Chat Thread

[Warcry]

I still can't believe it. But I suppose when you choose the most hated woman in the country as your presidential nominee, it's not that much of a surprise when the most hated man beats her. But Jesus mother****ing Christ. Even if you like his policies, how can you not be unsettled by having such a vengeful, childish man in power?

What a cluster**** of an election.

Now we're going to have to build our own wall to keep out all the American refugees. Thankfully President Trump (I winced just typing that) has established that the country whose people are crossing the border is the one who need to foot the bill, so we won't need to pay for it.

On the bright side, I'll be able to import toys from the US for cheap again once the man's economic policies tank the US dollar.

[Denyer]

It is times like these if I had the money I would be considering which English speaking country (namely UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand) I would be moving to right now.

Wouldn't recommend the UK much right now, but the exchange rate's looking better for you guys at this point.

New Zealand is largely unpopulated and necessarily quite self-sufficient.

[Brendocon 2.0]

Even if you like his policies

Does he have policies? Best I can tell he's contradicted absolutely everything he's ever said at some point, so it's anyone's guess as to what he's actually going to do.

Though with the House and the Senate backing him up, it's not confidence inspiring.

[Warcry]

Does he have policies? Best I can tell he's contradicted absolutely everything he's ever said at some point, so it's anyone's guess as to what he's actually going to do.

Oh, absolutely. He's even less coherent than the usual politician, and he lies a ton, so it's tough to pull out much in the way of policy from there. The bullet points of "kill Obamacare", "stop illegal immigration" and "bring jobs back to the Rust Belt" are the big things, plus some generic angry grumbling about Muslims, and a lot of other smaller things I've probably forgotten. He was definitely short on details but considering nobody ever actually does what they say they'll do when they run anyway, I don't think that was a huge issue for voters. He said enough to give people an idea of the direction he'd take the country in. And I can see how people might embrace a candidate with his views if they were focused on a couple of issues to the exclusion of all else.

I just can't understand doing it when the man himself is so obviously both completely ignorant of what the job entails and by all accounts seems to be a truly awful human being. It's not like Dubya where he was able to dodge some of the flak that came from his terrible policies because he seemed like he was a nice guy, and even if you absolutely hated him you still kinda liked him. Trump's not likeable at all.

Though with the House and the Senate backing him up, it's not confidence inspiring.

I don't think the House and Senate are going to have his back. Parties in the US are a lot less cohesive than in parliamentary systems, and the rest of the Republican leadership hates Trump almost as much as the Democrats do. I don't think he's going to find much cooperation there, not unless he compromises with them to address their priorities. And how likely does Trump cooperating with someone sound?

I dunno, I kinda think he's just going to spend four years preening, using the levers of power to get revenge on his business rivals and trying to deport Rosie O'Donnell. I don't expect him to actually try to keep any of his promises aside from ones that he can implement with the stroke of a pen on an executive order.

[Tetsuro]

Even if you like his policies, how can you not be unsettled by having such a vengeful, childish man in power?

That's like making me the POTUS.

[Skyquake87]

it snowed today as well. truly, this is the end of days.

I am listening to Moose Blood who are quite jolly. And I'm going to watch the Last Leg to see how pompous and annoyed Adam Hills will be

[inflatable dalek]

****ing hell America, thanks for making Britain only the second stupidest country of 2016.

Seeing claims Trump actually won with less votes than the last two runners up lost with, seems his real victory was people either not bothering or going with a pointless third party vote (and yes it's unfair it works like that, but a vote for anyone but the main two was a wasted vote). I cannot understand why Americans seem to hate Clinton so much, but they've not so much cut their nose to spite their face because of it as stuck their genitals into a meat grinder.

So we're now living in a world where we're dependant on the President Elect getting convicted of child rape before he can do any real harm. Or dies of old age (possible, not really sure why people in their 70's with less chance of doing a full term go for it). And then we'd still need his VP to accidentally walk under a bus.

[Brendocon 2.0]

Seeing claims Trump actually won with less votes than the last two runners up lost with

And also fewer votes than the person he beat, thanks to the electoral college system.

I cannot understand why Americans seem to hate Clinton so much

Lots of reasons. Rebelling against entitled dynasty politicians is part of it, but we could be here forever on the subject and I'm worn out after a day of it on the Twitters.

So we're now living in a world where we're dependant on the President Elect getting convicted of child rape before he can do any real harm.

Fairly sure she dropped the charges a couple of days ago, unless there's more than one case.

[inflatable dalek]

And also fewer votes than the person he beat, thanks to the electoral college system.

God bless the land of the free.

Lots of reasons. Rebelling against entitled dynasty politicians is part of it, but we could be here forever on the subject and I'm worn out after a day of it on the Twitters.

Yeah, I suppse what's so odd about it, her mistakes/EVILS just seem par for the course for US politics (is there anyone whose held high office who isn't a bit dodgy?, hell, I like Obama but he got back in despite some major screw ups) so the bile she got always seemed wildly disproportionate.

Fairly sure she dropped the charges a couple of days ago, unless there's more than one case.

Damn, you're right, someone corrected me on that on twitter this morning as well (I must have missed it at the time with all the other crazy stuff going on). Wishful thinking.

[Brendocon 2.0]

Yeah, I suppse what's so odd about it, her mistakes/EVILS just seem par for the course for US politics (is there anyone whose held high office who isn't a bit dodgy?, hell, I like Obama but he got back in despite some major screw ups) so the bile she got always seemed wildly disproportionate.

A lot of it is backlash against The System. She represents politics, the existing system refining itself, whereas Trump (while ironically being as much The Establishment as anyone else), is a breath of fresh air and an outsider coming in to smash everything up. Or at least that's the perception he put out there.

I can't remember the exact words, but I saw one good tweet summing it up as "Trump's cure might be shit, but Clinton refuses to acknowledge there's a disease". Basically when enough people are sick of the system, they'll vote to burn it down.

Plus there's the whole dynasty thing - as with Jeb Bush, a lot of people see it as another cliquey little politician stepping up and going "oh, my turn now". Breeds resentment.

Turnout was only about 53% too. Which shows how disillusioned people were with the choices on offer. Reports that Harambe got 11,000 votes are unsubstantiated though as write-ins aren't recorded in that much detail (at least not this quickly).

[Warcry]

God bless the land of the free.

It's an awkward system, but I don't think it's inherently any worse than one where a party can get complete control of the government by winning <40% of the popular vote, like happened the last time around in both of our countries.

Yeah, I suppse what's so odd about it, her mistakes/EVILS just seem par for the course for US politics (is there anyone whose held high office who isn't a bit dodgy?, hell, I like Obama but he got back in despite some major screw ups) so the bile she got always seemed wildly disproportionate.

Clinton had three major public perception hurdles lined up against her, and I don't think she cleared any of them.

The first is that the Republicans have been digging up dirt on her for nearly thirty years now. She was a big part of her husband's campaign to be president, and governor before that. And after Bill's career ended she was a senator for eight years, then ran for president herself (and got stomped by Obama in the primaries), and secretary of state for four more, and then ran for president again. That's a long-ass time to build up your character assassination files on someone, even if they aren't especially dirtier than the average politician. From Benghazi to the emails to Whitewater to her role in covering up Bill's sexcapades, it's easy to cherry-pick and make her look like Hitler when she's been living under a bright spotlight since the 1970s.

(As an aside, I really think the groping accusations against Trump would have done him in against any other candidate. But it's really hard to make that stick when Hillary is married to a serial sex abuser, and she expended tons of energy in the 80s and 90s trying to make those accusations against her husband "go away".)

Then there's also the whole "dynasty" thing that Brend mentioned. People really seemed to turn on both her and Jeb when it seemed, early on, that it would turn into a Bush vs. Clinton showdown when those families have held the White House for five of the last seven terms. Obama was an outsider who ran on a platform of hope and change and won because people were sick of the constant lies, warmongering and bullshit from DC after the Bush/Cheney years. But over eight years he accomplished almost nothing because the "establishment" refused to work with him, whether it was Dems or the GOP in control of Congress. I don't think it's surprising that a lot of people were turned off by a Clinton, when they've been "a part of the problem" for two decades now (of course the real problem is that the US's founders deliberately made it as hard as possible to get anything done because they didn't trust a strong federal government, but try getting people to care about that when their job just got sent overseas).

And then on top of that, Hillary just has no charisma at all. It's like trying to get people excited to vote for Cartoon Shockwave as president. No matter how smart and competent she is, it's not going to happen.

Honestly the Democrats really should have known better than to nominate her, especially after how thoroughly Obama dismantled her as a candidate in the '08 primaries ("She'll say anything, and change nothing" still resonates to this day, and for good reason). The only reason things were even close was that the Republican party got hijacked by a clown who couldn't keep himself from spouting incendiary nonsense.

[Brendocon 2.0]

Also (and I don't like saying this, but it's a factor), when part of Trump's strategy is "get the votes of the angry sexist misogynist manbabies by giving them permission to be awful to women", sticking him up against a woman really wasn't sensible, as it just gives him the opportunity to show not tell.

"Yerrr, look at the Man being mean to the Wimmins. Back to the kitchen, war criminal!" etc and so on.

Okay that's not really the DNC's fault, but it is basically just lining up an open goal for the prick.

Read a good bit about how Trump speaks at a 3rd grade level while Hillary spoke at an 8th grade level. Which may make Trump look unsophisticated, but it gets his point across to a wider demographic.

So much fascinating analysis to be had from something so ****ing horrific, to be honest...

[Clay]

****ing hell America, thanks for making Britain only the second stupidest country of 2016.

Most succinct synopsis I've seen on Facebook (and it may have been you or Chris posting it):

Britain, July 2016: "Brexit is the dumbest thing a country could do to itself."
America, November 2016: "Hold my beer and watch this..."

Personally I'm of the belief that Trump won't remain president for too long until he gets bored of it, and then will have Pence running things. That's terrifying.

[Clay]

Though with the House and the Senate backing him up, it's not confidence inspiring.

I doubt it; many of the people in his own party withdrew their endorsement of him within the last month, and Trump is the type to hold a grudge. I don't really foresee him working or playing nice with people that publicly distanced themselves from him even with they're supposed to be on 'his side'.

[Tetsuro]

Even if Trump fails to accomplish any of his goals because he's a petty bastard and refuses to play along with the senate during his presidency, there's still an atmosphere of hate and fear to worry about.

I can only hope things cool down by the time he actually enters office.

[electro girl]

I learned to figure skate today. That was pretty rad.

[Cyberstrike nTo]

****ing hell America, thanks for making Britain only the second stupidest country of 2016.

Seeing claims Trump actually won with less votes than the last two runners up lost with, seems his real victory was people either not bothering or going with a pointless third party vote (and yes it's unfair it works like that, but a vote for anyone but the main two was a wasted vote). I cannot understand why Americans seem to hate Clinton so much, but they've not so much cut their nose to spite their face because of it as stuck their genitals into a meat grinder.

So we're now living in a world where we're dependant on the President Elect getting convicted of child rape before he can do any real harm. Or dies of old age (possible, not really sure why people in their 70's with less chance of doing a full term go for it). And then we'd still need his VP to accidentally walk under a bus.

Believe it or not Pence is even worse than Trump. Trump is an idiot but Pence is ultra right-wing Christian extremist zealot of the type just like ISIS. Hell if every member of ISIS would convert to Christianity, I wouldn't be surprised if Pence would probably join them since the only difference between him and ISIS is the name of the religion they subscribe too.

[kathykit]

Believe it or not Pence is even worse than Trump. Trump is an idiot but Pence is ultra right-wing Christian extremist zealot of the type just like ISIS. Hell if every member of ISIS would convert to Christianity, I wouldn't be surprised if Pence would probably join them since the only difference between him and ISIS is the name of the religion they subscribe too.

Yup! That's true!
Agreed your point! Just cann't imagine the situation.

[Cyberstrike nTo]

Yup! That's true!
Agreed your point! Just cann't imagine the situation.

I live in Indiana and this f***wit is a horrible governor that made my state and international embarrassment he is an EXTREMELY anti-LGBT and
just made same-sex marriage a felony and passed a law that if a woman got an abortion would have to a funeral for the fetus. Pence is a not Christian he's a evil sick bastard.

[Skyquake87]

God Bless America


...be interesting to see what Trump makes of the deal done by Australia to dump some migrants it had effectively 'locked up' on a couple of islands on your fair shores.