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3 hours ago, Shoblongoo said:

NFL attendance and ratings are WAY DOWN.

Trump seems to use this constantly as a criticism of whatever he wants to disparage. Is the viewcount that big a deal for him or is it more bluster from a man whose reputation is built on that? Probably the latter knowing Trump but still.

As for the current dickwaving contest with North Korea, who is more likely to escalate it to conflict?

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19 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

And they did!

(snip)

Normally, the comments sections are a mixed bag.  But not that thread.  That was hilarious, even if sports and politics shouldn't mix.  Good to know the NFL thinks that it's complete nonsense.

For example

EDIT: And the follow-up here

Edited by eclipse
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2 hours ago, Dayni said:

As for the current dickwaving contest with North Korea, who is more likely to escalate it to conflict?

Could be both. One's a freak and the other is Trump.

Lets assume Trump actually doesn't want to escalate things then at one point Trump may find himself at a point where he has to. Trump has already used so many threats that he may lose credibility if he doesn't act on them. Trumps heavy rhetoric makes it much harder for him to back down without losing face even if he wants to.

I doubt Trump actually wants a war....but its at least possible that he wants one. He wouldn't be the first unpopular leader to go to war in order to hide his domestic policies failing him and it would be a great excuse to push the abandonment of all those investigations about him. 

Also his behavior with Iran isn't helping. Why would Korea even want to talk if Trump heavily implies that agreements with the United states aren't worth much under his reign.

 

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Reading some general comments it seems more are flirting with outright authoritarianism than I at first thought - the same that would rant against "PC culture" and think that waving confederate flags and nazi demonstrations should be protected under free speech are the same who rage against a less than stellar reaction to American patriotism and want those people to be pushed to be fired by a federal government.

I think waving a confederate flag is more of an affront to American patriotism if you actually care about that.

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On 9/25/2017 at 2:09 AM, Tryhard said:

Reading some general comments it seems more are flirting with outright authoritarianism than I at first thought - the same that would rant against "PC culture" and think that waving confederate flags and nazi demonstrations should be protected under free speech are the same who rage against a less than stellar reaction to American patriotism and want those people to be pushed to be fired by a federal government.

I think waving a confederate flag is more of an affront to American patriotism if you actually care about that.

The extremes on either side share an intolerance to things that they don't agree with.  That's why I try to stay closer to the center.

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On 9/24/2017 at 2:32 PM, Dayni said:

Trump seems to use this constantly as a criticism of whatever he wants to disparage. Is the viewcount that big a deal for him or is it more bluster from a man whose reputation is built on that? Probably the latter knowing Trump but still.

As for the current dickwaving contest with North Korea, who is more likely to escalate it to conflict?

...Oh Trump was just called out for his lack of a disaster relief response in Puerto Rico, while he was busy getting into a Twitter war with the NFL. His response was: "White House response in Puerto Rico getting great reviews!"

Its all just a reality TV show to him.

Kim-Jong has to know that if it comes to all out war with the United States he gets annihilated, whereas Trump has no such fear. And Trump might be thinking that if the domestic news events around his White House and the ongoing investigations against it get bad enough, war with North Korea is the obvious way to generate superseding headlines.

...speaking of...

Tonight, there are some significant new developments with the Special Investigation into Trump/Russia tonight:

  • The Criminal Investigations division of the IRS is now working with the Special Prosecutor and his team
  • The Special Prosecutor has, in the course of his investigation into Team Trump and its Russian associates, found sufficient circumstantial evidence of financial crimes (i.e. tax evasion, money laundering, bribery/corruption/fraud...) to subpoena tax returns and subpoena going all the way back to 2006. 
  • The IRS has answered the subpoenas; these records are now in the possession of the special prosecutor and are being reviewed by his team.
  • Persons close to the investigation are reporting that the special prosecutor is preparing to begin interviewing White House aids, on conduct and conversations that occurred in the White House during the course of Trump's presidency.
  • Persons close to the investigation are reporting that Mueller is preparing to hand down the first pair of criminal indictments for crimes related to the 2016 election, against Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.

    Story Developing. (theres gonna be a whole load of mess coming down the pipeline in the next few weeks)
     
Edited by Shoblongoo
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2 hours ago, eclipse said:

The extremes on either side share an intolerance to things that they don't agree with.  That's why I try to stay closer to the center.

Is it because you don't want to be associated with the far left or right that you want to say your political ideology is centrist, or does that actually match your political positions?

I'd consider myself pretty left-wing, but the furthest right on the "socialism" spectrum, because I would be a social democrat. I'm fully aware of how single-minded a lot of the more far left-wing can be, and hence why it's very easy to find "debates" bashing on easy targets (just the same as the right-wing, really). And although it may seem as though that the center "has no extremes", it can easily still be authoritarian, and I would argue that neoliberalism, primarily a centrist movement, has done a lot of damage to this world - it just doesn't get discussed as much as the authoritarian far left or far right because it's still better than those.

1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

Persons close to the investigation are reporting that Mueller is preparing to hand down the first pair of criminal indictments for crimes related to the 2016 election, against Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.

Trump's supporters will not care short of an indictment of Mister Trump himself. Watch them pretend that those two had nothing to do with Trump's campaign/administration when it happens.

Edited by Tryhard
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3 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

Is it because you don't want to be associated with the far left or right that you want to say your political ideology is centrist, or does that actually match your political positions?

I'd consider myself pretty left-wing, but the furthest right on the "socialism" spectrum, because I would be a democratic socialist. I'm fully aware of how single-minded a lot of the more far left-wing can be, and hence why it's very easy to find "debates" bashing on easy targets (just the same as the right-wing, really). And although it may seem as though that the center "has no extremes", it can easily still be authoritarian, and I would argue that neoliberalism, primarily a centrist movement, has done a lot of damage to this world - it just doesn't get discussed as much as the authoritarian far left or far right because it's still better than those.

Mostly because my political leanings are a gigantic mess.  I'm indifferent on the financial side (I think the government and private entities need to cancel out each other's bad points, and Trump is a conflict of interest) and lean progressive on social issues.  However, all my background descriptions are conservative.  Regardless, I disagree with "my way or the high way" mentality, so I don't want anything to do with the extremes.

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17 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

Trump's supporters will not care short of an indictment of Mister Trump himself. Watch them pretend that those two had nothing to do with Trump's campaign/administration when it happens.

Even if/when Trump gets an indictment, they'll just make it out to be a conspiracy by the establishment to unjustly depose of him and whatever evidence gets pulled up on him is just 'fake news'.

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16 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Mostly because my political leanings are a gigantic mess.  I'm indifferent on the financial side (I think the government and private entities need to cancel out each other's bad points, and Trump is a conflict of interest) and lean progressive on social issues.  However, all my background descriptions are conservative.  Regardless, I disagree with "my way or the high way" mentality, so I don't want anything to do with the extremes.

It's tricky because "progressive" on social issues can be many things - libertarians are generally so, and they are decidedly right-wing. Young conservatives these days don't see any problems with gay marriage and legal marijuana at the least. And regulated capitalism - which I assume is what you mean by government and private entities working together, as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism, can span a wide range of the scale, because I'm in favour of a system like that too as opposed to any socialist system (while I would consider a system like this, it would not be my ideal), just that I would be perhaps more concerned with wealth inequality and corporate domination (and in favour of unions) than others in favour of regulated capitalism all the way to the center-right wing. The political scale doesn't exactly convey itself perfectly.

To correct what I said at first, I said I mostly gravitated towards democratic socialist when I meant social democrat, as they are different things.

Edited by Tryhard
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18 minutes ago, Magus of Flowers said:

Even if/when Trump gets an indictment, they'll just make it out to be a conspiracy by the establishment to unjustly depose of him and whatever evidence gets pulled up on him is just 'fake news'.

Both impeachments (as well as the impending impeachment against Nixon) were the result of actual conspiracies to remove previous Presidents. Andrew Johnson was being a stick in the mud in regards to Reconstruction, so the House impeached him. The Republicans didn't like Clinton, so they impeached him for "lying" about having an affair when it really boiled down to him having an affair in the first place. With the Donald, it truly won't be. The people know it, the politicians know it. They just want the truth to out on its own because "I know you know I know" is in full effect, and nothing has been done about it. He doesn't have to be removed for this to doom his presidency.

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Trump is not going to be impeached because you think he is a racist/sexist/homophobic.  Some even say if Russian Collusion was true (of which there is no evidence for Trump specifically), it will not warrant impeachment.  In fact, we haven't had a single month where no one has claimed something obnoxious is grounds for impeachment.  Given that the house is controlled by Republicans, all this talk of "what will happen if he gets impeached" is completely absurd because I have not seen a single republican from the house entertain the thought.  It's a complete impossibility.  I know some people are upset about the president, but how upset they are is entirely irrelevant to the impeachment process.

@Hylian Air ForceExcellent points but it just proves the wrong thing.  The Republican side of the house is entirely behind Trump which means that he will not get impeached.  If you think Republicans hate Trump, especially the House, you are simply misinformed. 

We should probably wait till he commits an actual crime as president before talking impeachment, but maybe I'm just crazy. 

 

Anyways, tax reform is about to get serious so keep an eye out.  Democrats have stated that they are willing to and would like to work with Republicans to do something constructive.  We'll see though.  The major complaint is the deficit, but I personally think it's no different than when the Democrats encourage spending (which causes the same deficit). 

In other news, Steve Scalise has returned to congress.  There was a lot of unity at the house when he came back, I'm hoping he can keep that up and turn into a big figurehead for uniting the house.  But again, we'll see.

 

edit;  I guess I'll throw out my thoughts on the NFL protests as well.

edit2:  You know what nevermind, I wrote about enough crap about controversial topics above.

Edited by Lushen
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6 hours ago, Lushen said:

The Republican side of the house is entirely behind Trump which means that he will not get impeached.  If you think Republicans hate Trump, especially the House, you are simply misinformed. 

They really do hate Trump lol, are you joking?

The Senate won't impeach Trump because they think Trump is good for their agenda (he's not, by the way), and the House basically goes with constituents and not necessarily among party lines. The House republicans are all over the place, as are house democrats.

But as far as the house is concerned, Paul Ryan has said on many points in leaked tapes that he does not support Donald Trump. It's pretty old news, and it's pretty clear they're regretful in making this alliance.

Neither party is particularly united, but the propaganda wing of the Republican party is good at keeping the voters in line.

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You know as dumb as this whole Republican tax plan is, I'd actually support it. If they passed it as part of a larger bill that raised the federal minimum wage and did away with the part-time employee exemption. Then it's like fine--we got an actual economic growth policy out of the deal. Here's your tax cuts for top earners, if that's what you need to sell it to that base you've got buying into trickledown as  "pro-growth." It's bullshit, but we know you have to go back to your home districts and explain your vote. Take it. Once upon a time that was how we moved big legislation in this country. This Congress??? Never gonna happen. 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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21 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

But as far as the house is concerned, Paul Ryan has said on many points in leaked tapes that he does not support Donald Trump. It's pretty old news, and it's pretty clear they're regretful in making this alliance.

And the entire DNC sided with Clinton.  President Trump sided with Luther but now stands with Moore.  Obviously people are going to have their preferences but Paul Ryan now stands with the president.  I actually fall into this category as well.  I can think of a lot better Republicans, but since Trump is our president I am willing to get behind it because I think he was the best option that we had and he's what we're going to have for the next seven years.  Do you have any modern findings from members of the house criticizing Trump?  I am aware that some didn't vote with him on health care but that doesn't make them against him. 

 

As for the car, I think it's a very stupid statement but I have actually bought a used car for under $1,000.00 and if you renovate a small kitchen yourself it can be very cheap.  I don't think the comment was completely outrageous.  That being said, it's still a stupid comment because people who are in an economic situation where the combined cost of a new car and a renovated kitchen should be used to get you out of that bad economic situation. 

 

The thing I can get behind is the simplification of the tax code.  I don't find filing taxes particularly challenging, but I can understand how some would and it is definitely an annoyance and all the requirements and reading/writing required is simply ridiculous. 

 

Trump is calling some wins on the NFL.  Personally I think the stupidity of the NFL challenging Trump is hysterical.  As a business, challenging half the Country's pick for president is just stupid.  Even if a very small percentage, like 5%, of the nation tuned out of football in response it would be devastating to their income.  Just stupid.  It's almost as bad as Pepsi taking an anti-Trump stance.  Of course, the ESPN turns the story around to prove that the country is racist rather than acknowledging that people just want to watch Football.

Edited by Lushen
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7 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Trump is calling some wins on the NFL.  Personally I think the stupidity of the NFL challenging Trump is hysterical.  As a business, challenging half the Country's pick for president is just stupid.  Even if a very small percentage, like 5%, of the nation tuned out of football in response it would be devastating to their income.  Just stupid.  It's almost as bad as Pepsi taking an anti-Trump stance.  Of course, the ESPN turns the story around to prove that the country is racist rather than acknowledging that people just want to watch Football.

Except there's no telling what will happen once that challenge was issued.  Maybe some of Trump's supporters would be mad about having their favorite pastime turned into a political stunt, and side with the NFL.  But I doubt this will cause any sort of giant business backlash, since football's pretty big here.

It makes me curious about the profits from the upcoming Super Bowl, though.

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33 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Except there's no telling what will happen once that challenge was issued.  Maybe some of Trump's supporters would be mad about having their favorite pastime turned into a political stunt, and side with the NFL.  But I doubt this will cause any sort of giant business backlash, since football's pretty big here.

It makes me curious about the profits from the upcoming Super Bowl, though.

Yea me too.  The issue is ESPN and NFL, in effort to raise racism awareness, has decided to get political which is just bad business.  ESPN's own survey cites that 40% of Americans are less likely to watch an NFL game because of the protests.  Now, they tried to spin it around in an effort to prove that racism is a problem in America by saying that Blacks don't have this viewpoint, but did we really need another survey to show us that the majority of Black Americans support anti-racist protests?  The survey means nothing other than ESPN is going to lose at least some amount of money.

It doesn't matter if its 49/51% or 51/49%.  Whether the majority supports the protests or doesn't is entirely irrelevant.  Guess what, if even 5% of your viewers tune out you are going to lose a substantial amount of money.  I would even guess if as much as 15% tuned out it would be enough to put them out of business or be forced to make some serious budget cuts.  I just don't understand why they didn't see this coming.

The issue now is ESPN is cornered.  If they continue to support the protests, then Trump wins because they will lose money and people will become more and more frustrated with the NFLs stubbornness when they just want to watch football.  If they stop the protests (which it looks like they're doing), then Trump wins and the left will start attacking ESPN for pulling out. 

Edited by Lushen
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18 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Trump is calling some wins on the NFL.  Personally I think the stupidity of the NFL challenging Trump is hysterical.  As a business, challenging half the Country's pick for president is just stupid.  Even if a very small percentage, like 5%, of the nation tuned out of football in response it would be devastating to their income.  Just stupid.  It's almost as bad as Pepsi taking an anti-Trump stance.  Of course, the ESPN turns the story around to prove that the country is racist rather than acknowledging that people just want to watch Football.

The NFL challenging Trump? Wasn't it the other way around: Trump rallied his base against the NFL and demanded the protesting players to be fired? After being put into this situation by Trump anything they could have done would be a statement of support or opposition of the president. In a loose-loose situation like this, I would say that supporting their players is the most moral thing they could do.

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11 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

The NFL challenging Trump? Wasn't it the other way around: Trump rallied his base against the NFL and demanded the protesting players to be fired? After being put into this situation by Trump anything they could have done would be a statement of support or opposition of the president. In a loose-loose situation like this, I would say that supporting their players is the most moral thing they could do.

Trump challenged the NFL first but the NFL and ESPN fired back with statements and encouraged players to kneel or not show up for the anthem.  In other words, it takes two to tango.  In one case, they even tried to force a US Veteran player to stay in his cave until the anthem is over, which he refused.  What I think is really sad, is he has since apologized for going out without his team.  I don't believe for a second that he wasn't guilt tripped into apologizing by his whole team.  He says he feels "like he threw his team under the bus, unintentionally".  In what America should you have to apologize for not standing alone for your views. I don't apologize to my liberal friends for being a conservative. 

It's just not a question of morals.  It's a business.  How is it morally acceptable to sacrifice company profits which could potentially result in layoffs from budget cuts to pursue a political agenda that viewers didn't ask for?  Some people just want to watch football.


Anyways, I hope I'm not right about my guess about 15% being enough to cause budget cuts...because....

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nfl-ticket-sales-plummet-179/article/2635955

Some are even saying up to 30%

Edited by Lushen
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24 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Trump challenged the NFL first but the NFL and ESPN fired back with statements and encouraged players to kneel or not show up for the anthem.  In other words, it takes two to tango.  In one case, they even tried to force a US Veteran player to stay in his cave until the anthem is over, which he refused.  What I think is really sad, is he has since apologized for going out without his team.  I don't believe for a second that he wasn't guilt tripped into apologizing by his whole team.  He says he feels "like he threw his team under the bus, unintentionally".  In what America should you have to apologizing for not standing alone for your views. 

It's just not a question of morals.  It's a business.  How is it morally acceptable to sacrifice company profits which could potentially result in layoffs from budget cuts to pursue a political agenda?

So I was actually right about this? I figured I must have missed something with the way you firmly laid the blame for this on the NFL.

Of course it's not their fault that they got dragged into such a mess by Trump. I mean, what could they possibly have done to avoid a situation like this? If the president demands for players to be fired, they can either fire that player and support the president or don't fire that player and oppose the president. Either way they would be making a political statement.

And even from a purely soulless business standpoint, supporting their players still looks like the best thing to do to me. I mean, the president is extremely unpopular. He started out loosing the popular vote and his popularity kept dropping from there. So they would piss of even more people by actually supporting the president. And that's not even counting the people who just don't want to see politics involving themselves in sports like this, and would therefore hate to see the NFL submit to a politician's demands.

Not to mention if they would actually submit to the president, then this would encourage politics to get involved into sports more often, and consequently loose-loose situations like this would occur more frequently. And this is absolutely not something that the NFL could want.

Edited by BrightBow
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One thing to note is that the NFL legally doesn't qualify as a corporation (the fact that they file a 501c6 sickens me, but that's beside the point). If they aren't getting tax cuts from being a big business, why would they support Trump? If it was just Kaepernick, maybe they would, but several influential and talented players are doing this. Not to mention the previously stated controversies that, if coupled with such a large layoff, would cost the NFL millions, possibly billions of dollars. It isn't profitable, and the NFL knows it, so they placate their players, and nothing really happens.

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23 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

Of course it's not their fault that they got dragged into such a mess by Trump. I mean, what would they have to do? Submitting to the presidents will and fire their players? As I said, they were forced into a situation were no matter what they could have done it would be a statement of support or opposition of the president and would therefore have pissed off a large portion of the population.

All the NFL had to do was ignore him.  It would have been over in a couple days.  People should know by now that if you challenge Trump, regardless of who starts it, he will not stop tweeting about you.  The NFL could have said they were going to take a nonpartisan stance and leave it up to the players.  By encouraging their players to protest and replying directly to Trump, they have challenged him.  And since the president can afford to lose 5% of his fanbase and ESPN cannot, they are going to lose which will gain Trump back his 5% and then some.  That's the thing - you don't alienate your fanbase if you're running a business. 

The thing I find ironically saddening about this whole ordeal is that if budget cuts are actually necessary who do you think is going to get laid off?  Yea thats right, all the low income workers on the stadiums!  In fact, if this 15% trend increases or even remains consistent for a time, they will need to lay off plenty of low income workers for the stadiums because they are servicing less customers.  All the while the protests are actually not helping anyone.

It may seem ridiculous to mention that budget cuts could happen for such large companies but you're talking about 15-30% less money being made.  This is different from profit. I would bet some are no longer making profits and losing money.  30% is, in the words of Trump, YUGE.  If they were making $100.00 / game (hypothetical) profit but you were spending $1,000.00/game to make $1,100.00/game, at a 30% reduction of incoming dollars they are losing $330.00/game.  Natural business response would be to lay off workers until you are only spending $700.00/game so you can make the same profit and give the same income to workers you keep since businesses can rarely decrease the income of individuals already working for the company.  Sadly, it's even worse than this because a lot of the money you're spending is fixed - you can't change it.  This means you have to lay off even more workers.

Edited by Lushen
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12 minutes ago, Lushen said:

All the NFL had to do was ignore him.  It would have been over in a couple days.  People should know by now that if you challenge Trump, regardless of who starts it, he will not stop tweeting about you.  The NFL could have said they were going to take a nonpartisan stance and leave it up to the players.  By encouraging their players to protest and replying directly to Obama, they have challenged him.  And since the president can afford to lose 5% of his fanbase and ESPN cannot, they are going to lose which will gain Trump back his 5% and then some.  That's the thing - you don't alienate your fanbase if you're running a business.

I'm not sure if that would have worked. Just ignoring the issue doesn't seem possible to me when the president keeps obsessing over the topic and keeps making noise. Eventually his base would demand for the NFL to take a clear stance. And that's assuming Trump's base doesn't just interpret the NFL's inaction as opposition to the president right from the start. I mean, they even freaked out over Vogue putting the statue of liberty into the background of one of their magazine covers because they thought it was an attack on the Trump administration.

Edited by BrightBow
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