StrangeSox

This debate made me miss Joe Biden. As far as Trump winning, that's becoming slightly less likely every day and it's actually been a fairly stable election showing a Clinton win since about July.

Kaine is channeling some reddy here, not a great look

He's extremely socially conservative.

oh crap right Palmer might not even be an option

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 05:01 PM) All of the effort of posting links and parroting facts was directed towards NSS's post. I'm not upset with you not sure why you keep saying that. Although I didn't appreciate the time you called me ignorant for not studying local politics. You're literally ignorant of local politics, though. Like that's just the definition of the word. If anything take umbrage at me calling you lazy for ignoring them and telling people voting is a waste of time or whatever the specific argument was. You're willfully ignorant and think you have a good reason to be so--I disagree, and we can leave it at that, but there are even libertarians (Somin) who make arguments about voters being 'rationally ignorant.' So don't take offense at that word, because it doesn't mean stupid or dumb or anything, just not-knowledgeable. There are lots of things that I'm ignorant about. QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 05:07 PM) And Obama did technically invade Iraq. In November of 2011 he pulled all the troops out. Since then he has sent troops there multiple times. Sure it was Bush's admin's fault for emboldening ISIS but Obama sent troops to Iraq after he initially ended it. This is a weak attempt at salvaging a bad argument. Obama did not "technically" invade Iraq. The US did not send troops against the wishes of the ruling government in Iraq. When we sent the Marines to Haiti after that horrible earthquake, we weren't "technically" invading Haiti. (the comparison there being sending troops with the support of or at the request of the ruling government, not the humanitarian nature of Haiti versus the ISIS-crushing nature of Iraq) Can you own up to being wrong about Obama campaigning on pulling out of Afghanistan?

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 05:35 PM) Romney still paid significant total $'s in taxes, his amount was lower than most Americans more so because a lot of his income at his stage of his life was driven by capital gains than it necessarily being tied to W-2 / 1099 ordinary type income (this is going off memory, but I believe that was the case). Yes, his rate was somewhere around 15% IIRC. His income being capital gains wasn't because of his stage in life though, his income was always primarily that through Bain. edit: lots of people assume that he intentionally goosed his taxes to get his rate up to 15% for the one year he released so it didn't look quite as bad during his Presidential run.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 05:43 PM) More like you said something that was patently false, I asked you to substantiate and you changed the subject when it was pointed out. I pick my points on facts not on political preference. You would have called me out if I said "Bush prioritized healthcare more than Obama" (I don't believe that) so why can't I point out your fallacies on foreign affairs? Here's how it actually went: claufield called Obama non-interventionist I said "maybe compared to bush" but implied that he's not really non-interventionist farmteam asked if I was being serious by calling Obama's foreign policy "adventures" I replied no and gave a list of several of his foreign military interventions. You skipped those last two and asked that I substantiate it. It's not my fault you missed the clarifying posts or seem to think that I changed the subject. I really, truly do not care if you want to have a big huge argument on whether or not Obama is as interventionist as Bush or not because it'll basically just come down to "Obama didn't do an invasion like Iraq" and that'll be my stance. That's simply a subjective difference in opinion on how you can quantify or weigh who is "more interventionist," and it's not even relevant because I'm not a huge fan of Obama's (or Clinton's!) foreign policy 'adventures.' Now do you want to respond to the two hilarious basic factual errors in your own post?

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 04:31 PM) You said Obama was a non interventionist compared to Bush. I showed you all the countries that each bombed. Obama bombed more and started more conflicts. I am sure you'll say I'm "sniping" you or whatever but you made an unsubstantiated argument, I presented info and you can't dispute it so you just change the subject? You don't know what I'm referring to when I said you "snipe" at me, but mainly it's that you seem to take a personal affront to my posting and can't help but comment on my posting rather than the content of the posts. Constantly whining about my having said that is another example of it. Anyway, Barack Obama has done some s***ty things in continuing some of the worst parts of Bush's foreign policy and I haven't said otherwise. If you want to make another gigantic effortpost because you're really, really upset that I offhandidly said Obama is less interventionist than Bush for the reasons NSS laid out, feel free, but I don't think I'll be responding since you get very basic things 100% wrong like claiming Obama ran on getting troops out of Afghanistan. He didn't; he ran on "Iraq was a gigantic, insanely stupid mistake when we should've been focusing on Afghanistan all along." There's also a ridiculous whitewashing of how much the Bush White House primarily driven by Cheney drove and fabricated the case for the Iraq war, stoked fear, and spread propaganda in the media through people like Judith Miller.

Yeah, instead, Trump rarely donates money to his own foundation and hasn't donated anything since 2008, illegally solicits funds from others, and appears to have used the foundation as his own personal slush fund on many, many occasions. And even with taking that $1M deduction, the Clintons' effective tax rate is still 34-35% the last couple of years and historically is relatively high. http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinto...rate-1471017626 You can say that they're only doing this for political purposes, but they're still doing it.

I've got to bench Ryan against Denver in favor of Palmer against SF, right?

I've had a couple of cars with that and found it extremely annoying.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 03:46 PM) I get detesting the right wing spin on it but if you (not you personally) think HRC isn't claiming losses too you're mistaken. Everybody who's as wealthy as these two has an accountant who's going to legally evade taxes as best they can. This is an industry. When presidential candidates do it people go nuts because they're uninformed (not you personally). I am sure if anyone here uses an accountant and he/she said, "You can use X to get a write-off" nobody would say, "No, I'd rather pay my fair share." Taxes are incredibly steep on the wealthy and the appropriation of them by our government is embarrassing. Power to Trump and HRC for taking advantage of the law that's made to protect the private citizens. I don't care if Trump is super wealthy, or a scumbag or orange or whatever insult you can put next to him, he's still afforded the same rights as anyone else. The Clintons have several decades of tax returns publicly available, and their effective tax rates are in the 30%'s. Also LOL that "taxes are incredibly steep on the wealthy," get that nonsense out of the dem thread. You're talking about a man who's paid 0% for many years and who's a billionaire. You can look at Romney's tax returns from the 2012 race too. There's doing your due diligence and there's trying to find every single trick and loophole in the book. There's a reason that you can still follow the exact letter of the law but still be found in violation due to very clearly violating the spirit of the law.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 04:29 PM) Almost 1B in personal losses is a HUGE failure as a businessman. Its crazy stupid. The deeper people are able to dig the more you see he's a con-man. His father was a piece of s*** slum lord and Donald isnt far behind. And LOL at Wikileaks Lots (all?) of Trump's empire is organized as S-Corps, so profits and losses all flow through to the owner(s). If Trump Casino, S-Corp loses $10M in a given year, it's going to flow through to his personal returns. There are financial reasons to structure companies these ways but it'd been a while since I took 1 semester of business law and I'm sure Jason or any of the other financial guys could explain it way better.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 04:33 PM) Here's the other problem. Pay to Play indicates that Banks actually made money. But here's the thing people always seem to forget - the TARP funds were paid back by nearly every bank who received them, with interest/returns, to the government. The banks LOST money on TARP. The only banks who didn't pay it back are the ones that went out of business. So even if the chart is true - which I don't really believe (one article noted this was in a folder called "Pay to Play" which they would never have done) - it would be like saying they donated money in exchange for losing more money. "ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES FOLDER (DO NOT READ)" alternatively, the last time some "pay to play" fundraising email was posted, I googled around a bit and there's some sort of SEC term-of-art regarding financial advisers and working with government entities. This is something that needs to be tracked and reported by campaigns, so possibly it's related to this and completely innocuous. https://www.cov.com/files/Uploads/Documents...o_Play_Rule.pdf

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 04:05 PM) I am guessing that most of these shifts are indeed for political reasons, as you state. That is still a world better than a lunatic hatemonger at the button, in my eyes. Clinton most certainly will shift for the electorate, but she is also cold as ice and while I wouldn't want to have a beer with her, I think she can handle the pressures of the White House. Trump can't even handle the pressure of mean people tweeting things. She is supposedly a nice and warm person in smaller groups.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 02:11 PM) Obama took the most extreme aspects of the Bush foreign policy and pushed it forward. Bush bombed: Afghanistain, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya Obama bombed: Afghanistain, Iraq (started a new war there), Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. What's your basis for your argument? Didn't pull a mega-blunder like invading Iraq in the first place.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Oct 4, 2016 -> 01:29 PM) Exactly. Which also is related to the thing a lot of Trumpeters are missing here. It's not that what he did was "wrong", or whether or not it was smart, or whether or not it was course of business. It's that his approach is 100% non-repeatable in government. His entire success has rested on a combination of loans from his Dad, real estate market connections from his Dad, and a willingness to play every debt game that is legally possible. NONE of those things will help a President, and furthermore, NONE of them are related to any actual leadership skills. They are about what he was born into, combined with an all-in willingness to treat every other human being and everyone else's money as disposable. I've voted for more Republicans than Democrats for President. And I do not understand one bit how anyone could even consider voting for someone this unqualified, this hate-fueled and this bigoted for f***ing Dog Catcher, let alone President. I don't like Hillary Clinton, but even if you see her email server, shifting positions and snobbery in their worst possible light, she's still miles better than the orange jackwagon. Donald "King of Debt" Trump suggested exactly that sort of thing over the summer when he floated the idea of "renegotiating" outstanding US debts (American citizens are the single largest holder of US debt by far).

OTOH the single biggest annual gain shown in that same link you posted was...Fannie Mae in 2013.

more Trump Foundation fun from WaPo's David Fahrenthold

Daily Beast with a breakdown of Trump losing almost a billion dollars and dodging taxes Art of the Steal: This Is How Trump Lost $916M and Avoided Tax Oh and a couple of days ago, someone did a calc and found that Trump accounted for just shy of 2% of entire national Net Operating Loss all by himself.

New video footage of Assange's press conference from earlier today:

Some interesting info on why the heroin epidemic is hitting white people harder than black people: Old stereotype assumptions about "black people feel less physical pain" lead to fewer black people being prescribed pain killers which leads to lower rates of opioid addiction.

Mike Pence is an awful person. edit: Indiana posters, are you happy that Pence will no longer be your governor soon?

"KKK leader Robert Byrd" A good sign you're dealing with an idiot

10/4/16 Trump Scandal Count: 1 Trump Used Foundation Funds for 2016 Run, Filings Suggest lmao Trump's entire empire collapsing and his brand name becoming worthless is how this is all gonna end, isn't it?