U.S. Elections: Trumpsterfire Unchained

[The guy from the Vale]

3 hours ago, DraculaAD1972 said:

I'm no conservative, just a left-leaning libertarian. I liked Bernie Sanders and can't believe Evil Hillary stole the crown. My workplace is a model of diversity and I have muslim colleagues on my team who I enjoy. Doesn't mean that I and my half iranian best friend can't delight in politically incorrect humour. Or believe mass muslim immigration into europe is a bad idea. The problem with sjw's is that they always need to emerge morally victorious with a drpping scalp, no matter what the severity of the thought crime they demand blood. An apology is never enough even for comments said in humour.

But what you want here is a law prohibiting employers from firing employees. That is, in libertarian terms, government intrusion into the rights of business owners.

You can absolutely delight in politically incorrect humor in private, but doing so at a public speaking event as the public face of an organization might still get you in trouble with your employer. I can also tell you, from first hand experience working with second- and third generation immigrant Muslims in Europe that most of them are fully integrated members of society. I see no massive problem with letting them into the country as long as we make sure the laws apply to everybody equally. And most "SJW"s I know of are against the death penalty. So no, they're not demanding blood. They're just using their rights of assembly, speech and the freedom not to buy stuff to encourage better behavior from others. Which, again, is perfectly in line with the principles of democracy or libertarianism.

[mormont]

52 minutes ago, Stannis is the man....nis said:

It should be pointed out one of the "victims" (Juanita Broaddrick) twice testified in the 90's Bill never raped her and failed a lie detector on top of that. Also when Ken Starr was on his warpath to get Bill impeached looked into the case of those 3 women and didn't believe them either 

Ken Starr not believing someone is not, for me, particularly proof of anything. Nor is Ms Broaddrick's earlier testimony: people recant for valid reasons all the time. As for lie detector tests... those are not reliable.

I don't know if Bill Clinton is guilty or innocent, but there are accusations against him and they shouldn't be dismissed. (Of course, the same is true of Donald Trump.) They're not proven one way or the other. They may never be. We can acknowledge that while still criticising things that are undeniable (for example, Donald Trump's own words about how he treats women).

[Boris the Blade]

25 minutes ago, mormont said:

Ken Starr not believing someone is not, for me, particularly proof of anything. Nor is Ms Broaddrick's earlier testimony: people recant for valid reasons all the time. As for lie detector tests... those are not reliable.

I don't know if Bill Clinton is guilty or innocent, but there are accusations against him and they shouldn't be dismissed. (Of course, the same is true of Donald Trump.) They're not proven one way or the other. They may never be. We can acknowledge that while still criticising things that are undeniable (for example, Donald Trump's own words about how he treats women).

Exactly. 

[Wethers]

I think Sam Wang put the dilemma facing Republican leaders best when he used the old Internet meme:

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"All their base (R) belong to Trump."

 

[James Arryn]

Interjection: Clinton was maybe the best President in the past several decades, but...

 

...he should have been impeached. Not for adultery, sex, w/e. But because he committed perjury. Clearly. He played the Republicans/situation masterfully...they staked everything on the sex scandal being enough to sink him, and up until then it would have been, but Clinton sensed the winds of change and knew that a blowjob just wasn't that much of a game changer anymore, not with the economy going well and no losing wars. The GOP gleefully put almost everything on sex and Clinton won that war...but everyone lost track of the fact that a sitting President lied under oath, and not for the country or to beat the GOP, but to affect the outcome of a sexual harassment case against him. Ie, why most criminals lie under oath, for self-gain. 

As much as I admire him politically, he shouldn't have gotten away with it. I don't wish the Republicans had won, but IMO an evidentiary legal system loses something when everyone knows the senior official in the country lied under oath and walked away from it almost unharmed. I know, lost his licence. That's something. But it should have been more. 

Now,modes this mean I think he's guilty if the sexual assaults he's been accused of? I honestly don't know, bu his credibility as a witness on the matter should hold exactly zero water, which means the accusers start off with  higher degree of reasonable leverage. 

[butterbumps!]

8 hours ago, DraculaAD1972 said:

Ignore ALL my points...And hold up a single idea, of the right to be offensive, as a counter. Sigh.

Being sacked is more than being called out, as is being victim to a rape gang. Did you actually read my post?

 

6 hours ago, DraculaAD1972 said:

Apologies to butterbumps! For being snappy earlier. That was uncalled-for. The point you made about legitimising hate speech was an important one. As a 9 year old I witnessed my mixed-race friends dad physically attack a racist who was shouting the n word repeatedly at a player during a football match. My dad and others had to pull him off the racist guy. It was very dramatic and felt like justice. 

I don't see the scientist's very publicly delivered joke

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“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry.”

to be "harmless" or just words at all.   The attitude this propagates is incredibly toxic.  That this was said on an international stage also serves to make women feel even less welcome in a field heavily populated by men.   When someone of incredible note says something like this as a "joke" to an international audience, it validates the toxic behaviors and mentalities of others in the workplace, especially in the historically male-dominated STEAM arena.   It's what perpetuates the same stereotypes and permissibility that makes even my boss, in the middle of super liberal and diverse NYC, feel totally comfortable repeating harmful and ridiculous canards, such as "men are rational, women are emotional.  it's science-- that time of the month, you know, bumps" (I wish I was exaggerating).  And those aren't just words.  Those attitudes lead to all sorts of infantilization, condescension, paternalism, which does affect women very materially in the workplace.  I hope you can see that.

On the rape gangs, I thought one issue was that it was mostly (not entirely) perpetrated by South Asians, such that they didn't only investigate Pakistani suspects.  Was it the case that they actually failed to investigate properly due to fear of being called racist?  To be clear, I think that's incredibly wrong if that's what occurred.   And I thought the second issue is the allegation that authorities didn't want to create an anti-immigrant panic so they apparently downplayed it in the media.   I think that's fairly sympathetic if they had reason to believe that the immigrant community could face devastating repercussions.

But this is probably really far off topic now.

[Gorn]

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I don't recall seeing anywhere that SJWs called for investigations of rapes and sexual assaults by groups of people to not be investigated and prosecuted because the perpetrators are immigrants or refugees.

You might not be aware of this case, where 1400 underage girls (conservative estimate) were systematically molested over a period of 16 years in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal

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Because most of the perpetrators were of Pakistani heritage, several council staff described themselves as being nervous about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others, the report noted, "remembered clear direction from their managers" not to make such identification.^[31] OneHome Office researcher, attempting to raise concerns about the level of abuse with senior police officers in 2002, was told not to do so again, and was subsequently suspended and sidelined.^[32] The researcher told BBC Panorama that:

... she had been accused of being insensitive when she told one official that most of the perpetrators were from Rotherham's Pakistani community. A female colleague talked to her about the incident. "She said you must never refer to that again – you must never refer to Asian men." "And her other response was to book me on a two-day ethnicity and diversity course to raise my awareness of ethnic issues."^[17]

The report noted that the police showed lack of respect for the victims, who were deemed "undesirables".^[32] 

 

 

I detest the alt-right, but ignoring or downplaying real, actual crimes for the sake of political correctness only wins them more converts. When events like this come to light, people say "well, they were right about this, what if they are right about other things too?"

[Ordos]

I'd like to address this 'locker room talk' excuse Drumpf makes. For the sake of argument, let's say he's right and men talk in such a manner when there are no women around. It's just talk he says and he is not acting out on it.

Well what I would say is this and I don't know if anyone here has already said this: let this be a teachable moment for all of us men. If we do such things we ought to stop and introspect for a moment and say to ourselves 'I should view women with more than just the prospect of a sexual conquest'. 

I'm sure people are saying 'That's not the kind of talk I heard' and they are most likely right. I personally never partook in 'locker room talk'. In school, I was the last to shower after sports and got dressed alone in a corner or bathroom stall away from the immediate view of classmates.

[Fez]

Here we go. New Utah poll...

Clinton 26, Trump 26, McMullin 22, Johnson 14

Utah doesn't matter to the electoral math (and McMullin winning it wouldn't help Clinton), but if Mormons have so thoroughly soured on Trump, then Nevada is probably safely for Clinton now and Arizona is on the razor's edge. 

It also may make Alaska more interesting than expected. Its 4.5% Mormon, and the few polls of the state have shown it shockingly competitive; Trump has lead by +3 and +6 in polls taken the past couple weeks.

[mormont]

[mod] Let's not get derailed into a detailed discussion of past events that have nothing to do with the thread topic. Thanks. [/mod]

[OldGimletEye]

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/09/09/home-depot-co-founder-has-message-for-republicans.html

How Republican Business Guys Sell Bullshit. And a another example of how the Republican Party has become the intellectual trash heap that nominated Donald Trump and why we shouldn't have been too surprised.

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“When I listen to Hillary Clinton and I listen to the [economists] who never in their life ever hired a human being or trained a human being, I say, I don’t know the world that they belong in.  I know that when you have high taxes that you kill off jobs. Killing off jobs means hurting America. It means hurting the economic wealth of America – and that’s not good for anybody,” he said.

It always come down to this with republican business guys. It’s always, “trust us, we have deep insights that nobody else has cause, cause, we’ve hired people!”

If Republican business guys want to sell this bullshit, then they need to provide some solid data, publicly verifiable, that show top marginal rates have a strong effect on economic growth.

They have no such data. They have no such strong empirical case here. They need to stop with this idea that the public should rely on their “secret knowledge”, which conveniently enough isn’t empirically testable by anyone else.

They need to stop with this, “I have superior knowledge that nobody else has, cause I’m so awesome at business”.

For whatever reason, Republicans love the sell the idea that Republican Presidents are better running the economy. There is simply no proof whats so ever that has ever been the case.

Once, again, this demonstrates the intellectual trash heap that is the Republican Party.

I’ve long suspected that the Republican party has dumped any empirical analysis of any matter and has resorted to wacko “faith based reasoning”. This is why they were in denial about Mitt Romney’s prospects back in 2012. This why they deny global warming. This why they didn’t nominate Kasich who would probably be winning if he had been nominated. This how we got Unskewed Polls. And how Fox News had a meltdown after Romney got his ass handed to him. This is where the constant conspiracy mongering comes from.

Once, again, Trump isn’t something that randomly happened to the Republican Party. His rise is the result of a party that has become unhinged.

[LongRider]

18 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

If Republican business guys want to sell this bullshit, then they need to provide some solid data, publicly verifiable, that show top marginal rates have a strong effect on economic growth.

They have no such data.

But, but Saint Reagannnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!   Reagannomics!  He lowered taxes!*  He's our model and he wasn't even an economist.  Who needs facts when they have Reagan?

 

*and then raised them up several times, but hey, who's counting?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 hours ago, Swordfish said:

Boiling it down to a single reason is overly simplistic and counterproductive to any discussion about why she's so universally disliked.

Certainly that's one reason, but there are many.

The point was to be overly simplistic. 

[OldGimletEye]

40 minutes ago, LongRider said:

But, but Saint Reagannnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!   Reagannomics!  He lowered taxes!*  He's our model and he wasn't even an economist.  Who needs facts when they have Reagan?

 

*and then raised them up several times, but hey, who's counting?

Whenever I hear people like Marcus talk I'm reminded of the line from Animal House, "You fucked up. You trusted us."

[LongRider]

A debate coach grades the second debate, pretty interesting.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/10/opinions/debate-coach-grading-the-town-hall-debate-graham/index.html

[Frog Eater]

I have had the discussion 100 times with colleagues and clients that lowering taxes for those who make a million dollars or more a year doesnt increase jobs at all. demand increases jobs. you can lower taxes on those who make a million dollars a year or more to zero, and they wont hire any more people than they need to to accomplish their required production. 

for example: say a person is a general contractor for building single family homes. This person is successful, and they build several new homes every month. You can reduce this person's taxes to zero, but they wont build any more homes than they can sell. Therefore, no increase in jobs. 

However, if you decrease taxes on the middle class, they can better afford homes and new cars, and other goods, that drive demand up, and therefore, production, thus increasing income to those business owners. If this business owner is currently paying a marginal tax rate of 45% and you increase this to 50% or 55%, he wont stop building houses, because he is still making a million fucking dollars a year. 

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, LongRider said:

A debate coach grades the second debate, pretty interesting.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/10/opinions/debate-coach-grading-the-town-hall-debate-graham/index.html

Hilarious:

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I've known coke fiends who inhale with less fervor than Trump. Again, it could have been solved with practice.

I agree with this:

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She told us what he was saying was not true, and that we should fact check, but when he's throwing the kitchen sink at her, it would have been nice if she had had a short, 10 or 15 second, rejoinder at the ready for each attack.

This was my biggest criticism of Hillary's debate performance. I understand though that the amount of bullshit coming from Trump could seem overwhelming.

[OldGimletEye]

16 minutes ago, Frog Eater said:

 However, if you decrease taxes on the middle class, they can better afford homes and new cars, and other goods, that drive demand up, and therefore, production, thus increasing income to those business owners. If this business owner is currently paying a marginal tax rate of 45% and you increase this to 50% or 55%, he wont stop building houses, because he is still making a million fucking dollars a year. 

There are lot of potentially good theoretical reasons to doubt Republican claims about the wonder of tax cuts. One is that lowering top marginal rates increases inequality. And increasing inequality lowers consumption, which has the effect of pushing the real rate of interest down. When the real rate is too low, then its difficult for monetary policy to stabilize the economy. And low rates have been a big problem over the last few years.

 

[SerPaladin]

Have we learned nothing from horror movies? As long as the monster is still breathing, it will keep coming. An 11% lead that falls back to 9% (or even 6.5%) means that a number of folks out there in the polling universe have changed their mind back to Trump.

Kill it with fire.

Monday, I thought the Trumpies were setting up their excuses for the loss, but they think there are more October surprises coming for Hillary. I'll say this... the Wikileaks e-mails are not a huge problem, yet. However, it will be easy to plant a very damaging false story in one of them too late for Hillary or Podesta or whoever to put out the fire. With no Apprentice tapes forthcoming, it's possible the D's might have blown their ammo too early.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

9 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

Have we learned nothing from horror movies? As long as the monster is still breathing, it will keep coming. An 11% lead that falls back to 9% (or even 6.5%) means that a number of folks out there in the polling universe have changed their mind back to Trump.

Kill it with fire.

Monday, I thought the Trumpies were setting up their excuses for the loss, but they think there are more October surprises coming for Hillary. I'll say this... the Wikileaks e-mails are not a huge problem, yet. However, it will be easy to plant a very damaging false story in one of them too late for Hillary or Podesta or whoever to put out the fire. With no Apprentice tapes forthcoming, it's possible the D's might have blown their ammo too early.

Trump is helpfully keeping the negative coverage going, though, by attacking prominent Republicans like Ryan and McCain. I think his downward spiral is going to coax more and more unhinged behavior out of him from now until election day. If he could just shut up he probably would regain some voters he lost, but I don't think he can.