Pidesco

Are we living in interesting times? Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE shun Qatar, Turkey backs Qatar, there's an ISIS attack in Iran, Trump blames Iran for it, Iranians blame Saudi Arabia for the attack. Also, I hear the Middle East has some oil.

Fixed that for ya. It's already too late. The issue now isn't how to solve climate change but how to mitigate the catastrophe as much as possible. The Paris agreement will help, somewhat, but Trump's asshatery will certainly be a blow to its positive effects, given the US's weight in the world, in terms of emissions.

Talking about those and other tiny drops in the budget amounts to discussing angels and pinheads. There's a gigantic raise to the already gargantuan defense budget and a proposal to spend I don't know how many billions on literally useless infrastructure, that dwarfs all the comparatively tiny budget cuts.

Yeah, you don't get that kind of fidelity without SVGA graphics.

It's kinda playable:

Usually statues of guys in impressive poses aren't built to be a poignant criticism of those guys and a reminder of the terrible things they did. From what I read the monuments being removed were all built in support of the Lost Cause narrative, which seems kind of abhorrent to me. Quote on one of the monuments, covered up in 1981: Also, the monuments will be moved to a museum, apparently.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-18/house-may-be-forced-to-vote-again-on-gop-s-obamacare-repeal-bill Outstanding work.

I am not the best person to ask about corruption in Sweden but as fast I know corruption here is relatively low compared to the rest of Europe. Regarding the corruption I mentioned is mostly about taking bribes in order to defend the rights of those that bribed as opposed to the rights of the people the politician supposedly represents. In the US this seems to be rampant and used to be the biggest problem of the government, there. Thankfully, it is now a minor problem, compared to having the increasingly extremist right pushing a xenophobic agenda. There are other types of corruption, of course. For example, the current administration appears to have maxed out its nepotism skill tree.

I don't think I agree with that last part. There are plenty of decent candidates that did run for the Republicans and could have run for the Democrats. This is purely my own opinion here so take that for what it's worth but I do think I'm pretty well read on there things: For the Democrats these candidates should have performed better than Clinton nationally: James Webb US Senator VA: Smart, practical, level headed and good name recognition. US Army Vet. He wasn't socialist enough to get traction in the primaries but would have shown well vs Trump. He has no negative baggage. Brian Schweitzer Governor of Montana: Big advocate of Federalism, He's likable with a good record or states rights and workers rights as well as practical environmental regulation. The quintessential Jacksonian Democrat. But he's anti-gun control so the national Democrats won't have him. They don't tolerate dissent on any issue. Tulsi Gabbard US Rep HI. The DNC showed her the door when she endorsed Sanders (dissent on any issue will not be tolerated by the DNC) but she has a clean record, military service, opposed the TPP and sequestration, and bank bailouts. She should be the rising star of the Democrat Party but they won't have her. Corey Booker US Senator NJ: Centrist Democrat with a reputation for working with opposition party. Of everyone on this list he's be the most likely to make deals and compromises to accomplish goals. He has some great ideas about tax free enterprise zones to rejuvenate inner cities. His gun control advocacy would hurt him in flyover country. Republicans. The thing that helped Trump the most is the number of candidates in the Republican field. Trump was not winning primaries by majority. He just was getting more because support was spread so thin among all the others. Take away Rubio, Kasich, & Cruz (or any combination of 3 prior to Super Tuesday) and it's likey Trump would not have been nominated. Trump is president today in large part because a few GOP candidates didn't "take one for the team" and bow out so support could coalesce around one of the others. Rand Paul US Senator KY: OK, this was my choice. If he won the nomination I'd have voted for him. I did donate to his campaign during the primaries. He's more in the traditional Republican mold than his father is, but still has a strong libertarian streak. Of all the candidates he would have been the biggest advocate for fiscal responsibility. Nikki Haley US Ambassador to UN: Think Sarah Palin with a brain. She checks the conservative box without being a fanatic and a four year stint as UN ambassador will giver foreign policy cred. But she could have gone on the strength of a successful term as governor of SC. Marco Rubio US Senate FL: There is nothing wrong with Rubio. For some reason he was never able to get his campaign in gear. I think he was focusing on defeating Clinton when he should have been focusing on Trump. But nationally he would have performed better to the general electorate than he did to the primary. Tim Scott US Senate SC: OK, this one is a bit of a reach because he's still light on electoral experience but he's the balance between fiscal conservative and social liberal that general election voters would gravitate to. Put any of those Democrats vs Trump or any of those Republicans vs Clinton and I think they would have won a general election. I just noticed I made a gigantic typo that completely changed the meaning of of my post: This tiny sentence: "I don't see a candidate the Democrats could have put up that would be massively better President than Trump." Should actually be this: I don't see a candidate the Democrats could have put up that wouldn't be a massively better President than Trump. Now regarding your list of candidates to replace Trump/Clinton, my point that the difference between candidates, as far as the popular vote is concerned is tiny. Obama got less than 4% of the vote over Romney, Clinton had a little over 2% of the vote over Trump, Bush had 2% over Kerry, Bush Sr had 8% over the Dukakis, the same for Clinton and Dole. Other than 1984, every presidential election of the past 40 years was decided by what are effectively tiny margins, with huge swaths of the population voting the same no matter what. I think the story of the 2016 election is that Republicans had results similar to all other candidates in recent history, despite having a candidate with a history of racism, sexism, sexual assault, and general mismanagement of his various businesses. Politicians are already generally a bunch of corrupt, seedy rat bastards, but Trump comes along and not only normalizes their behavior, but shows himself to be vastly worse during the campaign, without essentially any effective backlash. Sure there was lots of pearl clutching as the scandals rolled out, but nothing ever really happened to him that was substantial. He only had 4% percent less of the popular vote than, say, Bush in 2004.

I don't think the Trump campaign did much during the run up other than winging it as much as they could. Trump's victory was as much a surprise to him as to the rest of the world.

That's all well and good but the media was always a bunch of biased muckrackers, even back to the days of the beginning of your country. The mainstream media is continuing as it always was, sometimes good, sometimes bad but most times just mediocre. Trump as President was the result of a weird confluence of factors, the strongest of all being the subprime financial crisis, but also the cult of celebrity, the increased awareness of underlying prejudices in society, the rise of internet powered extremists, the hard partisan divide, demographics, the electoral college, the slanted perception of crime and terrorism, the return of fascism as a relevant political force, and more things that haven't crossed my mind, right now. One could argue that the pivotal event leading to the Trump Presidency was Comey's shenanigans a week before the election, but really, Trump shouldn't even have made it out of the escalator, much less the Republican primaries or the actual Presidential campaign. You all that is true to an extent. But I really believe the biggest factor in electing Trump was the absence of a viable alternative. If the Democrats had nominated nearly anyone else (except Sanders, that s--t will never fly in the US as a whole) We would have a congress in control of one party and executive in the control of the other and we'd all be sleeping better. Hillary Clinton and all the baggage that came with her was a nonstarter. I mean she lost Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Democrats don't lose those states. She nearly lost Minnesota. Even Mondale won Minnesota. It was the only State he won. So for all of Trumps flaws, Clinton was equally flawed. And the voters were facing a choice of SoS or something different. Unless they were smart. The smart ones said "to hell with both of you" and voted 3rd party. I know that saying all the GOP/DNC candidates are pretty much the same is your thing, but that was always obviously not true about Trump and is, incredibly, becoming even more blatantly obvious as time passes. I don't see a candidate the Democrats could have put up that would be massively better President than Trump. That was also true of the candidates that the GOP put up against Trump in the primaries, as terrible as that field was. What Trump was, was a huge litmus test of partisanship in American politics. Once a upon a time you could say something along the lines of the following, albeit without evidence: "Republican voters would vote for their party even if Justin Bieber/Carrot Top/Donald Trump/Kim Kardashian/Paris Hilton was the nominee". well, now there's evidence, and I think the same is true of Democrats. Hell, if you could have magically exchanged the nominees in the last election, I'm pretty sure the end result would have differed very little in terms of the popular vote.

Pretty much.

That's all well and good but the media was always a bunch of biased muckrackers, even back to the days of the beginning of your country. The mainstream media is continuing as it always was, sometimes good, sometimes bad but most times just mediocre. Trump as President was the result of a weird confluence of factors, the strongest of all being the subprime financial crisis, but also the cult of celebrity, the increased awareness of underlying prejudices in society, the rise of internet powered extremists, the hard partisan divide, demographics, the electoral college, the slanted perception of crime and terrorism, the return of fascism as a relevant political force, and more things that haven't crossed my mind, right now. One could argue that the pivotal event leading to the Trump Presidency was Comey's shenanigans a week before the election, but really, Trump shouldn't even have made it out of the escalator, much less the Republican primaries or the actual Presidential campaign.

It's a good thing Trump agrees with that then, as he wants to spend money on an ineffectual wall instead of actually needed and useful infrastructure.

So what's the difference to all other publications, according to you?

That type of story doesn't really expire though. I mean I don't think he is just coasting on it or anything, but that gives him some lifelong street cred in my world. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/make-believe-maverick-20081016

McCain is now well known for being all talk. Also he was always a womanizing, unprincipled idiot who only got anywhere because of his Dad.

Anyone wants a 50% coupon?

Baby boomers had more kids than you can shake a stick at and the world's slowly stumbling towards catastrophe thanks to their active efforts. Seems to me that having kids is not a reliable predictor towards a person's ability to give a rat's ass about said kids' future.

He is not.

No. You are welcome.

The Supreme Court is back in conservative hands and illegal border crossings are down 70%, so he's not as ineffective is you claim. Consider the difference if the super shrew won. Republican weakness is that they're disunited against a united Democrat opposition, thus majority of Republicans have to yield to Dems because the far right is so intransigent they sabotage the good when they can't get the perfect.I would suggest that if people are suddenly choosing to stay in Mexico instead of moving to the US, things must be getting pretty bad in the US. Yes. The decrease in bank robberies after new security system is installed is a sign that things get pretty bad in the bank. F... logic. The better analogy would be a new security system that works so well it reduces the number of new clients the bank welcomes on a daily basis. And then the bank gets robbed by an existing customer, anyway. Edit: I'm sorry, I completely dropped the ball here. Let me correct this. And then the bank gets robbed by the CEO. And then the bank gets robbed by the branch manager. And then the bank gets robbed by the security contractor. But now, at least the money is safely always within the bank, under the control of fewer and fewer customer while the rest of the customers see their assets decreasing in value over time.