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The issue with that, though, is that the violence will always be under the surface, a not-so-subtle backdrop to everything he says. That does not bode well for either our or his future because if he goes all emollient and gentle, his supporters will then (rightly) claim that he too has betrayed them, and disillusionment with the process will be complete.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Things can only get worse, it would appear.
I'm not sure how he would do that, considering that the core of Trumps supporters hate Obama as much as Clinton. The President has excellent favorability numbers, but the country at this moment in time is very much polarized...hell, it seems like a large portion of the globe is. Perhaps (hopefully) this is all just a hiccup and here at home we are heading for a one term presidency for whoever wins and both parties start off with a clean slate and...uhmmm...probably not...Quote:
Originally Posted by flabbybody
...I'm probably just gonna retire next year, get a dog or two and head up into the woods to become a hermit.
I hope you get a cabin with wifi. Otherwise I'll miss you.
We think he is a dick head !!!
Thank you Trishie...but I could never 'rough it' without hi speed internet and giant flat screen television...Thai food's gonna be tough though.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
Not so sure about your last comment. At the moment, Trump is trying to get the Republican party to put up most of the money for his Presidential campaign, but according to the New York Times (a hostile source), Trump has a shambolic organization that appears to be incapable of mounting an effective simultaneous nationwide campaign which a General Election requires. I can imagine a scenario in which the Republican Party establishment -the same one derided so often by Mr Trump- will negotiate a deal -and Trump is the man for deals- which trade money and organization for, shall we say, 'clarification' on policies, or 'Positions' as they are called on Trump's website.Quote:
Originally Posted by makerandmodder
This ought not to be a surprise because most Presidents enter office with an agenda they cannot hope to fulfill in its entirety. Whatever agenda George W. Bush had when he entered the White House in 2001 was thrown out the window because of September's events. Obama entered office in 2009 faced with the most serious financial crisis in the US since 1928 and in spite of his commitment, Guantanamo is still functioning, even if that is not entirely his fault. And while I agree that Trump failing to get his headline policies through Congress is predictable, this does, again raise the question of what happens when/if Trump fails. If the US electorate decide there has to be a way to reform Congress if that is seen as the main choking point for real policy-making, how will they address this? How does one reform an institution from the Centre when so much of it is controlled by individual states?
In the UK as in the US, anyone can stand on a platform and make rousing speeches about change, but most political scientists will the tell you real change only takes place at the margins. And I suspect post_Trump most enthusiasts for change will retreat from the arena disillusioned, and the militants who remain will be the same ones who are there now making all the noise.
A Trump Presidency may have quite a different tone from previous ones, but how much of the agenda we know about now would reach the statute books?
Are there any limits to the talents and clairvoyance of Donald Trump? This is what he said the other day about Brexit:
“Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of their economy, politics and borders,” he said. “I was on the right side of that issue, as you know, with the people - I was there, I said it was going to happen, I felt it..."
-Mind you, he also said this:
“Globalisation has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7108256.html
Something tells me that if he meets Boris Johnson, born a few miles away in the same city (but not at the same time) only one of them will be left standing, as each believes themselves to be possessed of almost unnatural talents of insight and political skill. One only hopes they will meet as losers in a green room, far far away.
Not so certain, if this street art is to be believed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
After the revelation yesterday that Mrs Trump appeared to have used in her speech the same words and phrases used by Michelle Obama in her Convention speech in 2008, it has emerged that another original source has been mined for its relevance. As the New Yorker quoted-
“The world outside our borders is a dark place, a scary place,” Marcus Luttrell, a former Navy SEAL, explained. “America is the light.”
it emerges that this is a modified version of a line from the film Gladiator-
"I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark. Rome is the light."
One wonders what will the next rifled quote be?
This has never precluded someone from winning an electionQuote:
Originally Posted by Ginamax
How close is this maniac to becoming President? :nervous:
I watch channel 4 news about it but so much else seems to be going on there(re. election)it seems to easily go off-topic?
Don't know. Everyone has a different estimation of his chances. It's close enough that I can't bare to look. (I'm the kind of girl who turns her eyes from the screen when the story's about to go badly awry.)Quote:
How close is this maniac to becoming President?
Ladbrokes is giving Hillary close to a 70% chance of winning in November.
These are the same folks who made Remain a similar likelihood in the BREXIT referendum...they're paid to make odds, not to be correct
trish, your fear is warranted
I think the polls at the moment reflect the way the campaigns have been managed, and that means that in both cases the two candidates have been in control of their agenda, as will be the case until the Democrat Convention is over. The 'head to head' confrontations between Mrs Clinton and Donald Trump will I think be the most compelling since these tv debates began, assuming that the US tv networks arrange them. In the UK it is being predicted that this will be the dirtiest election in US history.
Of the two, Trump is the most likely to 'go rogue' and say something he later regrets, but Mrs Clinton has the problem of not being much liked and she is not a great public speaker. I think in the Brexit case many voters had made up their mind without reference to any of the tv debates, and I suspect Trump's supporters are not going to worry too much if he makes a fool of himself. Statistically I think that means 30% on both sides is already a done deal. Nevertheless, when weighted, identifiable segments of the voting population suggest Mrs Clinton has the edge over Trump with regard to women, and 'non-white Anglo-Saxon' Americans many of whom live in the most populous states, and ultimately the Electoral College decides.
We also have to factor in the 'unknown unknowns' from a terrorist incident, an 'October Surprise' or something that both candidates have to respond to immediately. Finally, from what I have read, Melania Trump admires Michelle Obama (and why not? and not just as they chose the same designer's frocks as Convention clobber) -and re-wrote parts of her speech herself (this evening's news on the BBC might contradict this). But the Trump children don't like her, and as they allegedly chose Governor Pence she snubbed him not appearing on the same platform as him, though that will have to happen in due course.
And yet, however sloppy and badly managed the Trump campaign might be, and whatever the impact might be of Roger Ailes leaving Fox News, Trump's entire campaign is run like a tv advert and nothing else.
Lastly, in the UK both the Financial Times and the Telegraph have been relying on the RealClear Politics poll tracker, which is found here-
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...lls/elections/
Trump will make a big splash tonight.
Ivanka, not Donald.
There is a story in the New York Magazine which claims Donald Trump has no interest in the daily decision making that Presidents must make -it claims that John Kasich was offered the Vice-Presidency on the basis that he would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy. The report continues:
Given that domestic policy and foreign policy together comprise, well, all policy, what (the Kasich adviser inquired) would Mr Trump be doing with his time, exactly? “Making America great again,” Donald Jr replied-
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7147291.html
Kasich declined the offer, but last night the candidate Trump did select said this:
I'm a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.
-A curious thing to admit to a party convention where he is being selected for the second-best job in the country that the party ranks third in importance; whatever, the segment that caught my attention was this:
Elect Hillary Clinton and you better get used to being subject to unelected judges using unaccountable power to take unconstitutional actions. So let me say, for the sake of the rule of law, for the sake of the sanctity of life, for the sake of our Second Amendment and for the sake of all our other God-given liberties, we must ensure that the next president appointing justices to the Supreme Court is Donald Trump.
-Apart from the astonishing claim that the liberties of US citizens have been granted by God (as opposed to the mere mortals who have run the country since 1776), lies the suggestion that Supreme Court justices are 'unelected' and 'unaccountable' when the President is a Democrat, but if a Republican those appointments are not...maybe Trump has god-given powers we do not know about, or maybe the fate of the Supreme Court should become a matter of public debate?
The Pence speech transcript is here-
http://www.bustle.com/articles/17395...s-here-to-stay
I think the whole wide world should be worried, not just Americans. This man is a psychopath!: hide-1:
I stayed up to watch the Trump speech live, but was not expecting it to go on and on and on and on. Once the speech passed 25 minutes it was torture. There are some aspects of the speech which may generate some concern among Republicans, as well as Americans and the wider world, but the speech was of interest for what Trump did not say as for what he did.
For example, the TEA Party radicals and the Evangelical core of the Republican Party believe that the nuclear, Christian family is the base on which American society is built and without which America has no meaning, no purpose and no values. Other than admitting to personal failings on which he did not elaborate (three wives?) he made no mention of God and the Bible (evidently not important to his father either), and had nothing to say on abortion and planned parenthood which have been high priority issues for the TEA Party and other Republicans, but he he did defend the rights of the LGBTQ communities across the USA. Where other Republicans would link crime, drug and alcohol abuse to welfare and decades of liberal dominance in social policy, Trump simply ignored it all, other than implying that if drugs were not being illegally imported into the US from Mexico there would not be a drug problem, and this from someone whose speech was modelled in part on the 1968 convention speech of Richard Nixon, who began the 'war on drugs' in 1973, a war that appears to have no end.
Trump had nothing to say on the environment or climate change, even though the continental USA notably in the south from southern California across to Texas has long-term problems of water resources and land management. With the exception of Mexico there was no mention of the USA's neighbours in the Caribbean or Central and Southern America, even though many illegal immigrants in the USA are from Central America rather than Mexico, and Mrs Clinton is blamed by some of her opponents for creating the chaos in Honduras which has led many to flee the country and end up crossing the border into the USA.
For a man so determined to make America rich again, Trump had nothing to say on anti-trust legislation to break up huge conglomerates like Exxon, IBM, Apple, and the Trump Organisation, and give 'the little guy' a chance; nothing to say at all about banks, in fact I don't think he used the word 'bank' or 'bankers' once in the speech, but did mention Bernie Sanders. And other than implying that the deficit will be drawn down from the fabulous sums of money the USA makes on his watch, Trump offered no practical guide to deficit reduction and like most critics of the Obama administration did not explain how it was the fault of the Federal government that wages have stagnated.
Indeed, if I am hearing Trump correctly, he is opposed to free markets -because the US economy in his terms is 'rigged' and competitors like China are 'cheats'- and he believes it is the job of the Federal government to determine the wages of every American in work. But it is also clear to me that Trump either has no idea what is happening in the world of work, or simply ignores the role technology is playing in extending automation in industry and other areas of work to the detriment of humans, or is creating jobs but not in the volume of heavy industry in the past, and not generating tax revenues for the state that those industries did.
Finally it is by now simply tiresome to hear Mrs Clinton being held responsible for the growth of Daesh in the Middle East and every other problem in the region. Deash or ISIS or ISIL is itself a fusion of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party and those Sunni officers and soldiers sacked from the armed forces by Paul Bremer III, so you could just as well argue that Daesh would not exist without al-Qaeda which would not exist without the war against the USSR in Afghanistan but that would mean linking the support of the Reagan administration for the Mujahideen out of which al-Qaeda was born. Mrs Clinton, whose support for Israel should be an embarrassment to anyone who believes in freedom, cannot be blamed for Middle Eastern terrorism or the Arab Spring and its consequences, but Trump bases his views on general ignorance, just as he finds it convenient to accuse Iran of being at the centre of global terrorism but never once in his speech mentioned Saudi Arabia, a significant problem state he will have to deal with if he becomes President.
In sum, the speech I think most of us expected, and not enough to win the White House, but a lot will now depend on how the Democrats approach the election -one hopes by not mentioning Trump but talking about their policy proposals instead -and how Trump performs with Mrs Clinton if they debate on tv.
Nicely done Stavros. I would add that even though Trump (somewhat awkwardly) supports LGBT, says nothing about abortion, Planned Parenthood, nor dwells on God and the Bible, 'his choice' of running mate - Mike Pence- is the evangelical counter-weight on all those and related issues. Indeed, if Trump really does intend to delegate to his VP his power to determine details of domestic and foreign policies (as reported in the New York Magazine) and spend his own time playing golf and making America great again, then one might expect Mike Pence to have quite a bit more say in these matters than VP's usually do. I worry this promise to delegate, makes Trump more palatable to those who find him too rash and inexperienced but have swallowed all the Hate Hillary nonsense.
On the Democratic side we're very close to getting a tweet on Tim Kaine being officially chosen as veep.
As politicians go, he's spectacularly ordinary. The exact opposite of an Elizabeth Warren or Cory Booker. But Hillary craves boring right about now. Why fuck things up when oddsmakers say you'll win?
And most importantly, Kaine was said to be Bill's choice
At least Gov. McAuliffe will likely appoint a Democrat to take Kaine's place on the Senate. Warren would certainly add spice to the ticket and perhaps would bring in more of the disaffected Bernie people. The drawback is she's doing a great job in the Senate, and were she to leave Baker would replace her with a Republican. Same with Booker. I don't know much at all about Tim Kaine. How would he do against Pence in a debate - anyone?Quote:
Originally Posted by flabbybody
It just occurred to me what Trump's hair is all about !:tongue:
Attachment 951771Attachment 951772Attachment 951773Attachment 951774
A few points in the aftermath of Cleveland-
1) Trump suggested Bernie Sanders' supporters would be voting for him, but if it so it would not be out of loathing for Mrs Clinton, but because Trump is the anti-globalisation candidate who, like Sanders thinks that Americans have got a bad deal out of globalisation and all it is claimed to represent.
2) What happens to the Republican party now? Is this the 'Party of Lincoln' or the 'Party of Trump'? Indeed, has it always been 'the Party of Lincoln' and if not when did it stop becoming that party -under Nixon? Reagan?
3) Emboldened by Trump's campaign, David Duke has announced his entry as a Republican candidate for the Senate contest in Louisiana in November. There is a belief now that the impossible is no longer that -Leicester City wining the Premier League in the 2015-2016 season, the UK voting to leave the EU, Trump becoming Presidential candidate -presumably it is now only a matter of time before one of those awful Kardashian or Jenner people run for whichever political post they think merits their fame, choosing Taylor Swift as their 'running mate'...(I admit I have never googled these people so don't really know who they are, I just look at the pictures)...
On (2): I think the Republican Party stopped being the party of Lincoln ironically through a kind of sudden migration across the party borders. It happened when all the southern Democrats who opposed the civil rights legislation (that Johnson signed into law) flooded into the Republican Party, changing the profiles and goals of both parties ever after.
Thanks Trish, and I agree with most of what you say on civil rights. However, I think that the issue that has separated the two main parties and ended the degree of bi-partisan agreement that used to be common in Congress, is the issue of 'Big Government' which has is roots in the critique of Lincoln as the first 'Imperial President' who established as a norm that the Federal Govt could and indeed should intervene in the economy and 'guide' the US in terms of social policy. If the New Deal paradigm was replaced with a neo-liberal one in the Reagan era and an agenda the Democrats under Clinton adapted as their own, it seems to me that civil rights aside, the confusion in the Republican Party lies in the inability of the party to reconcile economic and social policy with an electorate that is more diverse in its origins than that which elected either Nixon or Reagan. The argument that government should not be making decisions people can make for themselves is at the heart of free market economics, yet the TEA Party radicals and the Evangelical, Moral Majority Christians seem to want that economic freedom, but to define social policy on their own narrow and mostly religious terms.Quote:
Originally Posted by trish
Trump, in this instance, is the champion of free market radicals because he wants lower taxes, he wants the Federal government to withdraw from health care and industrial policy, and he wants to break that aspect of globalisation which has seen inter-state trade deals ring-fence the signatories with privileges outsiders do not have, and replace it with a truly free global market place where competition between companies determines contracts, not agreements between states. Indeed, on this basis, as I said before, the logical candidate for anti-globalisation voters to turn to after Bernie Sanders is Donald Trump.
But, because Trump (set aside the empty rhetoric on 'law and order') does not really have any real interest in civil rights or social issues like abortion, same-sex relations, divorce, and education, the question would also be does this mean he can take the Republican Party into a new direction?
Or, as seems to me most likely, Republicans (re-)elected to Congress will continue to promote their 'God and Family' agenda, regardless of who is in the White House, and anyway Trump will lose, and the GOP will revert to what was before, until someone can step forward to take the GOP in a new direction.
Does anyone know if this is legal or illegal?
Trump...speaking at a press conference in Florida, raised the stakes again, as he urged Russia to hack into and release Clinton’s emails from the personal server she used while she was secretary of state.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...mails-dnc-hack
-As usual Trump having said one thing only to follow it up either with a denial, in this case claims he said it as a joke, though I don't suppose he would think it funny if someone entering Trump Tower with a briefcase when asked its contents replied -as a joke- 'a bomb'. Or maybe he just doesn't take this campaign seriously?
I don't know if its legal or not. But it is kind of shady and while I'm never someone who throws this label around much, it comes off as being "un-American". He is basically asking a country who at the moment the United States has a strained relationship with to indirectly poke its nose in its Presidential election. Even if there is something of merit in those 30,000 emails, those emails should be discovered in way that doesn't pose a threat to national security. You know the same thing that Hillary Clinton is being accused of.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Melania doesn't understand Trump, his own kids don't understand him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
He is where he is now for just one reason- because he swooped in and hi-jacked all the Fox News Watching Jellyheads who have been brainwashed for years to ignore all the facts and trust their Racist Daddy. No matter what Daddy tells "THEM"
But, seriously, this is way beyond an unbelievable joke, man.
Legal? Don't know, but it's worth four or five Congressional investigations. Come on Ryan - form an investigatory subcommittee - whaddya waitin' for?Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Donald Trump has been given an opportunity to respond to the DNC and this is what he produces:
Donald Trump is living up to his reputation as thin-skinned bully.
At a Davenport, Iowa, rally on Thursday, Trump threatened to attack several of the Democratic National Convention’s speakers for their remarks against him.
“I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy,” Trump said at his rally. “I was gonna hit this guy so hard, his head would spin, he wouldn’t know what the hell happened.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/poli...icle-1.2730295
Apparently the Daily News thinks he is referring to Michael Bloomberg. And I think the Trump camp have already had to issue a press release to say Donald was just joking, just as they had to 'confirm' the invitation to Russia to hack US government emails was 'sarcasm'. Whatever. It does at least confirm that any TV debates between these two will either be compelling viewing, or just an embarrassment.
And who knows, there may even be a debate on policy...
Of course, everything The Donald says is a joke.Quote:
Apparently the Daily News thinks he is referring to Michael Bloomberg. And I think the Trump camp have already had to issue a press release to say Donald was just joking...
Most of us grow older as each day goes by. This idiot Trump seems go get more stupid each day! I've never come across anything or anyone like it! :smh
I think this coming October 31st I will trick or treat as Paul Manafort.
(the real monster is BEHIND the mask!
https://s32.postimg.org/705nmrxad/tu...qgp297_500.jpgfree photo hosting
Buttslinger, Is that to protect your Russian investments or to re-install your buddy Yanukovych in Kiev? Or both? Do you pay taxes on the profits? Innocent question..Quote:
Originally Posted by buttslinger
I'm taking all of my money out of Russian Rubles and the Stock Market to bet them on Trump to win in November.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Under the table of course, no taxes.
Paul may be a no-good-nik, but he wears the nicest suits you ever saw. ...........
and he's guaranteed me a Trump win this Fall.
They say Putin may be worth 200 billion dollars.
And as we all know, 200 billion dollars CAN'T be wrong!!
It would be easy to dismiss the latest rant from Donald Trump- referring to Hillary Clinton as 'the Devil' (and I assume, with a capital D), claiming the General Election will be rigged- as a desperate attempt to get past the row over the 'Gold Star' parents Mr and Mrs Khan, not to mention his inept remarks about Vladimir Putin and Russian involvement in Ukraine. The problem is the language and tone matter, just as a 'Gold Star' mother was booed at a Pence rally, and just as there have been Americans who shared Trump's views on Obama and already believe elections are rigged, so the persistent use of this kind of language and argument, in the tone that it is delivered, must over time devalue the democratic process, which thrives on honest and open debate about real issues. We saw these tactics being used in the EU referendum campaign in the UK, where real debate was replaced by accusation and counter-accusation.
But, taken to its logical conclusion, where people believe 'we do not live in a democracy', that 'elections are rigged', and that politicians are 'only in it for themselves', you may find that 240 years of democracy is destroyed in two months, by someone and some people, it must be said, who really do not care about it, or what happens next.
True. And if he is capable of winning the election by making such comments, then the system was not functioning very well to begin with and we have only been lucky in past cycles that our parties have not nominated such demagogues. We have not encouraged enough civic responsibility, popular participation in the vetting process of our leaders, or attention to policy detail to elect minimally competent leaders.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Donald and the Republican's trick has been to vilify the media which acts to vet the sensibility of the policies proposed by respective candidates. When people believe that no criticism by the media, no matter how well documented or argued, is made in good faith or worth listening to, they become insensitive to common sense. They adopt thinking along the lines of, "well CNN, which is in the pockets of the Democrats, argues that Donald made a racist statement, but that just means he is speaking the truth. The New York Times thinks Donald did not know that Putin invaded Crimea, but they've always had it in for him. It's time to do away with the elites." The elites, of course, end up being anyone who has paid attention to domestic and foreign policy and obeys the norms of civilized discourse. It is the reflexive popular protest movement against anything deemed "establishment" that can lead people to wildly insensible positions.
Look - the election will be rigged, the other contender is The Devil and greatest sacrifice anyone can make is to "earn" millions on the backs of immigrants. Doomsday is coming to the USA.
Behold the Head of a Traitor
The Donald figured out early that by calling Mexicans rapists and murderists, you could keep playing that pied piper tune and they'd follow you anywhere, but I don't think he understands that even the most hardcore of racists well up a bit when they hear the story of a Muslim son killed in the service to this Country.
The Donald is getting away with his crimes because he's destroyed THE EVIDENCE, and the evidence in this case is a Library Card.
Obamacare and a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage is going to upset the applecart for a while, but 15 bucks an hour is going to put more money into the Community Chest, and less money into the off-shore accounts of One Percent Ivory Tower builders. White Middle Class working men are EXACTLY the ones who should be voting for Hillary, half their paychecks are ending up in the pockets of the guys who sign their patchecks.
The American Political Process was insane WAAAAAAAY before Donald Trump.
The fact that we are arguing over Democrat vs Republican, and not the 99% vs the 01% just proves how much power they have.