SeriousLee wrote: 
That is a good thing, that means you are really looking.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
That was my first thought. It can be scary to leave your eyes open when you turn your gaze to the mirror. That, i know.

 SeriousLee wrote: 
Indeed to that, but my point was that there are lot of people with open eyes but they looking at everyone but themselves and ultimately the answer has to come from within..

 bokey wrote: 
Good Lord no bokey, you should know be better than that!

 sirdroseph wrote: 
Indeed. Working together is the only way we can achieve true progression. And the man looking in the mirror needs to open his eyes for that to happen.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
By electing the lying,supportive wife of a misogynistic sexual predator?

Please read these articles, they are well written, important and both written by people who do not support Trump and have no illusions as to who he is (and neither do many people that do support Trump):

How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind

 

Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans

 

Oh and to avoid the inevitable condescending beration towards me I would like to make it perfectly clear that I would not vote for Trump with your vote.    Just take Micheal Jackson's advice and look at the proverbial "man in the mirror".   The only true social progression can take place from within our own hearts.

 marko86 wrote: 
At this point, Trump and Clinton supporters are absolutely convinced that their candidate is superior, committed to their needs and better for the country as a whole. I've stated repeatedly (and occasionally quite obnoxiously) that I believe Hillary has more experience, character and vision than Trump but I probably haven't budged kurtster's support for Trump one inch. 

Trump and Clinton's pasts may provide an indication of their fitness to lead but those pasts don't matter that much to the lives of voters today and over the next four years. I know it's ridiculous to ignore past mis/deeds and focus on the candidates' platforms  but consider these two points: 

1. We're not electing a dictator. A President brings in a whole new cabinet and appointed officials. S/he faces factions within his/her own party and a determined opposition, both of which will shape policy directions. A President's extreme positions tend to get moderated, watered down, compromised or just killed. Those are the checks and balances working in our government. 

Neither candidate is going to be able to keep all of their campaign promises. Neither candidate's administration is going to play out as advertised on the campaign trail. I don't have much faith that forces working on a President Trump would make him an effective or popular leader but they would help him avoid the biggest possible blunders and excesses. I think a reasonable opponent of Clinton would say the same thing about a Clinton administration. 

2. The agendas of either administration are going to affect you and me far, far more than Trump's treatment of people who don't look like him or Clinton's penchant for privacy/secrecy. Rather than getting all amped up about the personality of the candidate you oppose, why not look at the proposed policies of that candidate and those of your preferred candidate to assess their impact on the country and your life? 

Do the policies of the candidates make sense? Are they practical? How much will they cost? Which policies or programs will suffer or lose priority if a candidate has sufficient power to get things done? Who will benefit if a proposed policy goes into effect? 

Again, I'm biased (most of us are this point. Maybe Ken Bone's red sweater is crippling his ability to form an opinion). Most of the analyses that I've read of Trump's policies conclude that they will not be effective or politically viable. The analyses also conclude that some of Trump's policies will have an effect diametrically opposed to what he promises (the tax reform plan in particular comes to mind). Some analyses of Clinton's agenda criticize the unintended effects of her policies (for instance, her plan to reign in drug costs and make college education affordable). Reading policy analyses will not give you clear-cut answers that prove your candidate is The Savior. But you will get a better sense of what's coming down the pike that will affect your life. And that's a lot more important than all the scrutiny of the candidates' pasts. 

Frankly, this kind of attention to policy detail is boring compared to reading about the monster you must stop on election day. But if you're unhappy with the state and direction of the country, you'd better pay attention to what's being promised and what will actually get done.  

 kurtster wrote: 

Wow, talk about your straw man arguments! It would seem to me that trump is both Absolutely corrupt and absolutely misogynistic , considering all the evidence,(but only Sith's deal in absolutes)  I think this piece nicely sums up the double standard.

Bill Clinton cheats on his wife. Impeach him. Trump proudly brags about sexual assault (and has cheated on his wives). Elect him. Hillary oversaw the department of state while 4 people died in an embassy attack. Put her in jail. 2 Republicans were in office while over 200 people died in embassy attacks. No problem. Immigrants don't pay taxes. Round them up and kick them out. Trump doesn't pay taxes. He's a business genius. Hillary's foundation only spent 87% of their donations helping people. She's a crook. Trumps foundation paid off his debts, bought sculptures of him, and made political donations to avoid investigations while using less than 5% of funds for charity (and he got shut down by NY State). So savvy... Put him in the white house. Trump made 4 billion dollars in 40 years, when an index fund started at the same time with the same "small loans" he received would be worth $12 billion today... without a trail of bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits and burned small business owners. He's a real business whiz. Hillary took a loss of $700k. She's a criminal. Trump is the first candidate in the modern era not to release his tax returns, and took a billion dollar loss in 1 year. Genius. Hillary takes responsibility for private email servers and apologizes. Not credible. Trump denies saying things (on the record) he actually said (on the record), he's just telling it like it is.

Your arguments are thin. Your ignorance of reality is shocking. Your double-standards are offensive, and your willingness to blindly support him and recycle the rhetoric is absurd. Your opinion is not fact. Your memes are not news articles. And your hypocrisy is not a platform.

Alex Schiller

Since it seems to be coming down to character more than anything else ...

Which is worse when it comes to governing ... being absolutely corrupt or possibly misogynistic ? 

What is ironic about this whole thing is it seems Bill Clinton and Trump have a lot in common regarding their personal lives, Main difference is Clinton is a hypocrite with a double life because in his political, public persona he is actually somewhat of a feminist, Trump is just a straight up Misogynist.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
With the retreat into separate but equal, we are creating / recreating subdivisions and factions that all have their particular single focus or purpose.  That being said, in this world of binary choices, they eventually have to pick one of those offered to support / jump on their bandwagon.  Then work it backwards and put into play the guilt by association factor to deconstruct of the binary choices.

But how far do we take it ?  You can't acknowledge everybody just as you cannot disavow everyone.  

Extreme example ...

Cannibals.  While illegal, they exist.  Are they worth the time of day to even acknowledge their existence ?  But they have a problem with their diet.  Too boring, the same old boring white meat, day after day.  They are driven to find some variety.  How better to seek that end ?  Support open borders of course.  So they get together and have a meeting to choose who to support in the coming election.  The choice is clear.  So they decide to pick the candidate who dreams of open borders, cuz the other one wants to seal off the border and limit their food choices.

Now I ask, speaking of monsters, who wants the support of cannibals ?  Is it really necessary to disavow the cannibals, have we reached that point ?  With the gotcha mentality, yes.  So if you don't go out of your way to immediately disavow the cannibals, you are suddenly pro cannibal and unelectable.

I could do this with polygamists and make it really politically incorrect by dividing polygamists into two groups, Muslim and Mormon.  One is politically cool while the other is not.

If Roman Polanski supported Hillary, no big deal.  But if he supported Trump, well shit howdy, the howling would never end.

Take two aspirin ...  

I heard that Donald Trump got at least one new celebrity endorsement today, from Bill Cosby.

 Beaker wrote: 
Yes to all of this but my point, circuitously made by me if at all, is that the headline "Millions of people disagree with your political views. That doesn't make them moral monsters" is correct, but that that doesn't mean there are no moral monsters. If the moral monster du jour disagrees with you, and the candidates that monster supports don't take quick and decisive action to distance themselves from that monster and that monster's position, then it is not much of a leap to the conflation addressed by the headline that those candidates supporters are or agree with or also support moral monsters.

I hurt my brain. 

 Beaker wrote: 
Which decade do you suppose it will be when conservatives decide that relitigating old political battles that were lost long ago is a nonstarter politically?

From one of my favored writers, Joe Lansdale.

Why My East Texas Neighbors are Voting for Trump

Thing is, the support of Trump in Texas — and I speak specifically of my region, East Texas — goes beyond the smart and the not so smart, the educated and the uneducated. It is more a result of what I like to call the happily stupid; the ones who hold stupid views by choice, not due to lack of intelligence, but due to a kind of tribalism. Facts that interfere with their version of the world are there to be ignored. It’s like putting a hat on a pig and insisting the porker is your Uncle Frank, contrary to all other evidence.

Trump has provided a dark, dank hole into which these folks can dump whatever it is they’re mad about. Even contradictory views, since Trump frequently changes viewpoint in midsentence, can happily nest there, swelling and breeding like poison fungus.

Most of what Trump is selling shouldn’t convince a distracted 12-year-old, and certainly it’s hard to see how a conniving real estate tycoon represents the average person, but those are the people he has made the greatest inroads with. It certainly isn’t due to his sterling personality. He always seems like the mean little boy whose last fun moment was beating his pet hamster to death with a chair leg.

 kurtster wrote: 
Thanks for the butt-hutt/hurt clarification. I'll take your word that you didn't call me that. Someone did. It's really pointless now. I apologize for getting into a flame war with you and accusing you of being a shill. You have valid points about Trump, Clinton and the election that deserve my serious consideration. 

I'm also weary of the Clintons. I haven't seen Juanita Broaddrick's recent discussions of her claim that Bill raped her, but I've seen an older one and it put a chill in my spine. I tend to believe right off the bat women who claim rape , especially when they appear in emotional agony when talking about the incident as Juanita has. That video made me think, "Christ, was/is Bill a psychopath?" I'm also skeptical of their rapid accumulation of wealth since Bill left office: it looks like they cashed in many favors. 

I understand your desire to change or stop the status quo. But kurtster, the status quo will remain in very good condition even if Trump wins or Clinton goes to jail in her first term. The federal government (hell, most governments) is a thriving exchange or marketplace trading in power, money, influence and alliances. Voting in a "maverick" is like jailing street-level drug dealers: there may temporary change, but the demand and supply of the product aren't affected in the long-run. If Trump wins, it will take him a long time to figure out how Washington works and that he will never have powers like a king. Without party support and some concessions to the status-quo on his part (i.e. playing ball), Washington will isolate Trump and work around him. That's what happened to Carter. Bernie Sanders and his talk of revolution would also have been gently bundled off to a quiet corner. If you keep talking about revolution and smashing the marketplace after you've been elected, you can't get anything done in the marketplace. 

You have every right to demand change. I think that status quo can't continue: too many people are being left behind and without a political voice. A lot of people have made great money by turning the federal money spigot their way. This guy  for instance has written some great (and dense) pieces on how trade lawyers have captured trade deals for themselves and allies, in turn hurting US manufacturing.

Average voters like you and me have to hammer at our Congressmen and Senators about what we want them to do. Bill and Hillary are like other top-level politicians: they triangulate and alter their positions to suit popular opinion and gain political support. Bill likely didn't want to welfare reform legislation that was as strict as the bill he signed into law but he had to accommodate Republicans on some issues like giving welfare money to states in block grants (which let states spend the money on non-welfare matters). He signed DOMA to avoid the humiliation of having the GOP override his veto and to get its support on other matters.

You point to Hillary's Wikileaked stuff and it's possible that she's misled the public (I haven't read much about the leaked stuff) but like many politicians she says nice vague things about immigration to one group

"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere."

and different (but also vague things) to another. (Did she also ask for puppies and rainbows in that speech?)

HRC is not the devil. She is a clumsy and greedy politician. Clinton needs public scrutiny and pressure to be honest and open. She will shift her positions to reach a working compromise. Bernie forced her to do it on healthcare and college education. A healthy GOP will rein her in and pull her to the right.  

Wrapping this up: I don't think Trump knows how to work with people in politics. Mitt Romney found out the hard way that being a successful CEO has little to do with being a successful governor but he got stuff done. OTOH Trump is accelerating the collapse of the GOP dramatically and is losing allies left and right. Trump wants to burn the house down...and then what?

 kurtster wrote: 
Oh, okay. Then the difference between fiction and actual assault.

 BlueHeronDruid wrote: 
I would bet that she would disagree with that.  Strongly disagree.