US Presidential Election 2020

[Smudge]

1 hour ago, Alf Bentley said:

American/expert posters may have more detailed info, but as I understand it.....

 

25th Amendment & Impeachment are 2 totally different processes, so impeachment wouldn't force Pence to invoke 25th

- 25th Amendment is to declare President unfit for office (by VP and half the cabinet)

- Impeachment would put Trump on trial by the Senate for misconduct. If found guilty while still in office, he'd be turfed out; if it was after his term had ended, he'd be disqualified from any future office for life

 

Impeachment will doubtless pass the House of Representatives (Dem majority), but requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, which is currently 53-47 Republican (and still only 50-50 after the new Senate takes over).

 

At least a couple of Republican Senators (including ex-VP Cheney's daughter) have said they'll vote to impeach......but it would still presumably require about another 15+ Republican Senators to find him guilty?

All seems to come down to Republican Party politics.....do a sufficient number want to take the risk of severing the connection with Trump, when he's still so popular among GOP voters?

 

I'm assuming that the chance of him being found guilty by the Senate is higher than last time, but still unlikely......but I might be wrong about that......any further clarification, Americans/experts?! 

That's a good assessment Alf.

I think McConnell's opinion is the key.

[Kopfkino]

20 hours ago, leicsmac said:

I see what you're saying but no, still not getting there.

 

Twitter isn't some be-all-end-all behemoth of communication and other platforms existing isn't by the by IMO - it's critical to the nature of this discussion. They may be dominant now (possibly), but it would take much less than some folks think to have another platform come along and gain a good market share too. For me, they aren't arbiters of free speech or discourse and I really don't think they should be considered to be - that is always the job and responsibility of elected officials. If they engage in the slippery slope that is being depicted here, then a populace will (most likely) reject them and find other platforms.

 

NB. If they had chosen to remove Sanders account because he was violating their ToS in some way and shown how he was doing it, then I would have agreed with their right to do it then too.

 

 

It would take much less than people think to challenge them? Facebook just buys up any potential challenger, it paid over a $1bn for a 13 employee photo sharing app and it paid $22bn for a messaging app that it still can’t monetise. Twitter could do exactly the same, albeit it doesn’t have the clout of FB. Even if a challenger isn’t bought up, it runs on AWS, breaches their TOS and dies on its arse (for reference, and the avoidance of doubt, this is no defence of Parker in any way). Or the challenger is Chinese. And actually we have to look at all the big tech monopolies/duopolies as a group rather than individually and I want to know how it would take much less than people think to displace them? Cos get me in as an early employee pls. I’ll sell my soul.
 

These companies have a significant stranglehold on modern day comms. If Twitter really wants to, it can do a lot to control the narrative. Supporting their right to do this seems bizarre for the ordinary citizen. They seem like classic monopolies and the nature of the modern world makes them pretty close to a public good/utility.

 

I don’t believe your last paragraph, easy to say as a hypothetical. But actually if you do genuinely believe that, then I worry more because it isn’t political self-interest and you are happy to bend over to the whim of these companies. Don’t be surprised if that gets out of hand in other respects.

Edited 13 January 2021 by Kopfkino

[Milo]

5 minutes ago, Kopfkino said:

It would take much less than people think to challenge them? Facebook just buys up any potential challenger, it paid over a $1bn for a 13 employee photo sharing app and it paid $22bn for a messaging app that it still can’t monetise. Twitter could do exactly the same, albeit it doesn’t have the clout of FB. Even if a challenger isn’t bought up, it runs on AWS, breaches their TOS and dies on its arse. Or the challenger is Chinese. And actually we have to look at all the big tech monopolies/duopolies as a group rather than individually and I want to know how it would take much less than people think to displace them? Cos get me in as an early employee pls. I’ll sell my soul.
 

These companies have a significant stranglehold on modern day comms. If Twitter really wants to, it can do a lot to control the narrative. Supporting their right to do this seems bizarre for the ordinary citizen. They seem like classic monopolies and the nature of the modern world makes them pretty close to a public good/utility.

 

I don’t believe your last paragraph, easy to say as a hypothetical. But actually if you do genuinely believe that, then I worry more because it isn’t political self-interest and you are happy to bend over to the whim of these companies. Don’t be surprised if that gets out of hand in other respects.

There was a good article on exactly this on the Media Show on R4 this evening - talking about the monopolies that the big 4 tech companies hold. 
Good points were made regarding Apple and Android phones, and the App stores that control what media platforms you can and can’t download to them. 
Worth a listen 👍

[StanSP]

2nd vote on impeachment happening right now...

[StanSP]

They've voted to impeach Trump  

[Koke]

Few days old but just saw that Piers is now done with Trump you took your time Piers but ok. He passionately defended this guy for years.

 

 

 

 

Edited 13 January 2021 by Koke

[StanSP]

 

[ozleicester]

10 hours ago, Fightforever said:

It is more complicated than this you can't just point the finger at someone and say that everything is their fault the world doesn't work like that. They were left behind by globalization their jobs weren't relevant anymore. The UK had to make the transition from more or less bleeding the colonies dry to fund their economy in a preferential trading system that gave those workers job making goods out of their basically free resources to a modern day European nation state and some people were left behind. Call it the evils of capitalism if you will but It was inevitable.

Of course its more complicated. But the facts remain that Thatcher and the conservatives have been waging a war against the working classes.. remember the Tory motto... give just enough, to just enough.... to ensure they remain in power.

She didnt just take their jobs, she destroyed the union movement, removing power and pride from the working class, conservatives then went on a orchestrated campaign with the elite media to turn the workers and poor against themselves.

As you acknowledge they did nearly nothing to assist the people, families, and future unemployed, they cut social housing, and turned a society that believed in helping each other into one that believed only in the individual.

Compare the support and printing of money to stop banks failing and keep the rich middle class supported during the GFC (and Covid)....with the non existent support of the mines and manufacturing industries. As is evident and they knew, they too were "too big to fail" but the Tories let them and now we have the disaster, poverty, crime and sadness in those once proud communities.

If you look at a the poor, a "chav" or anyone, and think they deserve where they are.. that is done by Thatcher and the corrupt conservative scum.
 

[leicsmac]

5 hours ago, Kopfkino said:

It would take much less than people think to challenge them? Facebook just buys up any potential challenger, it paid over a $1bn for a 13 employee photo sharing app and it paid $22bn for a messaging app that it still can’t monetise. Twitter could do exactly the same, albeit it doesn’t have the clout of FB. Even if a challenger isn’t bought up, it runs on AWS, breaches their TOS and dies on its arse (for reference, and the avoidance of doubt, this is no defence of Parker in any way). Or the challenger is Chinese. And actually we have to look at all the big tech monopolies/duopolies as a group rather than individually and I want to know how it would take much less than people think to displace them? Cos get me in as an early employee pls. I’ll sell my soul.
 

These companies have a significant stranglehold on modern day comms. If Twitter really wants to, it can do a lot to control the narrative. Supporting their right to do this seems bizarre for the ordinary citizen. They seem like classic monopolies and the nature of the modern world makes them pretty close to a public good/utility.

 

I don’t believe your last paragraph, easy to say as a hypothetical. But actually if you do genuinely believe that, then I worry more because it isn’t political self-interest and you are happy to bend over to the whim of these companies. Don’t be surprised if that gets out of hand in other respects.

Allow me to clarify then: some people are saying (or at least inferring) that it's impossible for other tech companies to challenge the monopoly/cartel that the current tech companies have: the "censorship" argument directly infers that. I'm saying that it's difficult (as you give good reasons for) but certainly not impossible. Who would have predicted the rise of Twitter in the first place, for instance? Change in such markets often comes unexpectedly (to most) and also often suddenly.

 

That the current group of companies have a stranglehold on the market is a matter of record, as you say. But there are numerous ways by which that might change and I think that some of them can be driven, if they wanted, by those disaffected folks who think they are being "silenced". It's not like there isn't money for doing so in the right-wing (I use that term loosely), is it?

 

If it got to the case where free methods of instant communication really were being strangled to death with no recourse by these companies (like, for instance, in China) then I would fully expect and hope that government would step in and do their job with legislation because yes, it is a public good. I just don't think that we're there yet - or even close.

 

NB. You should know me well enough by now that political or any other form of self-interest has never been my guiding star and the only reason I might use it as a positive is if I know an action taken with it in mind it would benefit other people as much or more.

[leicsmac]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55656385

 

"Violence and vandalism have no place in our country... No true supporter of mine would ever endorse political violence."

 

How can the man actually use that No True Scotsman fallacy with a straight face? Good grief.

[Fightforever]

57 minutes ago, ozleicester said:

Of course its more complicated. But the facts remain that Thatcher and the conservatives have been waging a war against the working classes.. remember the Tory motto... give just enough, to just enough.... to ensure they remain in power.

She didnt just take their jobs, she destroyed the union movement, removing power and pride from the working class, conservatives then went on a orchestrated campaign with the elite media to turn the workers and poor against themselves.

As you acknowledge they did nearly nothing to assist the people, families, and future unemployed, they cut social housing, and turned a society that believed in helping each other into one that believed only in the individual.

Compare the support and printing of money to stop banks failing and keep the rich middle class supported during the GFC (and Covid)....with the non existent support of the mines and manufacturing industries. As is evident and they knew, they too were "too big to fail" but the Tories let them and now we have the disaster, poverty, crime and sadness in those once proud communities.

If you look at a the poor, a "chav" or anyone, and think they deserve where they are.. that is done by Thatcher and the corrupt conservative scum.
 

I think its was more them putting faith in a bad economic model along with previous governments failing to see the writing on the wall. Thatcher and Regan stupidly believed if you gave tax cuts to the rich and so on that they would re-invest the money into the poor and that the wealth would trickle down (in reality the rich just pocket the change). As we have seen that is now notoriously known as trickle down economics and doesn't actually work. Either way the job losses were going to happen sooner or later these jobs were unsustainable and no plan was put in place to give these people different jobs and different paths foward. You have to understand how much the UK needed the colonies for those factories to run. Have you seen how much wealth we took from the colonies its ridiculous. It was a failure over decades of left and right wing governments. The right wing governments couldn't care less and had a flawed economic model that they thaught would jump at the opportunity to invest in those places and the left wing governments didn't want to alienate their base by telling the union leaders that they needed to switch carrers and essentially ditch their cushy jobs as the leaders of huge unions. Remember in this time period the unions had huge sway in how their members would vote. If a leader had told them that their jobs were unsustainable some other leader would have come along who told them what they wanted and gotten their vote. This is called populism.

 

I don't think Thatcher had much choice at that point. The money need to revitialize these areas at that point would have been insane and even then it would be a long term project that would take at least 30 years. You don't build roads, schools, banks, shops, airports for tens of millions of people all in one day so it was just easier to support what already functioned and in the UK's case that was the middle class and back then I am guessing she hoped trickle down economics would work and that the market would see an opportunity in investing into these areas but that never happened due to her flawed economic model.

 

Even then re-traning these millions of people who have been working in the coal mines for decades into doctors, lawyers, bankers and engineers with the infrastructure available at the time in those areas just wouldn't have been possible it was far too late. Think of all the teachers and re-training buildings (universities trade schools and what not) and roads for said buildings there would have needed to been built for tens of millions. The cost would have been huge. Agian call it the evils of capitalism but it was inevitable and there was little alternative. Thatcher was the excutioner who got all the blame but it really was the governments before her that should be blamed for not diversifying the local economies in those areas and getting them slowly adpated to a world where they can't have virtually free resources from the colonies and adapting them to a capitalist world where paying wages to British workers for coal just wasn't the cheapest option and harmed our environment

 

Globalization means that our economy needed to essentially become mostly service based in order to pay the wages and maintain the standard of living we have gotten used to here.

 

In order to do so it needed an educated population trained in providing services that other countries and other people in our country that have already amassed inherited wealth want.

 

The ex-coal miners and manufacturers who had been doing those jobs for decades were never going to learn the skills needed to adapt by the time Thatcher got into office especially in that climate and they would have probably refused to while there was still coal in the pits.

 

The best you could have hoped for is that their kids getting the education and investment needed which again due to poor long term planning by our government never really happened. 

 

Thatcher has to share the blame but honestly, I blame the governments before her for not preparing the UK for the inevitable. Its like how if in Saudi Arabia all of a sudden oil wasn't a viable source of revenue anymore and their economy collapsed no one would feel any pity for their state since oil has been branded as something that won't work long term for a very long time now and they have had plenty of time to adapt.

 

The same thing happened with the UK. We never adapted some parts of the country over time to the role our economy was going to play. By the time Thatcher was in power it was to little too late.

 

Bit by bit we should have re-trained workers built the schools and roads and infrastructure needed over a few decades to face up to the eventuallity. Then with an educated work force companies that needed skilled people would have moved in and provided employment like it has in modern day Ireland and hence why their GDP per capita is better than ours now and their economy looks to be a model for the rest of the world. That needs to happen over multipule governments and it just never happened. Due to the lack of will by the public and the government.

 

Its the flaws of democracy and capitalism rolled into one mess.

 

It was a failure by multipule governments and people and shouldn't all be blamed on one woman. To do so would be a massive over simplification which doesn't tell the whole truth.

[urban.spaceman]

[Dahnsouff]

6 hours ago, ozleicester said:

Of course its more complicated. But the facts remain that Thatcher and the conservatives have been waging a war against the working classes.. remember the Tory motto... give just enough, to just enough.... to ensure they remain in power.

She didnt just take their jobs, she destroyed the union movement, removing power and pride from the working class, conservatives then went on a orchestrated campaign with the elite media to turn the workers and poor against themselves.

As you acknowledge they did nearly nothing to assist the people, families, and future unemployed, they cut social housing, and turned a society that believed in helping each other into one that believed only in the individual.

Compare the support and printing of money to stop banks failing and keep the rich middle class supported during the GFC (and Covid)....with the non existent support of the mines and manufacturing industries. As is evident and they knew, they too were "too big to fail" but the Tories let them and now we have the disaster, poverty, crime and sadness in those once proud communities.

If you look at a the poor, a "chav" or anyone, and think they deserve where they are.. that is done by Thatcher and the corrupt conservative scum.
 

That’s far too simplistic. My old man, he was a union man, and he used to say the unions destroyed themselves with their greed, their self importance. Too many self interested people make it to the top of unions, just like they do everywhere else in life, and that applies to those in politics too.

[ozleicester]

8 hours ago, Fightforever said:

I think its was more them putting faith in a bad economic model along with previous governments failing to see the writing on the wall. Thatcher and Regan stupidly believed if you gave tax cuts to the rich and so on that they would re-invest the money into the poor and that the wealth would trickle down (in reality the rich just pocket the change). As we have seen that is now notoriously known as trickle down economics and doesn't actually work. Either way the job losses were going to happen sooner or later these jobs were unsustainable and no plan was put in place to give these people different jobs and different paths foward. You have to understand how much the UK needed the colonies for those factories to run. Have you seen how much wealth we took from the colonies its ridiculous. It was a failure over decades of left and right wing governments. The right wing governments couldn't care less and had a flawed economic model that they thaught would jump at the opportunity to invest in those places and the left wing governments didn't want to alienate their base by telling the union leaders that they needed to switch carrers and essentially ditch their cushy jobs as the leaders of huge unions. Remember in this time period the unions had huge sway in how their members would vote. If a leader had told them that their jobs were unsustainable some other leader would have come along who told them what they wanted and gotten their vote. This is called populism.

 

I don't think Thatcher had much choice at that point. The money need to revitialize these areas at that point would have been insane and even then it would be a long term project that would take at least 30 years. You don't build roads, schools, banks, shops, airports for tens of millions of people all in one day so it was just easier to support what already functioned and in the UK's case that was the middle class and back then I am guessing she hoped trickle down economics would work and that the market would see an opportunity in investing into these areas but that never happened due to her flawed economic model.

 

Even then re-traning these millions of people who have been working in the coal mines for decades into doctors, lawyers, bankers and engineers with the infrastructure available at the time in those areas just wouldn't have been possible it was far too late. Think of all the teachers and re-training buildings (universities trade schools and what not) and roads for said buildings there would have needed to been built for tens of millions. The cost would have been huge. Agian call it the evils of capitalism but it was inevitable and there was little alternative. Thatcher was the excutioner who got all the blame but it really was the governments before her that should be blamed for not diversifying the local economies in those areas and getting them slowly adpated to a world where they can't have virtually free resources from the colonies and adapting them to a capitalist world where paying wages to British workers for coal just wasn't the cheapest option and harmed our environment

 

Globalization means that our economy needed to essentially become mostly service based in order to pay the wages and maintain the standard of living we have gotten used to here.

 

In order to do so it needed an educated population trained in providing services that other countries and other people in our country that have already amassed inherited wealth want.

 

The ex-coal miners and manufacturers who had been doing those jobs for decades were never going to learn the skills needed to adapt by the time Thatcher got into office especially in that climate and they would have probably refused to while there was still coal in the pits.

 

The best you could have hoped for is that their kids getting the education and investment needed which again due to poor long term planning by our government never really happened. 

 

Thatcher has to share the blame but honestly, I blame the governments before her for not preparing the UK for the inevitable. Its like how if in Saudi Arabia all of a sudden oil wasn't a viable source of revenue anymore and their economy collapsed no one would feel any pity for their state since oil has been branded as something that won't work long term for a very long time now and they have had plenty of time to adapt.

 

The same thing happened with the UK. We never adapted some parts of the country over time to the role our economy was going to play. By the time Thatcher was in power it was to little too late.

 

Bit by bit we should have re-trained workers built the schools and roads and infrastructure needed over a few decades to face up to the eventuallity. Then with an educated work force companies that needed skilled people would have moved in and provided employment like it has in modern day Ireland and hence why their GDP per capita is better than ours now and their economy looks to be a model for the rest of the world. That needs to happen over multipule governments and it just never happened. Due to the lack of will by the public and the government.

 

Its the flaws of democracy and capitalism rolled into one mess.

 

It was a failure by multipule governments and people and shouldn't all be blamed on one woman. To do so would be a massive over simplification which doesn't tell the whole truth.

Of course its not ALL her. But she (and her corrupt rich Tory mates and their greedy supporters)....
destroyed the unions,..
cut the tax rates for the rich

sold council housing

reduced taxes for corporations

changed welfare to stop wage parity
took away the belief in a compassionate society

etc etc

I could go on.. but the facts are.. the changes that evil government under her direction changed the UK for everyone and to this day, the damage is being felt.... and worst of all, we have a privileged self righteous "middle class" looking down on those people.

There but for the grace of dog go i

[leicsmac]

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/investigations/daniel-bice/2021/01/11/st-croix-republican-party-urges-members-prepare-war/6622950002/

 

[hejammy]

Can someone tell me if he doesn't get impeached, can he, after he becomes a "civilian", be charged under Federal Law for inciting violence? 

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, hejammy said:

Can someone tell me if he doesn't get impeached, can he, after he becomes a "civilian", be charged under Federal Law for inciting violence? 

That's shaky ground considering the possibility of him pardoning himself, which it seems is a possibility that could work but no one seems to be sure if it would work.

 

However, a much more solid possibility is the NY State authorities giving him a tap on the shoulder regarding various tax and financial irregularities, the penalties for which could be rather severe.

[hejammy]

1 minute ago, leicsmac said:

That's shaky ground considering the possibility of him pardoning himself, which it seems is a possibility that could work but no one seems to be sure if it would work.

 

However, a much more solid possibility is the NY State authorities giving him a tap on the shoulder regarding various tax and financial irregularities, the penalties for which could be rather severe.

Correct me if I am wrong though, can he not pardon himself of all offenses? (I know this has not been done by any president before but this is Trump?)

[Fightforever]

2 hours ago, ozleicester said:

Of course its not ALL her. But she (and her corrupt rich Tory mates and their greedy supporters)....
destroyed the unions,..
cut the tax rates for the rich

sold council housing

reduced taxes for corporations

changed welfare to stop wage parity
took away the belief in a compassionate society

etc etc

I could go on.. but the facts are.. the changes that evil government under her direction changed the UK for everyone and to this day, the damage is being felt.... and worst of all, we have a privileged self righteous "middle class" looking down on those people.

There but for the grace of dog go i

You didn't read what I wrote. The unions were one of the reasons why those areas didn't move on from coal they didn't want any other jobs unless it involved coal/their industry of choice hence they only voted in labor leaders that supported their dying industry rather than revamping those areas. She helped what was functioning in the UK because previous governments didn't do anything to adapt our economy. She only gets blame from finger pointing idiots that can't see that. It was her economic model that was the problem. She assumed cutting taxes for the rich would lead to higher investment in the poor (since there was no way the government could have taken on that role at that rate) which it didn't. In order to have saved those people you would have needed huge investment that can only happen over decades and should have happened over multiple governments. I won't blame her for the ills of previous governments. I will blame her for her stupid economic model. But you will lay 90% of the blame on her door because getting to the root of a problem is too much bother for you clearly. The things you listed are an aftermath of decades of action-less governments. Not one. In reality she only deserves 30% of the blame. Even then the UK's living standards are some of the highest in the world . As for society's compassion life isn't fair. If the UK had went on supporting those industries we would be much worse off today.

Edited 14 January 2021 by Fightforever

[Jon the Hat]

Just now, hejammy said:

Correct me if I am wrong though, can he not pardon himself of all offenses? (I know this has not been done by any president before but this is Trump?)

Only federal offences apparently, so any state could still pursue him. If the Supreme Court decided a president can pardon himself.

[leicsmac]

1 minute ago, hejammy said:

Correct me if I am wrong though, can he not pardon himself of all offenses? (I know this has not been done by any president before but this is Trump?)

He can pardon himself of all federal offences. State offences, however, are unpardonable by any President and therefore fair game.

[Mike Oxlong]

Just now, leicsmac said:

He can pardon himself of all federal offences. State offences, however, are unpardonable by any President and therefore fair game.

Washington DC falls outside any state lines at present I think 

 

Must be some provision though to deal with criminal offences on a non federal basis 

[leicsmac]

1 minute ago, Mike Oxlong said:

Washington DC falls outside any state lines at present I think 

 

Must be some provision though to deal with criminal offences on a non federal basis 

It does, but as per above, there are other offences committed in NY State that he could be charged with.

[Mike Oxlong]

 

 

[Mike Oxlong]

Just now, leicsmac said:

It does, but as per above, there are other offences committed in NY State that he could be charged with.

Yes, aren’t they mostly tax matters ?

 

I’d like to think that he will be answerable for his role in the events of last week nonetheless