vox

From what I've read, the U.S. response will be limited to leaking documents on the financial arrangements of the Russian political elite and oligarchs, and providing tools to combat Russia's internet censorship.

Trump has never proposed using tariffs as a response to corporate espionage or cyber attacks. His suggestion of implementing tariffs is based on making American companies more cost competitive with their foreign counterparts. Tariffs are a completely inappropriate policy response to intellectual property theft. First, the perpetrator and sponsor of the crime is often unclear. Second, the purpose of IP theft is almost never reselling that product or service internationally, it's to consume the product if it's digital media, or to sell domestically if it's a knock-off, or to improve a company's own capabilities if it's a trade secret or industrial design, or to commit financial fraud if it's sensitive personal data. Here are Donald Trump's actual remarks on cybersecurity: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-remarks-on-cybersecurity

1. The Bloomberg poll only reinforces the fact that wording matters. Their wording of the questions were "Turning now to trade, generally speaking, do you think U.S. trade policy should have more restrictions on imported foreign goods to protect American jobs, or have fewer restrictions to enable American consumers to have the most choices and the lowest prices?" and "Are you willing to pay a little more for merchandise that is made in the U.S., or do you prefer the lowest possible price?" There are many problems here. The main ones are that the poll is comparing a concrete job loss versus an indeterminate price hike, and that people have a bias to respond in a more altruistic manner when in reality that doesn't align with their behavior. 2. Fair trade refers to a separate practice in which producers in developing countries are paid higher prices to promote development and sustainability. Sorry, but that phrase is already taken. 3. Donald Trump's corporate espionage and cyber security plan does not differ from Hillary Clinton's plan other than that he wants to escalate and use offensive cyber attacks. This doesn't seem like a great idea when the U.S. has the most intellectual property to lose in a cyber war.

The majority of people in the U.S. do not support: building a wall along the Mexican border, banning Muslim immigrants and refugees, and trade protectionism. You are misreading a vocal minority for a majority. I don't think this is true. Polls I have seen show a majority do favor protectionism over free trade. You are right that majority may not favor the other two, but they are near 50/50. Polls don't favor a wall along the whole border but that is not what has been proposed. It is all about wording in polls. I agree that the wording of the question matters but the polling that I've seen does not support that view. "Free trade agreements between the U.S. and other countries have been a ___ for the United States" Good thing: 51%, Bad thing: 39%. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/03/31/republicans-especially-trump-supporters-see-free-trade-deals-as-bad-for-u-s/ "What do you think foreign trade means for America? Do you see foreign trade more as an opportunity for economic growth through increased U.S. exports or a threat to the economy from foreign imports?" Opportunity: 58%, Threat: 34%. http://www.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/190427/american-public-opinion-foreign-trade.aspx "Which of the following statements come closer to what you think?" I think free trade with foreign countries is good for America because it opens up new markets and we cannot avoid the fact that it is a global economy: 55%, I think free trade with foreign countries is bad for America because it has hurt manufacturing and other key industries and there is no proof more trade creates better jobs: 38%. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-conventions/majority-voters-support-free-trade-immigration-poll-n611176

The majority of people in the U.S. do not support: building a wall along the Mexican border, banning Muslim immigrants and refugees, and trade protectionism. You are misreading a vocal minority for a majority. I have never claimed there were a majority behind those issues. You are misreading what I have written. Your claim is that the government is implementing policy counter to the will of the majority of the people. Your example to prove that was that in certain European countries, the majority disfavored increased immigration even though the government pushed it through, resulting in a drag on GDP. My claim is that 1. your example is not applicable in the U.S. because there has been no disruptive increase in immigration and 2. the policies that Trump support are not favored by a majority of Americans. Therefore, I don't see evidence that the will of the people has been systematically subverted.

The majority of people in the U.S. do not support: building a wall along the Mexican border, banning Muslim immigrants and refugees, and trade protectionism. You are misreading a vocal minority for a majority.

I don't know, has any of the bourgeoisie in this thread met and talked to any of the hundreds of thousands of middle-americans who attend Trump's rallies? Seems not. I have witnessed the rise of a populist party in my country and this has happened in pretty much every Western European state. Maybe you are so insular that you don't notice this over there, but the theme is well-established in Europe. This is not a one-off to do with only the unique characteristics of Trump. You just, for once, are about a decade behind us Europeans. And you are making the exact same mistake that we have done in analyzing the situation. It is not about Le Pen. It is not about Farage. It is not about Wilders. It is not about Strache. It is not about Kjaersgaard. It is not about Åkesson. It is not about "charismatic" leaders using their demagogic magic to enchant the public. It is about a ruling class that has tilted more and more in favor of special interests and certain lobby groups at the expense of serving the citizens of the country which they ostensibly are sworn to. At that point, what choice do the voters have? In my country for years and years 60-70% of the voters wanted lower immigration. At the same time 7 of 8 political parties in parliament didn't and actively pushed for higher numbers. Immigration rose every year for over a decade and then finally came to a screeching halt last year during the refugee crisis. Now we have a drag on our economy of 1-2% of GDP yearly despite the voters never asking for any of it. Some accountability. We had 163 000 asylum seekers last year in a country of 10 million people and the voters were firmly against increases when the figure was 1/5 of that. Despite being forced into a 180 by practical circumstances (i.e the imminent downfall of the system) there has been no mea culpa from anyone in charge. That is not a well-functioning democracy. Even if the issues are somewhat different from country to country in the West, the patterns of non-accountability for politicians are the same. That is what the complaints about "globalism" in the US stems from and not, for the majority of people, some resurgence of jingoism. The very concept of the state rests on the premise that it favors its own citizens. This contract has been broken in the West and people protesting it is not an expression of white supremacy or nationalism or anything of the sort per se. But it could very well devolve into tribal conflicts if elected officials keep actively undermining their own constituents. The essence of all practical politics is tribalism, it's just that where the tribal lines are drawn will change if the incentives are there. The ideal situation is that the nation is the tribe and that the citizens, of all races and creeds, all identify as tribal members. You could of course intellectually favor the abandonment of tribalism altogether, but that's never going to happen, on account of human nature. Trump will probably lose but there will be new challenges to the system if nothing changes. Probably by more competent and polished people, hopefully not by anyone more sinister than a blustering 70 year old TV star with an ego. This whole thread is upper middle-class, college-educated, financially savvy people complaining about having to watch the symptoms of a problem they don't acknowledge or aren't impacted much by. The politics of non-accountability hurt the people on the margin, not you. Use empathy. The difference is that the U.S. does not have a recent broad influx of immigrants. The number of admitted refugees has been less than 80,000 per year since 2000. Independent studies conclude that there has been a significant decrease in illegal immigration from Mexico since 2009, and the net balance shows a loss of Mexican immigrants since 2005. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/30/politics/border-patrol-union-endorses-donald-trump/ http://www.npr.org/2016/03/30/472420387/border-patrol-union-endorses-donald-trump http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/retired-ny-police-group-endorses-donald-trump-article-1.2604861 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/03/30/border-patrol-agents-union-endorses-trump/ https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-border-agents-endorsement-wall-000000406.html http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/national-border-patrol-council-endorses-trump/476091/ http://www.nbcnews.com/card/trumps-law-order-talk-wins-over-largest-u-s-police-n649726 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2016/04/13/el-paso-border-patrol-union-votes-back-trump/82969472/ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-border-patrol-trump-20160511-snap-story.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/16/us/fraternal-order-of-police-to-endorse-clinton.html http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-09-16/nations-biggest-police-union-endorses-trump http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-1474052253-htmlstory.html http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/09/26/us/26reuters-usa-election-trump-immigration.html http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/immigration-customs-enforcement-union-endorses-trump-228664 http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-09-26/immigration-union-ice-backs-trump-for-president-trump-campaign

I agree that most members of the press favors Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump. But the important question to ask is, why is that the case. I think there are a number of reasons. 1. There's a visceral distaste for conspiracy theories that Trump has propagated. He claims that the election will be rigged, but only if he loses. The idea that there's wide spread in person voter fraud in the US has been countered by every piece of research that's been conducted on the issue. His attempt to pivot away from being a leader of the birther movement by saying he was satisfied after he forced Barack Obama to release his birth certificate in 2011 is farcical when there are multiple tweets and sound bites of him stating that he did not believe President Obama was born in the United States through 2016. His endorsement of a theory that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy is outlandish. 2. Similarly, Trump's lies are often easily verifiable as false. As Brian Stelter of CNN points out, "Whether Hillary Clinton was truthful about her emails is such a complicated and almost insidery story that it requires a multi-thousand-word PolitiFact explanation. Donald Trump calling Obama the founder of ISIS can be fact-checked in a chyron." The Atlantic's Jame Fallows writes "the things Trump says are demonstrably false in a way that's abnormal for politicians. When he says he got a letter from the NFL on the debates and then the NFL says, 'No, he didn't,' it emboldens the media to treat him in a different way." 3. Trump maintained a blacklist of reporters and media outlets prohibited from receiving credentials to his events. The list has included the National Review, the Des Moines Register, Univision, BuzzFeed, the Daily Beast, Fusion, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, etc. 4. Trump riles up his supporters by insulting the media. Katy Tur of NBC describes, "A few days earlier, at another Trump rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, I'd tweeted live as wave after wave of protestors stood up during his speech. "Now 10," I wrote from the scene, counting the interruptions. "Trump ends speech abruptly and leaves stage. Trump thought my tweets were "disgraceful" and "not nice!" according to a chastising note from his 26-year-old press secretary, Hope Hicks. In the hours that followed, Trump took his complaints public, trashing me and CBS News reporter Sopan Deb for the coverage. He demanded I apologize. I didn't, so Trump decided to go further in Mount Pleasant, pointing his finger squarely at me and launching a personal attack as millions of Americans watched at home. "What a lie it was," Trump said, referring to the claim that he had left the stage abruptly. "What a lie. Katy Tur. What a lie it was. Third. Rate. Reporter. Remember that." It wasn't until hours later, when Secret Service took the extraordinary step of walking me to my car, that the incident sank in. The wave of insults, harassment, and threats, via various social-media feeds, hasn't stopped since. Many of the attacks are unprintable. "MAYBE A FEW JOURNALISTS DO NEED TO BE WHACKED," tweeted someone with the handle GuyScott33, two weeks after Trump lashed out. "MAYBE THEN THEYD STOP BEI[N]G BIASED HACKS. KILL EM ALL STARTING W/ KATY TUR."" Chuck Todd tweeted about the incident: "The campaign rhetoric needs to be ratcheted back. This is outrageous and dangerous behavior." Megyn Kelly posted: "Enough. Seriously." Janice Dean responded: "This needs to stop." 5. Trump wants to "open up libel laws." He said, "One of the things I'm going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we're certainly leading. I'm going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We're going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected... We're going to open up libel laws, and we're going to have people sue you like you've never got sued before." 6. Trump has little support from institutional Republicans. This means that the media does not get much pushback from the political wonk class when it produces coverage critical of Trump. That may embolden reporters because they know that George Will is not going to harangue them at his next dinner party. It also means that being critical of Trump will not damage their long term relationship with other members of the Republican party. It does not jeopardize their personal or professional relationships.

I'd strongly encourage anybody interested in politics and media to read this background story on Steve Bannon. https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-steve-bannon/ "Bannon is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, the crusading right-wing populist website that’s a lineal descendant of the Drudge Report (its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, spent years apprenticing with Matt Drudge) and a haven for people who think Fox News is too polite and restrained. ... And he’s devised a method to influence politics that marries the old-style attack journalism of Breitbart.com, which helped drive out Boehner, with a more sophisticated approach, conducted through the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, that builds rigorous, fact-based indictments against major politicians, then partners with mainstream media outlets conservatives typically despise to disseminate those findings to the broadest audience. The biggest product of this system is the project Bannon was so excited about at CPAC: the bestselling investigative book, written by GAI’s president, Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Published in May by HarperCollins, the book dominated the political landscape for weeks and probably did more to shape public perception of Hillary Clinton than any of the barbs from her Republican detractors. ... In 2012 he became founding chairman of GAI, a nonpartisan 501©(3) research organization staffed with lawyers, data scientists, and forensic investigators. “What Peter and I noticed is that it’s facts, not rumors, that resonate with the best investigative reporters,” Bannon says, referring to GAI’s president. Established in Tallahassee to study crony capitalism and governmental malfeasance, GAI has collaborated with such mainstream news outlets as Newsweek, ABC News, and CBS’s 60 Minutes on stories ranging from insider trading in Congress to credit card fraud among presidential campaigns. It's essentially a mining operation for political scoops that now churns out books like Clinton Cash and Bush Bucks. ... For Bannon, the Clinton Cash uproar validated a personal theory, informed by his Goldman Sachs experience, about how conservatives can influence the media and why they failed the last time a Clinton was running for the White House. “In the 1990s,” he told me, “conservative media couldn’t take down [bill] Clinton because most of what they produced was punditry and opinion, and they always oversold the conclusion: ‘It’s clearly impeachable!’ So they wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber.” What news conservatives did produce, such as David Brock’s Troopergate investigation on Paula Jones in the American Spectator, was often tainted in the eyes of mainstream editors by its explicit partisan association. ... “It seems to me,” says Brock of Bannon and his team, “what they were able to do in this deal with the Times is the same strategy, but more sophisticated and potentially more effective and damaging because of the reputation of the Times. If you were trying to create doubt and qualms about [Hillary Clinton] among progressives, the Times is the place to do it.” He pauses. “Looking at it from their point of view, the Times is the perfect host body for the virus.” It wasn’t the only one. In June, when the Clinton Cash frenzy hit its apex, Bannon said: “We’ve got the 15 best investigative reporters at the 15 best newspapers in the country all chasing after Hillary Clinton.”"

The genesis of this story comes from Peter Schweizer, author of the book Clinton Cash, and president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI). GAI is funded by the Mercer Foundation which donated $1 million to GAI in 2013. Rebekah Mercer sat on the Board of GAI and has been a top donor to Ted Cruz in the primary campaign and later Donald Trump (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/09/07/rebekah-mercer-takes-helm-of-pro-trump-pac-extending-familys-influence-in-campaign/). The other large contributors to the GAI include the Franklin Center, a Koch brother funded organization and Donors' Trust, headed by current Chief Executive of Donald Trump's campaign Stephen Bannon. Those two organizations donated $3.5 million to GAI in 2012/2013. GAI's total revenues were $2.2 million in 2012 and $2.6 million in 2013, so of the $4.8 million received for those years, $4.5 million came from three right wing funding sources. Your investigation of the Uranium One donations isn't like a critical examination by a short seller, it's analogous to someone touting research from a stock promoter that's been paid by the company to write a favorable analysis. If you think that Hillary Clinton exerted inappropriate influence in the approval of the transaction, then presumably she would be e-mailing her colleagues at the State Department, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, etc. Yet, somehow, there is no evidence that any person on the receiving end of such an e-mail had any such conversation with Secretary Clinton.

A person's place of birth should not matter, but the Constitution is difficult to change. No need to change the constitution. The wikipedia page summarizes it well: "The U.S. Constitution uses but does not define the phrase "natural born Citizen", and various opinions have been offered over time regarding its precise meaning." Nothing in the constitution says that you must be born in the US on US soil. A common language interpretation would be that if you are a US citizen from birth then you can be president. Sure, but my belief is that even those who are not born a US citizen should not be prohibited from becoming president. For example, if a child were born in a different country and adopted by a U.S. family, they would be constitutionally excluded.

A person's place of birth should not matter, but the Constitution is difficult to change.

I haven't seen a reputable poll that tracks this specifically among Hillary supporters. The NBC/Survey Monkey poll suggests that 5 - 10% of Democrats believe Barack Obama was not born in the United States. This of course is substantially lower than the percentage of Republicans that hold that belief. http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-persistent-partisan-divide-over-birther-question-n627446

In this election cycle, media opinions like these only further embolden Trump supporters. I agree. On the other hand, 65% of Trump supporters think President Obama is a Muslim (13% think he's a Christian), so they may be impervious to reality. http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/05/gop-quickly-unifies-around-trump-clinton-still-has-modest-lead.html

The USA Today endorses not Trump. http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/09/29/dont-vote-for-donald-trump-editorial-board-editorials-debates/91295020/ "In the 34-year history of USA TODAY, the Editorial Board has never taken sides in the presidential race. Instead, we’ve expressed opinions about the major issues and haven’t presumed to tell our readers, who have a variety of priorities and values, which choice is best for them. Because every presidential race is different, we revisit our no-endorsement policy every four years. We’ve never seen reason to alter our approach. Until now. This year, the choice isn’t between two capable major party nominees who happen to have significant ideological differences. This year, one of the candidates — Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency. From the day he declared his candidacy 15 months ago through this week’s first presidential debate, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he lacks the temperament, knowledge, steadiness and honesty that America needs from its presidents. Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections. We’ve been highly critical of the GOP nominee in a number of previous editorials. With early voting already underway in several states and polls showing a close race, now is the time to spell out, in one place, the reasons Trump should not be president: He is erratic. Trump has been on so many sides of so many issues that attempting to assess his policy positions is like shooting at a moving target. A list prepared by NBC details 124 shifts by Trump on 20 major issues since shortly before he entered the race. He simply spouts slogans and outcomes (he’d replace Obamacare with “something terrific”) without any credible explanations of how he’d achieve them. He is ill-equipped to be commander in chief. Trump’s foreign policy pronouncements typically range from uninformed to incoherent. It’s not just Democrats who say this. Scores of Republican national security leaders have signed an extraordinary open letter calling Trump’s foreign policy vision “wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.” In a Wall Street Journal column this month, Robert Gates, the highly respected former Defense secretary who served presidents of both parties over a half-century, described Trump as “beyond repair.” He traffics in prejudice. From the very beginning, Trump has built his campaign on appeals to bigotry and xenophobia, whipping up resentment against Mexicans, Muslims and migrants. His proposals for mass deportations and religious tests are unworkable and contrary to America’s ideals. Trump has stirred racist sentiments in ways that can’t be erased by his belated and clumsy outreach to African Americans. His attacks on an Indiana-born federal judge of Mexican heritage fit “the textbook definition of a racist comment,” according to House Speaker Paul Ryan, the highest-ranking elected official in the Republican Party. And for five years, Trump fanned the absurd “birther” movement that falsely questioned the legitimacy of the nation’s first black president. His business career is checkered. Trump has built his candidacy on his achievements as a real estate developer and entrepreneur. It’s a shaky scaffold, starting with a 1973 Justice Department suit against Trump and his father for systematically discriminating against blacks in housing rentals. (The Trumps fought the suit but later settled on terms that were viewed as a government victory.) Trump’s companies have had some spectacular financial successes, but this track record is marred by six bankruptcy filings, apparent misuse of the family’s charitable foundation, and allegations by Trump University customers of fraud. A series of investigative articles published by the USA TODAY Network found that Trump has been involved in thousands of lawsuits over the past three decades, including at least 60 that involved small businesses and contract employees who said they were stiffed. So much for being a champion of the little guy. He isn’t leveling with the American people. Is Trump as rich as he says? No one knows, in part because, alone among major party presidential candidates for the past four decades, he refuses to release his tax returns. Nor do we know whether he has paid his fair share of taxes, or the extent of his foreign financial entanglements. He speaks recklessly. In the days after the Republican convention, Trump invited Russian hackers to interfere with an American election by releasing Hillary Clinton’s emails, and he raised the prospect of “Second Amendment people” preventing the Democratic nominee from appointing liberal justices. It’s hard to imagine two more irresponsible statements from one presidential candidate. He has coarsened the national dialogue. Did you ever imagine that a presidential candidate would discuss the size of his genitalia during a nationally televised Republican debate? Neither did we. Did you ever imagine a presidential candidate, one who avoided service in the military, would criticize Gold Star parents who lost a son in Iraq? Neither did we. Did you ever imagine you’d see a presidential candidate mock a disabled reporter? Neither did we. Trump’s inability or unwillingness to ignore criticism raises the specter of a president who, like Richard Nixon, would create enemies’ lists and be consumed with getting even with his critics. He’s a serial liar. Although polls show that Clinton is considered less honest and trustworthy than Trump, it’s not even a close contest. Trump is in a league of his own when it comes to the quality and quantity of his misstatements. When confronted with a falsehood, such as his assertion that he was always against the Iraq War, Trump’s reaction is to use the Big Lie technique of repeating it so often that people begin to believe it. We are not unmindful of the issues that Trump’s campaign has exploited: the disappearance of working-class jobs; excessive political correctness; the direction of the Supreme Court; urban unrest and street violence; the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group; gridlock in Washington and the influence of moneyed interests. All are legitimate sources of concern. Nor does this editorial represent unqualified support for Hillary Clinton, who has her own flaws (though hers are far less likely to threaten national security or lead to a constitutional crisis). The Editorial Board does not have a consensus for a Clinton endorsement. Some of us look at her command of the issues, resilience and long record of public service — as first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of State — and believe she’d serve the nation ably as its president. Other board members have serious reservations about Clinton’s sense of entitlement, her lack of candor and her extreme carelessness in handling classified information. Where does that leave us? Our bottom-line advice for voters is this: Stay true to your convictions. That might mean a vote for Clinton, the most plausible alternative to keep Trump out of the White House. Or it might mean a third-party candidate. Or a write-in. Or a focus on down-ballot candidates who will serve the nation honestly, try to heal its divisions, and work to solve its problems. Whatever you do, however, resist the siren song of a dangerous demagogue. By all means vote, just not for Donald Trump."

Donald Trump is an illiterate flip flopper on monetary policy and also traffics conspiracy theories. A normal candidate would be castigated for their ignorance, but for Trump, it is par for the course. "Trump’s Yellen cycle began in October, when, in an interview with The Hill, he accused Yellen of keeping down the Fed’s key interest rate, known as the Fed funds rate, because President Obama “doesn’t want to have a recession-slash-depression during his administration.” (This raised the question, of course, Who expects a President to want a recession-slash-depression?) By the spring of this year, Trump had revised his thinking about Yellen. “I have nothing against Janet Yellen whatsoever,” he told CNBC, on May 5th. “She’s a very capable person. People that I know have a very high regard for her.” Trump explained his newly rosy view by endorsing the very policy he had mocked a few months earlier. “She’s a low-interest-rate person; she’s always been a low-interest-rate person. And I must be honest, I’m a low-interest-rate person.” A couple of weeks later, Trump reiterated his happy view of the Fed chair. In an interview with Reuters, he said, “I’m not a person that thinks Janet Yellen is doing a bad job.” This week, Trump was back on the attack. On Monday, he told CNBC that Yellen should be “ashamed” of the low-interest-rate policy that Trump himself endorsed so fully in May. “She is obviously political, and she’s doing what Obama wants her to do,” he said. Once again, Trump made the claim that there was a secret Obama-Yellen pact to keep rates low, rooted in their nefarious desire to prevent an economic crisis. They both knew, he said, that “as soon as [rates] go up, the stock market is going to go way down.” On Thursday, after giving a speech at the Economic Club of New York, Trump again took aim at the Fed. “The Fed has become very political,” he said. “Beyond anything I would have ever thought possible.” It’s impossible to reconcile Trump’s conflicting statements on Yellen and the Fed’s interest-rate level. Low interest rates can’t be both smart policy and evidence of corruption, just like Yellen can’t be both “very capable” and a shameful Obama stooge. But beyond the contradictions, Trump has betrayed a basic misunderstanding of how central banks work. Take his statement that he and Yellen are both “low-interest-rate” people. Yellen, he said, has “always been a low-interest-rate person.” Central bankers like to say that the entire point of the Federal Reserve is to “lean against the wind,” meaning that, when the economy is growing so fast that it risks inflation, the Fed raises its interest rate, and, when economic growth is sluggish, the Fed lowers it. In the context of central banking, Yellen is often identified as a “dove,” which means that she is generally a bit more concerned about lowering unemployment than about the risks of inflation. But calling Yellen a “low-interest-rate person” is like calling a doctor concerned about a patient’s high fever a “low-temperature person.” Yellen, like all central bankers, is not a low-interest or high-interest person. She’s a person for whatever interest rate is appropriate, given economic conditions. In her two decades of votes as a senior Fed official, she has voted for higher rates plenty of times. Where Trump is most clearly and dangerously wrong is in his accusation of political interference by the White House. Yellen doesn’t make decisions about the interest rate on her own. As chair, she has one vote on the Federal Reserve’s twelve-member Open Market Committee, which is currently made up of five members appointed by President Obama and seven members who come from regional Federal Reserve banks and who are chosen by their own boards, made up of bankers, businesspeople, and, in some cases, community representatives. It’s a diverse lot—several members of the committee have shown no particular loyalty to the President. What’s more, the board’s decision-making process about the interest rate is public. We know how each of the twelve members vote at each meeting of the committee. The Fed even releases a “dot plot,” which shows how the different members expect to vote over the coming years. ... On Thursday, at the Economic Club of New York, Trump was asked specifically how he would advise the Fed, and his answer was filled with as much narcissism and nonsense as any he had given before. “Well, as a real-estate person, I always like low interest rates, of course,” he said. “Obama wants to go, he wants to play golf, and he wants to leave. He doesn’t want to have any stock-market disruptions. . . . I think the Fed is totally being controlled politically.” He concluded, “I really believe if it was a political decision or the right decision, they’re going to go with the political decision every time.” What would a President Trump’s monetary policy be? Judging by his words and the people with whom he surrounds himself, the options appear to range from fringe kookiness and ignorance all the way to nihilistic collapse." http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-and-the-truth-the-interest-rate-flip-flop

Donald Trump also advocated for immediate military intervention to topple Qaddafi in Libya. From his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZFQiDR4hQ His addendum is that he also wants to steal their oil. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=duyvYNh-fLw

She has been coughing, bobbing her head uncontrollably, taking long rest periods between campaign sessions, falling multiple times over the last 10 years and once hitting her head, which necessitated a six month recovery period according to Bill Clinton. She also suffers major memory loss, according to her FBI testimony. Some evidence (note one of the reporters is visibly startled): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gYplpPmbXI http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2629288/Bill-Clinton-reveals-took-Hillary-six-months-work-accident.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/02/the-many-things-hillary-clinton-couldnt-recall-in-her-fbi-interview/ https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/25404 Wouldn't say it's quite a conspiracy theory to doubt she's all there. Please don't misattribute that quote to me - it was a subquote writen by Cardboard. Your evidence amounts to: Hillary Clinton coughed twice on the campaign trail and sometimes clears her throat before she speaks - which if you manipulate like in the second video - you can make it appear like she is coughing. She was surprised by the volume of a question and reacted in jest according to the person who was there and asked the question. http://elections.ap.org/content/video-proves-clinton-suffering-seizures-not-so-i-was-there She made a 100% recovery from her accident in six months even though she was back at work one month later. She gave the "I can not recall" answer that every lawyer would instruct their client to do when asked certain questions by the FBI. And someone sent her an unsolicited e-mail saying that he was wrong that Provigil was not invented by the military.

What news sources do you think are credible? Do you think that the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Time Magazine, and The New Yorker just make up facts? Do you think Gallup's polls are fraudulent? Do you realize that muscleman has literally posted about conspiracy theories regarding Hillary Clinton's health? Somehow, you posted that same day and yet you never tried to censure him.

Hi Cardboard, If you took the time to go through my posts, you would find that I started a thread on Naspers (JSE: NPN) on July 3, 2014 - it has returned 86% since then. I've also commented on the investment threads related to BP Prudhoe Bay Royalty Trust (BPT), Webster Financial (WBS), and Apple (AAPL), and general discussion topics such as cheap stocks based on EV/FCF, Myers Briggs personality test, the Panama canal, etc. My posting philosophy is to contribute only when I have something meaningful to add to the discourse or challenge people when I think that the beliefs they are stating are incorrect or ill-formed. There seems to be an abundance of the latter in the political discussions. I'm sorry if my comments have caused you some personal animus, but your reaction of trying to silence people who disagree with you is fundamentally wrong.

I don't know if Hillary Clinton would be a great president, but I will take the over on expectations of her success. 1. Historically, Hillary Clinton has a much higher approval rating when she is in office than when she is running for office. The Gallup favorability ratings from 1992 through 2015 show ebbs in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2007, and 2016, when she was campaigning for First Lady, Senator, and President; they peak during her actual time in office. When she left her most recent position as Secretary of State in 2013, she had a 64% favorability rating, compared to 38% now. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/may/22/hillary-clinton/hillary-clintons-approval-rating-secretary-state-w/ 2. Hillary Clinton works well with Republicans. In 2006, the NYT had a story on her ability to form bipartisan alliances. It quotes Lindsey Graham calling her a "smart, prepared, serious senator" who "has managed to build unusual political alliances on a variety of issues with Republicans." He says, "I don't want her to be president. We're polar opposites on many issues. But we have been able to find common ground." The NYT continues: "With Senator Trent Lott, she worked on improving the Federal Emergency Management Agency. With Representative Tom DeLay it was foster children. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, jumped in with her on a health care initiative, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, was a partner on legislation concerning computerized medical records. The list goes on: Senator Robert Bennett on flag-burning; Senator Rick Santorum on children's exposure to graphic images; Senator John Sununu on S.U.V. taillights; Senator Mike DeWine on asthma. And virtually every Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose Republican chairman, John Warner, speaks admiringly of Mrs. Clinton's "remarkable core of inner strength." For the most part, she avoids sharply ideological issues in her work with Republicans, which she promotes through a steady stream of photo-ops and press releases from her office." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/nyregion/from-senator-clinton-a-lesson-in-tactical-bipartisanship.html 3. She listens. When Hillary Clinton ran for the Senate in 2000, she kicked it off by doing a "listening tour" across the state of New York. These were derided at the time, the New Yorker published "she tried to elevate nodding into a kind of political philosophy." During Clinton's travels, she stuffed notes from her conversations and readings into suitcases, and after she became Senator, blocked out "card-table time" to categorize the notes and draft legislation to address them. Her listening tour to kick off the 2016 campaign led her to be the first candidate to focus on a plan to fight opiate addiction. http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/02/politics/hillary-clinton-10-billion-drug-addiction-fight/ Her campaign events continue to focus on listening to the concerns and suggestions of others rather than mega-rallies: "“I’m taking a lot of notes,” Hillary Clinton admitted to the panel on national security on Wednesday. The small group of invited service members and their families chuckled. Hillary Clinton, policy wonk, was in the building. Days after delivering two speeches where she sharply criticized Donald Trump over his approach to national security, Clinton’s five-person panel discussion in one of the nation’s most concentrated hubs of service members and military families took a different approach to drawing a contrast with Trump. Clinton had come, she told the small room of invited guests, to “do a lot more listening than talking.”" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/15/clinton-goes-full-policy-wonk-to-draw-contrast-with-trumps-reckless-ideas/ I saw this being shared by one of my extreme left friend on FB, and I start to wonder if "vox" on our board is the same person as VOX on FB? https://www.facebook.com/Vox/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED In China, there is a group of people being called the "50 cent party", whose job is to surf online everyday and whenever they see things against their government, they post replies to either spin rumors or lies to explain, or directly attack the guy, and the government pays them 50 cents per post. The cost of doing the above in China annually has exceeded the military budget, ironically. VOX in FB seems like the US version one of those "50 cent party" guys. If you did even a modicum of research, you would realize that Vox is owned by Vox Media and includes assets such as: SB Nation, The Verge, Polygon, Curbed, Eater, Racked, Vox, and Recode. It's funded by various large private equity funds and NBC Universal. Vox.com is run by Ezra Klein, former editor at Wonkblog at the Washington Post. I am not affiliated with Vox, Vox Media, or the Chinese government.

I don't know if Hillary Clinton would be a great president, but I will take the over on expectations of her success. 1. Historically, Hillary Clinton has a much higher approval rating when she is in office than when she is running for office. The Gallup favorability ratings from 1992 through 2015 show ebbs in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2007, and 2016, when she was campaigning for First Lady, Senator, and President; they peak during her actual time in office. When she left her most recent position as Secretary of State in 2013, she had a 64% favorability rating, compared to 38% now. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/may/22/hillary-clinton/hillary-clintons-approval-rating-secretary-state-w/ 2. Hillary Clinton works well with Republicans. In 2006, the NYT had a story on her ability to form bipartisan alliances. It quotes Lindsey Graham calling her a "smart, prepared, serious senator" who "has managed to build unusual political alliances on a variety of issues with Republicans." He says, "I don't want her to be president. We're polar opposites on many issues. But we have been able to find common ground." The NYT continues: "With Senator Trent Lott, she worked on improving the Federal Emergency Management Agency. With Representative Tom DeLay it was foster children. Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, jumped in with her on a health care initiative, and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, was a partner on legislation concerning computerized medical records. The list goes on: Senator Robert Bennett on flag-burning; Senator Rick Santorum on children's exposure to graphic images; Senator John Sununu on S.U.V. taillights; Senator Mike DeWine on asthma. And virtually every Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose Republican chairman, John Warner, speaks admiringly of Mrs. Clinton's "remarkable core of inner strength." For the most part, she avoids sharply ideological issues in her work with Republicans, which she promotes through a steady stream of photo-ops and press releases from her office." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/nyregion/from-senator-clinton-a-lesson-in-tactical-bipartisanship.html 3. She listens. When Hillary Clinton ran for the Senate in 2000, she kicked it off by doing a "listening tour" across the state of New York. These were derided at the time, the New Yorker published "she tried to elevate nodding into a kind of political philosophy." During Clinton's travels, she stuffed notes from her conversations and readings into suitcases, and after she became Senator, blocked out "card-table time" to categorize the notes and draft legislation to address them. Her listening tour to kick off the 2016 campaign led her to be the first candidate to focus on a plan to fight opiate addiction. http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/02/politics/hillary-clinton-10-billion-drug-addiction-fight/ Her campaign events continue to focus on listening to the concerns and suggestions of others rather than mega-rallies: "“I’m taking a lot of notes,” Hillary Clinton admitted to the panel on national security on Wednesday. The small group of invited service members and their families chuckled. Hillary Clinton, policy wonk, was in the building. Days after delivering two speeches where she sharply criticized Donald Trump over his approach to national security, Clinton’s five-person panel discussion in one of the nation’s most concentrated hubs of service members and military families took a different approach to drawing a contrast with Trump. Clinton had come, she told the small room of invited guests, to “do a lot more listening than talking.”" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/06/15/clinton-goes-full-policy-wonk-to-draw-contrast-with-trumps-reckless-ideas/

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/hillary-bill-clinton-secret-service-224578 "The author of a new tell-all book about Hillary Clinton could never have seen any of what he claims — he was too low-ranking — say several high-level members of Secret Service presidential details, including the president of the Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service. On Tuesday, AFAUSSS, which is strictly nonpartisan, is set to release a statement blasting Gary Byrne author of “Crisis in Character,” saying members “strongly denounce” the book, which they add has made security harder by eroding the trust between agents and the people they protect. “There is no place for any self-moralizing narratives, particularly those with an underlying motive,” reads the statement from the group’s board of directors, which says Byrne has politics and profit on his mind. ... The group’s statement, which POLITICO obtained in advance of its release, very carefully calls Byrne a liar. “One must question the veracity and content of any book which implies that its author played such an integral part of so many [claimed] incidents. Any critique of management by one who has never managed personnel or programs resounds hollow. Additionally, why would an employee wait in excess of ten years after terminating his employment with the Service to make his allegations public?” it reads. The closest contact that Byrne could have had, according to Gilhooly and others, is seeing the president or the first lady pass in the hallway — far from the intimate access he would have needed to catch Bill Clinton in the act or see Hillary Clinton fly into the cursing rages he now writes have convinced him that she doesn’t have the “integrity and temperament” to be president. ... Gilhooly, who served primarily in the details of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, was also an inspector within the Secret Service from 1995 through 1997. During that time, he said, he was constantly in contact with people in the White House, and often with Hillary Clinton — professionally, as well as through the former first lady writing a letter on his behalf to an insurance company with which he was having a dispute after the death of his wife in 1993. “I never once saw any kind of what I would have considered inappropriate behavior,” Gilhooly said. Gilhooly said he doesn’t remember ever meeting Byrne, or knowing who he was before word of the book started circulating. The former supervisor of the presidential protective division also said Byrne didn’t ring a bell."

Unfortunately, it's not a surprise to see a Donald Trump supporter resort to lodging bizarre insults towards people with whom they disagree rather than engage in issues substantively.