Trump

[pogo]

What is this thinking based on though? Where does the belief that more will switch to Hillary then will switch to Sanders come from ?

It’s just that she is seen as establishment, someone Republicans at least understand and can work with. Some have already said they will vote for her not Trump, even some quite senior Republicans. I just don’t think a lot of that will transfer over to Sanders. Remember Bloomberg, ex Mayor of NY? He a few months ago threatened to run as an independent if both Sanders and Trump were nominated. The implication being he, a Republican, would be happy with Clinton.

As for policies they do agree on many more things than they disagree. Increasing the minimum wage, raising taxes for high earners, improving healthcare by building on Obamacare. Sanders is far more revolutionary in his approach, Clinton more pragmatic. But realistically if Sanders were elected what he might achieve is far closer to Clinton’s platform than his own. So, given the choice between Clinton and Trump, Sanders supporters have only one option, the one who would enact most of what Sanders would be able to.

Plus if America is not ready for Sanders now, they might be in the future, but only if the groundwork is laid by previous Democrats. Nominating liberal justices to the Supreme Court, fixing Obamacare’s flaws, making more progress on discrimination, inequality, economic justice. If e.g. Clinton can do that and people can see it working then in four years they might be ready to elect someone much more radical. The Demographics are all on the Democrat side while the Republicans might take a long time to recover from their self-inflicted troubles.

[gumboot]

Flanked by anti-establishment crazies, it is at least good to see a tone of cooperation and common ground between Republicans and Democrats. They don't normally talk like that.

[pogo]

Worth highlighting one thing that from my last post that is more important than almost anything else. The President gets to choose Supreme Court justices. This is vitally important. The reason gay marriage is legal in the US? The Supreme Court decided it, based on the constitution. That means it cannot be overridden, except by a constitutional amendment or the court reversing itself in future, both of which are very unlikely to happen. Other things they have found in the constitution include a right to an abortion and a right to unlimited election spending. Other times they rewrite or even strike down laws, such as the Defense of Marriage Act.

The court is in a very odd state at the moment. It has been been conservative, i.e. Republican, for a very long time, with a 5:4 majority of judges appointed by Republicans. This was odd, given that four of the last six presidential terms were Democrat. But then they do serve a very long time, until death or very late retirement. The longest serving was appointed by Reagan.

Normally they try and put off retiring (or dying) until there is a president they agree with in office. Except Antonin Scalia broke with that tradition by dying suddenly in February. And he was a conservative. Now the court is split 4:4. Any time they decide a case that way it is as if they never decided on it, so no precedent is established. They need a replacement. Whoever gets to make that replacement, whether Obama, Clinton or Trump, gets to set the balance of the court for probably the next four years and possibly much longer.

[merman]

Well, apparently I have an answer to the question I asked earlier; apparently Mr. Trump only fears most Muslims:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36256087

So Mr-tell-it-like-it-is tries to undo what his undiplomatic mouth said, and he still gets it wrong.
He's almost as good a diplomat as Cameron...

[pogo]

Scourge, not saviour

Another reminder that his main supposed strength as a candidate, his business record, is really a weakness.

“HE ALMOST bankrupted us,” says the retired owner of a construction business on the east coast. Thirty years ago he ran a small business with around ten employees, which was hired by Donald Trump to work on an 11-month project at his Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. It was the biggest contract, by far, that the business had ever had. The builders worked as they had never done before to complete the job on time. As soon as they finished, Mr Trump stopped paying. He owed around $200,000 of a bill totalling about $700,000, a huge sum for a small company.

What followed was a nearly year-long battle to extract the money it was owed. Lawyers advised the company that Mr Trump would procrastinate with expensive litigation, as he had done many times before. Other contractors relayed their experiences with the “Trump discount”, the billionaire’s habit of rarely paying the full sum he owed. As the “Trump discount” made the rounds in the industry, wily contractors quoted a higher price at the outset to avoid suffering any losses.

Expect much more of this as news organisations dig into his record. There’s no shortage of people who have suffered at his hands. Contractors. Customers who were conned out of their money. Employees who were rendered jobless by his repeated bankruptcies. Governments and taxpayers who were bilked out of subsidies, grants and other benefits which ended up wasted on Trump’s ventures.

[Mayhem]

Ah, the Jack Tramiel way of doing business...

[Little stoned kiwi]

It could be a grand way to get his policies done. Pick up truck load of day labourers, take them to the border to build the wall, then leave them there and don't pay them.
It gets the wall built at the expense of the Mexicans and gets rid of illegal immigrants while doing it.

[pogo]

Another advert. This is similar to one from a few weeks back, but instead of women saying his words they use actual recordings. If anything even more effective, you get a better sense of how really fucked up his attitude to women is.


edit: from the same people another advert on the same theme. Not as effective but it does get in there the key recent policy statement that he would want women punished for having an abortion.

[merman]

The Fox journalist Trump tangled with in the live debates interviewed him again.

She pointed out some of the garbage he retweets, and some people are reading his "excuse me" as an apology. Nope, not buying it.

And not buying his offer to talk with Kim Jong-Un.

[KlaxonCow]

some people are reading his "excuse me" as an apology.

I read it as a really, really awkward non-apology.

His ego just couldn't bring him to say the actual word "sorry", and the closest he could manage was "excuse me" (which honestly made no sense in context whatsoever). Then he sits there waiting for Megan Kelly to accept this pathetic non-apology with good grace but she doesn't - rightly - because he hasn't actually apologised. Indeed, she's probably just waiting for him to actually use the word "sorry", which he doesn't.

So they both sit there awkwardly for a second or so, Kelly expecting Trump to go on from there and actually apologise, Trump expecting her to swallow his non-apology, so he can avoid having to actually genuinely apologise.

Here's the thing. If Trump can't handle such a simple social situation as that - being unable to simply give a "sorry" for the sake of diplomacy that he doesn't even really mean - then how the fuck is he going to be able to handle the far more awkward and much more important situations that are bound to crop up as President?

Getting it wrong here merely invokes the wrath of a single woman to be rather pissed off at him. As President, in international negotiations, a similar cock-up could provoke war, trade wars, loss of international cooperation, etc., etc..

[funkstar]

Another advert. This is similar to one from a few weeks back, but instead of women saying his words they use actual recordings. If anything even more effective, you get a better sense of how really fucked up his attitude to women is.

Some Trump apologists have attacked this ad for the last quote not having been about women, but about China (or Mexico, I forget, and don't care). Because that really makes it a lot better, you know.

I recently got to wondering if Trump actually knows what it means to be president. I don't mean in terms of the "being presidential" aspects, or the import of his actions and words, or anything like that; I mean, what does the president actually do every day, what does the office carry of responsibilities and powers, etc. His talk about what he is going to do makes it sounds an awful lot like he believes the office to be a dictatorship. On top of his already staggering ignorance, I don't think he actually knows what a president is. He's heard a lot about them, to be sure, but what does he actually know?

I also wonder what damage he has already caused the US (and with it, the world) economy, so far. IANAE, but from what little I know instability is a prime cause for holding off on investments, raising prices to compensate for expected losses, etc. And since he has pretty much promised to plunge the world into recession by starting a trade war with China and Mexico, I'd imagine that some (in particular Chinese) investors may have pressed "pause" on US investments already.

And as to what could happen should he actually be elected, I shudder to think. We can hope for a day 1 impeachment, perhaps?

[PumaG]

Move your investments to arms stocks!

Abby Martin on Hillary Clinton

'Whats the point of having a women as President if you're going to act like a militaristic hawk/man. I'd rather have someone who's more feminine'

'Trump, he's scary because he's so unpredictable, I feel he can get swayed like Obama' 'He could get in there and be pulled by anyone, "you've got to do this, you've got to do that"'

'Hilary is cold, calculated, heartless. Iran is the scariest. She said she'd obliterate Iran if they attacked Israel. which is ridiculous as Israel have Nuclear weapons'



Farron Cousins

'I find Hilary Clinton one of the most dangerous people running for president. Hilary Clinton is essentially the foreign policy of George W Bush, only I feel she is more aggressive'

'this is important information we need to know about Hilary'

'The media has failed so hard on this' 'MSMBC has become the Hilary Clinton network, they're not going to bring any of this up, instead they mock Donald Trump'
'rather than attack policy, they, mock, it's snark, it's not intelligent conversation'

'As dumb as Donald Trump comes across, I dont know that he's going to push us into wars like Hilary likely would'

[gravy]

You seemed to have confused this with a Hilary Clinton thread!

[F-ZeroOne]

Well, hes already making nice, sensible choices for his advisors:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronom ... visor.html

[merman]

Trump's started lying already, months before he even gets a sniff of being in power.

"I've been invited to Downing Street, I'll probably go."

No. He hasn't, even with a tradition of inviting the candidates. But that usually does not happen until after the Conventions.