The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

Grammar's not the ******* point!!!! It's!!!! NOT!!! THE!!! POINT!!! Geez! How do I get this through your heads? We don't elect ******* grammar teachers, we don't even elect writers, who may I add, frequently break grammar rules to build realistic characterization.

If you wanted to win a political point, then it's a grammatical point now, and you won it alright. If you wanted to actually win a political point, you failed. If you wanted to piss me off, you accomplished that as well. Congladurations, I'm legitimately pissed off. So now that you've pissed me off, what do you do with said "victory"? Did you even think you'd get this far? Why was pissing me off the goal, and not fixing healthcare? If democrats put in half the effort, to fixing healthcare, they wouldn't be blaming the failure thereof on republicans. Europe could do it, there's no ******* excuse.

I'm not dumb, grammar is false-equivalency to politics. I'm pretty damn old too, I distinctly remember Obama's presidential election victory. He had PLENTY of support for the first 2 years, republicans didn't do **** compared to this transition of power, to inhibit Obama's actions. His actions were simply ****-tastic. That's not a real word, don't even webster it and then call me out on it, because it's "alt-grammar", it's just a word I made up, deal with it.

So you're saying the FBI theory was that there was a ghost in the machine communicating with Russian banks and violating banking laws. Trump? Never entered their minds. Certainly not why it got escalated into a national security issue involving FISA and the NSA. Yea, I think the rogue NSA AI conducting banking business with the Russians and some random health clinic theory is more plausible.

Perhaps you should understand this as well. That's not even what Trump said. For someone so seemingly interested in parsing out the truth with a high degree of evidence, you seem surprisingly inclined to strawman. Whatever 'real' media outlets you're reading (obviously not NYT anymore lol), they're not very credible if that's what you got out of them.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/837989835818287106

I can only suggest that you perhaps read Trump with atleast a quarter of the due diligence and benefit of doubt you gave to Howard Dean literally admitting to wiretaps occurring.

At this point it seems pretty clear cut. People within the Obama administration, perhaps the Clintons or some other deep state actor directed these FISA wiretaps with the intention of finding dirt they could use on a political opponent. Obama may not have directed it, but he certainly would have known about it. When Trump unexpectedly took the elections, Obama then relaxed privacy regulations around the sharing of NSA information and disseminated the information gained to all intelligence agencies. If any part of that disseminated information was related to the Trump FISA, which it most likely is, a whole world of legal pain is going to follow. I would quote the NYT writing the very same things, but apparantly they aren't 'real' news anymore.

Anyway, I apologise, clearly this thread doesn't have people ready to talk about this right now so I won't push it anymore. I feel like I could say the Earth is round, show you a picture, and you wouldn't be able to see it.

You're extremely fond of claiming a "strawman" as a way to win a point.

Sounds like you need to read a bit.

But I understand your frustration in talking to people who completely ignore what you say repeatedly in favour of their own contrived misdirections. I suffer similarly

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/837996746236182529

Yeah I did reorder words and shortend "Obama has gone to" to "ordered". So?

But I guess we've proven before that the meaning of words out of Trumps mouth is completely different to us. I guess this one of those cases again?

You must have missed the last one or two years of Trump doing Trump things to think it is a good idea to give that man the benefit of the doubt.

That man needs no benefit of the doubt, that man needs whatever he says to be scrutinized and fact checked.

So to reiterate what that scrutinization (is that even a word?) yields us here:

- Some things happend month ago with a criminal investigation about a server that somehow talked to the russian. A judge of one of these nasty secret FBI/NSA-things decided it was worth investigating for some reasons.
- Back then until a two days ago nobody made a Watergate out of it, even though it was well known and investigated.
- Now month later the alt-right media picked up on it and cooked up some wild implications
- Very soon after Trump picks up on the alt-right media and claims the wild implications are facts now. He however provides no new sources whatsoever. Just stuff that has been known since month. In fact he doesn't even provide that. His fans do it for him.

So you're saying there was a Watergate scandal in plain sight for month but only now somebody realized that?

lol?

We flat earthers have supporters all around the globe

To sum it up (correct me if I'm wrong):

-That Pence guy used his personal email for his professional stuff when he was governor. He didn't broke any law as he didn't disclose any secret, but he shouldn't have done so.

-Trump and his team were being spyied during the campaign by FBI and other federal agencies. They say it was a criminal investigation and not political but they didn't find any crime. There is no way to prove that it wasn't orchested by any big government figure or that findings of interest for the campaign weren't filter to politicians. On the other hand it could be proved if Obama or Clinton were behind it all but it's very unlikely to find any evidence.

Those are the facts that I've understood from the last posts.

Also, Russia, but apparently we don't like talking about that because it's a giant diversion from Real American Issues, and Fake American Issues aren't totally being overreported on to distract from Russia.

Not at all.

Russia is a country, not a fact.

Ah, but you see, Russia existing is also a fact

I'm curious, do the liberals on this thread think nato should be disbanded? Should America remove it's troops from europe? Why aren't Germans, for example, upset at foreign soldiers on their territory?

Edit, thanks for the replies. Also liberals are on the opposite side of the political spectrum from conservatives. Liberals generally ephasisize big government solutions wheras conservative generally emphasize small government solution to the same political questions. In the US, liberals are democrat and conservatives are republician.

I have no idea what you mean by "liberal" Anyhow, who wants some facts.

http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php

at this point just assume "Sayteeeen"

I dunno what qualifies as "liberal" either, but this sounds like it is a question to me, so:

Why would I be upset?
As long as they behave I in general don't mind anyone on German territory.
I'd certainly like a lot more open "**** you"s at certain US behavior (all that spying **** comes to mind), but where they have their soldier stationed just doesn't make a difference.

About the Nato: The only certain opinion I have there is that I don't think we need to increase funding to them. But that is just a result of my more general opinion that increasing the military funding in general is a fouls errand. If that 2% funding goal is not reached by most members then just reduce it to a 1% funding goal instead, problem solved.

That's an interesting analysis.

EDIT:
A comedic view on Trumps wiretapping claims:

I have no strong views on NATO.

As for foreign military presence, I'm for cutting back as much as possible while retaining the necessary influence. I'm not in a position to know what that necessary level is.

I don't view myself as a full on liberal.. still interesting question.... I don't think left leaning politics does revolve around total disbanding of the military. There's a move towards disbanding nuclear weapons specifically on the basis they are something that should never be used in the first place. Still, I don't get the concept that being liberal = pacifism.

On the issue of the US having a presence in the eu / NATO, why not? They are allies to the eu and I can't see that changing any time soon.

That paul ryan face thing is INSANE. how did I miss that?

this.

I mean I know at this point it's talking in a blizzard to try to explain liberal wishes to someone who wants nothing more than to view them as "satan's will".

@Corgiarmy
It's so typically republican to think that libs would spend time obsessing over Nato or US military presence in europe when this doesn't even come close to qualifying as an issue or something we even remotely care about here in europe.

metaphor time :

if you were born on berk, raised your whole life by vikings. who told you that dragons are vicious ferocious blood-thirsty beasts and that you went and asked the dragons personally and that they told you that's preposterous, that on the contrary they are fun loving and kind.

would you continue drinking up the viking's outsider's perspective? or spend time with both sides and let each one present themselves to you through their own words?

I asked this question based on a conversation with someone that shares many of the same thoughts people on here are discussing. Just wanted some worldwide and random oppinions.

Editx2 bc of grammar nazis: some argument against are:
1. No purpose of nato or us bases
2. Expensive
3. Local populations generally don't like foreign troops stationed near by and may be considered creeping on host nation sovereignty.

yeah well in a european's book an american lib's a third of a european lib or a eu righty. remember :


there's not only U.S.'s opinion and view on things and not only U.S.'s opinion and view on things matters.

are you seriously going to be both person A and person B of this made up debate?

seriously whoever here as a european is bothered about nato raise their hand.

also I'm sorry to be taking on this mantle but I strongly believe this forum has been the source of my practice in english and I don't want to backtrack on all the good work done here.

argument

DUDE, ENGLISH IS A LIL' BIACH LINGO MADE OF DISCARDED SPARE PARTS THAT OTHER LANGUAGES THREW OUT!

You "argue", therefore, it's an "arguement". Except it's not. That's not out fault. F*ck Engrish!

In like 7 other languages, it's "ananas". You call it "pine apple" lol it's like an apple but piney. F*ck Engrish!

Plural of House is Houses. Plural of mouse is mouses, no wait, it's mice. Is plural of houses "hice"? No, it's houses, go figure. What about moose, is it also mise? No, is it mooses? No, it's... moose? Like single, but also plural? F*ck Engrish!