Elephants and Jackasses...

Honestly if you can't see how terrible a candidate Trump is at this point, I'm not even sure where to begin explaining it to you. Letters? Colors? Object permanence?

 

It's Hobson's choice; there is no good choice.

Everyone is programmed to believe that in a free society you only have two choices. They are also programmed to believe that a third party candidate is throwing their vote away or a vote for the candidate they hate the most. Therefore, I look at it as which one will keep the establishment in tact the most, which is clearly Hillary. I want the establishment broken, so it is an easy choice for me. There is a major party candidate that is no supported by the establishment within either party.

This one election won't bring about the level of change necessary but it could at least be a start. I still don't understand all of the breathless hyperbole relating to smoking holes in the ground, I can understand questioning if good or bad will occur. I am certain both good and bad will occur, no matter who is elected. I am also certain that what is good and what is bad will all be based on individual perspective.

In the end, it defies logic to me. 8 years ago, everyone clamored for Hope and Change. What Changed? We get 8 more years of more of the same. Why isn't everyone still clamoring for hope and change?

 

Yeah, we fucked up pretty big when we gave the GOP control of Congress - you know, that party that threatens to shut down the Federal Government just about every year, the party that's refused to even hold the hearing to fill a SCOTUS seat that's been sitting vacant for 8 months and counting, the party that has openly declared they're going to refuse to work with Clinton should she be elected.

Want meaningful change? Vote the GOP out of office. Or don't; the other option is to give the GOP full control of the legislative and executive branches. We'll get change that way, too, but I have my doubts on the quality of any such change.

 

That's not so much a factual analysis as it is a plea to vote for Clinton, but it's an interesting read.

I'm not going to touch the hot potato of the race stuff because when you look at the quote snipping about Trump in context it paints a different picture to me, but his temperament is terrible. As far as that meaning he's going to use nuclear weapons, I find it about as compelling as the arguments that Clinton will escalate our problems with Russia to a nuclear war. Which is to say not at all.

He wants to cut taxes for everyone, not just the rich. The rich currently pay a far lower rate than the 'rate' because of all the loopholes.

That's his tax rate for the rich. If you closed the loopholes and brought people closer to 33% (most of the rich pay no where near the current 'rate') it could raise revenue substantially. He has spoken consistently about closing the loopholes. He abused them because this government is idiotic and despite being audited multiple times the IRS is powerless to actually do anything with the way the law is written. He's not going to protect his rich friends, many of whom are democrats paying Hillary under the table (or in plain sight, however you want to look at it). He's abused the system and he's plainly stating the problem. Hillary is not. She's pretending the loopholes are there because 'republicans' rather than because 'the wealthy bought them'. It's not actually a partisan issue. Same as corruption. Trump has bought politicians and is plainly stating the problem. Hillary dodges it at every turn while at the same time pretending she's going to fix it.

Revenue is going to come from other sources as well. The tariffs imposed on China and other importers, as well as American businesses that have moved overseas. The taxes on imports will hurt poor consumers in the short run, but it will move manufacturing back home and provide additional jobs for unskilled laborers(that are going to pay better than wal-mart and fucking McDonalds) so the long term benefits outweigh the costs. You also get taxes when businesses return home, but this will actually be less than if they stay overseas under the Trump plan. Corporations respond to profit incentives, they don't give a fuck about anything else. You can cherry pick the numbers, but however you add it up we have trillions of dollars offshore. Ideally, I would like him to use tariff revenue from the import taxes to increase entitlements in the short run as manufacturing rebuilds, but Trump probably won't do that. He has some other things in his tax plan to help though.

The first reason I'm voting for Trump is not Hillary. His economic plan is the closest second and gets us out of the problematic bubble thinking Peter Thiel mentioned that has devastated the American heartland and looks to do further damage down the road.

I think she will support it after the election with some minor revisions to satisfy her base. As to why I'm against the trade deal in general, see above.

She is the ultimate insider and the exact opposite of a revolutionary. What a stupid comment.

I would like to see a female president in my lifetime, and I probably will by the end of Tuesday, but I would never vote for anyone based on their gender or race, let alone that fact approaching anything near a clinching reason.

Lesser of evils argument. I hear them, but we need real change. Not more of Hillary.

Hmmm... let me put that another way. Her supporters won't admit that she defines the awful, broken state of Washington politics.

Her no fly zone is just taking a hard line against Russia due to popular sentiment rather than anything that makes strategic sense. When she was secretary of state she funneled more, and more weapons into the middle east, some of which is now going to terrorists. She wants to arm rebels who will create chaos in Turkey, and are opposed by Russia who will respond by providing more arms to Assad. She wants to play the game of middle eastern gangster politics and is deluding herself in believing her intentions have any reasonable chance of success. We've been following this sort of foreign policy since 9/11 and need to get out of the bubble.

The experience argument here, given her failures in the past and the insanity of her vision for the future fall apart under scrutiny.

His environment plan, or lack thereof is ridiculous. I disagree with him on immigration, but I disagree with Hillary more. I don't want the Syrian refugees and I want an actual attempt made at border control. I don't think Trump's plan realistically addresses this issue, and I'm for amnesty for most illegals.

Let me explain the right's philosophy on this issue, other than the deplorables who don't like the icky brown people. Trump's stance, and that of many republicans is that the system is totally fucked. We need to enforce border security, include a vetting process for immigrants, and bring order to a dysfunctional system. The left has no desire to do this, and will not address the problem ever. It will be amnesty today, then amnesty again ten years later, and then again. There are glaring holes in Trump's vision on this issue. There are glaring holes in the left's stance on this issue, which is how this happens.

The Clinton foundation is one of many areas I hit my red line with Hillary. I'm a registered democrat, but my family goes back before the revolution and some people in my family are republicans, some are democrats. The party identification is irrelevant to me. What Clinton has done with the foundation is treason, full stop. I don't care for the arguments that the evidence is merely circumstantial or any of the euphemisms. That takes precedence over deporting people who aren't American citizens. If you can't see the evidence for what it is, or flat out deny it's happening that's not acceptable to me, and is one of the many reasons this has become one of the most volatile elections in American history.

This nation is in dire need of healing, and while I'm fervently against Clinton another part of me doesn't care who wins. Trump claiming he can bring people together is the ultimate false promise. Hillary can't do this either so we're going to look at things getting worse before they get better while people scream across the aisle.

 

https://theawl.com/when-truth-falls-apart-b4667d39575b#.f0qssuwvd

Interesting piece.

The role the media and social media have played in this election is terrifying because we are incapable of the 10x effort it takes to prove something is bullshit. I think about the planned parenthood video...my mom still thought that was real.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/506594/

Or that Obama was a terrible president for the economy...(read above).

Or that the point of the trade agreements is to make it harder for American manufacturers...(no the actual point is to level the plaYing field).

Would Trump have made it this far without the billions in free coverage from the major networks? Would we have allowed it to continvest without social media wharrgarbl response? I don't think so...if we thought a bit more critically about this, we would fare a lot better.

My favorite is the welfare recipient...the average is a 21 year old single mother...no one would argue she doesn't need all the help she can get. yet somehow, thanks to disinformation, she's a lazy entitled piece of shit that is gaming the system enriching herself. one of those is a hard truth and the other is comfortable outrage...

 

Anyone else really happy this is about to end?

 

Last election dozens of conspiracy theories came out about Obama that were easily proven false, but people believed them no matter what because he wasn't on their team. This election the people harboring suspicions about Clinton have had them confirmed, but people seek out confirmation bias that everyone voting for Trump is merely crazy. It's easy to prove many of the 'conspiracy theories' and some of the e-mail leaks have Clinton or her aides confirming them in no uncertain terms.

People can't evaluate evidence anymore. They look for one quote, misrepresent it, and then pretend that invalidates something obvious. It's what the left wing media has been doing for a long time as a pseudo-discussion of right wing ideas. The right does it too, so people can't sift through the noise anymore.

No, that's not the point of trade agreements(although sometimes corporate money greases the wheels because they realized they can make a higher profit, American workers be damned), but the results are clear. Reworking the trade deals and implementing tariffs are to level the playing field for American manufacturers because there is no way to compete on labor cost, or a lack of enforcement of expensive safety regulations.

Overall I think Obama did reasonably well as president. I don't think he'll go down as one of the historical greats. The economic recovery was sluggish, but after the election in 2008, when much of the information regarding wall street and how much debt Bush was hiding came to light, people expected the recovery was going to take a long time. There are a number of things Obama did during his administration that I'm not a fan of, but he was a far better president than Bush. Not that that was a high bar to leap.

 

Yeah, and even with all that shit I believe about Hillary I can still see why some people would choose her over Trump, but any political discussion is going to include a bombardment of misinformation, both ways. Because politics has gotten so hyper defensive it's as if people treat admitting you're wrong as an intellectual weakness when in reality it's the opposite.

Trump believed the Obama birther stuff for something like 6 years and still thinks Mexico is sending its people. Who knows what the fuck he's going to get in his head while in office? Everyone is drawing the red line somewhere and both these candidates suck so hard people are amazed someone else didn't draw their red line in the same spot.

 

Maybe this speaks to how complicated things are getting but I think it's apropos that you mentioned the vaccination controversy. Jill Stein, who is the Green Party candidate, is a Harvard trained physician who practiced internal medicine at Beth Israel for 25 years and she was afraid to agree that the evidence was in for vaccinations not causing autism.
She first tweeted that there is no evidence vaccines cause autism and then walked back to say she wasn't aware of any evidence.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox..._of_evidence_linking_vaccines_and_autism.html

So I guess we have politicians/aspiring politicians who don't give a fuck about what they do or say because they'll do what they want regardless of popular opinion and people who are too scared of butt hurting someone.

I'm voting party not person this election. The Republicans have been and are doing all they can to be on the wrong side of history.

 

I've gotten 4 more of them tonight alone, 2 of them in fucking Spanish. I'm now up to like 15 or 20 of them.

I wasn't going to vote any down ticket races, but those texts changed my mind. Straight fucking Republican for annoying me.

 

Hey, now. That is the kind of talk that gets you labeled as a rightwing nut job. Careful.

I agree with you, I want Trump for the fuck you factor only. I really want him to win and to break it. "It" being the Government....I don't even care if it works after that. I just want to see it stop. I'm not worried about the repercussions because the sun will still rise and you will still go about your life if the Government is in shambles. They will eventually figure it out and fix it but until we break it nothing is going to change.

Another thought I have is the reality that just like everyone was high on hope and change 8 years ago and then forgot it all. People will forget their dissatisfaction with the system or just be plain old afraid of change. Think about it, it happened in 4 months this time. Everyone wanted Bernie because he was a real change and then they were happy to turn around and vote for Hillary. That is from one extreme to the other pretty quickly. I just don't think many people (myself included) are all that sincere about change unless it comes in a form they approve of or are comfortable with.

 

I absolutely refuse to believe the "letter" from Belichick is real. It reads like it was written by Trump's "doctor" from a few months back.

 

Considering he said Brady called to tell him he voted for him, yet Brady went on record saying he didn't vote early... I'd be very suspicious.

I get that trump's schtick is to make outrageous claims (like that ms America sex tape) and then let people deny it once the damage has already been done, but this just isn't right.

The sad thing is though, his supporters just eat all this up. Trump does it because it works. I'm so glad there's less than 24 hours remaining of his campaign. Tomorrow I'll be able to laugh when he pulls crap like this because there won't be the remote chance he'll be our next president... his behavior is terrifying.

 

I've posted why I think Trump can get a little bit more done than you believe, but it's also something else. Given the anti-establishment sentiment within the republic and her history in politics she is going to make people a lot angrier and divisive than you realize. You think that because she's a career politician she'll correctly read when she needs to make a concession and that she can magic up an antidote to an implosive system, or at least hold it over until we can elect someone else. Every time people call her on the next act of corruption the democrats will try to paint them as horrible people. Racist and misogynist is the most common. It will also be that they're stupid, or that they 'just don't get it' and people are going to go ballistic.

I can't predict what will happen over the next four years, and I am by no means saying Hillary = more violent candidate, but just putting it out there to consider.

 

There's jackasses everywhere in the glass house. Doing it the night before the election looks super suspicious. At the moment though, all the arguments are worthless. Unless Brady/Belichick confirm or deny it's all just speculation.

This whole tangent of "Who do these celebrities support?" is completely meaningless.

It's sad that anyone in their right mind would give a fuck which candidate a celebrity supports anyway, even though both camps do for whatever fucking reason.