2016 Presidential Election Thread

This whole race has just been embarrassing.

This clearly puts you in Trump territory.

"Some of this group are bad, therefore all are."

The US Republican party (aka GOP) are asking this question among their elites too (I imagine). The process is absurd but it's better than watching reality TV. Ok maybe it's about the same.

There's no mystery. The Republican party is reaping what it has sowed. They mobilised the fundamentalist, paranoid, nativist constituency over the past 25 years and now they've lost control of it.

25? McCarthyism occurred 60 years ago.

But their base has been there since the beginning: "The party advocated moralistic policies based on evangelical Protestant values." source

There is a sizable racist minority in this country. Always has been. Southern Dems courted them directly, then Republicans used dog whistles while denying they were dog whistles.

Well, Trump has gone back to the direct game. And made it the centerpiece of his campaign. And is dominating the Republican field. Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty has to recognize this reality. It can be denied no longer. A significant minority of the Republican Party are racist.

I'm reminded of the quote attributed to George Wallace:

I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.

Yeah, Wallace was a Democrat. I also have yet to hear one of those dog whistles. It seems only liberals can hear them.

Also note that you're so racist you think Muslims are a race.

Surely you recognize the difference between a ban on immigration from one particular country with a blanket ban on immigration from a religious group comprising over 1.6 billion people worldwide?

Muslims don't really recognize the nation state. It's all "Dar-al-Islam" and in many cases they move freely between countries, except for the countries where the Muslims are all trying to kill each other. One of the things we've found that should be obvious to anyone is that we're not facing a problem caused by one particular Muslim nation, some messed up government structure or peculiarity of local tribal politics or ancient grievances. Pretty much the entire Muslim world is having severe problems with terrorism, oppression, and insurgents.

Afghanistan: Oh hell yeah.
Pakistan: Perhaps even worse.
Iran: Eaten up with hatred, sworn to blow us off the face of the Earth.
Iraq: Overrun by ISIS, who are opposed by Shia jihadists.
Chechnya: They blew up the Boston Marathon.
Bangladesh: Hacking bloggers to death for insults against Islam posted online.
India: Frequent terrorist attacks. They had a massive slaughter in a mall.
Saudi Arabia: Terrorist attacks. Source of scads of terrorists.
Yemen: A brutal civil war pitting terrorists against terrorists. People are flocking to Al Qaeda as the moderate alternative.
Syria: A vast pool of bloodshed and mass executions.
Lebanon: More terrorist attacks. Homeland of Hezbollah that is fighting in Syria.
Egypt: Terrorist attacks, for a brief while ruled by the Muslim brotherhood. Hundreds of them are facing execution. The Russian airliners had a bomb placed on board while it was in Egypt.
Libya: Brutal chaos. ISIS haven. Hillary's greatest accomplishment.
Tunisia: Terrorist attacks.
Algeria: Terrorist attacks. Most of the French terrorists immigrated from Algeria.
Mali: Terrorist attacks.
Nigeria: Terrorist attacks.
Turkey: Terrorist attacks.

That leaves a few countries like Jordan, Kuwait, and the UAE that so far haven't been eaten up with the cancer, but that's probably because their radicals travel to other countries to wage jihad.

Do you notice a pattern? Pretty much all Muslim countries have a severe problem, and countries that aren't Muslim are having severe problems with the few Muslims they do have. The problem is that a sizable fraction of Muslims are "the problem" and we don't have a good way to filter those out, and still can't guarantee that they won't become a problem in the future. Jihadi John was a rapper before he started sawing people's heads off. The male San Bernardino shooter was a happy California state worker until about two years ago when he got in touch with his Muslim roots.

Donald Trump Calls for "Closing That Internet Up"

Next he's going to propose blocking the sun because terrorists benefit from daylight.

Blocking the sun would be a highly effective way to handle the problem, but a better way might be to put a lens into orbit that could act as a heat ray.

Since the beginning of time, Man has dreamed of destroying the sun.

Trump's appeal isn't all that hard to understand. First, he does actually have some applicable experience and skills. Second, he's an outsider in a country that is sick to fucking death of business-as-usual in Washington. Third, when he says these crazy things, if someone calls him on it he doesn't retract or explain or back off, he doubles down. That alone makes him stand out from the crowd of "oh, I misspoke/I was misquoted/You took that out of context" types that live in the political world. Fourth, he had considerable name recognition well before he started running for President. People seem to love his antics no matter what he's up to. Fifth, he's slinging a lot of populist rubbish and that almost always works. Bernie Sanders is basically doing the same thing for the reality-impaired.

Has anyone mentioned the theory that Trump is running as a Republican as a favor to the Clintons? That he's basically torpedoing the Reps so that Hillary can glide to an easy victory? I've seen that one on Facebook a few times.

I don't see O'Malley being anyone's running mate. If, by some bizarre chance, Sanders can beat Hillary then he will likely have to accept Hillary as his running mate.

To be honest I've considered that possibility as well. The guy's history of being nice to the Clintons and talking shit about Bush along with his current cavalier attitude towards campaigning just makes me think it his real agenda.

I believe I've mentioned it a few times in this thread.

I wouldn't be too surprised if Trump some day says "Psych! I'm not really serious about this president stuff; I just wanted to see how long I could get away with this!"

He might know f-all about politics, but he knows the media - and how to keep himself in the spotlight.

Bernie is great at promising free shit to stupid, envious people. My laziest and most self-entitled FB friends love him.

Hillary is too scary to contemplate.

Agreed, Trump is halfway between crackpot and boob.

The popularity of outsiders like this putz is an amazing statement on how disenchanted the country is with politicians in general, and Obama in the specific (Trump, the populist prick but a pendulum swing back from obama's elitist, arrogant and sub-par administrations).

Hehe, Trump is getting mad at all the Republicans denouncing him and is threatening a 3rd party run. You know Hillary is smiling about this.

If Democrats had any sense they'd run someone like Tom Hanks, or at least start grooming that kind of person for higher office. No crazy. No baggage.

Just today more e-mails came out about Benghazi. One said:

“I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S [an apparent reference to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton]

“After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak. They include a [REDACTED].

“Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to procure the approval from host nation. Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us [REDACTED].”

Among the recipients of Bash’s email are Jacob Sullivan, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides.​

I guess the principals didn't agree because a rescue mission might have exposed their massive deals shipping Libyan arms to Syrian jihadists.

And this of course wouldn't surprise or upset you. If the Republicans are so fucked up, then they won't stand a chance, right? The Democrats (liberals) are running basically unopposed - isn't that what you want? The Dems will surely win, and the US will continue to be a paradise with a Democrat as HMIC.

They say Will Smith is interested in a political career.

Back in the 1980s, Paul Newman was reportedly really wanting to be president and hoped that if Dukakis had won in 1988 that he would've gotten an ambassadorship.

Given how Will Smith's kids seem to have turned out, do we want him in charge of anything?

Why not? Half of Ronald Reagan's kids were bat crazy too.

For that matter JFK used to make fun of Eleanor Roosevelt and claim the reasons she hated the Kennedy's was that the Kennedy children turned out better than the Roosevelts.

All the Roosevelt kids were pretty big disasters. My cousin married one of them, which I think ended in divorce like his half-dozen other marriages.

Maybe your cousin was the problem.

Seriously doubt that. All the guys were engineers, heart surgeons, airline CFO's, or university presidents. Not sure about girls, but back then they would have mostly been housewives. Roosevelt's kids, however, were all problem cases, although I think one briefly headed the California DNC.

Turns out Trump was right about New Jersey Muslims cheering 9/11. Millions of us remember the reporting about it, and someone finally found a clip to confirm that it was reported. That's why the story completely disappeared all of the sudden. Discover or Scientific American even had an article posted for day by a psychologist explaining "false memories". It was completely deleted.