U.S. Elections 2016: It's Not A Lie, If YOU Believe It

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 minutes ago, Myshkin said:

1) My response to the critism Clinton is getting for not immediately announcing she had pneumonia is, why the fuck is she getting criticized for this? How in the world is this even remotely a scandal?

2) It is perfectly reasonable to point out that one candidate is being inexplicably criticized over a ridiculous issue, while the other candidate is allowed to skate on actual wrongdoing. We are judging these candidates by two different sets of standards, and that is extremely dangerous considering our judgment will decide which of them becomes the next President of the United States.

3) Even if you think those defending Clinton are making childish arguments, that does not excuse the logical fallacy of your response.

 

[Jaxom 1974]

If the campaign had come out and said, "The Secretary has been diagnosed with pneumonia, something she felt was simply allergies until the doctors diagnosed her on Friday.  She immediately went on antibiotics and is taking fluids and she responded really well.  However, the heat truly did get to her Sunday afternoon while she was determined to attend the ceremonies in New York as a private citizen. She's resting and feeling better and her full recovery is imminent in just a few days."

You can be assured the reaction  from such transparency from the right would have been, "SERIOUSLY SHE'S FUCKING DYING, SHE'S GOING TO BE DEAD SOON! WE TOLD YOU! YOU WOULDN'T LISTEN SHE'S GOT THE PLAGUE!"

[Mudguard]

45 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I have allergies and spit out a foul greyish black substance that would have gotten me burned as a witch 300 years ago on a daily basis this time of year.

I'm pretty sure that coughing up foul greyish black substances from your lungs isn't a typical symptom of allergies, unless it's also tied to something else, like smoking maybe.

As for Clinton, she doesn't appear to have a history of coughing up golf ball sized wads of phlegm twice a year, every year, so that should have tipped her off that she had some sort of bug.

[The Lone Rider]

Here's the thing - "Clinton's OLD !!!"  is nowhere near as harmful as " Clinton lied about another thing !!!" "Clinton lies about her health, WHAT  ELSE DOES SHE LIE ABOUT ???" 

 

And as much as I need her to win - because frankly Trump as no idea what he will do when he wins and is making zero attempts to do anything - I'm not going to lie and say that her dishonesty is not something a rather large portion of the voters out there is worried about. I'm not talking about the Benghazi crowd here, but those who wonder what sort of shady stuff goes on in the Clinton Foundation. 

 

As for brushing away all criticism against her as sexist, that's how a large portion of Donald's supporters came to existence - they were simply not being listened to, and got damn tired of it. So tired they're blindly placing their faith in a man who until now has not spoken a single word about how he is going to achieve anything he has stated he is going to.

[Fez]

7 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I've never taken more than 5 days vacation, and never in summer. My folks never did either. What you're describing is not (in my experience) a real thing for most americans. And golfing in Hawaii and sailing? That's rich people stuff. 

And I've never been unsympathetic to an injured player for going on IR. Frustrated, sure. But not hostile.

Just a note on this, the big summer break that Congress takes isn't a vacation, everyone's still working. But the politicians are spending the time back in their districts/states, campaigning/fundraising/keeping their profiles up/etc. and their staff are trying to actually get some work done while the limelight is elsewhere; negotiating bills that their bosses can screw up with later.

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Mudguard said:

I'm pretty sure that coughing up foul greyish black substances from your lungs isn't a typical symptom of allergies, unless it's also tied to something else, like smoking maybe.

As for Clinton, she doesn't appear to have a history of coughing up golf ball sized wads of phlegm twice a year, every year, so that should have tipped her off that she had some sort of bug.

Yeah I don't smoke, just some good old fashioned plague. It's gross, I spit it out wherever I can, and I move on with my life. If it's a really bad day that shit can come out of nowhere and be pretty damn annoying.

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, Fez said:

Just a note on this, the big summer break that Congress takes isn't a vacation, everyone's still working. But the politicians are spending the time back in their districts/states, campaigning/fundraising/keeping their profiles up/etc. and their staff are trying to actually get some work done while the limelight is elsewhere; negotiating bills that their bosses can screw up with later.

To be honest I was pretty off balance from the beginning of the whole conversation. I have literally never heard anyone complaining that they had to work instead of taking summer break... maybe that they had to work on the 4th of July or something, but that's one day. 

[all swedes are racist]

Out of all the 'scandals' parading through American politics, in this election in particular, "Clinton has pneumonia and doesn't broadcast the fact for a few days" ranks pretty far down there for me. 

mayne I'm taking crazy pills here, but I think some people really need to get a fucking grip

[The Lone Rider]

2 minutes ago, R'hllors Red Lobster said:

Out of all the 'scandals' parading through American politics, in this election in particular, "Clinton has pneumonia and doesn't broadcast the fact for a few days" ranks pretty far down there for me. 

mayne I'm taking crazy pills here, but I think some people really need to get a fucking grip

A lot of things this year shouldn't have been , but they are what they are *sigh* 

[Martell Spy]

Why Clinton’s bad weekend won’t rewrite the race
With most voters already decided, the effect of her health scare and insults might move numbers only at the margins.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-health-analysis-228060

[S John]

4 minutes ago, R'hllors Red Lobster said:

Out of all the 'scandals' parading through American politics, in this election in particular, "Clinton has pneumonia and doesn't broadcast the fact for a few days" ranks pretty far down there for me. 

mayne I'm taking crazy pills here, but I think some people really need to get a fucking grip

About half the country seriously needs to get a grip.  

Somehow I went from being reasonably sure that Trump was gonna get blown out just a few short weeks ago, to now again being legitimately concerned that Clinton could lose.  

Its not only that Trump isn't my guy, it's a laundry list of bad things - and a sharp turn in the wrong direction that I believe will be in store if Trump wins.  NPR had a segment this morning about Trumps desire to extricate the US from the Paris climate agreement and his staunch climate change denial.  Ugh...for fucks sake.  

And that's is just one of many steps AWAY from needed progress that we (and the world) are going to get if the Trump show goes prime time.  I really don't need this shit.

Unfortunatley, I have completely lost faith in the American electorate to do the responsible thing.  Facts and reason do not seem to matter this cycle, like, at all.  The only thing that gives me hope is that I think the battle lines have already been established and I don't think we will see much changing of minds so maybe Clinton will still pull this out in the end.  

But where a month or so ago I was thinking that maybe Trump would get stomped and the Americsn conservatives would learn a lesson... Now I am worried that even in defeat they may find a way to roll out yet another abomination in four years as the Trump campaign has mainstreamed some of the nastier elements in our society that we had managed to relegate to the fringes since the 60s.

[The Anti-Targ]

It's funny you know. IMO if Clinton was up against Romney (and Romney wasn't the candidate in 2012), I think Romney probably wins. 

If Trump is up against any reasonably competent Democract the Democrat wins. Hillary is reasonably competent, but she has historical baggage and she's a woman. I can't really think of anything else that makes people afraid that this election will be close or possibly even a win for Trump.

This pneumonia thing would be a non-issue if it wasn't for the baggage Hillary carries. And how much of the baggage she carries is actual vs. perceived?

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

It's funny you know. IMO if Clinton was up against Romney (and Romney wasn't the candidate in 2012), I think Romney probably wins. 

Except that Romney 2012 states + Ohio + Florida + Nevada + Iowa is still a Clinton win. Virginia and Colorado trending Democratic has made the Republican path to 270 EVs very tough.

[lokisnow]

6 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Maybe? During a certain part of the allergy season that's basically what I do, too. Should she have said 'I don't know what it is, I'm going to see a doctor'? How would that have played into the wonderful alt-right bullshit machine of her health? 

Honestly the easiest  answer is the straightest. She thought it was allergies. It didn't get better. She went to a doctor. Got a surprising diagnosis. Knew that it'd look super bad if she didn't go to the memorial, felt like shit but tried to power through it. She did that for 90 minutes and then threw in the towel. If she thought it was super bad she probably would have gone in earlier. There have been plenty of women in my life who thought that they were fine and it was just something they ate, and it turned out to be something horrible like an untreated ear infection that would kill them. 

Again, the idea that this is some massive amount of subterfuge is ludicrous. 

There's no subterfuge, she loathes the media and not telling them she had pneumonia s because of that.

it would be even worse right now if she had canceled the 9/11 event after being diagnosed because no one would believe her and they would blow it out of proportion, that was an event she had to attend even if it killed her, not attending it would have killed her campaign entirely.

Im seeing on Facebook people saying stuff akin to: "of course she did this that and the other since being diagnosed, she's a women, and we ALWAYS have to power through every illness taking care of our family and work in spite of it, shit we don't get sick days like men do, we don't wallow in illness like men do, we get shit done." One person pointed out that the very existence of sick days is sexist since they are reserved for jobs that were historically male dominated, and republicans fight tooth and nail to keep it that way, while jobs that are still female dominated such as minimum wage jobs are not given sick days.

of course the media is shitting on her though, because the media hates her equal to the amount she hates them. At least in this instance my social media seems to be operating superior to regular media.

 

[Lord Pumpkin]

Firstly, full disclosure, I'm Australian and I am not voting in the election. These are some of my rambling thoughts on it.

This pneumonia story is not important. They didn't lie, I'm in agreement with the line that it's bullshit.

This has however exposed one of the Trump campaigns strategies, namely to tear Clinton down to Trump's level of integrity. If Trump is a liar, so is Clinton. If Trump's health is debatable, so is Clinton's. Trump is a dodgy businessman, doesn't keep his word, owes money, owes tax, so they must denigrate Clinton. 

If neither is better than the other for any person looking for a President of Integrity, then what remains are the promised actions as President.

Clinton promises another term of the same as Obama. Trump's followers hate Obama.

Trump is promising several things, including; a wall paid for by Mexico, a new invasion of Iraq culminating in conquest and occupation for the oil, a minority religion as a scapegoat to blame everything on, mass deportation of other ethnic minority scapegoats, and more. And Trump's supporters are loving all of this shit, whereas his opponents are correctly concerned that if he does win he might follow through on them.

So the tactic to denigrate Clinton is to stop people voting for her, people who aren't going to vote for Trump anyway. 

I don't know if the USA has ever been this polarised before. And I don't think either of them will be decent Presidents. 

Clinton is ok to say that Trump has the support of the deplorables, the KKK and the Nazis are all voting for Trump. She doesn't need to hold back about this. There will be trouble if she wins, all these types will be calling it rigged and they'll be pissed and the alt-right will be all over it. 

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

23 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

One person pointed out that the very existence of sick days is sexist since they are reserved for jobs that were historically male dominated, and republicans fight tooth and nail to keep it that way, while jobs that are still female dominated such as minimum wage jobs are not given sick days.

To be fair to the modern Republican Party - they'd get rid of male job sick days if they could.

[The Marquis de Leech]

12 minutes ago, Lord Pumpkin said:

I don't know if the USA has ever been this polarised before. 

Yes:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/ElectoralCollege1860.svg/2000px-ElectoralCollege1860.svg.png

It wasn't pretty either.

[lokisnow]

And let's not forget that the polarized media is the historic norm as well. Unfortunately, we only have Fox News that is mainstream and polarized, none of the rest of the media is willing to polarize to the left, part of the problem. But we seem to be moving away from our historic anomaly trend of a non polarized media, so it's only a matter of time until we finally get the media to start favoring the left instead of their constant milquetoast false equivalencies. Looking forward to getting back to the historic trend.

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

There's no subterfuge, she loathes the media and not telling them she had pneumonia s because of that.

it would be even worse right now if she had canceled the 9/11 event after being diagnosed because no one would believe her and they would blow it out of proportion, that was an event she had to attend even if it killed her, not attending it would have killed her campaign entirely.

Im seeing on Facebook people saying stuff akin to: "of course she did this that and the other since being diagnosed, she's a women, and we ALWAYS have to power through every illness taking care of our family and work in spite of it, shit we don't get sick days like men do, we don't wallow in illness like men do, we get shit done." One person pointed out that the very existence of sick days is sexist since they are reserved for jobs that were historically male dominated, and republicans fight tooth and nail to keep it that way, while jobs that are still female dominated such as minimum wage jobs are not given sick days.

of course the media is shitting on her though, because the media hates her equal to the amount she hates them. At least in this instance my social media seems to be operat0ing superior to regular media.

 

Aye. Let's take a look at what's happened in the last few day. The GOP's VP just refused to denounce David fucking Duke. Trump lied about whether he opposed the Iraq War again. Comments Trump made on 9/11 came to light wherein he brags that now that the WTC is down, his building is the tallest in downtown Manhattan again. News emerges that Trump misappropriated 9/11 recovery funds. Called Sen Warren a racial slur for the like 100th time. His son retweeted neo-nazis again.

Meanwhile Clinton ... got pneumonia. And didn't immediately tell the national press about it because, like, why would she?

And yet, look at the media narrative most places.

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

And let's not forget that the polarized media is the historic norm as well. Unfortunately, we only have Fox News that is mainstream and polarized, none of the rest of the media is willing to polarize to the left, part of the problem. But we seem to be moving away from our historic anomaly trend of a non polarized media, so it's only a matter of time until we finally get the media to start favoring the left instead of their constant milquetoast false equivalencies. Looking forward to getting back to the historic trend.

The media isn't polarized at all. The media is just wedded to an ideology where neither side can truly be deplorable and where, well, they fucking hate the Clintons.

You can see it most clearly perhaps in the reactions to Clinton's comments about how Trump's base is full of racists. Despite this being an easily demonstrable thing the media can't accept it and just wants to keep talking about whether she should have even said it rather then whether it's actually accurate.