Donald Trump

[ChicagoBlue]

There was a great article in the New Yorker by Anthony Schwartz, the guy who ghost-wrote 'The Art Of The Deal' back in June last year: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all

It's really quite worrying, particularly for people like me who thought that once the campaign was over, we might see a presidential figure emerge.

Yes, I saw a few interviews with him and read the article, but tbh I thought Schwartz was enjoying his 15 mins a little too much, even though what he had to say was absolutely spot on with regard to the glimpses of personality we have seen along the way. It doesn't bode well. At the pre-inauguration luncheon at his new Washington DC hotel, he was speaking to invited guests who had been providing financial support. He told them "My cabinet has, by far, the highest IQ of any Cabinet in history!" In short, he is bigly inexperienced so he is going to try to surround himself with smug cunts who all think they know better. Then, they report to him and he becomes the Decider. What that does is illustrate HE is above all the so-called "smartest guys in the room!"

To say it is ironic does not do it justice, but he has selected an Oil & Gas CEO with strong ties to Putin (who gave him a fucking medal!) as his Secretary of State.

A guy who said he wanted to get rid of the Department of Energy when he ran for President, but then forgot it in the debate, is his choice to run that Department.

Oh, and did I mention, someone JUST had to tell him his Department was in charge of all the US nuclear arsenal...and he had no idea what a centrifuge was. In his confirmation hearing, he said that now he knows what they do, he has changed his mind and it is important!

How about a head of the Department of Health and Human Services who is part of a cultish medical group with fringe medical beliefs and who thinks we need to get rid of welfare?

Maybe you would prefer to discuss someone from Oklahoma, the center of the U.S. oil and gas distribution system, who has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency...to run the very agency he is suing? Oh, and a climate denier who believes in MORE FOSSIL FUEL EXPLORATION, EXTRACTION AND USE!!! Still happy?

How about a Billionaire Secretary of Education who donated millions of dollars to both Trump and an organization that seeks to get rid of Public Education? She never ever attended a state school, her kids never attended a state school, and she is dead set against state education funding and yet SHE is going to fix the US education system?!

Maybe you would LIKE your Secretary of Defence to be called "Mad Dog Mattis"?!

Or maybe a Secretary of the Treasury who, during the financial crisis, cobbled together a few buddies to buy a bankrupt bank, shed all the old lady mortgages by foreclosing on them...one was a 90 year old woman who owed 20p that he had kicked out of her house...dumped the other bank customer accounts on the governments Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (how socialist!), then changed the name of the bank and flipped it for £1Bn, making £300+M for himself.

Or, in the mystical world of Trump's America, maybe you pick a quirky (or is that quacky?) neurosurgeon who believes the Egyptians built the pyramids to store grain (who knew they were hollow grain silos?!) to be your Head of Housing and Urban Development...because he grew up black in an urban area?

Lovely jubbly, what could possibly not go BIGLY?!

Oh wait, I should have just said "Farage as a Special Advisor" and left it at that. You would have got the idea!!

 

[ChicagoBlue]

If folks like me had ten votes, Trump still would have won. We well-read, clever people are a rare commodity.

I certainly don't agree with him on everything, but I'd have voted for Kasich; supported him during the primary.

If forced to vote Republcan, Kasich was, by far, the most qualified, moderate and ready to go to work in Day One. I certainly don't agree with everything he does, or did in Ohio, but he was the best of a very bad bunch of 17!

 

[bluemoonmatt]

If folks like me had ten votes, Trump still would have won. We well-read, clever people are a rare commodity.

I certainly don't agree with him on everything, but I'd have voted for Kasich; supported him during the primary.

Thing is though, he didn't win did he. He lost by over 2.5 million votes so I understand. America is a convoluted conservative place that has carefully, consideratly and deliberately developed a system to maintain the centre/right, right, far right, wing political system they fostered when faced with a Cold War with them dirty communists.

Genuine question have the dems ever had overwhelming majorities in both houses?

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Thing is though, he didn't win did he. He lost by over 2.5 million votes so I understand. America is a convoluted conservative place that has carefully, consideratly and deliberately developed a system to maintain the centre/right, right, far right, wing political system they fostered when faced with a Cold War with them dirty communists.

Genuine question have the dems ever had overwhelming majorities in both houses?

Yes -- a number of times, most notably during the Depression and before and after Nixon.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774721.html

 

[Helmet Cole]

Thing is though, he didn't win did he. He lost by over 2.5 million votes so I understand. America is a convoluted conservative place that has carefully, consideratly and deliberately developed a system to maintain the centre/right, right, far right, wing political system they fostered when faced with a Cold War with them dirty communists.

Genuine question have the dems ever had overwhelming majorities in both houses?

No different to our own electoral system really which is always tweaked in favour of the status quo.

 

[bluemoonmatt]

Yes -- a number of times, most notably during the Depression and before and after Nixon.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774721.html

Not of late then? So when Obama swept to power after what seemed like (at least to most of us here in the motherland) a dismal & horrendous second term from dubya, the dems still failed to hold both houses?

 

[FogBlueInSanFran]

Not of late then? So when Obama swept to power after what seemed like (at least to most of us here in the motherland) a dismal & horrendous second term from dubya, the dems still failed to hold both houses?

Correct. Both were majority Democratic after 08 on the Obama coattail effect but the Obama backlash showed up in the House in 2010. Recall they're on different cycles as everyone in the House is up every two years while those in the Senate have 6 year terms on rolling cycles, so only one-third are up for re-election every two years.

 

[bluemoonmatt]

No different to our own electoral system really which is always tweaked in favour of the status quo.

No to be fair you're not wrong, it's odd though that as a labour leaner I never thought how shit our system was until a green got voted in at Brighton. I remember looking at the totals countrywide & they got something like 0.2% of votes (making it up now cos I can't be arsed to find the actual figures) yet (thank god) no BNP got elected however they polled something like 4 or 5 times as many. I didn't like it but remember thinking surely they deserve their fair representation. Not sure what the best answer is here but the prop rep debate surely has some merit.

 

[bluemoonmatt]

Correct. Both were majority Democratic after 08 on the Obama coattail effect but the Obama backlash showed up in the House in 2010. Recall they're on different cycles as everyone in the House is up every two years while those in the Senate have 6 year terms on rolling cycles, so only one-third are up for re-election every two years.

Wow never knew any of that, your system seems even stranger now ;-)

 

[Paul Lake's Left Knee]

No to be fair you're not wrong, it's odd though that as a labour leaner I never thought how shit our system was until a green got voted in at Brighton. I remember looking at the totals countrywide & they got something like 0.2% of votes (making it up now cos I can't be arsed to find the actual figures) yet (thank god) no BNP got elected however they polled something like 4 or 5 times as many. I didn't like it but remember thinking surely they deserve their fair representation. Not sure what the best answer is here but the prop rep debate surely has some merit.

Caroline Lucas had over 30% of the vote in her win though, as we vote MPs in its fair she won her seat, the BNP got nowhere near that in any of their seats. The Greens got nearly 4% of the vote at the last general election which was easily their best general election result. For me the largest injustice was highlighted by SWP's back earlier in the thread saying that UKIP nearly 13% of the nationwide vote and 1 MP and the SNP got nearly 5% of the vote but ended up with 56 MPs. UKIP had over 2 million more votes than SNP.

A change to the voting system was rejected via referendum recently, so it isnt likely to be altered any time soon.