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AngelusNox Warder of the damned from The guard of the gates of oblivion Since: Dec, 2014 Relationship Status: Married to the job
Warder of the damned
#135701: Aug 18th 2016 at 5:07:49 PM

Take a sip of your favorite beverage every time Trumps says "Okay".

Inter arma enim silent leges
pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#135702: Aug 18th 2016 at 5:12:37 PM

Maybe there shouldn't even be a drinking game. We don't want anybody to die from alcohol poisoning.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#135703: Aug 18th 2016 at 5:24:26 PM

More on Manafort:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6eed1ef61eb744e1aac584f8ac1f7247/trump-advisers-waged-covert-influence-campaign

First three paragraphs:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A firm run by Donald Trump's campaign chairman directly orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine's ruling political party, attempting to sway American public opinion in favor of the country's pro-Russian government, emails obtained by The Associated Press show. Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, never disclosed their work as foreign agents as required under federal law.

The lobbying included attempts to gain positive press coverage of Ukrainian officials in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. Another goal: undercutting American public sympathy for the imprisoned rival of Ukraine's then-president. At the time, European and American leaders were pressuring Ukraine to free her.

Gates personally directed the work of two prominent Washington lobbying firms in the matter, the emails show. He worked for Manafort's political consulting firm at the time.

Hodor2 Since: Jan, 2015
#135704: Aug 18th 2016 at 5:34:42 PM

RE the treason discussion, as noted, it is rightfully very difficult to be tried/convicted for treason. I suppose that as an Al Capone type deal, he could theoretically be guilty of something under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#135705: Aug 18th 2016 at 5:53:42 PM

While I agree with that, more and more it feels like people are getting Off on a Technicality here.

Oh for the days when Make the Bear Angry Again was an amusing fiction.

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#135706: Aug 18th 2016 at 6:02:00 PM

The US didn't even charge people with treason at the height of the Cold War, it's that hard to get someone for it. Instead it went for Espionage, which is much easier to get a conviction for.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#135707: Aug 18th 2016 at 6:17:51 PM

Here is the one US law Manafort is actually aledged to have violated, BTW. The max penalties are either a $10k fine or 5 years prison. (Which is peanuts if he gets hit with corruption charges from Ukraine I bet.)

edited 18th Aug '16 6:18:54 PM by Elle

FalseDichotomy from Your mind :o Since: Oct, 2015 Relationship Status: Tsundere'ing
#135708: Aug 18th 2016 at 6:50:17 PM

A few days ago I posted about Trump's lack of support among black voters. Turns he's not doing too well with white voters either. He's doing better than I'd like to see, but still it does the heart good to see him having trouble with his target demographic.

Donald Trump's Crucial Pillar of Support, White Men, Shows weakness

Donald J. Trump’s support among white men, the linchpin of his presidential campaign, is showing surprising signs of weakness that could foreclose his only remaining path to victory in November.

If not reversed, the trend could materialize into one of the most unanticipated developments of the 2016 presidential campaign: That Hillary Clinton, the first woman at the head of a major party ticket and a divisive figure unpopular with many men, ends up narrowing the gender gap that has been a constant of American presidential elections for decades.

Surveys of voters nationwide and in battleground states conducted over the last two weeks showed that Mr. Trump was even with or below where Mitt Romney, the Republican Party nominee four years ago, was with white men when he won that demographic by an overwhelming 27 percentage points.

For Mr. Trump, who has staked much of his legitimacy as a candidate on his strength in the polls, the numbers are a dose of cold, dangerous math. If he does not perform any better than Mr. Romney did with white men, he will almost certainly be unable to rally the millions of disaffected white voters he says will propel him to the White House.

All along, one of the central questions of the election has been whether there are enough white men who will turn out to vote to lift Mr. Trump to victory. And there may be enough, demographers and pollsters said. But for now it appears that after a ceaseless stream of provocations, insults and reckless remarks, Mr. Trump has damaged himself significantly with the one demographic that stands as a bulwark to a Clinton presidency. Continue reading the main story

“If you set out to design a strategy to produce the lowest popular vote possible in the new American electorate of 2016, you would be hard-pressed to do a better job than Donald Trump has,” said Whit Ayres, a pollster who has advised Republican presidential and Senate candidates for more than 25 years. “This is an electoral disaster waiting to happen.”

There are still nearly three months before Election Day, ample time to shift the dynamics of the race. But the question that Republicans inside and outside the Trump campaign are asking is whether or not the damage Mr. Trump has caused himself over the last few weeks is irreparable. Continue reading the main story

Interviews with voters found that Mr. Trump’s increasingly outlandish behavior was rubbing many in his key voting bloc the wrong way. “I liked Trump until he opened his mouth,” said Phil Kinney, a retired middle school administrator and a Republican from Bethlehem, Pa. The recent string of attacks Mr. Trump has unleashed, particularly his criticism of the family of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq, left Mr. Kinney disappointed. Faced with the choice of voting for Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Kinney said he may just stay home.

Two national polls conducted this month have Mrs. Clinton catching up to Mr. Trump among men over all. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Mrs. Clinton with 43 percent support among men to his 42 percent. A Bloomberg Politics survey put Mr. Trump with a low-single-digit lead among men, according to the pollster who conducted the survey, Ann Selzer.

Mr. Romney relied on his 27-point edge among white men to carry the male vote over all, but Mr. Trump is even more reliant on them because of how poorly he performs with nonwhite voters. If Mr. Trump is only doing as well or worse than Mr. Romney did with white men, he will never make up the votes he is losing among women and nonwhites.

Mr. Trump’s troubles with white men do not end there. The data reveal a huge gap in those who have a college education and those who do not. As Mr. Trump saw in the Republican primaries, he is most vulnerable with white men who have a college education or higher. Mr. Romney won that group, which votes at a higher rate than those without college degrees, by 21 points. Recent national polls have put Mr. Trump’s support with them far lower.

“We’re looking at a margin among college-educated white men for him that’s less than half what Romney won,” said Gary Langer, an independent pollster who conducted an ABC News/Washington Post survey this month that showed Mr. Trump losing over all to Mrs. Clinton. “And that is problematic for Trump given his need to appeal to whites.”

Mr. Trump’s difficulties with men are symptoms of a larger vulnerability: disapproval that runs deeply through many segments and subgroups of the voting population.

Self-identified Republicans, white women, the wealthy and well-educated people of all races are turning their backs on him. Two national polls have recently put his support from African-Americans at an astonishing 1 percent. Separate Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist surveys in Ohio and Pennsylvania from July found that zero percent of black voters said they planned to vote for him. The latest poll of Latinos, conducted within the last week by Fox News, had Mr. Trump with just 20 percent support, below the 27 percent that Mr. Romney received in 2012.

Even under the rosiest projections of white turnout, Mr. Trump would still lose the popular vote if his poll numbers among whites do not improve considerably.

William H. Frey, a demographics expert with the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, conducted several simulations that tried to determine how much the turnout among white men without college educations would have to increase for Mr. Trump to win. He used the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll of registered voters that had Mrs. Clinton beating Mr. Trump in a nationwide two-way race, 50 percent to 42 percent. It was among the better polls for Mr. Trump lately.

Mr. Frey tested different turnout assumptions, including improbably optimistic ones, like if 99 percent of white, non-college-educated men turned out to vote. None of the chain of events produced a Trump victory.

In fact, even if virtually all of the white, non-college-educated men eligible to vote did so, Mr. Frey found, Mrs. Clinton would still win the popular vote by 1.1 million.

And Mr. Frey said he did not account for the expected growth in Hispanic turnout. “Once you build that in,” he said, “it’s even worse for Trump.”

By not appealing more broadly to African-Americans, Hispanics and other minority groups, Mr. Trump is precariously reliant on a segment of the population that is a shrinking portion of the electorate.

White voters were 88 percent of the electorate in the 1980 election, a figure that has declined a few percentage points every four years since then. By 2012, the white vote was down to 72 percent. Most estimates for 2016 put it at or below 70 percent.

And if Mr. Trump keeps alienating more of them like Gary Williams, a lifelong Republican and small-business owner from Lexington, Tenn., his base will continue to shrink. “He cusses in front of women and children and everybody else. He’s not a Christian. Everything about him makes me sick,” Mr. Williams said in an interview. He plans to vote for Mrs. Clinton or Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate.

An especially worrisome problem for Mr. Trump lies in some of the white, heavily blue-collar states he hopes to put in play, like Ohio. Mr. Trump is nearly tied there with Mrs. Clinton among men, with 42 percent to her 41 percent, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll conducted the first week of August.

Illustrating just how much Mr. Trump’s deterioration with men puts him in an electoral hole, Mr. Romney won men in Ohio by seven percentage points four years ago. But that was still not enough. President Obama won the state, capturing 51 percent of the vote to Mr. Romney’s 48 percent.

edited 18th Aug '16 6:50:38 PM by FalseDichotomy

speedyboris Since: Feb, 2010
#135709: Aug 18th 2016 at 7:13:04 PM

"So Eric Bolling, one of the more deluded and detestable people on Fox, actually tried to say polls dont matter because Trump gets crowds that are bigger than the sample size.

And that's not even entirely true, either. I was reading an article a couple weeks ago which described Trump going to a rally at a high school and the place was only half full, and when they interviewed students afterwards, they were less than impressed.

ThePest179 Since: Jul, 2015
#135710: Aug 18th 2016 at 7:26:42 PM

When Rudy Giuliani said "under Bush we had no terror attacks", I presume he meant post-9/11 we had no terror attacks. Except that wouldn't be true either, because apparently he also forgot about the anthrax attacks that happened only five days after 9/11 and the DC sniper attacks.

djbj Since: Oct, 2010
#135711: Aug 18th 2016 at 7:32:40 PM

So, I was reading the Memes.Politics page, and I came across this entry:

A well-publicized election for the seat of governor of Louisiana saw Edwin Edwards, a well-established figure with a growing reputation for being a fairly "standard" crooked politician, running against David Duke, a Neo-Nazi and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Before long, the election made nationwide attention, with such signs as "Vote for the crook -- it's important!" and "Vote for the lizard, not the wizard!"

There's something very familiar about this whole thing...

edited 18th Aug '16 7:32:58 PM by djbj

kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#135712: Aug 18th 2016 at 7:35:28 PM

[up]x5

Here is the one US law Manafort is actually aledged to have violated, BTW. The max penalties are either a $10k fine or 5 years prison.

LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!!

edited 18th Aug '16 7:36:04 PM by kkhohoho

AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#135713: Aug 18th 2016 at 7:49:57 PM

[up][up]Please keep in mind that Clinton is not actually a criminal. Nor is anyone running ads that entertaining or catchy right now.

But seriously, let's all remember that Clinton is not a criminal. Accusations and persecution from the right does not mean she's actually done anything illegal.

Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#135714: Aug 18th 2016 at 8:09:15 PM

[up][up]I don't like even joking about that scene. That was The Angry Mob in all its horror. Let's not emulate it even if people deserve comeuppance.

ThePest179 Since: Jul, 2015
#135715: Aug 18th 2016 at 8:19:22 PM

[up][up][up][up] I already brought that up more than a few pages ago.

djbj Since: Oct, 2010
#135716: Aug 18th 2016 at 8:28:33 PM

[up][up][up]And Trump isn't an actual Neo-Nazi either (though he does pander to them). I meant it as a humorous exageration of our current election. But yeah, I looked up the Edwards guy, and it looks like he was actually corrupt, as in he served jail time, so it's not a fair comparrison.

[up]Sorry, I only occasionally skim through this thread.

edited 18th Aug '16 8:32:00 PM by djbj

kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#135717: Aug 18th 2016 at 8:33:55 PM

[up][up]I know. Doesn't stop me from bringing it up again, does it?

Hodor2 Since: Jan, 2015
#135718: Aug 18th 2016 at 8:41:12 PM

This is belated, but wanted to follow-up on Captain Capsase's reply Re my comment about concerns about Wikileaks coming out with some kind of October surprise that would win Trump the election and/or drop Clinton from the ticket/send her to prison.

I'm really skeptical because the stuff released so far (besides lots of people's personal information because Assange is an asshole) was about the Clinton campaign/the DNC hating/plotting against Sanders. It was well chosen to hurt Clinton's efforts to woo Sanders voters, but it's not criminal in the slightest.

And I think what's important to note is that communicating about distaste for a political opponent is pretty normal behavior by a political campaign. It only looks bad because most of the time those messages don't get out. And even if Clinton/the DNC were involved in something really bad/criminal it probably wouldn't be in emails. Basically, (smart) people put in emails information they consider innocuous.

Ultimately, I think that the whole point of the wikileaks hacking is to release unflattering information and use claims of having more as a way of discouraging Sanders supporters from supporting Clinton. Well, that and releasing people's personal information so that Trump (and probably some Sanders) supporters can harass them.

Krieger22 Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018 from Malaysia Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: I'm in love with my car
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
#135719: Aug 18th 2016 at 9:28:07 PM

An anarchist art collective put up nude statues of Donald Trump in several cities. The New York Parks Department destroyed theirs, but not without an amusing comment.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#135720: Aug 18th 2016 at 9:37:04 PM

[up]One in, I think Chicago, was taken down but its feet were broken off. As they carted off the rest of the statue someone shouted to take "his stinky feet" too.

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#135721: Aug 18th 2016 at 10:43:47 PM

I knew it wouldn't last long. TYT, Huff Po, and other far left idiots have gone back to the stupidity they've shown in the primaries.

The Horseshoe theory of political spectrum needs to drop the "theory", now.

New Survey coming this weekend!
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#135722: Aug 18th 2016 at 10:56:41 PM

What's Huffington doing this time? I thought they'd mostly fell in line with Clinton?

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#135723: Aug 18th 2016 at 11:59:03 PM

"Theory" in science is a well accepted term even for confirmed stuff. Theory of Relativity etc. The term has a somewhat different meaning.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
GameGuruGG Vampire Hunter from Castlevania (Before Recorded History)
Vampire Hunter
#135724: Aug 19th 2016 at 12:06:22 AM

[up][up] They have... The only things being reported on about Clinton there is just things that other non-conservative news sources reported about. Looking at Huffpo's Politics page, it's full of how much Trump sucks.

Wizard Needs Food Badly
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#135725: Aug 19th 2016 at 5:22:26 AM

@Tactial: There's no longer any real danger of Trump actually winning at this point. That being the case, the Enemy Mine between leftists and liberals can be considered effectively over. If he suddenly rallies in the polls, I can more or less guarantee those people will back off of Clinton.

edited 19th Aug '16 5:24:24 AM by CaptainCapsase


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