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PoliGAF 2015-2016 |OT3| If someone named PhoenixDark leaves your party, call the cops

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PhoenixDark said:
Anger over ISIS is largely rooted in the ridiculous notion that the US is all powerful and can defeat anything. ISIS had lost a quarter of their territory in the last few months, the Kyrds have stymied them on multiple fronts, etc. The fact that they can only pull off small scale attacks should be telling you that they are not some major threat.

Unless you want to round Muslims up I see no way to prevent small scale mass shooting attacks. That type of attack is the future of terror. Grand, complex plots like 911 aren't very feasible today given US intelligence/spying. But how do you effectively spy on people who don't talk on the phone, have no network, etc. Yes I know informants and undercover work is prevalent but you realize that can't catch everything.

How do you defeat an ideology? Hundreds if not thousands of people are being radicalized monthly. In this country, in France, etc. Who do you bomb to stop that?
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Domestic threat of radicalization is different than combating ISIS. To begin, we should identify respectable, knowledgeable voices within the Muslim community in the west that champion peace, tolerance and civility while still being truthful to their traditions. You're only going to get a knee-jerk, fuck you reaction if you bring anyone else that even presumes to talk down to Muslims. That's understandable. Only Obama can talk to the blacks the way he can because of the shared collective and experience. If you get a Bill Cosby (pre-scandal) to talk down to blacks, he's gonna get (and actually did get) a big fat fuck you from the black community. Real talk. Of course Obama has the highest platform in the nation which helps, but my point is we need to elevate voices in the community from within. No uncle toms (or uncle tarek in our case). The government and media loves their uncle tareks because we like to hear what we want to hear; that Muslims need to let go of part of their faith or drop the hijab or change their holy books or whatever. Or how the crazy people that are blowing themselves up are demonstrating an equally valid expression of their faith. The people who say these things are not going to help you defeat radicalization or capture lone wolf terrorists. They will only exacerbate and accelerate the existing problems.

I'm not saying that simply giving a bigger platform to anti-radical voices could have somehow prevented Paris or San Bernardino. There will always be few that slip through and we still have a lot to learn. But the decoupling of America's interventionist, seemingly anti-Islamic foreign policy with the personal religious identity of a Muslim is something we should strive for.There are lots of very articulate, very reasonable, civil and all-American Muslim leaders in our community that have institutions and organizations that work and have been working with cases of domestic radicalization. Only thing I would add is that by elevating I don't mean to invite them to white house and appear besides politicians. That will just add unneeded political veneer to their message. I'm not even sure if the government can do anything in this regard or how to organically move the voices of love over the voices of hate. Community outreach programs? More Muslim politicians? Create more trust between the government and Muslim minorities? I guess the Islamic communities need to step up their game as well and speak more about things going on in their communities and being close to families. Make the friday sermons relevant to the problems the young teenagers and adults face instead of the droll sunday-school type religious lectures.
 
How gun control works: Japan makes it very hard to buy and own guns, with some of the strongest gun control laws in the world. The system is so restrictive that even Japan's criminals, which through the notorious yakuza can be highly ingrained in corrupt government agencies, largely see gun ownership as a liability, as Vox's Zack Beauchamp explained.

"Under current laws, if a low-level yakuza is caught with a gun and bullets that match, he’ll be charged with aggravated possession of firearms and will then face an average seven-year prison term," longtime Japan correspondent Jake Adelstein wrote in the Japan Times. "Simply firing a gun carries a penalty of three years to life. And … a yakuza boss may decide a death sentence is more appropriate if his thug miraculously gets released on bail before going to jail [because accomplice laws could get the boss indicted along with his subordinate]."
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If you take away guns, only criminals will have guns!

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/4/9850572/gun-control-us-japan-switzerland-uk-canada
 
RustyNails said:
I'm of the opinion that Obama's strategy on ISIS is the only acceptable strategy that causes least problems for everyone involved as far as America is concerned. Airstrikes and dronestrikes targeting ISIS needs to be very judicial and cautious. One airstrike against a children's hospital and it's over. Under no circumstances should we allow troops and tanks inside any middle-eastern country. Sneak attacks under the cover of darkness by US Spec Ops like the one that freed those 90 prisoners or the OBL raid in Pakistan are also acceptable because they don't leave any footprint.

Even though we created the mess in the middle-east, sadly it's up to the Arabs to bear the burden and clean it up. Ideally, Arab and Islamic countries should create a NATO like organization that deals with their local problems in the region. America and Europe should contribute towards it's creation and funding. In the long run, this will be the best case scenario. But for that to happen Iran and Saudi Arabia need to kiss each other first and that's not happening any time soon.
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That's the reason it is not going to happen. There would have to be a regime change for that to happen and the whole thing might be a sectarian thing as it would be Sunni dominated. The Arab League is a organization, but I don't know if they do military matters. If they do it'll be against Iran eventually.
 
Carson said we should restore Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

http://www.advocate.com/election/20...re-dadt-deal-transgender-thing-somewhere-else

“We have too many important things to do when our men and women are out there fighting the enemy, the last thing we need to be doing is saying, ‘What would it be like if we introduced several transgender people into this platoon?’ Give me a break. Deal with the transgender thing somewhere else.”
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Yes, Ben, because the first thing on everyone's mind when they are being shot at by lunatics overseas is that "Weren't you a man before? What the fuck! ICK ICK ICK GET AWAY FROM ME WITH YOUR TRANSGENDER COOTIES."

What a fucking idiot. This just shows that there can be a complete disconnect between book smarts and common sense smarts. And that just because you're a doctor, you can still be a fucking dumbass.

LGBT individuals have been fighting for decades to leave the closet. They are not going back in because of your bitch ass.
 
Motherfucker thinks Israel is at war with fucking Hummus and he thinks he has important things about the military, that's awesome.

That Sandy Hook Truther thread reminded me that any Sandy Hook Truthers should not be allowed to legally own guns, I'm sorry.
 
CVhH-HTUEAM0Zvu.jpg:large


Whoopsies.
 
Wilsongt said:
Explain to us sports haters.
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Michigan State vs Iowa in the BIG Championship.. It's college football. MSU just won..

As Adam and I cry ourselves to sleep being Ohio State fans.

PhoenixDark said:
Great game. But that wasn't the type of game you could possibly turn off before it was over and say "well, my team won!" If the game ended on a hail mary (shudder...) or something like that, and she had turned the game off a minute beforehand assuming it was over, I'd understand.
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Why aren't you drunk right now is my question?

eBay Huckster said:
meanwhile i don't have time to be sad because i have finals
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The joys of going to school online for me is that school never ends..

Oh well I guess I still have the Browns... Oh God...
 
Great game. But that wasn't the type of game you could possibly turn off before it was over and say "well, my team won!" If the game ended on a hail mary (shudder...) or something like that, and she had turned the game off a minute beforehand assuming it was over, I'd understand.
 
So I checked on my bet and all of a sudden I am up. Trump is at 27 now, he was sitting at like 20 for the longest time.
 
Diablos said:
Trump threw a wrench into everything. Look at what happened to Walker. They are waiting for the right moment to back a candidate. If you do it now it won't matter, Trump is dominating.
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The main thing holding Rubio back is he was part of the Gang of 8. His stance on immigration tends to flip flop some and therefore a significant part of the base doesn't trust him. If not for that, he would likely be much higher in the polls. Cruz and Trump have attacked Rubio on this quite a bit in last few weeks which has hurt him.

Obviously Jeb wants Rubio to fail as well and has attacked him some. Although much less effectively than Trump and Cruz.

Overall it seems Trump and Cruz don't attack each other much. They take small jabs at each other at times, but for the most part they go after the other candidates. Hell, Trump has brutally gone after some of them, especially Carson but has been fairly friendly so far with Cruz. I thought Trump going hard on Carson would severely hurt him because Carson had high likeability numbers. I seem to have been very wrong since Carson has dropped a fair amount in last few weeks and Trump appears to be holding steady or even going up a bit.
 
Rubio is an empty establishment figure. Even if he gets the nomination, there's not going to be the enthusiasm he needs to have any chance of becoming president. He's a good talker, but it's obvious the ideas aren't his own. Cruz and Trump might be batshit insane, but at least they put some feeling behind the nutball things they say. Rubio is the result of the GOP designing a robot to appeal to latino voters.
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
Holy crap, Jimmy Carter just announced he's cancer-free. That's awesome.
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That's great. I was hoping he'd make the DNC one more time.

2016 is going to be interesting. You'll have Obama, loved by the base, Clinton, loved by pretty much everyone, and Carter, whose image has been rehabilitated greatly since his presidency and he's pretty well-regarded as a diplomat and peacemaker. Compared to the RNC where they'll just jizz over Reagan's figurative corpse for four nights while the two living GOP presidents are shoved in the closet.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
I'm convinced that half of the people that took this poll don't know that non-white voters exist:

CVjMeS6WwAApQrW.jpg
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Or, they can figure that a 4% point increase in the Hispanic turn-out would be dwarfed by a 1% turnout in the white vote, and figure that Trump is the best candidate for doing that (he is). I agree with them entirely Trump is the Republican candidate most likely to win an election. I mean, none of them are likely, far from it, but he is the most likely, comparatively.
 
Most white people are racist, but Trump doesn't have the Nixon or Reagan esque respectability to allow every racist to vote for him, especially racist middle class women.

The gender gap is vast: Trump has been seen more unfavorably than favorably by men by 10- to 14-point margins since late summer. Women, by contrast, rate him unfavorably rather than favorably by much wider margins, 29 to 39 percentage points. In the latest such measure, in an ABC/Post poll Nov. 8, 33 percent of women saw him favorably, 64 percent unfavorably.



Among partisan groups, 69 percent of Republicans rated Trump positively earlier this month, a new high for him. But 80 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents saw him negatively, making for another dramatic division.
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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-favorability-stable-divisions-groups-poll/story?id=35497575

The "independent" right-leaning women care too much about respectability to ever vote for Trump even if he's as racist as they want.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Most white people are racist, but Trump doesn't have the Nixon or Reagan esque respectability to allow many racists to vote for him, especially racist middle class women.
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There's a small fraction of Republican voters who will vote this way - people who are racist or at least tolerate racism in the pursuit of e.g. lower taxes, but have public sensibilities that disavow them from supporting open racism. However, a) in the privacy of the ballot box, there's nobody to judge them, so they probably will vote Trump anyway, and b) they're a smaller pool of people than those who don't care and if anything are really pumped up to vote for a candidate that is open about his convictions rather than just alluding to it.
 
Has Trump actually spent a meaningful amount of his own money yet? That's the thing that matters to me. Right now it feels like he's actually making money promoting his damn book all the time.
 
Bam Bam Baklava said:
Has Trump actually spent a meaningful amount of his own money yet? That's the thing that matters to me. Right now it feels like he's actually making money promoting his damn book all the time.
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I don't think so, apparently he's got campaign contributions rolling in and he's just been spending that.

Basileus777 said:
You mean that one line in an article about someone else?
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Part of the issue in handicapping him is that no one is really writing about him seriously, so the only peeks into how he's actually running his campaign come through small comparisons with the other candidates. Like, for example, we know how he's doing in comparison to Rubio, but not to Cruz.
 
You feelin' that #enthusiasm up in here? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
Crab said:
There's a small fraction of Republican voters who will vote this way - people who are racist or at least tolerate racism in the pursuit of e.g. lower taxes, but have public sensibilities that disavow them from supporting open racism. However, a) in the privacy of the ballot box, there's nobody to judge them, so they probably will vote Trump anyway, and b) they're a smaller pool of people than those who don't care and if anything are really pumped up to vote for a candidate that is open about his convictions rather than just alluding to it.
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Speaking of "admitting it", public respectability, privacy-of-the-booth, etc..

Back in the days of land lines (mid-90s), I worked for a pollster that mainly did political and social research within states in the deep South. It wasn't frequent, but it was enough for me to notice that some southern rural women didn't want to answer poll questions with their husbands present in the same room. I asked my methodology professor about it, and we ended-up agreeing on a few starting point guesses:
- it was probably a single-digit % effect
- it'd be incredibly difficult to design a scientific poll in order to quantify the issue
- proliferation of mobile & cordless phones could enable more respondent mobility, lessening the effect

If Trump is the nominee, seeing how traditional Republicans respond and conduct themselves is going to be one of the most interesting aspects of the general. Could we end-up with a Trump version of the Bradley Effect?
 
Same thing happens in the UK. I did some work with YouGOV and one of the methodology problems was the difference between online forms and phone calls - UKIP consistently did better in the former than the latter, and the former eventually ended up being more accurate, and the best guess was people didn't actually like admitting to a human operator they were going to vote UKIP, but felt fine filling in an anonymous form about it.
 
Crab said:
You feelin' that #enthusiasm up in here? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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More than three-in-four Democrats and leaners surveyed — 76 percent — said they had a favorable opinion of Clinton, while 18 percent said they did not, for a positive rating of +58 points. In the last survey, Clinton had a net favorability rating of +51 points, with 73 percent to 22 percent seeing her in a positive light.

In the case of Sanders, 51 percent gave him favorable marks, while 14 percent said they had an unfavorable view of him. Taken together, a slight increase in Clinton's favorability rating and a slight decrease in Sanders' resulted in the overall favorability disparity between the two candidates, who along with Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, will next debate on Dec. 19 in Manchester, New Hampshire.
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http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/poll-democrats-2016-hillary-clinton-216422
 
It was more a comment on how y'all in this thread should feel ashamed for being enthusiastic about such a hawkish candidate. Grudgingly acceptant, yes; enthusiastic, no.

Also, 73-22-5 compared to 51-14-35 implies that when you take out Don't Knows, Clinton is on 77-23 and Sanders is on 78-22, so... there's effectively no difference (this matches with the CBS/NYT poll, see my post in the Trump supernova thread). The difference isn't in favourability (most Democrats see other Democrats favourably for obvious reasons), but in enthusiasm; a much higher proportion of Sanders' supporters are enthusiastic about him than Clinton's supporters are about her.
 
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