[mikeh]

kenberg, on 2016-December-26, 21:35, said:

I could claim that Donald trump is the Antichrist.

The irony is that many Xian conservatives DID claim that Obama was the anti-Christ in 2008. And still do! I made the mistake of googling 'Obama as anti-christ'. I don't recommend it. It is a glimpse into insanity.

I wonder how many of K's friends at least don't reject the notion?

[y66]

Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT), who is pretty far to the right of the political spectrum, said this of Merrick Garland, Obama's Supreme Court nominee in 2010 when he was considered for the slot that ultimately went to Elena Kagan: If nominated, he would be a “consensus nominee” and there was “no question” he would be confirmed.

This year, before Obama nominated Garland, Hatch said “The president told me several times he’s going to name a moderate, but I don’t believe him. He could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants.”

The argument for voting for Trump because he was the last person standing between Hillary Clinton and the death of the Constitution and America as some posters know it is lost on me. Out of respect for logic and decorum, can subscribers of this view please not also suggest they are pro-judicial independence or that the founding fathers, who would have supported their right to vote for Trump, would not also have been baffled by their reason for doing so.

[Winstonm]

mikeh, on 2016-December-26, 23:54, said:

Hey, Winston. I make no excuse for the slimes who have crept out from under their rocks to threaten the guy, but the guy was way out of line, from the various reports I read, some of which quote the comments posted by this guy and his husband. Ivanka is a nasty piece of over-privileged garbage (if the quotes I have read from her book are true*) but she and her kids were slumming on a regular plane, en route to one of daddy's mansions, and were entitled to be allowed to travel in peace, no matter how horrible they may be as human beings. I am no fan of anything trump, but this is not one for the good guys.



* including feeling sorry for herself because her lemonade stand was not on a public street, so no passersby would buy her lemonade....but it turned out ok because she made all the servants buy her lemonade...their money going to her! And it was sooo tough being made a Director of a major company at age 25....all those grownups thinking that she got the gig only because daddy owned the company....guess what...they were right. Making fake arrowheads 0n one of daddy's estates and selling them to her friends....hey...a chip of the old block...what's a little fraud between friends? And so on.

I wasn't standing up for the guy. My point is to look at how the Trump supporters responded to the guy's rudeness - the vitriol is more like an angry mob than an insulted citizenry.

[Winstonm]

Overcoming a political bias is difficult as it requires both rigorous self honesty and rigorous intellectual honesty.

[y66]

From Sorry, Liberals. Bigotry Didn’t Elect Donald Trump by David Paul Kuhn:

Quote

Donald J. Trump won the white working-class vote over Hillary Clinton by a larger margin than any major-party nominee since World War II. Instead of this considerable achievement inspiring introspection, figures from the heights of journalism, entertainment, literature and the Clinton campaign continue to suggest that Mr. Trump won the presidency by appealing to the bigotry of his supporters. As Bill Clinton recently said, the one thing Mr. Trump knows “is how to get angry white men to vote for him.”

This stereotyping of Trump voters is not only illiberal, it falsely presumes Mr. Trump won because of his worst comments about women and minorities rather than despite them.

In fact, had those people who agreed that Mr. Trump lacked “a sense of decency” voted for Mrs. Clinton, she would have been elected the next president.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump equally won over party loyalists. Yet about one in five voters did not have a favorable view of either candidate. These voters overwhelmingly backed Mr. Trump. Exit polls demonstrated that if voters who disapproved of both candidates had divided evenly between them, Mrs. Clinton would have won.

Several weeks before the election, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 51 percent of white working-class voters did not believe that Mr. Trump had a “sense of decency” and ranked Mrs. Clinton slightly higher on that quality.

But they were not voting on decency. Indeed, one-fifth of voters — more than 25 million Americans — said they “somewhat” disapproved of Mr. Trump’s treatment of women. Mr. Trump won three-quarters of these voters, despite their disapprobation.

Bluntly put, much of the white working class decided that Mr. Trump could be a jerk. Absent any other champion, they supported the jerk they thought was more on their side — that is, on the issues that most concerned them.

And anti-immigrant blowback, for instance, was not what unified them. Mr. Trump proposed expelling illegal immigrants yet more of his voters, by a 50 percent to 45 percent margin, said illegal immigrants working here should be offered a chance to apply for legal status rather than be deported.

In the Obama era, we also saw that race was not a critical driver of white swing votes. Barack Obama won more support among white men in 2008, including the working class, than any Democrat since 1980.

Mr. Obama’s support among these whites was at its peak in 2008 after the stock market crash. At the depths of the Great Recession that followed, blue-collar white men experienced the most job losses.

Their support began hemorrhaging after Mr. Obama chose early in his presidency — when congressional Democrats could have overcome Republican obstruction — to fight for health care reform instead of a “new New Deal.”

By 2016, Mr. Trump personified the vote against the status quo, one still not working out for them. A post-campaign study comparing the George W. Bush coalition in 2000 to the Trump coalition in 2016 found that Mr. Trump particularly improved in areas hurt most by competition from Chinese imports, from the bygone brick and tile industry of Mason City, Iowa, to the flagging furniture plants of Hickory, N.C. The study concluded that, had the import competition from China been half as large, Mrs. Clinton would have won key swing states and the presidency with them.

This argument does not ignore bigotry. Racism appeared more concentrated among Trump voters. One poll found that four in 10 Trump supporters said blacks were more “lazy” than whites, compared with one-quarter of Clinton or John Kasich supporters.

But traits are not motives and don’t necessarily decide votes. Consider that four in 10 liberal Democrats, the largest share of any group, said in 2011 that they would hold a Mormon candidate’s faith against him or her. It would be silly to argue that, therefore, liberals voted for Mr. Obama because Mitt Romney was Mormon.

Yet the Trump coalition continues to be branded as white backlash. The stereotyping forgets that many Trump supporters held a progressive outlook. Mr. Trump won nearly one in four voters who wanted the next president to follow more liberal policies.

Democrats need only recall Mr. Clinton to understand how voters can support someone in spite of his faults. Mr. Clinton won re-election in 1996 despite a majority, including about a third of liberal voters, saying he was not honest. His approval rating reached the highest point of his presidency during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It wasn’t that Democrats and independents endorsed Mr. Clinton’s behavior. They opposed Republicans more.

Two decades later, we are reminded again that a vote for a presidential candidate is not a vote for every aspect of him. We can look for the worst in our opponents, but that doesn’t always explain how they got the best of us.

So, according to Kuhn, Trump won because Obama made a strategic error by prioritizing healthcare over the economy and by not doing more to address the loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs (3.6 million lost between 2000 and 2007 due to imports plus 1.4 million lost between 2007 and 2014 due to the Great Recession). It's definitely the case that those 5 million jobs have not come back and that Obama expended a lot of political capital on healthcare that did not pay off politically.

[hrothgar]

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-26, 20:00, said:

Let's test that hypothesis. The most attacked people in the Water Cooler are Al_U_Card, jonottowa, Kaitlyn S, jogs, (did I miss anyone?)

Wow, it's just awe-striking how much truth there is to that statement!

Same here. I'm pro-choice, pro environment, and pro-gay rights. Still considered an alt-right wingnut in most places though.

Kaitlyn, I just did a quick scan of posting histories.

In recent memory, Jogs has only participated in one thread in the Watercooler (this one)
He's only posted (roughly) a dozen times.

In what way, shape, or form could he be one of the "most attacked people in the Watercooler"?

This is yet another example of you posting sloppy and incorrect information based on your own perceptions rather than doing even a basic research.

I agree that you, and Al, and Jon get attacked a lot.

I dn't think that this is because of your political views - there are a number of conservative and centrist posters who don't get attacked - rather the issue is that all three of you

1. Post a lot
2. Post stuff that can be easily demonstrated to be factually incorrect
3. Seem to be constitutionally incapable of learning from your constant string of mistakes.

Take a look at the defining characteristic of these "attacks"

1. Person X posts something that is provably false
2. Person Y demonstrates that this is untrue
3. Person X runs away, refusing to confront facts that contradict their world view

Then, after a while, Person X starts complaining that people don't respect them our their decisions.

FWIW, I have seen a bunch of claims from you that you are "pro-choice, pro environment, and pro-gay rights"

This may be true, but most of stuff that you actually post is a combination of racist drivel and conservative conspiracy theories.

I have a strong feeling that if you were actually making "pro environment" posts, I'd find these every bit as distressing.

[hrothgar]

Kaitlyn S, on 2016-December-26, 20:00, said:

Let's test that hypothesis. The most attacked people in the Water Cooler are Al_U_Card, jonottowa, Kaitlyn S, jogs, (did I miss anyone?)

Wow, it's just awe-striking how much truth there is to that statement!

On a more serious notes, Al and Jon are are two of the the most obvious anti-Semites and racists on the site.

You really might want want to consider who you are choosing as your fellow travelers...

[Al_U_Card]

mikeh, on 2016-December-26, 20:45, said:

You might want to stop using the 97% meme as not only does consensus not have anything to do with real science, it labels you as someone that has not done any real or serious investigation into the facts of the matter.

[Al_U_Card]

hrothgar, on 2016-December-27, 06:06, said:

On a more serious notes, Al and Jon are are two of the the most obvious anti-Semites and racists on the site.

You really might want want to consider who you are choosing as your fellow travelers...

Please demonstrate the facts that support your contention. Being anti-anything that is your opinion is not sufficient.

[hrothgar]

Al_U_Card, on 2016-December-27, 07:42, said:

Please demonstrate the facts that support your contention. Being anti-anything that is your opinion is not sufficient.

Sure, here's the easiest...

When people complain about Goldman Sach they might be complaining about the institution
When they go out of their way to unnecessarily capitalize the word "Goldman" they are pointing at Jews.

If you prefer, we can start examining various sources that you cite to support your own positions and trace some of their less savory comments about the internional Zionist conspiracy, the Protocols of the Elders o Zion, and the imminent threat that the Freemasons present to the United States. However, this will need to wait until at least tomorrow's dinner party

[Al_U_Card]

hrothgar, on 2016-December-27, 07:58, said:

Sure, here's the easiest...

When people complain about Goldman Sach they might be complaining about the institution
When they go out of their way to unnecessarily capitalize the word "Goldman" they are pointing at Jews.

What? Seriously? The vampire-squid society interest in all things $ cannot be emphasized enough!
Try again, 2 strikes to go.

[Al_U_Card]

Al_U_Card, on 2016-December-27, 08:03, said:

What? Seriously? The vampire-squid society interest in all things $ cannot be emphasized enough!
Try again, 2 strikes to go.

Btw you get a break on the Z-word things as 3rd party (not the dinner kind) and further removed associations are so weak as to be beneath consideration. Losing the moral high ground means you will have to come up with something substantial even if it means waiting 'til Hell freezes over. (Sorry if I offended anyone by excessively capitalizing the H ... erm... h-word .... )

[hrothgar]

Al_U_Card, on 2016-December-27, 08:03, said:

What? Seriously? The vampire-squid society interest in all things $ cannot be emphasized enough!
Try again, 2 strikes to go.

You're too stupid to even understand what I wrote

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2016-December-26, 22:23, said:

Ken,

I think you are too generous. I also suggest reading about how Trump supporters are attacking the jet blue passenger who had the audacity to criticize Ivanka Trump. I fear things in this country will only get uglier.

mikeh, on 2016-December-26, 23:54, said:

Hey, Winston. I make no excuse for the slimes who have crept out from under their rocks to threaten the guy, but the guy was way out of line, from the various reports I read, some of which quote the comments posted by this guy and his husband. Ivanka is a nasty piece of over-privileged garbage (if the quotes I have read from her book are true*) but she and her kids were slumming on a regular plane, en route to one of daddy's mansions, and were entitled to be allowed to travel in peace, no matter how horrible they may be as human beings. I am no fan of anything trump, but this is not one for the good guys.



* including feeling sorry for herself because her lemonade stand was not on a public street, so no passersby would buy her lemonade....but it turned out ok because she made all the servants buy her lemonade...their money going to her! And it was sooo tough being made a Director of a major company at age 25....all those grownups thinking that she got the gig only because daddy owned the company....guess what...they were right. Making fake arrowheads 0n one of daddy's estates and selling them to her friends....hey...a chip of the old block...what's a little fraud between friends? And so on.

A brouhaha that had escaped my notice. I will let them all fight it out without me. And, in a way, that's my point. Or one of my points. We do not yet know a lot of details about Trump's plans but we can look at some questions.

There have been a number of stories about people who are currently enrolled in the ACA and who are wondering where this election leaves them. Many of them voted for Trump, apparently trusting that he did not really mean what he said. Saying that he will repeal it and replace it by something really terrific made, I guess, a good campaign bite but we are now reaching a point where more details than "really terrific" are needed. What are they?

PISA recently released another report and guess what, US students scored abominably. Trump has made it clear that he regards Common Core as an instrument of the devil, and he will get rid of it immediately. Ok, he will get rid of it. Is that the whole plan?


And so on. Verbally attacking Trump's wife [oops. daughter, of course. My error] as she travels with her children is bad manners and bad tactics. I consider the "bad manners" the worse of these, but bad tactics would also be bad. Same for booing Pence as he goes to see a play. But it is also a sideshow. Our future is at stake here. We have to do better than booing Pence at Hamilton or berating Ivanka on a plane.

Health care is tricky. I am at an age when I see often and up close just how tricky. For finances, for longevity, for quality of life. I am open to possibilities, but "really terrific", without details, doesn't work for me as a plan. Educational issues are very important to me. At the personal level, I am a Ph.D whose father finished eighth grade and whose mother had a little high school. I want kids to have the opportunity I had. At the national level, I think doing a better job of education is a matter of national survival. Demonizing Common Core, again without any details of what comes next after dumping it, strikes me as simplistic beyond tolerance.

I regard myself as open to workable ideas and they do not have to come from the left. My expectations for Trump are so low that he almost has to do better than that. At least I hope so.

[andrei]

hrothgar, on 2016-December-26, 12:42, said:

2. A very small set of world leaders joined the march in France.

hrothgar, on 2016-December-26, 14:23, said:

EUROPE:
French President Francois Hollande
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
British Prime Minister David Cameron
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis
European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker
European Parliament president Martin Schulz
European Union president Donald Tusk
Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg
Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz
Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt
Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny
Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico
Latvian Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic
Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel
Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat
Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven
Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko
Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga
Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibachvili
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov
Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz
NORTH AMERICA:
US attorney general Eric Holder
Canadian public safety minister Steven Blaney
MIDDLE EAST:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman
Jordanian King Abdullah II and Queen Rania
Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas
United Arab Emirates foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan
Qatari Sheikh Mohamed Ben Hamad Ben Khalifa Al Thani
Bahrain foreign minister Sheikh Khaled ben Ahmed Al Khalifa and Prince Abdullah Ben Hamad al-Khalifa
AFRICA:
Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita
Gabonese President Ali Bongo
Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou
Benin President Thomas Boni Yayi
Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa
Algerian foreign minister Ramtane Lamamra

[cherdano]

Clearly, if Obama had attended the march and said "radical Islamic terrorism" in every speech (followed by a magic spell from Harry Potter), ISIS would be history by now.

[Al_U_Card]

cherdano, on 2016-December-27, 09:09, said:

Clearly, if Obama had attended the march and said "radical Islamic terrorism" in every speech (followed by a magic spell from Harry Potter), ISIS would be history by now.

So, continuing the invasion and subjugation of several sovereign nations, while supporting "moderate" factions for regime change in others (not to mention sanctions already used or currently in force etc) had nothing to do with anything? The US is the great Satan in those nations because their military presence in those regions is unnecessary and unproductive except for the benefit of the arms industry and associated corporations.

[Al_U_Card]

andrei, on 2016-December-27, 09:04, said:

You may well be too stupid to understand what he said
.........ROFLMAO

[hrothgar]

andrei, on 2016-December-27, 09:04, said:

There are roughly 200 countries in the world.
There look to be 44 represented here...

Big whoop.

[Al_U_Card]

hrothgar, on 2016-December-27, 09:45, said:

There are roughly 200 countries in the world.
There look to be 44 represented here...

Big whoop.

And it is, accent on the who. I would have capitalized the WHO in whoop but I am not very anti the World Health Organization.
More of a big whoops.