2016 Presidential Election Thread Archive

[Collimatrix]

LOL, WTF is this shit?

 

 

Trump apparently was smart enough to see the bubble coming (or at least have enough liquid assets on hand to make out nicely in the event of a downturn), so he stood to benefit when the 2008 crash happened.  Or at least to suffer less than everyone else did.  And somehow this means if elected he will steal from people?

 

What the hell sort of cause and effect relationship am I supposed to be drawing here?  Am I to believe that Trump is some sort of all-powerful supervillain who will somehow have the power to cause financial crashes and swoop in on foreclosure auctions?  Will he wear a high-collared Dracula-cape number covered in dollar signs and big Elton John sunglasses?  Will chain his enemies in place and cut them in half with powerful lasers?  The vast distances covered by this logical non-sequitur suggest that it could be used as the basis for some sort of faster-than-light travel.

 

And I feel bubbly and light in the knowledge that, in this election season of election seasons, more gloriously insane shit is yet to come.

[Toxn]

LOL, WTF is this shit?

 

 

Trump apparently was smart enough to see the bubble coming (or at least have enough liquid assets on hand to make out nicely in the event of a downturn), so he stood to benefit when the 2008 crash happened.  Or at least to suffer less than everyone else did.  And somehow this means if elected he will steal from people?

 

What the hell sort of cause and effect relationship am I supposed to be drawing here?  Am I to believe that Trump is some sort of all-powerful supervillain who will somehow have the power to cause financial crashes and swoop in on foreclosure auctions?  Will he wear a high-collared Dracula-cape number covered in dollar signs and big Elton John sunglasses?  Will chain his enemies in place and cut them in half with powerful lasers?  The vast distances covered by this logical non-sequitur suggest that it could be used as the basis for some sort of faster-than-light travel.

 

And I feel bubbly and light in the knowledge that, in this election season of election seasons, more gloriously insane shit is yet to come.

You'd think that not being one of the innumerable vampires or their enablers who caused the damn crash in the first place would be an absolute minimum requirment for electability in 2016.

 

As such, this makes Trump seem like one of the few folk smart enough not to be a victim of the lunacy that saw a small number of people plough the world economy into the rocky shore and then get patted on the head for their prowess.

[Collimatrix]

You'd think that not being one of the innumerable vampires or their enablers who caused the damn crash in the first place would be an absolute minimum requirment for electability in 2016.

 

If Trump wins there will be a hell of a lot of Sanders supporters sarcastically saying "I told you so."  There were some models from about six months ago that showed that Hillary would lose to Trump, but that Sanders could prevail.  I don't know what sort of rigor or error bars applied, but it will still be ammo.

 

Question: if Trump wins, does the DNC plow on like this never happened or do they turn on themselves in a cannibalistic orgy?  Or will the idiot-spell of 2016 be broken by then, and they'll be able to make sensible reforms in an organized and adult fashion?

 

 

As such, this makes Trump seem like one of the few folk smart enough not to be a victim of the lunacy that saw a small number of people plough the world economy into the rocky shore and then get patted on the head for their prowess.

 

I have no idea what Trump's P&L sheets looked like for 2008-2009.  Did he make out when everyone else choked?  Or did he just get kicked in the shorts less?  No idea.

 

But that single off-the-cuff statement about the state of the market in 2006 potentially being a bubble certainly makes him look like he at least understands the concept of "buy low, sell high."  Apparently it is supposed to make me think he rapes grandmas, however.  Maybe my calibration is off?

[Toxn]

 

If Trump wins there will be a hell of a lot of Sanders supporters sarcastically saying "I told you so."  There were some models from about six months ago that showed that Hillary would lose to Trump, but that Sanders could prevail.  I don't know what sort of rigor or error bars applied, but it will still be ammo.

 

Question: if Trump wins, does the DNC plow on like this never happened or do they turn on themselves in a cannibalistic orgy?  Or will the idiot-spell of 2016 be broken by then, and they'll be able to make sensible reforms in an organized and adult fashion?

 

My guess is that they carry on for a while on inertia, then implode into a bunch of squabbling internal factions. Expect a 'new but under the same brand name' party to emerge some time later.

 

I have no idea what Trump's P&L sheets looked like for 2008-2009.  Did he make out when everyone else choked?  Or did he just get kicked in the shorts less?  No idea.

 

But that single off-the-cuff statement about the state of the market in 2006 potentially being a bubble certainly makes him look like he at least understands the concept of "buy low, sell high."  Apparently it is supposed to make me think he rapes grandmas, however.  Maybe my calibration is off?

 

I think you're still calibrated to 'common fucking sense' rather than whatever elite consensus (and I have come to believe that such a creature does indeed exist) is driving this phenomenon.

 

[Brick Fight]

LOL, WTF is this shit?

 

 

Trump apparently was smart enough to see the bubble coming (or at least have enough liquid assets on hand to make out nicely in the event of a downturn), so he stood to benefit when the 2008 crash happened.  Or at least to suffer less than everyone else did.  And somehow this means if elected he will steal from people?

 

What the hell sort of cause and effect relationship am I supposed to be drawing here?  Am I to believe that Trump is some sort of all-powerful supervillain who will somehow have the power to cause financial crashes and swoop in on foreclosure auctions?  Will he wear a high-collared Dracula-cape number covered in dollar signs and big Elton John sunglasses?  Will chain his enemies in place and cut them in half with powerful lasers?  The vast distances covered by this logical non-sequitur suggest that it could be used as the basis for some sort of faster-than-light travel.

 

And I feel bubbly and light in the knowledge that, in this election season of election seasons, more gloriously insane shit is yet to come.

 

Anyone with a brain saw that coming. Economists like Krugman were warning of it for years, but it got dismissed as "liberal media bias" or whatever. Even the average dipshit could watch HGTV and wonder why throwing a single piece of track lighting in a kitchen added $25,000 to a house price. When I go to back to my hometown in Jersey, every year more houses look like crap; they need paint, the yard is uncut and full of weeds, the windows are dirty, etc. It's fairly obvious the entire town is renting because anything within an hour of NYC costs ten million dollars because realtors said it was worth that much. A guy whose probably most reliable source of income was property, and most likely inherited a certain amount of his property would understand what was going on and how he could work it. And considering how crooked the system behind the crash was, I don't mind that he made money off of it. There's plenty of other shit to find reprehensible about him.

[Ramlaen]

Imagine this during the first debate later this month.

 

[LostCosmonaut]

Anyone with a brain saw that coming. Economists like Krugman were warning of it for years, but it got dismissed as "liberal media bias" or whatever. Even the average dipshit could watch HGTV and wonder why throwing a single piece of track lighting in a kitchen added $25,000 to a house price. When I go to back to my hometown in Jersey, every year more houses look like crap; they need paint, the yard is uncut and full of weeds, the windows are dirty, etc. It's fairly obvious the entire town is renting because anything within an hour of NYC costs ten million dollars because realtors said it was worth that much. A guy whose probably most reliable source of income was property, and most likely inherited a certain amount of his property would understand what was going on and how he could work it. And considering how crooked the system behind the crash was, I don't mind that he made money off of it. There's plenty of other shit to find reprehensible about him.

 

Out of morbid curiosity, what part of Jersey are you from? (I spent about 10 years in NJ, and I've got a cousin who lives around exit 150 now)

[Brick Fight]

Out of morbid curiosity, what part of Jersey are you from? (I spent about 10 years in NJ, and I've got a cousin who lives around exit 150 now)

 

Was born in Wharton, and moved to Pennsylvania when I was 10. Looking at pictures now, they've cleaned up the town a bit. It was always a little run-down looking but it got bad shortly after we left.

[Ramlaen]

Twice in a day.

 

[Meplat]

Twice in a day.

 

 

What, someone splash the wicked witch of the east with water again?

[Donward]

The coughing is all well and good but the question I have is if Putin and the Russkies were such baddies, why did Hillary approve of turning over one-fifth of the Uranium production in the US to Russia in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html?_r=0

 

But yeah, Trump is a bad, bad man for not wanting to start World War 3 with the Russians over a bunch of Syrians.

[Toxn]

An interesting thesis:

 

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/new-class-war/

[Collimatrix]

An interesting thesis:

 

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/new-class-war/

 

 

It's more or less accurate, but the effort they go into detailing the supposed class lines is excruciating in how long-winded and almost correct it is.

 

It's this simple; Trump supporters are mostly losers.  Just like Ron Paul's supporters were mostly losers.  Back then they called it the "long tail;" the thin distribution away from the center of the curve.  Libertarians, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, peddlers of bizarre racial theories, cranks and more.  What did they have in common?  Just the fact that they were losers.

 

I mean losers in the social sense.  Mortal men crave power and prestige beyond all other things.  This is the primary flaw that our great lord Satan uses to manipulate us to his ends.

 

In a nation without particularly codified or rigid class distinctions, and with those that do exist dissolving day by day, the act of being a loser in the United States is largely self-imposed.  In order to not be a loser, you just need to flaunt having the correct opinion of the week, and have absolutely no scruples in throwing who are no longer useful to you under the bus.  It's that simple.  Sure, it helps if you are also talented and clever, and brainwashing at an early age in order to get the reflexive crimethink in place helps too, but fundamentally all you have to do in order to have all the riches in the world is give your trust and hope to Satan.

 

Well, various people don't do that, or they don't do it hard enough.  Some are too crazy to avoid being losers, and some are too stupid, and some are too stubborn, and some are too concerned with pesky external reality and noticing that being cool doesn't actually pay the bills, and a tiny, tiny percentage aren't cool because they've come to their senses and realized that a great many of the things you are required to say to be a cool person in the USA in TYOOL 2016 are:

a)  Disturbingly mutable.  Are we supposed to be for invading Iraq now?  Weren't we against it, like, just a few years ago?

2)  Obviously untrue.  If all religions are at their core the same and about peace and love, then what the shit was up with the Aztecs?

c)  Completely galloping insane.  You want what percentage of your power to come from photovoltaics?  When the sun only produces x watts per square meter?  When the PV panels are only Y efficient?  When the peak power demand is Z?  Can you fucking do multiplication?

 

But those who are dissenters from cool for reasons of logic and reason are so rare they can basically be ignored.

 

So, you have all these losers, thinking that the world has wronged them and that is why they are not cool so pretty girls will not kiss them on the mouth, and here comes this blonde carrot messiah saying he's going to destroy the world.  And all the people who are not losers shriek in (justified) horror, "he's saying he's going to burn down the world we worked so hard to make for ourselves and other cool people!"  And what they don't realize is that un-cool people want nothing more than for the world to burn, because once it's done burning it might be their turn to be cool.

 

There is a slight downside to this; the part where the world burns.

 

Trump can't go the distance, I'm nine out of ten parts certain.  He can't change the way the USA (and thus the world) works because civil servants have 133 years and counting of legal insulation from any would-be reformers.  He's not going to set the world on fire.  He's not going to change anything substantial.  He probably actually wants to, but he can't.  In four years there won't even be bitterness and resent in the hearts of his supporters.  They'll just sort of catch collective amnesia about what they were doing in late 2016 and convince themselves that somehow they weren't really taken in by it all.  Sure, some other people got downright cult-y about it, but no sir, they just went along with it because they thought he was the lesser of two evils.  Besides, it wasn't so bad.  Basically, look at the lies and rationalizations rabid Obamanauts from eight years ago are telling themselves now.  If you find joy in watching predictable human foibles and weakness buckle in on themselves, as does our lord Satan, then you should enjoy this.

 

Who was it who pointed out that political rallies are based on big tent revivals?

 

Anyway, what makes this election engaging isn't the possibility that anything will change.  What makes it engaging is watching people shit their pants over such a trifle.  The "managerial elite" of the world could save themselves a hell of a lot of heartburn if they just didn't let people vote.  But they're like the guy who keeps hooking up with strippers and ex-junkies who inevitably steal his stuff or try to get him to get into fights with their exes; deep down, they actually crave the unnecessary drama.  Why?  I don't know; it's just the total depravity with which Satan, the great demiurge and creator of this world fashioned us human beings.

[Donward]

A Trump supporter tired of Bellingham hippies stealing his yard signs electrified them.

 

http://mynorthwest.com/386250/jolt-of-support-bellingham-man-adds-electricity-to-trump-signs/

 

Hilarity Mild amusement ensues. 

[LostCosmonaut]

Speaking of hippies, the Green Party candidate is being charged with vandalism; http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/jill-stein-to-face-charges-north-dakota-227826

[Brick Fight]

I do think the presidential election fervor's gonna hit an apex one of these cycles. I think in two years, when the news media wants to get the election cycle up and running again, people are going to wonder why they got so worked the h*ck up last time. Not to mention the Republicans are going to keep as much of a lid on their weirdos as they can to cut down on the circus and just get the guy they want in as smoothly as possible.

[Walter_Sobchak]

Speaking of hippies, the Green Party candidate is being charged with vandalism; http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/jill-stein-to-face-charges-north-dakota-227826

 Not a Jill Stein fan, but I am not going to blame her for standing up on this occasion.  I have not read much about this issue, but I certainly have no doubt that the US government is capable of circumventing the rights of native american tribes of their rights in the name of economic development.  Seems to me that this issue deserves as least as much news coverage as those idiots that occupied the nature preserve in Oregon got.  

[Donward]

I agree with Walter that this issue should be receiving far more attention, certainly in comparison to the YeeHawdists. That's even if I don't necessarily agree with their goals.

[Priory_of_Sion]

What is Aleppo?

[Belesarius]

What is Aleppo?

Statement from Gary Johnson:

"This morning, I began my day by setting aside any doubt that I’m human. Yes, I understand the dynamics of the Syrian conflict -- I talk about them every day. But hit with “What about Aleppo?”, I immediately was thinking about an acronym, not the Syrian conflict. I blanked. It happens, and it will happen again during the course of this campaign.

Can I name every city in Syria? No. Should I have identified Aleppo? Yes. Do I understand its significance? Yes.

As Governor, there were many things I didn’t know off the top of my head. But I succeeded by surrounding myself with the right people, getting to the bottom of important issues, and making principled decisions. It worked. That is what a President must do.

That would begin, clearly, with daily security briefings that, to me, will be fundamental to the job of being President."

[Priory_of_Sion]

Maybe he was just reading the NYTs this morning and got confused. 

[Brick Fight]

 Not a Jill Stein fan, but I am not going to blame her for standing up on this occasion.  I have not read much about this issue, but I certainly have no doubt that the US government is capable of circumventing the rights of native american tribes of their rights in the name of economic development.  Seems to me that this issue deserves as least as much news coverage as those idiots that occupied the nature preserve in Oregon got.  

 

They'd do it to anyone really. One of the biggest out of many, many reasons that nobody points out to dumbass baby boomers why Trump's wall is a stupid idea is that we already built a border fence during the Bush administration. Despite it not working like at all, the ding-dongs who supported it didn't realize we had to build it on American soil, so anyone who didn't sell land to have it built got eminent domained. 

[Bronezhilet]

Maybe he was just reading the NYTs this morning and got confused. 

And they fucked even that up, since they stated that Raqqa was Syria's capital, not Aleppo as the second correction states.

[Sturgeon]

What is Aleppo?

What some people who see the third parties as alternatives need to understand is that American third parties are complete shit shows. They are a joke, they are amateur hour, and they only seem harmless because they have no power whatsoever.

Gary Johnson is not an exception to this.

[Priory_of_Sion]

Since the Democratic and Republican parties are like chimeras of 3 to 4 loosely aligned political ideologies, it leaves no space for a true 3rd party. Not to mention FPTP voting discourages 3rd parties.

This why the LP has Gary Johnson and Jill Stein is going to jail.