2016 US Presidental election thread

[Darth Penguin]

Top Trump surrogate doesn't consider grabbing a woman's vagina sexual assault.

After the phrase "grab them by the pussy" went viral on Friday, most commentators immediately agreed that the phrase implied sexual assault.

But not all. On Monday, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a top Trump surrogate, explained to The Weekly Standard that "grabbing" a woman's vagina was not in fact, sexual assault, and that any attempt to interpret it that way was "a stretch."

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What exactly the act was, Sessions couldn't explain. The Senator further struggled to imagine how such an event could even physically transpire.
From the transcript:

The Weekly Standard: "But beyond the language, would you characterize the behavior described in that [video] as sexual assault if that behavior actually took place?"

Sessions: "I don't characterize that as sexual assault. I think that's a stretch. I don't know what he meant.

The Weekly Standard: "So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that's not sexual assault?"

Sessions "I don't know. It's not clear that he—how that would occur."

For some, sexual assault in limited to acts of forced sexual intercourse. But the Department of Justice currently defines sexual assault as "any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient."

Included in that list are a range of sexual activities including "forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape."
It is unclear how grabbing a woman's vagina without her expressed consent would not fall under the umbrella definition. Following Sessions' comment, some people on Twitter began to compare the Senator to former Missouri Representative Todd Akin, best known for using the term "legitimate rape."

bold mine

[lecale]

[Darth Penguin]

Anderson Cooper attacked by Trump suporters

CNN anchor Anderson Cooper made history on Sunday when he became the first openly gay man to host a presidential debate, co-moderating the second presidential debate between Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz.
“I don’t think Anderson Cooper should be a moderator because Anderson Cooper works for CNN, and over the last couple of days, I’ve seen how Anderson Cooper behaves,” Trump told the Washington Post’s Robert Costa during a September interview. “He’ll be very biased, very biased. I don’t think he should be a moderator. I’ll participate, but I don’t think he should be a moderator. CNN is the Clinton News Network, and Anderson Cooper, I don’t think he can be fair.”

So it should come as no suprise that his followers thought both reporters were out to get him, despite the tough questions they asked of both candidates.
Twitter’s ‘basket of deplorables’ unleashed a disgusting assault on Cooper using a series of homophobic slurs during the debate:

[Darth Penguin]

Trump presidency "dangerous" says UN Human Right chief.

Donald Trump's "deeply unsettling and disturbing" views make him a danger internationally, the UN's human rights chief has said.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein cited Mr Trump's comments on the use of torture and his attitude to "vulnerable communities".
The Republican presidential candidate's campaign has been marked by a number of controversial comments.
Recent crude remarks about women have caused the biggest political fallout.
Overnight President Barack Obama, at a rally for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, condemned those comments, saying: "The guy says stuff that nobody would find tolerable if they were applying for a job at 7-Eleven."

Mr Hussein said at a news briefing in Geneva: "If Donald Trump is elected on the basis of what he has said already - and unless that changes - I think it is without any doubt that he would be dangerous from an international point of view."
Mr Hussein said he was "not keen or intent on interfering in any political campaign within any particular country".
But he said that when an election could result in an increase in the use of torture "or the focus on vulnerable communities in a way that suggests that they may well be deprived of their human rights, then I think it is incumbent to say so".

Mr Hussein has spoken out before on Mr Trump's policies, saying in June that "bigotry is not proof of strong leadership", while in September he launched a scathing attack on Western populist politicians, branding them "demagogues and political fantasists".
During the campaign, Mr Trump has said that "torture works" and has promised to bring back "a lot worse than waterboarding".
Waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques previously used by US forces on terror suspects have been banned by the Obama administration.
Mr Trump said of waterboarding in June: "I like it a lot. I don't think it's tough enough."

[Lynn49]

Trump exemplifies with worst traits in a human being: lust, greed, racism, misogyny...the NY Times got it right at the beginning of this fiasco:

(Trump) is a study in the peril and pitfalls of unchecked testosterone and tumescent avarice. It’s a commentary on wealth in the Western world: how ardently certain blowhards pursue it, how much the rest of us forgive in those who attain it, how thoroughly we equate money and accomplishment.It’s a comedy. It’s a tragedy.

Comparing him to Berlusconi, the article went on: Both men have learned that they can turn such cloddishness to their advantage, by casting it as unvarnished candor. Sloppy talk becomes straight talk. Insult becomes authenticity, even if it’s pure theater and so long as it’s a hell of a show.And self-regard goes a long, long way. It can be mistaken for wisdom. It can masquerade as vision. With enough of it, the clown transforms himself into a ringleader. The dwarf looks like a giant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/op...ald-trump.html

[Darth Penguin]

Trump supporters tweet repeal the 19th

Donald Trump supporters just reared their ugly, misogynistic heads yet again.
On Tuesday evening, FiveThirtyEight published two polls showing what the outcome of the presidential election would look like if only women voted and what it would look like if only men voted. As you may have guessed, the outcome of the election would be very different if only one gender could vote.

[Darth Penguin]

More women coming forward alleging that they were assaulted by Trump

Civil rights lawyer Gloria Allred says she has been contacted by more women claiming they were sexually harassed or abused by Donald Trump.
Ms Allred said she had been contacted by women before and after a recording of him boasting about grabbing and kissing women surfaced.
She is noted for taking on high-profile cases such as Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski.

"If there is an unwanted or unconsented to touching of a person’s intimate parts such as the genital areas or a woman’s breasts, that could constitute a sexual assault or a sexual battery," she told Gothamist on Monday.
She added: "I am disgusted by what Donald Trump said and admitted that he had done on that video. An apology is not enough."
The lawyer declined to give any further information about the women's claims and did not disclose how many women had contacted her.

[Darth Penguin]

Prime Minister Campbell calls Trump a sexual predator

Canada’s first female prime minister ripped into Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday, calling the GOP nominee a sexual predator who is committing a crime against democracy.
Kim Campbell, who served as Canada’s prime minister in 1993, excoriated Trump over his candid remarks in a now-notorious “Access Hollywood” video. The 2005 tape features the candidate bragging about kissing women without their consent and explaining how he can “grab them by the pussy” because he’s famous.
“He has described himself as a sexual predator. The behavior he has admitted to and celebrated in himself is predation,” Campbell told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
“He has unleashed a wave of misogynistic rhetoric that is in the guise of being opposed to political correctness,” she added.

Campbell has previously criticized Trump over his foreign policy and the way he has conducted his campaign, describing him in August as “a complete vandal who doesn’t understand anything, and shoots his mouth off.”
The former prime minister’s latest remarks are her strongest yet, however, as well as some of the most damning from any past or present world leader.
“Unconsented sexual touching is a sexual assault. And somebody who does that, who thinks he has a right to do that, who does it thinking that it’s a reflection of his value because he’s a celebrity, etc., I mean, that is predation,” Campbell said.
In addition to condemning Trump’s talk of sexual assault, Campbell highlighted the danger of his repeated suggestion that the election would be rigged.
“The notion that you would want to open a wound and encourage people ― who may do who knows what as a result of your encouragement ― to believe that somehow an election was stolen against their candidate ... is really a crime against democracy,” she said.

[Darth Penguin]

Kathy Shelton rape case: 5 facts you need to know.

Kathy Shelton of Springdale, Arkansas, is now 54 years old. But in 1975, at the age of 12, Shelton was allegedly raped by a 41-year-old factory worker named Thomas Alfred Taylor. The lawyer who provided Taylor’s defense was a 27-year-old law professor who ran a legal aid clinic for underprivileged defendants. Her name was Hillary Rodham, soon to be known as Hillary Clinton — and in the end, Taylor’s charges were reduced from first-degree rape to “unlawful fondling of a child under 14,” mainly due to a lack of credible evidence in the case. Taylor served 10 months of a one-year sentence, and died in 1992.
The Shelton rape case has long been used by Clinton adversaries to attack her, saying that her defense of Taylor makes her a hypocrite when she claims to be an advocate for women and sexual assault victims. Clinton’s political opponents have even claimed that the Democratic Presidential nominee “laughed” when discussing the case in an interview several years later.
With Donald Trump signaling that he intends to attack Clinton as a “bully” toward victims of sexual assault, the Shelton rape case is expected to be a topic in the second Presidential debate on Sunday, October 9, according to Bloomberg News reporter Joshua Green.

[Lynn49]

more women coming forward alleging that they were assaulted by trump

I hope Gloria nails his peni$ to the wall!

[Darth Penguin]

Catholic out -cry at Clinton aide e-mail

Donald Trump has called on White House rival Hillary Clinton to fire an aide involved in leaked emails in which conservative Catholics were disparaged.
The comments were made in an alleged April 2011 exchange between Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri and a think tank fellow.
Her then-colleague appears to mock media mogul Rupert Murdoch for bringing up his children as Catholics.
Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said the comments were "staggering".

[Darth Penguin]

Former beauty queens; Trump strolled in on naked contestants

On an April 11, 2005, airing of “The Howard Stern Show,” Donald Trump bragged about some of the special perks he enjoyed while he was owner of the Miss USA pageant. They came not in a locker room but a dressing room.
“I’ll go backstage before a show, and everyone’s getting dressed and ready and everything else,” he said. “And you know, no men are anywhere. And I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant. And therefore I’m inspecting it.”
Stern replied, “You’re like a doctor.”
Trump responded: “Is everyone okay? You know they’re standing there with no clothes. And you see these incredible-looking women. And so I sort of get away with things like that.”
CNN broke the story of his Stern show comments.
CBS 2 Los Angeles did a little fact-checking and, guess what, this time, no Pinocchios. Tasha Dixon, Miss Arizona in 2001, told the TV station that Trump just came “waltzing in” while contestants were nude or half-nude as they changed into bikinis.
Separately, BuzzFeed News reported Wednesday that four women in the 1997 Miss Teen USA beauty pageant said Trump walked into their dressing room while they were changing. Some were as young as 15, BuzzFeed reported.

All I can say is it's a good job he wasn't pretending to be transgender so he could grope them or anything /sarcasm....

[lecale]

Former beauty queens; Trump strolled in on naked contestants




All I can say is it's a good job he wasn't pretending to be transgender so he could grope them or anything /sarcasm....

Read the news this morning and there are now 10 women claiming sexual assault by DJT and he is attacking and shaming all of them.

Good thing he brought up Bill?

[Natalka]

Why didn't all of this come out much sooner?

[Lynn49]

Why didn't all of this come out much sooner?

Natalka, can you imagine the big guns that trump could hire to make those women, individually, look like whores? He would, and I'm pretty sure they knew it! But when something like this comes out, one by one, women begin talking with each other about it and find out that perhaps there's power in numbers, and that they can finally get some justice for the abhorrent way they were treated by that scum-bag. I can only hope they all find the justice they deserve.