vox-pop I've seen since the result has been "I voted for Trump because..." or "I voted against Hillary because...."
Clinton as a person (nevermind all the foreign policy stuff in this thread that the average Joe doesn't know or care about) but she as a person.. was deeply divisive and unpopular among the electorate... and they knew it, and did NOTHING to attempt to change that. It's complacency, and that backfires EVERY time.
The question is WHY this has happened, and it's not because America is crawling with crazy racist rednecks; it's because there was an uprising against what people consider to be "the establishment" voting for something/someone/anyone offering something different (not realising of course that they're being fed another big fat LIE in the process) It's the exact same thinking that's spreading across Europe, the exact same thing that caused Brexit, and until people start waking up from the bullshit they're fed, then it will continue unabated.
Agree, except for the last sentence: I believe many people deep down suspect / anticipate that the socalled populists will have a difficult time bringing about the changes these voters want. QUESTION: what OTHER option is there besides voting for those demonized "populists", except voting for the business as usual bullshit of established political parties? In other words: in what scenario would "it" NOT continue unabated?
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6 hours ago, mnino said:
Yep, this was an election for the Democratic Party to lose given the changing demographics and, boy, did it ever lose... Most of the establishment Dems got there by some sort of Clinton connection (they have been there forever...) and so no one was willing to challenge to coronation of Hillary. It's clear to see now that Sanders would have beat Trump easily in the Rust Belt. Dems picked the wrong candidate, the only one that could have lost to Trump. This election was lost not because more people voted for Trump. They didn't and this graph totally proves that. The election was lost because of the candidate and what she stood for, not her gender.
This commentator has some good insights on why most Democrats didn't vote for Hillary.
"On the surface, it's astounding that a man who ripped off thousands of people who worked for him became the champion of the regular Joe. But, as Bernie Sanders reiterated (...) , the problem is that people have ceased to see a difference between the parties, particularly on economic issues. I'll briefly cite a few examples.
Starting out with NAFTA, Bill Clinton forced "free trade" upon the party. I warned multiple times during the election that Trump would make inroads with voters in the Rust Belt unless Democrats made a clean break from corporate trade deals. Around the globe, these deals are a key tool to drive down wages, exploit workers and prosecute global class warfare. But, the current president still serves up the malarkey about the benefits of these deals.Bill Clinton's broader economic agenda was even more corrosive. During Clinton's so-called "good economy," the decline of organized labor continued. The president, and his secretary of labor, Robert Reich, did very little to arrest the decline.No Democratic president was more focused on letting business interests off the leash. He gave more power to media companies, triggering consolidation and a powerful wave of concentration of the media into a few hands. The average person, not steeped in policy, understood this every time he or she opened their skyrocketing cable bills.Hand-in-glove with Wall Street, Clinton got rid of the Glass Steagall Act, which removed the separation between commercial banks, insurers and investment banks, allowing the self-dealing manipulation of mortgages and interest rates and accelerating the shifting of huge wealth into the hands of a few.Again, the average person, just trying to make ends meet, eventually got the sharpest end of that spear when millions of people lost their homes, jobs and retirement in the thundering collapse known as the Great Recession, which, for many, has been a depression.There is so much more: A planet dying because for years fossil fuel interests were coddled. Welfare reform. Mass incarceration of people of color, which had both racial and economic consequences. The praise of the Clinton years, and red-faced defense by its leader, was always couched in contrast to the Reagan and two Bush Administrations. Great.Feeding off the Clinton machine, the Democratic Party has become riddled with lobbyists, billionaires, and hustlers who pocket huge sums of money by running either nonprofit "think tanks" or election-cycle networks, and politicians who, indeed, are focused mostly on reelection. Surrounding the party are extremely well-paid non-profit leaders, who end up defending the status quo.Chief component of the Clinton machine in recent years, the Clinton Foundation operated somewhat out of sight.The big donations streaming from anti-union powerhouses like Wal-Mart or big financial entities like Bank of America not only whitewashed the policies of interests directly opposed to what the Democratic Party should stand for, but they also clouded the deeper systemic crisis within the party. We can only address climate change, poverty and global inequality by axing the very system benefiting many of the donors to the Clinton Foundation."It's too late now and lessons will be learned. Hopefully, the right to vote in this country will not be taken for granted so much. But I do have a hard time with people, especially those living outside the US, that keep labeling this country as racist and bigoted. People, Trump didn't even get the majority of the votes! And I bet that a lot of people voted against her and not for him. Now, if you're a big Hillary fan, this may be hard to understand because you most likely had to turn a blind eye to the many red flags in her past. People do that often. They turn a blind eye to the negative traits of a person when they believe that his or her good traits trump (pun intended) their flaws.Hillary fans were willing to lose this election by supporting a very disliked establishment candidate when Americans in general has been voting for change ever since Obama was elected. Obama won against Hillary because he was the candidate of change! He beat her because she was the establishment. If dems did it, then why would the general electoral body not do it?I also think it is very disingenuous to paint a misogynistic brush over the election's results. Fathers talking to their daughters and explaining why America still does not have a female president need to be careful in not putting the blame on a constituency that cannot handle a woman in power. That's bull. There are people like that (a lot of them even) but they are the minority, they can't elect presidents. Dems voted for a man instead of woman back in 2008, is the race of person more important than their gender? Dems voted for Obama because they wanted change and not because she was a woman. Hillary's track record and not her gender is what worked against her.Very good analysis. Worth the read, so I'm quoting in full.
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3 minutes ago, jazzyjan said:
That is what is also frightening. Trump loves the power and fame and he is an opportunist. He uses people and causes to gain popularity and support from different groups to increase his chances. People think that voting for Trump will bring a change but they should be very aware of the likes of Pence and his backward ultra religious views. Having so many deeply religious conservatives with power is a huge issue in itself.
Yes, I agree, religious fanatics - of any brand - with and without power is a huge issue. Old human habits die hard.
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Just now, ULIZOS said:
Yeah, and I was simply saying that Trump doesn't deserve the blame, his supporters do, in response to someone who said we should shoot Trump.
Trump supporters are the fucking worst when all of a sudden they're offended by things.
Most people will be offended about being shot.
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22 minutes ago, XXL said:
Like I said, WW3 has always been on the cards. Hillary or not. Ask the late Albert Pike and Mazzini
I think that letter by Albert Pike predicting three World Wars might be a hoax: http://wideshut.co.uk/albert-pikes-3-world-wars-letter-hoax-wideshut-webcast/
The war between Islam and the rest of the world seems less of a hoax, however.
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6 minutes ago, Ciccone's Cheeks said:
Imagine if it was Trump who got the popular vote and she won the EC 8*o.
It's a part/possibility of the current system that I don't appreciate: most popular votes versus not the most electoral votes. To me it feels wrong, but there may be a rational for it. No energy left to look it up on the interwebs...
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1 minute ago, XXL said:
I wish he could direct some of that sarcasm at the ghastly neocon style policies both Obama and Clinton continued using in the Middle East and in regards to the banking sector. Again, pointing out the obvious, that he's a racist and a chauvinist, meanwhile the real elephant in the room of decade long bipartisan faulty American politics gets lost in the deliberately fomented soap opera tone of this election cycle. The same neocons he rightly bludgeoned to death in that 2004 documentary. This is distracting and hypocritical
Agree.
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3 minutes ago, Love Spent said:
Why is no one calling this out?
I don't care how upset someone is, THIS is uncalled for under any circumstances.
People did: see the posts following that remark.
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9 minutes ago, tumbleweedt said:
Alright, but just the pinky toe.
(Ref. Harlem Nights, Eddie Murphy)
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5 minutes ago, Pud Whacker said:
What about Lady Ugly?!!! Just in the foot...
Alright, but just the pinky toe.
(Ref. Harlem Nights, Eddie Murphy)
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3 minutes ago, ULIZOS said:
Why? He won. The entire world, literally, was against him, and he managed to win. That's admirable, IMO.
Shoot his supporters, not him.
Nobody should be shot. It has taken a lot of shooting in the history of mankind to get that far (the not shooting thing). Let's cherish and defend that accomplishment wherever it has been achieved.
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34 minutes ago, Raider of the lost Ark said:
Please elaborate where Germany breaches EU agreements. And spare me this shit about dictating the economic performance and how much Germany has benefited from the EU. I'm sick and tired of this. Are we supposed to excuse ourselves for the fact that we are an economic powerhouse. And have always been. It is not our fault that certain economies are not competitive. They should have never applied for a Eurozone membership in the first place or even cheated their way in. But I guess cheap credits were much more interesting than keeping your own currency to devalue and keep your products competitive. And yes, keep attacking Germany. We really like to be fucked once all those credits fail that we have guaranteed for. Even we cannot afford a few hundred billion Euros. And what about the normal German citizen? All of our retirement plans fall apart at the moment thanks to the zero interest policy of the ECB and the corrupt Draghi. And we can't even change to real estate because houses and appartments have become unaffordable for normal people because of a huge increase in prices. Thanks to all the Russians as well as the poor people from Southern Europe buying up all the real estate with money from dubious sources and from all the taxes they have evaded. I have shown a lot of sympathy over the years and have certainly not agreed with everything the German government has done but when people continue attacking Germany when German taxpayers might pay for all this mess at some point although they did not do anything wrong than I'm pissed off.
I take issue with YOUR LEADERS AND THEIR CORPORATE SPONSORS and those of other EU member states for creating these problems. I don't blame German citizens. I know many citizens get shafted because of those policies. I think we agree on a lot of things, actually. But on the matter of the Euro crisis in Greece the German hardliners and hardliners FROM MY OWN COUNTRY dictated terms that will only make financial problems bigger and more unsustainable. My country's taxpayers have accumulated the biggest pile of pension funds in relative terms, of the whole Eurozone, which is now being put into the Eurozone balance to hold of the economic collapse of the Euro project. When - not if - this unsustainable Euro scheme breaks down, my countrymen will suffer at least at much as yours.
On immigration Germany unilaterally broke with the Dublin agreement by 'magnanimously' inviting all Syrian refugees to Germany.....except, then it decided that other member states should take them in as well. Any countries opposing such dictates are being threatened with punitive measures.
We're all tired of bullshit. No special alibi for a so called model Germany that "leads by example" as you describe it, on these issues.
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12 minutes ago, runa said:
@tumbleweedt, you don't have to tag if you quote. The member will be notified either way.
OK, thank you, sorry about that. I also want to apologize for discussing several topics peripheral to the main topic of the thread. I can understand if that would irritate people (although, so far, nobody has said anything about it). I just get a bit dismayed by what I consider 'cartoonish/crude' representations and statements in posts decrying Trump for the same.
PS And I do not have many hopes/expectations regarding the blessings of Trump for (international) politics.
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23 minutes ago, Raider of the lost Ark said:
All very interesting. Except for the so called political correctness. Political correctness is something that, from my perspective, does not exist in Germany. But this may be because we have a different idea about the definition of "political correctness". That what Americans understand of political correctness is something different. We call the things as they are and don't find it offending unless it has to do with discrimination. A disabled person is a disabled person, not handicapped, not challenged. The difference is that we in Germany actually believe in two things: manners and that you are able to back up the things you say by facts. Our approach is very technocratic. Which totally explains why people tend to believe Germans are boring and have no sense of humor.
And regarding the migrants: yes we are really sorry, as the single biggest payer of the EU, that we ask other countries that receive billions and billions of Euros in subsidies to play their role in the European Union. We are sorry to ask for a little bit of solidarity when we took way more than a million refugees on our own. Something that should be considered "leading by good example". But you are right, we are bullying our European neighbors.
You failed to address the part where Germany BREACHES European agreements and doesn't ask but threatens other EU members that UPHOLD them to take in untold numbers of migrants. Also you forgot to address the part where Berlin dictates the Eurozone and its economic performance has benefited hugely from its membership and uneven competition with weaker EU member economies. You billions and billions of subsidies.....flow right back to Germany by propping up markets to sell your goods to. Just economic sense from Germany's perspective. I love Germany as a country. Your fairy tales of Germany as a moral example ON THESE ISSUES, not so much.
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Just now, beta_test said:
well if they in fact would have kept the agreement and everything else, then yes I would agree. But if you violate more or less other agreeements constantly too (and we all know Dublin doesn't work anymore), then you cannot complain if the big countries do it too
"...if you violate more or less other agreements constantly too...." Care to elaborate?
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15 minutes ago, beta_test said:
concerning migrants: if you actually want to have ALL benefits of a club (and we know who gets money and structural support in the EU). Maybe it is also understandable if those who in fact pay for all of it, might hope for understanding and a tiny bit of support in return. Also I don't know how Orban or the polish government is having free debates in their own backyard - while crying out loud that they are not allowed to phrase their opinion. (being invited and speaking about their concern in front of the press is obviously not enough to express it too)
NO, you don't get to breach European agreements and then threaten other EU member states THAT ACTUALLY UPHOLD THOSE BORDER AGREEMENTS to boot. BTW This behavior by big EU countries is not restricted to migration issues. Germany's membership of the EU and the Euro has greatly benefited their economy, because they could unevenly outcompete much weaker economies like Greece. It's not like Germany is such an altruistic benefactor that only pays. They're BULLYING and threatening. #Germany #GREECE @beta_test
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41 minutes ago, Raider of the lost Ark said:
It's genetic. Really. Being born into a country that has brought so much evil over the world (no matter what actually led to WWI and WWII) you know how to be extra careful and not really trust any politician without questioning their motives. This country is called "Land der Dichter und Denker" for a reason. That also makes many people go crazy about the rise of the new right. People don't get it and find those people downright offensive. In result people really think, well, you don't wanna listen then you will need to feel.
I don't know about genetics (I assume you mean that as a figure of speech), but I think that one of the legacies of World War 2 has been the rise of the "Gutmensch" that you mentioned earlier and the accompanying ideology of multiculturalism and political correctness. It's healthy to keep scrutinizing politicians and their motives. But the doctrine of political correctness makes me think of the statement attributed (erroneously I believe) to Churchill that the fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists. Needless to say, I think political correctness is dangerous, because it tends to stifle free thought and free expression. To me tolerance is NOT going out of your way not to insult someone, BUT allowing people to say things that one completely disagrees with. Pointing out the negative consequences of disregarding European border agreements to take in millions of migrants is regarded as heresy from a "Gutmensch" point of view. Suppressing debate about these issues and bullying European neighbors - as done by German authorities - into accepting these migrants is NOT an example to follow.
Donald Trump elected U.S. president 🚽
in Politics and World Events
Posted
Time for your medication. Other than that, Trump seems to bring out the worst in YOU. Breathe and re-read what you just wrote. And APOLOGIZE. @Raider of the lost Ark