Trump

Yeah sypo, they've lost control......
Now I'm always one for a good conspiracy theory..... IMO about 6 or so years ago, there was a BIG change and push in regards to "opinion polls"..... Big money in it.... These companies don't do it as a "community service".... I believe that these so called trustworthy poll companies have been compromised... I believe they are being used not to state the mood, but create the mood. They are being manipulated in an attempt to shape public opinion, and therefore shape policy... I mean how can these so called "reputable" poll companies get things soooooo wrong? Brexit was waaay out..... Clinton was heading for an easy win..
If these poll companies are "on the take" from vested interests to manipulate data, to make a cause or issue seem supported by a majority hoping people will follow suit, then they have no one to blame when the masses just scoff at their latest numbers.... I'm scoffing at the numbers.... I dont believe them.... The upside, and there always is an upside, is that the days of "poll driven politics" may be numbered.

Maybe the US election Opinion Pollers just went out to the streets in the Major cities to collect their Data ie: 3 blocks from the TV station. astonishing to see how polarised Rural votes vs city votes were in this election.

This kind of division brings to mind the Thailand govt. protest rallies in 2013

yeh lots of manipulation of opinion going on, saw it over a few days at the Washington post, smart arse comments trying to change the course of conversation as the fbi comey thing developed. apparently some brooks guy had hired them all, you could literally see the change of shift

this is the new game and its why things are so broken, the media feeds itself rather than reporting reality, and everyone is partisan

it's not even conspiracy sheepdog, just collusion, most of them are so dumb they don't even know they're doing it.

same with the saudi arabia blind ignorance to terrorism thing, as bernie said ...there's no conspiracy,....just collusion.....collusion of the highest order. self serving collusion that has corrupted the process and its systems rather than just certain individuals

The thing I agree with Trump about (the only thing) is his statements about ordinary people being forgotten by the political elite. Same as Brexit and here. My theory on why this is so comes down to how western democracy has been corrupted by lobbyists. Politicians are no longer able to make decisions without having lobbyists for and against every decision they want to make banging down their door. Think I'm talking through my arse think back to the mining tax campaign the mostly foreign no tax paying miners raged here in AU. If you want to see how all that works in the US look no further than what the processed food industry or gun lobby gets away with.

Anyway, while Trump struck a cord in the rust belt it will be interesting to see if he can deliver, personally I'm not holding my breath coz Trump has used the same tactics in the past to gain commercial advantage and he alone will have to battle both the senate and congress to get any movement.

..... its laughable that here and elsewhere the right are claiming a victory and are giving the finger to so called lefties. Trump isn't a republican, not sure what he is but he isn't a poster boy of conservative values, in fact I'm thinking he has split the right even further into clearer groups of moderate ultra conservatives and ultra ultra right fucktards that should stay under their rock .... it will be interesting to see whether he just rolls over to the republication agenda now or he will stay true to word in support of the rust belt.

Where trump could really fuck up is on tax cuts. What he has promised is inconceivable - cutting corporate and personal tax drastically and balancing the budget. An impossible task and the last lunatic president that cut taxes and increased spending was Bush and he pretty much bankrupted the US economy. Bankruptcy, now that's a thing Trump is good at so he mightn't care if he bankrupts the US economy and causes a massive recession or perhaps depression. Where will his rust belters (and the world for that matter) be then?

Only hoping he has the good sense to surround himself with good men and women, for everyone's sake.

Finally, Michael Moore predicted all this coz he has been spending a lot of time out in the rust belt states, its a pity the democrats didn't listen, the world is likely to never be the same again.

I'm actually pretty positive, his acceptance speach was pretty gracious and conciliatory

and he put it out to his party that he's open and needs their guidance

that tells me he doesn't really want it, he just wanted to shake shit up, he'll be out at the first opportunity ...a farage maybe?

@ Floyd

It's really not important where Trumps sits in the left/right thing.

What's more important is the lefts nightmare has come true and they all thought it couldn't happen.

I missed Trumps' speech...I think.

In all seriousness, InSypo, that's it? Too hard, fucks off. Fucken hell. Great. Who's taking the reins? Pence??? Sweet baby Jeeezus.

"What's more important is the lefts nightmare has come true and they all thought it couldn't happen."

Anyone who considers the democrats Bill Clinton onwards "of the left" needs to study a bit more... Same with Labor here in Australia..... They don't represent the working class anymore.... They represent the bourgeoisie, the upper middle class tossbags who munch quinoa and smugly belittle people....

But Trump has also decimated the right... He's forever changed the republicans, once represented by the Bush clan, Rumsfeld, Cheney etc.

Back to the books, Doggo...all over the shop on all counts there.

Trump has riven the Republicans though...for now

@indo, so agreed with what you said yesterday when you said you know jack shit, or am I misquoting you? :))

There is no left in America its all centre right or right right ultra right

so what do you guys call all those poor misguided teary eyed girls sitting in that big cube thingy until 2 in the morning waiting for that glass cieling to smash?

left or right?

then the nasty piece of work didn't even show her face, slips out the backdoor and concedes to trump on the phone

classy

Trumps win is the presidential equivalent of Adriano Desoucsa' s world title .....everyone is going to think they've got a realistic shot now.

Michelle Obama and Kanye West on the ticket next time round.

Maybe i didn't word that correct, i wasn't suggesting Hillary or her party was left and i wasn't really thinking about the perception in USA.

I was thinking more just the lefties in Australia, they are now all over social media sulking and its great to see the medias reaction.

I dont agree, at-least here in Australia i don't think anyone really thought Trump could become president, and everyones reaction i know are just WTF? Including me i was blown away.

So even though I'm not a Trump supporter it's still gold now all these people are going WTF how could this happen, its even better after Brexit.

Maybe i follow ABC, SBS and public radio too much but it always feels like we are having views on how to think shoved down our throats instead of being give the facts then letting us make a decision, and not only how to think but how others are thinking, and its kind of good when it doesn't pan out how thy say its going too.

wow!!

paul keating on trump on 7.30 report

check it out, he's on Floyd's boat amongst other things

saw it sypkan, Keating the greatest political mind in AU in my lifetime .....

Would anyone like to hazard a prediction of the result if it were Bernie Sanders running instead of Hillary?

Thats an interesting question VJ, reckon he would have done it easily. its worth noting the things he was saying, darn outright socialist by uncle sam standards and he won 20 states and almost toppled clinton. if the democrats are to ever be relevant again in the rust belt states they would be wise to follow a path closely aligned to what BS was preaching, but that's 4 years away and the world might be like gotham city by then.

Didn't take long......

Donald Trump goes on a fact-finding visit to Israel.
While he is on a tour of Jerusalem he suffers a heart attack and dies.

The undertaker tells the American Diplomats accompanying him, 'You
can have him shipped home for $50,000, or you can bury him here, in
the Holy Land for just $100.'

The American Diplomats go into a corner and discuss for a few minutes.
They come back to the undertaker and tell him they want Donald
shipped home.

The undertaker is puzzled and asks, 'Why would you spend $50,000 to
ship him home, when it would be wonderful to be buried here and you
would spend only $100?

The American Diplomats replied, 'Long ago a man died here, was buried
here, and three days later he rose from the dead.

We just can't take the risk!'

Turkman writes "Back to the books, Doggo...all over the shop on all counts there."

Why do you say that , old timer? Are you saying The Democrats didn't list waay to the right in the 1990s?

Wow! What a whacky topsy turvy world we live in when it's patriot Pauline asking for a pardon for Julian Assange!!

Can it get any stranger?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3922380/Pauline-Hanson-asks-Donald-Trum...

Just crazy, eh Sypkan? The way things currently stand, how can anyone can throw their lot in with one political party? Things that you firmly belive in this year will become your politico antithesis the next, and vice versa.

Bold move by Pauline, could very well come back to bite her.

Velocity Johnno: "Would anyone like to hazard a prediction of the result if it were Bernie Sanders running instead of Hillary?"

Few pundits saying he would've won but there's no way of knowing. I mean, up to 24 before polls opened Hillary was a shoo-in.

That said, while Bernie had the millenial and college vote I strongly doubt wider America has the stomach for his brand of democratic socialism.

Does anyone else see the irony of Joe Hockey being our diplomatic bridge between Australia and the US?

Joe Hockey, our failed and incompetent treasurer, who baited our car manufacturers into leaving the country and therefore putting up to 200,000 Australians out of work and thereby creating potential rust belts in South Australia and in Geelong and Broadmeadows in Victoria now having to work with an American administration with a (pre election) policy platform of bring those rust belt manufacturing jobs "back home".

I could go on about Hockey, a most unlikable leaner, but I'll leave it at that.

There's no way Bernie would have won. The element of the American psyche that elected trump wouldn't stand for it. Remember it's the white working class in the Midwest. Having had plenty beers and random conversations with people from that demographic there's no question the 'don't tell me what to think and say' attitude is prevalent and powerful. It's genuinely not necessarily racist or anything just a notion of freedom from other peoples' opinions and attitudes. In some ways it's also just like the kind of blow back we saw on this site when blindboy called out nick3's homophobic joke.

Plenty of Americans are sick of being told what to think etc. Now add to that, being told what to pay for, there's no way it would have gotten up. By way of example I was once sitting with some friends and they'd just got an $800 bill for blood tests (standard ones, nothing more than routine). After stressing about how they'd pay for it and talking about that they couldn't believe that would be 'free' in oz, having paid for it via Medicare, they wanted universal health care, they said. It's got its problems but it's pretty sweet, I said.

We talked about how it works here, for a few minutes, and I reckon It was within maybe another five minutes that they were angrily, and I mean really angrily, declaring they'd never be prepared to pay for the health care of some guy they knew (who was a drug using lazy dole bludger in their eyes) because fuck that my money is for me and my family not sponges like him. And with that, the declaration for universal health care was gone. They liked the system they had better because they got to decide what they spent their money on and no one from Washington or wherever could tell them how they had to spend it.

Bernie would have appealed to the same people who voted for Hilary but the swing voters who put trump in wouldn't have accepted being told what they had to pay for, which would benefit other people instead of just themselves let alone what to think and say by the progressives. I don't reckon anyway.

Quick edit. Apparently Bernie isn't ruling out a tilt once again in four years as a 79 year old. Obviously he knows his constituents better than me so we might get to find out... http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/us-election/bernie-sanders-doesnt-...

Yes I have a feeling Bernie would have done really well. Similarly this may explain Corbyn hanging on in the UK.

I am puzzled why the traditionally labour-oriented parties have thrown their core constituency under a bus in the last 25 years - the (in Western nations) white working class. If you look at the wholesale stripping out of manufacturing (from value-adding comes wealth), I am surprised no-one really stood up for the people working in it, but rather both political sides stripped it bare, from many angles. From importation of cheaper labour, all the way to remaining silent on currency manipulation and "one way" FTAs... And then insulted these people with politics of guilt, colour, gender etc that were completely alien to most of them. Chickens coming home to roost now.

Being of more of a libertarian, even conservative bent these days, I've found a decent explanation for the brick bat that has hit both Cameron's establishment in the UK, and now the Dems in the US...

"And while I’ve never considered myself much of a right winger, being more of a libertarian bent, I have found myself increasingly pushed and marginalized by the “enlightened and progressive” amongst you into the same camp with all sorts of deplorables, regardless of where they lived and what they called themselves. Nationalists, alt righters, anarchists, constitutionalists and so on and so forth all made for strange bedfellows but an effective team. Working on the premise that the enemy of my enemy is my friend we have all found common ground. We have you to thank for that. By pushing, badgering, harassing, marginalizing and insulting us on a regular basis you created something new. And it crushed you at the ballot box."

link

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/11/10/sorry-snowflake-but-its-no...

Michael Moore also picked it, check his youtube talk to voters in Michigan I think. Its poignant to note Trump threatened Ford execs with a 35% tariff when they shipped their small car production to Mexico; contrast this with the Australian industry shutting down, protected by a (bipartisan agreed) paltry 5% tariff.

Yes Floyd I'll never forget Hockey daring Holden to leave. wtf

There's still time for you all to get one last Australian Holden surf wagon before it's gone forever...

Reckon there's a bit of insight being offered on the whole 'deplorable' thing. Far as I can see, read, or hear, Trump threw down insults in the hundreds to Democrats and their constituents, none of which are being recalled now. Yet somehow the word deplorable is the insult of the election.

Can anyone make sense of that before I jump to conclusions?

I reckon it's all to do with velocityjohnnos quote above, totally relate to that

I don't particular like preppers, but unfortunately it seems most of us have developed more in common with them than Clinton's twisted perspective

It's tribalism, she denigrated anyone who doesn't share her perspective,

trump just played with political correctness

"It's tribalism, she denigrated anyone who doesn't share her perspective,

trump just played with political correctness"

Interesting perspective. Don't agree with it, you saying he didn't actually denigrate anyone?

She insulted an entire group, which is not on electorally or even generally (despite the potential accuracy), whereas he insulted specific individuals. It wasn't women who were fat pigs it was specific women. So long as enough people are prepared to ignore the implications of those insults about how he's prepared to address people, women or otherwise, he'll get a pass for that. And it seems people are willing to ignore it.

I don't see how Clinton's got a twisted perspective though. Looking at some of the stuff that trump supporters did say and are saying, it's pretty deplorable.

Deplorable!

Good explanation but...

I agree that it's tribalism. The tribe HAS spoken (in the name of Democracy) and put their loudest namecaller on the national pedestal. Now those who were labelled 'deplorables' have their day of retribution and this is their catchcry - 'who's the deplorable now?'

Have a look at how smug all of the above Trump supporter's posts are after the win. Its not 'now we can advance the national interest for the better' it's 'how do you like these apples lefties?'

They are pretty deplorable from a certain perspective benski

But go look at today's polly article at the guardian, another top down belittling, as she does...

But read the comments, there's some well pointed out double standards going on to the hypocrisy of identity politics, it's totally pointless and unworkable when viewed objectively

Her whole argument is pathetic when you consider the same states voted Obama in for two terms

Trumps petty name's mean nothing, the way he pulls it off is, there is nearly always an element of truth to what he says, but the left is so busy wigging out to his words, and their preconceived (media mislead) perceptions of him they don't hear a word. His whole schick is cutting through the crap

Calling someone fat?.... meh...some of us would like to point out the kids are fat, not pointing it out seems to be half the problem

I too notice the double standards: a powerful white man calls it as he sees it and everyone maneuvers into  a position of acceptance, a white woman does the same and it's "playing identity politics", or denigration, or some other thing.

Your right stunet

But its a thirty year backlash to belittlement

White dudes have feelings too! Oppression is oppression no matter who's feeling it

Just like feminism the pendulum swings until it finds a balance... hopefully ...eventually...

Yeah, the pendulum swings, and really, I'm just throwing thoughts out there. Though I do find it curious, I've personally never been offended by a feminist, ever, and all the while the very people who tell us free speech is a birthright and we all should harden up are as prompt in their outrage as any other cohort.

I'm the same stunet. I don't see how white people are even close to being oppressed. Frankly I find it laughable and pathetic that it's even expressed that way. Oppression is systemic disadvantage. Being asked to change your language to reflec the ideals you believe in is not oppression. That's those around you exercising their free speech to hold you to your highest stated ideals.

Some of the early responses to fight back from this 'oppression' of being asked to treat people equally really are quite deplorable....here's a collection of stories and videos collected on twitter. No doubt a grain of salt required because there's no context but I doubt it's all made up. And while it's mostly white supremacist type crap there's also some nasty stuff going the other way.

https://twitter.com/i/moments/796417517157830656

You're gonna use 'deplorable' at every available opportunity, aren't you Benski?

haha! Yeah I'll let it go now.

You guys talk nicer than me so maybe it doesn't apply but the best thing I've seen for understanding men and women came from Facebook, yes Facebook sorry...

Women communicate with friends through compliments and talking each other up, while men communicate by giving each other shit and cutting their mates down, ...both are lying

Modern feminism's whole gig is kerbing man talk, culminating in safe spaces and trigger warnings, as that spectator article points out, not all feminist agree with this path, besides being totally self indulgent, I think more people are concerned with the social impacts of such thinking

It's not reality oppression, more so oppression of opinion

And now we are having a reckoning of the 'experts' opinions and their fruit, and the people don't like what they see

The experts have fucked it up, so now the deplorables are saying we told you so, but no one was listening

"Women communicate with friends through compliments and talking each other up, while men communicate by giving each other shit and cutting their mates down, ...both are lying"

That's classic! As in it's funny.

But I disagree with the last part sypkan. Modern feminism, as far as I can tell, is fully supportive of man talk. They support men being men and talking about manly things and issues relevant to being a bloke in today's day and age. They probably don't support men joking about grabbing women by the pussy or even more benign jokes that belittle women, but that's what I'm talking about too.

If we are as supportive of equality as we say we are, maybe we need to think a little more about what we joke about etc. If it's normal and fine for a bloke to make jokes about women's competence at work, that's going to alienate, to a small extent, many women who might be at that work. Not always but some of them.

I make jokes like that all the time with my wife. But the joke is actually about the attitude towards women not the driving ability of women or whatever the context.

Trigger warnings is just another name for how the news warns you that in this report you'll see a starving Ethiopian kid with flies buzzing around his dead mother, or in this report you'll see someone get shot (i.e. and a warning this report contains scenes some viewers may find disturbing). It's been a part of being polite for decades. I can't understand what's wrong with that, because it's just being nice to people to accommodate any issues they might have, isn't it?

Sorry I'm rambling on a bit and filling the pages today, I should get to doing stuff, but I'm keen to hear the reply if my walls of text aren't too dulling!

"It's not reality oppression, more so oppression of opinion"

Yeah I dig that. Exactly what I was getting at with my post earlier today. Sick of being told what to think. I see that's the issue but I don't buy it or I don't accept it as the actual case.

I can't let go of the notion that people aren't being told what to think so much as not liking having their claimed ideals of equality contrasted with their language and the subtle remnants of support for inequality that it contains.

Again you're correct benski, but as always, in anything, there is a spectrum

You are totally correct most women have become more accommodating of men talk, realising they cannot clip us into the perfect man, and I think most people are now finding better balances, but I've got to say there's still a significant transformation when the women aren't around as the hen pecked release.

Trigger warnings in university lectures though benski?
It's university snowflake, this isn't school

I'm more concerned about the no plat forming, seriously when a womans department lobby to ban Germaine Greer (a godmother of feminism)from presenting at their university something is going a little awry.

I'm sure all these things come from all the wings of feminism without consensus, but the overall theme I'm getting is control of narrative and a very inorganic imposed development to social norms

But you're right we could all be a little nicer

Wonderful to read all your thoughts. Finding myself just deeply interested in perspectives, but I won't buy any explanation on the grounds that nobody really knows, we are all in a hall of mirrors and can only imagine what others may be thinking, but those others are no less alien in their thinking than we are to say, an amoeba. It's just unknowable, but it's definitely interesting and I'll follow this rabbit down some very deep holes before it's all over.

A few thoughts in no particular order.

Cheer up, it may not be as bad as you suspect. Trump may do some very good things, as Keating points out (god love him!) better relations with Russia can only be a good thing. Drawing back NATO and the american reach of power could be a great thing. Being less interested in holding China back due to some post-war analagous fear of the yellow hordes may also be hugely positive.

Clinton, although clearly the better candidate, also had huge baggage, none more than her name. She has been as much a part of the establishment as anyone during the period where the middle and the poor in America got fucked over. Add to that the dynastic Bush-Clinton-Bush- fuck-over of america, it was always going to be hard to go back to that. Look how Jeb Bush did in the republican primaries. He should have won the nomination by a landslide and he was the first one out.

Would Bernie have done better? Don't know but I was hoping to find out. That was a great insight Benski into the American mentality on universal health care. They are so, so, so demonstrably culturally fucked in that way. But don't downplay how well his narrative may have gone. He would have been talking directly to those people who voted for Trump, telling then what they knew, which was that the big corporates and the best government that money can buy were exactly the people who screwed them over, and he was going to screw them back. It would have played well.

Clinton, of the Bill variety, is hugely complicit in the fucking over of those people who have done it toughest, relaxing regulations which directly led to the GFC, and a host of other deregulations as well as NAFTA which directly led to their jobs being lost. Hillary was there, she couldn't deny that legacy.

As for those deplorables comment, well, I'll accept the argument of double standards but I don't buy it. Put a label on someone and blame yourself if they then turn it around and wear it with pride.

Finally, those who voted for Trump may be deplorables, they are almost certainly economically and politically illiterate, but their choice was not dumb. I won't say that their thinking wasn't dumb, because thinking doesn't come into it. Like all democracies they don't vote with their brain, they vote with their guts. We kid ourselves, and nowhere more than 'the Left', that we vote according to our interests based on rational assessments. Like the study of economics which relied on this fictitious rational player - Homo Economicus - the assessment of political leanings is not a rational choice.

These people were essentially left with a Hosbon's choice, you can go with the candidate who is essentially guaranteed to continue the status quo (Clinton) even if she is supposedly of the Left, that same group that has been bending you over and having its way with your arse for decades, or you can vote for the disruptor. Throwing the Hail Mary pass with seconds left to play and your behind by 6 is not an irrational decision.

So they may be deplorable and they may be dumb, and they may not be, but their choice was not necessarily so. Although racism and sexism are always part of the mix, and we are hardly innocent in Australia on that score, I don't buy that Trump was only elected by racists and sexists.

And if you think this was a win for the Republicans, you've forgotten that the first group of people that Trump fucked over was the entire Republican Party. He is no more one of them than I am an aardvark. No way does this forestall the demise of the old narrative of the GOP. They are also gone as a political force. The name may stay, but their entire paradigm has been shat upon by something very big.

I'm quite surprised at my overall reaction. I'm much more upbeat than I thought I could be about a Trump win. There was always a bright side here, whichever way it went a duplicitous turd was going to be flushed away. Perhaps I am most happy to see so many pundits completely bamboozled. I read their analysis and so much of it is wishful thinking, projection and utter bullshit. Perhaps I am just enjoying looking at the embarrassment of the King realising he has no clothes.

This is a worthy article. I like this guy, wrote a great piece earlier this year about how the baby boomers are fucking everyone over. This is also good.

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/november/1477918800/richard-coo...

Hold the phones! I should've got a trigger warning that there was some reasoned and reasonable debate on this here thread! Where's Disco-Stu? Actually, what was Disco-Stu?

Anyway, Ol' Bernie has made a statement:

“Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids - all while the very rich become much richer.

“To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”

Excellent post Batfink.

Actually, well done chaps. Great to hear the different perspectives while keeping things reasonably civil.

Zen, what do you do in Japan again?

Anyway, kinda like Batfink, I've been surprised by my levels of upbeatedness in the wake of the decision. But having said that, my 'levels' do oscillate wildly. Especially, when you read of who he may appoint in his administration. For example, say, Newt friggin' Gingrich!

Now, I've been a bit of a student of the US political scene for many years. And especially during the Clinton years. The Clinton-Gingrich regime years. The NAFTA, GATT, WTO years. The de-regulation, 'workfare', 'prison-industrial complex' years. The friggin' Third friggin' Way years! If nothing else, chuck THAT in your search engine if need be (minus the pejoratives).

Forget Clinton's dick tricks, he could've/should've been impeached for a range of actually important things (well, maybe impeached is a tad strong)! Just one example: his so-called "Telecommunications Act". See where that's got them all. No, another, and added to that de-regulation disaster: his punting of the move to re-introduce the "fairness doctrine" that Reagan repealed in 1987 (which years later he admitted he should've done so)! Sheesh! Be-google away. Oh yeah, chuck "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act" & "workfare" in there too.

Yeah, I was a student of the times, figuratively and literally, but I was also a participant here. Culminated in the Sept 11 event (the year before the other Sept 11 event) in Melbourne. After Howard's subsequent re-election, and the manner in which he did it, I then fucked off overseas and didn't come back till he was long gone.

Anyway, too much bio from me, Newt friggin' Gingrich! And this guy?! Myron Ebell!

My upbeatedness is fading faster than the poor old environment! Find a happy place, find a happy place...