Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[Todd]

Yesterday, my faith in American politics and the American press was reaffirmed.  Trump said something stupid about abortion.  Lots of sound-bite sized condemnatory statements, from both pro- and anti-abortion folks, were played or quoted by various news outlets.  Many thoughtful analyses were presented.  Trump back-pedaled.  Trump also said really stupid things about nuclear policy.  This got coverage.  The fact the South Korean and Japanese governments thought Trump's suggestions really stupid, though they of course did not phrase it that way, was reported.  A few analyses were presented.  No back-pedaling yet, though.  In terms of precious airtime and column inches, stupid abortion statement trumps stupid nuclear policy statement.  It's good to know that abortion is more important than American nuclear policy. 

[The new erato]

I never know with you US folks. Is this irony or not?

[Gurn Blanston]

I never know with you US folks. Is this irony or not?

No, not irony as much as sadness... 

[Brian]

I never know with you US folks. Is this irony or not?

We are finally learning that the greatest gift our mother country gave us, before we rudely rebelled and kicked her back home to Britannia, was the gift of irony. Irony really does make it easier to get through this world...

[The new erato]

I'm often defensively ironic when I'm sad, so I get your point. Still; they could have been discussing toupees.

[Karl Henning]

https://gop.com/convention-facts/

[Florestan]

Well I don't see much government toppling......and I surely believe that people aren't manipulated into not voting for those politicians you seem to agree with.

I don´t know what politicians you think I agree with.

As for historical experiences doesn't it strike you as somewhat interesting that votes in Poland seem to follow the older prewar east/west borders with the west markedly more liberal, and the former east more nationalistic/religious etc (left map in picture below):

If I were Pole, I would vote PiS, no doubt about it.

I'll give you another example to reflect on; Norway is a member of Schengen. Popular opinion in Norway is that Roumania never should have been let inside Schengen

Check your facts. Romania is not a member of Schengen. And Schengen is dead, anyway.

[jochanaan]

https://gop.com/convention-facts/

Why mess up brilliant arguments with facts?

[Brian]

If I were Pole, I would vote PiS, no doubt about it.

Even with how gross their government has behaved so far this year??

[Florestan]

Even with how gross their government has behaved so far this year??

Their government did nothing more than trying to clean the mess of the PO and to get rid of the FSB influence in media, the judicial system and the secret services. I don´t know what  your sources of information regarding Poland and PiS are but the mainstream media is not exactly the most trustworthy, unbiased and honest on this issue.

[Florestan]

in the US where you in effect have only 2 parties and massive pressures (as it seem) to preselect candidates, in that regard I understand both the support for Trump and Sanders.

Exactly. What are the chances that a Trump or a Sanders pop up in a mainstream European party? Who is the Trump of France and the Sanders of Germany, or the other way around --- two countries that will hold elections in the near future? If the Republican Party and the Democratic Party had been functioning European style, the leadership of the former would have nominated Ted Cruz and the leadership of the latter would have nominated Hillary Clinton without bothering to ask anyone of the rank and file, much less allowing sympathizers have a say in the matter.

[André]

Their government did nothing more than trying to clean the mess of the PO and to get rid of the FSB influence in media, the judicial system and the secret services. I don´t know what  your sources of information regarding Poland and PiS are but the mainstream media is not exactly the most trustworthy, unbiased and honest on this issue.

That can be thorny. 'Alternative media' often have an agenda (left or right, or whatever) and present things from their own perspective. Either the reader is of the same persuasion, or has to make adjustments...

Recently on vacation with my wife's sister and her companion, we had a somewhat tense exchange over dinner about the Middle East situation - specifically the refugee crisis in Europe. Sister-in-law snapped "We don't read from the same papers". 

[Brian]

Exactly. What are the chances that a Trump or a Sanders pop up in a mainstream European party? Who is the Trump of France and the Sanders of Germany,

What?!?!?

The Trump of France is Marine Le Pen.
The Sanders of Europe is probably 25% of all European politicians.

[The new erato]

Check your facts. Romania is not a member of Schengen.

Well the point still stands; as soon as they have entered Schengen anywhere, any country inside Schengen has few measures to prevent them migrating anywhere. I still guess you get my point; despite the popular opinion against eastern European countries in many EU countries , should we have left you to "the sphere of Russian influence"? Will you concede that politicians sometimes have to take the "greater view" and go against popular opinion in favour of more long term, strategic goals?

Exactly. What are the chances that a Trump or a Sanders pop up in a mainstream European party?

We have them, lots of them, already, and they are not vetted by any system. Still they never seen to garner a majority, though decidedely influencing policies. And whatever you may think, this is not because of any conspiracy to silence or manipulate them in a two party system.

[The new erato]

If I were Pole, I would vote PiS, no doubt about it.

Which kind of proves my point about historical experiences.

[Todd]

The Trump of France is Marine Le Pen.

Stylistically, I'd say Berlusconi is closer to Trump than Marine Le Pen.  In terms of xenophobic ideas, Europe has more than a few names to choose from.

[Jo498]

Exactly. What are the chances that a Trump or a Sanders pop up in a mainstream European party? Who is the Trump of France and the Sanders of Germany, or the other way around --- two countries that will hold elections in the near future?

Germany has never had a two-party-system, so there is more diversity through coalitions. Until the 1980s it was dominated by two big parties (social democrats and conservatives), but there was still a third party ("liberals") as well as some local and small ones around and federal governments had been based on coalitions of all possible combinations of those three. From the 1980s we had four parties in the Bundestag and the Greens were part of the government 1998-2005. By now there is also a leftist party in the parliament (and it has been in coalitions in regional governments several times) and very probably the new conservative AfD will be represented in the next Bundestag, so there will be at least 5 parties there.
So "Trumps" and "Sanders" might not be among the candidates of the biggest parties, but some analogues can be found in the leaders of smaller parties and while they are not likely to become chancellor, they can become minister, Ministerpraesident (regional governor, the first Green one has just been re-elected in the southwestern state Baden-Württemberg).
More generally, the smaller parties work as "valves for excess pressure" if people are not satisfied. Usually it does not change much. But the Greens everybody laughed about around 1980 changed by their very existence the stances of the other parties and now everybody claims to be ecological and environment-friendly.

[Brian]

Their government did nothing more than trying to clean the mess of the PO and to get rid of the FSB influence in media, the judicial system and the secret services. I don´t know what  your sources of information regarding Poland and PiS are but the mainstream media is not exactly the most trustworthy, unbiased and honest on this issue.

"Getting rid of the mess" is dishonest. They're trying to gain unconstitutional powers for themselves.

7 Jan 2016
"The Council of Europe (CoE) has called on Poland's president not to sign a controversial law passed by the country's parliament on the grounds that it threatens press freedom.

"The new media law allows the government to appoint and dismiss the executives in charge of public TV and radio broadcasters.

"The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)...has warned that the law "will endanger the basic conditions of independence, objectivity and impartiality of public service broadcasters."

"Similar concerns have been expressed by major press freedom bodies, including the International Federation of Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, Index on Censorship and Article 19.

"They believe Poland's ultra conservative government, led by Jarosław Kaczyński's Law and Justice party (PiS), is eager to stifle what it regards as unfair criticism. The legislation would enable it to exercise control over public broadcasters. They fear PiS will fire many executives at the country's public television and radio companies and appoint replacements of their own choice.

"The introduction of the media law follows the passing of a bill that undermines the ability of Poland's judiciary to maintain checks on parliament.

"According to the press freedom organisations, the law would be "wholly unacceptable in a genuine democracy" and was "put before parliament to be voted on without the necessary inclusive public debate.""
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2016/jan/07/polish-president-urged-not-to-sign-controversial-media-law

13 Feb
"Poland is drawing up new regulations to punish use of the phrase "Polish death camps" in reference to wartime Nazi concentration camps on Polish soil, the justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, has said."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/13/poland-plans-ban-phrase-polish-death-camps

29 Feb
"Changes to Poland's supreme court endanger the rule of law, democracy and human rights, according to a draft opinion from Europe's leading constitutional experts.

"'As long as the situation of constitutional crisis related to the constitutional tribunal remains unsettled and as long as the constitutional tribunal cannot carry out its work in an efficient manner, not only is the rule of law in danger, but so is democracy and human rights,' the expert body concluded.

"Changes to the court removed 'a crucial mechanism which ensures that potential conflicts with European and international norms and standards can be resolved at the national level", it said."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/polands-changes-to-court-system-risking-democracy

Polish language article: "More Than Half of Poles Think Democracy Is Threatened"
"56 percent surveyed by Ipsos are convinced that the democratic system in our country is threatened. 37 percent there are no such worries."

- Opinion Article -
"So it's not the policies, the politics or even the ideology that requires all friends of Poland to sound the alarm; it's the winning team attempting unilaterally to change the rules of the whole democratic game.... Duda holds a doctorate in law, but his own doctoral supervisor says he has already violated the constitution three times. New legislation and judicial appointments will effectively neuter the constitutional court (formally constitutional tribunal); a new media law subordinates public service broadcasting directly to government; political appointees will be allowed at the highest level of the civil service, and so on."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/07/polish-democracy-destroyed-constitution-media-poland

[Florestan]

Well the point still stands; as soon as they have entered Schengen anywhere, any country inside Schengen has few measures to prevent them migrating anywhere.

As per Wikipedia:

A 2011 report by Statistics Norway found that immigrants are overrepresented in crime statistics but that there is substantial variation by country of origin.[72] The report furthermore found that "the overrepresentation is substantially reduced when adjusting for population structure – for some groups as much as 45 per cent, but there are also some groups where the overrepresentation still is large."[72] According to the report, the data for 2009 shows that first-generation immigrants from Africa were three times more likely than ethnic Norwegians (or rather individuals who are neither first- nor second-generation immigrants) to be convicted of a felony while Somali immigrants in particular being 4.4 times more likely to be convicted of a felony than an ethnic Norwegian was. Similarly, Iraqis and Pakistanis were found to have rates of conviction for felonies greater than ethnic Norwegians by a factor of 3 and 2.6 respectively. Another finding was that second-generation African and Asian immigrants had a higher rate of convictions for felonies than first-generation immigrants. While first-generation African immigrants had conviction rates for felonies of 16.7 per 1,000 individuals over the age of 15, for second-generation immigrants the rate was 28 per 1,000 – an increase of over 60%. And for Asian immigrants an increase from 9.3 per 1,000 to 17.1 per 1,000 was observed. In 2010 13% of sexual crimes charges were filed against first generation immigrants who make up 7.8% of the population – a rate of overrepresentaion of 1.7. Unfortunately, no data is available on sexual crime that is broken down by ethnic background.[72]

In 2010, a spokesperson for the Oslo Police Department stated that every case of assault rapes in Oslo in the years 2007, 2008 and 2009 was committed by a non-Western immigrant.[73] This picture has later been nuanced, as only perpetrators in the solved cases were counted, and 4 of the victims in the 16 unsolved cases described the perpetrator as being of Norwegian ethnicity.

A 2011 report by the Oslo Police District shows that of the 131 individuals charged with the 152 rapes in which the perpetrator could be identified, 45.8% were of African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin while 54.2% were of Norwegian, other European or American origin. In the cases of "assault rape", i.e. rape aggravated by physical violence, a category that included 6 of the 152 cases and 5 of the 131 identified individuals, the 5 identified individuals were of African, Middle Eastern or Asian origin. In the cases of assault rape where the individual responsible was not identified and the police relied on the description provided by the victim, 8 of the perpetrators were of African/dark-skinned appearance, 4 were Western/light/Nordic and 4 had an Asian appearance.[74]

So, immigrants that are nominated as committing crimes in Norway come from Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan and are generally described as Asian, African or Middle Eastern. Why are Romanians and Latvians never mentioned, I wonder, if there is a lot of criminality related to them?

Will you concede that politicians sometimes have to take the "greater view" and go against popular opinion in favour of more long term, strategic goals?

Yes.

[Florestan]

Stylistically, I'd say Berlusconi is closer to Trump than Marine Le Pen. 

Exactly.

Marine Le Pen´s ascension is the direct result of the mainstream French parties stubbornly refusing to acknowledge and discuss the issues she is capitalizing upon.