2016 US Presidential Elections Thread [Trump Wins] Page 31

Started by Kanzler January 31st, 2016 9:29 PM
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Somewhere_

i don't know where

Age 23
Male
somewhere (duh)
Seen June 5th, 2019
Posted March 17th, 2019
I would like to add that many of the Alternative-Right and those advocating for a wall want the wall to not just to prevent illegal immigration. Like gimmiepie pointed out, if this was the case, then they would want it easier to become a US citizen.

They want to prevent illegal immigration because of who is illegally immigrating. They dont want these people, legal or illegal, unless they will fully assimilate to the culture, language, and be productive with a job by adding to the economy. To Trump, the wall is a cultural barrier, not a political barrier (at least according to many of his supporters. If not the case, then the supporters advocate this, and regardless of the purpose, it achieves the same thing).

In short, to them it is a cultural issue more than it is a safety issue (within the context of Mexico and South American immigration).
Male
Seen June 21st, 2018
Posted March 18th, 2018
322 posts
11.5 Years
It should also be noted that illegal immigration into the US is at it's lowest in years and only decreasing, so rhetoric about that should be taken only with that knowledge in mind.
Also, while pence did win the debate it should be noted it was through unabashed lying and denial about things more than presenting coherent arguments- he came off looking more "electable" but at the expense of the truth. I would not call him more electable than Trump considering his own frightening history of awful anti-LGBT rhetoric and generally regressive behaviour towards any and all social progress. (I.e, supporting abhorrent "conversion therapy", singing anti-abortion laws that require burial or cremation (Basically a funeral) for aborted or miscarriaged fetuses, systematically defunded planned parenthood and caused an AIDS epidemic in his state due to it being the biggest supplier of testing and care for AIDS patients and publicly said he'd rather put money towards conversion therapy than to preventative measures for the AIDS epidemic he personally caused)

A candidate who's own website said all rape victims have the right to be believed despite her calling the legitimate reported rape of Kathy Shelton (12 at the time of the attack) the fantasy of a young girl who "sought out" older men, A twelve year old girl.
The discussion of this seems to be over, but it should be noted that this isn't at all true Clinton at no stage said this, it's a mishmash of things said by other people during the trial. Clinton did request a psychiatric evaluation of the victim on advice from a child psychologist who said part of that, but she didn't agree or say so herself.

Source: http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-laughed-about-it/
(Snopes needs to be used a lot more around here for fact check purposes imo)

Ivysaur

Grass dinosaur extraordinaire

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On the subject of presidential candidates who worked as attorneys defending criminals because it was their damn freaking job -and the 6th Amendment guarantees that any suspect has the right to have a defence attorney regardless of how bad the charges are-, Slate brings up this gem:

When James Madison proposed a Bill of Rights to shore up the new Constitution’s protection of individual rights, he included a right-to-counsel clause in his earliest drafts. The clause enjoyed nearly universal support at ratifying conventions, since the colonists had suffered under the old English rules barring many defendants from assistance of counsel. Indeed, a majority of colonies already guaranteed the right to an attorney before the Sixth Amendment was even ratified. Moreover, for much of American history, defending vilified clients was seen as an honorable, even noble calling. John Jay and Alexander Hamilton represented universally deplored defendants without apology. So did Abraham Lincoln, who defended several notorious murders. Lincoln, in fact, defended an accused murderer just a year before he was elected president. His client got acquitted.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/10/this_attack_on_tim_kaine_proves_the_gop_is_done_defending_the_constitution.html

Esper

California
Seen June 30th, 2018
Posted June 30th, 2018
I would like to add my personal experience with people who are immigrants to the US which is that they're generally very hard-working people. It takes a lot to move to another country. (Money, bravery, etc.) I see a big parallel to people who want to adopt children. They both have to go through a lot of extra effort and be subjected to a lot more scrutiny for something that other people take for granted.

If anything, wanting immigrants to assimilate is in some small way asking them to take what they've worked hard for for granted.

CoffeeDrink

GET WHILE THE GETTIN'S GOOD

Male
Lootin' Your Poké's
Seen December 4th, 2016
Posted December 4th, 2016
1,250 posts
9.7 Years
Spoiler:
You might notice that there's a lot of European countries with laxer immigration laws that also have lower crime rates too, so don't try that argument either. Especially with Canada next door.
I have brought up several reasons and instances before as to why Europe has lower crime rates than the US. If, as you say, illegal immigration is at an all time low, then the statement as to 'lax immigration laws' and low crime is antithesis to the above statement. Letting people in or blocking people out does not have any correlation with a reduction of crime domestically based.

This is perhaps the reason why I am frustrated. I'll explain that the US has 33k gangs, cite sources, documents, studies, research both European based as well as US based but somehow Europe has everything figured out, every time.

Perhaps Europe has a lower crime rate because there are less people present that commit crimes?

Perhaps there is a direct correlation between drug consumption and criminal activity? Perhaps the reason why is that the majority of the world's narcotic producers [Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Belize, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela - courtesy of the Whitehouse Press secretary] are closer to the US than Europe? Not to mention that the drug market is stronger in the US monetarily, and consumption wise.

Perhaps the UNODC, the FBI, the CIA, are incorrect?

Europe has less prisoners, even if you include Russia in the mix. Even, at the very least, if 30% of the US' prison population is violent, that still makes about 650k violent offenders, at minimum. All of Russia has about just as many prisoners total [courtesy of the World Prison Brief].

There are several different reasons why the US has more violence and more crime, but as always Europe is brought up time and again even though they lack several of the issues that we do. This seems to be the latest excuse as to why Europe has less crime than the US.

Someone please explain to me why it's so magical how somebody with less violent offenders deals with less crime. Crime and violent crime has not diminished over the years, but increased steadily along with the population, however homicide itself has diminished considerably (within the US). So, Europe has less gangs, therefore it is common enough sense as to why they have less crime.

Less criminals, less narcotics, less viagra I made that last one up, I don't know for sure. But there could be a correlation between viagra and twinkie consumption and criminal activity. What I am uncertain of, however, is the rest of Europe's black market economy, but chances are that the US would have stronger pull in terms of trends and growth. Walls and immigration have nothing to do with criminal correlation in affects effecting a much larger issue. The numbers would be negligible in terms of illegal immigration and criminal activity.

But, you know, there's always Singapore and their trafficking laws... but this is all besides the point and has nothing to do with the current campaign. So, illegal immigration is breaking the law, but not inherently violent and not all illegal immigrants are violent but all illegal immigration is, well, illegal.

What does everyone think about the US accusing Russia of tampering with the election? I think it's a tad... embarrassing.

Somewhere_

i don't know where

Age 23
Male
somewhere (duh)
Seen June 5th, 2019
Posted March 17th, 2019
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jag/POL596A/Putnam-Immigration-Lecture.pdf

Just going to leave this here. The above study demonstrates how immigration produces a decline in social trust. I do not know if social trust relates entirely to crime. However, I believe it is relevant to the discussion about the virtues of immigration.

It also reveals that immigration has long term benefits, such as creativity leading to innovation and economic success. I would like to inject my own opinion here that this is not an argument for open borders, but more of an argument for select immigration.
Male
Seen June 21st, 2018
Posted March 18th, 2018
322 posts
11.5 Years
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jag/POL596A/Putnam-Immigration-Lecture.pdf

Just going to leave this here. The above study demonstrates how immigration produces a decline in social trust. I do not know if social trust relates entirely to crime. However, I believe it is relevant to the discussion about the virtues of immigration.
Not really, what you've linked to is an article about how immigration can/does lead to different immigrated ethnic groups gathering together geographically and socially, for example a decrease in communal activity ect. Crime has nothing to do with it.

From there, the study in question has a very low sample size for studying something with such a wide variety of issues/factors involved (30,000 people in the US, to be exact) filling in personal feelings as the information gathered. As with all social studies, it's very difficult to quantify those, especially in a context with a smaller sample size than what would be necessary to totally understand every faucet of the issue. (Not to mention the issues that would come with trying to get a sample population representative of enough to get accurate readings for those factors)

It also reveals that immigration has long term benefits, such as creativity leading to innovation and economic success. I would like to inject my own opinion here that this is not an argument for open borders, but more of an argument for select immigration.
It's not an argument for anything, it's an observation of data converted into speech. "Select Immigration" (At least, from what i can assume that is since it's not a real term i can define), however, would very much mute at least half of those benefits. Specified slots for immigrants will not lead to the melding of differing ideas and concepts that would increase creativity and innovation in the same way current forms of immigration does, and as far as i'm aware the increase economic success would likely not be as large with heavy limitations on immigration intrinsic to that sort of idea (And as such, I don't see any arguments for pure open borders either although it's definitely harder than it should be to emigrate to a lot of big power western countries like the US, UK or Australia)

Esper

California
Seen June 30th, 2018
Posted June 30th, 2018
Wikileaks has leaked some Clinton speech transcripts. Unsurprisingly, they show what everyone pretty much already knew, which is that she's said a lot of flattering things about Wall Street to Wall Street.

How I wish this could have come out during the primaries.

And in other news, Trump is dealing with his latest, and perhaps worse, scandal involving some rather crude remark about women that I'm sure you can find for yourselves and I don't need to repeat here.

Ivysaur

Grass dinosaur extraordinaire

Age 32
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Seen 2 Days Ago
Posted April 5th, 2023
21,076 posts
16.2 Years
Scores of Republicans telling Trump to resign without realising that Trump doesn't give a flying blep about the GOP or about "conservatism", and that the only human being he wants to see as president is himself. If outrageous comments were enough to make him quit, he would have never made it to Iowa in the first place. It's kinda sad.

I'm surprised they -including Pence, looking at reports- did buy their own "I'm supporting him because there is a different Trump in private who is just a normal moderate mainstream conservative" crap and feel now betrayed to find out that there is only one Trump- the one we all knew for years. And if the reports of Wisconsin R voters being angry at Ryan for dumping Trump from his event today are true, it seems that the only ones who did buy into it were the Republican leaders, and no one else. Have fun explaining the 13 million primary voters that the same crap he's been spouting since day 1 is now somehow "unacceptable" and so Pence has to run in his stead.

The debate is going to break 100 million watchers though. Count on it.

GhostTrainer

Male
Georgia
Seen March 27th, 2017
Posted January 11th, 2017
304 posts
8.5 Years
I'm confident that this recent Trump scandal will be the nail in the coffin for his campaign, so many fellow Republicans are pulling support from him, his supporters are a bit worried (those who actually find fault with his comments), and since this is a hot button issue now it's going to be brought up multiple times during the Debate/Town Hall tomorrow evening, and he's going to be railed on it through and through by the audience.

Somewhere_

i don't know where

Age 23
Male
somewhere (duh)
Seen June 5th, 2019
Posted March 17th, 2019
If you know Trump supporters (NOT the reluctant ones- actual ones), you would know they LOVE Trump. They are very optimistic about his chances.

Now many of them are not confident at all and do not believe he has a chance. That is really saying something.

Netto Azure

Kiel

Age 30
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Alistel, Vainqueur
Seen November 17th, 2021
Posted September 29th, 2021
9,467 posts
15 Years
That was quite the ride. I really thank Anderson Cooper and Martha Radditz who actually kept control of the debate by stopping them from talking over each other.

Entermaid

Non-binary
The States
Seen November 6th, 2016
Posted October 27th, 2016
2,138 posts
10.4 Years
Trump was rattled, inarticulate, delusional, lost, and ill-prepared for the debate. Even more so than the last debate. His body language said it all. He was anxiously and aggressively pacing and failed to connect with audience members. Despite my many criticisms of Clinton, her rhetoric has been redirected to include the voices of progressives. At this juncture, Trump's campaign status is so tenuous she has a real ability to turn more and more to the left and contrast her vision of progress to a greater extent against Trump's jingoist, racist, xenophobic, sexist, anti-muslim, and hetero-normative sentiments that have truly exposed a core of our constituency. If the GOP is to go forward, they WILL have to move their platform significantly.

Trump truly embodies a true and representative core of American attitudes and in many ways is allowing us to get behind the mask of the neoconservatism fascism. That's not to excuse or ignore common prejudices that have existed among democrats for decades as well.

Pence seems to have jumped ship. Many Republicans, especially women have jumped ship. By far the most cringe-worthy political performance concerning the modern presidency. I almost felt bad for Trump.
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Almost.
#Team Popplio & Brionne

Ivysaur

Grass dinosaur extraordinaire

Age 32
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Donald Trump is running for dictator ("You'd be in jail", a special prosecutor- he's promising to do the kind of stuff Richard Nixon had to resign for) and has no clue how the political system works ("Why didn't you pass a law about carried interest?" "Because George Bush had a presidential veto." "Blah blah veto schmeto"). Yes, he did better than expected- he didn't pee his trousers on stage, punch a member of the audience or attempt to assault any woman on stage. But I'm not sure this is the kind of president any country needs:

About his sexual assault tapes: "It's locker room talk and one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS."

Trump, on health care: "We are going to have plans that are so good"
Moderator: "What does that mean?"
Trump: "We- we are going to have plans that are so good. So good. There is going to be so much competition."

About the economy: "If China has a GDP of 70% that is a national disaster. We are down to 1%" (if someone can tell me what the hell this means, I'd appreciate it).

About world conflicts: "Russia is new in terms of nuclear".

This guy has no clue about anything, he can't acknowledge mistakes, he can't say coherent sentences. And he still has the unflinching support of 40% of the US population. That is terrifying.

gimmepie

Age 27
Male
Australia
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11.1 Years
Trump did better than I thought he would in all honesty, but in the end Clinton was the clear winner if you ask me - not that I'm surprised. Her tendency to go well over her time kind of annoyed me, but much less so than Trump's inability to actually answer questions.

He went back to the same two/three issues over and over - never actually explaining how he'd fix anything - when asked about a topic he didn't have an answer for whilst Clinton had an answer for just about everything - and more often than not, good ones.

Her attitude was also far more becoming of a presidential candidate/future president.

Kudos to the guy who asked the last question by the way, that was hilarious.
RPWLA&MVGGaming Journal

Hands

I was saying Boo-urns

Age 32
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Seen December 15th, 2022
Posted November 23rd, 2022
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6.8 Years
This guy has no clue about anything, he can't acknowledge mistakes, he can't say coherent sentences. And he still has the unflinching support of 40% of the US population. That is terrifying.
That's because he's indicative of a much bigger problem. People simply do not trust the political system. They see someone like Clinton who, quite frankly, could get away with murder. Who also never takes any real responsibility for her actions and who has for each of her growing list of scandals a plethora of excuses and pre-written blanket answers and they see the face of the system they feel has destroyed their country. For all his bumbling and bizarre statements, they still see Trump as "one of the guys", normal and flawed and in their eyes "saying things how they are". Trump does well because he doesn't have a constant, professional spin on everything and because the mainstream American media outlets (who often give free passes to political interests) rip him to shreds constantly. It strengthens their idea he's an outsider who cares about the average Joe and who the elite are worried will split their little club up. In some ways he rides the same waves of disenfranchisement that Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have benefited so much from. The biggest difference there is that Sanders and Corbyn have well thought out, presented plans and ideals whereas Trump is just firing off whatever he can to stay relevant.

Esper

California
Seen June 30th, 2018
Posted June 30th, 2018
In a way you could say Trump did win. Not because he was more accurate or articulate, but because he got his supporters fired up and made it more difficult for other Republicans to move away from him (and face the wrath of his supporters on election day). But that's about the only way you might argue he won. I don't think anyone jumped onto the S. S. Trump who didn't already have a ticket in hand.

Pretty amazed though at how he pulled the rug from under Pence. Ouch. Could he even leave the ticket so close to the election and be replaced with a new VP nominee?

That's because he's indicative of a much bigger problem. People simply do not trust the political system. They see someone like Clinton who, quite frankly, could get away with murder. Who also never takes any real responsibility for her actions and who has for each of her growing list of scandals a plethora of excuses and pre-written blanket answers and they see the face of the system they feel has destroyed their country. For all his bumbling and bizarre statements, they still see Trump as "one of the guys", normal and flawed and in their eyes "saying things how they are". Trump does well because he doesn't have a constant, professional spin on everything and because the mainstream American media outlets (who often give free passes to political interests) rip him to shreds constantly. It strengthens their idea he's an outsider who cares about the average Joe and who the elite are worried will split their little club up. In some ways he rides the same waves of disenfranchisement that Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have benefited so much from. The biggest difference there is that Sanders and Corbyn have well thought out, presented plans and ideals whereas Trump is just firing off whatever he can to stay relevant.
I mean, this seems like a spot on explanation for the support Trump still has, but what I can't understand is how "outsider" seems to translate to "cares about the average Joe" in their eyes. Is it because they see anyone who isn't a politician as automatically caring about Joe more in the sense that anything greater than zero is an improvement however small, or is it something else I'm not seeing?

Ivysaur

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These polls tell a very interesting story, if you remember what happened exactly on the 7th:



The Teflon candidate: he can say and do anything he wants without being punished... until he is.

Netto Azure

Kiel

Age 30
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Alistel, Vainqueur
Seen November 17th, 2021
Posted September 29th, 2021
9,467 posts
15 Years
Paul Ryan pulling support from Trump is quite the spectacle on the intra-party civil war that's going to happen post Nov 9

Elysieum

Requiescat en pace.

Non-binary
By the lake.
Seen September 8th, 2019
Posted May 1st, 2019
258 posts
9.6 Years
Trump fared a little better than the previous debate I think, Clinton fared a little worse, but mostly their relationship to one another remain the same. Trump has cemented himself as a petulant man. Before you even get to the content of his answers, he introduces them in such a disruptive, disorderly way.

I think Ivysaur said it best - Trump is running for dictator, not President.