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[Powder Miner]

It gets at me personally because when it's implied that that sort of thing is simply normal sexuality, it begins to imply that the opposite is not, or is simply repressing one's own natural sexuality, which is a bit of a charge.

[mainiac]

Ken Bone never touched a woman...

... without her consent.

[BFEL]

I'll admit the comments are 100% prime douchebag yeah, but I feel bringing it into politics, or sports or shit like that is kinda silly personally. Also he's apologized for the remarks anyway. Granted he may or may not be sincere on that, but I see no reason not to let it go.

[mainiac]

but I see no reason not to let it go.

Because it says a lot about him as a person.  This is the judgement and character that will matter over and over and over again.

Consider just one small thing the president does.  The president sets personnel policy priorities for senior military commanders.  Sexual assault in the military is a huge problem.  The fact that Donald Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women tells you a lot about how much he is going to do to prevent sexual assault in the military.  He certainly wouldn't do nearly as much as Ken Bone.

[RedKing]

I'll admit the comments are 100% prime douchebag yeah, but I feel bringing it into politics, or sports or shit like that is kinda silly personally. Also he's apologized for the remarks anyway. Granted he may or may not be sincere on that, but I see no reason not to let it go.

His apology was the "I'm sorry you're offended" kind of BS. Although I did find it amusing that last night his defense seemed to be "Oh, I was just talking shit I never actually hit on anyone or grabbed anyone". So then he's just a liar.


Just dawned on me, Donald Trump is the rich preppy asshole kid from every 80's movie. He's James Spader in Pretty in Pink, right down to the sexual assault.

[misko27]

It gets at me personally because when it's implied that that sort of thing is simply normal sexuality, it begins to imply that the opposite is not, or is simply repressing one's own natural sexuality, which is a bit of a charge.

This bothers me immensely too. Everyone keeps saying "Guys say that". I'll ask you the same thing they asked Giuliani: "Do you say that?" Because if you don't, it's not really fair to say "guys say this thing". It's a copout. At least admit you just grab a woman you find attractive and just start kissing her. Come on, don't say "guys" say this, someone say "I say this!".

Well since he didn't actually do that,

I mean he *said* he does that. He said it quite clearly. He said he tried to sleep with a woman who was married. And he said he can't control himself, he just starts kissing attractive women he sees, and grabs them by the pussy. Do we disbelieve him?

just talked about wanting to do that with another dude who was egging him on,

Definitely wanted to impress Billy Bush, of all people. Billy Bush was totally egging him on by... following along.

just about everyone talks shit like that occasionally. I sure as hell say some crazy shit with my friends.

BFEL let me be quite frank and say if you said what Donald Trump said, to me in private, you'd be picking up your teeth off the floor. I am very, very rarely physical, but coming from a household of abuse I have absolutely zero tolerance for such commentary. No one has ever said this much me. I've been in sports locker rooms, high school locker rooms, and all sorts, and I do not tolerate this. And no one has admitted "hey, *I* say this stuff", they've only said "oh yeah, *guys* say this". Come on people. Guys don't say that. I don't say that. Do you?

Also calling them "recent" comments is pretty ridiculous, since it happened 11 years ago and was just drudged up by Hillary's campaign now (she had an attack ad about it within 3 hours, so its pretty much guaranteed she knew in advance).

At the ripe old age of 59, and he's dragging out allegations at Bill from twice that period of time. Come now, don't get holier then thou.

As for my mom, she's a perv and all emotional trauma from the hypothetical situation would be due to her bragging and talking shit about it literally forever.

Your mother is probably too old anyway. He doesn't like old people. Anyone over 35 is off-limits.

I'll admit the comments are 100% prime douchebag yeah, but I feel bringing it into politics, or sports or shit like that is kinda silly personally. Also he's apologized for the remarks anyway. Granted he may or may not be sincere on that, but I see no reason not to let it go.

For me the issue is "I'm a powerful man and I use my power for sex", and this same man is asking to be the most powerful man on earth. And then attacking Bill Clinton for it.

[Reelya]

I learn so much from this thread, I'm really glad it's around.
I just woke up and am feeling sentimental, carry on

I do like that we have at least a couple of Trump supporters, though, echo chambers are less interesting.  But I think we do okay at attacking (aka quoting) Trump instead of attacking his supporters, so it's not our fault there are so few here.

I disagree, personally. The comment directly above yours contains a quote chain that demonstrates completely unwarranted snide condescension toward Folly. It's not atypical.

I disagree there. What did the quote train include? It included a link to an article pointing out that Bush & Co "lost" 22 million emails and that the Republicans ran their own private party-owned servers when they ran the White House. That's not snide condescension, it's providing context that Folly would have to address if his argument is on the level. Mere snide condescension tends to not be backed up by damning evidence.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Clinton’s email habits look positively transparent when compared with the subpoena-dodging, email-hiding, private-server-using George W. Bush administration. Between 2003 and 2009, the Bush White House “lost” 22 million emails. This correspondence included millions of emails written during the darkest period in America’s recent history, when the Bush administration was ginning up support for what turned out to be a disastrous war in Iraq with false claims that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and, later, when it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.

Like Clinton, the Bush White House used a private email server—its was owned by the Republican National Committee. And the Bush administration failed to store its emails, as required by law, and then refused to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking some of those emails. “It’s about as amazing a double standard as you can get,” says Eric Boehlert, who works with the pro-Clinton group Media Matters. “If you look at the Bush emails, he was a sitting president, and 95 percent of his chief advisers’ emails were on a private email system set up by the RNC. Imagine if for the last year and a half we had been talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails set up on a private DNC server?”

And then you have guys like "Jeff Gannon" - the Bush administration made up entire fake news outlets along with fake journalists so that they could put fake stories into friendly media outlets. Don't let people forget about that one. Republicans take the cake for creative bullshitting. Even the most extreme "Crooked Hillary" conspiracy theory makes her look like Mother Theresa next to those guys.

[Sprin]

I wonder what would happen if we just decided to not have a president for the next four years

[mainiac]

Democrats are up 7 points in the NBC/WSJ house race question.  Those are the kind of numbers they would need to overcome gerrymandering.  Too bad there is zero chance of a filibuster proof majority.

[mainiac]

It's weird, you come out in favor of sexual assault, and stand to your guns when questioned, and people eventually start acting like there is something wrong with you.

[RedKing]

Yeah, at least half of those things that have your panties in a bind are mine. Deal with it. I'm old enough that I don't waste time coddling people whose values and motives follow a recognizeable pattern, when those patterns are abhorrent to me.

Or in more blunt terms, if it looks like a douche and acts like a douche, it's probably a douche. And I have no time for douches.

Don't you have some immigrants to run out of Glorious Brittania or something rather than concern-trolling for the state of American political discourse?

[Rolepgeek]

Democrats are up 7 points in the NBC/WSJ house race question.  Those are the kind of numbers they would need to overcome gerrymandering.  Too bad there is zero chance of a filibuster proof majority.

Eh, if there's zero chance of either party preventing the other from getting things through you run into issues.

Although I do wonder if the Democratic leadership will try to eliminate the gerrymandering or just turn it to their favor when they get the opportunity. It'll be interesting to see.

Query: How important is context versus content for a politician, in your guys' opinions (as in what you personally find more compelling)? The substance of their platform is obviously always going to be an issue, but how important is the conduct of the individual and the way the politician goes about trying to implement it and the like? If someone had policy positions you didn't find too important or they were acceptable rather than great (you get the idea) and was overall an excellent member of society, high integrity, intelligent, excellent at arguing their position before courts/congress in an honest and reasonable manner, has shown that they're willing to change their mind/look deeper into issues that concern them when presented evidence, etc., was running up against someone who shared your positions pretty much dead on, but was essentially Anthony Wiener or the equivalent, someone who was stubborn, rude, self-centered, underhanded, an ideologue, etc., but shares basically all your beliefs/viewpoints and consistently sticks to them before congress and while working on bills, who would you prefer?

@Covenant: Do you have anything to add to the discussion itself? If you do, please get to it, as right now you're just kinda bein' smug.

[RedKing]

The former (good person, not necessarily 100% aligned in policy). Because the more important thing about a President isn't how they're going to react to the problems we already know about, it's how they react to the problems we're going to get out of left field. Which you can't necessarily predict from a policy sheet.

[Reelya]

another poster who has merely expressed his opinion on Trump's comments and not insulted anyone?

But that discussion (quote tree) that you referenced wasn't even about Trump's comments, it was in response to a hysterical rant about Hillary's emails. And "Crooked Hillary" wasn't a characterization of what Folly wrote, it's an exact quote of what he said.

[Reelya]

By that logic, anyone who even came within 100 yards of someone in the Bush administration should be in prison, since they deleted about 1,000 times as many emails as Hillary. Not even counting all the other on-the-record crooked shit they pulled.