Trump to win?

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

Such a drama queen, Santa. A strategic vote for Trump to upset the political status quo and send Clintonism packing is hardly giving up on one's country and political system. Quite the opposite, one would think.

And the oldest extant democracies are Iceland and the Isle of Man and they are full of white people.

the insult "such a drama queen" is gratuitous. the comment would have been better absorbed by readers without that insult.

the "full of white people" is provocative and as you are quite aware invites a racist interpretation. again the comment would have been more useful to readers without it. otoh, if you thought it important then it is important enough to include an explanation of the significance of "white people." otherwise it, too, is gratuitous and raises the question as to whether your intent is to communicate or to provoke. you might say both, but the two are in conflict.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

I forgive you Woody. And when this political race is over, I hope you can forgive yourself for giving up on your country and its political system. I had a higher opinion of you than the crayon crowd but read your post…just Trump level insults. You’ve given up on the oldest democratic system in the modern world. I won’t do that.

Such a drama queen, Santa. A strategic vote for Trump to upset the political status quo and send Clintonism packing is hardly giving up on one's country and political system. Quite the opposite, one would think.

And the oldest extant democracies are Iceland and the Isle of Man and they are full of white people.

[santafe2]

Re: Trump to win?

It's been gnawing at me, this icky feeling of recognition every time you purse your lips. And then it hit me. Santa, you're the Paul Lynde of iTulip! Only half as quick and twice as irritating.

Cupcake, for the sake of your gentle soul, I hope you get your every wish this Christmas... pardon, Election Day. How could your fragile little psyche handle it otherwise?

I forgive you Woody. And when this political race is over, I hope you can forgive yourself for giving up on your country and its political system. I had a higher opinion of you than the crayon crowd but read your post…just Trump level insults. You’ve given up on the oldest democratic system in the modern world. I won’t do that.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

...You often describe those supporting HRC as fearful when it is you, fading into your final years, watching white supremacy fade, who fears the future.

It's been gnawing at me, this icky feeling of recognition every time you purse your lips. And then it hit me. Santa, you're the Paul Lynde of iTulip! Only half as quick and twice as irritating.

Cupcake, for the sake of your gentle soul, I hope you get your every wish this Christmas... pardon, Election Day. How could your fragile little psyche handle it otherwise?

Hillary’s Hubris: Only Tell the Rich for $5000 a Minute!
by RALPH NADER

There is a growing asymmetry between the media’s mounting demands for Donald Trump to release his tax returns (Hillary has done so) and their diminishing demands that Hillary Clinton release the secret transcripts of her $5000 per minute speeches before closed-door banking conferences and other business conventions.

The Washington Post, an endorser of Clinton, in its August 18 issue devoted another round of surmising as to why Trump doesn’t want to release his tax returns—speculating that he isn’t as rich as he brags he is, that he pays little or no taxes, and that he gives little to charity. Other media outlets endorsing Hillary have been less than vociferous in demanding that she release what she told business leaders in these pay-to-play venues.

When asked last year about her transcripts on Meet the Press, she said she would look into it. When the questions persisted in subsequent months, she said she would release the transcripts only if everybody else did. Bernie Sanders replied that he had no transcripts because he doesn’t give paid speeches to business audiences. Nonetheless she continues to be evasive.

We know she has such transcripts. Her contract with these numerous business groups, prepared by the Harry Walker Lecture Agency, stipulated that the sponsor pay $1000 for a stenographer to take down a verbatim record, exclusively for her possession. .

The presidential campaign is moving into a stage where it will be harder for reporters to reach her. Except for a recent informal gathering with some reporters, Hillary Clinton, unlike all other presidential candidates, has not held a news conference since last December. This aversion to media examination does not augur well should she reach the White House. Secrecy is corrosive to democracy.

Why wouldn’t Hillary tell the American people, whose votes she wants, what she told corporations in private for almost two years? Is it that she doesn’t want to be accused of doubletalk, of “gushing” (as one insider told the Wall Street Journal) when addressing bankers, stock traders or corporate bosses? On the campaign trail Hillary only mimics Bernie Sanders’s tough, populist challenges to Wall Street. The Clintons are not known for answering tough questions or participating in straight talk. Dodging and weaving is what they do and too often they get away with it.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Trump to win?

I predict the race will be tight right to the election and that the stock market will swing wildly in the three week leading up to it. Gold will hit 1750, and Metalman, Clue, and Barbara Lewis will come back to us.

[santafe2]

Re: Trump to win?

You wouldn't know serious if it kissed you on your cheek, Santa.

You live in the Alice in Wonderland world of The Donald. In your world, a candidate who takes money for speeches to Goldman Sachs should be damned and The Donald, who owes Goldman tens of millions should be forgiven because he’s the “honest” one.

In your world, the candidate who takes money for a charitable foundation should be damned and The Donald who owes the Chinese government tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars should be pardoned. I know you think you’re the smart guy but you haven’t had a cogent thought in this discussion. Please don't point to that tired magical crap you feed TNotes.

And possibly you’d like to explain why The Donald’s tax returns will never be released. I’ll help you. A criminal cannot release their tax returns. That’s evidence and he lives on bombast and his followers live on magical thinking. You’re a bunch of angry old white guys who no longer control the country. For that, the rest of us are thankful.

Good new ad from the HRC PAC. Your boy is really a nasty little jerk. “You have to be wealthy in order to be great”. In a better world you would truly stand for nothing Woody. You fashion yourself as a nihilist but you support a naked oligarch, a racist and a self-described fascist.

You often describe those supporting HRC as fearful when it is you, fading into your final years, watching white supremacy fade, who fears the future.

[vt]

Re: Trump to win?

FBI finds 15,000 more emails Hillary didn't turn over:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mepage%2Fstory

Some pretty damning info too:

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-r...dation-donors/

You maybe find the same for a Jeb Bush, etc. but with Trump you don't know. Of course the Clinton's have a long history of pay to play going back to their White House days:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...es/lincoln.htm

I thought the White House and the State Department were owned by the taxpayers.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

You must have thought about Hedges, but you are going with blow-it-up Trump. Explain dismissing the former.

Explain.

Don't you mean explain again? Because that is what I have sought to do in dozens upon dozens of posts, in reference after reference, with analogy, simile, comparing, contrasting, on and on until exhaustion. And still, it's "please explain."

So one more time, with emphasis, until the next. Under Trump what will blow up is the political status quo, along with the extant GOP and Democratic parties, opening a door to substantive change - not guaranteeing it or determining its form, merely opening - that until now has remained firmly shut. Under Trump, Left Democrats find their voice, a common and unifying cause, begin to effectively push back the neoliberal assault led by the Clinton New Democrats, expose it forever as the flip-side of neoconservatism, and either initiates a process that restores the Democratic Party to its intellectual and moral foundations as set by FDR and JFK, or constructs something entirely new from the rubble. And so too does the GOP. From there all things follow.

I understand that most lose the capacity for nuance during the silly season and devolve to the moral and intellectual standard of George W. Bush - either with us or against us. That's too bad, but probably a component of human nature not subject to meaningful correction. Patrick Henry said "I know of no way of judging the future but by the past" yet we seem compelled to deny Hillary's past and so may miss a future that is entirely within our grasp. And by missing it, we may be granted an alternate few expect and all will rue. "For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it."

The truth in all its anguish - surely recognition of it is what keeps us here at iTulip - is that we approach the end of this political economy and those arrangements to which we have put our attachments. Bill Clinton brought us to the beginning of the end; Bush Jr. and Obama to the the middle of the end. The Trumpsters could ring the curtain down on the whole farce and provide the opportunity to restore what should be restored and discard what never worked. But under HRC, we instead we will have 8 more years of ad-hoc crisis management deployed to preserve the desiccated corpse of the status quo and perhaps even reanimating it as a sort of zombie empowered by the death force of global war and domestic chaos.

And by slamming the lid on the boiling pot even harder, then stacking it with bricks, the pressure only grows. For surely under Hillary we shall see the emergence of a new, most virulent post-Trump that really does resemble the darkest dreams of those who see The Donald as a modern Hitler. And as Hillary's Wiemar Republic/Kerensky Provisional Government crashes down and the country and the world becomes even more dysfunctional, there will arise a movement the likes of which will cause us all to long for the "authentic Trump."

All that said, I admit this old man is running out of shits to give and looking forward to a return to the "salt life." Indeed, as did Trump, I "misunderestimated" the onslaught of the fearful and unimaginative defenders of their status and the status quo, surely the sine qua non of American liberalism in the 21st Century. Little wonder Clinton does as well as she does despite her numerous infirmities and near-universal distrust. But who wants to go to the trouble of thinking, much less original or unconventional thinking? For most, it's always better to fail conventionally than to win unconventionally. And it seems axiomatic that the more one gains by way of wealth, the more one loses by way of courage.

We seem so afraid, so timid and so easily cowed. Truly, the powers have nothing at all to fear.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Trump to win?

You must have thought about Hedges, but you are going with blow-it-up Trump. Explain dismissing the former.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

You wouldn't know serious if it kissed you on your cheek, Santa.

You witnessed the lies Obama fed the public during his two campaigns. You witnessed his turn to the right and unmasking as a neoliberal in the truest sense. You saw him double-down on the Cheney administration's worst policies, domestic and international, and you talk about seriousness?

You saw all of this and witness HRC running toward the right with the worst of the neoconservative elements behind her, pushing her further rightward, as she proclaims she will continue the Obama agenda. But somehow, in your Saturday morning cartoon concept of politics, you think enabling her will get you what you claim you desire.

You don't know much, least of all the role of the left in American politics. There's a short little book called "Death of the Liberal Class" you might want to read as it explains what you fail to understand, refuse to understand. The job of the left is not to gain power - beware any leftist who seeks power - but to serve as the conscience of liberals, to pull liberals from their natural tendencies to move right, a tendency made crystal clear by the tenure of William Jefferson Clinton and his wife Hillary. That means rewarding them when they do good and punishing them when they do otherwise. You seem to think that this is the same as handing Hillary a blank check. It is not.

Your rhetoric no longer corresponds with reality. Faced with the prospect of the hard work of actual resistance which is never easy and never without personal cost, you and those like you prefer the fiction of resistance in the form of useless moral posturing that costs nothing, requires no sacrifice, no commitment. Better to secure a place as one of the Democratic Party's self-appointed scolds and pretend that you are part of the debate by issuing pathetic cries of protests, only softly so that no one in authority need be troubled.

In precisely the same way that liberal goodthinkers rewarded Obama with a Nobel Peace Prize on the basis of "hope" alone, people like you are determined to reward Hillary with the presidency. Should that unfortunate circumstance come to fruition, I will be sorely disappointed for a day or so. You, however, will have at least four years to reflect on the disasters your jejune magical thinking has wrought.

And the "next Trump" will in all likelihood fulfill the dark nightmares you've convinced yourself the present one portends.

[santafe2]

Re: Trump to win?

Didn't think you could stay away. Only to call what you do in this thread "discussing" is more of the same doublespeak. Really, it's more like a drive-by; roll down the window, take a few pot shots and speed off. But welcome back just the same.

Supporting Sanders right now is folly unless you don't mind that money going to the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

I think giving any aid and comfort to the Democrats after the underhanded and undemocratic way Bernie was treated at the hands of Hillary and the DNC is a fool's errand. The current leadership must be defeated and I think one of the best ways to ensure that happens is to deny them any financial or in-kind support. Democrats who oppose the Unpopular Front, the neoliberal/neoconservative union of the DNC/RNC and media, can only stay out of their way as they drive the party into the ditch. Only then, after the Clintonistas are purged, is it safe to re-engage.

I get that you want everyone else to share your Republican shit sandwich Woody but I wasn't talking to you or your crayon companions. This is a serious movement. In all likelihood, HRC will win the election. If we stop working to move her away from her neo-liberal tenancies, we may get less from her than we got from Obama over the last eight years. These are professional politicians. They only move in the right direction when we push them. I intend to continue to push the current system in the right direction. I would encourage other iTulipers to do the same. I would encourage you to re-read your posts in support for Sanders before you respond to this post. While I don't think he is the right person to represent the Democratic Party, I do support many of his ideas and the only way to make some of them come to fruition is to continue to work. It won't be easy.

[vt]

Re: Trump to win?

Hillary sounds a bit short of cash. Maybe she needs Bernie's help.

http://nypost.com/2016/08/21/clinton...or-more-funds/

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Trump to win?

If you have given up on Chris Hedges or just found him too out there, try this. It is tonic. I have a Polish friend here in Chiang Mai. She says it is spot on. 30 minutes.
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item...irtue_20160819

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

While I'm out on this discussion I do think it's important for iTulipers who continue to want change in the US to support Sander's new website and movement, Our Revolution. I joined and donated today and would encourage anyone here willing to work for change to do the same. HRC is far from perfect but if millions of Americans push her in the right direction, we'll be in a better place four years from now. There are currently over 2000 local groups. Join one and work to make this country better.

Didn't think you could stay away. Only to call what you do in this thread "discussing" is more of the same doublespeak. Really, it's more like a drive-by; roll down the window, take a few pot shots and speed off. But welcome back just the same.

Supporting Sanders right now is folly unless you don't mind that money going to the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

I think giving any aid and comfort to the Democrats after the underhanded and undemocratic way Bernie was treated at the hands of Hillary and the DNC is a fool's errand. The current leadership must be defeated and I think one of the best ways to ensure that happens is to deny them any financial or in-kind support. Democrats who oppose the Unpopular Front, the neoliberal/neoconservative union of the DNC/RNC and media, can only stay out of their way as they drive the party into the ditch. Only then, after the Clintonistas are purged, is it safe to re-engage.

As it stands, Bernie's organization has barely hatched and is already been co-opted by the Clinton campaign. Regardless of their assurances, any dollars or in-kind contributions benefit Hillary first. Fool me once, shame on you...

The man who led Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign vowed Monday night during a conference call with DNC officials that Sanders was committed to traveling the country to campaign for Hillary Clinton and down-ballot Democratic candidates.

“This is not going to be an easy task and it’s going to take all of us rowing together,” Jeff Weaver said.

The private conference call – which included top Democratic National Committee officials including chief of staff Brandon Davis and state party leaders – was led by DNC interim Chairwoman Donna Brazile, who had met with Weaver and Sanders’ top campaign adviser Mark Longabaugh earlier in the day. According to DNC officials, the three discussed Sanders’ schedule as well as voter mobilization among former Sanders supporters.

Brazile told those on the conference call that Weaver had agreed to help her “through this election process and beyond.”

The call focused on a 50-state strategy for the November election to be implemented soon by members of Clinton’s campaign and Sanders’ former presidential team.

The close interactions between the interim DNC chairwoman and the Sanders campaign is in stark contrast to earlier in the presidential cycle when the campaign criticized now-former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz as unfairly partial to Clinton.

“I know that sometimes in primaries there can be sharp elbows, and I hope I haven’t bumped into too many of you,” Weaver said on the call. “But as we go forward into the general election, I’m very happy to be working with members of the Clinton team in trying to get the secretary elected.”

Weaver noted that Sanders’ organization Our Revolution has raised nearly $300,000 for liberal Democratic down-ballot and congressional candidates.

Brazile thanked Weaver and the Sanders team for their leadership and organizing ability for up and down the ballot. The team has been “tremendous in reaching out, helping out, filling gaps,” she said...

In private call, DNC flexes unity with Clinton camp and Sanders team

Any dollars to Bernie goes directly to Hillary. It is giving Democrats aid and comfort and a most cynical, if entirely Clintonian, gambit. As for Dan Weaver, the fellow seems too eager to be pushed around by the Clinton campaign, and I can't forget what a milquetoast he turned out to be in the face of Robby Mook's bullying. Left Democrats are better advised to support Jill Stein if they can't stomach a strategic vote for Trump. Giving any aid and comfort to Clinton is typical of the self-defeating, TINA-attitude the Clinton camp demands of Left Democrats. I hope they learned their lesson in the primaries.

My bet is that over the next several months Our Revolution will be exposed as a DNC funding operation. And then it will vanish into irrelevance like Obama's OFA. Holding Clinton accountable is the only chance Left Democrats have to be effective in this election and that means no aid and comfort to the enemy. Rewarding Clinton after what they did to Bernie is just dumb. Why would anyone expect the Clintons not cheat again?

I won't forget Bernie talking of us holding Hillary's feet to the fire and we all saw how well that didn’t work during the convention.Those delegates with ‘silenced’ tape over their mouths said it all perfectly, without uttering a word. And now Bernie is campaigning for Clinton like the good sheepdog he feels he must be.

I'm not falling for it and I hope Left Democrats are smarter that that.

[santafe2]

Re: Trump to win?

too bitter for me. from hot anger to cold anger. my hope was we could get past the anger but i guess not.

While I'm out on this discussion I do think it's important for iTulipers who continue to want change in the US to support Sander's new website and movement, Our Revolution. I joined and donated today and would encourage anyone here willing to work for change to do the same. HRC is far from perfect but if millions of Americans push her in the right direction, we'll be in a better place four years from now. There are currently over 2000 local groups. Join one and work to make this country better.