[Terez]

Oh, they're establishing a legacy, no doubt about that. Whether it's a politically viable legacy is another question.

[worry]

I vow a chicken in every pot and a Trump in every election.

[worry]

Star Trek people new and old released a pretty strong anti-Trump statement today. Lots of signatories. Not surprising, I suppose, but it made me curious about the candidates' stances on NASA. Seems to me HRC is good (not great) on NASA, and will at least maintain the status quo -- not ideal, but not backwards movement. Trump is a little more wishy-washy: has positive things to say about NASA in the distant past, but seems to think it's disposable in light of other things he wants to accomplish to MAGA (probably in part because he doesn't actually care about it one way or another, and in part because NASA is a major participant in climate change science). Decent breakdown, but a few months old so it has a lot of the Susan Collins/convention stuff up top. https://www.inverse....ncy-nasa-future

[Terez]

worry, on 01 October 2016 - 01:37 AM, said:

Star Trek people new and old released a pretty strong anti-Trump statement today. Lots of signatories.

Had to Google that. The article I found noted that Shatner and Stewart were missing, maybe because they can't actually vote in the US. But both Shatner and Stewart have commented on Trump publicly before. Maybe they didn't want to go so far as to support Hillary. I dunno.

[Mentalist]

Terez, on 30 September 2016 - 09:51 AM, said:

Darkwatch, on 29 September 2016 - 09:23 PM, said:

The more I hear about the importance of Trump's kids in this campaign the more and more worried I am that one of them is going to also run for president in the future.

I'm sure they've thought about it, but as time goes on I suspect we'll come to see this episode in our political history as a low point (hopefully this is as low as it gets) and that any association with Trump will be considered toxic.

I realize there's US-specific things about this election (racism), but I still see this as part of a general political shift in the West, as part of the Brexit pattern. Governments have become too distant from the average person, leading the "anti-establishment protest votes/candidates") to gain significant traction. I can't predict how strong this movement/shift can get, but I certainly see it as a relevant subject in our near future.

[Silencer]

Mentalist, on 01 October 2016 - 06:21 AM, said:

Terez, on 30 September 2016 - 09:51 AM, said:

Darkwatch, on 29 September 2016 - 09:23 PM, said:

The more I hear about the importance of Trump's kids in this campaign the more and more worried I am that one of them is going to also run for president in the future.

I'm sure they've thought about it, but as time goes on I suspect we'll come to see this episode in our political history as a low point (hopefully this is as low as it gets) and that any association with Trump will be considered toxic.

I realize there's US-specific things about this election (racism), but I still see this as part of a general political shift in the West, as part of the Brexit pattern. Governments have become too distant from the average person, leading the "anti-establishment protest votes/candidates") to gain significant traction. I can't predict how strong this movement/shift can get, but I certainly see it as a relevant subject in our near future.

The thing is, I'm not sure that Trump, or Brexit, are truly anti-establishment votes.

Bernie Sanders was an anti-establishment vote. Even the Tea Party was, at least conceptually/initially from what I understand, basically an anti-establishment movement.

Brexit and Trump, though? Nothing in Brexit was anti-establishment to me. Because the EU was not the establishment. The EU is new, and young, and was bringing more legislation into effect that was anti-establishment than any political party in the UK.
Trump might *appear* anti-establishment by virtue of not being a career politician - and he certainly played on that point a lot during the primaries. But he's a career businessman/fraudster who thrives on what the establishment has done, and stands to gain vastly from furthering its progress.


I fear that anti-establishment is rapidly just becoming a code word for anti-progress, much in the way the term "regressive left" has magically sprung up out of nowhere as a disparaging remark for anyone who isn't completely callous to human suffering, despite its apparent definition only applying to about 0.1% of the population. Anti-establishment has been adopted by people who need a cloak for their votes, and in so doing they've undermined the term.

Brexit, Trump, the BNP and UKIP in Britain, the National Front in France and their ilk across Europe, they're all the same trend; racism, xenophobia, othering, and so forth. Granted, those feelings are fed and reinforced by the policies and practices of the establishment, and used to great effect by right-wing parties the world over, but that doesn't make people voting for those parties anti-establishment, it just makes them ill-informed and potentially racist. The GOP doesn't represent anti-establishment tendencies, and neither does Trump. Hillary doesn't either, but that doesn't make voting for Trump a protest vote, given Trump is just a worse option backed by a party that would love someone like Hillary to be their candidate.


If anything, Trump and Brexit are anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-multiculturalism votes. You can see it in the campaigns, the fascist, dictatorial language, the focus on controlling borders (as if they aren't already), and stopping illegal immigrants (which, by definition, are already not allowed, so what's new?), and through it all not one word of getting money out of politics - just getting other people out of *our* politics (read: make it a locals-only, whites-only, men-only club, again). That's not anti-establishment. Not by a long shot.


Heck, if Brexit was anti-establishment, then anti-establishment is *definitely* a bad thing. And I don't think that's the case at all.

[Tiste Simeon]

Yeah Brexit was dressed up as anti-establishment by people who were very establishment and packaged for people who are too stupid not to realise that...

[Terez]

Mentalist, on 01 October 2016 - 06:21 AM, said:

Terez, on 30 September 2016 - 09:51 AM, said:

Darkwatch, on 29 September 2016 - 09:23 PM, said:

The more I hear about the importance of Trump's kids in this campaign the more and more worried I am that one of them is going to also run for president in the future.

I'm sure they've thought about it, but as time goes on I suspect we'll come to see this episode in our political history as a low point (hopefully this is as low as it gets) and that any association with Trump will be considered toxic.

I realize there's US-specific things about this election (racism), but I still see this as part of a general political shift in the West, as part of the Brexit pattern. Governments have become too distant from the average person, leading the "anti-establishment protest votes/candidates") to gain significant traction. I can't predict how strong this movement/shift can get, but I certainly see it as a relevant subject in our near future.

I don't disagree with this, and I don't see the xenophobic motivations as being too far removed from the anti-establishment motivations, but I'm still hoping Trump is our low point. If we go any lower we're going to get a party shakeup, and I wouldn't complain about that, but I'd still rather not go any lower than Trump. Here's hoping.

[D'rek]

I saw some headlines and short articles recently saying that the U.S. Congress (or Senate?) passed a bill allowing citizens who had family members killed in 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia for damages based on the allegations that SA supported the attacks somehow, Obama veto'd it, and then they voted to overturn the veto and it passed? What's the deal with that?

[EmperorMagus]

D, on 01 October 2016 - 05:44 PM, said:

I saw some headlines and short articles recently saying that the U.S. Congress (or Senate?) passed a bill allowing citizens who had family members killed in 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia for damages based on the allegations that SA supported the attacks somehow, Obama veto'd it, and then they voted to overturn the veto and it passed? What's the deal with that?

That's pretty much it.

Obama vetoed it because he claimed "It opens the US up to litigation in foreign jurisdictions." The congress overturned to veto in a bi-partisan vote because "The legislation is specific to 9/11 and Saudi Arabia and Obama's veto was because of lobbyists."

The actual reason it passed was because it was really popular in year when the entire congress and half the senate are up for reelection.
Obama vetoed it because Saudis paid a lot of money.

Democracy in action folks!

[worry]

The other half is that immediately after overturning the veto, Republicans in Congress went into a panic spiral about the potential unintended consequences of the bill, and then blamed Pres. Obama for not warning them about those consequences in time (despite the fact that is exactly what he's been doing, and is included in the reasoning for his veto, and also that it's not his job to do their job for them). Mitch McConnell is the head moron on a Voltron-like body of assembled morons.

[EmperorMagus]

worry, on 02 October 2016 - 12:12 AM, said:

The other half is that immediately after overturning the veto, Republicans in Congress went into a panic spiral about the potential unintended consequences of the bill, and then blamed Pres. Obama for not warning them about those consequences in time (despite the fact that is exactly what he's been doing, and is included in the reasoning for his veto, and also that it's not his job to do their job for them). Mitch McConnell is the head moron on a Voltron-like body of assembled morons.

What continuously keeps amazing me is that we the people keep voting these idiots in. I know gerrymandering and the sort are affecting the election outcomes, but that congress of baboons is still an elected body. It's plain embarrassing for the state of the human race.

[Tsundoku]

It's all about keeping people fat and stupid.

Happy is also preferred, but if you can't manage that, you at least get them angry at some sort of "Others".

[JPK]

Oh boy, the NY Times got ahold of some past tax documents of Trump's and then published them without his consent. What was found doesn't show that he did anything illegal, but it does include a $916 million loss in 1995 that would allow him to write off a rather large amount of income for up to 18 years afterwards.

Times article

It looks like his lawyers are already trying to push consequences to the fullest extent of the law.

With as juicy as this is, I'm very curious as to what his more recent returns would reveal about the state of his worth and his business acumen.

[Morgoth]

HoosierDaddy, on 28 September 2016 - 10:58 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 28 September 2016 - 01:29 PM, said:

Vengy, no offence, but you guys elect your judges. How does this make your justice system non-political?

The judges that matter are most certainly not elected, and appointed for long periods of time, if not life.

Local judges, state judges: Blah. Don't mean shit. Federal judges are legit and where anything worthwhile happens.

There's actually been a lot of research regarding this question in Norway. Here the court system is an independent government body that makes its own choices as to whom they hire. Judges are not appointed by parliament. Except in the case of Supreme Court justices. Here too the court administration picks whom they wish to hire for the position, but in this case the choice needs to be confirmed by the ministry of justice. There has yet to be an instance where the ministry rejects the choice of the courts.

Now, even so there's been a lot of speculation as to whether judges feel beholden to the political party in power at the time of their hiring. In legal circles it was taken as a given that they do not. In other branches of the social sciences it was taken for granted that they do. A number of relatively recent research papers show quite clearly that there is no measurable bias. So 1-0 to the legal field I suppose. Obviously the US is not Norway and Norway is not the US. Still, at the end of the day judges are professionals, and typically amongst the best of their field. I think one does them a disservice to make unfounded assumptions about their biases.

The US Supreme Court is obviously a different matter as there you have a specific ideological basis for picking a judge.

[worry]

NYT just published an article today, coincidentally enough, on the very subject of elected judges: http://www.nytimes.c...hn-roberts.html

Luckily it's still the first week of the month, so I haven't exhausted my 10 free articles or whatever. Anyway, the gist of it is that yes indeed, being subject to elections affects the behavior of judges, predominantly by making them harsher in criminal matters and less likely to risk their necks on the frontiers of social justice (like gay rights) than non-elected counterparts. In addition -- in case that alone might not seem like a causal link -- it also seems that the closer one is to the election, the more this harshness increases (it might still be worth reading the article, which is more eloquent about this than I am).

So while I get HD's point about the hierarchy of courts, I wouldn't discount the toll on people's lives that judicial elections cause even in low level courts.

[EmperorMagus]

I'm on mobile, so haven't read the article.

But you can bypass the 10 free article restriction on NYT by opening the new articles using Chrome's incognito mode.

[Silencer]

You can also probably get the same information in an unlimited and more entertaining manner by watching the Last Week Tonight segment on Elected Judges...

>.>

[worry]

Yah, that was pretty good stuff too.

On another note, NY's attorney general has ordered the Trump Foundation to stop fundraising, Trump just implied that soldiers with PTSD are weak, and HRC is 'big league' baiting him on his business incompetence: https://twitter.com/...002734924484608 so his malformed brain will be frothing at the bit to combat that. I'm not above hoping he melts down completely in coming weeks.

[Kruppe of Darujhistan]

worry, on 03 October 2016 - 08:37 PM, said:

...I wouldn't discount the toll on people's lives that judicial elections cause even in low level courts.

Don't do crimes in election years. Got it.