US Presidential Candidates

Relax wrote:To start with neither candidate this election said one thing about policy. Not one. Ok, they both said some outright whopper lies that we all know will never happen. Obama likewise said NOTHING about policy when he ran. They all ran on touchy feely moralistic crap as if that has ANYTHING to do with foreign policy or signing/vetoing the budget passed by congress.

Both candidates spoke about policy, although Trump was vaguer and less consistent. It didn't get much airtime and the voters didn't seem to care.

SNIP

Don't have anything to add here to my previous post.

PS. You do this as a private citizen on a black box military project and YOU GO TO JAIL. I personally know people WHO DID GO TO JAIL who lost a LAPTOP containing classified information which was not supposed to go to Farnborough AirShow in France!!!!!!!

Black box military projects are a different matter altogether, as is the UCMJ. For all the shouting about how "anyone else who did this would go to jail", I've yet to see anyone present an example which didn't have significant differences.

dscott8 wrote:

gcomeau wrote:
I would entertain that as a reasonable explanation for a handful of infractions.

Once you pass the tenth time you have retweeted some guy posting with a #whitegenocide tag or something it becomes a little strained.

Once you pass the 30 or 40th white supremacist retweet you're straining the plausibility of the excuse.

Once you pass 50 or 60 still trying to insist it's all an innocent mistake has long since become absurd.

Please remember that this is a son of privilege, who has never lived among common folk. He may have had no real understanding of the consequences when he retweeted that stuff, and because he didn't know, he didn't care. I'm not excusing him, just trying to explain him.

Even if he didn't understand the consequences, which I find very hard to believe considering he spent an entire year pretty damn well unerringly tailoring his message to these kinds of groups, we would still be left with something having drawn him so strongly to the tweets of White Supremacists over and over again that he felt compelled that those be the ones he re-tweeted.

Which isn't a whole lot better is it?

And then we would still be left with the campaign having been racist anyway which doesn't invalidate the original point. "Racist.... ummmm.... because he's so completely clueless and incompetent he couldn't understand he was being racist" doesn't make it not racist.

That is the rather unlikely best case scenario here. Which is not exactly encouraging.

Relax wrote:

Eyal wrote:SNIP

Sooner or later, the Democrats will be in power again. It's quite possible that the lesson they take from this election os to forget policy and go as dirst as you can for the heartstrings; forget good governance and go to for the jugular. Do you really want US politics to descend into an orgy of mutual scorched-earth tactics? Because that's where I see this headed if not repudiated.

To start with neither candidate this election said one thing about policy. Not one.

Actually, one of them had significantly detailed policy proposals released to the public throughout the entire campaign. That they got zero attention because of the Trump National Travelling Circus does not make them disappear.

Eyal wrote:Black box military projects are a different matter altogether, as is the UCMJ. For all the shouting about how "anyone else who did this would go to jail", I've yet to see anyone present an example which didn't have significant differences.

Top secret is top secret. The kicker is HRC personally on video telling her staff NOT to do it in 2009 for obvious reasons... This is her minor offense IMO. The blatant corruption combined with several of her policies, not that the policy of any president means jack diddly as it is congress that counts, put me completely off of her.

Anyways, the real question is what is going to happen to the petrodollar... Will the Federal reserve raise rates or keep printing... Boomers are retiring and expect social security and medicare.

#1 thing that must happen is take all the unconstitutional executive dictatorial orders that have piled up over the years by the last two presidents and give the power back to the senate or HoR. Frankly both of them should have been impeached for their unconstitutional aggrandizement of power.

gcomeau wrote:Actually, one of them had significantly detailed policy proposals released to the public throughout the entire campaign. That they got zero attention because of the Trump National Travelling Circus does not make them disappear.

Oh baloney. Did you even bother to read her own web page that you claim has details???
Here: Read it and weep: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

taxes: "pay fair share", close loop holes, "buffet" rule which is 100% open ended
Justice system: "make america strong"
Unions: "make strong"
Free college...
Need economy that works for everyone...
blah blah blah blah
etc etc etc.

Nothing but stupid emotional empty fluff that has not one single specific other than GIVE FREE STUFF to buy votes from fools who when they grow up get the shocker they have to pay taxes for this "free stuff" so we can have more fools getting useless hotel management degrees, womens studies, philosophy degrees, arts degrees... yea.

EDIT: My bad, she did have one specific policy: said she wanted to stop killing horses for human consumption.... which is so laughable as to make me weep. IT DOES NOT happen in the USA... Its possible it might start again... What are we gonna do, invade Mexico to stop them buying the meat? Really?

Relax wrote:

gcomeau wrote:Actually, one of them had significantly detailed policy proposals released to the public throughout the entire campaign. That they got zero attention because of the Trump National Travelling Circus does not make them disappear.

Oh baloney. Did you even bother to read her own web page that you claim has details???
Here: Read it and weep: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

taxes: "pay fair share", close loop holes, "buffet" rule which is 100% open ended
Justice system: "make america strong"
Unions: "make strong"
Free college...
Need economy that works for everyone...
blah blah blah blah
etc etc etc.

Nothing but stupid emotional empty fluff that has not one single specific other than GIVE FREE STUFF to buy votes

And let me just stop your rant there...

You do realize all of those "read more" links lead to... more? As in, the details and specifics? The pages they link to expand in some detail, then THOSE have a further link to more detailed fact sheets. Pages and pages and pages and pages of them.

Taxes is not just "pay fair share and close loopholes" slogans.

The Fair Share Surcharge is a specific thing with specific numbers attached to it not some nebulous bumper sticker. Closing the Bermuda re-insurance loophole. Implement a risk fee on any liabilities of large financial institutions with more than 50 billion in assets. Close the carried interest loophole. Etc...


Now personally I don't think Clinton was ever going to implement meaningful financial reform and she has a long history of saying anything she thinks she needs to say to get elected then just obeying her big money donors in office.... but the idea that neither candidate had detailed policy positions is just ignoring reality.

Relax, I'm confused. You talk about the "real issue" and imply it isn't ISIS. What is it? As I said we do have free speech, and can discuss anything as long as we are truthful (unlike US politicians).
To PeterZ as we are a free democracy with freedom of speech, if a future PM tried to redefine hate speech in a restrictive way, he would cop it in the media and polls. At the present moment a couple of high visibility cases seem to be winding the definition back anyway.

Regarding hate speech, and PeterZ's comment about future PMs, at one point in recent years we had five PMs in five years. Wouldn't some here have liked that people power at times?
There is a push to either modify or reduce 18C of the act at the moment. It isn't a biggie really, as we are both a generally polite society, and general slander laws work as well. Statements made by both your candidates duringthe campaign would not be acceptable here.
On the rare occasion that some yob (usually a white trash woman) abuses someone racially on a bus or train, the phone cameras come out and they are well shamed.

Well, Daryl, it is a pity other places are not nearly as polite as you guys down-under. Heck, this forum has had more than a few inteperate words fly. Choosing to be polite can be difficult. Tips hat for managing that to all you Aussies and I suspect Kiwis.

Daryl wrote:Regarding hate speech, and PeterZ's comment about future PMs, at one point in recent years we had five PMs in five years. Wouldn't some here have liked that people power at times?
There is a push to either modify or reduce 18C of the act at the moment. It isn't a biggie really, as we are both a generally polite society, and general slander laws work as well. Statements made by both your candidates duringthe campaign would not be acceptable here.
On the rare occasion that some yob (usually a white trash woman) abuses someone racially on a bus or train, the phone cameras come out and they are well shamed.

gcomeau wrote:And let me just stop your rant there...

You do realize all of those "read more" links lead to...

Now personally I don't think Clinton was ever going to implement meaningful financial reform and she has a long history of saying anything she thinks she needs to say to get elected

Wow! You don't say, READ MORE links have more information. No way! Say it isn't so! No kidding! Why thank you for telling such a blind ignorant like myself that they exist... Did you bother to read them? No...
Then you turn around and agree with me, calling it a rant... Wow. Two thumbs up!

Buffet rule etc... does not address the issue, nor is it just. Which is why it is DOA as I wrote upthread. Just makes the tax code more onerous. It hits some without tackling the main issue which everyone knows and understands. The tax code has millions of lines in it. You want to make a "fair" system? Get rid of most of the IRS tax code which is only there for the WEALTHY. All those asset loopholes vanish. This "surcharge" BS is just that. It adds more complexity. All it does is change the asset type the super wealthy have to buy in order to protect themselves. It is absurd. It is blind ignorance to believe those rules would do anything other than help buffet and his friends.

Side note: We need a sunset clause on corporations/banks/hedge funds where they "die" and have to reform where their assets get taxed upon their "death". That way mega corporations can't keep growing as a larger % of the entire economy. (It will never pass) Why? This is where the wealthy pass their money around via stock and board positions to hide it from the IRS. Don't even need a higher tax rate. This alone would knee cap them. You might notice, but no one worries about wealthy private business ownership. Why? Inheritance taxes. So we don't have princelings. The corporation which did not exist and was in its infancy when the IRS was formed were not a problem then. Yes, Carnegie, Mellon, etc were filthy rich. Might notice their offspring were not.

Political reality, a president can arm wrestle congress on maybe 2 subjects for their entire term. See previous posts about completely DOA as division of powers does not work that way for presidents. They are NOT prime ministers. Policy is a Congress issue except if the President says they will veto certain things.

PS. Where else did you think I got the dead horse for human consumption which was an OUTRIGHT lie to begin with? Not that it matters. Fine eat horse. We eat cow. Chicken. Turkey.