a Trump vs Clinton United States Presidential Election in 2016

Who do you vote into the office of USA President?


  • Total voters
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As fascinating as this discussion on rating censorship is, can we talk about real problems related to this thread? Like how I said I worried how this election was going to color people perception of my Taiwanese/Chinese family, and one of the FIRST things our PEOTUS does is kick the hornets' nest that is Taiwan-China? Yep, so happy to see the direction this is going. Things have worked out so well for anyone vaguely Middle-Eastern looking in the last 15 years. Nothing to worry about here.
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not entirely sure what you think is going to happen?

Jun has been in the states over 2 years. In all that time, never once has she been discriminated against, called any racial slur, told to "go back to her country", or chastised for not speaking English in public.

I live here:

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It's in Pasco country. It's not quite "home on the range" countryside i.e. @Ravenpoe - ville, but it's no metropolitan area either. New Port Richey is 88.9% white, 0.5% Asian, and Pasco country went Trump in the election (I'm sorry I couldn't pull it to Johnson).

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I've taken Jun to places like this (although It's uh, not my preferred dig. I framed it as a cultural experience, lulz):

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We can sit for hours, speaking not a word of English and absolutely 0 people care. Actually strike that--if someone does say something, it's always something positive. Like "Holy shit, you guys are speaking Chinese?" or "Where in China are you from?"

She's even gotten a part time job doing music in a southern, (mostly) white church:
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Jun couldn't feel safer, more welcomed and included during her time in the U.S.

And although I am a major supporter of the idea that China is 1000x safer than the U.S., Asian nationalism scares me way more:

There - have - been - more - than - a few - cases. Heck, I was in Shanghai during the 2012 anti-Japanese riots. Thank goodness I wasn't Japanese.

I assure you that:
"Get the f*ck out of our country! We don't want your kind here!" He suffered a mild concussion and some other minor injuries as a result of the attack.
wasn't a quote from a Trump supporter.

In fact, the only discrimination Jun and I ever faced was a single incident where she was called a slut, by a Chinese person, on a Shanghai beach, because she was with me.

Don't stress yourself out unduly. If all my time abroad taught me anything, it's that the US is one inclusive mother effin' country.
 
I think the next person who makes a post about something other than trump in this thread today is going to have a time out.
So how about Stein not pushing through the recounts in Pennsylvania? What if - I know it's a big IF - there turns out to have been some fraud/miscounts in MI and WI, and both turn to Clinton? It would still leave Trump with the win, but it would cast serious doubts on his being properly elected....But with the recount window closed, there's no real recourse for people to check further. Would it destabilize the presidency, or cause a turn over in the EC?
 
I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not entirely sure what you think is going to happen?

Jun has been in the states over 2 years. In all that time, never once has she been discriminated against, called any racial slur, told to "go back to her country", or chastised for not speaking English in public.

I live here:

View attachment 22710

It's in Pasco country. It's not quite "home on the range" countryside i.e. @Ravenpoe - ville, but it's no metropolitan area either. New Port Richey is 88.9% white, 0.5% Asian, and Pasco country went Trump in the election (I'm sorry I couldn't pull it to Johnson).

View attachment 22711


I've taken Jun to places like this (although It's uh, not my preferred dig. I framed it as a cultural experience, lulz):

View attachment 22712

We can sit for hours, speaking not a word of English and absolutely 0 people care. Actually strike that--if someone does say something, it's always something positive. Like "Holy shit, you guys are speaking Chinese?" or "Where in China are you from?"

She's even gotten a part time job doing music in a southern, (mostly) white church:
View attachment 22715


View attachment 22716

Jun couldn't feel safer, more welcomed and included during her time in the U.S.

And although I am a major supporter of the idea that China is 1000x safer than the U.S., Asian nationalism scares me way more:

There - have - been - more - than - a few - cases. Heck, I was in Shanghai during the 2012 anti-Japanese riots. Thank goodness I wasn't Japanese.

I assure you that:
wasn't a quote from a Trump supporter.

In fact, the only discrimination Jun and I ever faced was a single incident where she was called a slut, by a Chinese person, on a Shanghai beach, because she was with me.

Don't stress yourself out unduly. If all my time abroad taught me anything, it's that the US is one inclusive mother effin' country.
I'm honestly very glad Jun has had a positive experience. For the most part, life has been similar here. But, unfortunately, I've been a witness to my own family being harassed on a few occasions. Before we were dating, Mr. Z got jumped on the subway. And there's been more than just the time she was applying for her citizenship that my MIL's accent/English proficiency has been used to harass or threaten her. I'm less worried about deportation, and more about the general atmosphere if Trump keeping Tweeting insults at China. There have been too many times people of vaguely Middle Eastern decent (and a few I've know personally) that either been assaulted or had to change they way they live (one changed his name from Mohammad), just because some ignorant idiot takes it upon themselves to be judge, jury, and executioner. This wasn't a candidacy won by saying "Let's unite all Americans and try to understand our differences".

I'm concerned could also effect how we can see our family, most of which is still in Taiwan. She tries to travel at least once a year to see them, and strained relations could effect that. I also don't want her being called into question why she travels there so much.

But mainly, my point is that we should be paying attention to international actions like this one, when this dumbass isn't even sworn into office yet, and make sure they DON'T become an issue. But just saying, "Oh, it's fine. There's nothing to worry about" is kinda how we got into this elected mess. Assuming that all Americans are level-headed and open-armed is how we got President Trump. I'm not building a fallout shelter, I'm trying to say that things like this are probably more important than "Disagree" ratings.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I'm concerned could also effect how we can see our family, most of which is still in Taiwan. She tries to travel at least once a year to see them, and strained relations could effect that. I also don't want her being called into question why she travels there so much.
Why would Trumpism/China stuff make someone question how often someone goes to Taiwan? The average derp on the street won't know your schedule, and the government would know the difference between the two nations.
 
Why would Trumpism/China stuff make someone question how often someone goes to Taiwan? The average derp on the street won't know your schedule, and the government would know the difference between the two nations.
I think she means officially if Trump causes problems for the U.S. with China by acknowledging Taiwan, not guy on the street.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I think she means officially if Trump causes problems for the U.S. with China by acknowledging Taiwan, not guy on the street.
Ok, so if Trump acknowledges Taiwan... who will be questioning how often she and her family go to Taiwan? I'm still not sure I follow.
 
Well, Trump loves Tweeting. And holy shit does he step into shit when he does.

(Please note that I linked to the DailyKos, which is so very, very, not an unbiased news source. But in this case, the Tweets pretty much speak for themselves.)

He may do more than wreck the U.S. economy. He may drag us into full-scale military confrontation.
lol... The US economy's bread and butter is full-scale military confrontation.

China can certainly hurt our trade economy, but militarily they're still very much second rate compared to the full scale might of the US military. To put in perspective we have 10 full sized Air Craft carriers. The rest of the world has 10 - combined! And those suckers aren't even capable of launching planes; mostly helicopters.
 
Well, Trump loves Tweeting. And holy shit does he step into shit when he does.

(Please note that I linked to the DailyKos, which is so very, very, not an unbiased news source. But in this case, the Tweets pretty much speak for themselves.)
Gonna voice an unpopular opinion here, but nothing in Trump's tweets is false. What probably led us closer to full scale conflict was Obama's "Pivot to Asia", which I can assure you was big news when it happened. I never thought I'd see the day that the progressive left would admonish a president (elect)'s support for a fully functioning democratic ally in the pacific over that of an Authoritarian dictatorship while continuing to spout the long-debunked myth of China's debt holdings and their ability to destroy us with it. I say all this as easily the most pro-China member on this board. Calling out currency devaluation and SCS bullshit is a positive, not a negative.
 
The rest of the world has 10 - combined! And those suckers aren't even capable of launching planes; mostly helicopters.
Whoa, hold on. You're mixing-and-matching there. It's true the USA has by far the most aircraft carriers, and it's also true that most other nations' aircraft carriers are mostly for helis. However, you can't combine the two. The rest of the world has 10 full jet-capable aircraft carriers. Or a couple of dozen aircraft carriers if you count the smaller ones. France, for example, has 10 aircraft carriers - but only 2 full ones.

If you want to properly convey how much naval air superiority the USA has, it's more useful to compare deck space or amount of jets that can be launched from ACCs. In which case the USA has approximately twice what ther est of the world has, combined.
 
Ok, so if Trump acknowledges Taiwan... who will be questioning how often she and her family go to Taiwan? I'm still not sure I follow.
Sorry, I'm in a rush today, so I'm trying to explain clearly.

Right now, to my knowledge, my MIL has duel citizenship (I think Mr. Z does, too, I have to check), but their passports are listed at the Republic of China . (That's the how and why) According to my MIL, while many people on Taiwan considering themselves Taiwanese, there are those who still see themselves as Chinese first. Since you can't very well tell who's who just by looking at them, I would be concerned any future travel might cause a "ping" on any flight restrictions, also because she has been to the mainland a number of times in the past few years.

You would think common sense would rule that out, but you also have articles like this floating around, and well, people open fire on pizza restaurants for less.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Sorry, I'm in a rush today, so I'm trying to explain clearly.

Right now, to my knowledge, my MIL has duel citizenship (I think Mr. Z does, too, I have to check), but their passports are listed at the Republic of China . (That's the how and why) According to my MIL, while many people on Taiwan considering themselves Taiwanese, there are those who still see themselves as Chinese first. Since you can't very well tell who's who just by looking at them, I would be concerned any future travel might cause a "ping" on any flight restrictions, also because she has been to the mainland a number of times in the past few years.

You would think common sense would rule that out, but you also have articles like this floating around, and well, people open fire on pizza restaurants for less.
I'm pretty sure anybody looking at their passports (government officials) probably knows the difference between the Republic of China (Taiwan, for those of you in the studio audience) and the People's Republic of China. I mean, the people who set up the watch lists certainly would. I don't think any customs processes take into account whether a person considers themselves Taiwanese/Chinese first. Granted, this is not an area in which I would consider myself an expert, but I don't think you need to be worrying too much about this particular scenario.
 
Whoa, hold on. You're mixing-and-matching there. It's true the USA has by far the most aircraft carriers, and it's also true that most other nations' aircraft carriers are mostly for helis. However, you can't combine the two. The rest of the world has 10 full jet-capable aircraft carriers. Or a couple of dozen aircraft carriers if you count the smaller ones. France, for example, has 10 aircraft carriers - but only 2 full ones.

If you want to properly convey how much naval air superiority the USA has, it's more useful to compare deck space or amount of jets that can be launched from ACCs. In which case the USA has approximately twice what ther est of the world has, combined.
But the Russians don't know how to land on their aircraft carrier.
 
So how about Stein not pushing through the recounts in Pennsylvania? What if - I know it's a big IF - there turns out to have been some fraud/miscounts in MI and WI, and both turn to Clinton? It would still leave Trump with the win, but it would cast serious doubts on his being properly elected....But with the recount window closed, there's no real recourse for people to check further. Would it destabilize the presidency, or cause a turn over in the EC?
Last I heard Stein was proceeding with the recounts in PA.

In that same vein, a judge has ordered a mandatory recount in Michigan, because Trump's margin of victory was less than 11,000 votes, or 0.2% - a recount is mandated when the margin is less than 0.5% in most states.

I read the other day that Trump's margin of victory in PA had dropped from 71,000 to 49,000 as the count proceeded, and Philadelphia is still being counted. It is far from impossible that the recounts could cost Trump the election - he only won by about 105,000 votes total across three swing states.
 
Gore didn't demand *another* recount. The margin of victory in Florida was so small that there was a mandatory recount. The court battle over the recount was that Gore wanted the recount completed to count every vote, and the Bush camp wanted it ended by a cut off date. The courts agreed to end at the cut off date. In the end, Bush was awarded Florida by 537 votes.

Issues with the Florida vote:

1) the infamous butterfly ballot in which it was hard to tell whether you were choosing Al Gore or Pat Buchanan. This led to a surprising number of elderly Jewish Floridians voting for Pat Buchanan. Effectively, Gore/Lieberman was in the 2nd slot but to select them you used the 3rd hole; the 2nd was for Buchanan. http://web.archive.org/web/20011111101807/http://www.sun-sentinel.com/graphics/news/ballot.htm

2) The Volusia error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volusia_error due to Diebold voting machines, a precinct in Florida with 585 registered voters, with 412 voters recorded, somehow produced 2,813 votes for Bush, -16,022 votes for Gore, and a larger number of negative votes for Ralph Nader.

3) DBT Online was hired to purge and update the voter rolls for the state of Florida. Governor Jeb Bush (brother of candidate George W. Bush) and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris stipulated that for purging non-voting ex-convicts, the software should recognize firstname lastname and lastname firstname - meaning that if an ex-con named "Jackson Marcus" were purged, "Marcus Jackson" would also be purged. The state also eventually changed it to only requiring an 80% match, omitting middle initials and suffixes, and adding nicknames and aliases. Thus, if there was a convict named "Jackson A. 'Snoopy' Marcus, Jr." then "Jackson H. Marcus," "Marcus Jackson", and "Johnson 'Snoopy' Matthews" would all be purged. It was later found that over 57,000 people were improperly removed from the voter rolls. 88% were black, despite only 11% of the Florida voting population being black. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File#Demographics_of_the_purge_list



But hey, it's a post-facts world, say what you like.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Gore didn't demand *another* recount. The margin of victory in Florida was so small that there was a mandatory recount. The court battle over the recount was that Gore wanted the recount completed to count every vote, and the Bush camp wanted it ended by a cut off date. The courts agreed to end at the cut off date. In the end, Bush was awarded Florida by 537 votes.

Issues with the Florida vote:

1) the infamous butterfly ballot in which it was hard to tell whether you were choosing Al Gore or Pat Buchanan. This led to a surprising number of elderly Jewish Floridians voting for Pat Buchanan. Effectively, Gore/Lieberman was in the 2nd slot but to select them you used the 3rd hole; the 2nd was for Buchanan. http://web.archive.org/web/20011111101807/http://www.sun-sentinel.com/graphics/news/ballot.htm

2) The Volusia error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volusia_error due to Diebold voting machines, a precinct in Florida with 585 registered voters, with 412 voters recorded, somehow produced 2,813 votes for Bush, -16,022 votes for Gore, and a larger number of negative votes for Ralph Nader.

3) DBT Online was hired to purge and update the voter rolls for the state of Florida. Governor Jeb Bush (brother of candidate George W. Bush) and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris stipulated that for purging non-voting ex-convicts, the software should recognize firstname lastname and lastname firstname - meaning that if an ex-con named "Jackson Marcus" were purged, "Marcus Jackson" would also be purged. The state also eventually changed it to only requiring an 80% match, omitting middle initials and suffixes, and adding nicknames and aliases. Thus, if there was a convict named "Jackson A. 'Snoopy' Marcus, Jr." then "Jackson H. Marcus," "Marcus Jackson", and "Johnson 'Snoopy' Matthews" would all be purged. It was later found that over 57,000 people were improperly removed from the voter rolls. 88% were black, despite only 11% of the Florida voting population being black. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File#Demographics_of_the_purge_list



But hey, it's a post-facts world, say what you like.
You're cherry picking. Those were not the only issues with the Florida vote. And I distinctly remember the whole hanging chad/dimpled chad debate that called for more re-recounts. Also from wikipedia:

The canvassing board did not discover any errors in the tabulation process in the initial mandated recount. The Bush campaign sued to prevent additional recounts on the basis that no errors were found in the tabulation method until subjective measures were applied in manual recounts.

The Gore campaign, as allowed by Florida statute, requested that disputed ballots in four counties be counted by hand. Florida statutes also required that all counties certify and report their returns, including any recounts, by 5 p.m. on November 14. The manual recounts were time-consuming, and, when it became clear that some counties would not complete their recounts before the deadline, both Volusia and Palm Beach Counties sued to have their deadlines extended.
So yes, the Gore campaign did want more manual recounts after the first audit of the tabulation process produced no errors, and wanted it to go on as long as it took for more votes to miraculously turn up for Gore.
 

Necronic

Staff member
Does it even matter? Like for real who gives a fuck? At this point I would take 16 more years of Bush over the following year of Trump. Dude is already close to causing an international incident as the fucking president elect.

Fucking assclowns that elected this guy need to spend the next 4 years owning this shit and calling him out when he pulls the crap he has been nonstop pulling.

I mean ffs this moron uses twitter to speak as the president? Does anyone appreciate how frightening that single fact is? Seeing as his dumb ass has already shown that it's his platform of choice and that he uses it recklessly he's now made it clear that if anyone can hack twitter and send out one or two messages on his account they will sow massive seeds of doubt/unrest without much effort at all. We are relying on TWITTER'S security protocols here?

He's not even president and he's already a threat to national security.

Fucking assclowns.

Yeah I been drinking.
 
Taiwanese guy here.

You guys may be interested to know that, regarding Trump's phone call with our President, approximately half of the news coverage has been "Trump had a phone call with Tsai Ying-Wen", and half has been "dumbasses in the Taiwanese media have managed to mistranslate Trump's tweet 'Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.'"

Because a bunch of media outlets plugged that tweet into Google Translate, which spat out the wrong translation. The Google Translated version basically said, "I should not have accepted that phone call", and so a bunch of media outlets ran with the story "Trump regrets taking Tsai's call!" And then people pointed out that they're completely wrong, and lots of egg came into contact with lots of faces.
 
Gore didn't demand another recount. The margin of victory in Florida was so small that there was a mandatory recount. The court battle over the recount was that Gore wanted the recount completed to count every vote*, and the Bush camp wanted it ended by a cut off date. The courts agreed to end at the cut off date. In the end, Bush was awarded Florida by 537 votes.

* Except for Overseas Absentee Ballots
FTFY

As @GasBandit noted, it was a lot more complicated than that, but that was my take-away. Gore liked to talk about every vote should count when he actually meant that every vote for him should count, and he wasn't particularly good at disguising that opinion.
 
Ending the mortgage interest deduction.
To be fair, the article goes on to say that few people would actually be affected. They aren't talking about getting rid of it altogether, but lowering the cap on deductions.
 
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