fishmike wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

Knickoftime wrote:

gunsnewing wrote:First I see a grown woman crying hysterically on CNN about the injection of he word PUSSY. Then a few days later on SNL I see everyone laughing hysterically at the comments or of 60-70yr old man.

Confirms to me my opinions on selective outrage and how extremely unfortunate that most
Of America only cares about the salacious soap opera stuff. These people prefer comedy over real issues. Therefore this election circus is precisely what America deserves.

Looks like you got the talking points in your email gun...

You can find a few outliers like the video you mentioned, but no, this isn't outrage about the word PUSSY, its concern about the 60 year old man running for president as a 70 year who was bragging about sexual assault.

Exactly - he bragged about committing sexual assault (a crime he's been accused of committing as well).
If Hillary had been accused many times of assaulting men and then she confessed on video, the reaction would be a lot worse than this!

my god he's even getting backlash from athletes. Having played on team sports for years locker room talk 100% happens, but I don't EVER remember a dude saying he could take that which wasn't offered. Its like look at the rack on the chick behind home, or if you could bone one of these 3, which would it be? Respectful of women? No.. locker room testosterone talk? Yea. I can say with confidence if during one of these chats someone bragged about groping his babysitter we would be like your an a-hole and the conversation would die. I know I would. Big freakin difference to "locker room talk" and bragging about taking what is not offered.

Right, the whole premise of 'locker room talk' is to make yourself appear more desirable to girls/women than you really are. To create the impression that they WANT you.

That isn't Trump's pathology. His delusion isn't his attractiveness or desirability. He didn't even brag about how woman come onto him because of his fame/power, which is still icky but not assault.

It's his fantasy what his status allows him to do whatever he wants.

I'll say it again. In January 2016 he publicly opined that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any of his "unbelievable" support.

SAME pathology, again manifested in the most dark fantasy imaginable.

Try reading something instead of nodding your head to whatever pops up in your conspiracy-laden YouTube autoplay.

Sorry if I'm being a dick, but I'm honestly stunned by how often conjecture passes for the truth.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/12/donald-trump/donald-trump-claims-obama-has-spent-2-million-lega/

President Obama has spent over $2 million in legal fees defending lawsuits about his birth certificate.
— Donald Trump on Thursday, April 7th, 2011 in an interview on NBC's "Today" show

Donald Trump claims Obama spent $2 million in legal fees defending birth certificate lawsuits

By Louis Jacobson on Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 at 4:10 p.m.

Among those who challenge President Barack Obama's citizenship, one claim is often raised: Why would Obama spend millions of dollars defending against the lawsuits instead of simply producing his original birth certificate?

That argument took on renewed life recently when it was cited by potential GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

And the argument is almost always attached to a specific figure: $2 million.

In an interview on NBC's Today show, for example, Trump said Obama "spent $2 million in legal fees trying to get away from this issue." He repeated the figure in a CNN interview on April 10, 2011. "I just say very simply why doesn't he show his birth certificate?" Trump asked. "Why has he spent over $2 million in legal fees to keep this quiet and to keep this silent?"

(For some background on the underpinnings of the dispute over Obama birth certificate, start here).

In a Fox News appearance on April 10, 2011, Palin echoed the figure while praising Trump's efforts. Trump is "paying for researchers to find out why President Obama would have to spend $2 million to not show his birth certificate," Palin said. "So more power to him."

It's certainly true that the Obama campaign has spent some amount of money opposing an array of lawsuits brought by people who claim that Obama has failed to produce a legitimate birth certificate and is therefore ineligible to serve as president. But has the president spent $2 million?

We contacted Trump's office to find out where he got the number, but we did not receive a response. Others who have used the number have cited a story from WorldNetDaily, a conservative news website that has served as a venue for news and commentary about the birth certificate controversy.

In an Oct. 27, 2009, article, WND reported that, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Obama campaign had paid approximately $1.7 million to the campaign's law firm, Perkins Coie, since Obama was elected.

So that's where we started our research. We did our own tally of payments made to Perkins Coie, all of which were reported, as required by law, in quarterly disbursement reports filed to the FEC by his campaign organization, Obama for America. We found that in the last quarter of 2008 -- which is roughly the period after Obama was elected in early November -- and the first three quarters of 2009, which is when WND wrote its story, Obama for America did, in fact, pay Perkins Coie $1.7 million. If you add in the payments made in subsequent months, the fees paid to Perkins Coie between October 2008 and December 2010 rises to $2.6 million.

But what does that $2.6 million number mean? Not what Trump and others have assumed.

Specifically, the payments by Obama for America to Perkins Coie covered all sorts of legal expenses -- not just expenses related to birth certificate issues.

The FEC forms do not specify what each payment specifically went for, since that degree of detail is not required by law. We also couldn't get additional details from Perkins Coie or the Democratic National Committee about how the legal fees were spent.

However, DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call in a March 31, 2011, story that "the campaign has incurred ordinary legal expenses related to the wind-down of its operations and other legal services, which all campaigns incur, and which are proportional to the unprecedented size of this campaign." (The Obama campaign raised upwards of $750 million -- a record.)

For the sake of comparison, the Roll Call story noted that the campaign for Obama's 2008 Republican opponent John McCain -- which was a smaller operation -- had spent more than $1.3 million on lawyers since the election.

In the interview with Roll Call, Sevugan confirmed that some of the legal fees were needed to defend the campaign against what he called "unmeritorious" lawsuits, including one that challenged Obama’s citizenship. And WND reported that Perkins Coie attorney Robert Bauer wrote at least one letter to challenge a plaintiff, retired military officer Gregory S. Hollister, who had filed a suit raising questions about the legitimacy of Obama's right to hold the office of president.

WND reported that Bauer -- who later left Perkins Coie to serve as White House counsel -- wrote to Hollister's attorney that "the suit is frivolous and should not be pursued. Should you decline to withdraw this frivolous appeal, please be informed that we intend to pursue sanctions, including costs, expenses and attorneys' fees...."

Still, there are clearly lots of other expenses incurred by the Obama campaign's legal team that have nothing to do with the citizenship question. For instance, the Republican National Committee filed a complaint with the FEC claiming that the Obama campaign had accepted donations from foreign nationals, among other alleged campaign finance infractions. All told, Roll Call reported that "the FEC has written 26 letters — totaling more than 1,500 pages — to the Obama campaign questioning its reports and outlining a flurry of compliance concerns."

After we looked through court records and spoke to experts in the field, we found insufficient evidence to support the claim that Obama for America spent $2 million solely on birth-certificate-related work.

Four campaign-finance experts we interviewed all agreed that after the campaign was over, a law firm in Perkins Coie’s situation would have a full plate of legal work to do that had nothing to do with birth certificate questions. Two of the experts who took this position have represented Republicans -- Trevor Potter, a campaign finance lawyer who worked for the 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns of John McCain and the 1988 campaign of George H.W. Bush, and Robert Kelner, who has represented the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee. A third attorney who agreed, Allison R. Hayward, is the vice president of policy for the Center for Competitive Politics, which filed an amicus brief opposing the Obama administration’s position in the landmark Citizens United Supreme Court case, which ended a broad swath of campaign finance restrictions.

"FEC audits and/or enforcement matters can take several years -- most are still open from the 2008 election," said Potter, general counsel to the Campaign Legal Center. "Various criminal investigations of donors may require campaign responses. Lawsuits against the campaign, campaign staff, and/or the candidate take time to defend. Vendor disputes may exist and require settlement."

"Law firms representing presidential campaigns typically are very busy in the one to two years following the campaign," said Brett Kappel, a lawyer with the firm Arent Fox LLP who specializes in campaign finance law. "First, there are all the legal issues involved in closing down the campaign –- resolving disputes with vendors, preparation for the FEC audit and so on. Second, the one to two years after the campaign is over are typically when all the FEC complaints that were filed against the campaign are resolved, and that’s certainly been the case with the 2008 Obama campaign."

We should note that, since Obama was elected, a number of federal cases related to the birth certificate issue -- including several filed by or with the assistance of California attorney Orly Taitz, a leader among Obama birth certificate questioners -- have been handled by federal attorneys, including those with the U.S. Department of Justice. Several of these cases were dismissed almost immediately. Others were active for up to a year but were ultimately dismissed and then, in some cases, appealed. The case in which Bauer wrote the letter to the plaintiff was dismissed twice by the Supreme Court.

We interpret the quotations by Trump and Palin to mean payments made by Obama in a personal capacity, not in cases where he's represented in an official capacity by government lawyers. For one thing, both Trump and Palin used the term "legal fees," which would be irrelevant in a case defended by government lawyers. Federal attorneys are paid a salary by the taxpayers, and they do not charge their "client" -- in this case, the president -- fees for representation. If these attorneys weren't working on birth certificate cases, they'd be working on some other case for the same salary.

So that leaves the funds paid to Perkins Coie. Trump's and Palin's claims assume that the vast majority of the money paid to Perkins Coie since the election was used to defend against lawsuits challenging Obama's citizenship. We agree that some amount of money was spent in legal fees related to those lawsuits -- the letter from Bauer to the plaintiff is an example of that. But, while we don't know exactly how much the Obama camp spent on their private lawyers, there were many, many non-birth-certificate duties that a law firm typically handles in the wake of a presidential campaign, which suggests that any birth certificate work was a small percentage of the overall fees paid to Perkins Coie.

When fact-checking, we think the onus is on the person making the claim to back up his statement. And the only backing we've seen in this case is that the Obama campaign's legal team spent more than $2 million on legal fees since the election ended. It's clear to us that the WND story has been twisted to wrongly assume that every dollar the Obama campaign spent on legal fees went to fight the release of Obama's birth certificate. The evidence shows that's simply not true. It's a huge, unsubstantiated leap to assume that all, or most, of that was related to lawsuits about Obama's citizenship. We rule Trump's claim False.

Knickoftime wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:I am not familiar with cable news networks to be honest. Thanks for mentioning it though. I'm really on the periphery through this all. (Getting most of my news online but also through "TV" on youtube.)

You're genuinely claiming to be unaware of the known slant of Fox News and who Rupert Murdoch is?

Who you're describing is someone who sounds massively uninformed.

earthmansurfer wrote:For something so simple, why did Obama spend millions (I heard) defending where he was born?
I don't think he was really ever officially investigated for being a non US born citizen, was he?

Annnnd... then you confirm it.

He didn't.

And no, he was not. Because there was no credible evidence to warrant an official investigation.

You don't launch an investigation based on racist fantasies.

Where did I say I'm unaware of Fox News and their slant, nor Rupert Murdoch. I said cable news networks, last I lived in the States, I got FOX on TV. Regardless...

And excuse me for citing what was reported elsewhere. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/12/donald-trump/donald-trump-claims-obama-has-spent-2-million-lega/

I don'T mind you disagreeing, but please stop extrapolating, putting words in my mouth and trying to twist and steer things.

Do you not see the bigger point in this all? Can you look past the personal? There is NO winner here. If Trump by some miracle did win, I wouldn't celebrate it, I would just think there is less of a chance of war.

martin wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

martin wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:I could see backing Hillary over Trump, as Walt said, she has the experience but we are comparing two apparently pretty corrupt individuals (I still fear a corrupt politician over a corrupt businessman). I am not shocked that she is hard working. Any person who wants this much power (Trump included), generally does all they can to get it, and since power corrupts, I'd imagine for all the wrong reasons. (Isn't there some kind of statistic regarding people in high positions of power e.g. CEO's and psychopathic behavior or something like that?) I wouldn't waste a stamp on an absentee ballot for either candidate. I'm just crossing my fingers that whoever gets in actually tries to do something for the people and not corporations.

I am still trying to solidify what you mean by pretty correct individual. Could you help me with that? Specifics? Not allegation? 8 years as senator, 4 as Secretary of State.

earthmansurfer wrote:Some of those emails are pretty damming and to not talk about them is sort of criminal, I mean it is news. Why can't they talk 50/50 about each candidate or close - I mean add some intelligence? Seems to be about companies, who own media conglomerates, creating public perception.

I've asked you this before. Please tell me what emails you are referring to and how they lead you to believe they were criminal? I've tried to search and can't find anything relevant regarding this latest batch. Help me with this. Specifics.

I only said corrupt individual, not correct. Well, with your logic, Al Capone was only a tax evader, not a mob guy as he was never convicted, right? Perfect analogy as well.
The death list alone (roughly 40 people) who were working with the Clintons, most notably Vince Foster whom Hillary most definitely was having an affair with, that met strange, often 2 shots to the head suicided, can't be ignored. There is a reason there are multiple books, written about the Clintons (and the Bush's for that matter.) Look into when Bill was Governor of Arkansas and how large amounts of cocaine were brought through the state, all on his watch. These "stories" go on and on and at some point, you have to realize, prosecution is never going to happen. Just like Grandpa Bush getting a slap on the wrist for dealing with Hitler during the war or Wachovia and HSBC getting small fines even though they were caught for being complicit in both laundering Billions of dollars and being connected to 20k or so deaths. As Carlin said - They are in a club and your are not a part of it.

You want evidence for a powerful and corrupt family with close government ties? Unless the Shizz hits the fan, they will never be prosecuted, just books written. But we can hope.

No it's not, not even close.

Your clinging to wild conspiracy theories is very much clouding your judgement. I think there were like 3 different investigations that covered Vince Foster, last one by Kenneth Star in 97. All ruled his death was suicide. Man, this is exhausting.

Sorry Martin, but I just don't trust this government nor their courts. (Not to say I trust Russia and theirs either.) I'll put the burden of proof on the government who has a history of breaking the law. I do love my country though, just think the government has slowly been hijacked.

LOL, wow, Kenneth Star did an investigation. And Kissinger was, for a time anyway, heading the 911 investigation.
To think we live in some kind of real democracy is the conspiracy. Hey, maybe we can get another (professional) actor in as president to make us think otherwise.

I'm clinging to my crossed fingers that Hillary doesn't go against military leaders, again, and start another war.

earthmansurfer wrote:Sorry Martin, but I just don't trust this government nor their courts. (Not to say I trust Russia and theirs either.) I'll put the burden of proof on the government who has a history of breaking the law. I do love my country though, just think the government has slowly been hijacked.

Again, you're just demonstrating the circular logic that is the foundation of conspiracy theories. You argue you put the burden of proof on government, but you wouldn't trust their proof. So why would you even make that statement?

That is just intellectual nihilism.

You don't trust anything, so therefore everything and anything you see in a Youtube video is credible.

You've acknowledged you've given up on seeking any objective grounding.

You're interested in questions. You're disinterested in answers.

If you were truly interested in finding truths, you'd do some research on the psychology of conspiracy theory, but I suspect you'd be uncomfortable recognizing things about yourself.

DrAlphaeus wrote:I'm really tired of all the ignorance of my "fellow Americans"... I'm not perfect of course. My Canadian family can't understand what is going on here.

There is a telling psychological underpinning about the whole thing.

Trump supporters genuinely believe the polls are wrong and the TV coverage is manipulated, that his local rally sizes are an indication of the national mood and that if he loses, it'll be a conspiracy.

Trump critics worry about the people who support Trump, worry that are more than them than our polling sources tell us and fret about democratic turnout.

The difference is simply, empathy.

The former don't understand their views doesn't represent the majority. Their worldview is utter contained to their own limited experiences. To neighbors to towns and counties and their chosen news sources.

The latter fully understand there are LOTS of people who think very differently than they do. They see and comprehend a relatively more accurate reflection of the diversity of our society.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/RenataPumarol/status/786184590515900416

BRIGGS wrote:

Knickoftime wrote:Man, the media is starting to go medieval on Trump's ass.

just starting? They've been at him 1 day after republican nomination. Hillary Clinton's run for President has been the most corrupt process in the history of politics. She's a criminal who does not deserve to be President.

Trump wouldnt have come close to winning the nomination without the media hyping him up. They found that the news networks in essence gave Trump over a billion dollars in free airtime/publicity running up to the convention. Now that they see he could actually win, and might go after them if he wins, the media is starting to take Trump becoming president seriously, and are fact checking him now like many of them should have from the start.

holfresh wrote:Drip...Drip...Drip...

-Woman in Palm Beach County accuses Trump of groping her...
-Woman sued Trump in 1997 for sexual assault, grabbing her p___y...

More to come...Drip...Drip..Drip...

Watching MSNBC...they are f'n coming out of the woodwork. Putting those 4 women into play before the debate and giving his lame locker-room response has come back to haunt him...I can guarantee that some of his victims were watching what he did and said and flipped out.

Folks also have to realize what these women are going to have to face Trump, his lawyers, and all the Trump crazies. Stepping up was not an easy thing to do.