Donald Trump has "Game Changing" News for Election!

[Thinking Aloud]

Tyrannical,

Thank you for demonstrating my point for me.

"Where's the birth certificate? Where's the birth certificate?"

<Obama releases certificate of live birth>

"Where's the long form birth certificate? Where's the long form birth certificate?"

<Obama releases long form birth certificate>

"That's just a PDF!!! I must hold the long form certificate in my hands and personally inspect it before I'm convinced that the black man is not really from Africa!!"

He IS from Africa anyway, that's just a matter of how long you want to go back in time.

And so am I.

[laklak]

So is Mrs. Lak. Really, she was born there.

[Clinton Huxley]

Hell, for $1,000,000 The Donald can dip his balls in my mouth.

You'd do it for a tenner.

[Bella Fortuna]

Hell, for $1,000,000 The Donald can dip his balls in my mouth.

You'd do it for a tenner.

Assuming lak had that much in his wallet...

[Clinton Huxley]

Hell, for $1,000,000 The Donald can dip his balls in my mouth.

You'd do it for a tenner.

Assuming lak had that much in his wallet...

I'll lend him a tenner.

[laklak]

I only use plastic. Or was that latex?

[Clinton Huxley]

I only use plastic. Or was that latex?

If you get pregnant with Trump's baby, it's what God intended.

[Bella Fortuna]

I only use plastic. Or was that latex?

There aren't enough nerve endings back there to be able to tell decisively.

[Coito ergo sum]

Trump is offering $5 million to charity if Obama releases his school records.

Personally, I'd offer ten million simply because I know Obama would never do it. Graduated suma cum laude from Harvard and still has something to hide?

Yeah, I agree with you. I have yet to hear a good reason for Obama not releasing his college and university transcripts.

[Ian]

I have yet to hear a good reason for Romney not releasing all those tax returns.

[Coito ergo sum]

I have yet to hear a good reason for Romney not releasing all those tax returns.

Me neither, but Romney has released multiple years of tax returns, and different Presidents over the past 40 years have released differing numbers of years tax returns.

So, once again, what is the good reason for Obama releasing zero transcripts? If you feel that he is justified in not releasing any, because Romney has only released some of his tax returns, then you're entitled to that view of it, I guess. But, it doesn't sound too rational.

Since the 1976 election, presidential candidates have released at least one year of tax returns. After winning that election, Jimmy Carter then set the precedent for all sitting presidents and vice presidents to release their returns each year. Since 1984, the standard for challengers to an incumbent president has been to disclose at least two years of returns, if not significantly more.

Bob Dole holds the record, releasing 29. McCain released 2. Mike Dukakis released 5. Why didn't Dukakis release 29? I don't know.,

But it seems as if releasing 2 is at least some. I can certainly see why people would want to see a few more, although it is largely a non-issue because we know Romney made lots of money, and there isn't anything in a 1040 form that is going to be all that Earth shattering. If he committed some sort of tax evasion, he makes so much that the IRS has taken very close looks at his returns many times. Audit risk is VERY high when income is that high.

Also, it's Obama who is making the case that "candidates need to be as transparent as possible," and release information to the public. He demands openness from others, but he doesn't want to be open himself. The transcripts, I recall, were considered very important by Democrats for Bush to release, and he released them, and he was chided for being a mediocre student. So, there is a bit of hypocrisy when Democrats say that they're irrelevant. They're irrelevant NOW, but they weren't irrelevant before. As usual, it depends whose ox is being gored.

[Ian]

I don't know why Obama hasn't bothered to release college transcripts, but what's the worst thing that could show up? We all know where he went to college, that he graduated with distinction, etc. Is there a birther argument in there somewhere? I don't know, but as odd as it is, 30-yr-old college transcripts just don't interest me as much as recent financial information from someone who has been running for President since at least early 2007.

[Gerald McGrew]

Except for in this case, the reason conservatives are demanding Obama's transcripts is because they're convinced he's really from Africa.

We know he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, so obviously grades aren't the issue.

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't know why Obama hasn't bothered to release college transcripts, but what's the worst thing that could show up? We all know where he went to college, that he graduated with distinction, etc. Is there a birther argument in there somewhere? I don't know, but as odd as it is, 30-yr-old college transcripts just don't interest me as much as recent financial information from someone who has been running for President since at least early 2007.

The bad things that could show up:

1. Poor grades, which would allow the GOP to caste the common assertion that Obama is "the smartest guy in the room" as a manufactured myth.

2. Poor grades at Occidental, casting doubt on how he was ever accepted to Columbia in the first place.

3. Possible jokes about how Bush did better in school than Obama.

4. Possible evidence that he misrepresented himself on his applications to Columbia and/or Harvard, perhaps casting himself as a foreign student. This is not a "birther" argument, although they might make one out of it, but rather it is an argument that he may have lied back then.

5. We don't "know" he graduated with distinction. We would only know that if we got the official records.

As for the age of the records -- every candidate's college records were 30+ years old by the time they are running, although Obama's were more like 25 years old, since he's on the younger side. Romney's HIGH SCHOOL record was deemed relevant by Obama supporters, and many folks made cases that his pranks and alleged "bullying" as 14 year old kid was relevant to his fitness to be President of the US. George Bush's academic records were deemed highly relevant to Gore supporters, because they wanted to be able to say their guy was the intellectual and Bush was just a dopey prep school legacy.

Seriously - what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and that is doubly true for the one giving speeches about how candidates need to be "transparent" and "open." That's Obama, right? "YOU need to be transparent. I didn't mean that I needed to be transparent."

[Ian]

Yeah, I'd like it if he released them a while back. But is anyone going to realistically claim that the guy isn't smart? Honors from Harvard, a Constitutional Law professor... nobody's going to claim that he's secretly a dummy, and anyone who might believe it already hates him anyway. And this seems to be the best that conservatives have got regarding his lack of transparency. Whoop-dee-doo.

And I for one didn't care much about Romney being a bully in high school. So, how about those far more recent financial records? If your guy isn't even going to be transparent about that sort of thing WHILE he was running for President, shaddap about college transcripts.