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General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)
Comments
I mean, Donald Trump seems heavy on the "hard negotiating" part of... literally everything, hence things like the USMCA just being NAFTA but heavier on the Republican-ness plus a few concessions that seem like his entire master plan was to get "US" in the name (and for it to be first).
So the actual negotiating is probably what Moon Jae-in has been doing for like, the past few months*. I'd like to put Mike Pompeo in there, but he seems to suck at his job. Not in terms of being a "hard negotiator" or whatever, but actually genuinely sucking at being somebody who can make concessions because of a long-term goal. That might be the White House line pressuring him, but I'm pretty sure Mike Pompeo also just sucks at being Secretary of State.
Anyways, the "battering ram" is a good tool to have in your arsenal, but you need to work out the details of the thing unless you want to end up with a deal where North Korea just stagnates. That would leave the people way less better off (yes, even more so), because then their President would have even more legitimacy to push people around with.
*If it doesn't work out for him, at least he got some super epic dogs out of it.
The point being, of course, that cool people read 5-7 deep-dive analyst pieces on the US Mid-Terms a day.
I need to re-learn what a cool person is.
Honestly, after a while, all the analyses are either just providing profiles of various voters, or the following:
assumptions on voting preferences and turnout -> extrapolation/inference as to election results
And if there's anything we've learned in the past two years, with regards to trying to read electoral politics in the United States, it's that it's not easy to read it with any level of certainty.
After reading a few analyses I just sorta stop caring to read speculation after speculation and just prefer to (1) understand people, (2) try to reach out to people I know and remind them to vote, and (3) let the chips fall where they may.
A few months old, but still.
Well yeah basically, which is why I'm way over it.
Good luck with that.
Well, there go Beto and Gillum.
I'm not okay with what Abrams is up to right now. Like, voter suppression is definitely a serious issue, but be gracious and move on. I don't think I'd even eat my words if the recount did come up in her favor.
In fact, they're not done counting the votes in most places, just that many of them either are in races that have a far larger margin or races that you're probably not paying attention to.
Yeah but I'm not too hopeful about either one.
Probably true <_<
And the GA-SoS gets to manage how elections are conducted.
As for Florida, the final first counts will be done by tomorrow. Then there will be machine and hand recounts.
Current standings:
FL-Gov R by 36002
FL-Sen R by 14848
FL-AgCommish D by 3120
At the very least, the last two are getting hand-recounted, and the first one is getting machine-recounted.
Well okay.
By the way, Ocasio-Cortez can't afford her rent. The reaction this is supposed to elicit is apparently; "Oh my gosh that is the cutest millenial story ever."
Actual reaction: "Why would you elect a person who can't even handle her own finances, considering she probably got a whole bunch of donations that nobody would really mind her putting up on a place to live for a bit?"
This is especially bad when you consider she couldn't even explain how she'd fund the programs she'd promised to implement to (the super democrat friendly) CNN.
So like, um... that's not good.
I've lived in Northern Virginia, where even if you go all the way out to Fairfax, you're still starting out at around $1000/mo for even the most basic accommodations unless you get lucky and can share a house or live in someone's basement.
As for campaign money, I'm not sure if she can legally use that to pay for her rent, but I have very little knowledge of campaign finance law in that regard, aside from knowing that you can't spend money on some stuff (e.g. Duncan Hunter's son spending it on Steam games).
Anyway, vote counting will be first finalized on Saturday, though I've read somewhere that military ballots may be counted even if they arrive by November 16, as long as they were postmarked by election day.
what
I think it's funny that you can pay for innumerable TV commercials but probably not the rent.
homeless guy x for [whatever]https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/mb4nnv/heres-all-the-insane-stuff-vaping-congressman-duncan-hunter-charged-to-his-campaign-credit-cards
https://kotaku.com/congressman-spends-1300-of-campaign-money-on-steam-gam-1769260047
The main thing is that campaign funds have to be used for campaign expenses, and I don't know whether the law can be stretched to include "I just got elected and now I need to rent a pad in the DC area". Or maybe it already has a provision for that? Dunno.
She should have maybe put some thought into that because that's a weird lack of foresight for a person whose entire job is to have some to make sure their ideas that seem good now are actually good ideas in the long run.
To be honest though, if someone might have to resign from elected office they haven't even yet served in just because they can't afford the rent in DC, that says more about (1) the problem of high rents in DC, and (2) the difficulty of actually serving in elected office in what is supposed to be a representative democracy.
In practice, she still has to move to DC.
This is several levels of hilarious and also something else that I can't exactly put down.
I don't have anything to say, really. Just thought I should acknowledge it.
I mean, Things have happened, definitely, but it's not so bad that I've completely lost all hope over things.
Social media discourse though, that's been a mess since possibly an hour after it first started.
Vandals have chainsawed Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park due to lack of supervision by park rangers during the government shutdown.
FWIW, apparently the trees were cut down in order for some people to make new roads. What they were trying to reach isn't exactly clear, but presumably it's views or campsites that they wanted to use/establish.