The Romulan Republic wrote:Sanders hits hard on the issues. He just doesn't tend to stoop to personal attacks on his opponents from what I've seen.
Regardless, Trump being Trump should be enough to cost the Republicans any shot at the Latino vote for the forseeable future. And considering that's a fast-growing demographic... yeah, they're fucked.
Aren't his immigration ideas designed to make latinos a less fast-growing demographic? So if he wins this might become less of a problem for him.
bilateralrope wrote:Now is not the time for the democrats to go after republican candidates. A successful attack against a republican candidate now will only mean that another candidate gets the nomination.
Is it likely the republican members would care if a democrat attacks their candidate anyway? If anything, it should increase votes for them, the democrats are "the enemy".
Thing is (and I can't believe I'm writing this) I can see the attraction of Trump as a candidate. Not him per se, but the fact that he isn't a "professional politician" as it were. Maybe it would be a good thing to have someone come in with different ideas.
Of course whilst I can accept that as a good idea, I'd much rather it wasn't Trump.
Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."
Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.
Reading Adam's comments actually make a great deal of sense. Fro ma certain psychotic nature Trump is brilliant.
Most of us know that he is basically saying ANYTHING to be popular among the right wing currently. Especially on immigration issue. It is amazing to think that the man has said so many thing that, had they been uttered by anyone else, should have killed a campaign a dozen times over by now. But there in lies the 'genius' and madness of Trump. In that he truly DOESN'T CARE.
And you can see this scarring the crap out of the other Republicans. They actually DO Care about the general election, and trying to get black or latino voters, and now the find themselves trying NOT to say things like "Of course I would also repeal the 14th amendment" or "Why of course i'll also deport babies and send them home" I mean the other day Ted Cruz was out and out refusing to take a stance on weather or not he thought repealing the 14th amendment was a "good idea" or not. It is crazy, yet brilliant.
As I have said in other places, Trump is a die hard megalomaniacal Narcissist. He can never be wrong, he can never admit a mistake and he certain, could NEVER think anything he does would have negative consequences. The man is like Dubya but with a confidence you could bend steel with.
While I am about 98% certain Trump has "no chance" of winning the general election, The Scary thing about him is that he MAY Actually win the GOP nomination.
A few weeks ago I thought this was all being done as basically a giant 'reality' show for Trump with himself as the Star, that if it looked like he would win the nomination, he would drop out. Now I no longer believe that. The depths of the mans narcissism and delusions are such I can now easily see him happily marching to oblivion in a general election
For me, the really scary thing? Deep down, I wonder what if the man had run as a democrat?
Imagine for a moment... Imagine him with the same firing bombastic personality saying things like "Screw the Old White Man vote! I believe America belongs to minorities!" or things like "The Second amendment? Totally out of date! Lets get rid of that!" or things like "Republicans are just a bunch of mindless Zombies, why do I care about their votes?"
I mean... Would Liberals see right through him? Or would they too be swept up by his snake oil?
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
SAMAS wrote:No seriously, a fifteen-year-old in Iowa has registered under the name "Deez Nuts", and is currently polling at a respectable 9%.
Sounds like we've found the "none of the above" demographic...
While such antics get a bit of attention... it's still something like 14 or 15 months before the elections. Such bollocks will be winnowed out as the process goes on.
In other news...
Trump hits a new low when it comes to showing that he basically cannot physically (or mentally) handle direct confrontational situations AT ALL MSN-NEWS
DUBUQUE, Iowa — The day began with Donald Trump going to war with the top conservative news outlet in America. It wrapped up with Trump’s security dragging the most prominent Hispanic journalist in the country from his press conference for asking pointed questions about immigration — before letting him back in. In between, the campaign barred the state’s leading newspaper from the same event over a previous grievance.
Tuesday was just another day in the Trump campaign, with the candidate engaged in a never-ending series of feuds with reporters, campaign rivals, and critics. He kept it all simmering once again with tweets, press releases, and trash talk.
“Should we be nice or not?” Trump asked a standing-room crowd of thousands at an event hall in here as he kicked off his speech.
“Noooooooooo!” came the reply from the audience.
And so Trump launched into a winding speech in which he called Secretary of State John Kerry a “schmuck” for signing off on the Iran nuclear deal and blamed America’s economic woes on “stupid people” negotiating trade deals. He took special joy in Jeb Bush’s recent struggles to defend the phrase “anchor baby,” which Trump has used frequently in arguing the 14th Amendment shouldn’t grant citizenship to children of illegal immigrants.
“[He’s] taking tremendous criticism for using the term anchor baby,” Trump said. “No one cares when I use it because they expect it.”
He closed by tweaking CNN over their ratings, threatening to charge them a $10 million charitable donation for the privilege of hosting him in their debate next month. Then the audience shuffled out to Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It!”
Minutes before the speech, Trump finished a half-hour press conference in a nearby room where Univision anchor Jorge Ramos — a leading Trump critic — tried to ask a pointed question about Trump’s call to deport all undocumented immigrants. Trump refused to respond.
“Go back to Univision,” he said. “Sit down, you weren’t called.”
As Ramos continued to try and ask his question, a stocky white bodyguard with a buzz cut closed in and physically pushed him out of the room. Problem solved.
“He’s obviously a very emotional person, so I have no problem with it,” Trump told reporters when asked about the incident.
Someone in the campaign must have realized that having the most-watched Spanish-language anchorman being tossed out of an event might not help with Trump’s pledge to win the Hispanic vote — a recent Gallup poll found him at a net negative 51% approval rating, 44 points worse than any other Republican — and Ramos returned for a combative exchange with Trump over whether his immigration plan was humane and realistic. By the end, Trump was interviewing Ramos, demanding the journalist answer whether he would deport criminals (he said he would) and asking him to name the amount Trump sued Univision for over a canceled pageant event ($500 million).
It would have made a great story for The Des Moines Register, the top newspaper in Iowa, but their reporter was barred from the event over Trump’s continued displeasure with an editorial by the paper calling on him to leave the race.
Trump’s spat with Ramos (who declined an interview request with msnbc) likely served both of them well with their audiences, but is yet another headache for GOP leaders who have to deal with one more clip in a growing highlight reel of Trump antagonizing Hispanic voters.
Trump’s immigration talk has already dragged rivals to uncomfortable places this month. Last week, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who is fading in a must-win Iowa as Trump rises, said that he opposed birthright citizenship, then told the press he had no position, then clarified that he would not change the Constitution to address the issue. Bush, who opposes ending birthright citizenship, came under fire for using the phrase “anchor baby” — only to earn more condemnations from Asian-American critics after he said he was referring to narrow instances of primarily Asian elites flying to America to give birth.
The immigration issue meanwhile is catnip for Trump voters, who credit the candidate with going further than anyone in the field with his pledge to build a wall, deport all undocumented immigrants, and freeze legal immigration — prescriptions that have even the most conservative candidates in the field balking.
“They come here, they have babies, then they have the right to stay illegally,” Sandy Murray, a 50-year-old account executive from Dubuque told msnbc as she waited in a line that stretched far down the street two hours ahead of Trump’s speech. “We need the money from their handouts for education and veterans.”
The interview was interrupted when a Trump staffer asked if she wanted to stand behind him onstage. Her eyes lit up. “Yes!” she exclaimed.
None of Trump’s rivals have come up with an answer to his unrestrained style. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry staked his campaign on an all-out effort to discredit Trump. Instead, he sank to margin-of-error territory in the polls and, on Tuesday, his prized Iowa chairman Sam Clovis defected to a national role with Trump while complaining to reporters that Perry could no longer pay his staff.
“It’s time to disrupt the status quo!” Clovis told the crowd as he introduced Trump in Dubuque.
Trump tweeted with glee on Tuesday that Sen. Lindsey Graham, another hardcore anti-Trump rival, was down to 4% support in a poll of his native South Carolina. Trump led the field there.
Trump’s speech also came hours after he reignited yet another media war with Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who he previously accused of having “blood coming out of her wherever” when she questioned him about his language towards women in the Aug. 6 presidential debate. In a series of tweets, Trump said she was “off her game” after returning from vacation and — for the second time — quoted supporters who called her a “bimbo.”
Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, who negotiated a truce with Trump after the first Kelly spat, slammed Trump’s “surprise and unprovoked attack” in a statement and requested an apology. A plethora of Fox personalities from Bret Baier to Sean Hannity chimed in with mostly gentle criticism, and Trump issued a statement saying nuts to an apology and boasting about his latest poll numbers.
For most candidates, launching an offensive against the most popular conservative media outlet in the country would be political suicide. But none of this seemed likely to hurt Trump in the eyes of his supporters, who gushed to msnbc about his take-no-prisoners style — even as some delicately suggested that he maybe tone it down sometimes.
“I love the noise he’s making,” Chris Wilson, 38, of Dubuque said.
If the polls are to be believed, Trump’s appeal extends a lot further than his rallies. A raft of surveys in recent days have shown him leading the GOP field nationally, as well as in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, by significant margins, leaving early front-runners like Bush, Walker, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio far behind. Republican strategists who are worried that Trump is a general election loser are starting to get nervous — like, physically shaking nervous — that what seemed like a brief fling in June is turning into a live-in relationship. Everything they throw at him makes him stronger. As the candidate boasted on Tuesday, it’s still “the Summer of Trump” and there’s no guarantee the fall won’t look the same.
Watching the video you want to laugh, but end up feeling awkward and eventually creeped out.
Trump quite literally sics one of his personal body guards on the Reporter, and has him tossed out for interrupting him.
He doesn't even attempt to "handle" it or deal with it... He basically shouts at him at first. Then tries to ignore him. When he cannot ignore him any more, he has Ramos thrown out.
To add to it, the other Press in the room start to turn on Trump after they incident, and he begins to yell at them as well, as though he can't get what all the fuss is about.
This whole escapade will no doubt only cement the approval of the crazed 34% behind Trump right now. Meanwhile, I hope it also further cements any latino in the country to never even consider voting for him,.
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
Trump Declares: ‘I’m Not a Fan of Hitler’
by Jacob Kornbluh
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trump reading
Donald Trump has an important message to share with his fellow Americans.
“I’m not a fan of Hitler,” the Republican presidential front-runner said on Thursday as he addressed supporters in Greenville, South Carolina.
The statement was made in response to a New York Times story that noted Los Angeles radio host Ricardo Sanchez has listeners who refer to Trump as “Hitler” for his harsh remarks on illegal immigrants.
“’Trump, who has dismissed some Mexican immigrants’ — listen to this — ‘as rapists and criminals, or simply put, as Hitler,’ ” Trump said, reading a portion of the article from a print copy he held up.
“Now the Hitler one I’ve never heard of until this morning when I woke up,” he remarked.. “I’m not a fan of Hitler. So now they’ve just added Hitler into it, which is all false, by the way, and they know it.”
Earlier the month, Vanity Fair republished online an interview with Trump in 1990, after he got divorced from his wife, Ivana.
Vanity Fair’s Marie Brenner wrote in the lengthy profile, now available online:
“Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)
Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
The Republican presidential frontrunner was also highly praised by an anti-Semitic former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke,BuzzFeed reported Tuesday.
Duke, who unsuccessfully ran for president as a Democrat in 1988 and served in Congress for one term, said Trump’s rise as frontrunner in the Republican 2016 primaries is because he “understands the real sentiment of America” and his “great sense” of what people want to buy.
But Duke fell short of endorsing Trump, since he remains untrustworthy for his “deep Jewish connections” and support for Israel. But he added, “Although we can’t trust him to do what he says, the other Republican candidates won’t even say what he says. So he’s certainly the best of the lot. And he’s certainly somebody that we should get behind in terms, ya know, raising the image of this thing.”
“Trump has made it very clear that he’s 1,000 percent dedicated to Israel, so how much is left over for America?” Duke added during an interview with the Daily Beast published Wednesday.
When asked Wednesday about Duke’s praise, Trump said he doesn’t need the endorsement and would reject it if needed.
“I don’t need his endorsement; I certainly wouldn’t want his endorsement,” Trump told Bloomberg News. “I don’t need anyone’s endorsement… I would [flat-out reject it] if that would make you feel better.”
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08/27/2015 4:42 PM by Jacob Kornbluh
Next date in a week or so wanted to post this exchange from Reddit on the odd world we live in.
Reddit wrote:
Headline:Donald Trump: Kentucky clerk broke ‘the law of the land’ by blocking gay weddings
[–]Marmalade_the_Dog
Good lord, what the fuck is wrong with Republicans when Donald Trump is the one making the most sense?
[–]linkprovidor
He just speaks his mind. That means he doesn't filter out sexism, racism, or his raging ego, but he also doesn't try to deny things that are true just for political gain.
The rest of the Republican candidates know what he says (in this case) is true, but also know it's political suicide for them to speak the truth.
He's polling above 35% now, Donald Trump now has a third of vote in the last few polls and I believe he will maintain that through September now.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Based on the polling, I can't see what makes you think Sanders is so likely to win. Clinton has double his polling rating, and unlike Trump that amounts to almost half of the sample group, so Sanders would find it difficult to win via appealing to non-Hillary voters.
And yes, Corbyn is doing well in the UK against many people's expecations, but he was doing well in the polls from the start. He was winning in a labourlist poll before he even got enough nominations to be eligible for the contest.
I'm looking at trends, particularly in certain key states in the Primaries. His support has been going up. Her's has been going down.
Does that mean a Sanders victory is certain? No. Its a long way to go until the Democratic convention. But at the very least, I would say he's a viable competitor.
I certainly hope we get Sanders. From what I know of the candidates at this point, he's the only one aiming to fix some of the systemic problems in our country.
I'm a cis-het white male, and I oppose racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. I support treating all humans equally.
When fascism came to America, it was wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
That which will not bend must break and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.
Dismayed that I hear from well educated people that "Bernie Sanders is the candidate for people that don't understand basic economics," and "Bernie Sander's economic ideas so incomprehensibly bizarre."
This despite the fact that Mr. Sanders hasn't proposed anything that hasn't been tried in true in all other advanced countries for years.
It has been thoroughly drilled into many Americans' brains that socialism (often falsely treated as communism and even Nazism)=bad, to the point that its probably a matter of faith, seen as self-evident rather than requiring evidence.
The thing is, this isn't the average joe here. People that regularly consume and discuss political and economic issues are saying this. MBA educated folk.
Some even say things like "Everything he's saying sounds so appealing, until I recall back to my basic economics teaching and realize that everything he's saying is unworkable."
America's fear of Socialism is just a sad hold over from the Cold War that they really need to get over. They need to stop demonizing it and realize that socialized programs such as actual universal health care and the like can really do a lot of good for Americans.
There wouldn't happen to be a post any where (I couldn't find one) on the forums explaining the American electoral process in any kind of detail would there? I could look it up but I really enjoy the insights of a lot of the commenters on Star Destroyer and I just find the American electoral process completely alien compared to the Canadian parliamentary election process.
Lord MJ wrote:The thing is, this isn't the average joe here. People that regularly consume and discuss political and economic issues are saying this. MBA educated folk.
Some even say things like "Everything he's saying sounds so appealing, until I recall back to my basic economics teaching and realize that everything he's saying is unworkable."
Even very smart people can believe some very stupid things.
Sig images are for people who aren't fucking lazy.
By the by...
For anyone out there even a LITTLE worried that Trump will somehow whip up enough support for winning...
Real Clear Politics, THE authority's on polling has Hillary pretty much winning EVERY head to head match up against Trump. Even Faux news has her up by 5 points
Praying is another way of doing nothing helpful
"Congratulations, you get a cookie. You almost got a fundamental English word correct." Pick
"Outlaw star has spaceships that punch eachother" Joviwan Read "Tales From The Crossroads"! Read "One Wrong Turn"!
Sgt_Artyom wrote:There wouldn't happen to be a post any where (I couldn't find one) on the forums explaining the American electoral process in any kind of detail would there? I could look it up but I really enjoy the insights of a lot of the commenters on Star Destroyer and I just find the American electoral process completely alien compared to the Canadian parliamentary election process.
In the year prior to the year of the election, both parties have people throw their names into the ring to be nominated, and we get about 6-12 months of silly season. Starting about 13 months before the election, people outside of political junkies start to pay attention, and the lines are drawn. Iowa's caucus (physical headcounting of people by standing in different corners of the rooms) goes first, followed a week later by New Hampshire's primary (standard pick one secret ballot). South Carolina is next, followed by Nevada, and then all of the rest in an order that changes from cycle to cycle. These contests are for the party delegates who will vote in the party conventions in the summer before the election. While there are delegates to the convention that are not voted on by the public (the "Super Delegates"), they make up a minority of the delegates to the political conventions (but do provide a mechanism for the party establishment to influence the outcome).
At the convention, the parties vote on the official party platform, and the nominees for President and Vice President. There has not been a serious challenge to a presumptive nominee (the person with the largest number of delegates) since 1980 when Teddy Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter (1976 saw Reagan challenge Ford at the convention). Once the candidates are nominated, you move on to the general election where you compete for states to get the most electoral votes.
"I believe in the future. It is wonderful because it stands on what has been achieved." - Sergei Korolev
Also, it's worth pointing out that when states elect delegates those delegates almost always vote for the candidate they're supposed to, they aren't really showing up at the convention and deciding who to vote for. In the modern era the delegates are just a convoluted way of counting the popular vote in each state, you could get rid of them entirely with little or no impact on the final result.
(The same is true for the presidential election, it's an awkward relic of a system that made a lot more sense 200 years ago.)
I heard that this election could cost up to $5 billion USD and that just seems to be an entirely ludicrous amount of money to me considering the last Canadian election cost $292 million and this one is projected at $375 million and that's for all the political parties involved. Aside from paying staffers and for things like advertisements, what in the hell would the candidates need that much money for?
Seems a little unfair if you need to be insanely rich or have the backing of the wealthy to even stand a change at election.
Do keep in mind that Canada is a much smaller country in terms of population- it has roughly ten percent of America's population. If America's election budget was the same as Canada's relative to population, it would be about four billion by your numbers.
