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M1IRONMIKE wrote:

heyzeus wrote:

Radbird wrote:

Freed Roger wrote:

Joe Shlabotnik wrote:

Radbird wrote:What does Trump owe Putin for the DNC email hack? Estonia?

Well, we know who Putin DOESNT want to be President. Who wants to vote for the candidate Vladimir Putin endorses? Not me.

IIRC, Berlusconi and Putin were pals too.

Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s top adviser, and his ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine

It's not just Manafort, it's Trump himself with the frightening ties to the Putin and his Russian underworld supporters. As banks have gradually refused to lend to Trump (probably due to the bankruptcies), he has turned to shadowy pro-Putin Russian sources for his financing. It's unsurprising that Trump is now praising Putin as a great leader, talking about not defending NATO allies that Russia has its eyes on, and benefiting from a Russian hack of the DNC servers. That's just how demagogue dictators do favors for eachother.

No big deal though, this is just our democratic republic going down the tubes here.

Here we go.....the left gets caught conspiring to get Hilary nominated and now they blame trump . Not upset with their corruption but upset they were caught red handed....the demo mantra.....deflect....go for cover....then create another diversion....this week ought to be good

haltz wrote:

TGantz wrote:I'm voting for Gary Johnson. Trump and Hilary are a joke.

Waste of a vote - plus libertarian thought is middle school intellectualism. Unlikable as Hillary may be, you have to vote against Trump.

Someone remind me why Bernie didn't run as an independent.

So there’s a LOT of smoke. Is there any fire? That is to say, is there any proper causal evidence that Donald J. Trump is a patsy of Vladimir Putin?

No, I don’t see it. Yet.

First of all, let’s dismiss the part of this story that connects folks like Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Mike Flynn to Russia. Those links are there, but they are also irrelevant for the campaign. If there is anything we have learned about Donald Trump’s campaign to date, it’s that non-family underlings don’t matter. Foreign policy advisers like Page or Flynn certainly don’t matter. I’m not saying that these connections are not worth exploring, just that they are not part of some master grand plan.

Second of all, while the evidence for Russia being behind the DNC hack is certainly suggestive, it’s far from ironclad. Click here, here and here for some critical pushback on these stories. I certainly think the link merits further investigation. But I’m uncomfortable with the ironclad casual assertion that “Russia was behind this” that is starting to form inside the Beltway.

The third and hardest part of this story to dismiss is the money trail. As Marshall noted, Trump has increased his debt load and the dirty little secret is that most U.S. banks don’t loan money to Trump because they don’t trust him. And as Spoiler Alerts discussed last month, “I’m beginning to wonder if [Trump’s] motivation to win now is less about making America great again and more about avoiding yet another Trump bankruptcy.” Cozying up to Russia and Russian money would certainly be one way of bolstering his finances. And one wonders if the reason that Trump won’t release his tax returns is because it would expose Trump’s reliance on foreign money to prop up his companies.

This story is of a kind as stories that accuse Hilary Clinton of being compromised because of foreign sources of funding for the Clinton Global Initiative. Correlation does not prove causation. Just because funders might want to influence powerful people doesn’t mean that they actually do. Indeed, in some cases the ideological affinity was preexisting. The evidence suggests, for example, that Trump had been enamored with Russia for some time, probably because the plethora of plutocrats there jibe most closely with Trump’s view of how to navigate the world. It’s not like Putin needed to change Trump’s mind on anything — Trump’s headspace was already there.

All of this justifies further investigative journalism, but I’m queasy with immediately making the leap from “Russia is behind the DNC hack” to “Russia is trying to put a patsy in the White House.” But there are two conclusions I do draw from this ongoing story. The first is that I really wish those writers who have critiqued the Trump-Russia ties were as vigilant and careful when talking about whether Hillary Clinton has been compromised by foreign funding for the Clinton Global Initiative.

The second is that, even though I don’t buy this story yet, the damning thing about Donald Trump and his odd campaign is that one cannot dismiss the allegations out of hand, either. Which is probably why the Clinton campaign will be pushing this argument as hard as humanly possible.

Freed Roger wrote:Arsewipe's praise of Saddam Hussein's methods of keeping law and order -I realize the pace of his manic commentary is hard to keep up with - but it sort of flew under the radar.

Needless to say, we committed a lot of lives, ours and innocent civilians to opposing Saddam, as well as economically-damaging amounts of resources.

FWIW, I opposed the Iraq war, especially the go-it-alone strategy. And am not alone in thinking it was a disaster with long-term effects. That does not mean I am somehow in agreement with the Arse on Saddam. It's a completely reckless comment about a terrible murderous dictator.

Tie this with his views with Putin, and all the other [expletive] he says... I dunno....my gut says he isn't capable of imposing Strongman rule over the US like his buddies Saddam and Putin.... Hell, I don't think he's capable of strongman rule over a country club or hotel (see bankruptcies, Trump U,). But hard to say what he'll do with that sociopathic ego, and the cohorts he cozies up to.

Anyhows, I don't understand how other people (people that openly or effectively support Trump) can reconcile his statements on Saddam Putin with their views on humanity, as well as national security.

MrSaigon wrote:Maybe the mods need to make a template or something to circumvent the 'no saying something good/bad about x unless you acknowledge y' problem we're having in this thread and others.

I have never liked D, for [reasons] and have voiced that opinion numerous times. I don't even mind that others in good conscience can't vote for D, and correspondingly don't vote, or vote for L or Deez Nuts. But don't try to pass off this horse [expletive] about Asswipe being = to D in asshattery and being dangerous to this country.

Freed Roger wrote:

MrSaigon wrote:Maybe the mods need to make a template or something to circumvent the 'no saying something good/bad about x unless you acknowledge y' problem we're having in this thread and others.

If I am getting what your saying, then Maybe that would -

I.e this template " I have never liked D, for [reasons] and have voiced that opinion numerous times. I don't even mind that others in good conscience can't vote for D, and correspondingly don't vote, or vote for L or Deez Nuts. But don't try to pass off this horse [expletive] about Asswipe being = to D in asshattery and being dangerous to this country.

ok that template doesn't work.

I wrote last week about the new nonfiction book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, the Yale Law School graduate who grew up in the poverty and chaos of an Appalachian clan. The book is an American classic, an extraordinary testimony to the brokenness of the white working class, but also its strengths. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. With the possible exception of Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic, for Americans who care about politics and the future of our country, Hillbilly Elegy is the most important book of 2016. You cannot understand what’s happening now without first reading J.D. Vance. His book does for poor white people what Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book did for poor black people: give them voice and presence in the public square.

This interview I just did with Vance in two parts (the final question I asked after Trump’s convention speech) shows why.

RD: A friend who moved to West Virginia a couple of years ago tells me that she’s never seen poverty and hopelessness like what’s common there. And she says you can drive through the poorest parts of the state, and see nothing but TRUMP signs. Reading “Hillbilly Elegy” tells me why. Explain it to people who haven’t yet read your book.

J.D. VANCE: The simple answer is that these people–my people–are really struggling, and there hasn’t been a single political candidate who speaks to those struggles in a long time. Donald Trump at least tries.

What many don’t understand is how truly desperate these places are, and we’re not talking about small enclaves or a few towns–we’re talking about multiple states where a significant chunk of the white working class struggles to get by. Heroin addiction is rampant. In my medium-sized Ohio county last year, deaths from drug addiction outnumbered deaths from natural causes. The average kid will live in multiple homes over the course of her life, experience a constant cycle of growing close to a “stepdad” only to see him walk out on the family, know multiple drug users personally, maybe live in a foster home for a bit (or at least in the home of an unofficial foster like an aunt or grandparent), watch friends and family get arrested, and on and on. And on top of that is the economic struggle, from the factories shuttering their doors to the Main Streets with nothing but cash-for-gold stores and pawn shops.

The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic interests because of social issues, a la Thomas Frank (more on that below). Maybe they get a few handouts, but many don’t want handouts to begin with.

From the Right, they’ve gotten the basic Republican policy platform of tax cuts, free trade, deregulation, and paeans to the noble businessman and economic growth. Whatever the merits of better tax policy and growth (and I believe there are many), the simple fact is that these policies have done little to address a very real social crisis. More importantly, these policies are culturally tone deaf: nobody from southern Ohio wants to hear about the nobility of the factory owner who just fired their brother.

Trump’s candidacy is music to their ears. He criticizes the factories shipping jobs overseas. His apocalyptic tone matches their lived experiences on the ground. He seems to love to annoy the elites, which is something a lot of people wish they could do but can’t because they lack a platform.

The last point I’ll make about Trump is this: these people, his voters, are proud. A big chunk of the white working class has deep roots in Appalachia, and the Scots-Irish honor culture is alive and well. We were taught to raise our fists to anyone who insulted our mother. I probably got in a half dozen fights when I was six years old. Unsurprisingly, southern, rural whites enlist in the military at a disproportionate rate. Can you imagine the humiliation these people feel at the successive failures of Bush/Obama foreign policy? My military service is the thing I’m most proud of, but when I think of everything happening in the Middle East, I can’t help but tell myself: I wish we would have achieved some sort of lasting victory. No one touched that subject before Trump, especially not in the Republican Party.