donald trump

Why I'm Voting For Jill Stein

Submitted by movie buff on Mon, 10/03/2016 - 6:41pm

An essay was published here a few days ago titled "Why I am Voting For Hillary." While I respect the author for posting it here--"behind enemy lines," so to speak--I still felt that his reasoning was just the latest update of the same reasoning we hear every four years, which goes: You have to vote for the Democratic nominee because the Republicans are awful.

I concur: they are awful. And they'll likely always be awful. Yet some people are always trying to use this inescapable part of American political reality to justify all manner of backsliding by the other political party--you know, the one that claims to represent "the people."

So I would like to write a rebuttal here. Not of that article, but of that entire manner of thinking.

36 Years Down the Republican Rabbit Hole

Submitted by hungeski on Mon, 09/26/2016 - 12:19am

In "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Lewis Carroll tells the story of Alice, a more-or-less average curious, rational child, who, on a dreamy summer day, chases a waistcoat-wearing white rabbit down a rabbit hole into a bizarre land. In this, and in a later book ("Through the Looking-Glass"), we find many strange characters producing many puzzling and irrational quotes. For instance, we have the giant talking egg, Humpty Dumpty:

When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

And we have the Queen of Hearts, who is quite quick to propose simple, brutal solutions:

[The King] called the Queen, who was passing at the moment, 'My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!'
The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said, without even looking round.

... and, when the Dormouse spoke out of turn in court:

'Collar that Dormouse,' the Queen shrieked out. 'Behead that Dormouse! Turn that Dormouse out of court! Suppress him! Pinch him! Off with his whiskers!'

An observer of American politics since 1980 or so, might well picture oneself as, like Alice, having gone down the rabbit-hole to find many strange Republicans, who, like the characters in Wonderland, issue puzzling and irrational quotes. Over the decades, here are just a few of the characters we have met, as we went down, down, down ...

How Crazy Is Donald Trump, Really?

Submitted by joe shikspack on Sun, 09/18/2016 - 11:26am

How crazy is Donald Trump, or more appropriately, how far outside of the mainstream of US politics is he?

This week over at The Intercept, Robert Mackey posted a piece about Trump's policy proposal to use the US military as the muscle to seize the oil resources of Middle Eastern countries.

His article recounts the many occasions that Trump has touted this policy in interviews and suggests that we can "better understand what Trump really is," by viewing him through this lens.

To give you a flavor of the commentary that Mackey is referring to, here is a condensed version of some of Trump's word salad that Mackey quotes from an appearance on the Bill O'Reilly show (emphasis mine):

"In the old days, when you had wars, you win, right? You win. To the victor belong the spoils. So when we go to Iraq, we spend $1.4 trillion so far and thousands of lives are lost, right? And not to mention all the poor guys and gals with one arm and no arm and all the problems, right? ... I like the old system better: You won a war, you stay there, and you keep the oil. And you know, then those people will not have died in vain. Forget the money we spent, they will not have died in vain. ... You stay and protect the oil, and you take the oil and you take whatever is necessary for them and you take what’s necessary for us and we pay our self back $1.5 trillion or more. We take care of Britain, we take care of other countries that helped us, and we don’t be so stupid."

Mackey goes to some effort to demonstrate that Trump is a lunatic version of Smedley Butler's nightmare.

Hillary Clinton and the Button

Submitted by DarkScholar82 on Mon, 09/12/2016 - 9:18pm

Today, I received an e-mail from MoveOn.org asking me to donate five dollars in order to fund a new commercial attacking Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The commercial would focus on the prospect of Trump getting his hands on America's nuclear weapons. As the e-mail stated:

Donald Trump's climbing in the polls.1 It's time to go nuclear. (In a way.)

MoveOn made an important discovery in the course of our intensive research this summer: A key bloc of swing voters appears to be most strongly persuaded to vote against Trump when confronted with the threat of his finger on the nuclear button.2

As part of this research effort, our Video Lab made an ad, ran the video online to show it to voters in swing states, and teamed up with researchers at the Analyst Institute to study its effectiveness—and the results blew us away.

In our controlled study, men over the age of 30 who watched our video about Trump's finger on the nuclear button were seven percentage points more likely to support Clinton over Trump, compared to those who didn't watch the ad.

Given his at times erratic behavior, concerns over Trump getting the bomb are understandable. However, the people at Move On failed to consider the issue of their own candidate getting the bomb, which is arguably concerning in its own right.

My Gut Reaction: Somehow, I don't think someone who threatens to annihilate Iran is a safe option for the presidency, either.

More below the fold...

The Anti-Antiwar Left

Submitted by Big Al on Thu, 09/08/2016 - 9:41pm

Many have lamented the lack of an antiwar movement in this country, the land of Empire and Imperialism. Many have also criticized the faux left that supports U.S. "interventions", those that support War Criminal Obama and want War Criminal Clinton to be the next President of the Empire.

We're not alone. They have the same problem in Europe.

How to campaign against Hillary Clinton.

Submitted by FreeSociety on Wed, 09/07/2016 - 9:09pm

----

Bernie Sanders was too much of a gentlemen to do this, but he probably could have routed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primaries by a large enough margin to overcome all the blatant cheating and voter disenfranchisement --- had he added this kind of attack line into his daily campaigning each day:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEE_K5UPY64 width:640 height:480]

----

If you dislike Clinton's conservative policies vote for Stein, not Trump

Submitted by betterdemsonly on Thu, 09/01/2016 - 12:37pm

It is really messed up for any supporter of the 99 percent to vote for Trump, because you are telling the elites you like ALL of Trump's policies, including the wall, the attacks on women, and getting rid of the estate tax, all of it. You are telling them you endorse all of his views. A vote for Stein leaves Trump with a possible victory but no mandate.

Pages