2016 Democratic Thread

[Balta1701]

WhileI don't think she is trying to necessarily step in front of Donald before he shoots himself in the foot, in a normal campaign her normal activities would be covered. but her big rally in OH last week to talk to Veterans was not covered...because Trump went to Mexico and then doubled down on deportations.

 

What did come out was a series of articles with scary tones about the Clinton Foundation that had zero actual allegations of improprieties that were backed up in the articles.

 

Meanwhile, Trump Foundation actually did illegally donate money to an AG race Florida just after she said FLA might join the suit against Trump University and then suddenly declined after the donation.

 

Trumps strategy is to suck all of the medias oxygen in the room with outlandish tactics. It works, he gets all of the coverage. Now, obviously doing outlandish things is not a great strategy for the voters who take the president's job seriously, but it is effective in what it aims for - to be what everyone is talking about all the time.

Last week she also spent a good amount of time on a mental health issue treatment and response plan and put out a newly-developed policy statement on creating a commission that would have legal authority to issue fines for "excessive" prescription drug price hikes and issue emergency orders to get around them when they happen.

[StrangeSox]

Republicans in Congress are planning a light legislative agenda as they return from their long summer break on Tuesday, a strategy some say is designed in part to bog down Hillary Clinton if she becomes president.

 

It is not uncommon for the Congress to take it slow in an election year and legislative delays could work in Republicans' favor if their nominee Donald Trump takes the White House in November.

 

But the strategy will also pay dividends if it is Clinton who takes office on Jan. 20. She will be forced to deal with old baggage rather than focus on her agenda of infrastructure investments and immigration and Wall Street reforms.

 

"If Hillary wins, we force her to waste time, resources, momentum, early good will and political capital - all on cleanup duty," said a senior aide to one Republican senator.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cong...k-idUSKCN11C109

[Brian]

If Hillary wins, I hope people will have voted Reps out.

[bmags]

Trump and Clinton were both speaking at same time. Guess which was covered? Clinton in hiding again.

[Balta1701]

So, apparently in New York State it is legal for one party to record another without the other's express permission.

 

This is relevant today because as of last week we started hearing rumors that Gretchen Carlson had been taping comments by Roger Ailes and others for the last several years.

 

Within a few days of the rumors that there were tapes, Fox News settled her sexual harassment claim for $20 million, along with several other claims by other women today, and issued a public apology.

 

For the most part, people such as Sean Hannity who tweeted that she was a liar have yet to comment.

[bmags]

So, apparently in New York State it is legal for one party to record another without the other's express permission.

 

This is relevant today because as of last week we started hearing rumors that Gretchen Carlson had been taping comments by Roger Ailes and others for the last several years.

 

Within a few days of the rumors that there were tapes, Fox News settled her sexual harassment claim for $20 million, along with several other claims by other women today, and issued a public apology.

 

For the most part, people such as Sean Hannity who tweeted that she was a liar have yet to comment.

 

and Greta Van Sustern resigned.

[Balta1701]

and Greta Van Sustern resigned.

Yeah, we have no idea what is up with that yet so I didn't include it.

[Middle Buffalo]

and Greta Van Sustern resigned.

Insulted she wasn't harassed.

[bmags]

Yeah, we have no idea what is up with that yet so I didn't include it.

 

Just super odd timing. Defended Ailes, settlement comes, same day she resigns.

[greg775]

Trump and Clinton were both speaking at same time. Guess which was covered? Clinton in hiding again.

As long as Hillary has a big lead, the liberal media will avoid covering her. If she needs a boost or help, they'll come around. Otherwise they just keep covering/mocking Donald.

[Steve9347]

As long as Hillary has a big lead, the liberal media will avoid covering her. If she needs a boost or help, they'll come around. Otherwise they just keep covering/mocking Donald.

Damn that liberal media for giving Donald Trump so much airtime.

[brett05]

Related, the scotus rejected north Carolinas voter restriction appeal.

 

Really looking forward to a fully liberal scotus.

Mostly liberal now. This measure should have failed. The asylum is being run by the inmates and it needs to stop. Thankfully each day it appears more and more likely that Trump is winning this one.

[caulfield12]

With that kind of bravado, you should send your CV to The Trump Organization...maybe four campaign managers before the 1st of October.

[StrangeSox]

Mostly liberal now. This measure should have failed. The asylum is being run by the inmates and it needs to stop.

No, as was already explained to you the last time you tried to claim that the SCOTUS has been liberal for a while because right wing conservatives don't win every single case.

 

Thankfully each day it appears more and more likely that Trump is winning this one.

 

Thankfully, this is also not reality.

[StrangeSox]

Gary Johnson’s Hard-Right Record

Gary Johnson spent his time as New Mexico’s governor championing private prisons and austerity. He’s not worth a protest vote.

 

Former colleagues remember Johnson as an ideologue, sincerely committed to his project of dismantling government. “He made it very clear to me that by the time he graduated from third grade, he knew all there was to know about government,” said Raymond Sanchez, who was speaker of New Mexico’s House of Representatives for six years of Johnson’s tenure. “He tried to privatize everything he could think of — everything that was in reach.” By 2003, he had set the state record for vetoes, rejecting 739 bills passed by the Democratic legislature.

 

But he’s best remembered for the prisons. Johnson originally ran on a platform of privatizing every jail in the state — “that way,” he reasoned, “we’ll always have the latest and greatest and best.” His first budget proposal included $91 million for a new privately run state prison.

 

As Joseph T. Hallinan reports in his book on the US prison system, Going Up the River, Johnson accepted at least $9,000 in campaign donations from a prison company that ultimately won a state contract. By the time he left office, New Mexico led the country in for-profit prisons, housing 44 percent of its inmates in private facilities. Only Alaska, with 31 percent, came close.

 

Whenever problems surfaced in the for-profit prisons, Johnson turned extremely defensive. In 2000, after four inmates and a guard were killed in private facilities, Johnson vetoed an oversight bill and startled reporters by insisting that New Mexico had the best prisons in the nation. When a riot in a private prison prompted him to send 109 inmates elsewhere, he selected a supermax prison run by the same company in Virginia — despite previous reports of human-rights violations. To this day Johnson is remorseless, saying he “saved taxpayers a lot of money.”

 

Johnson’s preference for private prisons dovetailed with his tough-on-crime philosophy. As governor, he advocated a three-strikes sentencing policy and a law eliminating early parole. He also sought to limit appeals from death row and even said capital punishment should sometimes be used on minors. (He later changed his mind and said he wanted to eliminate the death penalty altogether; he still believed in “an eye for an eye” but thought that as a policy, it was too costly and unfair.)

 

Then there was Johnson’s antagonism toward labor, which dated back to his days as a small-business owner. In 1991, a jury penalized his construction company $600,000 for dismissing an employee who reported safety concerns to OSHA. Once in office, Johnson enacted spending cuts that caused the state to eliminate its toll-free hotline for reporting similar safety violations.

 

He rejected minimum-wage increases and backed “right-to-work” bills. And in 1999, when public employee unions’ right to collectively bargain was set to expire, Johnson vetoed a bill to extend it. Thanks to Johnson’s actions, AFSCME’s Carter Bundy told me, ten thousand government workers saw their wages frozen. “He was incredibly hostile to labor,” said Morty Simon, an attorney who represented labor groups in the ’90s. “We were just totally shut out of the Gary Johnson administration. No contact, no nothing.”

[brett05]

No, as was already explained to you the last time you tried to claim that the SCOTUS has been liberal for a while because right wing conservatives don't win every single case.

 

Right, you explained it and I countered it showing that the court is indeed liberal leaning.

Thankfully, this is also not reality.

Thankfully you're wrong. With each day Trump closes the gap or slowly takes the lead. It's really Trump's to lose.

[StrangeSox]

Right, you explained it and I countered it showing that the court is indeed liberal leaning.

 

No, you listed a couple of issues without addressing the actual history and ideological makeup of the court over the past several decades. There's no objective analytics that would show a liberal court.

 

Thankfully you're wrong. With each day Trump closes the gap or slowly takes the lead. It's really Trump's to lose.

 

Oh, ok. I look forward to quoting this post on 11/9.

 

[bmags]

His argument is basically that if the court rules on a liberal law, it is a liberal ruling unless the court throws it out.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

His argument is basically that if the court rules on a liberal law, it is a liberal ruling unless the court throws it out.

Sure, but even if you want to get that simplistic (which misses an awful lot of what the court does and why, even strategically how they vote and what cases are even heard in the first place), the aggregate over the past several decades is still not a liberal court.

 

brett, why do you think the NC law should have been allowed to stand? The lower courts found a clear and explicit history of the legislature crafting the law specifically to disenfranchise minority voters.

Edited September 7, 2016 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

Right, you explained it and I countered it showing that the court is indeed liberal leaning.

 

Thankfully you're wrong. With each day Trump closes the gap or slowly takes the lead. It's really Trump's to lose.

 

 

Don't be fooled by the "Trump has a 45-43 lead in the latest poll" stories. He's getting crushed or losing by a sizeable margin in most of the states he needs to win. Unless the vague Assange threat of dropping some major news on Hillary this week is legit bad, there's really no way she loses.

[StrangeSox]

Don't be fooled by the "Trump has a 45-43 lead in the latest poll" stories. He's getting crushed or losing by a sizeable margin in most of the states he needs to win. Unless the vague Assange threat of dropping some major news on Hillary this week is legit bad, there's really no way she loses.

 

FWIW Assange has made this threat about various people many times in the past and has always fell flat on his face. He even made this promise about Clinton already, saying he was going to drop something during her DNC speech. It really betrays his claims of being non-partisan, too. Strategically timing releases of material that would be politically damaging to only one party while saying you won't release anything on the other isn't exactly non-partisan.

 

There's something to keep in mind about some of the polls out there, too. The LA times/USC and Reuters/Ipsos polls are both tracking polls, which are substantially different in their methodology from 'normal' sampling polls. Those polls are following the same pool of about 3000 people and polling several hundred of them daily whereas normal polls sample the whole registered voter poll randomly each time. The second is that Reuters/Ipsos changed their methology substantially a couple of weeks ago under the radar, and their likely voter model has white voters turning out at record high levels and minority voters at record low levels. I'm still following the "throw 'em all in the mix and just follow the aggregate trends" mindset rather than trying to pick apart each and every poll, but it is something to keep in mind.

 

That said, the trend over the past couple of weeks has been a tightening race, but the race has tightened to the about what Obama's biggest polling lead over Romney was at any point in 2012. Clinton's spike in percentage is tapering off a bit from her post-DNC, post-complete-Trump-meltdown high, but Trump is still really struggling to break out of the low 40's.

Edited September 7, 2016 by StrangeSox

[bmags]

If he had so much time with the material you'd think they could review it to prevent innocent people from having their bank accounts revealed.

[lostfan]

Trump can, and does, benefit from rock-bottom expectations.

 

He went to Mexico and really accomplished much of nothing (except getting called out on a bold-faced lie, twice, not that anyone really cared) and managed to not urinate on Nieto's shoes or blurt out racial slurs, so the chattering class talked about how he "looked presidential" (whatever the f*** that means).

[Jenksismyhero]

FWIW Assange has made this threat about various people many times in the past and has always fell flat on his face. He even made this promise about Clinton already, saying he was going to drop something during her DNC speech.

 

It really betrays his claims of being non-partisan, too. Strategically timing releases of material that would be politically damaging to only one party while saying you won't release anything on the other isn't exactly non-partisan.

 

The guy's terrible for sure, but is this because of partisanship or availability of information? We know he was provided the hacked Clinton/DNC stuff. Does he have RNC/Trump stuff to leak?

[StrangeSox]

The guy's terrible for sure, but is this because of partisanship or availability of information? We know he was provided the hacked Clinton/DNC stuff. Does he have RNC/Trump stuff to leak?

 

He's said he has no interest in leaking Trump stuff and that he does have some.

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/08/26/a...ny-trump-leaks/