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Jarmak posted:Eh, this is contentious at best, I'm not trying to attack Hillary I'm just saying there was something valid for them to complain about (or at least make the argument for) and not only did they ignore it they effectively insulated Hillary from that line of attack by embracing the full-on nutjob approach. The next logical step of the reasonable criticism of underfunding would be to raise taxes on the rich and fund security, and Republicans don't want to do that because they're only interested in funding boondoggles that funnel trillions of dollars to defense contractors. So there's that, and then also they went whole hog on the insane conspiracy theory strategy from the moment Obama took office, and they're kind of locked into it now, both because they depend on the crazy poo poo to get people to vote for them in the general and because any hint of conciliation or compromise toward Obama will be used to bash you in the primaries.
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Oct 6, 2016 05:18
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NikkolasKing posted:I don't want Trump to be president mainly due to the fact he's an idiotic, narrow-minded jackass. You have people predicting literal fascism here in America and World War III. Isn't our government set up to protect against those kinds of things? The myth the president is all-powerful has been discussed and debunked in this very thread. The Congress is where the power lies. If you care about Congress then definitely go vote dude. Romney beat Obama in Texas by 16 points, Hillary is only trailing Trump by 7. That's a 9-point swing! If that translates to downballot tickets through increased Democratic turnout, normally-Republican Hispanics casting gently caress-you-GOP-for-supporting-Trump votes down the ticket, and/or Republican women staying home that puts 55-45 gerrymandered congressional districts in play. We could see badly-needed house districts flipping D, you could help that happen!
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Oct 6, 2016 07:03
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I'm going to get cocky anyway, because my individual cockiness will have zero effect on the election, provided I remember to mail in my absentee ballot.
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Oct 7, 2016 06:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:1. Assuming for a moment that the Democrats take the Senate, what are the chances that some Democratic Senators will break ranks? Like, will there be a Lieberman expy that's going to gently caress over Clinton on a Supreme Court nomination? If Garland ever makes it to a floor vote he will pass with a bunch of Republican support. He was confirmed 99-0 when Obama appointed him to the federal district court. That's why McConnell won't let hearings or a vote happen. If dems take the Senate, McConnell can no longer bottle up his hearings in the judicial committee.
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Oct 7, 2016 13:43
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:And then to get rid of the spoiler effect entirely, we should use the single stochastic vote to select representatives. Just vote for who you want to win, strategic voting is impossible. This sounds like it could easily go horribly wrong for a single winner election. For example: half the country writes in themselves for president. Now you have a 50-50 chance of making some unqualified idiot commander-in-chief that 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% of the country hates.
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Oct 12, 2016 04:01
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Alec Bald Snatch posted:well other than the whole nicene creed thing To be fair, that's not in the Bible anyway. It's just the other early churches that didn't standardize on it either (a) were overrun and destroyed in the East or (b) conquered parts of europe got on board with it to get the Pope's approval for their new kingdoms
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Oct 12, 2016 09:47
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It boggles my mind how incompetent Trump's campaign is. Bringing Bill Clinton's accusers on camera and talking about how much he believes them totally undercuts any argument Trump can try to make later to discredit his own accusers. I thought Kellyanne Conway was kinda sorta competent a months ago, but goddamn if she didn't walk into that exact trap with Anderson Cooper  : "Bill settled that lawsuit with Paula Jones, why would he do that if he weren't guilty?" : "So you're saying we should assume anyone settling an allegation is guilty, like Trump's racial discrimination cases?":  : "What I'm saying is this. Bill Clinton is a bad, bad man"
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Oct 13, 2016 08:32
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evil imp posted:Man, my justice boner could dislodge the moon from orbit right now. Watching the GOP establishment get immolated by the same fire they've played with for years ("anyone who disagrees with you is evil and hates America", "never trust a politician", "never trust the media", "never believe facts you don't like, just eat up whatever talk radio and the internet makes up") is going to kill me from schadenfreude overdose. Whoops now your base has figured out you're politicians, figured out Fox News is the media, hates your facts and thinks you're America-hating traitors to conservatism!
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Oct 13, 2016 09:31
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Mulaney Power Move posted:No one cares if you are black. You're just a loving rear end in a top hat, and if your default to anyone who dares take offense to you saying "gently caress you" without qualification to entire demographic groups -- rural white people or coal workers in Appalachia -- is to simply call them racist, then you're not even attempting rational debate and deserved to be told to gently caress off. Just because Ken Bone has possibly the least terrible reasons I've ever seen for considering voting for fascism, it doesn't mean those reasons aren't still loving terrible.
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Oct 14, 2016 05:51
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Penisaurus Sex posted:What gives me pause is that, the week before the first debate, Trump still had a puncher's shot at the Presidency. He had to walk a tightrope in the debates, and obviously failed, but a saner man (which is not hard to find) would have cruised through. The problem is a saner person still has to say all the insane poo poo to win the primaries like Romney did, and then is also beholden to the GOP donors so he has to agree with all the unpopular conservative establishment poo poo like destroying social security and medicare, repealing labor protections, shipping jobs overseas, and protecting tax loopholes for the rich like carried interest. The Republican coalition just plain doesn't have enough aligned interests for everyone to get behind a candidate, maybe it's possible for a mythical Reagan figure to thread that needle but it's going to be harder to find than "any sane dude who kinda admires Hitler"
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Oct 14, 2016 06:48
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there wolf posted:Assuming the GOP doesn't fall apart in the next 5 years or so, Libertarianism is what they're going to rebrand themselves as to win over younger voters. Maybe in 2020, but definitely by 2024, well get the Republican Obama, a young, libertarian-leaning senator/congressperson who opposes culture war stuff as a waste of time/money, and refused to support Trump back in the day out of principle. They'll be a Paul Ryan 2.0 except without the albatross of the Tea Party hanging around their neck, trying to choke them out. This will never happen because libertarianism is and always was crushingly unpopular, and the only way Republicans got anyone outside of a cabal of rich assholes and unsuccessful idiots to vote for laissez-faire horseshit was by tricking racists into believing Republicans would give them back a white supremacist America. And that completely backfired because the racists were more numerous, and they dumped the free market poo poo hard in favor of a crazy blabbering racist the first chance they got. Or at least the first chance they got after the free market Republicans betrayed the racist base on amnesty for illegal immigrants.
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Oct 14, 2016 11:23
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The Iron Rose posted:Again, I care about stability, peace, and prosperity in that order. And until we have some crazy sci fi one world government, American Hegemony is the most moral way to accomplish that. I imagine you like that Picard clone the Romulans did in that one really bad Next Gen movie. Except instead of needing Picard's blood transfusions to survive, you're dependent on regular infusions from Arab children.
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Oct 17, 2016 07:58
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QuarkJets posted:Which episodes were your favorite? My favorite was the one where the doctor has sex with a 500 year-old ghost who lives in a candle. Hi yeah I didn't understand this episode. Beverly didn't have a daughter, what was the ghost's survival plan after she died.
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Oct 17, 2016 10:37
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Nessus posted:Seduce Wesley? Nag Wesley into getting some daughters on? But he already ascended to another plane of existence by then, how is she going to get him on the phone to badger him about granddaughters. Even if that's the plan, he'd have to figure Wesley would just get bored with being a creepy god and show up unannounced one day in a Starfleet uniform like nothing ever happened.
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Oct 17, 2016 10:42
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QuarkJets posted:Dude don't ask those kinds of questions, Star Trek isn't about having a consistent plot or keeping the details of your world straight, it's about paying people to write the shallowest poo poo possible while maintaining enough of a veneer of intellectualism to draw in the large fraction of the nerd population who think they're much smarter than they actually are. What should I watch to reassure myself that I actually am as smart as I think I am. MSNBC?
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Oct 17, 2016 10:46
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Ghetto Prince posted:Best episode is the one where he gets his mind taken over by a probe that makes him live out the memories of a long dead guy from a dying planet. I saw a rerun of that when I was like 5 and I still think about it sometimes. If I were Picard I would have kept that probe and punk'd people with it. "Eat poo poo Riker, you just spent 50 imaginary years living out your life as some old dude on a dying planet where everyone you know and love is doomed, now you barely remember your own name!" ... ... "So you want to jam on our flutes together?"
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Oct 17, 2016 11:43
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How would the Republicans dial back the insanity. They've spent years convincing their base to never believe anything they don't like and to immediately assume anything that contradicts their biases is liberal lies. Fox sent Megyn Kelly to destroy Trump in that one debate and all it did was convince the base that Fox is liberal propaganda and turn them to Breitbart and Infowars. Republicans systematically destroyed their own credibility in the eyes of a plurality of their party by frightening and angering them with outrageous lies about Obama and the Democrats and sharia law and death panels, and then turned around and treated Obama like a 1990s political adversary instead of as the existential threat to America and the white race they said he was. Seriously think about the last six years from the perspective of a true believer tea partier. The Republicans uncovered vast and evil sinister plots to put a Muslim in the White House, take control of the health care system to murder conservatives by withholding treatment, import terrorists to kill Americans, appoint traitors to high positions to impose Islam on the country by force, etc etc. And then instead of impeaching him and putting him on trial before the whole country with proof of his many crimes, they make budget deals with him! They back him on amnesty! They keep funding the death panels! Their rhetoric was totally irresponsible and unbeknownst to them turned out to be a poisoned chalice that put them in a no-win scenario and I don't see how they dig themselves out of it after they've radicalized a plurality of their party. Either they cut loose the Tea Party and lose a few cycles until they can steal a bloc from the Democrats and put together a new coalition, or the Tea Party wins the struggle and finishes taking over the party until enough of them finally die off. Judging by their willingness to un-un-endorse Trump in the hope of keeping their seats for the next two years, I don't see the Republican leadership ever caring about the long term enough to accept a few elections worth of losses while they get a better coalition.
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Oct 18, 2016 07:40
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Agnosticnixie posted:Liberal pragmatism is cold comfort for people who grew up then and spent their youths fighting for poo poo that ended up being a knock-on effect of the late 90s way of doing thing. Canada had gay marriage in every province before there was a paradigm shift. Same with Mexico and Argentina's federal gay marriage laws. Who gives a poo poo if someone had wrong opinions on gay rights in the 90s. The entire strategy of the gay rights movement ever since the 70s was to change minds about gay rights. Putting people on trial for opinions they used to have after you worked to change their minds is stupid and counterproductive.  Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman, it's not for homos! Actually, gay people are no different than straight people, we are all human and deserve the same rights and privileges. Look around, you probably know gay people. Your cousin loves his husband as much as you love your wife, are you going to tell him he doesn't deserve to visit his loved one in the hospital Hmm I guess you're right. From now on I'll support you as an elected official. No way, get hosed you hypocrite!! I'll never forgive you and I'll never support you no matter what you do so you might as well keep working against my interests to get the bigot vote cuz you sure won't get mine!
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Oct 19, 2016 04:32
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Agnosticnixie posted:Or you know, primary the fucker. Also this is generally a terrible argument that only feeds a relatively complacent, liberal view of how things progress. Without angry people, the assimilationists would have gotten nowhere. Okay buddy you find me a human being that has never been wrong about anything ever and primary all the flip-floppers. And I am not arguing against being angry at bigots and at oppression. That's valuable. Continuing to be angry at people who changed their minds and now agree with you, now that's just dumb and counterproductive. I am glad Robert Byrd went from KKK Grand Wizard to a 100% rating from the NAACP. How does continuing to hate him advance the cause of civil rights. Why should we have primaried him with some no-name with no recognition who will go on to get destroyed by Republicans in the general. There is a reason Republicans are always concern trolling about some Democrat's decades-old opinions and it's not because Republicans are trying to advance the cause of civil rights!
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Oct 19, 2016 05:01
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Kilroy posted:Yeah probably not. But, keep in mind that the way gerrymandering works is definitely not that they would need a 30% margin or something to get parity - once they cross a threshold it will appear to be a landslide as all those gerrymandered +5R districts go blue. The numbers are not as dire as they first appear. Yeah and the other problem is the gerrymandering relies on certain demographics being expected to turn out and expected to vote R. It's why Trump plummeting with white women and white college graduates is so dangerous, if demoralization knocks a few percentage points off the turnout for those groups it puts gerrymandering in danger. Especially if Trump supporters can't be relied on to not cast blank downticket ballots or not split their ballots. Trump's appeal among white working class voters who typically vote D isn't guaranteed to help downballot races either. But this is just punditry on my part.
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Oct 21, 2016 07:27
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Spacedad posted:Yeah, this is a really interesting analysis of exactly what Hillary did - what's also interesting to me is that people drastically underestimated her strategy because she made it look so easy. You don't have to look any farther than the Republican debates to see that. Sure they were handicapped because they couldn't go after Trump's racism, but they still could have baited him into rambling like a crazy person instead of accusing each other of liplocking Obama and challenging Trump on the length of his dick.
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Oct 21, 2016 08:23
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JFairfax posted:Lol the poo poo Russia is doing in the Middle East is no different to the west, there is no moral difference between actions of the US and its allies and Russia. Ok then you probably want Hillary who successfully negotiated with Russia to get them on board with sanctions on Iran that led to the Iranian nuclear deal and a subsequent warming of relations with Iran. And not like, the guy who wants to scrap the deal and go it alone with unilateral sanctions on Iran.
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Oct 21, 2016 09:12
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Agnosticnixie posted:Brazil, a country famously whiter than the US. Lol Brexit won because 50+1% of Brit voters are cowardly racists who are scared of other white people, Trump is not going to come anywhere close to that level of popular support.
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Oct 21, 2016 09:18
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JFairfax posted:America has levelled plenty of cities in Iraq Afghanistan Libya and has helped out in yemen.
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Oct 21, 2016 09:22
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JFairfax posted:If it suits your interests, you already have some pretty repugnant bed fellows. Do you get whiplash from changing positions so fast? "The US is bad for invading other countries for selfish interests, when it should be supporting Russia invading other countries for Russia's selfish interests!" Tankies 
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Oct 21, 2016 09:30
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Themagicalgoat posted:Someone try and sell him a rock that keeps tigers away. "YOU FOOL!" *Throws rock far away, tackles you* "Don't you get it? ISIS wants us to have this rock!" 
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Oct 26, 2016 08:47
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Lightning Knight posted:I usually assume that the more delusional business Republicans assume that they could be so much more popular if only those silly minorities and women saw how great tax cuts and deregulation are. This is my dad, but add that minorities will love being racially profiled once they see how well it works at suppressing crime. He thinks black people have been tricked into voting for Democrats because of Democrat propaganda that Republicans are racist and Republicans are incompetent at refuting it. As evidence, he mentions black people whom he has invited to Oklahoma Republican Party events who accept saying "No one has ever invited me to one of these before". See, Republicans are just bad at recruiting, that must be why they've never invited black people to anything. He is a Cruz supporter and I assumed he would never vote Trump because  the Republican ticket being explicitly racist is just going to confirm everything the Democrats have been saying since 1964 and destroy any chance of getting black people on board with tax cuts and deregulation. But I recently found out from other family that he is encouraging everyone to vote for Trump because defeating political correctness is the most important issue of all time.I guess I'll get to talk to him at Thanksgiving, but I assume the reasoning is once Trump wins and gets the economy moving again, black people will be like "thank God the police unloaded on my family and neighbors, now everyone is too frightened to commit crimes" and Hispanics will be like "thank God he deported my illegal immigrant parents, now their jobs are mine", and they'll realize the Democrats were the real racists all along.
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Oct 27, 2016 05:39
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iospace posted:Yeah, I give Texas 2028 to become a true swing state. It may happen in 2024, but this year is an exception year, so I expect it to swing back a bit in 2020. I expect it to swing back a bit, but I wouldn't be surprised if Trump has accelerated the process. One of the issues in Texas is poor minority registration and turnout: the record-breaking registration means hundreds of thousands of new voters learning the process and having an easier time voting in the future. Oh and whoops their motivation to register was hatred of the Republican ticket, that's something they're likely to remember.
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Oct 27, 2016 06:55
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Ego-bot posted:Guess who's back.... I do get some wry amusement out of seeing Boehner and Ryan vilified by their own base, as their strategy of energizing their voters by insane obstruction of everything because the president is black backfires on them. Whoops turns out a platform of pretending you'll let the country burn before a black man is allowed to govern leaves you unable to perform basic functions of your office without opening yourself up to attacks from true believers who really would let the country burn before allowing a black man to govern.
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Oct 27, 2016 07:40
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So how indirect do my statements need to be if I show up armed to a bank for it not to be armed robbery when the teller hands me all the money in the till "because of the implication". Asking for a friend.
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Oct 28, 2016 |
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Oct 28, 2016 09:11
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Nessus posted:OK, so at what point does the armed group of wannabe rebels become an actual threat? Like, is there an actual legal point where that happens? Because I know for drat sure the cops get to shoot people all the time on the grounds that their responsibility is to come home safely and the lives of random citizens are less important than that feeling of safety. It is fascinating to me that open carry simultaneously cannot be construed as a threat by the government, and also such an imminent threat that the government has the right to shoot you as you sit peacefully on a park bench or lie with your hands in the air if they only think you might have a gun.
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Oct 28, 2016 09:46
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The reason why Republicans don't mind an R draft dodger president while calling a D war hero a coward is the same reason Republicans don't mind an R congress cutting the State Department's security budget while accusing a D secretary of state of hating America because she can't afford to approve every request for security funding.
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Oct 30, 2016 09:31
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Wait can Comey charge people? I thought the Department of Justice did that and the FBI's role was just to investigate and recommend charges or not. He could recommend charges but I don't see the DoJ acting on that recommendation without additional evidence.
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Oct 30, 2016 11:20
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mcmagic posted:You know you can acknowledge that she's an awful candidate with high unfavorables and still want her to win, right? That is just acknowledging reality. Yeah we get it, you've been saying the same thing for six months, you never have anything new or interesting to say besides "Clinton is widely hated" and it's boring as gently caress to scroll past the same argument every week. Could you just yell into a pillow about Clinton's unfavorables every time the urge strikes you? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Oct 31, 2016 |
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Oct 31, 2016 14:51
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MattD1zzl3 posted:Often? You mean " almost always white". Ive heard 80-85% banded about worldwide. Whiteness isn't a biologically meaningful category, so depending on the specific ideology/heritage of the dumb racist you're talking to, Irish, Italians, Spaniards, Poles, Slavs, German Jews, the English, etc may not be considered white.
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Nov 1, 2016 05:00
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Night10194 posted:Remember that back in those days they showed very similar numbers for Clinton, as neither primary was even settled yet. Also plenty of photos like this  which would allow the Trump and the Republicans and the news to do "Both sides BOTH SIDES" without the unholy levels of pissed-off women backlash they get when they blame Bill's adultery on Hillary
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Nov 1, 2016 06:30
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Kavak posted:No U.S. President is ever going to trial let alone to prison as long as the U.S. itself exists. Get over it. Which is exactly why we must elect Trump! Once he destroys the U.S., we of the Revolutionary People's Front can finally prosecute infamous war criminals George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Hillary KKKlinton! Right after we hang those splitter shithead traitors in the People's Revolutionary Front and the Popular Revolution Front, of course.
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Nov 1, 2016 07:43
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