So what do you Brits make of Trump ?

[trish]

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.

[Stavros]

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/

[Stavros]

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?

[Stavros]

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

[buttslinger]

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.

upload gambar

[Stavros]

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

[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
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?

[Stavros]

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
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?

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.

[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!

[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?