Also: the only political act of armed violence related to the election for the entire year was a firebombing of the Republican office in North Carolina
You're forgetting the arson of a black church with "Vote Trump" spray painted on the ruins.
only political act of armed violence related to the election for the entire year was a firebombing of the Republican office in North Carolina.
There is no evidence one way or the other who committed that firebombing of the Republican office in NC, though I seem to remember a McCain supporter claiming a black man carved a "B" into her face, until the cops realized it was backwards because she did it herself in a mirror. It is just as likely it was a Trump supporter angry at the local Republican Party (that was right after they started jumping ship after the Access Hollywood tape), or were trying to set it up to make it LOOK like it was done by liberals. I have read 3 stories in the last month of cops, ex-cops, or the spouses of cops causing property damage or arson at their own property and calling it in blaming it on Black Lives Matter. The only thing we know for sure about that NC firebombing (and trust me, had a Hillary supporter been the culprit, it would have been the biggest story in the country) was that many Democrats online raised money to help them re-open the office (which I frankly thought was ridiculous).
I don't think we should bother trying to quantify which side is better and which side is worse in terms of violent outbreaks.
But if you want to do so, I think that sort of argument would require real research and real numbers cataloguing each and every example we're talking about here--not just listing a handful of examples (whatever we happened to have noticed) and saying "we did X, but they did Y, and Y is a lot worse."
Otherwise we'll probably just end up comparing our marbles to their bowling balls.
If Roe v. Wade were overturned, abortion would still be available for the majority of the country, and within driving range for almost everyone.
"Within driving range" is a pretty dubious standard. For one thing, why should anyone have to drive cross-state or cross country to get a basic medical procedure?? For another, poor women may either a.) not have the money it takes to travel, from say, Alabama to the next closest state (who even knows what that state would be if Roe is overturned) and b.) they may not have a car, or a car that can make a 500 or 1000 mile trip.
whomever was saying Trump doesn't want to take away a woman's right to choose look at the third debate (I believe) where he says he will appoint a supreme court justice who he said would automatically overturn Roe v. Wade the legal basis of abortion in the USA.
That's one reason why this election mattered, no matter what you thought of clinton at least she wasn't campaigning on taking away a woman's right to choose nor in the party that wants to cut social security and taxes on the rich.
Not everyone agrees that choosing an abortion is a right for anyone; those people believe the child's right to live supersedes the women's right to an abortion. I am pro-choice, edit: as long as it's not used as a form of birth control, but this as an argument that Trump wants to take away women's rights is weak and controversial.
-Roe vs. Wade establishes that women have the right to choose.
-Trump says he will appoint a supreme court judge who will overturn Roe vs. Wade.
Therefore
-Trump wants to take away women's rights.
I mean, people can believe whatever they want, but Roe vs. Wade was enacted because women by the thousands were dying by trying to end their pregnancies. Making abortions illegal doesn't stop abortion; it creates an extremely dangerous environment for women and girls who are in an extremely desperate situation. At some point, "those people" who believe as you describe need to look at themselves in the mirror and ask whether the fetus inside is really more important than the already-living person in front of them who is threatening to harm and potentially kill herself one way or another.
@Nonnahswriter So I wanted to thank you for this, I did some research. I was under the impression that before Roe vs Wade, abortion was legal in order to save a woman's life. I was about to say so incorrectly when I decided to source it first and realized my supposition wasn't right. Your comment spurred me to learn.
It was legal in about 20 states to perform abortions for various reasons (such as rape, incest, saving a woman's life), but not all of them, before Roe vs Wade.
Because of its illegality, doctors could be prosecuted, but not women: women were often called the "second victim" in legal cases involving abortion. (Doctors who performed abortions on women whose life was at risk were not always prosecuted in states where it was illegal.) So when someone wanted an abortion for other reasons, they usually had to go to back-alley, illegal, dirty clinics to get them done. This seemed to have created more health risks for mothers and resulted in more deaths than abortions not performed when a mother's health was at risk, although it's obviously a hard statistic to verify because of the illegal nature of the abortions.
I did come across some interesting data, though, that you may find comforting. Less than 1% of abortions in the United States are performed because the mother's health is at risk, among other interesting statistics. I could not find a way to verify if this statistic was the same shortly after Roe vs Wade, though. I assume not because our medical science has come a long way since then.
I am going to agree with both @booinyoureyes and @semiticgod that if Roe vs Wade was overturned abortion would still be available to most of the country, as most states have some sort of local version of a Roe vs Wade now, but that it would open up a can of worms for abortion to be under serious review. I do not think it would be completely illegalized at the cost of a woman's health; our society has come too far for something that extreme to happen. It would most likely mean that abortions for other reasons would become illegal, but that the traditional exceptions for abortion (risk to the mother, incest, rape) would remain legal.
I don't think we should bother trying to quantify which side is better and which side is worse in terms of violent outbreaks.
But if you want to do so, I think that sort of argument would require real research and real numbers cataloguing each and every example we're talking about here--not just listing a handful of examples (whatever we happened to have noticed) and saying "we did X, but they did Y, and Y is a lot worse."
Otherwise we'll probably just end up comparing our marbles to their bowling balls.
What we can say about at the very least most mass-shootings in this country is that they are almost, without fail, carried out by males, usually under the age 40. Even if you take out the age qualifier, they are, 99% of the time, male.
whomever was saying Trump doesn't want to take away a woman's right to choose look at the third debate (I believe) where he says he will appoint a supreme court justice who he said would automatically overturn Roe v. Wade the legal basis of abortion in the USA.
That's one reason why this election mattered, no matter what you thought of clinton at least she wasn't campaigning on taking away a woman's right to choose nor in the party that wants to cut social security and taxes on the rich.
Not everyone agrees that choosing an abortion is a right for anyone; those people believe the child's right to live supersedes the women's right to an abortion. I am pro-choice, edit: as long as it's not used as a form of birth control, but this as an argument that Trump wants to take away women's rights is weak and controversial.
Roe vs. Wade was enacted
No, it wasn't. Basic tenth grade civics: Roe was not a piece of legislation. It is not a law. It is a Supreme Court decision based on reasoning that many left-wing legal scholars agree is dubious. You can agree with the result, but it was not a law and was not enacted because "people were dying".
If Roe v. Wade were overturned, abortion would still be available for the majority of the country, and within driving range for almost everyone.
Not in Mississippi where there is currently one abortion clinic open to serve the entire state.
Not in Texas where there are currently nineteen clinics open to serve the entire state--which was once forty.
Not in Indiana, Pence's state of choice, where there are ten clinics open and a slew of restrictions in place to limit women's access.
Not anywhere in the deep south that, with their all-red elected representatives, would make abortion illegal no matter the circumstance or trimester, should the power go back to the states. So for example, anyone living in, say, Alabama, would have to cross as many as three states to reach someplace where abortion is legal. Before she passes the twenty-week mark. With enough money to pay for gas, a plane ticket, food, possibly housing, and the procedure itself. Which is difficult enough for a woman of privilege, but damn near impossible for a woman who's poor, or disabled, or too young to drive.
"Majority of the country" my ass. But what do I know? I'm only a woman of child-bearing age who's had to look into these things in case the worst were to happen. It's not like I'd be affected or anything.
I did come across some interesting data, though, that you may find comforting. Less than 1% of abortions in the United States are performed because the mother's health is at risk, among other interesting statistics. I could not find a way to verify if this statistic was the same shortly after Roe vs Wade, though. I assume not because our medical science has come a long way since then.
This happens to coincide pretty closely to the fact that only 1.2% of abortions are performed after 20 weeks, heavily implying that the VAST majority of so called "late-term abortions" are being performed due to risks to the health of the mother. The idea that someone would carry a child for 7 or 8 months and decide to get rid of it on a whim is, in most cases, ridiculous. Only 162 clinics in the entire country provide it after 20 weeks. Only 40 perform them after 24. There are a total of FIVE that provide abortion throughout the entire 9 month pregnancy.
By the way, I'm not getting those numbers from some liberal advocacy group. Those come straight from Operation Rescue, whose members have been involved in and supported terrorist activity. The fact is, relatively speaking, getting an abortion after 20 weeks in this country is already monumentally difficult from a logistical standpoint.
By the way, our new Vice President signed a law that would have required women to hold a funeral for their aborted fetus and that the remains be buried or cremated. Nevermind the obvious religious issues presented here (what if you don't believe in funerals??), this is simply madness. The fact that it was overturned by a federal judge does nothing to mitigate the fact that Mike Pence signed that piece of paper, and that if he had his way, this is what women would have to do. It's not up for debate.
Nonnahswriter So I wanted to thank you for this, I did some research. I was under the impression that before Roe vs Wade, abortion was legal in order to save a woman's life. I was about to say so incorrectly when I decided to source it first and realized my supposition wasn't right. Your comment spurred me to learn.
You're welcome, and I'm glad you were able to learn something.
It was legal in about 20 states to perform abortions for various reasons (such as rape, incest, saving a woman's life), but not all of them, before Roe vs Wade.
Because of its illegality, doctors could be prosecuted, but not women: women were often called the "second victim" in legal cases involving abortion. (Doctors who performed abortions on women whose life was at risk were not always prosecuted in states where it was illegal.) So when someone wanted an abortion for other reasons, they usually had to go to back-alley, illegal, dirty clinics to get them done. This seemed to have created more health risks for mothers and resulted in more deaths than abortions not performed when a mother's health was at risk, although it's obviously a hard statistic to verify because of the illegal nature of the abortions.
Yeah. I hesitate to put a number of the death rate (even though NARAL did in their paper, it still seems difficult to me how they could have collected all that data from "back alley" areas) but my grandmother lived through that era. She saw the headlines. She's a conservative, but even she applauded the decision because she believed it would put a stop to the deaths.
I did come across some interesting data, though, that you may find comforting. Less than 1% of abortions in the United States are performed because the mother's health is at risk, among other interesting statistics. I could not find a way to verify if this statistic was the same shortly after Roe vs Wade, though. I assume not because our medical science has come a long way since then.
Well, yeah. It is comforting, but it's pretty well-known. Most (if not all) late-term abortions are sought out because of health complications that endangers the mother's life, or because the fetus isn't viable outside the womb.
I am going to agree with both @booinyoureyes and @semiticgod that if Roe vs Wade was overturned abortion would still be available to most of the country, as most states have some sort of local version of a Roe vs Wade now, but that it would open up a can of worms for abortion to be under serious review. I do not think it would be completely illegalized at the cost of a woman's health; our society has come too far for something that extreme to happen. It would most likely mean that abortions for other reasons would become illegal, but that the traditional exceptions for abortion (risk to the mother, incest, rape) would remain legal.
I would also like to think at least that those same instances would remain legal even if it were overturned. But I still want to see abortions remain legal no matter the circumstances and no matter where a woman lives. I believe that no government body should have control over a woman's reproductive health--period.
(And that goes double for any government body that controls how many children a woman is allowed to have, and thus encourages abortions too. Like China when they still had their One Child policy.)
Nonnahswriter So I wanted to thank you for this, I did some research. I was under the impression that before Roe vs Wade, abortion was legal in order to save a woman's life. I was about to say so incorrectly when I decided to source it first and realized my supposition wasn't right. Your comment spurred me to learn.
You're welcome, and I'm glad you were able to learn something.
It was legal in about 20 states to perform abortions for various reasons (such as rape, incest, saving a woman's life), but not all of them, before Roe vs Wade.
Because of its illegality, doctors could be prosecuted, but not women: women were often called the "second victim" in legal cases involving abortion. (Doctors who performed abortions on women whose life was at risk were not always prosecuted in states where it was illegal.) So when someone wanted an abortion for other reasons, they usually had to go to back-alley, illegal, dirty clinics to get them done. This seemed to have created more health risks for mothers and resulted in more deaths than abortions not performed when a mother's health was at risk, although it's obviously a hard statistic to verify because of the illegal nature of the abortions.
Yeah. I hesitate to put a number of the death rate (even though NARAL did in their paper, it still seems difficult to me how they could have collected all that data from "back alley" areas) but my grandmother lived through that era. She saw the headlines. She's a conservative, but even she applauded the decision because she believed it would put a stop to the deaths.
I did come across some interesting data, though, that you may find comforting. Less than 1% of abortions in the United States are performed because the mother's health is at risk, among other interesting statistics. I could not find a way to verify if this statistic was the same shortly after Roe vs Wade, though. I assume not because our medical science has come a long way since then.
Well, yeah. It is comforting, but it's pretty well-known. Most (if not all) late-term abortions are sought out because of health complications that endangers the mother's life, or because the fetus isn't viable outside the womb.
I am going to agree with both @booinyoureyes and @semiticgod that if Roe vs Wade was overturned abortion would still be available to most of the country, as most states have some sort of local version of a Roe vs Wade now, but that it would open up a can of worms for abortion to be under serious review. I do not think it would be completely illegalized at the cost of a woman's health; our society has come too far for something that extreme to happen. It would most likely mean that abortions for other reasons would become illegal, but that the traditional exceptions for abortion (risk to the mother, incest, rape) would remain legal.
I would also like to think at least that those same instances would remain legal even if it were overturned. But I still want to see abortions remain legal no matter the circumstances and no matter where a woman lives. I believe that no government body should have control over a woman's reproductive health--period.
(And that goes double for any government body that controls how many children a woman is allowed to have, and thus encourages abortions too. Like China when they still had their One Child policy.)
Your last statement about governmental interference is something that I hold very dear. It's not he government's jobs to tell us how to live our lives. It is the government's job to protect our rights.
It is unfortunate this is such a controversial issue and a gray area. I wish it was more cut in stone, but that's how politics are sometimes.
I did not put two and two together that the 1% would also have been in the late stages of pregnancy.
whomever was saying Trump doesn't want to take away a woman's right to choose look at the third debate (I believe) where he says he will appoint a supreme court justice who he said would automatically overturn Roe v. Wade the legal basis of abortion in the USA.
That's one reason why this election mattered, no matter what you thought of clinton at least she wasn't campaigning on taking away a woman's right to choose nor in the party that wants to cut social security and taxes on the rich.
Not everyone agrees that choosing an abortion is a right for anyone; those people believe the child's right to live supersedes the women's right to an abortion. I am pro-choice, edit: as long as it's not used as a form of birth control, but this as an argument that Trump wants to take away women's rights is weak and controversial.
-Roe vs. Wade establishes that women have the right to choose.
-Trump says he will appoint a supreme court judge who will overturn Roe vs. Wade.
Therefore
-Trump wants to take away women's rights.
Your logic is spurious. It's actually this:
-Roe vs. Wade establishes that women have the right to choose.
-Many Republican voters want to take away women's rights.
-Trump will say anything to get elected.
Therefore
-Trump says he will appoint a supreme court judge who will overturn Roe vs. Wade.
The truth is, he doesn't give a **** either way, and what he actually does in office will have no relationship whatsoever to what he said he would do whist campaigning. (but will probably amount to very little apart from trying to persecute anyone who criticises him and lining his own pockets.)
" I don't really care about videos anyway." Yeah, wouldn't want to see something that could challenge your worldview.
I'm perfectly happy to see news stories and statistics that challenge my worldview, just not youtube videos. I also hate going to youtube for instructions, if that helps any. Reading is FUNdamental!
(Especially when your internet is crap.)
(But I hate political youtube vids even if it wasn't; even the ones that are well-sourced are still going to take ten times as long to watch as they would to read, and be harder to carefully check.)
On the topic of news stories that challenge my worldview (specifically, the view I expressed a few pages back), this I thought was quite interesting:
The truth is, he doesn't give a **** either way, and what he actually does in office will have no relationship whatsoever to what he said he would do whist campaigning. (but will probably amount to very little apart from trying to persecute anyone who criticises him and lining his own pockets.)
That's really hard to be confident of at this point, partially because Trump seems serious about some of his election promises and had no legislative background to draw clues as to how he will govern, and partially because he already said he's going to delegate an awful lot to Pence and Pence is pretty ferociously anti-abortion, as well-documented in the thread so far.
Fact is, he said he'd do it, and he's in a position now where it is possible he could, and unlike a typical Republican politician, he's not likely to be dissuaded by projected electoral costs for himself or his party. It's by no means certain, but there's no reason to feel secure about it.
So what's everyone think of Trumps Secretary of State pick? To me, it seems this guy is a (extremely) well paid Big Oil shill. He's spent his life making hundreds of millions of dollars from big oil.
It's a good thing this country has never gone to war over oil
@mashedtaters China's one child policy averted famine on a massive scale and saved a tens of millions of lives.
Is there a citation for this? The one child policy wasn't even done for that purpose; the idea was to focus on the "quality" rather than quantity of the Chinese population as a means of improving economic growth.
So what's everyone think of Trumps Secretary of State pick? To me, it seems this guy is a (extremely) well paid Big Oil shill. He's spent his life making hundreds of millions of dollars from big oil.
It's a good thing this country has never gone to war over oil
He isn't just a shill for big oil, he IS big oil. He's the CEO of ExxonMobil, and pretty much the closest American friend of Putin.
In other posts, Rick Perry will be Secretary of Energy, which was one of the posts he famously "forgot" when he was talking about what government agencies he wanted to ELIMINATE the 2012 Republican Primary debate. He is being put in charge of an agency he doesn't believe should exist.
Carly Fiorina is being considered for Director of National Intelligence, because apparently managing to bankrupt tech-giant Hewlett-Packard and lying about Planned Parenthood videos qualifies you for this position.
The Republican strategy is very simple: Deride government at every opportunity. When you get power, put people in charge of major agencies who will actively undermine them from the top down, thus creating an incompetent government in a self-fulfilling prophecy. After 4 or 8 years of total disaster, pretend it never happened and blame Democrats. Rinse and repeat.
So what's everyone think of Trumps Secretary of State pick? To me, it seems this guy is a (extremely) well paid Big Oil shill. He's spent his life making hundreds of millions of dollars from big oil.
(I'm still laughing hysterically that Linda McMahon finally bought herself the government position she blew 100 million dollars failing to win electorally. Which is more than Trump personally spent becoming president, IIRC. Sad!)
That being said, it'll take some wheeling and dealing to even get Tillerson nominated (due to a bunch of Republicans as well as Democrats being Russophobes), so he's not a sure thing yet.
So what's everyone think of Trumps Secretary of State pick? To me, it seems this guy is a (extremely) well paid Big Oil shill. He's spent his life making hundreds of millions of dollars from big oil.
(I'm still laughing hysterically that Linda McMahon finally bought herself the government position she blew 100 million dollars failing to win electorally. Which is more than Trump personally spent becoming president, IIRC. Sad!)
That being said, it'll take some wheeling and dealing to even get Tillerson nominated (due to a bunch of Republicans as well as Democrats being Russophobes), so he's not a sure thing yet.
Republicans like McCain and Rubio will roll-up for Trump like a cheap carpet. I wouldn't bet a cent on him not getting ANY of his nominees.
The more centrist-leaning posters in this thread seem to have a general consensus that Trump will be fine because a.) he doesn't mean what he says b.) it's always worked out before c.) the American system of government is strong enough to withstand him. This is where I just completely disagree. The media is not capable of dealing with Trump. Trump, among those who voted for him, has made the media completely obsolete. This is a mixture of them destroying themselves over the past two decades, and Trump's relentless assault against them. He has a blank check in both Houses of congress, and barring him slitting the throat of an infant on national television, I imagine there won't be a hearing on a single thing that happens.
When the inevitable terrorist attack happens at home or abroad, it will, of course, be blamed on Obama, even if at that time Trump hasn't read his National Security Briefing for a month straight. If any elements of Obamacare are kept, the people who despised it for 8 years because it was the policy of a black President will think it's JUST PEACHY now that Trump is in office. Hell, by 2020, our newly written history will record that indeed, it was Trump all along who came up with these policies. The fact that Barack Obama, who inherited George W. Bush's disaster in 2008 and is going to leave office with unemployment at 4.9% and gas at less than $2.00 a gallon, will, as soon as Trump is in office actually become news stories, and he will get credit for that as well.
Trump's cabinet is a horror show of billionaires and people who have spent their lives trying to destroy the agencies they are being put in charge of. It doesn't much matter what my opinion is, or whether many here agree with me or not. The writing is on the wall, and anyone who has the faintest memory of 2000-2008 can see what is coming from miles away, except this time it's looking to be twice as bad. We are slipping dangerously close to some sort amalgamation of oligarchy and fascism. Not the kind we saw in Europe in the early part of the 20th century, certainly (not yet), but dangerous enough on it's own to completely transform this country from whatever it currently is. I'm not even totally sure what that might be anymore.
Let me close with this: Hillary Clinton's national vote lead is larger than the entire population of North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska COMBINED. It would be one thing if Trump, realizing that a far larger number of people voted for his opponent was trying to strike some sort of moderate tone and govern from the center. What we are seeing is the assembling of a cabinet that is without question going to be the most right-wing administration in modern times. We are where we are, but make no mistake, this country is going to be under minority rule, and aggressive, almost antagonistic minority rule at that.
Republicans like McCain and Rubio will roll-up for Trump like a cheap carpet. I wouldn't bet a cent on him not getting ANY of his nominees.
They're not the only ones, and there's already an inquiry into "Russian meddling" in the election being launched by Republicans and pretty explicitly against Trump's wishes. If he loses any Republicans, he'll need some Democrats onside to vote for Tillerson, which could be fun.
The more centrist-leaning posters in this thread seem to have a general consensus that Trump will be fine because a.) he doesn't mean what he says b.) it's always worked out before c.) the American system of government is strong enough to withstand him. This is where I just completely disagree. The media is not capable of dealing with Trump. Trump, among those who voted for him, has made the media completely obsolete. This is a mixture of them destroying themselves over the past two decades, and Trump's relentless assault against them. He has a blank check in both Houses of congress, and barring him slitting the throat of an infant on national television, I imagine there won't be a hearing on a single thing that happens.
Nixon looked invincible after winning a landslide in 1972, too. If Trump is caught in sufficient malfeasance to turn public and political opinion against him, he can be impeached.
The fact the media is a lot more feckless now than in 1972, for various reasons that mostly predate Trump, is compensated for by the relative ease of leaking information.
That doesn't mean Trump will be fine. He'll likely be terrible. But America has survived populists before, not to mention a few worse things, like, y'know, civil war.
When the inevitable terrorist attack happens at home or abroad, it will, of course, be blamed on Obama, even if at that time Trump hasn't read his National Security Briefing for a month straight. If any elements of Obamacare are kept, the people who despised it for 8 years because it was the policy of a black President will think it's JUST PEACHY now that Trump is in office.
Yes, and most Democratic pols and voters were just fine that Obama continued and expanded on many of George W. Bush's most heinous policies. Had it been GWB who had come up with the "kill list" and assassinated American citizens without trial, liberals would have marched in the streets screaming for his impeachment. Had GWB led an unprecedented persecution of whistleblowers and imprisoned Chelsea Manning, liberals would have flocked to their defence. Libya, the Five Eyes, the use of executive orders, the list goes on.
But instead, since those were the policies of Barack Obama, the liberal opposition was muted or outright turned into support for policies that would have been abhorrent had he been his predecessor. It wasn't held against him by most Democrats that he lied about closing down Guantanamo Bay (both in not doing it, and that he never intended to "close it" in any case in the way liberals expected). When he was going to release the pictures from Abu Ghraib, liberals supported him, and when he changed his mind, citing the exact same "national security/harm to our soldiers" argument that Republicans had been using, liberals changed their minds right along with him (for the most part, as shown by surveys and commentary at the time).
So yeah, people will change their minds in a hurry about the virtues of the all-new Trumpcare, but that is how most people always act. Rah rah. Go team.
Most parts of Obamacare are popular (except for the enforced buying of insurance), even with Republicans. It'd be both bad in and of itself and politically stupid to repeal it all, so if Trump doesn't, good. Isn't it better if in some ways he isn't a horrible president?
The popular benefits of Obamacare won't work without the mandate as long as we still have private, for-profit insurance companies. To keep the pre-existing conditions portion without the mandate would mean Republicans would just write a big fat check to the insurance industry to placate them.
UK manages to have a free to use NHS and still have private health insurance. You go private if you want your own room and a doctor who speaks English.
UK manages to have a free to use NHS and still have private health insurance. You go private if you want your own room and a doctor who speaks English.
Key part of this is the existence of the NHS in the first place. Here we have a morally reprehensible system that has no interest in anything but money. Obamacare was simply a band-aid put on a broken system. The system itself is a disgrace.
1. Russia was responsible for the hack of DNC. 2. Russia also hacked the RNC, but did not release whatever documents it found. 3. Both instances of hacking, if not the leaks of the information stolen, occurred before Trump's rise in the Republican primaries. 4. Based partly on 1 and 2, the CIA believes that Russia was attempting not simply to damage the U.S. electoral system, but to aid Trump and/or hurt Hillary. 5. The CIA has NOT yet concluded if Russia actually changed the outcome of the election; merely that the Russian government attempted to. 6. Although the intelligence community does have a consensus that Russia hacked the DNC and RNC, other intelligence agencies have NOT agreed with the CIA's assessment of Russia's motives. Some believe Russia was simply trying to weaken the election's reputation and legitimacy; not change the outcome. 7. There is NO evidence that Russia, or any other actor, hacked the U.S. electoral system and changed votes. 8. There is NO evidence of widespread voter fraud. 9. Trump's call for Russia to hack more emails did not prompt any further hacks, as it occurred months after the DNC hack. 10. Although Russia has spread misinformation about the U.S., there is NO proof that it had any measurable effect on the outcome. Russia's media has very little pull in the U.S. 11. Although some fake news about the election has come out of Eastern Europe, it was largely done for profit, NOT to influence the election.
People have come up with a lot of theories about the election and hacking, but the U.S. intelligence community has found evidence for only SOME of them.
1. Russia was responsible for the hack of DNC. 2. Russia also hacked the RNC, but did not release whatever documents it found. 3. Both instances of hacking, if not the leaks of the information stolen, occurred before Trump's rise in the Republican primaries. 4. Based partly on 1 and 2, the CIA believes that Russia was attempting not simply to damage the U.S. electoral system, but to aid Trump and/or hurt Hillary. 5. The CIA has NOT yet concluded if Russia actually changed the outcome of the election; merely that the Russian government attempted to. 6. Although the intelligence community does have a consensus that Russia hacked the DNC and RNC, other intelligence agencies have NOT agreed with the CIA's assessment of Russia's motives. Some believe Russia was simply trying to weaken the election's reputation and legitimacy; not change the outcome. 7. There is NO evidence that Russia, or any other actor, hacked the U.S. electoral system and changed votes. 8. There is NO evidence of widespread voter fraud. 9. Trump's call for Russia to hack more emails did not prompt any further hacks, as it occurred months after the DNC hack. 10. Although Russia has spread misinformation about the U.S., there is NO proof that it had any measurable effect on the outcome. Russia's media has very little pull in the U.S. 11. Although some fake news about the election has come out of Eastern Europe, it was largely done for profit, NOT to influence the election.
People have come up with a lot of theories about the election and hacking, but the U.S. intelligence community has found evidence for only SOME of them.
If those "other intelligence agencies" mentioned happen to include the FBI, you aren't, at any time in the near future, going to find many liberals who believe a thing they have to say, considering what happened in the final weeks of the campaign. It makes no difference regardless. For a myriad of suspect reasons, Trump is going to be President. Frankly, Donald Trump is the President that America deserves. He's what happens when the system starts to break down. In retrospect, the idea that so many people would fall for a tabloid campaign run by a fake-billionaire with years of experience in reality TV and screwing people with their pants on has to be the least surprising thing ever.
Given the way Romney cow towed to Trump I don't have high hopes for Rubio to stand up to him. McCain I have respect for but he's just one guy surrounded by an army of followers.
Comments
But if you want to do so, I think that sort of argument would require real research and real numbers cataloguing each and every example we're talking about here--not just listing a handful of examples (whatever we happened to have noticed) and saying "we did X, but they did Y, and Y is a lot worse."
Otherwise we'll probably just end up comparing our marbles to their bowling balls.
"Within driving range" is a pretty dubious standard. For one thing, why should anyone have to drive cross-state or cross country to get a basic medical procedure?? For another, poor women may either a.) not have the money it takes to travel, from say, Alabama to the next closest state (who even knows what that state would be if Roe is overturned) and b.) they may not have a car, or a car that can make a 500 or 1000 mile trip.
So I wanted to thank you for this, I did some research. I was under the impression that before Roe vs Wade, abortion was legal in order to save a woman's life. I was about to say so incorrectly when I decided to source it first and realized my supposition wasn't right. Your comment spurred me to learn.
It was legal in about 20 states to perform abortions for various reasons (such as rape, incest, saving a woman's life), but not all of them, before Roe vs Wade.
Because of its illegality, doctors could be prosecuted, but not women: women were often called the "second victim" in legal cases involving abortion. (Doctors who performed abortions on women whose life was at risk were not always prosecuted in states where it was illegal.) So when someone wanted an abortion for other reasons, they usually had to go to back-alley, illegal, dirty clinics to get them done. This seemed to have created more health risks for mothers and resulted in more deaths than abortions not performed when a mother's health was at risk, although it's obviously a hard statistic to verify because of the illegal nature of the abortions.
I did come across some interesting data, though, that you may find comforting. Less than 1% of abortions in the United States are performed because the mother's health is at risk, among other interesting statistics. I could not find a way to verify if this statistic was the same shortly after Roe vs Wade, though. I assume not because our medical science has come a long way since then.
http://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics
I am going to agree with both @booinyoureyes and @semiticgod that if Roe vs Wade was overturned abortion would still be available to most of the country, as most states have some sort of local version of a Roe vs Wade now, but that it would open up a can of worms for abortion to be under serious review. I do not think it would be completely illegalized at the cost of a woman's health; our society has come too far for something that extreme to happen. It would most likely mean that abortions for other reasons would become illegal, but that the traditional exceptions for abortion (risk to the mother, incest, rape) would remain legal.
Not in Texas where there are currently nineteen clinics open to serve the entire state--which was once forty.
Not in Indiana, Pence's state of choice, where there are ten clinics open and a slew of restrictions in place to limit women's access.
Not anywhere in the deep south that, with their all-red elected representatives, would make abortion illegal no matter the circumstance or trimester, should the power go back to the states. So for example, anyone living in, say, Alabama, would have to cross as many as three states to reach someplace where abortion is legal. Before she passes the twenty-week mark. With enough money to pay for gas, a plane ticket, food, possibly housing, and the procedure itself. Which is difficult enough for a woman of privilege, but damn near impossible for a woman who's poor, or disabled, or too young to drive.
"Majority of the country" my ass. But what do I know? I'm only a woman of child-bearing age who's had to look into these things in case the worst were to happen. It's not like I'd be affected or anything.
This happens to coincide pretty closely to the fact that only 1.2% of abortions are performed after 20 weeks, heavily implying that the VAST majority of so called "late-term abortions" are being performed due to risks to the health of the mother. The idea that someone would carry a child for 7 or 8 months and decide to get rid of it on a whim is, in most cases, ridiculous. Only 162 clinics in the entire country provide it after 20 weeks. Only 40 perform them after 24. There are a total of FIVE that provide abortion throughout the entire 9 month pregnancy.
By the way, I'm not getting those numbers from some liberal advocacy group. Those come straight from Operation Rescue, whose members have been involved in and supported terrorist activity. The fact is, relatively speaking, getting an abortion after 20 weeks in this country is already monumentally difficult from a logistical standpoint.
By the way, our new Vice President signed a law that would have required women to hold a funeral for their aborted fetus and that the remains be buried or cremated. Nevermind the obvious religious issues presented here (what if you don't believe in funerals??), this is simply madness. The fact that it was overturned by a federal judge does nothing to mitigate the fact that Mike Pence signed that piece of paper, and that if he had his way, this is what women would have to do. It's not up for debate.
(And that goes double for any government body that controls how many children a woman is allowed to have, and thus encourages abortions too. Like China when they still had their One Child policy.)
It is unfortunate this is such a controversial issue and a gray area. I wish it was more cut in stone, but that's how politics are sometimes.
I did not put two and two together that the 1% would also have been in the late stages of pregnancy.
-Roe vs. Wade establishes that women have the right to choose.
-Many Republican voters want to take away women's rights.
-Trump will say anything to get elected.
Therefore
-Trump says he will appoint a supreme court judge who will overturn Roe vs. Wade.
The truth is, he doesn't give a **** either way, and what he actually does in office will have no relationship whatsoever to what he said he would do whist campaigning. (but will probably amount to very little apart from trying to persecute anyone who criticises him and lining his own pockets.)
Ok. Why are you telling me this? It's interesting information, though.
(Especially when your internet is crap.)
(But I hate political youtube vids even if it wasn't; even the ones that are well-sourced are still going to take ten times as long to watch as they would to read, and be harder to carefully check.)
On the topic of news stories that challenge my worldview (specifically, the view I expressed a few pages back), this I thought was quite interesting:
qz.com/840973/everything-we-thought-we-knew-about-free-trade-is-wrong/
Fact is, he said he'd do it, and he's in a position now where it is possible he could, and unlike a typical Republican politician, he's not likely to be dissuaded by projected electoral costs for himself or his party. It's by no means certain, but there's no reason to feel secure about it.
It's a good thing this country has never gone to war over oil
In other posts, Rick Perry will be Secretary of Energy, which was one of the posts he famously "forgot" when he was talking about what government agencies he wanted to ELIMINATE the 2012 Republican Primary debate. He is being put in charge of an agency he doesn't believe should exist.
Carly Fiorina is being considered for Director of National Intelligence, because apparently managing to bankrupt tech-giant Hewlett-Packard and lying about Planned Parenthood videos qualifies you for this position.
The Republican strategy is very simple: Deride government at every opportunity. When you get power, put people in charge of major agencies who will actively undermine them from the top down, thus creating an incompetent government in a self-fulfilling prophecy. After 4 or 8 years of total disaster, pretend it never happened and blame Democrats. Rinse and repeat.
(I'm still laughing hysterically that Linda McMahon finally bought herself the government position she blew 100 million dollars failing to win electorally. Which is more than Trump personally spent becoming president, IIRC. Sad!)
That being said, it'll take some wheeling and dealing to even get Tillerson nominated (due to a bunch of Republicans as well as Democrats being Russophobes), so he's not a sure thing yet.
The more centrist-leaning posters in this thread seem to have a general consensus that Trump will be fine because a.) he doesn't mean what he says b.) it's always worked out before c.) the American system of government is strong enough to withstand him. This is where I just completely disagree. The media is not capable of dealing with Trump. Trump, among those who voted for him, has made the media completely obsolete. This is a mixture of them destroying themselves over the past two decades, and Trump's relentless assault against them. He has a blank check in both Houses of congress, and barring him slitting the throat of an infant on national television, I imagine there won't be a hearing on a single thing that happens.
When the inevitable terrorist attack happens at home or abroad, it will, of course, be blamed on Obama, even if at that time Trump hasn't read his National Security Briefing for a month straight. If any elements of Obamacare are kept, the people who despised it for 8 years because it was the policy of a black President will think it's JUST PEACHY now that Trump is in office. Hell, by 2020, our newly written history will record that indeed, it was Trump all along who came up with these policies. The fact that Barack Obama, who inherited George W. Bush's disaster in 2008 and is going to leave office with unemployment at 4.9% and gas at less than $2.00 a gallon, will, as soon as Trump is in office actually become news stories, and he will get credit for that as well.
Trump's cabinet is a horror show of billionaires and people who have spent their lives trying to destroy the agencies they are being put in charge of. It doesn't much matter what my opinion is, or whether many here agree with me or not. The writing is on the wall, and anyone who has the faintest memory of 2000-2008 can see what is coming from miles away, except this time it's looking to be twice as bad. We are slipping dangerously close to some sort amalgamation of oligarchy and fascism. Not the kind we saw in Europe in the early part of the 20th century, certainly (not yet), but dangerous enough on it's own to completely transform this country from whatever it currently is. I'm not even totally sure what that might be anymore.
Let me close with this: Hillary Clinton's national vote lead is larger than the entire population of North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska COMBINED. It would be one thing if Trump, realizing that a far larger number of people voted for his opponent was trying to strike some sort of moderate tone and govern from the center. What we are seeing is the assembling of a cabinet that is without question going to be the most right-wing administration in modern times. We are where we are, but make no mistake, this country is going to be under minority rule, and aggressive, almost antagonistic minority rule at that.
The fact the media is a lot more feckless now than in 1972, for various reasons that mostly predate Trump, is compensated for by the relative ease of leaking information.
That doesn't mean Trump will be fine. He'll likely be terrible. But America has survived populists before, not to mention a few worse things, like, y'know, civil war. Yes, and most Democratic pols and voters were just fine that Obama continued and expanded on many of George W. Bush's most heinous policies. Had it been GWB who had come up with the "kill list" and assassinated American citizens without trial, liberals would have marched in the streets screaming for his impeachment. Had GWB led an unprecedented persecution of whistleblowers and imprisoned Chelsea Manning, liberals would have flocked to their defence. Libya, the Five Eyes, the use of executive orders, the list goes on.
But instead, since those were the policies of Barack Obama, the liberal opposition was muted or outright turned into support for policies that would have been abhorrent had he been his predecessor. It wasn't held against him by most Democrats that he lied about closing down Guantanamo Bay (both in not doing it, and that he never intended to "close it" in any case in the way liberals expected). When he was going to release the pictures from Abu Ghraib, liberals supported him, and when he changed his mind, citing the exact same "national security/harm to our soldiers" argument that Republicans had been using, liberals changed their minds right along with him (for the most part, as shown by surveys and commentary at the time).
So yeah, people will change their minds in a hurry about the virtues of the all-new Trumpcare, but that is how most people always act. Rah rah. Go team.
Most parts of Obamacare are popular (except for the enforced buying of insurance), even with Republicans. It'd be both bad in and of itself and politically stupid to repeal it all, so if Trump doesn't, good. Isn't it better if in some ways he isn't a horrible president?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/world/europe/russia-trump-election-cia-fbi.html
In a word:
1. Russia was responsible for the hack of DNC.
2. Russia also hacked the RNC, but did not release whatever documents it found.
3. Both instances of hacking, if not the leaks of the information stolen, occurred before Trump's rise in the Republican primaries.
4. Based partly on 1 and 2, the CIA believes that Russia was attempting not simply to damage the U.S. electoral system, but to aid Trump and/or hurt Hillary.
5. The CIA has NOT yet concluded if Russia actually changed the outcome of the election; merely that the Russian government attempted to.
6. Although the intelligence community does have a consensus that Russia hacked the DNC and RNC, other intelligence agencies have NOT agreed with the CIA's assessment of Russia's motives. Some believe Russia was simply trying to weaken the election's reputation and legitimacy; not change the outcome.
7. There is NO evidence that Russia, or any other actor, hacked the U.S. electoral system and changed votes.
8. There is NO evidence of widespread voter fraud.
9. Trump's call for Russia to hack more emails did not prompt any further hacks, as it occurred months after the DNC hack.
10. Although Russia has spread misinformation about the U.S., there is NO proof that it had any measurable effect on the outcome. Russia's media has very little pull in the U.S.
11. Although some fake news about the election has come out of Eastern Europe, it was largely done for profit, NOT to influence the election.
People have come up with a lot of theories about the election and hacking, but the U.S. intelligence community has found evidence for only SOME of them.