The 2018 Trump Presidency thread

[zephyr]

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the society and state without discrimination or repression.

Orly?

Righto then, fair enough, are you saying that your freedom to Express yourself here is on par with everyone else?



What if you are given the exact same leeway and freedom to express yourself as everyone else, staff or not. Kinda like in the political world, Trump is also given and takes without asking, as much freedom to express himself as anyone else.

Who is the leader of the Democrats anyway? Who is Andrew Jackson?

I'm pretty sure no one is physically stopping him from being just as much of a Twitter twat as Trump.

Are the Republicans actually preventing anyones civil rights ? Has any right wing person impeded your freedom to Express yourself here in this subforum?

 

[TheLoveBandit]

number of trump tweets about the caravan since the election? zero.

obvious conclusion is obvious...

I'm pretty sure I can win the BL Award (we doing those again sometime?) for dimmest bulb on things. The obvious can escape me. Care to elaborate on why Trump hasn't tweeted about the caravan? IME, he can't help but tweet about all kinds of sht.

 

[Xorkoth]

I think the implication is that it was a fake issue used to drum up Republican support for the midterms. And that he doesn't actually care about it.

zephyr: The Republicans are trying to take away a woman's right to abortion and defund planned parenthood. They're trying to prevent gay marriage. Their use of voter suppression is off the charts, which is certainly impinging upon civil rights. But that's just policymakers, it has nothing to do with Bluelight.

 

[zephyr]

Voter supression is a thing now is it? Was it at the last election?



Hey its politics, this is what they do, just bloody vote for whomever represents what you think anyway .





*I had a quick look into the "taking away a womans right to abortion" thing, defunding Plannrd Parenthood etc.


Again, quite foreign to me as Medicare does provide access to any bulk billing gp so anyone who needs a doctor has access here as long as they have a medicare card.


Sexual health services are both private and state owned, why America cant just provide a basic health service which includes sexual health is beyond me.


Abortions, well, they are not free ok. They are pretty expensive for surgical ones, the numbers should drop and keep dropping if the sexual health and education workd as does access to get contraception, the chemical abortion is a horrible experience as well but so much cheaper and safer.


Why is there this really out dated uneducated view about sex and pregnancy there?

Looking at the funding for planned parenthood, they are supposed to be not for profit, they run at a profit and still dont have to pay tax or return unused funding?

How about scrap that monopoly entirely and cut the crap, the govt should provide health care, abortions are awesome and all, they come with the sexual health lecture, script and fitting of a mirena coil and a $800 bill so abortions are necessary to have available, kept legal and lets face it, a half hour twighlight procedure with a suction curette , not cheap but yes there is a profit made. My company profits from them, thats normal for the private health industry.


Given the reluctance to fund much of anything health wise, or anything wise, what do you even have a government for anyway?

 

[alasdairm]

Everyone around me is hard left.

i figured that much but how, exactly, are they preventing you from expressing your views (which is what i take from your use of the word 'suffocate')? i guess i'm just a little confused as you also say you are "pretty unapologetic about it" which suggests you're freely expressing contrary opinions.

I'm pretty sure I can win the BL Award (we doing those again sometime?) for dimmest bulb on things. The obvious can escape me. Care to elaborate on why Trump hasn't tweeted about the caravan?

this:

I think the implication is that it was a fake issue used to drum up Republican support for the midterms. And that he doesn't actually care about it.

he clearly exaggerated the threat to instill fear for political purposes. election over, no need to do that any more...

alasdair

 

[TheLoveBandit]

Thanks.

 

[zephyr]

That's one way of looking at it.

 

[alasdairm]

Thanks.

no worries. what do you think?

alasdair

 

[cduggles]

Trump is delineating rules for decorum for the press? Ffs.

 

[Bagseed]

Even if they all intentionally did a nazi salute it doesn't mean that they're racist. It doesn't mean anything.

where I am from, doing the Hitlergru? intentionally means you're a Nazi...

 

[alasdairm]

"I can tell you Matt Whitaker's a great guy...I mean, I know Matt Whitaker." (donald trump, october 11th)

"I don't know Matt Whitaker" (donald trump, november 9th)

he can't even get his story straight with himself.

alasdair

 

[Captain.Heroin]

i figured that much but how, exactly, are they preventing you from expressing your views (which is what i take from your use of the word 'suffocate')? i guess i'm just a little confused as you also say you are "pretty unapologetic about it" which suggests you're freely expressing contrary opinions.

When I do express my views, I get a lot of nasty looks. People have judged me quite negatively and/or hate me for some of my views. Outright scoffing to mild expressions of hostility. I'm not surprised and I don't really care, people are entitled to their disgust. It has created an unfriendly environment in which to be open and honest in real life.

I'm fairly unapologetic about my views but pretty much choose to selectively open up, or not at all.

Again I'm referring to where I live in real life. BL has been remarkably willing to hear me out for the most part and I feel that the more well-read minds at least give my ideas a once-over serious consideration/examination, even if some are, in the end, vehemently opposed to some of my ideas.

 

[Xorkoth]

Voter supression is a thing now is it? Was it at the last election?



Hey its politics, this is what they do, just bloody vote for whomever represents what you think anyway .

Yes, it has been happening for a long time. It's about throwing out votes that were made (dispportionately people of color), and making it more difficult for groups of people to actually vote. It's about redrawing districts to make it difficult or impossible for one party or another's candidate to win regardless of if they won the popular vote in the greater area or not. It's also about actively working to disenfranchise groups of people, and while it's ultimately an individual's responsibility to not be disenfranchised, it's still sketchy and clearly an attempt to influence the vote.

Abortions, well, they are not free ok. They are pretty expensive for surgical ones, the numbers should drop and keep dropping if the sexual health and education workd as does access to get contraception, the chemical abortion is a horrible experience as well but so much cheaper and safer.

They're not free from planned parenthood either.

How about scrap that monopoly entirely and cut the crap, the govt should provide health care, abortions are awesome and all, they come with the sexual health lecture, script and fitting of a mirena coil and a $800 bill so abortions are necessary to have available, kept legal and lets face it, a half hour twighlight procedure with a suction curette , not cheap but yes there is a profit made. My company profits from them, thats normal for the private health industry.


Given the reluctance to fund much of anything health wise, or anything wise, what do you even have a government for anyway?

Good question isn't it?

 

[cduggles]

Trump, en route to California, says more missing in wildfires 'than anyone thought even possible'

President Donald Trump previewed his trip to California with reporters at the White House on Saturday, lamenting the number of residents missing in the wake of multiple deadly wildfires that blazed across the state this week.

“Many more people are missing than anyone thought even possible,” the president said.


The confirmed death toll of a single Northern California wildfire that razed the town of Paradise stands at 71, with the list of missing people rising to more than 1,000, authorities said Friday.


Trump said he will be meeting Saturday with Gov. Jerry Brown, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom and emergency workers across the state.


“I want to be with the firefighters and the FEMA first responders,” Trump said, anticipating that he would likely be returning to the White House at 4 a.m. Sunday morning, “or something like that.”


The president also hinted at some potentially confrontational discussions he might engage in Saturday with California’s elected leaders, including on the state’s forest management efforts.


“I’ve been saying that for a long time this could have been a lot different situation, but the one thing is that everybody now knows that this is what we have to be doing, and there's no question about it,” Trump said. “It should have been done many years ago, but i think everybody's on the right side. It’s a big issue.”


The president was widely criticized by state officials last week for a tweet in which he blamed the fires on California’s “gross mismanagement” of its forests and threatening to withhold federal funding from the state.
“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” Trump wrote online. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

You know no one is going to explain that 'land management', which is logging, had nothing to do with this fire to Trump.

I wonder how this trip will go?

 

[alasdairm]

trump decided not to honor american soldiers in france.

trump decided not to honor american soldiers at arlington (which, uncharacteristically, he admitted was a mistake).

trump claims he did visit arlington on veterans day last year. he did not.

remind me who's disrespecting the military?



alasdair

 

[zephyr]

Yes, it has been happening for a long time. It's about throwing out votes that were made (dispportionately people of color), and making it more difficult for groups of people to actually vote. It's about redrawing districts to make it difficult or impossible for one party or another's candidate to win regardless of if they won the popular vote in the greater area or not. It's also about actively working to disenfranchise groups of people, and while it's ultimately an individual's responsibility to not be disenfranchised, it's still sketchy and clearly an attempt to influence the vote.

Hang on a sec, bear with me here a minute. Do you mean like rezoning an area or neighbouring areas to fit a candidate?


How the hell can that happen? Just with urban sprawl ?

Aussie but bear with me again..

Theres council areas and "seats" here so the whole of FNQ (top end queensland) is ONE seat right, has one candidate, and a huge number of aboriginal voters. Polling areas are pretty much at the same place every time, theres no variation, counters are not party members as far as I know , or their families but are government employees.


So when Labor won, it was helped along , in fact they would not have won without their candidate who was a pretty well known, respected elder and I wouldn't know if he was chosen because the race draw card or he simply was the right guy for the job in Mossman, but he was done for domestic violence by his ex and dodging child support , wasnt actually turning up to sittings anyway and kept his job just because he kept them in govt. And the Liberal leader who lost also a complete arsehole.

Is that an equivalent scenario to this weird thing?

Why has it not been really named here, in this sub, until the last couple of days? I've only seen it in the other thread.


What about when Obama won? Same thing? It's just not very convincing than some made up trendy term to throw to the right, haven't had much back at the left except Trump being a dickhead.

Ok so if it actually exists and isnt the usual smoke and mirror election bullshit, I would hazard a gues at both being culpable in a way, because it does seem really too much nonsense about race.

It's not as if America is the only country of mixed races, I'm pretty sure if other democracies can manage to have elections that are fair, then you Americans can too.

 

[Xorkoth]

Basically, voting is split into districts, and candidates win not on popular vote in total, but by winning districts. Generally what happens is the dominant party (not just Republicans) will redraw districts into very strange shapes (for example moving wealthy neighborhoods that used to be a part of pone district into another, or moving predominantly minority neighborhoods, etc) so as to put people likely to vote against them into districts that they already know they will lose, removing those votes from districts they want to make sure to win. From wikipedia:

Gerrymandering is effective because of the wasted vote effect. Wasted votes are votes that did not contribute to electing a candidate, either because they were in excess of the bare minimum needed for victory or because the candidate lost. By moving geographic boundaries, the incumbent party packs opposition voters into a few districts they will already win, wasting the extra votes. Other districts are more tightly constructed with the opposition party allowed a bare minority count, thereby wasting all the minority votes for the losing candidate. These districts constitute the majority of districts and are drawn to produce a result favoring the incumbent party.[26]

A quantitative measure of the effect of gerrymandering is the efficiency gap, computed from the difference in the wasted votes for two different political parties summed over all the districts. When the parties win district elections in rough proportion to their electoral popularity, the efficiency gap is near zero.[27][28] Citing in part an efficiency gap of 11.69% to 13%, a U.S. District Court in 2016 ruled against the 2011 drawing of Wisconsin legislative districts. In the 2012 election for the state legislature, that gap in wasted votes meant that one party had 48.6% of the two-party votes but won 61% of the 99 districts.[29]

This illustrates how a candidate could only get 48% of the popular vote yet win 61% of districts, thus getting elected, even though they shouldn't have been according to what the people wanted... through gerrymandering. Election tampering. it's voter suppression because it's blatantly making the votes of some people not count. And it's something both parties do, but lately the Republicans have been doing it so bad that some states have passed ballots to only allow nonpartisan, third-party committees to redraw district lines (a very good thing).

 

[cduggles]

Gerrymandering only effects (on the national level) elections for the House of Representatives.

Senators and POTUS/VPOTUS go along state lines (with a couple of exceptions for the electoral college).

Here's a podcast about REDMAP and a hysterical video by John Oliver if you are curious: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A-4dIImaodQ

 

[cduggles]

[h=1]'Great families, torn apart': Trump meets with families, emergency responders of California bar shooting[/h]

During his trip to survey wildfire damage in California, President Donald Trump met briefly at an airport hangar with families and first responders touched by the shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks more than a week ago, which left 12 victims dead in what Trump called "a horrible, horrible event."

Reporters and photographers were not allowed to accompany the president to the session, which Trump later described as emotional.

"What can you say other than it's so sad to see. These are great people. Great families, torn apart," he told reporters. "We just hugged them and we kissed them — and everybody. And it was very warm."

He added: "It was tragic and yet, in one way, it was a very beautiful moment.".

Yes. What can you say?

 

[zephyr]

How can a district just be redrawn like that, by anyone , since that would also change the surrounding districts and also along with that what area the public are represented by, as if it's just a drawing?


That doesnt happen here that I am aware of , not without community consultation and a lot of bureaucracy.


Elections are fiddled with by preferential deals between candidates who kinda collude to get enough votes to win office between them, it's really quite amusing to see it happen and who promises to not ever trade preferences prior to the vote then have them do just that during the count.


Theres no name for it, it's not voter suppression as we have to vote for who we think is the best person but none of them really are.