It's not. I think it's even deeper than that. We are being fed news stories that match articles we've already read due to website tracking and therefore, we just get continual reinforcement of whatever views. Literally, dividing the country into two extremes.

I've asked this before and never got a good response. I supported Bush on Afghanistan and opposed him on Iraq. What position am I allowed to take on actions Obama has taken or Clinton might take in order not to be viewed a hypocrite?

And even if the Democrats roll over and join the GOP on a number of issues, there are still very clear differences on issues like LGBT rights, minimum wage, health care, climate change, etc.

Also its without much nuance, to be honest. Most Democrats really weren't all that pissed with Bush for drone warfare.

Would people be less upset about drones if they were just called remote control aircraft as they were for decades previously? Personally, I'm all for anything that keeps our soldiers safer.

At the heart of it all: Who shall be master?

I dunno, it sounds tough on the surface, but it's an easy distinction for me to make personally, probably because it's more of a question of the disparity of someone's level of outrage, rather than the specifics of their position. As long as someone is displaying something close to an equal level of thought and emotion, you could change the particulars of your position every day, and it probably wouldn't set off any of my alarms, but some of the folks that are absolutely frothing to call Trump Hitler on my Facebook feed have been playing see-no-evil for the past 8 years.


Personally, I think the most distressing thing about drones is just the willful secrecy and lack of oversight..it's hard for the public to have an honest discussion about them, let alone trust how they're operating, if nobody's liable for even reporting how/when they're used.

Is it me or was last night better than tonight (so far)?

Last night had Obama and Diamond Joe, of course it was better.

Please ... not blue!

Whew, white.

Chelsea did a great job.

With the notable exception of Mr. Khan. He was incredibly powerful.

I also liked the Reverend from a bit before him.

Eh, tonight was okay but last night was better. Yeah Mr. Kahn was pretty powerful, great line.

I'm good with rich people being taxed more. The thing about corporations paying their fair share ... I want to know how she defines that. There will be a negative impact to the stock market if she wins (but it'll adjust with time).

Big business wants Hillary. Not necessarily because of her policies but because of stability. The devil you know.

I do like Trump's corporate tax plan though. Knock it down to 15% and allow companies to repatriate money for a one-time 10% tax.

Just saw a snippet of the former MI governor Jennifer Granholm impersonate Carly Simon. Pretty cute, had a good chuckle.

About 50 secs in.

Jennifer Granholm Channels Carly Simon To Mock Donald Trump

To me, the root cause is that we, as a society, have gotten a lot more tolerant of willfully anti-social behavior.

This is driven, at least in part, by media saturation (and its anti-social behavior, i.e. people yelling at each other on cable news) and the relative anonymity afforded by using the internet.

I mean, it's one example, but compare Trump to this:


And that was only 8 years ago.

I thought that Mr. Khan's speech was the one part of both conventions that has a chance to break though the chatter. Particularly that image of him pulling out a Constitution and offering to lend it to Trump. It's short; it's simple; and it's a powerful visual. Whoever scripted that moment for the DNC did a great job.

dola:

And though this has nothing to do with anything, I am still curious. It was a perfect prop: blue border with a picture of the Constitution on the front. A little worn and weathered like it's been read a lot.

Was it his? If it was his, was it already worn, or did they crease the page for him? If it wasn't, did they send an intern out to buy a bunch of pocket constitutions so that they could see which one looked best on camera? And was there one person in charge of bending and folding it to make it look weathered?

I can appreciate the shout-out to the media as mostly culpable. We didn't just "evolve" on our own, though face to face communication plays some small role. We are sheep as we spout so many times against one another. The media (MSM, web news, AM radio, Facebook, Twitter) herd us with uncanny effectiveness.

Face to face conversation would probably be better though because we aren't so brazen in our approach. But how are we different than the media? We all live with the unwritten but well respected rule that we don't talk about politics, religion, and race....the media aggressively discusses those issues but almost exclusively one-sided in every venue mentioned above. Why? Viewership, listeners...and ultimately...money. At our expense, of course. This is the legacy of America's freedom of speech. We are blowing it as much as we are blowing our 2nd amendment rights and our private industry rights.

My guess is that he obtained it as part of his naturalization process -- and that he doesn't take his citizenship for granted as many of us do.

Dola:

Fox News Plays Benghazi Commercial Over Khzir Khan's Anti-Trump Speech At The Democratic National Convention

Charles makes a good point here. I think I agree with him that it easily could be assumed that neither of the parties involved knew what they were doing or saying in this exchange over the e-mails.

Charles Krauthammer: Clinton Campaign Contradicts Hillary's Story About Emails | National Review

What exactly are we blowing of our 2nd amendment rights?

I don't get that and its a really strange argument to make, calling for anyone to commit a crime (which hacking is) regardless of whether they're a foreign power isn't something any candidate should be doing.

PS - I don't think Trump was at all serious, but it was in poor taste and aimed at making people think poorly of his rival ... as most of his rhetoric is, it has to be really as he has no credible policies of his own.

I don't really see that, it's being too literal. I'd argue that by asking them to hack into the system to find the deleted e-mails, it implies they get access to all the other e-mails. This includes all those produced and those that are classified that were produced but not to the public.

I think he was serious at that point in time. In the news conference the reporter challenged him a couple times and he kept on going about it.

Khan is the type of person that the GOP should be attracting. He, and those like him, would respond to a conservative message if that message wasn't drowned out by hate. That should worry the GOP more than any single line in his speech.

Decent enough speech, but Hillary has never been the orator that Barack and Bill (Clinton) have been. A few good lines though, definitely.

I've seen a few articles, tweets, comments, about how Republicans are a bit sad that Trump allowed the Democrats to position themselves as the party of values, patriotism, and God and they did it oh, so smoothly.

So regardless of what you think about Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she sure threw together a fantastic convention.

I don't think he was serious - I think he is very clever and knows what will get him coverage in the press, that is something entirely different ..

If the election comes down to discussing topics and viewpoints on serious issues and having to indicate a viable platform Trump loses as he has little knowledge and fewer plans from what I can see, however if it stays at the reality TV level of sound bytes and outrageous comments he's in with a shot ...

That confused me too. We always talk a good game after a mass shooting, but our country's current gun laws are to the right of Antonin Scalia.

But let's be honest here. We heard these exact same comments at the early stages of the Republican primary race. We are not dealing with a conventional political race in any way, shape, or form. If there's a prototypical 'Teflon' candidate, Trump is it. Verbal body blows by his opponents or misplaced comments by him just don't seem to affect him one bit. He just keeps chucking molotov cocktails onto the situation.

The Republican establishment candidates learned it the hard way. Hillary did fine in the confines of her convention. However, the next stage of the election (debates and campaiging) is where Trump really did extremely well in regards to drawing voters into his camp. He's like Phil Hellmuth at a poker table. He'll just keep poking and poking, regardless of how bad it may look, in order to get you off your game. He's going to be doing that exact thing to Hillary Clinton over the next three months. Her ability to get elected over the next stage is going to have very little to do with her policies and much to do with whether she can remain calm and look 'presidential' under the heat of Trump's verbal attacks. It's certainly a great test for her because there are a lot of leaders out there in the world who will test her much the same way if she is elected.

plus, what are 'private industry rights'? That's a new one.

The right to pollute the environment, sell contaminated products, and pay people next to nothing for their labor.

Yep. Looks,just like the one my student had when he was getting his citizenship.

BTW, that was an awesome day, shy Ethoiopian kid got to graduate high school and become a citizen on the same day.

If you want to go with the Hellmuth example that's fine, but given the attacks HRC has endured over the last 25 years (some justified, some not), I am really, really confident that with Trump's silliness, she can "dodge bullets, baby."

Exactly. Also, given the ease with which the interns running her Twitter feed appear to be able to bait Trump into stupid tweets, I think he's the one who should be worried about looking presidential.

Indeed. If there is ANY candidate who could stay calm in the face of any assertion or implication and poke back to make Trump erupt, it's Hillary Clinton.

But I don't think it matters too much on his end. As I mentioned before, he beat 15 other people who were trying to look presidential, mainly because they failed to negotiate the Trump minefield.

I should mention that although I currently would vote for Trump, there's a pretty good chance I'll sway to Johnson in the end.

Fourth Circuit strikes down NC voter restrictions: http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions...d/161468.P.pdf

Probably not a huge deal for the presidency because if NC is that close than Clinton has probably already won Virginia, Florida, Ohio, and Colorado. But it may be huge for Senate control.

Umm, I believe you that such articles exist. I'm hard pressed to think they didn't come from liberal authors OR a few stray former conservatives/pseudocons who are dealing with some butt hurt over the beating Trump administered to them.

The reaction I've seen would put Republican disgust with the Ds at an all-time high. The parade of repulsive character after repulsive character to the stage pretty much rendered any hope of rehabbing the party's image moot for a very long time. Even the anti-Trump'ers I know were on a steady rant about that most of the week.

Erick Erickson is a former conservative/pseudocon?

Erickson's credibility took a huge (yuuuuuge) hit during primary season. He wasn't all that notable to begin with frankly, at this point, just a butt hurt loser yapping.

Oh, sorry I misunderstood you. You were upset that actual conservatives were criticizing the pseudocon Donald Trump.

Winning a primary takes a different group of voters than winning the general.

Trump being goaded into saying stupid shit on Twitter will not help him with the middle 10% that's up for grabs (assuming both candidates basically start with 45% in the bag-ish). It simply wasn't a liability in the primary.

Plus, it's also clear that while Clinton probably has an army of interns/staff doing her Twitter feed, Trump appears to do most of his, himself. There's a good chance they'll just keep him exhausted trying to conduct Twitter wars 24/7. :D

Seriously, though, none of his primary opponents had both the resources and the drive to attack and goad Trump on social media.

Jon's using the traditional definition of "conservative", which is "return us to the 19th or 18th century, plzkthx". This differs from the modern GOP, which is aiming for on or about 1951.

Not sure if it means anything, but I'm in north Florida this week and the Jacksonville station is playing a ton of Clinton ads and so far zero Trump ads.

He doesn't have much money to advertise with.

Dems to win NC spiked to 53 cents on PredictIt.

Also, McCrory's re-election price dropped from .43 yesterday to .36 right now.

Wait, so there's actually a FIFTH candidate considered to be "in the race"?
(Granted, that's a pretty low bar to meet, but still)

I don't know that -- until updating my ISideWith quiz just for the heck of it -- I'd even heard the name of this Castle fellow.

Rolling back the early voting was done specifically to eliminate the black vote. No other way to look at it after seeing the data.

And, no, I'm not being sarcastic/ironic/tongue-in-cheek or anything else.

Hillary will obliterate him in a debate. It's one of the areas she's extremely good at. She made Obama look bad in 2008 during them.

If I was her I'd want as many debates as possible and in as open as format as possible. Trump is limited in what he knows about policy and international politics. Any chance to showcase that is a win for her.

There's also a very good chance that he'll try to bully and insult her which won't play well.

That is a certainty and with his obvious limited vocabulary I bet he drops a "shut up" or f bomb during a debate:-)

Depends upon the audience he's playing to.

For his likely voters -- who HAVE to remain motivated enough to show up & vote if he's to have a chance -- there really isn't anything bad he could do to her that won't play well. About the biggest mistake he could make with them would be to treat her with anything other contempt.

And how that plays quite possibly depends on what sort of research they're getting about the surety/softness of those votes.

His base will eat it up. His base isn't going to win him the election though. The people he needs in order to win the election aren't going to like it.

I think that's the problem the GOP runs into nowadays. What they need to do in order to secure their base and what they need to do to get enough independents/moderates to win the election are completely different.

But he can't win -- zero percent chance -- if he doesn't hold that base AND get them to show up.

It's one of the dicier propositions his candidacy faces IMO. This isn't a candidate that has years or even decades of people that will show up to vote for him out of habit. (Look how quickly he lost me, the same could happen with every voter than isn't purely a not-Hilary voter) He caught lightning in a bottle to get this far ... but can he manage to put the cap on the bottle?

It seems at least reasonable to think we might see record low turnout in November, all things considered. Is there a risk that he pushes the turnout up & in the wrong direction? Sure. But if the numbers are low then you have GOT to hold onto that base to have any chance at all.

There's certainly a legit question to ask about how many votes #NeverHilary is worth for him. It might even be a majority of his votes, but I don't believe it's enough to win with. I just don't see a way to keep the rest of the pro-Trump support around if he tries to be anything other than himself.

He can't win unless he gets moderates to vote for him. And suburban housewives probably don't like his act.

Hillary is terrible but imagine electing this guy.

The Gallup polling on the convention shows Trump's problem going all anti-Hillary.

He can if they stay home.
(see my comment about total turnout)

So far, he's gotten at least a nominal lead in national polling by keeping up the aggression. I don't know that he holds that if he does anything else. He may very well not hold it if he continues, but I don't think changing course now makes a helluva lot of sense either.

Let's be very realistic: If you're willing to vote for HRC now, the odds of you changing sides because there's suddenly a kinder, gentler Trump are so small as to be unmeasurable. If you're voting for him now, then there's not much he can do in terms of being rough that is going to change that either, but he can lose those votes by being soft.

There's a chance, for sure, that he takes people out of the non-voting column and pushes them into the wrong camp. I acknowledge that, no problem. How many of those there actually are, and whether they're meaningful in the outcome, that's a lot murkier to me.

I've never heard of him either, but the Constitution Party is usually on my ballot in Michigan.

I think low turnout is the best way for him to win. That's why I don't think I'd be doing a bunch of crazy stuff at debates where you get people who normally don't care to get out and vote because they don't want Donald Trump as their President.

Kind of a tough line for him to walk. He has to keep his base motivated but not piss off casual voters.

Trump's starting to complain about debate scheduling. He does not want to be up there 1 on 1 with her. Not his strength. He thrives in the media setting, not a 1 on 1 setting.

Pence: 'Name Calling' Has No Place in Politics | NBC Bay Area

Wow, can't believe a VP candidate would call out his running mate like that...


...oh.

If it's a purely base election, he can win. The problem is, Clinton has been in the limelight for so long, and had so much dirt hurled at her, that I think a smoking gun (and possibly a literal one) is the only way he can pull off the two-step of being so odious the moderates won't vote for him while also damaging Clinton so badly that the moderates won't vote for her.


Put another way, if you're disgusted by his antics now, you aren't going to be fooled, and if you've crossed the Rubicon to support him after all the shit he's said and done, those bridges done been burnt already and you're not crossing back over.


How many there are is a fair question, but remember that people in the non-voting camp tend to be either the sort of moderates we discussed above or traditionally Democratic demographics who don't turn out as reliably as the Republican base in the first place - youth and minorities. The youth vote especially.

And that's his problem - I'm not sure there's such a thing as Republicans currently inclined to sit this out who would "come home" absent that aforementioned smoking gun. Anybody he pushes from inactivity to voting is almost certainly going to be someone who isn't pulling the lever for him.

I don't think that makes the difference in the election one way or another but it could be the difference from the "expected" map and states like Arizona, and Georgia turning unexpectedly blue.

yeah I saw that and wondering how much pot he had smoked before he said that. If there is a king of name calling, its his running mate. Demagogue is such a harsh word too :)

What an ass...

Donald Trump to Father of Fallen Soldier: 'I’ve Made a Lot of Sacrifices' - ABC News

He's made a lot of sacrifices and then couldn't name one sacrifice.

Then, of course, he had to take a shot at the guy by accusing him of not letting his wife speak because of their religion.

You know, Pence might scare me even more than Trump does. He has the face of a man who would kill his mother to get a leg up.

Sounds like Trump is trying to get out of the debates. Not surprising since Hillary is really good at them.

Log In - The New York Times


Shocking Trump would lie and make something like that up while trying to weasel out of the debates.

I love how Trump is using the fact that NFL games are up against two of them-he said he got a letter from the NFL saying it was "ridiculous" to have the debates scheduled then. And obviously Hillary was to blame for the schedule.

1. The debates are decided on by a non-partisan group with no input from the campaigns...and were decided on in Sept 2015.

2. The NFL never sent Trump a letter.

Don't let the truth bite you in the ass, Donald.

oops sorry did not see your post mckerney.

Just a note on the Koch brothers.

Koch brothers network rules out anti-Clinton ads | Politics - WMTW Home

I know his supporters don't care but it's crazy how you can just blatantly lie about stuff that is easily verifiable like that. I think he's got a personality disorder.

yeah its crazy the lies he gets away with. I think its going to come back to bite him in ads and the debates (well if he participates in them)

Just so that I'm clear on something ... the same NFL that people here rant about being so awfully run is the same one that gets the immediate "oh well they said they didn't, so obviously they didn't " benefit of the doubt?

How ... interesting.

Considering the debate schedule was set before the NFL schedule was, yeah.

What is the motivation for the NFL to lie about something like this? Especially something Trump could prove by just showing the letter they sent him?

If everything he said around that statement about the NFL letter involves him blatantly lying about easily verifiable information, I'm going to tend to think he's lying about that too. Doesn't really matter what the other entity is.

Okay, THAT part is pretty easy. I mean, how silly would the NFL look complaining to Trump about something like that? I don't figure their ratings are going to get clipped THAT hard as long as the games are decently close.


That kinda requires him to have bothered to keep it. Does it really seem like a stretch to think it was read & trashed?

I'm going to go with a pathological liar got caught in another lie.

Some pictures of the GOP Candidates wife (and potential first lady). Probably shouldn't matter but in a way, it does to me.

Melania Trump like you’ve never seen her before | New York Post

I'm pro-Trump but that's starting to get degraded to "reluctantly pro-Trump". The way he's running his campaign it's almost as if "I want to see how many ways I can be my own worst enemy and still win". Any other candidate with all this uncertainty about Clinton would've walked away with the presidency by now even before elections. I do happen to think there's a bit of "pathological liar" in him, but not in the way ppl will just call someone "psycho" or "sociopath", I'm rooting for him but something clearly seems to be off with him. What started off as "cute" or "trump being trump" is now "ok something seems wrong about this guy." To lie about something that can be easily proved is stupid. Also not sure why NFL games being on at the same time is an issue for a presidential candidate - is he implying he's pissed cuz he wants to watch football or is it a ratings thing? If it's for ratings that further goes to tie him to his "reality star" roots, which is what he should be distancing himself from.

Very odd man. Not so sure about him these days.

It's sad because I like some of Trump's ideas. He's right on the H1-B visas and our trade partners taking advantage of us. I like his corporate tax plan a lot as well. And while I'm not for building some giant wall on the border, I do think we should take illegal immigration more seriously.

But he doesn't have the temperament to be President. He is so thin-skinned that he can get drawn into childish insults with ease. Going after Khizr Khan is pathetic. You can't win that battle, just ignore it or do what Hillary did with Pat Smith.

And the lying is a huge problem. Now all politicians lie, but he lies about stuff that is easily verifiable. The NFL lie was unnecessary and a phone call away for most reporters. It wasn't something that would even help him politically. That makes me think he's just a pathological liar.

Also the stuff about not wanting to use phones or e-mail to communicate in the military. I understand security issues and you want to make sure you have that nailed down. But carrier pigeon stuff is like going back to the Civil War. Imagine fighting terrorism the way he thinks it should be fought.

I don't think he wants to debate. Say what you will about her, but she's a highly skilled debater. Hammered Obama in 2008 and I think she was much better than Bernie in most of their debates.

Also one-on-one debates are not good for Trump. He held his own in the primary debates where it was a bunch of people on stage because they aren't really much of a debate. You can prepare some canned answers to the few questions you get but you can also spend most of the time just throwing out attacks at the others on the stage which he did. He's going to be pressed in these debates to actually know things which I don't think he does.

I will differ on some of your points of agreement with Trump but I also agree with Trump on some issues vs Hillary.

With that said, I do think how he has conducted himself will not work well in the world stage and will get us into trouble. He is unstable, unfiltered and too full of himself.

On top of that, he just doesn't know enough stuff about the world. He was just on TV a few minutes ago saying that Russia will never invade Ukraine.

From Mark Cuban's endorsement of Hillary yesterday in Pittsburgh,


and the Dallas News definition is fantastic:

For somebody who is such a stickler for paperwork, like, oh I don't know, fucking BIRTH CERTIFICATES, then yes I sure as shit expect to see proof if he expects anyone outside his most ardent supporters to believe that.

Trump isn't a stickler for paperwork; he's a stickler for publicity.

Trump said he wanted that mother to speak if her religion was keeping her quiet, well she has spoken now:

Ghazala Khan: Trump criticized my silence. He knows nothing about true sacrifice. - The Washington Post

If Trump had had the good sense to have said nothing or, if asked, "it's terrible that they lost their son. I appreciate his sacrifice and can't imagine what it's like to lose a son," the impact of Khan's speech is minimized, and pretty much forgotten in a couple of weeks or so. Instead, the longer him attacking this family stays in the news, the more potential votes he loses from undecideds and conservatives who were lukewarm about him.

I've never seen a candidate where you had to fact check every little thing he says. Even the most easily verifiable stuff has to be fact checked.

He claimed he opposed the Iraq war so many times and has used details of his opposition so much on the campaign trail that I assumed he was telling the truth. It turns out there's no record of his opposition to the war until after it started and no record of his claims of addressing the white house because his opposition was getting so much publicity (as he's claimed). The only thing anywhere where he publicly commented on the war was 6 months prior to the war on Howard's Stern's show he said he guesses he supports an invasion of Iraq.

I don't think he's going make anywhere near the impact he feels he'll make and most on the left fear he'll make when it comes to policy. It is downright frightening to picture a guy that can't avoid calling people that disagree with him names and lies about the smallest of things meeting with foreign leaders.

I'm not as worried about Trump's domestic ideas because of Congress, but his foreign policy would be catastrophic.

I wonder if the NFL holds any sort of grudge towards him after the whole USFL thing.

They shouldn't. He almost singlehandedly destroyed their biggest competitor.