Donald Trump and US politics

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Wraeclastian wrote:

And just who did you think would be the better choice? He was the best choice we had and unlike all of the other candidates, at least Trump cares more about Americans than people in a foreign country who hate our fucking guts. You can have your own opinions but don't expect people to be civil when your opinions are nothing but unfounded attacks.

I would have voted for Sanders, had he won the primaries. Since he did not, I would have voted for Clinton. But I figure you already knew that :-)

Apart from that, Mrs. Clinton probably does not love America or the Americans any less than Trump. This is not a point thats in any case refutable or proveable, if thats even a word.

And as for unfounded attacks: there were none. I was asked for things that Trump did wrong and gave my opinion, based what the news reported.

By your username and "would have voted", I'm assuming you're German?

If you haven't read this recent article yet, it might interest you.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

b) 1. It was not blown up, it got the coverage it deserved. It was huge, as was treated accordingly. the fact that even Trump realized his vast mistake does not undo it.

That's just like your opinion man. Trump did not undo anything, he did nothing and then he did something. Big difference.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

2. It is true that for weeks there had been warnings about laptops in planes. these warnings were vague. Now, Trump himself tweeted that "As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety. Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against ISIS & terrorism." The fact that there had been vague warnings before makes it fairly hard to believe that Trump repeated these weeks old vague warnings in order for russia to "greatly step up their fight against ISIS and terrorism". So yes, it is safe to say that Trump did reveal things he himself thought to be new and of interest to the russians, according to his own words. Also, General McMaster appeared to acknowledge afterwards that Thomas P. Bossert, the assistant to the president for Homeland Security and counterterrorism, had called the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency after the meeting with the Russian officials - for what other reason then for them to be better able to contain damage? And why would he do that, if there was no damage possible?

I see a lot of speculation here. In the end we can't know what exactly has been discussed in that room. At least the official Israeli channel wasn't mad at all about this so who knows.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

3. Yeah, this will be investigated. Let's talk again in a year or so and compare notes. But aren't you in the least bit concerned that he clearly fired him because of the investigation?

Not since I've been red pilled on Comey. He's a Clinton stooge through and through so good riddance. I might do a write up on Comey later on.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

d) Again, thats true. Those aspects alone mean nothing. However, they give reason to fear that it is not reason that drives Trump. Does that not matter to you?

The "he's only in it to make more money" angle never made sense to me. He might be doing this for his ego but I don't care as long as he does what he promised.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

e) Bullshit. The "Renewables Companies" you are referring to included Gap, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Mars, Adobe, Apple, Exxon, to name a few, wanted to keep USA in the Paris Agreement. And not because they wanted subsidies, but because Climate Change is a fact and needs to be acted upon. Basically the whole world accepted this fact and decided to act.

Dude, most companies you mentioned profited directly off of the Paris subsidies. These companies either invested in other renewables companies or are in natural gas like Exxon.

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pneuma wrote:

We've been shouldering the NATO burden for a long time. Change of plans: other people can pay up like they said they would or they can fend for themselves. That statement is only as outrageous as the other members of NATO not holding up their end of the deal in the first place.

The US did not invest in their military to make the NATO happy, but to a good part for domestic reasons. You probbaly don't want to argue that it's not popular to "support the troops"? Cutting military spending costs votes. The US also invested for decades to beat the soviet union, partly, to win the cold war through exhausting the enemies capabilities. It worked.

Thats not to say that the other NATO Members, among them Germany, spent as much as they said they would. They did not. The german military is in disarray, if I judge the papers correctly. That needs to be changed.

A completely different discussion is whether it was wise to not reaffirm article 5 when Trump was in Europe. I say, it was most unwise damaged the US.

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pneuma wrote:

He gave secret info to Russia to try and stop islamist attacks and save lives. That will probably result in us getting less info in the future, but the innocent lives were worth more at the time. Not easy to tell if that was a good or a bad move.

I assume that it would have been possible to warn russia without exposing the Israeli source, which I believe he did. Also: If it was necessary to warn in the way that he did, why did other countries not receive the same information? If only Russia was in danger, was it really Trumps job to inform Russia? Could this Information not have been faster and safer been delivered to the appropriate places more directly than up the chain to the president, delivered in speech to the russian side and then again down the chain?

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pneuma wrote:

See also: telling Russia to leave that Syrian airfield that we bombed.

Syria. No clear opinion there.

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pneuma wrote:

He fired Comey because Comey was perpetuating the Russian collusion witchhunt. It's a stupid move, but it's only a criminal one if you have already determined there was collusion despite no evidence. Regardless, Mueller is leading it and the investigation will continue without Comey.

I agree. Lets resume this in a year or so. ^^

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pneuma wrote:

If you were for TPP/TIPP, then I don't know what to say. You're okay with corporations being able to sue sovereign nations? This is something that you actually want? Trade deals are good, but they're not that good.

I am, in fact, unsure whether this trade deal per se is good or bad. I do, however, prefer american influence in asia to chinese influence. China is already trying to fill the gap the withdrawal left. By the way, Corporations are already sueing sovereing nations, and american corporations among them. That's not bad per se. What would be bad indeed, however, was if this prevented the states from regulating themselves in certain areas. for instance, I don't think its detrimental if states get sued for damages when they first allow the corporation to invest money and then devalue that investment for no good reason. If, however, the investment is a cigarette factory and the state then forbids the company to advertise its products for health reasons, then that state should not have to pay damages. So: no easy answer to that.

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pneuma wrote:

By your username and "would have voted", I'm assuming you're German?

If you haven't read this recent article yet, it might interest you.

Yes, I am from Hannover, Germany. My news on America, however, I mainly get from American media. Thanks, though, it is an interesting read.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

e) Bullshit. The "Renewables Companies" you are referring to included Gap, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Mars, Adobe, Apple, Exxon, to name a few, wanted to keep USA in the Paris Agreement. And not because they wanted subsidies, but because Climate Change is a fact and needs to be acted upon. Basically the whole world accepted this fact and decided to act.

The speed of light is ~3.00×108 m/s <-- That is a fact.
Donald Trump is currently president of the United States <--That is a fact

The first statement is a quantitative fact, the second one qualitative. Now, let's take something well studied, like gravity. We know for a fact that the average gravitational acceleration on Earth is ~9.8 m/s2. Does this make gravity a "fact"? Hardly. It is observable, and provable as a process, but we still aren't sure what is causing it.

There are theories of gravity, and gravity models, and scientists accept them because they have hypotheses which can and have been tested. Climate change is far less understood than gravity. There are a lot of potential causes and effects (Co2, solar radiation flux, water vapor, methane, heat island effects, noctilucent clouds, etc)but so far, the models and theories of climate change do not have any real predictive successes. While we can say the gravitational constant is X, and then measure it in orbit and on Earth and verify it, we cannot say the Climate Change constant of man made atmospheric Co2 is X, and test it. If you can't potentially falsify it, it isn't science.

Climate Change is not a 'fact'. The various hypotheses have produced error prone predictions, or predictions that are not statistically significant to the data used to generate them. The models keep getting revised, thrown out, and new models tried. This is true of many hypotheses that are struggling to become a theory. It may one day become an evidence based theory that has been rigorously tested, but that day is not even on the foreseeable calendar yet.

There are a lot of people that accept Climate Change. There are a lot of people that accept Trump as a good president so far. That acceptance is just an opinion. Scientific fact is not determined by a consensus of opinion. If 998/1000 mathematicians formed a consensus that 2+3=57, it wouldn't make it true. We might find these scientists normally trustworthy, but even still, opinion does not trump the scientific process. When you look at the amount of money being spent on climate science, the question arises of how dependent is the scientific community on continuing this funding, and does it make them dishonest?


Figure 1: Reported Federal Climate Change Funding by Category, 1993-2014


http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/climate_change_funding_management/issue_summary

When the largest professional organization of scientists in the world questioned Climate Change, the hysterical response of the climate change group was to try and silence those scientists.

That alone is damning. When scientists try to hide, conflate, obscure, and twist data, they are no longer scientists, but become hacks. Many of the pro-climate change scientists have auctioned off their integrity and tattooed themselves as hacks for the way they have elevated politics above the scientific process. In the public's mind, they are little better than fake news, and less trustworthy than the average politician.

You mentioned Apple. If Apple was so concerned about doing what was right, why did they move their company to Ireland? It wouldn't be just because they could lower their taxes would it? Adobe is another great example - is their licensing truly set up to help the world, or just to maximize their profits?

Microsoft has been hammered by the courts enough that they are almost an example of a bad company, so including them hurts your position. Exxon - I'm sure people around the world think "Exxon puts the environment first, I totally trust them with environmental policy positions". Let's not even discuss the social media company that allowed torture and suicides to be lived streamed for hours as being an example of a company that does the right thing. Google? I'm sure they aren't biased against Trump, it isn't as if one of their important officials....



Nevermind, let's leave Politoogle out of this as well. We can continue the game, if you want, but citing companies who are well known no more proves Climate Change is a fact than not measuring the speed of light proves the speed of light is about 60mph.

There's a reason Climate Change/Global Warming/Greenhouse Effect/Nuclear Winter/Population Bomb/Eugenics keeps changing its name.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

Pulling out of paris means that the trust in the US' reliability will considerably be weakened. Again, for no reason at all. The Paris Agreement had no mechanics to punish countries that did not reach their goals AT ALL. It was a peer pressure thing, prompting countries to act in order to maintain their reliability which... ah, right. whatever bad thing might have come to the US, did already happen - because of Trump.

Would you mind elaborating on the emphasized part of your quote, because I have no clue what the hell that means in the context of an international agreement focused on lowering emissions over a 20 year period.

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

I am from Hannover, Germany. My news on America, however, I mainly get from American media. Thanks, though, it is an interesting read.

That explains a lot.




I also find it ironic that you didn't start posting in here until another German poster ended up on probation...

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Wraeclastian wrote:

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Donnerdrummel wrote:

I am from Hannover, Germany. My news on America, however, I mainly get from American media. Thanks, though, it is an interesting read.

That explains a lot.



I also find it ironic that you didn't start posting in here until another German poster ended up on probation...

delete that gif please, it can cause seizure...

Also, climate change is a fact.

Just because we don't know the exact formulas to be used to determine how the climate change doesn't mean it's not a fact.

To give you an example with gravity.

Gravity is a theory, but it's a fact that there's a force at work that prevents us from being launched into space.