Karnal wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2016 at 8:32am:


The Presidency is not an autocracy.

There are any number of checks-and-balances before action is sanctioned by various committees and bureaucracies.

greggerypeccary wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2016 at 12:59pm:


As will Hillary.

The US is effectively a one-party state - the repugs and the dems are merely two factions of the one party. In fact there is a bigger ideological divide within the republican party than there is between repugs and dems. You only need to look at the way establishment repugs are clambering over to the dems after Trump became their candidate. They prefer Hillary because she is Mrs establishment - establishment meaning the ruling elite that rule America - by and for big business. Yet even if Trump wins it won't be a big deal. He'll end up playing the establishment role just like every other President. In any case, they've never been able to do much anyway - outside starting wars. And that will probably be the key difference between a Clinton and Trump Presidency - we'll likely see more wars under Hillary.

Far Left Social-Marxist Marla from Colorada voted for Trump.

That's got to be a harbinger of Things to Come on the 8th.

She was so desperate to keep Hillary out of the Oval Office that she voted two weeks early.

The lesser of two evils is Trump.

Trump only obeys the Voices in his Pants - but Hillary obeys the Voices in her Head, which as President would be a lot more dangerous than Trump molesting the White House interns.

polite_gandalf wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2016 at 1:15pm:


But of course. Just look at how the first black president, originally the "hope" candidate, has been restrained by the system.

US intervention in foreign countries, using drones - escalated.
Guantanamo Bay - maintained. 
US foreign surveillance and spying on friendly heads of state - exposed.
Universal health care - compromised.
The appointment of Supreme Court judges - prevented.

And when every policy or appointment is blocked in congress, it's the president's fault for being weak. 

If the Republicans get a majority in either house, watch them go for Hillary. They will reject all her policies simply because of who's proposing them. They'll play hard-ball with Supply, ultimately screwing government workers, just as they did in Obama's first term. They'll oppose everything they can because, in their words, the election of Hillary will be illegitimate.

Republican tactics have become more extreme and less in the interest of American citizens as they've welded themselves onto their lobbyists and corporate donors. In doing so, the business of government has been seriously compromised. Food safety standards, universal health care, environmental protection, a living minimum wage - all have been neutralized in the interests of the lobbyists.

Politicians slide between the corporate and public sectors. Running for office is now a big business career move. Do what you're told in the senate or congress and be rewarded with a multi-million dollar CEO or corporate-consultancy job.

Public service - working for the people who voted for you - is no longer an end in itself. Through the untendered contracts, the appointment of corporate lobbyists as the heads of public boards, and private industry representatives writing actual laws, US governance has been effectively outsourced.

The system is rigged, not because of any actual corruption or illegality, but because corporate Amerika pays its politicians to get elected and pays them off with lucrative jobs when they decide to retire. In the last administration, Cheney, Rumsfeld and even Bush himself, went seamlessly from the corporate sector into government and back to the corporate sector again.

Trump knows the process well - he used to pay Hillary. He's given millions to politicians, a tactic he learned from his father. As Trump pointed out in a debate during the primaries, he'd given to every politician on the stage.

The business of Amerika is business. Unravelling this process will be next to impossible, but putting Trump in to do it is like putting the wolf in charge of the sheep. Obama was too much of an outsider to make any progress, and Hillary is too much of an insider to want to. But Trump, who still runs a business, and pays no taxes, and has a bigger conflict of interest than anyone who's stood for office to date, is already part of the system.

Voting for Trump to shake things up and make Amerika great again is the most ludicrous proposal ever made in a US election.

The strangest thing of all, of course, is that people actually buy it.

Karnal wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2016 at 2:37pm:

And as they did during Bill Clinton's Presidency.

Waffle.



Again, it's back to the lesser of two evils. In political terms Hillary is far less a clean-skin than Trump with her having years more experience of milking the system for hers and Bill's own personal benefit.

Just the fact that Trump isn't a rusted-on Old Boy career politician should be enough for America to give him a chance for at least a paltry four years.

Unlike Obama, Hillary is not a committed ideologue: There is no policy end she desires, there is only an urge to power, with policy and platforms as a discreet veiling of that urge. Her tin-eared phrase for the rest of you losers - "everyday Americans" - underlines the distance between the rulers and the ruled. Her replacement slogan - "Stronger Together" - translates to "Get with the program", but the program is mere set-dressing. Trump is demonized as a Caesar - the strong man as embodiment of the state - but in fact his rise was driven by highly specific policies: build the wall, end mass Muslim immigration, make health insurance purchasable across state lines. Trump is inviting you to vote for something; Clinton to vote for someone: With Hillary, power and authority are all, and public policy is simply collateral damage. A Clintonian restoration, born of politically-derailed criminal investigation, industrial-scale charities fraud and a foreign policy for sale to dictators, would see a massive acceleration of the already appalling and debilitating levels of political corruption in America - because there is nothing else.

Nigel Farage has never held high office: he will never be Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer or anything else. But he has accomplished more than anybody who has held those offices in the last quarter-century. Twenty years ago, he set out to reverse the principal thrust of post-war British policy (foreign and domestic) - and he did. Whether you agree with it or not, that's an accomplishment; that's a reason to go into politics.

The Clintons? Hillary got rich, Bill got laid, republican virtue got screwed. Like the sickly leaders of late-Soviet politburos, both appear older and feebler than their years: once the star performer of the double-act, Bill staggers around like the Blowjob of Dorian Gray; the life has all but literally been sucked out of him. His straight-woman, once the reliably stolid, stone-faced Margaret Dumont of his cigar-waggling routine, now has to be propped up on street bollards and fed lines by her medical staff. When she shuts down and she's out cold, who's driving the pantsuit? Huma? Cheryl? Podesta? Bill and Hillary have been consumed by their urges. America would be electing the Walking Dead, insatiable and fatal to the touch, but utterly hollow.

Steyn

Sprintcyclist wrote on Nov 2^nd, 2016 at 7:15pm:


Wanna bet?