Election 2016 Thread

[Svartalf]

Everybody knows she is, why heap more on it?

[Forty Two]

To keep her out of the white house. Apparently, not everyone knows it, and not everyone believes it.

[Svartalf]

Given that Sanders, however preferable he would be, is unlikely to be able to live up to the strain of the job, and that drumpf is totally unsuitable, I stilll admit her to be the lesser evil... unless sanders would get a really first class veep to take over when he croaks in office.

[Forty Two]

Given that Sanders, however preferable he would be, is unlikely to be able to live up to the strain of the job, and that drumpf is totally unsuitable, I stilll admit her to be the lesser evil... unless sanders would get a really first class veep to take over when he croaks in office.

I find Trump to be far less of an evil than Hillary, but then, i suppose, there is a lot of room for disagreement there.

[piscator]

Given that Sanders, however preferable he would be, is unlikely to be able to live up to the strain of the job, and that drumpf is totally unsuitable, I stilll admit her to be the lesser evil... unless sanders would get a really first class veep to take over when he croaks in office.

(CNN)Hillary Clinton is not the lesser of two evils in this election. There's only one "evil" in this race, and his name is Donald J. Trump. That was on clear display during Trump's speech Wednesday, which was riddled with falsehoods.

I say this as a person who passionately supported Bernie Sanders during the primaries. After all, Clinton was -- and continues to be -- the less progressive candidate on issues both domestic and foreign. She maintains uncomfortably strong ties to Wall Street and remains hawkish on international affairs.Of course, there are other issues that have given Sanders supporters room for pause. Clinton received extremely large paychecks for speeches at Goldman Sachs and other big banks after leaving the State Department. She supported a controversial 1994 crime bill that disproportionally affected minorities and then referred to young black men involved in criminal activity as "super predators." (She has since apologized for the use of that term.) Then there's Clinton's email server controversy -- though frankly this is an issue raised more by conservative opposition than by progressive liberals.
And all of this has taken a toll on her overall favorability. A new CNN poll out Tuesday finds that Trump and Clinton are tied with an abysmal six in 10 Americans viewing both of them as unfavorable candidates.

But the difference between Clinton and Trump is about more than their divergent views on tax law, immigration, or foreign policy. It's about the battle of good versus evil.

The "evil" in Trump's campaign has been evident since the day he declared his candidacy. He kicked off his campaign a year ago this month, telling Americans to fear Mexicans because, in his words, Mexico was sending "rapists" and people who are "bringing drugs" across our borders. (Trump's statement has been proven false by a group of non-partisan fact checkers.)
Since then, Trump has continued to serve up a steady diet of bigoted, racist and sexist fare. There was Trump's sexist remarks about Carly Fiorina's face, his recent racist comments about the so-called "Mexican" judge, and his mocking of a disabled reporter for failing to back up Trump's baseless claim that "thousands" of Muslims were cheering in New Jersey on September 11.

Speaking of Muslims, Trump has offered a master class in how to demonize one particular faith group. He kicked off his jihad on Muslims last December with his proposed Muslim ban that was less a well-reasoned policy proposal and more a tactic designed to stir up xenophobic sentiment across the country. He then gave us in March "Islam hates us." And Trump recently took his fearmongering one step further, suggesting that Muslim Americans know about terror plots but do not come forward to the authorities. In other words, Trump insinuated that all Muslim Americans are one degree removed from ISIS and other Islamic extremist networks.
Clinton, in stark contrast, has neither demonized any minority group nor made any bigoted or racist remarks. In fact, she's done the exact opposite. In her Super Tuesday speech, Clinton proclaimed, "Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we're not going to let it work."

And just last week, a day after the Orlando shooting, she actually stood up for the Muslim community. This was a bold a move -- and one for which she has been given virtually no credit. Sadly, there is little upside to defending Muslims in American politics today, but particularly the day after a shooter pledges allegiance to ISIS and kills 49 innocent club-goers.
Yet Clinton did just that, declaring that "millions of peace-loving Muslims live, work and raise their families across America." She added, powerfully, "We should be intensifying contacts in those communities, not scapegoating or isolating them." In doing so, Clinton changed the tenor of the conversation from that of fear and hate to one of love and kindness.

Our nation appears to be at a true crossroads in this election in the battle between Trump and Clinton. Some would say our nation's soul hangs in the balance. If you don't want to vote for Clinton, that's your democratic right. But stating that Clinton is the lesser of two evils is not just factually wrong -- it makes you an apologist for Donald J. Trump's "evils."

[pErvinalia]

If Clinton isn't a neolib and a warmonger as Prez, I'll eat crow.

[Svartalf]

crow can be very tasty with the right seasonings

[Forty Two]

That CNN article cites the "fact checking" and it's clear where their loyalties lie when they say shit like this:

"We rate Trump's claim that policies allowed and encouraged offshoring as accurate, but Trump left out his own role in that process with his businesses. For that reason, we rate his claim as true, but misleading."

So, he didn't commit any "falsehood" there - because what he said was "accurate." They just think that when Trump was in business, he operated under that regime, rather than swim against the stream. That's like complaining about tax policy not taxing the rich enough, while not voluntarily paying more, and calling it "misleading" to criticize the tax policy. That's the kind of fucking "fact checking" we get.

Then they accuse him of making a "false" claim by stating that he started off in his business career with a small loan. They say "most Americans think a $1 million loan is not "small." Well, dipishits, that doesn't make it "false." It makes his opinion that in business a $1 million loan is fairly small. And, he has a point, because business loans are very often much larger, in terms of venture capital. So, they rank an opinion "false." Horseshit.

Then they go on to the third one, and vet the allegation that Clinton lied about landing under sniper fire -- they rate Trump's statement that Clinton was "phony" when she lied about that story -- True.

Then they rate his comment on China's theft of intellectual property: "She let China steal hundreds of billions of dollars in our intellectual property -- a crime which is continuing to this day." They state that "it is true that China has stolen intellectual property from United States entities for years..." -- there you go. So, he is true about the theft part. Where they take issue with his statement is when he says that Hillary Clinton let them do it. The "fact checkers" use sleight of hand -- they rate his blame on Clinton "false" because they say that the State Department is not responsible for stopping "hacking" by the Chinese. This, however, is not what Trump said - he said China steals intellectual property, and the article explained that it is true - they steal intellectual property to the tune of one of the "greatest transfers of wealth in history." However, the article ignores the fact that the State Department was and is responsible for international intellectual property theft -- http://www.state.gov/e/eb/tpp/ipe/ So, while the State Department may not be the department tasked with preventing computer hacking -- it is tasked with protecting intellectual property rights, and Trump says they failed in their task. He's fucking right.

But, the article explains that the Obama administration has taken steps to reduce "computer hacking" over the last few years, so that must mean, according to the fact checkers, that Trump's statement is false. LOL. I mean, you can't make this stuff up.

Then they go on to declare as "false" the statement that Trump made that the Orlando shooter's father was a Taliban supporter. They say Trump's statement was false because the Orlando shooter's father said so. LOL. Right, because Sediqque Mateen says so, it must mean Trump is lying. But, let's see -- he did run a company called Durand Jirga which had Youtube and Facebook pages publishing anti-LGBTQ videos and expressing ideological support for the Taliban. has called for the arrest of Hamid Karzai and has set himself up as some sort of provisional government of Afghanistan from his office in Florida. LOL. But, after the incident, he said he knows nothing, so that's the fact check!

Then they say he's lying because he said the trade deficit jumped 40%, when their fact checking said it was only about 34% when construed in the light most favorable to Trump. They say he's lying because the fact checkers assert that the jump in trade deficit is due to the narrowing of the trade deficit previously.

This kind of fact checking is a joke. I can only ask if they'll be evaluating Clinton's statements in the same way. When she says something is small or large, she's lying if some people make an opposite value judgment. LOL

[Animavore]

Trump, you weapon''s grade plum.

http://mashable.com/2016/06/24/trump-tw ... p6h7Ujosqj

[Forty Two]

Trump, you weapon''s grade plum.

http://mashable.com/2016/06/24/trump-tw ... p6h7Ujosqj

He's referring to the UK as a whole. He arrived in Scotland, which is part of the UK. It's like if a vote occurs in the US, and he says "just arrived in Florida - people going wild over the vote to take country back" -- but, a majority of Floridians voted the other way. It's part of the US.

UK-ers love to get bent out of shape that nobody understands their interconnections. Scotland is part of the UK. Scotland voted in 2014 to stay part of the UK. When the UK votes to be out of the EU, Scotland is going with it. Scotland is not staying in the EU, and it's probably pretty accurate that there are big chunks of the population going wild about it.

Yes, they like to say Scotland is a different country, technically, but nobody else gives a fuck. You have England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Isle of Mann, Jersey, Guernsey and all the other little chunks. Whatever. You're the UK, like we're the United States. In the UN, you have a seat "United Kingdom of Great Britain (which is England, Scotland, Wales, etc.), and Northern Ireland" -- Ireland has it's own seat.

Yeah - he's "weapons grade plum" because he fucking didn't include in his 140 character tweet a breakdown that he's referring to "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" and that whether the majority regions like Scotland or the Falklands or Isle of Mann or whatever voted "in"..... such bollocks.

[Scot Dutchy]

He is fucking pig ignorant FFS. Scotland is still a separate country within the UK. It is not fucking England. It has its own parliament and justice system.

[Forty Two]

He is fucking pig ignorant FFS. Scotland is still a separate country within the UK. It is not fucking England. It has its own parliament and justice system.

Nobody said it was England - and Trump didn't say that either. He's referring the Brexit, where the UK is voting to leave the EU. Every State in the US has its own legislature (equivalent of parliament), etc. It's still part of the US. Scotland is part of the UK. The UK is a country. They can use whatever nomenclature they want, but the nation-state at issue is the United Kingdom, which includes Scotland, England etc.

I mean, jesus, even Brexit is a misnomer. Britain is just part of the UK, so the UK-ers themselves are not even using the right terminology. Fuck them and their ignorant bullshit, right? Dont' they know that Britiain is not the UK and it should be the UKexit, not Brexit? Ignorant plums, right?

[Scot Dutchy]

UK does not contain Northern Ireland. Scotland was a kingdom and the only other kingdom was England. So technically Wales is not part of the UK as it is only a princedom.

[Forty Two]

UK does not contain Northern Ireland. Scotland was a kingdom and the only other kingdom was England. So technically Wales is not part of the UK as it is only a princedom.

"The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom Northern Ireland is, of course, part of the UK. What are you talking about? "it includes the island of Great Britain (the name of which is also loosely applied to the whole country), the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands.[9] Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another state—the Republic of Ireland.....The UK consists of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.[15] The latter three have devolved administrations."

Maybe you're getting confused with "Great Britain" which is the island including Scotland, etc.

Great Britain was a Kingdom including England, Wales and Scotland in 1707 and became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. In 1822, it became the UK of GB and Northern Ireland.

[Scot Dutchy]

Wales was never a kingdom nor was NI. That is why NI is separately mentioned. Ireland was never one kingdom either. Wales was a princedom and played no part in the union of the parliaments.