oldviolin wrote: 
And what currency is the piper currently accepting ?  Something tells me he is no longer taking children and doesn't want bitcoin either.

 oldviolin wrote: 
Yeah, we REALLY need to get money the fuck out of politics. Make all campaigns publicly-funded.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Unfortunately money rules and common sense drools...Sounds pretty negative I know. Quite unlike me in most other areas. This area I'm pretty sick of because it thrives on negativity and that sells ad time, just not to me. I ain't buying any of it. We're at the end of a cycle. The lag time is all used up. It's time to pay the piper.

 oldviolin wrote: 
Yeah; they're both dumpster fires. This is why I'm hoping that this election cycle creates at least a couple more viable parties.

 oldviolin wrote: 
The candidates are the parties standard bearer. I give you that if you are just comparing the basic parties they are a lot closer. It will be interesting to see if the party in general tries to put some distance between itself and Trump.   I do think the Clinton is pretty much the Democratic party (for better or worse), but they are also probably a lot happier to have her than the Republicans are to have Trump.

It's going to be a long 100 days. 

Edit - neither of these will be good for old wounds. This is one of the major problems I do have with Clinton. A lot of it isn't really even her fault, it's just that she comes with 40 years of baggage and there's just no way to untangle the parts of that she should own from the parts that are partisan hackery. She certainly has the experience, but many others would do just as fine and wouldn't have the baggage.  

 islander wrote: 
Ok. Your prerogative. This is the Trump thread after all. However, Kcar was referring to parties, not specifically Trump or Clinton. Tell me what about their choices and the process selecting those choices to lead their parties into this election makes you think one is any better than the other? What chance does either of those selections have to begin the healing of open and festering wounds. I'm not a fan of equivocation in general, and certainly not when it comes to grading mediocrity.

 oldviolin wrote: 
I'm going to call false equivalence here.  The Dems have their host of issues, and Clinton(s) is high on the list among them. But they are a long way from Trump crazy. I'm a strong proponent of 3rd parties, and really think I'll be voting for Johnson. But if the election were held today, I'd probably vote Clinton just to show that I'm against Trump and don't want to give any legitimacy to his 'rigged' BS. I really hope that in ~100 days he's such a laughing stock that any talk of 'rigged' will be long gone and we can get a decent showing for third parties - This is what most of the ' want change / not racist' Trump voters should be doing anyway.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
Why yes,yes we have indeed.It was a century earlier though.

 VV wrote: 


  
Trump is an insane raving lunatic.He would step on his dick a lot and embarrass himself and us.That sucks but we've had almost 8 years to get used to that as the new accepted behavior from a POTUS.

Hillary is a cold,calculating entity from below Satan's outhouse.If we wind up with a Democratic Congress she will do damage beyond repair.She knows the system,she knows where the bodies are,she's full of anger and frothing hate.

 I'll take the buffoon for $100 Alex.

 kcar wrote: 
I'm pretty sure the other one  is neck and neck. It's just too hard for some folks of that persuasion to admit; plus the other is such an easy distraction. Sound plausible?

 bokey wrote: 
b,  You did a pretty good job of summing it up.  

v,  Its getting hard to defend Trump to be sure.  I ain't living and breathing this stuff, posting 24 / 7.  Unless Johnson gets over 15% and on the stage, there's little else to do.  ABC, that's all I got, especially when we see the parade of the establishment on the left and right lining up behind her.  If nothing else, Trump has forced everyone to lay their cards on the table and we now see who supports who.  That should be more frightening than a Trump presidency.



 

 bokey wrote: 
Bokey, it was fine to hold that opinion when Trump was considered "unorthodox" during the primaries. The anti-establishment/maverick act played well back then. However; when that act morphed into a state of prolonged lunacy and instability with no end in sight... your statement (at best) can't be anything but this at this point:   

Donald Trump MUST not be POTUS.
Hillary SHOULD not be POTUS.

To say anything else is ignoring the obvious... which is... that he's unfit for the position. He continues to reinforce that opinion in his words and deeds. If this sideshow was happening with any other Republican nominee they would have been driven out of town long ago. Trump has managed to set the bar and expectations so low that there doesn't appear to be a bottom anymore.

Trump is a far scarier proposition that Clinton. That is crystal clear. If you don't believe that then you're just fooling yourself.  

 bokey wrote: 
Haven't you guys done something kind of similar before?

 bokey wrote: 
The military staging a coup and removing a civilian government? That will never happen in the US as it looks right now. You'd have to have some sort of end-times situation for people to even consider that. My hunch is that things rarely improve with a military junta in any country. 

One of our two major parties is pretty dysfunctional right now. We also have too much money in our election system. That allows the super-rich and large corporations to block change based on popular will, to lock in their political power and to prevent attempts to address income inequality. However, as a country we're not in the same state of distress as we were during the Great Depression. I know Bill Clinton's slogan of "There's nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America" sounds pollyannish, but it's true. 

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
My view as to what needs to be done is terrifying even to me and I don't want to go down that slimy,slippery slope.It would involve the military.Historically that is the beginning of the end of decency for a long time until a society can right itself.

  As to  what is wrong? Our political system is so horribly dysfunctional it needs to be removed and replaced.With what? I dunno.Let the military run things and clean up the mess and then we'll decide.

 meower wrote: 
Interesting. They put a small notch in all cats ears here when neutering but you wouldn't see that at a distance. 

 meower wrote: 
Awww...Love her meow/snarl/bark...

Yeah, ear-tipping makes sense for instantly identifying fixed cats among strays. I wonder if it affects cats' hearing or freaks them out ("WTF happened to my ear?!?").  

 kcar wrote:

 
I was going to go into a whole explanation, but this is better:

http://www.alleycat.org/Eartip

 

basically, she was feral and taken in to be fixed and tipped with the rest of her colony, but the vets felt that she was too little to be released (afraid that she would die) so she was made available for adoption, and we got her.

 

 meower wrote: 
me too, he's my favourite 

 meower wrote: 
meower, I've been wondering for weeks and just have to ask: what happened to your avatar kitty's left ear?