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Trump vs. Clinton: Godwin's Law Has Already Been Fulfilled!
Re: Trump vs. Clinton: Godwin's Law Has Already Been Fulfilled!
Rumour is that The Donald's speechwriters have removed the phrase "ask not what your country can do for you" from his acceptance speech. :)
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
Rumour is that The Donald's speechwriters have removed the phrase "ask not what your country can do for you" from his acceptance speech. :)
Also:
- "let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself" has been amended to: the only thing we have for beer is beer itself;
- "four score and seven years ago" has been changed to: four score and six years and twelve months ago.
Last edited by Peter McKillop; Tuesday, 19th July, 2016, 12:50 PM.
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." - Plato
"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincey
DNC chief financial officer Brad Marshall wrote, “This would make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
Bernie got burned, lol.
Hm, for one reason or another the Clinton News Network - CNN - has yet to publish the DNC wikileaks.
I wonder why?
To infatuated with their courtship of Kaine, I guess.
Last edited by Neil Frarey; Saturday, 23rd July, 2016, 10:55 AM.
Re: Trump vs. Clinton: Godwin's Law Has Already Been Fulfilled!
Donald Trump has done some thinking about the events in Munich on Friday. The news is that the person who killed 9 people and wounded 27 is not likely linked to any terrorist organization, but rather seems to be someone with a history of mental illness and who was on medication to treat that illness.
In view of that, the Trumpster has announced that effective January 20th 2017, his "first day in office"....
(1) all residents and citizens of the U.S. who are or who have ever been on any kind of medication designed to treat mental illness, or who are being or have ever been treated or assessed for any kind of mental illness, shall be confined to a mental institution, and all such institutions will have armed guards to enforce such confinement....
(2) no foreigners who are or who have ever been on medication for mental illness, or are being or have ever been treated or assessed for any kind of mental illness, shall be allowed into the U.S. ......
UNTIL TRUMP CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.
In fact, Trump has decreed that he is going to personally go over "all the data" on every single resident of the U.S. and for each such resident, make a decision as to whether that person should be confined to an institution or (in the case of immigrants, even legal immigrants) deported....
UNTIL TRUMP CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Re: Trump vs. Clinton: Godwin's Law Has Already Been Fulfilled!
I just stayed up late to watch the analysis of tonight's Democratic convention events on CNN hosted by Don Lemon (it started at 1 a.m. .... what can I say, I'm a night owl). And something very telling happened.
Lemon brought on the infamous Jerry Springer as a guest. If you don't know who Jerry Springer is, you might as well skip all this.
I didn't know this, but Springer is a former mayor of Cincinnati. It also turns out Springer is an avowed Democrat, he leans further left than Hillary but prefers Hillary to Bernie as the Democratic nominee. He spoke about this briefly, then he turned onto Trump and said first of all that he has met Trump and even worked for him briefly (a Miss Universe broadcast many years ago) and Trump has always treated him in a friendly and good manner. What Springer said annoys him about this political season is that Trump has decided, with no political experience whatsoever behind him, to run for President. According to Springer, this is totally improper -- anyone running for the most important job in the world should have earned his way via several years of political experience.
Anyway, Springer was asked by host Don Lemon whether he views Trump as a racist, and Springer did not say yes or no to that, but he did say that what Trump said in his Republican acceptance speech and at other times "gives cover" to known bigots and racists.
Now here comes the telling part. That last comment by Springer started off a cacaphony of debate between the "panel" of 4 other political commentators who are a part of this show all this week. One of them is a die-hard Trump supporter, Kayleigh McEnany, who is possibly the most brainwashed person I have ever run across in my life (I've seen her on other political shows). She could literally watch Trump push a disabled person in a wheelchair over a cliff and she would find justification for it, that's how bad she is. There was also a Democratic strategist, and a Jew who started in about "my people", and one other woman I know nothing about.
Eventually they were all talking at once, and the Jewish guy and Kayleigh McEnany were practically at each other's throats.
Jerry Springer stands up and starts talking like this is one of his shows! The only things missing were the ringing of the bell for the beginning of the boxing round, several big enforcers to come in and separate the combatants, and a watching crowd chanting "JER-RY! JER-RY JER-RY"!
The way that this is 'telling' is that this is the best we can hope for in America today. There is no compromise, no middle ground, there is only polarization and it's all leading to hate. Very ironic that Jerry Springer should have witnessed firsthand how his own idea of getting people to argue to the point of physical confrontation should have progressed to become the very theme of mainstream America!
All of which plays right into Donald Trump's hands, and he is now ahead in the polls.
Last edited by Paul Bonham; Wednesday, 27th July, 2016, 04:02 AM.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Re: Trump vs. Clinton: Godwin's Law Has Already Been Fulfilled!
How many people are there on the planet who are both eligible and experienced enough to be POTUS? I guess all living one-term Presidents, since they have experience, and all living VPs, who got to see the job close up and spent time in the bullpen, so to speak. That's about it.
Who has the policies to lead? We can never know. Politicians lie. They say they will do X and then half the time do something else. We can't even know which half. Circumstances change. Recessions, terrorist attacks, natural disasters. Even if the politicians were 100% reliable, circumstances are not.
Both candidates aren't qualified and what they will do is a mystery. So, it all comes down to how likeable they are, or more precisely how "anti-likeable" they can make their opponent look. Since both Trump and Clinton appear to me to be completely anti-likeable people it's not so surprising we get messages like "Trump is Hitler" and "Crooked/Rotten Clinton". Most people realize that their vote barely matters and even if it does there is little difference that we can know for certain between the candidates. Voting against a potential Hitler or against a suspected thief is as good a reason as any, I guess.
On a related note: not that he has said this, but if Obama really believes that Trump is the next Hitler then he should refuse to relinquish the role of POTUS if Trump wins. To not do so is an act of cowardice.
"Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.
How many people are there on the planet who are both eligible and experienced enough to be POTUS? I guess all living one-term Presidents, since they have experience, and all living VPs, who got to see the job close up and spent time in the bullpen, so to speak. That's about it.
Who has the policies to lead? We can never know. Politicians lie. They say they will do X and then half the time do something else. We can't even know which half. Circumstances change. Recessions, terrorist attacks, natural disasters. Even if the politicians were 100% reliable, circumstances are not.
Both candidates aren't qualified and what they will do is a mystery. So, it all comes down to how likeable they are, or more precisely how "anti-likeable" they can make their opponent look. Since both Trump and Clinton appear to me to be completely anti-likeable people it's not so surprising we get messages like "Trump is Hitler" and "Crooked/Rotten Clinton". Most people realize that their vote barely matters and even if it does there is little difference that we can know for certain between the candidates. Voting against a potential Hitler or against a suspected thief is as good a reason as any, I guess.
On a related note: not that he has said this, but if Obama really believes that Trump is the next Hitler then he should refuse to relinquish the role of POTUS if Trump wins. To not do so is an act of cowardice.
All very good points and very true as well. Springer's comments about political experience show too much trust in the current political system. I believe the root of the problem is having professional politicians: this should be eliminated as much as possible. Politicians should be forced to volunteer their services, with perhaps a "living wage" offered to those who would be taking up their entire work week to do their duties, such as members of Congress and the Senate. The living wage would be maybe about what a typical public school teacher earns, maybe even less. This would weed out the ones who are in politics for what they can get out of it (pretty much all of them right now).
Chess is mostly run by volunteers, and it survives. That's because there ARE enough people who truly love chess to keep it going, and who will make sacrifices for the game. This could happen with politics as well.
I think Bernie Sanders might just be one of the people who would volunteer if that's what the system demanded. He launched a campaign that could have been viewed as political suicide, because the central theme of his candidacy was that he would extremely disrupt the wealth inequality in America... capital-S Socialism. So he was already sticking his neck out. I think the entire Democratic Party had to be shocked at how much support he gained and that he very nearly stopped Hillary Clinton.
But to your points, Tom, I've always believe another thing: voting doesn't matter NEARLY as much as how people spend their money. Every time you spend money, you are voting. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, people en masse stopped buying cars. At the height of the crisis, the major U.S. automakers (except Ford, I think, which managed itself better) were all threatened with financial collapse. This forced the immediate government bailout of GM and Chrysler, and that would have happened with George Bush still in the White House just as it did with Barack Obama. It HAD to happen, the people not spending on cars forced the government's hand.
If there were a political party that could influence how its members spend their money, and that party gained tens of millions of members, and Bernie Sanders was its leader, we would dramatically reduce wealth inequality almost overnight. Much, much more effective than Sanders as President. But that does rely on party members actually acting in unison. If too many decide it's not worth it to forego the things they normally spend their money on despite Sanders asking them for restraint, the whole thing falls apart.
It's like the notion of bringing down the government using a tax revolt: it only works if everyone actually revolts.
Wealth inequality IS the force that can ultimately break the entire capitalist system. It is doing so now. Just as all the whining and complaints in organized chess are due to not enough money to go around, which itself is due to a "flaw" in the game (pure skill), so it is with the increasing level of insanity that is taking hold in American society. There are piles of money sitting with the top 1% that isn't doing anything, because the top 1% can only invest so much. There has probably never been so much wealth 'sitting on the sidelines' in human history. And that means less money actually working in the system. Yes, people have jobs, unemployment is down from the crisis levels, but REAL gains are just not happening. A record level of those jobs are part-time or low-wage service jobs. That is why interest rates must STILL be kept so low, just to keep heads above water. Trickle-down economics is failing because it turns out there's a limit to how much can actually trickle down.
The old Marxist adage about capitalists, given enough rope, eventually hanging themselves may yet be proven true.... just that it takes a lot longer than Marx might have expected.
The major difference between Hillary and Donald is this: Hillary will do at least SOMETHING to reduce wealth inequality, whereas Trump will actually EXPAND it. All other differences between them pale in comparison to this one. With Trump, the collapse of capitalism comes sooner.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
... The major difference between Hillary and Donald is this: Hillary will do at least SOMETHING to reduce wealth inequality, whereas Trump will actually EXPAND it. All other differences between them pale in comparison to this one. With Trump, the collapse of capitalism comes sooner.
Most people who have no money don't plan and lack financial discipline. Millions can tell you what the Kardashians are up to, or the stats of their favourite sports teams, but their eyes glaze over with talk about stocks and bonds. Anyone with an average+ IQ and decent health can become a millionaire over a lifetime. If you live in Canada or the US you are already the 1%.
Obama did nothing to stop wealth inequality. Why would "from-zero-to-eight-figures-net-worth" Clinton?
Last edited by Tom O'Donnell; Wednesday, 27th July, 2016, 08:37 PM.
"Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.
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