kcar wrote:
Trump and Clinton are awful for different reasons, but both awful. They don't have to be equal, don't have to be equivalent to be beneath my threshold of acceptable. Neither has earned my vote, and I owe it to neither. I don't need to put them in order of awfulness and frankly don't care; unacceptable is all I need.

We've had decades to see what the characters of these two are. Those decades have revealed them both to be composed of naked ambition and little else. I think we are both on the same page about Trump's failings. I could catalog Hillary;s misdeeds but it's already late and I don''t have all night. If you'd like to get a glimpse of Hillary Clinton's character flaws I recommend Christopher Hitchens' No One Left to Lie To. it focuses more on her husband's presidency but has a lot to say about her as first lady, White House powerbroker, and senator.

On many issues that matter to me she has been a weathervane, changing her positions (can't really say if she has opinions) with the polls. She has been repeatedly propped up into offices she wasn't qualified for or particularly good at, groomed for her roles by an oligarchy she pretends to oppose while sucking up to it to build money and influence.

Again, you don't need to convince me that Trump is awful—you need to convince me the Hillary isn't just not awful but worthy of the responsibility she is seeking. And Putin doesn't need Trump's invitation to hack her emails; if he hasn't read all of them already then a whole mess of spies must be shoveling muck in Siberia as punishment. The email scandal is only the latest of many many examples of her putting her own ambition ahead of the country's interests.

I agree that local politics is a great place to start. I don't agree with pretty much any of Bernie Sanders goals or prescriptions; believe it or not there are people with principles who aren't leftists. And we really need to ask ourselves how it got to this point, how it got so bad that these two self-obsessed oligarchs are the best our two incumbent parties could do. It says a lot about the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of both but I think the public bears most of the blame for that.

Our obsession with celebrity over substance, identity politics, and short attention spans are a good part of it. Again it's late and I've had a long day. If you actually want to discuss this that would make a good topic for another day. If you just want to plug for your candidate...give it a rest. I've heard it. Got one I actually like and won't be ashamed to vote for.

 Lazy8 wrote:

 
So am I to understand that the gist is that both are "cut from the same cloth" and on par in terms of how bad they are? If so, then it's you who has been fooled. There is only one candidate whose accumulated actions and rhetoric is causing serious erosion of support from their own party if not outright support for the opposition candidate.

It's fine to dislike both candidates but you can't paint them with the same brush.

 

 Lazy8 wrote: 
"Hillary is straight-up lying. She knows the truth and does not want you to go there. That there are a lot of people who are willing to pretend they believe her, willing to dissemble and shade the truth and obfuscate and help spew octopus ink in the water to cover for her and, yes, straight-up lie as well makes it not one whit better."

Lazy8, you seem to equate Trump and Clinton as two awful evils. Maybe your reading of Hillary's sins is deeper than mine. As you see it, Hillary is lying about what exactly?  If it's a matter of whether there were highly classified emails on her server, I can't be bothered to muster up a fart about that. If she and/or her staff used the State Department connections to further the interests of the Clinton Foundation, I'm sorry but that doesn't rock my world. I don't really care about the killing she made in cattle futures before Chelsea was born. Or Whitewater. 

I get really irritated at her attempts to keep trying to spin the email server controversy. Admit it was a dumb thing to do and move on. Announce a set of standards for behavior and transparency that you and your staff will adhere to and stick to those standards. Earn the trust of Americans. 

Clinton didn't swindle honest people out of their money or hard-earned wages, though. Trump has done so, time and again. Trump doesn't just prevaricate or split hairs like Hillary does—Trump contradicts himself on major positions so many times and to such a significant degree each time that you don't know whether he's lying or suffering from split personality disorder. 

Clinton's lies aren't going to get people killed. Trump's lies will. 

I was never going to vote for Trump, but when he invited Putin in so many words to hack into the servers of Clinton or the State Department I stopped even trying to understand why anyone would still support this man. That Trump would invite RUSSIA to meddle in our elections is inexcusable. I would not muster a drop of spit for this man if he were on fire. 

So no, I don't think Trump and Clinton are two different poisons with the same degree of deadliness. Clinton is a very bright woman with a lot of baggage and occasionally flawed judgment. Trump is a mentally ill bigoted narcissist who has no idea of how unprepared he is or how much damage he's already done to his own party and to his country. He is a cancer-like symbol of the worst parts of America. 

One good op-ed piece I read recently suggested that people get involved with local and state politics to effect change. I agree. If you agree with Bernie Sanders' goals, you have to start at the grassroots level and keep building support over many years. The failings of Trump and Clinton should move us to force our political parties to present better candidates. 

 kcar wrote:
If I ask you which way to the post office and you send me down the wrong street unintentionally  you're mistaken.

If you walked right past it on your way to meet me then send me down the wrong street you're inattentive as well as mistaken.

If you deny there is such a thing as a post office, never was one, but vote for you and you'll build such a post office you're just making shit up because you haven't got a clue where the post office is and you want to look like you have some kind of answer.

If you send me down the wrong street on purpose because you really don't want me to go to the post office, then when you're caught have your staff scramble to find out if there's a place that sells fence posts somewhere and claim that's what you thought I meant and you just got confused, even tho the fence post store is right next to the post office then you're a liar.

Both of the latter two are dishonest. Which is worse?

You know Trump is talking out his ass; maybe he believes it when he says it and maybe he doesn't but if he's fooling you it's because you want to be fooled.

Hillary is straight-up lying. She knows the truth and does not want you to go there. That there are a lot of people who are willing to pretend they believe her, willing to dissemble and shade the truth and obfuscate and help spew octopus ink in the water to cover for her and, yes, straight-up lie as well makes it not one whit better.

To me it's a meaningless difference. Strychnine or cyanide? Boiled to death or torn apart by dogs? Stalin or Pol Pot? Pick one! You have to! Do it for the children!

I will not let one of these cretins hold me hostage to the other.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
I support Hillary Clinton but my God she is pathetically bad at splitting hairs, prevaricating and yes lying. 

For some reason, lawyers think it's OK to misinterpret communications with other people. For instance, if you asked Joe (a lawyer) if he'd seen Jane, Joe would think it perfectly OK to say "no"—even though he'd heard (but not seen) Jane in the next room only moments ago. Most of us would understand that you were trying to find Jane and didn't care whether Joe's knowledge of Jane's whereabouts came from his eyes or ears. And yes, you'd have a right to be annoyed with Joe if you found out that Joe was splitting hairs about Jane's whereabouts. This is one reason why people don't like lawyers.

Hillary has that tendency to prevaricate. Apparently she thinks that she can thread a definitional needle or re-phrase a statement to her advantage without pissing people off. Notice her attempt to re-phrase FBI Director Comey's statement as excerpted above. Unfortunately, she's inept at this kind of thing and many Americans have been so conditioned to the right-wing's demonization of Hillary that many instances of her prevarications get turned into "Hillary lies again." 

Is she the most honest politician? No. But the last paragraph in that Jacob Sullum excerpt that you posted—the one that I've boldfaced—puts things in proper perspective. Hillary is a shifty politician. Trump is a pathological liar and a narcissist with delusions of grandeur.

I'll stick with Hillary, thanks.

FWIW the New York Time's column The Upshot gives Hillary an 86% chance of winning. 

DaveInVA wrote:
The judges are tallying up their scores...

Trump Trounces Clinton in the Lie Olympics

The Democrat's deceptions are tedious, while her opponent prevaricates with panache.

Jacob Sullum| August 10, 2016

 kcar wrote: 

Hillary still has him beat in that area of expertise:

 aflanigan wrote: 
I could only get through three minutes or so...

Here's a testament to Trump's warp-speed bullshittery and self-contradiction. I'm pretty sure he's lost track of where he stands on most issues:

Here's 6 Unbelievable Minutes of Donald Trump Directly Contradicting Himself

 kcar wrote: 
Actually given the scale, I think we need a different meme from Dumpster Fire or Trumpster Fire. Something more grandiose (and suggestive of his hyperbole).

How about Casino Collapse? 

A good friend has hit the "nail" on the head, I think.

Trump speaks the language of abuse. It's not what he said; it's your interpretation and/or reaction that's the problem. Abusers feel entitled to do and say whatever they want without consequence. They escalate their tactics because they and their victims acclimate to the current level of abuse, and the abuser doesn't get a rush from it anymore. The twisted game ends when either the victims leave (possibly by dying in the case of domestic abuse) or someone with more power than the abuser intervenes. It's nauseating watching this play out on a national level.

http://boingboing.net/2016/08/08/trump-disagrees-with-every-pos.html

Didn't everyone watch Revenge of the Nerds?  Guys like Trump and the Alpha Betas may initially come off as funny and righteous, but are always revealed for who they truly are. 

From Dan Rather, citizen:

No trying-to-be objective and fair journalist, no citizen who cares about the country and its future can ignore what Donald Trump said today. When he suggested that “The Second Amendment People” can stop Hillary Clinton he crossed a line with dangerous potential. By any objective analysis, this is a new low and unprecedented in the history of American presidential politics. This is no longer about policy, civility, decency or even temperament. This is a direct threat of violence against a political rival. It is not just against the norms of American politics, it raises a serious question of whether it is against the law. If any other citizen had said this about a Presidential candidate, would the Secret Service be investigating?

Candidate Trump will undoubtedly issue an explanation; some of his surrogates are already engaged in trying to gloss it over, but once the words are out there they cannot be taken back. That is what inciting violence means.

 kcar wrote: 
ikr?

 kurtster wrote: 
 

At least you won't find anyone supporting the Taliban in Trump's audiences.  

Can't say the same for Hillary.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Someone should set this to Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter" with an overlay of William Shatner reciting Trump's babblesong:

 

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist  and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, 
OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart 
—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, 
like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the 
smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a 
conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's 
why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went 
there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my 
like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but 
you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would 
have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear 
is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the 
power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of 
what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), 
but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it 
used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I 
would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, 
you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter 
right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about 
another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians  are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.


Years from now, we'll all look back on this craziness with a wistful nostalgia. And younger generations will refuse to believe our tales of Trump.  

 buddy wrote:  
Doesn't buddy's post pretty much sum your attitude to Douchebag Don's daily batshit-crazy antics at this point? 

How are we going to put up with this guy until November?


aflanigan wrote:  
Trumpster fire. 

(Someone has undoubtedly beaten me to this tag   . When you're dealing with this much stupidity, there's a frenzy of creative insults). 
 

an actual Trump sentence

yesh... this is the guy who should have control of America's nuclear weapons. Yeah. 

The lunatic who would be king has - once again - gone WAY around the bend. When are his supporters going to realize what an unstable, unpredictable danger he is? Is this the guy we want to have the nuclear codes? Seriously!? SERIOUSLY!?