Delta1212

That's what we all said at the end of W's presidency and look how that has turned out.

If things are just peachy in 4 years I will be thrilled. I'm not upset because the government is Republican. I'm upset because the specific things they have proposed doing terrify me. Not just on moral issues, but diplomatic, economic and environmental. I'm anticipating negative consequences pretty much across the board. If everything goes smoothly, I'll be ecstatic and relieved because, unlike the Republicans we've had in government over the last eight years who have repeatedly flipped on their own legislation when it was backed by Democrats, sabotaged policies that came out of conservative groups or bipartisan attempts at cooperation between individual Democrats and Republicans or following the Hastert rule and zealously trying to avoid passing anything in the House that couldn't be passed exclusively with Republican votes and no input from Democrats all to make sure that Democrats and especially Obama have no successes they can point to as their openly stated objective and damn the consequences for the country at large, I don't actually give a shit who it is that implements good policy as long as someone is doing it. I know a lot of Republicans who are very strong party loyalists. And the way Republicans tend to vote is pretty consistent for their party. They turn out to elect members of their party regardless of their enthusiasm for the specific candidates. It's why they tend to do so well in the "less exciting" midterm elections. They show up to support the party. And the thing I think a lot of those people and people who are surrounded by mostly Republican areas don't get is that Democrats don't have an equivalent number of people who are equivalently dedicated to their team. The majority of Democratic voters don't vote for the party so much as they vote for candidates and issues that they feel are important to them. There is much less team loyalty baked in. They might show up and vote straight ticket if there is something they like that gets them to the polls, but you can't count on them to hold their nose and be there if there is nothing they like on the ticket that election season. It's why Democrats turn out in lower numbers in midterm elections. The Republican core shows up to support the party, but the Democratic core is much smaller and since the candidates are much less visible there are fewer people from the Democratic base who are excited about voting for them and showing up to do so. You can also see it Presidential approval ratings. Recent Democratic Presidents tend to have much lower ceilings on their approval ratings, while Bush had much more volatile approval ratings. There is a core of Republicans who will not give Obama their approval because he is on the wrong team while Democrats were much more willing to throw their support behind Bush following 9/11. It's not that every member of each party is like this, so much as it is that the relative number of each of this type of person is different across the parties. Democrats have traditionally been much more willing to work with Republicans to acheive the things that they believe in than Republicans have been to work with Democrats even to acheive Republicans' own goals. The Dems just don't care as much who it is that supports something as long as someone is supporting it if they think it's good policy. I just, again, don't think the things that are currently being proposed are good policy and expect to see negative results following them. But you have no idea how relieved I would be to be proven wrong and have Donald Trump be the greatest president in American history. I'm perfectly capable of laughing at myself if that proves to be the case. I just don't anticipate being in a laughing mood for a very long time.

The fact that this forum and other places I frequent got a healthy injection of racist propaganda over the last few days (and weeks) and the fact that the KKK is now planning a victory parade for December makes me think the racism isn't just lingering on as it gets smaller and smaller. There's been a distinct upswell over the past year and we're seeing it crescendo at the moment.

The act of protesting is never shameful, and any non-violent form of protest is acceptable. Taking other means, especially violent ones would be and is shameful, but the simple act of expressing, publically and in an assembled group, your displeasure with the result of the political process, even a result arrived at legally and through our democracy, is not and never will be in and of itself shameful. The fact that protest itself often gets equated with acts of violence or vandalism that occur sometimes in and around protests is, in my opinion, the thing that is shameful. And if you want to talk about people who have channeled their anger and frustration specifically into violent and destructive acts then I will join you in condemning those people and people like them. But the act of protest should be considered sacred and not equated with criminality no matter who is protesting. You don't have to like people who are protesting or agree with what they are protesting about, but protesting itself is never the problem.

The fun part is that this is pretty much the best thing both of them could say no matter what the truth is. If Russia pushed Trump as a destabilizing force in the election, then coming out and saying that is probably the best way to further destabilize our democracy. And if they didn't, then it still has the same destabilizing effect and so of course it's a good move. And the Trump camp, of course, is going to deny it either way. I still honestly don't know whether Trump is actually playing for Putin or just being played by him. It's not really comforting either way, though. I expect he's more useful fool than Manchurian Candidate, but there's no really good way to tell at this point.

Keep in mind that while a couple of the big states were covered by the Voting Rights Act, most of the critical states that Trump won were never restricted by the act in the first place, so the impact it could have had is somewhat limited and it certainly doesn't explain him outperforming across the board.

The problem is that while anyone might be able to help somewhat when intervention is necessary to keep the person alive, someone who doesn't have any training may not be able to determine when it is actually necessary to intervene, and you wind up with people who don't know what they're doing hurting people who didn't need help, or at least who didn't need that specific kind of help.

Oh fuck off.

Frankly, people who don't know what they are doing in emergency situations are often as likely to screw something up as to actually help. A doctor or EMT might have a responsibility to administer CPR. A random person off the street who doesn't know what they're doing could easily kill or seriously hurt someone to no benefit if they were legally required to do it.

Depraved heart murder explicitly doesn't require malice, just total indifference to human life. Not making an argument, mind. Just pointing out a fact.

That's not what Black Lives Matter means. If someone says "You matter" does that mean they think no one but you matters?

Yes, "black lives matter" will be the cause of a race war. Ok.

There has been a tradition of ex-Presidents being friendly with each other, even across party lines. I wonder how Trump will manage in that particular fraternity.

Why? That's looking at it rather backwards. It doesn't matter if every Trump voter is a white nationalist militia type. It only matters that every white nationalist militia type is a Trump voter. "Don't worry, I only voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils" doesn't do someone any good when the Trump voter next to them strings them up and drags them behind a truck for being a traitor. There is a very real risk of violence as a result of white nationalism and the alt right being emboldened by Trump's victory. They'll see it as an endorsement and support of their beliefs from America's electorate and what Trump actually does in office or why individual people actually voted for him won't make a lick of difference. The message has been received regardless of whether people meant to send it or not.

Don't worry. It's still illegal at the federal level, and all of the new state legalizations rely on the federal government not prosecuting their citizens for the federal crime that they are no longer enforcing on a state level. So, whether marijuana is treated as legal in any state, regardless of voting outcomes, is now up to the Trump administration.

This is the second most bizarre thing I've seen in the last 24 hours.

That's not happening for quite a few cycles yet if trends hold. Big government is a term that gets thrown out a lot because intuitively, it seems easy to understand, and yet really, it doesn't mean anything at all. Which is handy because it means that the speaker can make it mean whatever they want.

Why would that matter to a belief in God? If a God does exist, I would find it exceedingly more plausible, given what we do know about how the world works, that he/she/it would simply set up the rules of the universe so that live develops as part of the whole thing unfolding that that they'd set up the environment according to those rules and then reach down with godly fingers and plop the first cell, which also follows all of the exact same rules that the rest of the environment does, into the primordial ocean and then let things go back to progressing from there. It seems oddly inelegant to have to edit the universe by hand after the fact just to insider something that doesn't operate according to any different rules anyway.

A rapidly changing global culture and economy that has largely left behind anyone who isn't fairly highly educated and located in or around a major urban population center. Rising global wealth that has gone pretty much exclusively towards the already wealthy or raising the standard of living in very poor countries with wage growth and standard of living in rural and poorer areas of Western countries stagnating or even shrinking. A culture shift in the direction of a global, urban cosmopolitan way of life that runs very counter to the traditional, provincial life that many people grew up with and are accustomed to. These are rather shocking results because of the scale of the effects being unanticipated, but the reasons aren't really all that mysterious. The world is becoming increasingly urbanized, and for the people who are a part of that urbanization process the benefits to themselves and to the world at large are clearly visible. But that same process is killing off an older way of life, and the people who are either unwilling or unable to make the transition have been squeezed by it, and now they've reached the point where they are flipping out in a big way because no one has been listening to them.

I offer you my congratulations.

Yes.

Losing the technical ability to produce and maintain them. Possibly a single world government. Can't think of any realistic alternative to those two. I suppose either a better toy or a fool-proof way of blocking their use globally.

This is why I like having discussions with you even when we don't agree.

Is a baby not conscious?

So it would be wrong to get an abortion after being raped, but it should still be legal to have the option?