US General Election 2016

{{ He certainly seems a far more reliable source than your President! }}

{{So Trump and co say the books all lies, fake news, and the gossip of ex-disgruntled employee. Then a current serving high ranking official in Trumps government goes and writes an anonymous editorial saying, yup its true, that is what we do to protect the country from its President!! This is incredible stuff. }}

shit just got real

Yeah but it was published in the New York Times, so it can't be true.

The White House must be a REALLY miserable workplace right now, with nobody able to trust anybody else. I don't know what they're going to be able to do, and they've still got 2 more years to go....

{{Its certainly got interesting! Besides the problem of apparently having an imbecile as President with as much grasp on world events and cause and effect as a stunned chimpanzee has of Sweden, you also seem to have a government within a government. An unelected one at that.

Seems to me there is really only two choices here- either whoever this 'resistance' is come forward, declare their belief Trump is unfit to serve and try to legally remove him, or they have to let Trump do exactly as he wishes no matter how dangerous they think it is, and if it is stupidly dangerous hope the voters will back his removal once they see how off the rails he is unfettered.

Hiding behind anonymity and running a shadow government within the Trump government doesn't seem like a tenable position, least of all constitutionally. }}

Coming out will get you fired, and I don't see any way the levers of government could work fast enough to stop it. It's not clear the president can fire the vice president, so Pence would be the only one who could come out and still stick around in the White House long enough to curb Trump.

halfwise wrote:Coming out will get you fired

Would that be so bad? There must be something like a dozen people fired (or resigned to avoid being fired) in the last year and a half, and most of them seem to be doing just fine judging by all their appearances on talk shows.
(OK, I'll admit Flynn may be having some troubles...)

I just realized that in the parliamentary system a vote of no confidence can be used to remove someone for dumb-assery, while in our constitution a president can only be removed for various criminal offences.

For some reason, this feels germane.

{{I have always thought Presidents to hard to remove- not that's its easy to get a no-confidence vote either, but it shouldn't be easy, after-all you dont want opposition using it as a tool to force elections all the time, you need a good chunk of the PM's own party to turn on them and join the vote- this might yet happen to May!
But its not the only way. The ruling party can have a leadership challenge and then the party votes and this can oust a sitting a PM - this is precisely what happened to Thatcher- although there is an argument its undemocratic in that the people voted for, say Thatcher, at the general election, only for her own party to then remove her from office without any input from the public. But Ive always found that argument against it to be ignorant of the fact that the Prime Minister is not a President, but just the first among the cabinet ministers as the title implies- in the UK your vote is not for an individual like it is in the US but for a party. The PM is if you like the face of the party but not the party itself so its perfectly within bounds for the party to elect a new Prime Minister as the party stays in power and the party is what the people voted for.}}}

Good point that a PM has a very different role than a President.  The argument you hear about not removing him is because people voted him in precisely because he wasn't beholden to any party. Running as a Republican was mere convenience.

{{The main differences as I see them are that to be PM you have to have first become party leader, to become leader of your party, and nearly all, if not all PM's fall into this category, you have also held at least 1 of the 3 'great offices of state'- Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Office or Home Office (May for example was Home Office before becoming PM).

The benefits of this are that anyone becoming PM will have years of experience already running a huge govenrment department and as party leader experience of running the party (probably even harder given back-benchers!)

downside is that it makes it very difficult, if not nearly impossible, for Joe Bloggs to become PM, but then Trump might prove its maybe not a bad idea not to let just anyone stand for running your country.

The other big difference is technically no government policy is the responsibility solely of the PM- in theory, in order to get a policy into actual law the PM has to convince the Cabinet of it and get a vote, as once passed there is 'collective Cabinet responsibility'- once something is agreed by the Cabinet they are supposed to all back it, no matter their actual personal position on it during the debating it stage in Cabinet.

Which brings us to Boris, who resigned from May's Cabinet because the Brexit deal struck at Chequers was agreed on by the Cabinet, which Boris was in- but he couldn't keep his mouth shut as he disagreed and went public and had to resign, because he couldn't accept collective Cabinet responsibility for the deal.

This is also what the big fuss around Blairs government style was and why he was always being accused of being Presidential- he made decisions with a small group of mainly Special Advisors and wherever possible largely bypassed the Cabinet and collective responsibility- oddly enough all former PM's had just gone along with the rules about Cabinet, turned out there was nothing to stop a PM acting like a President as all our checks and balances are based around Cabinet mainly not the PM in especial. Although even Blair still had to get a majority vote in Cabinet, which goes some way to explaining the 'dodgy dossier' on Iraq's capabilities and threat posed, which wa spure fiction and included gems about Uk targets of weapons of mass destruction being within 45minutes of an Iraq attack, when of course as we know they didn't even have any weapons of mass destruction, and the dossier had all the caveats taken out of it- Blair needed his Cabinet support, which is also why all the fuss arose over how Blair used the Legal advice too.
But after Iraq ect it seems the general consensus in political circles is Cabinet Responsibility is better so its reverted to that since Blair. }}}

Trump's trade war is hammering farmers.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/brutal-map-shows-u-s-farmers-want-trump-end-trade-war-123443562.html

Yep.

{{And getting worse, China just responded to Trumps latest tariffs-

'The Chinese government said Tuesday that it would impose tariffs on US goods worth $60 billion....China's new tariffs will be levied at rates of 5% or 10%, depending on the product, from the same date, China's state council said... More than 5,000 US goods will be affected, including meat, nuts, alcoholic drinks, chemicals, clothes, machinery, furniture and auto parts.'- CNN

Hope you can manage Dave till this madness ends! }}

I hope so too, Petty....

Trump on twitter this morning wrote:China has openly stated that they are trying to impact and change our election by attacking our farmers, ranchers and industrial workers because of their loyalty to me. What China does not understand is that these people are great patriots and fully understand that China has been taking advantage of the United States on Trade for many years. They also know that I am the one who knows how to stop it. There will be great and fast economic retaliation against China if our farmers, ranchers and/or industrial workers are targeted!

A couple points:
First: I'm not sure he understands that much of the loyalty and patriotism in rural America is to the Presidency itself, not necessarily to him personally.

Second: Is the "great and fast economic retaliation" supposed to fix anything or is it just the old "eye for an eye leaves everybody blind" thing?

Third:What does he mean IF we're targeted? Hasn't he noticed???

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Hi Blue! I was starting to think youd been lost under a paper pile at Admin Tower!!! }}

Nice to see you lot again too. The paper pile is a distinct issue, and Amarië is dead set against Eldo's prefered method. (i.e. the fireplace.)

I'm off travelling in Catalonia at the moment, but perhaps I'll find time to stop by again in not too long.

David H wrote:I hope so too, Petty....

Trump on twitter this morning wrote:China has openly stated that they are trying to impact and change our election by attacking our farmers, ranchers and industrial workers because of their loyalty to me. What China does not understand is that these people are great patriots and fully understand that China has been taking advantage of the United States on Trade for many years. They also know that I am the one who knows how to stop it. There will be great and fast economic retaliation against China if our farmers, ranchers and/or industrial workers are targeted!

A couple points:
First: I'm not sure he understands that much of the loyalty and patriotism in rural America is to the Presidency itself, not necessarily to him personally.

Second: Is the "great and fast economic retaliation" supposed to fix anything or is it just the old "eye for an eye leaves everybody blind" thing?

Third:What does he mean IF we're targeted? Hasn't he noticed???  

Fourth, he by all accounts doesn't know what he is doing, which is a problem for the US as a whole. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/13/why-china-will-win-the-trade-war/

Hello Blue

{{ Whooo Blue is back! What you doing in Catalonia Blue? It a holiday or you there fighting the good fight? }}

Good to see you around, Blue!

Hi Blue I haven't been on the forum much in recent weeks myself...

{{Yup a very welcome return of recent absentees today!    }}}

If only Orwell and Amarië would check in now.

Bluebottle wrote:by all accounts doesn't know what he is doing, which is a problem for the US as a whole.

Wait.....Trump doesn't know what he's doing?