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2016 American Presidential Campaign

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trump claiming obama founded isis and now this - just makes the republicans look pretty silly.

from here: "If it’s Monday, it’s another attempt by the Donald Trump campaign to turn a new page after a week wasted by self-inflicted wounds." :)

alasdair
 
Narcissists do what they do. Even they do not know why!

If Trump throws this one chance at greatness away, do all Droppersnecks become irrelevant?

One can only hope.

:)


The entire system looks silly at this point.
 
Fact-checking Donald Trump’s ‘major’ speech on the Islamic State

Donald Trump traveled to Youngstown, Ohio, to deliver what was billed as a “major” speech on how to deal with the threat posed by the Islamic State terrorist group, a.k.a. ISIS. For reasons known only to Trump, he continued to repeat false statements that have been repeatedly debunked in the past. So here’s a roundup of some of the more notable claims made in the speech. As is our practice, we don’t award Pinocchios in roundups, but readers by now should be able to tell the real whoppers.

tl;dr: it's full of lies.

alasdair
 
I wonder how many people on this thread have actually voted for president in the past and plan to vote this time. I would guess many outspoken folks here have not voted.

I consider Trump politically dim, uninformed, and unengaged with politics in general. But he may be a good 'hands off' type manager of his staff if elected. He's a businessman, not a statesman.

I think Hillary is a seasoned politician. Able to lie through her teeth without batting an eye. But I don't think she is inherently evil.

I say get your own house in order before arguing over rich politicians. Funny how my life got better when I stopped complaining about shit and took responsibility for my own actions, made good life choices, and made an effort to improve myself. No president is going to change your life so get off your ass, stop bitching, and do something positive.

I'm tired from a long day and off topic I suppose, but there is still great opportunities here in America and I love my country for the many good things we have going here.
 
I can totally understand not supporting trump, but I cannot understand how someone is able to support Hillary when her 'record' is BY FAR worse.

I also don't get why some people continue to keep calling Trump racist/homophobe. You don't have to agree he's smart or agree with anything he says, but calling him a racist and homophobe is just not accurate

I can't support any of the candidates and will not be voting... I actually can't ever see myself becoming a registered voter in my lifetime tbh
 
- he's been sued (twice actually) by the u.s.justice department for violation of the fair housing act - not renting to black tenants.

- he claimed a judge could not be impartial because he was mexican. suggesting somebody - a federal judge no less - can't do his job because of his race, is racist. the federal judge in question also happens to be a u.s. citizen, born in indiana. but trump didn't let that fact get in the way of his racist comment.

- also this: Ex-executive's Book Lambastes Trump As Racist Boor:
"And isn't it funny. I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. . . . I think the guy is lazy. And it's probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It's not anything they can control."

O'Donnell writes that he advised Trump against publicly espousing such views.

"Yeah, you're right," he quotes Trump as telling him. "If anybody ever heard me say that . . . I'd be in a lot of trouble. But I have to tell you, that's the way I feel."

- the central park five case and the publicity surrounding it

- he refers to black people (and other racial groups) in a monolithic manner: "the muslims... the blacks" (Trump: 'I have a great relationship with the blacks')

but let's ask black people how they feel about donald trump: Donald Trump is getting ZERO percent of the black vote in polls in Pennsylvania and Ohio

draw your own conclusions on that last point.

calling him a racist is perfectly accurate.

alasdair
 
Hilary referring to black youth as super predators and cozying up to Robert Byrd, former grand wizard, is by far more racist than trumps subjective housing lawsuit that was all about propert value and money over race. Trump is hard to be a supporter of, but he may be out last chance to have a person not bought into globalism. I garuantee nationalism never comes up in any of the next elections. The powers that be will make sure of that. Really all it comes down to ARCI, is the scotus. Do you wanna see two or three more Elena Keegan's appointed? What about a couple Sonya aotomayors?
 
- he's been sued (twice actually) by the u.s.justice department for violation of the fair housing act - not renting to black tenants.

- he claimed a judge could not be impartial because he was mexican. suggesting somebody - a federal judge no less - can't do his job because of his race, is racist. the federal judge in question also happens to be a u.s. citizen, born in indiana. but trump didn't let that fact get in the way of his racist comment.

- also this: Ex-executive's Book Lambastes Trump As Racist Boor:

- the central park five case and the publicity surrounding it

- he refers to black people (and other racial groups) in a monolithic manner: "the muslims... the blacks" (Trump: 'I have a great relationship with the blacks')

but let's ask black people how they feel about donald trump: Donald Trump is getting ZERO percent of the black vote in polls in Pennsylvania and Ohio

draw your own conclusions on that last point.

calling him a racist is perfectly accurate.

alasdair

The quote you posted was heresy...

As far as I see it he refused to be shook down from al sharpton-like race baiting shake down artists.

Obviously someone made it their crusade to get the DOJ involved because Trump didn't have enough black tenets to whomsoever's liking.

If he was personally guilty of systematic racism he would have been found guilty of conspiracy what about a person's presumed innocence alasdair?

His grandchildren are half Jewish and observe Jewish holidays, I'm so sick of people saying Trump doesn't like Jewish people, he is a Manhattan real estate mogul for Christs sake.

Racist and homophobic is not accurate and is defamation.

I honestly wonder sometimes if these ppl that cry racist and homophobe even listen anymore when they go on their triggers...
 
The irreparable damage the progressive left is doing by desensitizing an entire generation to words that used to hold such meaning, is what truly disturbs me. The fact that when you read something you have to distinguish whether or not it is politicized rhetoric touted as racism or actual racism is just a sad state of affairs. Same goes for homophobia and Islamophobia..
 
Really great articles on Clinton corruption...

[h=1]From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer[/h] The FBI turns materials from its investigation into Clinton’s emails over to congressional investigators.


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Esam Al-Fetori / Brian Snyder / Gary Cameron / Jim Young / Reuters / Brennan Linsley / Susan Walsh / AP / razihusin / Shutterstock Zak Bickel / The Atlantic


Subscribe to The Atlantic’s Politics & Policy Daily, a roundup of ideas and events in American politics.


Old scandals never die, and it’s unclear whether they ever fade away, either. At this point, most (though certainly not all) of Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails have been released, and the Department of Justice has announced it won’t press charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information.
But House Republicans are looking for a way to resuscitate the legal case against the Democratic nominee—and, in turn, to make it into a bigger political problem for her. There were two developments on that front on Tuesday.


Fox News reported
that in July, the Republican chairmen of the Oversight and Judiciary Committees sent a letter to the acting U.S. attorney for D.C., arguing that Clinton committed perjury during an October 2015 hearing, during which she told members that “there was nothing marked classified on my emails, either sent or received.” When FBI Director James Comey announced the results of his findings, however, he said that a few emails were marked (c) for “confidential,” which is the lowest level of classification. (Overall, Comey said that Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless” in their handling of emails, but did nothing that rose to the level where he would recommend prosecution or expect to win a case.)

The chairmen also take issue with Clinton’s statement that her staff “went through every single email,” noting that Comey said reviewers had used search terms and reviewed headers to sort Clinton’s correspondence. Fox reported that Justice had confirmed receiving the letter but had been noncommittal about further steps.


Read more at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/tracking-the-clinton-controversies-from-whitewater-to-benghazi/396182/




 
the republicans are desperate because their candidate is awful and his campaign is in disarray. so what to do? try to deflect attention away from him with this kind of political maneuvering.

congressional approval is at about 12%. i wonder why?

:\

alasdair
 
I'm still trying to figure out if #Hillarystool refers to what she must sit/lean on or what Huma has to clean up during Hildo's bathroom breaks. Any help appreciated.
 
the republicans are desperate because their candidate is awful and his campaign is in disarray. so what to do? try to deflect attention away from him with this kind of political maneuvering.

congressional approval is at about 12%. i wonder why?

:\

alasdair


Trump is like those ink bombs they put in money when you rob a bank, nobody wants ink on them come November


landscape-1445544703-fashionweek.jpg

This pimp certainly has no approval issues
 
Islamophobia..

that shouldn't even be a word.

a phobia is a real mental disorder - an irrational fear. not wanting Muslims to bring Muslim culture and Muslim etc., is not a mental disorder. It's quite sane. It's quite rational.
 
The Era of 'The Bitch' Is Coming

A Hillary Clinton presidential victory promises to usher in a new age of public misogyny.


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Andrew Harnik / AP


Get ready for the era of The Bitch.

If Hillary Clinton wins the White House in November, it will be a historic moment, the smashing of the preeminent glass ceiling in American public life. A mere 240 years after this nation’s founding, a woman will occupy its top office. America’s daughters will at last have living, breathing, pantsuit-wearing proof that they too can grow up to be president

A Clinton victory also promises to usher in four-to-eight years of the kind of down-and-dirty public misogyny you might expect from a stag party at Roger Ailes’s house.

You know it’s coming. As hyperpartisanship, grievance politics, and garden-variety rage shift from America’s first black commander-in-chief onto its first female one, so too will the focus of political bigotry. Some of it will be driven by genuine gender grievance or discomfort among some at being led by a woman. But in plenty of other cases, slamming Hillary as a bitch, a c**t (Thanks, Scott Baio!), or a menopausal nut-job (an enduringly popular theme on Twitter) will simply be an easy-peasy shortcut for dismissing her and delegitimizing her presidency.

Either way, it’ll be best to brace for some in-your-face sexist drivel in the coming years. Despite progress in the business world, women as top executives still prompt an extra shot of public scrutiny. (Just ask Marissa Mayer or Sheryl Sandberg or Carly Fiorina.) And just as Barack Obama’s election did not herald a shiny, new post-racial America, Clinton’s would not deliver one of gender equality and enlightenment. So goes progress: Two steps forward, one step back(lash). As the culture changes, people resent that change and start freaking out, others look to exploit their fear, and things can turn really, really nasty on their way to getting better.

Raw political sexism is already strutting its stuff. At Donald Trump’s coming-out party in Cleveland, vendors stood outside the Quicken Loans Arena hawking campaign buttons with whimsical messages, such as “Life’s a Bitch—don’t vote for one” and “KFC Hillary Special: Two fat thighs, two small breasts… left wing.” One popular T-shirt featured a grinning Trump piloting a Harley, grinning as Hillary tumbled off the bike so that you could read the back of Trump’s shirt: “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THE BITCH FELL OFF.”

“People will have no problem vilifying her and saying the most misogynistic things imaginable.”The home-crafted humor was equally tasteful, like the guy in a Hillary mask brandishing a large “Trump vs. Tramp” sign or (my personal favorite) the conventioneer who put together an elaborate “Game of Thrones”-themed ensemble incorporating a life-sized, inflatable Hillary doll—naked, of course.
Social media is awash in references to Clinton as a bitch, among less-flattering terms. “Trump that Bitch!” T-shirts are this season’s must-have couture at Trump rallies. And how about the tween boy yelling, “Take the bitch down!” at a recent Trump event in Virginia? Pure class.
It would be nice to think that this is all merely a heat-of-the-campaign thing—that if Hillary wins in November, the baser attacks will fade, and she will be treated with a smidge more respect. Fat chance. (Just ask Obama how that panned out for him.) “It will probably become even more overt the more power she attains because the more threatening she is,” predicted Farida Jalalzai, a political scientist at Oklahoma State University who focuses on gender. “People will have no problem vilifying her and saying the most misogynistic things imaginable.”
Just as Obama’s presidency helped bring unresolved issues about race into the mainstream political discussion, a Hillary presidency would likely do the same for issues like equal pay and child care. And while such discussions clearly need to be had, they pretty quickly can get heated. “Clinton will be walking a fine line,” said Leonie Huddy, a professor of political science at Stony Brook University. She will be a historic figure who brings a different perspective to the job. “But she is also going to be evaluated through the lens of, Is she just there for women? Maybe she will do something bad to men. There is a latent fear among men that their position in American society will decline further. So while there are a lot of guys on board for equalizing gender power, there are also quite a few who aren’t.”


It does not help that Trump has been ginning up anti-woman sentiment, said Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University. “He has really motivated a lot of his supporters to be concerned and sort of feed on this gender resentment—the idea that women are getting too far, that Hillary is getting too far and is not really qualified, and that the only reason she has been successful is because she is a woman,” said Lawless.
Not that the bulk of the misogyny necessarily will have much to do with gender anxiety. Often, gender (like race) simply becomes a convenient tool to delegitimize a politician, said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It’s an easier attack than actually getting into substance.”
“The broader problem is that it is just a lazy way, an easy way” to dismiss one’s political adversary, asserted Julia Gillard, who got up close and personal with this phenomenon during her time as the first woman prime minister of Australia.

As head of the Australian Labor Party, Gillard served as prime minister from 2010 to 2013. Her tenure was turbulent and notable for what Gillard termed in her exit speech the “gender wars.” What surprised the former PM most about the experience: that the sexist attacks grew worse as her time in office progressed. “I expected the maximum reaction to my being the first woman prime minister to come in the first few months,” she told me. “What I found living through the reality was that the sort of gendered stuff actually grew over time” as she tackled tough policy decisions. (Gillard too was derided as a “menopausal monster.”)

Gillard recalled a particularly galling episode stemming from her 2011 announcement of a controversial carbon tax and trading scheme. Thousands of protesters showed up outside Parliament House toting signs with charming messages like “Ditch the Witch” and “JuLIAR—Bob Browns [sic] Bitch.” (Brown was the leader of the Green Party.) Rather than denouncing or ignoring the slurs, the head of the opposition party, Tony Abbott, gamely used the signs as a backdrop for delivering an anti-tax address. (Later, on the floor of parliament, Gillard delivered a takedown of Abbott’s behavior that became known as “the misogyny speech” and turned her into a global celebrity.)

Gillard detected subtler differences in treatment as well. For instance, she recalled, the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation did a comedy about her prime ministership. “They chose bizarrely, in my view, to finance a comedy where an impersonator played me,” said Gillard, noting that this was something not done for any other prime minister before or since.

“You can have a woman in the highest office in the land, but that office is still a highly masculinized office.” It is, in fact, the subtler, “more insidious gender negativity,” that worries Stony Brook’s Huddy. “There will be concern about outright gender discrimination, but we can call people on that. Then it moves into more subtle realms,” she said. “There are plenty of gender stereotypes still available to say, ‘Maybe a woman isn’t up to this.’” (You know the routine: She’s not a strong leader. Or, She’s too abrasive and aggressive.) These sorts of messages can erode “mainstream” opinion, even those inclined to support gender equality, said Huddy.

“People can play into stereotypes very much associated with gender without saying, ‘Oh, she must be having her period,’” agreed Rutgers’s Dittmar. They raise vague issues about a woman leader’s strength or likability or even age and health, she said, “to tap into those persistent gender stereotypes and norms and raise doubts in the broader public.”

To avoid further pressurizing the situation—and setting Hillary up for massive failure—Clinton supporters (especially women) should try to control their expectations in terms of what the first woman president can accomplish.

“You can have a woman in the highest office in the land, but that office is still a highly masculinized office,” said Dittmar, noting that Americans have typically looked for presidents who are “heroic, singular leaders” and somewhat “paternal.” Thus one challenge for Clinton will be to strike a balance between living up to the existing cultural norms of the institution even as she redefines it.

“Institutions hold on to status quo,” said Dittmar. And changing them can be a heavy lift. “It’s going to take work. Just as it took work for us finally to take seriously a woman candidate,” said Dittmar. “Women have been running for president for close to 150 years. And it’s taken all of those women to sort of chip away at expectations that the presidency is only a male bastion of power.”

“Sexism is more socially acceptable than racism.” People should also take care to avoid (even subconsciously) seeing Hillary’s inevitable stumbles and failures through the prism of gender. “The expectations placed on her shoulders in regards to gender are huge,” said Oklahoma State’s Jalalzai. Because of the polarized nature of U.S. politics, she said, “It’s hard for any president to get anything done.” But because Clinton would be the first woman to hold the post, people might see her performance as somehow tied to being a woman. “We don’t do that for men. We don’t ever say George W. Bush was a bad president because he was a guy,” said Jalalzai. “We don’t question men as political leaders because of their maleness.” But women are still to some degree “outsiders” in this role, noted Jalalzai. “Even if Hillary Clinton wins the ultimate prize, she is going to be viewed through that lens as a first and a novelty.” And if her presidency turns out to be unsuccessful? “The parties are not going to nominate another women [for a while],” said Jalalzai.

Worse still, said Huddy, women tend to take on the failures of a woman leader. “If she fails, a lot of women are going to feel that it is a personal failure.”

One of the most annoying parts of all this? It can be tough for women leaders to push back against sexist attacks without inviting even more sneering. “You can try to call people out on it, but you have to be a little bit careful,” said Huddy. “People will say you’re playing the woman card, that you’re a crybaby, that you can’t handle it.”

“Sexism is more socially acceptable than racism,” said Jennifer Lawless, of American University. Multiple women, in fact, brought up a couple of examples from Hillary’s 2008 campaign. One was the low-grade sexism of some in the mainstream media. (MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is still considered the worst offender, with his “Nurse Ratched” crack and gripes about Hillary’s “cackle.”) Then there were the two hecklers at a New Hampshire rally who waved signs and chanted, “Iron my shirt!” Clinton laughed it off, and the incident was reported mostly as dumbass 20-something guys acting like dumbass 20-something guys. But if someone had yelled an equivalently demeaning remark at Obama—like, say, “Shine my shoes!”—the public response likely would have been very different.

Gillard agrees. “In some ways, I think we put a burden on women in the face of gender attacks that doesn’t necessarily play out in the face of racist attacks,” she told me. Take the episode with the anti-tax protesters, she said: “I have made the point since that, if Australia had an aboriginal Australian prime minister and the opposition leader went and stood in front of signs that said, ‘Sack the black,’ or inserted any of the dreadful words we have for aboriginal Australians, it would have been a career-ending moment. And if an indigenous Australian prime minister had complained about that, I don’t think people would say, ‘Oh, he is just playing the victim.’ But that is what gets said about women who complain about sexism. There is an added kind of layer that women leaders are just supposed to take it on the chin and not complain about it.”
This is why it is so important for the public to speak out—loudly—against this kind of nonsense in all its forms, said Gillard. Appalled by what she has seen so far in the U.S. presidential election, in July the former prime minister wrote an op-ed in The New York Times calling for the “naming and shaming of any sexism” in the race. Vigorous public debate about a president’s decisions is “100 percent legitimate,” Gillard told me. But “as soon as the gendered bit starts raising its head, men and women of good will should be saying: ‘No. Stop that.’”

Depressed yet? Don’t be. As unpleasant as it may be, this type of backlash pretty much has to happen for society to move forward.

As with any barrier breaking, things are always brutal for the first person to challenge a norm, but then it gets progressively easier. “The amplitude of this style of reaction goes down every time,” observed Gillard.
Thus, there have to be people like Gillard and Obama and Clinton who are willing to take the hits. (God knows, Hillary knows how to take some hits!) “This kind of trail blazing opens the way for others,” said Huddy. “Someone has to do it.”

Said Gillard, “We do need to go through that so we can hit a time where it’s so normal for a woman to be president—or for an African American or a Hispanic or a Native American to be president—in the United States that people don’t really comment on it.”

Until then, forward-thinking women might want to start working to reclaim the word “bitch” from the haters ASAP. Seriously. Bitches of the world unite! Indeed, if Hillary wins in November, I am immediately ordering a dozen hoodies emblazoned with the theme of that brilliant Saturday Night Live riff Tina Fey did about Clinton’s 2008 run: “Bitches get stuff done!” All my girlfriends should expect one for Christmas.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/the-era-of-the-bitch-is-coming/496154/
 
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