Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Mon Nov 14, 2016 7:27 pm

One day, when I was sitting alone amongst gloom and despair, and thinking that my life was a mess, and the world was going to hell in a hand basket, a little voice came to me from out of the gloom, and said "Cheer up! Things could be worse."

So, I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Boocola » Tue Nov 15, 2016 1:12 am

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
:twisted:

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Jason Toddman » Tue Nov 15, 2016 10:13 am

drawscore wrote:One day, when I was sitting alone amongst gloom and despair, and thinking that my life was a mess, and the world was going to hell in a hand basket, a little voice came to me from out of the gloom, and said "Cheer up! Things could be worse."

So, I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.

Drawscore

What, aren't you happy that Hillary lost and Trump won? Or only that Hillary lost?
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Tue Nov 15, 2016 12:26 pm

I'm happy that Hillary lost. I hope the next thing I read about the Clintons, is their obituaries.

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Mask6184 » Tue Nov 15, 2016 3:12 pm

I was actually surprised at how the results played out. I didn't expect the rust belt states to play out as they did, along with Pennsylvania, Florida, and even how close Virginia was. It did say a lot about the election.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Jason Toddman » Tue Nov 15, 2016 3:26 pm

drawscore wrote:I'm happy that Hillary lost. I hope the next thing I read about the Clintons, is their obituaries.

Drawscore

So what are your specific thoughts about Trump being president-elect? Are you glad, sad, neutral, or what?
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby wataru14 » Tue Nov 15, 2016 3:31 pm

drawscore wrote:I hope the next thing I read about the Clintons, is their obituaries.

Drawscore


That is horrifying. As much as I loathe Mike Pence I would never wish for his death.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby MisterBones » Tue Nov 15, 2016 3:38 pm

wataru14 wrote:
drawscore wrote:I hope the next thing I read about the Clintons, is their obituaries.

Drawscore


That is horrifying. As much as I loathe Mike Pence I would never wish for his death.

That wasn't about Pence.
I have ocs or whatever

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby wataru14 » Tue Nov 15, 2016 3:40 pm

It doesn't matter who it was about. Wishing for someone's death is monstrous.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Tieup1 » Tue Nov 15, 2016 4:18 pm

In elections somebody wins, and somebody loses. That's just the way it is. You just have to deal with it.

I see there have been protests in America, about Trump's win, which is fair enough, because it's a free country, and people have the right to express their views.

But, it won't change the result, so people who think they have lost out, will just have to live with it, until the next election.

It's up to the losing party to find a credible candidate for the next election.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Jason Toddman » Tue Nov 15, 2016 4:19 pm

wataru14 wrote:It doesn't matter who it was about. Wishing for someone's death is monstrous.

Actually, I think what Drawscore meant was that he hopes they stay out of the political limelight for the rest of their lives;not that he wishes their immediate demise. At least, that's how I choose to interpret it unless DS himself contradicts me.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby wataru14 » Tue Nov 15, 2016 7:49 pm

We can only hope.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Tue Nov 15, 2016 11:41 pm

wataru14 wrote:It doesn't matter who it was about. Wishing for someone's death is monstrous.


I did not wish for their deaths. I wised for them to go away and be forgotten; to end up in the dustbin of history, and to be so out of the news, that the next time they make the newspapers, it will be on the obit page.

Far be it from me to wish harm befall any of our elected or appointed officials, but there are many, who, if they went out in the morning to pick up their newspaper, and happened to get run over by a bus, I would not shed any tears.

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Tue Nov 15, 2016 11:48 pm

Jason Toddman wrote:
drawscore wrote:I'm happy that Hillary lost. I hope the next thing I read about the Clintons, is their obituaries.

Drawscore

So what are your specific thoughts about Trump being president-elect? Are you glad, sad, neutral, or what?


Guarded optimism. The initial reaction, is that he's gotta be better than Obama, but then, in my opinion, a cabbage would be better than Obama.

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Oohmynameisblue » Wed Nov 16, 2016 3:58 pm

drawscore wrote:I'm happy that Hillary lost. I hope the next thing I read about the Clintons, is their obituaries.

Drawscore

Thats a friggin overreaction lmao and to your explanation okay but it was strongly implied you wanted their deaths.

drawscore wrote:
Jason Toddman wrote:
drawscore wrote:I'm happy that Hillary lost. I hope the next thing I read about the Clintons, is their obituaries.

Drawscore

So what are your specific thoughts about Trump being president-elect? Are you glad, sad, neutral, or what?


Guarded optimism. The initial reaction, is that he's gotta be better than Obama, but then, in my opinion, a cabbage would be better than Obama.

Drawscore

And what did Obama do that makes you think that with the exception of the stuff Trump made up?

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Wed Nov 16, 2016 6:13 pm

>>>And what did Obama do that makes you think that with the exception of the stuff Trump made up?<<<

Not so much what he did, but what he didn't do. He did not secure the borders; he did not keep his promise about keeping your doctor and health plan; he did not fix the problems with the VA; he did not stop the DoJ and the IRS when they broke the law; military retirees, disabled vets, and people on Social Security, did not get a COLA in three of the last four years; he gives away billions to countries that hate us, but ignores homeless veterans. Shall I go on?

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Jason Toddman » Wed Nov 16, 2016 11:22 pm

drawscore wrote:>>>And what did Obama do that makes you think that with the exception of the stuff Trump made up?<<<

Not so much what he did, but what he didn't do. He did not secure the borders; he did not keep his promise about keeping your doctor and health plan; he did not fix the problems with the VA; he did not stop the DoJ and the IRS when they broke the law; military retirees, disabled vets, and people on Social Security, did not get a COLA in three of the last four years; he gives away billions to countries that hate us, but ignores homeless veterans. Shall I go on?

Those are all problems Bernie Sanders also railed about and pledged to do something about. Yet you say you cannot stand Bernie Sanders, while at the same time supporting politicians who care even less about veterans than Obama does. Trump is a possible exception (who really knows what the hell Trump believes?) but there isn't any other major figure in the GOP who gives a damn about any of those things either; not even John McCain, apparently.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby cellofello » Thu Nov 17, 2016 12:01 am

drawscore wrote:>>>And what did Obama do that makes you think that with the exception of the stuff Trump made up?<<<

Not so much what he did, but what he didn't do. He did not secure the borders; he did not keep his promise about keeping your doctor and health plan; he did not fix the problems with the VA; he did not stop the DoJ and the IRS when they broke the law; military retirees, disabled vets, and people on Social Security, did not get a COLA in three of the last four years; he gives away billions to countries that hate us, but ignores homeless veterans. Shall I go on?


Securing the borders: how was Obama different from every previous president? News flash: Mexico is NOT going to pay for a wall, even though I've joked that they would to block the millions of Americans fleeing a Trump presidency.

On keeping doctor and health plan, all he was really promising was all he could promise: that the _government_ would not take away your doctor or your health plan. You couldn't reasonably expect him to forbid your doctor from ever retiring, could you? Nor could he force your employer to keep the same plan you had last year, nor force insurance companies to keep offering exactly what they offered the year before, nor from dropping your doctor from their preferred provider list, nor your doctor from withdrawing from their preferred provider list. I had all that happen to me years before Obamacare.

I need specifics on what you claim the DoJ was doing wrong. IRS, I presume you're talking about Lois Lerner and the long delays in granting 501(c)(4) status. That has to do with the uncertainties in whether a 501(c)(4) group has engaged in political activities that are illegal for groups holding 501(c)(4) tax exempt status. More on this at the end.

COLA: *headdesk* COLA stands for Cost of Living Adjustment. It is meant to protect recipients against inflation, not to increase their real income. For Social Security, it was enacted into law in 1973 and is based on the Consumer Price Index. We have had very low inflation. Therefore we have had little or no COLA. It is an automatic mechanism, and not at the discretion of the president! Blaming Obama for no COLA is as silly as blaming Obama for your not winning the lottery when you didn't buy a ticket. The only way Obama could have caused a bigger COLA would have been to adopt policies to boost inflation - but they wouldn't really have been better off, because everything would have cost more! It doesn't help you to double your salary if all the things you pay for also double in price. You can learn about the history of Social Security COLA at https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/latestCOLA.html. Military retiree COLA is likewise an automatic formula, not a presidential gift that mean old Obama chose to withhold.

Homeless veterans? See http://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Art ... since-2010. Doesn't sound like Obama was ignoring homeless veterans to me. It sounds like you are ignoring facts and getting your "news" from liars.

Last point: Just like every other president, Obama was not allowed to just spend as much money as he wanted on anything he wanted. There is this thing called a Congress - have you ever heard of it? - that decides on what the budget is. It also makes up the tax laws, including things like 501(c)(4) nonprofit status with messy, complicated rules about what such groups can and cannot do that the IRS bureaucrats have to figure out how to enforce.

The president can propose a budget, but Congress is free to ignore it (and has done so). All the president can do is veto the budget Congress passes, not change it. For the past several years, Congress has been controlled by the Republicans. Even when the Democrats nominally held control, the Republicans in the Senate were able to block pretty much everything by using a parliamentary tactic called a filibuster, where they can keep a vote from ever taking place. They even blocked his executive and judicial appointments to an unprecedented degree. Now, maybe Obama's policies would have failed, but he was never given a fair chance to even try them. So maybe you should be blaming the Republicans in Congress for some of the things you're unhappy about.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Thu Nov 17, 2016 8:11 am

I won't go into everything, but Obama's "You can keep your doctor and health care plan" promise was rated "Lie of the Year" by PolitiFact. What is surprising about that, is that PolitiFact is an arm of the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald, two of the most left-leaning newspapers in the southeast, (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Palm Beach Post are right there with them)

Suffice it to say, that Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that read "The buck stops here." Obama replaced it with one that reads "The buck never got here."

And you might note, that during the first year and a half of Obama's first term, he had a sizable majority in the house, and a veto-proof majority in the senate. The Republicans were powerless to stop the Democrats, until Teddy Kennedy died, and a Republican, Scott Walker, became the 41st vote.

One other thing: Remember the ABC's - Accuracy, Brevity, and Clarity. Long posts (unless they are stories) seldom get read beyond the second or third paragraph. By anybody.

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Oohmynameisblue » Thu Nov 17, 2016 11:43 am

drawscore wrote:One other thing: Remember the ABC's - Accuracy, Brevity, and Clarity. Long posts (unless they are stories) seldom get read beyond the second or third paragraph. By anybody.

Drawscore

Thats true but you did write 4 paragraphs. Short albeit but 4 paragraphs.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Thu Nov 17, 2016 3:20 pm

The post, itself, was short. I said that if the post was long, they seldom are read beyond the second or third paragraph.

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby cellofello » Thu Nov 17, 2016 7:28 pm

drawscore wrote:And you might note, that during the first year and a half of Obama's first term, he had a sizable majority in the house, and a veto-proof majority in the senate. The Republicans were powerless to stop the Democrats, until Teddy Kennedy died, and a Republican, Scott Walker, became the 41st vote.


The situation was more complicated than your description. The Democrats are even less of a monolithic hive mind than the Republicans.


One other thing: Remember the ABC's - Accuracy, Brevity, and Clarity. Long posts (unless they are stories) seldom get read beyond the second or third paragraph. By anybody.

Drawscore


Accuracy and Brevity are enemies. Simple-minded falsehoods such as your accusation that Obama should have provided COLAs are brief and clear, but not accurate. An accurate answer can almost never be as brief as a lie.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Fri Nov 18, 2016 2:54 am

I don't think so. I think that many things are over-complicated, and that gave rise to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. An example, is:

"A triumvirate of optically deficient rodents.
Observe how they perambulate
They all perambulated after the horticulturist's spouse,
Who removed their posterior appendages with a culinary instrument
Have you ever observed such an optical phenomenon in your entire metabolic existence,
As a triumvirate of optically deficient rodents?"

If you didn't recognize it, it's "Three Blind Mice," translated for bureaucrats and lawyers.

The point, is that things do not have to be unnecessarily complicated, but they often are. Things are often over-simplified, too. There has to be a middle ground. Still, keep it simple, and easy to understand. Not everyone has the same command of the English language as you or I do.

And the sign that read "The Buck Stops Here" on Harry Truman's desk, meant that, as president, he was responsible for what happened (or didn't happen) on his watch. He did not "pass the buck" to subordinates, or to congress.

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby cellofello » Fri Nov 18, 2016 9:29 am

drawscore wrote:I don't think so. I think that many things are over-complicated, and that gave rise to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle. [...]
The point, is that things do not have to be unnecessarily complicated, but they often are. Things are often over-simplified, too. [...]

And the sign that read "The Buck Stops Here" on Harry Truman's desk, meant that, as president, he was responsible for what happened (or didn't happen) on his watch. He did not "pass the buck" to subordinates, or to congress.

Drawscore


I'm afraid "The buck stops here" is one of those oversimplifications. Even in Truman's day, the president didn't have enough time to make all decisions for the government. The president can be blamed for not acting to fix problems, and even for decisions by political appointees - you can say the president should have chosen someone better. But when it's done by a career civil servant never chosen by the president, it's not fair to blame the president for the bad decision.

The simplistic idea that the Democrats could have done anything at the start of Obama's administration would only be true for things on which they all agreed. The president can pressure members of Congress to go along, but can't actually force them. Democrat Ben Nelson in particular held out for things in the health care law that Obama didn't want. Democratic legislators also depend on special interest money (like the insurance lobby). The health plan didn't need to be so complicated, but the complicated personal and business interests involved made it impossible to achieve the simplicity of single payer. You can't magically eliminate those complicated interests.

"[T]here is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong" (H. L. Mencken). Trump is a prime example of simple solutions for simple people. The idea that ending the trade agreements and putting tariffs on Chinese goods will bring all the high-paying manufacturing jobs back is a lie. Factories that come back here will be filled with robots, not well-paid factory workers as in the 50s. "Make America Great Again" - sure sounds nice, but what does it really mean?

BTW, it was Scott Brown (MA), not Scott Walker (WI) who ended the (theoretical) filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Sat Nov 19, 2016 9:22 am

Another case of where we'll have to agree to disagree.

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby cellofello » Sat Nov 19, 2016 2:28 pm

drawscore wrote:Another case of where we'll have to agree to disagree.

Drawscore


I'll be interested to see what you say the first time something goes wrong under Trump.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby drawscore » Sat Nov 19, 2016 3:27 pm

We'll see,

Drawscore

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Jason Toddman » Sat Nov 19, 2016 4:01 pm

cellofello wrote: I'll be interested to see what you say the first time something goes wrong under Trump.

drawscore wrote:We'll see, Drawscore


Well, we shouldn't have to wait long. :geek:
To be fair there are some things where I agree more with Trump than I do with either Obama or Hillary, such as being against NAFTA and the TPP or being bullish about expanding NASA's budget and returning to the moon in preparation for going on to Mars (I always thought Obama's been there done that attitude was especially stupid and short-sighted. Despite my misgivings i am more willing to give Trump a chance than most Trump supporters would have given Hillary (Impeach her on Day one is imo an incredibly ignorant attitude to take and sets a bad precedent). After all, if he goes well then we all benefit; if he screws up we suffer in the short run but we benefit in the long run because the GOP will probably implode even more thoroughly than the Democrat party just did, and maybe a Progressive third party will finally get a shot.
Dare to be different... and make a difference.
To boldly go where no one in their right mind has gone before...

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Mask6184 » Sat Nov 19, 2016 7:26 pm

We really don't know what to expect from the Trump administration. All we can do right now is watch closely and see were the US goes from here, and hope things turn out for the better.

Re: Disappointed in the Election Results?

Postby Chris12 » Sun Nov 20, 2016 9:30 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUWSLlz0Fdo

We should laugh because its better than crying. Alec Baldwin was always the best thing to come out of the Trump campaign. Its probably also a completely accurate depiction of what's going on in the Trump camp.