Octopus Overlords

Defiant wrote:

Rip wrote:
It isn't the fringe of the party. He won by a landslide with turnout up 62%. While Democrat turnout was down 21%. Just sayin.

I thought he won about 40% while there were other candidates in the field. After they dropped out, he got 70-80%.

Also, while Republican turnout was up, I'm not impressed with the turnout comparisons, since they compare Democrats to 2008 (a record high turnout) while they compare Republican turnout to 2012 (a fairly low turnout for Republicans during a non-incumbency primary - the total number of Republicans who turned out in 2012 was significantly lower than in 2008, which wasn't that high)

Rip wrote: Trump set turnout and voting records. It isn't about on and off years.

Fireball wrote:

YellowKing wrote:I think you "4 years" folks are probably right. I said 8 years more to get a rise out of my stepdad.

One would imagine (though I've been proven wrong many times before) that the Republican party would be very careful about the next batch of candidates. All it would take to beat Hillary in 2020 would be someone who comes off as halfway sane. Though that seems to be a pretty tall order these days.

Except that the Republican Party has no say regarding who runs for their nomination in 2020.

YellowKing wrote:Watched a bit of Trump's speech in Raleigh, NC.

The guy's a hell of an entertaining speaker, I'll give him that. And boy does he know his branding. Tossing in "Crooked Hillary" at every opportunity just sears it into the brain to the point where it no longer comes off as a juvenile insult, but her actual name.

KKBlue wrote:Boggles my mind how the majority of my family are Trump supporters and get VERY loud to the point of not even hearing what they are saying nor understanding or even letting a few of us finish a sentence. Amazing and unbelievably scary.

raydude wrote:- or even better, Muslim friend or neighbor, will now be under a cloud of suspicion.

hepcat wrote:

raydude wrote:- or even better, Muslim friend or neighbor, will now be under a cloud of suspicion.

I think you underestimate how much of a positive this is for many Trump supporters.

Kraken wrote:One man tries to understand Who Are All These Trump Supporters? and writes at length about his conclusions in the New Yorker.

Where is all this anger coming from? It’s viral, and Trump is Typhoid Mary. Intellectually and emotionally weakened by years of steadily degraded public discourse, we are now two separate ideological countries, LeftLand and RightLand, speaking different languages, the lines between us down. Not only do our two subcountries reason differently; they draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems. You and I approach a castle. One of us has watched only “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the other only “Game of Thrones.” What is the meaning, to the collective “we,” of yon castle? We have no common basis from which to discuss it. You, the other knight, strike me as bafflingly ignorant, a little unmoored. In the old days, a liberal and a conservative (a “dove” and a “hawk,” say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper, and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional. (As a proud knight of LeftLand, I was interested to find that, in RightLand, Vince Foster has still been murdered, Dick Morris is a reliable source, kids are brainwashed “way to the left” by going to college, and Obama may yet be Muslim. I expect that my interviewees found some of my core beliefs equally jaw-dropping.)

Donald Trump on Tuesday once again expressed his preference for keeping dictators in power in the Middle East.

While acknowledging that Saddam Hussein "was a bad guy," Trump praised the former Iraqi dictator's efficient killing of "terrorists" -- despite the fact that Iraq was listed as a state sponsor of terrorism during Hussein's time in power.

Trump, who supported the Iraq War before the invasion and in the early months of the war, said the U.S. "shouldn't have destabilized" Iraq before pivoting to praising Hussein.

"He was a bad guy -- really bad guy. But you know what? He did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn't read them the rights. They didn't talk. They were terrorists. Over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism," Trump said.

The remarks came during a rally where he was introduced by Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is a potential running mate for Trump.

Asked Tuesday night on Fox News about the comments, House Speaker Paul Ryan appeared taken aback by Trump's words.

"He was one of the 20th century's most evil people," Ryan said of the former Iraqi strongman.
...
The presumptive Republican nominee has previously said that Iraq and Libya -- two countries that have become ISIS strongholds -- would be better off if Hussein and Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi were still alive and in power in their respective countries.

"He was a bad guy -- really bad guy. But you know what? He did well? He killed terrorists.

Defiant wrote:

"He was a bad guy -- really bad guy. But you know what? He did well? He killed terrorists.

You know what else he did? He funded other terrorists. And he provided safe haven to some of them.

YellowKing wrote:
Even though on substance she could probably annihilate him, I think that may all be overshadowed by his quips. If she shows even the slightest hint of weakness, I have no doubt he will go for the jugular with some nasty soundbite that is so outrageous that the media can't help but splash it in the headlines.

Kurth wrote:

Kraken wrote:One man tries to understand Who Are All These Trump Supporters? and writes at length about his conclusions in the New Yorker.

Where is all this anger coming from? It’s viral, and Trump is Typhoid Mary. Intellectually and emotionally weakened by years of steadily degraded public discourse, we are now two separate ideological countries, LeftLand and RightLand, speaking different languages, the lines between us down. Not only do our two subcountries reason differently; they draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems. You and I approach a castle. One of us has watched only “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the other only “Game of Thrones.” What is the meaning, to the collective “we,” of yon castle? We have no common basis from which to discuss it. You, the other knight, strike me as bafflingly ignorant, a little unmoored. In the old days, a liberal and a conservative (a “dove” and a “hawk,” say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper, and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional. (As a proud knight of LeftLand, I was interested to find that, in RightLand, Vince Foster has still been murdered, Dick Morris is a reliable source, kids are brainwashed “way to the left” by going to college, and Obama may yet be Muslim. I expect that my interviewees found some of my core beliefs equally jaw-dropping.)

In terms of Trump supporters and their views of how his policies (of the moment) would impact actual people, the article above that Kraken linked to is an extremely good read. It's long, but it's worth it. Warning: It's also pretty damn depressing!

Zarathud wrote: Apparently, the Mexicans have stolen all the IT jobs that were supposed to be handed to him.

LordMortis wrote:

Zarathud wrote: Apparently, the Mexicans have stolen all the IT jobs that were supposed to be handed to him.

INS or whatever it's called now won't let that happen. Unless a company takes your IT job to Mexico. If my company could bring up IT pros from Mexico to work in the states and fire the likes of me, they would. But the Fed and the competition would put them out of business in a week or two. Every time we bring up an IT pro from Mexico to survey what's going on, that's essentially all they can do. Survey and either put the work on me or a consultant. Heck, working for a Mexican company, there are a shitton of legal proceedings you have to go through to bring someone to the US to work to prove that the labor cannot be sourced locally. Essentially, it's only IP work.

El Guapo wrote:Naturally Trump isn't backing down on his anti-semitic tweet, posting this:

Gotta say I absolutely loved Clinton's twitter response:

Rip wrote:Strawman of a strawman. Nice.

Malificent wrote:My question is:

If Trump didn't think there was something wrong with the original tweet, then why delete it in the first place?

I feel stupid asking, because I know Donald Trump is just trolling us all.

tjg_marantz wrote:At this point, anyone still defending him is a troll or a complete fucking moron.

YellowKing wrote:when you do racist shit you're going to be called out on doing racist shit even if you aren't doing racist shit.

Jeff V wrote:

tjg_marantz wrote:At this point, anyone still defending him is a troll or a complete fucking moron.

Why can't they be both?