RantMachine

Daaaaaaaamn, sorry to hear it mate

Haaaahahaha, love it

So apparently we're all f**ked: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tobias-stone/history-tells-us-what-will-brexit-trump_b_11179774.html BUT this means we get a chance to live in a post apocalyptic Mad Max type world. And as we all know, that means that bikers are on top of the pile.

Are we calling dibs on stuff yet? Well I'm pretty sure I convinced Six to buy my bike when I leave...

Fancy food and abundant alcohol! No point accumulating even more material possessions when I'm just gonna have to leave most of them behind come the big move

Frankly, I fail to see what is so amusing about people dying in tram disasters.

If we're gonna suggest documentaries, I would perhaps suggest watching this instead: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation For one thing, the video isn't produced by the anti-Trump or pro-Trump camps. And for another thing, it doesn't attempt to speculate on what might happen. And best of all, it doesn't present the horrendously biased versions of Clinton and Trump coverage that we've seen in European media (any yes, they've been putting vast efforts into painting Trump in a negative light and Clinton in a positive one - some Canadian news is vaguely free of bias, but the best outlets are online ones like the Huffington Post which give you a range of opinions and views so that you can see the whole picture). Essentially, that documentary is a brief explanation of the changes that have taken place in world politics, economy, and society over the past 40 years or so. Most of it focusses on disclosing the truths that have been quietly revealed over time, in hopes of avoiding embarrassment over the lies of the past. Stuff like the revelations about Bush and Blair and the second gulf war, but stretching back much further and going into detail of things that might otherwise have escaped our notice. Not so much of the "omg conspiracy" stuff, thankfully - all fact and no speculation. Netflix is the place to go for the tinfoil hat stuff. Tl;dr - it's an awesome documentary that serves as an eye opener rather than an opinion changer. If you want your opinions to be a little more well informed, give it a watch.

I volunteer!! Dangit...

I think Rennie's probably bang on the money with this one. Which begs the question, if Sanders had won the nomination instead of Clinton, would we now be looking at a Sanders administration in January? I think it's highly possible. Makes Hillary's dirty tactics during the primaries all the more disgusting.

If I understood correctly, the charge was thrown out on a technicality and has been raised against him for a second time with a court date in December... but you never really know what you can trust in the news or online these days

I nearly threw up when this came on the radio on my drive into work this morning. Had a complete feeling of slimy, creepy git of a leech who stands at the ends of bars chatting up any women who ventures to the bar on her own. None of what trump has been accused of matches what Bill Clinton got up to .... pot and Kettle No love for Bill here, but... he didn't ever have kiddy fiddling charges up against him, did he?

This! It's hard enough to know which new websites have a bias that they don't make obvious, if you get info from a site that openly aligns itself to one end of the political spectrum then you can be certain that everything you're reading is creative with the truth

Yeah, I think Reagan is generally well received. His big legacy is of course always being the president that ended the cold war, I think his biggest criticism is usually that he was more of a public face than a genuine decision maker; he had a strong administration but he just let them make the choices while he delivered it to the people in a palatable fashion. I'm guessing we'll see similar stuff from Trump. He certainly earned his nickname "The Great Communicator", did a great job of building relationships with other world leaders... that's probably the area where the two of them will differ wildly! On a global level, obviously there's the Cold War thing, but he does get a bit of criticism for withdrawing most American military assets from the middle east at a time when instability was on the rise, which didn't help. Oh, and his administration not-so-subtly set Gaddafi up as a sponsored scapegoat for all terrorist attacks against the western world, for all those occasions when it was inconvenient to tell everyone who was really behind it. And finally, the now not-so-popular war on drugs was his doing. Necessary at the time, to be fair - substance abuse was crazy widespread at the start of his presidency. Shame the whole thing wasn't updated with the times. And he tried time and again to stimulate the American economy (generally being successful in doing so) while promising to return a balanced federal budget for the first time in years (and failing consistently). Mixed bag! But not a bad one on the whole. Kept himself popular, had a couple of huge achievements, enough that people forget the rest!

Yeah, but America is suffering from some pretty serious war weariness these days. That's a good part of why an America-first campaign worked so well for him, alongside the obvious economic issues. He'd likely have trouble getting the public support for starting a major conflict, both from the public but also the houses (who are both conscious of the public opinion because they don't want to lose their cushy jobs!!). That's why I'd say that nuclear war seems much more likely than conventional war in this climate, if of course the circumstances to warrant conflict on either of those scales were to arise. You don't need to deploy troops to launch a nuke! But you do generally need a pretty good reason to justify it. For example, an uninformed and idiotic nuking of Syria isn't a danger, even if he REALLY wanted to... because everyone around him is smart enough to remember just how many other nuclear armed countries would take that INCREDIBLY BADLY

I think you're over thinking my position; If faced with a choice of: Option 1: God awful and terrible in every possible way for a fixed period of either 4 or 8 years Option 2: Continue along path towards a scenario where one of the two possible outcomes is an end of everything I think option 1 is smarter because you get to change your mind later. Bad everything can improve. Good nothingness is always nothing.

You honestly believe Trumps personality is more suited to war? You genuinely believe his temperament is more appropriate for international relationships? The deeper question isn't "who would make better choices in a time of war", though; the big question is "who is more likely to start them, for what reasons, and with whom". Trump doesn't give a poop about foreign countries, that's the thing. If someone is dumb enough to start something on American soil then you can bet he really won't play nice, but (see my earlier post) Hillary is an avid subscriber to the intrusive version of American foreign policy that we've seen on the rise over the last two decades. Now that worked just fine in Iraq or Afghanistan where they can do the old "hold them at arms length while hitting them" approach. Didn't work so nicely when they decided to take a more indirect approach in Libya... that's one HELL of a mess now. Syria... well, they pretty much lit the fuse on that themselves during the Nixon administration. The big scary with Hillary is the international stuff surrounding Syria. All this squaring off with Russia, acting like Russia is another tiny little Arab state they can push around. Sanctions on Russia for supporting the opposite side, stationing ever more troops and weapons systems on Russian borders, and so on. God forbid, if someone throws the words "war on terror" in Putin's direction, he laughs and the whole world catches fire. That's the kind of shit that I find terrifying about Clinton. America should just stick to American issues and stop f**king up the rest of the world, and at least Trump is likely to go that way. If it doesn't hurt America, and it doesn't profit America, he doesn't want to know.

Well I for one can't possibly see how Hillary could have been a worse option

Works for me! Clinton's approach to foreign policy is more http://new2.fjcdn.com/gifs/Unfair_380164_2570384.gif Where the midget is Syria and the dude outside the ring is Putin

That's what I've been thinking! All comes down to the foreign policy, and when it comes to it, Trump is an America-first isolationist. His presidency might have some negative economic impact on other countries as he pushes for a better deal for America, but only if he's successful - and that means making boardroom bargaining tactics work on a political level, which will be... messy. Other than that, admittedly it could have a bad impact on Nato; he's talked about pulling funding unless certain changes are made, and from what I last read, his proposals basically turn Nato into an American-run protection racket. Which isn't too far from the truth as it stands... but that doesn't mean we want to go any further down that route He might even improve relationships with Russia, which is a big thing in my eyes given the rising tensions. He doesn't seem to have any hangups about "BUT COMMUNISTS", which is positive. Hell, it might even mean that relationships with Cuba can continue to improve over time. Depends whether he can tell Cubans and Mexicans apart. But the biggest implications of a Trump presidency will probably be internal. He'll put up all the walls (both metaphorical and physical), isolate America from the world that bit more, and dabble with economic policies in a likely very hit or miss fashion. Might actually be quite interesting to watch! But not as scary for the rest of the world as say George "The W is for War On Terror" Bush. Hillary on the other hand is a real proponent of the "Team America World Police" approach to foreign policy, and that terrifies the HELL out of me. She might have done a better job of maintaining the status quo back home, and she certainly wouldn't have spread hate on American soil, but she's proven time and again that she has the same "we know what's best" attitude of Tony Blair with a generous hint of the "I am openly disgusted by the people I represent" of Theresa May. She certainly wasn't going to be another Obama, or even close... hell, combined with pro-intervention foreign policies, she'd probably have been closer to Bush than any other recent president. My biggest concern about a potential Clinton administration was the second cold war factor There's a worrying amount of posturing taking place on Russian borders these days, lots of American boots (and missile bases). Even some of the biggest war games in history taking place in spitting distance of Russia. Putin's actions make it more than clear that he isn't one to back down. I thought the possibility of an "irresistible force" foreign policy from the Clinton camp clashing with an "immovable object" from the Kremlin was looking like a very real possibility, and where that could go is just too damn horrible to think about. An important thing to note is that Trump was a HUGE Reagan supporter (both politically and financially), and still seems to style himself as a bit of a Reagan XL these days. "Make America Great Again" was Reagan's campaign slogan, for crying out loud So if you want a window into what the Trump presidency will be like, it's probably worth reading up on the Reagan administration. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up doing the same thing as Reagan and relying a bit too heavily on letting other people make the big decisions while he just plays the public face. /waffle Disclaimer: RantMachine DOES know shit about this stuff but he's hangin' pretty bad right now

Conti Gos are utter shite in the wet! If they're all that you can get for the CBF, it sounds like upgrade time to me...

Solution: they should all get the poppy tattooed on their faces or shaved into their hair. I'm with Hoggs, if it's a rule for everyone and everything then you can't really expect an exception without everyone wanting ones, and lines blur rather rapidly in that sort of circumstance.

I'm not actually gonna do it, for once I actually have work to do I was just having a bit of fun messing with Kc until someone tried to "correct" me as per usual

I see... well, in that case, give me a few moments to dig up every single thread from the last 4 years wherein someone asked for advice but never got round to acting on it so that I can share my two cents

And its good to keep threads updated with the relevant information too I didn't say the thread should be removed, did I? But Kc9400 gave an itemised reply to Alex's original post and as I pointed out, it might be a bit late to try and help him plan his trip