The DON / redux

Gordon Gray said:

Mark,

I don't. Just being naively hopeful.

Kevin, I'm over the e-mails. For me, it's the equivalent of background noise. I just ignore it like I do with all the "garbage" that accompanies DT.

Gordon

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I'd like to share that hope

I also agree that I'm over hearing about the email and I have been completely skimming past anything about it for ages. I suspect that a large number of people are doing the same thing. Oh this again, moving right along....

Gordon Gray said:

Kevin, I'm over the e-mails. For me, it's the equivalent of background noise. I just ignore it like I do with all the "garbage" that accompanies DT.

Gordon

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I understand, there really is no defense for it. Best to just ignore.

Kevin said:

I understand, there really is no defense for it. Best to just ignore.

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Kevin, I'm curious. Were you so concerned in 2009 about the 22 million emails deleted by the Bush administration in order to avoid turning them over to Congress? Or is it just democrats doing this sort of thing that bothers you?

http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/web-video/missing-white-house-emails

Currently Trump has business dealings all over the world. Historically presidents use a blind trust to avoid having conflicts of interest, however Trump says he will let his children run the show which makes him compromised from day one. He is the only presidential candidate in the last 26 years who is unwilling to release his taxes. He lied and claimed he couldn't because he was being audited. The IRS has publicly stated that he can release his taxes.

What is crazy are the double standards these candidates are being held to.

In terms of everything that people are complaining about regarding Clinton, Trump is almost always a much worse offender.

Politico showed that Hillary has lied about 13% compared to Trump at 53%. You can create a huge laundry list for either of them. The issue is false equivalence.

Basically even if Trump is much worse, since Hillary isn't spotless, the argument is that she does it too.

There is no perfect candidate. So we have to pick the better candidate and we can't just let Trump slide on everything he has done and then hold Hillary accountable for much less.

So Trump does something 5 times that is bad and someone points out that Hillary did something bad once and that absolves Trump of doing 5 times more bad?

Trump is not mature enough to be president. He is too needy and weak emotionally. He doesn't want to do the work. He has tried to pawn off the real work of being president to others. He just wants to be a cheerleader and take all the glory for his insatiable ego.

Hillary actually wants to do the work.

The difference between the candidates is night and day, but people will rationalize their support for Trump despite the fact that he is not suited for the job.

Rich said:

Kevin, I'm curious. Were you so concerned in 2009 about the 22 million emails deleted by the Bush administration in order to avoid turning them over to Congress? Or is it just democrats doing this sort of thing that bothers you?

http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/web-video/missing-white-house-emails

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There are similarities between the two, but also big differences. I think those emails were deleted, not deleted followed up by a good round of bleachbitting, to make sure they could never be recovered. From what I remember, I believe the vast majority of them were restored. But I don't think any top Bush official set up their own private server in the basement of their home to do "all" official government business that was certain to contain classified information.

To get to your point, I am against the way our government has behaved for most of my voting lifetime, certainly since I became more interested in current events and politics. I have said before, and will state again, start a post bashing Bush and I will gladly join in, I have many problems with his tenure as president. I just fail to see how the incompetency, failures and scandals of one administration is an excuse for the next?

Perhaps Hillary said it best when she bashed the Bush administration for their secrecy, even though she never lived up to her own words, when she said, "Our Constitution is being shredded. We know about the secret wiretaps, the secret military tribunals, the secret White House email accounts. It’s a stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok. It is everything our founders were afraid of, everything our Constitution was designed to prevent.” Uummm.... yeah!

I thought of this one day here in the office. The Virginia Bureau of Insurance came up with strict guidelines on how the insurance companies and agencies were to handle client data. I have every piece of information on someone, it seems their whole life history in some cases. The state requires that we protect this information to the best extent possible. That means a certain amount of computer protection, hard files must be locked when not in use, and we must submit a detailed plan to the state about our security plans for protecting client information.

As an office, I have our own employees obviously follow the states guidelines, but we have our own office policies as well. Should you have a reason to take a client file out of the office, you must first get permission. The clients are clients of the office, not the clients of the individual producer. That file is to be returned as soon as possible and not left where others can view it while out. This is both for the clients protection, as well as that of the office. I don't want someone making or copying client lists with information so they can have an easy time soliciting business from our office should they change employment.

I can honestly tell you, that if one of my own employees were to take files out of the office recklessly, whether in electronic or paper form, and then obviously lie about it to me- possibly even destroying information as part of their cover up, they will not remain an employee of my office after that. In fact, they would be out of the office as soon as discovered, I'll pay for the two week notice, I don't need someone like that lingering in the office for any amount of time. But Hillary did the same and much worse, but I am supposed to ignore what she did and support her for president?

Here is a very simple comparison about how much Hillary and Trump tell the truth vs lie.

The problem I see is that people seem to excuse all of Trump's lying because Hillary has lied too, so they write it off and call it equivalent.
But it's not equivalent. Trump is lying the majority of the time and Hillary is telling the truth the majority of the time.

I question very highly the method that politifact used to make this judgement. A scientific approach would have at least had them analyze so many statements each person made, and choose those statements at random. It still might not be accurate, but at least it gets rid of any intentional or even unintentional bias. But that is not what politifact did, instead, they picked what statements they wanted to fact check, based upon their own merits as to what statements should be fact checked. Let me go home tonight, and pull out 40 Trump statements to fact check, and then I will select 40 Hillary statements to fact check, and I'll get back to you with my results tomorrow. I am sure you will accept my finding, won't you??

I think I would trust them a lot more than you. The fact that you dismiss them out of hand is part of the issue. This doesn't line up with my beliefs so I it has to be wrong. It also supports the idea that we live in a "Post Fact" society where personal feelings matter more than facts do.

Suppose for a moment that this was completely accurate. Would you still vote for the same person?


Every day, PolitiFact and PunditFact staffers look for statements that can be checked. We comb through speeches, news stories, press releases, campaign brochures, TV ads, Facebook postings and transcripts of TV and radio interviews. Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones.

In deciding which statements to check, we ask ourselves these questions:

Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions, and we recognize that in the world of speechmaking and political rhetoric, there is license for hyperbole.

Is the statement leaving a particular impression that may be misleading?

Is the statement significant? We avoid minor "gotchas" on claims that obviously represent a slip of the tongue.

Is the statement likely to be passed on and repeated by others?

Would a typical person hear or read the statement and wonder: Is that true?


Transparency and on-the-record sources

PolitiFact and PunditFact rely on on-the-record interviews and publish a list of sources with every Truth-O-Meter item. When possible, the list includes links to sources that are freely available, although some sources rely on paid subscriptions. The goal is to help readers judge for themselves whether they agree with the ruling.



Here is a link to their process.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...ples-politifact-punditfact-and-truth-o-meter/

You posted their methodology for deciding whether any individual statement is true or not. I am questioning the methodology they used in choosing the statements for this study. You said you trust them more than me. Why? Do you know "them"? I don't.

I have a degree in science, so I don't tend to have faith in studies such as this (who lies more often), in which there was no attempt to pick out the statements they studied randomly. It's like my doing a study on whether the climate is warming or not, but I pick the days I want to do a temperature reading as opposed to just taking measurements every day or every third day or something. How they did their study isn't how I was trained to do one, at least to do one correctly, but I understand this wasn't a submitted for a scientific paper. But just think about it, they went through statements that they have both have made, and didn't select every statement, or every other one, but instead, just looked at the statements and made a decision on their own whether to include it in a fact check study or not. No, I don't put much stock into a study that does that, especially when the study was done by an organization that most concede has a left wing tilt.

What if the study is true? Is every lie the same? Is a lie about how people died in Benghazi or a lie about how you stored classified information equal to a lie about when you were first against the Iraq war? Also, politifact has some controversy as to what they even claim to be lies. Their "Lie of the Year" for 2012 was a campaign ad that Romney did stating that Jeeps would be made in China. Even a number of liberal organizations came out and said it was essentially true, but they not only declared it a lie, but it was supposedly the 'lie of the year'.

Trump lies, and lies fairly often. Hillary lies, she even lied about how her parents named her Hillary for gosh sakes, and she does so fairly often. I don't place to much trust in the statements of either one myself, but barring any unforeseen circumstance, one will be president. So pick which liar you are most comfortable supporting, that is what I did.

The scary thing is that after watching the 1992 Presidential debate all the way through, I came to a realization.

Every candidate said that they were the only one who could solve these problems.

Since that debate in 1992 and then in 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012 and now 2016 the EXACT SAME issues were debated and each candidate said they were the right person to fix these problems.

I think we the people should get it through our heads that it doesn't matter who the president is or what they say. These problems will remain and be debated decades from now and every candidate is going to say that "THEY" are the person who will vanquish these issues after countless others had failed.

I may do like Tom and watch the recap tomorrow. I'm not sure I can stand hearing exactly the same issues debated by people saying that they can actually do something about them.

OMG even on the DT scale

You should listen to the just released Washington Post video if you still care about the election and related topics.

If anyone had any doubts regarding DT's character, this should put it to bed. :rocker:

Gordon Gray said:

You should listen to the just released Washington Post video if you still care about the election and related topics.

If anyone had any doubts regarding DT's character, this should put it to bed. :rocker:

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Gordon, to be fair, I couldn't care less where he puts his prick. It really doesn't matter to me. What bothers me is that he was married at the time and was obviously trying to sleep around and still is a big hypocrite about this topic. How can he complain about someone else's infidelities when is so blatantly a womanizer himself?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4_story.html

I think we can be sure that JFK and likely many other presidents may have had lewd conversations with their entourage and were involved in affairs. Powerful men tend to be narcissistic and power is an aphrodisiac. So I don't think that is the sticking point. The problem is the pot calling the kettle black!

Gordon Gray said:

You should listen to the just released Washington Post video if you still care about the election and related topics.

If anyone had any doubts regarding DT's character, this should put it to bed. :rocker:

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Nice play on words, Gordon.

Mark, I think you are looking at this wrong. It's not about his marital infidelities. It's about him being completely comfortable abusing his power (fame and fortune) to do whatever he wants, including sexual assault of women, and just expecting he can get away with it because of who he is. This says more about his true character than anything else and shows just how dangerous he would be as president.

Rich said:

Mark, I think you are looking at this wrong. It's not about his marital infidelities. It's about him being completely comfortable abusing his power (fame and fortune) to do whatever he wants, including sexual assault of women, and just expecting he can get away with it because of who he is. This says more about his true character than anything else and shows just how dangerous he would be as president.

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LOL Rich, you described Bill Clinton to perfection !

While I one for one minute deny that DT is a sleaze, IMO the media (again) is driving this wagon long and hard.

twich54 said:

While I one for one minute deny that DT is a sleaze, IMO the media (again) is driving this wagon long and hard.

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What else are they supposed to do, Dave? He won't release his tax returns and his only "serious" policy proposals are building a wall and deporting all the Muslims. He won't even delve into serious policy discussions. His response to every issue is "it's a huge problem and I'm the only one who can fix it". He won't tell you how he will fix anything. He just tells you to trust him. In the absence of any rational policy discussions, the media are going to ride scandals like this even harder. Not to mention that he hasn't made it any easier on himself by taking a combative stance toward the media from the beginning. If he couldn't play nice with the media when he was riding high, do you really expect them not to kick him when he's down? To a large extent he has brought the negative media onslaught on himself.

Rich, I'm sorry, you missed my point........I was referring to the 'bus ride, locker room banter' BS. Regardless, I'll be happy when the election is over in hopes that the Republicans can put forth a legitimate candidate to keep Hilary from a second term. But then 'ya never know........ she might just surprise me !

Rich said:

It's about him being completely comfortable abusing his power (fame and fortune) to do whatever he wants, including sexual assault of women, and just expecting he can get away with it because of who he is.

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Well said my friend. Nixon on steroids.

Prediction.

In light of what's occurred in the past week, HRC will be declared the winner of the election by 9PM East Coast time, Tuesday, November 8.