Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, who moved to the UAE so he could keep running a guns-for-hire company?

 

Gun running, like death, is a growth industry.

 

I have multiple liberal friends who like to play the "facts" card on social media, but then openly question why I choose to fight on "this hill" when it comes to media sentences constructions asserting as established fact that Trump has "admitted to sexual assault."

Yglesias, who I usually like, has grafted even more onto Trump's comments by including the word "routinely."

It's sickening.

 

Neither Smith nor Jones care much for politics. They spend their days in quiet enterprise, providing for their families via voluntary trade with others. Wilson, on the other hand, follows politics closely, carefully weighing this question: "Under which candidate can I best manipulate the state to force others to trade with me on my preferred terms?"

Louis C.K. thinks Wilson's the good guy in this tale.

 

See, I'd never have posted a response to that. It's an opinion and not personal at all about the opinion being criticized.

 

Get off it. He's a fucking serial rapist incestuous pervert who gets away with it because he's rich.

He shouldn't be heading for the White House, he should be heading for the big house, for the deep basement where they pound you in the ass really really hard with red hot iron pipes.

 

Looks like the politics thread has caught a (1,67)2nd wind.

 

I don't know about C.K.'s politics, but his bit about the 3-year-old and "pig newtons" makes me laugh just thinking about it.

 

Obviously, the Founders changed the world for the better when they wrote the Constitution. The concept of a "balance of power" and, soon after, the Bill of Rights were extraordinary political concepts that many other nations eventually adopted. Most of the Constitution remains vital and important in the 21st Century.

But the Electoral College is an outdated concept that needs to go. It exists because the Founders were afraid to let the masses directly elect the leader of the executive branch. (We humble voters couldn't directly elect senators either, but thankfully that's changed).

Once again this year, three or four "battleground" states are all that really matter in the presidential election. The three most populous states — California, Texas, New York — are largely ignored by presidential candidates because they're so entrenched as Democratic and Republican electoral votes. If popular vote elected the president, they'd campaign where the people are. Sounds like democracy to me.

And of course, third-party candidates have more impact if the president is determined by popular vote, because the thousands of voters they have in each state mean more when they're added up in the national total. In some elections, they've prevented the winner from receiving a majority of the votes nationwide.

Oh well ... if the 2000 election wasn't going to eliminate the Electoral College, nothing will. Inertia is a very powerful force, especially when funded by the ultimate lobbyists for the status quo, the Democratic and Republican political parties.

Rant over. Vote for local candidates and your congressional reps, because at least that means something. For 90 percent of us, our vote for president isn't worth squat.

 

OK. Let me see if I can remember everything for which you all are pretending to take umbrage at me.

First, I expect nothing of anybody here. I don't know any of you, because I don't ask and I don't tell. By the way, therefore, you all don't know me, either, in more ways than that, too.

I come here because I like a good discussion, and I like to keep in touch with and connected to journalism and journalists when I have few other ways of doing so anymore. I've always believed journalists are usually smart, interesting, empathetic people, like myself, and sometimes, I miss them.

Second, I wouldn't consider myself disaffected, or disconnected, or anything like that. I simply refused to vote for either Trump, who, honestly, intrigues me a little bit but also makes me wonder at him and not be sure of him, at all, or for Clinton, whose flaws go far beyond her not being able to give a good speech. (And I can't believe how people here still are pretending that is the case while they studiously avoid anything else, in all their pride in her).

Third, I know who I voted for. Because I checked back. Because I really did draw a blank at the time, you know, as happens to (normal, imperfect) people once in a while, and I was not afraid to admit it or share that. Because I was also making a point. Which sailed right over all of your heads in your judgmental-ness. And that was that, because I did not vote for Trump or Clinton, it does not matter who I voted for, i.e., I wasted my vote, which I have never done before. Because that's how angry and upset I am over this whole election cycle, and I wanted to express that in some official way. Again, I know who I voted for. But now I'm not going to say. You know, just to irk you.

Like the people who really think the idea of "Just stop" really only meant "just stop" in the context in which I wrote it. It did not, and if you didn't get that at the time, well, then I can't help you. And also, you know, like people who gleefully and stupidly think my reasoned, willingly well-explained, thoughtful, nuanced and yes, forgiving, stance regarding Josh Duggar and his family is some kind of running joke when I treated it as anything but that.

You know, because I'm not as judgmental as others who think they're perfect and know it all, about everything and everyone.

 

You're not voting.

 

When I read that, at first I definitely thought it meant Trump. Heh.