Now that Trump is shifting his focus(just a couple of weeks from the election!) to his TrumpTV venture and trying to keep his properties afloat, do any Trump followers feel as if they are being abandoned by their candidate?
I live in California, and given the polls and any credible analysis - it is pure Hillary. So this is a thought exercise.
If California was actually in play, while filling out my ballot I would pause for only one, single reason:
I do not want the Democratic Party owning the Supreme Court. I think that Kelo vs. New London was a horrible allowance of an expansion of the definition of public good, and I fear a return to the use of the Commerce Clause to allow Federal oversight of anything that Congress desires.
I would hope for a strong Senate and Congress to keep the rest of Trump’s highly questionable potential behavior under control - but I wish the next few Supreme Court justices weren’t going to be nominated by Hillary Clinton (and potentially approved by a Democratic Party controlled Senate).
I see absolutely no evidence that Trump is opposed to decisions like Kelo. He has defended the concept of public takings for private gain (he calls “public good.”)
Not really. Ramping up trade wars in an effort to enforce his misguided ideas will not be beneficial, and his tax plans are in reality giveaways to the wealthy, and Trump is the personification of Leona Helmsey’s “only the little people pay taxes”.
As for immigration, what he wants is nothing short of repeating “operation wetback”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/james-comey-testimony/2016/07/james-comey-clinton-not-lie-fbi-225212
I believe this is selection bias in what stories about Trump you are willing to believe are indicative of his character and which you are willing to disregard with cynicism or worse. I do not think Trump is an angel and I am not voting for my the vacant position of my father.
It is possible that Trump simply wants to use the power of the presidency to extend his real estate empire in “darkdivisivedangerous” ways and is simply lying to my face for these purposes, along with his conniving children, Ben Carson, and Newt “Moonbase Mistress” Gingrich. So let me ask you: If I grant you this kind of conspiracy theory, which conspiracy theories about the current political establishment and/or The Other Woman are you willing to grant me? Or has he fooled these people as well? Is he a Sith Lord or something?
Trump may indeed be using my anger at the existing political class for his own benefit. He may on the other hand be just as angry as me at the existing political class. I don’t know. My guess is that a relatively honest but otherwise tough businessman has a lot of ire for the political class.
I understand this criticism and hear it a lot on NPR when it was the meme of the day to attack Trump. Unfortunately I don’t think the public can have it both ways. Either Trump is correct that it is possible such a judge could be biased or—for example—all-white juries for a black defendant are perfectly fine. I do not understand the mindset of a population which insists on diversity in both “race” and “gender” in representation of juries, politicians, CEOs, board members, television, film, video games, and comic books, which then acts shocked SHOCKED that someone would then suggest that people can in fact be biased by their heritage or their heritage-based associations. As far as I can tell the clamor for diversity is precisely because of alleged bias. Personally I don’t know where I stand on the matter, whether such bias is real, historical accident, or unreal but merely perceived, but I do know that even if the bias isn’t real the perception of bias already has real effects. I generally believe people are not biased in this way but I sympathize with those who say it is.
The major talking point regarding Trump’s tax returns has been the insinuation that he doesn’t want to release them because it will reveal that he doesn’t pay significant taxes. This is hardly a matter of abstract principle for pundits, who wouldn’t recognize a principle if it fell out of the sky, landed on their face, and wiggled. He should release them but I understand why someone under IRS audit would not want a nation of potentially hostile armchair-and-real auditors reviewing his tax returns. Do you think it is possible that an already hostile-to-right-wing IRS has now seized the opportunity to make Trump’s audit take longer than usual, or is the IRS just going through the motions as a perfectly upstanding organization? If they are a perfectly upstanding organization, then do you trust them to have, over the decades, correctly audit Mr Trump? Again, I believe Mr Trump should release his returns and I think I understand why he doesn’t without needing to create hypotheses about his state of mind to explain why he hasn’t.
I don’t know if this is true. It seems true. But it is exceptionally rare that my opinion coincides with Microsoft, Oracle, Walt Disney, Republicans, Democrats, Wall Street shills, and economist pundits. If I am to believe Elizabeth Warren, the system is rigged for these people, and the fact that they agree on this matter should be suspicious rather than taken as evidence of underlying fact. On the other hand, perhaps I shouldn’t be so cynical and I should think that just this one time all these people have my best interests in mind. What do you think? Can I leverage your cynicism of Trump’s attitudes at the very same businesspeople in the world? Or is it curiously selective?
Can you be more specific in regards to which statements are cavalier and what risks we’d be taking on that don’t exist now or won’t exist under Clinton?
Well it isn’t a policy statement or campaign platform position. But if you can read into Trump’s intentions from his speech I can do the same with the speech of others.
I never mentioned any “conspiracy theory”-only his own lifelong record. When people start responding to conversations that aren’t actually taking place, I’ve learned it’s usually time to step away.
Judges aren’t juries – judges are specifically trained and expected to put aside any personal bias. A judge with Mexican ancestry should be no more biased against Trump than a white judge would be towards him, unless you believe that some ethnicities are less able to suppress bias as judges than others. And all-white juries aren’t a problem unless there was collusion to specifically prevent black jurors from taking part.
That’s not the major talking point – the major talking point is that there might be information and business ties in his tax returns that could indicate serious conflicts of interest – if he owes a lot of money to, say, a Russian oligarch, then that might indicate a conflict of interest when making decisions that have to do with foreign policy regarding Russia. The no taxes/no charity stuff is just ways to poke, needle, and bait Trump. What’s really concerning are the unknown business ties and debts.
YMMV. I look at data and personal experience, and overwhelmingly in my personal experience, immigrants (whether documented or not) are great people who would make great Americans. There are exceptions, but not many in my experience, and the data supports this from what I’ve seen.
Wondering why we can’t use nukes in conflicts; saying it wouldn’t be a problem if Saudi Arabia, South Korea, or other countries got nuclear weapons; not understanding the nuclear triad; just off the top of my head.
I judge Trump by the specific words he’s used – banning Muslims; judge is biased because of his Mexican ethnicity (implying that white judges wouldn’t be biased); pretending to not know who David Duke is; using far harsher language to denounce President Obama and Hillary Clinton than white supremacists like Duke even when asked specifically about them; etc.
You’ve got zero words from the Democratic party, or a major leader like Obama or Hillary Clinton, regarding whites as the enemies of America. That’s just not a credible position, IMO.
The “other” reason to not release your tax returns is that you are not as rich as you said. And that you may be in crippling debt, or in hock to foreign powers.
With someone else it might not be as relevant. But Donald said “I am really really rich” as part of his appeal to voters. This and “birtherism” are the only reason he gets the traction which leads to the ballot.
Donald may be a criminal in a lot of ways. He has incited, subborned and supported violence for a start.
He has misused the charitable org tax laws. It’s under scrutiny now.
He has asked his supporters to patrol certain areas to prevent “voter fraud” This is a violation of a consent decree that the Republican party was under for over 30 years. There is no significant voter fraud that he is addressing. And his statements “You know where I mean” are offensive and inflammatory.
I was in the anyone but Hillary camp for a long time. She’s elitist and often not entirely truthful.
Trump’s unstable personality and his poor performance in the debates has forced me to reconsider.
Given two rotten and deplorable choices, I voted Hillary. Sigh, I need another shower.
Can it be a good thing when ones political post indicates ones race as part of the argument?
I just have to say that the combination of credulity (That Donald is a virtuous actor and not what he says and does in public. That he will feed and protect you once he gets the power, because you heard it in his voice ) and cynicism (at you know who) is really stunning.
GIGObuster I appreciate that you wish the judgment on whether or not Hillary Clinton lied to the FBI to rest with Comey’s testimony. The matter is not particularly complicated to me.
Did you, Mrs Clinton, expect that as Secretary of State you would be dealing with classified information? GIGObuster, what does she say? —that she didn’t think SoS would deal with this? That it’d only go through the post? Well, she’d have to, otherwise her personal server meant she intended to subvert the lawful channel. Thanks to Congressional testimony we know which questions were not asked of her.
Second, she said she didn’t, but we know now she did. I understand the official story is that she didn’t understand and also bumped her head and forgot a few things and isn’t it weird to have one-item lists that begin with “C”. Perhaps you are content with this story but it reminds me a lot of a kid who blames the broken dish on the cat.
Perhaps Director Comey feels it would simply be too difficult to prove in a court of law. I understand that; I disagree, but I am not a lawyer who would have to prosecute the case. We only got Capone on tax evasion. Would you adopt the position that this is the only crime Capone committed, because nothing else was proven in a court of law? What about the alleged crimes of Whitey Bulger which weren’t proven? How deep does your magnanimity extend? I understand things are difficult to prove, but I would not vote for Capone as President no matter how many times he bumped his head.
I think it is plainly obvious to anyone with the dimmest understanding of the operation of the Federal Government of the United States that the Secretary of State would be privy to and generally be consulted on classified information and as much as I dislike Hillary Clinton’s politics I do not think she is so ignorant. After all, her experience is her favorite part of her run for President. And if I believe her bump-on-the-head story then this is even more disqualifying. (I don’t believe that story, though.) Instead I know she expected to received classified material and I know she intended to keep it on the sly because this is the hypothesis with the least friction in light of how our government works and whether Mrs Clinton is experienced enough to understand our government. Why she intended to subvert these channels, I do not know. Perhaps it was for the common good in ways I’ll never understand until I meet her in heaven and ask her.
I do not. But I am not clamoring for diversity as an intrinsic moral imperative. My position is that Trump is factually incorrect on the matter of this judge’s bias but I do not make it a practice of thinking every person accusing some person or institution of bias be wrong. I understand that Judges are held to a higher standard than your average juror. I also understand that the entire justice system has been charged with bias against people of color. Which way should I have it, iiandyiiii? Suppose you say right now Trump is wrong. What does this imply about the justice system?
I disagree with your interpretation of events and think you have it precisely backwards. I think this is brought up precisely because it represents a point of contention for the narrative that “those rich people don’t pay their fair share, why, just listen to Warren Buffet.” I think this narrative is of significant importance to Trump’s political opponents and is not merely a diversionary tactic to send Trump on a twitter tirade for the lulz. It may not impress you but it seems to get the most play on the radio. You can see in this very thread the continued point that Trump is merely doing all this for political gain. I am sure you are not in such a camp, but the camp of people that worry about Trump’s debts seem very small.
You have said this twice as if I disagreed with it. One might get the impression that I have disagreed with it by your responses. But I have not. My point is not about immigrants as people but immigration laws.
For worrying about his specific words you’ve been rather, er, cavalier about your paraphrases. But going on a point-by-point of this seems diversionary. You view these episodes as damning, and I view them as nearly devoid of content in the framing you’ve just given them.
I don’t know what it implies about our justice system, but what Trump said demonstrates to me that he has racist beliefs (or a willingness to say racist things, regardless of his beliefs) about people of Mexican heritage. Considering how incredibly damaging racism has been to America through our history, I find that far more of a negative trait than anything Hillary Clinton has done in terms of being president.
I don’t think this is true, but we’re probably just going to continue to disagree on this. I think by far the greatest worry from voters and from the media about Trump’s tax returns is that he might have ties and debts to unsavory international characters.
What am I cavalier on? He specifically said he would ban Muslims from entering the country. He may have revised it later, but that’s what he said, explicitly. He explicitly said the judge shouldn’t be in charge of his case based on his heritage. He explicitly claimed to not know who David Duke was, even though he had specifically criticized Duke in the Reform party 15 years before. He has used far harsher language to describe Obama and Clinton than Duke and other white supremacists. These are all facts – I’m not editorializing with these assertions.
I also appreciate your civil responses, Erislover. We don’t often get new people who aren’t raving and completely closed off to other perspectives.
Regarding Clinton’s email use, and based on your post above, you are aware that she had two email addresses, aren’t you? She has a .gov email address for government business and the private server was for personal emails. I imagine that the SoS gets A LOT of email, so it’s not surprising that some wound up on her private server. I’m actually surprised it was as few as it was. And given the multiple investigations of her, I’m not surprised that she wanted to keep her personal email off government servers.
That said, I’ve never been enamored of Hillary. She’s too corporatist and political for my taste. I do think she attempted to spin the situation into something for which she couldn’t be faulted. However, that’s just typical politician stuff and I don’t find the level of offense to be grievous; a tempest in a teapot.
How much “spam” does the SecState receive? By which I mean, ordinary and mundane daily matters that are referred to her office but handled by subordinates? How often does she glance at the heading and conclude that the subject matter does not require her attention. And, therefore, she did not read it.
We were never advised as to the importance of these “classified” nuggets of info. She claims she does not remember any cavalier treatment of security, perhaps she doesn’t remember because she didn’t read every single one. Don’t think she could have, as a practical matter.
To clarify, as **Sinaptics **did, Hillary had a separate process for handling classified information. The email server was intended for non-classified and personal emails. 3 emails were (accidentally, I presume) sent to her personal email. All 3 were mislabeled, that is, the marker required to identify them as classified was not included in the email header, so it’s reasonable that she didn’t realize someone had sent her classified information to the wrong email address.
When her work emails were requested, she hired a law firm to review her emails, delete the personal, non-work emails, and forward only the work-related emails.
Wait, if one single person lies, that’s a conspiracy now? The belief that Trump is a habitual liar is not a conspiracy theory in any sense.
Agreed - but I still trust Republican nominees over ones from the Democratic party. Far from perfect, but again - that is the ONLY thing I see as a positive with Trump.
Since it was such a big deal to people I have given this matter a lot of thought and the only conclusion I came to is that there is an extremely fine hair in US politics on this matter.
This is true. Your phrasing was far more incendiary to my ears.
Yes, he did revise it later. It sounds like he heard significant, meaningful dissent and he responded immediately.
My recollection was that there was also the issue of the association the Judge was a part of. I do not have these things handy so I had to look it up. Politifact I guess passes for a cite here: “The group’s bylaws state, ‘The purpose and goal of this association is to promote the interests of the Latino communities throughout the state and the professional interests of the membership.’” You can check the article here:PolitiFact | Trump wrongly casts California lawyers group as strongly pro-Mexican. Of particular interest is the idea that judges were biased against latinos and people with “spanish-sounding surnames.” I wonder what your ire for these people accusing judges of bias would have been in 1977. Don’t they know judges are special people? How fine this hair must be. Soon, I suppose, we’ll finally be bald, if we don’t invent a new class of sorites paradoxes where judges enter quantum states of biased/unbiased over time and space in matters our abstract algebra is not yet up to task for. (Finally, an application of the monster vertex algebra! 
)
This is a curious reading of the events. Yes, Trump does not like Duke or white supremacists, as far as we both see from earlier times. When asked about a specific event, which Trump was unfamiliar with, Trump did not immediately say “Well Duke is a huge racist so anything he does up to and including eating broccoli must be bad, I DISAVOW.” Then the reporter of course did not care to repeat his question about what Trump was supposed to be upset about and Trump simply hedged. To be clear: you know Trump doesn’t like Duke and racist people and has specifically said so and you are willing to accept this as a fact worthy of mention but then when asked about some event he wasn’t clear on he was supposed to go on a tirade against David Duke because the reporter dropped his name? Is this your position, specifically, that he wasn’t cavalier enough in his position on David Duke, which you yourself were already clear on? If not, can you please clarify it for me? Because to a first approximation this is not even guilt by association.
I am not aware of this. Can you explain in more detail?
If Politifact is something that can be trusted as a source, then how about this OP from a current thread about their newest findings?
Neither to me, if we want to claim that we are a nation of laws… Well, it is like Bugs Bunny said in Baseball Bugs (1946)
"Umpire: Yerrr out!
Gas-House Gorillas batter: I’m out?
The Statue of Liberty: [rapidly] **That’s what the man said, you heard what he said, he said that, you…!
**
Bugs Bunny: [rapidly] **That’s what the man said, he said that, that’s what he said, he really said that, that’s what he said…!"
**
Oh, and: Go Cubs!!!