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Trump lies so many times a day it doesn't really matter if he lies agains because clearly a lot of people don't give a gak about how much he lies and contradicts his own earlier statements.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
As we all know, America has existed for 250 years plus, and we often forget that in its past, America has had some bad Presidents, and Trump is nothing new in this regard. Trust in the strength of your institutions and democratic heritage to see off Clinton or Trump.

Sounds to me like what the camel said before the last straw was placed on his back, to be honest. Just sayin.

If a nation can survive a civil war, it can survive anything.

I'm not predicting the collapse of the United States due to 4 years of Trump, or anything. I just (mildly) object to the advice. It's kina-sorta-maybe-not like telling someone to eat a bit of poison because their body can handle it in small doses.



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 Kilkrazy wrote:
Trump lies so many times a day it doesn't really matter if he lies agains because clearly a lot of people don't give a gak about how much he lies and contradicts his own earlier statements.

Trump is actually admired by many precisely because he is a liar. Lying as a leadership skill.

Trump is admired for lying all the time about stupid bs so simple that you would have to be a kindergarten child to not spot the lies.

Clinton is hated for small numbers of evasions and half-truths, that after millions of $ of legal investigation add up to nothing much.

Trump really reminds me alot of Gordon Gecko.

Incidentally, if I were Rosie O'Donnell, I'd seriously think about asylum or something.

We also learned that if you weigh over 399 pounds, Donald Trump is not a fan.

 d-usa wrote:
How long has Trump talked about "his movement" during this campaign? Last night was the first time I have heard him use that phrase, and it feels like just a way of trying to pick up Sanders voters.

Well, if Trump is having problems with "his movement", then he can do what the rest of us do and add a bit more fiber to his diet.

 jasper76 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Trump lies so many times a day it doesn't really matter if he lies agains because clearly a lot of people don't give a gak about how much he lies and contradicts his own earlier statements.

Trump is actually admired by many precisely because he is a liar. Lying as a leadership skill.

Unless you're Hillary apparently, who's seen as less trustworthy, in some weird leap of logic

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Trump lies so many times a day it doesn't really matter if he lies agains because clearly a lot of people don't give a gak about how much he lies and contradicts his own earlier statements.

Trump is actually admired by many precisely because he is a liar. Lying as a leadership skill.

Unless you're Hillary apparently, who's seen as less trustworthy, in some weird leap of logic

Logic has long left the building...

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Trump lies so many times a day it doesn't really matter if he lies agains because clearly a lot of people don't give a gak about how much he lies and contradicts his own earlier statements.

Trump is actually admired by many precisely because he is a liar. Lying as a leadership skill.

Unless you're Hillary apparently, who's seen as less trustworthy, in some weird leap of logic

Logic has long left the building...

Scott Adams has steadily taught me how Logic and Reason have no bearing on natural decision making, by exercising it against this election. The Big Reveal was a few days ago viz:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150816666991/blowing-your-mind-as-promised#_=_

When you filter the process through the view of two professionals exercising their discipline, the whole thing starts making eerie sense.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Trump is admired for lying all the time about stupid bs so simple that you would have to be a kindergarten child to not spot the lies.

Clinton is hated for small numbers of evasions and half-truths, that after millions of $ of legal investigation add up to nothing much.

You haven't been paying attention if you believe Clinton's faults amounts to "small numbers of evasions and half-truth".

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
If his supporters (party and military) didn't leave him over, for example, the "I like people who weren't captured" comment, this isn't going to do it, either.

Yep. Or attacking the parents of a dead soldier. Or saying soldiers will follow his command to commit war crimes.

If Clinton had even hinted at something like that 20 years ago she'd still be getting attacked over it today. But Trump says it and the supporter base just quietly ignores it as best they can. It's sad, really.

I've been saying for a long time, the GOP decision to dig in and entrench themselves over opposing climate change (and they only oppose it because the Democrats support it) has been one of the dumbest things they've done. The smart move would have been to sidestep the whole climate change issue by just supporting a cleaner environment without making any mention of climate change in the process. No sane person would argue against cleaner air for our children to breathe, cleaner water for our children to drink, and cleaner earth to grow the food our children to eat. But, instead, the GOP had to do the dumb thing and just automatically oppose the Democrats because reasons. Can we please bring back the GOP that actually believed in science and gave us NASA and other similar programs (at least I remember reading that somewhere)?

They're just following the money. The coal industry is a big source of cash in Washington, and that money goes overwhelmingly to Republicans these days. It used to be about 50/50 in the early 90s, but when the parties split on climate change the money started shfting to Republicans, and now it's about 80/20 by memory.

 malamis wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Trump lies so many times a day it doesn't really matter if he lies agains because clearly a lot of people don't give a gak about how much he lies and contradicts his own earlier statements.

Trump is actually admired by many precisely because he is a liar. Lying as a leadership skill.

Unless you're Hillary apparently, who's seen as less trustworthy, in some weird leap of logic

Logic has long left the building...

Scott Adams has steadily taught me how Logic and Reason have no bearing on natural decision making, by exercising it against this election. The Big Reveal was a few days ago viz:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150816666991/blowing-your-mind-as-promised#_=_

When you filter the process through the view of two professionals exercising their discipline, the whole thing starts making eerie sense.

Worth note however, that not perceiving reality as it is and what people perceive being completely independent from reality are two very different things that source seems to lump together.

 whembly wrote:
Or, maybe the fact that the Trump votes not leaving him over that is more of an indictment of Clinton.

Except the hatred of Clinton is just as manufactured as the hatred of Obama, or the hatred of Gore, or the other Clinton before that. Republicans convincing themselves that the latest Democratic presidential candidate is a horrible, terrible person says nothing about any particular Democratic candidate, because we're at the point we're Saint Reagan could rise from the grave and run as a Democrat, and the Republicans would convince themselves he's a pinko liberal out to destroy America.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Or, maybe the fact that the Trump votes not leaving him over that is more of an indictment of Clinton.

Except the hatred of Clinton is just as manufactured as the hatred of Obama, or the hatred of Gore, or the other Clinton before that. Republicans convincing themselves that the latest Democratic presidential candidate is a horrible, terrible person says nothing about any particular Democratic candidate, because we're at the point we're Saint Reagan could rise from the grave and run as a Democrat, and the Republicans would convince themselves he's a pinko liberal out to destroy America.

Nah... Saint Reagan would still beat HRC while he's still in his coffin.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
I really dont understand what our country has turned in to with Trump being this popular, having an actual chance of obtaining the highest office in the land.

How can anything that comes out of his orange suckhole be taken seriously?

Has america become this stupid?

It isn’t that Americans are stupid, or have become more stupid. They’re about as stupid as people in every country. Which is to say they’re pretty smart on things that they are directly involved in and affected by every day, and pretty stupid about anything that has only an abstract effect on their lives.

What’s changed is that one half of US politics has basically given up on reality. I’m talking about the Republicans obviously, but not just the party itself. The entirety of the US conservative movement, from the Washington think tanks to the conservative media basically just doesn’t give a gak about what’s true anymore.

Consider Trump’s statements on trade in the debate. He got up there and started talking about Mexico’s VAT as an unfair trade barrier. Now, it isn’t fair to expect the average American to understand that a VAT is levied on both domestic goods and imports, and so isn’t a trade barrier in any sense. But it is incredible that Trump could receive trade advice from economic experts and still believe that nonsense. And it’s even more incredible that not a single conservative commentator anywhere in the country has picked up on such a simple error in the hours since the debate.

And these kinds of stupid mistakes might be very common for Trump, but they were alarmingly common amongst almost everyone running in the Republican primary, and were also common in 2012, 2008, 2004, 2000 (and maybe before then, but that’d be stretching my knowledge and memory). Trump may be the most ignorant presidential candidate we’ve seen, but he’s the continuation of a pattern, not a one-off thing.

Voters aren’t stupid, they just aren’t in the business of running government so they don’t know, and can’t be expected to know the technical details of government. That really depends on having sensible political factions, and right now you’ve got one faction that’s really dropped the ball.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
You don't think the economic decline of the US has much of anything to do with what's going on in your election?

Except the US isn’t in economic decline. They remain the most powerful economy in the world by a long way, and the primary creator of new kinds of business and wealth.

The economic issue is one of different experiences for different people. For people living in big coastal cities, and attached to growth industries like finance or IT the US the economy is providing endless opportunities and ever growing pay cheques. But for working class folk in rustbelt towns there are less jobs and no wage growth at all.

So what we are seeing is not an economy in decline, but an economy in transition. Away from manual, semi-skilled work, and in to highly specialised service based jobs. It is an unfortunate reality that that change will leave many people behind. No-one has a particularly good idea on how to deal with this issue. Trump has a collection of particularly bad ideas on what to do, and that seems to be enough for some people.




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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Sorry, "decline" might not have been the right word. "Shift" might've been better, as more and more unskilled manufacturing is outsourced.

The loss of jobs isn't from outsourcing. The US is making more stuff inside its own borders than ever before. The issue is that manual human labour isn't that necessary anymore. It isn't Mexicans or Chinese that have taken US jobs, but robots.


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 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Its certainly unpleasant, but these things happen. Some designs and concepts look better on paper than in practice, and its not unheard of for the architect to go over budget.

If it was one architect, one time, then that defence might work. But Trump’s refusal to pay is a strategy he’s employed many times. It has been reported that he has stated to suppliers that it will cost them more in court to win the case than the value of the work provided.


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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
As we all know, America has existed for 250 years plus, and we often forget that in its past, America has had some bad Presidents, and Trump is nothing new in this regard. Trust in the strength of your institutions and democratic heritage to see off Clinton or Trump.

What? I understand people thinking that Trump’s ignorance and pettiness will require strong institutions to hold him back… but Clinton? That’s just fething stupid. I get that people might not like her, and if they’re not left leaning they also won’t like her politics, but talking about the US ‘surviving’ Clinton.

“Don’t worry everyone, I believe the US is just strong enough to survive a centre left incremental reformer.”

Come on.


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 whembly wrote:
Nah... Saint Reagan would still beat HRC while he's still in his coffin.

Read my post again, I think you misread. I suggested Saint Reagan running as a Democrat, so he wouldn't be running against Clinton. If that happened, Republicans would hate him, just as they'd hate anyone who ran with a D after their name. Hell, in Reagan's case the guy actually had a crazy long list of scandals in his presidency, so that time the Republican rage machine would actually make some kind of sense.

Robots or Mexicans, the context in which the US exists, both political and economic, has changed, and Trump is refusing to accept this reality.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:
lied about her cover ups for her husband, shown she does not care about women's rights as a result

Let's everyone just read this, two or three times. Let it sink in.

Here we have someone saying that because a woman made a personal choice for personal reasons, then anything she might have worked for or achieved in woman's rights doesn't count.

We actually have someone saying that if a woman doesn't act in her marriage the way some person on the internet thinks they should, then that woman can't really be for women's rights.

fething seriously.


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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Robots or Mexicans, the context in which the US exists, both political and economic, has changed, and Trump is refusing to accept this reality.

Definitely. Really the entire appeal of his trade policy* is asking people to join him in pretending that things can go back to how people kind of nostalgically remember them being. As if you can shut off trade with Mexico and China, and then a day later the mines and the factories will go back to labour intensive work that demands lots of blue collar workers. It's a total fething nonsense.





* 'policy' used in the loosest meaning of the word.

 sebster wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
If his supporters (party and military) didn't leave him over, for example, the "I like people who weren't captured" comment, this isn't going to do it, either.

Yep. Or attacking the parents of a dead soldier. Or saying soldiers will follow his command to commit war crimes.

If Clinton had even hinted at something like that 20 years ago she'd still be getting attacked over it today. But Trump says it and the supporter base just quietly ignores it as best they can. It's sad, really.

I've been saying for a long time, the GOP decision to dig in and entrench themselves over opposing climate change (and they only oppose it because the Democrats support it) has been one of the dumbest things they've done. The smart move would have been to sidestep the whole climate change issue by just supporting a cleaner environment without making any mention of climate change in the process. No sane person would argue against cleaner air for our children to breathe, cleaner water for our children to drink, and cleaner earth to grow the food our children to eat. But, instead, the GOP had to do the dumb thing and just automatically oppose the Democrats because reasons. Can we please bring back the GOP that actually believed in science and gave us NASA and other similar programs (at least I remember reading that somewhere)?

They're just following the money. The coal industry is a big source of cash in Washington, and that money goes overwhelmingly to Republicans these days. It used to be about 50/50 in the early 90s, but when the parties split on climate change the money started shfting to Republicans, and now it's about 80/20 by memory.

I have tried hard to stay out of this thread, but I would like to comment on this one thing, since the rest is really beyond my scope. The vast majority, by and far of Military, from my FB groups to the Soldiers I work with do not support Trump. Not even a little. In the beginning we were all thinking he was the one, then slowly he started saying unforgiveable stupid stuff. The majority I talk to are leaning toward Johnson.

A large number still do no support Clinton for one large simple reason many remain in denial about. She broke the laws of Operational Security and got away with it. It is drilled in our heads over and over again that these secrets we are charged with keeping in our daily work lives have a process for maintenance, and they are unflinching, unwaiverable, unyielding and you will face consequences when you break the law. There is a Seaman in jail right now for doing not even a fraction of what she did.

So from my perspective and the perspective of a large group that I interact with both through FB and IRL both have lost the trust and respect of the standard Servicemember. There are small pockets of resistance on either side, but honestly neither one is held in high regard.

 redleger wrote:
I have tried hard to stay out of this thread, but I would like to comment on this one thing, since the rest is really beyond my scope. The vast majority, by and far of Military, from my FB groups to the Soldiers I work with do not support Trump. Not even a little. In the beginning we were all thinking he was the one, then slowly he started saying unforgiveable stupid stuff. The majority I talk to are leaning toward Johnson.

Fair enough, and there’s certainly been a drop off in support for Trump from the military. Trump is touting his 200 generals, but that’s a massive step back from the 500 that supported Romney. But that still leaves 200 generals who are willing to endorse the guy who likes guys who don’t get captured, who wants to take the natural resources of other countries, turn the military in to a protection racket, and insists that the military will follow his orders to commit war crimes. 200 is a scary large number of generals to support that. 1 general would be scary. 1 person is scary.

 sebster wrote:
Except the US isn’t in economic decline. They remain the most powerful economy in the world by a long way, and the primary creator of new kinds of business and wealth.

The economic issue is one of different experiences for different people. For people living in big coastal cities, and attached to growth industries like finance or IT the US the economy is providing endless opportunities and ever growing pay cheques. But for working class folk in rustbelt towns there are less jobs and no wage growth at all.

So what we are seeing is not an economy in decline, but an economy in transition. Away from manual, semi-skilled work, and in to highly specialised service based jobs. It is an unfortunate reality that that change will leave many people behind. No-one has a particularly good idea on how to deal with this issue. Trump has a collection of particularly bad ideas on what to do, and that seems to be enough for some people.

While I agree with this, I feel that the changing distribution of wealth is also an important factor. There is a tremendous amount of money focused in a very small portion of the population, which has always been true but there is a recent trend of that issue becoming markedly worse. There are a lot of effects from that, and while I can't say I have a full understanding of how that all plays out it seems that leaving such out of a discussion on US economy is leaving out a notable portion of the puzzle.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:
Clinton has lied about real estate deals in Arkansas

Whitewater: The Original Benghazi.

 sebster wrote:

 redleger wrote:
I have tried hard to stay out of this thread, but I would like to comment on this one thing, since the rest is really beyond my scope. The vast majority, by and far of Military, from my FB groups to the Soldiers I work with do not support Trump. Not even a little. In the beginning we were all thinking he was the one, then slowly he started saying unforgiveable stupid stuff. The majority I talk to are leaning toward Johnson.

Fair enough, and there’s certainly been a drop off in support for Trump from the military. Trump is touting his 200 generals, but that’s a massive step back from the 500 that supported Romney. But that still leaves 200 generals who are willing to endorse the guy who likes guys who don’t get captured, who wants to take the natural resources of other countries, turn the military in to a protection racket, and insists that the military will follow his orders to commit war crimes. 200 is a scary large number of generals to support that. 1 general would be scary. 1 person is scary.

I did notice you only quoted the first part of my statement. I think its important to note also, in fairness the second part, and why that matters to us as a military community as well. Clinton is not the person we want in charge of use either. We have paid for her mistakes, whether the rest of America wants to talk about or not.

Gary Johnson has one over all statement which I think resonates in veterans minds. Judicious use of the military. The last 15 years that has not been a strategy and we are worn out. We are tired, and we just want to know when we fight, it is a fight we can win. We win the battles, but we leave behind broken friends mentally and physically, then we turn on the news and the same city we fought in is back under control of an enemy force. Its tiresome, and doesn't help.

Also most of us just want him to legalize weed(Im kidding, but a little serious.)

In a particularly low moment, Rudy Giuliani is saying Hillary Clinton is too stupid to be president because she stayed with Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair.

classy

 Ouze wrote:
In a particularly low moment, Rudy Giuliani is saying Hillary Clinton is too stupid to be president because she stayed with Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair.

classy

Well, this is the guy who continues to profess the virtues of publicly searching someone's anal cavity because shut up and stop being SOFT ON CRIME

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
While I agree with this, I feel that the changing distribution of wealth is also an important factor. There is a tremendous amount of money focused in a very small portion of the population, which has always been true but there is a recent trend of that issue becoming markedly worse. There are a lot of effects from that, and while I can't say I have a full understanding of how that all plays out it seems that leaving such out of a discussion on US economy is leaving out a notable portion of the puzzle.

Yeah, that is a major factor, and it was meant to be the focus of my previous post. Re-reading my post I ended up focusing more on regional effects, but I certainly meant to make the point about economic distribution. My overall point is that there isn’t an overall US economic decline, the problem is that new economic gains are going to a very small portion of the population.

Although 2015 showed the first reversal of that trend in a long time. But then 2014 was one of the worst years for gains being focused at the top, so it's likely that a lot of each year's result might be down to sampling data weirdness.


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 redleger wrote:
I did notice you only quoted the first part of my statement.

I generally trim posts I respond to down to a couple of key sentences, to avoid having big blocks of repeated text. If you think I misquoted or misrepresented you then please say so, because that wasn’t my intent nor do I think I did so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-womack/stop-pretending-you-dont-_b_12191766.html?section=women&

“Why do people hate Hillary Clinton so much?”

Is it because of partisanship?

Or a hard-fought primary?

Maybe, NBC once suggested, it’s because “she’s not a train wreck.”

Funny how the answers seem to be everything but the obvious.

We go on endlessly about how “untrustworthy” she is, while fact checkers rank her as the second-most honest prominent politician in the country. (And her opponent as by far the least.)

We say that she has trouble with transparency, while her opponent refuses to release his taxes and the current administration sets records for secrecy.

We decry her ties to corporations and the financial industry, while supporting a walking tax shelter or mourning the exit of a president whose re-election was funded by a record-shattering Wall Street haul.

We list so very many explanations, all of them complete bs.

 skyth wrote:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-womack/stop-pretending-you-dont-_b_12191766.html?section=women&

“Why do people hate Hillary Clinton so much?”

Is it because of partisanship?

Or a hard-fought primary?

Maybe, NBC once suggested, it’s because “she’s not a train wreck.”

Funny how the answers seem to be everything but the obvious.

We go on endlessly about how “untrustworthy” she is, while fact checkers rank her as the second-most honest prominent politician in the country. (And her opponent as by far the least.)

We say that she has trouble with transparency, while her opponent refuses to release his taxes and the current administration sets records for secrecy.

We decry her ties to corporations and the financial industry, while supporting a walking tax shelter or mourning the exit of a president whose re-election was funded by a record-shattering Wall Street haul.

We list so very many explanations, all of them complete bs.

I would argue that neither one is trust worthy. To accept the mainline media calling her trust worthy is to be a sheep. Both candidates are truly horrible. Both are questionable in regards to legal decisions they have made. I am sure it will be found trump is guilty of tax evasion eventually, and will go the way of Al Capone. However to over look Hillary's illegal activity simply because Trump is bad, so Hillary must be good is naïve and ignorant. The real question is, when will we get a media outlet that will discuss both issues equally, and quit ignoring certain facts in favor of the left or right choice?


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 sebster wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
While I agree with this, I feel that the changing distribution of wealth is also an important factor. There is a tremendous amount of money focused in a very small portion of the population, which has always been true but there is a recent trend of that issue becoming markedly worse. There are a lot of effects from that, and while I can't say I have a full understanding of how that all plays out it seems that leaving such out of a discussion on US economy is leaving out a notable portion of the puzzle.

Yeah, that is a major factor, and it was meant to be the focus of my previous post. Re-reading my post I ended up focusing more on regional effects, but I certainly meant to make the point about economic distribution. My overall point is that there isn’t an overall US economic decline, the problem is that new economic gains are going to a very small portion of the population.

Although 2015 showed the first reversal of that trend in a long time. But then 2014 was one of the worst years for gains being focused at the top, so it's likely that a lot of each year's result might be down to sampling data weirdness.


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 redleger wrote:
I did notice you only quoted the first part of my statement.

I generally trim posts I respond to down to a couple of key sentences, to avoid having big blocks of repeated text. If you think I misquoted or misrepresented you then please say so, because that wasn’t my intent nor do I think I did so.

No issues man. Just seemed like the usual thing where for some reason statements of Clinton's wrong doing seem to be ignore, but Trumps seem to be highlighted. Its why I was careful to point out why both candidates are generally thought poorly of.

 redleger wrote:
Both candidates are truly horrible.

And this is exactly the point of the article. They aren't "both truly horrible", with all the equivalence that statement implies. Trump is a spectacularly awful candidate in so many ways that it's getting harder and harder to include all of them in a grammatically correct sentence. Clinton is a fairly typical politician who has been built up into the Worst Person Ever by the right-wing outrage machine. So no, we shouldn't completely ignore her flaws, but we need to keep a sense of perspective about the whole thing. Her "illegal activity" wasn't illegal, and was the same kind of thing that her predecessors (from both parties) did without it being at all newsworthy. It was nothing more than the same kind of gray area carelessness with the rules that anyone with a long enough career in politics to be a viable presidential candidate is going to have. If you take away partisan bias the result is a brief note that yes, Clinton is a typical politician with a typical politician's ethics issues, followed by moving on to something more interesting (like her policy statements). It is not some weird middle ground where both candidates get equal time spent on covering their legal problems.

 Peregrine wrote:

 redleger wrote:
Both candidates are truly horrible.

And this is exactly the point of the article. They aren't "both truly horrible", with all the equivalence that statement implies. Trump is a spectacularly awful candidate in so many ways that it's getting harder and harder to include all of them in a grammatically correct sentence. Clinton is a fairly typical politician who has been built up into the Worst Person Ever by the right-wing outrage machine. So no, we shouldn't completely ignore her flaws, but we need to keep a sense of perspective about the whole thing. Her "illegal activity" wasn't illegal, and was the same kind of thing that her predecessors (from both parties) did without it being at all newsworthy. It was nothing more than the same kind of gray area carelessness with the rules that anyone with a long enough career in politics to be a viable presidential candidate is going to have. If you take away partisan bias the result is a brief note that yes, Clinton is a typical politician with a typical politician's ethics issues, followed by moving on to something more interesting (like her policy statements). It is not some weird middle ground where both candidates get equal time spent on covering their legal problems.

Ill buy that for a dollar. But from a purely introverted point of view, she loses credibility with my community and group. I also have heard about stories from Soldiers on her security details, and the way she treated them that definitely give me pause, but like I said Im coming at this from the point of view that I can offer some insight on. Im not well studied on most things, but the way one handles information and deals with subordinates says a lot in my circles.

 redleger wrote:
Ill buy that for a dollar. But from a purely introverted point of view, she loses credibility with my community and group. I also have heard about stories from Soldiers on her security details, and the way she treated them that definitely give me pause, but like I said Im coming at this from the point of view that I can offer some insight on. Im not well studied on most things, but the way one handles information and deals with subordinates says a lot in my circles.

Ok, so she loses credibility. What next? You can spend a bunch of time going over and over and over every detail of the "scandal" for the sake of "balance", or you can accept that you still have to make a choice about who to vote for. And it's very clear that the candidates are not equal. Clinton is flawed and loses credibility in the same way that every candidate loses credibility (after all, "politicians suck" isn't an idea that came out of nowhere), and continuing to spend time on the subject tells us nothing about how she'd be as a president relative to other presidents. Trump is flawed in all of the standard ways, but is also flawed and loses credibility in so many other ways. He goes beyond operating in gray areas and into being proud of how he breaks the rules (talking about ordering soldiers to commit war crimes, scamming contractors and laughing about how they can't afford to sue him, etc). There are plenty of things to talk about and understand how Trump worse than Clinton and far, far worse than the average presidential candidate. Talking about those things tells us something beyond "yep, he's a politician", and that makes them much more interesting to talk about.

In short, the two candidates are not equal. Clinton is the incredibly obvious correct choice, Trump is the incredibly obvious wrong choice, and any other candidates are the incredibly obvious "throw away your vote" choices. Pretending that there is any equivalence at all between them is simply wrong.

 Peregrine wrote:

 redleger wrote:
Both candidates are truly horrible.

And this is exactly the point of the article. They aren't "both truly horrible", with all the equivalence that statement implies. Trump is a spectacularly awful candidate in so many ways that it's getting harder and harder to include all of them in a grammatically correct sentence. Clinton is a fairly typical politician who has been built up into the Worst Person Ever by the right-wing outrage machine. So no, we shouldn't completely ignore her flaws, but we need to keep a sense of perspective about the whole thing. Her "illegal activity" wasn't illegal, and was the same kind of thing that her predecessors (from both parties) did without it being at all newsworthy. It was nothing more than the same kind of gray area carelessness with the rules that anyone with a long enough career in politics to be a viable presidential candidate is going to have. If you take away partisan bias the result is a brief note that yes, Clinton is a typical politician with a typical politician's ethics issues, followed by moving on to something more interesting (like her policy statements). It is not some weird middle ground where both candidates get equal time spent on covering their legal problems.

That's how it comes across to this foreigner - Clinton is a bad candidate in the same way that any politician is. You'll get some minor scandal but nothing much will change.
Trump on the other hand is probably the worst candidate I can think of, and at best you're going to have some frayed international relations, if not actual war.

Clinton is like hitting yourself in the hand with a hammer, it'll suck a bit, but you'll get over it. Trump is like sticking your arm in a woodchipper; you'd have to be crazy.

At this stage, you've only got 2 options, 1 meh-to-bad, 1 terrible-to-mindboggling.