There's about a month to go, and given how often it comes up in the main thread, and how it can lead to sprawling conversations, a separate topic was prudent. Once the dust has settled, I'll either lock this or re-purpose for general political news/chatting depending.
Also, I'm copy-pasting Spartan's rebuttal to me yesterday to highlight his points and for my own later reply.
► Show Spoiler
Vol wrote:
(alleged)
Key word.
Without evidence, it remains just a coincidence.
Consider the political ramifications of individuals supporting a figure as volatile as Trump, and how many stars would align to have to get this sort of inter-party collusion to occur, and you can Occam's-Razor away any sort of conspiratorial thinking.
It should come at no surprise that GOP members are pulling support considering the effects of being politically attached to someone so volatile.
Another thing to consider: Presidential candidates have a tendency to, for lack of a better term, "get serious" once the primary process is over. The more people running, the more unusual the candidate, and as opponents drop out, the more "serious" the others generally become. Product differentiation at the start, generalization as competitors are eliminated. However, with Trump, this "seriousing" seems to have died out around the time of the first debate. Now, Clinton's chances of winning are at their highest since August 17th, and don't appear to be slowing. The most conservative calculations put her chances at 77.5-22.5. If it was held today using current polls (each weighted for sample size and how well they conduct the polling process) it puts the chances at 86.5-13.4.
Vol wrote:
drop this "pussy" controversy and have the media blow it up.
Listen, if all you need to do to create a negative controversy around a candidate is put a microphone in front of them, they probably shouldn't be running for president. It's not a conspiracy or collusion if the media is dogpiling him for some nasty shit he's said.
He said it.
The only question here is if it's taken out of context. Having listened to the audio files, they don't seem too bad if it was something said in a casual and jovial setting by some random bloke off the street, or by a celebrity (which he definitely is), but for something like that to be said by a presidential candidate is something else [EDIT: The more I think about what was said, the more it's making me feel icky. If one of my friends said similar stuff to me, I'd be telling them to start pumping the brakes]. Evidently, people are expecting a higher level of prudishness or professionalism when it comes to leading the country with the largest and most advanced economy and military in the world. Couldn't possibly imagine why.
To be fair, I think that people should be granted a certain level of separation between personal and professional life. I make great efforts to not let anything in my personal life bleed over into my work life, and if I was running for office at some point, I'd be pretty pissed if someone used something said casually in my personal life as a way to kill my political career. At least with Trump, there appears to be little to no separation between personal and "professional" life.
Vol wrote:
Which means that Trump is now being actively attacked by the Democrats, the GOP dickheads, the entire mainstream media, globalists, and probably pollsters and everyone else who likes the status quo.
Do not equate dislike towards Trump as support of the status quo. I'm sure many would like to see change past the norm. Even that "list of enemies" your provided includes those who would see significant changes. The GOP would change things from the status quo for sure. Their ideas for taxes and worker compensation alone would have a far reaching effect on what is considered "normal," be it good or bad. Same goes with Democrats. Neither party is completely getting their way right now. Both would have significant changes made if they had zero opposition.
So no. The people opposing Trump are not all for the status quo. They are opposing him because they don't like him, his policies, or those he supports, or they just don't believe that he's all for shaking up the status quo like many of his supporters believe.
Vol wrote:
Also there's rumors, though I wouldn't believe much of anything right now, that Pence is being pushed to drop his role as running mate.
I think this is probably something that happens from day one. I doubt there are many VP picks who don't get some kind of pressure to drop out of their role when chosen. Personally, I think he should stay. Not because I like his policies; I think they're potentially more dangerous than Trump's policies, but because he's doing his best to balance out the crazy with sensibility. The VP debate showed just how good he is under fire. If the suspicions that Pence plans on running in 2020 are true, I think he'd be a very strong candidate, simply because it would start bringing some honest calmness and sensibility to policy discussion, even if I find his policies abhorrent.
Vol wrote:
but I have a feeling there's more backstabbing coming soon.
Apparently, Trump believes that there are similar stories still to come. Grain of salt, he-said she-said they-said, etc etc. Just a bloke on Twitter posting a screenshot of a supposed document.
Vol wrote:
We've seen clearly that the media doesn't need even a glimmer of fact to invent a story and magnify it.
And yet, when mere suspicions of wrongdoing in the Clinton camp come up from a "leak," and when there's often little fact to back it up, it seems the first thing you do is come and post it here. I don't want to be accusatory as it feels like a cheap shot, but if you're going to complain about a lack of substance in the negative Trump stories, the least you could do is try to remain impartial and apply something similar questioning to negative news surrounding Clinton.
Case in point:
TheodoricFriede wrote:
Meanwhile Bill Clinton has raped women.
Accused of rape by Juanita Broderick
Rape is a serious accusation. I'm sure you've all heard stories about college kids who had their life ruined by rape allegations that were later admitted to be blatant lies. Those kids should have remained innocent until proven guilty, yet they were prosecuted on false claims.
Same thing applies here. This is a serious claim, and by law you deserve the benefit of the doubt until evidence can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Doesn't even make sense why this would be quiet, too, even if you believe for whatever reason in complete media collusion. If this were true, and there was evidence to prove guilt, it would be one of the biggest scandals of the election, and seriously harm the Clinton campaign. Collusion becomes exponentially more difficult the more people you have to get working together, and there are so very many people who would have to be working together to keep this story from blowing up. Again, the number of assumptions require for it to be both True and a non-story can be easily occam's-razor'd away.
What makes this particular accusation funny is that, meanwhile, Trump has also been accused rape, only in his case, it's the repeated rape of a 13 year old child. A hearing will be held in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY on December 16 of this year on it.
Which means that in the last 48 hours or so, Trump has said that exonerating evidence isn't enough to disprove sexual assault in the central park five case, was caught on tape joking being able to "do anything to women" when you're famous, and has had a case of child rape against him ordered to move forward to a hearing. Some October surprise.
But of course, Bill's rape accusation is the one that matters most.
(For the record, I don't believe either rape case to be true due to a current lack of evidence on both sides, but if you're going to parade allegations against one candidate while ignoring the allegations about another, your bias is showing).
All positive news about [PREFERRED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are true and do not require fact checking. All negative quotes from [PREFERRED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are [PICK ONE: taken out of context / false / actually positive / mean nothing]. All negative news about [PREFERRED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are a result of [PICK ANY: media collusion / shills / baseless accusations / faked documents / overblown stories / Russian hackers / conspiracy / Illuminati].
Meanwhile, all negative news about [OPPOSED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are true and do not require fact checking. All positive news regarding [OPPOSED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are the result of [PICK ANY: media collusion / shills / lies and falsehoods / old people / OPPOSING POLITICAL PARTY / SJWs].
(alleged)
Key word.
Without evidence, it remains just a coincidence.
Consider the political ramifications of individuals supporting a figure as volatile as Trump, and how many stars would align to have to get this sort of inter-party collusion to occur, and you can Occam's-Razor away any sort of conspiratorial thinking.
It should come at no surprise that GOP members are pulling support considering the effects of being politically attached to someone so volatile.
Another thing to consider: Presidential candidates have a tendency to, for lack of a better term, "get serious" once the primary process is over. The more people running, the more unusual the candidate, and as opponents drop out, the more "serious" the others generally become. Product differentiation at the start, generalization as competitors are eliminated. However, with Trump, this "seriousing" seems to have died out around the time of the first debate. Now, Clinton's chances of winning are at their highest since August 17th, and don't appear to be slowing. The most conservative calculations put her chances at 77.5-22.5. If it was held today using current polls (each weighted for sample size and how well they conduct the polling process) it puts the chances at 86.5-13.4.
Vol wrote:
drop this "pussy" controversy and have the media blow it up.
Listen, if all you need to do to create a negative controversy around a candidate is put a microphone in front of them, they probably shouldn't be running for president. It's not a conspiracy or collusion if the media is dogpiling him for some nasty shit he's said.
He said it.
The only question here is if it's taken out of context. Having listened to the audio files, they don't seem too bad if it was something said in a casual and jovial setting by some random bloke off the street, or by a celebrity (which he definitely is), but for something like that to be said by a presidential candidate is something else [EDIT: The more I think about what was said, the more it's making me feel icky. If one of my friends said similar stuff to me, I'd be telling them to start pumping the brakes]. Evidently, people are expecting a higher level of prudishness or professionalism when it comes to leading the country with the largest and most advanced economy and military in the world. Couldn't possibly imagine why.
To be fair, I think that people should be granted a certain level of separation between personal and professional life. I make great efforts to not let anything in my personal life bleed over into my work life, and if I was running for office at some point, I'd be pretty pissed if someone used something said casually in my personal life as a way to kill my political career. At least with Trump, there appears to be little to no separation between personal and "professional" life.
Vol wrote:
Which means that Trump is now being actively attacked by the Democrats, the GOP dickheads, the entire mainstream media, globalists, and probably pollsters and everyone else who likes the status quo.
Do not equate dislike towards Trump as support of the status quo. I'm sure many would like to see change past the norm. Even that "list of enemies" your provided includes those who would see significant changes. The GOP would change things from the status quo for sure. Their ideas for taxes and worker compensation alone would have a far reaching effect on what is considered "normal," be it good or bad. Same goes with Democrats. Neither party is completely getting their way right now. Both would have significant changes made if they had zero opposition.
So no. The people opposing Trump are not all for the status quo. They are opposing him because they don't like him, his policies, or those he supports, or they just don't believe that he's all for shaking up the status quo like many of his supporters believe.
Vol wrote:
Also there's rumors, though I wouldn't believe much of anything right now, that Pence is being pushed to drop his role as running mate.
I think this is probably something that happens from day one. I doubt there are many VP picks who don't get some kind of pressure to drop out of their role when chosen. Personally, I think he should stay. Not because I like his policies; I think they're potentially more dangerous than Trump's policies, but because he's doing his best to balance out the crazy with sensibility. The VP debate showed just how good he is under fire. If the suspicions that Pence plans on running in 2020 are true, I think he'd be a very strong candidate, simply because it would start bringing some honest calmness and sensibility to policy discussion, even if I find his policies abhorrent.
Vol wrote:
but I have a feeling there's more backstabbing coming soon.
Apparently, Trump believes that there are similar stories still to come. Grain of salt, he-said she-said they-said, etc etc. Just a bloke on Twitter posting a screenshot of a supposed document.
Vol wrote:
We've seen clearly that the media doesn't need even a glimmer of fact to invent a story and magnify it.
And yet, when mere suspicions of wrongdoing in the Clinton camp come up from a "leak," and when there's often little fact to back it up, it seems the first thing you do is come and post it here. I don't want to be accusatory as it feels like a cheap shot, but if you're going to complain about a lack of substance in the negative Trump stories, the least you could do is try to remain impartial and apply something similar questioning to negative news surrounding Clinton.
Case in point:
TheodoricFriede wrote:
Meanwhile Bill Clinton has raped women.
Accused of rape by Juanita Broderick
Rape is a serious accusation. I'm sure you've all heard stories about college kids who had their life ruined by rape allegations that were later admitted to be blatant lies. Those kids should have remained innocent until proven guilty, yet they were prosecuted on false claims.
Same thing applies here. This is a serious claim, and by law you deserve the benefit of the doubt until evidence can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Doesn't even make sense why this would be quiet, too, even if you believe for whatever reason in complete media collusion. If this were true, and there was evidence to prove guilt, it would be one of the biggest scandals of the election, and seriously harm the Clinton campaign. Collusion becomes exponentially more difficult the more people you have to get working together, and there are so very many people who would have to be working together to keep this story from blowing up. Again, the number of assumptions require for it to be both True and a non-story can be easily occam's-razor'd away.
What makes this particular accusation funny is that, meanwhile, Trump has also been accused rape, only in his case, it's the repeated rape of a 13 year old child. A hearing will be held in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of NY on December 16 of this year on it.
Which means that in the last 48 hours or so, Trump has said that exonerating evidence isn't enough to disprove sexual assault in the central park five case, was caught on tape joking being able to "do anything to women" when you're famous, and has had a case of child rape against him ordered to move forward to a hearing. Some October surprise.
But of course, Bill's rape accusation is the one that matters most.
(For the record, I don't believe either rape case to be true due to a current lack of evidence on both sides, but if you're going to parade allegations against one candidate while ignoring the allegations about another, your bias is showing).
All positive news about [PREFERRED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are true and do not require fact checking. All negative quotes from [PREFERRED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are [PICK ONE: taken out of context / false / actually positive / mean nothing]. All negative news about [PREFERRED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are a result of [PICK ANY: media collusion / shills / baseless accusations / faked documents / overblown stories / Russian hackers / conspiracy / Illuminati].
Meanwhile, all negative news about [OPPOSED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are true and do not require fact checking. All positive news regarding [OPPOSED POLITICAL CANDIDATE] are the result of [PICK ANY: media collusion / shills / lies and falsehoods / old people / OPPOSING POLITICAL PARTY / SJWs].
Tonight is the second debate. It starts at 9 PM EST and should be on all the major channels. Trump's allegedly more prepared for this one, and just now, had a last minute press conference with several of Bill Clinton's accusers and a woman who was raped as a child by a man that a younger Hillary represented in court. There's also been an alleged leak of strategy that Clinton may refuse to shake Trump's hand before Cooper immediately goes into addressing the Trump tapes.
So this is probably going to be a vicious, dirty debate.
