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The 2016 US Presidential Election


Adamski

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24 minutes ago, Savage Henry said:

 


There's no way he's going to ban all Muslims, and the Mexicans will never pay for the damn wall.

How do you know? Not only will he be the face of America, his party will dominate the senate and the house of representatives. If he says "all muslims must go", that's exactly what will happen. If he wants to force Mexico to build a wall and pay for it, that's exactly what will happen. They will be too afraid to ignore him.

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4 minutes ago, Poo said:

How do you know? Not only will he be the face of America, his party will dominate the senate and the house of representatives. If he says "all muslims must go", that's exactly what will happen. If he wants to force Mexico to build a wall and pay for it, that's exactly what will happen. They will be too afraid to ignore him.

It would just take a couple of moderate Republican senators to block it, and even the Democrats have enough senators to fillibuster legislation indefinitely. He'll extend the current fence a few miles on the cheap and add a few sensors and border guards.

1123US_Sunrise_haze_fence_up_hill-Kopie.

 

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26 minutes ago, harry94 said:

After the Muslim thing, he was asked about it in a lot more detail and pretty much said there would be an exemption for almost everything. He'll fulfill this pledge by reducing the refugee program and then boast that that's what he always meant.

The wall thing won't happen either. What he'll just do there is take the parts of construction that Bush and Obama have committed to in securing the border and then say it was achieved on his watch. The current fence will become a 'high tech super advanced modern wall' or some shit and Mexico will be said to pay for it through some sort of change in tax law or tariff.

The Iran nuclear deal will probably remain but when pressed on it, he'll give some guff about being a businessman and inheriting this contract but renegotiating parts of it and finding loopholes. Most of his pledges were based on fantasy anyway (like completely lying about the crime rate) so it will be easy enough for him to present facts in a few years and claim he's performed some sort of miracle.

My biggest worry about his presidency is climate change and foreign policy. Climate change legislation has no real safeguards in the same way as international agreements and there are a lot of nutters in both houses and big money interests which would favour seeing all the progress Obama (Bush and Clinton too) has made completely destroyed. My worry with him and foreign policy is that he appoints a nutter to represent the US abroad and brings us (allies) into really avoidable disputes.

It will be interesting though to see how his spending plans go. He's pretty much pledged the biggest increase in spending of any president in modern times and tax cuts everywhere. With Republicans always winging at Obama for having a big deficit (which is absolute bullshit tbh), I don't know how it'll play to them when he proposes such massive infrastructure projects. It could be a very interesting experiment but I suspect that a lot of the money will never see it's intended recipients. It is an easy way to inflate things in the short term and guarantee massive growth (that lasts until the 2020 election) and then see a massive crash.

The positive is, I suppose, that he has no discernible foreign policy. The negative is that he has no discernible foreign policy.  He plainly has no concept of the soft role of the Department of State, and my guess is he cuts or withdraws all funding from all of its educational programmes, which count among Obama's finest achievements.  

There's an interesting - if depressing article on Foreign Policy's website which cuts to the chase.

 

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/09/why-a-trump-presidency-might-not-be-as-awful-as-we-fear/?preview_id=892918&utm_content=buffer21715&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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1 minute ago, welshbairn said:

Expressions tell a story. Panic and despair?

I think he's just had a day of the 'talk' that US Presidents get after they are elected where they learn about loads of shady depressing shit that is not known to the public and they have the realisation that they won't be able to do what they wanted to and they'll have a miserable time.

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3 minutes ago, harry94 said:

I think he's just had a day of the 'talk' that US Presidents get after they are elected where they learn about loads of shady depressing shit that is not known to the public and they have the realisation that they won't be able to do what they wanted to and they'll have a miserable time.

:lol: I don't know if that's true or not, but I hope it is!

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3 minutes ago, jmothecat said:

So the Republicans have won three of the last six elections but only managed to win the popular vote once.

It's an unfair electoral system like FPTP is for Westminster.  Remind me, how did Labour vote when the LibDems tried to change that?

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It's an unfair electoral system like FPTP is for Westminster.  Remind me, how did Labour vote when the LibDems tried to change that?



It's hardly the same. When was the last time the party won the popular vote but not the election in the UK? 1951? Either way I voted to change it as I don't think it's particularly fair, I'm not responsible for what the Labour Party think about it.
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Just now, jmothecat said:

 


It's hardly the same. When was the last time the party won the popular vote but not the election in the UK? 1951? Either way I voted to change it as I don't think it's particularly fair, I'm not responsible for what the Labour Party think about it.

 

It is the same.  The Tories have a majority in Westminster on what, 38% of the vote?  (That figure might be out as I can't be arsed checking it)

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It is the same.  The Tories have a majority in Westminster on what, 38% of the vote?  (That figure might be out as I can't be arsed checking it)

They got more of the popular vote than any other party. Like I say, I voted for AV and support electoral change as I dislike the system, but the party with the largest share of the vote governing isn't as problematic as the person who won the popular vote not becoming president.

It also misses the crucial point I was attempting to make which is that the Republicans have only won the popular vote in a presidential election once out of the past six elections.

Edit: apart from anything else did Ed not support AV?

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1 hour ago, Carl Cort's Hamstring said:

The extra judicial killings by the USA and Britain are often wrong yes.

I'd also suggest that there's a moral difference between killing people as part of collateral damage and going after people independently specifically because they are related to a terrorist.

I have no idea where your ethics are if you're condemning deliberately going after the family of suspected terrorists, but deliberately killing people in the vicinity of a suspected terrorist is just "often wrong".

(I think much of this is a moot point as laws are laws in the US domestically, abroad they don't follow them anyway so what does it matter who the President is).

Glad we've cleared up that he isn't a "fascist dictator" though. Trump has about a billion flaws but exaggerated hyperbole is one of the major reasons he's been elected President. It puts rational people who normally wouldn't consider him on his side.

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