BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Did they? The popular vote was won by Clinton, albeit narrowly. Also Ds gained seats in both house and senate. Perhaps we should say that the American electorate offered evidence that conservatives were too insulated in their bubble?

I would say neither. For practical purposes it was just about an even split; Trump won the presidency due to the system used.

Ok, whatever!

The Republicans were worried about losing the Senate because they had a lot of Senators up for reelection quite a few in tossup or normally blue states. Democrats were talking about picking up 20+ seats in the House, regaining control of the Senate, and winning the Presidency. None of those things happened.

Normally, in a change election which I think most people agree this election was, the side in power loses big time. That didn't happen this time. Republican politicians were shocked and happy. If you want to cast what happened as a small victory, fine. But there seemed to be a lot of glum Democratic politicians after the election.

All I can say is that whenever I'd discuss politics with my liberal/Democratic friends, they'd tell how well we were doing -- unemployment was below 5%, jobs were being created, we've got ISIS contained, etc. But I'd say "Working class people are really struggling and they're pretty upset." But my observations were dismissed out of hand as baseless.

Dennis Kucinich, a staunch Cleveland Democrat (he used to be a Congressman, not sure if he still is), had some astute comments the other night. He said that he and his wife liked to go to ethnic/folk festivals in Cleveland (huge central and eastern European population) and had noticed over the past couple years "a lot of real anger due to their struggles to just get by." So he saw it, too.

Then why didn't the Democratic pundits recognize the problem?

Ok. (I'll pretend it doesn't sound like you're bashing motherhood and the monumentally vital role that women have historically played as homemakers and raising healthy and well-adjusted children.) I would imagine it took a lot of independence for countless historical figures to do what they did. I guess they had a lot of independence, some might have even had so much that they declared it!

Let's acknowledge that women who choose NOT to enter the workforce, but to raise a family instead (while their husbands work & provide, as men have done for generations,) should be praised, not scorned or derided

I recall both democrats and republicans emphasizing the problem of income inequality for quite some time, acknowledging the fact that almost all of the gains of the last decades have gone to the super-rich. Putting forward an acceptable solution is the challenge. That challenge is magnified because in the US a political candidate depends upon financial support from the very people who benefit from income inequality.

Both Sanders and Clinton (the latter reluctantly) agreed with the republican about-face that it would help to rebuild buggy-whip factories. It's true that no democrat was willing to say that the solution to the problem was getting rid of Mexicans and stopping immigration -- simple, easy-to-explain, and completely dishonest.

In fact, Trump plans to pump up the economy with a massive increase in deficit spending, and that will succeed for a time. But that will lead to inflation, followed by greater and greater amounts being spent on debt service for an exploding US national debt. None of the other 16 republican candidates were willing to go that far, for good reasons.

Trump will then point to his immigration policies as the source of the better economy. He will point to the democrats as the source of the exploding debt.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night. It is a totally one-sided, biased show - nothing funny at all. Equal time for us?
7:26 AM - 20 Nov 2016

Pay attention to your spelling.
Correct is: WINNER

Eric Tucker, a 35-year-old co-founder of a marketing company in Austin, Tex., had just about 40 Twitter followers. But his recent tweet about paid protesters being bused to demonstrations against President-elect Donald J. Trump fueled a nationwide conspiracy theory — one that Mr. Trump joined in promoting.

...

Nov. 9, shortly after 8 p.m. Eastern

Mr. Tucker, who had taken photos of a large group of buses he saw near downtown Austin earlier in the day because he thought it was unusual, saw reports of protests against Mr. Trump in the city and decided the two were connected. He posted three of the images with the declaration: “Anti-Trump protestors in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the busses they came in. #fakeprotests #trump2016 #austin”

...

Several hours later, the first important step occurred. Mr. Tucker’s tweet was posted to the main Reddit community for Mr. Trump under the heading: “BREAKING: They found the buses! Dozens lined up just blocks away from the Austin protests.” It quickly generated more than 300 comments, some of which blamed the protests on George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist, who is a frequent target of the group.

...

Nov. 10, late morning through the afternoon

Sean Hughes, the director of corporate affairs for the bus company Coach USA North America, said he learned about the rumor involving its vehicles after receiving a couple of curious emails and hearing from a friend in New Jersey who had seen the claim on Facebook and wanted to know if it was true.

A reporter at the Fox television station in Austin contacted Mr. Hughes later that day, and he responded with a statement noting that “at no point were Coach USA buses involved in the Austin protests.” But that did little to stem the online furor.

“That reporter said, ‘You’re probably going to get a lot more phone calls because it’s all over the place,’” Mr. Hughes said in an interview on Thursday.

“You’re the second journalist to actually call me to see what was going on, no bloggers or anything, and we’re easily accessible on our website,” Mr. Hughes said.

He added, “I just kind of wish people looked into facts before they go ahead and do something like that, because it could be easily debunked based on a quick phone call or two, or a couple emails.”

...

Nov. 10, evening

Around 6 p.m., the conservative blog Gateway Pundit posted a story using Mr. Tucker’s images under the headline “Figures. Anti-Trump Protesters Were Bussed in to Austin #FakeProtests.” The post, which included a mention of “Soros money,” has been shared on Facebook more than 44,000 times, according to statistics on the website.

The story line became a prominent one throughout the conservative blogosphere, with other sites incorporating Mr. Tucker’s tweet into posts about paid protesters, referring to him as an eyewitness in Austin.

Then, shortly after 9 p.m., Mr. Trump sent this tweet:

Quote

In this era of fake news, it's instructive to learn the ways that false information spreads. I asked JonOttawa earlier in this thread what the devil he meant by the phrase "Soros riots," something I'd never heard of and neither had Google. No response.

Seems now that he was simply exaggerating a fake news item that got some play in irresponsible blogs that, on principle, don't perform the simplest fact checking: How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study


So I guess I've gotten my answer about the "Soros riots" -- just more fake news. I should have known.

Then why didn't the Democratic pundits recognize the problem?

At a time of continuing discussion over the role that hyperpartisan websites, fake news and social media play in the divided America of 2016, LibertyWritersNews illustrates how websites can use Facebook to tap into a surging ideology, quickly go from nothing to influencing millions of people and make big profits in the process. Six months ago, Wade and his business partner, Ben Goldman, were unemployed restaurant workers. Now they’re at the helm of a website that gained 300,000 Facebook followers in October alone and say they are making so much money that they feel uncomfortable talking about it because they don’t want people to start asking for loans.

Instead, Wade hums a hip-hop song and starts a new post as readers keep reading, sharing and sending in personal messages. One comes from a woman who frequently contacts his page. “YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I TRUST TO REPORT THE TRUTH,” is one of the things she has written, and Wade doesn’t need to look at her Facebook profile to have a clear sense of who she is. White. Working class. Midwestern. “And the economy screwed her.”

He writes another headline, “THE TRUTH IS OUT! The Media Doesn’t Want You To See What Hillary Did After Losing... .”

“Nothing in this article is anti-media, but I’ve used this headline a thousand times,” he says. “Violence and chaos and aggressive wording is what people are attracted to.”

“Our audience does not trust the mainstream media,” Goldman, 26, says a little later as Wade keeps typing. “It’s definitely easier to hook them with that.”

“There’s not a ton of thought put into it,” Wade says. “Other than it frames the story so it gets a click.”

“True,” Goldman says.

“We’re the new yellow journalists,” Wade will say after a day and night when the number of people following LibertyWritersNews on Facebook will swell by more than 20,000. “We’re the people on the side of the street yelling that the world is about to end.”

...

Writing for audience

There are times when Wade wonders what it would be like to write an article he truly believes in. “In a perfect world,” he says, it would have nuance and balance and long paragraphs and take longer than 10 minutes to compose. It would make people think. But he never writes it, he says, because no one would click on it, so what would be the point?

Instead, as 4,000 people are on the website one night, Wade and Goldman keep writing and feeding, writing and feeding.

Wade writes about a rumor he has seen on Fox News’s website, which says “the new batch of anti-Trump protesters has been bankrolled by individuals like billionaire liberal activist George Soros and groups like Moveon.org.”

“Dude,” Wade says. “The left has been, like, manufacturing the protest.”

Goldman, meanwhile, is typing a story — “It was a literal Hell Storm at DNC headquarters today” — and laughing at what he has written. “God, I just know everything about this statement is so wrong,” he says, and adds, still laughing, “What is a hell storm?”

He finishes it as Wade is putting an old headline on his story about Soros, one that has nothing to do with what he has written but once brought in a lot of page views. He shares it on their Facebook page and watches as readers stream into the website — first a few hundred, then nearly 1,000.

“Boom, dude, look at that,” Wade says. “That one is doing super well.”

Goldman scans through what Wade had written. “When are we going to go after this traitor!” it says. “It is time to take this traitor out! He should be pursued to the depths of hell and beyond.” He looks up and smiles nervously.

“Maybe there’s a less violent way to say that.”

“I’m going to change that one, actually,” Wade says, suddenly looking panicked as he grabs his laptop and moves to replace “take this traitor out” to “take this traitor down.”

“Down is so much better sounding than out,” Goldman says.

But the comments are already coming in fast. “Arrest and hang him for war crimes,” one woman writes of Soros. “This man should go straight to F@#KING HELL,” another woman posts. “I gladly volunteer to take this Traitor to America out,” another says. “Jail is way too good for him.”

...

One afternoon, Goldman has an idea.

“It would be a perfect time to open up a small liberal newspaper right now,” he says as he types a post with, “The Democratic party is finished! Just wait til you see what happened today... .”

“It would,” Wade says. “There is so much animus on the left right now.”

“You could get more traffic than we do now,” Goldman says.

Let's hope every nation plays nice-nice with Donald else he might hold his breath until the world explodes.

I'm willing to believe that blacks commit more crime than whites, mainly because they're more likely to be poor and live in inner cities where crime, gangs, drug abuse and violence are rampant.

But it's also my understanding that the proportion of blacks in prison is far higher than just the proportion of crimes they commit. Blacks are far more likely to be convicted than whites for the same crimes. In many cases this is simply because white defendants tend to be more affluent and can afford better defense. Studies have also found unconscious bias among judges and juries -- when researchers control for all the other effects, they still find that blacks are more likely to be found guilty than whites.

A black crack addict is likely to be sent to prison, a white cocaine abuser will get sent to rehab.

There are significant racial disparities in sentencing decisions in the United States.1 Sentences imposed on Black males in the federal system are nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes.2 Black and Latino offenders sentenced in state and federal courts face significantly greater odds of incarceration than similarly situated white offenders and receive longer sentences than their white counterparts in some jurisdictions.3 Black male federal defendants receive longer sentences than whites arrested for the same offenses and with comparable criminal histories.4 Research has also shown that race plays a significant role in the determination of which homicide cases result in death sentences.5

Better he hold his breath than push the button.

From what I'm reading in this thread, I think some folks believe that All in the Family was a documentary. Let's contrast criminals on a fictional TV show (with a regressive leftist political agenda) with criminals in real life, shall we?