The 2016 Presidential Election Trainwreck

[Jeff Lebowski]

[Commando]

Paul Ryan via a brokered convention?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...vention-221522

I could live with that.

[beefytee]

Looking at the map ahead, unless the polls change significantly, I think that Donald Trump will get enough delegates on the first ballot. Trump needs something like 56% of the delegates still in play (485 delegates).

California and NY are both wta by congressional district. So in NY he will likely get all of the delegates since he currently leads by 30 points (95 delegates).

In California he has a 10 point lead which I think would translate into about two thirds of the delegates (115 delegates). So with just 2 states, he gets close half the delegates he needs (210).

Everwhere else should easily produced the rest of the delegates needed. The map really favors Trump from here on out.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...mary-4222.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...mary-5322.html

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/R

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...alculator.html (Not sure why this projection gives any of NY's delegates to Kasich)

[BlueK]

Looking at the map ahead, unless the polls change significantly, I think that Donald Trump will get enough delegates on the first ballot. Trump needs something like 56% of the delegates still in play (485 delegates).

California and NY are both wta by congressional district. So in NY he will likely get all of the delegates since he currently leads by 30 points (95 delegates).

In California he has a 10 point lead which I think would translate into about two thirds of the delegates (115 delegates). So with just 2 states, he gets close half the delegates he needs (210).

Everwhere else should easily produced the rest of the delegates needed. The map really favors Trump from here on out.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...mary-4222.html

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...mary-5322.html

http://www.thegreenpapers.com/P16/R

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...alculator.html (Not sure why this projection gives any of NY's delegates to Kasich)

The most recent poll taken in CA only has Trump one point ahead of Cruz. A lot can still happen. They don't vote there for another couple of months.

[Uncle Ted]

What we need is yet another Clinton scandal...

How The Panama Papers Leak Will Impact The US Presidential Election


Trending News: Bernie Sanders Was Just Given A Gift That Will Make Him President
[...]
When you think of the term “global elite,” few names spring to mind more readily than Bill and Hillary Clinton. And while the former and perhaps future First Couple have had a pretty good run despite some spectacular ups and downs, the Panama Papers scandal may permanently dash their hopes of moving back into the White House.

The leak of 2.6 terabytes worth of data from a Panamanian law firm that specializes in facilitating tax dodging by rich people around the world is going to lead to some very uncomfortable questions for some world leaders (it already has, in Iceland’s case). That could include Hillary Clinton, one of the most insider-y of all Beltway insiders.

Sanders has regularly railed against Clinton’s coziness with some of the most morally questionable financial companies out there, notably Goldman Sachs.

Embedded Tweet

http://www.askmen.com/news/power_mon...-election.html

[Uncle Ted]

[Uncle Ted]

Back in 2011 Hillary was totally pimping the free trade agreement with Panama... Bernie, at the same time, was telling everyone that the Panama free trade deal would make the money laundering and tax evasion problems worse:

In light of the Panama papers it seems that Bernie was pretty much dead on and he has no problem letting folks know:

In the midst of global outrage over the Panama Papers, Bernie Sanders is coming directly for Hillary Clinton, citing her support for the Panama trade pact.


“I was opposed to the Panama Free Trade Agreement from day one. I predicted that the passage of this disastrous trade deal would make it easier, not harder, for the wealthy and large corporations to evade taxes by sheltering billions of dollars offshore,” Sanders said in an official statement. “My opponent, on the other hand, opposed this trade agreement when she was running against Barack Obama for president in 2008. But when it really mattered she quickly reversed course and helped push the Panama Free Trade Agreement through Congress as Secretary of State. The results have been a disaster.”


“The American people are sick and tired of establishment politicians who say one thing during a campaign and do the exact opposite the day after the election,” he added.

Sanders also underscored his 2011 prediction that the free trade agreement with Panama would embolden its status as a popular destination for wealthy citizens to hide assets from governments. As US Uncut previously reported, Sen. Sanders and Hillary Clinton both issued statements strongly against and strongly in favor of the agreement, respectively.


“I wish I had been proven wrong about this, but it has now come to light that the extent of Panama’s tax avoidance scams is even worse than I had feared.”

http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-d...panama-papers/

It should be interesting to watch to see how Hillary spins this..

[Pelado]

Back in 2011 Hillary was totally pimping the free trade agreement with Panama... Bernie, at the same time, was telling everyone that the Panama free trade deal would make the money laundering and tax evasion problems worse:

In light of the Panama papers it seems that Bernie was pretty much dead on and he has no problem letting folks know:


http://usuncut.com/politics/bernie-d...panama-papers/

It should be interesting to watch to see how Hillary spins this..

This article claims that there are a lot fewer Americans on the list of clients (so far) than what might otherwise have been expected:

On the other hand, other countries appear to have provided Mossack Fonseca, which has thirty-six offices on three continents, with much more business than America did. In the past, the firm had at least one office in the United States—in Las Vegas—but it doesn’t currently have any. According to charts published by the I.C.I.J., the United States isn’t among the ten countries for which Mossack Fonseca created shell companies. (Hong Kong, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom held the first three places). And no American banks appear among the list of the ten financial intermediaries that most often requested offshore companies for their clients.

There are several reasons why the United States might not have been a major source of clients for the Panamanian law firm, relatively speaking. Perhaps it deliberately avoided having a large presence in the United States, so as not to attract the attention of U.S. authorities. Or perhaps there was too much competition. An article published in The Economist in 2012 pointed out that the business of setting up shell companies in tax havens is competitive and includes a number of well-established firms, such as the Hong Kong-based Offshore Incorporations Ltd., the Isle of Man-based OCRA Worldwide, and Morgan & Morgan, of Panama. In other words, wealthy Americans have many options for structuring their offshore holdings.

Eoin Higgins, a writer from Massachusetts, suggested another possible factor as well: the diplomatic relationship between Washington and Panama. In many cases, the entire point of setting up a shell company is to hide things. But, in 2010, the United States and Panama signed a trade-promotion agreement that, among other things, obliged Panama to provide to the U.S. authorities, on request, “information regarding the ownership of companies, partnerships, trusts, foundations, and other persons, including . . . . ownership information on all such persons in an ownership chain.” Higgins pointed out, “If Panama had ever been an attractive destination for American offshore storage of funds, this agreement shut the door on that possibility.”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-c...american-names

[BlueK]

Typical whiny, entitled, childish, immature, stupid response from Trump about his loss last night -- something about Cruz trying to "steal" the nomination from him. He wants it, so anyone competing with him for something under the established rules is trying to "steal" it. Typical egotistical crap from a sociopathic aspiring dictator.

[USUC]

Typical whiny, entitled, childish, immature, stupid response from Trump about his loss last night -- something about Cruz trying to "steal" the nomination from him. He wants it, so anyone competing with him for something under the established rules is trying to "steal" it. Typical egotistical crap from a sociopathic aspiring dictator.

I think Trump's argument is completely valid. It's like this one time in high school when I called dibs on a girl but another dude swung in and tried to date her. I was like "I didn't think so Trevor, I called dibs on her already." Stand your ground Trump!

[byu71]

I think Trump's argument is completely valid. It's like this one time in high school when I called dibs on a girl but another dude swung in and tried to date her. I was like "I didn't think so Trevor, I called dibs on her already." Stand your ground Trump!

LOL, The Trump analogies to elementary , Jr. High and High School kids are great.

[old_gregg]

if this hasn't been posted before, can any of our bernie bros explain this?

some notable excerpts:

Daily News: I know you’ve got to go in a second. When was the last time you rode the subway? Are you gonna a campaign in the subway?
Sanders: Actually we rode the subway, Mike, when we were here? About a year ago? But I know how to ride the subways. I’ve been on them once or twice.
Daily News: Do you really? Do you really? How do you ride the subway today?
Sanders: What do you mean, “How do you ride the subway?”
Daily News: How do you get on the subway today?
Sanders: You get a token and you get in.
Daily News: Wrong.

has bernie, the brooklyn native and man of the people, really not been on the subway in 15 years?

Daily News: Okay. Well, would you name, say, three American corporate giants that are destroying the national fabric?
Sanders: JPMorgan Chase, and virtually every other major bank in this country. Let me be very clear, all right? I believe that we can and should move to what Pope Francis calls a moral economy.
Right now, there are still millions of people in this country who are suffering the results of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And when you have companies like Goldman Sachs and many other major banks reaching settlements with the United States government, as you’re aware, for many billions of dollars, this is an implicit admission that they have engaged in illegal activity.

bernie can't name a bank other than jpm and gs?

Daily News: Now, switching to the financial sector, to Wall Street. Speaking broadly, you said that within the first 100 days of your administration you’d be drawing up…your Treasury Department would be drawing up a too-big-to-fail list. Would you expect that that’s essentially the list that already exists under Dodd-Frank? Under the Financial Stability Oversight Council?…You further said that you expect to break them up within the first year of your administration. What authority do you have to do that? And how would that work? How would you break up JPMorgan Chase?
Sanders: Well, by the way, the idea of breaking up these banks is not an original idea. It’s an idea that some conservatives have also agreed to.
You’ve got head of, I think it’s, the Kansas City Fed, some pretty conservative guys, who understands. Let’s talk about the merit of the issue, and then talk about how we get there.
Right now, what you have are two factors. We bailed out Wall Street because the banks are too big to fail, correct? It turns out, that three out of the four largest banks are bigger today than they were when we bailed them out, when they were too-big-to-fail.

not only does he not answer the question, he doesn't know neel kashkari by name at this point? holy smokes. this is the bread and butter of his campaign!

Daily News: Okay. Well, let’s assume that you’re correct on that point. How do you go about doing it?
Sanders: How you go about doing it is having legislation passed, or giving the authority to the secretary of treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail.
Daily News: But do you think that the Fed, now, has that authority?
Sanders: Well, I don’t know if the Fed has it. But I think the administration can have it.
Daily News: How? How does a President turn to JPMorgan Chase, or have the Treasury turn to any of those banks and say, “Now you must do X, Y and Z?”
Sanders: Well, you do have authority under the Dodd-Frank legislation to do that, make that determination.
Daily News: You do, just by Federal Reserve fiat, you do?
Sanders: Yeah. Well, I believe you do.

i don't think he knows anything about dodd-frank. he has zero idea how he'd go about doing the thing at the center of his platform. this should scare people.

Daily News: Okay. But do you have a sense that there is a particular statute or statutes that a prosecutor could have or should have invoked to bring indictments?

Sanders: I suspect that there are. Yes.

Daily News: You believe that? But do you know?

Sanders: I believe that that is the case. Do I have them in front of me, now, legal statutes? No, I don’t. But if I would…yeah, that’s what I believe, yes. When a company pays a $5 billion fine for doing something that’s illegal, yeah, I think we can bring charges against the executives.

Daily News: I’m only pressing because you’ve made it such a central part of your campaign. And I wanted to know what the mechanism would be to accomplish it.

he's ready to crucify anybody that works at a bank, but he can't even speak to whether anybody actually broke the law?

[byu71]

If there could be an absolute guarantee if we accepted 100,000 refugees there would be no ISIS terrorists slip through, accepting the refugees would have to be a no brainer except for those who have no compassion, IMHO.

Since there are no guarantees when it comes to human beings, do you think the Obama administration has done a risk analysis? I would certainly hope so. I wonder what the acceptable risk would be that would be considered acceptable by the government and the American public. I am sure there would be a number acceptable to me knowing worse case scenario would probably never occur.

[byu71]

if this hasn't been posted before, can any of our bernie bros explain this?

some notable excerpts:







bernie can't name a bank other than jpm and gs?



not only does he not answer the question, he doesn't know neel kashkari by name at this point? holy smokes. this is the bread and butter of his campaign!



i don't think he knows anything about dodd-frank. he has zero idea how he'd go about doing the thing at the center of his platform. this should scare people.



he's ready to crucify anybody that works at a bank, but he can't even speak to whether anybody actually broke the law?

When it comes to economics he is about as knowledgeable as the college kids he appeals to.

[Omaha 680]

if this hasn't been posted before, can any of our bernie bros explain this?

some notable excerpts:



has bernie, the brooklyn native and man of the people, really not been on the subway in 15 years?



bernie can't name a bank other than jpm and gs?



not only does he not answer the question, he doesn't know neel kashkari by name at this point? holy smokes. this is the bread and butter of his campaign!



i don't think he knows anything about dodd-frank. he has zero idea how he'd go about doing the thing at the center of his platform. this should scare people.



he's ready to crucify anybody that works at a bank, but he can't even speak to whether anybody actually broke the law?

Good stuff. Sanders is just as clueless as Trump on most of the major issues.