So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

The fact that we are arguing over Democrat vs Republican, and not the 99% vs the 01% just proves how much power they have.

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I understand the sentiment but I'm going to disagree with this part. There are plenty of people in the top 1% of wealth who do not vote based on the narrow economic interests of their class. It is a battle over fairness and principle, against rigging rather than good outcomes.

I never understood this 1%, 99% dichotomy, as though ill-gotten wealth is somehow perfectly stratified within the top percent and everyone else is perfectly pure. This is one of the reasons I did not like Bernie; this sort of populism is often divorced from how the world works and does not provide a very good guide to implementing effective policies. If we are not going to punish wealth or discourage it, then there's no reason to demonize those who possess it. I would encourage wealthy people to vote against Trump.

That last post may seem unnecessarily argumentative (it would not be the first time) but it just seems that the problem in this country is that leaders do not have any faith in the public's ability to evaluate a policy so they instead propose new bogeymen. If someone is not bad because of their race then they're bad because of their wealth or their profession or where they live.

What if politicians instead said, we propose this regulation because it prevents a business from engaging in anti-competitive practices, or a bank from taking on too much risk, or a wealthy individual from buying elections? What if they said, there is nothing intrinsically bad with this group of people but we have not done enough to disincentivize bad behavior and they are uniquely placed to take advantage of poorly written laws? Naïve I know. We won't have banksters, evil 1 percenters, rootless cosmopolitans, godless liberals, or the biased media to talk about.

I hear that (to use one of Donald’s favorite phrases) the richest 20 Americans own more wealth than the bottom fifty percent. CNN reports the richest 1% own more than the remaining 99% of us.

I agree that Bernie is kind of a one-note-charlie on this issue and I also agree that one shouldn’t demonize the wealthy as a group. But one has to admit that the wealthy, by the nature of wealth, wield is disproportionate amount of power. Having such a lopsided distribution of wealth makes it difficult for a democracy to sustain itself. This is still one of the wealthiest nations on Earth with some of the most productive workers; and yet we can’t get successful businesses to pay their laborers a living wage. To say the wealthy should share their good fortune makes it sound like we’re asking them to be charitable and generous, whereas in fact they (and all of us who have benefited from a successful stock market) owe a good portion of their wealth to the workers who have been stiffed for over a decade.

I would like to see some substantial tax reform, including higher rates on capital gains and a tax on every transaction. Trump wants to go back to the fifties when America was ‘great.’ Let’s go back to the progressive tax rates we had in 1955 when the rate was 91% on the highest bracket.

It’s difficult to talk about this subject without sounding like you’re demonizing the wealthy. But if even one assumes no one in the top 1% intentionally stepped on the backs of others and only ever had the most innocent of intentions and that the economy is not a zero sum game, one cannot get around the fact that current distribution of wealth is divisive, contributes to a lopsided distribution of political, social and economic power and hampers the functioning of our democracy.

The ONE PERCENTERS have this thing figured out, and you can't fault them for that, but it would be nice if the 99% figured things out and played this game like the 1% do.
I don't think the USA would fall apart if 50% of the Country had 50% of the wealth.
Dwight D Eisenhower would not have let Trump get 100 yards from Government, when he said beware the Military Industrial complex, who do you think he was talking about?
Bush was not a President who was a businessman, he was a businessman who was President. Somewhere in that statement is a distinction that's going to have to be addressed and figured out.
If you cut Wall Street out of the relationship between the American Producer and the American Consumer you could buy a gallon of milk for 2 bucks. That's not Communism, that's good business.
But yeah, it's a complex problem that is no wheres as easy as I'm painting it. When you try to take people's money they fight back. Liking trying to sink Obamacare for the last 7 years.
Man, those Republicans really bristle when it comes to health care for the poor.......

Good posts. I want to point out that I'm not equating economic and geographic discrimination with racial discrimination. All things equal, it is at least logical to have a common ground economically and completely irrational to be politically motivated by ethnic differences and similarities. I just think one common denominator in modern politics is the desire to segment the voting public ; this is probably the basis for electoral strategy....these guys will vote for us, these won't, and these guys will only vote for us if we pander to their antagonism towards this other group.

I also wonder if on the high end, some of the growth in the number of super wealthy is based on the fact that companies depend more on intellectual property than human labor. I'm sure this is not a new point, but if someone can get rich off of building a network with proprietary software or creating a marketplace for people to buy and sell goods, they will be transmitting much less of their wealth to employees (there goes the idea of "job creators"). On the lower end our protections still need to be better corporate governance to protect investors, better labor and work safety laws, and an educational system that is more responsive to the marketplace, even if that means that 18-22 year olds are learning practical skills in addition to liberal arts curriculum. A more progressive tax is also necessary to provide services that enable socioeconomic mobility...as for buying political influence, we're still waiting on the Supreme Court.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

-... 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, ...

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This one definitely hurt him a bit. Your typical conservative poster on social media throws the following things at people (often daring you to 'share')..God,.. the flag... and the belief that only they respect law enforcement and....veterans. Especially if they served overseas.
When Trump ridiculed McCain's service, his followers were able to overlook that (but some didn't). ...but once that immature, thin skinned moron went after the Khan's, who's child gave the ultimate sacrifice, in his usual tone deaf way...I believe he may have lost some followers. At the very least it silenced some of them for awhile.

even if it didn't lose him massive numbers (his core support is too entrenched at this point)

I continue to marvel at a presidential contender having the self control of a two year old.

The papers here report that Donald Trump has declined to endorse either Paul Ryan or John McCain in their respective primaries for their seats in Congress, one wonders if these two masochists which just lap up the insults or at some point say enough is enough? Just out of interest, does the Republican Party have a recognised leader? Is it the Presidential candidate? The leading Senator or Representative? Whoever heads the RNC? There doesn't seem to be anyone in control of this party or one person with an authoritative voice, whereas here in the UK the leaders are clearly identifiable.

stavros I might have caught your sarcasm there.
regardless, Trump's attack against the Khan parents might finally be his undoing. Even some of my asshole pro-Trump friends are aghast.
Hillary has opened a 10 point lead in some of the polls. America is on the verge of regaining sanity

It might interest HA members to know that Trump signed an anti-pornography pledge. So much for the party that wants to keep government out of private business.
http://theslot.jezebel.com/donald-tr...dge-1784643504

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Originally Posted by trish

It might interest HA members to know that Trump signed an anti-pornography pledge. So much for the party that wants to keep government out of private business.
http://theslot.jezebel.com/donald-tr...dge-1784643504

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Trish, if you haven't yet, read the comments under that article...some of them are very good (some are funny too. there's one that comments on the bewildered look on the babies faces...and mentions his pucker looking like a prolapsed anus with a great GIF included :D )

Some of you may have seen the footage of the 'speech' Mr Trump gave in Virginia, the one so rudely interrupted by a crying baby. It struck me when I read it this morning that this is typical Trump -say one thing one moment, then flip it shortly after.
As reported (you can see it on YouTube or in the press if you prefer)- Trump said: “I love babies ... I hear that baby crying and I like it. I like it. What a baby, what a beautiful baby." A few minutes later when the baby was still crying: “Actually I was only kidding,” he said. “You can get the baby out of here.” Of the mother misguided enough to have been reassured by his earlier words, he said, “I think she believed me that I love having a baby crying while I’m speaking. That’s OK. People don’t understand." So now it appears Trump has managed to insult mothers and babies. One wonders if there is anyone in America he hasn't slated yet.

The odd thing is that I was thinking suppose he had just given the order to drop a nuclear bomb on Mosul, and ten minutes later changed his mind -'only kidding! Can we call the guys back?' -and this afternoon I came across a story in which it is claimed-

"Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can't we use them," Scarborough said on his "Morning Joe" program. The claim is not verified by specific sources or Trump and the claim can be seen here-
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump...h-reports.html

Fucking psychopath, he's the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party.

Most of today's papers focus on Trump's endorsement of Paul Ryan, which I believe he made reading word from word from a piece of paper -implying a lack of sincerity? Yet for me the two statements that are worthy of attention concern Japan and immigrants -
On Japan he said
“You know we have a treaty with Japan where if Japan is attacked, we have to use the full force and might of the United States,” Trump said. “If we’re attacked, Japan doesn’t have to do anything. They can sit home and watch Sony television, OK?”

Ending with what must be one of the cruellest of his tirades against US allies -
The Republican nominee also suggested that Japan might be “better off” with its own atomic weapons, and that he would consider, as president, ending the U.S. defense commitment to Japan and encouraging them to “go nuclear.”
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/201...ded-expensive/

The other comment is crude and the kind of thing you would expect to hear from a Klansman-
Trump said efforts to resettle Somali refugees — many of them in Minnesota — were “having the unintended consequence of creating an enclave of immigrants with high unemployment that is both stressing the state’s … safety net and creating a rich pool of potential recruiting targets for Islamist terror groups.”

He then listed several immigrants, mostly from Muslim majority countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Uzbekistan and Yemen — who were arrested for conducting or threatening to carry out violent attacks, teaching bomb-making to recruits, and otherwise supporting terror groups.
“We’re dealing with animals,” he seethed.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/201...nimals-barred/

You have to wonder if this man has any limits to his depraved ideas. Isn't this sort of thing illegal?

Donald Trump has been accused of a making an “assassination threat” against rival Hillary Clinton, plunging his presidential campaign into a fresh crisis.

The volatile Republican nominee was speaking at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, about the next president’s power to appoint supreme court justices. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment,” said Trump, eliciting boos from the crowd.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...cond-amendment

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Originally Posted by Stavros

You have to wonder if this man has any limits to his depraved ideas. Isn't this sort of thing illegal?

Donald Trump has been accused of a making an “assassination threat” against rival Hillary Clinton, plunging his presidential campaign into a fresh crisis.

The volatile Republican nominee was speaking at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, about the next president’s power to appoint supreme court justices. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment,” said Trump, eliciting boos from the crowd.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...cond-amendment

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I can't believe I'm about to do this. But I'm going try to clarify what he was saying.

I think he was trying to say that the 2nd amendment people can prevent that from happening by voting for me. The problem is Trump is trying to be appear folksy so he is not using a teleprompter and going off the cuff with his speeches. He will say one thing, lose his train of thought, and then he says the first thing that pops into his head.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

You have to wonder if this man has any limits to his depraved ideas. Isn't this sort of thing illegal?

Donald Trump has been accused of a making an “assassination threat” against rival Hillary Clinton, plunging his presidential campaign into a fresh crisis.

The volatile Republican nominee was speaking at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, about the next president’s power to appoint supreme court justices. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment,” said Trump, eliciting boos from the crowd.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that will be a horrible day.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...cond-amendment

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I think he was saying that his supporters could use weapons to stop Hillary, whether as a joke or not, it is very near the lines of illegality and in other countries would cross it. I follow a constitutional law scholar on twitter and he said his students would know that as dangerous as Trump's comments were they do not break the law because of Brandenburg v. Ohio. I pulled up the wikipedia version of the case as I do not feel like reading the whole thing, and at least the part I did read is that the speech has to be likely to incite IMMINENT violence for it to be punishable. He would have to say something that would make someone in his presence or at that moment watching a live feed begin to act I believe.

There is a good debate to be had about how far our first amendment goes in protecting many types of speech that are dangerous to law and order, civilized society, and that border on non-expressive conduct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I think he was saying that his supporters could use weapons to stop Hillary, whether as a joke or not, it is very near the lines of illegality and in other countries would cross it. I follow a constitutional law scholar on twitter and he said his students would know that as dangerous as Trump's comments were they do not break the law because of Brandenburg v. Ohio. I pulled up the wikipedia version of the case as I do not feel like reading the whole thing, and at least the part I did read is that the speech has to be likely to incite IMMINENT violence for it to be punishable. He would have to say something that would make someone in his presence or at that moment watching a live feed begin to act I believe.

There is a good debate to be had about how far our first amendment goes in protecting many types of speech that are dangerous to law and order, civilized society, and that border on non-expressive conduct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

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I take the legal point, and without prejudice ask, isn't this just too subtle for the context in which Trump made his remark? And too subtle for Trump as well as people listening to what he says? As an outsider when I hear Americans these days talk about their '2nd Amendment rights' I tend to see them walking around with guns, with the intention of using them in 'certain' situations, though not sure what they are...

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

I can't believe I'm about to do this. But I'm going try to clarify what he was saying.

I think he was trying to say that the 2nd amendment people can prevent that from happening by voting for me. The problem is Trump is trying to be appear folksy so he is not using a teleprompter and going off the cuff with his speeches. He will say one thing, lose his train of thought, and then he says the first thing that pops into his head.

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Set aside the gun issue and the fact that Hillary Clinton was quite specific in her Conference speech that she does not advocate precisely what Trump says, this is a key passage: If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks.

As I understand it Supreme Court Justices are nominated by the President, and appointed by Congress -two branches of Government maintaining the integrity of the third, so Hillary Clinton can nominate whom she wants but Congress -elected by the people- can do something about it -and in the past Presidential nominees have been rejected. It is Trump's ignorance of the political process that is as important as his implied threat to justify violence to change something the people don't like.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

I take the legal point, and without prejudice ask, isn't this just too subtle for the context in which Trump made his remark? .

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Yes. It is just one of those situations when legal standards seem meaningless because they strive for exactness when there is something intuitive about the wrongness of what Trump did. The most over-quoted statement by one of our Justices is about how he knows what is pornography...he said, "you know it when you see it".

If you pay attention, you know when someone is being reckless with other people's lives and futures...no matter where any of these lines are drawn by legislatures or founding fathers.

Although it may not be necessary I do want to briefly address the alleged ambiguous-ness of Trump's comments. He said, "if she gets elected, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know." So, the beginning premise is that she has already been elected.

Stavros is correct that Congress gets to approve of Supreme Court Justice nominees. In his conditional statement, the elective process involving the public has already passed. He said the second amendment people can still do something in the case that she has already been elected and I think his statement loses its ambiguity about what it is second amendment people can do.

It’s clear and obvious that Trump was alluding to a “Second Amendment Solution”. From the laughter (mostly his own) it’s also clear that it was meant to be taken (at least on one level) as a joke. Sharon Angle, Sarah Palin and others in the past have also come dangerously close to this precipice; but were never legally charged with braking the law.

But look: we need to get more people to carry guns.

What if you were doing something good, but were interrupted by a good guy with a gun who mistakenly thought you were doing something bad. Another good guy with a gun could take him out for you. If it weren’t for that other good guy with a gun, the good thing you were doing would not have gotten done.

Or what if you saw a bad guy with a gun doing something bad which you mistakenly thought was good - you know - perhaps you thought he was saving a good guy by shooting a bad guy with a gun, when in fact he was saving a bad guy by shooting a good guy with a gun. If you had a gun you could help him shoot the good guy you thought was bad; and though that’s not altogether a good thing it would be an example of how people with guns, good or bad, can bond and get along better than people without guns.

It’s all very simple. If you have to make a snap judgment, there’s nothing better than a gun for adding a nice touch irrevocable finality to it.

A short but eloquent riposte from Ronald Reagan's daughter Patti Davis:

To Donald Trump: I am the daughter of a man who was shot by someone who got his inspiration from a movie, someone who believed if he killed the President the actress from that movie would notice him. Your glib and horrifying comment about "Second Amendment people" was heard around the world. It was heard by sane and decent people who shudder at your fondness for verbal violence. It was heard by your supporters, many of whom gleefully and angrily yell, "Lock her up!" at your rallies. It was heard by the person sitting alone in a room, locked in his own dark fantasies, who sees unbridled violence as a way to make his mark in the world, and is just looking for ideas. Yes, Mr. Trump, words matter. But then you know that, which makes this all even more horrifying.

http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/11/pat...nounces-trump/

Donald Trump's latest policy 'innovation' is called 'Extreme vetting' and sounds like this:
“A new immigration policy is needed,” said Trump. “Clearly new screening procedures are needed.
“We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people.”
“In the cold war we had an ideological screening test ... The time is overdue for a new test. I call it extreme vetting,” he concluded.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...foreign-policy

As far as it goes the proposal is inadequate but I am not surprised he targets immigrants because the word alone raises a 'red flag' for his constituency. It is a feeble policy because Trump's need to demonize immigrants simply ignores the two most obvious problems -that a terrorist incident may not involve immigrants at all but be the act of someone born and bred in the US, or, as happened with the 9/11 hi-jackers, terrorists who enter the country as tourists or students. I don't know what the 'extreme vetting' will consist of, but if it is going to be applied to immigrants, why not everyone else entering the USA?

To enter the USA on my first trip to the USA in 1971 (Chicago) I had to apply for a tourist visa, and this required filling out a form which from memory was at least more than 4 but possibly not more than 8 pages long. What I recall most were the questions, such as 'Have you ever visited a Communist country?' and 'Are you a member of a Communist Party' to which I answered no although I had in fact travelled through Bulgaria and Yugoslavia when they were both Communist countries, so I guess I lied. The point is there was a form, I filled it in, and it was not a big deal.
I don't know how 'Extreme vetting' will work, and I don't know if it will amount to much more than filling out a form, but who knows what innovations this test will include?

As is now to be expected, Donald Trump departs from the truth in his speeches because in a 'post-truth' society everything is a matter of opinion and the primary aim is to create an impression or distract the voter from the truth by referring to an allegation which, by the time it has been investigated has been replaced with another. And so on.
Thus, speaking in 93% white Lansing, Michigan, Trump offered this incentive to Black Americans:

"Look at how much African American communities are suffering from Democratic control. To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose?" he asked. "You live in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...he-black-vote/

Well, as a substantial number of those 58 percent are still in school and therefore not either looking for work or unemployed, they may decide that voting for a liar is not the next best option.

Trump also said that “58 percent of African-American youth are either outside of the labor force or not employed.”
Trump’s campaign cited annual average data for 2015 from the BLS. That year, 583,000 African Americans age 16 to 24 were unemployed. That was roughly 9.9 percent of the total civilian noninstitutional population for African Americans in that age group.
To get to 58 percent, the Trump campaign also counted the nearly 2.88 million African Americans 16- to 24-years-old — many of whom are in school — who were not in the labor force, which, as we mentioned, means that they are not working and not looking for work.
As of July 2016, 22.5 percent of the labor force for African Americans in that age group — who were not enrolled in high school or college — were unemployed, according to the most recent nonseasonally adjusted data from the BLS.
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/08/tru...onomic-speech/

A lively article on the US elections and the EU referendum campaign in the 'post-truth era' -
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...uth-politician

You never really saw BIG GOVERNMENT til WWII, you didn't even tax the middle class til WWII, the lights in the Pentagon never went out after WWII.
But big bad America had an embarrassing racism problem in 1946, unbelievable, even, in today's standards. Obama has 5 thousand arms that plug 5 thousand leaks in a dyke with 15 thousand leaks.
Hillary is a dyke.........no, no no, I won't make fun of someone with medical problems.
Trump is just another headache in a sea of headaches for our next Presidentess, I think if anyone here ever got to see the first one hundred worst truths in this administration's real world truths you have to face, your head would snap off.
Trump is on a list of problems like Putin, N Korea, Iran, Syria, healthcare, racism, jobs, money, money, money,....etc etc etc
Being President is a tiring thankless job which is why Trump wouldn't take it even if they handed it to him.
Racism I haven't even seen as a topic unto itself down here, need to get the band back together with onyourknees and his Fox Friends, and have a rousing debate.
There is lots I don't know about being black and being gay. And in Govt, you don't know what you don't want to know. You can't afford to know.
It's all rigged.

https://s10.postimg.org/fdy39ffyh/wh...y_fountain.jpgupload gambar

Trump's latest campaign issue, that the election is rigged, threatens to become toxic and could run out of control after election day. What Trump calls 'rigged elections' however is not the most common form that it takes -denying or obstructing those who wish to register to vote and then vote on the day itself- but the spurious claim that the 'dead' are voting or that multiple votes are being cast by one person. The article linked below was published in 2012 and looks in detail at the issue and discovers that voter fraud barely exists in the US, whereas the attempts to prevent it have led to States imposing photo ID laws and other measures that in effect prevent Black, Hispanic and other minority groups from voting at all. This is fairly well known, but some of the detail may be of interest.

The article is by Kevin Drum and is here-
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ion-kevin-drum

Been a while since I posted on this thread and obviously things are changing. Having watched it on TV I am beginning to think Trump is the safest of the two of them, lesser of two evils :nervous:
It really is an unbelievable choice for the Americans!
My opinion of Clinton is now she is power mad, a warmonger, doesn't like Russia and despises Putin!
That is one lethal, toxic cocktail if I am right?

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Originally Posted by peejaye

Been a while since I posted on this thread and obviously things are changing. Having watched it on TV I am beginning to think Trump is the safest of the two of them, lesser of two evils :nervous:
It really is an unbelievable choice for the Americans!
My opinion of Clinton is now she is power mad, a warmonger, doesn't like Russia and despises Putin!
That is one lethal, toxic cocktail if I am right?

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No, you are over-reacting, for the simple reason that what Hillary Clinton has said on foreign policy does not depart very far from what US foreign policy has been since the 1960s. Moreover, Hillary Clinton is well aware of what a President can and cannot do and what the role of Congress is in foreign policy, whereas it is not clear if Donald Trump even knows what the law is, and the statements he has made have been called into question by the military as well as other experienced holders of office.

As for Putin, you might want to tell is what it is that is appealing to you, if that is the case. Is it the tendency of the Russian President to imprison or murder his political opponents? Is it the crushing of all political opposition, the bent elections, the 'bold and uncompromising' foreign policy that has seen Russian troops invade sovereign countries and participate -willingly or otherwise- in the bombing of civilian airliners?

Does this mean that as the 'lesser of two evils' you think that if Trump wants to send Hillary Clinton to gaol that is what he will do, presumably without trial? Will Trump be organising squads of 'election monitors' to make sure that when Black Americans vote in Philadelphia, it is because they -the Trump Squads- decide they are eligible voters -and is this even legal?

What does the 'lesser of two evils' actually mean? Is evil the right word to use in the context of a Presidential campaign, because if you are using it terms of theology, which religion is relevant to your point, Christianity? Judaism? If it is just short-hand for a moral point, you are asking difficult questions about politics and morality -if you think poverty is a crime rather than the natural order of things, then any and all politicians who fail to end it must be evil. If you think that waging war, which is illegal under the Charter of the UN, is evil, then Putin is evil. It might not be the best word to use when debating politics.

But what you could do is look at something very real than can be explained -what policies will these candidates, if President, propose to combat climate change and the other environmental issues that are important to the USA? How do they propose the education system of the USA prepare its children to live and work in the 21st century? What policies do either candidates think will create economic growth and jobs? And so on. I think these bread and butter issues are of far greater importance than the relentless focus on the personalities of the candidates concerned, only one of whom has experience of public office.

Stavros;
I'll keep this very blunt, I wouldn't vote for either of them and would advise all US citizens to do the same!
I won't sleep easy in my bed no matter which of these two "nuttas" gain power!

Well, fellow Americans, you have got yourself in the shit. You won't be voting for the best candidate but for the one you distrust/hate the least. How the hell did you get into this state?

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Originally Posted by martin48

Well, fellow Americans, you have got yourself in the shit. You won't be voting for the best candidate but for the one you distrust/hate the least. How the hell did you get into this state?

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My feelings exactly Martin, thankyou.

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Originally Posted by peejaye

Stavros;
I'll keep this very blunt, I wouldn't vote for either of them and would advise all US citizens to do the same!
I won't sleep easy in my bed no matter which of these two "nuttas" gain power!

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By not voting because of a cynical disregard for both of the Presidential candidates, citizens opt out of politics and take one step towards the end of democracy, which thrives on the participation of the citizen in debating and voting.

It is as if the same citizens agree with Trump that the election is rigged in advance, so just as he will not commit to accepting the result, why should citizens bother to vote?

I can offer substantial criticism of both candidates too, but am not an American so it would remain the rhetorical argument my comments on this election have been so far. For the record, I have never voted Conservative in the UK and though was once a member of, indeed an elected official of the Labour Party abandoned that party because of 'New Labour' reforms to the party constitution and because of regime change in Iraq. But I continue to vote, albeit for a fringe party that in practical terms is a wasted vote, because I consider myself to be an active citizen, and because I think it is morally superior to comment on politics if one is on the field of play rather than walk off in a huff but then shout from the sidelines.

What happens in the USA matters to all of us because the USA is a major player in the global economy, it is a major guarantor of the security of Japan and Korea and through NATO of Europe and has, for all but its terrible civil war maintained a democratic political system for 240 years -think about that, 240 years!- , and as such the US stands tall as a country of freedom and liberty which, before you or anyone else is tempted to mock that, is cruelly absent in too many other countries many of them within a few hours flying time from Washington DC. Even in the case of the UK, in the first week after the referendum vote the fall in the value of the pound had an adverse effect on the value of the Yen, just as the Republic of Ireland is facing as difficult and uncertain and economic future as the UK -we are connected, like it or not, in a global capitalist system.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump believe in capitalism, Clinton believing the state has a moral duty to intervene where capitalism doesn't work or make a profit, Trump claiming to think markets can do everything better. On this aspect of politics alone, it is a nonsense, and indeed an insult to compare the two and to damn both of them as 'evil' or 'dangerous' or 'crazy' when Clinton actually has a record in office you can judge without getting hysterical about her successes or her failures, which are inevitable in real politics; or deriding her as a 'nasty woman'.

By contrast, Trump's record both in business and from what we know of his other activities is not qualified to be President not least because he has shown he has no idea how the Presidency works, he has no natural diplomacy that tempers his language to offer the opponents of the USA a route to the negotiating table, and appears to lack the even temperament that is needed when a President can be provoked by others just to see what happens. So while it may be true that in the USA anyone can become President, you might want to add, but that doesn't mean anyone should be.

And if you don't think it is vital to vote Democrat to stop Trump, isn't that as good as endorsing Trump? There is a choice to be made in the election, and I for one hope the citizens who vote make a choice that will not trash the value of the dollar and the values of the country.

This is not even a difficult choice for someone with progressive or liberal politics, though perhaps the distance of being in Britain may make it seem that way. I personally don't understand the view that paints Hillary as a nutter or almost indistinguishable from Trump. Because she doesn't like Putin? Putin is indiscriminately killing civilians in Syria, murders journalists within and outside of his country, and does not allow free and fair elections to proceed within his country.

I actually think this might have something to do with the left-wing politics in Britain that on the left people would be more suspicious of Hillary than Trump. Maybe she's a corporate puppet or something sinister like that. Definitely some kind of puppet.

Much better we should vote for the guy who wants to dissolve NATO, who wants to expand the list of countries with nukes, who argued we should be able to use nukes, who wants to repeal the only comprehensive healthcare plan we've ever had, whose tax policy will increase our YUGE national debt and provide disproportionate relief for the wealthy, who wants to build a wall on our entire southern border, who wants a roving police force to arrest and transport 11 million people out of our country, who thinks Assad is the only one fighting ISIS (and is only fighting ISIS), and wants to ban Muslims from entering our country, especially refugees. I can hardly see why someone on the left would object to these things.

I forgot to mention: He wants to appoint Supreme Court Justices who will take away a woman's right to have an abortion, who will roll back the right of gay couples to get married, and who will block any type of firearm regulation. Also, his running mate has supported something called gay conversion therapy, which is basically the systematic torture of gay men and women, who through a process of compulsory self-hatred become suicidal. Progressive stuff....much better than what Hillary has to offer (none of those things).

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Originally Posted by broncofan

I forgot to mention: He wants to appoint Supreme Court Justices who will take away a woman's right to have an abortion, who will roll back the right of gay couples to get married, and who will block any type of firearm regulation. Also, his running mate has supported something called gay conversion therapy, which is basically the systematic torture of gay men and women, who through a process of compulsory self-hatred become suicidal. Progressive stuff....much better than what Hillary has to offer (none of those things).

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Not to mention Trump's running mate (Pence) once signed legislation that gave funerary rights to fetuses. It would require all fetal tissue issued from an abortion or an even a natural miscarriage to be taken to a funeral home to be cremated or buried, presumably at the expense of the woman and her family. Fortunately a Federal Court stopped the law from being enacted.

Trump essentially claims he doesn’t pay Federal Income Tax because Hillary made him do it! Apparently by not closing the loophole he’s been using for over a decade.

These two guys are crazy squared.

Hillary, after earning a degree in law from Yale, married Bill Clinton, moved to Arkansas and as a legal advocate helped enact State policies to ensure that handicapped children (who were being kept out of public schools) had the opportunity to go to school and learn.

As First Lady led the first attempt to delineate and enact a federal health program. When the proposed legislation failed, she didn’t give up. She created the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). This legislation passed with bipartisan support. The program provides matching funds to states for health insurance for modest income families with children.

The hard right objected and vilified her for interfering in a domain where she didn’t belong. She wasn’t an elected official and she was a woman. They were so intimidated and outraged they invented one scandal after another. No federal prosecutor (all appointed by a biased GOP) could ever lay a single infraction or wrong-doing at her door. At that point the tin-foil brigade took over. To date she’s been accused of nearly one-hundred murders! Really? If were that good and that vicious, one has to ask, “How is it that there are any Republicans left?” Hillary intimidates the hell out of the hard right, and they’ve smeared her ever since she was First Lady. Before Lewinsky, she took more shit than Bill. If you’re attacked by scurrilous skunks everyday of your life for thirty years, the smell doesn’t easily wear off - but that doesn’t make you the skunk.

As a Senator she voted against the Bush tax cuts. She co-led the investigation into the health issues incurred by first responders to 9/11. I don’t always agree with her. She voted to invade Afghanistan (I was and still am ambiguous about that military involvement). She voted to support Bush II’s war against Iraq (which I was totally against). As Secretary of State she supported military action in Libya (about which was apprehensive).

So no I don’t always agree with her decisions. But I do trust her. I trust that her actions, past and present, are not about personal profit nor personal aggrandizement. I trust she is sincere and believes in the issues she promotes. I trust she will negotiate and work in a bipartisan manner (if at all possible) but probably with a stronger manner than Obama. Generally I trust that most nominees for president have these virtues to a greater or lesser degree - with at least one obvious exception. Trust is rarely an issue, policy is. Trust is not really an issue in this election either. You can trust Hillary. On the other hand, every single time you see him, Trump is lying about having lied about lying.

Ah, but there is the private email server! I fail to see the great horror of this but please explain if I am missing something. When I used to do work for UK Government, then I would get messages (out of hours) from civil servants and others from their hotmail accounts - usually along the lines "The Minister is saying this in the House tomorrow, is it factually correct?" It's how business gets done.

Anyway I'm off to check my other 16 email accounts now!

Thanks for that little lot Stavros, you sound a very interesting guy with whom to enjoy a quality pint of beer with.:cheers:

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Originally Posted by peejaye

Thanks for that little lot Stavros, you sound a very interesting guy with whom to enjoy a quality pint of beer with.:cheers:

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If you are paying! I can't handle a pint these days, a bottle is as far as I can get.

no, America is pretty stupid to have this election. thanks for making the world laugh at you!

The Constitution mandates we have a presidential election every four years. You saying we should've made an exception and skipped this one? If Hillary wins I'll be laughing while you guys clutch your never endangered sovereignty and ride the Brexit roller coaster.