USA Politics

I'm pretty sure Elon's tweaked with Grok on several occasions and it always ends up reverting back to calling him out and saying he's wrong. Funny enough, the day after Grok started goose-stepping into infamy, the CEO for Twitter announced she was leaving.
 
Assuming the USA has free and fair elections, it is almost a sure thing that the House swings to the Dems. There's a huge possibility of the inverse of 2010 happening. Young, progressive primaries removing aged incumbents and pushing the Dems more into what the actual left wants. Will that leave the centre with nowhere to go and actually open up a lane for a third party? Doubtful.
 
There's Musk with his "America Party" shenanigans, but I don't see that actually accomplishing anything.

Long term I believe that having a multi-party system would be better for the US. Having to work on coalitions and compromises has the potential to rein in the extremes a bit. With the way the voting population is divided currently it seems like an impossible goal right now. It would take decades and as we've seen with Trump, decades of progress can be wiped out in an instant by those who don't care about laws or the constitution.
 
Lost in a lost world said:
The fissures in the MAGA contingent are forming more visibly and, as with the falling out with Musk, I figured it was only a matter of time before the conspiracy theorist faction turned against Trump.

www.usatoday.com

Trump rips 'so-called' friends' attacks on Bondi, tells MAGA to move on from Epstein

MAGA allies have been assailing the attorney general since the DOJ said a review "revealed no incriminating 'client list'" tied to Jeffrey Epstein.
www.usatoday.com

On another note: More Americans are becoming pro-immigration again.

Maybe militarized ICE raids changed a few minds on the subject.

Edit: the PBS article says more Americans agree immigration is a good thing but they also simply don’t want to decrease immigration levels more than they have already decreased.

www.pbs.org

Poll shows how U.S. views of immigration have changed since Trump took office

Since taking office, Trump has called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to do all in its power to deliver “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
www.pbs.org www.pbs.org

Maybe things will get better and we’ll get a Dem congressional majority (either chamber) in the mid terms to finally have some semblance of checks and balances back.
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The problem is that nothing is new here. Americans generally seem to be pretty conservative on immigration and also consistently disapprove of Trump's extreme approach to immigration (we saw similar stories when it came out that Trump 1.0 was putting kids in cages). Despite this, if there was an election today and the central issue was immigration, Trump would still win every time imo. Immigration is one of the key issues that has kept him viable over the years.

I've said it before but Trump has never had to preside over a bad economy. If the economy keeps getting worse and these tariffs trigger a recession, that seems to be the thing that is most likely to actually turn people against Trump. But as of now, I don't buy any stories that Trump has lost any support since November.

LooseCannon said:
Assuming the USA has free and fair elections, it is almost a sure thing that the House swings to the Dems. There's a huge possibility of the inverse of 2010 happening. Young, progressive primaries removing aged incumbents and pushing the Dems more into what the actual left wants. Will that leave the centre with nowhere to go and actually open up a lane for a third party? Doubtful.
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I think this is the calculation behind passing the bill last week. I don't think it's so much that Republicans think they can steal the next election, but if losing control of congress is a sure bet in 2026, why not pass the most ambitious policy agenda possible now? It's going to be really hard for a Democratic trifecta to undo a lot of this legislation.

Of course this assumes that the lefty version of the tea party movement isn't ready to go scorched earth when they have control over the government. We'll see, America underestimated the tea party movement back then as well.
 
ICE can't be deterred by being shot at. As was made clear in LA, there are always bigger guns to bring in. They can only be deterred by (mostly) non-violent action blocking them from enforcing their actions.
 
I find this whole Epstein thing super fascinating on so many levels that I'm not even sure where to start.

Spaldy said:
Just imagine how staggeringly dumb you'd have to be to not realise that Trump has been a liar all this time. Anyone with a braincell could get the jist of the guy in 30 seconds.
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imo this is just something that the anti-Trump people just misunderstand about his support. There are definitely some ultradumb maga people who like to say Trump fooled them as if he had previously presented as an honest person (we had one person on here who was trying to act surprised about his actions not that long ago). But I strongly feel that these people are a minority within his support. People know that he is a liar and they vote for him anyway. The fact that this (along with other unsavory qualities) is baked in is one of the things that keeps his floor for support so high. Nothing could come out that would take away a significant amount of support from him because everybody has already decided to accept these things when voting for him in the first place.

How this relates to Epstein is where things get interesting to me. I'll say right off the bat that I am not convinced that this is going to blow up any more than it has, especially now that it seems like some information is going to come out, I think it will be enough to placate the right wing media and I also just think it follows a familiar pattern of Trump eventually wriggling out of a scandal when something else distracts everyone.

With that being said, this has already blown up beyond what I would have initially guessed. I think it has less to do with Trump lying and more to do with Trump breaking a promise, which is something he has gotten backlash for in the past. By covering this up and also being as brazen about it as he has, he is showing himself to be a part of the deep state that he has sworn to destroy. Trump generally seems to try and do what he campaigned on, and when he fails he has a scapegoat to blame. On this Epstein issue, the only person who is stopping the files from coming out is Trump, there is nobody to scapegoat this time.

The other interesting component is it feels like we are very slowly starting to see the tentacles of lame duckness approach Trump. The Republicans have been in a weird stasis with Trump continuing to hint at a third term (and the media shamefully treating this like a completely normal thing to say), but at some point reality is going to set in that there will be a another Republican nominee in 2028 AND Trump's endorsement continues to be shaky at best (i.e. it's not going to be enough to save congress in the next midterm). I think a lot of the right wing backlash against Trump right now is going to be fuel for the next MAGA/QAnon based candidate to campaign. It's also just going to be necessary for candidates in 2026 and 2028 to distance themselves from Trump if they want to keep their seats. Trump's grip on the party right now is still very very strong, but I will be curious to see what happens when he's no longer going to be on the ballot but other people connected to him are.
 
“Any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or a statewide housing guarantee, is preferable...”
If this quote is accurate—even if it's framed within a housing context—I wouldn't vote for Zohran Mamdani.
 
Azas said:
“Any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or a statewide housing guarantee, is preferable...”
If this quote is accurate—even if it's framed within a housing context—I wouldn't vote for Zohran Mamdani.
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How would you propose to solve the housing crisis?
 
I'm not a politician, and Zohran Mamdani’s politics walk a bit too close to the edge for my taste. That said, obviously, it’s up to New Yorkers to decide what’s best for themselves.
 
Mamdani was directly responding to someone calling him a Communist about his policy of 100% housing. The clip is out of context and does not accurately represent his views, which is a government mandate to house every unhoused person. You can call that socialist, but it is not Marxism.

Global trials of housing the homeless shows it is the best way to get them into jobs so they can rent and re-enter the system on their own, or get them the medical help they need to become stable. And that is what reduces costs on the social safety net.
 
The long and short is, housing shouldn't be treated as a commodity. From an economic point of view it should be treated as infrastructure. You can do premium upgrades the same way you can sell Ferraris when there is public transportation available, but the basic demand must be met without profit interests in mind. For the very simple reason that if he can't have a place to live in, a person will not go to your company to make money for you.
 
Weren't the US and Israel the only UN countries back in 2021 to vote against the right to food?

I wonder if this is because of the typical "pull yourself up from your bootstraps" mentality. So many folks who are actively voting against their interests in the name of team sports.
 
Another phrase I've heard a bunch that fits is that many see themselves as "temporarily embarassed millionaires". Despite being much closer to poverty than to riches, they see themselves as having the potential of becoming one of the rich, if only a couple of things in life go right. At the same time they are one wrong step away from bankruptcy.

A lady I know from the US had to undergo lifesaving brain surgery, which wiped away all her savings. Her husband died at some point, so now she's left taking care of her three kids and barely living paycheck to paycheck. The actions of the current admin are making it all but impossible for her to make it through the next four years. Obviously just an anecdote, but people haven't really felt Trump's economic catastrophe yet; things are going to become far worse.
 
So now Alice Cooper is saying that not everything was great under the Democrats… (Yeah, I know—it’s just an opinion, but still, worth noting.)
Blabbermouth article

"Asked if he liked Trump when they spent time together, Cooper responded: "We got along okay. Look, America has been having a slow-motion nervous breakdown for a while now. It got so 'woke' with the [Joe] Biden people, even they thought it was crazy. If a guy says to a coworker, 'I like your new dress,' that means he now gets fired? That's crazy. It got so over the top that whoever ran against the Democrats was going to win. America got sick of the stupidness, and all I can say is, in a shooting war, you don't want a poodle; you want a pitbull."

Vaenyr often repeated that Kamala didn’t run on a woke or progressive agenda—and that’s fair. But it’s also fair to acknowledge that, for some people, the situation in the country had already gone too far.

I still wouldn’t vote for Trump, but the Democrats have, in many ways, become their own worst enemies.
 
It's not news that a huge chunk of voters is uninformed and doesn't know anything about current politics. Alice's claim is verifiably untrue, it just feels like that to him. Feelings over facts. Once we actually look at campaigns, at policies, at how much money was spent on certain ads, it is undeniable that the only ones focusing on culture war issues were the GOP, not the Dems.

An old, washed-out rocker is not who I'd ask for political analysis. It actually says quite a bit about the level of discourse if we have to stoop to such levels to try and push "anti-woke" articles, just because the centrists are butthurt. At this point I'm convinced that if this thread was around during the Civil Rights movement, we'd have multiple people posting dozens upon dozens of comments against the movement.

Edit: To elaborate on why I think this line of argument is meaningless. I could easily find and provide quotes from other musicians or celebrities who believe that the dems aren't left (or "woke" I suppose) enough. That this is an issue and that this is the problem with the Dems. By the same logic as in Azas' post that would mean that we should take those views seriously and push for the Dems to embrace the culture wars, right? Or do we selectively apply these logical arguments only to the side that agrees with us and we conveniently ignore them when the same exact argument, thought through to its logical conclusion, ends up disproving our own points? In other words, it might feel nice to read an interview with a random musician who reinforces your view, but it doesn't actually mean anything nor does it make a difference in any way.
 
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And still, you don’t have the guts to admit that not everything the Democrats did was right or timely. Funny how the mods rolled out strict rules about no name-calling or personal attacks, yet here you are calling Alice Cooper a “washed-out rocker.”

Honestly, I think he’s far from uninformed. The guy travels constantly and talks to people from all walks of life. He’s not living in a bubble, and I believe he’s speaking some truth.

Both U.S. parties need to sit down and have a real, grown-up conversation. One side needs to rein it in a bit, and the other needs to be more open to change. That’s the only way we’re going to end up with future presidents who are sane, steady, and actually predictable.
 
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