Trump to win?

[lektrode]

Re: Trump to win?

just seen elsewhere:

FBI Director Comey is a board member of Clinton Foundation connected bank HSBC.
It seems that our beloved FBI Director is or until very recently was a director and board member of HSBC, which is tightly connected to the Clinton Foundation. Check out some of these links:
http://www.hsbc.com/news-and-insight...ins-hsbc-board
“Mr. Comey’s appointment will be for an initial three-year term which, subject to re-election by shareholders, will expire at the conclusion of the 2016 Annual General Meeting.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...sbc-swiss-bank
“Clinton foundation received up to $81m from clients of controversial HSBC bank”
https://www.clintonfoundation.org/search/node/HSBC
It’s like a revolving door of money and special projects that the bank and the CF are involved in.
This is the same HSBC that was accused of laundering drug cartel money, was heavily involved in the LIBOR scandal, and who knows what else, and all while our esteemed FBI Director James “she didn’t intend it” Comey was part of the senior leadership.
http://investmentwatchblog.com/fbi-d...ted-bank-hsbc/

does anybody still believe that comey's farcical so-called decision on hitlery is/was 'impartial/apolitical' ? (and/or that he was appointed by the admin for the same reasons holder&co were)

and what do we hear from the LAMERSTREAM MEDIA ON ANY OF THIS?

[vt]

Re: Trump to win?

Shiny, who should Trump had picked?

Do you think Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia would be a good VP pick for Clinton?

Anyone elses opinions on best VP picks for both parties?

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Trump to win?

just seen elsewhere:

FBI Director Comey is a board member of...HSBC

Wow. I didn't know that and that's really quite shocking. The director of the FBI being on the board of directors of a criminal institution engaged in money laundering for drug cartels.

I can't believe no one in government saw this as a conflict of interest and either compelled Comey to give up his board seat at HSBC or resign from the FBI.

If Al Capone were alive today, he could learn a few things. For starters, put Elliot Ness on the board of directors of Capone's business interests.

[shiny!]

Re: Trump to win?

Shiny, who should Trump had picked?

Sanders if he could have gotten him. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Anyone from the center. Anyone not a corporate interest protecting, TPP loving, hard religious right social conservative.

Trump surprised everyone by succeeding as well as he has while refusing to go along with the Republican party establishment. He's succeeded precisely because he refused to go along with the Republican establishment. He brought in an enormous number of new voters that don't identify as hard-right, but were voting for an anti-politician with a populist and nationalist message.

The Republican party should have supported this sea change instead of fighting it.

Trump should have supported the movement that he and Sanders began.

In choosing Pense he's done a 180. It's a purely political move. For a candidate who says, "Vote for me because I'm not a politician," he just lost all credibility among people who wanted an anti-politician.

If he wins, does anyone think that Pense will bring him the co-operation he'll need from both parties in congress?

This is just my opinion and worth exactly what you paid for it.

[shiny!]

Re: Trump to win?

Wow. I didn't know that and that's really quite shocking. The director of the FBI being on the board of directors of a criminal institution engaged in money laundering for drug cartels.

I can't believe no one in government saw this as a conflict of interest and either compelled Comey to give up his board seat at HSBC or resign from the FBI.

If Al Capone were alive today, he could learn a few things. For starters, put Elliot Ness on the board of directors of Capone's business interests.

It's disgusting. I'm sure Martin Armstrong's not surprised.

[shiny!]

Scott Adams on the Pence Pick

Scott Adams thinks Pence was the right choice from a persuasion standpoint.
Excerpt from...

On Gingrich, Pense and Monitoring Mosques:

... You might be wondering what I think of Trump’s decision to pick Mike Pence for VP, given that Pence has disagreed with Trump on substantive policy issues in the past.


First of all, policies don’t matter in this election, or in any other election. Reason is mostly an illusion. And anyway, Pence will modify his positions to match Trump. No one cares.


Secondly, political experts say making a good choice for a VP running mate can’t help a candidate much, but a bad choice can hurt. Pence doesn’t do much to help, but he also doesn’t do much to hurt. So he’s a safe choice on that dimension. And he has plenty of government experience, as Trump says he needs. So Pence helps solve for Trump’s lack of experience. But those effects are all marginal.


What matters with Pence is how he looks in terms of contrast with Trump. The best choice for VP is someone who looks like a boring, washed-out version of the top of the ticket. You need that contrast to remind people that the top of the ticket is truly special.


Pence is an experienced politician. But you stand him next to Trump and he sort of disappears. The contrast persuades you – subconsciously – that Trump is better than an experienced politician. That’s totally irrational, and totally effective.


What’s Clinton’s biggest strength? Experience. How does Trump compare to the experienced politician on his own ticket? Better, at least in the public’s irrational way of thinking. So if Clinton and Pence are both experienced, and you prefer Trump over Pence, you somewhat automatically extend that thinking to Clinton – with all of her boring experience – and imagine her to be a weak version of Trump as well.


Replace Trump and Pence with Reagan and Bush-the-elder to see how well this contrast-based persuasion works.
And think of Obama picking Biden. It’s all the same persuasion trick. You want the VP to be the solid, uninteresting version of whoever is at the top of the ticket.


Now imagine if Trump had picked Gingrich for his VP running mate. Gingrich would make Trump look less experienced, less informed, and less intelligent by contrast. That’s a bad formula for winning. Gingrich is simply too interesting.


And after Gingrich came out in favor of testing Muslims for loyalty to Sharia law, he became the worst possible choice for Trump’s running mate. Trump is trying to move to the middle for the general election. Gingrich is running hard in the opposite direction. If Gingrich is not on the ticket, his radical-sounding ideas create an anchor that actually makes Trump look moderate by comparison. But if Gingrich had been a running mate, it would make a Trump presidency look scarier than it already is. And fear is Clinton’s best weapon against Trump. So no matter what Trump planned a week ago, Gingrich took himself out of the running with his recent comments about testing Muslims. Still, I expect Gingrich to be part of a Trump administration somehow.


No matter what you think of Pence, he was the right choice on the dimension of persuasion. And that’s the only dimension that will matter here. Trump just needs to stay boring until November to win. Pence can do that. Gingrich probably could not.

[jk]

Re: Scott Adams on the Pence Pick

the same reasoning has convinced me from the beginning that clinton would not choose warren. too many people would say the ticket was upside down.

[vt]

Re: Scott Adams on the Pence Pick

As boring as Hillary is it's difficult to find someone who will not overshadow her, but here's a possibility:




But we'll get "Mr. eyebrow" instead:

[shiny!]

Re: Trump to win?

Wow. I didn't know that and that's really quite shocking. The director of the FBI being on the board of directors of a criminal institution engaged in money laundering for drug cartels.

I can't believe no one in government saw this as a conflict of interest and either compelled Comey to give up his board seat at HSBC or resign from the FBI.

If Al Capone were alive today, he could learn a few things. For starters, put Elliot Ness on the board of directors of Capone's business interests.

Here's a link to HSBC's original announcement of Comey's appointment to the Board of Directors:
http://www.hsbc.com/news-and-insight...ins-hsbc-board

Lo and Behold! That page has been taken down. Doing a search for "Comey" on the site returns zero results. But here's a snapshot of the original announcement, courtesy of the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160712...ins-hsbc-board

[Milton Kuo]

Re: Trump to win?

Here's a link to HSBC's original announcement of Comey's appointment to the Board of Directors:
http://www.hsbc.com/news-and-insight...ins-hsbc-board

Lo and Behold! That page has been taken down. Doing a search for "Comey" on the site returns zero results. But here's a snapshot of the original announcement, courtesy of the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160712...ins-hsbc-board

According to the Wayback Machine, he is a "non-executive Director and a member of the Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee" appointed March 4, 2013. If HSBC wanted to ensure that they were not a threat to the global economy, it seems suspicious they couldn't have a government regulator appointed to keep close tabs on them rather than a person on the company payroll.

And from Wikipedia, Comey's appointment to be Director of the FBI was confirmed by the Senate on July 29, 2013 after being nominated by Obama in June of that year.

It was clearly obvious that there was a conflict of interest when Obama nominated Comey for the FBI directorship.

Obama has really done a poor job as president and has screwed just about everybody in the U.S., both his supporters and his critics. And there's no point in even talking about Congress but at least they didn't run on a platform of "Hope" and "Change you can believe in."

[santafe2]

Re: Trump to win?

File this one under sf2 is totally confused by any American who would support Trump and the Republicans. They have officially said they want to shed all public lands including national parks.

“Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to the states,” reads the adopted language. “We call upon all national and state leaders and representatives to exert their utmost power and influence to urge the transfer of those lands identified.”

I can't imagine hating our government enough to vote for a party that wants to turn the Grand Canyon over to Arizona so they can wholesale the land to energy companies and developers. If you think I'm expanding the intent of this platform, they've gotten very specific about a state's right to "approve" any federal government mandate.

To say the two parties are the same offers up the worst soft of unthinking false equivalence.

[BK]

Re: Trump to win?

Amazing that you believe that Trump is focused on selling off the Grand Canyon and Bryce.

Stop reading Democratic talking points. see https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q...%80%9D&start=0

This is what National party do they play up an emotional issue to raise hate of the other party. Its a great technique and it works.

[Woodsman]

Re: Trump to win?

File this one under sf2 is totally confused...To say the two parties are the same offers up the worst soft of unthinking false equivalence.

No, the GOP platform does not in any way call for the U.S. government to cede control over all national parks and national forests and return ownership of them to the states. There's also no groundswell of support for that among the GOP base, no constituency for it in the lobbies and NGOs, and there's no way it gets any meaningful support in congress from either the GOP or the Democrats.

We know you are confused, bubba. The two parties are neither the same nor equally culpable but denying the equivalences for the sake of short term partisan advantage is a thoughtlessness equally as soft and malignant as any false equivalence I've seen here.

Me, I think they're the same where it matters most. I think the remarkable continuity between the Bush Administration and the Obama administration on the wars, the torture, the surveillance, and the banks would have convinced all but the most hard-core partisans of that plain truth. And after witnessing 8 years of the many hypocrisies in Obama’s talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, if we look at what comes out of the mouth of The Barack is there any reason to castigate The Donald or expect Hillary will be a departure from the status quo?

Is the GOP really all that different from the Democrats when it comes to the meaningful stuff of who gets what, who gets whacked, and who gets wise? Compare and contrast the actions of the last Republican president to this latest Democrat:

— On numerous occasions, in reply to a question about why his administration has not prosecuted the Bush-Cheney gang for mass murder, torture and other war crimes, former law professor Obama has stated: “I prefer to look forward rather than backwards.” Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found innocent of any crime on such grounds. On other occasions, Obama, without apparent embarrassment, has stated that “nobody is above the law”. (A public figure can be labeled stupid not just for saying or doing stupid things, but for not even realizing that the public will SEE his words or actions as stupid.)

— Asked whether he would apologize for Washington’s role in Chile’s 1973 military coup which overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced it with a dictatorship, Obama replied: “I’m interested in going forward, not looking backward. I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world.” (June 23, 2009)

— Question from CNN, 2008: “Do you think the US should apologize for any mistakes that it has made in the past?” Obama’s reply: “I don’t think the US should ever apologize for anything.”

— Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24, 2014 where he classified Russia to be one of the three great threats to the world along with the Islamic State and the ebola virus.

— Obama’s declaration that ISIS “has nothing to do with Islam”. This is standard political correctness which ignores the indisputable role played by Islam in inspiring Orlando and Paris and Ankara and many other massacres.

— After Turkey’ intentional shoot-down of a Russian warplane along the Turkish-Syrian border, instead of rebuking Turkey, a NATO member, for its absolutely reckless behavior –- or expressing sympathy to the Russians -– Obama asserted that “Turkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and its airspace.”(November 24, 2015) Turkey later apologized to Russia, but Obama didn’t.

— In September 2013 Obama stood before the United Nations and declared: “I believe America is exceptional.”

— On March 9, 2015 Obama declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.

— Obama spoke of “the principle that no country has the right to send in troops to another country unprovoked” (March 3, 2014) (Do our leaders have no memory or do they think we’ve all lost ours?)

— “I’m good at killing.” (Just imagine Trump saying this.) Obama has claimed the power to murder anyone anywhere by drone. Nixon had an enemies list, but this drone king has a personal kill list. Obama’s use of drones against jihadist leaders, and anyone else who happens to be too close, has essentially rescinded the leading principle that was established in the Magna Carta 800 years ago — the presumption of innocence.

— Imagine also The Donald joking — as Obama did — about using a drone on his daughters’ boyfriends: “They’ll never know what hit them.”

— Obama, State of the Union speech, 2012: “This generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world.”

— On May 28, 2012 the president declared that Vietnam was “one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of [US] military history”.

— After taking over the White House in 2009, Obama called Afghanistan the “good war”

— Obama, explaining the US/NATO devastation of Libya in 2011, turning it from Africa’s highest standard of living into a desperate failed state, based on made-up reports about Ghaddafi carrying out atrocities: “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.” (March 28, 2011)

— Said Obama: A US refusal to intervene in Libya would be “a betrayal of who we are.” (How true.)

— In March 2011, as the US/NATO bombardment of the people of Libya continued, day after day, the White House insisted that it was “a limited humanitarian intervention, not war.”

— “All the forces that we’re seeing at work in Egypt are forces that naturally should be aligned with us, should be aligned with Israel — if we make good decisions now and we understand sort of the sweep of history.”(March 4, 2011) Egypt quickly became a brutal dictatorship.

— State of the Union address, 2011: “And we’ve sent a message … to all parts of the globe: we will not relent, we will not waver, and we will defeat you.”

— Obama: “I’m not somebody who discounts the sincerity and worthiness of President Bush’s concerns about democracy and human rights.” (Washington Post, January 19, 2009)

— Obama: “President Bush was right that Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat [to Europe and the US].” (September 30, 2009)

“I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis.” (Obama, Washington Post, August 17, 2008)

— June 22, 2009: Obama says America is “fully prepared” for any action by North Korea. (Thank god; after the nuclear attacks by China and Russia it was great to not have to worry about North Korea. But there was still Iran.)

— Obama, speaking about Russia, July 7: “In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries. The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over.”

— During a visit to Baghdad April 7, 2009, Obama praised the US military for their “extraordinary achievement” in Iraq.

— Obama: “To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet.” (December 1, 2008)

— Speaking to a joint session of Congress: “I can stand here and say without exception or equivocation that the United States does not torture.” (Washington Post, February 24, 2009)

— “There is no spying on Americans. We don’t have a domestic spying program.” (Obama on The Tonight Show, August 7, 2013)

— Just 18 days before the disastrous Gulf oil spill in 2010 Obama said: “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.” (Washington Post, May 27, 2010)

— Obama’s pep talk December 2010 to US troops in Afghanistan in which he lauded them as “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known”. (George W. Bush: the US military is “the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world” and “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.”) Try and top those lines, Donald.

— As a presidential candidate in 2008 Obama lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [who] must be protected from reprisal.” In 2012, the campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama boasted on its website that he had prosecuted more whistleblowers in his first term than all other US presidents combined.

— Obama’s claim that the U.S. has been “For nearly seven decades the anchor of global security”. (September 10, 2013)

— “Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it’s an act of terror.” (April 16, 2013); “I was elected to end wars, not start them. I’ve spent the last 4 1/2 years doing everything I can to reduce our reliance on military power as a means of meeting our international obligations and protecting the American people.” (September 6, 2013); “The bottom line is, nothing of significance, nothing of benefit results from destructive acts.” (November 25, 2014)

Thus spoke the man who carried out military attacks against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Yemen, and Syria.

— Obama (CBS News, February 13, 2013): “I urge this Congress to come up with a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change.”

— In his book “The Audacity of Hope” Obama wrote: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

We've seen this remarkable continuity with Bush across the length of the Obama administration and you have the chutzpah to accuse your opponents of soft thinking and false equivalence? With so much history contradicting your claim? One need only go back to the 2007 presidential primary when America’s venerable conservative magazine, William Buckley’s National Review, ran an editorial by Bruce Bartlett, a policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, and a fellow at two of the leading conservative think-tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute (you get the picture?) telling his readers that it’s almost certain that the Democrats will win the White House in 2008. So what to do? Support the most conservative Democrat. He writes: “To right-wingers willing to look beneath what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative.” During the same primary we also heard from America’s leading magazine for the corporate wealthy, Fortune, with a cover featuring a picture of Mrs. Clinton and the headline: “Business Loves Hillary”.

And what do we have in 2016? Fully 116 members of the Republican Party’s national security community, many of them veterans of Bush administrations, have signed an open letter threatening that, if Trump is nominated, they will all desert, and some will defect – to Hillary Clinton! “Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin,” says Eliot Cohen of the Bush II State Department. Cohen helped line up neocons to sign the “Dump-Trump” manifesto. Another signer, foreign-policy ultra-conservative author Robert Kagan, declared: “The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.”

And what’s wrong with Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, you ask? Not conservative enough. Not like Hillary.

[jk]

Re: Trump to win?

in terms of who gets greased, who gets real power, there's no difference.
i think may be a difference in foreign policy, if trump is - as he has said - less interventionist, less imperial and more nationalistic. frankly, i lean towards trump on that.
clinton is more likely to support voting rights [for obvious reasons]. she's probably slightly more supportive of freedom of speech, somewhat less likely to sue or imprison journalists who stir something up.
and as much as i abhore abortions, i think they should be legal and i think there is a difference in the answer to the question: how many abortion clinics will exist in texas?
i also am disturbed by a candidate saying "in the good old days, someone like that [a protester] would get beat up." i don't see such statements as promoting the better angels of our nature.

[vt]

Re: Trump to win?

Clinton Nightmare: Republican Platform Reinstates Glass-Steagall


by Chriss W. Street19 Jul 2016Newport Beach, CA63
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Donald Trump is using his Art of the Deal to attack Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street fundraising spigot by promising to reinstate the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that her husband, President Bill Clinton, repealed in the waning days of his Administration.

The demand to repeal Glass-Steagall is also a page taken from Hillary’s primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and offers an opportunity to hit her from the left as well as the right.

According to a report by The Hill, Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort told reporters in Cleveland on the first day of the Republican National Convention that the GOP Platform would include language calling for “a reintroduction of Glass-Steagall, which created barriers between what big banks can do.”
Video: Clinton says Obama should listen to Democratic leader on trade

And, indeed, the final platform — passed by the convention on Monday — did (emphasis added):

The Dodd-Frank law, the Democrats’ legislative Godzilla, is crushing small and community banks and other lenders. The Federal Communications Commission is imperiling the freedom of the internet. We support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prohibits commercial banks from engaging in high-risk investment.

The former Secretary of State has never had a morally dilemma about being politically “flexible” regarding what she advocates or opposes. Once for the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Hillary triangulated away to oppose the both measures that she had helped negotiate. To buy love from her liberal nemesis, Sanders, she flipped to support his 1) free in-state public college tuition; 2) $15 minimum wage; and 3) “Medicare for all.”

Although Clinton talks tough — “I have what I consider to be a more comprehensive approach to what we need to do to rein in these institutions, including the big banks” — she set a firewall against re-instating Glass-Steagall’s prohibitions, which would destroy big banks’ incredibly lucrative securities and derivatives trading rights.

Ever since her husband’s repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, Wall Street has been shown leadership in fundraising for Hillary Clinton. Citicorp was number one, and Goldman Sachs was the number four contributor to Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign. Six years later, Citicorp and Goldman Sachs were again the top two contributors to Hillary’s 2006 reelection campaign. Furthermore, six of the top ten organizations that gave to her campaigns and leadership PAC between 2001 and 2006 were from Wall Street banks, investment firms, and insurance companies.

Clinton’s strong ties with Wall Street were evident in her first run for the presidency in 2008. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers led a gaggle of banks and their lawyers as Clinton’s third-largest source of campaign cash.

Accounting for nine of Mrs. Clinton’s top 20 donor organizations, financial service industry contributions were far ahead of the cash Clinton has raked in from traditional liberal donors tied to public education and women’s issues.

After Clinton lost, Goldman Sachs was Obama’s second-largest contributor, and 8 of his top 20 largest contributors that helped the junior senator from Illinois raise a record $745 million were Wall Street banks and law firms.

Number 8 in Donald Trump’s “11 winning negotiation tactics” of The Art of the Deal is “when people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard.”

Expecting the Clintons and their surrogates to come at him very hard, Trump is putting the re-instatement of Glass-Steagall in the Republican platform as a direct attack on Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street fundraising.

Now, every time Hillary Clinton receives a another contribution from any entity or employee of a Wall Street bank, Trump will be able to attack her on the right and the left for selling out main street citizens to Wall Street interests.
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2016 Presidential Race, Big Government, Breitbart California, Art of the Deal, Glass–Steagall, Goldman Sachs, Hillary Clinton, triangulate, wall street