Review of the Russian collusion narrative

[One Bad Pig]

Am I in the Twilight Zone? Do we mean the same thing we using the term "right" in regard to political spectrum in the US? Because I have no idea how you think Obama is center right, implying that he's to the right of center in the US political spectrum (aka slightly conservative).

Check out this Washington Post article, that spends all its time talking about exactly how liberal Obama is. Note, the question in the article isn't whether he's liberal or conservative, but exactly how liberal he is. Apparently the Washington Post didn't ask if he was on the right or left wing because it's exceedingly obvious which side he's on.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e131c82440d5

With regard to Mr. Pence, I assume you won't be surprised to hear that I'm for "ultra strict" abortion policies, namely that it should be outlawed, since I'm not a fan of murder. And you'll forgive me if I hesitate to assume your assessment of an "anti-gay legislation" is accurate, seeing as how you're so liberal that you think a liberal president is a flipping conservative.

Edit: The problem with calling Pence and people on this forum "FAR right" is that (in addition to the fact that it's not all that accurate) is that' you're not leaving any room in the labeling vernacular for the people who actually are further right than we are. And believe me, there are plenty of people to the right of the average Twebber.

Starlight is far left even by NZ standards. It's not surprising that he sees US conservatives as far right.

He considers the WaPo to be right-wing as well.

[rogue06]

Are you trolling for Jerks?

That obvious, huh.

[rogue06]

As a liberal I'm happy for Trump to stay around until 2020 as his historic low approval ratings will greatly assist even incompetent Dems in taking back the house and even senate in 2018, and should give the Dems supermajorities in 2020.

FWIU at the end of 2017 Trump's numbers were pretty close to what Obama had at the end of his first year. Of course, in marked contrast Obama had a fawning press that quickly squelched criticism of any sort whereas Trump has been on the receiving end of non-stop over-the-top criticism 24/7 from them and Hollyweird.

[rogue06]

Obama, center-right?

Yes. The fact that the conservatives on this forum don't see that is just another indication of how insanely FAR right you guys are.

Yup. It is always everyone else who is outta touch rather than just Starlight.

[Terraceth]

FWIU at the end of 2017 Trump's numbers were pretty close to what Obama had at the end of his first year. Of course, in marked contrast Obama had a fawning press that quickly squelched criticism of any sort whereas Trump has been on the receiving end of non-stop over-the-top criticism 24/7 from them and Hollyweird.

Obama's approval rating at the end of his first year was around 50%, whereas Trump's has been around 36%. I'm not sure how you can construe that as "very close."

[Zymologist]

Yup. It is always everyone else who is outta touch rather than just Starlight.

I'm actually a little disappointed: I didn't count any uses of the word "sociopath," and he only used "far right," "extreme," and "insane" a couple times.

[Tassman]

FWIU at the end of 2017 Trump's numbers were pretty close to what Obama had at the end of his first year.

Of course, in marked contrast Obama had a fawning press that quickly squelched criticism of any sort whereas Trump has been on the receiving end of non-stop over-the-top criticism 24/7 from them and Hollyweird.

The press can only report what the president says, and Trump, unlike Obama, has been characterised by serial lying and juvenile tweets.

[rogue06]

I'm actually a little disappointed: I didn't count any uses of the word "sociopath," and he only used "far right," "extreme," and "insane" a couple times.

Give him a break. Maybe he had a good day and it influenced his posting.

[rogue06]

Obama's approval rating at the end of his first year was around 50%, whereas Trump's has been around 36%. I'm not sure how you can construe that as "very close."

I don't care what they "averaged" for the year. That wasn't what I said.

Rasmussen has Trump at 46% approval and 53% disapproval and on Dec. 28 of his first year in office (2009), Obama had near identical numbers with 47% approval, 52% disapproval.

[Tassman]

I don't care what they "averaged" for the year. That wasn't what I said.

Rasmussen has Trump at 46% approval and 53% disapproval and on Dec. 28 of his first year in office (2009), Obama had near identical numbers with 47% approval, 52% disapproval.

Oh, Rasmussen!

[rogue06]

Oh, Rasmussen!

The polling company that the American Research Group study declared had the highest accuracy among 25 pollsters in the 2016 election.

[Teallaura]

In the 'this won't matter but might as well tell y'all anyway' category, SL is almost certainly using the European scale, not the American one. In addition to the situational definitions of liberal and conservative, we have multiple scales. The centrist US has a rather steep bell - Europe has a danged line with a bump in it. As a result, right and left have very different meanings. In the European, yeah, I'd buy Obama as center right - in the American he's clearly strongly left.

Political science - you gotta love a discipline that spends a ton of its time redefining the same terms.

[MaxVel]

In the 'this won't matter but might as well tell y'all anyway' category, SL is almost certainly using the European scale, not the American one. In addition to the situational definitions of liberal and conservative, we have multiple scales. The centrist US has a rather steep bell - Europe has a danged line with a bump in it. As a result, right and left have very different meanings. In the European, yeah, I'd buy Obama as center right - in the American he's clearly strongly left.

Political science - you gotta love a discipline that spends a ton of its time redefining the same terms.

I have the impression that Starlight thinks I'm rightwing, if not far right.

On political compass I come out as almost exactly in the middle, just very slightly more libertarian than authoritarian.

I suspect that anyone who disagrees with, or even questions, Starlight's positions is automatically seen as slightly right of Attila the Hun.

[Starlight]

Do we mean the same thing we using the term "right" in regard to political spectrum in the US? Because I have no idea how you think Obama is center right, implying that he's to the right of center in the US political spectrum (aka slightly conservative).

Ah, there is a difference because I follow politics in multiple countries, so the left-right spectrum I use is loosely speaking that of the Western world (particularly the English speaking parts of it like the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Ireland, and the US) across the last 50 years or so.

As you are no doubt aware, a lot of conservatives in the US tend to label European countries in general / other Western countries in general, as "socialist". That is a tacit admission of the fact that the US is quite far right-wing compared to other Western countries. What you would call your political spectrum spanned by the Democratic and Republican parties equates to only the right-wing half of a wider political spectrum that takes into account other Western countries. Consider, for example, that the UK and NZ have had government provided universal health care for ~75 years and it is supported by parties all across the political spectrum, whereas in the US not only do you not have universal government provided healthcare yet, but it is something that only the fatherest left politicians within the democratic party even support the idea of (though a lot of the US voters do).

By international Western standards, Obama was a pretty typical center-right politician. He got on well with a previous leader of my own country who was head of a right-wing party, and he and Obama seemed to agree on most issues. Of course, your US politics is all kinds of crazy - and that is one of the major reasons I follow it closely, because it is so ridiculously dysfunctional and out of alignment with the rest of the Western world - so Obama's center-right position on the international spectrum translates to something quite different within the US political spectrum.

Check out this Washington Post article, that spends all its time talking about exactly how liberal Obama is. Note, the question in the article isn't whether he's liberal or conservative, but exactly how liberal he is. Apparently the Washington Post didn't ask if he was on the right or left wing because it's exceedingly obvious which side he's on.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e131c82440d5

They report Obama's DW-Nominate scores in congress and in his presidency. DW-Nominate seems generally regarded as one of the best metrics. They found he was about average / a tiny bit more liberal than average for a Democratic congressman, but quite a lot more centrist/moderate than average for a Democratic president. In the post-war years, Obama ranked the 2nd most moderate/centrist Democratic president (behind LBJ) and 3rd most centrist/moderate of all post-war presidents (behind Eisenhower and LBJ). The winner for most extreme president was Bush W, followed by Reagan.

So, even by US standards, Obama was far from anyone's extreme liberal as president. He was, in fact, close to being the most right-wing president the dems have ever had.

However, the more general point is worth emphasizing that the US political system is badly broken because you are almost entirely missing what the rest of the Western world would classify as left-wing parties and politicians. You've got Bernie Sanders. That's 1 politician. Occupying basically half of the political spectrum, on his own. You should have an entire major political party sitting in that half of the spectrum and you don't, which is a big problem. And what makes the situation even more interesting is that actually a good proportion of the US population does occupy that half of the political spectrum. Polling shows that Bernie Sanders is by far the single most popular US politician. And polling on each of the individual policies Bernie Sanders espoused in the 2016 cycle found that nearly all of them had >50% support among the US populace - so it's not as if that area of the political spectrum is unoccupied by the US populace - in fact you could use that and other evidence to argue that the majority of the US populace is politically left wing in an international spectrum. But all those people - as much as half the nation - are essentially represented in their views by a single independent politician, and the Democratic and Republican parties are quite far to the political right of the populace. It's a mess. The parties need to move hard to the left to where the voters actually are, but they're being pulled really strongly to the right by their donors, because the big-money donors lean much further to the right wing than the bases of the parties do.

I assume you won't be surprised to hear that I'm for "ultra strict" abortion policies, namely that it should be outlawed, since I'm not a fan of murder.

I doubt you're really against murder: I've seen you defend police murdering people in these forums; I suspect you support the death penalty; and US wars abroad; and drone strikes; and gun proliferation. You just have a weird hang-up that abortion = murder, a view AFAIK not shared by any Western country's laws.

[Starlight]

I have the impression that Starlight thinks I'm rightwing, if not far right.

On political compass I come out as almost exactly in the middle, just very slightly more libertarian than authoritarian.

That does surprise me. In recent NZ elections what party(s) did you vote for / would have voted for / would have seriously considered voting for?