R_P wrote: 

Don the Con and the Mob...
The Donald Trump Story You’re Not Hearing About

(...) Unlike its TV competitors, ABC News has raised some questions about Trump’s mob relations. Last December, a Good Morning America piece by the network’s investigative master Brian Ross touched on one tendril: Trump’s relationship with a twice-convicted felon, the Russian émigré Felix Sater, who (along with several other felons) occupied office space in Trump Tower. On air, Ross reported that Donald Trump had testified under oath in a civil lawsuit that Sater “helped develop the Trump SoHo hotel and condominium in New York City.” Online, in a simultaneous piece co-written with Matthew Mosk, Ross noted that in 1991, Sater got into an argument with a commodities broker at the bar of a New York restaurant, smashed a margarita glass and with the broken-off stem, slashed the man in the cheek and neck, breaking his cheek and jaw, severing nerves and lacerating his face and jaw. The victim required 110 stitches.Sater was convicted of first-degree assault and sent to prison in 1993. Then, in 2000, he pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges for running a $40 million “pump and dump” stock scam and for, as Mosk and Ross wrote, “collaborating with members of four New York mob families.” Sater served no time, however, because the FBI testified at his sentencing hearing that he was “an important witness on both mob-related and national security matters.”

To date, Trump has danced away from straight answers about his former associates. In a 2013 video deposition for a civil lawsuit, Trump said: “If he (Sater) were sitting in the room right now, I really would not even know what he looked like.” This, Mosk and Ross noted, from a man who “touts his outstanding memory.” During the same deposition, “when asked about how much he knew about Sater’s past,” Mosk and Ross wrote, “Trump said he knew Sater had ‘got into trouble because he got into a barroom fight which a lot of people do.’” Trump added: “I don’t know him very well, but I don’t think he was connected to the Mafia.”

In his on-air piece, Ross pointed out that the BBC had pressed Trump on why he didn’t tell Sater “You’re fired!” after reports surfaced alleging that the Trump associate had organized crime connections. Trump rose from his chair mid-interview.“I hate to do this, but I do have that big group of people waiting so I have to leave,” he said. With that, he walked out of the room. “Trump later said under oath he did not remember being interviewed by the BBC,” Ross went on. In February, Trump’s then-rival Ted Cruz picked up the Trump-Sater story, but the issue died, at least temporarily, with Cruz’s campaign.

In April, The New York Times picked up the baton with a front-page investigation by Mike McIntire about Trump’s close collaboration with Felix Sater and other investors from the former Soviet Union. In McIntire’s words, “What sort of due diligence Mr. Trump did before jumping in with his new partners is unclear. But he, as well as many others, apparently missed some dark spots on Mr. Sater’s résumé.” (...)

Donald Trump’s Brexit press conference was beyond bizarre

People want to take their country back. They want to have independence, in a sense, and you see it with Europe, all over Europe. You're going to have more than just — in my opinion, more than what happened last night, you're going to have, I think many other cases where they want to take their borders back. They want to take their monetary back.

They want to take a lot of things back. They want to be able to have a country again. So, I think you're going have this happen more and more. I really believe that, and I think it's happening in the United States.

It's happening by the fact that I've done so well in the polls. You look at the recent polling, and you look at the swing states and you see how I'm doing, and I haven't even started my campaign yet, essentially.

 islander wrote: 
If you frame the election as Authority Figure vs Troublemaker, particularly in the wake of how much FOX has framed the emotional tone of the nation into a temper tantrum, then we might indeed have our own catastrophe looming. 

 islander wrote: 
So this was from a few weeks ago.

The Brexit debacle is what happens when the ugly side of populism takes hold.  Everyone is indeed going to feel the pain, but the ones who will really suffer are the poor and the young.  I really feel for the youth of England, this may be another decade lost for them. I wonder if the youth of America are paying attention, and I wonder how much they want to gamble on old people driven by fear and hate.

 sirdroseph wrote: 
If the article's disagreement was with Trump's lack of an expression, that would make sense in this case. I hate the "thoughts and prayers" statements as routine and irrelevant. 
The author's point here, I believe, was that Trump used the setting for self-aggrandizement. Would've been more grown-up for him to keep quiet instead. 

 Steely_D wrote: 
Keep in mind when you are dealing with politicians, expressed is the key word.  Expressed sorrow followed by carefully scripted words to use this and any tragedy as a means to achieve an agenda. I think there should be at least a week moratorium of silence mandated for all elected officials including the President before making a statement following these tragedies.  There is nothing they can say that will not piss off at least half of the population and is actually disrespectful to the victims and their loved ones. 

Donald Trump and the “Amazing” Alex Jones - The New Yorker

Garrison Keillor: The punk who would be president

 steeler wrote: 
Point taken. Most of us have reasons for not participating more in politics, reasons that we should be able to overcome or work around. The ones I hear most are

1) lack of time

2) feelings of impotence in the face of monied, vested and organized interests

3) belief that national politics don't affect someone's daily life

When I hear about so many people working two or more jobs, I can really understand excuse #1. I snicker when I hear pundits come up with involved reasons for voting patterns because most people just don't have time to pay lots of attention to campaigns and politics. A typical voter supports a candidate based largely on a gut reaction that the candidate is the option most closely resembling the voter. That hunch doesn't rely on careful thought and analysis. 

Trump got the nomination by voicing #2 and savaging the canned personalities of everyone else. I don't listen to conservative shock-jocks and pundits but Trump reminds me of a mix between Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern. He called bullshit on the candidates and the entire stilted, preachy campaign process. Someone needed to, frankly. 

I suspect that reason #3 helped Trump, too. The Washington Post and other news organizations keep reporting that Trump's supporters don't expect him to actually build The Wall or keep Muslims out, but they love his blunt anger and statements that he's on their side. I wonder whether many of Trump's supporters think that a President Trump wouldn't be that bad or wouldn't affect their lives even if he was incompetent. They like his yelling but they apparently don't think it's going to cause problems for them.

In terms of fixing things, I don't know how you tackle #1. Many times people say they don't have time when they're really thinking that they don't want to re-arrange their life priorities. People make time for things they care deeply about. My best guess for tackling #2 and #3 is to get people involved in local politics or in grassroots organizations that focus on specific issues, like health care reform or job training/creation or environmental issues. Make them feel empowered about politically addressable issues they care about and that affect their lives. Hopefully their interest and power in local or smaller issues trickle up into influence on the two parties' national agendas. 

Apparently a number of Bernie's supporters are starting grassroots organizations in order to carry on his message. That's brilliant. I hope both parties start taking more direction from voters because both establishments need to get the average American more involved and empowered. 

Final thought: Donald J. Trump actually being Andy Kaufman in disguise would be the greatest comedy act in the history of Western civilization.  

 Steely_D wrote: 
Probably much the same things you are willing to do, or are doing.

I firmly believe that each of us has to look at ourselves and our involvement, or lack of involvement.. It is too easy to lay all the blame on the politicians, the media ,Wall Street, etc. When  we do that, we tend to absolve ourselves of any blame for these problems. We all share the responsibility. We live in an era in which there are abundantly more sources of information than any other time in history.  Excusing  people for not voting based on the claim that they are being bamboozled does not ring true to me.

 

Cash-Strapped Trump Campaign Auctions Chris Christie on eBay

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R Crumb, the Father of Underground Comix, Takes Down Donald Trump in a NSFW 1989 Cartoon | Open Culture

 steeler wrote: 
That's fine, but it immediately invokes the question what are you willing to do?

 Steely_D wrote:

 

I am not willing to give a pass to all of "us"  and lay all the blame on those seeking to game the system. (As in:  I'm ok, and you're ok, it's just these guys over here that are the problem)

 

 Steely_D wrote: 
 
lawyers 
 
 
                                           
  

 steeler wrote: 
I don't think of that as a problem with the same magnitude as: folks go vote without being able to understand what they're voting for/against.

This isn't just about literacy or language - which I think are very important issues. This is not race - this is voting with an understanding of the topic.

But, more obnoxious than that: the inability of people to understand the topic and the consequences of their vote because of deliberate obfuscation. Not only is it an issue of the intent of the law - it's simple grammar that folks without a PhD can understand.
This isn't the fault of the electorate; it's the fault of the folks who craft laws - even down to their verbiage.

I'm always hesitant to vote for or against anything for fear I'm being tricked. Don't you hate Hitler? (Well, yes) Then let's vote to prevent Germans from ever holding office! (What?) But it'll prevent HITLER, man! So I can put you down for the Anti-Hitler law? Thanks.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Multi-party systems, especially those with relative parity among several parties, run the risk of unstable minority governments frequently holding office. A minority government is required (depending on the constitution) to be constantly making compromises with one party or another to retain office.  It may seem at first glance that this is not a problem; possibly even good.  An unfortunate consequence is a splintered political society with little continuum and resulting consistency in policy.  There are unintended consequences to all the compromises and deal-making the ruling coalition must make. Inconsistent foreign policy and international economic policy will provide two examples.  The interwebs reveal lots of scholarship and debate on this subject.

An advantage of a two-party government, especially in our non-parliamentary system, is that the winning party represents a majority of voters. Or close to a majority.  When we have a plurality winner, the third party loser quickly becomes marginalized bcs their party holds few or no seats in Congress.  e.g.  Nader and Perot. 

The two-party system is not ideal, certainly.  But it's durable, reliable, and serves a majority of the population quite well, imo.  The system must continually strive to ward off racism, xenophobia, and many other social and systemic ills.  That is something our two-party system allows quite well. We have a national conversation every four years.  Predictably. Civil Rights progress since WWII has been quite notable, for example. I suggest caution to those who want to see a "dismantling" of our current system. The result of a "dismantling" is not likely to be free of casualties (economic and physical) and with no guarantee of a "good outcome".  We can hope for a "velvet revolution", but how common are they? 

Edit: voters = those citizens who actually cast a ballot.

 steeler wrote: 




Yea, that really gets old. I am just hoping the incredibly high disgust quotient for both candidates is starting to erode that illogical mode of thinking. If not now, when?