Curb Your Authoritarianism? The 2016 Conventional Wisdom Thread (Elections, Part 6)

good devo song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIl20jItjHY

omg

You'd think, after losing an entire cemetery-ful of his comrades in Benghazi, he would object to a potential Clinton presidency with more vehemence than if he were being offered a stick of gum. "No, thanks. But thank you for offering."

(I expect that there will naturally be a follow-up retraction ad once they're caught up on the news from the past week.)

"NRA violated government policy in pro-Trump ad that featured veterans cemetery "

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/nra-violated-gov-rules-anti-hillary-ad-veterans-cemetery-article-1.2693440

"A lot of people say they're not going to vote this November because their candidate didn't win," he says over shots of gravestones. "Well, I know some people who won't be voting this year either."

go fuck yourself forever

"A lot of people say they're not going to vote this November because their candidate didn't win," he says over shots of gravestones. "Well, I know some people who won't be voting this year either."

Must not be a cemetery in Chicago, ha ha.

desperately want trump to pick christie.. the focus on shady atlantic city dealings could do nothing but help these assholes amirite? also when christie inevitably gets indicted it will make trump look ever wiser.

Christie would be a totally stupid pick that won't help him at all in the general election, so of course it's who Trump will pick. Like a true monomaniacal fascist he prizes loyalty as the highest virtue.

I mean who else even *wants* the job, what a thankless, doomed task

I know I'm not supposed to be laughing and this but holy shit, it's basically a comedy sketch

Love how it doesn't even say what Hillary did, just "Hillary as president? ......No thanks"

fucking lol

that NRA ad will play to the fringebase and nobody else so in that sense it's effective. otherwise total fail as a general election strategy.

As for the featured guests who would be given speaking roles, Mr. Trump has said he will be contacting major sports figures and other celebrities. At least one, the former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, has turned him down, saying a large convention speech “isn’t really my style.” He is also thinking about asking Serena Williams, Don King and Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to play a role of some kind in Cleveland.

is there something I don't know about Serena Williams or what

He just wants the best people

Adroitly sidestepping a question about Trump at the French Open, where Williams is the defending champion, she says she is "not involved at all" in politics.

Williams, a Jehovah's witness, adds "I don't vote. It goes back to my religion."

She says she has met Trump "several times," because she lives in Palm Beach, Florida, and he has a 17-acre estate, the Mar-a-Lago Club, there.

so i'm guessing she won't be there

I also like the prospective Gingrich pick so Trump can relitigate NAFTA over and over

He just wants the best people

and that Serena, boy! have you seen her play? she's a winner, like him

oh man I would love Gingrich as Trump VP just for the lolz

but Newtie said some not-nice things about Trump so he's probably out

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/01/politics/lynch-to-accept-guidance-from-fbi-on-clinton-email-probe/index.html

I feel like bill is going out of his way to sabotage this campaign. Why hasn't she locked him up in a basement yet?

non-scandal everyone will forget about by next week

real Bernie heads don't forget

i wish, but since benghazi never worked out like they hoped, my guess is that the email will be the new endless scandal. Especially since at this point it seems incredibly unlikely that the fbi will indict her, given the proximity to the election.

is this stuff going to get any traction?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/why-the-new-child-rape-ca_b_10619944.html

jezebel seems skeptical and if anyone would believe it i'd think it would be them
http://jezebel.com/heres-how-that-wild-lawsuit-accusing-trump-of-raping-a-1782447083

The list of Trump potential VP's is piling up with politicians that are not even liked much at all in their home state. I saw an article on Mike Pence yesterday, so he can be added to the ranks.

When it comes to lurid allegations against a highly visible and powerful person with lots of political power, skepticism is the default position unless it is abundantly clear that skepticism is not warranted. The job of journalists at this point is not to believe or disbelieve, but to maintain some distance from the story and distinguish between allegations and facts.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmTQhRaVIAAWAVt.jpg

is that dan gilbert's son?

teenage Michael Gove impersonator

http://www.theonion.com/video/gop-maintains-solid-hold-on-youth-that-already-loo-36778

trump can get the millennial vote by pantsing that nerd in front of cpac

so bad at this http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-keeps-settling-primary-scores-campaign-pivots-n602761

so so bad: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-super-pacs-finding-it-hard-to-collect-on-pledges-224542129.html

I laughed, loud and long.

In early June, private equity mogul Thomas Barrack got big headlines when he told CNN that he had lined up $32 million in pledged contributions to Rebuilding America Now, a super-PAC he helped establish to promote Trump’s candidacy. That came as Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was telling donors that Barrack’s operation was the campaign’s preferred destination for big-dollar, unlimited contributions that only super-PACs are legally allowed to receive.

But Rebulding America Now has collected only $2 million of those pledges — from a single donor — Laurance Gay, the managing director of Rebuilding America Now, confirmed to Yahoo News.

Re: the previous link, 'I didn't bother to learn and understand the rules until I was tits-deep in the game' = 'rigged' in Trumpsylvania. He's such a pissy little toad. He fucking won the nomination against all reason b-b-but he didn't win everything exactly the way he wanted to! Unfair! Sad!

barrack has (or at least had) a bunch of money in atlantic city.. birds of a feather fundraise together

Not only is the Trump campaign *still* soliciting donations from foreign nationals, they're probably illegally coordinating with Super PACs, some of which are probably fake anyway: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/welp-that-s-weird-but-of-course-it-is

I hope somebody can compile a proper list by say 9 Nov 2016 of exactly how many other countries' MPs this campaign has hit up for funds.

Should we make a poll thread wagering this? We're already at 6 and it's only July.

this was a pretty good read

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/6/11/1537582/-The-most-thorough-profound-and-moving-defense-of-Hillary-Clinton-I-have-ever-seen

^ It certainly is a defense in depth, so I guess "profound" would apply in one of its meanings, but even though I fully appreciate the hatred that has been aimed at Hillary and how little of it has been merited by her actions, I did not find myself "moved" by that essay. It is just a reasonable summary of the history of hillary-bashing.

yeah ignore the title/URL, still kind of a nice read when LYIN CROOKED HILLARY is pretty much a nonstop meme now

most of that is 100% otm, partic in invoking petraeus, whose ridic escapade was the most actually shocking, in the sense of unexpected and to my mind completely disqualifying, d.c. scandal of my lifetime maybe?

but wrt her speaking fees which take up an awful lot

For millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills, the very idea that someone can make $100,000 or more for just giving a speech or hanging out at a Vegas nightclub is obscene. But as Richard Nixon used to say, “don’t hate the player, hate the game.” Hillary didn’t invent the speaking engagement industry, and she isn’t anywhere near the first person to make a lot of money from it. And while her fees are in the upper range of what speakers make, neither they nor the total amount of money she has made are unusual. It’s just unusual FOR A WOMAN.

but the point of bringing up the speaking fees is not to imply that she is literally taking bribes from goldman sachs but to imply that her beliefs are so amenable to the executives of goldman sachs that they will happily pay hundreds of thousands of dollars just to listen to them

obv the argument against that is she's a politician she works constituencies she doesn't have to believe the stuff she says to goldman sachs or act exclusively on it and anyway i thought you said she was lyin hillary

i don't think she's lyin hillary particularly tho and i think she prob believes in and is proud, in a modest private way, of the content of her speeches, which are prob m/l the pragmatic technocratic Democratic globally-investing equivalent of mitt's 47% "gaffe" and public knowledge of which prob would not partic help her, or the project of dgaf-gonna-go-ahead-and-call-it-neoliberalism, in her+its present fight v fascism

nevertheless i am sure that a lot of people think she is literally taking bribes

one thing that occurred to me: the republicans have spent eight years treating the president as illigitimate, obv, but w the exception of the birthers, whom iirc the party elders at least affected to hold themselves above; and of benghazi, which has been all hillary's (in part strategically); they have not actually spent eight years launching investigations into him for insane petty shit. maybe partly this is because (unlike bill) obama has self-discipline, but is the rest because the "optics" on furiously investigating the black guy again would be bad even for the gop? if it is, too bad for them, cuz maybe they coulda kept the trumpists and the god market.

well, according to the GOP, they have investigated a corrupt administration: IRS, BENGHAZI, emails.

https://twitter.com/BraddJaffy/status/749239879645687808

no wonder reddit likes this guy so much

fucking unreal

It was scheepishly removed soon after, the Star of David replaced by a circle. Was gonna post it to the 'is this anti-semitism' thread but really, no arguing here. Terrible.

*sheepishly

retracted with a wink and a nod, no doubt.