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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I see you enjoy the beautiful game of Moving the Goalposts as well, no?
![]()
That's not moving the goalposts; this particular metric specifically regards military achievements within the President's past term.
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. We have to be prepared for what happens if the first debate is a disaster for Clinton, and everything that could follow from that.
edited 23rd Sep '16 5:54:14 PM by CaptainCapsase
Republican response to Cruz's endorsement of Trump.
"We can get into the fact that he accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK," Lee told Newsmax's Steve Malzberg. "We can go through the fact that he has made some statements that some have identified correctly as religious intolerance. ... I would like some assurances that he is going to be a vigorous defender of the U.S. Constitution, that he is not going to be an autocrat."
Three months later, Cruz (Tex.) endorsed Trump for president — and did not give Lee a head's up. "This Cruz news is all a surprise to us and the senator," his spokesman, Conn Carroll, said.
This was not the first time that Lee's "best friend" had flummoxed him. Lee had appeared blindsided when Cruz, a fellow member of the Judiciary Committee, used a 2015 hearing on criminal justice reform to announce that the threat of "violent criminals" had moved him against a reform bill. "It is simply incorrect to say that this suddenly releases a bunch of violent criminals," said Lee, watching the bipartisan reform effort begin its long, election-year slide into oblivion.
To other conservatives, who had come to see Cruz as a champion of the movement, today's endorsement was just as shocking — and then, suddenly, obvious. Like most of Trump's rivals, Cruz had allowed the mogul's movement to grow inside the Republican Party, expecting the laws of gravity to eventually bring Trump down. When that didn't happen, Cruz became Trump's most bristling, eloquent critic, attacking an "amoral" and "sniveling" candidate who could not be trusted to defend the Constitution.
Cruz's later refusal to endorse Trump at the Republican National Convention got him booed offstage, but won him respect on the right. Glenn Beck, who had campaigned for Cruz across the country, compared him to Sen. Charles Sumner, a 19th-century abolitionist beaten with a cane by a supporter of slavery.
Noah Rothman ✔ @NoahCRothman
What an incredibly courageous and brilliant undermining of Trump. Good for Cruz's career, horrible for Trump.
Cruz did call Beck to talk about the Trump endorsement. In a Facebook post, the host said that he had talked to Cruz for 40 minutes, and that the senator would appear on his show Monday to explain himself.
"Profoundly sad day for me," Beck wrote. "Disappointment does not begin to describe. Maybe it is time to go to the mountains for a while."
Other conservatives who had refused to endorse Trump spent the afternoon asking what they'd seen in Cruz. "I think Ted Cruz endorsing Trump at this point plays to the caricature that he is self-interested, not really principled," wrote Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator who had just published a well-received essay on why he still rejected Trump. "Hate it for him." An hour later, he amended his remarks: "It does become almost impossible to claim 'self-interested Ted' is a caricature after this."
Steve Deace, an influential Iowa radio host who campaigned for Cruz, spent Friday afternoon tweeting that he had just seen "the worst political miscalculation of my lifetime," and a genuine, personal disappointment.
"I'm just sorry to see so many people let down again," Deace wrote. "That's the toughest part of this for me. I grow weary of seeing people disappointed. I'm used to being let down. It's a state of being in this line of work. But the people deserve better. I wish I could give it to them."
One thing Cruz learned during the primaries was that the self-identified defenders of true conservatism did not have as much pull as it seemed. Cruz sought and won endorsements from some of the strongest voices in the movement, from Beck to Mark Levin to James Dobson to Robert P. George. On the trail and in debates, he (eventually) cast Trump as an ideological phony, a donor to Democrats — including Hillary Clinton — who could not be trusted.
"It's easy to say 'Make America Great Again,' " Cruz said in one often-repeated riff. "Why, you can even put that on a baseball cap! The question is, do you understand what it was that made America great in the first place?"
Most Republican primary voters tuned this out. Most delegates booed when Cruz suggested that there were principles keeping true conservatives from backing Trump. When Cruz refused to endorse Trump at the RNC, and an angry Texas delegation (composed mostly of Cruz delegates) gave him an earful, Cruz pivoted to the personal, saying that Trump had insulted his family.
"That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go slander and attack Heidi, then I'm going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father," Cruz said.
Today, both explanations for his long hold-out came back to haunt Cruz. By buckling, Cruz was suggesting that Trump had failed ideological tests and it hadn't mattered, and that it didn't really matter that Trump had smeared his wife and father.
"With his endorsement of Donald Trump, a man who humiliated his wife and father, Ted Cruz is the literal definition of a cuckservative," wrote Jamie Kirchick, an anti-Trump conservative columnist.
"Cruz's conscience told him he must vote for a man who mocked the looks of his wife and falsely connected his father to the JFK assassin?" asked Stephen F. Hayes, a Weekly Standard columnist.
And it didn't escape notice that Trump had mocked the idea of Cruz endorsing him. "I don't want his endorsement," Trump had said after the convention snub. "If he gives it, I will not accept it." Today, a rote news release informed reporters that Trump was "greatly honored" by the endorsement.
It was a reminder that Cruz had been humbled by the convention's aftermath. In Gallup polls, his favorable rating with Republicans, already lower than Trump's, tumbled 20 points. More important, donors who had bet on Cruz excoriated him for not being a Trump team player. "We need ‘all hands on deck’ to ensure that Mr. Trump prevails," said the mega-donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer to the New York Times. "Unfortunately, Senator Cruz has chosen to remain in his bunk below, a decision both regrettable and revealing."
Cruz, who is up for reelection in two years, had no easy way to reunite conservatives behind him. Some Texas Republicans were urging Rep. Michael McCaul, the second-wealthiest man in Congress, to primary him; the Mercers were suggesting that Cruz could look elsewhere for help.
Still, in the Facebook message that explained his conversion, Cruz provided a series of strong policy arguments for backing Trump. Either he or Clinton was going to win the election. Cruz, whose Washington career began when he was the clerk for Chief Justice of the United States William H. Rehnquist, explained that the fate of the Supreme Court was a strong reason for staying with Trump.
"I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue," wrote Cruz, "and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list. This commitment matters."
But a few hours had passed between Trump's release of the list and Cruz's statement. In that time, Lee's spokesman had already declined any interest in a Supreme Court nomination.
"Sen. Lee already has the job he wants," Conn Carroll said.
edited 23rd Sep '16 8:22:08 PM by sgamer82
Newsweek exclusive
:
It has become an accepted reality of this presidential campaign that Trump spins a near-endless series of falsehoods. For months, the media has struggled with this unprecedented situation—a candidate who, unlike other politicians who stretch the truth, simply creates his own reality. Trumps regularly peddles “facts” that aren’t true, describes events that never happened or denies engaging in actions that everyone saw him do. He utters his falsehoods so fast that before reporters have the chance to correct one, he has tossed out five or six more.
This time, it is different. Trump can’t skip past his perfidy here. There are two records—one, a previously undisclosed deposition of the Republican nominee testifying under oath, and the second a transcript/video of a Republican presidential debate. In them, Trump tells contradictory versions of the same story with the clashing accounts tailored to provide what he wanted people to believe when he was speaking.
This fib matters far more than whether Trump was honest about why he abandoned his birther movement or the corollary fib that Hillary Clinton started the racist story that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. In the lie we are examining here, Trump either committed a felony or proved himself willing to deceive his followers whenever it suits him.
Trump told the public version of this story last year, during the second Republican presidential debate.
REUTERS/CARLO ALLEGRI
Trump had been boasting for weeks at his rallies that he knew the political system better than anyone, because he had essentially bought off politicians for decades by giving them campaign contributions when he wanted something. He also proclaimed that only he—as an outsider who had participated in such corruption of American democracy at a high level—could clean it up. During the September 2015 debate, one of Trump’s rivals, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, verified Trump’s claim, saying the billionaire had tried to buy him off with favors and contributions when he was Florida’s governor.
"The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something—that was generous and gave me money—was Donald Trump,” Bush said. “He wanted casino gambling in Florida."
Trump interrupted Bush:
Trump: I didn’t—
Bush: Yes, you did.
Trump: Totally false.
Bush: You wanted it, and you didn’t get it, because I was opposed to—
Trump: I would have gotten it.
Bush: Casino gambling before—
Trump: I promise, I would have gotten it.
Bush: During and after. I’m not going to be bought by anybody.
Trump: I promise, if I wanted it, I would have gotten it.
Bush: No way. Believe me.
Trump: I know my people.
Bush: Not even possible.
Trump: I know my people.
If Trump was telling the truth that night, so be it. But if he was lying, what was his purpose? His “If I wanted it, I would have gotten it,” line may be a hint. Contrary to his many vague stories on the campaign trail about being a cash-doling political puppet master, this story has a name, a specific goal and ends in failure. If Bush was telling the truth, then Trump would have had to admit he lost a round and, as he assured the audience, that would not have happened. When he wants something, he gets it.
But that wasn’t the point he needed to make in 2007. The deposition was part of a lawsuit he’d filed against Richard Fields, whom Trump had hired to manage the expansion of his casino business into Florida. In the suit, Trump claimed that Fields had quit and taken all of the information he obtained while working for Trump to another company. Under oath, Trump said he did want to get into casino gambling in Florida but didn’t because he had been cheated by Fields.
A lawyer asked Trump, “Did you yourself do anything to obtain any of the details with respect to the Florida gaming environment, what approvals were needed and so forth?”
Trump: A little bit.
Lawyer: What did you do?
Trump: I actually spoke with Governor-elect Bush; I had a big fundraiser for Governor-elect Bush…and I think it was his most successful fundraiser, the most successful that he had had up until that point, that was in Trump Tower in New York on Fifth Avenue.
Lawyer: When was that?
Trump: Sometime prior to his election.
Lawyer: You knew that Governor Bush, Jeb Bush at that time, was opposed to expansion of gaming in Florida, didn't you?
Trump: I thought that he could be convinced otherwise.
Lawyer: But you didn't change his mind about his anti-gaming stance, did you?
Trump: Well, I never really had that much of an opportunity because Fields resigned, telling me you could never get what we wanted done, only to do it for another company.
One of these stories is a lie—a detailed, self-serving fabrication. But unlike the mountain of other lies he has told, this time the character trait that leads to Trump’s mendacity is on full display: He makes things up when he doesn’t want to admit he lost.
Assume the story he told at the debate is the lie. Even though Bush’s story reinforced what Trump was saying at rallies—he had played the “cash for outcomes” political game for years—he could not admit he had tried to do the same in Florida because he could not bring himself to say that he had lost. Instead, he looked America in the eye and lied. And then he felt compelled to stack on another boast: His people are so wonderful that they would have gotten casino gambling in Florida, regardless of Bush’s opposition—if Trump had wanted it.
Now consider the other option, that Trump committed perjury in the 2007 testimony. There, he admitted pushing for casino gambling in Florida, but said he would have gotten what he wanted if he hadn’t been tricked by Fields. The rationale for the perjurious testimony is simple—Trump wants money from a man who stopped working for him and, once again, the story lets him deny he is anything less than perfect.
No question, these two stories must be investigated if there is ever a President Trump. In their impeachment of President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about an extramarital affair, Republicans established the standard that failing to tell the truth while testifying—even in the most understandable of circumstances—rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Surely, perjury for pecuniary purposes or to inflate one’s self-image cannot be ignored.
Finally, the lie here matters because it shows how shameless Trump is and how reckless. He told this lie even though he knew he was standing next to a credible witness—Bush—who could contradict him, and he gambled that no one would discover his sworn testimony.
Trump’s penchant for this type of baldfaced lying could undermine American foreign policy—when he meets with a foreign official, will he try to deceive the world about what happened? That question already came into play in early September when Trump flew to Mexico to talk with that country’s president in a bizarre publicity stunt. He came out of the meeting and declared the two had never discussed his signature issue—that he would compel the Mexican government to pay for a wall along America’s southern border. Before an hour passed, a Mexican official declared that Trump’s statement was false, and that President Enrique Peña Nieto had told the Republican nominee that his country would never pony up the cash for the wall. Either Trump lied or Peña Nieto did. The government of Mexico—one of America’s most important trading partners and allies—knows whether a President Trump will be trustworthy or will lie out of convenience, on matters large or small. Shouldn’t the American public know the same before it votes in November?
Trump must be called upon to answer the troubling questions raised by the episode regarding Bush and gambling in Florida: Is the Republican nominee a perjurer or just a liar? If he refuses to answer—just as he has refused to address almost every other question about his character and background—Trump supporters must carefully consider whether they want to vote for a man who at best has treated them like fools over the past year and at worst committed a crime.
ABC News has an expose of its own
:
Trump has said he will not participate in decisions about his business if he is elected to the White House and that those decisions will be left to his children in what they have called a “blind trust.”
But Richard Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served as ethics advisor to Republican President George W. Bush, said the arrangement would not fit his definition of a blind trust, and appeared ripe for potential conflicts.
“I don’t see how you have a blind trust when you know what’s in the blind trust,” Painter told ABC News. “The appearance is that a foreign government or other foreign organization has influence over the president of the United States through financial dealings with his family and that would be unacceptable.”
As questions have been raised about Trump’s business interests with Russians, the candidate has sought to distance himself from Moscow.
“For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia,” he wrote on Twitter in July.
He later told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “Will I sell condos to Russians on occasion? Probably. I mean I do that. I have a lot of condos. I do that. But I have no relationship to Russia whatsoever."
But an ABC News investigation found he has numerous connections to Russian interests both in the U.S. and abroad.
“The level of business amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars — what he received as a result of interaction with Russian businessmen,” said Sergei Millian, who heads a U.S.-Russia business group and who says he once helped market Trump’s U.S. condos in Russia and the former Soviet states. “They were happy to invest with him, and they were happy to work with Donald Trump. And they were happy to associate—[and] be associated with Donald Trump.”
Questions about Trump’s posture towards Russia have been a recurring issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. They have come from Democrats and Republicans, many of whom expressed surprise at Trump’s flattering remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as the official U.S. stance has grown increasingly frosty.
“I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there’s nothing I can think of that I’d rather do than have Russia friendly as opposed to the way they are right now so that we can go and knock out ISIS together with other people and with other countries,” he said.
PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives at Belfast International Airport on June 17, 2013 in Belfast, Northern Ireland
◊. Peter Muhly - WPA Pool/Getty Images
Sen. John Mc Cain told a talk radio audience he was “astonished” after Trump praised Putin on the campaign trail. “I think [it] shows either profound ignorance or an attitude that contradicts everything about the United States of America and our relations with our adversaries,” Mc Cain said.
The Russian Boom With Trump Branded Properties
Long before he ran for president, Trump displayed an ongoing interest in Russia and the former Soviet states. He negotiated projects in the Republic of Georgia and Azerbaijan, neither of which was completed. And he and his children at different times toured Moscow in search of a site for a Trump project there.
“I know there were some drafts prepared for the [Moscow real estate] project when Donald Trump flew to Moscow. And he shared those drafts with some of the Russian businessmen,” Millian said, adding, “It didn't go any further at the moment.”
Trump was involved in a range of deals with Russian-born business executives, including the developer of the Trump project in Toronto. One of his partners in Trump Soho recruited financing from investors in Russia and Kazakhstan, according to court filings. And in 2013, Trump earned a cut of the proceeds when a Russian oligarch paid to host the Miss Universe Pageant at his venue in Moscow.
PHOTO: Miss Venezuela Gabriela Isler celebrates with her crown during the 2013 Miss Universe competition in Moscow on Nov. 9, 2013
◊.
Alexander Nemonov/AFP/Getty Images
At the same time, wealthy Russians accounted for significant profits at Trump projects in the U.S.. Throughout the 2000s, records show Russians were buying into Trump branded real estate.
ABC News conducted a review of hundreds of pages of property records and found that Trump-branded developments catered to large numbers of Russian buyers.
This was most notable at the Trump licensed condo towers in Hollywood and Sunny Isles, Florida. Local real estate agents credited the Russian migration for turning the coastal Miami community into what they called “Little Moscow.”
Trump Organization General Counsel Alan Garten told ABC News the firm does not track the nationality of buyers, but he does not believe Russians spent any more money on Trump ventures than those from other regions.
“This whole fascination with this connection is overblown and misleading,” Garten said.
Garten said the Trump Organization played no part in determining which market to pursue – the strategy used to attract buyers was entirely the purview of the developer.
“In a license deal we’re not selling the unit,” Garten added. “That is a contact between the developer of that project and the buyer. We’re not selling anyone anything.”
In the case of the Trump towers along Florida’s coast, they were sold by two separate builders with Trump licensing his name to the projects. But the licensing agreements required Trump to participate in the marketing of the condos, and Trump received royalties for each unit sold, according to Gil Dezer, president of Dezer Development, which built six Trump buildings in Sunny Isles.
“He [Trump] obviously benefits from each apartment sold,” Dezer said. “There was a licensing percentage there.”
Dezer described Trump’s hands-on approach to the projects, with involvement in every detail of the construction. “He would come in and he knew exactly what he would want,” Dezer said.
Fishing for Russian Billionaires
There is ample evidence in Russian media from that period in the 2000s that brokers mounted a significant effort to attract buyers to Trump properties in Florida, Toronto and New York. And Trump and his children participated in those campaigns.
During the marketing of the Trump So Ho project, in which Trump licensed his name to a group that included Russian investors, the Trump family met with a group of Russian journalists at their New York offices to help boost interest in the project, according to Russian media reports. During the meeting, Trump was quoted telling the gathering of Russian journalists: “I really like Vladimir Putin. I respect him. He does his work well. Much better than our Bush.”
Eric Trump and Donald Jr. were also present, and were quoted praising the importance of Russian condo buyers, many of whom have purchased units in Trump buildings in seven-figure, cash-only deals.
"As the experience of the past few years shows, the best property buyers now are Russian,” Eric Trump is quoted as saying. “They're different in that they can go around without a mortgage loan from American banks, that require income checks and they can buy apartments with cash.”
Garten said the Trump Organization did not fly Russian journalists to New York to tout the SoHo project, or any other. “If such a trip took place it would have likely been arranged by the developer or the broker for the project - not us,” he said.
Rising Russian Interest Stalled by Sanctions
Victoria Shtainer, a New York real estate agent who specializes in the high-end market, said the interest from Russian buyers rose in the early 2000s as Russians started to accrue wealth and began looking for a safe place to move their money.
“They felt that the United States is a place where they could park their money and have their children go to school and have a future here,” she said. “America has always been the dream.”
Advertisements began appearing in Russian media. Real estate agents marketing Trump projects showed glossy photos of the Florida oceanfront properties, such as one licensed development called Trump Hollywood.
“An exclusive location on the Gold Coast,” read the Russian subtitles on one online video. “Excellence is felt in every look and every touch.”
Daniel Pansky, a Florida broker who specializes in Russian buyers, said the Trump branded was uniquely suited to Russian buyers, who equated his name with luxury. As sales piled up, “Sunny Isles developed into a Little Moscow,” he said. “A lot of local dry cleaners, restaurants, stores having menus and signs in Russian.”
“The Trump brand basically started the branding game here in south Florida,” said Pansky. “The majority of clientele were from New York and Russian origin.”
But Pansky and Shtainer told ABC News that purchases from Russian buyers in New York and Miami began to drop precipitously in 2014, when the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Russia in response to the Russian military incursion into Crimea.
To Russian buyers looking to move money out of their home country, Shtainer explained, the sanctions “basically cut off their oxygen.”
'Trust Me'
Should Trump come out on top in the elections in November, he has said he'll consider whether or not to lift sanctions on Russia.
“We’ll be looking at that, yeah we’ll be looking,” Trump responded in July when asked if he would roll sanctions back.
Hope Hicks, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said the Republican nominee has "never issued a position on the matter one way or another" and reiterated that he would be studying the issue.
Trump's children said that if their father becomes president, they would abide by the "blind trust" and not talk business with him.
“And we'll act incredibly responsibly and my father already said that he would put the company into a blind trust and it would be run by us,” Ivanka Trump told ABC News last week.
Donald Trump Jr. said his father would not be told about their deals: “We're not going to discuss those things. We're just, it doesn't matter. Trust me.”
Millian said he hopes Trump continues to pursue closer ties between the U.S. and Russia. He recently posted a Trump donation card on his Instagram feed.
“He knows that a lot of Russians love his properties,” Millian said. “They buy his luxury residences. So it was a good, very good business for him.”
ABC News' Randy Kreider, Cho Park, and Alex Hosenball contributed to this report.
Some VR developers are bailing on Oculus Rift after the founder of Oculus, Palmer Luckey, was revealed to be the main funder of the controversial "PAC" Nimble America
. When your "PAC"'s setup is so drastically different from the norm that even the largest group of racist fuckwits on Reddit think you're defrauding people, you know you've fucked up.
Palmer Luckey, the 24-year old founder of VR company Oculus, has been secretly financing an unofficial, Pro-Donald Trump group dedicated to posting memes and putting together viral stunts in an attempt to disparage Hillary Clinton.
Small developers have taken notice of the news, originally reported by The Daily Beast, and are threatening to remove Oculus Rift support from their VR games if Luckey doesn't step down.
Palmer Luckey. Credit: Bryan Steffy/Getty Images
◊
Luckey, who sold Oculus to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion, put money behind Nimble America, a 501(c)4, and went by the Reddit handle NimbleRichMan until it was deleted late last night. In a Reddit post on r/The_Donald (a pro-Trump subreddit with a rule banning "Dissenters or S[ocial Justice Warriors]," the organization said that "we’ve proven that sh*tposting is powerful and meme magic is real."
The organization's best-known stunt was a viral billboard posted near Pittsburgh with a distorted image of Clinton and the caption "Too Big to Jail."
Luckey confirmed his involvement as the man behind the group's bank account. "I’ve got plenty of money," Luckey told The Daily Beast. “Money is not my issue. I thought it sounded like a real jolly good time.”
Luckey said he spoke with a number of pro-Trump supporters behind the group on Facebook and met Breitbart tech editor and alt-right internet figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopulos was recently in the news for being banned from Twitter following harassment of Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones.
On social media, indie developers are denouncing Luckey and his involvement, with some threatening to drop Oculus Rift support from games
until Luckey steps down or is removed from his job.
Polytron, the makers of the hit indie game Fez, put out a statement on Pastebin
and on Twitter
that it won't support the Oculus Rift with its new game, SuperHyperCube due to Luckey's funding the pro-Trump group.
"In a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform," the team wrote
.
"Hey @oculus, @PalmerLuckey's actions are unacceptable. NewtonVR will not be supporting the Oculus Touch as long as he is employed there," developer Tomorrow Today Labs wrote on Twitter
. NewtonVR is a free physics-based tool for VR developers, and Oculus Touch is the VR company's upcoming controllers to support its Rift headset.
Developer Scruta Games also voiced discontent on Twitter
: "Until @PalmerLuckey steps down from his position at @oculus, we will be cancelling Oculus support for our games."
Late Friday night, Luckey released a statement on Facebook:
"I am deeply sorry that my actions are negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners," he wrote. "The recent news stories about me do not accurately represent my views."
He claimed to have contributed $10,000 to Nimble America, which he said he wrote "had fresh ideas on how to communicate with young voters through the use of several billboards." He also wrote he claims to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in the general election this November.
Luckey also claims that that contrary to The Daily Beast's original report, he did not write the NimbleRichMan Reddit posts and was also not behind their deletion.
Be sure to check out the full story on The Daily Beast, which discusses Nimble America's spending, how the r/The_Donald subreddit reacted negatively to Nimble America, and posts about the organization being deleted from Reddit.
Should we scrap the Constitution and write a new one.
It would be risky and all but impossible to do in secret like last time. Corporations would probably try to get some sort of pork for themselves write in.
Anyone can write a new Constitution. All it takes is a pen and some paper, or a text editor if you're feeling really modern. Look, I'll do it now.
"We, the People, in order to guarantee the success of Fighteer, will give him all our stuff forever and ever."
You may have noticed the problem with this scenario: getting 2/3 of the states plus 2/3 of Congress to call a convention, and then getting 3/4 of the states plus 2/3 of Congress to ratify whatever you propose.
Also, the Constitution is not the problem, the Second Amendment excepted. The problem is the imbeciles waving it around as if it is some holy document that they can interpret to mean whatever suits them. "The Constitution means we can shoot black, gay, and Muslim people in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen."
Hell, I'd be less afraid of corporate pork in this hypothetical new Constitution than I would the attempts to enshrine Christianity as the national religion, make homosexuality and abortion crimes, put us back on the gold standard, reinstate Jim Crow, etc. Some things can't be compromised on — remember "three fifths of a person"?
edited 23rd Sep '16 10:30:14 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"~Krieger 22: For some reason, every time I click the first folder in your post to attempt opening it, it instead opens the previous folder in sgamer82's post.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.Hillary's almost definitely going to win the debates on substance. She's been mired in politics for decades and Trump doesn't seem to have been studying. She'll probably go into her policy proposals with great specificity and hammer him, espevially on foreign policy. I've been wondering how did Reagan and the younger Bush win debates against policy wonks?
edited 24th Sep '16 12:57:32 AM by 940131

edited 23rd Sep '16 5:03:39 PM by CaptainCapsase