The usual caveat: Both candidates are awful. But Trump is beyond vile, despicable and grotesque. He used those women, exploited them, for his own miserable political gain, to deflect from his own admittance that he is a serial sexual predator:

The facts about Hillary Clinton and the Kathy Shelton rape case By Glenn Kessler October 11 at 3:00 AM

Excerpts:

The Facts

In 1975, Clinton — then Hillary Rodham — was a 27-year-old law professor running a legal aid clinic at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. After a 41-year-old factory worker was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, he asked the judge to replace his court-appointed male attorney with a female one. The judge went through the list of a half-dozen women practicing law in the county and picked Clinton. She has said she was not thrilled with the assignment but felt she had little choice but to take the court appointment — which the prosecutor in the case confirmed to CNN.

Court records describe a sad tale. Shelton, at the time 12 years old, went out for a late-night drive with Tom Taylor, then 41, a 20-year-old cousin, and a 15-year-old boy with whom she was apparently infatuated. They bought a pint of Old Grand-Dad whisky, which was mixed with Coca-Cola for Shelton. After hanging out at a bowling alley for a few hours, they allegedly drove to a ravine where the two older men left Shelton and the 15-year-old together. The two then had sex, the boy told police. After they were finished, Taylor approached the truck and apparently attacked Shelton. The boy reported that Shelton screamed and he saw Taylor hitching up his pants.

As part of her handling of the case, Clinton filed an affidavit July 28, 1975, requesting that the girl go through a psychiatric examination. “I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing,” Clinton said. “I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body. Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”

Clinton offered no source for the claims.

When Glenn Thrush, then a reporter for Newsday, showed the affidavit to Shelton in 2007, he wrote that she was visibly stunned. “It kind of shocks me – it’s not true,” she said. “I never said anybody attacked my body before, never in my life.”

But Shelton told Thrush at the time that she bore no ill will toward Clinton. “I have to understand that she was representing Taylor,” she said. “I’m sure Hillary was just doing her job.”

But in 2014, Shelton told the Daily Beast that she had been misquoted. “Hillary Clinton took me through hell,” she said.

Shelton’s ire had risen with the 2014 discovery of previously unpublished audio recordings of Clinton discussing the case in the mid-1980s with Arkansas reporter Roy Reed for an article that was never published.

In the recorded interview, Clinton is heard laughing or giggling four times when discussing the case with unusual candor; the reporter is also heard laughing, and sometimes Clinton is responding to him.

For instance, Clinton laughed after she said: “Of course he [the defendant] claimed he didn’t [rape]. All this stuff. He took a lie-detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.”

The Daily Beast article said:

The victim was put through several forensic procedures, including a lie detector test. At first, she failed the lie detector test; she said that was because she didn’t understand one of the specific sex-related questions. Once that question was explained to her, she passed, she said. The victim positively identified her two attackers through one-way glass and they were arrested.

In an interview with the Daily Mail that appeared Aug. 9, Shelton agreed for the first time to be identified by name. This article strongly suggested that the psychiatric examination took place:

Although Clinton’s legal maneuver would likely be prohibited today under Arkansas rape shield act, the law was not passed until two years after the case.

Shelton said one of her worst memories of the case was being questioned repeatedly by appointed experts.

“It got so bad that I told my mom I wasn’t going back, and whatever happened, happened,” said Shelton. “It’s sad that a 12-year-old had to go through what I had to go through, because for days I cried and cried and cried over it.”

The gofundme site, which was established Aug. 13 and seeks to raise $10,000, quotes Shelton as explicitly saying that the test took place: “Hillary then began to attack my character, forcing me to undergo multiple polygraph tests where I was asked explicit sexual questions I didn’t even understand. Next I was sent for a psychiatric examination. It felt like I was the one on trial.”

But the court docket, unearthed by Pittsburgh attorney Norma Chase and for the first time made public, shows that one day after Clinton filed a request for psychiatric exam, it was denied by the judge. The court docket for July 28 says Clinton filed her motion for an exam. On July 29, it states: “Hearing on Motion for Psychiatric Examination — Motion denied. Defendant objects.” (There is also no evidence that Clinton was responsible for arranging Chase’s polygraph test.)

Here’s the docket sheet:

sdram wrote:

Since I believe that the election is finite, I truly suspect that Trumps latest performance was primarily about priming the pump(his loyal supporters) for the new Trump media empire that’s sure to magically spring up after Hillary wins the election.

Trump has a large batch of humans in his pocket that he’ll continue to exploit until he wears them out. His initial message will be to bag on Clinton and any other non right wingers(both republicans and democrats) for the next 4 years buoyed by these loyal supporters who constantly will need to be led. He can go from KKK meeting to Aryan nation webcast to Trump fund raisers for ever – talking, snorting, lying, lurking about, hurling insults, spouting nonsensical bullshit that Bannon’s team of degenerates feed him. Location, location, location was the mantra of the real estate shyster. Now it’s onto ratings, ratings, ratings. He’ll have Ailes and Breitbart boy at his beck and call.

He could give a shit less about helping anybody or real people in America and families and kids – he cares about money. That’s his honey. He wants it all.

Well said.

It’s too bizarre for words that he has any backers. He’s rarely anything but incoherent, and when he speak coherently, it’s always thuggish and vile.

Amazing thing about his supporters. They hold too conflicting things in their head at the same time without a care: They say they love him because he “tells it like it is.” But when confronted with something he has said that is obscenely ugly, racist, misogynist, xenophobic, etc. etc. they say he didn’t really mean it.

I used to think Ron Paul fans were the most oblivious to reality and the most obnoxiously diehard. But Trump supporters, in general, are worse.

Some MSM (WaPo) fact-checking and another article of possible interest.

My guess is leftist news sources aren’t going to comment much at all about the debate. Perhaps Jacobin will later. Will post that if it happens:

Fact-checking the second Clinton-Trump presidential debate

Trump wanted to put Bill Clinton’s accusers in his family box. Debate officials said no.

wv wrote:

Anybody watch the second debate?

Apparently CNN thinks Trump didnt win any new converts.

http://wtvr.com/2016/10/09/poll-who-won-2nd-presidential-debate-between-trump-and-clinton-st-louis/

“..Donald Trump exceeded expectations, but Hillary Clinton won the second presidential debate, according to a CNN / ORC poll of debate watchers. The results showed a clear victory for Clinton, with 57% saying Clinton won, as opposed to 34% for Donald Trump. It’s a strong showing for Clinton, but not as good as her performance at the first presidential debate, when 62% of debate watchers said she won. The results Sunday also track closely with watchers’ pre-debate preference. Fifty-eight percent of debate watchers said they were supporting Clinton before the debate…”

——–

w
v

I did. Am embarrassed to admit it. But I did. It was a circus, and showed American politics at its worst — or close to it. No other candidate could get away with doing what Trump did before and during the debate, but it appears he has. I’ve never seen such a spectacle — bringing together a group of (four) women who accused the spouse of one’s opponent of a range of sexual predations, from rape to harassment. An eleventh hour move to deflect from Trump’s own admittance of sexual assault.

Basically, “But mommy, mommy!! Joey did it too!! Waaaahhhgh!”

(Yes, Bill Clinton was a pig, and a terrible and all too conservative president. But he’s not running this time.)

Many of the talking heads this morning are saying it worked. But the most bizarre thing (IMO) is that no one is talking about the elephant in the room: Trump’s incredible incoherence throughout. When they become available, people should read the transcripts, because Trump spoke gibberish for nearly 90 minutes, and never answered any questions, went off on tangents within tangents, and made Sarah Palin sound like Cicero in comparison. I found myself yelling at the TV, asking him to say how he would accomplish all of these amazing things he promised. He never did, and hasn’t ever during this entire campaign.

How would he give America those rainbows and unicorns he promises?

All Trump does is talk about the living hell in place, but never says how he’d fix anything. Drives me up the wall, and it makes it all the worse that no talking head seems to care.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Billy_T.

wv wrote:

Zooey wrote:

wv wrote:

Bill Maher on the trump shit-storm.

Yeah. How is Gary Johnson polling higher than Jill Stein?

Gary Johnson has no idea what the fuck is happening anywhere. He couldn’t find Canada on a map if you erased every continent but North America.

——————–
I saw a couple of confusing-articles that indicated that Johnson actually takes
more voters away from Clinton than from Trump. It surprised me.

The article didnt say who the pussy-grabbers were voting for this year. I’m guessing they are leaning toward Jill.

w
v

WV,

I think that’s because of millennials, primarily. The Dems have turned them off and they don’t like the GOP, either. So some have bought into the nonsense from the right-libertarians about “liberty,” even though it’s not the freedom and liberty of millennials at issue. American libertarians are always really talking about “freedom and liberty” for business owners and the rich, and couldn’t be more anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-social-justice if they were paid to be. And, well, they actually are, by folks like the Koch brothers.

As far as the reference to “pussy-grabbers.” I guess you missed the video with Trump bragging about his frequent sexual assaults. I don’t blame you for avoiding the teevee and the MSM. It is a cesspool. But that’s where the term comes from.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Billy_T.

Bush inherited a huge surplus and no wars. Clinton ran surpluses four of his eight years. See table 1.1 (page 29) for this:

Fiscal Year 2016 Historical Tables

Bush cut taxes twice, revenues fell for his first three years and his last, and he doubled the debt.

(also on page 29)

Obama inherited a fiscal year 2009 budget deficit — Bush’s last — of 1.4 trillion, two wars and a worldwide economic catastrophe, caused by the Masters of the Universe and their center-right enablers in government (both parties). Deficits fell dramatically after we got out of the Bush recession. No president since Ike has seen a slower rate of increased spending — which is one of the main reasons for the slow recovery and an obvious sign of neoliberalism’s hold on the Democrats. Keynes, OTOH, would have pushed for a huge increase in demand-side spending to prime the pump. Instead, Obama, the Dems and the GOP decided to do trickle-down to one degree or another, especially with the bailouts which ALL went to the richest of the rich. That’s the opposite of Keynes.

No economist or economic historian of any stature says we’ve being following Keynes in the last four decades. We’ve been doing the opposite.

wv wrote:

An Undergraduate’s Question About Economic Policy: A Professor Replies

w
v

The Keynesian consensus in America was roughly from late FDR through LBJ and into part of Nixon’s presidency. It corresponds, almost exactly, with our one and only Middle Class boom (1947-1973). We had no such thing before it or after Keynesian economics was abandoned by the DC powers that be in the early 1970s. With the rise of neoliberalism roughly in 1973, through Obama’s presidency, we’ve been in an anti-Keynes consensus. Roughly 43 years now of opposition to Keynes, from both major parties.

My own view is that Marxian economists are the best, in general, when it comes to understanding and analyzing capitalism, with Keynesians number two. The worst of the bunch have always been the Austrians, followed by their kissing cousins, the Chicago School folks, who basically invented neoliberalism. Reagan/Thatcher consolidated all of that politically, took garbage (and voodoo) economics mainstream . . . and then, with the arrival of the tea party, we sunk even deeper into economic illiteracy with the rise of the neo-Austrians — the children of Von Mises and Hayek. Ron Paul and his fanboys set the table for that, but the tea party helped mainstream it. And the Pauls and the tea party folks added Ayn Rand to the Austrians to make the horrific even more odious. They helped give abject selfishness a “philosophical” veneer.

I wish America would evolve and grow up enough to bring in actual Marxians and libertarian socialist economists. But it likely never will, at least not in my lifetime. So the next best thing is to return to Keynes. Staying with right-wing economic idiocy is killing this country, and the world.

wv wrote:

That stupidity thing is interesting. It seems to be fracturing the right itself, in some cases. Some right-wing outlets are being upstaged by newer, even more ludicrous media, selling crazier and crazier conspiracy theories than the old guard. Fox News used to be the go to place for that. But they’re now too tame, and some of their journalists even have the nerve to question Trump’s endless lies. So you have monstrously stupid, paranoid and hair’s-on-fire sites like Breitbart, Zerohedge and Infowars — which may be the king of the maniacs — making Fox, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, etc. etc. almost “sane” by comparison. And you see a few of the old-school hair’s-on-fire conspiracists, like Glenn Beck, saying, “Wait a second, you guys have gone waaay too far.”

I saw him interviewed the other night and was shocked to hear him admit that “the uber-right” in Europe was infecting things here. It was amazing to see someone who used to peddle the bullshit about “progressives” causing every evil throughout history actually admit that neo-nazis and neo-fascists in Europe were right-wing. He’s also disgusted by Trump.

Not sure if I’ve ever seen a weirder, more confusing political landscape in America . . . and while Trump is more the symptom than the cause, he appears to be helping the right eat itself. It’s quite likely the only decent thing he’s done in his entire, miserable life.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Billy_T.

I think it’s a big mistake to assume Trump hasn’t done anything illegal — regarding his taxes, or anything else. He has a history of breaking the law and getting away with it. He has four thousand lawsuits against him, active. The states attorney for New York says the Trump Foundation has been acting illegally there. He’s bribed several key officials, including Pam Bondi, to suppress investigations against him, including Trump University, etc. etc.

The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet New York’s attorney general has ordered the Trump Foundation to quit raising money, saying it is violating state law by doing so.

The Post’s David Fahrenthold has published a series of damaging stories about the foundation. Despite bearing Trump’s name, the foundation has largely been run using other people’s money for about a decade now, as it draws donations from other givers, then donates them under Trump’s name. Earlier this year, the foundation raised a reported $1.67 million for veterans’ causes. Donald Trump has reportedly used Trump Foundation donations to settle legal issues involving himself, as well as to buy gifts that he may have kept. Both of those would violate rules that ban “self-dealing” by charities. In addition, there are cases where Trump directed income to the foundation, but it’s not clear that he paid income taxes on those monies, as required.

Schneiderman is investigating the Trump Foundation to see whether it broke rules against self-dealing by buying gifts for Trump, settling legal cases with foundation monies, and making a political donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose office was at the time deciding whether or not to pursue an investigation into Trump University.

We also know that the 1995 writeoff is just one of many. He paid no taxes in several years prior to this as well. No, Donald Trump’s tax avoidance is not normal — Josh Barro: Oct. 4, 2016, 3:48 PM

Even if Trump had generated no net value through his business ventures and was living off his inheritance from his father, you would expect him to be reporting (and paying tax on) significant investment income from his wealth. Indeed, his 1995 tax documents reflect over $7 million in interest income — meaning Trump likely owned $100 million or more worth of interest-bearing investments at the time, despite his significant financial distress.

Yet all the public tax information we have about Trump reflects incomes near or below zero.

Last spring, The Washington Post reported that Trump paid no federal income tax in 1978, 1979, 1984, 1991, or 1993. He did have taxable income in the years 1975 through 1977, with the highest amount of income being $118,530, on which he paid $42,386 in income tax in 1977.

His 1995 tax documents, of course, reflect income of negative $916 million, with reported business losses far more than wiping out his interest and dividend income. Most of that reported loss was carried forward from prior years, which suggests he had several years in a row with no taxable income, going back to the peak of his business difficulties in the early ’90s.

That’s amazing.

You’d know better than I . . . but whales and dolphins are supposed to be smarter than humans, right? The former are massive. Horrible to think they were nearly driven to extinction for oil.

I think Gurley is missing holes. And that the line is not blocking for him well.

It’s both/and, to my eyes.

Just doing some dime-store psychologizing here, but I think the Rams may have hurt his development by basically anointing him king of LA before the season, and MVP for the team. He’s too young for that, and it’s just not necessary. His actions on the field will tell everyone all they need to know about those things. There is no need for the Rams to try to produce a star before he’s actually “born.”

In short, I think Gurley is pressing at least in part because he believes he is the team MVP. Attendant insecurities follow and snowball when he doesn’t perform well, etc. etc.

Anyway, I wish he would watch a ton of film on Edgerrin James. While he wasn’t in the same category as the Rams’ own Eric Dickerson, he was, to my mind, the best of his generation in following his blockers, letting the play develop, and getting the most from openings. In short, that “patience” the writer talks about.

Right now, Gurley doesn’t seem to have it, and he’s not seeing the field very well. He’s running frustrated, which rarely produces good results.

Lots of “blame” to go around, but Gurley is a good part of that.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 1 month ago by Billy_T.