The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

grokit

well-worn member
Its all relative to the individuals quality of life. There is some good and bad shit happening in the country and if you can access the good and avoid the bad then life can be pretty nice.
It was more of a rhetorical question, yet you make a good point. But the same could be said for just about any place, in any period of history. Ie; ancient rome sucked for slaves, but was great for senators.
 

gangababa

Well-Known Member
It is so sad, is it not?, @CarolKing
Who would have thought America would have voted for a black man ... people have to believe in change. Barack Obama represented that change. It didn't turn out the way we thought....

There has been no change because of eight years of Republican opposition at all costs.

Need judges in America?
Too bad!
Can't appoint leaders to run Federal agencies to protect social interests, environment, water, air, health?
Next President!
The people are voting for change?
Restrict the vote!
Nothing gets done in Washington?
It's the Black man's fault!

The one who says there is no difference between voting Democratic or Republican or not voting, is ignorant!

On President Obama's inauguration day January 20th 2009, a cabal of prominent Republican legislators, operatives and planners gathered in a meeting and established the Republican opposition plan. They decided to oppose EVERYTHING that the President would attempt.
They stuck to their plan and opposed the good of the country for their political ends.
Republicans rejected and disowned THEIR own ideas when the President embraced them.
I saw head-spinning examples of Republican hypocrisy.
The ACA story is an excellent illustration of this "opposition at all costs" behavior.
 

Gunky

Well-Known Member
imrs.php
 

grokit

well-worn member
Editorial: Something smells in the Democratic Party
The Register's editorial 3:06 p.m. CST February 5, 2016

635902118784200868-des.m1025JeffJackson.bh-2945.JPG

Voters sign in before the Democratic presidential caucus at Simpson Barn in Johnston Monday, February 1, 2016. Brenna Norman/For The Register(Photo: Bryon Houlgrave/The Register)

Once again the world is laughing at Iowa. Late-night comedians and social media mavens are having a field day with jokes about missing caucusgoers and coin flips.

That’s fine. We can take ribbing over our quirky process. But what we can’t stomach is even the whiff of impropriety or error.

What happened Monday night at the Democratic caucuses was a debacle, period. Democracy, particularly at the local party level, can be slow, messy and obscure. But the refusal to undergo scrutiny or allow for an appeal reeks of autocracy.

The Iowa Democratic Party must act quickly to assure the accuracy of the caucus results, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

First of all, the results were too close not to do a complete audit of results. Two-tenths of 1 percent separated Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. A caucus should not be confused with an election, but it’s worth noting that much larger margins trigger automatic recounts in other states.


DES MOINES REGISTER
Iowa's nightmare revisited: Was correct winner called?


Second, too many questions have been raised. Too many accounts have arisen of inconsistent counts, untrained and overwhelmed volunteers, confused voters, cramped precinct locations, a lack of voter registration forms and other problems. Too many of us, including members of the Register editorial board who were observing caucuses, saw opportunities for error amid Monday night’s chaos.

The Sanders campaign is rechecking results on its own, going precinct by precinct, and is already finding inconsistencies, said Rania Batrice, a Sanders spokeswoman. The campaign seeks the math sheets or other paperwork that precinct chairs filled out and were supposed to return to the state party. They want to compare those documents to the results entered into a Microsoft app and sent to the party.

“Let’s compare notes. Let’s see if they match,” Batrice said Wednesday.

Dr. Andy McGuire, chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party, dug in her heels and said no. She said the three campaigns had representatives in a room in the hours after the caucuses and went over the discrepancies.

McGuire knows what’s at stake. Her actions only confirm the suspicions, wild as they might be, of Sanders supporters. Their candidate, after all, is opposed by the party establishment — and wasn’t even a Democrat a few months ago.


DES MOINES REGISTER
Complete coverage: Iowa caucus results, photos, videos


So her path forward is clear: Work with all the campaigns to audit results. Break silly party tradition and release the raw vote totals. Provide a list of each precinct coin flip and its outcome, as well as other information sought by the Register. Be transparent.

And then call for a blue ribbon commission to study how to improve the caucuses, as the Republican Party of Iowa did after its own fiasco in 2012. Monday’s mess showed that it’s time for the Democrats to change, too.

The caucuses have become something they were never intended to be. It’s as if RAGBRAI tried to morph into the Tour de France. It wasn’t built for the speed or the significance.

The current process grew out of efforts to find a more democratic way to choose delegates to conventions, after the grassroots saw how Democratic powerbrokers controlled the nominating process in 1968. But the caucuses have become as antiquated and opaque as the smoke-filled rooms of yore.

Democrats should ask themselves: What do we want the Iowa caucus to be? How can we preserve its uniqueness while bringing more order? Does it become more like a straw poll or primary? How do we strike the balance between tradition and transparency?

We have time to consider these questions. First, however, we need answers to what happened Monday night. The future of the first-in-the-nation caucuses demands it.


http://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...l-something-smells-democratic-party/79777580/
 

His_Highness

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Many believe that another 4 years with a democratic president would result in another 4 years of republicans blocking anything that comes from that president. Stalemate again?

I wonder what would happen if, heaven forbid, a republican wins the presidency? It wouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the focus would be on dismantling Obamacare, etc. but could they pull it off? Would the american people stand for it?
 

CarolKing

Singer of songs and a vapor connoisseur
The DNC has shown favoritism with Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders several times I've noticed when the head of the DNC was interviewed in the news. Wasserman Shultz shows favoritism every time ive seen her interviewed. I guess others have noticed this too.

Debbie Wasserman Shultz is anti cannabis, maybe she is one of the reasons Florida hasn't been able to get medical cannabis for their state.
CK

Debbie Wasserman Schultz has failed in her position as DNC Chair,” Mr. Canova says on his campaign web site. “She has tipped the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and made sure virtually no one would see the primary debates. She has stood in the way of the progressive movement, and she has consistently put her own political interests ahead of the Democratic party.”

Installed by President Obama as chairwoman of the DNC in 2011, her tenure has been marked by successes — including Mr. Obama’s re-election in 2012 — and criticism, particularly intense in recent months, over how she’s handled the 2016 primary.

The DNC’s decision to sanction a mere six Democratic debates was seen by progressive groups as a way to clear a path for Mrs. Clinton to win the nomination.
 
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cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Caucuses suck, they always have and they always will. They have always been a bad idea and never produce clear results. They should be eliminated in favor of primaries.

But even MORE ridiculous is having Iowa and New Hampshire be first, and allow them any early influence on shaping the candidate pool. There is literally no way that I can see them as being representative of the country, racially, politically, anyway. And if they are not, why should THEY winnow the field?

Ridiculous I say. Time to take the power away from the corn lobby.
 

Gunky

Well-Known Member

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/al...y-clinton-has-done-in-one-big-list-2016-02-04
DOVER, N.H. (MarketWatch) — I have a confession to make: I can’t keep up.
Am I supposed to hate Hillary Rodham Clinton because she’s too left-wing, or too right-wing? Because she’s too feminist, or not feminist enough? Because she’s too clever a politician, or too clumsy?
Am I supposed to be mad that she gave speeches to rich bankers, or that she charged them too much money?
I’m up here in New Hampshire watching her talk to a group of supporters, and I realized that I have been following this woman’s career for more than half my life. No, not just my adult life: the whole shebang. She came onto the national scene when I was a young man.
And for all that time, there has been a deafening chorus of critics telling me that she’s just the most wicked, evil, Machiavellian, nefarious individual in American history. She has “the soul of an East German border guard,” in the words of that nice Grover Norquist. She’s a “bitch,” in the words of that nice Newt Gingrich. She’s a “dragon lady.” She’s “Elena Ceaușescu.” She’s “the Lady Macbeth of Little Rock.”
Long before “Benghazi” and her email server, there was “Whitewater” and “the Rose Law Firm” and “Vince Foster.” For those of us following her, we were promised scandal after scandal after scandal. And if no actual evidence ever turned up, well, that just proved how deviously clever she was.
So today I’m performing a public service on behalf of all the voters. I went back and re-read all the criticisms and attacks and best-selling “exposes” leveled at Hillary Rodham Clinton over the past quarter century. And I’ve compiled a list of all her High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Here they are:
1. When she was first lady, she murdered White House lawyer Vince Foster and then dumped his body in a park.
2. She drove Vince Foster to commit suicide through her temper tantrums.
3. She was having an affair with Vince Foster.
4. She’s a lesbian.
5. Chelsea isn’t Bill Clinton’s child.
6. She murdered Vince Foster to cover up that she once bought a tract of undeveloped land in Arkansas and lost money.
7. She murdered Vince Foster to cover up her role in firing the White House travel department.
8. After she murdered Vince Foster, she ransacked his office in the middle of the night and stole all the documents proving her guilt.
9. When Bill was governor of Arkansas, she was a partner in the state’s top law firm, and it sometimes did work involving the state government.
10. She once invested in commodities futures on the advice of a friend and made $100,000, proving she’s a crook.
11. She once invested in real estate on the advice of another friend and lost $100,000, also proving she’s a crook.
12. Unnamed and unverifiable sources have told Peggy Noonan things about the Clintons that are simply too terrible to repeat.
13. The personnel murdered at Benghazi make her the first secretary of state to lose overseas personnel to terrorism — apart from Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, George Schultz, Dean Rusk and some others.
14. Four State Department staff were murdered at Benghazi, compared with only 119 others murdered overseas under every secretary of state combined since World War II.
15. She illegally sent classified emails from her personal server, except that apparently they weren’t classified at the time.
16. She may have cynically wriggled around the email law by “technically” complying with it.
17. She once signed a lucrative book contract when she was a private citizen.
18. Donald Trump says she “should be in jail,” and he’s a serial bankrupt casino developer in Atlantic City, so he should know.
19. Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay says his “law-enforcement sources” tell him she is “about to be indicted” — and if a man once convicted of money laundering and conspiracy doesn’t have good law-enforcement sources, who does?
20. She’s a hard-left radical who wants to break up the nuclear family.
21. She’s a conservative “mousewife” who refused to break up her own family.
22. She’s in favor of single moms.
23. She refused to be a single mom.
24. When she was first lady of Arkansas, she pandered to conservative voters by dyeing her hair.
25. Before that, she totally insulted them by refusing to.
26. She’s a frump.
27. She spends too much money on designer dresses.
28. She has “cankles.”
29. She has a grating voice.
30. She yells into the microphone.
31. She spent 18 years in Arkansas and some of the people she knew turned out to be crazy rednecks and crooks.
32. She’s in the pay of the mafia.
33. She’s in the pay of the Chinese government.
34. She’s in the pay of the Wall Street banks.
35. In order to suppress the billing records from her time at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, she cleverly packed them up and took them to the White House rather than shredding them.
36. When she handed over the documents to public officials, they couldn’t find any evidence she’d committed any crimes, so she must have doctored them.
37. Congress spent tens of millions of dollars and six years investigating her investment in the “Whitewater” real estate project, and while they didn’t actually find anything, they wouldn’t have spent all that money if there weren’t something there.
38. By cleverly hiding all evidence of her crimes in the “Whitewater” affair, she caused Congress to waste all that taxpayers’ money.
39. When she ran for senator of New York, she was still a fan of the Chicago Cubs.
40. She once said the Clintons were thinking of adopting a child, and they didn’t follow through.
41. She was photographed holding her hand near her mouth during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
42. She’s got brain damage.
43. She’s old.
44. She’s really ambitious and calculating, unlike all the other people running for president.
45. She secretly supported Palestinian terrorists, Puerto Rican terrorists and Guatemalan terrorists.
46. She secretly supported a group that wants to give Maine back to the Indians.
47. She’s a secret follower of “radical prophet” Saul Alinsky.
48. She did her law degree at Yale, and it’s a well-known “socialist finishing school.”
49. When she was young, she did things to build up her resume rather than just for their own good.
50. When Bill was president, she “allowed” him to keep people waiting.
51. She’s married to a sex addict.
52. She’s an enemy of traditional marriage.
53. She didn’t divorce her husband.
54. His philandering is her fault because she is too strong, and too weak, and too frumpy, and too fat, and too cold.
55. She’s hostile to women who fool around with her husband.
56. A divorced taxi driver in Florida told me that if Hillary is elected president, “women will take over everything.”
57. She insulted Tammy Wynette.
58. When they left the White House, she and Bill bought a big house in New York that they couldn’t afford.
59. She sometimes calls her staff during dinner, even when they’re out at a restaurant.
60. She claimed there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy” against her husband, and turned out there was nothing but a bunch of tycoons financing private investigators, and some fake think-tanks and books and news sites and stuff.
61. When she got married, she didn’t “stay at home and bake cookies.”
62. She supported the Iraq War because she’s a secret foreign-policy conservative.
63. She’s a secret foreign-policy radical with a plan to impose worldwide “radical social experimentation” through the World Bank.
64. She is secretly plotting to let children sue their parents for making them take out the garbage.
65. She looked bored during the Benghazi hearings.
66. Oh, yeah — and she totally has a vagina.
It’s clear: Hillary must be stopped. Hearings now!
 
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Farid

Well-Known Member
62. She supported the Iraq War because she’s a secret foreign-policy conservative.

That is a high crime, I don't see how it can be shrugged off sarcastically alongside Hillary being accused of being a sex addict. I was talking to my sister in law this weekend, and she was remembering how upset her father was when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. He had been on business trips to Iraq, and had developed friendships and connections there. Lots of Egyptians worked in Iraq, and the invasion came without instigation or conflict to catalyze it. It made our country look terrible in the region, and created rifts and divides that will not be mended for decades. Clinton allowed this to happen in Iraq, then continued to allow it to happen in Libya despite knowing the failures of "regime change". Shrugging it off as something everybody at the time supported ignores the words of people like Sanders who warned exactly what would happen in Iraq. So far it seems Sanders and other critics of the war have been spot on with their assessment of the war's results. All Clinton offers as a response is that she was misled, while continuing to support regime change elsewhere.

So even with all of Clinton's experience, she can't learn from a mistake, but Sanders is smart enough not to have made the mistake in the first place.
 

Joel W.

Deplorable Basement Dweller
Accessory Maker
Don't forget her tall tale of landing under sniper fire in Kosovo or Bosnia in 95/96. Many vets I know really dislike this exaggeration/lie.

Even Brian Williams called bs.

Edit: "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.". Mark Twain..

" If you're gonna lie, don't lie about being in a combat situation ". Me
 
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lwien

Well-Known Member
After reading all the anti-Hillary posts above as well as reading and listening about all the outrageous, false, claims that Trump has made as well as listening to the right describing Bernie Sanders as a crazy old man who won't be able to get anything done, etc. the very simple fact is....................half the people believe what they want to believe and I sincerely feel that it has nothing to do with the facts. The other half believe in the facts but excuse all of the negatives due to what they perceive as positives.

Bottom line..........voting in a President has nothing to do with reality but has everything to do with perception.

(guess I have a flair for the obvious, eh?) :rolleyes:
 

howie105

Well-Known Member

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/al...y-clinton-has-done-in-one-big-list-2016-02-04
DOVER, N.H. (MarketWatch) — I have a confession to make: I can’t keep up.
Am I supposed to hate Hillary Rodham Clinton because she’s too left-wing, or too right-wing? Because she’s too feminist, or not feminist enough? Because she’s too clever a politician, or too clumsy?
Am I supposed to be mad that she gave speeches to rich bankers, or that she charged them too much money?
I’m up here in New Hampshire watching her talk to a group of supporters, and I realized that I have been following this woman’s career for more than half my life. No, not just my adult life: the whole shebang. She came onto the national scene when I was a young man.
And for all that time, there has been a deafening chorus of critics telling me that she’s just the most wicked, evil, Machiavellian, nefarious individual in American history. She has “the soul of an East German border guard,” in the words of that nice Grover Norquist. She’s a “bitch,” in the words of that nice Newt Gingrich. She’s a “dragon lady.” She’s “Elena Ceaușescu.” She’s “the Lady Macbeth of Little Rock.”
Long before “Benghazi” and her email server, there was “Whitewater” and “the Rose Law Firm” and “Vince Foster.” For those of us following her, we were promised scandal after scandal after scandal. And if no actual evidence ever turned up, well, that just proved how deviously clever she was.
So today I’m performing a public service on behalf of all the voters. I went back and re-read all the criticisms and attacks and best-selling “exposes” leveled at Hillary Rodham Clinton over the past quarter century. And I’ve compiled a list of all her High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Here they are:
1. When she was first lady, she murdered White House lawyer Vince Foster and then dumped his body in a park.
2. She drove Vince Foster to commit suicide through her temper tantrums.
3. She was having an affair with Vince Foster.
4. She’s a lesbian.
5. Chelsea isn’t Bill Clinton’s child.
6. She murdered Vince Foster to cover up that she once bought a tract of undeveloped land in Arkansas and lost money.
7. She murdered Vince Foster to cover up her role in firing the White House travel department.
8. After she murdered Vince Foster, she ransacked his office in the middle of the night and stole all the documents proving her guilt.
9. When Bill was governor of Arkansas, she was a partner in the state’s top law firm, and it sometimes did work involving the state government.
10. She once invested in commodities futures on the advice of a friend and made $100,000, proving she’s a crook.
11. She once invested in real estate on the advice of another friend and lost $100,000, also proving she’s a crook.
12. Unnamed and unverifiable sources have told Peggy Noonan things about the Clintons that are simply too terrible to repeat.
13. The personnel murdered at Benghazi make her the first secretary of state to lose overseas personnel to terrorism — apart from Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, George Schultz, Dean Rusk and some others.
14. Four State Department staff were murdered at Benghazi, compared with only 119 others murdered overseas under every secretary of state combined since World War II.
15. She illegally sent classified emails from her personal server, except that apparently they weren’t classified at the time.
16. She may have cynically wriggled around the email law by “technically” complying with it.
17. She once signed a lucrative book contract when she was a private citizen.
18. Donald Trump says she “should be in jail,” and he’s a serial bankrupt casino developer in Atlantic City, so he should know.
19. Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay says his “law-enforcement sources” tell him she is “about to be indicted” — and if a man once convicted of money laundering and conspiracy doesn’t have good law-enforcement sources, who does?
20. She’s a hard-left radical who wants to break up the nuclear family.
21. She’s a conservative “mousewife” who refused to break up her own family.
22. She’s in favor of single moms.
23. She refused to be a single mom.
24. When she was first lady of Arkansas, she pandered to conservative voters by dyeing her hair.
25. Before that, she totally insulted them by refusing to.
26. She’s a frump.
27. She spends too much money on designer dresses.
28. She has “cankles.”
29. She has a grating voice.
30. She yells into the microphone.
31. She spent 18 years in Arkansas and some of the people she knew turned out to be crazy rednecks and crooks.
32. She’s in the pay of the mafia.
33. She’s in the pay of the Chinese government.
34. She’s in the pay of the Wall Street banks.
35. In order to suppress the billing records from her time at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, she cleverly packed them up and took them to the White House rather than shredding them.
36. When she handed over the documents to public officials, they couldn’t find any evidence she’d committed any crimes, so she must have doctored them.
37. Congress spent tens of millions of dollars and six years investigating her investment in the “Whitewater” real estate project, and while they didn’t actually find anything, they wouldn’t have spent all that money if there weren’t something there.
38. By cleverly hiding all evidence of her crimes in the “Whitewater” affair, she caused Congress to waste all that taxpayers’ money.
39. When she ran for senator of New York, she was still a fan of the Chicago Cubs.
40. She once said the Clintons were thinking of adopting a child, and they didn’t follow through.
41. She was photographed holding her hand near her mouth during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
42. She’s got brain damage.
43. She’s old.
44. She’s really ambitious and calculating, unlike all the other people running for president.
45. She secretly supported Palestinian terrorists, Puerto Rican terrorists and Guatemalan terrorists.
46. She secretly supported a group that wants to give Maine back to the Indians.
47. She’s a secret follower of “radical prophet” Saul Alinsky.
48. She did her law degree at Yale, and it’s a well-known “socialist finishing school.”
49. When she was young, she did things to build up her resume rather than just for their own good.
50. When Bill was president, she “allowed” him to keep people waiting.
51. She’s married to a sex addict.
52. She’s an enemy of traditional marriage.
53. She didn’t divorce her husband.
54. His philandering is her fault because she is too strong, and too weak, and too frumpy, and too fat, and too cold.
55. She’s hostile to women who fool around with her husband.
56. A divorced taxi driver in Florida told me that if Hillary is elected president, “women will take over everything.”
57. She insulted Tammy Wynette.
58. When they left the White House, she and Bill bought a big house in New York that they couldn’t afford.
59. She sometimes calls her staff during dinner, even when they’re out at a restaurant.
60. She claimed there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy” against her husband, and turned out there was nothing but a bunch of tycoons financing private investigators, and some fake think-tanks and books and news sites and stuff.
61. When she got married, she didn’t “stay at home and bake cookies.”
62. She supported the Iraq War because she’s a secret foreign-policy conservative.
63. She’s a secret foreign-policy radical with a plan to impose worldwide “radical social experimentation” through the World Bank.
64. She is secretly plotting to let children sue their parents for making them take out the garbage.
65. She looked bored during the Benghazi hearings.
66. Oh, yeah — and she totally has a vagina.
It’s clear: Hillary must be stopped. Hearings now!

Pretty much proves that there is one born every minute however it doesn’t point out that half of them are on the right and half of them are on the left. Some folks believe in that funny campaigns world where the pep rally events never end and bad street performance replaces actual policy discussions. Year after year problems, fears and hatred grows with the same old refrain from the leadership, ITS NOT OUR FAULT. Sadly they are sort of right its not all their fault because we as citizens accept excuses.
 
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macbill

Oh No! Mr macbill!!
Staff member
I agree that Bernie is the candidate closer to my own beliefs. Should he become the Democratic Party's nomination for president, I know I'll vote for him.

But having grown up in the 50's, 60's & 70's, calling someone a “Socialist” is akin to calling them a "gay child molester”. The American Press and the Government inundated the airwaves with propaganda against creeping Socialism and Communism. Sen. Joe McCarthy (Cruz's doppelganger) claimed to have lists of Government workers who were in the Communist Party. Folks were terrified.

I wish I could say I have confidence the America people will vote a self-described Socialist into office. I don't believe it will happen. They aren't that smart. It's the word “Socialist”. It solicits fear. Collectively, they can't see how much better it could be. Because the next president will appoint the next couple of Supreme Court Justices, it is imperative the President be a Democratic one. I believe Hillary has a better chance to become president. That's why I will vote for her in the primary: not because she's better – but because she has a better chance to win. May I be wrong in my opinion of the American Public.
 

Farid

Well-Known Member
So you'll vote for him if he's the party nominee, but you wont vote for him in the primary despite him being the candidate that matches with your beliefs? It's usually the other way around, you're not taking a risk by voting for Sanders in the primary.
 
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