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Ted Cruz Drops Out Of The Republican Presidential Race (washingtonpost.com)
rmdingler writes: Ted Cruz drops out of the presidential race after losing in Indiana. Donald Trump has become the presumptive nominee before Hillary has locked things up versus Bernie. This is huge. Cruz's decision to drop out came after losing significantly to Trump in the Indiana primary. "I said I would continue on as long as there is a viable path to victory. Tonight I'm sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed," Cruz told a small group of supporters Tuesday night. "Together we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we got, but the voters chose another path." He said he would "continue to fight for liberty," but did not say whether or not he would support Trump as the nominee. The exit comes soon after he announced former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as his running mate in a desperate move to keep his candidacy afloat.
R. Daneel Olivaw for President!
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Namely "Cruz for President"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Considering how he now has to lay off his entire campaign staff, picking Carly Fiorina as his running mate looks more and more like a brilliant decision!
Someone's God lied to them......
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
Unlikely, or he would not have the lead he has.
I wouldn't say "Huge". I'd say a %$%^$ nightmare. Except that it may have done some good in showing the Republican party and their deep-pocket funders like the Koch brothers where a race to the bottom eventually gets them.
Where does this take us? Trump is going to score well in conservative White districts, and Clinton (yes, I like Sanders, but he doesn't have the delegates) is going to score well enough to beat him with less conservative Whites and everyone else. I don't know if enough people would have voted for Clinton without someone who inspires people to vote against him like Trump. But even people who would in another situation never have voted for Clinton will cast votes against Trump. Clinton just got handed the White House. Game over.
What really troubles me is what happens after the election. 40 years of anti-intellectualism and pandering to prejudice and we got a significant part of the country voting for someone who really would not have been good for the country. The historical parallels are obvious. What do we do now?
Bruce Perens.
I have inside information that he's undead.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Unlikely, or he would not have the lead he has.
I.e., around half of all Republicans motivated enough to participate in caucuses/primaries. Doesn't sound promising for the general election.
(Except for the fact that Clinton may have a substantial popularity problem on the Democratic/independent side.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So, you are convinced that yours is the lesser of two evils? Are you sure?
There appears to be a choice between someone who is conniving and self serving, and someone who is nasty and under handed.
Can you tell which is which?
Will be interesting to watch from a distance, but is there enough distance? hmmm..
I'm not in the US so all I get are news paper reports.
Is it possible for trump to win the presidency? From the outside he looks incredibly divisive even in his own party, but are there enough disenfranchised people that would jump on his band wagon to get over the line?
We had a similar muppet in Australia called Clive Palmer who managed to get elected to our house of reps despite all the press saying he didn't stand a chance.
As a political analyst its simple to understand why a ted cruz candidacy was untenable. We simply need to look at the facts.
.04%. now, while this number is rising at an alarming rate, is nowhere near the 34% required for Ted Cruz to survive outside his spacecraft. his inability to handle Nitrogen and Oxygen perhaps cost him valuable facetime with the american people. Any reasonable subterranean intergalactic cephalopod species could surely identify with the all too common problem of our atmosphere and its no reason to think Ted didnt understand this problem acutely.
1. total Co2 in the earths atmosphere is around
2. The mindgasm with Carly Fiorina was tentative, as the aetherial fluids clearly hadnt been administered yet and the nanites had no substrate on which to build the newmind. Carly lacked ambition, determination, and a plan. Most importantly, she lacked the void stare, obedient subservience, and slow speech and gait that are all classic telltale signs of "the syrum." Of course Ted could have used the mindworms, but its unlikely a true fiscal conservative would take to using them. Theyre just too costly in a campaign.
3. despite liberal restucturing in the identity chamber, teds human form was too precitable and beginning to arouse suspicion of his youthful, larval past as the zodiac killer. Had he simply taken the time to explain that humans are a complete nutritional delicacy for his species and that 4-5 are required to exit the larval stage and return to the hivemind, most conservatives would have viewed this as a good leadership quality.
so heres hoping the Yaylaka prince Don-Al of Ukador persei 9, commonly known as "Don-Al Trumph" does better. and before you bash the candidate, its worth remembering his speech seems to approximate normal english almost 60% of the time! Quite an achievement if youve never slid into a humanform that may or may not have been a long haul trucker from illinois whos been missing for 36 years and presumed dead. I think we can all agree when he says "hail Ji-Ban-Lau forever" he means it.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Yeah, what ARE we going to do with that Kasich guy?
Make some positive changes, as this country is sliding into third world status/"late Empire" conditions, or GTFO. Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich were the GOP Establishment's attempt to elect another controlled opposition candidate.
Pretty much. Clinton is delusional if she thinks after all the insulting things she's said about the Bernie supporters and the various dirty campaigning practices that she's going to get all of us to toe the line. I for one will not vote for that woman. If that means President Trump, then so be it. We can survive 4 years of Trump, I'm not sure we can survive the precedent of letting somebody as pathologically dishonest as Clinton to win.
Just the other day it came out that she's been using the Hillary Clinton Victory fund to funnel donations well above and beyond the legal limit into her campaign coffers. Roughly 99% of the money that was donated, ostensibly for the party and other Democrats has been funneled back into her campaign.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670
Is that really better than what Trump can do for us? I doubt very much that he really believes most of the inflammatory rhetoric.
There appears to be a choice between someone who is conniving and self serving and nasty and under handed, and someone who is conniving and self serving and nasty and underhanded
FTFY
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Wait a second...
Rafael Cruz AND Glen Beck both said Ted Cruz was "anointed by god" to be the next president. How could god have gotten it so wrong??
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
I had something for this!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ok, I know almost none of you would vote for me, but you should...
I'd split right down the middle...
If we can afford our current military, then we can afford to provide basic services to our people. Americans should not be going hungry, or lack for medical care.
Single payer universal health care, free at the point of service. It should be a basic human right. The NHS in the UK isn't perfect, but it spends FAR less than the US does per person and provides at least basic universal care, free at the point of service. It is a crime against humanity that the US does not do this.
As for companies, I'd end the corporate income tax, it is stupid. Companies don't pay tax, people do. Instead I'd adjust the tax rates, no exemptions.
$0-$100K - 10%
$100K-$1M - 20%
$1M+ - 30%
All income from any source, capital gains, labor, etc. is taxed at the same rate. No deductions.
National Sales Tax of 10%, all state sales taxes abolished. No exceptions whatsoever. 7% of sales tax goes to the states, 3% to the federal government.
Monthly food benefits, all US Citizens (must prove citizenship) will get $300 a month for food, this compensates for food sales being taxed.
No more child tax credit, no earned income credit, nothing. Instead, every US Citizen (again, must prove citizenship) will get $500 a month for basic living expenses, this is a citizens dividend for being an American.
I would end birthright citizenship for foreigners, one of the parents must already be a US Citizen to enable the child to be one.
I would cut the military in half, the world does not need a US Policeman. I would probably however, nuke the middle east, because those people are savages living in the 12th century and we'd all be better off without them. (ok, maybe not, but I'd want to!)
---
There are many more things that I'd do, but that would be the start of it. I would never get any votes with that plan I don't think, but it strikes me as quite reasonable. If we can afford 11 nuclear aircraft carriers, then we can afford to take care of our people.
And I'm a right-wing Republican who strongly believes in capitalism... but regulated capitalism, because you need strong rules or people will abuse it.
He's not dead yet.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
All that really needs to be said is Hillary is powerless to stop Trump among just about ALL voting groups, read :
Looking back: How Trump Beat Hillary
Unless the Democrats are smart enough to actually nominate Sanders, which they are not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Trump will need 70% of the white male vote to win the election without votes from every other voting bloc that he so far had managed to alienate. Not happening.
The overwhelming fact about American general elections right now is that white male voters just aren't as powerful as they used to be. In 1980, when the electorate looked very different than it does today, Ronald Reagan cruised to an easy victory by winning 63 percent of white males, according to exit polls. In 1988, George H.W. Bush took 63 percent of that group in his rout of Michael Dukakis. By 2004, however, winning 62 percent of white men barely got George W. Bush past John Kerry in a squeaker. And eight years later, Romney won 62 percent of white men—and lost to Barack Obama by 3.5 million votes.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/donald-trump-needs-7-of-10-white-guys-213699
It doesn't help that 70% of women don't like him either.
Donald Trump's image among U.S. women tilts strongly negative, with 70% of women holding an unfavorable opinion and 23% a favorable opinion of the Republican front-runner in March. Trump's unfavorable rating among women has been high since Gallup began tracking it last July, but after rising slightly last fall, it has increased even further since January.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/190403/seven-women-unfavorable-opinion-trump.aspx
A vote for Reagan is a vote for war.
I suspect it won't matter. If the choice comes down to being between somewhat-disliked Clinton and outspoken-bigot Trump, a left-leaning voter will still pick Hillary, just to keep things from getting too bad.
The Clintons have a PR problem. Bill was friendly, and eventually that was a liability. Hillary has had mostly bad PR since becoming a controversial Secretary of State, and the Republican party has consistently amplified that controversy, exaggerating real problems and inventing conspiracies. However, Hillary's stated policy positions aren't too bad. Sure, she has ties to the right, and isn't as far to the left as Bernie Sanders, but if she gets the nomination, she's still a Democrat.
In the general election, though, that's exactly what would happen. It will become us-versus-them, and both sides will be sure to keep that in the public eye. If you're a Republican and you don't vote for Trump, the dirty Democrats will win. If you're a Democrat and you don't vote for Clinton, the rotten Republicans will win. I expect mud-slinging all around.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I've been following Scott Adams' blog, and he has some insightful things to say about Trump and how he manages to win.
Scroll back a few entries in the blog and they're pretty interesting.
With that background, I've just this morning figured out how Trump managed to pull it off: he's been using "sad" as a verbal kill-shot.
Check out any image of Ted Cruz, and the most notable feature is his sloping eyebrows. He's definitely got that "sad puppy-dog" look.
Trump has been using "sad" in his speeches for months, and associating it with all sorts of slightly pejorative things. He's never made it specific that he's doing this as an association to Cruz, and "sad" is not extreme rhetoric so it escapes peoples' notice. (He sometimes calls Ted sad, but I'm talking about all the other "sad"s over the past few months.)
Furthermore, he masks it by giving people a more transparent and direct kill-shot: "lying Ted Cruz". People are distracted by the extreme moniker and reject it, and all the while they don't notice that they are slowly building an association between "sad" and a wide range of slightly bad things.
So when they see Ted on stage or in the media, that association is what they feel.
I think it's a case of priming, and Trump has masterfully arm-wrestled Ted's reputation to the floor without him realizing it.
Pundits are quick to point out that Trump's unfavorability is at 70%, and all polls show that Hillary would beat Trump in an election.
What they *don't* say is that Hillary herself is only 12 points lower (56% unfavorability), and that's bound to change over the next 6 months.
In fact, Hillary's unfavorability seems to be creeping up of late, and Trump's is falling.
It's starting to look like he might win.
And that he's winning on purpose.
Who'd of think it?
Trump has a lot of negatives, yes.
And that might matter - if he were not running against Clinton.
Read Looking back: How Trump Beat Hillary
It's pretty amusing how much your posts parallels all of the people claiming Trump had no chance of winning the Republican nomination... The fact is you simply do not understand the vast majority of voters, women and men, white and black, hispanic or any other racial groups.
You've not even factored in how much more strongly Trump is against big banks than Clinton is (not hard to do since the Democrats have for some time been deeply intertwined with the likes of Goldman Sachs, which Trump has taken very little money from banks and has a natural animosity towards them having had to go through them in dealing with business ventures).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Trump is literally going to plaster the walls with Hillary, after the first debate that all become apparent even to you... I doubt Hillary will do more than one open debate, and then where will the reclusive sulking get her? Exactly nowhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're ignoring the fact that now that he has the nomination, he's free to move to the center and make nice with women, blacks and mexicans. Anything can still happen.
Lesser of two weasels.
"Lesser of two evils"
That's funny as hell. Look at what you left yourselves after generations of picking the "Lesser of two evils". Who ever dreamed that Bush could make the suit look good?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm hoping this election cycle results in the GOP splitting in two.
How does that not happen without the Democrats splitting similarly?
I have a number of strongly Democratic friends on Facebook. I have NEVER seen such a massive dislike of the front-runner (Hillary) and support for the candidates being shafted (Sanders). I would be surprised if even half of the Democrats I know will vote for Hillary ever.
The same is true on the Conservative side of course, with (again) probably about half not willing to vote for Trump either...
So to me that means the end of BOTH parties as we know them, and some very large percentage of hugely disenfranchised swing voters. Trump gets most of those this round but it doesn't seem like all of those people can stay registered as Republican or Democrat, and no way will they identify with libertarians... so it effectively means a large unaligned block of simply Independent voters.
I don't know what happens after this but moth parties are in for a major overhaul, and if neither can do it both will lose big-time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Celebrate diversity, right? Democrats could not convince the electorate of their ideas, so they changed the electorate — by diluting it with a heavy dose of people from countries, where the government is the source of what little wealth there is.
They don't mind big government, and are happy to receive "free" help from it. The dilution is ongoing — while the same Administration fought tooth-and-nail to deport refugees from a rich country, who fled over homeschooling...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You would be surprised to know, but he does have quite a lot of support from other ethnicities as well, but mostly due the whole "i'm bringing jobs" speech.
Seems like people are more interested on actually getting a job from a racist guy than a pat on the head from the "cute" face of the corporations.
Yes, but Trump says he loves me and Hillary makes me feel guilty about making too much money even though I hardly have anything left after my paying my rent each month.
Clinton is 16 points lower, not 12 points as typoed.
The most recent unfavorability ratings are:
Trump's unfavorability has dropped to 65%.
Hillary's rating has been mostly steady at 55%.
So this month there is only 10 points difference.
Man, I *totally* can't type numbers tonight!
The 56 <-> 70 numbers were correctly entered. The difference between them is 14 points!
It may surprise you, but Hillary is not Bill.
The only effort Hillary got to lead during Bill's time was a healthcare fiasco that sunk any healthcare reform for Decades, and even now only gave us "reform" that was meant to boost the insurance industry profits, not help people.
If Hillary was president will she accept idea one from philandering Bill? Hell no. It's health care fiascos all the way down, only in the space of foreign relations, the economy, etc. We already had a preview of what Hillary looks like as foreign policy genius with everything that has happened in Libya, Syria, and Russia. If you liked all that you will LOVE four years of Clinton at the helm!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's a democracy, right?
The majority wins, even if they later on have to say autsch!, it hurts.
That's how things work. There are many examples in history where the majority was all excited about a person and full of hope and the shining luminary ran the cart in the ditch big time.
We'll see what happens.
There was a saying, that the lower consciousness cannot recognize the higher, only the reverse works....
Maybe democracy isn't fitting this scheme.
The election will test the validity of that presumption.
Can you win the national election on pure PC virtue signaling? Because... Hillary has a lot of problems as a candidate as well.
She's a robotic speaker that is not especially charismatic. Not good in a president.
Just as Trump has problems with women, Hillary has problems with men... including Democrat men.
Just as Trump has a harder time with older voters that find his vulgarity off putting... hillary's corruption scandals have hurt her amongst younger voters which is why Bernie is trending as well as he is.
Very little you say against Trump is something you can't say against Hillary... the Flipflopping... the allegations of corruption... The being against one group or another. You can say Trump is an evil billionaire but then you have to admit that Hillary is getting most of the money from the other evil billionaires. So... sort of a wash really.
At the end of the day, the democrats are going to have to go positive on themselves. Say "we will do this good thing" whatever that is... with credibility. Because going negative on Trump and expecting to win the office on that alone is probably not enough to get elected at this point.
No one has a crystal ball into the future on this issue. But keep in mind that no one... means no one.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You're ignoring the fact that now that he has the nomination, he's free to move to the center and make nice with women, blacks and mexicans.
According to Donald Trump, he has no intention of doing that. If he did, his base will stay home.
http://ezkool.com/2016/04/donald-trump/
Meanwhile Ben Carson is still standing in the hallway waiting for the New Hampshire debate to begin.
If they stall too long they might have to consider Trump's nominee instead.
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
The great majority (if not all) of wars was caused by self-serving leaders, and never by incompetence. Psychopatic minds only interested in their own benefit, financial and political, have been the motive force behind practically all wars in recorded history.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
2016
Out of the two which one was inept enough to use a private email server potentially exposing national secrets.
She won't need to get us into WW3. They will blow us up with out own nukes by stealing nuclear launch codes from her iPhone.
I suspect you will see his policies shift, but not in any way that allows for easy categorization. But there is one thing that Trump is very very good at which is he is a mainstream media prediction killer. From pretty much day one every prediction about him by the mainstream media has gone up in smoke. The initial prediction that I read about his campaign was that it would last just long enough for him to promote his show or a book.
Yet, it is the country that elected AND reelected a black president.
Exactly. It's kindof scary that the most likely next president is hated by 75+% of the population. At least with Sanders or Kasich, the other side of the aisle tolerates them. I'm a republican/libertarian and disagree with most of what Sanders believes but I still think that he is a decent human being. I can't say the same about Hillary or Trump. If it was Kasich vs Hillary, I would vote for Kasich, if it was Trump vs Sanders, I would vote for Sanders, but Hillary vs Trump and I have no idea who to vote. We're either going to have one of the highest turnouts or lowest turnouts in voting history and most people are going to be voting *against* a candidate instead of for a candidate.
And to top it all of, Cruz accidentally punches his wife and elbows her while giving a hug onstage.
It's completely accidental, all of us have done the same thing at some point in our lives, and I hate that this is what's going to be all over the news tomorrow.
I'm a big fan of rational political discussion, and this media circus makes me sick.
You say that the billionaire thing is a wash, but one thing that plays very well is when he says that Hillary is bought and paid for because he bought and paid for her in the past.
I think that this election will boil down to one of two things. First is if the Bernie voters vote for anyone let alone Hillary. The other is if one of these skeletons pops out of her closet and says BOO!!! Not just the DOJ investigation but there could be others that just brew up into a storm over the next 6 months. Either of those could hand him the election on a platter.
Someone like Bernie, who has never been a strong party supporter, could encourage his voters to either sit this out, or not very likely, vote for Trump because he is at least a proponent of campaign finance reform. He might be sore over Hillary's abuses.
You speak the truth.
This is going to be a scary election.
Decency is a lost value in the U.S.
Indiana has only gone to the Democrats once in the last 50 years (2008)... the results just confirm that it will likely to Republican this time around... Florida however is a more important state to watch.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Unlikely, or he would not have the lead he has.
I.e., around half of all Republicans motivated enough to participate in caucuses/primaries. Doesn't sound promising for the general election.
(Except for the fact that Clinton may have a substantial popularity problem on the Democratic/independent side.)
Obama won twice without "independents." Bernie's best wins have all been in states that let independents vote in their primaries.
So methinks that any problems she'll have are over-rated.
Fascinating, Captain...can the politician who got where he is by defying all conventional wisdom about how to be a successful politician then expand on that success by suddenly employing the primary tactic of all conventional politicians?
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
Yep, Clinton is the status quo. If she gets elected then things will likely be exactly the same 4 years from now as it is now. The problem with this is that the majority of the population is not happy with the status quo which is why Trump, Cruz, and Sanders have been getting so many votes. I know many die-hard democrats that voted for Sanders in the primaries but if Sanders doesn't get the nomination they plan to vote for Trump. People want change and Trump/Sanders are campaigning on change. Clinton is campaigning on keeping things the same and I'm not sure that's a winning strategy in this election year. Trump is a loose cannon and unpredictable but he is promising to shake things up and to create new jobs both things that appeal to a large part of the population on both sides of the aisle.
No....I'm not really a fan of Trump, but he pretty much seems to be an open book. How many politicians do you know of that will have reservation against a certain religious group and openly speak about it? With Trump, what you see is very much what you get. Obama can't claim that (compare his campaign promises vs what he actually did) and Hillary will make Obama look like a saint in that regard.
I don't think those problems are congruent, though. Trump has problems with women directly because of his sexism. In contrast, Clinton's problems with Democrat men aren't because of her feminism, but rather are because of all her other issues as a candidate, which men are less willing than women to give her a pass for.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
In 40 years the major cities will be full of 80 year olds and people serving them coffee.
Except for SF which will be entirely populated by 20 year old billionaires. (all coffee shops staffed by robots there).
The future belongs to the people that show up, and the only people having babies in significant numbers are in rural areas.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"This doesn't belong on Slashdot!", decries man who already posted 7 comments on the article. (Of which 6 were actually discussing the article.)
You know what sane people do when they see an article on Slashdot that they think is uninteresting? They scroll right past. If you honestly don't like seeing this kind of thing on Slashdot, the best thing you can really do is ignore it. Both for your own sanity and because if enough people do it, perhaps such articles will get fewer views, fewer comments, and eventually become less likely to be posted.
(In case you're thinking of calling me out as a hypocrite, here: I like these threads and do not want to see them go away.)
No one forced you to post in this thread.
You must be new here.
Well, based on your UID you've been here quite a while, so I'll guess instead you've been away for some time. This site was overrun by a decidedly conservative voice some time ago. This article is here because it will draw eyeballs from the main page into discussion and hopefully get some beneficial traffic from as well.
If Bernie had dropped out, the article would have either been celebratory or non-existent. This article is here in sympathy and solidarity. Tomorrow we will see slashdot users starting to tell us how much they love Trump and always have.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It seems insane to leave when Bush was president, only to return under Obama who had an even worse unprovoked war in Libya, who decided that instead of intelligent troops who could avoid shooting may innocents he would rather fight with indifferent and blind drone strikes, who made sure that Syria was to become a wasteland....
In your hatred of Bush, you helped grow something far more vile. But that what else would come of raw hate other than something vile?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Really? Hillary has had her hand in throwing lots of people to their deaths in conflicts launched or made worse on her watch. Or are you trying to ignore that part? Ask some Libyans how all that's going lately.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There appears to be a choice between someone who is conniving and self serving, and someone who is nasty and under handed.
Can you tell which is which?
That's easy: one wears a bad haircut and the other wears a bad pantsuit.
As a historical comparison, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover may have been just as conniving/self-serving/nasty/underhanded or whatever, but at least Nixon's haircut wasn't half bad. And however bad Hoover's pantsuit might be, at least he never wore it in public...
Just because it doesn't belong doesn't mean I'm not going to post in response to things I think are wrong or disagree with. I'd be fine with the whole story and all my posts vanishing.
Not sure why that's hard to understand, but then you probably believe in boycotts too which are just plain idiotic.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
To the contrary the "war on women" campaign backfired in the congressional elections and it is not polling well as a political concept. Look at the number of college age women that self identify as feminists as well. There is a preception whether real or not that the PC thing has gotten out of control. It has become "uncool". Whatever women believe, when queried they are openly less willing to associate with these things because they're seen as divisive.
This perception is largely the result of males generally seeing modern feminism as hostile to men. Whether that is true or not is not really the issue here because we're talking about politics and politics is about perceptions. Those are the perceptions.
So it is a wash. The numbers were so bad that the Hillary Campaign or their proxies went so far as to claim male democrats voting for Bernie were merely doing so because they don't like women in power. THAT sort of behavior has consequences.
The Attraction of playing the woman card is that you want to get 50 percent of the voters on your side. The risk however is that you may turn off half the voters in the process. What is more, women have very interesting voting patterns depending on whether they're single or not. Single women tend to vote very differently from married women. To a large extent... Hillary is going after single women... that is the demographic that responds to this sort of thing. But the risk is that she can turn off men and even married women in the process which could easily be fatal.
The ultimate fallout here is unknown to either of us. Its all speculation. We won't know what happened or why until after it happened.
Various groups on the internet are over represented and under represented. Judging things based on activity in social media is unreliable.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Obama won twice without "independents." Bernie's best wins have all been in states that let independents vote in their primaries.
THIS. I'm one of those that couldn't vote in either the R or D primary. I suspect that over 90% of 3rd party / independent supporters would vote for Bernie. With Trump on the other ticket, a lot of that party may not know where to cast, though the same could be said for moderates on the D side too.
Can't say I like Hillary that much, but there is one major aspect I do like: She has excellent taste in enemies. Not saying that the enemy of my enemy is automatically my friend, but her loudest and most prominent enemies are on the scale from "despicable" to totally "despicable". I'm liking her more and more just for the nasty things the flagrant bastards say about her.
The second thing I rather like about her candidacy is that she is obviously vastly more qualified and competent than Trump (or Cruz) and significantly better than any of the other prominent candidates the so-called Republicans were considering. If they had found a candidate like Abe Lincoln, Teddy, or Ike, today's fake Republicans would have booed him out of the first debate.
The main reason I still prefer Bernie is that his primary personal identity is "idealist", and I think they are basically harmless compared to most of the alternatives. Hillary's #1 identity is probably "corporate lawyer" and "idealist" probably isn't in her top 10. I'm not sure "politician" is in the top 5, but she has Bill on her side, and his clear #1 is "politician", so I think she's covered there. (President Obama is also a primary politician, if you ask me, and I regard that as a bad (but evidently almost absolute) requirement for the office these years. I think Carter and Ford were the last exceptions.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Country may be fucked. But it's going to be one hell of an election year. Buckle up and pass the popcorn.
My money's on Trump. Why?
1. He has already shown your polls and theories and all are a bunch of horseshit. He has won the Republican nomination against all odds, same situation in the general - except
2. Trump is vicious and Clinton's closet is full of skeletons. For fuck's sake, the woman could be dragged into court over the e-mail thing any day now! She has said and done plenty that won't play well with voters. Benghazi? The story about getting shot at? She is not as likable as Slick Willy.
I hope Trump wins just so I can come read the comments on the Slashdot story.
It fits here only so that we can gloat about Carly Fiorina not being the vice-presidential race any more.
She was formerly the CEO of HP, responsible for changing HP's corporate culture and for massivie layoffs making her very unpopular among some.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Signed, Everyone that's not a Republican.
Note that this includes Trump.
Have you not seen a series of Sanders supporters here saying they will vote for Trump? It astounds me how few people here see the cross appeal.
What is really going to blow people's minds is when Trump asks Sanders to be his VP. Only thing that can stop that happening is Sanders.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Couldn't you at least have waited until an article came along about how people were using 3D printers to replicate model Trump hair to wear in support or something?
Hey, we did get the story about how Trump's hair shorted out the LHC.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So long Rato
What in the world? Hillary Clinton's two biggest "controversies" are Benghazi, which is about as much of a controversy as global warming, and this whole email scandal where she used a private server instead of the State Department one. Given how many government servers have been hacked in the last ten years, the emails were probably safer there than they were on the government system anyway.
Pretending that Hillary Clinton is anywhere in the same zip code as despicable a person as Trump is to ignore basic facts about the two people and their history. The only reason people even think stupid things like this is because we've been taught by the 24-hour news cycle to look at the constantly-updating horse race statistics rather than the actual policies and histories of the candidates.
It's funny that the American version of "extreme leftist" looks somewhat centrist from a European/Australian perspective.
Clinton just got handed the White House. Game over.....
Well, the question is if it enough people are going to vote?
With the poor voter turnout in the US, anything could happen... The sane people might be too ignorant to actually vote.
It's not a given that Trump won't win. Because Americans don't care. So anything could happen.
Out of the two which one was inept enough to use a private email server potentially exposing national secrets.
She won't need to get us into WW3. They will blow us up with out own nukes by stealing nuclear launch codes from her iPhone.
Given how many government servers have been broken into the last ten years, the emails are probably safer on her private server than on the government ones.
There appears to be a choice between someone who is conniving and self serving, and someone who is nasty and under handed. Can you tell which is which?
I can tell which candidate is constantly appealing to bigotry and hate, implicitly (and not-so-implicitly) condoning violence and torture, and blaming all of the nation's problems on minorities and foreigners.
I can tell which candidate has actual experience in government, and which one seems to have learned everything he thinks he knows about government from watching "24".
I can tell which candidate has actual considered positions on issues, and which candidate is just making it up as he goes along (because hey, how hard can running a country be?)
I can tell which candidate is willing to engage in reasoned argument, and which one thinks that merely flinging childish personal insults is a sufficient form of debate.
I can tell which candidate is able to withstand criticism and adversity without getting thin-skinned and emotional, and which candidate can't go 30 minutes without responding to each and every criticism individually by lashing out wildly on Twitter.
I can tell which candidate the KKK and other hate groups are getting themselves excited over.
I don't think Hillary's an ideal candidate by any stretch of the imagination, but at least she's in the right ballpark. I'd expect her tenure as President to be much like Obama's, except with less panache, and that's fine with me. The idea of electing Trump to be president, OTOH, is about as appealing as the idea of hiring Twisty the Clown to entertain at my kids' birthday party.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Good thing is that US geopolitically is as good as ever. Europe as usual is in trouble...
Please elaborate? There is UK voting on EU membership (ironically the politicians there is probably learning the same lesson as the GOP: don't produce fear mongering using opinions you don't really share)...
Then there is some ongoing financial trouble in Greece... Economic growth isn't completely back yet (but that the same case for 99% of the Americans).
But these are likely solved given time and luck, things are definitely being addressed.
The whole refugee crisis, is not a crisis, just an under-investment in refuges... The European countries can fix that anytime. It's mostly a superficial issue, not actual trouble in any sense.
So I'm curious how do you see a Europe in crisis?
Now watch Trump air Hillary's dirty laundry 24x7 all the way until the election. I would not be that she would win, especially if he starts acting more "presidential" so to speak. There are a shit ton of very bad skeletons in her closet, some of them chucked there by her husband.
I'm not American but my understanding is that it is actually the Republican Congress that would have to pass any tax increases and the President can't do much more then make suggestions and veto if it is not an overwhelming majority.
What would Bernie actually be able to accomplish?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
So I guess the time has finally come that the US might admit their two-party political system isn't such a great democracy after all?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
..and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
We now will hopefully have a 4 year respite from having to deal with hearing more of this crackpot evangelical nonsense and assorted deluded fantasies.
It's also pretty centrist from an American historical perspective, and from a policies-the-general-American-populace-actually-support perspective.
It's only "extreme leftist" from a myopic, mainstream-media-manufactured view of the political spectrum.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Yeah, as a European, the whole cold war just seems to have increasingly polarized the former USSR to the extreme left and the USA to the extreme right.
In the US, any mention of the word "social" seems to be interpreted as "communist" to the point where "anti-social" has become a positive.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The president's powers are so limited without a cooperative congress that none of this matters anyway. As much as I detest Clinton, she will probably win. The house and senate will probably remain very Republican and nothing will get done. Unless she screws up royally, Hillary will probably be re-elected which will again push congress more Republican in the mid-terms.
Get ready for 8 more years of nothing getting accomplished. I would be surprised if the supreme court seat is ever filled. Maybe 2024 will offer something different.
"Almost everyone in the country" can't afford a house payment in the first place, and THEIR taxes won't be going up. "Lower middle class" is already better-off than almost everyone in the goddamn country.
You realize ~50% of Americans make under ~$25k a year, and ~75% of them make under ~$50k?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Bernie has said that if he did fail to get the Democratic nomination, he would throw his support behind Hillary.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Vote Trump.
If it comes down to Hillary or The Donald, I think the lessor of two evils is The Donald, simply because his unfiltered rants are preferable to the shrill non-answers given by the consummate politician.
In truth, the results will be pretty much the same either way, so for me it comes down to who's press conferences I'd rather hear for the next 4 years. (Or less, Hillary could stroke out at any time, and Trump could just say "fuck it", so it will be interesting to see who the veeps are...)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If those that dislike Hillary and Trump voted for a single 3rd party candidate, they'd probably win. I'm a Bernie supporter that has decided to vote 3rd party. I've heard "you're wasting your vote" every time I've mentioned it. I don't care at this point. It's the only way we'll ever buck the current two party system.
Hillary has no real accomplishments short of getting her husband and herself elected to numerous offices and then using those offices to make as much money as they possibly can. How much do they charge the secret service rent? Is it really enough to pay their mortgages? I bet it is enough to pay the average American's mortgage. Probably the average 10 Americans. How much do they charge to speak? How many foreign governments and companies have they taken money from? What exactly does their non-profit do besides pay for their travel expenses to speaking engagements?
She talks about giving the average American the same chances she had. How is she going to do that? Seminars on trading in cattle futures? Maybe how to setup a large scale chicken farm with her moneyed friends?
Her term as secretary of state was a disaster. She chose to intervene in Libya and not to confront ISIS. She made a big deal out of pressing a big red reset button with Vladimir Putin, who reset Russian expansionism.
As far as her policies, it would be better to look at whatever Bernie Sanders said two weeks ago. That's assuming she really means what she says and what the definition of is is.
Considering that Hillary isn't exactly popular either that's not a good reason.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
But will his voters follow him then? Especially when Trump is the one that shows that the system is already broken and may cause a change.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
The analysis is all bullshit. Scott Adams is full of shit and possibly mentally deranged. The word "sad" is not what swung that primary election.
And "Priming" routinely fails all of the replications anyone tries for it. From your link: "Nobel laureate and psychologist Daniel Kahneman has called on priming researchers to check the robustness of their findings in an open letter to the community, claiming that priming has become a 'poster child for doubts about the integrity of psychological research.'"
Gee, "some random anonymous dude on the internet", that's a particularly cogent and persuasive argument you got there.
I happen to know that priming works because I use it.
As one of my AI lectures, I use a priming example that requires audience participation(*). It's always worked, never had it fail.
But again, who am I to argue? I'm just another "dude on the internet".
Here's a video of Derren Brown using priming as a sort of magic trick.
Priming is sort of like bullets. The fact that *you* don't believe in them doesn't mean that they don't work.
(*) As part of my argued position that AI is not based on hidden Markov models. HMMs are a fine construct and a fertile ground for research and innovation, but have nothing to do with AI.
Kasich isn't really trying to get the nomination this time, he's in it to either get the Vice President position or to get his name known for next election.
It doesn't really matter unless in the coming states the Cruz supporters gets really sour and put all their votes on Kasich instead of Trump.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
It's not over yet. The similar sort of "superdelagates" that prevent Sanders having a chance on the D side haven't been wooed by Trump on the R side. It could be Jeb or someone who hasn't been near the primaries that will be put up for election.
It's an expected outcome of playing deliberate wedge politics for far too long just to distinguish a "brand" (yes it is that petty) and history shows it can get violent.
The folks with Parliamentary systems seem to be able to handle this better than we do.
Oh Really
(Fox News was only news site I could find with working non-flash video)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Richard Nixon was so far to the left that he would have made Hillary look like a Republican!
I wish it was a joke but with the EPA, his health care proposals and a few other things he would be called a Communist by some Republicans if he was pushing such things today. That was of course before Koch and other similar donors made the demands that shaped current politics.
I can't see myself voting for Trump (his rhetoric has gotten too close to the moral event horizon), but I can see myself abstaining, going third-party, or even writing in Sanders anyway.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
There was a lot more than that - worth keeping in mind before electing an autocrat like Trump.
It's no accident that there are elected groups with various levels of power running the place instead of a King.
Which is truly bizzare since real scandals such as with Pfizer getting nothing but a rap on the knuckles then becoming a big donor, and the stuff from the Manning leak (ordering agents to get info to blackmail UN delegates) are ignored.
The email thing was dismissed as a non-issue with Palin by the same people that lazily push that instead of worrying about real problems. Of course opening the donor corruption can of worms could backfire on the R side so maybe that's why they don't push it.
Since so few of you people actually bother to turn up and do your duty as citizens and vote he has more of a chance than you think. Even Reagan's landslide was under 20% of the people who could have voted in that election and that was an exceptional turnout. If Trump uses a few old carpetbagger tricks (or a few more of them than he currently is) he could get a few more people to vote for him even if the population at large wouldn't. Then there's always the possibility of gaming the electronic devices and gaming the legal system such as with Florida in 2000.
Hillary has one thing over Trump. She has experience with political campaigning going back decades
All of that experience is experience in LOSING.
She lost the nomination to Obama.
She lost her attempt at healthcare reform when her own well-liked husband was president.
Even now she is actually losing against Sanders, even with a billion super delegate firewall arrayed against him it's hardly enough. Only the incredibly rigged system built to assure her coronation makes it fairly certain she will be the Democratic candidate, but how can it be a victory if there never was a real fight to begin with?
Basically she has lost at just about everything she has tried... she was the mastermind behind Libya after all, which went ever worse than Iraq.
She has just as much money, if not more than Trump.
So what do you think Money does? Magically win elections? Nope. Hasn't been true for some time now. Many, many spoiled elections where big money lost... And Trump so far has been winning spending just about nothing compared to other candidates. Why should that not remain true going forward? Now that Trump is the official candidate do you think Trump will get less or MORE coverage?
You also seem to have totally forgotten where Hillaries vast money has COME from. It's all as dirty like a mud pit in a tar storm. It's every single favor bought during her time as secretary of state, every large "donation" from every big bank and insurance company you can think of. THAT's an ASSET?
Her money, and where it came from, is actually her biggest albatross...
Even one of the Koch brothers spoke out in her favor.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA and you think that's going to go over well with all of the incredibly pissed off Sanders voters? Or sway even a single conservative?
These are the people that matter, and who elect the candidates.
No, they are the ones who pull some strings but people like you forget voters are very much an independent whaling mass who were just barley under control in the past, but no longer seem to be...
the Sauds are likely going to throw a lot of money her way
Like I said, mud pit in a tar storm.
but because she IS the system.
And that... is why you FAIL.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You do realize that the 'black' president you are seemingly attacking has done more to help America in his time in office than basically the previous 15 presidents before him...right? Or have you not read history?
Have you looked at Libya and Syria lately? Those are hillary's handywork.
The great majority (if not all) of wars was caused by self-serving leaders, and never by incompetence.
Apparently you aren't familiar with the Pig War of 1859!
Yaz
Take the Hillary vs Trump debacle as an opportunity to vote for a Libertarian candidate! Or, really, any third-party candidate. You won't be contributing to the eventual failure of the American people to elect a decent leader, and you will be contributing to the long-term emergence of a viable third party which we desperately need.
Taxation also was a primary motivator for the Magna Charta in the 13th century. For the english king to get the barons to agree to additional taxes, he had to grant them the rights stated in the Magna Charta.
The great majority (if not all) of wars was caused by self-serving leaders, and never by incompetence. Psychopatic minds only interested in their own benefit, financial and political, have been the motive force behind practically all wars in recorded history.
That logic does not explain WWI, Korea, Vietnam, or even the American Civil War. Yes, everyone who engages in war is out to benefit in some way, but that hardly qualifies as psychopathy.
WW1 (world war 1) can be perfectly explained by self-serving ego-maniacs interested in only their own benefit (financial and political): it was a war that has 0 benefit for anyone except the monarchic families of Austro-Hungary, Prussia and the smaller allies.
Korea and Vietnam were conflicts behind which there were the overt motives of repressing a Communist/Marxist insurgency (popular boogieman during the cold war). This was in the interest of the rich ruling class but was sold to working class America - as I said, it was a popular boogieman, and it worked. The fact that millions of civilians died didn't bother those in power, hence the psychopath angle. There was also a covert motive, which is the military industry, that always lobbies in favor of conflicts. Again, the persons behind such lobbying never cared for the millions of innocent lives lost in those conflicts.
But you are right about the American Civil War, I think.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Hillary's biggest problem is her creepy, wide-eyed, teethy stare-smile. Like she's an alien from Mars Attacks wearing a mask. I don't know who told her to look that way, but it's definitely not making her more likeable. And many voters go for such signs more than for what candidates say.
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
The great majority (if not all) of wars was caused by self-serving leaders, and never by incompetence. Psychopatic minds only interested in their own benefit, financial and political, have been the motive force behind practically all wars in recorded history.
What part of Trump's personality do you believe doesn't fit your description?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
A satanist would resent that.
Seriously. A satanist may do bad things or good. But they'll never do it in God's name.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
You're ignoring the fact that now that he has the nomination, he's free to move to the center and make nice with women, blacks and mexicans. Anything can still happen.
I'd comment, but I'm late for my date with Jessica Alba. I've got to move the Torana so I can move the Gallardo to get my flying unicorn out of the garage.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Dude, if you could make all that happen you got my vote. Problem is that common sense (your approach) doesn't work in politics. But I agree with the simplicity of your plan.
Shit.
Hillary has had bad PR since the Watergate investigation when she was kicked off being one of the most dishonest lawyers Jerry Zeifman has ever seen.
He regrets to this day that he did not report her to the bar association.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
The party bosses, still interfering with the voters right to elect a serial killer.
It's a bit more complicated than that, clearly. It's not as if Libya and Syria were perfect idylls of heaven on Earth, then Hillary pressed a button which fucked them up. Of course that would suit your narrative down to a T, but reality begs to differ.
No....I'm not really a fan of Trump, but he pretty much seems to be an open book....With Trump, what you see is very much what you get.
Except you see a different Trump pretty much every day. He is the very definition of pandering to an audience. You seriously think he wants to build and make Mexico pay for (or actually afford to do so) a wall, or ban all Muslims from traveling to the US? What is scariest about Trump is that he doesn't even try to hide the fact that he is clearly only telling people what they want to hear and people are eating it up. His entire voter base is sitting there playing a lute watching the city of the Republican Party burn. On the bright side, now that we have 2 candidates that a majority of people can't stand maybe third parties will have a better showing.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So I guess the time has finally come that the US might admit their two-party political system isn't such a great democracy after all?
Although it wouldn't directly affect the presidential race, I think we should move to having members of the house elected at large. Physical districts don't make any sense in today's world where you can drive across a state in a couple hours. It would be much better if the top X candidates of each state became the house of representatives. This would allow someone to run as a libertarian, a representative of chicago, a representative of rural america, but it would also allow people to run as a representative of old people, hispanics, blacks, etc... Basically, in a state with 12 representatives, any group that could get more than 1/12 of the votes for their representative would get a voice. It would be much better than the gerrymandering system we have today where 49% of most districts are unrepresented.
Perfectly spoken for someone who has now idea how democracy works and who doesn't actually understand much. Do you even know who said "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president and I hope he does a good job"?
Hint: He was a sincere conservative but too wise to run for president. Unlike a certain fool who took the country halfway down the rathole, mostly by destroying most of public education.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The fundamental problem is that most of the so-called Republican Party now stands for "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%", while Trump is much simpler. He just wants "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald", and that is why they hate him.
The threat is that his supporters are gullible or ignorant or both. The gullible ones believe whatever Trump says that they personally agree with, even though he has been on every side of every issue. The ignorant ones have fundamentally short attention spans and can't even remember what he said yesterday.
Going forward Trump is going to create so much confusion that he might actually win. He is a master of playing the mass media for fools, and I'm strongly reminded of a book Harlan Ellison wrote in 1968, when he predicted that Reagan would eventually become president only because he really understood television. As I've already noted, Trump is a con man or liar (or both), but he understands how the new social media work.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
are going to be voting *against* a candidate instead of for a candidate.
I turn 40 next year, so this is my 9th presidential election, the 8th of which I can remember. There hasn't been one in my life time where that wasn't the case.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
no real accomplishments
http://addictinginfo.org/2015/...
You don’t have to like Hillary Clinton or her ideas. I get it. She’s a Democrat, a progressive (in most eyes), and conservatives don’t like that. However, you cannot say she does not have any accomplishments. Here are just a few:
Even though her major initiative, the Clinton healthcare plan, failed (due to Republican obstruction), you cannot deny that it laid ground for what we have today, the Affordable Healthcare Act, something Clinton supports and would continue.
She played a leading role in the development of State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides the much-needed state support for children whose parents cannot afford nor provide them with adequate healthcare coverage.
She was also instrumental in the creation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act and the Foster Care Independence Act.
Successfully fought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and asthma at the National Institute of Health (NIH).
She spearheaded investigations into mental illness plaguing veterans of the Gulf War; we now have a term for it – Gulf War Syndrome.
At the Department of Justice, she helped create the office on Violence Against Women.
She was instrumental in securing over $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center redevelopment.
Took a leading role in the investigation of health consequences of first responders and drafted the first bill to compensate and offer the health services our first responders deserve (Clinton’s successor in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand, passed the bill).
Was instrumental in working out a bi-partisan compromise to address civil liberty abuses for the renewal of the U.S. Patriot Act.
Proposed a revival of the New Deal-era Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to help homeowners refinance their mortgages in the wake of the 2008 financial disaster.
Was a major proponent of sensible diplomacy which brought about a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, and brokered human rights with Burma.
Oversaw free trade agreements with our allies such as Panama, Colombia, and South Korea.
Was the most traveled Secretary of State to date.
The Clinton Foundation, founded by her and her husband, has improved the living conditions for nearly 400 million people in over 180 countries through its Initiative program.
These are not all of her accomplishments. Her activism on behalf of women a children across the world is renowned. Her activism for raising the minimum wage and combating climate change is stellar. You do not have to support what she does or stands for. But do not say she doesn’t have any accomplishments. The conservatives who say this are the ones who are pushing for Ted Cruz – who brought on a $24 billion shut down. That, to them, is an accomplishment?
Yes, Hillary Clinton has accomplishments. You don’t have to like them, but they do, in fact, exist.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp
I was about to reply that your statistics are totally bogus, but then I found this:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/
I've surrounded myself by people in I.T. and other high income professions so long, I've lived in a bubble.
As much as I detest Trump and Cruz, the commercial Cruz (?) did showing a bunch of guys in suits running across the border with the caption asking if illegal immigration was costing white collar professional jobs, would liberals be as tolerant made me take a step back and think.
He won't "make nice" if he keeps saying stuff like how well he is liked by "the African Americans" and by "the Hispanics" while referring to his supporters about how "we will win".
Did you actually hear his speech last night?
Trump will need 70% of the white male vote to win the election without votes from every other voting bloc that he so far had managed to alienate. Not happening.
I wouldn't be so sure. Romney got 62% of the white male vote last time round. That isn't 70%, but its in hailing distance.
No....I'm not really a fan of Trump, but he pretty much seems to be an open book.
If so, then he's one of those fake Amazon books where the first few pages are prose written to look lucid enough to get past spam filters, followed by 3,000 pages of randomly generated text, designed specifically to scam money off of Amazon's $-per-page author pool.
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
Yes. Instead, Hillary the War Hawk will plunge the whole planet into WWIII intentionally.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Actually I follow a lot of tweeps from the Arab world. As far as they are concerned Libya has gone far far better than Syria has under her replacement's watch. A lot of Syria's neighbors and the countries in Europe being flooded with their refugees would probably agree.
Turns out that intervening to stop a genocide may not make the land fart rainbows and unicorns afterwards, but it can prevent the genocide.
I can't believe it! Otherwise this is just a dumb ass space filler.
Trump is actually leading Clinton right now. Most other current polls show the same result, or have them tied. Given Trump just came out of a very nasty primary (as compared to the milquetoast competition on the Demcrat side), he will inevitably rise in the polls.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I wonder how he is going to do it.
Trump has barely spend any money at all by today's standards. To air dirty laundry you need to convince a lot of media sources to give you air time to pour through that dirty laundry.
Media sources are really torn. Trump generates a lot of viewership and extraordinary ratings, which means money to the media sources. However most mass media pundits clearly dislike Donald.
I am putting my money that Media will go after the ratings and money. People will be entertained. The show must go on. This is America!
Hey, quit showing up the fact that most of those who will vote in this US election haven't a bloody clue about how their Government works! What, you want them to get educated, and then really get pissed off about what the US Federal Government is actually doing versus what it was originally supposed to be limited to do? That's downright anarchist talk - where's the NSA and the CIA and rendition for you?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
ADJUSTED gross income is not the same as actual income. Add in deductions for the kids and mortgage, and an AGI of $25K is easily hit with a person making the actual median of $51K per year, about double that you state.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If that means President Trump, then so be it. We can survive 4 years of Trump, I'm not sure we can survive the precedent of letting somebody as pathologically dishonest as Clinton to win.
Can we? Can we really? I don't know about you (perhaps you're young), but the direction this country has taken over the past 20 years or so really doesn't give me a lot of reasons to put faith in the American people to make even semi-reasonable choices. It's the tragedy of the commons. In a democracy, you get the leaders you want, not the leaders you need. You need a well educated populace to elect the best and brightest, and we most assuredly have not been doing that. At all.
So what can happen in four years to a democracy? A lot, especially if the population has a lot of frustration, anger, and fear. Do you think someone like Hitler just waltzed in with an army and took power? Of course not. He was elected, and over the course of 4 years became an authoritarian dictator. If you have a "it can't happen here" mentality you're just lying to yourself. All it takes is circumstance, discontent, and fear to coincide and you'll have the population basically begging for granting people in power with "emergency" powers just to make them feel better.
I'm not talking about you or I here, and perhaps not even the majority of slashdotters. I'm talking about the general public. You know, the ones who actually think terrorism is number one threat to American lives while heart disease and obesity related problems kill a million plus a year. Another 9/11 type event (or worse) on American soil and you'll have these people burning the Constitution in the name of security and begging for a police state.
I don't rule anything out any more. Every time I think the bar can't get any lower, someone lowers it.
I for one will not vote for that woman. If that means President Trump, then so be it. We can survive 4 years of Trump,
*You* can survive four years of Trump. Not everyone is so lucky. Carry on you high-horse.
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
Remember, we in Canada don't have right wing radicals in power any more. We provide an American quality of life without Trump level racism or radicalism. Come live the good life you always dreamed and never found (aka, the American dream). Plus, if you are an international business owner, if Trump does become president, your business would find relations with your international parts in other nations, including India, China, most of Europe and the UK rather strained, whereas here in Canada, we are nearly everybody's friend (with a few exceptions in Afghanistan). Amazon liked us so much, they tested their drone delivery services here. So it's a benefit to your business to host your internal corporate headquarters with us. Plus, we have better health care than at least 50% of the USA (the ones that choose not to participated in extended Medicare/medicaid and we likely have better government health coverage then those that did). Lots of room in Nova Scotia at Cape Breton Island, but we have room in other places too.
Better politics, better international relations, better health care, friendlier people, less racism. USA quality of life. What more could you ask for?
Canada: It's better up here, eh?
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Although I am happy to see Cruz drop out I am even more happy to see Carly Fiorina get taken out with him. She was a bigger threat to the middle class than Cruz. Now we just need to get Trump elected to shake up Washington and get this country refocused on internal growth.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
What the heck does Kasich think he is achieving by still running?
Trump has had just over 10M votes cast for him so far, which doesn't even match up with what GWB got in the 2000 primary. He's had 15M votes cast against him so far.
He won because the opposition never coalesced behind a particular anti-Trump candidate, until far too late.
Look at this graph
Sure, total vote tally isn't the measure for getting the nomination - delegate count per state is. And total vote tally isn't the measure for winning the general either, vote tally per State is, as filtered through the Electoral College. But it doesn't bode well for him - he's going to have to find a way to roll back a lot of nasty things he's said before November unless he wants a big chunk of those 15M people to stay home.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I'm not attacking him, i'm attacking the notion that america is gigantic pile of racists that certain people from a certain cult seems to preach, like the OP tried to imply.
Get out of my head! I've been fretting about this since I voted for Kasich in the Ohio Primary. I knew it was unlikely that he could get the nomination, but I don't think I can even hold my nose and vote for either Trump or Clinton - it's a choice between a Dorito-tinted proto-fascist and a thoroughly untrustworthy carpet-bagging flip-flopper.
Maybe the Democrats in the remaining primaries will overwhelmingly vote for Sanders and spare us all?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Bernie is so far to the left he makes Hillary look like a Republican.
Or, phrased another way, Hillary is so far to the right she makes herself look like a Republican.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
We were all told that Ted Cruz had been anointed by God himself to be the next President. Clearly dropping out of the race is blasphemy to the Almighty. What the hell is wrong with Cruz, has he completely lost his faith? Why doesn't he stay in the race and wait for the miracle that he should know is coming?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I heard an awesome quote yesterday:
"Yeah, Trump needs to prove he's not Hitler but Hillary needs to prove she's not Hilary which is a lot harder to do".
For as many people who will believe he is honest after his opinions shift and was just pretending before, just as many (or more) will believe that he was honest before and is trying to appeal to voters only until he gets elected. I doubt his base will stay home in significant numbers for any reason. Parts of the GOP base, however, is another story.
Love him or hate him - Trump has run a brilliant campaign. Personally I don't think he will be able to implement half of the policies he has promised but that doesn't seem to matter to his supporters. I think it comes down to this - a lot of people are pissed off right now. Some people are pissed off about the economy, some about ISIS, some about immigration, you name it. Somehow he has managed to unite these groups.
I think a lot of people are tired of the same old political BS we get every election cycle and are not in a hurry to have another lawyer in the White House. Trump represents the anti-politician. Is he full of shit too? Yeah, probably. Time will tell. But some people are willing to take that chance.
I never saw Cruz as a viable candidate in the first place. His appeal is too narrow. In a general election he would be nothing more than a bible belt candidate. We saw this in how poorly he did in the north east. That pitch to include Fiorina was pure desperation. How can you even announce a running mate before you have won the nomination? The fact that she would even accept it probably speaks more to her desperation than his.
You forgot the third option, that a lot of Dems just won't vote. I think Hillary is going to have a hard time getting turnout from young people.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Your median is household income (for the median two-person household), not personal income (which is unsurprisingly half that).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
1. Playing to peoples' emotions regarding current issues (H1Bs and immigration, ISIS, PC, etc)
2. Attacking other candidates hard (see: Lyin' Ted, low-energy Jeb)
As for #1, a lot can happen between now and the election. Even things that happen in Europe like immigration crises and terrorist attacks help fuel Trump's support, regadless of whether or not his ideas actually constitute good solutions to those problems. As for #2, once he starts going after Hillary (or, on the offchance, Sanders), you can bet his opponent will lose some support.
And those figures aren't even the ones I was talking about; those are household incomes, where the median household is two people. So that median $50k household is the product of two $25k incomes, on average. Individuals making over $50k themselves are about twice as rare as those in household making over $50k combined.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Yeah, that's because Indiana is like 80% Republican.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
wouldn't be so sure. Romney got 62% of the white male vote last time round. That isn't 70%, but its in hailing distance.
Right. Ronald Reagan/George HW Bush got 63%, John McCain/Mitt Romney got 62%. Over the last 40+ years, the white male voter demographic for the Republican Party has been getting smaller and smaller. Trump can't pull enough voters out of his ass to get in hailing distance.
Right, because Clinton never voted to go to war with Iraq...
or pushed to start bombing Libya...
Or advocated an Iraq-style "surge" in Afghanistan...
Wait, why does it seem significantly lower to you again?
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
ADJUSTED gross income is not the same as actual income. Add in deductions for the kids and mortgage, and an AGI of $25K is easily hit with a person making the actual median of $51K per year, about double that you state.
Your post says "person" but your link goes to the page about household income. The page on personal income would be more relevant:
"The overall per capita income for all 155 million persons over the age of 15 who worked with earnings in 2005 was $28,567"
Of course, even that isn't counting all the people who don't work for various reasons.
Enigma
...our new Trump overlords.
Those were all very deliberate and calculated acts, not accidents.
Trump has a much higher likelihood of having a gaffe cascade into a war because he is such a bull headed idiot. Look at how he conducts himself with Mexico. Imagine if he conducts himself this way with Russia or China.
Never mind the Doomsday Clock, we need a Trump Doomsday Clock. If this fat bastard becomes POTUS, it's Game Over for the United States, and maybe the rest of the Free World, too. No, I'm not kidding. He'll ruin us.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
So I've had some predictions, and it looks like I am doing pretty good so far. I have a friendly two part 10$ bet with a friend at the start of this whole mess. The first part was that Trump would win the Republican nomination, the second was that he would beat Hillary to become president. Neither of us live in the US, but he thought I was crazy to take that side of the bet.
There are a whole lot of reasons for this firstly the Republicans showed a lack of cohesion by diluting their leader nomination with 16! candidates. Trump if he has done anything well with his life it was building the name recognition of the "Trump" brand. If you asked 10 people who the candidates are, most people probably couldn't remember the other 15 names, but everyone will know who the hell Trump is. Second, for having so many candidates, how the heck did you find so many crazy ridiculous people? I mean Trump for all the nutbar things he has said, is the least crazy person on the list. I know I was briefly excited about Ben Carson, hearing he as a neurosurgeon, I figured he must be smart and educated, surely he will have some good ideas! Though it seems all you need is steady hands, not a stead mind... (Though I did seem him on the Daily Show and he did seem much better, perhaps he just did a really horrible job of presenting himself). At any rate another thing is that he is "honest" and not a politician, which speaks to a lot of voters who are really disenfranchised with the whole process and want real "change" (would be funny if he stole Obama's slogan!). Lastly Trump is able to reasonably argue that his fiscal success, and deal making etc... will be a boon for the American economy, jobs, etc... As that is always a top 3 if not #1 election issue every single year. So yeah, I predicted it, and I am not in the least surprised. For good or ill, I also think that he was the only one that could challenge the Democrats.
Now on the other side, the Democrats, I really like Bernie Sanders, I think he would probably be the best thing for the US in a very long time. That said, I think Hillary is going to beat him for a number of reasons. First is the fact that he is Old. Just some bad timing really. You only have a set window to be able to do this sort of thing, and he couldn't have won against Obama, but now he is the oldest Candidate, and while not by a large margin, he also does really look old, which people make fun of all the time. There would be the fear (real or not) the guy might die while in the job, never a good thing. Here is where him having a really really strong VP running mate would have made a huge difference I think. The other thing that Hillary has going for her that Bernie does not is a lot of the minority vote, which I am not sure really why to be honest, but it is definatly there. Lastly and also a big one is Money. Hillary has a ton of it, and Bernie does not. In US politics this doesn't always trump (pun intended) not having it, but it does make a big difference. As Bernie has pointed out Hillary stands for the wall street, and a lot of special interests which also inflates her coffers. So unfortunately for Bernie (and probably the US) I think Hillary has a big advantage and is likely to win the Democrat nomination. Oh and Hillary also has a whole bunch of "super delegates" in her corner, which if I am honest I am really not all that certain how that all works, but it doesn't sound good for Bernie.
Now when it comes down to the actual election between Hillary and Trump, I think there is (as crazy as it sounds) a pretty good chance, and I would say a better chance that Trump will win over Hillary. When my friend was incredulous over this prediction asking how that is even possible, the first thing I pointed out was US recent historic voting record. They elected George W Bush, despite him being the obviously crazy guy that he was. Then they elected him again. So just like Toronto mayoral races, where a guy like Mel Lastman gets two terms, a guy like Rob Ford can also win. So there is a precedent for electing a pr
There is absolutely no chance of people being drafted again. Vietnam saw to that - a conscription army is far less trained and motivated than a volunteer army, and any attempt to bring back the draft would be instant political suicide in any political climate less than an all-out invasion of the continental US.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
As far as pathologically dishonest goes, the Republic survived Nixon, and actually got some good work done. The Clean Water Act. The EPA. Ending the Vietnam War. Opening trade with China. The SALT I nuclear weapons limitation treaty.
Not bad for being a corrupt dishonest asshat who was going to be impeached if he didn't choose to fuck off on his own.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Don't forget the updated version of the same ad from the 1984 Democratic campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
We're about overdue for a television spot juxtaposing nuclear annihilation and cute children from the Democratic National Committee.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It was nationally pushed through national media and coordinated through local political organizations and national political organizations. This does not mean that anything specific happened in literally every single voting district. I can't speak to where ever you're from. It was NATIONALLY applied. I can post you links to national media articles from the time. And it was also reported after the congressional election that it backfired because there was a huge drop in MALE democrats showing up to vote.
Now you can either note what happened and adjust your strategy to take reality into consideration or your opinions on reality lose their value.
As to your opinions on what is good or bad... we're not talking about your feelings. I don't care about your feelings. I'm talking about politics. That anti PC is seen as patriotic or whatever whilst at the same time seen as "cool" is not a good thing for your position politically. It means you're losing the argument. Now if you want... you can double down on your position, ignore how you're being perceived, and just assume that because Jesus is with you that you're going to win. Or you can note that some of the things you're doing are not working and you should adjust your policies to be more politically effective. Choose. Because if you just double down and ignore how things are playing out... you're going to lose bigger.
As to conflating suffrage with modern feminism, I don't think you can sustain that argument.
As to conflating losing a political argument by having people vote in the polling stations in a manner you don't like with rape... Come on... this is a big part of the reason you're losing this argument. You can't just conflate everything with rape. It makes you sound crazy.
As to judging things by voting patterns being unreliable... not when it comes to who wins an election. Who wins the election is pretty much decided by who got the most votes on election day.
Look, you can be a political zealot if you want. But you need to be responsive to reality if you want to be effective in your political advocacy. If you're not... then you're just going to fail. Just a helpful word of advice there.
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The jerk point is not politically relevant.
As to men voting for hillary, Hillary through her proxies has accused male democrats of voting for bernie because of sexism. And the war on women thing did backfire in the congressional election. The smart money says that its going to have negative consequences for male turn out. Whether those consequences will be decisive is another matter. Neither of us have crystal balls.
As to corruption not making the top 10 things with Hillary... it tends to be in the top 2 actually. Would you like to see the polling? Or would you like to save me the time and yourself the embarrassment by simply conceding the point?
As to the policy differences between the two... this is probably one of the funnier things you've said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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Sure, charisma gap.
if you're less charismatic than bernie sanders... oh well.
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They know that the Republicans control both the House and the Senate, and that the SCOTUS is even, and missing a judge.
Normally that would matter more but this year the feelings about BOTH Clinton and Trump are so strong is has driven that long-term fact to the back of everyone's minds.
And even if you DO think that is a factor, do you think Clinton would push a more left leaning justice than Trump? I think it's a wash. So it's not like that's even a factor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Trump got a *higher percentage* of female voters in New York than Clinton did!
The laughable mistake you make is thinking that anyone besides those who hated trump already cared a whit about what he said. In effect, Trump offended no-one because there was no effect from any of his statements that supposedly offended people.
Now, you may not attribute much voting power or political astuteness to those groups, but I do.
I attribute a great deal of power to those groups. But unlike you I understand the degree of Trump support within said groups, which you are trying to hide your head in the sand and ignore.
In particular, Trump is vasty more popular with millennials than Hillary is, primarily because of all of the things Hillary has done to stop Sanders. Do you really no see that?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Right. Ronald Reagan/George HW Bush got 63%, John McCain/Mitt Romney got 62%
No, McCain only got about 56% of the white male vote. So a 7 point swing up in that demographic in a single cycle is certainly feasible, since that's what happened last cycle. A similar swing up again would get them close to 70%.
So the real question here is will that upward trend continue, or is 62-ish% that party's white-male ceiling, and the McCain election was just an aberration? It isn't tough to find people out there arguing the former. Admittedly, the aberration theory seems to best satisfy Hanlon's Razor at the moment. But we only get datapoints for inter-cycle theories like this once every 4 years, so its tough to separate the evidence from the noise.
Considering the track record of any public policy with "social*" in the name, and the track records of socialist and communist countries... it seems to me that loathing them is the correct reaction.
I can't pull your head out of your ass if you're so desperate to be up there.
http://gazette.com/editorial-w...
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek...
http://www.newsweek.com/war-wo...
Look, I'm trying to make sense not advocate for a political position. You are trying to advocate. I don't care.
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As to playing to emotions, all politicians do that. "Hope and Change" is not a policy position. Its touchy feely position. All politicians do it.
So some are shitty at it and some are good at it.
As to attacking opponents, all politicians do that as well. All politicians do it.
Some are shitty at it and some are good at it.
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I wouldn't be so sure about that. Trump has expressed a desire to improve relationships with Russia (indirectly improving relationships with Russia's allies like China). He also wants to be a bit more isolationist and has criticized Bush's handling of the middle east. Yes, European countries (plus Canada and Mexico) hate him, but we were in no danger of having a war with them to begin with.
Any fool could use google to find lots of young people complaining about the corruption at hillary and bernie rallies... and if you talk to bernie supporters they will often cite that as an issue. And bernie's voters shift younger.
If you want to stick your head up your own asshole and pretend otherwise... that's your choice. But that's all you're doing.
Sticking your own head up your ass is not a counter argument. It merely makes you an object of pity.
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Insightful. The USA appears to be following past empires -- Russia, Greece and Rome in particular -- down the path of controlling itself to death.
By US standards of "social", pretty much every democratic country in the world except the US is social.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
At least vote for Gary Johnson instead of Sanders. Voting for someone whom you disagree with on just about everything makes no sense.
The next thing you should ask yourself is if Progressives are really the best fit to represent blue collar workers in the bottom 2 quintiles of income.
The sources to that one are kind of sketchy....But what Hillary did actually do was get the charges against a child rapist dropped on a technicality. That's generally OK. Everyone deserves representation, and mishandling of evidence is a bad thing. The part that shows she is an evil, powerhungry, money whore is the fact that she laughed about it.
Evil Hillary
It doesn't matter. If your hope of having a good life with a long career depends on a manufacturing job, you're kind of out of luck.
Except for nuking the Middle East, this sounds pretty good actually. I do disagree on the tax rates; it should be 0% for lower incomes. Since you've thrown a UBI in there, it doesn't have to be very high, maybe the first $10k is tax-free. However, to make your UBI and universal healthcare work you'll need much higher taxes at the top end, more like 50% for the $1M+ people and 35% for the $100k-1M people.
As for the military, the thing really needs to be revamped. We should be able to afford just as much military hardware for half as much money. Look at how much an aircraft carrier costs now. 20 years ago, it was around $2.5B for a carrier. Now it's suddenly $15B. Military costs have risen far more than the rate of inflation. And there's been a huge amount of merging in the defense contracting industry, which probably isn't a coincidence. I'm not exactly sure what the solution is, but we taxpayers are not getting much for our defense dollars, and it needs to be fixed.
This is a problem I see with a lot of analyses: they assume that current costs are fixed or rising, and that there's no way to make them lower. The government does have the ability to change the costs of things if it manages things smartly. And it is possible to manage things more intelligently: various European countries have proven this by doing it. Healthcare costs (per capita) are much cheaper there, telecom/internet service is much cheaper, etc.
The man literally wants to double-triple-quadruple taxes on everyone from the lower middle class and up to pay for massive government expansion. We're talking about tax increases that will actually cause almost everyone in the country to not be able to afford their house payment.
Sorry, but this is just dumb. Go find a calculator and plug in your income and see what your tax increase would be. I did (I make probably average for a professional software engineer on Slashdot), and came up with a somewhat high-sounding number. Then, I calculated how much I spend per month on my health insurance premiums. It's a wash. I'll pay higher taxes, and then save just as much by having universal healthcare. Sounds like a good deal to me, especially when I can see that my poorer friends aren't struggling with healthcare problems.
Yeah, if you're netting $500k/year or something, you're going to pay higher taxes. Boo hoo. For everyone making less than 6 figures, it's going to be an improvement.
Now you know why Trump is on the other side. Hillary just had to look saner by comparison and the worst that happens is that people who would vote for a decent Republican stay home.
Not really. What about all the people who would vote for a decent Democrat? They'll stay home instead of voting for Hillary (or maybe vote Green Party). Trump actually has enthusiastic voters, and they will turn out. The only real chance the Democrats have now is to give Bernie the nomination. He can beat Trump. Hillary cannot.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Once Trump is elected President, the hate will be palpable. Looking forward to it.
At least the Republican party is now toast. The establishment of that party will never recover.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
What would Bernie actually be able to accomplish?
More than Hillary, that's what. Bernie would actually push for a lot more, and then compromise, so we'll get something rather than nothing. Hillary will just go straight to "compromise" and get nothing that the opposition wasn't already prepared to agree to in the first place.
And Bernie would use the bully pulpit to push Congress to do better, and to help get more like-minded politicians elected. Hillary will only help with the campaigns of fellow corporatists like her buddy Debbie Wasserman-Schultz who's a huge fan of payday lenders who prey on low-income people with usurious interest rates.
Polling data on what? You want exit polls? What would you accept as valid data. I want you to be explicit so I can know if you're asking for something unreasonable or if you're going to make it easy for me to instantly win.
Its going to be one of those two because we both know I'm right. The DNC pundits and political strategists are aware of it.
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Just move to Canada. All the cool people are saying they will do it.
Just look at how good Hillary's foreign policy record is. I can't even think of a single screw-up. None at all. And certainly no one ever died as a result of her decisions.
There was no surge in Afghanistan. Certainly not an Iraq style surge. It was just called a surge to gain political acceptance. If it were an Iraq style surge it would have succeeded.
Media gives Trump free air time because gas bags bring higher viewership.
mfwright@batnet.com
And Teddy Roosevelt did some good stuff, too. Today's politics don't seem to be too linked to the old systems, and in particular today's so-called Republican Party is just a brand hijack. No relation to the progressive and liberal Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln or the pragmatic if too-pro-business-for-my-taste GOP.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Actually young single women are far less likely to identify as feminists than older, married women. This may be because of self preservation... men don't tend to want to go out with/commit to women whom they see as natively hostile to their gender. A married woman or an older woman who no longer require/depend on male attraction can afford to be seen as openly feminist.
But Hillary's core constituency is definitely feminist... and of the more militant shade. The bulk of her support from women who are 50 or older, post-menopause, generally angry and bitter for their perceived loss of status due to old age/discrimination and who have hostile attitudes towards men in general.
Except for nuking the Middle East, this sounds pretty good actually.
I was mostly joking there... that is an emotional viewpoint, not a rational one. At the end of the day, rational would win. (I think!)
I do disagree on the tax rates; it should be 0% for lower incomes. Since you've thrown a UBI in there, it doesn't have to be very high, maybe the first $10k is tax-free.
Actually, that is why I put a UBI in there, to avoid 0% tax rates.
I believe that everyone should pay something into the system, everyone takes part. If millions of people pay nothing, then they have no investment in the system.
Consider UBI to be the counterbalance to the removal of 0% tax rates.
However, to make your UBI and universal healthcare work you'll need much higher taxes at the top end, more like 50% for the $1M+ people and 35% for the $100k-1M people.
Maybe... I haven't done a serious study on it or anything, but consider that large numbers of people pay amazingly little in taxes. Under my plan, my personal tax rate would double, for example.
As for universal health care, I don't think that would cost a dime, it may save money. Take all the money from insurance companies, all the money from medicaid, all the money from welfare, food stamps, writeoffs from medical bills not being paid, plus the economic damage from 1 million+ bankruptcies from medical bills, and I think it pays for itself.
Of course, I'd do it differently... I'd suggest simply hiring 250,000 doctors, pay them a salary, and tell them to take all comers with the goal to provide quality patient outcomes. Consider that we don't allow "for-profit" police departments or fire departments, some things just shouldn't be profit driven. Of course doctors have to be paid, but they don't need half a million dollars either.
Keep in mind, my wife is a doctor, she makes in the comfortable six figures, but takes home less than half of it. She has to employ a medical billing person who does nothing but chase down insurance companies for money. She would LOVE to take a $100k salary and just treat all comers, free of charge.
As for the military, the thing really needs to be revamped. We should be able to afford just as much military hardware for half as much money. Look at how much an aircraft carrier costs now. 20 years ago, it was around $2.5B for a carrier. Now it's suddenly $15B. Military costs have risen far more than the rate of inflation. And there's been a huge amount of merging in the defense contracting industry, which probably isn't a coincidence. I'm not exactly sure what the solution is, but we taxpayers are not getting much for our defense dollars, and it needs to be fixed.
Yep, that is a long story in itself... In short, we love flashy and fancy, but we tend to waste a huge amount of money. We make far too few long term plans. The F22 is wonderful and you need those, but the F35 has been a mess. And they KEEP trying to kill the A10, what a wonderful and cheap airplane, I'd love to build 200 more of them.
One thing that I'd like to consider is merging all the services into a united military service. There is a lot of overlap between the branches and while they would fight tooth and nail, the question is how much could be saved by having a single purchasing department instead of 5, a single testing center instead of 5, etc.
Maybe lots, maybe little, but I'd look at it.
As for the carriers, keep in mind that exists for 2 reasons:
1. Jobs program
2. Maintaining the ability to build nuclear ships at all - once lost, that ability is hard to get back
European countries have proven this by doing it. Healthcare costs (per capita) are much cheaper there, telecom/internet service is much cheaper, etc.
Too many Americans think we're the best at EVERYTHING, without being willing to look at other nations and seeing what they do best... This is foolish, we are not the only "great nation" in the world.
As for the carriers, keep in mind that exists for 2 reasons:
1. Jobs program
2. Maintaining the ability to build nuclear ships at all - once lost, that ability is hard to get back
I disagree: nothing about these two factors have changed in 20 years. But the costs are far greater. There's other factors at work.
Too many Americans think we're the best at EVERYTHING, without being willing to look at other nations and seeing what they do best... This is foolish, we are not the only "great nation" in the world.
We have a massive case of NIH.
Actually, that is why I put a UBI in there, to avoid 0% tax rates.
I believe that everyone should pay something into the system, everyone takes part. If millions of people pay nothing, then they have no investment in the system.
This isn't a big point, but I somewhat disagree. The UBI still isn't much money, and I think people should be encouraged to work. I think a tax-free amount at the onset would help that, because taxes discourage activities. Give them a little carrot that they can keep 100% of their first $10k and not have to bother filing taxes. After that, they have to pay, but then they won't feel so bad about it because they're making more significant money (and are probably more educated anyway). Again this isn't a big point; where and how much to set these taxation thresholds is something you really need to do a big study for.
cite your district please... we'll see if it didn't happen or you just weren't paying attention.
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Well there are also generational distinctions about what "feminism" means. So when someone says they identify with something from one generation it doesn't mean the same thing as someone from a past era in politics and culture associating with that.
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I'm not saying he'll be able to accomplish what he wants. Far from it in fact. What I'm saying is that what he wants seems to line up really well with what he says. The Muslim thing can't happen for example; there's no way it would fly once challenged in court due to an obvious first amendment violation.
Would a Republican Congress actually compromise with an actual left winger? Shit look how they've worked with Obama, someone that was barely left of Romney. With Hillary, they'll agree to increase spying on the people, agree to trade agreements that help the rich at the expense of the common man and all those other things that always get bi-partisan support.
Of course either way, they'll argue about the things that the rich don't really care about, abortion, equal rights and the other talking points that the right hates and the left likes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Yes, the elite used taxes to get the common man riled up enough to go along with the elite. Another leading cause was the Royal Proclamation of 1763 where the tyrant proclaimed that the natives were equals and had a right to keep their land, something that really pissed off the big land speculators such as Washington. The tyrant also extended more rights to the evil Papists, even allowing them to take part in government without swearing allegiance to the Anglican Church as well as not stopping them from bearing arms, contrary to the Bill of Rights of 1689.
There was also the first rumblings about ending slavery which upset the south
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I think Bernie would be a better choice for two reasons here:
1) Hilary is despised by the Republicans. Bernie, not so much. They just don't agree with him.
2) As you point out, with Hillary they'll pass bipartisan legislation to increase spying, etc. With Bernie, they won't because he'll veto that crap. So even if he's unsuccessful in getting anything good passed, at least he won't sign off on anything bad like Hillary will. I'd rather Washington come to a complete standstill than getting more pro-corporate/pro-0.01% garbage passed and little to nothing good. And then with that much gridlock but Bernie as President, at least he'd have a chance at convincing voters to get out to the polls in 2018 to vote for some better Congresspeople so maybe he can do some good stuff in 2019-2020. Hillary isn't going to work to get anyone good elected, she'll just help get her corrupt buddies like DWS elected.
I don't disagree and originally responded to a poster who seemed to think that Bernie would snap his fingers and raise taxes.
As a Canadian, I'd much rather see Bernie then Hillary elected and I'd like to see your Congress reflecting the will of the people. Unluckily it seems the deck is very stacked and things won't change in 2018 no matter the will of the people. http://www.salon.com/2016/04/0...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I have lots of data. To the contrary, I want you to cite the data you will accept so that YOU cannot goal post move. Tell me what you will accept now so I can win. If I just cite my data you're going to concoct some retarded reason to reject it.
So either give me criteria, admit your challenge was false and you're merely attempting to waste my time with bullshit, or keep tap dancing and prove to my satisfaction that your challenge was false.
Your move. Cite the acceptance criteria or I'm going to conclude one way or the other that your challenge was bullshit.
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Will he really throw his support, mumble some platitudes, or just vaguely wave his hand in her general direction?
I think that many Bernie supporters are so polarized against her that they won't even contemplate voting for the evil one. Where many of them are young and haven't really set in their political ways, Trump is not an irrational leap for them to make. Minimally their lack of political party loyalty may allow them to sit it out.
One thing that I can say for certain is that I am glad that I am not having to vote in this election. People often joke about voting for the least worst. In most elections I usually can't imagine any even vaguely qualified candidates that I would have preferred to be running; so least worst it is. But in the US I would look at the two choices and then think Warren; then know that the two choices really really suck.
It's like going to the doctor and being told, you lose a foot, choose which one. While looking at the doctor next door treating a patient with the same problem but that patient is getting a single pill that not only will cure the problem but is tasty as well.
Your dodge is noted.
If you want to play we can play. But if you're going to play coy on your location when you're citing your location as evidence is just a concession on your part. Cite where you are so I can show you're not paying attention or that the reason you were not targeted probably involves you living on the dark side of the moon.
Its one of the two. Cite where you live if you're honest. Make up a fake place after doing some research to try and find a reasonable dead zone if you're a shithead.
Either way... You can either give me what I want and I'll show you're wrong. Or you can dance and concede by default.
Either way... its heads I win or tails you lose.
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Kodos' human suit runs out of power:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And the hands malfunctioned...... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
... So... looking for a criteria you will accept... none offered. Suspension confirmed. You will reject all evidence thus rendering my previously hesitation to engage with you in this manner valid.
Thanks for playing.
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They did.
Bruce Perens.
Wrong. It is EXACTLY because Trump is despised by the extremes of both the left AND right that he will win.
That's because Trump the the candidate VASTLY closer to the center of the political divide than Hillary is or ever can be.
There's a reason why Trump polls with 2x the minority support of any previous Republican candidate.
There's a reason why Trump got a higher percentage of women voters i the New York primaries than did Hillary.
It's because the people who are not at the extremes, real people living real lives LIKE Trump, or at least think he's way better than Hillary and admire his candor EVEN IF THEY DISAGREE WIHT HIM.
That last part is really the thing you and others are incapable of comprehending, why his eventual landslide election will be such a mastery to you for all time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Amazing he dropped out.
Looks for criteria... none cited. Your request for data is void without criteria.
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No, I have the data. I am attempting to stop you from goal post moving when I post it. Your refusal to cite acceptance criteria validates my suspicion. You have no interest in the data.
What you will TRY to force me to do is to get MORE data and then more and then more and then more and then more... Every time I provide data you will reject it on some grounds and tell me to get more.
I have no interest in playing that game. I want you to cite the criteria then I will post what I have and win.
The alternative is that you refuse to post criteria and your request for data will then become void. Thus ending the discussion.
You can either play or concede. Your choice.
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That's not going to get anyone out to vote.
The issue here is that you can't just get voters to choose you as the lesser of evils kinda sorta... you have to make them show up on polling day.
Trump and Hillary have huge negatives. People that don't like them REALLY don't like them. Those people can be relied upon to vote for the opposing candidate. Interestingly, these negatives don't line up perfectly with the party battle lines. So some democrats really don't like Hillary and some republicans really don't like Trump. So that introduces interesting dynamics in that the parties have to win over some of their own base to candidates that are seen by some of their own people as unacceptable.
What is more you have the middle... people that dont' have strong feelings about either party or who say the entire system is a joke and that's why they don't vote. Trump might actually have a big advantage there... he's running a more subversive campaign than is Hillary who is running more of a business as usual campaign. The middle might find subversion attractive. Regardless... nothing you make a voter "feel" will matter unless it changes what they do on polling day.
We'll see what happens.
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Criteria for acceptance is a prerequisite. I detect sophistry in your position and I will not waste my time providing data unless you've already agreed to accept a given criteria of data.
You will obviously just reject anything I post arbitrarily without that condition. If I get you to agree before hand you will not be allowed that flexibility and I will be rhetorically rewarded for providing the data.
Your entire position is a blatant attempt to make information and facts meaningless. I will not cooperate with that strategy. You will either provide criteria or I will not bother citing anything. The reason conversations on the internet turn into insult fests is because a lot of people discussing things are not doing so honestly.
You get MAYBE one side trying to discuss something honestly and the other is just dicking around to fuck everything up. People like you will enter discussion and PRETEND they care about facts or figures when all they're really doing is wasting the time of people that are TRYING to have a legitimate discussion. I am shutting your bullshit down at the gate by forcing you to accept self identified criteria as a price of getting me to jump through any "where is the data" hoops. If you won't do that, then that reads to me like someone fucking the discussion up on purpose.
And that's fine. I saw you coming. Your troll was detected and shut down instantly. Get better.
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No criteria for data submitted... request for data null.
Try again.
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First link that came up when I did a search.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/10/...
yawn.
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Any fool can type "war on women backfires" into a search engine and find it.
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek...
http://gazette.com/editorial-w...
the list of articles goes on for pages and pages and pages.
As to whether it was applied nationally, what do you want... statements from the DNC at the time? What will make you drop to your knees on this issue? Because... you tell me what it is... and I'll do it.
You say "I WANT ARTICLES"... you got them. pages of them. Endless pages after pages after pages after pages of them.
If that doesn't do it... you need to be more specific. And that will just mean the inevitable kowtow.
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