US Election: 2016

[cupper]

There are no words for this. :boke:

 

[Fishbone Jones]

There are no words for this. :boke:

anic:

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

There are no words for this. :boke:

Amazing just how bad cloning experiments can turn out.  >

 

[The Bread Guy]

Thanks, M89, for sharing "Canadian in U.S." insights.  One point, though ...

*Depending on the mood I am in, the vehement reaction of some Canadians to Trump (speaking mostly of friends and relatives on Facebook) is either amusing or irritating. At the end of the day, what difference does it make to them? Other than killing a pipeline, how much did President Obama's actions (or inactions) affect Canadians?

Here's one from parts of the country where people earn a living from cutting down trees to be sawed into 2x4s for houses:  Canada–United States softwood lumber dispute.  On this one, it's been several presidents, not just Obama, that have caused jobs (up to 10,000 jobs) to disappear here - but not in Toronto, Montreal or Vancoiuver, admittedly, so I guess those jobs don't really count.

 

[Kilo_302]

There already is a clash of civilizations going on. Especially over there. Slow news day.

Perhaps they are worried that if President Trump draws a line in the sand, it won't move all over the map like Obama's.

And I think it's hilarious that a bunch of Arabs are trying to tell the US how to run their country. Something about tending your own backyard before complaining the neighbours are planting the wrong flowers.

If the West was to tend its own flowers we wouldn't have ISIS to deal with. Nor an Iran run by clerics, nor would Libya be in tatters, and Syria might not be the nightmare it is either.

 

[Kilo_302]

Another nail driven into democracy's coffin.

THIS is the nail in democracy's coffin? I would think Trump himself represents a "nail" more than widespread protests against the racist garbage he's encouraging. The sympathy for Trump on this forum is quite disturbing. Have you not seen the picture of a Trump supporter doing the Nazi salute (yeah yeah she says she was doing it ironically which is a load of horseshit), or the video of a young black woman being assaulted by numerous people while being called racist names? These are just two incidents in a growing list of out and out racial violence that are often incited by Trump himself. Or are you more comfortable with this than what the people who shut down the rally are calling for?

Here's an account of the protest. These people are heroes for standing up to neo-fascism and risking their physical well-being.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-chicago-protest-213728

 

[ModlrMike]

Crowing about shutting down your opponent's rally is the nail.

Yes, Trump's views, and those of many of his supporters leave much to be desired, but that's part of the process. Their voices should be heard so they can be countered with sound argument, or do you think that they should just be silenced though any means?

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

THIS is the nail in democracy's coffin? I would think Trump himself represents a "nail" more than widespread protests against the racist garbage he's encouraging. The sympathy for Trump on this forum is quite disturbing. Have you not seen the picture of a Trump supporter doing the Nazi salute (yeah yeah she says she was doing it ironically which is a load of horseshit), or the video of a young black woman being assaulted by numerous people while being called racist names? These are just two incidents in a growing list of out and out racial violence that are often incited by Trump himself. Or are you more comfortable with this than what the people who shut down the rally are calling for?

Here's an account of the protest. These people are heroes for standing up to neo-fascism and risking their physical well-being.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-chicago-protest-213728

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."



So you don't believe in the First Amendment.

 

[cupper]

The sympathy for Trump on this forum is quite disturbing.

I'm not sure that you have been reading things here correctly. I don't believe that there has been much sympathy expressed for Trump here.

There has been a fair amount of discussion as to why he has defied all expectations, and what the ramifications of a Trump nomination or Trump presidency would bring, both for the country as a whole and the GOP in particular. But to take that as sympathy for Trump and his rhetoric would be a bad misread of what has been said.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

I'm not sure that you have been reading things here correctly. I don't believe that there has been much sympathy expressed for Trump here.

There has been a fair amount of discussion as to why he has defied all expectations, and what the ramifications of a Trump nomination or Trump presidency would bring, both for the country as a whole and the GOP in particular. But to take that as sympathy for Trump and his rhetoric would be a bad misread of what has been said.

Stop subverting the discussion with facts!!! [

 

[a_majoor]

An intersting argument for not selecting a judge to replace Justice Antonin Scalia. The comment that the US is approaching a Jacksonian moment (both Trump and Saunders are essentially running Jacksonian campaigns with remarkable success) is also quite valid.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-10/look-beyond-judges-to-find-the-next-supreme-court-justice

The Supreme Court Needs an Outsider
68 MAR 10, 2016 1:47 PM EST
By Stephen L. Carter
As President Barack Obama prepares to square off with Senate Republicans over his Supreme Court nominee, I offer a soft word of advice: Don’t pick a judge.

I mean this quite seriously. My Yale colleague Akhil Amar has written thoughtfully about what he calls the “judicialization” of the Supreme Court. It is rare nowadays for anyone to be selected who has not attended a top law school, enjoyed a top clerkship and spent several years on the bench. In his fine book "The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Republic," Amar tells us this:

On the day that Samuel Alito replaced Sandra Day O’Connor in early 2006, not only was every justice a former judge, but each had been a (1) sitting (2) federal (3) circuit-court judge at the time of his or her Supreme Court appointment. Never before in history had the Court been so deeply judicialized.

Obama’s subsequent appointment of Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School, broke the pattern, but Amar considers the distinction insignificant:

Granted, Kagan came to the Court without having previously served as a federal judge. But she had served as solicitor general (SG) of the United States, the one technically nonjudicial position in America that is closest to being a judge. The SG is tasked with representing the United States in courtrooms across America, and in the Supreme Court in particular. For good reason, this officer is often called “the Tenth Justice.

The selection of justices, Amar tells us in dismay, has become much like advancement in the civil service. And this lack of “portfolio diversification,” he wants us to understand, is a new thing in the nation’s history.

What difference does background make? Amar is concerned about diversity in several important senses. It’s notorious that every sitting justice attended either Yale or Harvard. But he’s also concerned for a lack of diversity in styles of argument. Those who have spent their careers on the bench tend to think that “judges are more right than they really are.” There are more ways to think about the Constitution than the ways we think about it in the cases. Part of the triumph of Brown v. Board of Education is the richness of its understanding of politics. Amar implies that this is in part because nobody on the Brown court had spent a career in the judiciary. On the other hand, he attributes John Roberts’s vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act in part to the chief justice’s extensive earlier experience in the intricacies of executive-branch policymaking, including four years in the White House counsel’s office.

There’s something very Jacksonian about this argument -- and I refer not to Justice Robert Jackson, one of the heroes of Amar’s fine book, but to President Andrew Jackson, who campaigned against both the judiciary and the rule of lawyers. But although Jackson is in bad odor these days, on this point I think the seventh president was mostly right. He worried that judges were becoming an aristocracy in the new nation.

Amar doesn’t go quite so far, but perhaps he should. Both major parties are facing Jacksonian moments, with their bases believing -- with reason, I would say -- that their views are rarely reflected or even seriously solicited in the making of policy. More and more they see what goes on in the power centers they mistrust (Washington and Wall Street) as an ever-heavier burden of impositions. One needn’t share this opinion to see that it exists.

How does this relate to the judicialization of the Supreme Court? Because of the system that produces the justices, few Americans have heard of any of the nominees before they are nominated. Already, then, there exists a barrier that nonlawyers can’t easily breach. And yet in the past, the Supreme Court’s great justices have included both politicians and prominent advocates, some of them household names. Justices like Earl Warren, Hugo Black and Salmon Chase were already widely known. So was William Howard Taft, former president. Thurgood Marshall and Louis Brandeis were practically household names.

This isn’t to suggest that selecting a non-Ivy League nonjudge who has not been a clerk would suddenly cure the nation of its current passionate mistrust toward those in authority. But it might help.

One of the major and controversial changes Jacksonian Democracy worked was the movement at the state level toward electing rather than appointing judges. We don’t elect federal judges, of course, but the campaigns for and against Supreme Court nominees certainly resemble election campaigns.

Yes, Marshall was also a judge and solicitor general -- but he was a well-known civil-rights lawyer for over a decade before he held either post.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Stephen L Carter at scarter01@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Philip Gray at philipgray@bloomberg.net

 

[cupper]

Interesting that you should bring up Jackson. It can prove to be a cautionary tale for the GOP in how they deal with a contested convention in July should it come to that.

The First Time Party Bigwigs Tried to Stop a Front-Runner From Becoming President It Backfired—Big-time
What the GOP can learn from the story of Andrew Jackson in 1824.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/gop-2016-andrew-jackson-1824-213726

America has never seen a presidential candidate like this before. Detractors point to his lack of political experience, his poor grasp of policy, his alleged autocratic leanings and his shady past. They believe this man without much of a political platform (but with interesting hair) has neither the qualifications nor the temperament to be president. Yet in defiance of conventional wisdom, he is leading his three main rivals in the race for the White House, and party bigwigs are at a loss how to respond. No, it’s not Donald Trump. His name is Andrew Jackson, and the year is 1824.

Andrew Jackson was one of America’s first political outsiders. Born to impoverished immigrants in the backwoods of the South, he was tough, thin-skinned and fiercely confrontational—a brawling Jackson once took a musket ball in the chest before killing a rival in a duel. Resolute and strategically brilliant, Jackson rose through the ranks to become the greatest war hero of his generation. Known by his supporters as Old Hickory, Jackson stirred passions in the American people that his presidential rivals John Quincy Adams, William Crawford and Henry Clay could only dream of. Tens of thousands flocked to the charismatic outsider who positioned himself as a steadfast defender of the Republic. Jackson’s rallies dwarfed those of his rivals. Yet he had little political experience and plenty of baggage. Jackson was, his rivals believed, more of a celebrity than a serious candidate.

In many ways the general election of 1824 mirrors the Republican primary today. Following the collapse of the Federalist Party some years earlier, America was effectively under single-party rule, and all four candidates were members of the same political party, the Democratic-Republicans. In that way, 1824 was more like an extended primary campaign than a general election—a primary that would determine not just the direction of the nation, but also the fate of the party. And, as is the case in the GOP today, voters in 1824 appeared restless for change, and the most popular candidate was viewed as unacceptable by many in the party establishment.
In the election, held in December 1824, Jackson stunned his rivals to win a clear plurality in the popular vote and Electoral College. With 99 Electoral College votes to Adams’ 84, Crawford’s 41 and Clay’s 37, Jackson was short of an outright majority, but undoubtedly had the strongest claim to the White House. However, with no overall winner, the decision was put to the House of Representatives, which was then under the speakership of failed candidate Henry Clay. Clay threw his support not to Jackson but to second-placed John Quincy Adams. When Adams became America’s sixth president he returned the favor, appointing Clay his secretary of state.

To Jackson’s many detractors this was a legitimate move. The old general, who Clay referred to condescendingly as a “military chieftain”, was a polarizing figure who had fallen short of an outright majority. Adams, meanwhile, was a highly capable politician—indeed in the words of historian Daniel Feller he was “probably the most qualified man to be president the United States has ever produced.” Clay and his allies believed Adams could be a consensus choice, a man with the integrity and experience to unite the nation. A furious Jackson, however, blasted the deal as a “Corrupt Bargain.” From his perspective, Clay and Adams had conspired against him, putting their own interests above of the will of the people.

Whatever the truth, the deal backfired. The snub steeled Jackson for revenge and allowed him to paint the administration as corrupt and out of touch. What’s more, it fired up Jackson’s supporters and united a broad coalition of politicians and voters including many who had not supported him the first time round. This coalition would grow into a brand new political entity—the Democratic Party. It would also catapult Jackson to the White House just four years later, where he became one of America’s most consequential and controversial presidents. John Quincy Adams, however, would serve one unremarkable term, hamstrung by his minority status and dogged by claims of illegitimacy.

After the controversy of 1824, the election of 1828 was surely the most ill-tempered presidential campaign in history. Jackson’s supporters slammed Adams as effete and elitist. In an assault that puts Trump’s insults to shame, they claimed, falsely, that as minister to Russia, Adams procured an American virgin for the Czar. They were, in effect, calling the president a pimp. Meanwhile Adams and his allies hit back, attacking Jackson as barely literate, as a bigamist and as a murderer who had executed several of his own soldiers for minor infractions. Astonishingly, all these accusations were true, and yet—in a sign that should worry Trump’s antagonists—none of them stuck. Instead, they seemed to make Old Hickory even more popular, underscoring the fact that he was quite unlike most politicians. Jackson won the 1828 election in a landslide.

Back in 2016, and Donald Trump is well on his way to the Republican nomination, having solidified his delegate lead with clear wins in Tuesday’s primaries in Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii. (And he’s ahead in the polls in the two big winner-take-all states of Ohio and Florida.) Yet signs suggest that some Republicans are planning to follow the Adams-Clay playbook and do all they can to deny him the nomination. Establishment favorites Mitt Romney and candidate Marco Rubio have suggested that primary voters should vote tactically to deny Trump a majority of delegates. Meanwhile, other party leaders are dreaming of a brokered convention in Cleveland in July.

At this point, the best Trump’s detractors can hope for is to deny him the 1,237 delegates needed for outright victory, and then pressure delegates to dump him and unify behind an anti-Trump at a contested convention. While such an approach is perfectly legitimate, the same was true of the disastrous deal struck between Clay and Adams in the general election in 1824. What matters is perception. An aggrieved Trump would likely—and with some justification—denounce it as a “Corrupt Bargain” for the 21st century.

The 1824 election has been called “a political turning point in which none of the old rules applied.” According to historian Timothy Naftali, “the shift that occurs … is that the American people don’t want their representatives to choose presidents anymore. They want to choose presidents themselves.” For GOP insiders, it’s worth remembering this. Whatever you think of Trump’s politics or his temperament, like Jackson, the candidate has energized a significant section of the electorate. As he said in Thursday Republican debate, “Millions and millions of people are going out to the polls and they’re voting. … Some of these people, frankly, have never voted before.” The facts appear to bear this out with combined turnout at the Republican primaries higher than any year since 1980.
If the lessons of 1824 are to apply today, denying Trump the nomination if he remains the front-runner will likely make his supporters angrier and more determined. It might even position Trump as the leader of an even broader coalition of America’s disaffected and marginalized, as it did for Jackson—propelling him to the nomination or even the White House four years from now.

 

[a_majoor]

Indeed.

While one Billionaire contests the Republican establishment, Instapundit remarks on how some other billionaires are also trying to affect the election:

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/229038/

ROGER SIMON: Election 2016: Billionaires Battle For America’s Soul.

Donald Trump isn’t the only billionaire in the eye of a seemingly treacherous Florida hurricane that threatens to destroy us all or at least change our world as we know it. Three others – one or more of them far richer than Trump – are singing “Bye, bye, Miss American Pie.” Only it’s not a Chevy they are taking to the levee. It’s a Tesla.

They are Peter B. Lewis of Progressive Corp., Linda Pritzker of Hyatt Hotels, and, of course, George Soros of practically everything. These three billionaires are the principal backers of MoveOn.org, an organization whose devotion to our constitutional republic, specifically its first amendment, is somewhere between suspect and non-existent. It is MoveOn that has instigated many of the demonstrations against Trump and may be inspiring “lone wolves,” one of whom may sooner or later do what “lone wolves” are prone to do.

I’m so old I can remember when money in politics was supposed to be bad. Plus:

These supporting billionaires are fueled by a moral narcissism that knows no bounds, so convinced are they that they are “right” on practically everything. They have enabled the (most often) young people at MoveOn who undoubtedly believe that they too are “right” and have the “right” to suppress the speech of those with whom they disagree. They behave as if they think it their noble duty. This is the not-so-royal road to totalitarianism and is the tragic consequence of the miseducation of our young for which those billionaires are also, in part, culpable.

This is not to exonerate Trump, whose language has been, to say the least, challenging. But this is no normal election and we are not in a normal time. Our country has to decide whether it seeks to be like Europe or like America. Although I have lived several wonderful years altogether in Europe and love many things about it, the decline of Europe is evident and on the cusp of irreversible. It is also evident that the Democratic Party, in varying degrees, wishes to take us in that direction. Soros, Lewis and Pritzker are accelerating that process. Whether they are overt supporters or not, they could aptly be called “Billionaires for Sanders.” The irony is palpable – I’ve got mine but none of you will ever get yours.

The thing is, traditional America was good for the bourgeoisie. Europe — or better yet, the Third World — is better for the folks on top.

One guess which is the candidate of their choice...

 

[Kilo_302]

Crowing about shutting down your opponent's rally is the nail.

Yes, Trump's views, and those of many of his supporters leave much to be desired, but that's part of the process. Their voices should be heard so they can be countered with sound argument, or do you think that they should just be silenced though any means?

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I disagree in the sense that historically, extremist right wing movements are able to take power because the establishment liberals don't know how to deal with them. Viewing Trump and his supporters as just another political group that can be defeated through traditional means is naive. I think protests like the one we saw in Chicago are a legitimate attempt to disrupt his campaign.

As for freedom of speech, Trump is very intelligent. The US doesn't have hate speech laws like Canada or many other Western democracies, but even if it did, Trump has been very careful not to specifically encourage violence against one group. He HAS however incited violence against peaceful protesters at this rally, and the results often take a very racist and xenophobic form.

The rise of fascism in Germany was directly due to the mistaken belief that rationality and moderation would win the day. It didn't. Liberal democracy is a system that is inherently vulnerable to fascism, because  if the establishment has been co-opted by market forces (as it has in the US) it by definition cannot address the grievances of the masses, nor can it see a fascist threat for what it is. A clear example of this would be Krugman's latest hack job on Sanders, somehow equating his supporters with those of Trump. Similarly, this CBC piece http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-sanders-hitler-1.3485338seems to equate Sanders and Trump, even though it only mentions  "interfactional violence" as it's sole Sanders reference. But the main photo used in the article is clearly suggesting Sanders and Trump are the same thing. This knee-jerk defense of the system, even from an organization that doesn't have a horse in the US race exposes the media for what it is. It is incapable of intellectually making a distinction between Sanders supporters trying to stop a Trump rally, and the Trump supporters who are openly promoting racist violence. This failure of liberals to engage with the left is what has led to collapse of democracy in the past.

We've seen two Trump supporters displaying the fascist salute openly in Chicago. He has the KKK behind him. Can we just hope this goes away? I think not. Protests have legitimate place in a democracy, and the protest in Chicago was just that. Again, leaving it to the traditional political process to to stop Trump is naive and ensures his eventual victory.

 

[Altair]

I disagree in the sense that historically, extremist right wing movements are able to take power because the establishment liberals don't know how to deal with them. Viewing Trump and his supporters as just another political group that can be defeated through traditional means is naive. I think protests like the one we saw in Chicago are a legitimate attempt to disrupt his campaign.

As for freedom of speech, Trump is very intelligent. The US doesn't have hate speech laws like Canada or many other Western democracies, but even if it did, Trump has been very careful not to specifically encourage violence against one group. He HAS however incited violence against peaceful protesters at this rally, and the results often take a very racist and xenophobic form.

The rise of fascism in Germany was directly due to the mistaken belief that rationality and moderation would win the day. It didn't. Liberal democracy is a system that is inherently vulnerable to fascism, because  if the establishment has been co-opted by market forces (as it has in the US) it by definition cannot address the grievances of the masses, nor can it see a fascist threat for what it is. A clear example of this would be Krugman's latest hack job on Sanders, somehow equating his supporters with those of Trump. Similarly, this CBC piece http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-sanders-hitler-1.3485338seems to equate Sanders and Trump, even though it only mentions  "interfactional violence" as it's sole Sanders reference. But the main photo used in the article is clearly suggesting Sanders and Trump are the same thing. This knee-jerk defense of the system, even from an organization that doesn't have a horse in the US race exposes the media for what it is. It is incapable of intellectually making a distinction between Sanders supporters trying to stop a Trump rally, and the Trump supporters who are openly promoting racist violence. This failure of liberals to engage with the left is what has led to collapse of democracy in the past.

We've seen two Trump supporters displaying the fascist salute openly in Chicago. He has the KKK behind him. Can we just hope this goes away? I think not. Protests have legitimate place in a democracy, and the protest in Chicago was just that. Again, leaving it to the traditional political process to to stop Trump is naive and ensures his eventual victory.

As much as trump is a loudmouth buffoon,  he has a right to say what he's saying and his supporters have a right to hear what he has to offer.

Legitimate protest is also a right, but do it outside his rallies, and do it peacefully. Rushing the stage and disrupting his rallies is not the way to go about this. If anything, it only makes his followers all the more dedicated, now that they feel that they are under siege.

 

[Journeyman]

I disagree in the sense that historically.....

Please do not use that word; you show no indication you're aware of its meaning.

I think protests like the one we saw in Chicago are a legitimate attempt to disrupt his campaign.

If there was a left-wing candidate you supported, would the effort be equally legitimate?

The rise of fascism in Germany was directly due to the mistaken belief that rationality and moderation would win the day.

A clear majority of Germans (about 15% voted against Hitler in the 1934 referendum) turned to fascism.  They did so because:

-  tenets of the Treaty of Versailles' 448 Articles that they deemed unduly punishing, coupled with the rise of a new generation believing that they should not bear the punishment of previous governments;

-  a global economic depression that the National Socialists presented the best case for easing;

-  the death of Hindenburg left a political gap, which no left or centre factions were able to fill to the satisfaction of the majority of German voters -- for you folks loving popularity polls, between 1928 and 1932, the centre-left Social Democrat Party's fortunes declined from 30% to 21%; during the same period the NSDAP went from 2.6% to almost 38% (Hitler took party leadership in Jan 1933). 

Simply, what you call "rationality and moderation" (because the left is never  irrational or immoderate) was not what the German people wanted.  Believing it was "directly due" to the left being sheep-like and not protesting enough is 'naïve' at best -- possibly 'disingenuous' -- but most likely 'ignoring historical facts because of dogmatic political beliefs'.

Liberal democracy is a system that is inherently vulnerable to fascism....

Wow.  Google "campus political correctness" and get back to me on where fascist behaviour resides. 
Rhetorical; do not get back to me.

 

[ModlrMike]

I think protests like the one we saw in Chicago are a legitimate attempt to disrupt his campaign.

Violent protests aimed at shutting down the rally are legitimate? I guess it's OK so long as they don't actually wear snazzy brown uniforms.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Violent protests aimed at shutting down the rally are legitimate? I guess it's OK so long as they don't actually wear snazzy brown uniforms.

And they're going after the right, eh Kilo?

 

[cavalryman]

Just more examples of the left projecting their own hypocrisy and eliminationist rhetoric/actions on their opponents.  Nothing new here.  It's a matter of free speech and free association only for me, not for thee.  When it comes to Trump/anti-Trump, the spiritual descendants of the Sturm Abteilung are the ones launching vitriol, disruption and violence at Trump, and they're much too stupid to realize that they're helping his ratings.  :facepalm:

 

[Rifleman62]

Who is Kilo_302? A political mastermind? A serving military member or Vet? A wise, experienced, mature citizen? Or just a dumb fuck?