[POLL] United States Presidential Elections 2016

[Danoff]

Where did I say Hillary represents me well?

You didn't, which is why my post is directed to the notion that Hillary does not represent you well, but that trump represents you even less well.

I'll answer anyway, she does represent my social stances but not as much on economic. I do not agree with Trump's positions and his horrible comments towards others (look back at all of my posts if you want), nor do I agree with continuing the Bush Dynasty. Those are the only two reasons I would vote for Hillary, if different republican wins, I'll vote for them. I'm sorry that I don't follow the party line.

I'm not suggesting that you follow any party line. I'm suggesting that you vote for someone rather than against someone. Lots of people will run for president, find the one that suits you the best or vote for yourself. Don't get trapped into picking the lesser of two evils, it's a distortion of democracy. If no one represents you well and you are not willing to run yourself, feel free not to vote. It does not eliminate your ability to have an opinion on your government unlike @prisonermonkeys stated. There is no reason why you must vote for anyone. Abstained votes undermine the legitimacy of the government, which is deserved if there are no legitimate options.

Let me put it as simply as I can. If you have a choice between voting for Hitler or Stalin, choose neither, and you do not have to run yourself. Also, you can still complain about either Hitler or Stalin after they win even if you chose not to vote. Abstaining was the only correct choice. You do not have to legitimize Hitler by giving him your vote just because you dislike Stalin. Nor do you have to legitimize him to criticize him or Stalin.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Why?

Because you had the opportunity to change things by voting. By not voting, you chose not to change things, so why should you be allowed to complain about it? That fits under trying to have your cake and eat it, too.

 

[Danoff]

Because you had the opportunity to change things by voting. By not voting, you chose not to change things, so why should you be allowed to complain about it? That fits under trying to have your cake and eat it, too.

See my post #1351 for a rebuttal to this.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Because you had the opportunity to change things by voting. By not voting, you chose not to change things, so why should you be allowed to complain about it? That fits under trying to have your cake and eat it, too.

What if I don't see a viable change alternative that I support? What if none of the options appeal to me or represent my interests?

 

[FoolKiller]

If you don't like the republican nominee and aren't a fan of the Democrat nominee either you have plenty of choices that don't involve abstaining. @ukfan758, in the last presidential election we had seven choices on our ballot. Sometime around July or August (once all candidates are properly filed) our Secretary of State's web site will post sample ballots. Find yours, see what names you don't recognize and research them. See who actually represents you.

I haven't voted for a Republican or Democrat in a national election, or been registered in either party, since 2008. I even had a third option for governor, who I voted for. Third party and independent candidates are everywhere. You aren't limited to only one of two options.

Now that I think about it, I think I voted for Gatewood Galbraith in his last race for governor too.

 

[squadops]

I'll vote for anyone who has my interests at heart and a genuine care for the law, if I don't see one that I think can even uphold the oath they take to safeguard the constitution I'll take a pass. I wish we had a 'none of the above' on our tickets.

 

[ukfan758]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...1ba1c6-a27f-11e5-b53d-972e2751f433_story.html

Pataki suspends his campaign.

 

[Sanji Himura]

OP Updated.

 

[Sanji Himura]

Hilliary Clinton's State Department is the gift that keeps on giving apparently:

- According to Clinton emails that was released Thursday, her state department allegedly kept tabs on conservative blog site The Drudge Report. The Drudge Report, for those who don't know is an aggregate news site run by blogger Matt Drudge that links content from around the internet. The site was responsible for breaking the Monica Lewinsky story that ultimately disbarred Bill Clinton from law in Arkansas. Here are two emails that were released:

Read the stories that the emails were talking about here.

- In the novel Goldfinger, the book's bad guy, Auric Goldfinger, had a real interesting quote, "They have a saying in Chicago, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is in enemy action." Guess what is back in the news? Yep. More allegations of a pay to play scheme in Hillary's state department. According to reports obtained by the Wall Street Journal, more than 20 companies and one foreign government, Abu Dhabi, paid former President Bill Clinton more than $8 million while they had "matters before Hillary's State Department," according to Hillary's Financial records. Here is some of them:

UBS: $1,015,000
Ericsson: $750,000
Goldman Sachs: $600,000
Oracle: $500,000
Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative: $500,000
World Travel and Tourism Council: $500,000
Renaissance Capital: $500,000
Samsung Electronics: $450,000
Aflac: $300,000
Dell Computer: $300,000
Salesforce.com: $258,000

Source (Non Paywalled version)

 

[TenEightyOne]

Hilliary Clinton's State Department is the gift that keeps on giving apparently:

Looks like it could be a mess for Clinton if the facts stack up.

I wouldn't put too much store in every story on The Drudge being the next Monica-gate though, it is after all their job to collate/create stories which they do many times a day. They also have to retract them sometimes

 

[Sanji Himura]

Looks like it could be a mess for Clinton if the facts stack up.

I wouldn't put too much store in every story on The Drudge being the next Monica-gate though, it is after all their job to collate/create stories which they do many times a day. They also have to retract them sometimes

Not saying that it is, but the fact that Clinton's State Department was actively monitoring the only source that brought down the Clinton White House was of interesting note, not unlike the Obama wiretaps of the AP and Fox's James Rosen and his family.

 

[ukfan758]

Imagine the outcry from both Washington and the media if a republican candidate did this...

 

[TenEightyOne]

not unlike the Obama wiretaps of the AP and Fox's James Rosen and his family.

Source required, the Verizon subpoenas are a matter of public record... I haven't seen any suggested that call data was listened to, just that metadata were collected?

 

[Dotini]

There is a scandal brewing right now with congress being spied upon by the NSA with the administration reaping the benefits.

The Wall Street Journal broke the story.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/12/31/mossad-caucus-exposed/

 

[Sanji Himura]

Source required, the Verizon subpoenas are a matter of public record... I haven't seen any suggested that call data was listened to, just that metadata were collected?

Slate
In that article, it quotes a AP employee who said the following:

Were provided to the government by Verizon Wireless without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena.

FOX News

Another article that leads me to a 404 error questioned if Eric Holder misled congress with dealing with Rosen, who Holder went as far as declaring him a flight risk to prevent Rosen from being informed about the DOJ's activities.

The New York Times of all people have stated that, concerning Rosen, "With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible 'co-conspirator' in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news." (Source)

Here is the Washington Post's opinion of the matter: "The Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on civil liberties as anything done by George W. Bush’s administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. To treat a reporter as a criminal for doing his job — seeking out information the government doesn’t want made public — deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based." (Source)

In May of 2013, New York Times confirmed that it was indeed Holder who signed off on the Rosen case:

Reid Weingarten, a lawyer who has been a friend of Mr. Holder’s for three decades, said Mr. Holder had discussed no such feelings with him. Rather, Mr. Weingarten said, the disclosure to Fox News of the existence of a rare intelligence source in North Korea was “a horrible leak and he was charged with the responsibility to get at it.” That raised what he said Mr. Holder described to him as a trade-off between press freedoms and the need to identify leakers — a problem for which there are no easy answers because it pits “two laudable goals” against each other.

(Source)

 

[TenEightyOne]

Slate
In that article, it quotes a AP employee who said the following:

That doesn't say anything about "wiretaps", a method by which live phonecalls are listened to. It says that phone records (not recordings) were ordered from Verizon. I think you're mistaken about the wiretap. That's not to question the accuracy of anything you've posted about the requests, simply that you said they were listening in and they weren't, at least not according to those sources.

 

[Sanji Himura]

That doesn't say anything about "wiretaps", a method by which live phonecalls are listened to. It says that phone records (not recordings) were ordered from Verizon. I think you're mistaken about the wiretap. That's not to question the accuracy of anything you've posted about the requests, simply that you said they were listening in and they weren't, at least not according to those sources.

It was a generalization of the activities that Holder's DOJ committed while investigating the Media. Any unknowledgable person would call that a wiretap since we don't know if the contents of said conversations between the 21 reporters were exchanged with the DOJ, something that could have happened since the NSA's surveillance program was not known to anyone outside of the NSA and the FISA courts (as well as the companies subpoenaed).

 

[TenEightyOne]

It was a generalization of the activities that Holder's DOJ committed while investigating the Media. Any unknowledgable person would call that a wiretap since we don't know if the contents of said conversations between the 21 reporters were exchanged with the DOJ, something that could have happened since the NSA's surveillance program was not known to anyone outside of the NSA and the FISA courts (as well as the companies subpoenaed).

A poor generalisation when you make as specific an allegation as wiretapping but provide evidence that it was simply phone records that were handed over.

You go on to say, effectively, "It could have happened but we just don't know". That's not sourcable and not evidence of your specific accusation of

the Obama wiretaps of the AP and Fox's James Rosen and his family.

To say that

Any unknowledgable person would call that a wiretap

is simply wrong, I think, unless you suggest that you are that person?

 

[Sanji Himura]

No. As I have stated, the whole DOJ investigation could have happened in the FISA courts, which under law, any person under such a subpoena would legally not be required to tell anybody that they are being subpoenaed in the first place. The issue with the DOJ and the whole NSA dragnets are that the DOJ investigated reporters in 2013 over incidents that occurred in 2009 and 2012 (the Rosen case and the AP case respectively).

Since the Rosen case specifically mentioned North Korea by name (by way of Stephen Kim, the target of that DOJ investigation), it was perfectly reasonable to go by way of the FISA courts if they did so.

Obviously since the subpoenas themselves are under seal, I mean it was never publicized that it wasn't declassified in the first place, we have no way of knowing what the DOJ actually wanted.

To put it this way, if the NSA had something that monitored a specific target's phone number, and barely anybody knew about it except the higher chambers of government (say a sitting President and his cabinet for example), and suddenly you had a leak, wouldn't you want to use this something to plug it up?

 

[TenEightyOne]

No. As I have stated, the whole DOJ investigation could have happened in the FISA courts, which under law, any person under such a subpoena would legally not be required to tell anybody that they are being subpoenaed in the first place. The issue with the DOJ and the whole NSA dragnets are that the DOJ investigated reporters in 2013 over incidents that occurred in 2009 and 2012 (the Rosen case and the AP case respectively).

Since the Rosen case specifically mentioned North Korea by name (by way of Stephen Kim, the target of that DOJ investigation), it was perfectly reasonable to go by way of the FISA courts if they did so.

Obviously since the subpoenas themselves are under seal, I mean it was never publicized that it wasn't declassified in the first place, we have no way of knowing what the DOJ actually wanted.

To put it this way, if the NSA had something that monitored a specific target's phone number, and barely anybody knew about it except the higher chambers of government (say a sitting President and his cabinet for example), and suddenly you had a leak, wouldn't you want to use this something to plug it up?

Yet the AP simply refer to the subpoena for the toll records, nothing else. You can't have it both ways, either AP are considered "an agent of a foreign power" in which case no information about data gathering would have been released, or they're not. If the latter I suspect we'd see exactly what your links show - a rightful furore about a request for journalist's call metadata. Not a wiretap, there's no evidence or even a suggestion of that.

 

[Dotini]

Jane Harmon and Diane Feinstein, normally strong advocates of government wiretapping, were furious when they found out it was they who were being monitored,
https://theintercept.com/2015/12/30...e-of-privacy-only-when-their-own-is-violated/

 

[prisonermonkeys]

As predicted, terrorists love Donald Trump - they have taken his "Muslim ban" comments, and used them to make a recruitment video in which they claim it as proof that Muslims are being marginalised:

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-...s-use-donald-trump-in-recruiting-film/7064602

 

[Johnnypenso]

As predicted, terrorists love Donald Trump - they have taken his "Muslim ban" comments, and used them to make a recruitment video in which they claim it as proof that Muslims are being marginalised:

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-...s-use-donald-trump-in-recruiting-film/7064602

And there's no irony at all in the fact that they(terrorists) hate the west, hate everything it stands for, especially the United States, and wouldn't want to go there for any reason but to kill us.

 

[DK]

Bernie Sanders has proposed a financial transaction tax that could raise about $130 billion a year, and to use the proceeds to fund free third level tuition: HuffPo.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

And there's no irony at all in the fact that they(terrorists) hate the west, hate everything it stands for, especially the United States, and wouldn't want to go there for any reason but to kill us.

Do you think they hate it for no reason? That they just woke up one day and decided that they had nothing better to do but hate the West?

ISIL have been very effective in recruiting fighters because they target a very specific demographic: young men who already feel marginalised by the West; young men who want to practice their faith, but feel that western society will not allow them to. ISIL exploit that. They approach these young men and say "You know what? It's true - but we can offer an alternative. If you want to live in a state where you are free to practice your faith on your own terms, join us. But you're going to have to fight for it."

It's absolutely no surprise that the terrorists have seized upon Trump's comments and presented them as meaning "There is no place for Muslims in America, no Muslims can be trusted, the Islamic faith is dangerous and the rights and freedoms of people who were born here are more important than those of innocents who were not."

But go on, keep believing that terrorists just hate the West for no real reason and that therefore everything that the West does is perfect.

 

[A2K78]

Do you think they hate it for no reason? That they just woke up one day and decided that they had nothing better to do but hate the West?

ISIL have been very effective in recruiting fighters because they target a very specific demographic: young men who already feel marginalised by the West; young men who want to practice their faith, but feel that western society will not allow them to. ISIL exploit that. They approach these young men and say "You know what? It's true - but we can offer an alternative. If you want to live in a state where you are free to practice your faith on your own terms, join us. But you're going to have to fight for it."

It's absolutely no surprise that the terrorists have seized upon Trump's comments and presented them as meaning "There is no place for Muslims in America, no Muslims can be trusted, the Islamic faith is dangerous and the rights and freedoms of people who were born here are more important than those of innocents who were not."

But go on, keep believing that terrorists just hate the West for no real reason and that therefore everything that the West does is perfect.

Michael Scheuer on why terrorism exist

Bernie Sanders has proposed a financial transaction tax that could raise about $130 billion a year, and to use the proceeds to fund free third level tuition: HuffPo.

No different than what Clinton want

if anything, its quite amazing how Bastiat is still relevant even this day and age..

http://lexrex.com/informed/otherdocuments/thelaw/law09.htm

 

[TenEightyOne]

Michael Scheuer on why terrorism exist

He starts by announcing himself as "the only person in the west who understands". You're the other one, of course.

He doesn't actually claim to say "why terrorism exists", I think that's your misunderstanding (maybe you didn't watch the video), he says why he thinks America is attacked. Some of what he says is correct despite the right-hand spin, but some isn't. Overall the vid's a bit of a turd.

 

[Rich S]

Bernie Sanders has proposed a financial transaction tax that could raise about $130 billion a year, and to use the proceeds to fund free third level tuition: HuffPo.

Will be interesting to see what happens. He's a straight talker, like Trump in some ways but obviously not ideologically. Hillary and Cruz are both revolting to a lot of people, yet somehow they are high up on the totem pole. Cruz looks almost like one of those dummies from a horror movie, the ones that come alive and do terrible things. Hillary is like a female Hitler, its just depressing.

 

[CodeRedR51]

Will be interesting to see what happens. He's a straight talker, like Trump in some ways but obviously not ideologically. Hillary and Cruz are both revolting to a lot of people, yet somehow they are high up on the totem pole. Cruz looks almost like one of those dummies from a horror movie, the ones that come alive and do terrible things. Hillary is like a female Hitler, its just depressing.

I think despite what the polls say, Sanders will be a threat when it comes down to it.

 

[Dotini]

Perhaps not quite rivaling Donald in controversy and fringe appeal, Hillary promises to investigate UFO's.

Reporter Daymond Steer asks Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for her stance on UFOs when she visited the Sun on Tuesday. (MARGARET McKENZIE PHOTO)

When asked about her husband's nonchalant comment about contact with the third kind, Hillary Clinton responded: "I think we may have been (visited already). We don't know for sure."
http://www.conwaydailysun.com/newsx/local-news/123978-clinton-promises-to-investigate-ufos

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...73ce4b014efe0da95db?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592