The point about Trump is that he convicted himself with his own words. He was BRAGGING about what he does to women and WHY he gets away with it. He wasn't joking. The difference between Clinton and Trump is that Trump admitted to the behavior, he just never thought it would see the light of day. We know Clinton cheated on his wife many times. There is no actual evidence he sexually assaulted any of them. He MAY have, but he didn't indict himself with his own testimony as Trump did.
and I'd argue that he showed remorse, while Trump does not show remorse, he gets mad at leaks that make his behavior public.
I'd argue that there's a massive difference between philandering and sexual assault.
China has suspended coal imports from North Korea, one of the DPRK's most important exports. This is a rather unusual step: Despite China's opposition to North Korea's nuclear program, China historically has been extremely reluctant to apply much pressure on the North despite American prodding to do so, as they are afraid of destabilizing North Korea.
This came a week after a North Korean ballistic missile test that violated United Nations resolutions. It also came shortly after the assassination of Kim Jong-un's half-brother. Some analysts apparently believe that this was China's motive for the suspension of coal imports: the Chinese saw Kim Jong-nam as a potential pro-Chinese replacement for Kim Jong-un should the current government fall, and they were upset at the death of a friendly actor.
I'm a little skeptical of this reasoning. It's not clear to me what the Chinese think they would gain by applying this pressure; it would only further antagonize the Kim regime and convince them that the Chinese were hostile. If the North Koreans believed that the Chinese did it because they thought Kim Jong-nam could replace Kim Jong-un, they'd think the Chinese had been trying to overthrow their government.
Although I'm not sure the Chinese would actually realize what it would look like to the North Koreans. Foreign policy is often based on anger rather than calculation; China doesn't necessarily have the self-awareness to realize what their actions look like; and North Korea's worldview is famously difficult for outsiders to understand.
The point about Trump is that he convicted himself with his own words. He was BRAGGING about what he does to women and WHY he gets away with it. He wasn't joking. The difference between Clinton and Trump is that Trump admitted to the behavior, he just never thought it would see the light of day. We know Clinton cheated on his wife many times. There is no actual evidence he sexually assaulted any of them. He MAY have, but he didn't indict himself with his own testimony as Trump did.
and I'd argue that he showed remorse, while Trump does not show remorse, he gets mad at leaks that make his behavior public.
I'd argue that there's a massive difference between philandering and sexual assault.
If the philander has a huge amount of power, influence and wealth, I would argue that there is very little difference.
Someone has your future in their hands. Maybe they wouldn't hold it against you if you turned them down, but can you afford to take that risk?
The point about Trump is that he convicted himself with his own words. He was BRAGGING about what he does to women and WHY he gets away with it. He wasn't joking. The difference between Clinton and Trump is that Trump admitted to the behavior, he just never thought it would see the light of day. We know Clinton cheated on his wife many times. There is no actual evidence he sexually assaulted any of them. He MAY have, but he didn't indict himself with his own testimony as Trump did.
and I'd argue that he showed remorse, while Trump does not show remorse, he gets mad at leaks that make his behavior public.
I'd argue that there's a massive difference between philandering and sexual assault.
If the philander has a huge amount of power, influence and wealth, I would argue that there is very little difference.
Someone has your future in their hands. Maybe they wouldn't hold it against you if you turned them down, but can you afford to take that risk?
It's really absolutely stunning that no one, here, in the media, or really in general, even mentions anymore the fact that the President of the United States almost certainly sexually assaulted at least a dozen women. Or that over 40% of voters were perfectly ok with it.
Sure he did. And the other candidate is married to a man who behaved in exactly the same way. So the electorate was given the choice of voting for a man who sexually abuses women, or a woman who condones the sexual abuse of women.
False. Just because she stayed married to Bill doesnt mean that she condone's sexual assault.
False.
You cannot be married to someone without condoning their behaviour.
She's in a lose lose situation. Either she gets tarred with these type of second hand accusations or she files for a divorce and gets tarred with the she can't even keep her marriage together and she doesnt respect holy matrimony.
And a decient person would have accepted that and stepped down for the good of he country. Instead she chose to impose her lose-lose situation on her whole country.
False again. You are not going to file for a divorce because your partner gets multiple speeding tickets.
And no, decency has nothing to do with it. It is also her personal life and how she lives it does not reflect how she'd govern a country.
Hillary Clinton definitely believes Bill cheated on her. But does she actually believe he committed sexual assault? Because it's not possible to condone behavior if you don't think it happened.
"Do you condone your husband's sexual assaults?" "He's never committed sexual assault."
And as was said during the election, Bill Clinton was not running for President.
Hillary accepted her husband, who had shown remorse and while he's been accused of things, he was not guilty of anything more than the Lewinsky stuff. Also he's been a model citizen.
Trump bragged about sexual assaults on tape and had a dozen women verify that the type of behavior he bragged about had happened to them. He's shown no remorse or responsibility protested and slandered and threatened his accusers. His ex-wife claimed she'd been raped by him but then changed her story as part of divorce settlement.
Comparing Hillary into all this is blueberries to oranges
It's really absolutely stunning that no one, here, in the media, or really in general, even mentions anymore the fact that the President of the United States almost certainly sexually assaulted at least a dozen women. Or that over 40% of voters were perfectly ok with it.
Sure he did. And the other candidate is married to a man who behaved in exactly the same way. So the electorate was given the choice of voting for a man who sexually abuses women, or a woman who condones the sexual abuse of women.
False. Just because she stayed married to Bill doesnt mean that she condone's sexual assault.
False.
You cannot be married to someone without condoning their behaviour.
She's in a lose lose situation. Either she gets tarred with these type of second hand accusations or she files for a divorce and gets tarred with the she can't even keep her marriage together and she doesnt respect holy matrimony.
And a decient person would have accepted that and stepped down for the good of he country. Instead she chose to impose her lose-lose situation on her whole country.
False again. You are not going to file for a divorce because your partner gets multiple speeding tickets.
And no, decency has nothing to do with it. It is also her personal life and how she lives it does not reflect how she'd govern a country.
But she doesn't govern the country, does she? The first duty of a good leader is to put the good of the country above self-interest. And the good of the country was to not let Trump win, and to do that she should have stood aside, irrespective of wether it was "fair" or not.
But she doesn't govern the country, does she? The first duty of a good leader is to put the good of the country above self-interest. And the good of the country was to not let Trump win, and to do that she should have stood aside, irrespective of wether it was "fair" or not.
Hindsight's 20/20 yes she's not running the country. She, and many others, assumed that she would win easily.
Man, I CONSTANTLY hear people during election years talk about how sick they are of campaigning. I guess that only applies if you AREN'T Donald Trump and aren't one of his supporters. Because Trump just held a re-election rally for 2020, in February of 2017. What kind of weak, twisted mind needs this kind of adulation to function??
By the way, he continues to tell us all what a hellscape the country is. Does you know that's now ALL on him if that's the case?? Tell me again what sign Truman had on his desk.....
The cowards can't even face the music or prove they have the courage of their convictions. The Democrats got smoked at Town Halls during Obamacare, and many of them lost their seats, but at least they showed up. Republicans are taking that lesson and just not showing up. But why not?? After all, aren't all the people wanting to attend "paid protesters"?? How hard can that be to prove and deal with?? Again, with Democrats you have a party that certainly has MANY faults and will tell your run of the mill half-truths and falsehoods at times. With Republicans you have people who lie as a matter of strategy to create an entirely different reality. ANY opposition is illegitimate, ANY bad poll is fake, ANY negative news story is fake, ANY person who shows up in person in opposition is a paid protester. The bigger the lie.......
But she doesn't govern the country, does she? The first duty of a good leader is to put the good of the country above self-interest. And the good of the country was to not let Trump win, and to do that she should have stood aside, irrespective of wether it was "fair" or not.
Hindsight's 20/20 yes she's not running the country. She, and many others, assumed that she would win easily.
No need for hindsight. All that was needed was foresight, another desireable quality in a leader. Just look at my forum post from when she was sellected as candidate, where I state that "she was the worst possible candidate to put up against Trump".
Considering there were only two prominent contenders for the Democratic nomination--Sanders and Clinton--it doesn't seem realistic to say she was the worst possible candidate. I'd say second best.
I don't understand how Clinton could be considered such a horribly abysmal alternative to Trump when she won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes.
And for what it's worth, nobody predicted a popular vote win for Clinton and an electoral vote win for Trump. Some people thought Clinton would win both, some people thought Trump would win both, and some people thought Clinton would win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. But nobody foresaw this.
Considering there were only two prominent contenders for the Democratic nomination--Sanders and Clinton--it doesn't seem realistic to say she was the worst possible candidate. I'd say second best.
Any unknown with a clean record would have been a better choice than Clinton.
I don't understand how Clinton could be considered such a horribly abysmal alternative to Trump when she won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes.
Vote for a morally bankrupt corrupt oligarch with a charisma bypass, a proven track record of incompetence and an agenda of doing the same as always; or a delusional idiotic monster? 2.9 million people had to vote for someone. Most of them voted to stop Trump, not because they liked Clinton. Just as most of Trump's voters voted to stop Clinton, not because they liked Trump.
Cameron had this issue. He thought that because he had won an election people liked him. No, they just hated him marginally less than the other tit. So when he asked people to trust him in a referendum people told him to get stuffed.
All over Europe we are seeing the traditional establishment political parties being rejected in favour of new parties coming from both left and right (and even the centre). People are listening to Shakespeare when he said "a plague on both your houses". It's time the USA followed suit.
And for what it's worth, nobody predicted a popular vote win for Clinton and an electoral vote win for Trump. Some people thought Clinton would win both, some people thought Trump would win both, and some people thought Clinton would win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. But nobody foresaw this.
Who cares*? The popular vote is an irrelevancy.
*Okay, Trump cares, but that's because he is a moronic narcissist who wants everyone to love him.
Trump also took the time during his rally yesterday to talk about the horrible thing that happened here in Sweden this friday night. Which confused many of us here since nothing particular at all happened then. Not even the Swedish security service knows what he is talking about.
It's just baffling how he seems to make stuff up as he goes along.
Did Sweden add an Every Second Counts video? That would be a horrible thing to Trump!
He was clearly trying to make it seem like a Muslim terror attack took place there. This is now the second or third time he or his surrogates have invented a fake terrorist attack. And it's not baffling, it's purposeful. If he can get his supporters to believe there was a terrorist attack that didn't happen, he can then say the media didn't cover said fake terror attack, furthering his goal of completely delegitimising the entire press. And with those like the people at his rally yesterday, it will work. Those people now believe there was a terrorist attack in Sweden last night, which is exactly as accurate as saying Sacramento was burned to the ground by a dragon on Friday.
Again, these are not normal lies. They aren't the result of bad information, or even the product of responding to something and trying to defend a position with inaccurate information. They are willful, premeditated lies told SPECIFICALLY because they purposefully create a completely alternate and false reality among his supporters, so when the hammer falls (and clearly the media is the one who will report it) 30-35% of the country will not believe it.
Wow, Trump must be amazingly intelligent and have a keen understanding of human psychology to come up with a great plan like that. Good Lord, I'm starting to think everybody on both sides is losing touch with reality...
Wow, Trump must be amazingly intelligent and have a keen understanding of human psychology to come up with a great plan like that. Good Lord, I'm starting to think everybody on both sides is losing touch with reality...
Pray tell, what other reason is there to, in the span of 24 hours, say the media is the "enemy of the American people" and then invent a terrorist attack in Sweden out of thin-air?? Or is this one of those never-ending instances where we aren't supposed to take what he said seriously??
Trump says there is a terror attack in Sweden. There wasn't. He said he won one of the biggest electoral victories in recent history. He didn't. He says violent crime is at a all-time high. It is actually at a 50-year low. You don't tell lies this big, this easily countered, for fun. He knows the media will correct them, and then he attacks the media. His supporters are inclined to believe him. Thus, they think the media is lying to them, even though everything I just mentioned (and about 3 or 4 dozen other things) are verifiable FACTS that Trump is telling blatant falsehoods about. He isn't doing it for fun. Telling big, massive, totally out of proportion lies is THE key element of propaganda.
Ok, you're right. Woe is me! We're all going to die unless we immediately get Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders/Barack Obama (again)/Mike Pence/Jeb Bush or whoever else in the oval office. Americans are little sheep just waiting for the wolf to lead us to total destruction. Give me a break! So you know why I voted for Trump? It wasn't because I was brainwashed or I believed everything he said or his overwhelming charisma overrode my brain cells. Nope, it was because I chose too! And you know what, if I think he does a crappy job I won't vote for him next time. What'll even blow your mind more is that I don't think I would have voted for him if Hillary Clinton wasn't his opponent. If the Dems choose to ignore that fact, since I really doubt I'm unique in that sentiment, good luck in 2020.
The thing with Trump is he can decide what he wants to say and he says it. And he says it such that it seems he totally believes it. He's taken the "fake it until you make it" mentality all the way to 11. As the notorious RBG said, he's a faker - a con artist. And while he falls short in many areas, that is not one of them.
So whether he's talking about the largest electoral victory since Reagan, the terrorist attack of Sweden, the terrorist attack of 7/11 - his delivery is such that it sounds like he believes it's the truth. If you disagree or point out the truth, he will just attack you.
That's it. That's don the con.
It's pretty clear he's barely literate. He wants all his intel briefings on one page in bullet format with lots of pictures. A more pertinent question is who is feeding him these worldviews (President Bannon/Fox News/Brietbart/Alex Jones?) or is he just making this stuff up himself.
@smeagolheart I agree with your assessment of Trump. I have to admit I was kind of hoping at least some of his bluster was just an act to make himself appear more confident or powerful. Sadly it appears to be an integral part of his character. Now I'm just hoping he cares enough about his popularity to modify his behavior. I'm not holding my breath though...
Ok, you're right. Woe is me! We're all going to die unless we immediately get Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders/Barack Obama (again)/Mike Pence/Jeb Bush or whoever else in the oval office. Americans are little sheep just waiting for the wolf to lead us to total destruction. Give me a break! So you know why I voted for Trump? It wasn't because I was brainwashed or I believed everything he said or his overwhelming charisma overrode my brain cells. Nope, it was because I chose too! And you know what, if I think he does a crappy job I won't vote for him next time. What'll even blow your mind more is that I don't think I would have voted for him if Hillary Clinton wasn't his opponent. If the Dems choose to ignore that fact, since I really doubt I'm unique in that sentiment, good luck in 2020.
Oh, I'm well aware that is was a choice. I'm also quite sure that when things fall apart, your last sentence will be the excuse every Trump voter makes. "Hillary was so bad I just HAD to vote for him. The liberals pushed me towards him by putting up such a bad candidate." It will all be shifted to the left. It's already an argument that is popping up everywhere. This is also something I knew was coming, because of the Tea Party in 2009. All of a sudden, a group of people concerned about the DEFICIT showed up after Bush put a trillion dollar war on the credit card. The deficit. All of a sudden, ALL these people had opposed Bush's spending from the beginning. They never liked him, even though they voted for him twice. Such will be the case with Trump. Except Trump's base, core vote is the same people who stayed with Bush til the end. After Iraq, after Katrina, after a financial meltdown.
We'll need luck in 2020, since we'll still have a 18th century relic of a electoral system and he will have the power of incumbency. I'd say no matter how badly he performs (and it will continue to be an epic failure), he will still stand a 50/50 chance of getting back in. I'm not one of those who thinks Democrats are going to ride a wave against this guy in either 2018 or 2020. The House is gerrymandered to the point of making a Democratic wave nearly impossible, and the Electoral College will continue to award extra merit to places of the country that simply do not deserve it based on their population. Like Ginger Rogers, the Democrats have to do everything Republicans do to win, but backwards and in heels.
I'll also reiterate what @semiticgod said earlier. If Hillary was such a horrid, awful candidate, how did she manage to get 3 million more votes?? Trump just happened to get just enough votes in a few places where the people who live there have their votes literally count more than votes elsewhere in the country. This isn't just the 2nd time in 5 elections where the person who got more votes lost. It was also the second election in a row where Democrats got many more votes nationwide in Congressional races and didn't gain a thing. The game is rigged. And until events prove that such a situation can also adversely affect Republican chances of victory (and there is no sign that they will), it will continue to remain so. My team can play a perfect basketball game, but it likely won't matter a whole lot if the other team is spotted a 20 pt lead.
By the way, I live in MIchigan so if you can find 20,000 or so voters like me and change our minds that'll be a good start for the Democrat Party.
I'll say this, Hillary should have been in Flint, MI no less than 3 times after the convention talking about the water crisis (which is really more accurately a situation in which the citizens of the city were poisoned by their state government) rather than f'ing around in Arizona in a futile effort to win a solid red state.
It wasn't rigged. That's the way the Electoral College is supposed to work! I've got an idea. How about we don't allow Government workers and people on welfare programs to vote. I would venture to bet that wonderful advantage the Democrats have in the big cities would evaporate. I wish I could vote for the people signing my paycheck!
It wasn't rigged. That's the way the Electoral College is supposed to work! I've got an idea. How about we don't allow Government workers and people on welfare programs to vote. I would venture to bet that wonderful advantage the Democrats have in the big cities would evaporate. I wish I could vote for the people signing my paycheck!
I would venture to bet that many conservatives would find this suggestion music to their ears. How about we go back to only male landowners as well??
I know how the Electoral College works. That isn't the same thing as admitting it's a good idea. The Democratic advantage in big cities doesn't come from an artificial weight. Those are actual people, solid population numbers. That's where most people live. As I've said a dozen times, if California had the same proportional weight as Wyoming, it would have 198 Electoral votes instead of 55. But we have the ridiculous system we have. And just because it is working how it is supposed to (by the way, a system devised when there was 13 states up and down one coast, not 50 spanning the entire continent) doesn't mean it isn't rigged towards one side given modern demographics.
I don't need an excuse for why I voted the way I did. I own it. If I was wrong I'll modify it in the future. That's what reasonable people do.
I wasn't coerced in any way and I don't apologize for it no matter the result. I voted the way I felt was right at the time.
As long as you know where the blame lays if it does hit the fan and don't fall back on the excuse that the Dem's should have fielded a better candidate then all is good.
Comments
This came a week after a North Korean ballistic missile test that violated United Nations resolutions. It also came shortly after the assassination of Kim Jong-un's half-brother. Some analysts apparently believe that this was China's motive for the suspension of coal imports: the Chinese saw Kim Jong-nam as a potential pro-Chinese replacement for Kim Jong-un should the current government fall, and they were upset at the death of a friendly actor.
I'm a little skeptical of this reasoning. It's not clear to me what the Chinese think they would gain by applying this pressure; it would only further antagonize the Kim regime and convince them that the Chinese were hostile. If the North Koreans believed that the Chinese did it because they thought Kim Jong-nam could replace Kim Jong-un, they'd think the Chinese had been trying to overthrow their government.
Although I'm not sure the Chinese would actually realize what it would look like to the North Koreans. Foreign policy is often based on anger rather than calculation; China doesn't necessarily have the self-awareness to realize what their actions look like; and North Korea's worldview is famously difficult for outsiders to understand.
Someone has your future in their hands. Maybe they wouldn't hold it against you if you turned them down, but can you afford to take that risk?
No choice = sexual assault.
False again. You are not going to file for a divorce because your partner gets multiple speeding tickets.
And no, decency has nothing to do with it. It is also her personal life and how she lives it does not reflect how she'd govern a country.
"Do you condone your husband's sexual assaults?"
"He's never committed sexual assault."
That's not condoning.
Hillary accepted her husband, who had shown remorse and while he's been accused of things, he was not guilty of anything more than the Lewinsky stuff. Also he's been a model citizen.
Trump bragged about sexual assaults on tape and had a dozen women verify that the type of behavior he bragged about had happened to them. He's shown no remorse or responsibility protested and slandered and threatened his accusers. His ex-wife claimed she'd been raped by him but then changed her story as part of divorce settlement.
Comparing Hillary into all this is blueberries to oranges
And no, decency has nothing to do with it. It is also her personal life and how she lives it does not reflect how she'd govern a country.
But she doesn't govern the country, does she? The first duty of a good leader is to put the good of the country above self-interest. And the good of the country was to not let Trump win, and to do that she should have stood aside, irrespective of wether it was "fair" or not.
By the way, he continues to tell us all what a hellscape the country is. Does you know that's now ALL on him if that's the case?? Tell me again what sign Truman had on his desk.....
This tweet is without question true:
I don't understand how Clinton could be considered such a horribly abysmal alternative to Trump when she won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes.
And for what it's worth, nobody predicted a popular vote win for Clinton and an electoral vote win for Trump. Some people thought Clinton would win both, some people thought Trump would win both, and some people thought Clinton would win the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. But nobody foresaw this.
Vote for a morally bankrupt corrupt oligarch with a charisma bypass, a proven track record of incompetence and an agenda of doing the same as always; or a delusional idiotic monster? 2.9 million people had to vote for someone. Most of them voted to stop Trump, not because they liked Clinton. Just as most of Trump's voters voted to stop Clinton, not because they liked Trump.
Cameron had this issue. He thought that because he had won an election people liked him. No, they just hated him marginally less than the other tit. So when he asked people to trust him in a referendum people told him to get stuffed.
All over Europe we are seeing the traditional establishment political parties being rejected in favour of new parties coming from both left and right (and even the centre). People are listening to Shakespeare when he said "a plague on both your houses". It's time the USA followed suit.
Who cares*? The popular vote is an irrelevancy.
*Okay, Trump cares, but that's because he is a moronic narcissist who wants everyone to love him.
It's just baffling how he seems to make stuff up as he goes along.
Again, these are not normal lies. They aren't the result of bad information, or even the product of responding to something and trying to defend a position with inaccurate information. They are willful, premeditated lies told SPECIFICALLY because they purposefully create a completely alternate and false reality among his supporters, so when the hammer falls (and clearly the media is the one who will report it) 30-35% of the country will not believe it.
Trump says there is a terror attack in Sweden. There wasn't. He said he won one of the biggest electoral victories in recent history. He didn't. He says violent crime is at a all-time high. It is actually at a 50-year low. You don't tell lies this big, this easily countered, for fun. He knows the media will correct them, and then he attacks the media. His supporters are inclined to believe him. Thus, they think the media is lying to them, even though everything I just mentioned (and about 3 or 4 dozen other things) are verifiable FACTS that Trump is telling blatant falsehoods about. He isn't doing it for fun. Telling big, massive, totally out of proportion lies is THE key element of propaganda.
So whether he's talking about the largest electoral victory since Reagan, the terrorist attack of Sweden, the terrorist attack of 7/11 - his delivery is such that it sounds like he believes it's the truth. If you disagree or point out the truth, he will just attack you.
That's it. That's don the con.
It's pretty clear he's barely literate. He wants all his intel briefings on one page in bullet format with lots of pictures. A more pertinent question is who is feeding him these worldviews (President Bannon/Fox News/Brietbart/Alex Jones?) or is he just making this stuff up himself.
I agree with your assessment of Trump. I have to admit I was kind of hoping at least some of his bluster was just an act to make himself appear more confident or powerful. Sadly it appears to be an integral part of his character. Now I'm just hoping he cares enough about his popularity to modify his behavior. I'm not holding my breath though...
We'll need luck in 2020, since we'll still have a 18th century relic of a electoral system and he will have the power of incumbency. I'd say no matter how badly he performs (and it will continue to be an epic failure), he will still stand a 50/50 chance of getting back in. I'm not one of those who thinks Democrats are going to ride a wave against this guy in either 2018 or 2020. The House is gerrymandered to the point of making a Democratic wave nearly impossible, and the Electoral College will continue to award extra merit to places of the country that simply do not deserve it based on their population. Like Ginger Rogers, the Democrats have to do everything Republicans do to win, but backwards and in heels.
I wasn't coerced in any way and I don't apologize for it no matter the result. I voted the way I felt was right at the time.
I've got an idea. How about we don't allow Government workers and people on welfare programs to vote. I would venture to bet that wonderful advantage the Democrats have in the big cities would evaporate. I wish I could vote for the people signing my paycheck!
I know how the Electoral College works. That isn't the same thing as admitting it's a good idea. The Democratic advantage in big cities doesn't come from an artificial weight. Those are actual people, solid population numbers. That's where most people live. As I've said a dozen times, if California had the same proportional weight as Wyoming, it would have 198 Electoral votes instead of 55. But we have the ridiculous system we have. And just because it is working how it is supposed to (by the way, a system devised when there was 13 states up and down one coast, not 50 spanning the entire continent) doesn't mean it isn't rigged towards one side given modern demographics.