You said, "If you do admire him, then there is no other choice but to vote for Clinton. You either trust him or you don't". I believe that is a perfect example of a binary choice. You said it, not me. I believe there -are- other choices, such as voting -for- someone, rather than against.

As for remembering my stance if Trump should win, I'll say the same to you. When the debtor's prisons are raping the remnants of the once-middle class while Hillary only focuses on feeding the MIC with more wars, remember who put her in the position to do that. Because it for damned sure won't have been me.

If I haven't been clear enough, neither of the major candidates is worth my vote. I actually believe that Clinton is slightly more dangerous, due to the combination of competence and utter rapaciousness. Trump's total incompetence limits the damage he can do. The fact that these are the only two candidates with any real chance of victory is a complete damnation of our system. We're fucked.

But -DON'T- try to tell me what my conscience says, or how I have to respond. You haven't come anywhere near earning that right. Nobody in this universe has.

To be honest, even though I ain't voting for him, I almost would feel more comfortable with Trump 'the idiot' in office. An incompetent President cannot hurt us as bad as an extremely skilled politician whose hawkish stance with Russia will screw us for years.

Trump inherited over 200 million in real-estate from daddy in the early '80s.

If he'd sold it and simply put the money in indexed funds, it would be worth about 12 billion today. If he'd held onto it the real-estate would be worth about 15 billion today. At his most generous, Trump estimates his own wealth around 8 billion. Other sources have it much lower (Deutsche Bank estimated it well under a billion about ten years ago).

So, to answer your question, "How does he manage his companies?"

Badly. But when you start with so much even total incompetence takes a while to drain your accounts.

No major bank will lend him money anymore. I've heard that he owes hundreds of millions to Putin cronies, which perfectly explains why he's so Putin friendly. He's probably been told they'll write off some or all of his debt if he carries their water for four years as president. I think it's entirely possible Trump is bankrupt and doing Putin some favors is the only way to keep himself solvent.

I 100% agree that not only is Bernie the better candidate and would make a better President than either Clinton or Trump, he would also have a better chance of beating Trump.

Republicans might not like Sanders on a political level ("ermahgerd, teh socialism is coming!", etc), but they DESPISE Clinton on a personal level.

And let's be honest, most of that has nothing to do with her real or perceived failings.. it's because
a) she's a woman and
b) she was married to Bill.

But that is irrelevant because Clinton is the candidate.

Addressing your other points:
"Trump is a womanizer / misogynist / predator. Yeah, and Clinton is married to a worse one who disgraced the Presidency while he was in office.

Trump lies constantly. As opposed to the Clintons, who would never lie. For example, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (Bill), "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" (Bill)"

Sorry, I missed the part where Bill Clinton was the nominee. Leaving aside the dubious nature of the allegations against him, the point is that he's not the candidate, Hillary is.

The email thing was bad, but as has been gone over many times, it was stupid rather than malicious.

"Trump has no experience with government and would make an incompetent president. What's worse: a crooked / corrupt Washington insider that knows how to game the system, or someone with no experience?"

Easy, Trump is worse. When did we all decide that being able to make deals was a bad thing? That's what politics is. If you don't know the system, you will get railroaded.

Now, my preference would have been for someone who knows the system and wants to change it, but as that's not going to happen, I'll take someone who can get shit done over an inexperienced buffon any day.

Once again, I completely agree that Bernie would have stood a better chance than Hillary of being elected, but it pretty much doesn't matter anymore. Everyday that passes Trump slips further behind, giving me some small hope for humanity.
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

Yeah, Trump is a complete tool. Guilty of all the stuff Maher said about him. Given that kind of "competition", what would the Democrats have to do to get those 20 states to flip their direction?

I can take a stab that that one, Bill -- he's sitting right next to you. If the Democrats had chosen Sanders as their candidate, I guarantee that at least some of those states would have gone blue on election day.

Firm, registered Democrats? They'd all happily vote for Bernie in the general, just like they will vote for Hillary.

Undecideds, moderates, and young people? Drastically more likely to vote for Bernie than Hillary. A huge segment of the voting population is disgusted with the two major choices, and would happily flock to a candidate that has a proven track record of honesty and integrity, instead of the dog and pony show that we have now.

Firm, die-hard Republicans? Maher is right; there is a certain percentage of people that would never vote Democrat. But, I don't think that number is above 50% of the population even in the reddest of red states. But even for many of those people that are completely dissatisfied by Trump, from their perspective Hillary is NOT a better option.


Let's consider how all the arguments against Trump play to that specific audience: (note that the responses are what *they* think, not necessarily what *I* think)

Trump is a womanizer / misogynist / predator. Yeah, and Clinton is married to a worse one who disgraced the Presidency while he was in office.

Trump lies constantly. As opposed to the Clintons, who would never lie. For example, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" (Bill), "it depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is" (Bill), and "I am confident that I never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time" (Hillary).

Trump has no experience with government and would make an incompetent president. What's worse: a crooked / corrupt Washington insider that knows how to game the system, or someone with no experience?

etc. etc.

Hillary goddamn Clinton is NOT going to be seen as a reasonable alternative to Trump to those people. No matter how much he goes off the rails. No matter what crazy, foul, contemptible shit he says or does. No matter how many skeletons you dig out of his closet. Why? Because they are convinced (reasonably or not) that the Clintons have done just as much questionable shit and more, they are perhaps just better at covering it up.

But if the Democrat candidate was Bernie Sanders, I'm sure a lot more of those hard-line Republicans would be way more tempted to vote blue in November.

I'm basically done with defending WikiLeaks as well, after the shit they pulled with the leaks of Turkish data. Completely irresponsible, that one.

However, WikiLeaks doesn't need credibility -- the data does. And the data they published vis-á-vis Clinton/Podesta/DNC is, as of now, solid. There was one fake document, but that was shown to have been injected by someone other than WL.

"Strong bias" -- oh, I do have a strong bias. Plural, as in biases, actually. For instance, I'm disinclined to take anything the US intelligence agencies say at face value, given how they manufactured more than one casus belli. I don't put much weight into (un-)official statements in general, but especially since all the misinformation they spread about issues like the coup in Honduras or the actions of Nazi militias in Ukraine.

In this particular case, however, my argument is much simpler: Occam's razor seems much more likely than malicious intent. Propaganda outlets on both sides are run by people. Maybe the propaganda outlet Sputnik intentionally twisted the content of email, or maybe they just fucked up, like people are wont to do. Maybe someone intentionally fed Trump this bad info, maybe his people are just as incompetent as he is.

There are too many parts in this that include people who have more than once proven themselves to be utterly incompetent, or in complete ignorance of even the concept of truth. I don't think Trump gives a shit about truth or facts, he strikes me as the typical blowhard who spouts whatever shit comes to mind, and spins stories on the fly like a 4-year-old when caught red-handing.

No need for a conspiracy there, with all this incompetence, naiveté and plain disregard for facts.

So when they keep on pushing the Russian angle in this, it just seems like a desperate attempt to conjure up the old unifying enemy. Why worry about Russian propaganda when there's plenty on FOX and MSNBC/CNN? Why worry about Russian hackers when you accept the unbelievably insecure method of eletronic votes, partly without paper trails, and completely controlled by private companies?

It's just very strange to an outsider like me to see them focus on perceived external influences when the internals are a complete clusterfuck. And this presidential election is the biggest clusterfuck I've seen in 30 years, which doesn't mean much, admittedly.

That said, we can't just be looking at it from the outside with binoculars, not when people are back to full-blown Cold War rhetoric. When the ruling class in the US and/or the ruling class in Russia start their pissing contests and other forms of grandstanding, it's usually brown people who pay the price, like they have been in Syria for the last couple of years. And Libya. And Yemen. And Somalia. And Afghanistan, And Iraq. And Pakistan.

Personally, all the rhetoric about "standing up to Russian aggression" and similar nonsense makes me keenly aware that the bridge just outside my hometown was constructed with a shaft to place explosives in, to slow down advancing Soviet troops... so yes, I would very much like to bitch-slap all these warmongerers on both sides, but particularly the ones in the US since they are currently the ones racking up the highest death toll.

Edit: I should have made it clearer. Yes, WL is absolutely biased against Clinton and they do seem to act in support of Trump. Assange in particular. Which bums me out to no end, since I actually met the guy in person when they presented WL at the 26C3.

Argument pro plain incompetence/stupidity: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/in-the-democratic-echo-chamber-inconvenient-truths-are-recast-as-putin-plots/

On a personal note: Olberman throwing accusations at foreign governments without solid evidence while claiming that WikiLeaks "hacks Podesta's email" is not helping his credibility. He's always been prone for exaggeration, but at a time when your military is bombing people in nearly a dozen countries and you're fighting a proxy-war against a nuclear-armed superpower in Syria, going off on an almost McCarthy-ite rant is not helping.

I just skimmed the wrap-ups on the 4chan/Podesta/WL thing that went down tonight and... well, it really is one of those moments.

Same login data for different services, recovery email at Yahoo, WH asking for SSN/DOB through email -- they either really don't give a fuck or they are utterly incompetent.

And it just keeps on giving. I got as far as seeing that both the CIA director and the National Security Advisor use AOL, which was when I called it a day.

There's only so much you can take...

Hmm. I agree that Trump is an incompetent egotistical blowhard, who drums up support by drastically overstating America's problems. America doesn't *need* drastic change.

...BUT, American government, particularly at the national level in Washington really is a complete trainwreck that *does* need drastic change. Both of our disgusting parties hold plenty of blame for that.

I think that the short-term damage that a Trump presidency would cause would be mitigated pretty well by the separation of powers, one of the few elements of our government that does function pretty well. And I feel like it is possible that a long-term benefit could be that Republican voters would get a hard-to-ignore lesson that the "ideals" that are spouted by their party leadership don't work. George W Bush was the best thing to happen for the Democrat party in a long time; Trump could finish the party off and let something better replace it.

Hillary is definitely more competent. In the short term, the country would definitely be better off with her at the helm than Trump. But, I don't see any long-term benefits to electing her.

Republicans would have a prime and familiar scapegoat. The legislative branch ground to a standstill with Obama in office, I think it will/would be worse with Hillary. That might actually be a good thing; it could limit the damage that they can do -- and the consequences of a shitty legislative branch are worse than a shitty president, I think.

And the Democrat party, which had a golden fucking opportunity to lead by example and actually do some exciting GOOD things with government to win voters over, instead did every dirty and questionable thing they could to guarantee that Hillary "I am the establishment" Clinton got their nomination.


Neither side deserves to win, and in fact both sides deserve to lose. I'll be voting 3rd party; not that it will accomplish anything.

Democrats, you could have had my vote if you had selected literally anybody other than Hillary. Hell, I'd probably even have voted for Hillary over Trump if she had beat Bernie fair and square without resorting to all the shady stuff (she probably would have won even without that shit).

Republicans, almost the same goes for you -- I'd pretty happily have voted for anybody other than Trump running against Hillary. Well, maybe not creepy-as-fuck Ted Cruz or some other batshit crazy option like Sarah Palin; but pretty much any of the others.

Too late now though.

Pardon me, shots. It was a criminal level of incompetence. Yet neither the Commander who gave 'conflicting statements'(lied) nor the Officer have been charged with anything, even at this late date. Additionally, something else I forgot was that they let the victim bleed while handcuffed for 20 minutes without providing any first aid or making it a priority that he was treated. It was lucky that he didn't bleed out or go into shock.

But this is the type of thing I am talking about and was referencing to @bareboards2. I mean, I'm white and of Italian descent, so I could do damn near anything to an officer and not be killed. I even conceal carry, although they know that as soon as they see my license or run my plates. Yet we have people of color that are being run rampant over, be it racism or fear of a different culture/people. Like in that video where the guy was shot and the female officer's husband was in the pursuit helicopter saying that he looked like a mean black dude. We simply can't keep this up.

Took the shots.
He fired 3 times, and missed with all 3 shots if you believe he was shooting at the seated man brandishing a fully automatic toy truck.
That's a criminal level of incompetence if you ask me.

Cops shouldn't be considered a threat because they have been appointed by the government to uphold the law. The success of that is definitely up for debate, but to suggest that citizens should be fighting cops is absurd. That will only lead to more deaths.
(The solution is for the system to weed out the bad cops, the incompetent ones, the corrupt ones, the power tripping, racist, trigger happy etc).

Most cops do the right thing, most of the time. The millions of police encounters each day where nothing has gone wrong don't make the news.

I think it's worth considering what the any country would be like without law enforcement. We know what it would be like - hurricane Katrina - complete chaos on the streets, far worse than these shootings. Assuming your goal is to have fewer people shot and murdered, then having a police force is the best way we know of. However for that to work we need a competent police force that is there to serve and protect.

There definitely needs to be a system were police are made accountable to make sure stuff like this video does happen, or even non-lethal situations where citizens are being harassed. There are number of ways to do this. But my suggestions is that if you want to argue with someone, don't do it while they're holding a gun at you. Wait until you get to the station and call your lawyer. It's not perfect, but at your chances of getting shot will drop dramatically.

Sorry, I don't agree. Hillary wouldn't be my first choice, but of all the candidates on both sides (and independents), she'd be in my top 2 or 3. The rest are either idiots, incompetent or both (see Johnson and Aleppo). That's not that I like Hillary, but she's the least worst.

Trump, OTOH, is easily in the bottom row. The only worse candidates would be Cruz or Santorum.

Thing is, I can get past the racism, the xenophobia, the sexism and the idiotic economics. They're all terrible, but mostly they'll just fuck up the USA.

But his stance on the environment is completely unacceptable and has global consequences. He simply cannot be allowed to be president.

Saying Hillary and Trump are both bad is true, but it's also a false equivalence. Getting the flu or cancer both suck, but I'll take the flu over cancer any day.

But things will never change until you fix your broken political system. You're barely a democracy these days.

A better title might be 'cops bend over and lube up for Harris feed lot owners'. They didn't come out for the drone, they came out in force because the feed lot owners/managers asked them to....over nothing....at least twice.
Fresno police better not EVER claim they are overworked or that there are too few police. If they can come out in such numbers twice for possible trespass in the countryside on public land, they either have way too many officers there with nothing to do, or they are so incompetent that they ignored actual crimes to cow tow to a major local employer. Either case should lead to firings.