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    The Noble RenardHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 11:00am

    Trump’s speech was dangerously fascistic, but of course nothing anyone like me says can actually effect people who would vote for him. My only hope now is to try to convince any progressives like me that the stakes on this election truly are higher than ever in the past.

    Those who would sit out this election and potentially allow Trump to take office are not people who truly care about progressive causes. It’s become as simple as that. If your vote doesn’t matter (you live in NY, CA, DC, etc...), then by all means vote for Jill Stein, Vermin Supreme, or Lizard People. If your vote matters (you live in a swing state) and you stay home, you’re betraying your principles.

    If you truly, truly can’t bring yourself to vote for Hillary Clinton because you think people should demonstrate support for progressive candidates, then I strongly encourage you to look into vote swapping. Find a friend, a neighbor, a family member, who lives in a safe state who is going to vote for Hillary Clinton. Swap your vote with them. You’ll vote for Clinton in a swing state and they’ll vote for Jill Stein in a safe state. Swapping votes allows you to push back against Trump and register your support for progressive causes and hopefully allow Jill Stein or other progressives to get more federal election funding in the future. It’s the best solution to the problem.

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      OurGIIIThe Noble Renard
      7/22/16 11:14am

      Vote swapping is technically illegal, but I wouldn’t sweat it.

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      SkitttlesThe Noble Renard
      7/22/16 11:14am

      What if I live in a safe state and cannot vote for Hillary?

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    TRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)Hamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 11:00am

    The right has spent fifty years teaching its voters to think with their guts, tune out the “liberal elites” and disregard any and all inconvenient facts, especially any cited by the “mainstream media.” Which, conveniently, does not include the most popular TV news channel, a company so dedicated to misinformation that they went to court to defend their right to not tell the truth.

    Donald Trump is the apotheosis of this cultivated ignorance, immune to facts or reason. He will take that cynical Southern Strategy and try to destroy us. Thanks, GOP. America is so grateful.

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      butcherbakertoiletrymakerTRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)
      7/22/16 11:03am

      The right has spent fifty years teaching its voters to think with their guns, not their guts. They don’t have any guts, hence the reason why they are so terrified to live in this country without their 60 round per minute security blanket attached to them at all times.

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      thenewwavevandalbutcherbakertoiletrymaker
      7/22/16 11:08am

      That’s a good point - they’re terrified but also maybe kind of excited to really put the guns they’re so excited about to use.

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    blameitonthecroutons goodbye tourHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 10:56am

    “You can make statistics mean anything” - everyone who hates statistics that don’t confirm their worldview.

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      Ginger Is A Constructblameitonthecroutons goodbye tour
      7/22/16 11:05am

      Exactly. I’ve got numbers too! 45, 55, 65!

      You know what is dangerous? How criminally underfunded our public school system is.

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      OhioGrownblameitonthecroutons goodbye tour
      7/22/16 11:06am

      Well we could say that the reduction in crime and police deaths are due to properly arresting and jailing the offenders. America’s jailed population is at an all time high, and police deaths/crime all time low, so police must be doing a good job. Since said prison population is overwhelmingly african american, we can assume that african americans are the criminals causing crime and police deaths.

      Of course correlation doesn’t equal causation.

      *note: obviously this post has sarcasm and silly extrapolation.

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    festivusaziliHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 10:55am

    This is just more of that dangerously politically correct nonsense that prevents me from talking about the FACT that the country is scarier than ever and full of brown people. I’m sure those two things are unrelated, I just always mention them together. When are you liberals going to get it?

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      El-C0rnh0li0festivusazili
      7/22/16 11:09am

      The transgender Muslim terrorists are coming in from Mexico every day to abort innocent babies and take away our guns. Wake up, sheeple!

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      Low Information Boaterfestivusazili
      7/22/16 11:11am

      For real. I breezed through childhood in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, at the epicenter of the crack epidemic, under the looming shadow of nuclear incineration at the hands of the godless commies, all without a care in the world. Now that I watch the news and know better, I'm in a state of constant fear that animates my political choices.

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    tito_swinefluHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 11:03am

    I live in California, so my vote for president won’t matter.

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      Skipping along to our shared destructiontito_swineflu
      7/22/16 11:23am

      That doesn’t mean you should ever vote for a fat man.

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      tito_swinefluSkipping along to our shared destruction
      7/22/16 12:23pm

      Huh? Is Taft running again? Who is the fat man? Is this code for something? “I paid her thirty dollars extra to ‘vote for the fat man.’”?

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    Ginger Is A ConstructHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 11:03am

    By many metrics the economy has also been improving and unemployment has decreased, not that it matters to people who believe that anecdotal evidence > data.

    I was just having this argument with someone on FB. Despite evidence to the contrary he believes that first-generation immigrants commit more crimes, so how can it be racist for Trump to say that all Mexicans are rapists and criminals?

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      pre-emptive sighGinger Is A Construct
      7/22/16 11:26am

      Point him to this study that shows the exact opposite. Immigrants are less likely to commit crime than natives.

      http://www.cato.org/blog/immigrati…

      And if he tells you it’s a biased study, remind him the CATO Institute is a libertarian think tank founded by the Koch Bros...not exactly a liberal group.

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      ThePriceofEggsinMaltaGinger Is A Construct
      7/22/16 11:26am

      Sure, the economy has been improving, but it hasn’t returned to the mythical time when everyone* had a comfortable house, a white picket fence, a two-car garage full of the latest domestic steel, and a safe blue-collar job. Everyone was clean-cut and heterosexual, nobody tried to let ladyboys into the men’s room, brown people were across the tracks and in the back of the bus where they belonged, and the developing world was starving to death while America reaped the benefits of getting their resources for fractions of pennies on the dollar. Bad people and sad realities were hidden and not thought of, rather than thrust in our faces to make us feel weird guilt-like sensations. We were good, America was good, and everything else either striving to be like us, or was bad.

      Until that vision is realized, there’s a part of the population who will absolutely buy into the completely counterfactual suggestion that our world is crumbling and doomsday is just one more brown family driving into the neighborhood in a U-Haul.

      * “everyone” meaning “any white male”

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    FelixElixHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 11:05am

    I hate wondering this out loud, but I’m curious what the Public Perception of Crime looks like split by political party/ideology. Republicans have been pushing the “It’s worse than ever, Thanks Obama” narrative for 7 1/2 years. Dems hammered Bush from 01-09 for his overwhelming incompetence, but never/rarely over domestic law enforcement issues.

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      flamingolingoFelixElix
      7/22/16 11:27am

      This is anecdotal, but I read an interview a reporter did with some RNC attendees in which he asked them about how they felt the country was doing vs. how they felt they were doing. They almost all said they were personally doing great, but the country was going down the shitter.

      These people will spout the party line even if their own experiences undermine it.

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      FelixElixflamingolingo
      7/22/16 11:34am

      Not surprising—employment is down (but they’re retired), wages are down (but they’re on Social Security), healthcare expenses are out of control and arrrggh OBAMACARE (but they’re on Medicare), crime is out of control (not for them, but their grand-nephew got robbed), and now they have to think about Black lives mattering (they won’t)? This isn’t the America they grew up with.

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    KyuzoHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 10:59am

    According to Donald Trump, America is a blood-drenched third-world favela that needs to be patrolled by ED-209 and Judge Dredd.

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      Skipping along to our shared destructionKyuzo
      7/22/16 11:14am

      That’s so weird. My neighbors believe that about the poorer and immigrant-rich side of town.

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      99Telep☺dpr☹blemsKyuzo
      7/22/16 11:31am

      It’s way too late for that. We’re sending in Plissken.

      GIF
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    lena dunhams boobsHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 10:56am

    Of COURSE America is in the shitter in their mythical world. He’s literally following mein kampf as if it was an Ikea instruction manual or How to take over a democratic nation FOR DUMMIES books.

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      Monsterboylena dunhams boobs
      7/22/16 11:03am

      Well, hopefully if Trump is following it like an Ikea instruction manual, he’ll then pull out the drawers to climb up to the presidency and the whole thing will collapse on top of him on the way since it wasn’t bolted to a non-existent wall.

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      Pink Skulllena dunhams boobs
      7/22/16 11:31am

      You should hope the results are the same. Hitler got slaightered in his bid for the presidency and only achieved power through means Trump does not have access to (political savvy, party leaders who aggressively supported him). The German people did not elect Hitler (they elected a bunch of Nazis, but still...).

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    Becky With the Bad GradesHamilton Nolan
    7/22/16 11:06am

    Look, I completely agree with the overall misleading nature of him painting this narrative, and agree with what the data show on this issue, but are we going to ignore that the first line appears to show a gradual uptick towards the end of the 2010-present section (can’t tell what year that valley starts at, assuming 2012 or 2013 but could be wrong)? It seems like, at most, Trump’s point on that mark is subject to that Futurama technically correct gif.

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      AnnieW50Becky With the Bad Grades
      7/22/16 11:26am

      Because his actual words were “Worse than it has ever been”. And that’s bullshit. But it appeals to the fear that many have.

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      Becky With the Bad GradesAnnieW50
      7/22/16 12:16pm

      Yeah, and I guess I should have been more precise with my initial disclaimer. I missed that; thanks for making that clarification.

      And the interest of disclosure, I come down on issue identically as President Obama’s speech after Baton Rouge’s police shooting. Not trolling, just observing that the vast overstatement by Trump is touching on a very tiny kernel of truth regarding a complicated issue.

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