Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[jogs]

Just some food for thought -- The Russians aren't fools. With Hillary Clinton heavily favored to win the election by most analyst and polls, wouldn't it be very likely that Russia would also try to put in place some "friends" to influence Hillary as well? So, after the current investigation is completed (whatever the outcome), it would probably be worthwhile to look for possible infiltration by the Russians among the Democrats.

The Russian ambassador said he tried to meet with both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Trump campaign as often a possible.

After nearly a year there is no evidence of any Russian/Trump conspiracy to win the election. Schumer and the democrats just loves to waste money. There should be an investigation on how the Russians try to influence American politics. The Democrats should be the losers on this investigation. Investigate Hillary, Podesta, and Obama along with Trump.

[jogs]

Russia attacked the U.S. election system, ....

 

 

Israel, Brexit, France, etc. How many foreign elections has Obama interfered with?

[Winstonm]

Israel, Brexit, France, etc. How many foreign elections has Obama interfered with?

 

News Flash: Obama is not in office.

[Winstonm]

If you consider "prejudice" to be a inappropriate, I apologise. Please substitute "preconception".

 

So far in this thread, lots of allegations have lacked proof.

 

Many of my statements are almost tautologies, for which proof isn't really needed. For example: It's hard to achieve a peaceful outcome in negotiation with Russians, if you're convinced that you're "sworn enemies".

 

But, IMO, you should still try: the 1984 scenario, fostered by the weapons-lobby, risks "Armageddon". In such circumstances, it's foolhardy to rule out a peaceful solution.

 

Yes, when a nation such as Russia is actively attacking it is difficult to negotiate a peaceful outcome until they stop attacking. Perception has nothing to do with it.

[nige1]

Yes, when a nation such as Russia is actively attacking it is difficult to negotiate a peaceful outcome until they stop attacking. Perception has nothing to do with it.

We defend rebels against the wrong kind of democracy.

They attack our allies, who are holy men creating a benign Caliphate for the glory of God.

We arm, train, and support freedom-fighters. They support terrorists.

We condemn discrimination, in general, but Russians are fair game.

Even if we accept this view, we should still negotiate, for the sake of world-peace.

[Winstonm]

Even if we accept this view, we should still negotiate, for the sake of world-peace.

 

I never said there should not be dialogue, only that with eyes open one should understand with whom one is dealing. It would be ludicrous to believe that a handshake from Vladimir Putin and his personal promise not to interfere in our elections would accomplish anything other than making the believer look foolish and naive.

[Al_U_Card]

Should be obvious to everyone that Trump fired Comey because he fears what the FBI investigation will find. I don't think Trump will be able to suppress it over the long haul.

You would think that after 5 decades of J Edgar, director-appointees (at the behest of the President...) would understand the need to get dirt on everyone in power so that they could ensure that "justice" was done...

[rmnka447]

Yes, it would be a near certainty that the Russians tried that. However, the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump lies in the likelihood that the Russians would succeed. For Clinton: close to 0, for Trump: close to 1.

 

There is zero evidence for inappropriate contacts between the Clinton team and the Russians, most likely because Clinton knows that inappropriate contacts with Russians are ... inappropriate. There have been plenty of inappropriate contacts between the Trump team and the Russians, most likely because the word inappropriate doesn't exist in Trump's vocabulary.

 

And just to make this clear. The fact that the likelihood that the Russians wouldn't succeed with Clinton isn't anything special. Anybody who would take a governing job serious would make sure that enemies don't influence their policies. So, regardless of who would have been president: Hillary, Bernie, Ted or Big Bird, they would have had the integrity and brains to prevent getting compromised by the enemy. It is pretty unique that someone who seems to lack either one or both makes it to the White House.

 

Rik

The essence of your comments is that any contact between Russians and anyone associated with Trump was inappropriate, but any similar contacts with Hillary or her team weren't. No one knows whether that's true or not either way. But progressives seem to be absolutely sure any contact with Trump's campaign weren't. It's a belief not a fact as yet. That's why the FBI investigation needs to get completed to get to the truth.

[nige1]

deleted

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[Winstonm]

The Russian ambassador said he tried to meet with both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Trump campaign as often a possible.

After nearly a year there is no evidence of any Russian/Trump conspiracy to win the election. Schumer and the democrats just loves to waste money. There should be an investigation on how the Russians try to influence American politics. The Democrats should be the losers on this investigation. Investigate Hillary, Podesta, and Obama along with Trump.

 

Is there anything that could be found in Trump's history that you would consider serious enough to invalidate him as president?

 

I am wondering as there is a growing list of suspicions and accusations - non-official from a Dutch documentary - of a history of money-laundering, racketeering, mafia connections, and cooperation with entities funding terrorism.

 

Would any of those rise in your view as a reason to remove Trump from office?

 

Actually, from the growing list of suspicions it seems collusion with the Russians during the election might be the least of Trump's concerns.

[Winstonm]

A new poll pretty well nails Trump's core trolls supporters:

Just 29 percent of Americans approve of President Donald Trump’s decision to fire James Comey as FBI director, according to a new poll.

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Surely an independent investigation is on the horizon:

 

The NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found that 38 percent disapprove of the decision. Among those who said they have been following the news closely, 33 percent approve, while 53 percent disapprove. Additionally, 78 percent of respondents said they would be in favor of an independent special prosecutor to oversee the probe into possible Trump-Russia ties.

[PassedOut]

Terrorism isn't just an Islamist threat: They hate the US government, and they're multiplying: the terrifying rise of 'sovereign citizens'

 

Although the Trump administration is reportedly planning to restructure the Department of Homeland Security’s countering violent extremism (CVE) program to focus exclusively on radical Islam, a 2014 national survey of 175 law enforcement agencies ranked sovereign citizens, not Islamic terrorists, as the most pressing terrorist threat. The survey ranked Islamic terrorists a close second, with the following top three threats all domestic in origin and sometimes overlapping: the militia movement, racist skinheads, the neo-Nazi movement.

I have a close relative in law enforcement who has dealt with these 'sovereign citizens' on the streets and in court, and he's seen first hand that they're as dangerous as they are deranged.

 

According to data from the Anti-Defamation League, at least 45 police officers have been killed by domestic extremists since 2001. Of these, 10 were killed by leftwing extremists, 34 by rightwing extremists, and one by homegrown Islamist extremists.

Political correctness prevents Trump and his followers from calling out these right-wing extremists as the domestic terrorists they are. But it will be a serious mistake for Trump to divert resources from this threat--more political correctness run amok.

[helene_t]

Additionally, 78 percent of respondents said they would be in favor of an independent special prosecutor to oversee the probe into possible Trump-Russia ties.

I don't think such polls are enlightening. Most people would favour independent enquiries into anything that isn't settled. Then, when the enquiry doesn't show what they wanted it to show, they may changer their opinion or they may say it wasn't independent.

 

Better simply to ask how likely they personally think it is that Trump's policies are influenced by his ties to Russia (or some such).

[Winstonm]

I don't think such polls are enlightening. Most people would favour independent enquiries into anything that isn't settled. Then, when the enquiry doesn't show what they wanted it to show, they may changer their opinion or they may say it wasn't independent.

 

Better simply to ask how likely they personally think it is that Trump's policies are influenced by his ties to Russia (or some such).

 

I think the importance of this poll is that it shows 78% of those polled do not trust the U.S. Congress to hold a non-partisan investigation.

 

My personal view is that an independent commission is needed - a special prosecutor is not needed until there is evidence of actual crimes.

[jogs]

Is there anything that could be found in Trump's history that you would consider serious enough to invalidate him as president?

 

NO. What did Obama do for working class Americans during his 8 years? What did Obama do for the inner cities?

[awm]

NO. What did Obama do for working class Americans during his 8 years? What did Obama do for the inner cities?

 

I'm not sure what you expect a president to do. Obama accomplished all the following:

 

1. Big increase in jobs; accompanied by a drop in unemployment.

2. Continued the downward trend in crime rates.

3. Managed to slightly reduce the US incarceration rate, despite no help from congress.

4. Drastically reduced the percentage of Americans without health insurance.

5. Used the federal review process to help police departments deal with racism and bias (for example in Baltimore); police departments in many cases welcome assistance from the feds, but now Trump's attorney general is rolling back the program.

6. Obama created the deferred action program which allows children whose parents brought them across the border illegally to stay in the country.

 

All of the above seem pretty good to me. In fact, I live in a downtown area and my wife teaches "inner city" kids. Things improved substantially for our community in general (fewer shut down businesses, generally more people working) and for her students in particular (more/better jobs, less fear of being deported) during the Obama presidency. The reaction of her students to Trump has been pure terror, and not unreasonably considering the new policies on immigration and (racist) enforcement of minor drug offenses.

 

Are there still problems? Sure, there are still gangs, there is still racism. College is still too expensive and not everyone has a good job. But things got better during Obama's administration and now things are getting worse.

[cherdano]

Remember when it was Clinton who is supposedly extremely careless with classified information?

[ldrews]

Remember when it was Clinton who is supposedly extremely careless with classified information?

 

Didn't she say: "It doesn't really matter!"

[Winstonm]

Winstonm, on 2017-May-14, 14:52, said:

Is there anything that could be found in Trump's history that you would consider serious enough to invalidate him as president?

 

 

 

NO.

 

Thank you. You have just classified yourself as an idiot, and I can now peacefully place you on ignore. Goodbye.

[Winstonm]

Didn't she say: "It doesn't really matter!"

 

Swing and a miss!

[nige1]

Thank you. You have just classified yourself as an idiot, and I can now peacefully place you on ignore. Goodbye.

Another person who disagrees with WinstomM? :(

[y66]

From Trump’s Fraudulent Voter-Fraud Commission by NYT Editorial Board:

 

President Trump’s repeated claim that “millions” of noncitizens voted illegally in the 2016 election has always been transparently self-serving — a desperate attempt to soothe his damaged ego and explain how he could have lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes.

 

It also lined up nicely with a yearslong crusade by Republican officials to convince Americans that “voter fraud” is an actual problem. As Mr. Trump’s own lawyers have pointed out, it’s not. But that hasn’t stopped the president from trying, as he so often does, to commandeer the machinery of the federal government to justify his own falsehoods. The most recent example was his creation last week of an advisory commission whose ostensible goal is to “enhance the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes,” with an emphasis on weeding out “improper” or “fraudulent” registration and voting.

 

To state the obvious, this isn’t a commission. It’s a self-driving vehicle preprogrammed to arrive at only one destination: that strange, fact-free land in which, according to Mr. Trump and many conservatives, hordes of foreigners and people without valid photo identification flood the polls, threatening the nation’s electoral integrity. The right-wing politicians and anti-voter activists who appear to believe this never trouble themselves with the actual data.

 

So here it is: Voting fraud is extremely rare, and in-person fraud — the only kind that would be caught by voter ID laws — is essentially nonexistent, as study after study has shown. And as for those foreigners, a new survey of local election officials in 42 jurisdictions turned up a total of about 30 cases of suspected noncitizen voting last November — out of more than 23 million votes.

 

Meanwhile, voter ID and other suppression laws keep losing in court, where judges demand actual evidence in support of claims. On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the decision of a federal appeals court last year striking down as unconstitutional North Carolina’s stunningly harsh anti-voter law, which required photo identification at the polls, cut early voting and eliminated same-day registration, among other measures. That decision found Republican state legislators had deliberately targeted “African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” A similarly severe Texas law was struck down by a federal judge, also for intentionally discriminating against minorities.

 

The purported purpose of Mr. Trump’s commission — to restore confidence in elections — is laughable, not only because Republicans have spent the past decade sowing seeds of doubt with hyped-up tales of fraud. In reality, voters’ confidence is mainly affected by whether their preferred candidate wins, not by the existence of voter ID or other laws.

 

Robert Bauer, co-chairman of the last presidential commission on elections, said Mr. Trump’s commission “is not intended to bolster confidence, but to undermine it, and on the strength of this program, to advance reforms that are costly, unnecessary and a burden on lawful voting by eligible voters.” Real reforms should include improved technology, more opportunities for early voting, and better-trained poll workers, as a comprehensive 2014 report produced by Mr. Bauer, a Democrat, and his Republican colleague, Benjamin Ginsberg, found.

 

The report also showed that bipartisanship is central to any credible effort to fix America’s voting systems. In contrast, Mr. Trump has put his commission in the hands of Kris Kobach, a hard-line conservative from Kansas who is the nation’s most aggressive peddler of the voter-fraud myth.

 

Mr. Kobach — who has managed to obtain just nine convictions for voter fraud since 2015, most for voting in two states — thinks he is standing on the “tip of the iceberg.” He claims he can’t understand why voting-rights advocates resist a deeper inquiry into fraud. “What are they afraid of? Why do they not want to know these numbers?” he asked.

 

There are also people who believe in the abominable snowman, but the government doesn’t waste millions of taxpayer dollars trying to prove he exists.

[y66]

From How Democrats Can Get Their Mojo Back by David Leonhardt:

 

The great new dividing line in American life is the four-year college degree. The line runs through virtually every part of society.

 

The pay gap between college graduates and everyone else has soared in recent years. The unemployment gap has, too. So have gaps in physical and social health. College graduates are living longer than they used to, getting divorced less and eating better. All of these trends are darker for non-graduates.

 

Then there is politics. Americans without a college degree are today’s swing voters. White non-graduates shifted sharply to Donald Trump last year, relative to 2012, and black non-graduates affected the result by staying home in larger numbers. Both decisions — voting for Trump or not voting at all — stemmed in part from alienation.

 

In an alternate universe, Trump would devote his presidency to a conservative agenda that improved the lives of the people who elected him. Remember when he proclaimed, “I love the poorly educated”? In this universe, he sure has a funny way of showing his love. He is trying to take health insurance away from millions of Americans, while lavishing tax cuts on the affluent.

 

But his real-world disdain for the working class creates an opening for the Democratic Party.

 

Democrats have to find a way to win more working-class votes. (Yes, I’m using “working class” as a rough synonym for the two-thirds of adults without bachelor’s degrees.) It’s not just Trump. Republicans control the House, the Senate, 33 governor’s offices and the legislature in 32 states.

 

Democrats need a comeback strategy, and the American working class needs an ally. The solution to both problems can be the same: a muscular agenda to lift up people without four-year college degrees.

 

It would have two main pillars. The first would be improving the lives of those who will never have those degrees — ensuring they can find meaningful, well-paying work and afford health care, child care and retirement. A stable middle-class life should be possible without a bachelor’s degree.

 

The second would be helping more people earn degrees and enjoy their benefits. There is something about college — the actual learning, as well as the required discipline and initiative — that seems to prepare people for adult success. Although two-year degrees bring benefits too, four-year degrees bring much larger ones.

 

On Tuesday, the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal group, is taking a first step toward creating a working-class agenda. It’s calling for a “Marshall Plan for America,” echoing the program that rebuilt postwar Europe. “Progressives have not done enough about job conditions and the dignity of work for people who don’t go to college,” says Neera Tanden, the center’s president, who previously worked for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

 

The effort is in only its conceptual stages. But it’s worth attention, both because of the center’s history of influence on Democrats (including on much of the Obama agenda) and because this particular idea gets a few big things right.

 

It avoids some elitist strains in today’s liberal politics. One of those strains dismisses the white working class as irredeemably racist. In truth, many of these voters backed progressive ideas before and are open to doing so again. Anyway, Democrats don’t have much of a choice. “You can’t construct a solid majority coalition for Democrats unless you reach more of those voters,” the political scientist Ruy Teixeira says.

 

Even as the new effort avoids some excesses of the left, it also steers clear of the fallacy that out-of-power political parties must tack toward mushy moderation. And I say that as a self-identifying mushy moderate on many issues. Sometimes, though, the best policy solution, not to mention the best way to win votes, is on one side of the political spectrum. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were among the leaders who grasped this.

 

This new plan is unabashedly left-leaning in its call for the government to help create millions of good-paying jobs. It uses the phrase “jobs guarantee” and would meet the guarantee by taking on many problems the private sector isn’t solving: Crumbling roads and public transit. Patchy digital infrastructure. A shortage of good schools, child care, home health care workers and E.M.T.s. All of this would cost billions — but also far less than Trump’s reverse Robin Hood agenda.

 

The fact is, the electorate has shown some surprising support lately for an activist, populist government. Minimum-wage increases keep passing, in blue states and red ones, and Trump won the Republican nomination while spouting big-government promises (which he’s now violating).

 

Americans of all races who have been left behind in today’s globalized, high-technology, high-inequality economy are angry, and they have reason to be. They deserve better. They want tangible solutions. Finding those solutions is the right thing to do, and it’s the path back to power for Democrats.

[Winstonm]

Another person who disagrees with WinstomM? :(

 

Did you even read the exchange before butting in? 100% blind loyalty to an individual is both stupid and dangerous. There is no point to discussion with zealotry of that magnitude.

[PassedOut]

Conservative columnist David Brooks has his eye on Donald Trump: When the World Is Led by a Child

 

At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif.

 

First, most adults have learned to sit still. But mentally, Trump is still a 7-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom. Trumps answers in these interviews are not very long 200 words at the high end but he will typically flit through four or five topics before ending up with how unfair the press is to him.

 

His inability to focus his attention makes it hard for him to learn and master facts. He is ill informed about his own policies and tramples his own talking points. It makes it hard to control his mouth. On an impulse, he will promise a tax reform when his staff has done little of the actual work.

 

Second, most people of drinking age have achieved some accurate sense of themselves, some internal criteria to measure their own merits and demerits. But Trump seems to need perpetual outside approval to stabilize his sense of self, so he is perpetually desperate for approval, telling heroic fabulist tales about himself.

 

In a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care, he told Time. A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber, he told The Associated Press, referring to his joint session speech.

 

By Trumps own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase priming the pump (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself.

 

He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought hed be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.

 

Third, by adulthood most people can perceive how others are thinking. For example, they learn subtle arts such as false modesty so they wont be perceived as obnoxious.

 

But Trump seems to have not yet developed a theory of mind. Other people are black boxes that supply either affirmation or disapproval. As a result, he is weirdly transparent. He wants people to love him, so he is constantly telling interviewers that he is widely loved. In Trumps telling, every meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes but his guests stayed two hours because they liked him so much.

Yes, but this has always been clear, even to many folks who voted for him. That's why he's such a weak man, and so easy to manipulate by his Russian buddies. We need some stronger folks around him to find ways to make him grow up.