Omnibus Politics Thread: Campaign 2016 EditionFollow

I think it's overly simplistic to just talk in terms of "pro" or "anti" Russian. It's more like "pro" <some set of actions/policies> and "anti" <another set>. There's nothing wrong with being in favor of trade with a country while simultaneously opposing say them annexing part of a neighboring country. Heck. You want to promote trade with other countries at least partly so you actually have something to bargain/threaten them with when they do (or even consider doing) something you don't like.



I don't really agree with that at all. I think Russia, and certain Putin himself have benefited greatly with Obama at the helm in the US the last 8 years (the first half of which Clinton was SoS). Clinton didn't shape anything "aggressive" in the middle east. If anything she oversaw policies that constituted a retreat of US interest and activity in the region which gave Russia the green light to step in and replace us. Just look at what's happening in Syria. She also oversaw a reset/retreat in terms of US action in Eastern Europe, which we can at least list as a possible factor to Russia's decisions to annex Crimea. The Obama administration, like it has in many areas of foreign policy, had to be dragged almost kicking and screaming back to supporting the missile defense system that it initially abandoned back in 2009.

While it's not completely fair to attribute Obama's approach to foreign policy to Clinton herself, there's also no compelling evidence to suggest that she would reverse the approach and policies of his administration either. And frankly, just from a "pressure from liberal supporters" point of view, a fair amount of evidence that she'd continue them mostly unchanged. The political Left tends to be proactive and progressive on domestic issues, but reactive on foreign ones, while the Right tends to be the opposite. I just don't see her taking any significant foreign policy actions against Russia unless more or less forced to by circumstances (and I'm not sure what the threshold for "forced to" might be).



Right. But Clinton's self interest would mostly lie with domestic policy gains that her party and their supporters want, and *not* with getting involved and entangled in foreign issues. Putin knows this. Setting aside for a moment the people themselves, their respective parties have almost diametrically opposed viewpoints on foreign policy, and especially on the US "meddling" in foreign issues. And it's inarguable that Putin would much prefer a Democrat in the White House than a Republican.



I think that's a big fat red herring that gets thrown out there, but doesn't really factor in here. I don't see either of them being likely to be swayed in terms of foreign policy by simplistic financial incentives. By that logic any and all presidents are subject to this (and frankly, I'd argue that a Billionaire is less likely to be so than someone with less wealth). Heck. In Trump's case the argument could just as easily work the other way around. We could argue that he could use his wealth and assets to boss around the Russians (you don't move that missile site, and I'll withdraw my investments in your country and maybe suggest to a whole bunch of my super rich friends to do the same). Eh... It's a silly line of reasoning anyway. And certainly Putin isn't going to be basing any decision of his own on any such assumptions.

Domestic and party political pressure is a far greater factor IMO. And that certainly suggests Russia would do better with Clinton than with Trump. Just look how much they've gained under Obama.



You see Clinton as an alpha female? That's interesting. To me she looks like a well crafted political facade and not a lot more. Let's put it another way. Which one of the two do you see as the more predictable person? Clinton right? Which means you can figure out what she's going to do and plan your strategy based on that. Trump? You've got no idea how he's going to react. Heck. Just look at the whole tweet thing over nuclear weapons over the holidays. Putin does this big chest bumping thing about his nuclear weapons (so basically the same chest bumping he engages in regularly). Trump responds with a series of tweets threatening to escalate the US nuclear ******* (really? arsenal is filtered?) to a point the Russian's can't match. They go back and forth for a bit. What happened as a result? Putin spent 4 hours in front of Russian media insisting that he wasn't planning on getting into an arms race with the US. In other words, as clunky as we may see the methodology Trump got Putin to back down.

Clinton would not have responded that way. Putin knows she would not have. And thus he would not have had to back down. What's the end result of this? Putin's going to be a lot more cautious with his rhetoric once Trump takes office, because he won't know how Trump will respond (well, or will know he'll respond forcefully and directly). You can say that's Trump being reckless and irresponsible, but it's definitely going to put the burden of having to play nice on Putin. Which is a huge difference from the last 8 years of Obama falling over himself to play nice with everyone, no matter how mean they are to him (us).

I'm not sure I'm very thrilled with Trump's approach, but it's definitely the more aggressive style than Clinton's. By a long shot. Clinton might talk a big talk, but I've never seen anything from her that suggests her political style is anything but "get along to get along". That may be a good approach in many cases, but I believe it's an approach that Putin would prefer run the White House. It's predictable. It's "safe". He can be the bully and know that she'll back down (admittedly, my assumption, but again, I have no evidence from her to the contrary). Which is a win for Putin.

So no. Really not seeing any motivation for Russia to help Trump win. Makes zero sense to me.




I honestly go back and forth in my own head in terms of his thinking on this. I'm sure he thinks he's acting in some way to block Trump (I guess), but it also seems like he's doing a lot of harm to his own legacy and frankly to his party as well. And it goes beyond just the whole Russian hacking silliness.There's a long tradition of outgoing presidents taking great pains to avoid any major policy changes or shifts, especially on foreign policy, during the transition period. Yet it seems as though he's going out of his way to more or less break stuff on his way out. I'm not sure that's what he's going to want to be remembered for.

And it's another thing that kinda follows what Clinton was doing during the election. Doing and saying things that resonate strongly with the base, but push away folks in the middle. I'm sure there are a ton of people who aren't super thrilled with Trump but who don't see his election as the kind of world ending catastrophe that the far left does, and who are kinda shocked at the degree of classlessness being displayed by Obama and many Democrats.



Of course.

Edited, Jan 6th 2017 6:10pm by gbaji

Legislative term limits are dumb. All they do is remove voter choice and consolidate power into unelected staff and advisors with no direct accountability. You don't like your nine term legislator? Vote for the other guy.

Executive term limits make at least a little sense for someone holding a unique position instead of being one of hundred(s). Even then, for most of your nation's history we had no such thing and got along just fine. Wasn't until people got butthurt at FDR that it became an "issue".

New to me. I can see the message if I click EDIT, but I have no idea what it's complaining about. I'll try to repost and see if what happens.\

this is very weird. What is appears to be is that if a word is filtered, the whole post is now filtered?

arsenal was typed and filtered. *******

Didn't do it to me though.

No idea. Some times it seems like word count,but not always, or filtering, but not always.

IF Gbaji splits his post in two, it should work.

Edited, Jan 9th 2017 11:14am by Xsarus

So the forum basically said TL;DR to a gbaji post and refused to post it?

Amusing.

Freedom of abuse speech.

It's where you can talk about punching people who hate freedom.

I see the search function is sorta working again. Maybe this was the price?

THAT WASN'T OUR BARGAIN ZAM PEOPLE! THAT WASN'T OUR BARGAIN!!!!

They've changed the deal. Pray that they don't change it further.

Also, you could become a junior admin and complain on a whole new level.

Edit: I see I still get the fcluster proxy error whenever I try to post. So that's still a thing.


Edited, Jan 9th 2017 1:31pm by Poldaran

Everyone wants to be a junior g-man.

Wouldn't it make more sense, instead of filtering a long post, to maybe, i don't know, put a character limit on posts when typing in these little boxes?

Think it's based (partially?) on use of pseudo-uBB code. I saw an old post of mine where I used six smiley tags and it flagged it as abuse. Aside from those tags, it was a relatively modest sized post and had no censor-breaking tags.

Really, there's probably less than 30 people actively using the boards/comments. Talk about "fixing" a problem that didn't exist...

I think the issue is that the filter is picking up any "bad word" even if it's part of another word. So arsenal gets flagged. And words like assets get flagged. And, well, a ton of other stuff that shouldn't be.

Obviously, the longer the post the more words will be flagged, until it hits some "bad word" filter limit. There is literally not a single actual banned word in the post that was blocked.

Dats wut I said