Democracy in action

[The Dude Shepherd]

I really can't say Hillary is any better than Trump...

She goes against everything democracy stands for... she is 100% pay to play (she literally had a folder named "Pay to Play" on her email server)

Foreign nations are banned from donating to political parties, but Hillary skirts the law by setting up a "charity" for them to donate to instead...

She should be in prison for the email scandal... Comey said she committed several felonies, right before saying he wasn't going to prosecute... If it were anyone else, they'd be in prison

Hillary is an Oligarch who will sell out to the highest bidder (which isn't you or me)... you don't want that

[Reverend Al]

...Hillary is an Oligarch who will sell out to the highest bidder (which isn't you or me)... you don't want that

But who's to say Trump would be different?  If nothing else, Tim Kaine raised an interesting point during the Vice-Presidential debate:  When dealing with foreign countries, would Donald Trump's decisions be based on what's best for America, or on what's best for his personal interests?  My money's on the latter.

[SagebrushSage]

At any rate, if you won't listen to me regarding the election, perhaps you'll listen to respected Australian journalist John Pilger. Or, you know, legendary journalist Christopher Hitchens.

On the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton currently proposes a no-fly zone over Syria and threatens Russia with military action over the DNC leaks. These are part of her campaign platform.

The Democrat Party has left a wide swath of blood across three continents over the decades, broken only by the wide swaths of blood across three continents left by their establishment allies, the Republicans, when they happened to be running things. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for war with Russia, potentially nuclear war. Please don't vote for nuclear war. Neither Trump, Stein, or Johnson are part of the establishment, and they all want peace.

I live near a nuclear power plant. Many of us live in major cities. If Clinton wins, we evacuate or we die.

Pilger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUW5-LlLQ1Q
Hitchens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrzyVt1lbpo

[SagebrushSage]

Also, in case anyone doubted WikiLeaks, CBS thinks that the WikiLeaks emails are legitimate. Other, more compromised news agencies such as CNN have not challenged the validity of any specific WikiLeaks emails. WikiLeaks has a 10-year perfect track record of avoiding publishing forgeries. The documents that they publish are admissible as evidence in court, and are routinely used for this purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY7U-XKTsKI

As the CBS commentator points out above, appointing a special prosecutor is the standard operating procedure in cases involving activities in the highest levels of government, as with cabinet-level officials. The fact that a special prosecutor has not been appointed to investigate Clinton's illegal use of a private email server while secretary of state is evidence of corruption in the Obama administration, not of banana-republic show trials intended by a Trump administration.

wikileaks.org
reddit.com/r/dncleaks (compiled list of highlights with direct links to Wikileaks documents)

[The Dude Shepherd]

The Democrat Party has left a wide swath of blood across three continents over the decades, broken only by the wide swaths of blood across three continents left by their establishment allies, the Republicans, when they happened to be running things. A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for war with Russia, potentially nuclear war. Please don't vote for nuclear war. Neither Trump, Stein, or Johnson are part of the establishment, and they all want peace.

Sure, Hillary wants to start a war with Russia... she doesn't think we have enough nukes (seriously)

Trump wants to start a war with Mexicans and Muslims... Trump also likes nukes, he asks "why can't we just use nukes" several times during a foreign policy briefing
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html

The one I can't stand is Mike Pence... the guy is an anti-evolution science denier: (serious propaganda... not simply uninformed, but intentionally ignorant)
RWW News: Mike Pence Criticizes "Theory" Of Evolution

[SagebrushSage]

Great! I don't like Trump either. My primary concern is war with Russia. Trump has consistently expressed a conciliatory attitude towards Russia. If he gets us into additional quagmires in the Middle East outside of Syria or in Mexico, etc., these are not existential risks to the state. A war with Russia would destroy us, since they can't win using conventional weapons.

Like I say, there are plenty of very good reasons not to vote for Trump. But for every legitimate criticism of Trump, Billary are far worse. Don't like either? Vote Stein or Johnson. A surprise win by Johnson is reasonably likely, and would be fine. Stein is f**ked. Johnson will probably get some electoral votes, and 10% or better of the popular vote. Stein will probably get no electoral votes, and 5% or better of the popular vote.

[The Dude Shepherd]

I don't like the 2-party system... it inevitably leads to a vote for the lesser of two evils (or you "throw your vote away" on a 3rd party)

Maine has a ballot initiative that is supposed to pass for "Ranked Choice Voting"... that'll get rid of the throw your vote away excuse, and lead to 3rd parties having a chance... hopefully more states follow with this idea

https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiative,_Question_5_(2016)

[SagebrushSage]

Thanks! I forgot about the Maine ranked choice voting initiative. Ranked choice voting is necessary to save our democracy from civil war in the mid-term. In the near-term, defeating Clinton is necessary to save our democracy. Electing Clinton would either result in civil war or war with Russia, whichever comes first.

Check out Sargon of Akkad for insightful and historically-informed commentary on these matters. Our situation is very similar to the situation immediately prior to the end of the Roman Republic. Income inequality is the core issue after, you know, risking self-destruction via nuclear missles due to Clinton thinking that a limited war with Russia is possible.

Johnson offers a federalist viewpoint. As I understand it, the Libertarian idea is to let states figure out their own solutions to matters such as income inequality, which would work fine. Stein offers to get people back to work through a green energy revolution, which would work fine. Trump offers to get people back to work through greater use of conventional domestic energy sources such as coal and oil. This would save the union, and we could probably fix the environmental damage later. Nuclear war or global conventional war are greater climate threats than global warming, so this is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff.

Anyway, here's Sargon's video outlining the similarities between Trump and Marcus Gracchus, the politician who attempted, and failed, to save the Roman Republic through populist reform. It was the best chance they had to avoid autocracy. We can learn from them and do better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCvyg679bsg

[SagebrushSage]

Also, if any excessive SJW's on the forum think that Trump's sexist comments were relevant, another I just watched from Sargon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqXkvBtbNsk

Trump never needed to abuse women. A plethora of interested young ladies were always available for consensual relations. The important part of the quote was that "they'll let you do it." The very sound bite that the media is up in arms about is the sound bite that most convincingly shows that Trump is concerned about consent. The same was the case when he was describing his affair, where he was putting the moves on someone, but stopped because she wouldn't consent. Also, Billy Bush asked for a hug from the lady in purple after getting off the bus, and asked one for Trump. Both men only contacted her bodily after receiving explicit consent. The video shows the exact opposite of assault.

I don't understand why people are angry about this. We do not all need to be prudes. The video is embarrassing to watch, but shows nothing that is strictly unethical.

A plethora of interested young ladies were also available for Bill Clinton. Which makes the fact that he chose to abuse women instead even more disgusting. He chose to be abusive because he is a violent sadist. Trump, for all his faults, does not appear to be a sadist. Clinton covered for his sexual violence for many years, which shows a basic lack of concern for the well-being of others.

[jgiffin]

This "Trump Scandal" stuff just strikes me as what-the-fuck-ever. I'm not dismissing it. I don't disbelieve the footage. I don't endorse what he said. But all that stuff was baked into my opinion of that moron.

     Is he a fucking mook? Yes.

     Kinda creepy? Yep.

     Uncouth, hammy, indecorous, rough? Uh-huh, yeah, okay, and agreed.

I'm sorry, are we electing a fucking Scoutmaster or a goddamn politician? Breaking News: Everyone on TV with a (R) or (D) after their name is a fucking liar and no one you should knowingly allow around young children or legal tender. They rape both.

Shut-the-fuck-up. If these women were so aggrieved, they'd have brought it up before an election happened to approach. They didn't. Guess what? Many of Bubba's victims (whatever their faults) brought up their claims up sooner. Granted, they were publicly castigated by Hill-Dawg, which probably lessens the incentive to report things...but still, it wasn't 30 days before an election.

Fuck me. I can't vote for either of these jackasses. And the other guy, Johnson, isn't libertarian or knowledgeable. I gave him a pass on the Aleppo thing (guess he didn't read Othello) but come on. He can't name a world leader either? Argh. You're killing me here.

[SagebrushSage]

I don't like Johnson either. I'll be voting for Stein. Washington probably won't vote Trump, but a Stein upset is a remote possibility. I don't think that anyone is arguing that Trump has been as abusive towards women as Bill Clinton, but I'll grant you that some sexual abuse occurred.

Equivocating Trump and Clinton is not valid here. Trump's actions have not resulted in the toppling or weakening of numerous relatively stable, if oppressive, regimes, such as those in Honduras, Libya, Syria, and Iraq, to be immediately replaced by more oppressive and less stable regimes. ISIS would not have happened without Clinton's actions as a party leader, senator, and secretary of state in recent decades, as enabled or directed by the Obama administration. The recent Wikileaks Podesta leaks reveal that Saudi Arabia is clandestinely funding ISIS in the Clinton campaign's opinion, yet Clinton approved arms sales to Saudi Arabia and accepted tens of millions of dollars in bribes from them. They are terrorizing millions in a power vacuum that we created, using weapons that we either sent to the Saudis ourselves, or paid for by purchasing their oil.

Trump was also not complicit in compromising the integrity of the press, the DOJ, and the FBI in order to escape prosecution for evading all oversight. He was busy making dumb TV shows and building occasionally-successful hotels and casinos at the time. He did defraud some people with a fake university, which was bad. Clinton started or helped to start plural US wars and foreign civil wars with questionable or nonexistent justification under international law, which is worse.

The best legitimate criticisms of Trump's actions that the press was able to come up with were perhaps a couple of sexual assault incidents, a small-time fraudulent university, and some coarse language. So, I'll be generous to the MSM and say that's equivalent to one thousand war casualties of evil. Clinton's millions of direct and incidental war casualties are still a much bigger problem. Past actions, not current statements, are the best predictor of future behavior. If both are equally corrupt or what have you, we have to decide based on their record. It is clear who is the greater evil here in terms of body count.

reddit.com/r/dncleaks