@jjstraka34 Are you implying that Trump and Clinton are judged by different standards?
If I may butt in, I couldn't help but remember a quote I think is quite appropriate:
The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about 'new polities' and 'honesty in government' is one of the few men who've run for president of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.
McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?
So going back a few pages in this thread, why does the American government still trade and purchase goods from these Arab countries that enslave humans, kill Gays and treat woman like trash?
Because some of them let the US put bases on their soil or are otherwise considered allies, which trumps the US's concern for human rights every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
BTW, if you don't name which countries you're talking about, one would be tempted to believe you think this is a generally accurate descriptor of all "Arab" countries.
Funnily enough, the electoral was originally designed to cause this exact thing to happen, or to prevent the popular vote. It was designed to prevent geographically larger states from having too much voting power over geographically smaller states, but has since changed to do that same thing for states with larger/smaller populations instead. I do find it very interesting looking at the voting map, state to state. Here is a pretty interesting website that altered the US map based on different voting analysis.
I do not believe we would or even should abolish the electoral college in favor of the popular vote, because it would simply change what we have now without providing a solution. It would just eliminate the reason the college was founded in the first place without actually improving anything.
An alternative to the electoral college would have to be done correctly. Abolishing it entirely in favor of the popular vote is a mistake. It would just change the way campaigning is done now from touring in the swing states to touring in the big cities. It would be manipulated exactly the same way our political system is manipulated now. Just as we are complaining that the wrong voices were heard this election, we would be complaining that the wrong voices would be heard in every other election. Having all states split their electoral college votes would inevitably end up favoring the Republican Party, because states like California, Washington, Oregon, and all of New England, which offer large amounts of electoral votes consistently Blue, would finally have some of their votes go Red. Southern states are very unlikely to go blue for all but a few of their votes.
I personally don't have any ideas for a good replacement. Anyone got any?
@jjstraka34 Are you implying that Trump and Clinton are judged by different standards?
If I may butt in, I couldn't help but remember a quote I think is quite appropriate:
The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about 'new polities' and 'honesty in government' is one of the few men who've run for president of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.
McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?
- Hunter S. Thompson
Absolutely. "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" is seminal reading.
So choose a system that is fair in principle and do your level best to tackle the manipulation as it arises. You can't get fairer than one person one vote.
He's a clown, but unfortunately his "fake it until you make it" style handed him the presidency.
The FBI's reopening of Hillary's email server was big big news before the election even though it amounted to nothing. Donald Trump just settled for $25M his Trump University case for defrauding thousands of veterans, senior citizens, and other people. Would it have been informative for the American people to know that this candidate?
Why did people vote for him? The proof of the character of Donald Trump has been there all along. But a whole lot of people ignored it, overlooked it, or never bothered to learn who they were voting for. A large chunk of voters, such as Paul Ryan who would not say "Donald Trump, blindly voted for their party's nominee. What about the racist, sexist behavior and documented statements and lawsuits, people ignored those things too. People voted for him anyway. Unbelievable. Never underestimate the power of stupid in large groups.
I think the measure with which both candidates were judged mostly was "authenticity".
A large number of voters preferred an authentic [insert your choice of word for Trump here] to a "fake" Hillary Clinton.
That is not necessarily how Trump and Clinton really are (and not necessarily how I see them), but that is how they were perceived I think.
The idea that anyone could view Trump as "authentic" has killed whatever faith I had left in this country. I'm not saying Clinton WAS authentic (her problem is more than she's policy wonk and not a retail politician). When we are talking about Trump being authentic, what we're really saying, more often than not, is that he gives license for people to speak out loud the horrible things that are in their head. But it's all a game to him. Who the hell knows how Trump really feels about anything?? He simply uses racism, misogyny and whatever else he has at his disposal to defeat his opponent and come out on top. And he's made his bet that white nationalism is his meal ticket. He's doubled down on it.
You have a point about the cult of celebrity. We might see Antonio Sabato Jr. and Charles in Charge as prominent roles in the new administration. Weren't they the best Trump could do as far as celebrities endorsements go? All the non-obscure ones seemed to support Hillary.
Maybe next election the left puts up Tom Hanks or someone. We are literally on track for the dystopian future of Idiocracy where a celebrity is the president. In that movie Ultimate smackdown fighter Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho Trump is the President.
Imagine a future where people realize that just because someone's famous doesn't mean that they are right. Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton etc say a lot of things but for god's sake that doesn't make them right. It's safe to ignore their opinions. Really it is.
I see the markets in America are going up... The $ and £ are also going up after a big tumble and the euro is... Well... plummeting to depths hitherto not seen before... But it isn't a problem because you can always print more euros.
1. Authenticity and honesty are different things. Trump lies left and right without care. Even in his widely-praised 60 Minutes interview as president-elect he had two consecutive responses that made me laugh out loud: Donald Trump: I wanna do the job. We have some great generals. We have great generals. Lesley Stahl: You said you knew more than the generals about ISIS Donald Trump: Well, I’ll be honest with you, I probably do because look at the job they’ve done. OK, look at the job they’ve done. They haven’t done the job. Trump's flip-flopping IS authentic. He is a hypocrite in the way that may everyday people are hypocritical in matters they aren't very ponderous about. Clinton, on the other hand, is calculated in all her lies. Take, for example, her "evolving" stance on TPP. It was the "Gold Standard" until she realized she needed to appeal to the Sanders crowd. Or how she completely altered her stance on the Iraq War as soon as the polls shifted. Fair or not, people view being calculatedly dishonest AND inauthentic worse than just being a liar.
2. People seem to be missing the fact that the popular vote is a product of the Electoral College. Campaigns and turnout would be much different if the presidency is decided by popular vote, particularly Republican turnout in California (far and away the biggest state and its not even close) and NY. There is a reason Bill Clinton advised the Democrats that they needed to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan. Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, her advisers laughed at him. The amount spent on ads in the most populous states would skyrocket in a popular vote system, considering that none of the three biggest states are even close to being purple. Unless the difference in the popular vote was around 5 million, it is hard to take claims of injustice seriously when there are so many variables to account for.
The result really was ridiculously close. I read an analysis that if Hillary had gotten 54,000 more votes in 3 states that she would be the winner of the electoral college now. Like 27000 in Wisconsin, 10000 in Michigan, 17000 in Pennsylvania or something like that and she gets all three states. Very small difference out of 120 million total votes cast.
2. People seem to be missing the fact that the popular vote is a product of the Electoral College. Campaigns and turnout would be much different if the presidency is decided by popular vote, particularly Republican turnout in California (far and away the biggest state and its not even close) and NY. There is a reason Bill Clinton advised the Democrats that they needed to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan. Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, her advisers laughed at him. The amount spent on ads in the most populous states would skyrocket in a popular vote system, considering that none of the three biggest states are even close to being purple. Unless the difference in the popular vote was around 5 million, it is hard to take claims of injustice seriously when there are so many variables to account for.
As opposed to now, where all the money and campaigning takes place in Ohio, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
1. Authenticity and honesty are different things. Trump lies left and right without care. Even in his widely-praised 60 Minutes interview as president-elect he had two consecutive responses that made me laugh out loud: Donald Trump: I wanna do the job. We have some great generals. We have great generals. Lesley Stahl: You said you knew more than the generals about ISIS Donald Trump: Well, I’ll be honest with you, I probably do because look at the job they’ve done. OK, look at the job they’ve done. They haven’t done the job. Trump's flip-flopping IS authentic. He is a hypocrite in the way that may everyday people are hypocritical in matters they aren't very ponderous about. Clinton, on the other hand, is calculated in all her lies. Take, for example, her "evolving" stance on TPP. It was the "Gold Standard" until she realized she needed to appeal to the Sanders crowd. Or how she completely altered her stance on the Iraq War as soon as the polls shifted. Fair or not, people view being dishonest AND inauthentic worse than just being a calculated liar.
Lets discuss the point about lies. Sometimes he flip flops because he doesn't have a position or a different thought occurs in his head but he also is a very very calculating liar. He is a salesman, and he has 50+ years of experience selling TRUMP - himself - the brand. He know what he's saying. He is a practiced liar - why would he lie about his support of the Iraq War or his claims that the climate change is a Chinese hoax then contradicts himself later - even when you show him his face saying those things. He's doing it on purpose, the notorious RBG said he's a faker - he is he's faked it until he made it to President.
And I believe he purposefully sent Pence to "Hamilton" to set a different narrative on the News than the actual news concerning Trump the world should have been focused on - his $25M settlement of his fraud trail for his fake university scam. So Trump sends Pence there in apublic way knowing that he (Trump) is really really unpopular in New York and expecting a reaction to pretend to be butthurt about. Then this guy, who has never apologized in his life, asks the cast of Hamilton for an apology. And that's the news and the scam isn't mentioned.
Now Clinton. If you take Clinton at her word, she was for the TPP until she saw how the implementation of it was going to go then she was against it, presumably before the Sanders phenomenon. She isn't like Trump obviously. She's not going to say "I'll never go to Mexico" or some blanket statement like Trump does because she knows someday she may go to Mexico. She avoids absolutes because she's not a braggart. This makes her seem untrustworthy. Suggest you read this on how Trump is a BS artist - a bald face liar but is perceived as trustworthy as Clinton.
This is all a moot point, Trump will be the President unless the electoral college does it's job and votes for the best candidate. Supposedly the electoral college was made to avoid populists with foreign entanglements who bushwhacked the American people.
Black or white, male or female, or A or B or C or D, it's always a great time to be rich, unless a Communist revolution is afoot. It's just that Trump's proposed tax cuts on the 1% will make things even better for the rich.
"This is all a moot point, Trump will be the President unless the electoral college does it's job and votes for the best candidate." Hahaha, no one in this election was anywhere near being a good candidate, let alone the best.
"This is all a moot point, Trump will be the President unless the electoral college does it's job and votes for the best candidate." Hahaha, no one in this election was anywhere near being a good candidate, let alone the best.
Hillary wasn't many peoples first choice but her experience, calm demeanor and so forth would be a welcome change to this circus. The conspiracies, slander and scandals surrounding her have proven to be figments of troubled right wing propaganda. Bengazhi? OK she could have done more that was what 9 Republican investigations proved. Her email? Dumb mistake amounting to no charges. Pay for play? Yes she's a career politician. Her foundation? World class charity. Bill Clinton? Made some mistakes, was not running.
Compare that to the real scandals, wrongdoings and statements from Donald. He has foreign entanglements and has broken laws and thumbed his nose at the law his whole life. His priorities are burning the planet, cutting taxes for the rich, restricting free speech, and making money for himself. Yeah he should not be the choice and its not even close.
Hilary would simply be the head of another circus.
It would be a circus yes, because the GOP controlled House and Senate would continue to obstruct and do nothing, the same as they did to Obama. That's their bad.
"This is all a moot point, Trump will be the President unless the electoral college does it's job and votes for the best candidate." Hahaha, no one in this election was anywhere near being a good candidate, let alone the best.
One was like choosing to be sick with the common cold. The other was opting to go with terminal lung cancer.
Hilary would simply be the head of another circus.
It would be a circus yes, because the GOP controlled House and Senate would continue to obstruct and do nothing, the same as they did to Obama. That's their bad.
They are both the same.
@jjstraka34 Ah, but which candidate was which disease? Hilary and Trump were both laughably bad choices.
@smeagolheart haha very funny. There is little objective about politics. A lot of people hate Hilary for the same reasons a lot of people like her. This is true of every politician. Being smug and condescending because someone holds different views than you solves nothing and adds nothing to the discussion.
@smeagolheart haha very funny. There is little objective about politics. A lot of people hate Hilary for the same reasons a lot of people like her. This is true of every politician. Being smug and condescending because someone holds different views than you solves nothing and adds nothing to the discussion.
Sorry you feel that way. I've offered researched points but those are a waste of time to a true believer. This is Donald Trump the truth doesn't matter.
No one here finds it strange that the mainstream media has been slandering Hillary for the last 20 years...and then suddenly starts calling her things like "saint" and "cool-headed" only in the last 6-12 months? Not even Fox, which is typically republican, could get behind Trump. Why is this? If Trump could somehow get people, any people, not just a majority, but anyone, let alone enough people to make it a close enough call for him to become president...if Trump could get people to vote for him even though all the mainstream media has openly opposed him, what does that say? Does that say that the American people just loved Trump that much? Does it mean that almost half of the participating voters are racist and sexist, as has been alluded to out of confused incomprehension in this very thread? No. It says the American people hated Hillary that much. And apparently, it means that almost half of voters believe the claims about Hillary enough to vote in a rich eccentric instead. So I do not believe the claims against her are baseless, as certain people here have tried to point out. Study Watergate. Study the Vietnam War. Study the Korean War. Study the Pentagon Papers. Learn your history. Our government has been steeped with corruption for fifty years or more. It's not like we have suddenly stopped being corrupt. Hillary is the quintessential establishment politician, and that means she comes with all the corruption our government is known for as part of the package deal. Trump is corrupt too. But he is not Hillary, and half of American says thank goodness for that.
Comments
The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about 'new polities' and 'honesty in government' is one of the few men who've run for president of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.
McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.
Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be president?
- Hunter S. Thompson
BTW, if you don't name which countries you're talking about, one would be tempted to believe you think this is a generally accurate descriptor of all "Arab" countries.
It was designed to prevent geographically larger states from having too much voting power over geographically smaller states, but has since changed to do that same thing for states with larger/smaller populations instead.
I do find it very interesting looking at the voting map, state to state. Here is a pretty interesting website that altered the US map based on different voting analysis.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/2016-election-results-maps-population-adjusted-cartogram-2016-11?client=safari
I do not believe we would or even should abolish the electoral college in favor of the popular vote, because it would simply change what we have now without providing a solution. It would just eliminate the reason the college was founded in the first place without actually improving anything.
We need a viable replacement.
(Here is my previous quote on the subject.)
So choose a system that is fair in principle and do your level best to tackle the manipulation as it arises. You can't get fairer than one person one vote.
He alone does everything the best.
His brand is the best brand.
Admit to no wrong ever, it makes you look weak.
Brag about everything you do bigly.
This guy is so insecure and is always exaggerating his wealth and suing people who don't say he's as rich as he feels he is. Trump even rewrote punchlines on at roast of himself, faced with joke about a fictional 150,000-square-foot Trump Space Station, Trump made sure the size was upped to 300,000 square feet. He's also appeared as his own publicist John Barron and John Miller several times in where he'd do phone interviews and explain how great Donald Trump is and how he has no problem with the ladies.
He's a clown, but unfortunately his "fake it until you make it" style handed him the presidency.
The FBI's reopening of Hillary's email server was big big news before the election even though it amounted to nothing. Donald Trump just settled for $25M his Trump University case for defrauding thousands of veterans, senior citizens, and other people. Would it have been informative for the American people to know that this candidate?
Why did people vote for him? The proof of the character of Donald Trump has been there all along. But a whole lot of people ignored it, overlooked it, or never bothered to learn who they were voting for. A large chunk of voters, such as Paul Ryan who would not say "Donald Trump, blindly voted for their party's nominee. What about the racist, sexist behavior and documented statements and lawsuits, people ignored those things too. People voted for him anyway. Unbelievable. Never underestimate the power of stupid in large groups.
Are we taking bets on how long it will be before he is dangling from a lamp-post?
It is fair to say that he is the logical conclusion of the cult of celebrity.
Maybe next election the left puts up Tom Hanks or someone. We are literally on track for the dystopian future of Idiocracy where a celebrity is the president. In that movie Ultimate smackdown fighter Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho Trump is the President.
Imagine a future where people realize that just because someone's famous doesn't mean that they are right. Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton etc say a lot of things but for god's sake that doesn't make them right. It's safe to ignore their opinions. Really it is.
I see the markets in America are going up... The $ and £ are also going up after a big tumble and the euro is... Well... plummeting to depths hitherto not seen before... But it isn't a problem because you can always print more euros.
1. Authenticity and honesty are different things. Trump lies left and right without care. Even in his widely-praised 60 Minutes interview as president-elect he had two consecutive responses that made me laugh out loud:
Donald Trump: I wanna do the job. We have some great generals. We have great generals.
Lesley Stahl: You said you knew more than the generals about ISIS
Donald Trump: Well, I’ll be honest with you, I probably do because look at the job they’ve done. OK, look at the job they’ve done. They haven’t done the job.
Trump's flip-flopping IS authentic. He is a hypocrite in the way that may everyday people are hypocritical in matters they aren't very ponderous about.
Clinton, on the other hand, is calculated in all her lies. Take, for example, her "evolving" stance on TPP. It was the "Gold Standard" until she realized she needed to appeal to the Sanders crowd. Or how she completely altered her stance on the Iraq War as soon as the polls shifted. Fair or not, people view being calculatedly dishonest AND inauthentic worse than just being a liar.
2. People seem to be missing the fact that the popular vote is a product of the Electoral College. Campaigns and turnout would be much different if the presidency is decided by popular vote, particularly Republican turnout in California (far and away the biggest state and its not even close) and NY. There is a reason Bill Clinton advised the Democrats that they needed to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan. Unfortunately for Hillary Clinton, her advisers laughed at him. The amount spent on ads in the most populous states would skyrocket in a popular vote system, considering that none of the three biggest states are even close to being purple. Unless the difference in the popular vote was around 5 million, it is hard to take claims of injustice seriously when there are so many variables to account for.
And I believe he purposefully sent Pence to "Hamilton" to set a different narrative on the News than the actual news concerning Trump the world should have been focused on - his $25M settlement of his fraud trail for his fake university scam. So Trump sends Pence there in apublic way knowing that he (Trump) is really really unpopular in New York and expecting a reaction to pretend to be butthurt about. Then this guy, who has never apologized in his life, asks the cast of Hamilton for an apology. And that's the news and the scam isn't mentioned.
Now Clinton. If you take Clinton at her word, she was for the TPP until she saw how the implementation of it was going to go then she was against it, presumably before the Sanders phenomenon. She isn't like Trump obviously. She's not going to say "I'll never go to Mexico" or some blanket statement like Trump does because she knows someday she may go to Mexico. She avoids absolutes because she's not a braggart. This makes her seem untrustworthy.
Suggest you read this on how Trump is a BS artist - a bald face liar but is perceived as trustworthy as Clinton.
This is all a moot point, Trump will be the President unless the electoral college does it's job and votes for the best candidate. Supposedly the electoral college was made to avoid populists with foreign entanglements who bushwhacked the American people.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/carlos-slim-loses-5-billion-donald-trump-victory-article-1.2867413
Compare that to the real scandals, wrongdoings and statements from Donald. He has foreign entanglements and has broken laws and thumbed his nose at the law his whole life. His priorities are burning the planet, cutting taxes for the rich, restricting free speech, and making money for himself. Yeah he should not be the choice and its not even close.
@jjstraka34 Ah, but which candidate was which disease? Hilary and Trump were both laughably bad choices.
People are still denying the earth is round in 2016.
Not even Fox, which is typically republican, could get behind Trump.
Why is this? If Trump could somehow get people, any people, not just a majority, but anyone, let alone enough people to make it a close enough call for him to become president...if Trump could get people to vote for him even though all the mainstream media has openly opposed him, what does that say?
Does that say that the American people just loved Trump that much? Does it mean that almost half of the participating voters are racist and sexist, as has been alluded to out of confused incomprehension in this very thread?
No. It says the American people hated Hillary that much.
And apparently, it means that almost half of voters believe the claims about Hillary enough to vote in a rich eccentric instead.
So I do not believe the claims against her are baseless, as certain people here have tried to point out. Study Watergate. Study the Vietnam War. Study the Korean War. Study the Pentagon Papers. Learn your history. Our government has been steeped with corruption for fifty years or more. It's not like we have suddenly stopped being corrupt. Hillary is the quintessential establishment politician, and that means she comes with all the corruption our government is known for as part of the package deal.
Trump is corrupt too. But he is not Hillary, and half of American says thank goodness for that.