Mr. Trump Goes to Washington

[Eiki-mun]

Tinfoil hat time. Gonna pretend I'm a conspiracy theorist for a few minutes.

Consider the possibility that the recent terrorist attack in Manhattan could be a false flag by the Trump administration. It's extremely convenient after all. Around the same time we have people being indicted for Russian collusion (hi George!), suddenly there's a very convenient terrorist attack in Manhattan, near the WTC site, and a low-casualty attack at that. The attacker was an immigrant (Trump's least favorite people) and gave the president a wonderful excuse to demand cutting immigration.

He also moved surprisingly fast to blame Democrats and Democratic-enacted policies for the attack, almost like he knew it was going to happen and had his notes prepared in advance.

Now I'm not saying this is what happened. But it's definitely not impossible, and it's roughly in line with what I'd expect from Trump.

[Skybison]

It can't have been Trump because it wasn't staggeringly incompetent.  A false Flag staged by Trump he would have bragged about pulling off the Biggest False Flag ever on twitter before it happened, then the killer would have been wearing a shirt reading "REAL TERRORIZT NOT FALSE FLAG" and failed to kill anyone, and ten minutes later his son would have e-mailed reporters proof that it was a false flag by mistake.

[Id82]

Clearly Trump is a false flag himself, created by the Russian government to trick us into thinking that Russia is secretly controlling the US governmental election process from within, BUT are actually distracting from the fact that Russia is secretly controlling the US governmental election process from within.

[dpareja]

https://gritpost.com/donna-brazile-superdelegates-clinton/

To the extent that Donna Brazile's tell-all is true, and to the extent that all the other leaks about the DNC's tilt toward Clinton in the 2016 primaries are true, that sure explains a lot about why you had things like Sanders winning the Wyoming caucuses 56-44 but Clinton getting 11 of 18 total delegates from the state.

[Cloud3514]

At the same time, Clinton was ahead in the popular vote from day 1 of the primaries. And, yeah, imagine that, Democrats preferred the Democrat over the Independent running as a Democrat for strategic reasons. So, yeah, I think it goes without saying that the DNC preferred Clinton and didn't do much to support Sanders, but at the same time, the election is fucking over. I am really sick of people still dwelling on the damn primaries.

Sanders supporters need to realize that he was at a disadvantage simply because he's not a Democrat and Clinton supporters need to stop pretending that Sanders is detrimental to their cause. This is the rare case where both sides ARE, in fact, acting like children in many ways. I supported Sanders in the primaries, but, because I'm not an idiot, I voted for Clinton and encouraged everyone else to support her because AT THE VERY LEAST, she wasn't a fascist like Trump (and, no, I'm not saying she was the lesser of two evils, but I preferred Sanders for a few reasons, none of which matter at this point).

[dpareja]

1. Who's to say that she would have been ahead in the popular vote from day 1 had the DNC not worked to ensure Clinton received more exposure than Sanders? (Plus she wasn't quite; Sanders did lead in popular votes after New Hampshire.) Now that he has received a ton of exposure, his policies are overwhelmingly popular among Democrats. I'm pretty confident that if it had been, say, Elizabeth Warren running against Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders--Warren notably being a registered Democrat--the DNC would have done the same dirty tricks to prop up Clinton over Warren.

2. People are still dwelling on it because it exposes that that DNC is completely corrupt, which not only had implications for 2016 but has consequences going forward, too. Obama and Clinton are still controlling the DNC; witness Tom Perez being airlifted in to become chair when it seemed like Keith Ellison was a lock for the position, and now Sanders/Ellison supporters have been ejected from the DNC en masse. And we know that the Obama/Clinton model of corporate Democrats has failed; just look at all the electoral losses over the last eight years. The Sanders wing needs to take over if the Democrats are ever to become ascendant over the GOP again (ever more critical as the GOP moves further and further right), and the corporate wing is bound and determined to see that that doesn't happen.

"They'd rather lose to Republicans than have a progressive win with them. That's how dumb the corporate Democrats are."

[Skybison]

I`ve been reading Michael Adams "Could it Happen Here?", a book about whether or not a Trump like demagogue is likely to rise in Canada.  His answer is no, saying that the statistics show far less fear of immigrants and hostility to the government and elites in Canada then in the US or Europe, due to a combination of good policy decisions* and dumb luck.  There was a particular chart in the book I found interesting that I wanted to share with everyone.  Unfortunately I can't find it online so here is a version that goes up to 2012



Now when it came to 2016, the number of Canadians who said that a Father must be master of the house was only 23%, but in the United States it shot up to 50% and credited this to a backlash against feminism among men of generation X and Y in the last few years.  The timing of that backlash seems to coincide with the Anita Sarkeesian/gamergate movement although I do not know if that was the cause or result of the backlash.  I strongly suspect the former though, which might make gamergate a major part of why Trump got elected.

And that gap is a big part of why Trump is president and Trudeau is Prime Minister.

*For example we didn't shred our banking regulations and thus avoid the worst of the recession, our policies are designed to making it easier for immigrants to integrate, we have no fox news, etc

[dpareja]

*For example we didn't shred our banking regulations and thus avoid the worst of the recession, our policies are designed to making it easier for immigrants to integrate, we have no fox news, etc

The Conservatives were about to shred the banking regulations, but the recession hit before they did. (And then they took credit for our having strong regulations.) I would note, however, that Canadian banking has traditionally been more conservative than US banking, which was another reason Canadian banks weren't as exposed as US banks. (They still got bailouts, but nowhere near as much, to my knowledge, as US banks got.)

And the Conservatives tried to get Sun (or whatever that channel was called) into basic cable as I recall.

[Id82]

A promising victory tonight as Dems seem to be winning across the board. I think it's showing a shift for next year.

[Cloud3514]

Yeah, today went sideways for the Republicans. Virginia managed to elect a trans woman. That's huge.

[dpareja]

They're still going to keep Chaffetz's seat. Not much of a surprise, since it's Utah.

Interestingly, it looks like Curtis will get about 15 points less than Chaffetz, but it isn't to the Democrats, it's to the third-party candidates.

EDIT: Seen re: the "tax reform" bill: This isn't a tax bill, it's reparations to the rich for the crime of the New Deal.

[ironbite]

Man oh man.  Democrats really cleaned up last night.  My favorite was the woman who ousted the man who wrote a version of a Bathroom Bill and then turned around and said, "I don't want to speak bad about my constituents."

Ironbite-what a classy lady.

[Askold]

How many elections were there and how many did the Democrats win?

[ironbite]

Well Democrats cut out the GOP majority in the state legislature by picking up 10+ seats.  And both Virginia and New Jersey's governorships stayed/went blue.  And a bunch of city council, mayoral and state legislatures around the country went blue.  So there's that.

Ironbite-basically races that should've been the GOP's slithered to through the Elephant's trunk and right into the Donkey's ass.

[dpareja]

So Republicans keep saying that if you can't afford to raise your child, just put it up for adoption!

So they proposed to eliminate the adoption tax credit in their new tax bill.

Democrats then proposed not only to restore the credit, but make it refundable, paying for it by raising the corporate tax rate from 20% to 20.04%.

Apparently a .04 percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate is a bridge too far for the "pro-life" GOP, because they rejected it in committee.