The Many Faces of US Politics...

[muppet]

Joe Scarborough discussing with former Bush NSA Director Michael Hayden whether there are enough safeguards in place to stop a pissed off Trump launching nukes. Hayden says there aren't as the system is built for a quick response. He acknowledges Trump is far too erratic, but he still won't back Hillary!

Have such concerns ever been raised before about a presidential candidate?

trump has kids and grandkids of his own do u really think he would start a nuclear war ?

I didn't say it. Fellow Republicans are worrying out loud about it! Allegedly, Trump asked three times in some briefing why the US has nukes if they can't use them! Apparently doesn't get the whole deterrent thing!

He's talking about banning Muslims entering the U.S. if they can't be vetted properly
Stopping millions of illegal immigrants coming over the border from Mexico  and putting some pride back in the military which Obama has deballed and turned into a social experiment.

How has Obama deballed the military? What social experiment?

This whole Muslim thing arose over ISIS fighters from Syria posing as refugees. Do you how long it takes Muslim refugees from Syria to be vetted right now? Do you think the Obama administration is just letting these people stroll in through Terminal 4 in JFK?

Are you seriously supporting the idea of a 2000 mile wall along the Mexican border?

Why would he start a nuclear war ? And the media talk about trumps scaremongering .

The issue is Trump's temperament. All through his campaign, again and again and again, he has demonstrated that he doesn't have what it takes to be president. He is obsessed with every little thing that the press and the Clinton campaign and its surrogates and fellow Republicans say about him. Even today, when he was supposed to be focussing on Hillary, he just couldn't help himself and started on about all these perceived slights again, even going all the way back to the Megyn Kelly blood thing again, disingenuously saying he was referring to her nose. It's got to the point where you start to forget what last week's mess was all about, never mind a few months ago! And he really pissed off his fellow GOPers with his refusal to endorse Paul Ryan, instead using Ryan's exact words from a few months ago when he was hesitating on endorsing Trump. Talk about petty! Instead of brushing it off and moving on, he has to hit back each and every time. He looks like a complete narcissist who is apparently afraid that if he doesn't come down hard on each and every criticism, even if legitimate, that he will be seen as weak. Like some teenage bully. He's all balls and no thought or consideration.
You can't have a man as president who will spend all day, every day, obsessing on each and every thing being said about him and then launching twitter tirades (or worse, using the executive branch). We already had a, for the time, something similar, in Nixon, and look how that ended. You think Trump would put up with what Obama gets from the GOP and Fox News and right wing talk radio and internet? Or what Bush got from the Dems and the liberal press, once they found their balls after being compliant sheep in the run up to the Iraq war?

And that is the reason Joe Scarborough was discussing the nuke issue. I don't know if he is really fearful about nukes per se, but it and his temperament are legitimate questions for discussion given what we've seen, especially in the last week.

And all this is before you even begin to look at his policies and their lack of detail. Or the conspiracy theories... this week he's even claiming that the election may be stolen from him in November.

Allegedly Hillary is a lesbian and once had a former suitor
executed and is allegedly a crack addict.

Allegedly is a word people hide behind, moral cowards in other words.

Finally you admit it.

You have been bravely calling her strapon for months.

Regarding Hillary, no one other than homophobes give a crap about her sexuality and as for having people executed, no one other than nut jobs would believe that. Crack head? Do you know what the live of a crack head looks like?

Regarding Trump, his critics just repeat what comes out of his mouth, every week. It is hard to keep up with his lunacy.

[stew]

Hillary now 10 pts up on Trump... is there a decent chance the Dems could win back the house?

Yep, every chance, which is great you know now you will,have a liberal supreme court, America is ducked no matter what way you slice it.

[heganboy]

one of the issues that most people face when looking at the coverage of the US elections is that what they see is actually just that  - coverage. It is the media and their friends and colleagues talking about the race and what is happening. the more outrageous the coverage the more papers are sold, the more viewers for the show, the more page impressions and higher ad revenue.

To combat this and to look at facts I'm going to suggest you take a look at fivethirtyeight.com Nate Silver is regarded (yup- opinion again) as one of the best statisticians around. Take a look at his wikipedia page to see how successful he has been in the past. The short version is that in 2008 and 2012 he called the state race accurately in 49 out of 50 and then 50 out of 50.

The models he use has Hillary at the most likely win since polling started, at 91.6%
Silvers models are quantitative analytics and factor in a lot of external dependencies, but not news or opinion.
The site is treated as an academic paper and references are included so you can see where the data is being sourced.

At this point there is a one in 12 shot that Hilary will not be the first female president of the Unites States. with the only states in play really being Arizona and Georgia.

However the big question for the republicans at this point in the process is what to do about the Donald. To stew's point is he really a Republican? Can the candidates for election from the GOP take the calculated gamble to come out against him?

if Hilary wins the Dems need 4 more seats in the senate to own it (in a 50-50 vote the Vp casts the deciding vote) Can the GOP hold those seats?

There is an opinion piece here
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-may-start-dragging-gop-senate-candidates-down-with-him/
which looks at the polling data and suggests (again an opinion not a fact) that it will require a new pattern in american voting for the Republicans to hold on to many of these seats, which is ticket splitting. Usually in the US the voters pick the party of the presidential candidate they prefer and vote for that party the whole way down the ticket. if that pattern continues, the GOP could be in serious trouble.

[muppet]

However the big question for the republicans at this point in the process is what to do about the Donald. To stew's point is he really a Republican?

Whether or not he is a Republican, he isn't a politician and he isn't Presidential material. The rest of the world, Putin aside, is looking on in dismay that he could even be considered.

As for Hillary, her husband balanced the books and did a pretty good job. How bad is she going to be with him still in the background? Some of the criticisms of her are valid, but the bile from the usual suspects is way over the top. And it will win the election for her.

She is 100 times the candidate Trump is. And it is The Republicans fault for putting themselves in that position. There surely were better candidates than him in a country of 320m+? Bad as Dubya was, he just did what he was told. He could be managed. Trump won't listen to anyone.

[J70]

That's it?

You're upset over my use of the word "allegedly" to explain why members of Trump's own party were discussing his potential responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal?

At least I and they're acknowledging it's an allegation stew. You come on here all the time parroting right wing conspiracy theories about the Clintons, calling them murderers and so on.

The Republican party is not his party, he is not a Republican and you well know it.

It is a moot point, he is ten points behind in the latest poll, he has no chance and I would be delighted by that if it were practically anyone else but killory becoming President.

Give it up stew. Whatever he was in the past when he bought favours from both parties, he is the GOP nominee, and the logical conclusion to the path they have been on for decades i.e. using immigrants, minorities, gays, guns, supposed freeloaders etc. etc. to rile up working class and religious whites. The only difference is that Trump is not afraid to say all this shit out loud, and  has thrown in some economic populism too to seal the deal. The rich business/low tax/small government types are horrified, but Trump or someone like him was inevitable.

So you mentioned this inevitable trump esque figure when exactly???

I don't claim to have any foresight. But there is a clear line between GOP rhetoric and tactics over recent decades and the Trump candidacy. Maybe if someone like Trump hadn't come along this year, the resentments he is exploiting would have remained dormant or sidelined, but the GOP laid the groundwork for him to come in and ride the wave. To mix in yet another metaphor, the conditions were ripe, and that is their own doing.

[heganboy]

Do the GOP not fact check their candidates, surely this should have come up.
Difficult position to take to kick out all illegal immigrants, when you married one, well at least the third time around, I don't know the legal status of the other two, or even Melania's...

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/melania-trump-immigration-donald-226648

[muppet]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/08/01/trump_has_now_accused_two_fire_marshals_of_being_conspiring_against_him.html

Fighting with Firefighters now.

[J70]

Fat lot of good the intervention did! 

[stew]

Fat lot of good the intervention did! 

The man is a walking disaster area, a national embarrassment, as is Clinton.

Neither are fit to be President, she will win it going away because he seems to be doing his best to lose the thing anyway.

I consider Clinton an absolute horror show of a human being but even I have to concede four more years of Obama light in the white house is better than a nut job wannabee despot who knows f**k all about world affairs.

Obama is right about one thing, Trump is unfit to be POTUS but I hate the very thought of that arrogant nasty tr**p being President, I may as well get used to it because she has this thing done and dusted.

Cant believe I just wrote that!

[heganboy]

What if?

http://www.cracked.com/video_20056_what-if-donald-trump-just-elaborate-prank.html

[muppet]

[LeoMc]

I saw a good summary of the election on twitter.

If the election was about Clinton Trump would be President.
If the election was about Trump Clinton would be President.
Both Clinton & Trump want it to be about Trump.

[seafoid]

Trump has made a lot of good points about blue collar America. The problem is that  he has no tact.

[stew]

Trump has made a lot of good points about blue collar America. The problem is that  he has no tact.

If he had common sense and stopped insulting the parents of dead soldiers and war heroes he might have had a chance, he has struck a nerve and forever changed the GOP which is a good thing but he is a nightmare both foreign and domestic policy wise.

[LeoMc]

Trump has made a lot of good points about blue collar America. The problem is that  he has no tact.

If he had common sense and stopped insulting the parents of dead soldiers and war heroes he might have had a chance, he has struck a nerve and forever changed the GOP which is a good thing but he is a nightmare both foreign and domestic policy wise.

Like the Brexit vote in the UK he has tapped into a generation who have been ignored by politicians and who do not see a future for them (a decent job, an education for their kids) in their own Country.