USA Politics

Perun said:
Interestingly, NP had the same response.
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No, NP's response was a comment about himself. Your response was a loaded presumption about me. Similar words, very different meanings.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go over to the world politics thread and ask why Guterres gets all this attention when he's only a secretary. I assume you'll have my back over there.
 
Jer said:
No, NP's response was a comment about himself. Your response was a loaded presumption about me. Similar words, very different meanings.
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Your response was quite a presumption about what I thought about you as well. I didn't even know you were American.
 
Zare said:
@Mosh look what you've done
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What a dumb thing to get offended about. If you're a European user, the USA politics thread seems like a good place to ask questions about USA politics. Americans ask questions about European/World politics all the time in their respective threads. Even some Europeans ask other Europeans about issues in their respective countries (@The Flash is widely considered an authority on all things Turkey around here).

Anyway, since nobody actually answered NP's question:
Night Prowler said:
What's being voted in November?
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Midterm elections for Congress on the Federal level and some state-level elections (including Governorships). Every member of the House of Representatives is up for re-election (as they serve two-year terms) while Senators serve 6-year terms so not as many Senators are up for re-election. Members of the House represent small districts within states while Senators represent the entire state.

Democrats are projected to win the House for a few reasons. The party in power tends to lose seats in midterm elections and these races tend to be seen as a referendum on the president. Since the current president is pretty unpopular, it's expected that a lot of angry people on the left who normally don't vote will show up. A lot of Republican reps are also retiring. This can be taken as a sign that they didn't expect to win a primary challenge or the general election (which in itself can be a self-fulfilling prophecy since incumbency can be a powerful advantage).

The Senate is slightly tilted in the Republicans' favor, really just because of the map. More Democrats than Republicans are up for re-election and several of those Democrats are in red states that Trump won in wide margins. That being said, there are still probably more paths to victory for the Democrats in the Senate than there were for Trump in the presidential election.
 
Perun said:
Your response was quite a presumption about what I thought about you as well. I didn't even know you were American.
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OK, let's unpack your comment.

In response to my facepalm you informed me that "Not everyone here is American." How should I interpret this?

Option 1: You honestly believe that I don't know this already. For this to be true, I would have to be someone who comes to a fan site for a British band where people have been giving first-hand accounts of shows in Europe and the U.K. for months, yet somehow believes that everyone here is from the U.S., or at a bare minimum somehow believes that the only people who would participate in a U.S. politics thread on such a site would have to all be American. The only way for that to be true would be for me to be a colossal navel-gazing idiot, since anyone with more than one functioning brain cell could not reach the conclusions you would be ascribing to me.

Option 2: You know that I already know that not everyone here is an American, but you're saying it anyway, as if I don't know it. What purpose would this serve, other than intentionally trying to paint me as the idiot from option #1 when you already know that I'm not? And your "I didn't even know you were an American" defense would force this option to be the true one, because option #1 only works if I'm an American who's making incredibly stupid assumptions about the rest of the internet all being American too -- so if you don't know I'm an American, you must still be trying to paint me as a stupid one.

Option #3: You made a broad, stupid remark and can't admit that you misspoke.
 
Jer said:
OK, let's unpack your comment.

In response to my facepalm you informed me that "Not everyone here is American." How should I interpret this?

Option 1: You honestly believe that I don't know this already. For this to be true, I would have to be someone who comes to a fan site for a British band where people have been giving first-hand accounts of shows in Europe and the U.K. for months, yet somehow believes that everyone here is from the U.S., or at a bare minimum somehow believes that the only people who would participate in a U.S. politics thread on such a site would have to all be American. The only way for that to be true would be for me to be a colossal navel-gazing idiot, since anyone with more than one functioning brain cell could not reach the conclusions you would be ascribing to me.

Option 2: You know that I already know that not everyone here is an American, but you're saying it anyway, as if I don't know it. What purpose would this serve, other than intentionally trying to paint me as the idiot from option #1 when you already know that I'm not? And your "I didn't even know you were an American" defense would force this option to be the true one, because option #1 only works if I'm an American who's making incredibly stupid assumptions about the rest of the internet all being American too -- so if you don't know I'm an American, you must still be trying to paint me as a stupid one.

Option #3: You made a broad, stupid remark and can't admit that you misspoke.
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Option #4: Your ":facepalm:" sounded extremely arrogant towards a person who was innocently asking a question about something he didn't know and I was calling you out for it but didn't bother to write an essay about it.
 
Perun said:
Option #4: Your ":facepalm:" sounded extremely arrogant towards a person who was innocently asking a question about something he didn't know and I was calling you out for it but didn't bother to write an essay about it.
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So, option #3, then. Non-apology accepted.
 
Lol it's even worse now. Mosh I was being sarcastic, for the one I understood completely your original post and context. I just can't believe where this went next :D
 
So, part of the purpose of this thread is to educate, because the United States has a huge political system that is a combination of archaic compared to more modern European systems, as well as simply complex on its own merits. So it should always be fine to ask questions here and not get a facepalm as a response. Lots of people don't know anything about it. I suspect the vast majority of Europeans aren't aware of midterm elections, for example (since it happens to be the topic on the table today). I don't really think that it's known regularly.

@Mosh, thank you for answering.
 
Rudy Giuliani is a man who I seem to remember conducted himself with great dignity as New York mayor after the World Trade Centre attacks. Now he is Donald Trump's lawyer and spouting total bullshit on television. What a wanker.

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I guess he always had a similar political stance, or at least toed the party line, but yes, you can hardly believe it's the same person.
 
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