The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

[His_Highness]

HRC and I are still waiting for the subpoena and charges. C'mon...surely with all these leaks somebody can make something stick?

Lying is not a criminal offense....lying under oath is.

 

[cybrguy]

I know we really needed another reason to NOT vote for the orange man, but here we have one anyway. It's starting to feel like piling on...

Trump’s FDA plan should raise concerns for Americans who eat food
09/16/16 11:00 AM—Updated 09/16/16 11:13 AM
By Steve Benen

It’s long since faded from the public debate, but as the Bush/Cheney era neared its end, the American public was confronted with some major food-safety controversies. As regular readers may recall, after consumers purchased, among other things, tomatoes with salmonella and spinach with E. coli, Rick Perlstein coined the phrase “E. coli conservatism” in response to lax governmental regulations.

Those policies didn’t last. In 2010, President Obama and the Democratic-led Congress approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s food-safety system, expanding the FDA’s ability to recall tainted foods, increase inspections, demand accountability from food companies, and oversee farming. It was the biggest effort on food safety in more than 70 years, all in the hopes of preventing unsafe food from reaching consumers’ tables.

Congressional Republicans have pushed for years to scale back those food safeguards, and as of yesterday, Donald Trump made clear he intends to do exactly that if elected.

In a fact sheet Thursday, the campaign highlighted a number of “specific regulations to be eliminated” under the GOP nominee’s economic plan, including what they called the “FDA Food Police.”

Of particular interest, the Trump campaign complained about FDA rules on issues such as inspections of food facilities, the temperatures at which food is stored safely, and “farm and food production hygiene.”​

In other words, under a Trump administration, federal officials would oversee food safety from the perspective that, when it comes to food production, there’s too much focus right now on safety and hygiene.

The good news is, if you don’t eat food, you have nothing to worry about. Everyone else, however, should probably take note.

As we discussed last year, when your family sits down for dinner tonight, you probably won’t pause to think, “Is this food safe?” because, in the back of your mind, you’ll assume there’s an effective system in place enforcing certain safeguards. In general, those assumptions are sound – because there is an effective system in place.

But what if those safeguards are weakened because congressional Republicans are looking to cut spending and a President Trump disdains the “FDA Food Police”?

Postscript: Trump’s team originally published its plan online here, but by yesterday afternoon, the content had been removed without explanation. There are nevertheless screen-grabs of the campaign’s new agenda as it relates to food safety.

 

[His_Highness]

Trump finally stops lying and admits Obama was born in the U.S./Hawaii.
Then immediately starts lying that it was Hillary who accused Obama of not being born in the U.S.

 

[gangababa]

I have eight tabs open with reporting/commentary about Trump's Friday morning TV ad for his new hotel in the historic old post office built with hard working black labor.
BTW, Trump was introduced by a birther supporter; perhaps a paean to the racists Trump can't afford to lose.

Trump's supporters say he tells it like it is. They say that his word can be trusted. Beyond this visceral connection to a orange haired, bald-faced liar, there is no argument for Trump; none, nada, zilch, squat.
It all depends upon his word.

The birther issue and his place in it is the here and now, non-negatable proof of his perfidy.
He is lying. He is lying about his actions ,his words, his deep lack of core/soul values.
His word is worthlessly rotten; his words have been hateful and hurtful. He should not be a role model to children in the USA. It is not Christian.
Or is the claim that we are a Christian nation, a lie?

Trump fed upon, fertilized and harvested USA racism.
Here is a good place to start for anyone seeking truth about the past eight years, rather than the self-satisfaction of knowing that no one else can be right if they are left (out). ganga baba

The Secret Origin of the Birthers (link) (also reported briefly here)
"Birthers like to claim that the public was questioning Obama’s birth and eligibility long before such claims ever actually arose. By backdating their theories to 2007 or 2004 or even earlier, they mentally lend their beliefs greater credibility."

(The) "rumor first appeared in the early hours of Saturday, March 1, 2008, on the conservative web forum, FreeRepublic.com. In a thread entitled “FR CONTEST: Pin the Middle Name on the Obama,” where posters were offering various ‘funny’ middle names for Barack Obama in lieu of “Hussein,” a poster named “FARS” posted this non-sequitur:

"I was told today that Obama swore in on a Koran for his Senate seat. I do not believe he did. Can someone clarify this for me? I am under the impression only a Congressman has so far sworn in on a Koran.
Also that Obama’s mother gave birth to him overseas and then immediately flew into Hawaii and registered his birth as having taken place in Hawaii.
Again, any clarifications on this? Defintely disqualifies him for Prez. There must be some trace of an airticket. While small babies are not charged air fare they do have a ticket issued for them.
Long time ago but there may be some residual information somewhere. Good ammo (if available and true) BEST USED AFTER he becomes PREZ (if that occurs) and it’s too late for Dems – except accept the VP."

In good news, ganga baba can report,

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling this “the greatest day of my life,” a visibly moved Barack Obama held a news conference on Friday to thank Donald Trump for granting him U.S. citizenship.

“The issue of whether or not I was a U.S. citizen has been a dark cloud over my existence for as long as I can remember,” a tearful Obama told the press corps. “Only one man had the courage, wisdom, and doggedness to make that cloud go away: Donald J. Trump.”

The President, who had to halt several times during his remarks to compose himself, praised the Republican Presidential nominee for “never giving up” in his quest to prove that Obama was born in the U.S.

“A weaker man would have said, ‘I don’t need this in my life,’ but Donald Trump was always there for me,” the President said. “Over the past five years, barely a day went by when he didn’t call me and say, ‘Barack, I don’t care what a bunch of crackpots say. You were born here, and I’m going to prove it once and for all.’”

The President said he planned to spend the day celebrating his U.S. citizenship with his family. “It’s great to be an American, at last,” he said.

 

[grokit]

Progressive news is all negative, but at the end of the day it's still all about drumpf.

Not one headline mentioning killary in today's samuel warde update.

• The Trump Team: A Rogues Gallery Of Has-Beens, Extremists And Nut Jobs
• Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Warns Trump Would “Bankrupt” The United States
  
• Republican Senator Launches Spanish Ad Attacking Donald Trump – VIDEO
• Harry Reid: Donald Trump A ‘Human Leech’ – VIDEO

We are witnessing how far the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" axiom can be pushed.

edit/bonus: donald-trump-jr-making-silly-lol-holocaust-jokes-as-one-does

 

[KimDracula]

What we are really witnessing is the manifestation of the continuing fervent hope of the GOP that there really are still enough angry white men out there so that they don't have to bother appealing to anyone else. Teleprompter or no, Trump is still only playing to his base. I do not believe this is enough to win the presidency any more. The popular vote will be fairly close, I think; the electoral count not as close.

 

[Gunky]

After the debates the race may not be so close any more. Trump has never really received more than mild criticism face to face with his repub opponents. His grasp of media tricks and big lie technique will not help when Clinton gets right up in his face and starts quoting him. I will go out on a limb here and wager that the Clinton campaign has done some pretty thorough research on Donald J. Trump. I suspect we will see two or three really good burns which he won't have prepared for (preparation is not his thing) and which will leave Trump like a deer in the headlights. The moment he starts having that surprised and abashed look like a boxer puppy that has been struck with a rolled up newspaper, his support from angry macho whites starts to wither.

 

[grokit]

I fear the debates are going to be a re-run of 2000, when bush managed to steal gore's mojo by saying "fuzzy math" over and over again like an autistic child every time gore brought up a policy position supported by numbers. Hillary isn't any more telegenic than gore, while drumpf has a better telepresence than dubya could ever dream of. Remember that drumpf doesn't have to win outright; he just needs it to be close enough to cheat his way to power, like bushisimo did back when he freaking changed the world.

 

[Gunky]

When Bill Clinton ran against the elder Bush, Bush tried to bash Clinton with innuendo about a trip Clinton took to eastern Europe when he was a college student. Clinton had done his research and came back with a quote excoriating this sort of McCarthy style smear job in the words of Prescott Bush, Bush's father.

 

[His_Highness]

It comes down to self-control so maybe you folks who think Trump will trip himself up in a direct debate are correct. I hope so BUT.....if he can control himself and use the same trick his hired political guns use.....this isn't anywhere near a sure thing.

Haven't you folks noticed that whenever someone asks a hired Trumper or Trumpette to explain a Trump statement that they NEVER answer the question. They simply re-direct. It makes the moderator nuts and it works every time. If they can teach this to Trump it will frustrate Hillary and the moderator something fierce. We're all dependent on him losing his shit.

 

[Gunky]

Moderators and interviewers are all coming from a different standpoint than Clinton. Those guys are all afraid if they say Trump is lying when he plainly is lying, they will be accused of being in the tank for Clinton. Clinton herself has no such compunction. Trump has till now never faced someone like that. His primary opponents were all too busy jockeying for position and too scared of alienating Trump's fans to really go after Trump.

I am looking forward to the debates.

 

[His_Highness]

A few well timed NEW HRC LEAKS, a tired/worn-out/pneumonia swooning HRC, a Trump who can keep his cool and redirect the debate questions like his hired hands do on CNN and…..we'll be wishing hard for a Bernie Back-up that can't happen.

Wake up folks.....this is way closer than it should be. It's more than possible for HRC to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with the way this is going.

 

[CarolKing]

Now Trump is blaming Hillary for the birther story. What an idiot. He should just apologize but he doesn't do that. That's OK it just makes him look like the little man that he is. He can't take responsibility for anything. Obama needs an apology and so does the American people.

 

[grokit]

If they can teach this to Trump it will frustrate Hillary and the moderator something fierce. We're all dependent on him losing his shit.

I think you have it backwards, in that drumpf is the one who taught the re-direct strategy to them. He won't lose his shit, but he may get visibly angry as the paternal fearmonger that can "get things done on day one". Unlike the "feckless loser democrats" that are "giving this country away", he will decry all forms of political correctness while beating back hordes of the not white immigrants that are "destroying" an america that never even existed in the first place. He'll offer red meat to the carnivores, and they will eat it all up.

 

[macbill]

I am looking forward to the debates.

Do you think Lyin' Ted, Little Marco, Low-energy Jeb and the rest are secretly hoping Trump gets Dumped?

 

[cybrguy]

There is a reason they call her THE CLOSER...

 

[Gunky]

A few well timed NEW HRC LEAKS, a tired/worn-out/pneumonia swooning HRC, a Trump who can keep his cool and redirect the debate questions like his hired hands do on CNN and…..we'll be wishing hard for a Bernie Back-up that can't happen.

Wake up folks.....this is way closer than it should be. It's more than possible for HRC to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with the way this is going.

We are past the point of these doubts and hand-wringing. Have some courage.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures."

 

[KimDracula]

...Wake up folks.....this is way closer than it should be. It's more than possible for HRC to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with the way this is going.

This is kind of true but it's always closer than it should be, in recent cycles at least. Republican presidents in recent memory have not been at all successful while the Democratic administrations have done clean up and gotten us back in some kind of shape only to see half of the voting public swing the other way eventually.

Despite daily polls and all the horse-race narratives that the media must needs weave around the campaign in order to keep us watching I'm not sure how much movement there really is between these two candidates. I think it will come down to the Clinton campaign being able to drive turnout in a more thorough manner than Trump's who has alienated a few Republicans with his idiocy, at least. They're not likely to vote for Clinton but they may stay home or vote for Gary Johnson. Yes, Jill Stein is also there to bleed the Left a bit of the few busted Bernie followers but I think Liberals will mostly come home to play defense against the Republican scourge. It's what we do.

 

[macbill]

Donald Trump’s New Anti-Abortion Letter Should Terrify You
In a letter to anti-abortion leaders inviting them to join his coalition, Trump commits to a new policy: “Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.”has recruited the influential anti-abortion leader Marjorie Dannenfelser to lead his campaign’s national “Pro-Life Coalition.”
Not only that, but Trump has made a new policy promise that strengthens his anti-abortion position.

 

[Gunky]

Trump Makes His Birther Lie Worse

Gail Collins SEPT. 16, 2016

Continue reading the main story Share This Page

Wow. Donald Trump says President Obama was born here. What a concession. No wonder he’s trending up in the polls.

How did we get to this place, people? The big story of the day is that a candidate for president of the United States — a candidate who, according to The Times’s Upshot model, now has a one in four chance of being elected — admits he spent years telling the American people a stupendous lie. And even now, he won’t say he’s sorry.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again,” Trump said abruptly and briefly on Friday. This was at his new Washington hotel, which he has been promoting with an avidity he has never devoted to, say, getting his immigration policy straight.

Then Trump claimed that Hillary Clinton had been first to spread the rumor that Obama was not a native-born citizen. This is a lie. A lie that all the fact checkers in the world debunked when he started saying it long ago.

People, I know some of you get very frustrated that news coverage of this election does not begin every day with: “In yet another total falsehood, Donald Trump …” This is your moment.

The Day of the Double Falsehood is a very clear, very dramatic example of Trump’s tendency to, um, speak fictionally. He was just a real estate guy with a cheesy TV show until 2011, when he sort of ran for president, in a bid that focused almost entirely on his claims that Barack Obama had come from Kenya.

“Three weeks ago I thought he was born in this country. Right now I have some real doubts. I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” he told an NBC interviewer.

We never did learn what they found. But Trump has continued to get some of his most startling information from “people.” During the primary season in New Hampshire, a man at a Trump town hall gathering got up to claim Obama was a Muslim and “not even an American.” Strong candidates tell guys like this they’re wrong. Weak candidates ignore them. Trump responded, “You know, a lot of people are saying that. …”

None of the outrageous things he says are his fault. You got a complaint, take it to the people.

Trump’s campaign wanted the birther issue to be made to go away. First, running mate Mike Pence said he believed Obama was a natural-born American citizen.

“I confirm that and Donald Trump now confirms that,” First Pal Rudy Giuliani told another interviewer. Trump had changed his mind, Giuliani claimed, two or three years ago. That would have been around the time he was tweeting: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

Moving the candidate himself was obviously a harder job. When The Washington Post asked him this week if he’d changed his mind, Trump said, “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”

I’ve always said that women won’t vote for a candidate who yells because he’ll remind them of a bad boyfriend. This is the behavior of the nightmare date from hell. Who tells you exciting stories over drinks, all of which are clearly untrue, and then gets sullen and refuses to talk when you ask a couple of questions.

Trump’s people were forced to come up with an unwinding scenario that did not require the candidate to admit he’d ever done anything wrong. So they sent out a press release announcing that Trump was the hero of the story — the man who stamped out the birther rumor, which was started by Hillary Clinton’s “vicious and conniving behavior.” Trump’s demands for the truth had forced Obama to release the long-form version of his Hawaii birth certificate while “Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer.”

“Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States,” the campaign’s statement concluded.

Even the most creative minds in the press office could not come up with any explanation for why it took Trump five years to acknowledge what the birth certificate proved. Asked about that, Pence said, disjointedly and desperately, that his running mate’s record on behalf of the African-American community “really speaks for itself.”

What we have here is a candidate for president of the United States who makes stuff up all the time, but is either incapable of realizing that he’s telling a lie, or constitutionally unable to take blame for being untruthful.

Yet, according to the polls, Hillary Clinton’s biggest problem is that the public thinks she’s dishonest. Amazing.

 

[CarolKing]

It's important that we don't get Trump as prez. I can't imagine the racial divide in this country with him as a leader. Let alone what economists are saying about his financial plan. I think we've learned about trickle down economics from the past. I thought we realized it doesn't work.

Let alone the abortion issue which could be determined by the Supreme Court.

America with Trump will not be the America that I want to live in. He's evil. It would be horrendous. They are not the same in any way. I'm not Hillary's biggest fan like @Gunky but realize she is the lesser of the two evils. I wouldn't say Hillary is evil - just a saying.

I am offended by everything Trump represents. I am embarrassed he's even in the running in the country that I love.

I heard something on one of the news channels someone called Trump the Grand Wizard of the Birther movement. Pretty spot on with that comment. Maybe it was Bill Maher?

Make sure you watch Bill Maher.

 

[Gunky]

-snip They are not the same in any way. I'm not Hillary's biggest fan like @Gunky but realize she is the lesser of the two evils. I wouldn't say Hillary is evil - just a saying.
-snip

The problem is words really do matter. Every time you say "she is the lesser of two evils", you are explicitly comparing the two. Why can you not see that? (A is less X than B - this is the very definition of a quantitative comparison, not a qualitative one. Hello?). You keep saying over and over that they are not comparable and then you proceed to compare them and pronounce them comparable, give them fucking parity: one's just less evil than the other but both are evil. Seriously if you really believe what you say you believe, the rhetoric you are employing is incredibly inaccurate and utterly self-defeating. I suppose we are making progress. Now after saying she is evil you take it back, sort of. Like a teenager who says something really offensive and then adds, "no offense".

Here is a little suggestion to think about: if you really don't want Donald Trump to be prez, maybe consider fighting this compulsion to proclaim Hillary Clinton evil? Perhaps you could taper off. A bit less of it every day, exert a little will power. In time the urge itself would subside and one fine day you could be free of this bad habit.

As in think strategically and everybody pull in the same direction? United we stand, divided we bend over for Trump, etc? Even St. Bernie, who attacked long after he had any chance, even after the votes were all tallied, indeed right up until the last second - even Bernie has stopped attacking Hillary Clinton.

"The lesser of two evils" is not an accurate description when the race is Mussolini versus a mainstream democrat.

 

[ClearBlueLou]

Here's an easy-to-grasp analogy:

Two people have two incidents involving falling;
- One suffers a skinned knee, a sprained wrist, and a ripped stocking;
- Other shatters his spine and pelvis and skull...

But they BOTH fell, right? BOTH incidents are the same, right?
Can't trust EITHER of them to keep their balance, right?

No: actually, you can't describe them as 'equivalent'...
except in the most shallow and meaningless sense possible.

To take from a recent memestream,
"Do you want Hitlers? 'Cause THIS is how you get Hitlers!"

If OTOH complete economic disruption, religious repression, wars of extermination and a return to a high-value wild-west mentality are important to you, then by all means give Trump every opportunity to lie and DEAL his way into the White House.

(You might not remember when Reagan announced he was running for the Presidency: a reporter asked him what his qualifications for the job might be, and he replied, "I don't know, I've never played a president before." Everybody laughed - but it made me wonder WHO would be writing his scripts...much the same, I wonder now who Trump is making THIS set of deals with. We know from his personal history that there's little chance he's looking out for anyone but TrumpCo.)

I say this applies to the idea that HRC is personally accountable for uncounted deaths: you may or may not allow yourselves to take things like this seriously, but there really is a large armed contingent of the population who see a Trump victory as permission to "clean out" black neighborhoods, immigrant and refugee neighborhoods; they are, frankly about equally likely to take up arms if Trump loses, in vengeance, but the numbers shift lower: either way, we're talking about the worst days of Jim Crow violence and race-driven massacres all over the country if that fuse really gets lit...and we've JUST NOW got to the issue of how many deaths from the swaggering dick-waving we're sure to get from a Trump administration.

That fuse is the thread by which our fate is hanging: that we're genuinely debating the value of lighting that fuse is the worst thing - well, since we began pretending we'd done away with slavery in the first place.

 

[lwien]

My biggest worry right now is Trump becoming Prez.

My second biggest worry, which sometimes overshadows the one above, is what's gonna happen AFTER the election regardless who wins. If Trump wins, the minorities in this country are going to feel VERY threatened, VERY fearful, and VERY angry. If Hillary wins, the uneducated white majority in this country are going to feel VERY threatened, VERY fearful, and VERY angry. My fear is how in the hell is that fear and anger going to play out. People do some crazy shit when they're fearful and angry and the reaction to that fear and anger will be the same, with the same intensity, regardless who wins.

 

[Snappo]

Perhaps the phrase "lesser of two evils" confounds some into thinking this is a comparitive bundle being weighed on the same scale - failing to grasp that it is not, necessarily. How about one is Liederkrantz cheese and the other is Swiss... each is featured on a separate menu and at a different restaurant... pick your cheese and restaurant of choice, if you feel you must... and hold your nose if you feel you must.