Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[(poco) Sforzando]

Are the donators expecting a charitable donation receipt ? 

Under US tax law, political contributions are not deductible.

[André]

They are here, up to a very low ceiling.

[drogulus]

     This guy is supposed to be the best Trump impersonator.

     https://www.youtube.com/v/YfXdmHseiFA#t=118     

[BasilValentine]

Going backwards, ignorance of the law is no excuse. She did not "make a mistake'. In all probability, Russians could have gotten more than a peek at the emails, so that is already endangering "national security". Terrorism came as a DIRECT result of the void left in the Middle East by pulling out of Iraq and preparing the ground for the Arab Spring. In terms of security, the past 8 years have been a disaster. Also factor in the holes in the bucket immigration policies. They need to be patched up. Only one person (as much as he is personally flawed) is squarely facing that issue. Also let's not forget the goofy, self-destructive deal with Iran that does impact an ally of the US, Israel.

The reason it was necessary to fully withdraw from Iraq was because the Iraqi government insisted that if U.S. troops stayed it could only be under the condition that they be subject to local jurisprudence for any alleged criminal acts. No commander in chief in the history of the U.S. has ever submitted to such a demand. The void in the Middle East was created by the U.S. military action that, for no reason related to U.S. security, unseated Saddam Hussein, whose Sunni dominated regime had been the counterbalance to Iran for decades. The disbanding of the Iraqi military in 2003 is the root cause for the existence of ISIS, which, under other names, was already in full operation by 2006.   

[Gurn Blanston]

As the WP writes, don't worry. None of that dreck will stick. The man's a genius after all.

While Hillary (the dark witch of Endor) is so evil, evil...

How else are you to explain to the country, the world, and future generations that 100 million Americans, some of them otherwise informed - educated even - still intend to vote for Trump  ?

There simply is no explanation for it. I respectfully submit that every Trump supporter I have met so far has clearly drunk the Kool-Aid, to the extent that no amount of sober discussion has any effect, the Kool-Aid appears to render them deaf, although not, unfortunately, dumb. They are still able to chant, in unison, the mantra of the day. Today's mantra was "Of course he didn't pay any taxes, the man is a genius!".  I hate to see what tomorrow brings. 

[kishnevi]

From what I can tell, Trumpists hate the Establishment, and think Trump is the best way to challenge it.
Pointing out his manifold detects doesn't work because in the mind of a true Trumpist
1)Such defects don't subtract from his ability to challenge the Establishment
2) Stories about these defects are lies or half truths produced by the Establishment, and anyone who points them out is really just a tool of the Establishment, or a member thereof.

For the record,  I currently plan to vote for Trump. But that is because I think Hillary is globally corrupt, as much a narcissist as Trump, and will staff the Executive branch with culture warriors intent on imposing their views on the rest of us, as opposed to letting rational persuasion and the tincture of time help everyone come to terms with good changes and jettison bad changes.

But that is an antiHillary vote, not a proTrump vote: and if he disgusts me enough the day I go into the voting booth, I will end up casting a NOTA vote.

[drogulus]

For the record,  I currently plan to vote for Trump. But that is because I think Hillary is globally corrupt, as much a narcissist as Trump, and will staff the Executive branch with culture warriors intent on imposing their views on the rest of us, as opposed to letting rational persuasion and the tincture of time help everyone come to terms with good changes and jettison bad changes.

     "Globally corrupt" is the kind of thing you say when you hate someone for reasons you don't care to share. If there was any real corruption involved we could talk about that. As for culture warriors, they have their uses. I just don't always agree with them.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

For the record,  I currently plan to vote for Trump. But that is because I think Hillary is globally corrupt, as much a narcissist as Trump, and will staff the Executive branch with culture warriors intent on imposing their views on the rest of us, as opposed to letting rational persuasion and the tincture of time help everyone come to terms with good changes and jettison bad changes.

But that is an antiHillary vote, not a proTrump vote: and if he disgusts me enough the day I go into the voting booth, I will end up casting a NOTA vote.

I can sympathize with some of your thinking here. I have the luxury of voting third party, because I live in IL, where people would vote for Hillary's cremated corpse if they got the chance. But if I lived in a swing state, I would seriously consider voting for Trump (and then throwing up afterwards).

Why? Not so much because of culture warriors (although you may have a point there), but because of real warriors. Basically, if HRC gets elected, I put the chance of her starting World War III at somewhere around 40%. If Trump gets in, I put it around 25%.

Such is the stark dilemma we face.

[kishnevi]

     "Globally corrupt" is the kind of thing you say when you hate someone for reasons you don't care to share. If there was any real corruption involved we could talk about that. As for culture warriors, they have their uses. I just don't always agree with them.

No, it is the appropriate term for the Clinton Foundations.
The denial of reality by Trumpists has a clear parallel in some Clintonists.

I am not against culture warriors.  But I am against putting them in positions from which they can force their positions on others.

[kishnevi]

I can sympathize with some of your thinking here. I have the luxury of voting third party, because I live in IL, where people would vote for Hillary's cremated corpse if they got the chance. But if I lived in a swing state, I would seriously consider voting for Trump (and then throwing up afterwards).

Why? Not so much because of culture warriors (although you may have a point there), but because of real warriors. Basically, if HRC gets elected, I put the chance of her starting World War III at somewhere around 40%. If Trump gets in, I put it around 25%.

Such is the stark dilemma we face.

I live in a very swingy state, Florida.

I would reverse the chances of who gets in a war.  I think Trump might well insult us into a war, or go to war out if personal pique.  Hillary will get us into a hot war only through an actual mistake in judgement or only after thinking it through in a way Trump would not.

[drogulus]

No, it is the appropriate term for the Clinton Foundations.


I am not against culture warriors.  But I am against putting them in positions from which they can force their positions on others.

     I didn't think you had much of a reason. The Clinton Foundation is corrupt? Have you any idea what you're talking about?

     Every Clinton hater for decades acts as though the objects of their hatred have not been scrutinized, that they have discovered something about Whitewater, Vince Foster, the WH travel office that no one has found before. NOW we'll get them! So there's a foundation, ha! They finally slipped up this time, it's a cesspool of corruption, it has to be, please, please let it be.

     The foundation is in fact (fact: something that is indisputably the case) highly regarded by charity watchers. I looked it up, because I was curious.

     As for culture warriors in positions of power, that's what they're for. If what they do doesn't hurt anyone, they not trying hard enough.

[kishnevi]

     I didn't think you had much of a reason. The Clinton Foundation is corrupt? Have you any idea what you're talking about?

     Every Clinton hater for decades acts as though the objects of their hatred have not been scrutinized, that they have discovered something about Whitewater, Vince Foster, the WH travel office that no one has found before. NOW we'll get them! So there's a foundation, ha! They finally slipped up this time, it's a cesspool of corruption, it has to be, please, please let it be.

     The foundation is in fact (fact: something that is indisputably the case) highly regarded by charity watchers. I looked it up, because I was curious.

     As for culture warriors in positions of power, that's what they're for. If what they do doesn't hurt anyone, they not trying hard enough.

As I said, the denial of reality has parallels among the Clintonistas.

Entities, foreign and otherwise, make donations to a foundation run by an official who makes decisions affecting them. The official might channel 100 percent to charity, and it would still be corruption.

[drogulus]

     Federal Court Blocks Gov. Pence's Attempt To Bar Syrian Refugees From Indiana

     As I was saying a few posts back, states often make it their business to act despicably, safe in the knowledge that the federal government will act as the moral center. It's no use complaining that the federals seized the role or the states gave it away, I think a federal constitution strong enough to protect the rights of citizens determined where moral authority would reside.

Entities, foreign and otherwise, make donations to a foundation run by an official who makes decisions affecting them.

     I found an article on the CNN discussing the "controversy" about the foundation.

     What is the Clinton Foundation and why is it controversial?

     "How does the philanthropic world see the Clinton Foundation?

They're held in high esteem. There are watchdog groups that judge charities on how they're run, how transparent they are and how much they spend on programs -- some charities raise a ton of money, but spend a large percentage on salaries and bonuses instead of their actual cause.
Charity Watch gave the Clinton Foundation an A grade, while GuideStar gave it a platinum rating.
Daniel Borochoff of Charity Watch noted that in 2014, 87.2% of the foundation's funding went to its programs, "which is really high." The foundation, he said, does "really important, valuable work that saves lives of lots of people."

      IOW what I found when I checked is what the article said.

      But then, c'mon, cards on the table, you didn't really think that "pay for play" and foreign donor shit would fly, did you? We are not low information here in Extinctionland. This is the same "create a miasma of doubt" as you guys always put out. When the foundation story fizzles out you'll have another already in the pipeline. Give us a hint.....

[zamyrabyrd]

New York Times: How Hillary Clinton Grappled With Bill Clinton's Infidelity, and His Accusers

Hillary Clinton was campaigning for her husband in January 1992 when she learned of the race's newest flare-up: Gennifer Flowers had just released tapes of phone calls with Bill Clinton to back up her claim they had had an affair. Other candidates had been driven out of races by accusations of infidelity. But now, at a cold, dark airfield in South Dakota, Mrs. Clinton was questioning campaign aides by phone and vowing to fight back on behalf of her husband. "Who's tracking down all the research on Gennifer?" she asked, according to a journalist traveling with her at the time.

...privately, she embraced the Clinton campaign's aggressive strategy of counterattack: Women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Mr. Clinton would become targets of digging and discrediting — tactics that women's rights advocates frequently denounce. The campaign hired a private investigator with a bare-knuckles reputation who embarked on a mission, as he put it in a memo, to impugn Ms. Flowers's "character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition."

In a pattern that would later be repeated with other women, the investigator's staff scoured Arkansas and beyond, collecting disparaging accounts from ex-boyfriends, employers and others who claimed to know Ms. Flowers, accounts that the campaign then disseminated to the news media.

By the time Mr. Clinton finally admitted to "sexual relations" with Ms. Flowers, years later, Clinton aides had used stories collected by the private investigator to brand her as a "bimbo" and a "pathological liar."

Ms. Flowers, a lounge singer and Arkansas state employee at the time, sold Star magazine her story claiming an affair with Mr. Clinton that had lasted more than 10 years. In a meeting with aides, the Clintons scripted a unified defense that they delivered in the interview on "60 Minutes."

With Mrs. Clinton nodding agreement, Mr. Clinton admitted to the TV audience to "causing pain in my marriage," but denied an affair with Ms. Flowers. Mrs. Clinton professed sympathy for Ms. Flowers, saying she had been caught up in rumors through no fault of her own. But at a news conference the next day, Ms. Flowers reasserted her claims, playing excerpts from her calls with Mr. Clinton.

Glimpsing the news conference in South Dakota, Mrs. Clinton directed an aide to get Mr. Clinton on the phone, Gail Sheehy, a journalist traveling with her, recalled in a recent interview. "It was a reaction of no surprise, but immediate anger and action," said Ms. Sheehy, who also described her observations in a Vanity Fair article that year. "Not anger at Bill, but at Flowers, the press and Republicans." Back on a plane that night, Mrs. Clinton told Ms. Sheehy that if she were to question Ms. Flowers in front of a jury, "I would crucify her."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/us/politics/hillary-bill-clinton-women.html

[Parsifal]

No, it is the appropriate term for the Clinton Foundations.

Huh?  The Clinton Foundation is a charity which gets an A rating from independent watchdog groups because of the high fraction of the money collected that goes directly to relief.

https://www.charitywatch.org/ratings-and-metrics/bill-hillary-chelsea-clinton-foundation/478

[Madiel]

Basically, if HRC gets elected, I put the chance of her starting World War III at somewhere around 40%. If Trump gets in, I put it around 25%.

Oh come on. How do you think Trump is going to behave the second he and a leader of another country don't see eye to eye?

His attitude in business has been either to threaten to sue people, or to dare them to go ahead and sue him. In charge of a country, he's going to threaten to fire missiles or dare them to go ahead and fire a missile.

He puts everyone into two camps: there are brilliant amazing people, and there are disgusting horrible people. If Trump gets in, he is going to behave like a petulant 12-year-old because that's what he has been doing the entire time, and the risk of him pissing off someone is going to be pretty high. Stay tuned for cranky tweets about the President of China at 4 in the morning.

Put that against a woman who has already negotiated international deals, and I know which one seems more likely to me to risk starting a war.

[The new erato]

These two last posts are worthy of attention. Abstaining from a vote, or voting for a 3rd party candidate, is also an option if you really dislike HRC so much (yes, she is an apparatchik and the system may have screwed many americans). How anybody may imagine that the nutcase and upper 1%-er  Trumf would make things better are totally beyond me. 

[Herman]

How else are you to explain to the country, the world, and future generations that 100 million Americans, some of them otherwise informed - educated even - still intend to vote for Trump  ?

That number is debatable. Onle on Nov 8 will we know how many people really did it.

But the main answer is: the internet. Rather than a fount of information, as was first thought, the internet has developed into a myriad world of echo chambers where people can close themselves off from undesiarble info and only seek out likeminded stuff.

So if you're disappointed or angry because life is a little more complicated than you thought when you were sixteen, there are a lot of places you can go on the internet. The places with the conspiracy stuff, and the "the immigrants took our jobs" and "Hillary is your worst nightmare, just look at her!"

[Herman]

New York Times: How Hillary Clinton Grappled With Bill Clinton's Infidelity, and His Accusers

Hate to tell you, ZB, but virtually no one cares. It's such a long time ago.

[Madiel]

If you want to see rank sexism at work, one need look no further than the fact that everyone seems more interested in how Clinton dealt with her husband's infidelity than with how Trump got married 3 times and cheated on his 1st wife.

Because, you know, men are just supposed to be like that.