2016 POTUS Election Thread

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NoDak

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"Gonna put my country ahead.... Vote for Hillary Clinton..."

:rofl

I can certainly understand not wanting to vote for Donald Trump. He makes it very easy to dislike him. But to say you're putting your country first by voting for that fucking disgrace Clinton is embarrassing.
 

Jiggyfly

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WOW

So much truth.
 

Jiggyfly

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Charlie Sykes and the Questions of Blame and Responsibility
By Erick Erickson | August 15, 2016, 05:00am


I have boundless admiration this campaign cycle for Charlie Sykes, the Wisconsin radio show host. And that admiration just keeps increasing. Oliver Darcy of Business Insider, last night, tweeted out some comments Charlie made about conservative media and accountability in the Age of Trump.

One of the things Charlie said was “And I have to look in the mirror and ask myself, ‘To what extent did I contribute” to the conditions that led to Trump. I have written before that I think I and virtually every other person engaged in politics at the national level contributed in various ways. In fact, at this weekend’s RedState Gathering I said I think a new rule of thumb could be to never trust a politician, political consultant, or pundit who says they had nothing to do with the rise of Trump.

For some, like me, perhaps we pushed too hard on issues and held too many people to many promises we took more literally than we should. Perhaps we encouraged activists to have too little grace for others. For others, it was making promises they had no intention of keeping. For others it was peddling stories they knew to not be true, but were just too good not to talk about. And for others, it was ignoring very real concerns of Americans in favor of the concerns of check writers. Republicans and Democrats both deserve blame for the rise of Trump — the one for talking a good game and not delivering and the other for flat out ignoring the conditions and concerns of a disaffected group of Americans in favor of identity politics.

I think, if anything, the coin operated conservative movement will never account for its participation in the rise of Trump, but deserves much blame. It decided to define conservatism based on the highest bidder instead of the highest principle. Conservative activists turned lobbyists and suddenly their issues became conservative even if they were not really.

Back in February, Rush Limbaugh interviewed me for the Limbaugh Letter and he asked me about a particular criticism often raised of me — that I somehow think I’m the standard setter for conservatism. I told him I didn’t necessarily think that was true, but I also think there has to be people in that role because otherwise everyone will claim conservatism for themselves. It’s a vastly more popular label than liberal. To the extent I can help clarify what is and is not conservative while not being the pocket of vested interests, I do try to do that.

Remember, just ten years ago we had a number of supposed conservative thought leaders telling us we should go along with Harriet Miers because they had begun to treat conservatism as a synonym for Republican. It will not surprise you that now some of the very same people are trying to tell us that Donald Trump is a conservative.

Like Charlie, I think I have to more fully assess my role and responsibility in this new phenomenon. But I don’t think a lot of the people who deserve a lot of the blame will do that.

Do not, for example, hold your breath for the Wall Street Journal editorialists to ever acknowledge they were in part responsible, though they were too. Gigot would sooner prefer to be touched by a commoner than ever admit his editorial page fluffed elites and parroted talking points at the expense of heartland voters he disdains as a way to pretend his roots are more refined than they are. Hell, his opinion writers cannot even admit there is an elite or an establishment if only because their heads are so far up the rear ends of those folks they can’t see them.

One of the other groups that I am confident will never do that is the mainstream media itself. Much of Charlie’s statement to Oliver Darcy was about how conservatives have spent years delegitimizing the mainstream press. And I think it absolutely had to be done, though it is not without consequence. Further, I think a lot of the consequences cannot be blamed on conservatives, but on the media itself.

Take Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times as one example. He flat out made up the story about George H. W. Bush and the grocery store scanner in 1992. His punishment? Promotion.

Take the cultural issues of gay marriage and transgenderism as another example. National reporters in New York and Washington who shape national news opinion on this issue have taken a one size fits all view. If you don’t want to violate your faith or have boys in your daughter’s bathroom, you are a bigot.

Take environmentalism as another example. The press has taken the left’s position that we are polluters without any recognition that we are also producers and contribute the planet. The press has completely ignored the plight of displaced coal miners, put on government assistance against their will because extreme environmentalists have shut out their jobs.

Or look at the current media coverage of Clinton and Trump. I guaran-damn-tee you that if Dylan Roof’s dad had been at a Trump event, the media cycle on that story would still be ongoing, while the media circled the wagons around Clinton when the Orlando terrorist’s dad went to her rally.

Oh, and that reminds me, look at guns as an issue and how the media covers that.

I do think, however, what guys like Charlie and I and others have to be willing to do and be consistent about is calling out bullcrap on our own side. How many conservative outlets were willing to call out Gateway Pundit and Breitbart for running pictures of the Cleveland Cavaliers celebration as if it was a Trump rally? How many were willing to call out those sites that ran pictures from February as if they were pictures from yesterday showing Hillary Clinton falling?

Conservatives have spent years calling out the mainstream media for making up stuff about the right. We do ourselves no favors if we do not also hold our own side accountable lest they discredit us all and drive our own side to the brink of dementia. That is why, for example, I have a growing list of conservative media outlets I flat out refuse to reference or rely on for my radio show and this website.

If there is one great bit of blame for conservatives, it’s that we allowed bad operators to join us because we assumed we were in common cause with them when we were not. And now, like the cuckoo bird, these bad operators would shove us out of conservatism when instead they themselves much be held to account for profiteering, corruption, and lying to senior citizens and activists alike.

===========================================================

I totally agree with everything said here.

The echo chamber that has been created in pursuit of ratings, money and power has been a detriment to the Republican party.

Yes there is bias in mainstream media but the pushback has destroyed any reasonable debate.

I have a new found respect for Sykes and Erickson.
 

boozeman

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Worst. Election. Ever.

Not matter how you go, you are going to be wrong.
 

boozeman

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If there was some equity, they would give Johnson a stage.
 

Genghis Khan

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Charlie Sykes and the Questions of Blame and Responsibility
By Erick Erickson | August 15, 2016, 05:00am


I have boundless admiration this campaign cycle for Charlie Sykes, the Wisconsin radio show host. And that admiration just keeps increasing. Oliver Darcy of Business Insider, last night, tweeted out some comments Charlie made about conservative media and accountability in the Age of Trump.

One of the things Charlie said was “And I have to look in the mirror and ask myself, ‘To what extent did I contribute” to the conditions that led to Trump. I have written before that I think I and virtually every other person engaged in politics at the national level contributed in various ways. In fact, at this weekend’s RedState Gathering I said I think a new rule of thumb could be to never trust a politician, political consultant, or pundit who says they had nothing to do with the rise of Trump.

For some, like me, perhaps we pushed too hard on issues and held too many people to many promises we took more literally than we should. Perhaps we encouraged activists to have too little grace for others. For others, it was making promises they had no intention of keeping. For others it was peddling stories they knew to not be true, but were just too good not to talk about. And for others, it was ignoring very real concerns of Americans in favor of the concerns of check writers. Republicans and Democrats both deserve blame for the rise of Trump — the one for talking a good game and not delivering and the other for flat out ignoring the conditions and concerns of a disaffected group of Americans in favor of identity politics.

I think, if anything, the coin operated conservative movement will never account for its participation in the rise of Trump, but deserves much blame. It decided to define conservatism based on the highest bidder instead of the highest principle. Conservative activists turned lobbyists and suddenly their issues became conservative even if they were not really.

Back in February, Rush Limbaugh interviewed me for the Limbaugh Letter and he asked me about a particular criticism often raised of me — that I somehow think I’m the standard setter for conservatism. I told him I didn’t necessarily think that was true, but I also think there has to be people in that role because otherwise everyone will claim conservatism for themselves. It’s a vastly more popular label than liberal. To the extent I can help clarify what is and is not conservative while not being the pocket of vested interests, I do try to do that.

Remember, just ten years ago we had a number of supposed conservative thought leaders telling us we should go along with Harriet Miers because they had begun to treat conservatism as a synonym for Republican. It will not surprise you that now some of the very same people are trying to tell us that Donald Trump is a conservative.

Like Charlie, I think I have to more fully assess my role and responsibility in this new phenomenon. But I don’t think a lot of the people who deserve a lot of the blame will do that.

Do not, for example, hold your breath for the Wall Street Journal editorialists to ever acknowledge they were in part responsible, though they were too. Gigot would sooner prefer to be touched by a commoner than ever admit his editorial page fluffed elites and parroted talking points at the expense of heartland voters he disdains as a way to pretend his roots are more refined than they are. Hell, his opinion writers cannot even admit there is an elite or an establishment if only because their heads are so far up the rear ends of those folks they can’t see them.

One of the other groups that I am confident will never do that is the mainstream media itself. Much of Charlie’s statement to Oliver Darcy was about how conservatives have spent years delegitimizing the mainstream press. And I think it absolutely had to be done, though it is not without consequence. Further, I think a lot of the consequences cannot be blamed on conservatives, but on the media itself.

Take Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times as one example. He flat out made up the story about George H. W. Bush and the grocery store scanner in 1992. His punishment? Promotion.

Take the cultural issues of gay marriage and transgenderism as another example. National reporters in New York and Washington who shape national news opinion on this issue have taken a one size fits all view. If you don’t want to violate your faith or have boys in your daughter’s bathroom, you are a bigot.

Take environmentalism as another example. The press has taken the left’s position that we are polluters without any recognition that we are also producers and contribute the planet. The press has completely ignored the plight of displaced coal miners, put on government assistance against their will because extreme environmentalists have shut out their jobs.

Or look at the current media coverage of Clinton and Trump. I guaran-damn-tee you that if Dylan Roof’s dad had been at a Trump event, the media cycle on that story would still be ongoing, while the media circled the wagons around Clinton when the Orlando terrorist’s dad went to her rally.

Oh, and that reminds me, look at guns as an issue and how the media covers that.

I do think, however, what guys like Charlie and I and others have to be willing to do and be consistent about is calling out bullcrap on our own side. How many conservative outlets were willing to call out Gateway Pundit and Breitbart for running pictures of the Cleveland Cavaliers celebration as if it was a Trump rally? How many were willing to call out those sites that ran pictures from February as if they were pictures from yesterday showing Hillary Clinton falling?

Conservatives have spent years calling out the mainstream media for making up stuff about the right. We do ourselves no favors if we do not also hold our own side accountable lest they discredit us all and drive our own side to the brink of dementia. That is why, for example, I have a growing list of conservative media outlets I flat out refuse to reference or rely on for my radio show and this website.

If there is one great bit of blame for conservatives, it’s that we allowed bad operators to join us because we assumed we were in common cause with them when we were not. And now, like the cuckoo bird, these bad operators would shove us out of conservatism when instead they themselves much be held to account for profiteering, corruption, and lying to senior citizens and activists alike.

===========================================================

I totally agree with everything said here.

The echo chamber that has been created in pursuit of ratings, money and power has been a detriment to the Republican party.

Yes there is bias in mainstream media but the pushback has destroyed any reasonable debate.

I have a new found respect for Sykes and Erickson.
I don't know who that guy is, but I somewhat disagree. He said it himself, some of it is and has been justified. On both sides.

Which means, if you are unfairly biased - to the extent that what tyou are presenting as news is a skewed reality at best and a deception at worst - and someone points it out, you have only yourself to blame.

And the deflated credibility of the mainstream media doesn't mean we need to be dense about believing falsities. On the contrary, it means we have to vet for ourselves what is right and wrong. We can't expect to rely on institutions out of our control to spoon feed us the right information in the right way without an expectation that we'll receive it through their filter rather than our own. It means we have to be proactive in educating ourselves on the world around us.

And maybe that's actually the way it should be.
 

L.T. Fan

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I don't know who that guy is, but I somewhat disagree. He said it himself, some of it is and has been justified. On both sides.

Which means, if you are unfairly biased - to the extent that what tyou are presenting as news is a skewed reality at best and a deception at worst - and someone points it out, you have only yourself to blame.

And the deflated credibility of the mainstream media doesn't mean we need to be dense about believing falsities. On the contrary, it means we have to vet for ourselves what is right and wrong. We can't expect to rely on institutions out of our control to spoon feed us the right information in the right way without an expectation that we'll receive it through their filter rather than our own. It means we have to be proactive in educating ourselves on the world around us.

And maybe that's actually the way it should be.
The media no longer simply reports they somehow think their job is to shape the reporting.
 

Jiggyfly

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Yeah. jiggy acts like there is an angel and devil running.
I don't know who that guy is, but I somewhat disagree. He said it himself, some of it is and has been justified. On both sides.

Which means, if you are unfairly biased - to the extent that what tyou are presenting as news is a skewed reality at best and a deception at worst - and someone points it out, you have only yourself to blame.

And the deflated credibility of the mainstream media doesn't mean we need to be dense about believing falsities. On the contrary, it means we have to vet for ourselves what is right and wrong. We can't expect to rely on institutions out of our control to spoon feed us the right information in the right way without an expectation that we'll receive it through their filter rather than our own. It means we have to be proactive in educating ourselves on the world around us.

And maybe that's actually the way it should be.
You seem to be saying pretty much the same thing he is.

And the guy who wrote this is Erick Erickson.
 

Genghis Khan

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You seem to be saying pretty much the same thing he is.

And the guy who wrote this is Erick Erickson.
I got more of the impression that he was lamenting the fact that he can't just point to the NY Times authoritatively to correct someone's false beliefs, and was blaming himself and others like him at least partially for killing the credibility of the main stream media.

I'm saying their diminished credibility is their own fault, and it was never a good thing in the past to take their reporting as gospel anyway.

In another life I was a minor in journalism and when you study the actual reporting going on it's pretty sobering how much and often the reporting is just flat out wrong. And I'm talking even basic facts like someone's name or age. And this was 15 years ago.

I don't think things are appreciably worse today.
 

L.T. Fan

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How the check did you come to that conclusion?

I have criticized Hillary several times, you are the one bending over backwards to defend Trump.
You post everything inflammatory on one and do not post the negative on the other.
 

L.T. Fan

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How the check did you come to that conclusion?

I have criticized Hillary several times, you are the one bending over backwards to defend Trump.
I haven't defended him as much as I have chastised those who are so sanctimonious that they think anyone who would support him is without any intelligence. They think it is not a simple choice of two candidates but rather there is only one choice to be made and Trumps supporters are not smart enough to be potty trained. I loathe a supremacist and elitist attitude by some people's narrow mindedness.
 
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Genghis Khan

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I haven't defended him as much as I have chastised those who are so sanctimonious that they think anyone who would support him is without any intelligence. They think it is not a simple choice of two candidates but rather there is only one choice to be made and Trumps supporters are not smart enough to be potty trained. I loathe a supremacist and elitist attitude by some people's narrow mindedness.
You've been defending Trump like you're in his will.

And yes, while a blanket statement is insufficiently simplistic, supporting Trump is not a good sign for your intellect.
 

L.T. Fan

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You've been defending Trump like you're in his will.

And yes, while a blanket statement is insufficiently simplistic, supporting Trump is not a good sign for your intellect.
I am supporting Trump because he is the only choice to keep Clinton out of the White House. That has been my position for sometime and I haven't changed my stance. My choice from the start was Kasich but one by one the candidates for the Republicans have dropped out so when it left only Trump then by default the support shifted to him because that is all that is left to attain my goal. You comment is completely inappropriate because the support isn't a preference rather a last hope.
 

L.T. Fan

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Yeah. It has that superior elitist ring. It's never enough for some to disagree and provide the reasons. They feel compelled to point out their superiority on top of that.
 

townsend

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This could just as easily be said of Hillary supporters
But Hillary isn't an ideological choice. There are very few liberal purists that are satisfied with her. She's a definitively moderate choice, when compared to Sanders, Johnson, Stein, Cruz, or Trump.

That's why she can actually talk about policy in detail, unlike Trump who's all bigoted flash and no substance. Hillary's competent Trump isn't. If their resume hasn't already proved that, their general election campaigns have.

Trump supporters are fringe voters caught up in emotions. 100% of them, because as flawed as Hillary is, and she's deeply flawed, there's never been a major party candidate so superior to their other major party rival.

People that paint this as a match between similar candidates (like Obama and Romney) are clearly failing to understand how completely and thoroughly Trump has disqualified himself. After the judge Curiel thing, after the Khab thing, after ideological tests for immigrants, after his thorough display of the understanding of foreign policy. Comparing Trump to Hillary is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who's dumb enough to not have tuned you out yet.
 

Jiggyfly

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I got more of the impression that he was lamenting the fact that he can't just point to the NY Times authoritatively to correct someone's false beliefs, and was blaming himself and others like him at least partially for killing the credibility of the main stream media.

I'm saying their diminished credibility is their own fault, and it was never a good thing in the past to take their reporting as gospel anyway.

In another life I was a minor in journalism and when you study the actual reporting going on it's pretty sobering how much and often the reporting is just flat out wrong. And I'm talking even basic facts like someone's name or age. And this was 15 years ago.

I don't think things are appreciably worse today.
He pretty much said exactly that and gave examples of the bias.

I too was a journalism minor.

IMO the biggest difference has been the news media being more profit driven and the advent of internet driven media which has caused for more sensationalism to drive ratings and clicks.
 
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