Donald Trump for President Thread

[abelard]

Our media is very sophisticated about the way they shape their content, whether it is Rush Limbaugh or NPR or the NYT

It's really shameful how little attention TV news in particular, or the debates, devote to policy as opposed to personality and scandal. It would be interesting to consider what would happen if, turning up at the polls, voters were instead presented with competing policy summaries to vote for. But the trouble this time is that nobody has any idea what Trump's policies are meant to be - I say that not to be snide. He is all over the map and at times outright contradictory.

It's amazing how the system has managed to conjure such thoroughly detested candidates

 

[zandvoort blue]

Ortel was the whistleblower that blew the lid off the General Electric financial discrepancies in 2008.

Charles Ortel is a veteran Wall Street investment analyst who has carried out major studies into the operation of the Clinton Foundation and its legal status, and runs a blog monitoring its activities.

Pay-for-Play

"The Clinton Foundation has been a gigantic slush fund,” Ortel said. “People can donate relatively small sums to the Clinton regime and get gigantic concessions worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars back.” During the four years that Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into the Clinton Foundation from governments around the world, many of which then enjoyed favored treatment from the US State Department, Ortel noted. “To the world at large, the Clintons are open for business,” he stated. The US corporate media always refused to subject the Clinton Foundation to any kind of serious or skeptical coverage, in part because of fear of alienating the Clintons, Ortel explained. “This is such a big story that the US press is not doing its job. What we have in ‘Clinton Incorporated,’ is Tammany Hall on steroids,” he said.

 

[lancs blue]

nuclear war is inevitable

 

[VentureBrosEFC]

I'm not saying Clinton's choices would be good.

I'm simply saying that Pence's/Kasich's (let's not pretend Kasich isn't socially conservative as hell just because the party has become full reactionary) would be catastrophic. I mean...if it was just corporate regulation I was worried about, then yeah, it's all bad. But on one side I have someone that will treat the rich preferentially while trying to improve equality among women and races. On the other side I have someone that will treat the rich preferentially while reinforcing white male christian dominance.

So I take the blue pill, while gagging, because the red one is just more abhorrent to me.

Corporate personhood is vile and disgusting. I don't see either of them being the type to oppose it.

I guess I just don't see that as a congruent idea unless all you mean in regards to equality is access to goods and services.

 

[RaleighBlue]

I guess I just don't see that as a congruent idea unless all you mean in regards to equality is access to goods and services.

I mean that women, minority races, immigrants, and the like do not have the same access to services and support as white men in this country. As a white man, I am in a position of utmost privilege in this nation. Economic inequality is just a part of the vast tapestry of inequality in this nation.

It's better to address some of it than none of it.

 

[VentureBrosEFC]

I mean that women, minority races, immigrants, and the like do not have the same access to services and support as white men in this country. As a white man, I am in a position of utmost privilege in this nation. Economic inequality is just a part of the vast tapestry of inequality in this nation.

It's better to address some of it than none of it.

And to me I feel like these issues are not even close to what she has planned for her presidency. But who knows. We are certainly living in interesting times unfortunately.

 

[RaleighBlue]

And to me I feel like these issues are not even close to what she has planned for her presidency. But who knows. We are certainly living in interesting times unfortunately.

I don't think she does either.

But I do think any justices she appoints will lean more progressive (at least socially) than any justices appointed by Trump/Pence/Kasich. And when you're stuck picking between poisons, precisely how comfortable death is matters.

 

[Moomin]

Not to pile on, and really didn't want to read as snarky as the above reply reads, but're you're truly onto something.

Our media is very sophisticated about the way they shape their content, whether it is Rush Limbaugh or NPR or the NYT. I have long held that in the general election if we are talking about Hillary at election time, she'll lose. The same goes for Trump. Hillary is sinking because we're talking about her and the FBI this week instead of some creepy thing Trump has said. They'd really rather focus on Trump, but they feel the reins of the muleteam slipping away because of the internal revolt in the FBI.

They just can't say no to leaks, so they print them and try to spin them. They are their lifeblood. This is an extraordinary time.

Media win elections, Rupert Murdoch has won every election and vote he has backed in the UK.

 

[mezzrow]

Media win elections, Rupert Murdoch has won every election and vote he has backed in the UK.

Rather remarkably, there was virtually no mention of Clinton or any other candidate running for president on this particular day. And so I repeated this little thought experiment again last week and the results were largely the same. The Post should not be blamed for criticizing a candidate who has demonstrated xenophobic, racist, and sexually predatory behavior. But even at the end of perhaps the worst stretch of weeks for a candidate in modern American electoral history, perhaps 45 percent of the electorate, some 55 million voters or so, still will vote for Trump. And some of them may wonder if the Post put their fat thumbs on the electoral scales.

This is on the pages of Vanity [redacted] Fair. I hadn't read this before - I'm busy watching the Cubs victory celebration (hehehe) and somebody sent me a link to this.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/the-right-wing-media-isnt-crazy

 

[abelard]

^ you might like this: http://harpers.org/archive/2016/11/swat-team-2/

or this: https://thisishell.com/interviews/924-thomas-frank

although if you already know the author, you also might not

 

[TheFinnFan]

 

[mezzrow]

^ you might like this: http://harpers.org/archive/2016/11/swat-team-2/

or this: https://thisishell.com/interviews/924-thomas-frank

although if you already know the author, you also might not

We (over on our side) have been discussing what Frank has had to say in that Harper essay, even if we think nothing's wrong with Kansas.

He has been very insightful on the subject, though we differ on many points.

 

[mezzrow]

Ortel was the whistleblower that blew the lid off the General Electric financial discrepancies in 2008.

Charles Ortel is a veteran Wall Street investment analyst who has carried out major studies into the operation of the Clinton Foundation and its legal status, and runs a blog monitoring its activities.

Pay-for-Play

"The Clinton Foundation has been a gigantic slush fund,” Ortel said. “People can donate relatively small sums to the Clinton regime and get gigantic concessions worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars back.” During the four years that Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into the Clinton Foundation from governments around the world, many of which then enjoyed favored treatment from the US State Department, Ortel noted. “To the world at large, the Clintons are open for business,” he stated. The US corporate media always refused to subject the Clinton Foundation to any kind of serious or skeptical coverage, in part because of fear of alienating the Clintons, Ortel explained. “This is such a big story that the US press is not doing its job. What we have in ‘Clinton Incorporated,’ is Tammany Hall on steroids,” he said.

 

[DanEFC92]

http://europe.newsweek.com/donald-t...ary-clinton-united-states-europe-516895?rm=eu

 

[abelard]

We (over on our side) have been discussing what Frank has had to say in that Harper essay, even if we think nothing's wrong with Kansas.

He has been very insightful on the subject, though we differ on many points.

This is the trouble - there are actually many points on which both sides can agree, and could progress, but current political discourse doesn't begin to cover them. It is all tribalism and personality.

Our side - or, I should say, the side I best align with, though politics everywhere seems increasingly polarized along the same lines - does not agree that nothing is wrong with Kansas (http://www.cbpp.org/research/federa...utes-economic-growth-predictions-of-trump-tax)

But in terms of basic consensus on what norms should apply regarding the fair governance of the country, there is ample basis for specific accord. Unfortunately, there is no longer any organized, binding forum where progress can made on points of mutual concern, and where points of disagreement can be refined or set aside. One thing we all seem to agree on is that Congress is useless (http://www.pewresearch.org/data-trend/political-attitudes/congressional-favorability/)

Impartial districting and corporate-spending regulations would be one way to start to address this, but of course that would favour one side, which happens to be more popular than the other (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/27/ratfcked-the-influence-of-redistricting). The earlier article you cited considers this a violation of "free speech."