So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

[Stavros]

Meanwhile an Iowa voter admits that she 'rigged' her vote by doing it twice -

A Des Moines woman charged with committing voter fraud has said she voted twice because she was afraid her vote for Donald Trump would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton.

Participating in early voting in Iowa, registered Republican Terri Rote allegedly cast two ballots for the Republican presidential nominee. Arrested and charged with election misconduct, she was released from jail on Friday on a $5,000 bond.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rump-supporter

[buttslinger]

WMDs in Iraq.
TREASON in Hillary's e-mail.

[Stavros]

All we need now is a new film by that demented clown Peter Greenaway -The Groper, the Flasher his Wife and the President...

Nevertheless, this article by a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution defends Comey (worked for Bush, appointed by Obama) on the basis that he has been even-handed. It is the timing that has made it all look messy and politically inept, thus (and assuming external pressure was not applied to Comey):

But what you can't reasonably say is that Comey has been anyone's political lackey. Over the howling objections of many Republicans, he ended the Clinton email investigation, concluding that "no reasonable prosecutor" would go forward with a case. Over the snarls of the Clinton forces, at the same time, he commented quite disparagingly about the behavior of the woman who is likely to become his boss. And now, with the election only days away, he has amended his prior resolution of the case to deal with new information.

Say what you will about the FBI, but it's surely been independent.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/memo-pre...nd-doesnt-mean

-This also contains a photocopy of the letter Comey wrote to the Chairs of Senate Committees.

[buttslinger]

Unless Comey comes up with an email that 12 out of 12 Americans, ......BOTH democratic and republican, .....agree demands jail time for Clinton,
then this is a stunt to give Trump the only hope he had.
There is absolutely nothing Trump can do to make himself look good.
He has to have outside forces drop a House on Hillary.

If the polls shift 2 or 3 points next week, after the DOJ warned Comey it would,
there will be HELL to pay.

[hippifried]

This is a big bunch of nothing. Again! Still!

But we're gonna have to listen to the republican whiners and snivelers till at least Inauguration Day in January. The FBI is just being cruel and spiteful towards the American people now.

[peejaye]

I hear everything said and all the doubters, let's put it another way; Money talks and Trumps got lots of it.
Everyone as a price! Do I need to spell it out?
Head of the FBI was asked "why now?" It just seemed right....he replied!
The world is full of very gullible people.

[trish]

Premise 1: Money talks.
Metaphorically. Yes, money talks, but so do duty, loyalty, ideologies and lot's of other things.

Premise 2: Trump's got lot's of it - money that is.
Relatively speaking. But who really knows? There are reports that he doesn't really have as much as he says he does. And he doesn't part with it easily.

Premise 3: Everyone has a price.
Probably false, especially if by price you mean, "Can be bought off with enough money."

Premise 4: Comey hasn't yet given a reasonable answer to "Why now?"

Conclusion: Undetermined. Probably Comey has an ideological (or other) hatred of Hillary that he just can't let go of. Look at the preamble to his more recent announcement that his investigation found nothing that is prosecutable; it too was unprecedented.

[broncofan]

I'd also like to say that the supplementation of the record by Comey was completely unnecessary. I've never heard of someone being accused of perjury or dishonesty because subsequent events cast doubt on the conclusiveness of what they've said previously. Comey said the investigation was concluded, and it was at the time he testified. No rational person could think that means that no matter what new information comes to light it could not be reopened.

If there is substantial and incriminating evidence against Hillary that comes to light later on, that would justify opening the old investigation or beginning a new one. Certainly there was no onus on him to say he might have to do that depending upon the content of emails he has not viewed yet.

I'll post this in this thread too since it's very relevant to the discussion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/op...one-share&_r=0

[blackchubby38]

I saw an interview with Nigel Farage on GPS with Fareed Zakaria earlier today where he was equating BREXIT with Trump's popularity. He said that people were fed up with globalism and getting involved in foreign wars. That last part is one of the reasons why I was wary about voting for Trump. I was for the war in Afghanistan. While I was against the war in Iraq, thought it should have been executed better. But if those who supported BREXIT and Trump think isolationism is the answer, they're are sadly mistaken.

Its funny how it starts out by people saying we should focus within our borders. But before you know it, that turns into "Well you know if we weren't involved in a certain part of the world, we wouldn't have all these problems."

[Stavros]

I saw an interview with Nigel Farage on GPS with Fareed Zakaria earlier today where he was equating BREXIT with Trump's popularity. He said that people were fed up with globalism and getting involved in foreign wars. That last part is one of the reasons why I was wary about voting for Trump. I was for the war in Afghanistan. While I was against the war in Iraq, thought it should have been executed better. But if those who supported BREXIT and Trump think isolationism is the answer, they're are sadly mistaken.

Its funny how it starts out by people saying we should focus within our borders. But before you know it, that turns into "Well you know if we weren't involved in a certain part of the world, we wouldn't have all these problems."

This is a typical tactic of Farage, to start out with one issue and divert it into another. Farage worked in the City of London and benefited from the 'big bang' in the 1980s which released capital flows and created a new generation of 'financial products' that transformed the way business was being done globally and was thus part of the whole 'globalisation' phenomenon. What Farage resented in both the UK and the EU was state/government intervention in the economy, because he is a 'free market capitalist' who believes markets know better than governments. To campaign for this meant campaigning against the European Union, which is why he joined UKIP -but freely admits to having trousered over a million pounds from the salary and expenses he gets as an elected member of the European Parliament.

The problem is that 'globalisation' in one form or another has been part of the growth of a world economy since the 14th century shaped by the expansion of empire, the intrepid cross-border adventures of fur trappers in the Americas, the spice trade of south east Asia, the silk merchants of Shanghai and Lyon, the slave ships of the Atlantic and Africa, and so on and so on. When Farage and his new best buddy Trump rail against Globalism or Globalisation are they attacking capitalism? I don't think so.

What they want is economic nationalism, a capitalism that benefits the Americans and the British in their homeland. They can't accept that offshoring and outsourcing were part of the very advances they supported when Reagan and Thatcher were in charge, just as they can't handle the fact that capitalism is not a national project as it doesn't know what an international border is, indeed Trump's own business does not exclusively employ Americans, he is arguing for an economic programme he doesn't believe in or practive, while Farage has collapsed everything into a toxic debate on immigration in which the immigrant is viewed as a burden and a threat rather than a benefit. You begin with the problem of state intervention, and you end with the immigrant as the cause.

Just as UKIP scared the Tory party into the EU Referendum on the one issue that has divided the Tory party since 1973, so Trump has exposed the division in the Republican Party that has opened up since the emergence of the TEA Party but which I believe has its origins in the 1960s but did not become clearer until the Clinton Democrats stole half their policies leaving them with the option of either branching out to embrace the diversity of the American electorate, or retreat into a bunker of white Christian exceptionalism 'defending' the Constitution from its liberal and left-wing traitors.

The Republican Party is in a deep hole, how it deals with the next 10 days, win or lose, will be important, but will it mark the end of something or the beginning? And win or lose, what is it that will end, and what new beast will be born from the ashes of this election?