When you need to rant...

[fuzzygobo]

Funny how the word "xenophobic" is on a lot of people's lips these days. It's like the Flavor of the Month. A short time ago most people couldn't tell you what it meant, let alone spell it. If it didn't apply to Trump, a good number of people probably would never have known such a word existed.

Same with "transparency". If Obama could create jobs and be " transparent " about it, people would be dancing in the streets.
Before, a transparent person was a shallow, superficial creep.

 

[Drtooth]

Everything else doesn't really hold water. I'm in a minority in that I'm a big Hillary supporter, but I can admit she definitely has flaws in how she comes off and a sometimes over-reliance on keeping things private and secret. No candidate is perfect, but it's not close this election season.

Someone has to say it. Electing Democrats won't get you a workers paradise, electing Republicans isn't going to magically make it the 1950's and everything that's scary will automatically disappear. The Dems are closer to what Republicans were like in the 60's and 70's, and the Republicans clearly just keeps moving further to the right, even if it winds up hurting them in the end. I've said for years I've tried to be middle and centrist, but when the country keeps moving right, center all the sudden becomes left and then far left. All the crap about Bernie being a "socialist" which even himself he said he was. He's what a Democrat should be like. Hillary is what a Republican should be like. Heck, Reagan and Nixon would be called commies by their own party if they were still around.

I totally get the feeling that part of the Republican strategy is if Drumph's going down, he's taking his opponents with him. And the fact that the right has been campaigning for 2016 since basically 2008 doesn't just say "we're desperate to get back into power so we can screw up the same way again," but I really feel they know that shoving both politicians in our faces non-stop is going to lead to more voter apathy, which is going to give them a win. These debates may be making Donald look bad (purely by virtues of him being the world's oldest man-baby), but they're also making Hillary look bad. Like how the oh so biggest controversy is that they didn't shake hands. It comes off as both of them are acting like children, instead of (ahem) one's a freaking bully!! And the overused joke about "we know where that hand has been." Drumph's supporters don't care about the hundreds of disqualifying and or dangerous aspects, but with Hillary it's like ehhhhh I don't know... She's not great, she's also the one that isn't a humorless, talentless spoiled rich daddy's boy who weasels out of . And yeah, for the sake of argument, yeah... 3 out of 4 of the last Republican candidates were spoiled daddy's boys, but even then Bush and Romney were respectful, mature, well adjusted (more or less) people. I didn't like them because of their positions (Romney for the crap job he did in my state, spending most of his time running for president), but I just can't think of them as terrible people anymore. People who lived in a rich person bubble, sure.

It's horrifying that we have one ..ehhhh...alright I guess, she won't screw things up too badly candidate and one absolutely horrible human being candidate. Horrifying that we have that and still that doesn't scare enough voters into throwing support at Hillary. Even after the sex offender allegations, there's still not a comfortable enough gap. And that's not so much because Hillary's picking up supporters as Donald's losing a small amount of his that were probably just going to vote for whatever Rep is put in front of them.

But HEY! At least with the laughing at rape talk, the guy who worked for the third hour of the Today Show got fired...by...the ...company that gave Drumph a TV show and audience so...justice?

 

[D'Snowth]

Before, a transparent person was a shallow, superficial creep.

Well, "hack" used to describe the act of cyber crime of somebody breaking into somebody else's computer system, stealing their personal information, corrupting the system, what have you . . . somehow, "hack" is now a positive thing that, I'm not entirely sure, I think means how to fix something.

 

[mr3urious]

Elon Musk is so full of it. He believes that it should be illegal for all humans to drive and that "you're killing people" if you're skeptical of self-driving cars. Well, call me a mass-murderer because I'm still skeptical as heck, especially of the ethical dilemmas that the technology will present. Not to mention, he wants you to pay out the tailpipe just to activate the features in his cars.

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/elon-musk-says-every-new-tesla-can-drive/

 

[D'Snowth]

If that's the case, sounds like somebody's got my vote.

 

[Drtooth]

Funny how the word "xenophobic" is on a lot of people's lips these days. It's like the Flavor of the Month. A short time ago most people couldn't tell you what it meant, let alone spell it. If it didn't apply to Trump, a good number of people probably would never have known such a word existed.

That's the thing that's creepy about all of all this. Xenophobia has always been a thing, but the extent of which was that unnerving soft spoken in private that sometimes rears its ugly head as wartime propaganda. There were always extremist racist idiots that buy into that whole "the reason your life sucks is because of everyone but you" thing that leads to "DEY DOOK ERRR JERRRBS!!!" and it's something that's not exclusive to the US. Problem is, we get a nice mix of both kinds, fear Mexicans are taking our great 5 cents a day fruit picking jobs and terrorists that are specifically from any religion but Christianity are lurking around every corner to specifically target your family. Boom. Drumph's platform. And again, not specifically an American problem, not specifically an at the moment problem. Brexit was passed by xenophobia, as in really dumb people thought that leaving the European Union meant all the immigrants looking for work and all the Muslims would magically vanish, only to find out they kinda needed the rest of Europe to keep their mutual economies together. And even that concept wasn't an all the sudden Torries thing. Greece had a rise of an actual Neo-Nazi party because of xenophobia. The thing is, while this was always a problem, the angriest and most fearful crawled out of the shadows, and poisoned the mainstream. Particularly through the internet. And when you find like minded people on the internet, the worst of them that believe insane things tend to turn the moderates into extremists.

Same with "transparency". If Obama could create jobs and be " transparent " about it, people would be dancing in the streets.
Before, a transparent person was a shallow, superficial creep.

Transparency is a wonderful thing the Dems promise that the Reps refuse to do...only to have the Reps call them hypocrites for ailing to deliver that promise 110%.

Elon Musk is so full of it. He believes that it should be illegal for all humans to drive and that "you're killing people" if you're skeptical of self-driving cars. Well, call me a mass-murderer because I'm still skeptical as heck, especially of the ethical dilemmas that the technology will present. Not to mention, he wants you to pay out the tailpipe just to activate the features in his cars.

I can see where he's coming from, but in the end, ugh. Not everyone is a texting, drunk driving, road rage fiend. Driving is dangerous, but everything is. The problem, I agree with, is technology. It's hard to trust anything that new. Look at those Samsung phones with crap batteries that were made cheaply and poorly to meet the demand of early adopters who ignored every freaking horror story of failures in operation of something that just came out. The world isn't ready for these kinds of cars, and once they do come out, they'll be too expensive for mainstream consumption. And if that's the case, they might be failures anyway, or worse, some company will make a cheaper, shoddier car prone to malfunction. Maybe in 20+ years this could be a thing, but for now, it's a worthy idea, but one that needs time and development to happen.

 

[mr3urious]

I can see where he's coming from, but in the end, ugh. Not everyone is a texting, drunk driving, road rage fiend. Driving is dangerous, but everything is. The problem, I agree with, is technology. It's hard to trust anything that new. Look at those Samsung phones with crap batteries that were made cheaply and poorly to meet the demand of early adopters who ignored every freaking horror story of failures in operation of something that just came out. The world isn't ready for these kinds of cars, and once they do come out, they'll be too expensive for mainstream consumption. And if that's the case, they might be failures anyway, or worse, some company will make a cheaper, shoddier car prone to malfunction. Maybe in 20+ years this could be a thing, but for now, it's a worthy idea, but one that needs time and development to happen.

I'm not against autonomy in certain situations, like falling asleep at the wheel during a cross-country road trip. But as a whole? Still no. And there's still bound to be tons of abuse of the system when it does become mainstream, like in the episode of The Simpsons where Homer becomes a truck driver and uses the autopilot device in his truck to drive for him even when he's wide-awake.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Same with any new technology, unfortunately it will get maligned and abused in ways the inventors never thought of.

With the advent of Facebook, some were optimistic that all that bullying that took place on MySpace will never happen again. Things will be different now.

How did that work out?

 

[cjd874]

I repeat. When one of the candidates is a xenophobic, womanizing, self aggrandizing, multiple bankrupt, flip flopping, Hitler playbook using, immature, internet troll, Russian puppet, spoiled daddy's boy who keeps threatening to censor the media if they dare say anything against him, there clearly is a greater of two evils.

There's a difference between how we got both candidates. Hillary only got to where she is because older Democrats felt really really bad that Hillary keeps losing the nomination and they totally think the American people are ready for her now. That is, despite the fact Bernie was polling in safe and sound territory against every Republican in the primaries, and the fact the GOP was sabotaging Hillary since they totally knew that's who the Democrats would have picked all the way back in 2012. Meanwhile, the Republican nominee got there because the dangerous vocal minority who are completely out of touch with reality really hated the fact Obama got elected, banded together, and pushed the more relatively sane candidates away until it was either far right Cruz who actually is a far right politician or "says anything to get crazy people to vote for him" Trump.

The nominees, in short, got here because of one candidate being in their well meaning, but lacking sense bubble, the other because of the kind of people that post horrible things on cat videos because that's the death knell of their relevance...

Think of it this way. You're not voting for Hillary, you're voting against Drumph...and an anti-vaxxing overly liberal schmuck that even Captain Planet would be nauseated by and a pot head that has no idea how government works or what other countries are. You've got all these dangerous extremist views gaining traction and becoming mainstream. Why wouldn't you want to prevent that? Oh yeah... the person running for president that isn't a poisonous, ill prepared, egotistical, fake billionaire deleted e-mails. Yeah. Exactly the same.

Totally agree with you. It's hard to fathom how people can even think Hillary and Donald are even on the same plane. Donald Trump has an encyclopedia-length collection of scandals ranging from the embarrassing to the criminal, while Hillary Clinton mishandled some emails and was cleared by the FBI in an eternity-long investigation. Everything else doesn't really hold water. I'm in a minority in that I'm a big Hillary supporter, but I can admit she definitely has flaws in how she comes off and a sometimes over-reliance on keeping things private and secret. No candidate is perfect, but it's not close this election season.

After reading all this, I want to acknowledge that I've clearly known all along who the lesser of two evils is. There is no excuse for the behavior that Trump has displayed. I've always believed that he thrives off of the attention that he's received for being a candidate, and his plans are half-baked at best. He loves publicity, even if it's for all the wrong reasons. He's treating this like a business-themed reality show (hmmm, does this sound familiar???).

While Hillary is not perfect (Benghazi, emails, yada yada yada), I know which one is better for our country. I still feel sad though...there were thousands of senators and politicians in our country who are probably way more qualified than Drumph to run for office. How on earth did he end up here? It stuns me, and not in a good way.

 

[charlietheowl]

While Hillary is not perfect (Benghazi, emails, yada yada yada), I know which one is better for our country. I still feel sad though...there were thousands of senators and politicians in our country who are probably way more qualified than Drumph to run for office. How on earth did he end up here? It stuns me, and not in a good way.

I think the fact that there was no clear-cut favorite for the Republicans at the beginning created a vacuum for him to take over. If it hadn't been 17 people, and just Rubio/Kasich/Cruz against Trump, the primary votes wouldn't have been split and the big money donor backing would have found its way to one candidate, which then would have dug up some of the stuff that's bothering Trump now. But since there was such a large crowd, it was tough to stand out, and the loudest guy got the attention.