Assange Promises to Shake Up Hillary

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by Neuhaus, Aug 25, 2016.

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  1. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    There are plenty of independents left who are undecided. Even his support among Republicans is not as high as it could be. You just contradicted yourself on Clinton's medical records. Does it matter or does it not? Do her supporters care or do they not?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 14, 2016
  2. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    And, Clinton is not required to release anything else about her medical record. So, let me rephrase. There is no good excuse. There are voters who actually like to be informed and see some transparency.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 14, 2016
  3. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I agree. I just don't think the reason for this is that he hasn't released his tax returns. If I see a poll to the contrary I'll revise that assumption. The "IRS audit" explanation seems really absurd, though, since it's not like the IRS doesn't know what's in his tax returns, pretty much by definition.

    No, it doesn't matter for the reason I just said. Her supporters will believe anything her campaign says, her detractors will disbelieve anything her campaign says, and those in the middle won't know what to believe. So she'll probably release something, she kind of has to now, but it won't move the needle in either direction.
     
  4. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Honestly, if you really hate Donald Trump, will it change your mind if his tax returns reveal that his accounting is impeccable?

    Of course not. If they reveal he has more money than previously assumed then people will attack him for being rich. If he has less money then people will attack him for lying about his wealth out of vanity.

    If you really hate Hillary will a note from her doctor tip the scale?

    These two candidates are very different. I think the undecided block is probably simply undecided as to whether they won't both voting or whether they want to cast a protest ballot to a third party.

    The irritating part of this, and any, election is that it's just a neverending cycle of controversy. Start with superdelegates. Metrics show people are starting to be saturated with that message? OK, let's move on to Benghazi. Done with that? OK, let's say she's so incredibly ill that she is essentially being held up by handlers and periodically injected with adrenaline to keep her head from bobbing.

    Oh, Trump University! Hmmm, done with that? OK, well his wife may have had the wrong visa! Oh, hum...his butler! Yeah! His butler is a raving racist!

    It's a farce on both sides. And, in the end, we'll get a president who makes no meaningful changes either way and will blame the other party for that even if their party is in power. It isn't a new game. What's fascinating is how, every four years, we act like THIS is the election that will change it all.

    Madness.
     
  5. 03310151

    03310151 Active Member



    Someone else gets it? Awesome.....and now what?


    We get exactly what we deserve. We get it good and hard.
     
  6. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Reminds me of something my Dad told me in middle school:

    "Right to remain silent. If you ever get in trouble you should exercise it. Whether you did it or you didn't do it is irrelevant. Things tend to get sorted out a lot easier if you keep your mouth shut then if you run it."
     
  7. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Transparency??

    I saw this online, and it couldn't be more perfect;

    Imagine if you thought your husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend was having an affair. You ask to see their phone, but they immediately leave the house and go to see their team of uber-expensive lawyers. They come back three hours later, (three months for Hillary) and give you the phone after deleting 33,000 emails, texts and contacts. You then find out they used the "Bleach Bit" app so that they could not be recovered. When you ask them what was deleted, they tell you it was workout routines and recipes. Then you find out they have 11 more cell phones that they never told you about, and when you ask to see them, they tell you they can't give them to you, because they smashed them all with a hammer after you asked to see the first one.

    Would you ever trust them again? I wouldn't.

    I would rather have a President who is unpolished and says mean things, than one who will sell my country to the highest bidder.
     
  8. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    The thing is that the email scandal has been thoroughly investigated several times. No one seems interested in thoroughly vetting Trump.

    What is your rationale behind this? We have had plenty of presidents in the past who have made meaningful changes for better or worse, so it's very likely to happen again.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 15, 2016
  9. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Well, for starters, presidents don't make changes. The best they can do is try to whip the votes necessary in Congress to actually get them to make a change. That's a pretty inefficient way of doing things. People can, and routinely do, ignore the president.

    Let's look at Obamacare. Personally, I'm impressed that Obama got anything passed. But the original bills were strong and likely would have reduced many of the present woes with the inclusion of a public option. That would have caused Obamacare to resemble more closely the system in Massachusetts rather than just create what was, in essence, a massive windfall for insurance companies. And that railroading was under a democratic controlled Congress.

    Were this a parliamentary system there is no MP who would have dared vote against the Prime Minister while hoping to hold onto any form of influence within the party. It would be career suicide.

    Here a democratic or republican lawmaker can tell the president, of the same party, to get bent and likely face very few consequences. With the current composition even the threat of withdrawing committee memberships is reserved for only the most egregious offenses because that individual's vote will likely be needed in the future.

    Have changes occurred? Sure they have. But what each administration does more than anything else is maintain the status quo and then point to a handful of legislation as signs of progress. Frankly, what our Congress accomplishes in a year is handled in a single vote in some parliaments of the world.

    The executive branch being separate from the legislative branch might seem like a fun check and balance move. In reality it just creates a horrible quagmire of inefficiency, competing interests and siloism.
     
  10. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Unless they have a phone and a pen.

    I'll take a horrible quagmire over a horrible efficiency, thank you.
     
  11. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Presidential powers are extremely limited without Congressional support. Executive orders can only go so far and they cannot enact lasting change. The next president can cancel a prior executive order with the same pen and phone.


    That's a lot like saying you'd rather have cancer than a heart attack.

    I think I'd rather have properly functioning efficiency.

    But it seems par for the course that many in this country feel that we only ever get to pick between "horrible" alternatives or, alternatively, that every nation in the world is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad place. Once you leave our borders the rest of the world is actually just North Korean dystopias. Obviously, right? Because we're the very best at everything and everyone in the world wishes they can come here because no other country can do anything better than us except possibly for Switzerland with watches and chocolate.
     
  12. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    The immutability of Obama ink has already been argued and would become a roar with any attempt at undoing an Obama EO.


    A restrained state is cancer? Yikes!

    Yes, of course our Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis will have us functioning "properly."

    North Korean dystopias and Swiss chocolates. Talk to yourself much?
     
  13. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    It is quite apparent that there wouldn't be an Affordable Care Act if Obama hadn't been elected president. Whether or not you think it went far enough, the ACA was a drastic change. Additionally, Supreme Court appointments have an effect on major court decisions. The Citizens United decision would not have been made without enough conservative justices. The same-sex marriage decision would not have been made without enough liberal justices. The U.S. Congress has fairly recently become unproductive. It was very productive in the 90s.

    Nevertheless, I don't think people are mostly afraid of Clinton and Trump not succeeding in doing good. I think they are mostly afraid of them succeeding in doing bad. Many people are strongly against having more socialist programs. Many people are strongly against mass deportations.
     
  14. Ted Heiks

    Ted Heiks Moderator and Distinguished Senior Member

    Sounds better than Swiss dystopias and North Korean chocolates.
     
  15. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Yes, and the FBI Director admitted under oath to Congress that Hillary Clinton lied under oath to Congress. That's perjury, a felony, but the FBI Director chose to not pursue prosecution in what will go down as one of the most political, most gutless decisions in the history of American politics AND law.

    You're joking, right? The MSM has been digging for dirt on Trump since they finally realized that he's a serious candidate and a threat to their chosen one. The best they've been able to come up with is the Trump University nonsense (which was as much an institution of higher learning as the Totland College Preschool down the street), some wild rape allegations that suddenly weren't newsworthy (because they're BS), and the fact that he's been married 3 times.

    Lying constantly about anything and everything (including under oath), endangering national security, versus all that crap?

    Doesn't seem like a difficult choice to me.
     
  16. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    I think that it is fairly easy to criticize either candidate.

    Trump has a trail of litigation, including some adverse findings against him and his organization, and it's not like he was the most beloved man in New York prior to his campaign ambitions and reality shows.

    Trump has been, for a really long time, a kind of Mr. Burns for the city of New York. Which, I suppose, makes Larry Silverstein New York's Aristotle Amadopolis.

    Hillary has a long line of scandals and the best her die-hard supporters can come up with is that she's never been convicted of anything.

    Frankly? I trust neither of them. I can buy that a person finds one slightly less repulsive than the other. That, I feel, is a matter of personal preference. But I can't understand how one can heartily embrace one and say "Yes, this person isn't just the lesser of two evils, this person is AMAZING."

    Why am I not voting for Trump? Because I disagree with his positions on immigration, largely. There is very little data to support than any undocumented immigrant is stealing any job that someone with U.S. Citizenship wants. Exceptions? Typically children who came here when very young (and thus didn't have a choice), are fully assimilated into our culture, educated and want to work and contribute to our society.

    I don't feel that sending a 22 year old, who came to this country at age 2 and possibly doesn't speak the language of their origin, back "where they came from" is useful to them or us. We spent 12 years educating them. They want to go to college. They want to get a job. They want to pay taxes.

    I say let them stay if only for the reason that a kid who grew up in an undocumented household likely has a stronger work ethic than the privileged kids of a fourth generation orthodontist who spend more time protesting on the quad than attending class. They have no fear of failure. The undocumented kid? Yeah, s/he knows what happens without that education. They need that education to not be picking fruit in the sweltering heat.

    Which would likely thrive in their first adult job?

    I don't support perpetual undocumented status. I think if you're been here for a while and stayed out of trouble there should be reasonable pathways to residency and eventually citizenship. Have a bunch of options.

    If enlisting in the Army, and serving honorably for 3-4 years (depending upon your service contract) could buy you a green card would we really tell that person they didn't earn it, didn't deserve it and deserve to be "sent back?"

    Maybe you disagree with that. It's just an opinion so everyone is free to disagree as they see fit. But I can't get behind a guy who wants mass deportations. I don't like the idea as a person. I don't like the idea as a Human Resources professional.

    I'm also generally opposed to the religious freedom laws that states have been passing so Pence isn't on my list of favorite folks.

    So, Hillary.
     
  17. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    Again though, the president's role is primarily advocacy and whipping votes. Aside from the authority to either sign the law or veto it, the President cannot even propose the legislation directly. If we had a prime minister, our Chief Executive would also be a legislator and would have a direct role in that process.

    Influencing change is not the same thing.

    My mother never would have had her cataract surgery if I hadn't found her a doctor and physically driven her there (I pulled a "Let's go out to lunch!" and made a "quick stop" at the office). Her cataract surgery would never have occured had I not intervened. That said, I didn't perform the surgery. I have a role in the success of the surgery. But it wasn't my skill that actually excised the cataracts from her eyes.

    There would be no ACA without Obama. This is true. But there also would have been no ACA without Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. Obama drove the ACA to the doctor but Drs. Pelosi and Reid were the ones who actually did the deed.

    In a parliamentary system the Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader wouldn't be acting as intermediaries between the Chief Executive and the legislature because the Prime Minister would be functioning, in many ways, like the Speaker.

    So, again, inefficient system and an office that is crippled by unnecessary layers of bureaucracy.
     
  18. sanantone

    sanantone Well-Known Member

    The media has barely touched upon the dirty stuff. If it were any other public figure, the rape allegations would have been covered for days with or without a lot of evidence backing the allegations. They do it all the time. Fox had the best coverage on him until he became the Republican nominee forcing them to kiss his behind because they back party before principles.

    And, I don't think you've grasped the controversy behind Trump University. The controversy doesn't come from it being perceived as an institution of higher learning by the media. As far as lying, Trump lies just as much as Clinton (maybe even more); he just hasn't had the chance to do it in public office. His whole campaign is a lie. The only thing he's been consistent on is building a wall.

    Clearly, your definition of change is writing and voting for a bill. That is a very narrow definition. Obama's actions were a change from previous administrations; he and his people came up with the idea. Pelosi and Reid wouldn't have written that bill without Obama in the presidency. They didn't even write the ACA. All they did was whip and vote.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 17, 2016
  19. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member


    I just look at it like this. Who would i rather deal with, a liar? Or Trump the pathological liar? I will go with Hilary. At least she doesn't lie on average of every five minutes on record! For me it's an easy choice and I won't lose any sleep over it. There are never completely perfect candidates.

    Hell, even my NRA gun buddy and former right winger friend is getting on board to vote for Hillary. He says he can't vote for a man that clearly is unstable.
     
  20. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

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