Hillary Clinton: I Used to Love Her

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Originally Posted by zerrrr

The Republicans thought it was at the time. Every step since then has just dipped us further into the quagmire of Middle Eastern politics that includes the last eight years.

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It's tough to make the right decision even when you don't do anything deliberately stupid. The decision to invade Iraq cost hundreds of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. The decision to withdraw troops? It was not all that clear at the time what the net cost would be and it's not that clear what the cost would have been had we retained troop numbers.

The reason I nitpicked your terminology is that I don't think the actions of Bush and Obama were equivalent in any sense and the distinction in terminology makes that point (there's a different word for starting a war and negotiating terms of withdrawal). Obama has tried to engage in diplomacy and tried to draw down our troop commitment. You cannot hold someone to account for failing to clean up a disaster as effectively as it was created.

My problem with Obama's approach was the Arab Spring which ended up being a complete disaster. The focus should have been just stabilizing the region, not overthrowing governments.

Then to top it off he gives speeches and put out information leading us to believe the Al Qaeda was nothing more than some low level mob operation from the documents seized at his home when it was clearly not the case. If so, we would not be hearing about them today.

My problem with our foreign policy is that we think solely in terms of how everyone should live through a US lens when it is clearly not the case. You have to look at how people live by putting yourself in their shoes.

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Originally Posted by zerrrr

Quoting Harry Reid is like quoting a con man. One of the most corrupt and disliked Democrats in the Senate by his own party.
In terms of Iraq, a complete failure. The government is laughably weak and long-term our military is looking to move closer to Iran than Saudi Arabia since the young Saudi's are more radical in nature. Your quoting Bush but ignoring Obama's eight years of failure in the region.
Remember the change in governments across North Africa that was supposed to bring in a wave of democracy and peace? How has that worked? It hasn't except to create more chaos. Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Libya are still in conflict.
The diplomacy of the last eight years has not worked. Neither has the diplomacy of Bush when he went into Iraq.
In terms of Asia, they are moving closer to China because they look at the election rhetoric with disdain and realize their future is with the Chinese who are not talking about war and starting conflicts around the world.
Can you trust the US? Asia does not think so. Americans think they can but that is an American line of thinking being pressed onto Asia rather than looking at it from an Asian point of view. They see the Americans as warlike wanting conflicts around the world. That is the problem with America; we think in terms of ourselves and how others should see us rather than emphasizing with the other countries.
If you think just electing Hillary is going to solve our foreign policy problems you are mistaken. There is a lot of work to be done to repair damage caused by more than a decade of failure.

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Please accept these congenial thoughts in reply to your post.

a) I honestly don't know much about Harry Reid so I can't judge him, but he does hold a senior position in Congress.

b) I don't know if Hillary Clinton as President can solve foreign policy problems, but I do think she can put together a better foreign policy team than Donald Trump.

c) I think it is unfair to judge Obama's record in the Middle East as a failure, if only because you only need ask 'What does success look like?' to appreciate the extent to which the problems in the Middle East are local and regional and that if anything, the Obama Presidency has tried to step back from problems which it could not control anyway, it is called damage limitation.

But rather than go into the details which would take in the politics of every Presidency since Eisenhower, and the long-established (since the 1930s) commercial links (through the petroleum industry) the broad brush approach would ask why if it is the case, has the US appeared to lose influence in a region where it was once trusted as a partner and an honest broker?

Consider the importance of the Peace Treaty that President Carter brokered between Egypt and Israel in 1979, and the Peace Treaty between Israel and the PLO that President Clinton brought to a conclusion on the same spot on the White House lawn in 1993. On both occasions two warring parties agreed to stop fighting, and on both occasions the USA was victorious where the Russians were defeated. The 1979 treaty was possible because Egypt broke its relations with the USSR, fed up with its measly financial contributions and second-rate military hard-ware -President Asad thus swapped the USSR for the USA and opted for peace instead of war. In 1993 the PLO signed a peace treaty having lost the financial support of the USSR and at a time when the new Russia was led by a man, Boris Yeltsin, who was ignorant and indifferent to Middle Eastern issues.
Vladimir Putin was an observer of Yeltsin's failures and I do not doubt for one moment that defeating a Clinton would make his day, however he thinks that can be achieved; but replacing the USA as the region's most trusted partner would be a dream come true. Don't be fooled by Syria, Turkey and Iran -Vladimir, dream on.

Compare the successes of Carter and Clinton with the abject failures of Ronald Reagan in Lebanon,and George HW. Bush and his son George W. Bush in Iraq- not once but twice-, and you can observe an erosion of confidence in parts of the region in both the commitment of the USA and its motives. Moving troops into a country to defend its government or providing materiel and intelligence in support of a friendly government was standard practice for years, deliberate regime change by military means was a different order of magnitude. Doing so to long-established dictatorships which offer no smooth transition to peaceful let alone democratic government appears to have been risky to the point of insanity and the Obama Presidency has had to deal with this legacy, and before you leap in and shout 'Libya!' bear in mind that the greatest military support for the rebels in Benghazi that led to Qadhafi's demise was led by France and the UK.

The conclusion is that if the last ten years has seen an erosion of US influence in the region, the blame must lie with Republicans in general, and the Bush Presidency in particular. The Arab Spring which ignited hope before being smothered by state violence was never going to be a victory for anyone, but if the USA was going to take sides, why not with the people against the dictators? And yes, in some cases, such as Egypt, the US got it wrong, but that would require a different discussion than we have time for here.

After all, what has Russia achieved? It has become involved in an expensive civil war in Syria that has no end in sight, and whose conduct has reflected badly on its reputation. It has a flakey relationship with Turkey that can be co-operative on one day and become aggressive on another. It has failed to establish good relations with most of the region in part because of its actions in Syria, and those relations it has may not last. The USA might have lost something in the Middle East, but what, in reality, has Russia won? Not a lot.

A President Clinton, if it happens, faces an uphill struggle in the Middle East, and a more fractious, unstable and violent region than I can recall in my own lifetime. But with a good team and a patient and thoughtful policy agenda, I think she can re-build trust in the region, and be there when the time comes for wars to end and for treaties to be made. History is on the side of the Democrats on this, harsh as the region looks right now. Because I also think the Arabs want peace, they are also sick and tired of war and corruption and dictatorship. It can't last forever.

Look, what Comey did was put Hillary's face front and center, so what we've got now is what you would have if the Republicans had Jeb Bush running. It's ALWAYS going to be about Hillary. You will never see a Democratic President that will beat Republicans up as much as Hillary will.
Republicans didn't pick the wrong bitch to fuck with, we picked her.

Obama won the Iraq War: two dollar gas.
Thanks, Obama.
Obama is from Chicago,...... the children there are tougher than ISIS.
(I wish I was kidding)

I want to see what happens to Fox News, Megan Kelly is adding a chapter to her book about Ailes sexually cornering her. They're making that little pantywaste Tucker Carlson their 7PM man replacing that clutch cargo puppet Greta van Sustreren.

The Republicans have had their own TV Network where Republicans could tell any lie they want, with no counter response from Democrats, unless you count those fake dems on their payroll. That's illegal.
If it isn't
Hillary's new Supreme Court Justices will make sure it's illegal again.
And get dirty money out of politics,
And a couple hundred other things Scalia did.
On a level playing field, the GOP is doomed as it is now.
I don't hate the rednecks, I hate the Cruz$$ez.
Brylcream and bullshit.
Crooked Hillary might face Cruz in four years.
Oh, my God.

You know Trump can still win this thing right?

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

You know Trump can still win this thing right?

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Those sound like WAGERING words, sir............

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

You know Trump can still win this thing right?

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Honestly, no. I think he would need a swing in voting that even he cannot manage, or a successful campaign of voter suppression in North Carolina and Florida as was claimed in a story in Bloomberg News this week quoting an 'unnamed Trump official' thus:
We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” aimed at idealistic white liberals, young women and African Americans."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...rolina-florida

-Plus another claim the Russians will be stepping up their cyber-attacks with possible new leaks from their Wikileaks partners.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...mayhem-n677636

-Who made that claim about rigged elections?

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

I want to see what happens to Fox News, Megan Kelly is adding a chapter to her book about Ailes sexually cornering her. They're making that little pantywaste Tucker Carlson their 7PM man replacing that clutch cargo puppet Greta van Sustreren.

The Republicans have had their own TV Network where Republicans could tell any lie they want, with no counter response from Democrats, unless you count those fake dems on their payroll. That's illegal.
If it isn't
Hillary's new Supreme Court Justices will make sure it's illegal again.
And get dirty money out of politics,
And a couple hundred other things Scalia did.
On a level playing field, the GOP is doomed as it is now.
I don't hate the rednecks, I hate the Cruz$$ez.
Brylcream and bullshit.
Crooked Hillary might face Cruz in four years.
Oh, my God.

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You're talking about the fairness doctrine. Sorry, but the Supremes have nothing to do with it. It was never a law. It was an administrative rule in the FCC regulations, & was changed to a voluntary status during the Reagan years. Commission members are presidential appointees. They set the licensing regs for broadcasting on the public airwaves. As much as I'd love to blame Scalia for all that's wrong in the world, I think he was an HW Bush appointee. Not guilty on this one. Too bad. We could string him up posthumously.

Oh yeah... Ted Cruz was born a Canadian. He's a naturalized citizen. Natural born and naturalized aren't the same thing, and it doesn't matter who his mother is. That's why all the same clowns who just love him now were trying so hard to convince everyone that President Obama was born in Kenya. That would disqualify him from being President. Now the same assholes would like you to think that Republicans are immune from the same Constitutional prerequisites. Both George Romney (1964) & Cruz (2016) dropped out of the race before the SCOTUS could rule on it. Kind of sad that Ted Cruz was the Republican's last chance to keep from being Trumped. Oh well... That's what you get for let the crazy run amok because you're too chickenshit to take on the tea-baggers in the primaries.

Oh & 1 more thing: No use blaming God. God's an asshole when it comes to politics. Instead of saying "Oh, my God!", just say "Holy Shit!".

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

You know Trump can still win this thing right?

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I wouldn't put a lot of stock in the NYPost/ABC poll that showed a 1% spread. Even the Wall Street Journal rolls their eyes at that one. Seems that turned out to be a question about "enthusiasm". The NYT reported 6% of likely voters with no visible dip over the email bullshit. She'll probably take Ohio, Nevada, and Colorado. Arizona's 11 votes are up for grabs & starting to tip toward blue. Regardless of how red it's painted on the map, Texas is in play. It's shaping up to be a landslide folks. I think the media, who hype the "horse race" nonsense, underestimate just how turned off the American people are by this blustering jerk. He garners no respect. Like a traveling snake oil salesman. He got the nomination because the rest of the pack were such losers. He was just the last bozo out of the clown car. There's no there there. He has conservative Republicans trying to decide whether to write in somebody else, vote Libertarian, or just stay home.

I still have a bit of tingling from the knot in my stomach every election, but my sense of dread is way down this time around. Whether I've liked the outcome or not, I've won every Presidential election bet since I started in 1972. Hope my instincts hold up.

Everytime I check FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver has Hillary's probability of winning going down. On November second it was 70%, yesterday it was 66%. I sleep with my teeth clenched. I can't stand this election. If Trump takes the White House, I'm having a lobotomy.

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Originally Posted by trish

Everytime I check FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver has Hillary's probability of winning going down. On November second it was 70%, yesterday it was 66%. I sleep with my teeth clenched. I can't stand this election. If Trump takes the White House, I'm having a lobotomy.

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I read an interesting article that talked about the assumptions Silver uses that has resulted in his meta-polling data being the most pro-Trump. I found it...but it made me feel a little better after reading it because I've also relied a lot on his site. Maybe you won't grind your teeth when you sleep tonight:)

http://www.vox.com/2016/11/3/1314767...trump-forecast

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

Those sound like WAGERING words, sir............

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No wagering words. I'm just saying that people who are going to vote against Trump maybe in for disappointment when they wake up on November 9th.

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

No wagering words. I'm just saying that people who are going to vote against Trump maybe in for disappointment when they wake up on November 9th.

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You're absolutely right, CNN has Hillary under 270.
Nothing is more important than getting out to vote.

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

You're absolutely right, CNN has Hillary under 270.
Nothing is more important than getting out to vote.

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Originally Posted by trish

Everytime I check FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver has Hillary's probability of winning going down. On November second it was 70%, yesterday it was 66%. I sleep with my teeth clenched. I can't stand this election. If Trump takes the White House, I'm having a lobotomy.

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Don't worry. She has the election in the bag. This is just media scare tactics to get out the vote on both sides. Every network is tugging at your strings and pushing your buttons. Don't play into the fear.

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Originally Posted by zerrrr

This is just media scare tactics to get out the vote on both sides.

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Putting Giuliani in a cell next to Chris Christie won't ease my fears if that fucking clown is in the White House.
There are two parallel Universes here:
the college educated
and the 8th graders.
And the 8th graders have chosen a 6th grader to lead them.
They understand him.

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

You're absolutely right, CNN has Hillary under 270.
Nothing is more important than getting out to vote.

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That's exactly what I'm talking about. Less than a week ago, CNN had her at 270 and Trump at 179. Two things have happened over the past two weeks to galvanize Republicans. The announcements about premiums going up for people with Obamacare and Comey's one about the new emails. The two issues that Republicans have been foaming at the mouth about for the past 4 years and they feel their anger has finally been justified.

You combine that with Independent voters who are probably being being turned off by Comey's announcement and the Wikileaks emails and you can see why this election is going to be a lot closer than all the experts think its going to be.

Compare that to Democrats who I think got a little a head of themselves thinking that this election was going to be cakewalk. What have they had to get excited about. That Access Hollywood audio was a long time ago going by election standards.

Millennials don't give a damn about the Clintons or what they accomplished because they don't care about anything that happened before they were born and/or when they were young. They're still pissed that Bernie Sanders didn't the get the nomination.

Meanwhile some black voters feel if its not the Black Lives Matter movement, they can't be bothered. They feel not enough is being said to address their concerns, so they have been lukewarm to Hillary. I just hope they realize that if Trump does indeed win, they can probably expect even less being said.

Hillary and rest of the Democrats have 4 days to get their voters and undecided ones excited about voting for her on Tuesday. The message just can't be vote for her because she is a woman and Trump's behavior towards women.

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

..... The message just can't be vote for her because she is a woman and Trump's behavior towards women.

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The one and only message I read is that if Trump wins, the Republicans will control EVERYTHING, and they won't have to run their games in front of the public, everything is going to be done behind closed doors.
Catapulting 11 million Mexicans back to Mexico, and building a Wall that the Martians can see, that is a fucking joke, Trump is bullshitting his own flock. (unless he's a racist, then he's SMART)
The Republicans would lock Trump in the Oval Office if he won. I'm not worried about that infantile prick, I'm worried about that same cast of Republican Characters that destroyed the economy of the entire world 8 years ago....
for what they considered a more important mission- UNLIMITED RICHES and POWER.

I haven't heard one word on what Giuliani, ......I mean, Comey's announcement last Friday has had on the Senate race.

This just in -> http://nyti.ms/2esCdEd

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Originally Posted by trish

This just in -> http://nyti.ms/2esCdEd

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Trump has to see headlines the day before election day saying basically
"Republicans Wrong, Democrats Right"

Gee, I hope that doesn't influence voters....:whistle:

I wasn't crazy about her in 2008, but thought she was the lesser of two evils over Trump in 2016.

This exceptional, talented, caring, generous and most qualified woman got a raw deal from the she left law school. Instead of making zillions of dollars by joining a major law firm, she chose a life of public service. Her first accomplishment was a project (for the Children's Defense Fund) getting two million unfortunate children into public schools who had handicaps that (previous to her intervention) made school attendance impossible. Being a politically accomplished woman in the seventies made her unpopular to conservatives who still thought a woman's place was in the home tending babies and fixing her husband's meals. Her work on trying to get all of us universal health care drew the fire anti-government conservatives who spent the government's money on one investigation after another, after another, after another. Nothing ever stuck. She was never guilty of anything other than being a successful woman who was also liberal. But in politics, it doesn't matter whether you're innocent or guilty - only the volume of lies they tell about you.

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Originally Posted by Vladimir Putin

I wasn't crazy about her in 2008, but thought she was the lesser of two evils over Trump in 2016.

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Could you be more precise and tell us in what way are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton evil?

I didn't express myself well. I didn't mean to imply Hillary was evil. Just that I was disturbed over why she used a separate E-mail server while she was Secretary of State. I also was not fond of her support of past free trade deals that led to outsourcing of jobs.

She was clearly more qualified than Trump. I am very concerned that our country is going to be led by someone with psychological issues. We would not have any of that had she won.

Hillary wants to up our taxes even more. I know it sounds cool voting for her but who wants to keep getting poked in the ass each paycheck? Enough is enough.

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Originally Posted by BostonBad

Hillary wants to up our taxes even more. I know it sounds cool voting for her but who wants to keep getting poked in the ass each paycheck? Enough is enough.

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It depends on who you mean by "our". I'd love to get poked in the ass, 'cause that would mean I'd be a billionaire and raking in millions of dollars worth of profits and dividends. Right now, it's my employers who poke me in the ass. Sometimes enough isn't enough to make ends meet - so to speak.

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Originally Posted by Vladimir Putin

I didn't express myself well. I didn't mean to imply Hillary was evil. Just that I was disturbed over why she used a separate E-mail server while she was Secretary of State. I also was not fond of her support of past free trade deals that led to outsourcing of jobs.

She was clearly more qualified than Trump. I am very concerned that our country is going to be led by someone with psychological issues. We would not have any of that had she won.

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Nothing personal, I was just expressing my irritation with the way in which people often used standard words and phrases without giving them much thought. It is easily done and I have done it myself, though I suspect most people today would struggle to define the word 'evil' which is religious in origin.
Or it could be that a word like 'bad' is no longer thought to have the weight of meaning that it actually conveys, as people search for more powerful words to describe people and situations they don't like. It would have been possible to describe Trump and Clinton as two disappointing candidates, or unappealing, or regrettable, even bad. But the need for spectacular words to fit the febrile mood of the times may reflect a view that standard words and phrases are now no longer enough, but does imply the reach of an ever-increasing vocabulary to accommodate rage and frustration.

Given that 'evil' in this context is not to be taken literally, phrases like "the lesser of two evils" when applied to presidential candidates (which has been done so often it's more of a cliche than a meaningful claim) focus on the character of the candidates rather than their actions or policies.

Neither Hillary nor the policies she supports are evil, bad or anything of the sort. I would say I support most of her proposals and I have nothing but admiration for her personally. Yes, she's has made a few mistakes: she chose (like Colin Powell) to use a secure private server for her emails. BTW, the State Department's email server was hacked, hers never was; nevertheless the use of a private server was a political mistake that contributed significantly to putting Trump in the White House.

On the other hand I do think the secularized version of the word 'evil' does aptly apply to Trump, his character, his actions and his proposed goals for the nation. As to character he is a shallow, ignorant, narcissistic, bigoted, misogynistic, manipulative liar. As to his actions, he's groped women, broke contracts, refused to pay his contractors for services rendered, invented schemes to rip off old people's pensions and working families of their savings (and called it Trump University), he ran (runs) a charity that does little or no charitable work (unless you consider he and family charity cases). As to his goals for the nation, he wants to deport more immigrants than are here illegally, build a wall between us and Mexico and threaten them with crippling tariffs unless they pay for it, he wants a moratorium against all Muslims, he already put a leading white supremacist in the White House and he wants to make deals that will increase his empire of hotels and golf-courses ...oops...I mean he wants to make America Great Again.

This was not a choice between two evils. It was quite clearly a choice between good and bad. America was not thinking clearly, mesmerized by a cloud of obfuscation and buffoonery.

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Originally Posted by trish

On the other hand I do think the secularized version of the word 'evil' does aptly apply to Trump, his character, his actions and his proposed goals for the nation.

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There is an irony here -on the one hand you refer to the 'secularized version of the word evil' which thereby strips it of its religious meaning as taking the side of the Devil against Almighty God, so that all of the values associated with God are reversed by association with the Devil; on the other hand so many Americans claim to both believe in God and to be Christian that the word Evil may retain its meaning for them, and may even reflect the way they viewed either candidate in the campaign. The problem is we cannot be sure, as the need to find the most loaded words to describe someone people do not like runs the risk of distorting their meaning and purpose, it may not be truth that no longer has meaning, but words, and that is just as dangerous a trend.

So I don't dispute the reasons you dislike Donald Trump, and understand why you defend Hillary Clinton -but I would hope the judgement of a politician is not just moral, or religious, but political. For that to work, one should query the character of the person seeking the Presidency and analze their policy proposals, rather than overload the debate with words which aim to express extreme forms of discontent yet constitute the very extremism unleashed in the language used in the campaign which people are now complaining about. Once it becomes normal to refer to opponents as liars and criminals it doesn't leave much room for reasoned debate about them.

As the Presidential campaign in the USA and EU referendum debate in the UK revealed, we are in danger of normalizing a narrative in politics that had previously been considered unacceptable because it was, and remains associated with people who do not support democracy or free speech, and who deliberately target people because of their religion, their ethnic origin and their sexual orientation as existential threats to 'the nation' or the integrity of the state in which they live. This creates a quite different set of propositions from the practice of good governance, and transforms -or seeks to transform- the public realm into a 'life and death struggle' in which the assumption is that government must act against these threats, or the future of the state is in peril. The reality is that day to politics must deal with less dramatic issues, and though they have short and long term consequences, policies ought not to be framed by the kind of prejudice which was exposed in the campaigns -in the USA and the UK- because democracy may be more fragile than we have assumed in a world where it remains the minority form of government.

And that is why words matter, because just as they can be used to offer a calm, sober and reasonable political programme on which to judge government they can also hurt, and not so much reflect divisions in society, as create them. And the greater those divisions become, the harder it becomes to govern. The assumption is that Trump will revert in office to becoming the standard pragmatist that the office tends to create -consider Reagan's second term- and that the UK will find an accommodation with the EU that is good for the country but does not satisfy the hardline 'Brexiteers'. The alternative is life in a political wilderness where nothing gets done and the people get mad, and I don't think any of us want that.

Words do matter. With that I agree. But unfortunately for anyone who wishes to speak to future readers or even readers in another demographic, the meanings of words are in constant flux. “Decimate” used to mean to diminish your enemy’s number by one tenth; now it means to completely obliterate them. The average American (and I suspect the average Brit as well) has trouble reading Shakespeare (if they bother to do so anymore) because of the many linguistic shifts that have occurred between Elizabethan and modern times. Reading Chaucer is almost impossible.

You are right, when someone uses the phrase “the lesser of two evils”, we cannot be certain what they mean by ‘evil’, nor can we be certain what is meant by “so and so has been demonized.” For that matter, I’m never certain what the waiter means when I’m asked, “Would you like cream for your coffee.” We can only do our best, and in matters of importance we should curb our urge to exaggerate (although I do not think it’s an exaggeration to say Trump is a misogynist, a narcissist, a manipulative liar, or a cheat).

Words also matter, not only for the meanings they convey but for their emotional impact and shock value. Imagine the dissonance that reverberated throughout our collective brains when Trump announced he was never a Birther - that he was in fact the one who deliberately put an end to Birtherism! That whopper must’ve bought him several million hours of free air time. The fact that it was so obviously false and had such an ridiculous twist made it first class entertainment. To those ready to receive his message, it seemed deeper than it was: a metaphor for how Trump will simply sweep away all conventional restrictions and free us from liberal scorn and confirm us in our prejudices. Truth no longer matters; going viral is what counts. We no longer speak in sentences, we speak in memes.

How wonderfully dull it would be if we all said, “After considerable research and honest deliberation, I chose the candidate with the more promising policies and the better character for the job at hand.” At this point I so want to be living in that world. In that world I have a mouth; I can communicate. In this world, I’m all but mute.

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Originally Posted by trish

Words do matter. With that I agree. But unfortunately for anyone who wishes to speak to future readers or even readers in another demographic, the meanings of words are in constant flux. “Decimate” used to mean to diminish your enemy’s number by one tenth; now it means to completely obliterate them. The average American (and I suspect the average Brit as well) has trouble reading Shakespeare (if they bother to do so anymore) because of the many linguistic shifts that have occurred between Elizabethan and modern times. Reading Chaucer is almost impossible.

You are right, when someone uses the phrase “the lesser of two evils”, we cannot be certain what they mean by ‘evil’, nor can we be certain what is meant by “so and so has been demonized.” For that matter, I’m never certain what the waiter means when I’m asked, “Would you like cream for your coffee.” We can only do our best, and in matters of importance we should curb our urge to exaggerate (although I do not think it’s an exaggeration to say Trump is a misogynist, a narcissist, a manipulative liar, or a cheat).

Words also matter, not only for the meanings they convey but for their emotional impact and shock value. Imagine the dissonance that reverberated throughout our collective brains when Trump announced he was never a Birther - that he was in fact the one who deliberately put an end to Birtherism! That whopper must’ve bought him several million hours of free air time. The fact that it was so obviously false and had such an ridiculous twist made it first class entertainment. To those ready to receive his message, it seemed deeper than it was: a metaphor for how Trump will simply sweep away all conventional restrictions and free us from liberal scorn and confirm us in our prejudices. Truth no longer matters; going viral is what counts. We no longer speak in sentences, we speak in memes.

How wonderfully dull it would be if we all said, “After considerable research and honest deliberation, I chose the candidate with the more promising policies and the better character for the job at hand.” At this point I so want to be living in that world. In that world I have a mouth; I can communicate. In this world, I’m all but mute.

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We can't go on like this, living in a virtual world where our words are filtered through online portals that only exist through anonymity, a lack of responsibility and a 'so what?' attitude to reams of abuse directed at conservatives, republicans, democrats, men, women -well just about everyone. The ironic consequence of the internet snooping our Masters insist upon (now legal in the UK) is that the online terrorists who threaten to castrate, decapitate and incinerate people they don't like, may one day soon have to appear in person to explain why they said what they said, and dismissing it as 'just a joke, mate' might not be, should not be enough-
Police are investigating a tweet calling for someone to “Jo Cox” the Conservative MP Anna Soubry.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...mp-anna-soubry

I have to be an optimist, and believe that as the next four to five years evolve, a different narrative and a different language will evolve with it, and that the majority of people will agree that we can do better than this, think more clearly about real issues, and not get lost in a miasma of prejudice and hate that destroys more than it creates. Just last night in a prosperous suburb of London, one of the UK's wealthiest men and once upon a time Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, lost his seat in the House of Commons to a shock victory for the Liberal Democrats. Goldsmith resigned 'in principle' when the Government proposed to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport near Goldsmith's constituency, standing as an 'Independent' to oppose that policy. The election however became consumed by the EU referendum result as Richmond voted heavily for Remain. But it was also a rebuttal to Goldsmith who failed to defeat the Labour candidate for Mayor of London -Sadiq Khan- having accused this man of being soft on 'Islamic terrorism'. Richmond, at least, proves that not everyone in the UK, Europe or the USA is crazy for the crazies.

I agree the worry with Trump is that he himself and some of the men he has appointed are 'part of the problem' we have right now, Bannon in particular. But most of these people have never known what the reality of real power is like, Trump most of all. It is one thing to consider a deal that returns 7% in dollars over 5 years, and a deal that results in 7% of humanity losing their property and maybe even their lives in a week, and that just within the USA.

And rest assured, Trish, a post as eloquent and elegant as yours does not make you mute!

If you're keeping score at home, this is the list of the people that the Clinton camp is blaming for her losing the election:

James Comey
Russia
President Obama
Huma Abedin

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

Huma Abedin

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why her? all she ever did was marry carlos danger, put up with his lothario doppelganger anthony weiner (while probably giving him some amazing fellatio with that generous overbite) then suffer through the embarrassment of his failed run for mayor of new york

btw: one thing i found really funny. alex jones found out facebook considers him fakenews

p.s. i'm unsure whether i find huma abedin attractive or not. she's certainly "not bad" and does at least elicit desires of giving her a facial but i remain indifferent when considering coitus

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bluesoul

why her? all she ever did was marry carlos danger, put up with his lothario doppelganger anthony weiner (while probably giving him some amazing fellatio with that generous overbite) then suffer through the embarrassment of his failed run for mayor of new york

btw: one thing i found really funny. alex jones found out facebook considers him fakenews

p.s. i'm unsure whether i find huma abedin attractive or not. she's certainly "not bad" and does at least elicit desires of giving her a facial but i remain indifferent when considering coitus

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I'm guessing because she didn't divorce him the first time around and seemed to be standing by her man during his campaign for mayor of NYC. On a side note, I would take Weiner as mayor over DeBlasio in a New York minute.

I think Huma is attractive and would consider coitus in a New York minute.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

I think Huma is attractive and would consider coitus in a New York minute.

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What is a 'New York Minute'?

Meanwhile the NYT has published an extensive account of the DNC hacking with strong claims it was a Russian operation, being Putin's revenge on Hillary Clinton for claiming he fixed the 2011 elections in Russia, plus his belief the Security Council led him astray over Libya. What is really pertinent is that an aide of John Podesta instead of marking a phishing email as 'illegitimate' left it at 'legitimate', because history often shows that cock-ups have played a key role in dramatic incidents. The report also raises questions about the honesty of Julian Assange and Wikileaks which to me has now been so compromised as to make its 'revelations' unreliable.
The NYT report for those who haven't seen it is here-
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us...=top-news&_r=1

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stavros

What is a 'New York Minute'?

Meanwhile the NYT has published an extensive account of the DNC hacking with strong claims it was a Russian operation, being Putin's revenge on Hillary Clinton for claiming he fixed the 2011 elections in Russia, plus his belief the Security Council led him astray over Libya. What is really pertinent is that an aide of John Podesta instead of marking a phishing email as 'illegitimate' left it at 'legitimate', because history often shows that cock-ups have played a key role in dramatic incidents. The report also raises questions about the honesty of Julian Assange and Wikileaks which to me has now been so compromised as to make its 'revelations' unreliable.
The NYT report for those who haven't seen it is here-
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us...=top-news&_r=1

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New York Minute:

A New York minute is an instant. Or as Johnny Carson once said, it's the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn.

It appears to have originated in Texas around 1967. It is a reference to the frenzied and hectic pace of New Yorkers' lives. A New Yorker does in an instant what a Texan would take a minute to do.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

New York Minute:
A New York minute is an instant. Or as Johnny Carson once said, it's the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn.
It appears to have originated in Texas around 1967. It is a reference to the frenzied and hectic pace of New Yorkers' lives. A New Yorker does in an instant what a Texan would take a minute to do.

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How odd, because I thought a 'New York Minute' -guessing, obviously- is what the cab driver on W28th tells you when you ask at 6pm how long it will take to get to Lincoln Centre...enough time for a head in the back with the Brazilian Amazon you are taking to the Met...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

If you're keeping score at home, this is the list of the people that the Clinton camp is blaming for her losing the election:

James Comey
Russia
President Obama
Huma Abedin

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I think it's fair to blame Comey and Russia. The exposure of all of one candidate's private correspondence while the other candidate's correspondence remains untouched is surely unprecedented. Hillary had the public and right wing media tearing apart every private email sent between her and her staff for months on end.

Can you even imagine if we'd had every private correspondence between Trump and his team? For instance, I wonder what they were saying internally after it became clear that Melania plagiarized Michelle Obama. I wonder what sorts of emails Trump received that caused him to use his twitter account less. Almost anything a team of political advisers says internally to control the candidate's message is going to look bad if it's leaked during that election. Even in a team of people whose professionalism cannot be impugned the release of private correspondence is devastating.

Not one of my issues.. But would like to have made it a 3 way with her and Markie Post. I heard Markie and Hillary had a hot thing going until Bill wanted to watch.

Hillary lost because Democrats were in general, sick of establishment politicians. This is why Bernie Sanders shot up in popularity because he was an anti-establishment candidate. Trump is an anti-establishment individual hence his rise in popularity because Republicans were also sick of establishment politicians too.

Now here's the kicker. If the DNC had not interfered with the primaries and manipulated them in Hillary's favor, we might have seen a Sanders/Trump battle to which I believe Sanders would have won and defeated Trump!

Something else that the Hillary camp didn't take into account were the portion of Sanders supporters that flat out did not like Hillary and went Trump instead.