US Election: 2016

[mariomike]

Just like refusing to talk to the police without legal council present.

The complete quotation, not my words was, "Remember Donald Trump’s tax returns? It was unheard-of for a presidential candidate to refuse to release returns, since doing so strongly suggests that he has something to hide."

 

[Jarnhamar]

The complete quotation, not my words was, "Remember Donald Trump’s tax returns? It was unheard-of for a presidential candidate to refuse to release returns, since doing so strongly suggests that he has something to hide."

No worries I know it wasn't your words.

 

[Loachman]

Wasn't he a Dubya hack in diplomatic circles when they tried to sell the world a bill of sales on weapons of mass destruction, based on cooked up intel prepared at their own higher leadership request's !

The 1987 4 CMBG Brigade Study Week focussed on NBCW (CBRN as it is known now). Saddam Hussein featured prominently, due to his use of chemical agents in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, which resulted in approximately 1,000,000 deaths, and against Iraqi Kurds, who sided with Iran. One of many outstanding briefers was a Belgian doctor who had treated victims of Saddam Hussein's preferred nerve/blister cocktail, and even brought videos depicting treatment and autopsies. Another briefed on Iraqi chemical agent production, which was also the subject of a BBC documentary - "Secrets of Samarra" which appears, unfortunately, to be the only thing not available on Youtube these days. See also https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/chap5_annxB.html.

Saddam Hussein produced, stockpiled, and used chemical agents. That is fact. There was no reason to believe that he did not still have stocks available prior to the US-led invasion, coupled with a demonstrated willingness to use them.

There have been a few reports of small numbers of US personnel encountering chemical agent effects in Iraq, post-invasion, usually near old and disused ammunition dumps. These were, if I remember correctly, posted on Lightfighter a couple of years ago.

 

[Loachman]

Well, if this were a direct democracy, then it would matter.  If popular vote were all that mattered, then Clinton, Trump et al would campaign in NYC and LA.  That's it, that's all.  Read the reason for the electoral college.  Also remember that states are all supposed to be equal partners in the United States and that there wasn't one election, but 51 simultaneous elections, one in each state and one in DC.  So, the individual doesn't elect the president; the states do.
So, New York has 29 votes for POTUS, where Wyoming has 3.

And this is what so few people realize, even in the US.

The national popular vote is irrelevant. The state popular votes, collectively, are what count.

 

[Loachman]

The complete quotation, not my words was, "Remember Donald Trump’s tax returns? It was unheard-of for a presidential candidate to refuse to release returns, since doing so strongly suggests that he has something to hide."

But he DID offer to release his tax returns - as soon as Hillary released her 33000 Bleach Bit-deleted e-mails.

 

[Loachman]

A worthwhile read:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/12/12/why-hillary-lost-the-great-american-lie/?utm_hp_ref=au-homepage

:subbies:

It's only worth reading to see how the Democrat-supporting media failed to understand what was happening and why, and still fails to understand what happened and why.

I was following the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak poll at http://graphics.latimes.com/usc-presidential-poll-dashboard/, which did not conform to polls rigged in favour of Hillary, and sites such as the Still Report https://www.youtube.com/user/bstill3/videos, plus some Fox reporters, and was not surprised at all by Donald Trump's win. Yes, there is a lot of fake news (MSNBC, CNN, NYT, Washington Post, Huffington Post etcetera as well as personal websites), but there was also some very good information and analysis on some of the smaller sites. There were many indicators of a possible Donald Trump win well in advance - relative size of rallies, relative sales of anti-Hillary merchandise (like my "Hillary for Prison" T-shirt) to anti-Donald Trump merchandise (8:1), being two of them. I was quite surprised by the quality of detailed analysis coming from some of the individual sites, which ultimately proved to be far more accurate than the official fake news sites, which were more Clinton propaganda pushers than news organizations.

 

[Loachman]

Meanwhile, this was too funny NOT to share - gotta love Duffle Blog:
"Army to become ‘Land Marines’ under Mattis, Dunford-led Pentagon reorganization"

And that led me to http://www.duffelblog.com/2016/12/defense-secretary-nominee-gen-james-mattis-vows-make-killing-great/

 

[mariomike]

I find this, from Milnews, helpful,

To defame, you don't have to necessarily discredit, just cast doubt - and repeat over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, on any social medium you can, that MSM lies all the time.*

* - Does MSM get it completely right all the time?  Not fully.  Does Infowars.com get it completely right all the time?  Far less often than MSM.

13 Dec., 2016

Donald Trump has lost popular vote by greater margin than any US President.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-lost-popular-vote-hillary-clinton-us-election-president-history-a7470116.html
Now 2.8 million votes behind Hillary Clinton - five times more than the second biggest deficit.

Trump lost the popular vote in last month’s US presidential election by a bigger margin than any other US president in history.

The Republican is currently trailing Democrat rival Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes as the last remaining postal ballots are counted.

 

[Brad Sallows]

So Clinton beat Trump by over 4 million votes in CA, but only 2.8 million votes overall.

It's at least as relevant to ponder the meaning of that - while reflecting that each House elector represents a district ("riding") - as it is to rant and rave about the injustice of the electoral college.

Here in Canada, a very very blue - or red, or orange - riding still elects only one MP.

 

[mariomike]

- as it is to rant and rave about the injustice of the electoral college.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/266038556504494082?lang=en&lang=en

 

[Loachman]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443000/russia-election-hack-plan-revealed-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-only-pawns-kremlin

The Kremlin's Ingenious Plan to Hack the Election, Revealed

December 13, 2016 2:28 PM

Here's how the KGB orchestrated Hillary Clinton's defeat.

I just got off the phone with my secret source, deep inside the Kremlin. Using my command of highly limited tourist Russian, I spoke with Comrade Leonid Stalinov Leninksy. (Oops! I think I just outed him.) In a worldwide-exclusive interview, Leninsky explained to me how hackers controlled by Russian intelligence orchestrated the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the election of Donald J. Trump as the next president of the United States.

Their plan was truly ingenious:

- Anticipating that Clinton would run for president in 2016, these very far-sighted Russians hacked the State Department's operation center. They tampered with the January 2009 work order for a new computer server in the office of the secretary of state. These covert operatives in Moscow changed the instructions from "Please install in Secretary Clinton's seventh-floor office" to "Please install in basement of Secretary Clinton's Chappaqua, N.Y., home." Thus, that pesky server wound up in Clinton's cellar. Little did she know this would explode into the Servergate scandal.

- On the evening of September 11, 2012, Russian hackers infiltrated the information system at the State Department's Office of Public Affairs. They digitally doctored a press release that correctly blamed the al-Qaeda–linked Islamic terrorists of Ansar al-Sharia for the then-unfolding, deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The Russians rewrote the 10:32 p.m. EST communique to call "this vicious behavior" a "response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet." This forced Clinton's hand. Not wanting to send contradictory signals by revealing the truth, she stuck with that false "the video did it" narrative for years.

- The men from Moscow hacked into Clinton's teleprompter last September 9. In a fundraising speech that she delivered to donors at Cipriani restaurant, literally on Wall Street, her original reference to half of Trump's supporters as "hard-working Americans thirsty for economic growth and tired of being lectured to by condescending, out-of-touch elites in Washington" disappeared. Instead, Clinton was amazed to find herself calling them a "basket of deplorables." She was as stunned as anyone to find her lips forming the words "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic - you name it."

- The Russians cunningly hacked Clinton's HVAC systems in her two homes and the hotel rooms in which she slept on the campaign trail. Every night, soon after Hillary retired, the Russians hijacked the air conditioner where she dozed that evening. Forcing the room temperature down to 55 degrees, Moscow eventually gave the Democratic nominee pneumonia. This prompted the notorious fainting incident on September 11, which - fairly or not - raised questions about Clinton's health and stamina.

- The hackers penetrated campaign manager Robby Mook's PC and deleted Clinton's positive economic message.

- These e-vil people burrowed into the computers in Clinton-Kane's policy-development offices. They electronically shredded the campaign's plan to appeal to black voters with a new, nationwide commitment to robust school choice, so that black boys and girls might boost their life prospects by actually learning something in America's ghetto schools. Once that proposal vanished, Team Hillary had no choice but to revert to hackneyed scare tactics about an incipient rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Unimpressed, normally reliable black Democrats stayed home in sufficient numbers to contribute to Clinton's loss. In fact, enough of them voted for Trump to increase the GOP's share of the black vote by 33 percent, compared to what Mitt Romney earned in 2012.

- The Russians drilled into the navigation system of Stronger Together, Clinton's campaign plane, and erased Wisconsin from its map of the USA. This prevented her from landing and stumping even once in that entire state during the fall election campaign.

I had planned to send details of this conversation to my main contact at the CIA, J. Worthington Carstairs IV. However, I bet that Vladimir Putin's boys already have hacked Carstairs' e-mail system and slipped it into his inbox. I thank the Kremlin for sparing me the trouble.

- Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online.

 

[Brad Sallows]

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/266038556504494082?lang=en&lang=en

So Trump's a hypocrite and changes his mind a lot.  Congratulations.

 

[vonGarvin]

And this is what so few people realize, even in the US.

The national popular vote is irrelevant. The state popular votes, collectively, are what count.

Exactly

One vote per senator and one per congressional district.
Earlier New York and Wyoming were compared. Well, Wyoming has 1 member in the house; New York State has 27. Thats where thing divvy up by population. 
Each has 2 senators, where states are all equal.

 

[mariomike]

But he DID offer to release his tax returns - as soon as Hillary released her 33000 Bleach Bit-deleted e-mails.

There are various explanations I have read,

Refusal to release tax returns
Trump did not release his personal income tax returns, as nominees traditionally do, and said he does not plan to do so before the November election.[662] Historians say he would be the first major party nominee since 1976 not to make his tax returns public. Before declaring for president he said he would "absolutely" release them if he decided to run for office.[663] Early in the 2016 primary process he promised to put out "very big, very beautiful" returns.[663] He offered various reasons for not giving out the information. He says his lawyers told him not to release the returns because they are being audited. He contends that voters are not interested and "there's nothing to learn from them". He told one interviewer that his tax rate is "none of your business".[663]

Trump was criticized for his refusal to release tax information. Experts say being audited is no bar to releasing the information.[664] The current top IRS official, Commissioner John Koskinen, said that it would be fine for Trump to release his returns during an audit.[665][666]

2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney said that, "It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters." Romney speculated, "There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump's refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them."[667] John Fund of the National Review said that Republican convention delegates should abstain from voting for Trump if he does not release the information, fearing that the returns could contain an electoral "time bomb".[668]

There is no requirement that presidential candidates release their tax returns but candidates are legally free to do so even when under audit.[669][670] Tax lawyers differ as to whether releasing tax returns is legally advisable for someone like Trump who is under audit.[670][671] According to NPR, tax experts such as New York University Law School professor Daniel Shaviro say that "Trump's lawyers may advise him not to release the returns for legal strategy purposes."[672]

On October 1, 2016, the New York Times reported that the Times had been given three pages of certain state tax returns for Trump for the year 1995. The materials indicated that Trump incurred a $916 million net operating loss which, for Federal income tax purposes, could potentially have prevented Trump from owing any Federal income taxes for up to 18 years.[673]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2016#Refusal_to_release_tax_returns
References are at bottom of the page.

From what I have read, historians are saying there have not been president-elect demonstrations/protests/riots like this since Lincoln in 1860.

Even in Canada,

Ottawa police are already concerned about security for a Trump visit
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/city-hall-blog-a-trump-visit-to-ottawa-isnt-like-an-obama-love-in-for-police
“(With) Obama, it’s a love-in and the two visits we had with President Obama were very positive. I think the dynamics with a person like Trump is totally different that we have to factor into our planning assumptions and the potential (for) demonstrations or activities on such a visit.”
Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau

To see how in-step our opinions are with our fellow Canadians,
https://www.google.ca/search?q=trump+canadians+poll&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-CA:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&rlz=1I7GGHP_en-GBCA592&gfe_rd=cr&ei=klxRWLzLC4SN8QfW06uwBA&gws_rd=ssl

 

[The Bread Guy]

And that led me to http://www.duffelblog.com/2016/12/defense-secretary-nominee-gen-james-mattis-vows-make-killing-great/

Which led me to ...
"Headquarters Marine Corps orders Marines to stop referring to Mattis as ‘God’ "
Some of this stuff really does write itself ...

 

[Rifleman62]

I was going to post "give it a rest" with this blathering about all things the evil Trump but I posted that previously about the evil Harper.

 

[mariomike]

I was going to post "give it a rest" with this blathering about all things the evil Trump but I posted that previously about the evil Harper.

I don't believe anyone called him evil.

Not sure what Mr. Harper has to do with this discussion? Don't recall anyone calling him evil either.

 

[Lumber]

I don't believe anyone called him evil.

Not sure what Mr. Harper has to do with this discussion? Don't recall anyone calling him evil either.

We don't call them evil until after they've been democratically elected, democratically sworn in, been named Times "person of the year", addressed problems revolving around a specific and identifiable religious group, and had a few years to come up with a solution to those problems...........

 

[ModlrMike]

We don't call them evil until after they've been democratically elected, democratically sworn in, been named Times "person of the year", addressed problems revolving around a specific and identifiable religious group, and had a few years to come up with a solution to those problems...........

Nice way to invoke "Godwin" without actually saying it.

 

[mariomike]

Nice way to invoke "Godwin" without actually saying it.

Mike Godwin says it's OK, "Sure call Trump a Nazi. Just know what you're talking about."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/12/14/sure-call-trump-a-nazi-just-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-talking-about/?utm_term=.fe3e0dd57603

Regarding a technical glitch, Reply #2857 was awarded 1200 Milpoints by the same poster. Well deserved, of course! But, I thought the limit was 300? The same thing happened to me a few times.

We've been blathering about qualifications - or lack of - for 115 pages, ( even have an Election 2020 thread going ).

When it comes to politics, internet "blathering" - from all sides - never stops! ( Until they finally lock the thread. )

Besides, it's Radio Chatter!

My concern, as a non-voter in US elections, is who gets the nuclear codes.
Since it looks like President Obama will be handing them to this individual,
https://www.google.ca/search?q=trump+nuclear&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-CA:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&rlz=1I7GGHP_en-GBCA592&gfe_rd=cr&ei=sKZSWLaLMcyC8Qe804PQAw&gws_rd=ssl#q=trump+nuclear&start=0

Which really isn't worth worrying about, because most of us probably won't be around to argue about who should / should not get them anyway!