Unfortunately i so agree with this. Presidents are selected not elected and Wall Street bankers pull the puppet strings. I have been predicting her as the winner before this whole idiot pageant began. I was cautiously hoping Sanders would win but it became clear that he would never be allowed to get near any true position to implement his ideas and he was flawed from the beginning as well

Trump is Putin's and ISIS' best hope. 

It nauseates me to think she has a chance to be the first women president.....I would pull that chapter out of my grand kids history books.

I think Vompatti has a good point too....

...of course the fly in the ointment there is some smart people who think they are smarter than everyone else could put Trump in the White House by not voting for Clinton.

But again, gut feeling tells me Trump The Honest One (as some people here would call him, his "University" frauds, use of irregular immigrant labor, bankruptcies, etc etc etc notwithstanding) may become the next president. 

I have an uncle who is retired from the World Bank and IMF, he truly is the smartest person I know. He has always worked with developing countries to help them create a system to better their lives, economy and infrastructure, he is an economist. Has lived in Brazil, Nepal, Peru and still logs probably 200K air miles every year still doing consulting work all over the world.

He has political ties everywhere, based on the kind of work he does........I will not bore you with the details he gave me last week as I visited him in DC, but essentially the feeling in DC on Hillary is of shock that the US public is actually voting for her, based on everything she has done (and of course not done in any office she has held), that the public is completely ignoring the fact that she has done criminal acts and been associated with, the media has not followed thru on that as much as they should, never will. His opinion of her is she has little to no qualifications to hold this position, neither candidate has really, he said of Trump that he knows he will surround himself with intelligent people if he wins, he will not do much decision making on his own....duh! 

If she wins she needs to buy everyone at CNN a $100 steak dinner.....the general public has no clue, what a shame.

I've worked in Texas and/but I've spent a fair bit of time in SF and LA, so I am fully aware of what you are referring to. 

I dislike all forms of childish name-calling (unless I thought of it first). However, it characterises the school-playground bullying nature of American politics rather well.

Every non-liberal and/or "republican" who votes for Johnson is a vote that Trump doesn't get, so that's okay.

Not to mention his ties to the Mob and Union corruption in New York which surprisingly no one has mentioned in the press so far.....and yes there are articles about this online in the past...but like many rich folks he has managed to escape the mud from this just like Hillary has escaped the e-mail fiasco.

I have always thought that an election should be determined by popular vote. You have two candidates, registered voters go to their polling places and vote for one or the other. When the polls close the votes are counted and the candidate with the most votes wins.

What is so hard about that?

If "popular vote" was the only method used then the political establishment would no longer be able to tip the scales or try to control the outcome. You know that's never going to happen.

Make election day a national holiday

It is not uncommon for Californians to come home from work, turn on the news to see who's winning and then decide if they are going to vote or not.

Voter turnout has always been poor at best. In the last eight cycles the turnout has been between the low fifty per cent to the mid sixty per cent.

That is unacceptable. Why give people one more reason to stay at home and not vote.

But none of that matters as long as we have the electoral college because we may as well stay home since someone else is voting for us anyway. 

I don't think he will win, do I want him to win?? Look it's the lesser of two evils and really who do I dislike more, the other will get my vote. Clearly neither is qualified to sit in the WH, what will get Hillary there is this plan has been in the works for years. Trump and anyone else who thought about running, had no plan in place to make this happen like she did.

If Trump campaign makes no effort to sway the Bern voters, millennials, he will have little to zero chance.....The history is set that the voter will always choose a professional politician if given a choice, its the easy way out. The only chance Trump has is that even the Dems don't like Hillary, so many people dislike her for many reasons, if she falls on her face in some way again with the email thing or something else, that is the only way Trump can get her votes, but all have excused her and I doubt anything will happen.

So many are sick and tired of the same ole same ole with these politicians, but the majority is too scared to vote any other way, and really the media is so powerful in these cases to make people feel "wrong" for not voting for a politician, I don't think it will ever happen.

Everyone should be prepared for another 4 yrs of the same ole same ole......

Millions of Americans are fed up with the way the country is being run and the direction it is going in. They want to change this direction before it reaches the point of no return and the damage being done can no longer be corrected.

They want security because after all the number one job of the government and the president is to protect this country and it's citizens. Everything else comes second.

Instead we have a president who refuses to acknowledge the enemy that has sworn to kill us all. When you see large protests in the Middle East they are not burning Mexican flags or chanting "death to Canadians".

What we get is Obama telling us (for the 100th time) that Islam is a religion of peace and that painting all Muslims with a terrorist brush is not what we are as Americans.

Well, no sh*t. I'm really glad that he cleared that up.

Has there been a pattern of mosque bombings or a spike in anti Muslim hate crimes here in the US?

Obama is going out of his way to prevent a situation that doesn't exist in the first place.

ISIS is a cancer and you can't negotiate with or live with a growing cancer. It has to be completely cut out and then monitored regularly to see that it doesn't grow back. Video game type drone strikes won't cut it.

What we will get with Clinton is more of the same. She has made it clear from the beginning that she has no problems with Obama's policies and plans on continuing along the same lines.

She has a good chance of winning in November and then the whole country will lose.

Trump will be gone but the movement that he did not start will not go away. They will be back every election cycle so get used to them.

# 3........The environment

# 4........civil war

# 5........oxycontin

Having said that, since Trump winning could possibly cause the collapse of the United States of America as a geo-political entity, I'd say he IS actually a "threat". 

Now, being more generous with the term, ok, "threats" of more real danger than ISIS are climate change (which threatens our way of life and even the state I live in), income inequality, which also threatens to disrupt the entire capitalist system, and a few more. ISIS as a single group is not a big threat. Religious Fundamentalism is a threat, that one I can agree with. Not just Muslim, but Christian too. 

Actually the last Dream Theater album is more of a threat to humanity than any Yes or Tull... Coming from me you know it's the truth... believe me  

(it's a disaster of Trumpian proportions) 

1 and 2 have been around for a long time and I don't see them going away.

3 is a very real possibility because both sides are getting farther apart and neither side will give an inch.

You're on your own with 4 & 5.

1 and 2 have become tolerated and generally accepted as being a part of life in America and, like I said, have been around for a long time.

ISIS has not been around that long and their influence is growing. I do not want to see them become tolerated and generally accepted. 

Personally, I don't think anything can be done about 1 and 2 and they probably will eventually cause 3.

But something can still be done to stop ISIS and putting these seemingly unsolvable problems ahead of terrorism is a mistake.

But hey, we're America. Making mistakes is what we do.

Believe me, it's yuge, yuge bad. 

There was Al-Qaeda (well, it still exists), there was Zarqawi, now there's ISIS.  

The threats that some of you have brought up are very serious and it is not my intent to shadow them with the immediate threat of ISIS. They really should be two separate discussions because the threats you bring up are internal threats that need to be dealt with right here in this country. 

ISIS is an external threat that can be and should be dealt with by our military and they should be dealt with quickly. They are not going to fade away because they are getting stronger. They went from 4,000 fighters to 30,000 fighters in about a year and now their numbers are estimated to be 80,000 - 100,000.

So, like I said, these should be two different discussions (but not here, this is the Trump / Clinton thread) 

I look at ISIS from a military point of view (it's a throwback to my days in uniform). You identify your enemy, you engage your enemy, you defeat your enemy. 

Unfortunately, the problems that you and others brought up are not so simple. 

It bothers me a lot that racism is still such a problem in this country. When you consider the fact that the civil rights movement goes back about 56 years you would expect a lot more progress than we have had.

I'm an ornery old conservative who will never change but I had many black and Hispanic friends in the Army and during my thirty years in construction. I was married to a Mexican woman for twenty six years so I just don't see why people can't get beyond the race thing.

I don't get out much anymore but I'm sure we would have a great time listening to prog and tossing back some Coronas. We could sit around and discuss many topics and try to out BS each other.

And don't give a thought to that liberal comment. Hell, I have friends who like liberals.   

Containment? Both the Taliban and Al Qaeda were contained but not destroyed and they are still around. The last I heard was that Al Qaeda is gaining strength again.

Negotiate? Does anyone actually think that ISIS will ever sit across the table from John Kerry and work things out?

Islamic jihad has been around forever and it will continue to be around long after everyone on this forum are long gone.

To compound the problem, ISIS is not just an extension of the Taliban or Al Qaeda. 

They are well funded, partly because they have been selling captured oil on the black market and partly because there never seems to be a shortage of groups (and governments) that secretly channel funds to support terrorism.

They have been able to grow their ranks very quickly by using the internet and by using female operatives to entice young men into the cause.

They also use the internet to recruit lone wolf terrorists. There message is basically, "Come here and join our fight. If you cannot come here then fight where you are".

They are also much more brutal than the previous terror groups. Sawing off heads, putting people in cages and setting them on fire and dropping gay men headfirst off rooftops and then posting videos of their brutality on the internet for the whole world to see.

How could anyone not want to wipe these people off the face of the earth?