Yea but the issue is who is more qualified, which is hilary. Obama was a freshman senator, so his qualifications pailed in comparison to McCain. If your issue is that Trump is not qualified at all, that's different, although I would argue running a billion dollar empire gives him SOME basis of qualification.
Originally posted by Zampanó
Without sugarcoating it, my sense is that Trump isn't qualified in the first place, and that Pence would be a disaster if he get as much power as Trump has promised.With Obama, his experience in the government that meant we were comparing two people with different degrees of experience. Trump is like a divide by zero error.
Obama had 153 days in the Senate, how did that make him qualified?
Originally posted by MS Warehouse
Yea but the issue is who is more qualified, which is hilary. Obama was a freshman senator, so his qualifications pailed in comparison to McCain. If your issue is that Trump is not qualified at all, that's different, although I would argue running a billion dollar empire gives him SOME basis of qualification.
That's why I asked for the list of things you thought Trump would do well. I wanted to get the peripheral stuff out of the way (pandering / emotions) but that list is probably the core of where we can have a productive discussion. But frankly, I would not expect Trump to be competent for the presidency at all.
Although, Clinton is on stage with her VP pick now so we'll probably get distracted by him.
Maybe let's say 1 more post each about the candidates, and then move to your list of policies?
Originally posted by MS Warehouse
For some reason quote isn't working. But I want to know why you don't think Trump is competent for the presidency at all. You're not even saying he's unqualified or less qualified, you're questioning his competence.
I have serious and non-facetious concerns about Trump's mental acuity. From the infamous red hat dodge to his vocabulary to his ability to recall details about international or local issues... Trump has not convinced me that he's firing on all cylinders.
Maybe that's not fair to a man who seems to have a lot of balls in the air. But the impression that I've gotten on the campaign trail is similar to an undergraduate who forgot to prepare for a speech. Trump doesn't seem to know the details of domestic policy and has important inconsistencies in his claims, which reached the point where he seems to be debating with himself.
Like, I know you have said that Trump will educate himself. But up to this point he has been willing to make bold claims about how the world works that do not seem to match up to the facts. Here's a list of journalists and policy experts who are concerned about Trump's understanding of the issues. My criticism is that Trump seems not to understand the scope and duties of the job that he's applying for. There's even a case where Trump can't think of 3 main jobs of government:
(link)
QUESTION: In your opinion, what are the top three functions of the United States government?TRUMP: Well, the greatest function of all by far is security for our nation. I would also say health care, I would also say education. I mean, there are many, many things, but I would say the top three are security, security, security.
[snip]
COOPER: So top three, you're saying, security.
TRUMP: Security. I say all top three are security, but health care, education, would be probably three that would be top. And then you can go on from there.
[snip]
COOPER: So in terms of federal government role, you're saying security, but you also say health care and education should be provided by the federal government?
TRUMP: Well, those are two of the things. Yes, sure. I mean, there are obviously many things, housing, providing great neighborhoods...
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Aren't you against the federal government's involvement in education? don't you want it to devolve to states?
TRUMP: I want it to go to state, yes. Absolutely. I want - right now...
COOPER: So that's not part of what the federal government's...
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: The federal government, but the concept of the country is the concept that we have to have education within the country, and we have to get rid of common core and it should be brought to the state level.
COOPER: And federal health care run by the federal government?
TRUMP: Health care - we need health care for our people. We need a good - Obamacare is a disaster. It's proven to be...
COOPER: But is that something the federal government should be doing?
TRUMP: The government can lead it, but it should be privately done. It should be privately done. So that health care - in my opinion, we should probably have - we have to have private health care. We don't have competition in health care.
Now, this was from March. Maybe Trump has thought of more things that the Federal government should do. But I'll be honest, during this phase of the election I wasn't at all sure that Trump knew what the president does.
I meant to put this in the post, but the line that got a little bit of traction with one of my libertarian friends was "if Trump was applying for a job, and his speeches right now formed his resume, do you think he should get hired?"
(My friend wasn't going to vote for Trump, but he wasn't happy about skipping the polls either. He's considering a protest vote, but now that Gary Johnson is on the ballot that's more appealing as an alternative than a vote for Mickey mouse.)
Welp. DS seems to be banned, so I don't know if he will read this. But I have found an essay that might be interesting to him. I'm posting it anyway because I'll forget in 5 days for sure:
All day I've been trying to think about what to say about Donald Trump's acceptance speech last night.Obviously, I have my disagreements with the GOP platform when it comes to the rights of women, to LGBTQ individuals, to immigration, to the environment, to taxation, to separation of church and state, and a good deal more.
But beyond those disagreements, I realized as I watched that Mr. Trump was speaking to a group of people who see the world--and this country--in a fundamentally different way than I do.
He insists, and they believe, that we are desperately unsafe, that crime and violence are all around us, that our government is doing a very poor job of protecting us, and that even the police are powerless to stop the criminals who target us and them. He insists, and they believe, that vast hordes of Mexican murderers and Muslim terrorists are streaming or preparing to stream across our open borders and kill our loved ones. He insists, and they believe, that we have major economic problems and that we spend too much money on our international allies. He insists, and they believe, that America is being or has been stolen from the white Christians who made it great and that he is the only person capable of restoring America to its former glory.
This isn't my America. This isn't what I see when I look around.
Certainly we have a lot of work to do as a country; certainly there are many, many things we need to fix, including our politics; and certainly there are dangerous people out there. But in general things are pretty good, and certainly they are rosy when we compare things with the way they were in our not-so-distant past. Thankfully, there is actually less violent crime today than in the past; there are fewer police officers being killed in the line of duty; we are mostly shielded from terrorism, at least in part due to the governmental processes already in place to protect us.
So, as I watched thousands of people on their feet, voicing their approval for Trump as he hollered "We don't want them in our country," I realized it might be impossible for me to understand this. I might be in a position where all I could ever feel was fear and revulsion for this sort of thinking. My family came to this country not so very long ago, survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who moved here from Israel for opportunities for their young children. As I listened to the full-throated approval for a presidential candidate playing on their fear of immigrants and refugees, insisting that THOSE people don't belong in OUR country, I was reminded of Pastor Niemöller's most famous quote:
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
I'm not a Mexican immigrant and I'm not a Muslim (whether a Syrian refugee or someone born in America). But I know my world history and my family's history well enough to know that we must speak out and we must work against this notion that THOSE people make US less safe, take OUR jobs, make OUR country less safe, that THEY don't belong HERE and that they're taking OUR country away from US.
We must do this not only so that someone will be there to speak for us when we need them, but also because it is a moral imperative to speak out against the terrible lie that America belongs to a certain group of people and that the appropriate response to feelings of insecurity is to empower the government to lash out at anyone who isn't part of that group.
This is written by Ari Kohen, a political science professor at UNL.
Originally posted by Nephthys
Gotta say, going through Parks and Rec I was always on the fence about Tom. I think him suing his ex-wife to blackmail her into dating him pushes it into flat out dislike territory though.
I'm rewatching it atm and yeah Tom is pretty annoying, but he has his moments. No one can take the place of the worst character from Leslie tho.