I really wish that our — and of course I’m writing for feller Muricans here — first female president was going to be Senator Elizabeth Warren.
That, unfortunately, isn’t going to happen (at least not this time). Nor is a Jill Stein presidency a viable option.
So that leaves Hillary Clinton, a hawkish, centrist Democrat in the “Scoop” Jackson mold, AFAICT. That is not a good thing. Hillary is likely to be particularly poor in the arena of issues of interest to (past and present) readers of this blog. She will likely remain blind to the inequalities facing men, and I suspect she will continue to amplify the political tension between gender egalitarians and mainstream feminists. She will also very likely continue the buildup of the national security state, and her opposition to the democracy-threatening free trade deals is unreliable at best.
However, I do expect her to support the fundamentals of the New Deal, and to appoint reasonably intelligent and capable judges to federal posts and the Supreme Court. I expect her defense of a woman’s right to choose will be staunch.
It is a tribute to just how terrible a candidate Trump is that this mealy-mouthed appraisal of Hillary puts her leagues ahead of her opposition. In his favor, Trump has talked a good game about the trade deals that most Americans rightly despise. His adoption of that populist issue is what I believe allowed him to stand out from the truly dreadful slate of Republican candidates that aimed for the nomination.
However, in every other arena Trump is bad to terrible. He has gone on record saying he will appoint right-to-life judges, and has said he wants to eliminate much of the regulations that provide some minimalist protection of workers and consumers from unbridled corporate domination. He supports tax cuts that (like George Bush’s) will primarily benefit the super-rich. He is a part of the anti-science “not sure about global warming” minority that is playing such a big role in allowing the destruction of planet to proceed unabated. Moreover, he is temperamentally unsuited to hold office as a county executive, much less as leader of the free world. It is no accident that he has never been elected to a political office, nor is it any accident that racists and right wing extremists have flocked to his campaign.
I’m barely scratching the surface for why Trump is terrible. This David Pakman video is essential viewing for anyone considering voting for him. It provides a litany of reasons — including serial mendacity and apparent business incompetence — why a Trump presidency is a recipe for disaster for this country.
You expect her to protect remnants of the New Deal? How foolishly generous of you. To the contrary, she plans to revive her husband’s start on privatizing Social Security. Read the CounterPunch article by Alan Nasser for details.
Years ago I said on here that feminism was developing as a mask for capitalism. Now if you don’t vote for Clinton, you are a rapist, or at least a rape apologist. In any event, you hate women. A more pure ideological device for attaining authoritarian control would be hard to imagine. Identity politics has achieved the opposite of that which it pretends. Just like Clinton, is has a public face and a private face.
Giving your consent to that which controls you could be called voting only in the most Orwellian of worlds.
KH
Abortion, rich people’s taxes, global warming, and racism are threadbare red herrings and maguffins. Temperament is subjective, but if seeing a candidate for leader of the free world collapse from frailty makes you feel confident, I question your subjectivity. If Hillary is elected it won’t “our” doing it anyway it will be Latin Americans voting for Latin American expansion, Hillary will be more of a last than a first for the USA
Under no circumstances will I vote for a Feminist.
I did hear that, KevinHornbuckle, and it is a cause for concern. However, she and a (hopefully Democratic) Senate will be much less likely to damage the system than Trump and a Republican Senate.
Well, I appreciate your forthright expression of your views, Wilson, but if that’s what you believe there probably isn’t enough agreement on basic assumptions to have a productive conversation.
Our first female President?
I’m glad you qualified that.
I should point out that we Brits are already onto our second female Prime Minister and that we Scots not only have a female First Minister, but the Parties that came second, third, and fourth in the last Scottish general election all have female leadership.
As far as your election is concerned, I would be content for you to elect the 45th President not to be called “Donald Trump”.
Last week I went to a preview showing of You’ve been trumped too (also available here).
Present at the show were the filmmaker, Anthony Baxter, and several people who were featured in the film, most notably the Forbes family. I have also discovered that I have something in common with one of the people featured: I have also pissed on his golf course. Unlike her, I didn’t get into any trouble. Perhaps I will now.
I seem to recall you may have had a female head of state before those as well.
Seriously, were any British kings as dominant during their reigns as Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria? One often reads of the Elizabethan Era and Victorian Era, but I can’t ever recall seeing the Henry Era, the John Era, or the Georgian Era.
Wiki is your friend. There’s also the Caroline Era (which admittedly I had never heard of before researching this comment) named for Charles I, the Edwardian Era, and the Jacobean Era, named for James VI of Scotland.
Nor would I agree that Victoria was “dominant”. By this time in British history, power was firmly in the hands of Parliament. She just had the good fortune to enjoy an extremely long reign coinciding with the Industrial Revolution, and the spectacular expansion of the British Empire it enabled, neither of which were her doing. Similarly Charles I can hardly be described as “dominant”, if that word means in control of the country he ostensibly ruled. On the other hand, Henry VIII most certainly was, though he doesn’t get an Era named after him. There have been also been weak female monarchs, for example Jane Grey
So I don’t agree with your thesis that Female Monarchs in Britain have been generally more impressive than Male ones. Some have been impressive, others less so, just as with the men. You’re more likely to get an era named after you if you have a lengthy reign, and if you live in interesting times, whether you are their cause, their victim, or just an interested bystander.
Out of the six leaders of the five parties (The Greens have male and female co-convenors) with Scottish parliamentary representation, at least three are LGBT. That is some serious over-representation.
I wonder if they’re doing anything to end the bisexual male wage gap.
That’s a new one to me, and frankly, I’m skeptical. My Bayesian prior for the probability that a sexuality-based gender gap would be restricted to just bisexual men is low.
I think there may be another explanation for this apparent result.
I find this website strangely compelling.
If you angle the trumpet right, he looks a bit like one of the leading Brexiteers.
What a fucking disaster. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Makes Brexit look like small potatoes, frankly.
USA! USA! USA!
*sobs*
Ian Welsh has a worthwhile appraisal of the election.
I’ll take your salty tears, too, ballgame.
Here’s a professional ethicist that explains better than I can why I didn’t and wouldn’t vote for Hillary under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES , unless Trump was caught murdering or raping infants on the Trump Towers roof:
https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/11/08/the-2016-election-and-ethics-zugswang/
Wikileaks and the undoubted corruption it exposed as far as the Bernie Voters not having a real chance as well as stuff like this about the Clinton Foundation and its likely use in influence peddling with both domestic and foreign powers should be enough for any self-respecting person to try and burn the current Democratic Party down: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-foundation-idUSKBN12Z2SL
Trump is many things to be wary of: an egotistical populist (or someone who makes populist noises at least) ‘alpha male’ with a bit of a locker room mentality.He’s freely admitted using the systems legal loopholes (some such loopholes Clinton voted into law) to enrich or empower himself. But he has alot more ‘establishment’ opposition from both Republican RHINOS (‘cucks’ in this years politispeak) and the Democratic part of the House and Senate as well as hostility from large parts of the CORRUPT PRESS (something ELSE you should have been taking into consideration was how much wikileaks showed coordination with the Clinton campaign by various journalists) and the entrenched Donor classes and Federal Bureacrats. He won’t get everything he wants, not that we really know what he wants.
But if he does anything to close the borders or make illegal workers go home, that will be to the good for our own citizens. If he reforms Wall Street or the overbroad libel protections of our press (Britain is too harsh, America too lenient) that will be too the good as I’ve never seen so much downright Yellow Journalism as the past 2 years, esp the past year, or if the reevaluates some of the “Free Trade” agreements that will be to the good.
He won because the current political establishment plays World Power games, embroiling us in endless war and serving big bank and Petrodollar intersts while downright playing Identity Politics at home and using such politics to pit the working classes against each other, while laws that apply to Joe Everyman apparently don’t apply to them.
So continue to cry and bemoan the Death of an already dead Republic. Meanwhile I’ll look forward hopefully. If nothing else the SJW assault on me carried into the Justice Department and various other Federal regulations and laws should stop.
Hey Clarence, nice to see you stop by.
I was under no illusions about how bad Hillary was, but frankly I’d rather have someone who needed to be bribed to do terrible things than someone who does terrible things as a matter of course.
The notion that a nation ruled by Republicans will be less servile to big banks and petrodollar interests, won’t be pitting working classes against each other, and will make the rich elites as subject to the rule of law as Joe Everyman strikes me as rather shockingly naive.
There’s a difference between an already brought off Hillary and a loose cannon Trump.’
Why the heck DO you think the establishment has went so bonkers over Trump? He actually threatens some of their interests.
And at this point , disrupting their plans and forcing them to bargain is the most anyone can hope for. Also Trump isn’t a traditional Republican so the Congress and him won’t get as much right wing legislation through as would normally be the case. He’s downright ‘liberal’ on a few issues at least.
On the question of free trade, yes, they’re afraid that Trump actually meant what he said. So on that one (important) issue, Trump might actually be on the side of working people.
But there are a number of other areas where the interests of the elite might actually sync up to some extent with the interests of everyone else. While most of the elites hate the concessions they have to make to liberalism on an individual level (i.e. a coal mine owner hates environmental controls, agribusinesses hate restrictions on pesticides, etc.), overall most of them are smart enough to recognize the importance of stability and the rule of law. A few of them are genuinely pro-choice and pro-free speech. And none of them actually want the president to go sword-rattling with nuclear weapons. Trump is a loose cannon on all of these issues as well. I’ll wager there was considerable concern that Trump may try to run the country as a private fiefdom.
Even if you’re among the rich, crony capitalism is no fun if you’re not one of the cronies.
I know I ain’t welcome here brah…
https://stonerwithaboner.wordpress.com/2016/11/10/im-not-glad-trump-won-but-i-am-glad-clinton-lost/
but I know that “liberals” do not give one iota of care to low status men such as myself…
Clarence:
I agree that both candidates were awful. I find his arguments that Clinton or the Democrats are worse unconvincing.
In his first substantive point, he quotes a earlier post in which he says “If the choice is between Donald Trump being elected fairly and Hillary Clinton being elected by a rigged process, I will vote for Donald Trump.” That post was mislinked, but it was easy to find. In that post he characterises a change to the Presidential debate rules proposed by Clinton’s campaign manager as follows:
I find nothing in Mook’s words to indicate that he wanted Trump to be subject to penalties not also faced by Clinton, or that Clinton would get privileges not extended to Trump. His words are consistent with both candidates being subject to challenge from the moderators if they tell lies. That he didn’t talk about Clinton being challenged only indicates that he didn’t think she would lie, or that he wasn’t prepared to discuss that possibility publicly.
That a rule change might favour one participant doesn’t make it unfair. To use another chess analogy: Some players struggle under time pressure while others thrive on it. A reduction in the time available to play will favour the latter, but so long as both players get the same amount, its perfectly fair. The rule change proposed by Mook would would have favoured the truthful candidate over the lying one. That doesn’t strike me as a terrible change. If that’s “rigging the election”, then it’s a piss-poor example.
If you want to know how to rig an election you should see how the professionals do it:
The problems that did not exist were of course, voter fraud, of which the state’s lawyers could not point to a single example.
That law was struck down, along with similar laws in Texas and Wisconsin, but with the Republicans now controlling the Presidency, both Houses, and soon the Supreme Court, It’s only a matter of time before these states have a free run. I hope you enjoyed the election. It may be the last unrigged one you ever get.
Marshal’s next point is about the candidates’ alleged fascist tendancies:
“Basket of Deplorables” while not particularly edifying, is hardly a “Big Lie”. Demanding ideological fealty is a characteristic of both sides. As far as punishing dissenters is concerned, well, only one has threatened to sue “everyone involved” in making a film ciritical of him. Only one of the candidates has called for the other to be jailed. Only one of the candidates has suggested that the election be dispensed with, and the Presidency just handed to him. Only one has described the Massacre in Tiananmen Square of peaceable demonstrators as a “strong, powerful government” putting down a “riot”. These, far more than anything said or done by Clinton, are hallmarks of fascism.
There’s been intimidation on both sides. As far as speech codes and censorship are concern, free speech in public colleges is protected by the First Amendment. But that protection can only have teeth as long as the rule of law is maintained. It is Trump and the Republicans who undermining that rule.
The right.
Cite?
Again cite. This does not accurately characterise the remarks of Robbie Mook discussed above.
As Marshall goes on to acknowledge, Trump also wants to take your guns, if he thinks you are a terrorist. He also wants to take your home, if he can make a profit from developing it.
I’ll see your BLM and raise you a KKK and StormFront.
Cite? Trump himself has promoted violence at his own rallies.
Which party rigged the actual election by targeting black voters?
I could go on, but I think you get the point. It’s all academic anyway. You got the candidate you preferred. I hope it works out well for you.
“Loose cannon” is extremely apt. The image invoked is of a ton of cast iron rolling around the deck of a pitching ship. It’s a menace to everyone on the vessel.
A man with all the emotional stability and self-control of a three-year-old child, given the access codes to the United States nuclear arsenal is an existential threat to everyone on the planet.
Daran:
A warmongering idiot (Hillary) is just as much a threat if not more.
I’ll refer you to the this blog, where you can do your own research:
http://www.antiwar.com/
I will say that there is a tremendous difference between someone who says he can work the leaders of a major nuclear power and someone who says she’s going to establish a ‘no fly’ zone in Syria, which is an area that Russia thinks is a vital national interest.
In Trump I see a successful man with a happy family. Not a man prone to destroying things on a whim.
In hypothetical President Hillary’s foreign policy team I see the same Neocons as George Bush Jr and Sr.
Not to mention that Hillary is almost single handedly responsible for the disasters in Libya and Syria due to her time as Secretary of State.
I almost don’t believe you in even made this argument.
Daran:
I read the first twenty pages of your linked court decision.
Since I disagree with the premise that ‘disproportionate impact’ on any population is a sign of discrimination I fundamentally disagree with any “Justice” department policies (to include the Voting Rights Act) that bases any legislation or litigation on that basis alone.
Those are the same arguments that feminists use to prove a non-existent wage gap, that are used to destroy men’s teams in colleges and etc. It’s not enough that everyone be treated the same, apparently even though groups don’t all ACT the same or THINK the same, policies must AFFECT them the same. It’s illogical.
Basically, here is what you are moaning about here:
A. Requiring picture ID’s to vote.
B. States restricting or removing early voting.
C. People having their votes counted at the wrong polling stations, even though I was very careful to make sure I went to the right place this election as I always am.
D. Same day registration being eliminated
E. And a few more.
Basically , things that would assist in fraud and the least -intelligent or least conscientious voting.
I live in a machine city. We haven’t even had a Republican City Council member here in Baltimore since the 1940’s. Nor a Green, a libertarian or any of it.
One party rule is a poison.
You and the Democrats haven’t helped ease Maryland’s election laws (to get on the ballet we have some of the toughest laws in the country and the Democrats helped write most of them) but you expect me to care if the State of North Carolina wants to restrict its voter poll to conscientious people who can prove their identities.
Now, I don’t agree with all those changes. I’m for voter ID’s for instance, but only if the very poorest can get them free and the fee is very low for everyone else. I don’t have a problem with early voting. I’m generally of the opinion the more voting the better. BUT
The State also has a responsibility to its voters to assure the integrity of the election, which means REASONABLE regulations for voter ID etc should be acceptable WHETHER OR NOT they affect some ‘group’ more than others.
In Baltimore here, I voted. I fed my vote into a machine, and I asked if I could have a receipt.
Answer: No. The machines don’t leave a paper trail.
So of course get ahold of a machine and change some things and who is going to know? Even if they did leave a paper trail AND the state was nice enough to put my voting record up on some sort of secure system that I could check, checking MORE than my individual vote would be extremely costly and time consuming.
Maryland had the same problem in 2006 when I did technical support for the mid term elections here. It’s very possible some of our elections have been fraudulently decided, and the powers that be are fine and dandy with it.
And thats where crap like the NAACP challenging stuff like this : http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/31/politics/naacp-north-carolina-voting-registration-purge/
…
makes me totally unsympathetic to their arguments. The STATE should know where ALL its voters are. If there are 4500 or whatever that aren’t currently living where they are registered then its up to those voters to correct things unless the mistake was on the States end – such as wrong data entry or something.
Otherwise, off the rolls you go. Too bad, so sad, if this mostly affects poor people or whites, or blacks or whatever.I’m also in favor of total transparency to the public and other eligible voters, so if you do find something out of whack in terms of someones registration, you should be able to force the state to investigate or remove.
A right to vote means chickenshit if you can’t be reasonably assured that your vote is being counted properly. And if dead people vote, illegals vote, or people vote multiple times, then your voting right also means nothing.
There has to be a balancing of rights here, but all I ever see is people and organizations on the left fighting for totally unguarded election systems in hopes of getting their particular pet demographic more power at the ballot box rather than trying to make a fair and noncorrrupt system for everyone.
Hey Daran:
Reasons Hillary should be jailed and maybe hanging:
A. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/08/13/why-read-the-benghazi-brief-thoughts-from-the-author-me/
B. http://www.mostdamagingwikileaks.com/
#5 about inciting violence at Trump rallies.
C. https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/11/08/yes-yes-we-know-who-you-are-voting-against-but-you-should-know-who-and-what-you-are-voting-for/
This isn’t just Hillary per-se, but implicates the press:
http://observer.com/2016/11/this-election-has-disgraced-the-entire-profession-of-journalism/
I’ll deal with the rest of your post later. I do hope you didn’t fail to take Wikileaks into account when you compared the candidates. As for me, it’s enough knowing that Trump isn’t Hitler and that the people who make warmongers their responsibility almost unanimously think Trump is less belligerent than Clinton.
Trump is my wrecking ball at the current two party system. We better hope he succeeds (even inadvertently) in destroying Identity politics and opening the political system up to more populist concerns because otherwise this country is headed into open racial warfare , and possibly a civil war within 3 election cycles.
Clarence, posting a URL link and then saying “do your own research” is not a persuasive way to make your point. At times it borders on being a form of the Gish Gallop, like with this:
That link is nothing but a list of unsubstantiated claims followed by, “It’s in the Benghazi Brief.” So the citation you provided does nothing to substantiate your claim that Hillary Clinton “should be jailed or maybe hanging.” The possibility that the link you provided might link to something else which might substantiate your point is not particularly helpful. If you are making a point that you want others to take seriously, you should state the point and your link should substantiate your point as you made it.
The “inciting” element appears to be … showing up at a Trump rally with a t-shirt saying “Planned Parenthood” or “Trump is a Nazi.” If a “Planned Parenthood” t-shirt is all it takes to “incite” violence at a Trump rally, then there was something seriously wrong with Trump rallies. The “Trump is a Nazi” thing is more borderline, I guess. Kind of similar to showing up at a Clinton rally with a t-shirt saying “Hillary should be jailed or hanged,” I suppose. I would still expect such a person to be treated with civility.
Here are some of the people Trump is considering for cabinet positions:
• Chris Christie
• Sam Brownback
• Sonny Perdue
• Rudy Giuliani
• Mike Huckabee
• Newt Gingrinch
• Rick Scott
• Sarah Palin
• John Bolton
Bolton and Gingrinch are being considered for Secretary of State. Thank god Trump wrested the presidency from that hawk Hillary! Now, I hope this doesn’t come to pass and that Trump harkens back to the isolationist Republicanism of old and follows a more peaceful path than Hillary would have followed. But taken overall, Trump’s cabinet considerations seem to be your typical political insiders.
Yes, I agree that your cites are unconvincing and the sources unreliable, Clarence. After spending ten minutes on the wikileaks site I couldn’t find anything substantiating the claim that the Democratic party “hired a “dirty tricks” specialist to employ false flag operations and promote violence at Trump rallies”.
I did hear someone in as much of the video as I watched saying “we have mentally-ill people that we pay to do shit”. I don’t know who this person is, who he works for, whether he speaks with any authority for that organisation, what kind of shit he’s talking about, what the context of his remarks are, and so on.
So I googled him. It turns out that he was a regional subcontractor of a political lobby group, from which fired him as a direct response to his remarks recorded here. He did not work for the Democratic Party. So what I’m missing is evidence that the DP hired AUfC do dirty tricks and incite violence.
See, all this work to draw up a blank. It’s not my job to search for a needle in a haystack that might not be there. It’s your job to show me the smoking gun. And you haven’t,
Contrast that with the video I cited. To support my claim that Trump has incited violence at his own rallies, I linked to a video showing Trump inciting violence at his own rallies. It really is that simple and that straightforward.
Yes it does, though not perhaps in the way you think it does.
The Observer is published by Jared Kushner who just happens to be Donald Trump’s son-in-law. He’s also widely reported to have been intimately involved in Trumps election campaign.
These are precisely the kinds of interest that should be disclosed in any news or opinion piece about the election published in that magazine.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/18/politics/project-veritas-action-robert-creamer-donald-trump-rallies/
Gosh, that was SO HARD.
Yes, there was a connection to the Clinton campaign.
Oh, and more about this incident, including another tie to the Clinton campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Donald_Trump_Chicago_rally_protest
And one thing you can’t pin on Trump: he never incited violence at OTHER people’s rallies. Indeed, it seems most violence at rallies is a leftwing protest thing to try and shut down people they don’t like.
And shit, both parties have been undermining the rule of Constitutional law through at least 3 Presidencies now, but somehow, Daran can make an incredible claim that it’s only Republicans.
Then ballgame chimes in with a potential list (and at this point that is ALL it is) of Trump political appointees a list, by the way that the Huffington Post calls ‘fringe figures’: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-administration-cabinet_us_58249c70e4b01019814da7f9
…when what SHOULD be compared is Hillary’s foreign policy team vs Trumps foreign policy team.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/09/the-top-contenders-for-donald-trumps-foreign-policy-cabinet/
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-foreign-policy-crisis-2016-election-win-231080
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/25/robert-kagan-and-other-neocons-back-hillary-clinton/
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/08/16/why-hillarys-neocon-foreign-policy-will-make-problem-islamophobia-worse
No contest, really, which is why I’m surprised anyone would make PRO Hillary antiwar arguments. Hillary was bringing in the same foreign policy establishment from the same think tanks that have run US foreign policy for the past 40 or more years. Trump at least has some outsiders on his FP team, which is partly why the neocons went so apeshit.
I linked to that post ABOUT the Benghazi Brief , Daran, in hopes you would decide to read The Benghazi brief. It is very long. I thought the reasons for the link were obvious. I was being considerate, unlike you who claimed election ‘rigging’ via legal methods to decrease the incidence of fraud in an election, and , without warning, linked me to about a 100 page legal document from an intermediate appeals court (which disagreed with a lower court and could, itself, be overturned on appeal) that fundamentally ruled on a legal basis that I don’t even consider legitimate in the first place. I reject disparate impact analysis, as a matter of law and (almost always as well) policy and I have said that on this blog before.
“Isn’t Hitler” is one hell of a low bar to set. Putin isn’t Hitler. Assad isn’t Hitler. Deng Xiaoping wasn’t Hitler.
I’m not going to outright predict it, but I won’t be at all surprised to see Tianman Square style massacres under Trump. We’ve seen that he views peaceable protest to be “riots” and their murderous suppression to be acts of “strength”. Admittedly, he did call it “horrible”. But Presidents do horrible things in the belief that they are necessary.
Be careful what you wish for. Trump makes civil war more likely, not less. Only one candidate said they wouldn’t accept the result of the Election unless they one, and it wasn’t Clinton. What makes you think he will accept the result of the next? What do you think will be the result if he doesn’t?
Didn’t mean to end my last comment there, but I’m not at home and had to yield the computer to another user.
A wrecking ball candidate is fine, if they just wreck the two-party current system (and doesn’t put something worse in its place.) Trump, unfortunately is likely to wreck the country as well.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/us/oregon-protest-riot/
Here’s your ‘peaceful protest’, Daran.
Unless you are going to claim these are Trump supporters.
When the left learns to moderate its hateful rhetoric and ACTIONS, let me know.
You want to empower Dictator Trump?
Don’t disavow these people and the actions they are taking.
At least the protest in my city of Baltimore have been peaceful – so far.
By the way: unless I was bringing along at least a few hundred others with me, I would never dare to wage a peaceful pro-Trump rally in downtown Baltimore.
Sad, ain’t it?
Ken Silverstein’s work, Daran, rises or falls on its own merits, and as far as I’m concerned he adequetely covered his own biases.
People with CNN have family relationships with the Clinton campaign. And Wikileaks showed tons of downright collusion between our supposed press ‘watchdogs’ and the Democrats. But hey, there’s way too much political incest between the financiers, the politicians, the press , and even (in some cases) Academia and politicans in both parties to be good for the country.
Here’s the point: Donald Trump isn’t the Republican party. I don’t care about the Republican party. I want both parties dead.
You, on the other hand, don’t apparently either have a plan or possibly even see the need to reform the Democratic party.
A party every bit as corrupt as the Republicans and one that plays with Identity Politics way too much to be any good for the good of the country.
Well, so long as the Portland “Protestors” and the more radical elements of Black Lives Matter and such ‘speak’ for your party, enjoy your stay in the political wilderness.
[Comment approved 6:30 pm Eastern. —ballgame]
(Edited to fix broken link.)
There’s no admission of wrongdoing by Creamer in that article.
The only alleged “evidence” against him is a edited video produced by an organisation which has “been criticized for strategically editing footage to create false accusations about people or groups.”
I’m willing to look at that video to hear what Creamer said in it, provided that you tell me, minute and second, where in the video his words are recorded. I’m also willing to hear what anyone else said in it, provided that – in addition – you first show that those specific individuals are a part of Clinton’s campaign, which you’ve so far done in respect of Creamer and nobody else. Alternatively show that they were acting with the authority of the Democratic Party.
What I’m not prepared to do is spend 16 minutes of my life listening to a bunch of guys I’ve never heard of, whose connection with the Democratic Party is unclear, in the expectation of hearing some selectively-edited out-of-context fragment that fails to support the claim at issue., which, I remind you is that the Democratic Party ‘hired a “dirty tricks” specialist to employ false flag operations and promote violence at Trump rallies’.
Clearly it is, since you have so far failed to do so.
According to that article, Luis Gutierrez, a Democratic Representative, called upon his constituents to attend a protest, at which violent scuffles broke out.
There is, however, nothing in that article to indicate that
1. Gutierrez was speaking on behalf of the Democratic Party or Clinton’s campaign.
2. That he called for violence.
3. That the violence was instigated by protesters, rather than Trump supporters.
That is a
piss-poor defence.(Self-stricken for hostile tone — Daran)
That’s an opinion unsupported by evidence. All the actual violence I’ve seen on video has been initiated by Trump supporters.
I’ve made no such claim.
Gotta go. I’ll look at the rest of your comment shortly.
Hmm.
Someone here pulled one of my comments into moderation even though it contained no personal attacks.
I also don’t see how it could have gotten accidentally spammed since there were no links in it.
If this is how you guys are going to play the game , please inform me now so I can put this under Alas, V 2.0 and take my leave.
[The comment had been pulled into moderation automatically via keyword. I’ve approved it. —ballgame]
I didn’t do it. I don’t know why your comment is in moderation.
It’s happened before; the spam fairy works in mysterious ways.
However it is unusual, so my best guess is that ballgame did it. As this is ballgame’s thread, he gets to make such decisions, and I don’t countermand them. I will leave it to him to explain himself.
Obviously it wasn’t. And please dial back the sarcastic tone.
I don’t know who they are. I do note that they were described as “anarchists”. I thought the left was supposed to be in favour of big government and socialism, which is hardly compatible with anarchism.
According to this report, ‘Police said many demonstrators were “trying to get anarchist groups to stop destroying property” and that “anarchists” were refusing to do so. Demonstrators at many points shouted “peaceful protest.”‘
Of course I’m going to personally disavow them. I’m not responsible for them. I know nothing about them. I wasn’t involved in the violence. I’ve done nothing to encourage it. And I condemn it. Moreover it appears that the peaceable protesters, who appear to have been the vast majority also disavowed them, and indeed tried to get them to stop.
What you mean, of course is that I shouldn’t deny that they were Clinton Supporters/Trump opponents. But as I said, I don’t know who they are or what their motivations were.
As an analogy, consider the on-line trolls who harass and abuse feminists. Feminists generally assume that these people are all supporters of the MRM/gamergate. Do you think that is a valid assumption? Because I don’t. It strikes me as at least plausible that those harassing feminists are the same people who have harassed MRAs/gamergaters, and that their motivation is to cause mischief to both sides.
But I don’t know anything for certain. In the absence of evidence, I can’t come to a definite view.
Glad to hear that.
Continuing with Clarence’s earlier comment:
I will leave it to ballgame to defend his arguments. I will say, though, that the best, most knowledgeable advisers in the world are no use if you’re not going to follow their advice. As far as I’m aware, Clinton does not have a reputation for disregarding her advisors. Trump of course has no record at all, but his belief that he knows better than everyone else about every subject does not bode well.
I should have thought the reasons for not reading it were obvious.
300 pages for a start. (Stricken. I have no idea where I got the idea that it was 300 pages long — Daran) Second, I haven’t even found a link to the Benghazi Brief. When I get to the bottom of the page, and click on a link that looks like it’s going to take me to to the Benghazi Brief, I find myself on… another page talking about the Benghazi Brief.Assuming I could even find the document, I wouldn’t be able to evaluate it rigourously. I know next-to-nothing about the Benghazi incident. To properly fact-check it – by which I don’t just mean the factual accuracy of its claims, but also for the existence of omitted facts that might contradict the narrative or suggest other interpretations – I would have to become an expert myself.
In these circumstances I fall back on heuristics. Is the source credible? Does it look and quack like a partisan hatchet job or a conspiracy theory? If the answers are “no” and “both” respectively, then I’m not going to waste my time on it.
The methods are not legal, as the 4th circuit correctly found. The opinion, as is the nature of such things, goes into the legal arguments in meticulous detail, but the overarching argument is simple: The 15th says “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged […] by any State on account of race [or] color…” The 14th says “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges […] of citizens of the United States […] nor shall any State […] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”.
Voting is a privilege of citizens of the United States. It is not necessary for a State to outright prevent voting. Merely making it harder constitutes “abridgement”.
I never asked or expected you to read it all. (You are, of course, welcome to read as much of it as you like.) I quoted the part of it I wanted to draw to your attention. Precisely the part which summarized the evidence of racial discrimination.
It accepted the lower court’s factual findings in toto and based its own conclusions upon them.
It could, but it hasn’t been. In any case, any Supreme Court reversal would be on the basis of an error in law. Appellate courts including the SC are extremely deferential to lower courts’ findings of fact. And it was to the facts I wanted to draw your attention.
Disparate impact analysis is precisely what motivated the NC legislature’s policy, unless you think they had some other reason for “request[ing] data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices.”
When you say you “reject disparate impact analysis, as a matter of law”, I presume you mean as a ground for striking down a law. Do you also reject it as corroberative evidence (cumulate to the evidence, such as the racial breakdown of voter practices sought by the legislature) of intent to cause differential impact? Or perhaps you don’t think discriminatory intent matters either.
In any case as I have repeatedly emphasised, my focus here is on what the legislature actually did, not whether it was or wasn’t lawful. What it did was attempt to rig the election. If it was lawful, then it was a lawful attempt to rig the election. At least one senior Republican agrees with me. He outright admitted that the effect of the legislation was to “disenfranchise some of [Democrats’] special voting blocks and that this “within itself is the reason for the photo voter ID, period, end of discussion.” See footnote 7, page 47. If that isn’t the definition of electoral rigging, I don’t know what is.
Here is a summary of some of Trump’s campaign promises. I particularly like:
I wonder if he’s going to put Chris Christie in charge of the bridges.
12 is also good.
Yeah, that’ll show them.
Now that does puzzle me. I can’t see any keyword or phrase in it which would have done that.
(Daran: It’s there. If you can’t solve the ‘puzzle,’ read your email. —ballgame)
Believe it or not, despite scanning through Clarence’s comment several times, I didn’t see it. Proof, if any were needed, that I’d be a lousy computer filter.
Clarence, the mystery is solved. Your post was auto-moderated because it contained the word “incest”. We have no rule saying you can’t use this word, but we filter on it because it appears on spam far more often than in legitimate comments.