I know many liberals who had to take back their "never vote for Hillary" stance solely because the threat of Trump's claims of how he is going to gut the constitution is a greater threat. — swstephe

I thought liberals were all about "screw the constitution" :P

So then to be consistent, you must also say the same thing about Hillary. To rail against Trump for being dishonest and not say the same thing about Hillary is to be intellectually dishonest. — Harry Hindu

The thread is about Trump, though...:-|

And if you'd like consistency, shouldn't you come back and address your wildly insulting declaration that every male talks sexual assault like it's a normality?

C'mon, don't cherry pick!

To rail against Trump for being dishonest and not say the same thing about Hillary is to be intellectually dishonest. — Harry Hindu

Except that the assertion that 'Hillary is dishonest' is dishonest. 'Lying Hillary' is a lie. Clinton has been hauled in front of numerous senate select commitees, often comprising Republican senators who want to destroy her career, but they haven't been able to bring any kind of charge against her. They've been trying to make things stick for over a decade, but nothing does. And why not? Because there's nothing there.

Last week the big scandal about Clinton, was a leaked document that showed that she told a group of bankers that the financial services industry would be best placed to understand financial reform. Shock! Horror! How can she get away with it??

Whereas, her opponent has been caught lying so often that it is pointless talking about it. He has thousands of lawsuits against him, has gamed the financial system, routinely cheats his employees and molests women, and has behaved appallingly throughout his public career.

Even Obama is worried about the mess that his opponents have gotten themselves into, he understands that a two-party system needs two functioning parties, not one party against a rabble. (But then, I think a great number of basically decent GOP folks are weeping bitter tears over this situation too.)

'Disliking Hillary Clinton' is no rationale for turning a blind eye to what is happening.

First of all, as a Dutch person, I will have to say the obsession with the infallibility of the US constitution strikes me as incongruous with modern times; it was written by white, privileged slave owners concerned with protecting their property from the poor. That, apparently, was successful but it doesn't make a very good democratic basis, if you'd agree that all citizens should partake in the democratic process.

Second, Trump is a moron and a real danger to the USA. The idea that has been floated by Agustino to shake up the system by selecting Trump.

Let me try to put that in an analogy. You have a house and you're looking to reconstruct it because it has wood rot and peeling paint. You get to choose a pet and the one option is an old mean cat and the other is a faeces flinging chimpanzee with the temperament of a horny dog.

The cat will occasionally drag in a dead rat and rake you if you don't look out but most days not much of a nuisance and life goes on.

The chimp though flings his shit around everyday, screams incessantly, (sexually) assaults visitors and the few words he knows are "pussygrabber" and "Mexican rapist". Pretty soon your friends stop visiting.

Neither will fix your house but you'll have a shit load more work cut out for you after the chimp is gone.

Point being, no one person is going to fix your system, you'll have to do it yourselves and you're going to need help. From liberals and republicans and independents alike. Alienating most of them by singlemindedly trying to push your own agenda won't work and makes you an egoistic bastard to boot (not a social conservative value). Being willing to make things worse, for which a Republican president and its party will be blamed, will not instill trust with non-Republicans. Meaning you're setting yourself up to have no negotiation power in deciding how the system could change whatsoever after Trump would leave.

Don't vote or vote anything but Trump.

'Not voting' will work in his favour, people have to vote AGAINST him.

You see people being leeches. So you get sick and tired of this - you crack the whip on them - you treat them as expendables as well, because you know that if you don't, sooner or later they themselves will betray you and screw you u

Machiavelli.

don't demand the impossible in a bipartisan world. ;)

How much Trump had to do with the design, don't know. I would be very surprised if he had much at all to do with it. The tastes of the people who buy architect's services is often very at odds with the much more refined tastes of the designer. I doubt if most rich people could come up with a good building design if their lives depended on it. It isn't that they are untalented, it's just that most of them have pedestrian, bourgeois sensibilities suitable for the business world--that's how they got rich (if they didn't inherit it) and that's why they hire inspired architects.

Exactly, someone like Trump will have appalling taste. I expect that his brief for the architect was I want something striking and taller than everything around it, to look bigger and better. That would have been his entire input, well apart from focussing on the Super kingsize bed and gold taps in his penthouse.

Trump has just been described as an octopus by one of his victims, ha ha!

I know many liberals who had to take back their "never vote for Hillary" stance solely because the threat of Trump's claims of how he is going to gut the constitution is a greater threat. — swstephe

It's alright, because he's going to leave all the good bits, like that lovely bit which is used to justify a system in which citizens can go around shooting one another.

Except that the assertion that 'Hillary is dishonest' is dishonest. 'Lying Hillary' is a lie. — Wayfarer

Wow. No it isn't. They're both big liars, although, at least in this campaign, there is evidence which suggests that Trump is the bigger liar. If I find that article, which I read a while back, I'll post a link. In the mean time, there has been plenty of fact checking, and it would be incredibly naive to put the disparity between what Clinton has said on the one hand, and the facts on the other, wholly down to innocent mistakes.

Please don't bother with Internet conspiracy links about 'lying Hillary'. Clinton has faults but Trump is a threat to civilization.

Trump is impressively unimpressive. I wonder how many artists support him.

Please don't bother with Internet conspiracy links about 'lying Hillary'. Clinton has faults but Trump is a threat to civilization. — Wayfarer

Please stop deferring to your imagination and refer to what I actually said. There is a big difference between credible fact checkers and internet conspiracy theories.

Comparing Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump on the Truth-O-Meter

Hillary Clinton's file



Only 24% true and 49% between half-true and pants on fire. They're both liars. It's a matter of who is the bigger liar - which is clearly Trump.

Fair enough, that I regard as a credible source. But I am still nonplussed by the hostility about Clinton, considering the alternative.

Fair enough, that I regard as a credible source. But I am still nonplussed by the hostility about Clinton, considering the alternative. — Wayfarer

But that the alternative is worse doesn't redeem her, so why shouldn't - or why wouldn't - people express hostility towards her? Some of it, I believe, is justified - irrespective of Trump and his supporters. So I am not so nonplussed.

Desperate diseases call for desperate remedies.

Desperate diseases call for desperate remedies. — Wayfarer

Yep. I think that Sanders would've been the better remedy, but I would vote for Clinton if I could.

Let me try to put that in an analogy. You have a house and you're looking to reconstruct it because it has wood rot and peeling paint. You get to choose a pet and the one option is an old mean cat and the other is a faeces flinging chimpanzee with the temperament of a horny dog.

The cat will occasionally drag in a dead rat and rake you if you don't look out but most days not much of a nuisance and life goes on.

The chimp though flings his shit around everyday, screams incessantly, (sexually) assaults visitors and the few words he knows are "pussygrabber" and "Mexican rapist". Pretty soon your friends stop visiting.

Neither will fix your house but you'll have a shit load more work cut out for you after the chimp is gone. — Benkei

8-)

Jacket copy for current edition of Hillary Clinton's book, It Takes a Village

'A decade ago, Clinton chronicled her quest—both deeply personal and, in the truest sense, public—to help make our society into the kind of village that enables children to become smart, able, resilient adults.

For more than thirty-five years, Clinton has made children her passion and her cause. Her long experience—not only through her roles as mother, daughter, sister, and wife but also as advocate, legal expert, and public servant—has strengthened her conviction that how children develop and what they need to succeed are inextricably entwined with the society in which they live and how well it sustains and supports its families and individuals. In other words, it takes a village to raise a child.

In her new Introduction, Clinton reflects on how our village has changed over the last decade—from the impact of the Internet to new research in early child development and education. She discusses issues of increasing concern—security, the environment, the national debt—and looks at where we have made progress and where there is still work to be done.

It Takes a Village has become a classic. This edition makes it abundantly clear that the choices we make today about how we raise our children and how we support families will determine how our nation will face the challenges of this century.'

I will have to say the obsession with the infallibility of the US constitution strikes me as incongruous with modern times — Benkei

And peculiar given that Amendments are a thing.

Jacket copy for current edition of Donald Trump's book, It Takes a Wall.

'Some time ago, Trump chronicled his quest—both deeply personal and, in the truest sense, public—to help make our society into the kind of fortress that encourages children within the fortress to become ignorant, xenophobic, narrow-minded adults.

For more than thirty-five years, Trump has made scaremongering his passion and his cause. His long experience—not only through his role as a rich, greedy, tax-dodger, but also as a rich, greedy, television star—has strengthened his conviction that how children develop and what they need to succeed are inextricably entwined with a society in which there are no rapists or terrorists. In other words, it takes a wall to raise children without the fear of Mexicans or foreign Muslims.

In his new Introduction, Trump deflects on how our would-be-fortress has changed over the last decade—from the rise of xenophobia to the increase in hate crime. He stirs up issues of increasing concern—the lack of a wall, the lack of a wall paid for by Mexicans, and pussy grabbing—and looks at where we have made progress, in order to reverse it; and where there is still work to be done, so as to avoid it.

It Takes a Wall has become a classic. This edition makes it abundantly clear that the choices we make today about how we raise our children and how we support families are not as important as building a wall.

I visited Trump tower recently

That building never looks like it could have been pretty.

Don't vote or vote anything but Trump. — Benkei

The most hilarious thing is that people view Trump as an "outsider" from the elite or that he would do something to the corruption in Washington.

Yet Trump has been a friend with Bill Clinton and the Clintons and is part of the elite that runs the US.


And then there are the SHOCKING sex scandals that Trump has to face now. With these kinds of scandals Americans have a true love-hate relationship. They hate them, but seem not to get enough of them. Well, if anyone has listened to Trump, his taped behaviour shouldn't come as a surprise. Better yet, there's even one sex scandal brewing with both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are linked to which, well, tells it all. Oddly enough not much coverage of that one. The most laughable things is when some Americans condemn one of the womanizers (Bill or Donald), yet defend the other.

Yet my favorite still is the video where Donald, the GOP presidential candidate, makes an unwellcome approach (read sexual harassment) on Rudy Guliani (a GOP politician that ran for president) in drag, and Rudy says in the end "Donald, I thought you were a gentleman!"



The Irony of the above video for me is just unbelievable as one of the things why Rudy Guliani flopped was his drag performances. And Trump... is just Trump, and real world actions like that are likely to be the final nail in the coffin of his Presidential aspirations, where everything else (collectively far more dangerous) didn't matter. And that the two above are President hopefulls come from the Republican party. Yep, there's no business like showbusiness. (Perhaps US politics?)

That building never looks like it could have been pretty.

Yes it's an industrial hangover in the marina of my local town, Ipswich. The development of the marina was stopped in its tracks in 2008, a nod to the disgraceful behaviour of investment bankers.

You should see the building next door, an even better metaphor for the vacuous nature of Trump.


It's known as the skeleton, or wine rack tower.

I've noticed you're in denial. That's fine. I mistakingly expected you to have a point with that clip and wasted time watching it. Please don't make me watch inane videoclips again, especially not of a turd like Ben Carson. (Homosexuality must be a choice "b]ecause a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight— and when they come out, they’re gay.")

It's interesting to me, by the way, that as far as my memory serves, this is the first time a candidate is doing well in the US with a depressing message "the USA is doing terrible (Mexicans), it's going down the drain (terrorists) and I'll save you (with my super-wheelin'an'dealin' skills)". I'm used to "USA is the greatest country in the world and if you vote for me we'll tackle this and that problem".

It's very weird hearing such pessimism becoming mainstream in the USA. Sounds to me USA citizens to a large extent no longer believe in themselves or their fellow countrymen.

That video, despite the fact that you're annoyed, made an important point. It wasn't discussing Carson's views on homosexuality or anything of that sort. So bringing that up is simply a red herring. The fact of the matter is that Carson is right - liberals always trick social conservatives not to show up to vote, and therefore end up with the situation that always favours them.

It's interesting to me, by the way, that as far as my memory serves, this is the first time a candidate is doing well in the US with a depressing message "the USA is doing terrible (Mexicans), it's going down the drain (terrorists) and I'll save you (with my super-wheelin'an'dealin' skills)". I'm used to "USA is the greatest country in the world and if you vote for me we'll tackle this and that problem". — Benkei

That's how it should be - the world has many problems, we should be aware what those problems are, instead of self-deluded, like Obama, and think that everything is great when it actually isn't.

Yeah for a very simple reason that he says he will appoint conservative Judges, he will put tougher restrictions on abortion, he will end illegal immigration, etc. What does Crooked say on the other hand? That she will appoint progressive Judges. She will license partial birth abortion. That's the problem. It's not about the single person, but also about who surrounds them. Social conservatives have a degree of control over Trump that they don't over Clinton. I don't really care if Trump himself will be immoral so long as he will be a useful tool for the social conservative agenda. It's a calculated sacrifice - lose a pawn, in order to win the game. — Agustino

How will Trump "end illegal immigration"? Yes, he has perhaps said he will do so, but he's offered no remotely plausible plan for doing so (even his ridiculous Mexico-financed wall, should it be built, would not stop illegal immigration). Surely you're not that naive?