I don’t dispute people’s feelings. Reasonable or unreasonable, people’s fears are real and often immediate and indisputable. And even unreasonable fears are usually not irrational fears.
I don’t know where Trump’s trigger finger is supposed to point, though. He’s made no overt threats to any nation on Earth, unless the fear is that he’d use nuclear warfare as a bargaining chip in trade deals. Not sure radioactive cardamom seeds are worth purchasing when you win that one, though.
For those that think Trump is simply a greedy, cold, calculating ne’er-do-well, nuclear war is hell on real estate value and definitely against his best interests in many nations. Except perhaps Russia.
Oh, but Trump is allegedly Putin’s pawn and so wouldn’t attack Russia with a nuke. I think he knew a guy who knew a guy who liked Putin once, terrible.
So, I guess… nuking ISIS… somewhere?
“I don’t want Trump to have access to nuclear weapons” is at once weirdly specific (I don’t want my own mother, og bless her, to have access to nuclear weapons) and yet remarkably vague. Romney talked up how scary Russia was, only to be chastized by Obama, but then the russophobes are back in Clinton. I mean at least there you can see who Clinton is supposed to nuke in some petty revenge for interfering in the elections which by the way you should trust and aren’t rigged but Russia’s bad ok.
You know why I read this as a racist statement? Simple: it’s because it’s far too similar to one that says “I mean, I’m not saying all illegal immigrants are bad. In fact, some of them are my friends!”
Substitute “all illegal immigrants” for any race you like. Sound familiar?
Also: Trump’s wording was a tiny bit worse.
Overall your justification for your vote is one of the most lucid ones I’ve read. Congrats, I guess. But, as in many other editorials justifying their vote for Trump, I believe most people with actual brains are making a mistake. They are projecting what they wish Trump should be on the actual turd…sorry Trump. An objective reading of his many, many actions (sorry to dredge this up again): the Khan incident,the “lynching” of the Brooklyn Five, the speech which started his campaign and even little things like this “letter of condolence” to John Travolta (originally posted on Trump University’s blog, currently courtesy of the WayBack Machine) make me believe he’s a horrible person.
Added to that is that each time he was shown one of his incidents, his answers manage to make the situation even worse, which show me he’s very, very incompetent at what he’s doing right now and which give me no promise of him ever getting better at what is an even more difficult job. And why? Well… he blocked his own campaign from doing opposition research! That’s stupid, that is.
In other words: on the one hand you have an incompetent politician asshole trying to get elected as top politician.
On the other hand you have an overprepared, career politician asshole (YMMV) trying to get elected as top politician.
To be honest: I would prefer the overprepared, career politician asshole.
I did expect you to answer my question because I thought we were having a good faith discussion.
Hillary Clinton unknowingly received 3 emails which contained classified information. All three emails lacked the marker in the header indicating they contained classified information. Given that, in general, when handling classified information she followed the protocols for handling that information, it is clear this was a mistake and not deliberate. It is only a crime if the behavior is deliberate, so this was not a crime.
I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think having more than one phone is a crime. I hope so, given I have 3.
Prior to the subpoena she hired a law firm to review her emails, delete her personal emails (which she had every right to do), and provide the work-related emails to the State Department. She did this prior to receiving the subpoena.
The 30 FBI agents who actually investigated the issue unanimously concluded that it was not.
The people with the requisite experience, education, and knowledge who actually investigated the issue, concluded it was not gross negligence. So I think there is some stretch of the imagination under which it was not gross negligence.
He said:
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
Other than the 30 FBI agents who actually investigated the issue and unanimously concluded that Clinton did not violate the law?
That’s just the thing - who knows? Trump is a pretty dangerous and toxic mix of extreme ignorance and extreme arrogance, particularly as we have seen about foreign affairs (“I know more about ISIS than the generals.”). He openly advocates illegal acts - killing the families of terrorists (aka innocent people, or at the very least, innocent children) and torturing suspected terrorists, going far beyond waterboarding. He takes any criticism of his words or his actions as a personal attack that requires a full-bore response. How tempered are his reactions going to be when he has the full might of the U.S. military (and its nukes) at his beck and call? When, as now, he is surrounded by aides and yes-men and women who will tell him he is always right and his words very wise, how much restraint is he going to exercise when he will have the power to put his off-the-cuff illegal idiocy into action?
This is someone who openly advocated that South Korea and Japan, of all places, simply just acquire nuclear weapons despite their being signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which forbids precisely that course of action. And he suggested this as a reasonable alternative to having U.S. forces stationed in each country. He also said that South Korea and Japan weren’t compensating the U.S. for U.S. forces being stationed in and protecting their countries, which is false.
You can’t educate or teach Trump anything - his personality dictates that he is always right and knows more than anyone else about any given thing. So, given this mentality, the fact that we are really even debating whether he would or who he would nuke should be the biggest red flag there is against any candidate for the presidency.
The point was that Evil Economist could not see this possibility of unreasonable smear in Clinton’s “deplorables” comment, but could only see me take offense if I liked racists, or was butthurt that she knows racists exist, etc.
So was Clinton’s. Some are irredeemable. I’d wager at least two posters in this thread already have me in that camp.
I have not followed Trump all my life, though he’s been pretty famous most of my life. I never even watched an episode of the Apprentice. It is curious that now he’s Hitler. I wonder if Harry Reid returned the campaign donations. Bit embarrassing to have taken donations from Hitler, I’d think.
Since his run I’ve looked up old interviews of him and I disagree. I think his bluster is part of his strategy. I don’t understand it. I may be being misled, but to see an Oprah interview or some of the others when he wasn’t running for President, I can hardly recognize him. My speculation on the matter is that he’s doing it on purpose to ensure he fits the role he’s assigned himself as “political outsider.” But, again, I could be deluded.
It’s hard to explain. Presumably he knows what he’s done and it’s my understanding from the weeks of “sources” claiming wild things about Trump’s campaign that he’s basically in charge of it and doesn’t take outside advice.
Is this a new meme on the SDMB? Someone asks a question and then get upset when someone answers it?
Who knows who anyone would nuke? If you’re telling me Hillary Clinton would never use nuclear weapons then that’s even more of a reason to note vote for her. Nuclear powers exist in this world and they are not all our best friends and if we were ever attacked with them they damn well better be on the table.
He’s lived seventy years without throwing molotov cocktails or shooting someone with a gun. The only violent confrontation I’m aware of involving Trump is when he allegedly stopped a mugger. Maybe you’re aware of more? I don’t understand, is Trump all talk, using his position for his own greedy ends and duping me into it by voting for him, or is he secretly a violent unpredictably dangerous sociopath that could level entire nations for perceived slights like smiling aggressively?
Hard to understand how a man like that only manages to file bankruptcy claims instead of handing out concrete shoes for all these years.
This is one of the things I find most perplexing about Trump supporters. Most people will support a politician in the hope that he (or she) will keep their promises. We want a candidate who says what they’re going to do, and then does it. We’re disappointed when they don’t. Trump supporters, when pressed on some of his more outrageous statements, express just the opposite sentiment. “Oh, he doesn’t really think Mexicans are rapists.” “Oh, he doesn’t really want there to be riots if he loses.” Oh, he’s not really the asshole he presents himself as, it’s just an act." Trump’s supporters are the first to back a candidate in the hope that he will break his promises. They comfort themselves with the belief that they are being lied to.
Well, yes, actually. He’s made statements to that effect at least twice. Here’s the one he made to Chris Matthews.
Maybe he’s thinking we’d pick the largest concentration of their fighters we could find and turn that section of the world to radioactive waste? Never mind their distribution and network. Or the fact that they’re occupying countries that almost certainly would object strongly to being nuked.
He’s also stated that he would use them in Europe. The mind boggles.
I know what frightens me about having him involved with our nuclear arsenal is his complete lack of understanding of international relations (NATO treaties, the non-proliferation agreements, what is happening in Aleppo for that matter) and even the simple logistics of why the fuck you can’t drop a nuclear bomb on a roaming band of terrorists that you can’t even find with a drone strike. Irresponsible puts it way too kindly.
Changing the subject does not actually make your case. Regardless how one group or another “loves” illegal aliens," you claimed that Trump was lawful, yet he made a lot of money breaking the law.
Disingenuous, at best. You pointed out that some things he did happened to be within the law. That is not “being lawful.” I presume that he tends to avoid robbing banks, also, but that just means that he happens to not violate every law in the land. Given his numerous illegal activities, he is not “being lawful” which was a claim you made for him.
Just the opinion of Clinton haters with no actual evidence of law violations. As noted, no one else has ever been prosecuted for the same activities.
I never said that you believed white people were the enemy. I noted that, despite your claim regarding the DNC, I have never seen any statement by any Democrat that would lead me, a white guy, to feel that I was the enemy. The “white people are the enemy” theme is a fairly old claim made by a certain, small segment of the white population who are simply upset that the world differs from the comfortable sense of superiority they felt when they were children. That theme has been voiced by that tiny (if loud) group since the 1960s and is not actually something promoted by the DNC.
I served in the military (Navy) for 5 years active duty, and for the last 10 years I’ve been a civilian working for the Navy, and the entire time I’ve had a security clearance, and dealt with classified material almost every day. I’ve known literally hundreds of people who have mishandled classified/controlled data (forgetting to encrypt an email with controlled info, for example, or using the wrong network to transmit it). It is incredibly common (unfortunately), and it is almost always due to a moment of carelessness. It never results in prosecution for mere carelessness. Never. Not a single time. Nearly every time it happens, it is corrected with retraining. If a person becomes a “problem” handler, and routinely mishandles classified info, they may lose their clearance and even their job. But even then they are not prosecuted, unless it was intentionally done for spying, for profit, or to leak to a journalist.
This is a very poetical interpretation of what I said. I don’t want him to break any of his promises, except one, that people on uncontrolled, lack-of-due-process watch lists don’t lose Constitutional rights. I am merely talking about his attitude. You know, like when Bill Clinton could turn his southern twang on or off at a moment, or Obama could suddenly sound like a preacher?
Even Comey cannot bring himself to say something this soft.
The cite you give basically amounts to, “I would not take them off the table but I would not initiate a first strike.” Is it your position that a President should have a different opinion than this?
He didn’t say anything that conflicts with it. She was careless and dumb. Carelessness and clumsiness aren’t grounds for prosecution. It’s a fact that people don’t get prosecuted for doing what she did – I’ve seen it with my own eyes, multiple times.
I highly doubt you’ve seen multiple people set up private servers, house classified information on them, share it with associates who do not have clearance, put it on multiple unsecure devices, then claim they didn’t know they couldn’t do this because they forgot when they bumped their head. We’re not talking about a paper that got stuck to another paper on their desk.
I think I’d resent this insinuation if only I knew what you were talking about. It is only in the last two years that I’ve felt this way. I’m sorry, I’m not an old hand at this like the “certain segment of the white population” you reference. I don’t have a bunch of prepared statements or anything. You don’t feel that way, fine, vote Democrat. I do feel that way and I cannot.
Perhaps, but this isn’t the first time I’ve noticed such a thing from a Trump supporter. It seems to be a last line of defense when he does something completely unacceptable; “oh, he didn’t really grope women, that’s just locker room talk.” You convince yourself he’s lying and that it all just proves how subtle and clever he is. Your other option is to admit that your party has nominated a sexual predator[sup]*[/sup] for president, but you’ve got too much invested in him to turn back now.
Or a racist, or a xenophobe, or (gasp!) a bad businessman, depending on which lie he’s being praised for.
The last claim “they didn’t know they couldn’t do this” because of a bump on the head is BS, and I’ve seen all the others many times (or direct equivalent) aside from the home server. And the home server wasn’t illegal and wasn’t a part of the investigation by the FBI – they were investigating whether she broke the law in how she handled classified info, not where the data was kept.
You’re just talking from ignorance if you’re claiming that she broke the law, or that Comey’s investigation was somehow false. No one is ever prosecuted for the type of mishandling that she did.
This is a mischaracterization of what happened. What actually happened: She unknowingly received emails containing classified information on a server that was used for personal emails. The FBI reviewed her behavior in excruciating detail and concluded that she did not commit a crime.
QFT and I have to add that what I do see in a lot of people voting for Trump is that they are people that are more willing to turn into Alice’s Queen of Hearts, besides following ignorance one can see a lot of an authoritarian bent on them and that they follow conspiracy ideas.
It is not a way to run a country and it may had been plausible to vote for Trump if he only had some ignorant ideas but besides Trump having warehouses of skeletons Trump’s economical ideas are also dumb and with a boat load of conflict of interest added.
Frankly I find the feline manucaption comment funny. My mom and I joke about it nearly every day. It’s in poor taste, I understand. If he really did these things then it is terrible, no question. I wouldn’t excuse such an action in any way. I would certainly not vote for him. But just the other day at lunch I was talking about punching people in the face for cutting over at the last second and expressed my deep sadness that ebola didn’t reach epidemic levels in the US. We were all laughing at the time—you had to be there. I suppose if I were running for president I’d be a terrorist, had someone put that on tape.
It is not my party as republicans have made very clear. If the allegations against him are true it’s very serious and would definitely disqualify him in my mind as being president.
I wish I failed my way into that much wealth in as many countries. If he’s a racist xenophobe, the average citizen of any country on earth is downright sociopathic. Trump has bought properties in more nations than many people visit in their lifetimes. This smearing of his character is at odds with extremely basic aspects of a public figure’s life. tomndebb wants me to find him a hypocrite because he or one of his contractors hired illegal aliens. This is perfectly reasonable critique and I’m looking into it. Tell me a man is a dangerous racist xenophobe and it’s simply not true by inspection. There isn’t even a Vince Foster-ish ghost hanging around his hotels that a vast left-wing conspiracy keeps bringing up. Sexual predator? Maybe. I wish these women had come forward six months ago or even when he announced his candidacy last time so that there was time to have it out. As it is I’m in the position to have to go on as if they didn’t say anything.
I’d be more inclined to believe that if she didn’t lie at every phase of the investigation, “lose” things in the mail, and destroy documents under subpoena while her agent joked about the coverup (really he meant extending deadlines, isn’t that the usual way the word is used in comedic contexts?). Instead at this point I’m inclined to believe, at best, that Comey did not want to be personally responsible for taking down a presidential candidate because it could be viewed as partisan or interfering with the abstract “will of the people” or something else. I can find no more charitable interpretation of events. And this is if we just view this issue in isolation, but it isn’t in isolation. How it came to light matters. WJC visiting Lynch is highly suspicious. Three FBI investigations into the Clinton Foundation being squashed is suspicious.
Look, you’re free to always believe just the official story. And I won’t think ill of you for doing so. And you can criticize people who don’t buy official stories. I don’t think one bit less of you for it. But corruption in politics is a millennia-long tradition and I don’t have to own shares in Reynolds to find this situation reeks of it.
At this point 12 women have come forward to say that he assaulted them. So it’s more like if you said you liked to punch people in the face and then punched 12 people in the face.
Feel free not to believe her; instead believe the 30 FBI agents who investigated the issue and concluded that she did not commit a crime.
I’ve already explained that didn’t happen.
The 30 FBI agents also investigated claims that she destroyed documents after receiving a subpoena and concluded that she didn’t.
A more charitable interpretation of the events is that Clinton didn’t actually commit a crime, and Comney, plus the 30 FBI agents who investigated the issue, could not in good conscience say that she did. All 30 FBI agents who investigated the case independently and unanimously concluded that no crime was committed. I believe them. You think they’re all lying, including Comney, a Republican known for his integrity.