Slashdot Mirror
Online Journalists Launch An Onslaught Against Donald Trump (nytimes.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Online journalists at Buzzfeed are publicizing two controversial videos featuring Donald Trump. First the site "filed court motions seeking the release" of Trump's under-oath testimony in a June trial, in which the real estate mogul "says he planned his caustic remarks on immigration delivered during the launch of his presidential bid," bragging that they'd "led to my nomination in a major party in the country." And Buzzfeed is also publicizing a video clip from the 2000 softcore porn movie Playboy Video Centerfold: Bernaola Twins, in which Trump makes a cameo appearance. Playboy has even said that years earlier Trump actually pressured his second wife to pose for Playboy. ("Trump himself was on the phone negotiating the fee," remembered a top Playboy editor. "He wanted her to do the nude layout. She didn't.")
But his biggest problem may be the mainstream media. According to the New York Times, Trump "declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."
But his biggest problem may be the mainstream media. According to the New York Times, Trump "declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."
Meh.
Hillary is a corrupt, lying monster who is the ultimate expression of the repressive system of the political Establishment. She shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House. I'm voting for Trump just because the establishment is trying so insanely hard to derail him. When the UN hates his guts, that just adds another sparkle to his appeal. He's the napalm solution for a time when everyone is tired of what Hillary represents.
Burn the system down. Burn it all down.
AMEN.
Vote for Hillary = Affirmation that you're cool with corrupt politics.
Vote for Trump = Drop napalm on the whole F-ing thing.
Never realized how much scrutiny his life would get if he got the nomination.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nope, voting for Hillary just means you're going for someone with experience to be president for 4-8 years, rather than the insane guy dreaming of nuclear war with fallout for thousands.
All these attacks on Trump are only driving people to support him. He is perceived as the enemy of the media, and people hate the media more than they hate Trump.
Yes, yes...I'm sure Mr. Trump wants nuclear war...
That, and it's going to fracture the GOP - which could lead to more than a two party system.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Hillary is the candidate proposing to launch physical wars against cyber-attackers, the biggest two of which are big nuclear powers. Trump is the candidate who wants the US to stop being Team America: World Police. The candidate with then 20 years of bad political experience is the one who wants to perpetuate the current failed policies that have brought the US to the brink of bankruptcy and an internal race war. She's also accused of murdering 50 people, committing treason with state secrets, attacking several women her husband is accused of raping, and covering up health problems that may kill her during her first term, and money laundering and pay-for-play through the Clinton Foundation. The worst the DNC can dig up on Trump is that he allegedly called a beauty queen fat who violated the terms of her contract to be Miss Universe. No, the Frank and Claire Underwood award goes to... Hillary and Bill Clinton (in that order).
Why didn't that happen when the top Federal rate was 90%?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The point is, that if he's filing tax returns saying he's making massive massive losses, he's clearly not a successful businessman.
Remember, Trump's >$900million loss came from running a fucking casino. And this was in the go-go 90's when people were actually making and spending money.
You've got to be a special kind of businessman to lose almost a billion dollars running a casino.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I actually think the "fracture" of the GOP has already occurred. What you're seeing now is the populist, national birth of something entirely new. No wonder the MSM and political elites are sh*tting themselves...
Try other news sources. What you see of Trump depicted via the MSM is nothing than a fictional caricature. Yeah, Trump is a loud, brash New Yorker, but that doesn't make him anything like what they say he his. And I mean "they", the MSM who are licking the boots of Hillary.
I'm an Anti-Hillary fellator, thank-you-very-much! :)
Another of her top donors is Saudi Arabia -- a place where women are considered property. But let's ignore that and focus on the allegation that Trump called a beauty queen fat 20 years ago -- a woman whose weight gain violated her contract with Trump for Miss Universe.
It APPEARS, repeat appears, that everyone cares about these factual statements by the press, contrary to the "Goring" of Hillary
Looking like the pressure is on the Donald to do some real work for a change.
If you read the Wikipedia page you cited, it doesn't say anything about rich people leaving the country in the years the top tax rate was 90%.
If you want to argue that well, "nobody actually paid the top rate", then the same could be said for today. Because, even with all the pissing and moaning from right conservatives about taxes, taxation in the US is really not that high (as shown by your own citation).
You are welcome on my lawn.
Clinton would be a fucking weak candidate on any other occasion, no arguments there. But for Pete's sake, she's running against Trump. Trump. I can't even believe there's a choice to be made here for half the population of the US.
The GOP will have no one but themselves to blame after loosing this election.
I don't know if I've seen so many points expended to suppress both sides of an argument.
It scares the crap out of me that here on Slashdot, a site with presumably smart people like engineers and programmers, so many people are defending and rooting for Donald Trump.
Either Slashdot is not as intelligent as I thought, or it is more right-wing than I thought, which of course is not exclusive.
Vote for the lizard, not the wizard.
I've experienced the same living in South America and witnessing people i used to regard as smart defending the likes of Castro, Chavez, Kirchner and Rousseff. It was a sad eye opener.
Not only not mutually exclusive but also highly correlated.
It's what you get with miserable public education, corporate news media that's only in it for the ratings, and a population where most people don't have a passport and never left their country.
Don't get it, eh? Trump is not the GOP, which is why he was the winning candidate. This election is about immigration, national identity and an economy that's fscking over the middle class and making them pay for everything. The GOP as a party is dead, they just haven't stopped twitching. All you have to do is look at HRC and Trump's campaign slogans- "I'm With Her" is all about Hillary, who will continue to screw over the white middle class to bring in Democrat-voting, public assistance-using blacks, latinos and migrants and make the middle class pay to become a singled-out minority. Trump's "Make America Great Again" is about America for Americans, "To Ourselves and Our Posterity" and looking out for the American who wants an equal footing and opportunity (used or not) to be his or her own person. America is equal opportunity, not equal outcome and anyone who's tells you differently is a Democrat.
Buzzfeed is a corporation, just like Citizens United is a corporation. We heard it was wrong for Citizens United to spend money to make a political film. Where's the outrage about Buzzfeed spending corporate money against Trump?
Please post your expressions of outrage here. Unless your outrage was phony. Or selective, partisan outrage. Or you can explain why corporation B can legitimately spend on politics, but corporation C can't.
"Drop napalm on the whole F-ing thing."
That thing, the place where you live?
Play Command HQ online
I don't know if I've seen so many points expended to suppress both sides of an argument.
What's interesting is looking at the moderation levels over time.
For the first hour after the article was posted, there were a lot of pro-Trump comments.
Now it's 2.5 hours later and all those articles have been modded down. What's left is pro-Hillary, in a roundabout way.
You can tell when something's gone up and down because of the tags., If something has "Score: 2 insightful" it means someone modded it up (to gain the "insightful") and someone else modded it down.
When Whiplash took over I mentioned that this site goes to pot around 6 weeks before a presidential election, and becomes unbearable starting around 2 weeks before an election. This year I think it'll be worse than previous election years.
I can't *wait* until the election is over, so we can go back to having insightful posts.
Reporting the facts. All of them. Leave the editorializing to the readers.
I was wondering how he was going to try to recover from his recent string of bad news. Looks like his method is to pretend it's a conspiracy by the left-wing media to ruin him with an "onslaught" of bad press. Which implies that the stories are false or exaggerated, without actually making that claim. Clever, in case he ever needs to admit that the reports are true.
Truth has no sides. Reality has no bias. If these things are true, and I have seen no indications that they are not, then the news is making Donald Trump look bad because Donald Trump is actually bad. If he steals money from charity to bribe investigators to turn a blind eye to his fraudulent businesses, the blame for the bad press afterward lies purely at the hands of Trump, not on the media and press.
Either Slashdot is not as intelligent as I thought, or it is more right-wing than I thought
Trump is not "right-wing". He is a populist, with an eclectic and shifting mix of the worst of both left and right.
"Right-wing" means fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, free trade, and cutting entitlements, ... like Bill Clinton.
It scares the crap out of me that here on Slashdot, a site with presumably smart people like engineers and programmers, so many people are defending and rooting for Donald Trump.
The post you replied to doesn't appear to be doing that. Though GGGP posts may have been, they were done by ACs, which could very well be the same ACs that post GNAA spam.
Besides, ones intelligence isn't inherently going to make them favor a particular candidate. That, and to be honest I think the whole presidential race is stupid anyways.
In other words, she's an IRL Cercei Lannister?
Tend to doubt there's much of interest in Trump's tax returns. Otherwise the clintondrones at the IRS would have already leaked them.
an economy that's fscking over the middle class and making them pay for everything
I think I fit the definition of the middle class (between my job and the rent I collect I make just north of $80k/year) and I don't feel like I am being made to "pay for everything", nor do I feel like I'm being fucked over in any way. The top 1% income earners pay 50% of all of the federal income taxes, and the bottom 80% (which I'm part of) barely pay 15%, so please do explain why you think I'm getting fucked over and/or how I am being made to "pay for everything."
More like:
Vote for Hillary: cool with the corruption that comes with politics as usual.
Vote for Trump: watch me introduce corrupt business practices into that mix.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Here is real research by real academics who have actual PhD degrees and study the media. They are at one of the best universities on the planet: Harvard. This is the definitive definition of a qualified professional. They don't make shit up like Fox not-really-News.
This research covers 2015, but things didn't change much up to the national political party conventions. The most explosive material wasn't reported until after the first debate, and much of it is coming from online upstarts like Buzzfeed.
The mainstream news organizations have been completely missing until very recently. The information about Trump's income tax claim could have been uncovered by the NY Times at any time in the last two years, but it wasn't. He was getting a free ride from the entire mainstream press until a few weeks ago.
I know that Republicans have an extreme aversion to facts and departed reality many years ago, but the real world doesn't care what you think. It has a nasty habit of showing up when least expected and wreaking havoc on fools who ignore it. With any luck real world facts will finally catch up with Trump and pound him into dust. If that doesn't happen then the whole world is going on an extremely terrible ride.
Why is Snark Required?
Publishing - the man's own media appearances is an "onslaught"? Isn't that more like "routine"? It barely qualifies as journalism, too easy.
Isn't holding people accountable for their public positions the very job of journalists?
And The Times - every journalist has been howling for those tax returns for a nearly a year, they've been expected for 40 years - and now actually showing a couple of pages of a really old one is an "onslaught"? Most would say, "no brainer".
Clinton would be a fucking weak candidate on any other occasion, no arguments there. But for Pete's sake, she's running against Trump. Trump. I can't even believe there's a choice to be made here for half the population of the US.
Have you thought about what might be wrong with your world view that prevents your beliefs from matching up with objective reality?
People don't vote candidates, in general. They vote if they are happy about how things are, or if they are not. Usually, is the incumbent (I'm happy about how things are in MY life), or the challenger (I'm not happy, let's change something).
In this particular case the incumbent cannot run, so the proxy is the candidate of the same party. Also, people suspect that the usual challengers are not really a change at all. But in this case it is, or at least it appears to be. So the excitement about it.
Voting or defending Trump has nothing to do with Trump, really, and all to do with a desire for profound change. The people express that desire in the only way that the election game allows them, and that's not a good way, that's for sure, but it's the only one.
You are surprised of intelligent people defending Trump, and I am surprised of how this blatant fact, the desire, of so many people, for many current politics to change or reverse course, is completely bypassed by the media, that chooses to center in the, admittedly rather pathetic, personification of that desire. That's an ad-hominem fallacy if I ever saw one, and you fall into that trap and try to keep the discussion there (the person), instead of on the politics.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Alternatively, you're not as smart as you think you are.
When you have the sort of money that Donald Trump or Putin have (I've read Putin may have about $70 billion), then you generally make deals with each other. Billionaires generally come from two backgrounds, founding extremely successful companies that are one-offs. (Zara, Microsoft, Google, Apple), or by making a large number of deals that add to your holdings over time, increasing its value (Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, Sheldon Adelson, Waleed Bin-Talal, Mark Cuban).
These guys have dealings with so many ventures it's realistically impossible to not find a connection between all of them to each other in some way. That's how they got to be so big in the first place.
Donald Trump has struck a nerve with the american people. It's sad that he was the one to figure out how, but he did. That nerve is the sensitivity to the overtly corrupt political structure now at the helm of this country "for the people". He promised he could not be influenced because he has more than enough capital to fund his run, and live happily ever after.
Unfortunately, the Democrats didn't do any better, by swinging their ball completely in the 100% opposite direction. Hillary Clinton seems to be as politically astute as Donald Trump is politically ignorant. She successfully derailed Bernie Sander's campaign with insider dealings so corrupt, they forced the DNC chairman(woman) to resign, along with other DNC senior staff. She has been making insider plays, taken money from just about anyone who would give it to her, no matter what the cost to the American people, or the favor required; and wiggled her way to the Democratic presumptive nominee this election year, seemingly through those backroom deals. Her entire campaign doesn't really promise anything ground-breaking, really its just more of the same overly corrupt Washington insiders. Instead, her campaign is really "I'm not him". His campaign, if he could ever get the media to stop talking about his mouth, is "I'm not them".
Either Slashdot is not as intelligent as I thought, or it is more right-wing than I thought
Trump is not "right-wing". He is a populist, with an eclectic and shifting mix of the worst of both left and right.
"Right-wing" means fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, free trade, and cutting entitlements, ... like the Republican led Congress when Bill Clinton signed their bills into law.
FTFY
What? You thought Bill Clinton wrote every piece of legislation that Congress voted on?
You need to watch Schoolhouse Rock.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
This is, what, the fifth time you have spouted your vitriol against someone just for having a different opinion than yourself?
You leftists sure are full of love for your fellow man.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I see all these posts with "right", "left" and "liberal" thrown out casually. Usually the "left" and "liberal" are used as pejoratives, yet from this side of the pond there is no "left" or "liberal", only "right", "more right" and "far right". There isn't even a "middle" in US, probably due to the continuing knee-jerk, hide-bound fear of "commies" that pervades the US mindset.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
The same people that tells me that I should be ashamed of being white, so, meh.
(not that I like the giant douche, or the turd sandwich for that matter)
Progressive does NOT automatically equal Democrat. I'm am so sick and tired of everyone only seeing two sides, turning everything into a razor thin monolith with D on one side and R on the other. Perhaps you've heard of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative." Once upon a time there was a movement of Progressive Republicans.
"To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." This was back in 1912. plus ça change, plus c'est la.
Who do I stand with? Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and other like them. Both "parties" are morally corrupt, and under the control of the planet-spanning corpocracy. We had a chance with Sanders, but we squandered it. Johnson is a joke. Trump is only in this for Trump, Inc. Hillary is inherently unlikable, and is a corporate puppet who only changed her tune at all because of Sanders. Neither should be President.
However, given the "choice" we've been presented, I still would rather have a corrupt, mean politician as opposed to a megalomaniac who is intent on building an oligarchy like his buddy Putin.
People well and truly vote for candidates in the USA, and in general they seem to be confused at situations like Australia or the UK where we vote for parties.
Sorry to disagree, but that doesn't check with the fact that, in the USA, only candidates from the two big parties have a chance to run successfully for the presidency. If people really voted for candidates, then an independent candidate would have an even chance of winning, and that's absolutely not the case. Even in this election, with two deeply flawed candidates, independents cannot even make it to the TV live debate.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Because Trump is a "friend" of Big Media. He knows all the stakeholders by first name. They've all been to his "resorts" for free, they are all bought and paid for by Trump, Inc. Trump is no Republican. He's a White National fascist who used popularity to force the Republican party into a nomination. He's using the same playbook the Communists did after the death of Lenin...fear, confusion, obfuscation of reality to the point the only thing people know to be "real" is Trump himself.
WTF is this American fascination with saying that you're throwing your vote away?
NO! You are telling both of the leading parties that they are so fucked up they don't DESERVE your vote!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
His returns will show he's not a billionaire. To him that's the worst possible thing for the media to be able to prove. He'd rather be known as a crazy jerk than a pure charlatan.
You need to look at the media coverage of all Republican candidates together to understand what happened. The candidates thought to be the strongest opponents against Hillary received the harshest treatment (Christy, Romney, Rubio, and Cruz).
Trump was considered a non-threat, him getting the nomination was supposed to ensure an easy victory for Clinton. The long knives didn't really come out until poll numbers showed Trump actually having a chance to win. Now that he's ahead you see the hysteria.
.
only candidates from the two big parties have a chance to run successfully for the presidency
That's because the other parties tend to run:
1) Avowed communists or other loons
2) Supposed doctors who believe in homeopathy
3) Would-be presidents who can't name a single leader of another country.
Why would such people every gain any traction with a majority of the people in the US? The certainly can't get together enough people to support their campaign operations at a level that makes them strongly visible in a country of hundreds of millions of people - because would-be supporters look at them, weigh their absurd positions against reality, and walk away.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
We had a chance with Sanders, but we squandered it.
No, we dodged a bullet. His entire world view is based on either pure fantasy, or on making productive people slaves to non-productive people and calling that a virtue. Even Hillary Clinton (who is currently doing her best in public to pretend she likes what Sanders stands for, because she's wildly pandering to low-information young people who want free stuff) says in private (audio recording just released!) that Sanders' supporters are unrealistic live-in-mom's-basement people who want free stuff and don't know what they're talking about. She may be an evil witch, but she's correct about that. Of course, being an evil witch, she'll still lie her ass off and pretend to embrace those people's wish lists long enough to get elected. Nothing new there.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Have you thought about what might be wrong with your world view that prevents your beliefs from matching up with objective reality?
That's a good example of a Loaded Question.
only candidates from the two big parties have a chance to run successfully for the presidency. If people really voted for candidates, then an independent candidate would have an even chance of winning, and that's absolutely not the case.
Those two are unrelated. People don't vote for minor candidates because especially in the USA it is seen as throwing away your vote. In countries with a preferential voting system minor parties end up getting seats in all houses of parliament as people can vote for them without effectively removing themselves from the system. Also you give your minor parties too much credit. The other big problem with minor parties is that for the most part many people agree with a set of ideas they have but also believe they are completely incapable of governing. They are often plagued with the same bat-shit crazy ideas underneath that we are currently criticising trump for.
E.g. I voted for the greens one election hoping that they'd get my local seat. I would not have done so if they had a chance at another seat in parliament too because while they are an important voice that needs to be part of the political system their full array of policies would end our lives as we know it.
I'm not in tune enough with the American system to know the minor candidates, but when I look at most other countries you end up with
a) the pirate party.
b) someone with great ideas on small government who's also an insane racist.
c) someone who is an antivaxxer.
d) someone who believes that they can fix absolutely everything but is incapable of coming up with a plan to pay for it.
e) someone who's entire idea is the overnight shutdown of all coal and nuclear power plants and an instant ban on all combustion engines, not to mention the shutdown of all industry that would dare hurt plant or animal life.
Among these insanes are some great ideas and some good policy, but damn would we be in trouble if they ever got complete power.
It scares the crap out of me that here on Slashdot, a site with presumably smart people like engineers and programmers, so many people are defending and rooting for Donald Trump.
Ever consider that the world could benefit greatly from anti-establishment anarchy? I'm sure the people rooting for Trump aren't rooting for the man, but rather the idea that it would finally shake the shit out of the establishment and maybe wake up a government who most definitely is no longer for the people or by the people.
That's a bit extreem don't you think? Jack booted thugs? Seriously, Hitler? C'mon, no one buys that. Also, Donald Trump is running on the republican ticket, but he is far from an establishment republican like Jeb Bush is. Hilary is literally a 30 year career politician at various levels of government. She is the embodiment of Claire Underwood, with less sex appeal, and more political savvy, if thats even possible.
Also, I didn't say Donald Trump is a good guy, or a good leader. I only said that he found a nerve in American society today, which suffers at the hands on the special interests, locked in a dance with American politics.
But about that business of his. No doubt, he owns some of the most fantastic addresses in the world. The real-estate under his towers in Manhattan are worth quite literally billions. You don't get your company to that size "with an iron fist, and no help or good ideas from anyone else", or by "blaming everyone but himself as he never accepts responsibility".
Donald's organization The Trump Organization has tens of thousands of employees, activities spanning the globe, and is a model for modern business, leveraging its brand and assets. America could use some of that kind of thinking. Stop fixating on the "politically incorrect" in what he says. Before judging someone on their rants, ask yourself "what is the most important part of his job". I don't care if my dentist is a muslim-hating womanizer, as long as he does my dental work well. Likewise, I don't care if Donald trump disparaged women in a Larry King episode, or suggested "stop and frisk". We aren't electing a president of the National Organization of Women, or a chief of the NYPD. We are electing a president. I want him to curb our addition to international intervention, and improve our economy by moving it more towards a "laissez faire" economic model. Something he might be familiar with having an education in economics from one of the worlds best schools for that stuff.
One thing is for sure, it has nothing to do with intelligence.
Intelligence is backing up your political views with facts, sound logic, and reason. Gary Johnson, for example, agrees with the science of climate change, but considers protecting business interests to be a higher priority than the environment. You may disagree with that position from a moral perspective (personally, I do), but his logic is undeniable.
Donald Trump thinks climate change is a Chinese conspiracy to harm our economy. Many of Donald Trump's positions are based on superstitions, incorrect assumptions, and irrational fears. Sorry, but it's the textbook definition of lacking intelligence, if you can't see why supporting such a candidate is indicative of suffering from idiocy.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Hillary takes a different approach, by shielding most of her assets inside the Clinton Foundation. Frankly, that's a lot worse, because the Clinton Foundation is pretending to be a non-profit organization.
The above statement is 100% false. The Clinton Foundation does not "shield" assets any more than any other foundation. To this date not a single piece of evidence has come out to show that the Clinton Foundation is a scam, or not for profit.
The only known issue is that one can question the morality of taking a donation from Saudi Arabia, just like we question the morality of Donald Trump paying for a self-portrait using his foundation assets. We also question the Foundation making a political contribution. This one might actually be illegal, by the way. People are still looking into it, though, so I'm holding judgement on that one until the facts are out.
Marxism, obviously.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
So how is he going to get things done and "Make America Great Again"
Silly voter, he's just going to do it. Trust him, he has a secret plan. Remember, he knows more about ISIS than the generals (he said so himself!). And he has "the best temperament", the "best memory", and "has the best words". Those are all direct quotes so you know they're true!
When he gets elected we'll wake up the next day and the streets will be clean, kids will say "Sir" and "Ma'am", and Leave It To Beaver will be back on the TV machine. Black people will know their place again, atheists will once again be persecuted as is proper, and mothers will go back to the kitchens where they'll spend all day cooking tasty, nutritious food for the whole family again. It'll be glorious!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
His returns show the facts and figures of his business. From there it's simple to deduce his net worth. Hell, they've almost managed it without his returns. Actual documents will simply tweak the figures and give his opponents a chance to wave actual numbers in public.
What are people supposed to do when the other candidate declares them "enemies"? Flawed as he is, if Trump is your only hope to avoid being treated like an enemy by your country's government, why wouldn't you support him?
"it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."
Note the use of the word "Legally".
If you don't like what he did, change the law, don;t bitch about him following it. There are plenty of other corps (such as Apple) doing similar things.
Besides just that fact that what Trump did is actually legal would automatically make it fuck load better than MANY things Clinton and her foundation has done/is doing.
But, the reality is that if the US government crashes and burns, the whole world feels the pain with Americans getting the brunt of it. The US government does not exist in a protective barrier that we're shielded from. If it explodes, we get hit in the blast.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Where were you the last decade? The US has been quite good at destabilizing itself without outside help. Increasing inequality between the 0.01% and everyone else, jobs that become more precarious with time, hyper-partisan media, deteriorating value of an education, etc. Trump vs Hillary is just a symptom.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
For God's sake, have you ever been to Cuba? I have. Twice. Last time i visited i had several offers to trade for my combs, shampoo and ibuprofen.
There's a good reason people still try to flee the island to Miami in makeshift rafts and not the other way around.
Lynch-pin of stability? You've got to be kidding. Look at the Middle East. ISIS is the result of Americans meddling. 5 years of giving arms to anyone who said they would fight against Bashar al-Assad just increased the instability in the region. Russia achieved more in 1 month. Most of this could have been avoided if the US hadn't insisted on ousting Asaad, with no clear replacement. In retrospect, Asaad is still in power, the EU has been destabilized over refugees fleeing war, and Putin looks stronger than ever.
Aleppo is going to fall soon enough, and then it's just mopping up. Sometimes it's better to deal with the enemy/devil you know. In the instance of Syria, that's how it's turning out anyway, at huge cost.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Obama had a Democrat controlled congress and he used it to ram a shitty health care bill down everyone's throat.
You didn't elaborate on what made it so shitty, so I'll suggest why (don't blame Obama): The only way this (health care for the masses) was ever going to come to reality was if those who stood the most to lose (insurers and providers of healthcare and medicine) had a say in its conceptual design. IOW, those who had the most to lose from changing the status quo limited the degree to which the status quo changed- naturally by lobbying the democrats as not a single republican voted for passage- they continue to this day to undermine the basic right of healthcare. As it turns out, this lead to insurance policies that are still too expensive for the intended recipients and insurers who resent having to cover those who most need it because it makes it hard for them to profit. The right thing to do was create a single payer system and congress (not Obama) totally half-assed the entire thing. Half a solution in this case was not a solution IMHO. OTOH, a few good things did come of it: coverage of preventive medicine, age increase of dependents, medicare improvements, pre-existing coverage, and more.
He got what he wanted but pissed off enough people to destroy the Democrats majority in both houses.
By that I take it you mean he drove state district gerrymandering to a new level of absurd. The resulting ideological makeup of congress is in no way reflective of the populations they purport to represent, nor the country as a whole.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
If Trump had done nothing other than invest his initial "small loan" in index funds, reinvesting the dividends, he would be worth 12 billion dollars today. Even if he is worth the 4 billion he claims he is worth, he is still something of a failure as a businessman.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
the "mean" one is trump
the megalomaniac is clinton
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I have read it. In the original language, in fact. It was kind of a set book in the GDR, you know. So yes, you keep using that word...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
A really good nonprofit that is genuinely supporting a cause puts somewhere between 75% and 90% of its income into whatever cause it supports. The Clinton Foundation has a rather different record. For example, in 2015 the New York Post published numbers from 2013 showing that they foundation spend $9 million (out of a budget of $140 million) on charity,
You know that that is misleading to the point of lying, right? The Clinton Foundation doesn't give much money to other charities, true. Instead it runs it's own charitable programs, and percentage-wise spends less on payroll and administrative employee expenses than most charities. I don't know if the CF is a wonderful charity or not, but it is spending money better than other charities. It's been under constant scrutiny by anti-Clinton folks for years; if they were shielding assets for the Clintons it would have come out. Instead, people just repeat the same lies as you did
In a sense, it does lower the Clinton's taxes, in the way that donating to any charity reduces your taxes. It also means that that money is no longer theirs, which is why most people don't give 10% of their income to charity. But nobody has demonstrated that the Clintons are particularly using the CF money on themselves. Maybe they are and nobody has found the evidence (unlike with Trump's foundation). Or maybe you have evidence that the rest of the world doesn't?
I have a very hard time finding the evidence for your conclusion based on any sort of independent, non-partisan, non-cherry-picked evaluations:
Four Star, 93%+ rating from Charity Navigator https://www.charitynavigator.o...
Charity Watch: A Rating, 88% of funds go to programs not administrative costs: https://www.charitywatch.org/r...
The actual evidence seems to indicate that the vast majority of the money that goes to the Clinton foundation actually goes to what it's ostensibly for - charitable causes themselves. That's almost the exact opposite of a "slush fund" or a way to hide money, because they're not getting anything back out of it in any appreciable form. 12%? They'd keep more of the money if they paid standard taxes with no deductions!
You need to look at the media coverage of all Republican candidates together to understand what happened. The candidates thought to be the strongest opponents against Hillary received the harshest treatment (Christy, Romney, Rubio, and Cruz). [...] The long knives didn't really come out until poll numbers showed Trump actually having a chance to win. Now that he's ahead you see the hysteria.
And similarly, if you look at the study, the strongest opponent (singular, since there was only one) against the Republican frontrunners received the harshest treatment. The situation is entirely symmetrical, except that none of the strong Republican candidates won.
What the study essentially showed was that the mainstream media treats what it perceives to be the frontrunners on both sides more harshly. Neither Trump nor Sanders were treated as harshly precisely because nobody thought they had a chance. They are now making up for lost time on Trump.
It is true that there was a large amount of coverage on Trump. The linked version of the study does not show the breakdown between "positive" and "neutral" coverage of Trump. Assuming it's almost all "neutral" (which seems likely), the amount of coverage of Trump is explainable by the fact that pretty much everything Trump does is a headline of one sort or other.
There's no evidence of a conspiracy here. (Like all conspiracies, perhaps lack of evidence is evidence of a cover-up?) It's just that the tactic which works for the news outlets (in the sense of maximising eyeballs) most of the time backfired spectacularly this time.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Yeah, I've noticed that rightwing pundits have recently (mostly after the debate) started a "fact-checkers are all evil and controlled by the liberals" campaign. I had hoped that people would recognize it for what it is, but I guess not. So no worries: you just go along believing what your Political Overlords want you to believe, without needing those pesky facts to get in the way.
I'm going to guess that you were very suspicious about Obama's country of birth and his role in Benghazi, until the 2014 elections made him a lame duck so your Political Overlords needed to shift focus.
So now you are suspicious about Hillary's truthfulness and her role in Benghazi. You probably don't remember when your priorities changed, but you can track it easily enough by looking at Fox's news story history.
You were insanely upset that Obama was growing the deficit (even though the deficit dropped every year he was in office), but no longer much care about it since Trump's proposals will do far worse to it. But now your vague suspicion about fact-checkers has blossomed into full blown distrust and hatred, right on cue.
Yay, propoganda works!
His entire world view is based on either pure fantasy, or on making productive people slaves to non-productive people and calling that a virtue.
There is not a single policy that Bernie has advocated that isn't being put to good use in Northern Europe - he's really a Democratic socialist after the Scandinavian style. So are you saying that Finland is an imaginary place?
On your second point: Too true, I hate it when productive people (like contractors, who actually build useful things) are unpaid slaves to non-productive people (like freeloading Trump and his ilk).