Online Journalists Launch An Onslaught Against Donald Trump (nytimes.com) 843
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Online journalists at Buzzfeed are publicizing two controversial videos featuring Donald Trump. First the site "filed court motions seeking the release" of Trump's under-oath testimony in a June trial, in which the real estate mogul "says he planned his caustic remarks on immigration delivered during the launch of his presidential bid," bragging that they'd "led to my nomination in a major party in the country." And Buzzfeed is also publicizing a video clip from the 2000 softcore porn movie Playboy Video Centerfold: Bernaola Twins, in which Trump makes a cameo appearance. Playboy has even said that years earlier Trump actually pressured his second wife to pose for Playboy. ("Trump himself was on the phone negotiating the fee," remembered a top Playboy editor. "He wanted her to do the nude layout. She didn't.")
But his biggest problem may be the mainstream media. According to the New York Times, Trump "declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."
But his biggest problem may be the mainstream media. According to the New York Times, Trump "declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."
Meh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Meh.
Hillary is a corrupt, lying monster who is the ultimate expression of the repressive system of the political Establishment. She shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House. I'm voting for Trump just because the establishment is trying so insanely hard to derail him. When the UN hates his guts, that just adds another sparkle to his appeal. He's the napalm solution for a time when everyone is tired of what Hillary represents.
Burn the system down. Burn it all down.
Re:Meh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Burn the system down. Burn it all down.
I would rather not see Establishment Hilary elected, but Trump really could burn the system down, and what replaces it is going to be much worse than what we have. Corporate Authoritarianism and Full Surveillance State where we have less rights, less freedoms and where system rigged much harder against regular people. Your think your analog guns will be any good against autonomous kill drones?
Re: Meh. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the President has full power over kill drones, no checks and balances whatsoever?
Pretty much, and Obama already used them for killing off US citizens [wikipedia.org]. Sure, it was heinous people that got killed that way, but that can quickly get redefined.
Re: Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't think the AC has to worry. The ones that swear fealty to the leader are usually safe in an authoritarian regime.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
And when you really get to hate the color of your living room carpet, I assume you also set that one on fire to then watch it burn from the comfort of your sofa.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Burn the system down. Burn it all down.
I'm guessing you're not a Muslim, Hispanic, black person, or resident of a Middle Eastern country.
You won't get racially profiled, called the enemy, threatened with deportation, or have your country attacked on a whim.
Much more likely you're white (and probably male), and as bad as Trump is the worst consequence you're likely to personally experience is a drop in your purchasing power due to the recession.
In other words it's easy to say "burn it all down" when you're not the one in the house.
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Hillary already called almost half the voters "enemies" [cbsnews.com]. She doubled down [washingtonpost.com] and said many of them were "deplorable", "irredeemable" and "not America".
If I have to choose between my government hurting others or hurting me, what's my rational choice?
And why do blacks, Hispanics, and so many other people get a pass for supporting a candidate who so obviously hates many of their fellow Americans?
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Hag? Don't be so mean to the former administrative assistant of state.
After all, she did mention her concussion brain damage when called in front of congress. It's not cool to call dain bramaged people hags.
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Informative)
Where do you think the numbers on your state return come from? Maybe you've never filed taxes, but state returns say things like, "Enter amount from your Federal form on line 9a".
State tax returns are based on Federal tax returns.
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You really think that Trump isn't corrupt?
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Clinton is in major leagues level of corruption. Has Trump ever been under a FBI investigation multiple times ? NOPE .
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally agree. Anybody but Hillary.
Anything is better than the corruption that is the Clintons.
No, not anything. Economic devastation and deep recession followed by lots of multinational corporations becoming ex-US due to shattering of trade deals is not better. If you think US could survive couple bankruptcies like Trump's casinos, then you are sadly mistaken.
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Yes, she's bad. But he's several orders of magnitude worse, in pretty much anything. John Oliver explain this rather well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
poor sod (Score:4, Funny)
Never realized how much scrutiny his life would get if he got the nomination.
Re:poor sod (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump doesn't see these as negatives. Many of his supporters on here don't either, and even think these stories might help him. These guys know essentially zero about politics.
The house always wins (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, Trump's >$900million loss came from running a fucking casino. And this was in the go-go 90's when people were actually making and spending money.
You've got to be a special kind of businessman to lose almost a billion dollars running a casino.
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Re:The house always wins (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that is an interesting question. Remember, Donald Trump's only public record is as a businessman. He's never held any public office. So his record as a businessman is the only data we have to evaluate him.
At very least, a businessman who loses almost a billion dollars running a fucking casino had better be prepared to answer other questions about his skill at business.
Doesn't that sound relevant to you?
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For the benefit of some of our readers who've not been out of the basement in a while: A "casino" is a place where you insert 2 week's salary into something called a "slot machine" and they try to fool you into thinking that you've still managed to come out "ahead" because you got a "free" steak dinner + 2-3 drinks out of the deal. So you can maybe see why The Donald might be challenged to make a profit in this scenario. I think anyone would be, no?
Oh, wait--you say he owned the casino? Um... I'll get back
Re:The house always wins (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue the opposite. His tax returns would prove he is NOT a successful self-made billionaire. For a guy who's built his candidacy on an ego trip this is important.
Re: The house always wins (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if he didn't lose the money and still claimed the loss on his income tax, we have a whole different discussion, involving lengthy prison sentences. One thing for sure: we now know why Trump has been so adamant about not releasing his tax returns.
Re: The house always wins (Score:5, Insightful)
When he decided to run for president, I guess there was no way he could have known he'd be expected to release his tax returns.
http://www.mediaite.com/online... [mediaite.com]
Nobody has to "smear" Donald Trump with BS. He does it himself so much it's made his skin orange.
Re:The house always wins (Score:5, Insightful)
One cannot record billion dollar loss without having a billion dollars worth of assets at one time.
It is just like RIAA 'piracy damages' valuations, so yes you can record loss much larger than market valuation of assets at any time.
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That is complete bull. The closest to a tax return Trump ever disclosed was his PFD form submitted to the Federal Election Commission mid-year, where he listed about $360 million in yearly revenue. Revenue, not income. His actual income we'll never know until he publishes his returns, but it will be way, way below that figure.
Bad news for a man who built his campaign about how being really successful as a businessman qualifies him for office.
So what's the news? (Score:2, Interesting)
You pretty much have to be a sociopath or psychopath to make it to the level Trump/Clinton make it. There have been numerous studies proving that C-level executives and politicians are exponentially more likely to exhibit those signs.
Whether or not he actually got the tax break, it indeed makes him smart. If you knew how to game the system the way Trump, Gates, Jobs or Clinton did, you would do it too. Jobs purportedly never drove with a license plate on his vehicles, Gates did the overseas tax dodge, they
The downvoting is impressive! (Score:3)
Timely, too (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if I've seen so many points expended to suppress both sides of an argument.
What's interesting is looking at the moderation levels over time.
For the first hour after the article was posted, there were a lot of pro-Trump comments.
Now it's 2.5 hours later and all those articles have been modded down. What's left is pro-Hillary, in a roundabout way.
You can tell when something's gone up and down because of the tags., If something has "Score: 2 insightful" it means someone modded it up (to gain the "insightful") and someone else modded it down.
When Whiplash took over I mentioned that this site goes to pot around 6 weeks before a presidential election, and becomes unbearable starting around 2 weeks before an election. This year I think it'll be worse than previous election years.
I can't *wait* until the election is over, so we can go back to having insightful posts.
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It's meta-moderation correcting the early bad mods. The alt-right moderators are always out in force on every story about Trump it anything "social justice" related. They get in early to try to control the debate, and unfortunately it works.
Later meta-moderation cleans up, and the tone of the debate changes. Unfortunately most if the comments and views come early on.
Best way to counter it is to keep meta modding, but only stories from those threads since after the first 10 your votes count for less.
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You can tell when something's gone up and down because of the tags., If something has "Score: 2 insightful" it means someone modded it up (to gain the "insightful") and someone else modded it down.
Why not just click on the score and see the exact moderations done to the message? I don't think it lists in what order they happened, but you should be able to figure it out by the final score.
Re:The downvoting is impressive! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you accept that charge then what about President George "My Pet Goat" Bush? He and his entire core team were in the Oval office when intelligence sources reported about a possible Al Qaeda attack on US soil. They thought it was unimportant and sloughed it off. It was completely ignored.
Based on the standard you apply to Clinton then Bush, Cheney and pretty much every person in that room should have been convicted of criminally failure to execute their duties of office. The President and Vice President and Secretary of State should have been hung and the rest sentenced to life in a federal penitentiary.
My conclusion is that you are all foul hypocrites who are so hyper-partisan that you put your party ideology above the national interests of the United States.
Just like Citizens United (Score:5, Interesting)
Buzzfeed is a corporation, just like Citizens United is a corporation. We heard it was wrong for Citizens United to spend money to make a political film. Where's the outrage about Buzzfeed spending corporate money against Trump?
Please post your expressions of outrage here. Unless your outrage was phony. Or selective, partisan outrage. Or you can explain why corporation B can legitimately spend on politics, but corporation C can't.
Re:Just like Citizens United (Score:5, Insightful)
We were told it was wrong, not that it was "against the rules". Where's the outrage about Buzzfeed intentionally doing wrong?
If the rules change back and Buzzfeed does this again, you want people at Buzzfeed arrested for it, right?
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No, we were told it was against the rules, which is why it went all the way to the Supreme Court. That is a fact.
And yes, if the rules change again, I definitely want anyone who violates them arrested.
The media should focus on its job (Score:4, Insightful)
Reporting the facts. All of them. Leave the editorializing to the readers.
So that's how Trump's spinning it (Score:5, Insightful)
I was wondering how he was going to try to recover from his recent string of bad news. Looks like his method is to pretend it's a conspiracy by the left-wing media to ruin him with an "onslaught" of bad press. Which implies that the stories are false or exaggerated, without actually making that claim. Clever, in case he ever needs to admit that the reports are true.
Truth has no sides. Reality has no bias. If these things are true, and I have seen no indications that they are not, then the news is making Donald Trump look bad because Donald Trump is actually bad. If he steals money from charity to bribe investigators to turn a blind eye to his fraudulent businesses, the blame for the bad press afterward lies purely at the hands of Trump, not on the media and press.
Sorry, that's an "onslaught" ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Publishing - the man's own media appearances is an "onslaught"? Isn't that more like "routine"? It barely qualifies as journalism, too easy.
Isn't holding people accountable for their public positions the very job of journalists?
And The Times - every journalist has been howling for those tax returns for a nearly a year, they've been expected for 40 years - and now actually showing a couple of pages of a really old one is an "onslaught"? Most would say, "no brainer".
But it's buzzfeed (Score:3)
The same people that tells me that I should be ashamed of being white, so, meh.
(not that I like the giant douche, or the turd sandwich for that matter)
So what? Its legal. (Score:3)
"it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years..."
Note the use of the word "Legally".
If you don't like what he did, change the law, don;t bitch about him following it. There are plenty of other corps (such as Apple) doing similar things.
Besides just that fact that what Trump did is actually legal would automatically make it fuck load better than MANY things Clinton and her foundation has done/is doing.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Funny)
AMEN.
Vote for Hillary = Affirmation that you're cool with corrupt politics.
Vote for Trump = Drop napalm on the whole F-ing thing.
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Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Interesting)
These guys have dealings with so many ventures it's realistically impossible to not find a connection between all of them to each other in some way. That's how they got to be so big in the first place.
Donald Trump has struck a nerve with the american people. It's sad that he was the one to figure out how, but he did. That nerve is the sensitivity to the overtly corrupt political structure now at the helm of this country "for the people". He promised he could not be influenced because he has more than enough capital to fund his run, and live happily ever after.
Unfortunately, the Democrats didn't do any better, by swinging their ball completely in the 100% opposite direction. Hillary Clinton seems to be as politically astute as Donald Trump is politically ignorant. She successfully derailed Bernie Sander's campaign with insider dealings so corrupt, they forced the DNC chairman(woman) to resign, along with other DNC senior staff. She has been making insider plays, taken money from just about anyone who would give it to her, no matter what the cost to the American people, or the favor required; and wiggled her way to the Democratic presumptive nominee this election year, seemingly through those backroom deals. Her entire campaign doesn't really promise anything ground-breaking, really its just more of the same overly corrupt Washington insiders. Instead, her campaign is really "I'm not him". His campaign, if he could ever get the media to stop talking about his mouth, is "I'm not them".
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Interesting)
His returns will show he's not a billionaire. To him that's the worst possible thing for the media to be able to prove. He'd rather be known as a crazy jerk than a pure charlatan.
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His returns show the facts and figures of his business. From there it's simple to deduce his net worth. Hell, they've almost managed it without his returns. Actual documents will simply tweak the figures and give his opponents a chance to wave actual numbers in public.
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If Trump had done nothing other than invest his initial "small loan" in index funds, reinvesting the dividends, he would be worth 12 billion dollars today. Even if he is worth the 4 billion he claims he is worth, he is still something of a failure as a businessman.
Re: Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Insightful)
It scares the crap out of me that here on Slashdot, a site with presumably smart people like engineers and programmers, so many people are defending and rooting for Donald Trump.
Either Slashdot is not as intelligent as I thought, or it is more right-wing than I thought, which of course is not exclusive.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Interesting)
I've experienced the same living in South America and witnessing people i used to regard as smart defending the likes of Castro, Chavez, Kirchner and Rousseff. It was a sad eye opener.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
For God's sake, have you ever been to Cuba? I have. Twice. Last time i visited i had several offers to trade for my combs, shampoo and ibuprofen.
There's a good reason people still try to flee the island to Miami in makeshift rafts and not the other way around.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only not mutually exclusive but also highly correlated.
It's what you get with miserable public education, corporate news media that's only in it for the ratings, and a population where most people don't have a passport and never left their country.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
Either Slashdot is not as intelligent as I thought, or it is more right-wing than I thought
Trump is not "right-wing". He is a populist, with an eclectic and shifting mix of the worst of both left and right.
"Right-wing" means fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, free trade, and cutting entitlements, ... like Bill Clinton.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Interesting)
Either Slashdot is not as intelligent as I thought, or it is more right-wing than I thought
Trump is not "right-wing". He is a populist, with an eclectic and shifting mix of the worst of both left and right.
"Right-wing" means fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, free trade, and cutting entitlements, ... like the Republican led Congress when Bill Clinton signed their bills into law.
FTFY
What? You thought Bill Clinton wrote every piece of legislation that Congress voted on?
You need to watch Schoolhouse Rock.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama had a Democrat controlled congress and he used it to ram a shitty health care bill down everyone's throat.
You didn't elaborate on what made it so shitty, so I'll suggest why (don't blame Obama): The only way this (health care for the masses) was ever going to come to reality was if those who stood the most to lose (insurers and providers of healthcare and medicine) had a say in its conceptual design. IOW, those who had the most to lose from changing the status quo limited the degree to which the status quo changed- naturally by lobbying the democrats as not a single republican voted for passage- they continue to this day to undermine the basic right of healthcare. As it turns out, this lead to insurance policies that are still too expensive for the intended recipients and insurers who resent having to cover those who most need it because it makes it hard for them to profit. The right thing to do was create a single payer system and congress (not Obama) totally half-assed the entire thing. Half a solution in this case was not a solution IMHO. OTOH, a few good things did come of it: coverage of preventive medicine, age increase of dependents, medicare improvements, pre-existing coverage, and more.
He got what he wanted but pissed off enough people to destroy the Democrats majority in both houses.
By that I take it you mean he drove state district gerrymandering to a new level of absurd. The resulting ideological makeup of congress is in no way reflective of the populations they purport to represent, nor the country as a whole.
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It scares the crap out of me that here on Slashdot, a site with presumably smart people like engineers and programmers, so many people are defending and rooting for Donald Trump.
The post you replied to doesn't appear to be doing that. Though GGGP posts may have been, they were done by ACs, which could very well be the same ACs that post GNAA spam.
Besides, ones intelligence isn't inherently going to make them favor a particular candidate. That, and to be honest I think the whole presidential race is stupid anyways.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't vote candidates, in general. They vote if they are happy about how things are, or if they are not. Usually, is the incumbent (I'm happy about how things are in MY life), or the challenger (I'm not happy, let's change something).
In this particular case the incumbent cannot run, so the proxy is the candidate of the same party. Also, people suspect that the usual challengers are not really a change at all. But in this case it is, or at least it appears to be. So the excitement about it.
Voting or defending Trump has nothing to do with Trump, really, and all to do with a desire for profound change. The people express that desire in the only way that the election game allows them, and that's not a good way, that's for sure, but it's the only one.
You are surprised of intelligent people defending Trump, and I am surprised of how this blatant fact, the desire, of so many people, for many current politics to change or reverse course, is completely bypassed by the media, that chooses to center in the, admittedly rather pathetic, personification of that desire. That's an ad-hominem fallacy if I ever saw one, and you fall into that trap and try to keep the discussion there (the person), instead of on the politics.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
People well and truly vote for candidates in the USA, and in general they seem to be confused at situations like Australia or the UK where we vote for parties.
Sorry to disagree, but that doesn't check with the fact that, in the USA, only candidates from the two big parties have a chance to run successfully for the presidency. If people really voted for candidates, then an independent candidate would have an even chance of winning, and that's absolutely not the case. Even in this election, with two deeply flawed candidates, independents cannot even make it to the TV live debate.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
only candidates from the two big parties have a chance to run successfully for the presidency
That's because the other parties tend to run:
1) Avowed communists or other loons
2) Supposed doctors who believe in homeopathy
3) Would-be presidents who can't name a single leader of another country.
Why would such people every gain any traction with a majority of the people in the US? The certainly can't get together enough people to support their campaign operations at a level that makes them strongly visible in a country of hundreds of millions of people - because would-be supporters look at them, weigh their absurd positions against reality, and walk away.
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only candidates from the two big parties have a chance to run successfully for the presidency. If people really voted for candidates, then an independent candidate would have an even chance of winning, and that's absolutely not the case.
Those two are unrelated. People don't vote for minor candidates because especially in the USA it is seen as throwing away your vote. In countries with a preferential voting system minor parties end up getting seats in all houses of parliament as people can vote for them without effectively removing themselves from the system. Also you give your minor parties too much credit. The other big problem with minor parties is that for the most part many people agree with a set of ideas they have but also believe th
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
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It scares the crap out of me that here on Slashdot, a site with presumably smart people like engineers and programmers, so many people are defending and rooting for Donald Trump.
Ever consider that the world could benefit greatly from anti-establishment anarchy? I'm sure the people rooting for Trump aren't rooting for the man, but rather the idea that it would finally shake the shit out of the establishment and maybe wake up a government who most definitely is no longer for the people or by the people.
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What are people supposed to do when the other candidate declares them "enemies" [cbsnews.com]? Flawed as he is, if Trump is your only hope to avoid being treated like an enemy by your country's government, why wouldn't you support him?
Re: Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Interesting)
"To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." This was back in 1912. plus ça change, plus c'est la.
Who do I stand with? Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and other like them. Both "parties" are morally corrupt, and under the control of the planet-spanning corpocracy. We had a chance with Sanders, but we squandered it. Johnson is a joke. Trump is only in this for Trump, Inc. Hillary is inherently unlikable, and is a corporate puppet who only changed her tune at all because of Sanders. Neither should be President.
However, given the "choice" we've been presented, I still would rather have a corrupt, mean politician as opposed to a megalomaniac who is intent on building an oligarchy like his buddy Putin.
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We had a chance with Sanders, but we squandered it.
No, we dodged a bullet. His entire world view is based on either pure fantasy, or on making productive people slaves to non-productive people and calling that a virtue. Even Hillary Clinton (who is currently doing her best in public to pretend she likes what Sanders stands for, because she's wildly pandering to low-information young people who want free stuff) says in private (audio recording just released!) that Sanders' supporters are unrealistic live-in-mom's-basement people who want free stuff and don'
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the megalomaniac is clinton
Re: Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
His entire world view is based on either pure fantasy, or on making productive people slaves to non-productive people and calling that a virtue.
There is not a single policy that Bernie has advocated that isn't being put to good use in Northern Europe - he's really a Democratic socialist after the Scandinavian style. So are you saying that Finland is an imaginary place?
On your second point: Too true, I hate it when productive people (like contractors, who actually build useful things) are unpaid slaves to non-productive people (like freeloading Trump and his ilk).
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Lynch-pin of stability? You've got to be kidding. Look at the Middle East. ISIS is the result of Americans meddling. 5 years of giving arms to anyone who said they would fight against Bashar al-Assad just increased the instability in the region. Russia achieved more in 1 month. Most of this could have been avoided if the US hadn't insisted on ousting Asaad, with no clear replacement. In retrospect, Asaad is still in power, the EU has been destabilized over refugees fleeing war, and Putin looks stronger than
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In other words, she's an IRL Cercei Lannister?
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
Here is real research [shorensteincenter.org] by real academics who have actual PhD degrees and study the media. They are at one of the best universities on the planet: Harvard. This is the definitive definition of a qualified professional. They don't make shit up like Fox not-really-News.
This research covers 2015, but things didn't change much up to the national political party conventions. The most explosive material wasn't reported until after the first debate, and much of it is coming from online upstarts like Buzzfeed.
The mainstream news organizations have been completely missing until very recently. The information about Trump's income tax claim could have been uncovered by the NY Times at any time in the last two years, but it wasn't. He was getting a free ride from the entire mainstream press until a few weeks ago.
I know that Republicans have an extreme aversion to facts and departed reality many years ago, but the real world doesn't care what you think. It has a nasty habit of showing up when least expected and wreaking havoc on fools who ignore it. With any luck real world facts will finally catch up with Trump and pound him into dust. If that doesn't happen then the whole world is going on an extremely terrible ride.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Insightful)
You need to look at the media coverage of all Republican candidates together to understand what happened. The candidates thought to be the strongest opponents against Hillary received the harshest treatment (Christy, Romney, Rubio, and Cruz).
Trump was considered a non-threat, him getting the nomination was supposed to ensure an easy victory for Clinton. The long knives didn't really come out until poll numbers showed Trump actually having a chance to win. Now that he's ahead you see the hysteria.
.
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You need to look at the media coverage of all Republican candidates together to understand what happened. The candidates thought to be the strongest opponents against Hillary received the harshest treatment (Christy, Romney, Rubio, and Cruz). [...] The long knives didn't really come out until poll numbers showed Trump actually having a chance to win. Now that he's ahead you see the hysteria.
And similarly, if you look at the study, the strongest opponent (singular, since there was only one) against the Republican frontrunners received the harshest treatment. The situation is entirely symmetrical, except that none of the strong Republican candidates won.
What the study essentially showed was that the mainstream media treats what it perceives to be the frontrunners on both sides more harshly. Neither Trump nor Sanders were treated as harshly precisely because nobody thought they had a chance. They
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Insightful)
Clinton would be a fucking weak candidate on any other occasion, no arguments there. But for Pete's sake, she's running against Trump. Trump. I can't even believe there's a choice to be made here for half the population of the US.
The GOP will have no one but themselves to blame after loosing this election.
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Don't get it, eh? Trump is not the GOP, which is why he was the winning candidate. This election is about immigration, national identity and an economy that's fscking over the middle class and making them pay for everything. The GOP as a party is dead, they just haven't stopped twitching. All you have to do is look at HRC and Trump's campaign slogans- "I'm With Her" is all about Hillary, who will continue to screw over the white middle class to bring in Democrat-voting, public assistance-using blacks, latin
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Informative)
an economy that's fscking over the middle class and making them pay for everything
I think I fit the definition of the middle class (between my job and the rent I collect I make just north of $80k/year) and I don't feel like I am being made to "pay for everything", nor do I feel like I'm being fucked over in any way. The top 1% income earners pay 50% of all of the federal income taxes, and the bottom 80% (which I'm part of) barely pay 15%, so please do explain why you think I'm getting fucked over and/or how I am being made to "pay for everything."
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Interesting)
So how is he going to get things done and "Make America Great Again"
Silly voter, he's just going to do it. Trust him, he has a secret plan. Remember, he knows more about ISIS than the generals (he said so himself!). And he has "the best temperament", the "best memory", and "has the best words". Those are all direct quotes so you know they're true!
When he gets elected we'll wake up the next day and the streets will be clean, kids will say "Sir" and "Ma'am", and Leave It To Beaver will be back on the TV machine. Black people will know their place again, atheists will once again be persecuted as is proper, and mothers will go back to the kitchens where they'll spend all day cooking tasty, nutritious food for the whole family again. It'll be glorious!
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Clinton would be a fucking weak candidate on any other occasion, no arguments there. But for Pete's sake, she's running against Trump. Trump. I can't even believe there's a choice to be made here for half the population of the US.
Have you thought about what might be wrong with your world view that prevents your beliefs from matching up with objective reality?
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
Vote for the lizard, not the wizard.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:4, Insightful)
"Drop napalm on the whole F-ing thing."
That thing, the place where you live?
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But, the reality is that if the US government crashes and burns, the whole world feels the pain with Americans getting the brunt of it. The US government does not exist in a protective barrier that we're shielded from. If it explodes, we get hit in the blast.
Re:Whoopty Doo (Score:5, Interesting)
More like:
Vote for Hillary: cool with the corruption that comes with politics as usual.
Vote for Trump: watch me introduce corrupt business practices into that mix.
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WTF is this American fascination with saying that you're throwing your vote away?
NO! You are telling both of the leading parties that they are so fucked up they don't DESERVE your vote!
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Also, I didn't say Donald Trump is a good guy, or a good leader. I only said that he found a n
Re: Whoopty Doo (Score:2, Insightful)
All these attacks on Trump are only driving people to support him. He is perceived as the enemy of the media, and people hate the media more than they hate Trump.
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That, and it's going to fracture the GOP - which could lead to more than a two party system.
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Marxism, obviously.
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I have read it. In the original language, in fact. It was kind of a set book in the GDR, you know. So yes, you keep using that word...
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This is, what, the fifth time you have spouted your vitriol against someone just for having a different opinion than yourself?
You leftists sure are full of love for your fellow man.
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Looking like the pressure is on the Donald to do some real work for a change.
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Re:Legal maneuvers are ... legal! (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, that if he's filing tax returns saying he's making massive massive losses, he's clearly not a successful businessman.
Re:Legal maneuvers are ... legal! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why didn't that happen when the top Federal rate was 90%?
Re:Legal maneuvers are ... legal! (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the Wikipedia page you cited, it doesn't say anything about rich people leaving the country in the years the top tax rate was 90%.
If you want to argue that well, "nobody actually paid the top rate", then the same could be said for today. Because, even with all the pissing and moaning from right conservatives about taxes, taxation in the US is really not that high (as shown by your own citation).
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Hillary takes a different approach, by shielding most of her assets inside the Clinton Foundation. Frankly, that's a lot worse, because the Clinton Foundation is pretending to be a non-profit organization.
The above statement is 100% false. The Clinton Foundation does not "shield" assets any more than any other foundation. To this date not a single piece of evidence has come out to show that the Clinton Foundation is a scam, or not for profit.
The only known issue is that one can question the morality of taking a donation from Saudi Arabia, just like we question the morality of Donald Trump paying for a self-portrait using his foundation assets. We also question the Foundation making a political contribution.
Re:Clinton Foundation numbers (Score:5, Informative)
A really good nonprofit that is genuinely supporting a cause puts somewhere between 75% and 90% of its income into whatever cause it supports. The Clinton Foundation has a rather different record. For example, in 2015 the New York Post published numbers from 2013 showing that they foundation spend $9 million (out of a budget of $140 million) on charity [nypost.com],
You know that that is misleading to the point of lying [politifact.com], right? The Clinton Foundation doesn't give much money to other charities, true. Instead it runs it's own charitable programs, and percentage-wise spends less on payroll and administrative employee expenses than most charities. I don't know if the CF is a wonderful charity or not, but it is spending money better than other charities. It's been under constant scrutiny by anti-Clinton folks for years; if they were shielding assets for the Clintons it would have come out. Instead, people just repeat the same lies as you did
In a sense, it does lower the Clinton's taxes, in the way that donating to any charity reduces your taxes. It also means that that money is no longer theirs, which is why most people don't give 10% of their income to charity. But nobody has demonstrated that the Clintons are particularly using the CF money on themselves. Maybe they are and nobody has found the evidence (unlike with Trump's foundation). Or maybe you have evidence that the rest of the world doesn't?
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Yeah, I've noticed that rightwing pundits have recently (mostly after the debate) started a "fact-checkers are all evil and controlled by the liberals" campaign. I had hoped that people would recognize it for what it is, but I guess not. So no worries: you just go along believing what your Political Overlords want you to believe, without needing those pesky facts to get in the way.
I'm going to guess that you were very suspicious about Obama's country of birth and his role in Benghazi, until the 2014 elec
Re:Clinton Foundation numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Four Star, 93%+ rating from Charity Navigator https://www.charitynavigator.o... [charitynavigator.org]
Charity Watch: A Rating, 88% of funds go to programs not administrative costs: https://www.charitywatch.org/r... [charitywatch.org]
The actual evidence seems to indicate that the vast majority of the money that goes to the Clinton foundation actually goes to what it's ostensibly for - charitable causes themselves. That's almost the exact opposite of a "slush fund" or a way to hide money, because they're not getting anything back out of it in any appreciable form. 12%? They'd keep more of the money if they paid standard taxes with no deductions!