As the son of a father, with two brothers, five nephews and an illegitimate trans male son, this shit creeps the fuck out of me. Here's your goddamn rape culture, kids. Not only the way discussing sexual assault is brushed off as "locker room talk", but the heartless way Trump exploits these women as pawns. Talk about "PLAYING THE VICTIM CARD"!

Also, it disturbs the shit out of me that Trump still leads among men. It makes me wonder what kind of nightmare we'd all be living through if women had never won the right to vote.

Of course, the women themselves aren't exactly showing a whole lot of class, but the worst is clearly this woman who is attacking Hillary Clinton for performing her constitutionally mandated role as a defense attorney in a rape trial. This was in 1975. This was before Jaws or Star Wars came out, just before Kiss released Alive. Jerry Ford was President. Hillary Clinton was a law student, and she tried to get off the case.

My favorite example of misogyny is Beatles fans who are still pissed off at Yoko Ono, but never get mad at Mark David Chapman. Blaming the female defense attorney, and not the male criminal, is a lot like that. I'm sorry, ma'am, but Hillary Clinton didn't ruin your life. The monster who raped you when you were 12 ruined your life, and it was the bungling police, and the shitty culture of the time that nearly let him get away with it.

God I hate to pontificate like this, but 'the whole world is watching this shitshow, and I still have enough patriotism to be embarrassed by this.

It seems like 2016 was the year "shitshow" became a popular expression. No coincidence.

I can remember a couple of sexual encounters from my 20s that I know were consensual, but which creep me out to think about now. Consent used to be a murky business. In the 70s and 80s, NO didn't always mean NO. Does that sound fucked up? It should.

Bill Cosby was a premeditated serial rapist whose career spanned decades. I'm not necessarily convinced that some famous white guy got away with worse. But there must be a shitton of very successful men who weren't used to hearing NO, and didn't think they had to stop when they heard it.

I doubt if Bill Clinton has been raping women lately, but 30-40 years ago? It could have happened. And I really don't know what to do about that. I hate to say it, but under certain circumstances, rape seems more relatable and forgivable than this abomination of a press conference. I mean, I can at least understand wanting to fuck. This seems like as much of a violation, without the human motivation.

I think Trump has written off the election; he probably never really wanted to be President, anyway. He's going to ignore everyone but his deplorable base, and they're going to fucking love him for it. No matter what new atrocities come to light during the final weeks, they're going to cheer him off the stage, and that's probably all he cares about.

Ever see that movie with Bill Murray as FDR and Laura Linney as the cousin he was diddling? I couldn't tell you if the stuff in that movie was consensual or not. But even if it wasn't, I'm not giving back my social security money.

"Consent used to be a murky business. In the 70s and 80s, NO didn't always mean NO. Does that sound fucked up? It should."

Yep, there was a school of thought that only whores want it, and so to remain a good girl, a girl had to resist it and be ... persuaded ... into sex. That could mean -- and this is going to sound fucked up, and it should -- a sexual assault that persisted until it felt so good that she finally gave in. Certainly that's how men could look at it, essentially "no" means "keep going until you get that yes". A lot of mixed messages in there, and unfortunately, the next result was that a man wasn't "really" in the wrong unless he jumped out of the bushes and assaulted her at knifepoint.

Used to be commonplace and funny too. Consider this cartoon intro ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcArTVhq6Ik

... what do you suppose is happening during 0:32 to 0:37?

Good for you. Voting Hillary, unlike Stein, actually will "send a message" much more clearly than a wasted 3rd-party vote.

Point of order: can we all get over that tired third party votes are wasted meme?

It's an old, tired, untrue argument that gets dragged out every four years and it goes back so fucking far that Frederick Engels was bitching about it post Civil War.

Get over it. It's not like the two party system does a good job of representing all of us ever.

Vote for who you want for the reasons you want to if you're lucky enough to get to vote or lucky enough to be able to get to the polls on election day and not get turned away.

Just because you really, really want third party voting to be a constructive exercise, doesn't make it so.

Maine governor LePage is in office only because of third-party candidates. Hooray for protest votes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB1bSJB3n10

I still love you, cog, even if you voted for David Cameron.

#heartsneverexit

:)

Bort: actually that's exactly how it works.

If enough people believe that voting 3rd party will accomplish something, then it will! Hurray for social constructions!

See also: money, human rights, private property, nation-states, etc.

Fine, but what about parties that are polling at under ten percent, that have no footprint to speak of in actual elected positions, and whose presidential candidate thinks the Oval Office is an entry-level position fit for any anti-vaxx loon? I suppose it's possible that she'd win and do a good job, in the same way it's possible that $10 of lottery tickets would make you a millionaire.

I didn't vote for Cameron, I voted for pig fucking.

I'll support 3rd party voting when we require a runoff election whenever no candidate gets 50 per cent or more of the vote. That really ought to be in the constitution.

"kingarthur
Point of order: can we all get over that tired third party votes are wasted meme? "


Voting green party kind of is, because while I agree with their politics they seem to have no actual game plan whatsoever, beyond running a symbolic campaign every four years. How many people have they gotten elected at the state level (which is how you build a constituency and actually get things done)? What is their game plan to do so?

And I say that as a life long independent who would love to see a viable left wing party actually exist for the first time in my life.

Here is a list for Green Party US.
http://www.gp.org/officeholders

I think some of these state names are made up though.

Oh absolutely with a first-past-the-post system voting for minor parties or independents feels like shit. My favourite voting system is "instant runoff" where you rank your candidates and the lower ones get eliminated one-by-one until the top candidate has a majority.

Instant runoff in principle wouldn't even hurt major established parties because they would rarely be the bottom of the rankings in the initial rounds.

I'm not that optimistic though. The major parties are never going to actually commit to electoral reform. If they do, they'll promote a form of reform that does not allow dissenting voices to be present. Or worse, they'll propose a flawed plan and a referendum that is doomed to fail and then claim "welp we tried, the people didn't want it!"

I support the Thunderdome system.

The Democrats almost function like a coalition anyway. Imagine if this country had a Progressive Party, a Blue Dog Party, and a Center Left Party that agreed on about as much as they disagreed on ... that's about where the Democratic Party is now.

The big difference would be the general elections, where instead of the three parties splitting each other's votes and letting Republicans in, the Democrats fight amongst themselves in primary season and then (try to) beat the Republican on Election Day.

Get over it. It's not like the two party system does a good job of representing all of us ever.


Well, how could it?

No matter how many parties you have, only one person wins a given election, and that is the root of the problem. Most elected officials can expect to piss off half of their constituents on an ongoing basis, no matter how dedicated to public service they might be.

Jesus!

HOLY SHIT.

Somehow miraculously grosser than the people who watch Miss Teen USA.

Oh, it's exploding all right. Just did a search for "donald trump miss teen USA" And women are coming forth claiming Trump groped them.

And he's the one who made it happen. I don't think I've ever seen anyone fuck themselves quite so thoroughly. This is the problem with a nominee who's "not a politician"; he sucks at politics. With this insane press conference, one of the sleaziest guys in public life opened the door
every sleazy story about him to come out. The woman who's suing him for allegedly tying her to a bed and raping her when she was thirteen? The media had been steering clear of that. It was an unproven allegation. Well, Donald Trump made unproven rape allegations fair game, and he didn't even have the sense to find a surrogate to do it for him.

What are they going to do, attack the women who come forward, after demonizing Hillary Clinton for doing exactly that?