American Politics: Discuss and Debate (Page 5 of 58)

For all of Trump's faults, how many people around him have actually ended up dead?  Meanwhile, Hillary has many dead bodies in her wake (the most well known probably being her attorney Vince Foster who committed suicide with a magic gun)

I don't think either would use a nuke, but I do believe one of them is a killer.

Yeah, I can see Russia being a problem in a Trump presidency, but I honestly can't tell you the best strategy for them.  If Putin wants to invade other countries, what's the proper reaction?  Isn't "World War 3" the only thing that comes out of that?  Whether Obama, Trump, Hillary, Biden, Pence, Kaine, Ted Cruz, whoever is president? 

I've seen the "buddy-buddy" argument, but what's the endgame for that in people's minds?  Is the US going to go to war with NATO because Russia invaded the Ukraine?  Just stay out of it completely?  Invade Ukraine ourselves to help them hold it?

I'm using a lot of hyperbole, but I'm honestly not sure exactly what a Putin-Trump friendship, if indeed they're friends, would even mean.  Is it better to deal with Putin passively (as people assume Trump would do) or meet him with force (as people assume Hillary would do).  Is that even a question we want to ask?

The Trump fortune was built by Fred Trump in the 1940's and 50's on FHA loan profiteering.  Donald had nothing to do with it.  He has maintained his inheritance, nothing more.

I mean I don't disparage anyone for fearing Trump.  He's unpredictable.  I just don't really fear him.  He's not going to nuke Europe or drop out of NATO or build a wall and a bunch of concentration camps.  He's a buffoon and he's not capable of any of the fascist stuff people think he'll do.  I think he's much more likely to either quit after he wins (because he doesn't want to do the job) or get kicked out of office than do anything nefarious.

Hillary will go to war with Syria.  She will bring in a ton of refugees.  And she's going to have way more leash to do stuff she'll want to do because she has control over every Democratic congressman. 

Just my thoughts.

Yeah but wouldn't that number be offset by #NeverTrump Republicans and #NeverHillaryorTrump Democrats?  Pence would bring in establishment Republicans who don't want Trump, and it'd give an option to #NeverHillary Democrats who were turned off by Trump.

I don't see Trump voters switching to Hillary because Pence is too establishment.  Hillary basically has the patent on establishment.

Yeah, I think if Trump were to drop out now, I think that'd only be good for the Republicans.  Hillary has set up her entire campaign to be anti-Trump, and she has a gigantic lead.  If she suddenly had to start talking policy instead of just fear-mongering about all the things Trump will do, I don't know if she could.

Some hardcore Trump people would stay home, but some would vote Pence because he was Trump's guy.  And, again, you'd get Republicans and Democrats who have someone "reasonable" to vote for against Hillary. 

I'm not saying he'd definitely beat her, but since most of Hillary's arguments are based on Trump, she'd have her work cut out for her to get back on message.

thanks for posting this!

Those low skill factory jobs aren't coming back because they don't exist anymore.  The US does 21% of the world's manufacturing, a number that hasn't moved since the 1960's.  It's less labor intensive than it was, and the labor it does use isn't the kind that those old factory workers do.  It's electronics and chemicals and other highly skilled manufacturing we do now, while most of the grunt work type jobs have been automated.

Hillary Clinton may have alienated some people when she talked about killing the coal industry, but the truth is it's pretty much dead already.  The Dow Jones coal index is down 93% since 2011 and has only one company listed that's not in bankruptcy (Consol).  In a few more years producing coal will be akin to making buggy whips or phonograph needles.

Please watch her answer today at the association of black and latino journalists event about why are people supporting trump even with his offensive remarks.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised and it relates very much to the recent discussion here.

Hillary Clinton would sacrifice her own de grandchild if it would secure her win. Neither she nor her husband have ever cared about anyone but themselves, and neither one has any hint of a moral compass. We have decades of experience with these people and they've never shown a hint of sincerity or humanity. He fakes tears at funerals. She makes up 9/11 stories to gain sympathy.

There is nothing good or sincere about Hillary Clinton. She doesn't even seem to comprehend basic human emotion, and she couldn't care less about the little guy unless there's a camera around.

The problem is, Trump isn't much better. I think that looking for care from either of them will just result in falling for the con.

Well, I'm certainly not advocating continuing to use fossil fuels just for the sake of the miners.  But any level of investment would be better than the nothing that they're getting right now.

The problem is that the way to the presidency for Democrats is minorities and liberal affluent whites.  Poor whites aren't in the equation, and so they're getting ignored.  It's not just that Hillary lost them, but she hasn't even done much to court them back.  She doesn't care, or she knows making them any promises hurts her in other areas.

It's just odd that "stronger together" clearly doesn't mean everyone.

Hillary is pretty bad, very fake, shallow, conniving, you name it.  I think she's harmed her candidacy by NOT acting like Trump.  To be honest, the email thing is a farce.  There's really not much there.  Government employees treat "classified" info like junk all the time.  She used private email, big deal, everybody does.  Like Powell, I wouldn't trust certain communications on government servers.  There's a natural CYA inclination there.  Bengazi is a non-story, sorry but it is.  A bad thing happened, we learned from it, and should have moved on years ago.  Much WORSE has happened and been ignored.  She should have stuck to her story, and when called out, just kept brushing it away like Trump.   That seems to work!

Now Mr. Trump.....

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/ … index.html

And there we have it, Trump has basically adopted Obama's immigration stance.  Besides his hilarious rebuke of Free Trade, The Donald's main line of demarcation was immigration.  Nope.  Gone. 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/ … index.html

In another hilarious Trump moment, his "medical letter" released last year is now getting further scrutiny.  Sounds like Donny himself put it out there as good PR, and slapped his doc's letterhead on there.  MD's have scrutinized it with quite a bit of shock as well as jest. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/po … .html?_r=0

Of course my favorite Trump turn is the ouster of his campaign director Paul Mannafort, primarily for losing, but also for his nefarious ties to Ukrainian quasi-despot Viktor Yanukovych!  The media really hasn't covered this properly, although the NY Times spent 3 months investigating and began to do so.  As many have suspected or known, Trump's business is in debt, a lot of it.  Then again, he "loves debt" after all, and has made a career out of running it up, and running away when the bills come due.  More importantly, Trump owes a LOT of money to both China as well as Russia banks. 

Why?  Many companies do, but the main reason is that Mr. Trump's credit is PUTRID.  Has been for years, thanks again to skipping the check time after time.  He's been forced to go over seas to get loans to build his golf courses and buildings and such.  As a business man, that's fine.  As President?  That's plain scary.  Here's a man who owes money to China and Russia, the other 2 superpowers, and as Prez will have the ability to influence US monetary policy greatly in his favor!  This stands to save him potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, while doing the US economy much harm.  Sure, the Clintons are pay to play, we all know that, but what they've rung out of "donors" is chump change compared to what Trump is capable of.  For the first time, I can actually SEE a valid reason for Trump to WANT to be the President, and it's a bad one.

PS: Oh, there's also rumors he and (finally outed) dirtbag Roger Ailes win or lose, will start a new network that presumably would be even more nutty than Fox News!

It's bad, just all bad.

The problem is that we spent so much time focusing on Trump, someone who's not going to win, than about Hillary.  She's already backing off promises she made a couple months ago, hiring a transition chair that is pro-TPP and a fracking defender.  Usually candidates wait until they're in office to start breaking campaign promises, but this election was over long-enough-ago that she's already basically doing whatever she wants.

We'll be in Syria in her first 100 days.
Fracking will be expanded extensively around the world.
TPP is here to stay.
Any progressive idea that Hillary agreed to appease Bernie folks will be ignored or worked against.

And we're ignoring all of it because Donald Trump says stupid stuff.

Hashtag America.

If Hillary were running against any politician, this email story would've been the end of her campaign.  Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Ryan....name the guy, they'd beat her.  But no one cares about the emails because she's running against someone who's universally seen as worse.

Trump is getting one percent of the African American vote.  This race should be mathematically impossible due to that fact alone.  But it isn't...because she's a really terrible candidate.

So the next president of the United States didn't know that (C) in emails stood for classified at the confidential level.

C is for cookie.  That's good enough for her.

We are electing someone with the brain of cookie monster.  Sigh.

Well, she said she was never trained on it.  But handling classified information is a decent part of the Secretary of State, right?  Wouldn't she ask questions?  What keeps coming back to me is that this wasn't a job she ever took seriously.  She didn't want to handle matters of state - she wanted the job to put on her presidential resume and nothing more.  It's why she accomplished practically nothing and even members of the State department can't name a single thing she accomplished that was noteworthy.  It was a paperboy job your kid gets so he can buy a bike and then quits as soon as it's bought.

I go back and forth with her in my mind as either a cunning, devious, power-hungry monster.  And then when I read the FBI report (and I read the whole thing), she just comes off as an idiot.  She just sorta floated around in the State department not really understanding what was happening and not really understanding what she was supposed to do.  I can see her setting up this private server to do all kind of backroom deals, and I can also see her spending all this money because someone tricked her into doing it.

It's mutually exclusive, I know.  And I struggle with which side she actually falls on.  Is she a liar or does she actually not know the answer to any of these questions?

The BleachBit stuff in the FBI reports is the stuff I found the most damning because I'd only heard Republicans saying it before that.  I even searched on Snopes to verify if it was a real thing that happened.  But....yep, she paid a ton of money to permanently delete emails and had staffers smash her Blackberrys with a hammer.  That sounds like the work of a drug dealer flushing all his drugs down the toilet.

I still can't believe she's running against Donald Trump.  This should be the easiest election the Republicans ever had, and they've completely blown it.

That's exactly right.  What's crazy is that the Republicans are already making moves to "rig" their next election, and the Democrats don't really have their next guy lined up.  The Democratic Party has spent the last 16 years trying to set up Hillary Clinton for a run that I'm guessing we'll have a wide-open field next time.  Bernie will probably be dead and Tim Kaine would be 66 this time around if Hillary wins two terms.

I think Jeb would beat her.  He's not great, but Hillary wouldn't have much to pin on him.  She's running a 100% negative campaign because there isn't much positive to say about her.  Christie would have a similar problem to Trump.

Don't you destroy anything with a hard drive in it when you are done with it? Personally, I always use a drill first and then a hammer before I recycle it. And the only thing I am concerned about is getting my identity stolen...

Again I work in the industry and we only "destroy" drives that have personal financials on them like credit card numbers.  Tech has changed though and we don't even keep the numbers anymore.  Hillary could have easily deleted 15,000 spam messages, but Trump claims these are valid. 

Anywho, Gary Johnson showed why it is that 3rd parties continue to fall flat on their face.  He had next to no knowledge or even opinion on the mess in Syria.  The reason is that his platform, like that of many 3rd parties, is seemingly zoomed in on specific issues, and blank on everything else.  Can't do that. 

Meanwhile Trump continues to praise Russian President Putin, an enemy of democracy in Russia and abroad, for how in control of his country he is.  Sorry Don, that's called a dictatorship.  You've got almost anything related to Clinton being hacked by Russian sources, and released on the web by Wikileaks.  Assange has made it clear he's vehemently anti-Clinton.  Again, you've got a candidate sees nothing wrong with the methods of the Kremlin, one who may well OWE millions of dollars to Russian banks.  Difficult to know, because he refuses to release his taxes.

The Johnson stuff, to me, is irrelevant.  He's not a serious contender for the President, and as a 3rd party candidate, his only role in this election is to push his party's agenda.  And his party's agenda is mostly domestic.  So it honestly doesn't matter what his thoughts are on Syria because, in the long run, it doesn't matter.

As a former journalist, I was also a bit disturbed by the way that question was phrased.  “What would you do if you were elected about Aleppo?", to me, is a question designed specifically to get the response that Johnson gave.  Because the question had little to do with the city of Aleppo and more to do with the Syrian refugee issue as a whole.  It would be like asking "What are you going to do about Raqqa?" when you're actually asking what you would do about ISIS.

Regarding Putin, Trump is an idiot, but Putin isn't going away.  So what should be the US' policy on Russia?  If you go to Hillary's website, there's a ton of issues she talks about.  Nothing in there about Russia.  So while they're saying Trump would let Putin bully him, what's the alternative?  World War 3?  A second cold war?

There's thoughts that Putin in supporting Trump because he's worried about Hillary.  She's a known war hawk who's already responsible for the death of one of Putin's allies (Gaddafi), and who's openly wanted to get rid of another of one his allies (Assad).  And while "a bad person with bad friends is afraid of her!" sounds like a great reason to vote for Hillary, do we really want a scared Vladamir Putin?  Is that really in the best interests of anyone in the world?

Again, Trump is an idiot, but it's another instance where I'm not sure Hillary really looks much better.  It's just a terrible election with two terrible candidates.

I think it is very relevant as well. I also think that the excuses are a joke. They say that this was diagnosed on Friday, yet it is something that we have been talking about for weeks. Her needing to be held up is nothing new.

If there is nothing wrong with her, they should stop lying about it and hiding whatever the truth is. Obviously there is something that they don't want people knowing about, and it is serious enough that they can't hide it.

It's like Obama's birth certificate, the people who don't trust Clinton won't start no matter how much documentation she puts out there.

Yeah but saying "she won't ever please anyone" doesn't mean she shouldn't try to please as many people as possible.  She's going to be the president of the United States - not the president of people that like her.  And even if people are going to hate her, she needs to be presidential.  She can't be insulting millions of Americans when she's trying to insult Donald Trump.

And the fact remains that she's almost 70 and she's been showing signs of illness.  And if she's truly going to be president for 4-8 years, we need to know if she's going to survive 4-8 years.  If she's getting exhausted by the campaign, won't being president be 10 times worse? 

And Hillary was the *youngest* of the final three people for President.  It makes you wonder if that job needs an age maximum.

Term limits is my number one pet peeve.  I think the president should be one, six-year term.  It allows him/her to get work done without ever having to worry about being elected.

If it were me, I'd also make congressional jobs one term.  No re-elections for any job.  If someone is great at something, they can then move and do something else.  Run for the House, do that job for 2-6 years, and then run for the senate for 4-8 years.  Then you can run for president.  Or mayor of some town.  Or governor of some state.  It doesn't matter.

You can be a career politician.  Lots of places need leadership.  But you cannot be a career congressman, and you shouldn't waste time in office running for office.

(If it were me, I'd also disallow concurrent running - so you have to wait an election cycle before running again.  Go work in the community.  Cleanse yourself from political slime.  Then come back if you still want to help people).

Well, I've also maintained that the president should not get a salary.  Free room and board, free transportation, and you're set for life once you leave office in a hundred different ways.  Why are we paying them?

Well, I can't really think of what they need to spend money on while they're in office.  I can't imagine it's much.

He'd get no argument from me.