Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MetalSlimeHunt]

And that she's the Wall Street candidate, as shown by her SuperPACs. One can only imagine what promises she's given in turn.

[Lord Shonus]

You forgot the manufactured Whitewater scandal.

[Mephansteras]

A lot of the hate just confuses me.

Then again, the hate on Obama confuses me as well. I've heard plenty of Republicans say things about how Obama has messed up the country and how the liberals should obviously be regretting voting Obama into office and...I don't get it. He's not my favorite president, but the country seems to be doing fine to me. Seems to me there is some sort of perception filter in play.

[smjjames]

And of course, there's the fact that she has like almost the most lobbyists or THE most lobbyists in her employ of anybody in DC.

Also, an interesting 'Did You Know?' thing from the new Discover magazine that came today: "When it comes to the next president, analysts at the Evolution Institute think that we're likely to pick the tallest candidate, regardless of party affiliation. Their recent report on voter preference for height noted that we haven't elected a 5 foot 7inch or shorter president since William McKinley'

i'll see if I can find the actual study.

A lot of the hate just confuses me.

Then again, the hate on Obama confuses me as well. I've heard plenty of Republicans say things about how Obama has messed up the country and how the liberals should obviously be regretting voting Obama into office and...I don't get it. He's not my favorite president, but the country seems to be doing fine to me. Seems to me there is some sort of perception filter in play.

That's because their reaction to liberals is 'HISSSSSSSSS *waves a cross at the liberal*'.

Okay, I'm exaggerating, a little.

[sluissa]

Where's her super pac refuting the email scandal?

At the moment the only thing I can find that I can't forgive Trump for is his stance on climate change. While Hillary gives lip service to green energy, throw her in front of some oil drillers and she starts sounding like Sarah Palin.

And you forgive him for his xenophobic rhetoric?

The only reason that we haven't seen any super PACs defending against the email scandal is because the republicans have been mostly concentrating their fire at each other and Hillarys super PACs are kind of in primary mode atm.

I actually can. Because that can be corrected with the stroke of a pen and an apology. Removing regulations and returning 100% to fossil fuels and dumping ever increasing amounts of greenhouse gasses, not to mention toxic chemicals into the air, water and land, ruining the environment and poisoning people. That's a little harder to come back from.

Maybe we could do with a few years of isolationism to try to get our shit together. Stop fucking up other countries and fix our own. I know it's not that simple, I know there are plenty of reasons to maintain a presence in the larger picture of the world, but by the same brush, Clinton has shown as Secretary that she's got entirely the wrong idea about how to maintain that presence without screwing things up.

Trump does scare me, but most of what he's saying at least wouldn't get us into any MORE trouble than we're already in. At least nothing we couldn't come back to in a few years and say "whoops that was a bad idea, let's take a step or two back."... except for the environmental regulations...

Clinton scares me more because I see a bullheaded leader refusing to back down and compromise. Getting her way come hell or high water and leading us directly into said hell and high water as a country.

Don't get me wrong, I dislike them both... I desperately want a viable third option... but as far as damage control, it's looking like Trump might actually cause less and more easily fixable damage.

@Frumple Part of the reason she continues to get bad press is because she's forced herself into the spotlight for the last decade or more. The press is reporting on her because she makes a big deal about everything she does, and when it turns out to be less than stellar or even kind of shit, that's what gets reported. I will admit the benghazi hearing has definitely been dragged out, it probably should have been wrapped up within a few months of it happening, but she's also shown plenty of unwillingness to cooperate and desire to hide and cover up things. The email thing IS a big deal. She was warned numerous times to not use the system she had. That it was unsecure, unsafe and against protocol, and yet just because she preferred to use a blackberry over basically any other choice she continued to use that unsafe and unsecure method of communication which was shown to be unsafe and unsecure on at least one occasion and likely penetrated more often than that.

Almost everyone from the other politicians in Washington, to the press, to her own staff and secret service detail hate working with her. When she tries to be human and connect with plebs she's awkward and fails. She's basically the democratic mirror image of the republicans' Ted Cruz. Next we'll see her try to hug someone and end up punching Bill in the face.

[smjjames]

Don't get me wrong, I dislike them both... I desperately want a viable third option... but as far as damage control, it's looking like Trump might actually cause less and more easily fixable damage.

Hear! Hear!

Almost everyone from the other politicians in Washington, to the press, to her own staff and secret service detail hate working with her. When she tries to be human and connect with plebs she's awkward and fails. She's basically the democratic mirror image of the republicans' Ted Cruz. Next we'll see her try to hug someone and end up punching Bill in the face.

I thought the secret service thing was just someone blowing off steam for money or something. Haven't heard about her relationship with her own staff, nothing reliable anyway. And she is definetly known for her testy relationship with the press.

As to smjjames, are you sure that isn't just because the average American height has statistically increased, making the average candidate more likely to be taller?

Probably, I thought that myself because Zachary Taylor (or one of those) was like 5 foot 4inch or something. Haven't found the study yet, or more like haven't had a chance to look yet, heh.

[smjjames]

https://evolution-institute.org/article/when-democracy-meets-the-ghost-of-evolution-why-short-presidents-have-vanished/

It's not a very scientific article (no sources for info for one) and while the article seems to blame media, theres plenty of reasons why, like Americans being taller on average than in the past for various reasons (better nutrition mainly).

No idea whether the bias (which is entirely psychological and innate) applies to women in that particular way or not though.

[Loud Whispers]

Tfw we will have 6ft Chinese statesmen in our lifetime

[smjjames]

Tfw we will have 6ft Chinese statesmen in our lifetime

I'm sure they had tall emperors in the past.

Anyway, Clinton is 5 foot 7inches, maybe 6, so, she's of pretty average height.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm sure they had tall emperors in the past.

I found this thing trying to figure out the mean height by using measurements from the terracotta army. They figured the average height of the Chinese was 5ft4, interestingly the tallest soldier is 6ft1 so 6ft elite soldiers are at the very least confirmed

Anyway, Clinton is 5 foot 7inches, maybe 6, so, she's of pretty average height.

Taken to its logical conclusion, if the tallest man were to run for leadership in any country, would they ever stand a chance of losing?

[Orange Wizard]

Taken to its logical conclusion, if the tallest man were to run for leadership in any country, would they ever stand a chance of losing?

Napoleon

[origamiscienceguy]

Taken to its logical conclusion, if the tallest man were to run for leadership in any country, would they ever stand a chance of losing?

Napoleon

Napoleon was actually average height. His "shortness" was british propaganda.

[smjjames]

The trend isn't that strong. Biden is a bit taller than Obama, but he lost. The height increase really has a lot more to do with the fact that people are taller now due to better nutrition. Also Pataki (or whoever) is a tall guy but never got anywhere in the polls.

Honestly, that study wasn't very scientific and there are many variables unaccounted for, such as the average height increasing over time. From the way it was written, it seems to want to convince you that media is the sole reason behind that. It IS true that theres a bias towards height, but it's pretty subtle.

[SalmonGod]

I honestly find most of the reasons people hate Clinton so much to be kinda ridiculous.  I've never cared about Benghazi or the e-mail scandals.  I could describe very little about those things.  I don't like her.  But as far as politicians go, I don't particularly hate her, either.

I'll totally admit, my stance is mostly based in the whole anti-establishment thing.  It seems to me like status quo politics for the last 30 years has been 1 step forward in the culture war, and three steps backward on everything else, regardless of which party has dominance where.  And when it comes to the environment, it's literally going to be the death of us.  That's what gets me so upset with this election specifically.  All the people who are throwing their support behind the more moderate (relative to our political norm) candidate out of fear of the scary opposition and that the less moderate stuff can't be done, which I see as meekly accepting that as our fate.  For the first time in 16 years, we have a candidate who is genuine and enthusiastic about tackling the environment with the ferocity that is minimally required to save us, and this ends up being the thing that disqualifies him in the eyes of voters.  The totally shallow nature of most comparisons between the two doesn't help, either.  Hillary having more experience and such.  Not that experience is a shallow criteria, but the reason people believe it is shallow, in my opinion.

So, speaking strictly for myself, my hatred isn't for Clinton so much as what she represents, and the situation in general.

[mainiac]

I actually can. Because that can be corrected with the stroke of a pen and an apology. Removing regulations and returning 100% to fossil fuels and dumping ever increasing amounts of greenhouse gasses, not to mention toxic chemicals into the air, water and land, ruining the environment and poisoning people. That's a little harder to come back from.

Yes it is a little harder to come back from.  Because it's a delusion that has no bearing in reality and those are hard to remove.  The fact that Hillary Clinton is a pretty normal democrat who supports green energy and infrastructure investment doesn't matter.  You have decided to believe this bullshit and nobody but you can change that.

Is Clinton less left wing then Bernie on the environment?  Sure.  Because she has spent her career running on ideas that were politically acceptable at the time not staking a claim on the impossible.  But "less left wing then Bernie" doesn't mean that she is some coal loving extremist.  People have created this absurd picture of Clinton that has no bearing on the actual candidate.  They cherry pick the most trivial little shit because there is some desperate need to find her wrong about everything.  They can't say "well she is actually pretty good on environmental issues but I still prefer the other guy."  No, she can have no redeeming features.

Well actually no, I should put a caveat on that.  All the Bernie Sanders supports I have met face to face actually have a pretty realistic view of Clinton.  It's just on the internet that people think she is some sort of Corporate-Oni.

Well, got bored, decided to read Gary Johnson's political positions to remind myself of why I even cared about him in 2012. He's actually not that bad.

He supports making the tax system horribly regressive, wants block grants for education and medicare, wants to raise the social security age some more, opposes limits on greenhouse gasses, supports nuclear energy (the most expensive form of electricity) and wants us to cut our miserly foreign aid budget (to be fair we all do hate Israel sometimes).

The thing about a libertarian is you get the same mainstream liberal social views that you'd get from Barack Obama but they are coupled with a hard, hard right wing economic agenda.

It seems to me like status quo politics for the last 30 years has been 1 step forward in the culture war, and three steps backward on everything else,

30 years ago puts you in 1986 right as conservativism was gearing up to hit it's high water mark.  What if you dated things from say, 1992?  Or 2008?  Or way back in like 1950?