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2 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

So what does Sessions getting fired mean? Does it mean Trump feels threatened by the election outcome or does it mean he feels emboldened enough to go this far?

I don't believe Trump feeling threatened is the cause for him firing Sessions and it's possible the election results probably made the act more secure for him.

Here's the thing, Trump was always dead set on firing Sessions but he probably ended up taking the advice that firing him BEFORE the mid terms could lead to Senate losses as Sessions WAS a Senator for Alabama prior to his AG role. Last year, Republicans flat out warned Trump not to fire Sessions because back then, they embraced their own (Sessions) more than Trump. Have a look a Lindsey Graham's stance on the matter last year. They also said they wouldn't confirm a successor to Sessions.

The election revealed many things and among them, it's that Republicans running in FAVOR of Trump works and Republicans showing disdain towards him, doesn't. This is why I said that the results made the act more secure for him, the Republicans have kept control of the Senate and as long as they act in favor of Trump, voters of the Republican base would turn out for them. If impeachment proceedings were to occur and the votes came to the Senate try him, the Republicans would most likely vote note to save themselves so they'll vote in favor of Trump. They will not uphold those statements of the past.

As for what Session's firing means for the Mueller investigation, that's up in the air since if he gets his way, he'll basically be above the law and the only way to get rid of him will be to beat him in 2020 or killing him, Here's hoping this Ex-FBI agent is correct and it never comes to a point where the AG role becomes what Trump wants. Napolitano says that the Whitaker appointment violates the law but when exactly has Trump seen any consequence for breaking the law during his presidency? Sure there's investigations and lawsuits going on behind the scenes but no consequence has occurred at all like with the court ordered return of captive kids to their parents by July 25.

A dead man won in Nevada. He was a Trump-loving Republican.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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What a rollercoaster the past few days have been.

To start on a positive note: Great to see the number of women, especially Native American women, elected to Congress.

16 hours ago, DarthR0xas said:

But Gillum losing really surprised me. I saw next to no support for DeSantes, and literally one of his ads, which was on Election Day. Sure, he was a bit of an extremist (If I remember correctly), but I thought he had a good shot.

Funny choice of words, to call Gillum an ‘extremist’ when DeSantis is the one rubbing shoulders with Proud Boys and who used racially-charged language against Gillum in his campaign.

In addition to the deceased brothel owner, three Republicans indicted on felony charges also won their races. 

Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats talking of compromise are going to help sink the party; they’ll be steamrollered by Trump, just as he’s promising

The whole Jim Acosta situation is pretty revolting. Not surprising, but still revolting. The sheer brazenness of the White House/Fox etc. in calling his actions assault when Christine Ford is still being harassed is just... ugh. 

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3 hours ago, Res said:

Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats talking of compromise are going to help sink the party; they’ll be steamrollered by Trump, just as he’s promising

Any Democrat that still wants to reach across the aisle after what's happened the last 10 years are either so stupid they should be nominated for the Darwin Awards or are themselves crypto-fascists that are sympathetic to GOP/Trump's goals. There's literally no other explanation at this point.

Edited by Time the Crestfallen
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We're going to hear more "violent left" rhetoric and you can thank antifa for deciding to be useful idiots by threatening Tucker Carlson. Fucking idiots.

7 hours ago, Res said:

The whole Jim Acosta situation is pretty revolting. Not surprising, but still revolting. 

Lol Sarah Sanders used a video doctored by InfoWars to defend the decision to revoke Acosta's pass. That's a libel lawsuit just waiting to happen and I get the feeling this woman's guilty of violating the Hatch Act a dozen times throughout her time there.

Republicans in Wisconsin being sore losers

LOL fucking knew it.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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On 11/7/2018 at 4:17 PM, Pixelman said:

As someone who lives in California, I was quite surprised Prop 6 (repealing the gas tax) wasn't passed

I guess you can blame/thank voters like me. I personally love the gas tax. Even though I am still dependent on gasoline, if I can vote for anything to make life more difficult for the fossil fuel industry, I would totally vote for it even if it costs me money. Extra funding for transportation infrastructure is just icing on the cake.

Edited by XRay
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14 hours ago, Excellen Browning said:

This is fairly normal. Kinda scummy, but normal, and iirc tends to happen on both sides.

Immediately after seeing that someone from the opposite party has won the election and attempting to do so before they take office? I don't doubt that both sides partake in this sort of scummy shit but if you have other examples to show, I'd like to see them.

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1 hour ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Immediately after seeing that someone from the opposite party has won the election and attempting to do so before they take office? I don't doubt that both sides partake in this sort of scummy shit but if you have other examples to show, I'd like to see them.

This one comes to mind. The whole article is worth a read, but here's the key section:

She added: “Since 2010, the NC GOP has systematically engaged in a dangerous partisan political agenda, making it harder for people to vote, changing the nature of the State Board of Elections and stripping an incoming Democratic governor of power. 

“That’s not what democracy looks like – and North Carolinians deserve better.”

Following Mr McCrory’s election loss, he signed into law two bills that would greatly strip power from the incoming Democratic governor. 

The new House Bill 17 cut the number of people Mr Cooper can appoint to Cabinet positions, and requiring approval from the Republican-controlled Senate. He also signed Senate Bill 4, increasing the state elections board from five to eight officials – with four to be chosen by the governor and four by the Senate. 

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So I just saw a YouTube video about school lunches in America. While I am not surprised by the information, one of the comments (it should be the second comment by Trolligarch when you sort by top comments) piqued my interest. I will just copy and paste it:

"As a Brit, I never really understood why so many Americans were disillusioned with capitalism.

But then this video probably explains why. We sort of take our constitutional framework for granted - strict regulations on lobbying, strict conflict of interest laws and regulatory commissions being fully nonpartisan and independent and run by experts. We've always had an understanding that regulation is needed to rein in corporations. And we've always separated public and private sector functions. It would be inappropriate for the private sector to run your police, fire departments or hospitals. So our version of "capitalism" turns out to be very different from American capitalism.

The fact that companies can just buy their way into schools, hospitals and public institutions really shows the rampant corporate corruption in America. No wonder people are disillusioned."

While I do not think I am disillusioned by capitalism, I do agree that we should have some limit on capitalism. For example, the profitability of utility companies in California are tightly controlled, and I am certain most people would not mind not being gouged by regional monopolies. In my opinion, I believe school lunches should fall into this scenario. When I have kids, I want them to eat tasty, and preferably healthy, foods.

While I do not mind food companies making a profit on school lunches, I do want more regulation in that industry since I am paying for it with my taxes. In Sacramento at least, the school lunches here were pretty good when I was in grade school, so I never knew school lunches had such a bad reputation in the rest of the country until I got older. I was a little disappointed when middle school and high school serve regular pizzas instead of the square pizzas like in elementary school, so if I there is one thing I would change, I would definitely demand the square pizzas back. Those square pizzas are nothing like your regular pizzas, they have a unique taste and are so much better than regular pizzas in my opinion (or maybe that is just my nostalgia); I also assume they are healthier too, but do not quote on me on that!

Anyways, back on topic, if I were in another part of the country I would be pissed if the food that my taxes go towards is being used to purchase nothing but unhealthy crap. I mean, I still saw pizzas and burgers when I was in school, but we also always had "gourmet" options like enchiladas, stir fry noodles, KFC bowls (it is not actually from KFC, but I am not 100% sure), etc. unless you are the last in line or something, then you are stuck with pizzas and burgers. Oh, I guess I would also change the ratios of gourmet foods to pizzas and burgers, since there are never enough gourmet options to reach the back of the line.

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4 hours ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Chickenpox outbreak in North Carolina town 

As effective as "Thoughts and Prayers".

Natural selection sure is taking its time weeding out "Intelligent" Design.

Just as we do not permit religious human sacrifices, we should not permit religious exemptions on vaccines. If there is a kid who has a legitimate medical reason to not take vaccines and dies from chickenpox, the school district and all those parents of other kids who refuse vaccines for religious reasons should be held liable for involuntary manslaughter.

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58 minutes ago, XRay said:

Just as we do not permit religious human sacrifices, we should not permit religious exemptions on vaccines. If there is a kid who has a legitimate medical reason to not take vaccines and dies from chickenpox, the school district and all those parents of other kids who refuse vaccines for religious reasons should be held liable for involuntary manslaughter.

Evangelicals are funny

Apple CEO says Tech regulation "inevitable". What are everyone's thoughts on the matter? Personally, I just hope it doesn't come during this fascist administration or during Republican control, this is obviously something the country needs to be careful with and I don't trust government under the leadership of Mitch McConnel and Trump to do anything right (so good that they lost the house).

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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8 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Apple CEO says Tech regulation "inevitable". What are everyone's thoughts on the matter? Personally, I just hope it doesn't come during this fascist administration or during Republican control, this is obviously something the country needs to be careful with and I don't trust government under the leadership of Mitch McConnel and Trump to do anything right (so good that they lost the house).

Meh, kinda indifferent. I don't know enough about Silicon Valley, and about the tech market in general to make an assumption on whether he is jumping the gun or right on the money. Regardless, this made me remember a large levy of complains against Apple, but that isn't particularly relevant to this forum so I'll save those for some other time. This is something that needs to be done by people who understand a lot about technology and its market, from a variety of people on the political spectrum. Only then can you really create something that everyone is generally fine with. You also need to make sure that they don't get bribed from the big tech companies, like Apple gives a lot of money and the law is something like "All non-IOS devices will get a tax". It obviously won't be something that extreme, but favoritism due to monetary backhandism mustn't occur. To play a slight devil's advocate for our current administration, as much as I hate to do so, while they lost the house they gained a supermajority in the Senate. While this stops a lot of laws from passing, at this point control of the Senate is much more important than control of the house, since the Senate mainly controls appointments.

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10 hours ago, The Geek said:

So... who wants to tell him that northern California (which is where the most devastating fires have occurred) is largely Republican?

He'd spin it. "Hell on earth brought to our fellow Christians in California by the godless Liberals".

On the subject of Khashoggi...

Trump won't listen to the "suffering tape", so much for the claim that he's tough and doesn't back down from anything.

CIA makes the conclusion that MBS ordered the deed, Trump insisting it's not true and issued a statement echoing what the Saudis are saying

And then there's this gem coming in 2 weeks before the Mercy Hospital shooting.

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1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

So it seems naughty Ivanka Trump used her private Email to conduct governmental business. That vaguely sounds like a certain someone. 

Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!

Fake news! Trump emails are best emails. So secure. No problems. Government emails bad; China hacks them. Obama ruined government emails. Sad!

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Can a woman or minority beat Trump in 2020? Obama's thoughts

What do you guys think? As things stand right now, I have to disagree with him and say that it's probably setting up a second Trump term with the Electoral College still being a thing.

Naturally things can change as we head to 2020 but if the Election were today, Trump would probably beat any minority or woman running for president.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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43 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Can a woman or minority beat Trump in 2020? Obama's thoughts

What do you guys think? As things stand right now, I have to disagree with him and say that it's probably setting up a second Trump term with the Electoral College still being a thing.

Naturally things can change as we head to 2020 but if the Election were today, Trump would probably beat any minority or woman running for president.

Maybe he just wants his wife to be the next Clinton.

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56 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Well there's no reason a white woman couldn't beat Trump; their is sadly a not insignificant chunk of the population that would look for any reason (real or fake) not to vote for a minority candidate due to racial bias alone, and dealing with the combined racism and misogyny factors would be utterly hellish.

That said, I feel like the campaign issues will matter more than the gender/ethnicity of the candidate, and I have a gut feeling that the Democrats will avoid actually promoting a policy platform and will just repeat the same old song-and-dance of 'Trump is bad and colluded with Russia, us Democrats are slightly less bad than Trump so you ignore all our many shortcomings, something something Bipartisanship' even though it very provably doesn't work but hey, at least they get to avoid actually having a platform to campaign on.

Edited by Time the Crestfallen
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A woman can beat Trump and a minority can beat Trump. Anyone can beat anyone.

But the question in 2020 is whether or not the Democrats can regain control of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin after losing all three in 2016, which cost Hillary the election. If the next Democratic nominee wins all three of those then they've already won the damn race so long as they keep all the states Hillary kept.

Remember: Bush in 2004 had to essentially win every state outside the Blue Wall in order to win reelection. If he had lost Florida he would've lost his reelection bid. I think the odds favor the Dems in 2020 (even conservative pundits like Ben Shapiro seem to agree with this assessment, and it should be noted that Trump won those "Blue Wall" states with incredibly thin margins) but if 2016 is anything to go by, anything can happen.

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EDIT: I'm watching some clips of the Cruz vs. Sanders CNN healthcare debate and god, I wish the 2016 campaign was Cruz vs. Sanders. It would've been a lot more... insightful, I think, than whatever the fuck the real 2016 was.

Edited by Pixelman
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I think the big factor determining who would win in 2020 is, as others have stated, whether the Democrats can win back the areas that Clinton famously assumed would be hers.  If they choose to campaign based on issues like they did this year in the midterm elections, I'm willing to bet they stand a chance.

Another factor that will be interesting to see how it affects future elections is the passing of the law in Florida that gave voting rights back to felons who served their term.  A full 10% of the state's voting population can now exercise their right to vote when they couldn't before.  Will this result in Florida going from a swing state to decidedly being for one side or the other, or will it continue to be a swing state?

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14 hours ago, eclipse said:

If Trump is up for re-election, Hawaii will vote Democrat.  Hell, Cruz could be a Democrat, and I think Hawaii would vote him over Trump.

Didn't Kenya..uh I mean Hawaii always reliably vote Democrat? At least since the Obama days. I thought it was one of those states safely locked on the Democrat side no matter what.  

Edited by Etrurian emperor
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7 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Didn't Kenya..uh I mean Hawaii always reliably vote Democrat? At least since the Obama days. I thought it was one of those states safely locked on the Democrat side no matter what.  

Hawaii's a stronghold state.

Reagan's reelection was an odd one out, but that was an odd one out for every blue state besides DC and Minnesota.

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