U.S. Electile Dysfunction 2016

[Xyzzy]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...mp-2016-214318

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by chappy

Yes, Clinton voted for the Comprehensive Immigration bill (which did not pass the House) which did such terrible things as require that immigrants have translators so that they understood their rights during legal proceedings and provided for exceptions for mothers and children.

And, yes, redirected aspects of border security (which already existed) into increased scrutiny of the border for tunnels and maintaining the walls we have.

It also increased both the number of legal work visas and legal immigrants (though it set 10 year caps on the latter) and shifted legally the blame toward the companies that employ illegal immigrants. I wonder why it failed in the House?

Tell me again how that is the same as Trump's rhetoric to deport millions and build a wall?

(although it appears that he could be talking about HR 6061 which did pass, though he gave the wrong number--the wall was never finished and was mostly a waste of money.)

"the wall was never finished" -- Unless we're engaging in lawyerly parsing about the difference bwteen a wall and a high-security fence, then what was our current Dear Leader referring to way back in 2011 when, as described here by PolitiFact, Obama says the border fence is 'now basically complete'?

Re. Trump on immigration, I take a similar view as Dilbert creator Scott Adams - who now appears to be the target of an organized online harassment campaign by Clintonites, including the folks running Twitter - on this (note I've snipped Adams' "Master Persuader" language from the quote, because I find it unduly hagiographic). But I do agree with him that large-scale amnesty for illegal immigrants carries a huge amount of moral hazard:

Why Trump Doesn’t Scare Me | Scott Adams' Blog

Making a Huge First Offer

Trump has been consistent for decades in his practice of making an aggressive first offer and negotiating down to something reasonable. He talks about it in his book, The Art of the Deal. So when Trump announced he would deport 11 million people, I saw that as an aggressive opening offer, consistent with his history, and nothing worthy of fear. Most of the world saw it as a final offer.

It wasn’t.

Recently we learned that my interpretation from last year was accurate. Trump is now focusing on the “criminal” aliens who committed additional offenses after entering the country illegally. He plans to “prioritize” that group and get around to the rest at some future date, when circumstances might be different.
...
The problem is that Trump can’t say today that he will be lenient with illegal immigrants tomorrow because that would encourage more people to enter the country. The best play – and the only one likely to work – is to scare people into thinking he will deport everyone, then soften after the bad ones have been expelled and the wall is working. Trump is approaching immigration like a persuader. If you trust him to be kind later, his approach looks both humane and practical. But if you are afraid of the dark, and afraid of New York-style talking, you might see something sinister. I predicted last year that Trump would soften on deporting 11 million people, and he is doing just that, right on schedule.

In any case, for the benefit of our other readers, here is a useful PolitiFact rundown: Compare the candidates: Clinton vs. Trump on immigration.


o Ha ha, whichever DNC flunky is responsible for giving the Big Dawg his morning dose of tranquilizers must have slipped up:

Bill Clinton called Obamacare a “crazy system” | NY Post

Bill Clinton, the husband of the Democratic presidential nominee, knocked President Obama’s signature piece of legislation — the ObamaCare health care law — as “the craziest thing in the world.”

“You’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care, and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half and it’s the craziest thing in the world,” the former president railed at a rally in Michigan on Monday.

If Bill keeps emitting these kinds of unfortunate leaks of truthiness, he's gonna have the wife asking, like she (allegedly - Snopes.com is pooh-poohing the story) did about Julian Assange, "Can't we just drone this guy?"


o The Class Dynamics in the Rise of Donald Trump | Counterpunch

The claim that Trump owes his electoral victory mainly to non-economic factors such as racism and xenophobia lust much of its credibility when Bernie Sanders won handily against Hillary Clinton in States such as Indiana and West Virginia.

o HRC on the leak of Trump's big business loss of 2 decades ago: "What kind of genius loses a billion dollars?" I dunno, maybe a risk-taking big-businessperson, in the notoriously risky field of commercial real estate development? And note, I'm no fan of casinos - I find them to be in a similar wild-overpromise-hyped/taxpayer-boondoggle category as pro sports stadiums - but they are a perfectly legal RE venture in states which permit them. The fundamental reason the tax code has specific allowances for deductions related to business losses is the recognition that all entrepreneurship carries risks, and that the long-term cost of doubly punishing business ventures which fail - by way of the actual failure plus nondeductibility of such losses in the tax code - is fatal to economic development and innovation. Hey Hillary, we can't all be 100-bagger-scoring cattle futures trading savant like you, OK?

Getting back to the "what kind of genius" question: Maybe this kind? Chelsea Clinton's Husband Closes Disastrous Hedge Fund Which Bet on Greek Debt | The Daily Caller

Now admittedly, a few tens of millions is small potatoes compared to Trump's very bad year, but you can bet that Mr. Mezvinsky would have grown said hedge fund to much larger size, had the pool of Greater Fools not run dry.

But hey, if you want really big "genius" losses, look no further than leading economic parasite and Clinton-family BFF Jamie Dimon:

Hillary Should Ask Jamie Dimon What Kind of Genius Loses $6.2 Billion | Wall Street on Parade

Yesterday, building on the momentum afforded her by a series of articles in the New York Times, Hillary Clinton asked the audience at a campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio: “What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in one year.” Clinton was referring to the New York Times revelation on Sunday that Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return showed a loss of $916 million. (See video clip below.)
If Hillary really wants to know what kind of genius can lose a billion dollars in one year or $6.2 billion in the case of traders at JPMorgan Chase, she should ask the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon.

The Chairman of the Subcommittee at the time, Senator Carl Levin, stated that JPMorgan “piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public.”

Compared to these guys, Trump is a piker.

For the past three consecutive days the New York Times has deployed its front page as something akin to a Super Pac advertising medium to boost the campaign prospects of Hillary Clinton by sacking the business acumen of Donald Trump.
(The editorial page of the New York Times has also twice endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, calling Trump “the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.”)

While we are certainly no fan of Donald Trump, we have to ask ourselves two essential questions: (1) why is the Times creating a gag-worthy, revisionist history of the scandal-plagued career of Hillary Clinton and (2) why has the Times allowed its hometown’s largest industry, Wall Street, to become a criminal enterprise right under its coddling nose, leading to the unprecedented transfer of wealth from the 99 percent across America to the pockets of the super wealthy of New York City and its environs.

[chappy]

Not really in a position right now to respond completely to everything, but basically Bill Clinton said (if you bothered to see the context at all) that it's crazy that there are these huge gaps in coverage, mainly for small businesses, we should fix them. But the system is much better than it was. (and this illustrates the biggest problem with reading comprehension by twitter. ideas carry over from one sentence to the next.)

and re: fences Obama said it right in the article: "They'll want want a higher fence," Obama said. "Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That’s politics." So yes, there's a real physical difference not merely a semantic one.

Chelsea Clinton's husband isn't running for President. I would imagine if he were to run he'd release his Tax returns and own up to his mistakes. Something the Don is unwilling or unable to do. Remember that whatever is in all the tax returns is worse than anything that has been released so far--otherwise he'd just release them. Additionally, the losing a billion dollars is a misnomer. His loss was a billion dollars on paper. There's almost no way that was a real loss. He didn't have that much money to invest.

It's a great deal like the shenanigans that Romney played to have 100 million in his 401K. Invest at one value, remove at another.

The counter punch argument is specious at best, make the claim that democrats in those states are the same kinds of voters as the plurality of the half that voted for Trump and you'd have a point. But, since that doesn't seem to be the case I can ignore it. As it is, that particular proposition is never made, nor supported, merely assumed. And what can be proposed with no evidence can be dismissed just as easily. Then later it devolves into even more ridiculous and outsourced claims about Clinton's views on the middle class, the working class and how supporting capitalism makes Union leaders traitors to their class. Seriously? Did you even read the article?

What we do know from intense polling is that openly racist people support Trump. Of course there aren't very many of them anymore. So it's just a correlation that secretly racist people do too. However, xenophobes? Support Trump. Islamaphobes? Support Trump. Anti-Immigration? Trump. Anti-Hispanic immigration but okay with European immigration? Trump.

While there's a great deal of overlap in those voices and they may not be a plurality of Trump voters, there's a definite pattern there. I'm sure I could rope together some racists on the other-side, hopeful that Hillary will change her mind on all these issues. They'll be as disappointed as all the donors to Clinton Foundation who thought they were buying influence, but as the scary leaked documents have shown so far, got bubkis.

I've read some on the Scott Adams thing a while back. It all seemed weird, but it also made me remember that expertise in one field doesn't confer it in another.

I did appreciate the link to Politifact. If that doesn't describe deep philosophical differences between how the two candidates tackle problems (or perceived problems) I don't know what does.

[Xyzzy]

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...e-trump-rigged

And it turns out they do believe the election will be rigged — but only if Trump loses.

[chappy]

Two huge scandals rocked the political USA today.

In one, emails and transcripts were leaked that imply that HRC thinks Wall Street should police itself and participate in it's own regulation.


In the other, leaked tapes reveal a Presidential candidate, among other things, bragging about physically assaulting a married woman.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by chappy

Two huge scandals rocked the political USA today.

In one, emails and transcripts were leaked that imply that HRC thinks Wall Street should police itself and participate in it's own regulation.

In the other, leaked tapes reveal a Presidential candidate, among other things, bragging about physically assaulting a married woman.

Get raped by the self-policing banks or assaulted by the Donald ... hmmm...

Four somewhat-lesser items, but IMO still interesting:

o The "no-fly-zone" the warmongers are proposing in Syria - despite warnings by top military brass that this would lead directly to war with Syria and Russia - is not in fact a no-fly-zone, it's only a no-fly-zone for everyone *other* than the exceptional US.

o Obama administration now "officially" blames the Russkies for the DNC e-mail hack, while producing no added evidence beyond "unnamed experts say!" and ignoring the concept of spoofing. Because a sophisticated state hacking program is going to leave a broad digital footprint implicating itself as the source. All this is of course meant to divert from the more salient fact that the DNC is not disputing the actual leaked content, which shows blatant rigging of the primary process - both on the electoral and funding fronts for Hillary.

And speaking of the godless script-kiddie-imitating commies...

o Banner of Russia’s Putin hung from New York City bridge | Reuters

Ha, the article actually uses ‘the Putin’, as in ‘…featuring the Putin dressed in a suit in front of the Russian flag with the word “Peacemaker” in capital letters’ … paging the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, we have a fifth-column crisis! I blame the Donald for his mollycoddling of the evil commies like the Putin.

(I forwarded the link to a Russian friend, she replied with a note that a similar banner was hung in Dresden, and the occasion is the Putin’s birthday, 64th years young today, is the Putin.)

o Looks like of the Caribbean nations, Haiti was by far the worst-hit by hurricane Matthew - something approaching 1000 dead. Good thing the philanthropic Clinton Foundation is on the case, just as it was in the wake of the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake.

[chappy]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

o Looks like of the Caribbean nations, Haiti was by far the worst-hit by hurricane Matthew - something approaching 1000 dead. Good thing the philanthropic Clinton Foundation is on the case, just as it was in the wake of the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Hey look a completely unbiased account (that contradicts it's own narrative) from a wacky Jill Stein shill! You've convinced me.

How about instead of making up numbers like a billion dollars we talk about the actual numbers $30 million. That's how much the Clinton foundation has raised to spend in Haiti (because as the article points out but then ignores the Clinton Foundation isn't an International aid Org.)

And yes, I bet you can find actual evidence showing that aid money was wasted in Haiti. Of course if a person had any perspective and even a shred of balance, they would recognize that all of the aid organizations after the earthquake wasted money. The problems with Haiti aren't fixed as simply as throwing money at it. (See also the Red Cross in Haiti scandal)

And if a person wanted to dig, even just a little bit, they would find that the biggest critique of the Haitian debacle came not from left-wing nuts like you shared or right-wing nuts but from Chelsea Clinton. Who actually went to Haiti for the relief effort.

Which isn't to say one Clinton isn't deserving of a lot of the blame for Haiti, but not much of it has to do with charitable foundations. It's more a byproduct of Bill continuing the economic policies of Reagan Bush in the Caribbean and little things like the economic embargo of a nation run by a military junta (which had been a puppet of the CIA).

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by chappy

It's more a byproduct of Bill continuing the economic policies of Reagan Bush in the Caribbean and little things like the economic embargo of a nation run by a military junta (which had been a puppet of the CIA).

As with most things, to understand where Haiti is now you need to understand where Haiti has been....

[chappy]

Scott Adams on how being an alpha-male that sexually assaults women is the same as being gay or trans. Or even confused.

Delusional.

And, yes, Mr. Adams, between his racist housing and his bankruptcies and his not paying contractors and Trump University, he managed to rack up quite a few accusations of rape, marital rape, body shaming, etc.

[science_man_88]

‘I’d never withdraw’: Trump refuses to back down as Republicans call for him to exit race

Donald Trump defiantly insisted he would not end his campaign for the presidency, rejecting pressure from fellow Republicans to exit the race for the good of the party after the disclosure of lewd comments he made about women.

of course he won't:
1) he's a stuck up dickhead/dumbass and with his linguistic intelligence he probably
2) confused election and erection.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by chalsall

As with most things, to understand where Haiti is now you need to understand where Haiti has been....

I knew it was grim, but the extreme degree of extended atrocity is sickening beyond anything I could have imagined.