2016 POTUS Election Thread

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VA Cowboy

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This Clinton Foundation stuff sounds bad and it is definitely a full display of how Bill and Hillary will skirt the line to get what they want.

The thing is that they have been vilified so much I think these things are largely met with a shrug be the general public and it is just looked at like politics as usual by most.

Add in the fact that there is no proof of either getting actual money from the foundation and it's hard to connect the dots.

I will say Hillary is most likely a 1 term president unless the Republicans go completely off the rails because there is no way, she gets away with this stuff against a competent candidate.
Probably two terms. Nothing sticks to the Clintons, especially when much of the media turns into Dem advocates rather than reporters each election cycle. Not to mention the shift in the demographics of the country now. The Dems have a stranglehold on the votes of African Americans, Hispanic, single women and the young. Many of them are 1-2 issue voters, economy/taxes, abortion or gay marriage. Romney was basically right, the Dems start out with at least 47% support and just need 3-4% more to get over the top. And with Hillary specifically, there's been so many scandals/controversies I think a majority just tunes it out now.
 

VA Cowboy

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An open letter to Mylan CEO, Heather Bresch

In light of recent news regarding EpiPens, I would like to give you an opportunity to justify your pay increase from $2,453,456 in 2007, to $18,931,068 in 2015. In that time, the wholesale cost of an epipen has gone from $56.64 to $317.82. By the way, the cost of a 1 ml amp of epinephrine is $4.49. So, I give you the opportunity to justify the increase in the cost of an epipen, as well as the increase in your salary...
Hillary feigns outrage, but everything about this has Democrat fingerprints on it.

Just like earlier this year with Martin Shkreli and Daraprim, the Internet is full of outrage the past few days over the action of Mylan CEO Heather Bresch to raise the price of the live-saving drug EpiPen to $500 per unit. And as always happens, politicians are getting into the act, particularly Hillary Clinton, who raged that Mylan must reduce the price immediately - as if pharamaceutical companies check with candidates for political office in setting their pricing.

But if Hillary really wants to manifest her rage - as if it were anything but calculated for her own benefit - she should turn it inward toward herself and the Democratic Party. Because everything about this can be traced back to Democrats.

Let's start with the fact that Bresch is the daughter of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). That makes it a little awkward for the denizens of Washington to haul her in front of congressional committees for a grilling on her greed, you think? But the truly uncomfortable truth for Democrats is that the EpiPen price spike is not so much the product of "greed" as it is the product of one company having a monopoly. And that the direct result of the Democrat-controlled Food and Drug Administration's persistent refusal to allow anyone to compete with Mylan in the sale of EpiPen, as the Wall Street Journal explains:

Thus EpiPen should be open to generic competition, which cuts prices dramatically for most other old medicines. Competitors have been trying for years to challenge Mylan’s EpiPen franchise with low-cost alternatives—only to become entangled in the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory afflatus.

Approving a generic copy that is biologically equivalent to a branded drug is simple, but the FDA maintains no clear and consistent principles for generic drug-delivery devices like auto injectors or asthma inhalers. How does a company prove that a generic device is the same as the original product if there are notional differences, even if the differences don’t matter to the end result? In this case, that means immediately injecting a kid in anaphylactic shock with epinephrine—which is not complex medical engineering.

But no company has been able to do so to the FDA’s satisfaction. Last year Sanofi withdrew an EpiPen rival called Auvi-Q that was introduced in 2013, after merely 26 cases in which the device malfunctioned and delivered an inaccurate dose. Though the recall was voluntary and the FDA process is not transparent, such extraordinary actions are never done without agency involvement. This suggests a regulatory motive other than patient safety.

Then in February the FDA rejected Teva’s generic EpiPen application. In June the FDA required a San Diego-based company called Adamis to expand patient trials and reliability studies for still another auto-injector rival.

The FDA pulls crap like this all the time. This is the exact same reason Turin was able to gain a monopoly and hike the price of Daraprim, and now we're seeing it again with Mylan and EpiPen. Pharmaceutical companies know that they can charge prices like this because most patients are covered by insurance and the insurers will grumble and pay the bills.

And that, by the way, is another reason you can tie this to Democrats. They're the ones who hate the idea of patients self-paying for medical care, and want to make everyone dependent on third-party payers heavily regulated by the government. This is what you get when third-parties pay for everything. You get prices up the wazoo because drugmakers know they can avoid competition, and the deep-pocketed insurers will pay the bills and then pass the costs onto policyholders in the form of higher premiums.

If the occasional family gets screwed because it has no drug coverage but needs the drug anyway, too damn bad. That's how Washington Democrats designed the system, and the now-collapsing model of ObamaCare doubled down on it to the enth degree. This is the result.

Basic competion would make monopoly price spikes like this impossible. But as it stands, Democrat regulators prevent competition and grease the skids for Democrat CEOs to jack prices, only to become the target of fake outrage by a Democrat presidential nominee who I guarantee you will keep this system alive and well if she becomes president.

If voters only knew why these things really happen, they would make very different choices in the voting booth. But they don't, so they don't.

http://www.caintv.com/epipen-price-spike-daughter-of
 

townsend

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Probably two terms. Nothing sticks to the Clintons, especially when much of the media turns into Dem advocates rather than reporters each election cycle. Not to mention the shift in the demographics of the country now. The Dems have a stranglehold on the votes of African Americans, Hispanic, single women and the young. Many of them are 1-2 issue voters, economy/taxes, abortion or gay marriage. Romney was basically right, the Dems start out with at least 47% support and just need 3-4% more to get over the top. And with Hillary specifically, there's been so many scandals/controversies I think a majority just tunes it out now.
I wouldn't disagree with any of that. Clinton's controversies all kind of blend together, even if it's new you feel like you've heard it before.

As you've said Democrats have the demographics pretty well wrapped up too, Republicans have done themselves no favors though. The Trump nomination has certainly lost them several neutral demographics like incuding Hispanics, almost all female demographics, and college educated men. They needed someone to make their tent larger, and then they kicked out moderates, conservatives, and any shaky support they barely had from minorities instead.
 

VA Cowboy

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I wouldn't disagree with any of that. Clinton's controversies all kind of blend together, even if it's new you feel like you've heard it before.

As you've said Democrats have the demographics pretty well wrapped up too, Republicans have done themselves no favors though. The Trump nomination has certainly lost them several neutral demographics like incuding Hispanics, almost all female demographics, and college educated men. They needed someone to make their tent larger, and then they kicked out moderates, conservatives, and any shaky support they barely had from minorities instead.
Yep. And to top it off there are the NeverTrump Republicans, establishment GOP and conservatives, who won't vote for him. GOP was going to have this problem this year no matter who won the nomination. If an establishment candidate won many Trump supporters and conservatives would've sat out or voted 3rd party, whereas Dems almost always rally behind their nominee.
 

Jiggyfly

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I wouldn't disagree with any of that. Clinton's controversies all kind of blend together, even if it's new you feel like you've heard it before.

As you've said Democrats have the demographics pretty well wrapped up too, Republicans have done themselves no favors though. The Trump nomination has certainly lost them several neutral demographics like incuding Hispanics, almost all female demographics, and college educated men. They needed someone to make their tent larger, and then they kicked out moderates, conservatives, and any shaky support they barely had from minorities instead.
I could see Hillary being challenged and pushed out by another Democrat somebody like Warren.

Especially if she has the cloud of scandal continually over her throughout her term.
 

VA Cowboy

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I could see Hillary being challenged and pushed out by another Democrat somebody like Warren.

Especially if she has the cloud of scandal continually over her throughout her term.
I doubt it. The last sitting President in the last 35 years that didn't win a 2nd term was Bush Sr.. And that was when the economy tanked and Clinton was very charismatic and ran a masterful campaign. And I can't recall the last time a sitting President didn't when their partys nomination for a 2nd term.

* I just looked it up. Only happened once, Franklin Pierce in 1856.
 

townsend

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I doubt it. The last sitting President in the last 35 years that didn't win a 2nd term was Bush Sr.. And that was when the economy tanked and Clinton was very charismatic and ran a masterful campaign. And I can't recall the last time a sitting President didn't when their partys nomination for a 2nd term.

* I just looked it up. Only happened once, Franklin Pierce in 1856.
Yeah I sincerely doubt the Clintons could get ousted from their own party. They more or less engineered a primary for Hillary to run unopposed, now picture that level of influence increased by orders of magnitude after Hillary is a sitting president.
 

NoDak

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If the Dems tried to oust Clinton, the body count would be astronomical.
 

Jiggyfly

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Yeah I sincerely doubt the Clintons could get ousted from their own party. They more or less engineered a primary for Hillary to run unopposed, now picture that level of influence increased by orders of magnitude after Hillary is a sitting president.
I think all of this email stuff and the Clinton foundation stuff has turned off a lot of people in her very own party.

Add in the fact that there is a sea change going on with the number of younger people getting involved in the political process and I see an opening for someone who can harness that Bernie enthusiasm while maintaining a veneer of practicality.

I think Warren could do that, I don't think the Hillary would engender that kind of support if pushed by the right democratic candidate especially if some republican like Ryan is running way ahead in the polls.
 

townsend

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Anyone who legitimately believes the Clintons had people killed are idiots. Why in the fuck would Linda Tripp, or Monica or Ken Starr still be alive. All these body count lists are mindless practices in confirmation bias.
 

2233boys

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I doubt it. The last sitting President in the last 35 years that didn't win a 2nd term was Bush Sr.. And that was when the economy tanked and Clinton was very charismatic and ran a masterful campaign. And I can't recall the last time a sitting President didn't when their partys nomination for a 2nd term.

* I just looked it up. Only happened once, Franklin Pierce in 1856.
LBJ didn't win his nomination for the second term, of course he dropped out early. I suppose you meant going all the way to the convention.

Clinton will have a primary challenger when she runs again in 2020
 

BipolarFuk

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LBJ didn't win his nomination for the second term, of course he dropped out early. I suppose you meant going all the way to the convention.

Clinton will have a primary challenger when she runs again in 2020
Doubtful, unless she's a complete disaster and has no hope of being reelected.
 

Jiggyfly

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Latinos for Trump founder warns of ‘taco trucks on every corner’ if Trump’s not elected

BY
CHRIS SOMMERFELDT

Updated: Friday, September 2, 2016, 4:54 AM
A lot of Americans would definitely not have a problem with this.

In a bizarre diatribe on his own culture, a founder of the Latinos for Trump group said Thursday on MSNBC's "All in With Chris Hayes" that there would be "taco trucks on every corner" if Donald Trump loses this November.

"My culture is a very dominant culture," Mexican-born Marco Gutierrez told Joy Reid, who was guest-hosting the show. "It is imposing and it's causing problems. If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner."


Reid appeared baffled by Gutierrez' anti-culinary sentiment, saying, "I don't even know what that means" before asking Dominican-born New York State Sen. Adriano Espaillat to chime in.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto defends
 

townsend

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Latinos for Trump founder warns of ‘taco trucks on every corner’ if Trump’s not elected

BY
CHRIS SOMMERFELDT

Updated: Friday, September 2, 2016, 4:54 AM
A lot of Americans would definitely not have a problem with this.

In a bizarre diatribe on his own culture, a founder of the Latinos for Trump group said Thursday on MSNBC's "All in With Chris Hayes" that there would be "taco trucks on every corner" if Donald Trump loses this November.

"My culture is a very dominant culture," Mexican-born Marco Gutierrez told Joy Reid, who was guest-hosting the show. "It is imposing and it's causing problems. If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner."


Reid appeared baffled by Gutierrez' anti-culinary sentiment, saying, "I don't even know what that means" before asking Dominican-born New York State Sen. Adriano Espaillat to chime in.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto defends
Even if I was undecided this would get Hillary my vote. Taco trucks on every corner is a future we can all believe in.
 

Jiggyfly

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The Drive to Become ‘Fox News Famous’ Hurts the Right August 30, 2016 2:42 PM @DAVIDAFRENCH

The network’s cocoon is alluring, but it won’t win conservatives any converts. I’ll never forget the first time I was on Fox News. Bill O’Reilly had taken an interest in one of my cases and brought me and my client on to his show. Truly, he was interested only in her perspective, but since litigation was looming, we were a package deal. So I drove to a studio in Nashville, sat in front of the fake city-skyline background, took a deep breath, and dove in. I bombed miserably. O’Reilly didn’t like my answers, and I struggled to explain myself when he pressed me for more details. I didn’t look good and I didn’t sound good. I had all the charisma of a wet dishrag.

The first phone call after the show was from my best friend from college. He was laughing at me. “Dude, you were terrible.” And yet, in the long run, that first appearance may well have been the best career move I’d made since getting a law degree. From that moment forward, I could claim the most important résumé bullet point in the conservative movement: “David French has appeared on Fox News.” It’s hard to overstate the power of Fox News for those seeking a career in the conservative movement. I’ve seen the most accomplished of lawyers suddenly become “somebody” only after they regularly appear on Fox. I’ve seen young activists leave senators or representatives languishing alone in rooms as they flood over to Fox personalities, seeking selfies.

Fox has become the prime gatekeeper of conservative fame, the source of conservative book deals, and the ticket into the true pantheon of conservative influence. It’s killing the conservative movement. As Matthew Sheffield laid out brilliantly in a piece earlier this month, at any given moment Fox may have the biggest audience in cable news, but its overall cultural and political influence pales in comparison with that of its leading network and Internet competitors. Fox has constructed a big, beautiful, and lucrative gated community — a comfortable conservative cocoon.

The result is clear: Conservatives gain fame, power, and influence mainly by talking to each other. They persuade each other of the rightness of their ideas and write Fox-fueled best-selling books making arguments that Fox viewers love. The sheer size of the audience lulls minor political celebrities into believing that they’re making a cultural and political difference. But they never get a chance to preach to the unconverted.

The problem goes well beyond this cocoon effect, into the very moral and intellectual heart of the conservative movement. Like any human enterprise, Fox is filled with a wide variety of people — some good, some bad. But it is, at heart, a commercial endeavor, rather than an intellectual or spiritual one. Its fundamental priority is to make money, not to advance a particular set of ideas or values in public life. To be clear, one of the ways that it makes money is through a very deliberate strategy of counter-programming the mainstream media. But that is an economic determination far more than an ideological one, which means that Fox’s priorities will never exactly match the conservative movement’s. Such is the power of Fox fame that I’ve seen with my own eyes conservative leaders alter their message and public priorities in response to Fox’s demands.

Yet such is the power of Fox fame that I’ve seen with my own eyes conservative leaders alter their message and public priorities in response to Fox’s demands. “Fox isn’t interested” is a statement that often shuts down conversations and ends public campaigns before they begin, because if Fox is interested, the conversation never ends. Ever wonder why conservatives talk so much about Benghazi almost four full years after the vast majority of the key facts of that tragic engagement became clear? Because Fox remains interested. I’m not ascribing nefarious motives to Fox executives.

They know their audience and they play to it. Conservative leaders and conservative politicians should likewise be savvy enough to know the limitations of the network’s reach: It doesn’t speak to a majority; it speaks to a bubble. But such is the allure of the community within the bubble that a person can’t help but walk through its gates. The result is a world in which many individual conservatives just keep failing up. Fox is the place where you can nurse grievances over failed arguments. It’s the place where you can make money after failed campaigns. Do you wonder why the GOP had 17 presidential primary candidates?

In 2008, Mike Huckabee won by losing — not by making a strong electoral showing and positioning himself for the next contest, but rather by demonstrating enough charisma to land his own show on Fox. Here was a form of victory through continued influence and enhanced fame. If you couldn’t win the election, you could still be a contributor. You could still write a book. You might even get a show. So why not run? You’d probably lose the election, but you might gain a time slot. Fox News went on the air in October 1996. Since that time, the GOP has won the popular vote for president exactly once: in 2004, by a whopping 2.4 percent. If Hillary Clinton wins in November, as appears likely, the GOP will have lost the popular vote in five of the six presidential elections since Fox broke the liberal media monopoly.

In the six presidential elections before Fox, the GOP won four landslides. The reasons for the change are complex, and we certainly shouldn’t overstate the influence of any given media outlet. But prior to 1996, a politician could truly succeed only by going to the American people through the media outlets they actually watched, which encouraged communication that persuaded those who weren’t true believers. The conservative movement is a victim of Fox’s success. The network is so strong that conservatives who ignore it risk obscurity and irrelevance, even as it remains far too weak to truly transform the landscape. So long as Fox continues to make more than $1 billion per year, that’s unlikely to change.

It will be up to conservative leaders to wean themselves off the cheap high and intentionally engage the vast majority of Americans who don’t turn on Fox, don’t follow Sean Hannity, and think “The Factor” sounds more like an old game show than the most-watched news program in America. Appearing on Fox can create an alluring but illusory fame, and in seeking it above all else, some of our best minds inadvertently limit their own influence. I don’t resent Fox’s existence, but I lament its effect on our movement. It’s time to leave the cocoon.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439520/fox-news-hurts-conservative-movement
 

Jiggyfly

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FREEDOM ISN’T FREE

USA Freedom Girls Sue Trump Campaign for Stiffing Them
All they wanted was to hawk some merchandise and money for airfare, but the lawyer for three patriotic girls say all they got was broken promises.

KELLY WEILL

09.06.16 2:50 PM ET

The pre-teen dance troupe that briefly became a national sensation after they performed for Donald Trump are suing the self-proclaimed billionaire’s presidential campaign for stiffing them.

The USA Freedom Kids went viral after performing at Trump’s Jan. 13 rally in Pensacola, Florida. Dressed in bedazzled American flag costumes, the three pre-teen girls performed “Freedom’s Call,” an upbeat reimagining of a World War I propaganda song. “Cowardice! Are you serious? / Apologies for freedom, I can’t handle this,” the song begins.

The USA Freedom Kids said in a newly filed lawsuit the Trump campaign broke verbal agreements for performances at two events and refused to pay even a $2,500 stipend for the group’s travel expenses.

“We are not able to pay the girls or cover travel,” Stephanie Scruggs, a regional field director wrote Jeff Popick, USA Freedom Kids founder and father to one of the girls in a Jan. 5 email presented as evidence in the suit. However we have coordinated with the event space to allow the girls to set up a table and pre-sell their album, shirts, ect if this is helpful to you.” (The Trump campaign did not return a Daily Beast request for comment.)

Popick agreed, reasoning that the group could net more than $2,500 in merchandise sales, but the rally was “chaos,” Popick told The Daily Beast.

There was no merchandise table, and it wouldn’t have mattered if there was one: Security didn’t allow the girls to bring any of their merchandise into the Pensacola Bay Center. They left it outside in the parking lot, where all of it—the T-shirts, the CDs, the patriotic posters—was stolen while the girls performed their act, Popick says.
The USA Freedom Kids were not deterred though. Sure, they’d lost their swag, but footage of their performance was going viral, racking up millions of views online and parodies on late-night television.
Popick asked the campaign about future gigs and was offered one when Trump announced he was going to skip a debate to host his own rally in late January.

The only problem was that this event was in Iowa, not their home state of Florida.

“They had said, well Iowa’s a pretty long distance for us to travel,” Marc Shapiro, the lawyer representing the Freedom Kids, told The Daily Beast. “There’s plane flights up there, and hotels and so forth, would you give us a stipend so that we can travel up there and perform. The Trump campaign said no, you would have to pay your own way.”

The group coughed up the funds and took a red-eye flight to Chicago’s O’Hare airport, where Popick got the bad news: the USA Freedom Kids weren’t needed at the rally after all.
“It was a long, overnight odyssey. They were exhausted, but excited to perform,” he said. “We flew non-stop to Chicago, and then had to drive another 5½ hours to Des Moines. It wasn’t until after we were already in the vehicle about an hour or two into it that we had to break the news to the girls.”

The Trump campaign said they’d save seats for the scorned performers, on the condition that none of the girls spoke to the media, Popick said. Even this proved difficult, as the girls were still wearing their impossible-to-miss sequined flag dresses, and the Trump campaign had placed their reserved seats directly next to the media enclosure.

The gag order came as a final injury to the group who, barred from selling merchandise or performing, had at least counted on getting some exposure from the rally. Instead, they were going home, with no hint of booking future rallies.

“This is what he had emphasized: the exposure from this rally in particular,” Popick said. The girls were slated to perform multiple songs, which he felt was crucial to reforming their image as more than just a pro-Trump musical troup.

After nine months of haggling with Trump staffers, the group sued the campaign in Sarasota County, Florida, for as much as $15,000 in damages.

“This is not an opportunistic thing where we’re suing Donald Trump,” Popick said. “We’re not suing for emotional distress and all that other stuff that people do when they trump up—no pun intended—when they trump up a lawsuit. That’s not what this is. This is tangible dollars I spent under false pretenses.”

__________________________________________________________________

You can't make this shit up.:lol
 
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