DOOM, or The Official 2016 US Election Thread

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So, I've got next week off, and will be watching this until the bitter end, or until I pass out surrounded by empty bottles and an over-spilling ash tray.

It's almost here folks. The end of the World as we know it.

This is the thread for the build-up, real-time election night gossip and gasps, and the messy aftermath.

Place your bets now.

 

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(Someone had to do this, eh?)

 

[hmg]

It's almost here folks. The end of the World as we know it.

Don't fret, it looks like Hillary is losing

On the other hand, I did take delivery of a family pack of iosat potassium iodide pills last week.

 

[Leo]

this could be close, scary as hell! clinton was never ahead by as much as some polls said, but she's definitely lost ground. i still have faith in the clinton ground game making the difference in key swing states, but it's going to be a lot harder to pull off than expected, or than it by all rights should be.

one potential silver lining about comey's latest email statement is it could motivate the democratic base to get out and vote. the clinton campaign has been working like crazy but the base seemed to have become a little comfortable and lazy, thinking she had an insurmountable lead.

 

[droid]

Is there any argument against the assertion that the GOP in its current incarnation is the single most dangerous group in the entire history of humanity?

Actually, when was the last time that this wasnt true?

 

[vimothy]

Isn't the current incarnation of the GOP an incoherent mess? What's so dangerous about them?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Is there any argument against the assertion that the GOP in its current incarnation is the single most dangerous group in the entire history of humanity?

Actually, when was the last time that this wasnt true?

Dangerous for whom? For a good half-century or more at least three states and probably five have possessed the capability to render most or all of the Earth's surface uninhabitable, if that's what you're getting at.

 

[droid]

Pro nuclear proliferation, pro use of nuclear weapons, pro conflict and resource war, refusal to even accept the existence of climate change, let alone do something about it.

Dangerous to the continued existence of the human race - the biggest threats to which are climate change and nuclear apocalypse.

Capability to destroy the planet and willingness (or even eagerness) to do so are very different things.

 

[droid]

Incoherence aside, Trump represents the GOP, and his ideas on these subjects have been well documented.

 

[Mr. Tea]

How on earth is the USA, post-WWII, any more "pro use of nuclear weapons" than any other state? Their last test was in 1992. North Korea is conducting tests as we speak and Russia held a nationwide nuclear training exercise last month!

And China's almost literally left the USA in the dust as the world's biggest driver of AGW for years now.

None of which makes America or the GOP any less bad, or the prospect of a Trump presidency any less terrifying, but let's have some perspective here.

 

[sadmanbarty]

It's been rumoured that in an hour long intelligence briefing, Trump asked about using nukes 3 times.

 

[droid]

Yes. Some perspective.

Trump said he might use nuclear weapons and questioned why we would make them if we wouldn’t use them

Trump said he was open to nuking Europe because it’s a “big place”

Trump said that “you want to be unpredictable” with nuclear weapons

Trump reiterated that it was important to be “unpredictable” with nuclear weapons

Trump said he wasn’t that worried about more countries getting nukes since “it’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them”

Trump had no idea what the “nuclear triad” was

Trump said he’d be OK with a nuclear arms race in Asia

The time he said it didn’t matter if Saudi Arabia acquired nuclear weapons because “it’s going to happen anyway”

https://thinkprogress.org/9-terrify...about-nuclear-weapons-99f6290bc32a#.z9wp1f4j0

On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough claimed Donald Trump asked a “foreign policy expert” who was advising him numerous times about “why can’t we use nuclear weapons.”

Prefacing his comments by saying he’d “be very careful here,” Scarborough said: “Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump, and three times he asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times, he asked, at one point, ‘If we have them, we can’t we use them?’… Three times, in an hour briefing, ‘Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?’”

And so on...

 

[Mr. Tea]

OK, Trump leading the party does change that. But he isn't president (yet...).

 

[Mr. Tea]

Still, it hasn't stopped Pilger deciding he's less dangerous than Hillary Clinton, lol.

 

[Corpsey]

Where is our precognitive saviour?

 

[Leo]

liberals here shifting into full bedwetter mode, as is their wont. not that their worry is unwarranted but geez, grow a backbone!

 

[firefinga]

OK, Trump leading the party does change that. But he isn't president (yet...).

Trump isn't leading the party, he has usurped it, with him the Alt Right.

The doommongery is very reminiscent of what had been said bout Reagan. Big difference though is, Reagan was an integral part of the republican party, whereas Trump isn't.

but then, as I've written before, I think Trump together with the alt right is changing the right wing political spectrum in the US fundamentally, if the alt right is able to maintain the current momentum.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Sure. Trump as Republican presidential candidate, would have been a better way to put it, then.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Weirdly enough I had a very long and incredibly vivid dream about being caught up in a nuclear war just last night.

 

[firefinga]

Even if he's getting elected... won't matter much. The guy will be confronted with a highly skilled bureaucrats/technocrats who will steer him much into their direction. And bureaucracies basically have no other interest than to maintain their once aquired status, which will rule out the deployment of nuclear weapons (or precise, of strategic nuclear weapons).

The people who will likely suffer the most under a Prez Trump are the Joe Average types he is supposedly talking for/giving a voice. His isolationist "ideas" (you can't consider anything Trump has been saying to be a concise ideology) will possibly hurt them economically even more than a (relative) free trade regime that we have now.

As with any populist "movements" this said movement will likely crumble when confronted with reality. Question is, however, how much damage will have been done before the inevitable happens.