Priory_of_Sion Posted September 28, 2016 Report Share Posted September 28, 2016 Do I want shit on my shoe or my plate? I wish two party system would die already Not going to happen until Instant Runoff Voting reform is passed with preferably Single Transferable Voting for Congress. I don't see any reason why the Dems or Repubs would push for this reform though, so I'll just protest vote. SergeantMatt 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donward Posted September 28, 2016 Report Share Posted September 28, 2016 What if I were to say that Donald Trump is the third party, protest vote? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanagandr Posted September 28, 2016 Report Share Posted September 28, 2016 I'd still be writing in Chuck Tingle Priory_of_Sion and Belesarius 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Priory_of_Sion Posted September 28, 2016 Report Share Posted September 28, 2016 What if I were to say that Donald Trump is the third party, protest vote? I'd say that the idea has some merit, but not as much as the idea that Trump represents one of the minor parties that comprises the Republican party and would continue the 2 party hegemony as 90+% of Republicans support him and it is advantageous for the Republicans to have him win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donward Posted September 28, 2016 Report Share Posted September 28, 2016 I'd say that the idea has some merit, but not as much as the idea that Trump represents one of the minor parties that comprises the Republican party and would continue the 2 party hegemony as 90+% of Republicans support him and it is advantageous for the Republicans to have him win. Trump is basically the 1990s Reform party that was started by Perot except - like Ron Paul and Rand Paul - he made the correct choice to run under the GOP banner because of the advantage of having a party apparatus in place. Yo are correct, though, that this allows GOP insiders to still have a place at the table should there be a Trump Administration. However this also has advantages (and disadvantages) when you consider Trump will be surrounded by the likes of Pence, Christie, Gingrich, Sessions and whatnot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SergeantMatt Posted September 29, 2016 Report Share Posted September 29, 2016 https://twitter.com/cafedotcom/status/781310298657464320 Gary, Gary, Gary... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanagandr Posted September 29, 2016 Report Share Posted September 29, 2016 I bet the Brits are making jokes right now about Trump having more dollars than Pence Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted September 29, 2016 Report Share Posted September 29, 2016 Democracy has always been like this, it's just that for a little while in the Forties they pretended like it was some noble gentleman's sport, and we've been sliding back to normalcy ever since. T___A 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belesarius Posted September 29, 2016 Report Share Posted September 29, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bronezhilet Posted September 29, 2016 Report Share Posted September 29, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramlaen Posted October 3, 2016 Report Share Posted October 3, 2016 Someone at the New York Times was really willing to risk going to jail just to show that Trump follows US tax laws and makes rational decisions. Donward 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ramlaen Posted October 3, 2016 Report Share Posted October 3, 2016 Scolopax 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belesarius Posted October 3, 2016 Report Share Posted October 3, 2016 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/2016-election-pennsylvania-polls-voters-trump-clinton-214297 Someone please tell me that this is a gross exaggeration? You guys don't actually have lawyers challenging peoples right to vote at polling stations? That is intimidating as fuck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted October 3, 2016 Report Share Posted October 3, 2016 http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/2016-election-pennsylvania-polls-voters-trump-clinton-214297 Someone please tell me that this is a gross exaggeration? You guys don't actually have lawyers challenging peoples right to vote at polling stations? That is intimidating as fuck. Well, Politico had to go all the way back to 2004 to find a spooky story of voter intimidation, so that pretty much answers your question, I think. T___A 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brick Fight Posted October 3, 2016 Report Share Posted October 3, 2016 Depends on the state sometimes. Like he said, there are broad interpretations here in Pennsylvania. I've been doing Poll Watching since I want to say 2006, and I've seen a few incidents of participants over-stepping their bounds who usually back down when you tell them to sit or you'll call the police. Around here, it's usually mentlaly unstable middle aged guys harassing young kids and non-whites, or dorky college students unaware of how poll watching is actually supposed to work and aggressively proselytizing. It's taken fairly seriously and the police will usually have them vacate if it ever comes down to it. One of those nutters I was talking about turned out to be missing for several days, off his meds, and carrying around a large knife in his backpack. Every election day you'll hear some cable news or blogging parties try to make a big deal out of isolated incidents (fuck, Fox News still pulls up that footage of some Nation guy like 10+ years ago who was there for all of a half-hour before being vacated), but it's usually exaggerated. It was bad pre-'64 from what I read. There were direct violent threats, actions, and harassment of minority groups and it got largely overlooked. Sturgeon and Collimatrix 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShamefurDispray Posted October 4, 2016 Report Share Posted October 4, 2016 Someone at the New York Times was really willing to risk going to jail just to show that Trump follows US tax laws and makes rational decisions. Donald Trump Tax Records Show He Could Have Avoided Taxes for Nearly Two Decades, The Times Found Could Have wow it's fucking nothing Priory_of_Sion and T___A 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brick Fight Posted October 4, 2016 Report Share Posted October 4, 2016 He reported a net operating loss in 1995 of $916 million. Net operating losses are the difference between deductions and collectable income and can be carried forward 18 years, or if you pass certain checks, backwards 2 years. He essentially would have been an idiot if he didn't use it, but it's worth it to note that a lot of it came via a series of horrible business decisions that lost countless amounts of money. Collimatrix 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted October 4, 2016 Report Share Posted October 4, 2016 He reported a net operating loss in 1995 of $916 million. Net operating losses are the difference between deductions and collectable income and can be carried forward 18 years, or if you pass certain checks, backwards 2 years. He essentially would have been an idiot if he didn't use it, but it's worth it to note that a lot of it came via a series of horrible business decisions that lost countless amounts of money. Do you have any sort of technical training in accountancy? I took a two-hour long seminar on reading P&L sheets once to prepare for the written test to join the middle class. So I've been looking for someone better informed to explain to me what's going on with The Donald's tax statements, since the media will understand it about as well as they understand astrophysics, firearms, and archaeology. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brick Fight Posted October 4, 2016 Report Share Posted October 4, 2016 No training at all. I sometimes think I have a decent grasp, but I'll always receive some information that shows how little I know. Besides trying to find out on my own to try and sound smart, I worked part time for a lawyer who handled this sort of thing which taught me what was illegal, and I would chew the ear off the cute girl in accounting at one of my chef jobs when we had to go over finances or if I wanted to know how to save money on taxes. Essentially, the Times wasn't wrong, but they have a word limit to adhere to and lack of public knowledge of this kind of thing plus our penchant for stopping reading at the headline, the average person takes away "Donald lost a billion dollars." Essentially his businesses messed up super hard to the point where over a few years, his stocks dropped to less than one percent of their previous high point, and posted massive losses. But since they got their deductibles in line, losing that hard can be beneficial. If you've ever wondered why crashing businesses didn't have to declare bankruptcy or close down this could be one of the reasons and it's one of those things that small business owners don't take advantage of enough. I'm only assuming such a massive NOL was on the pre-audited returns, or I would be blown away since the pre-audit was most likely the much higher number. EIther way, I'd need to see the post-audited papers plus an idea of what their finances looked like leading up to 1995 to make any sort of opinion on what happened. Considering the losses happened over quite a period of time, he could have had similar filings in previous/following years that carried around to different places, which would explain all of the audits they've received to make sure it's being properly assigned. The losses are sort of troubling. The thing is that the $900 million is not the issue, but the losses themselves. You can cover taxes, but losses and debt accrued are a different story. Essentially, that debt can be paid off, forgiven, or bought out/renegotiated. If that debt is still around payment may seem likely as he accrued several billion in debt in the years leading up there and would likely still be paying it off today, maybe after renegotiation. Forgiveness would likely invalidate some of the benefits he received. He filed chapter 11 three times between 1991 and 1992 so renegotiation to a fair payment seems possible. A buyout is a serious accusation as there could be illegal wrongdoing if it is a conflict of interest and I'm not going to make that kind of accusation. Collimatrix 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belesarius Posted October 4, 2016 Report Share Posted October 4, 2016 *SNERK* http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/trump-backers-realize-theyve-been-played-as-wikileaks-fails-to-come-through-with-bombshells-about-clinton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ApplesauceBandit Posted October 5, 2016 Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 Ol' Johnny boy is at it again! SergeantMatt, Sturgeon and Donward 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donward Posted October 5, 2016 Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 But you see, if Johnson were only allowed to debate, 85 percent of Americans would vote for him! ... At least that's according to every Libertarian meme I see on Facebook. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Collimatrix Posted October 5, 2016 Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 Forbes writer weighs in. You'll have to lower your shields to see the article, but there's some pretty fine snark on display: Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that they had obtained a copy of Donald Trump’s 1995 New York state tax return (whoever sent it committed a felony). It showed that he claimed a net operating loss (NOL) of about $900 million that year. What followed was a collective explosion of talking heads over the weekend, with the theatrics inversely proportional to the pundit’s knowledge of tax policy. It’s not difficult to see how political reporters got played like a fiddle here. Most of them have never actually run a business, much less learned about the tax rules surrounding them. Most went from college to a series of simple, W-2 jobs (with the occasional freelance gig) in traditional media organs. These mainstream media companies have been cutting back and laying off these reporters in recent years, which has caused a kind of lustful fetish of class envy and selective transparency demands of late. The incessant demand for Trump’s tax returns–while not displaying the least interest in the donors to the Clinton Foundation–is a good demonstration of this bizarre coping mechanism. T___A, Jeeps_Guns_Tanks, Donward and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donward Posted October 5, 2016 Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 I'm sure the Attorney General of the New York will get right on prosecuting whoever leaked those tax returns, lickety-split. Jeeps_Guns_Tanks 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturgeon Posted October 5, 2016 Report Share Posted October 5, 2016 Scott Adams on presidential temperament and the risks of each candidates. I don't know that I agree with him on some of the details, but I agree with his statement that a major problem with American foreign policy is that the other countries we are dealing with don't know what our motives are or how we will react. I also agree that Clinton is high risk in this regard, for the same reasons he outlines. I'm not sure about Trump. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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