jcsmith

1 hour ago, ThaiFelix said:

I guess the contents of Donald's speeches are by now restricted to attacking his rival as he has no positive accomplishments to boast about and no-one believes his promises anymore eg his promise to return law and order.

It's all he's got.

44 minutes ago, RocketDog said:

The election process failed in 2016 when the popular vote was ignored. 

Dump the electoral college then voter fraud would be insignificant noise. 

I think the majority of the people in America would agree that the electoral college and the two senate seats per state are outdated structures. I mean Wyoming has 0.18% of the population yet they get the same number of senators as California who is over 12% of the population. The electoral college has affected both parties but neither will likely budge if they think it benefits them in the short term. Republicans would never allow the senate change as they would never hold the senate again if it happened. 

While it is true that the unemployment numbers were great all you have to do is to take a look at this chart to instantly see that it continued on the same trajectory as it was under Obama. 

Obama inherited the financial crisis and a 10% unemployment rate, and by the end of his term the U.S. was more or less at full employment at 4.7%. But you wouldn't know that if you watched Fox who had endless clips of Trump making ridiculous claims like unemployment was really as high as 42% under Obama. Then of course when he got his first job report he basically laughed it off and said now they are correct. Basically admitting that he was just making it up. But he's still doing the same thing 4 years later.

And here's GDP growth data from the Worldbank.

That awful pitfall is what Obama inherited.  So where exactly is this big Trump bump? That chart doesn't include post-covid data. I thought he was saving us from Obama's terrible policies ruining the economy?

EDIT: This post was in response to a post by ipocketHUCK where he made the claims referenced here. That post has been deleted it looks like but that is what I was referencing on the unemployment and economy numbers.

19 hours ago, Tippaporn said:

That's a new conspiracy theory.  Never heard it before.  Post your sources or retract as fake conspiracy news.  Let's talk facts and not imaginative BS.

You want a source that Trump has been trying to curb immigration in every way possible since he took office? How about just doing a google of "trump immigration". 

Some examples:
 

- Declared a national emergency and then deployed troops to the southern border in a crisis of his imagination. Illegal immigration had been on the decline for years before he took office. 
- Has used the wall as a motivator for his base the entire time. He continues to tout the building of the wall despite only 5 miles of new wall having been built in his four years in office. 
- The ban on 8 muslim majority countries, which was his compromise after suggesting he would call for a complete ban muslims from entering the country during the election. The fact that he made up a lie that thousands of muslims were cheering in the streets after 9/11 and that he saw it with his own eyes was used as evidence of his bias in court. 
- Reduced refugee admissions to the lowest level since the resettlement program was created... 40 years ago. The refugee program dropped from 85k refugees in 2016 to 30,000 last year, and a planned 18,000 this year. That 18,000 number was given BEFORE covid. 
- Cancelled DACA and left them in limbo for years.
- Ended protected status for Haiti, Nicaraguan, Sudan nationals, and threatened to do the same to Honduras and El Salvador. 

- His cruel family separation policies have been condemned around the world including by the U.N..
- He asked immigration officials to close the border and promised them a pardon if they got in trouble. 
- He proposed rolling back birthright citizenship. 
- The RAISE act attempted to cut levels of LEGAL immigration by 50% and would have also put a cap on the number of refugee admissions to 50k per year. 
- New asylum restrictions on asylum claims based on violence.
- Has spoken many times about wanting to end chain migration, despite his wives' family being an obvious example of it.

- His comments on S-hole countries are further evidence of how he feels about immigrants, long a part of the American Dream that was sold to us as children. Trump and Fox have attempted to rewrite that and paint immigrants as rapists and murderers.

On April 22nd he signed an execute order significantly reducing the amount of green card immigrants. It's speculation that Covid gave him the cover to do what he's been trying to do the whole time. But it's a reasonable assumption based on similar policies and excuses he's made in the past and the similar justifications which he has given for each of them.

1 hour ago, Logosone said:

Indeed, nothing to do with "lack of leadership" at all. Actually Trump showed great leadership in closing down flights long before most other countries did.

Trump shut down flights because he had been looking for ways to curb immigration anyway and it gave him a convenient excuse, but that also doesn't make it the wrong move. What absolutely was the wrong move though is how said he was closing flights to Europe because they had not done as good of a job in securing their borders as the U.S.... That's not leadership that is Trump insulting our allies when that shot didn't need to be taken. And looking at where the U.S. is now in comparison to Europe and the virus, he really put his foot in his mouth on that one.

4 hours ago, Boon Mee said:

 Lowest Black unemployment rate (before the Chinese Communist virus) in the history of the United States. 

Yes... leadership. 

If when you have to grasp onto that stat, knowing good and well Trump has done nothing to help black unemployment, it shows how few actual accomplishments he has. We saw a similar flailing as they tried to paint Obama's economy as stagnant and heading into recession and trying to say how trump revived it when even pre-covid that wasn't true, their economic growth was virtually identical between the two, and more jobs were created under Obama. Or like the ridiculous stunts with the immigration while they have done everything they can to curb immigration. 

The only person who I think came out well after that ordeal was Melania. 

On 8/24/2020 at 5:50 AM, ezzra said:

Sibling rivalry and hanging dirty washing in public it's not becoming of an educated person and a judge no less, unless that person is vindictive enough to want to destroy a sibling name, career and life an as such, that person should be ashamed of their doing...

How about trying to save the country and world from another 4 years of dealing with an incompetent conman?

15 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Given he was never going to be "convicted" ( he was already impeached ) it was all, IMO, a waste of time, and certain Dems just looked foolish. They'd have done better with their time finding a candidate that could beat Trump in November.

You expected them to just look the other way while the President commited crimes?

And since we're talking relevancy of that Russia probe... This is well timed news: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/bipartisan-senate-report-describes-2016-trump-campaign-eager-accept-help-n1237002?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

The senate's bipartisan report is pretty damning, as well. 

5 hours ago, Pilotman said:

Indeed she was, it's just a pity that Biden is such a inarticulate moron. If that is the best that the Democrats can come up with then they don't deserve to win against Trump. 

Because Trump is a more eloquent speaker? How are you liking like in Thighland?  Covfefe!

14 minutes ago, johnnybangkok said:

In a recent interview with Trump on Fox News:- 

“I have to tell you that if you go with this universal mail-in where you send millions of votes — in California, tens of millions of ballots being sent to everybody and their dogs. Dogs are getting them, OK? People that have been dead for 25 years are getting them,” the President said.

 

The President of the United States thinks dogs are being sent ballots. 
You couldn’t make this up. 

He also of course leaves out is that it is a federal crime to fake a ballot. You will go to prison. And of course people also file their taxes online. People have used mail in balloting for years, including Donald Trump. He's trying to suppress votes and steal an election that he is losing badly. It's pretty obvious. 

45 minutes ago, mtls2005 said:

Bob Woodward's new book, "Rage" is due out soon as well (Sep. 15).

 

Supposedly trump sat for ~ 12 hours of interviews.

 

Trump slams Bob Woodward’s new book ‘Rage,’ calling it a ‘fake

 

https://nypost.com/2020/08/14/trump-says-bob-woodwards-new-book-rage-will-be-a-fake/

 

 

His last book was pretty illuminating. Unfortunately the people who really should read it are the ones who won't. And those who do will just reinforce what they already knew. 

5 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Still beating that tired old claim that Mueller didn't want to try and indict a sitting president. There was nothing to stop him providing the smoking gun to congress, but whatever he gave them it didn't amount to enough to impeach and convict.

Mueller failed because there was no evidence that he could find that amounted to sufficient to impeach and convict, not because of some fallacy that a sitting president can't be indicted.

The Justice Office of Legal Counsel prevents indicting of a sitting president. Mueller made that clear on more than one occasion. Even if he had overwhelming evidence of a crime all he could do is write the report and then hand it over to congress. He made that clear. 

With regards to a conspiracy with Russia he concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to convict in either case, though made a point to note the same reasons that I outlined in my previous post. That he could not determine intent because Trump refused to answer his questions and they reached a point where the evidence trail was dead without additional testimony, some of it had been destroyed. That having been said, the fact that 7 members of his campaign were convicted, it's common sense that they didn't concoct this plan on their own. Does anyone think that his son, son in law, and campaign manager all attended a meeting with Russia and nobody bothered to tell Trump? Is there any reason why the same people had amnesia when it came to reporting that meeting and then denied it when the press asked until it became undeniable so they lied about it being a meeting about adoptions? Or why Trump went to the public and denied having any interests in Russia while at that very time he was in negotiations for a Trump Tower in Moscow, and reportedly ordered Michael Cohen to later lie about that fact to congress.

In terms of obstruction though there were several counts where Trump was pretty blatantly and obviously guilty but that wouldn't matter since it was not Mueller's job to determine guilt. He went out of his way to point out that he was not exonerating Trump when he said that if they had confidence that Trump had not committed a crime they would have said so. Trump very blatantly and obviously obstructed justice. Is that the act of an innocent man? 

23 minutes ago, Motoko said:

In other words, normal geopolitics, and Trump is innocent. 

Not exactly. Some important notes:

- Mueller said many times that he would not be able to indict a sitting president. His investigation thus was more about gathering information and then passing that information to congress and allowing them to do as they would. 
- Trump refused to give an interview. He gave written answers, some of them which were lies and half-truths. And he then refused to have a followup interview when questions were raised on those. It was impossible for Mueller to judge intent without it.
- There were many counts of obstruction of justice, several pretty blatant ones. Why the obstruction?
- Evidence was destroyed and some questions remain unanswered.
- 199 charges, 37 indictments, 7 people in Trump's campaign where found guilty. 

4 hours ago, Cryingdick said:

Well if you really want a contested election you found a self fulfilling prophecy. Only the dems can grasp defeat from the jaws of victory. Aren't the polls so overwhelmingly convincing we can run the election as it has always been? 

Like the time we're in right now is how it has always been... The U.S. has averaged 1273 deaths per day from Covid in the past five days and about 55k new cases per day despite testing less over that time. Schools are getting ready to start back up in a lot of places, businesses are attempting to open. This is going to be happening during the election. Are we really to expect people to risk the lives of themselves and their families to go out and vote? And if they do, with the social distancing guidelines in place you run the risk of what happened recently in local elections of lines running long, voting booths closing and people not being able to cast their vote. 

You said in another post that both sides are volleying for what gives them an advantage. Sure for political parties they will try to do that. But screw the political parties. America is a democracy. The bottom line is every person's vote should count. What Trump is attempting to do is cheating... and might I remind you it is the third time in two elections that he has attempted to cheat. You can try to say oh he was just doing opposition research with Hillary and didn't know any better, all the while ignoring the cover up and the fact that he was warned by the FBI that this was not okay. You can say the Ukraine stuff was no big deal, and it didn't rise to an impeachable offense. But now you have him basically admitting on national TV that he is trying to hurt mail in voting. You have him refusing to promise to accept the results of an election for the second election in a row. You have him making up lies about voter fraud... again. 

Anyone who had paid attention to his career knows that Donald Trump is a liar, and a cheat. He inherited a massive amount of money from his father, and lied about it. He then drove one business after the next into the ground, and the only way he has stayed afloat over the years is by cheating people who worked for him and driving them out of business by refusing to pay his bills and tying them up in court. Of course he's going to cheat. He's a cheater and a conman. That's who he is. Let's not pretend it is anything other than it is. He's a snake being a snake. But the GOP is apparently fine with looking the other way as he does so. And that is a major problem. 

2 hours ago, ChouDoufu said:

i'd consider a third party write-in, but so many states, although they allow write-in votes, don't count them.  what a choice!  don't vote, throw it away with a write-in, or vote for one of the two essentially interchangeable gangsters.

What exactly has Biden done that is corrupt? FSB propaganda aside. 

The problem with voting third party is you are basically just throwing your vote in the trash. I don't get it when people try to make equivalencies here. There is nothing wrong with not liking one guy but there are many scales of competence. And unfortunately Trump is near the bottom of that scale. Heck for a minute let's say that Biden is every bit as incompetent as Trump... If all he did was keep his mouth shut and stop embarrassing the country on a daily basis that would be an upgrade. 

Now you may not agree with my assessment and that's fine. But whichever way you feel you can't feel that they are both equal. Voting for the better of the two which you think can win is a far better option that voting for say Kanye West or a Libertarian candidate. There is a reason that Trump people have been doing everything they can to get Kanye onto ballots. It's because they know that head to head he's down by double digits. Their only route to winning is to suck away percentages from throwing out votes, or keeping people from going out and casting their votes.