The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

Joel W.

Deplorable Basement Dweller
Accessory Maker
EDIT: It's very surreal to me that the guy who spends all his time in this thread obsessing about Clinton's e-mails while ignoring everything wrong with Trump (the candidate who is the climate-change denier, in fact) is the one who thinks he is playing the reasonable role.

Fuck trump. He is not worth my time here...

This is election fraud by my party.

Let's just ignore it..
 
Joel W.,

Baron23

Well-Known Member
Those who are able to get more out of our society should likewise be expected to put more back in.

Well Kim, that's one POV of the issue. I read it as a slight variation on the dichotomy of "to each by their need" vs "to each by their effort or contribution". The former is really the basis of socialism while the later is the mantra of capitalists.

But they are, nonetheless, are two valid and opposing views on this that are not easily reconciled.

While an individual should get to benefit from their work and ingenuity; they had help. They didn't succeed in a vacuum by themselves.

Really? I personally know some very successful and completely self-made people who would object strenuously to this statement. In my own family, on my father's side his father died when very young and my Father sold magazines to pay for college while my grandmother worked as counter help in a flower shop. On my mother's side, my grandparents were babushka wearing Ellis Island immigrants (well, my grandmother was). Of the five kids (my aunts and uncles), four pooled together to get one through college. As far as I am aware nobody on either side of the family received any social program benefits. I think they too would object strenuously to your statement.

As for me, I joined the ROTC at a time in our history when people spit on folks in uniform (first hand experience talking here). I did so because I could get a scholarship and stipend for my service in the USAF as well as work as a dish washer at the local airport coffee shop. I would not term my career since then as "Yugely" successful (nod to my friend, @Silat :wave:) but I have done well enough for myself and neither I nor anybody in my family has received or accepted any Federal social program benefits.

It would be so nice if it was all as simple as those wearing the black hats against those who are the good guys in the white hats. But that's only in the movies.

Now, there may be some who read this and draw the conclusion that I am a Trump supporter. That is simply not true.

But I try to be thoughtful on these subjects and not be an ideologue.

Best to you and yours.

Cheers
 
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ReggieB

Well-Known Member
Fuck trump. He is not worth my time here...

This is election fraud by my party.

Let's just ignore it..
As you have some attention, what would you like to see done about it? I can see you seeing my comments as an attack, I would like to see you expand your idea and come up with something a bit more cogent than 'burn it all down'. For a start it's hard to tell what 'it' is, do you mean the political system? Or Congress? or the Democratic party? What is your solution for change?
 

His_Highness

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Does anyone still read the things Joel W. posts?

I read everything in this thread except the really long articles that are cut and pasted from non-impartial sources and even those I kind of skim.

Edit: When I see what looks like a personal debate that is getting heated.....like @KimDracula and @Joel W. I read those twice but typically steer clear of hitting the 'like' button :brow:
 

Joel W.

Deplorable Basement Dweller
Accessory Maker
Let's start by admitting there is a problem and try to work it through ok?

You go first.

How bad is it? (We don't know yet but it looks bad)

What to do? ( Open eyes and look., find out, investigate, get to the bottom)

Go from there.

I am done with you here Reggie.
 
Joel W.,

ReggieB

Well-Known Member
Joel, I'm trying to but you just keep saying research, or burn it, or getting angry, those kinds of statements aren't going to get anyone to do much, especially when the investigation stage is pretty much a done deal, you've established your facts, now what's to be done about it? A rhetorical question, you're done with me, I get it...
 
ReggieB,

Joel W.

Deplorable Basement Dweller
Accessory Maker
I have asked you questions and you ignore me.. then you ask a half dozen more questions . It's cute.

I have answered you Reggie. I want the truth, then I want due justice.

I think the problem is so sytemic and it's from the top (Obama) down, all the way to the lowest poll workers.

I really doubt ANYTHING can be done, if no one even really knows.
 
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Joel W.,

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
I don’t really want to spend a lot of time on this, but I guess a presidential candidate thread is not a bad place to talk about tax fairness given that the two candidates have very different views.

Tax fairness is always a difficult subject to find agreement on but I think there are a few principals of tax fairness that nearly anyone can agree on. The first one is a general truism, that you can’t get blood from a stone. There is only so much you can tax poor people, obviously, because they are poor and have limited funds to begin with. When people say that some number like 87% of tax taxes come from the rich, the response has to be well, duh, that’s where the money is.

But fairness implies reasonableness and if we’re going to be reasonable about this subject we have to make a comparison of apples to apples and express how the payment of taxes might actually affect different families. If a millionaire makes $50 million a year, you could charge him 50% of his income in taxes and it would be unlikely to change his life in any way. Maybe he could only buy a 70 foot yacht instead of a 100 foot yacht and still put $20 million in the bank at the end of the year.

If a manual labor has a family of four or five and makes $30,000 a year, a decent wage for a manual laborer, and you charge him 10% a year for taxes, that $3000 that you take may make a difference in whether or not he can clothe his kids or buy them school supplies or feed them every day and night something other than a rice and beans. Fairness implies a great deal more than just comparing raw numbers between people of greatly different economic circumstances.

Let’s also not forget that in (many of) our lifetime(s) maximum tax rates have been as high as 90% plus. They were over 70% as recently as the beginning of Reagan’s term as president, so it isn’t even that long ago when rates were dramatically higher. Too high, even I think, but hardly comparable to current rates that still leave rich folks crying in their
Givenchy scarves and Mercedes SUVs.

Let’s also keep in mind that the majority of the economic benefits our economy has produced over the last couple decades have gone almost exclusively to the very rich. Wages have not significantly grown, but rich people have gotten richer and the middle and working classes have suffered the burdens of the economic downturn. As the economy improves their well-being improves as well, but nowhere near the degree that those at the top have felt. Trickle-down economics just does not work and we all know that to be true. Why do we as a nation keep allowing Republicans to lie about the effectiveness of this terrible discredited principle?

I love Hillary’s new name for it, trumped up trickle-down, but a pig is still a pig and all the blessing you give it will never make it kosher. Tax fairness is a concept that the Republican party rejects as fuzzy math. I have always thought that weird given how many of the working class are Republican, but they are great at getting their own constituents to vote against their own interests. As Chris Hays said a few years ago, "the Republican party has become a con, and their base are their marks". I wish they weren't so easily duped...
 
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turk

turk
...hey guys chill..none of the presidential campaign nonsense will halt..stymie...or interrupt the steady movement to a cesspool that this country is heading....you have a "reality show star"..running against someone who could possibly be the most unpopular politician of our time...(with the possible exception of Anthony Weiner).....because the dems don't give a shit about the country..they care about their party...their divine process...their divine rules...fuck them.
.....let's just drop the pretentions..we've seen wages...jobs..benefits reduced in every segment of the American workforce...many do not have pensions...and in 20 years the only folks will have it..will be the ultra-rich...while we're still debating whether the suit..or the dress...was the appropriate attire for the occasion...
 

grokit

well-worn member
Did you guys catch this?
Drumpf was literally flailing (his tiny hands) when he said it.
We all know who he wants to take the guns from.
I remember doing a double-take :doh:


Trump literally says 'we have to take their guns' and the Second Amendment advocates are silent

What. The. Hell.

Gun nuts, now is your time. After eight years of kicking and screaming that President Obama was going to take away your guns, Trump literally just said “we have to take their guns!” while discussing his plan to implement a nationwide stop-and-frisk program that has already been ruled unconstitutional. Watch:

Why so silent now, NRA?

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016...and-the-Second-Amendment-advocates-are-silent

:myday:
 

Baron23

Well-Known Member
Tax fairness is always a difficult subject to find agreement on

I agree with this completely. I do not agree with much else you stated, but on this we are in violent agreement.

When people say that some number like 87% of tax taxes come from the rich, the response has to be well, duh, that’s where the money is.

Nope, never said "rich". That's a divisive term used by idoeloges in my view. What I quoted was that 87% of taxes are paid by the top 20% of earners. The top 20% goes from about $68k/year on up. I have seen that figure quoted as high as $84K/year. Not rich in many areas of the country. Definitely not rich in the Washington, DC metro area that I live in.

But fairness implies reasonableness

Sorry, not in the English I speak. When you introduce "reasonableness" you are introducing subjective opinion and its very clear that people on different sides of this issue have very different ideas of what is reasonable. From your acclaim for HRC's "Trumped up trickle down" I can guess as to your view of reasonable, but there is no objective measure of reason that makes this view universal.

As a matter of fact, in the next section of your post where you seem to define reasonable as being based on impact to the tax payer, I would guess that you support "to each by their need". The basic tenet of socialism. Many would disagree with you and cite the success of America being historically based on its capitalistic system of allocating resources.

So, in my view we don't have either pure socialism nor pure capitalism and I personally think that is proper. I have both a heart and a head, hence neither pure ideology appeals to me as a practical policy.

The argument is where is the proper place to draw the line between allowing people the reward of their effort versus how much wealth to redistribute as a social and humanitarian imperative.

That's really what most people disagree about.
 

ReggieB

Well-Known Member
Did you guys catch this?
Drumpf was literally flailing (his tiny hands) when he said it.
We all know who he wants to take the guns from.
I remember doing a double-take :doh:


Trump literally says 'we have to take their guns' and the Second Amendment advocates are silent

What. The. Hell.

Gun nuts, now is your time. After eight years of kicking and screaming that President Obama was going to take away your guns, Trump literally just said “we have to take their guns!” while discussing his plan to implement a nationwide stop-and-frisk program that has already been ruled unconstitutional. Watch:

Why so silent now, NRA?

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016...and-the-Second-Amendment-advocates-are-silent

:myday:
Yup, this has been festering for days, since his 'drugs' comment over the weekend about protesters.
 

His_Highness

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Did you guys catch this?
Drumpf was literally flailing (his tiny hands) when he said it.
We all know who he wants to take the guns from.
I remember doing a double-take :doh:


Trump literally says 'we have to take their guns' and the Second Amendment advocates are silent

What. The. Hell.

Gun nuts, now is your time. After eight years of kicking and screaming that President Obama was going to take away your guns, Trump literally just said “we have to take their guns!” while discussing his plan to implement a nationwide stop-and-frisk program that has already been ruled unconstitutional. Watch:

Why so silent now, NRA?

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016...and-the-Second-Amendment-advocates-are-silent

:myday:

My guess is that 'they' don't think Trump is talking about 'them'. The 'they/them' are the folks who have come by their guns legally for collecting, hunting and sport. 'They' aren't worried because Trump was talking about those who have guns illegally and are using them, or will use them for criminal activities.

If HRC had said the same thing I'm sure 'they' would have thought it was a ploy to opening a door to confiscation from 'them'.
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
How Clinton Got Inside Trump’s Head
by Nancy LeTourneau
September 27, 2016 3:12 PM

In writing about last night’s debate, Josh Marshall made an important point about Hillary Clinton’s performance.

As I said last night, her answer-ending asides and bemused taunts had him getting angry within 15 minutes. By 30 minutes in, she was dominating the debate. Sure, he attacked here and there. He was louder. He interrupted more. But he was always responding to her. She had him on the ropes. She was setting the tone and the terms. And the fact that he could feel it made him angrier, more impulsive and more unable to sustain any kind of consistent message that would help him in political terms.

This is getting lost with some people. Sure he was bad. But she was at least as good as he was bad. And the quality of her performance made him much worse.​

This was no accident. A couple of days ago, Abby Phillips wrote that Clinton’s debate prep wasn’t simply focused on ensuring that she had facts and information at her fingertips.

As Hillary Clinton prepared to face the most unconventional candidate of her political career on the debate stage Monday night, her campaign aides engaged in a deep study of Donald Trump’s personality to glean insights into how he might act, according to several people familiar with the process.​

Phillips’ sources weren’t willing to discuss the particulars about their study of Trump’s personality, but it is obvious from the outcome that they pretty well nailed it. On the second question Clinton faced, she included in her remarks something that was guaranteed to set him off.

We just have a different view about what’s best for growing the economy, how we make investments that will actually produce jobs and rising incomes.

I think we come at it from somewhat different perspectives. I understand that. You know, Donald was very fortunate in his life, and that’s all to his benefit. He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father, and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people, the better off we’ll be and that everything will work out from there.​

The point of that wasn’t to engage Trump in a discussion about trickle-down economics. It was to get under his skin about having inherited his wealth rather than being the brilliant business man who earned it. And it worked! Clinton subtly did that kind of thing over and over again. That’s how she had him on the ropes all night.

I’ll go back to something Marshall wrote a few weeks ago to explain what it is the Clinton campaign had learned about Trump’s personality.

Trump lives in a psychic economy of aggression and domination. There are dominators and the dominated. No in between. Every attack he receives, every ego injury must be answered, rebalanced with some new aggression to reassert dominance. These efforts are often wildly self-destructive.​

Throughout the 90 minute debate, Trump’s habit of interrupting and flailing around were his attempt to regain dominance aggressively. He can’t stop himself.

The salient fact about Trump isn’t his cruelty or penchant for aggression and violence. It’s his inability to control urges and drives most people gain control over very early in life…What is true with Trump is what every critic has been saying for a year: the most obvious and contrived provocation can goad this thin skinned charlatan into a wild outburst. He’s a seventy year old man with children and grandchildren and he has no self-control.​

Think about that for a moment:

Jon Favreau @jonfavs

Trump knew that all he had to do was hold it together for 90 minutes last night.

And he couldn't do it - because he has no self-control.

8:54 AM - 27 Sep 2016

This guy, who wants to be President of the United States, can’t even hold it together for 90 minutes in a debate. It’s not that he has so little self control. It’s that he has none. Do you imagine for a minute that Hillary Clinton is the only one who can figure that out and use it against him? That is just one more yuuuggge reason why he is unfit for the office he seeks.
 

CarolKing

Singer of songs and a vapor connoisseur
If this thread is bothering some of you walk away. Please try not to get so personal.. You don't have to agree with folks. Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that. This thread isn't going to do anything to change the outcome of this election.

I hope we can keep this thread open until the election is over, it would be nice since we've come this far.
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Trump Seems Unconcerned About Gender Gap
by Martin Longman
September 27, 2016 4:03 PM

I’m not a woman but I do know a few, and they seem to have a common experience with being interrupted by men, particularly in business settings, that they have no reticence about sharing with me. So, watching Trump talk over Clinton repeatedly last night probably triggered a lot of people and made them vastly less inclined to like him.


If that wasn’t bad enough, Trump is still insulting a former Miss Universe, accusing her on Fox & Friends this morning of gaining fifty pounds and being the worst winner in the history of the pageant. Considering that Machado went on to have a very successful career in soap operas and appeared in Playboy ten years after she supposedly “plumped up,” I have a hard time believing Trump is even telling the truth about the extent of her weight gain (not that being truthful would help in this case).

Here’s his explanation from his book Art of the Comeback.

machadocomeback.jpg

And here’s how she looked in 2006.

Alicia-Machado.jpg

I don’t know a lot of women who will look at her and think that she’s a fat pig or an “eating machine.” And I don’t know any women who appreciate being judged that way.

Then we have one of Trump’s most famous surrogates, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, saying that Hillary Clinton is too stupid to be president because she didn’t know that her husband had some kind of stealthy relationship with Monica Lewinsky. That’s on top of Trump ending the debate last night by making it clear that he could have attacked Hillary for the infidelities of her husband but didn’t do it because it would have been “inappropriate” and “not nice.” He explained in the post-debate spin room that “Everything I wanted to say I got out except for the transgressions of Bill” and “I’m very happy that I was able to hold back on the indiscretions with respect to Bill Clinton because I have a lot of respect for Chelsea Clinton and I just didn’t want to say what I was going to say.”

I don’t know any women who appreciate being blamed or shamed for the bad behavior of their husbands or boyfriends.

I also don’t know any women who enjoy having men talk about them the way that Trump has talked about Rosie O’Donnell. Here’s a list of insults Trump has thrown at O’Donnell over the last decade: “Obnoxious”, “Dumb”, “Loser”, “Disgusting”, “Slob”, “Talks like a truck driver”, “Weak”, “Fat, ugly face”, “Unattractive”, “Why would [her partner] stay with her if she had the choice?”

But in the last night’s debate, Trump went after her again.

“Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials,” the former reality TV personality said toward the end of the televised debate with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

“Some of it said in entertainment, some of it said by somebody who’s been very vicious to me, Rosie O’Donnell,” he added. “I said very tough things to her and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her.”​

This is, in my opinion, not the way to close the gender gap.
 

CarolKing

Singer of songs and a vapor connoisseur
Alicia Machado former Miss Universe has a powerful story to tell about Trump. The degrading events that she dealt with The Donald because she gained a few pounds. It was talked about at the debate last night.

She is explaining what happened on CNN. He won't be getting many female votes or Latino ones. She will be campaigning for Hillary.

I vaguely remember that some 20 years ago. At the time I remember how Trump was being disgusting and out of line. She was a young 19 year old and he humiliated her.
 
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cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
If she had been a year or 2 younger he might have gone to jail for the way he treated her. Than again he was a white American millionaire and she was a poor brown girl, so probably not.

As written at least she has a somewhat sordid biography and it is not unreasonable to suggest that the stress and pressure she was under being one of Donald's commodities at such a young age may have contributed to her making bad decisions in life. But as much as I would like to blame Donald there is no way to know how much he might have really contributed to the difficulties she has had in her life. We only know that he abused her for the period of her rein as Miss Universe.
 
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