The Totally Unoffical Phatmass US Presidential Election Poll

[dUSt]

Did you guys see Trump on Fallon?

 

 

[dominicansoul]

I only saw the end of the interview when the Donald allowed Jimmy to muss up his hair.  It was hilarious!

[dUSt]

Trump's letter to pro-life leaders:

https://www.sba-list.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Trump-Letter-on-ProLife-Coalition.pdf

Dear Pro-Life Leader:

I am writing to invite you to join my campaign’s Pro-Life Coalition, which is being spearheaded by longtime leader Marjorie Dannenfelser. As we head into the final stretch of the campaign, the help of leaders like you is essential to ensure that pro-life voters know where I stand, and also know where my opponent, Hillary Clinton, stands.

Hillary Clinton not only supports abortion on-demand for any reason, but she’d take it a step further: she wants to force the taxpayers to pay for abortions by repealing the bi-partisan Hyde Amendment. Hillary Clinton also supports abortion until an hour before birth. And she will only appoint Supreme Court justices who share this view. She doesn’t even try to hide her extremism. When asked on Meet the Press when unborn children have constitutional rights, Clinton bluntly responded, “The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.” She is so committed to this view that she proclaimed in a speech that “religious beliefs… have to be changed” in order to advance her abortion agenda.

Hillary Clinton’s unwavering commitment to advancing taxpayer-funded abortion on-demand stands in stark contrast to the commitments I’ve made to advance the rights of unborn children and their mothers when elected president. I am committed to:

 Nominating pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
 Signing into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would end painful late-term abortions nationwide.
 Defunding Planned Parenthood as long as they continue to perform abortions, and reallocating their funding to community health centers that provide comprehensive health care for women.
 Making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.

Your help is crucial to make this contrast clear in the minds of pro-life voters, especially those in battleground states. Together we can form this vital coalition so that Mike Pence and I can be advocates for the unborn and their mothers every day we are in the White House.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Trump

[dominicansoul]

If Trump wins, we Catholics need to hold him to these pro-life convictions.  If Hilary wins, we, like the unborn, don't even have a voice.

[Peace]

I wonder why the Dems don't consider more pro-life candidates, or make their platform neutral on the issue? I actually think we could see this within my lifetime, with the changing political landscape.

Seemingly most Dems would never vote for a conservative Republican in any case, so they might be able to cut into the GOP's Christian base quite a bit if they backed off on some of the social issues. 

Essentially that is what Trump is running as: a pro-life Democrat. You essentially have two Democrats running against each other, one pro-choice and the other pro-life (for those who believe Trump).

If the Dems caved on abortion and marriage I don't see how they could ever lose another election. Seriously.

Perhaps it might be tough for a candidate like that to win the Dem primary, but at least one thing Trump has proven is that someone can veer substantially away from the party platform and secure a victory among a split field.

[dominicansoul]

BTW, Democrats/liberals on social media are excoriating Fallon for "humanizing Trump."  They use the word "humanizing."  So, I guess liberals decide who can be human and who can't be human.  Sounds eerily like planned parenthood/abortion-rights propaganda...

[dUSt]

1 minute ago, Peace said:

If the Dems caved on abortion and marriage I don't see how they could ever lose another election. Seriously.

I agree with you.

If the democratic party dropped abortion from their platform, I'd probably vote democrat every time. 

[Anomaly]

If Catholics would insist on Abortion being a priority and consistently vote that way in local, regional, state, and Federal elections, abortion would be gone in my life time and I'm much older than most of you.  

It could start with gaining legal recognition of fetus as persons.  

As long as citizens devolve our election choices to be based on"nice people" and superficiality every four years, we will continue to be fooled into allowing infanticide as a trade for nice insurance or nicer wars.  

[KnightofChrist]

On 9/14/2016 at 8:37 PM, Ice_nine said:

I know that. I like metaphors. Don't be so stuffy

I think when one side accuses the other side of "just not getting it," the conversation has devolved beyond any chance of a meaningful discussion.

I respect you convictions (I guess I'm speaking to mainly DS an anomaly here). I don't really like the insinuation that I and others am just either too obtuse or not concerned enough about abortion because I don't agree with your political stance. That's disheartening. 

I've never voted democrat, and I live in a solidly blue state. I've been vocal, when the opportunity arises, to let people know that Obama is pretty hawkish with his drone campaign and comparable to Bush in terms of civil liberties. I don't know much about Hilary Clinton tbh. Maybe that's why I don't understand the seething hatred some people have for her.  I don't agree with much of her ideology, but I think Trump is an absolute joke. I don't like Clinton but I can at least admit that she has the credentials to be president (as do most of the people who ran for the GOP this year). Trump is just so openly narcissistic and incompetent.

But I can't participate in this conversation anymore. I don't think I have the energy. Esp when I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over.

I tried to make a point earlier in the thread and everyone pretty much just completely ignored it and carried on.

But I do very much believe that if abortion was unveiled and happened out in the open how we've all carried ourselves in this thread would be drastically different. The same would true if the victims were toddlers, a minority or religious group, or pretty much any group that we can communicate and interact with being murdered in mass out and in the open.

You will forgive me but I do not believe you would have trouble understanding why there is "seething hatred", as you call it, for Hillary Clinton if she instead advocated the mass murder of a group and you had to see it happen, hear it happen, and smell the after effects of what happened. I believe the only reason you have trouble understanding the passion some have against Clinton is because abortion is veiled and hidden away.

I also believe that if Clinton believed that religious groups were not persons and advocated the mass-murder of those persons you wouldn't say she had the credentials to be president. I'm sure you and everyone else in here would say that would automatically make her horribly disqualified. No one in this thread would have voted for her in the poll, no one in this thread would have defended even the remote idea that it could be permissible to vote for her. And everyone in this thread would have been a lot harder than Ds, Anomaly, Soc or I have been on anyone that would dare to say one could vote for Clinton in such a reality.

Does anyone actually deny any point I've just made? I'd prefer not to have it ignored again. But if it is I think I will understand why.

Edited September 16, 2016 by KnightofChrist

[dUSt]

4 hours ago, dominicansoul said:

BTW, Democrats/liberals on social media are excoriating Fallon for "humanizing Trump."  They use the word "humanizing."  So, I guess liberals decide who can be human and who can't be human.  Sounds eerily like planned parenthood/abortion-rights propaganda...

I'm stealing this to make a witty Facebook post.

[Peace]

1 hour ago, KnightofChrist said:

I tried to make a point earlier in the thread and everyone pretty much just completely ignored it and carried on.

The reason why we ignored your comments is because we did not believe that they were relevant to anything being discussed in the thread. At least from my perspective, your comments merely amounted to another lecture and additional insinuations that you care more about the issue than other people who may conclude to vote differently than you do (despite writing "we've all" in your comments). There was nothing of substance for us to respond to, to be frank.

1 hour ago, KnightofChrist said:

But I do very much believe that if abortion was unveiled and happened out in the open how we've all carried ourselves in this thread would be drastically different. The same would true if the victims were toddlers, a minority or religious group, or pretty much any group that we can communicate and interact with being murdered in mass out and in the open.

It is not as though you are making some profound point here that has never occurred to anyone. It is a rather obvious conclusion. Yes, if people had to step over the corpses of three babies every morning on the way to work they would take the issue more seriously. If you littered the streets with the corpses of the hundreds and thousands of innocent people that were killed during the Republican war in Iraq people would have taken that war more seriously. If people saw women being raped on the way to work every morning we would all take rape more seriously. If people saw children being molested on the way to work every morning we would all take child molestation more seriously.

But you have entirely missed the point. Ice_nine's objection was that we do not need to be lectured on the importance of the issue and we do not need you to insinuate that we are less committed to the issue. That objection would be exactly the same whether abortion remains "veiled and hidden away" or whether we had to step over the corpses of 3 babies on the way to work every morning. In fact, the objection would be likely be greater under your hypothetical. We would say "we do not need you to lecture us about abortion, we step over 3 babies every day on the way to work just like you do."

Again, you made a point, but the point is irrelevant to what was being discussed. And you were ignored for that reason. You were simply grandstanding again and giving us another unnecessary lecture.

1 hour ago, KnightofChrist said:

You will forgive me but I do not believe you would have trouble understanding why there is "seething hatred", as you call it, for Hillary Clinton if she instead advocated the mass murder of a group and you had to see it happen, hear it happen, and smell the after effects of what happened. I believe the only reason you have trouble understanding the passion some have against Clinton is because abortion is veiled and hidden away.

Obviously, she knows that people have a hatred of Clinton because she is pro-choice. Hasn't this thread alone made that clear?

In the context of the discussion she appears to have meant that she does not understand why people hate Clinton more-so than any other Democrat (she indicated that she is not familiar with Clinton's policies).

Perhaps you misunderstood her.

1 hour ago, KnightofChrist said:

I also believe that if Clinton believed that religious groups were not persons and advocated the mass-murder of those persons you wouldn't say she had the credentials to be president. I'm sure you and everyone else in here would say that would automatically make her horribly disqualified.

Please. Will it ever end? Will you ever stop trying to find a "gotcha" whereby you can insinuate that people do not take abortion as seriously as you do? Obviously she was talking about the fact that Clinton has political experience that is relevant to being president, while Trump has no political experience.

And as for Clinton being disqualified (in an absolute sense) - absolutely. She is disqualified. But guess what? So is Trump. He also has advocated for things that the Church considers a grave evil. And neither is he pro-life.

1 hour ago, KnightofChrist said:

No one in this thread would have voted for her in the poll, no one in this thread would have defended even the remote idea that it could be permissible to vote for her. And everyone in this thread would have been a lot harder than Ds, Anomaly, Soc or I have been on anyone that would dare to say one could vote for Clinton in such a reality.

Just because you say it, does not make it so. In simpler words, you are wrong.

One reason, obviously, is because some of us in this thread do not believe that Trump is any more pro-life or likely to act pro-life than Clinton is. The fact that some of us believe that both candidates are pro-choice does not change whether abortion remains "veiled and hidden away" or whether we had to step over the corpses of 3 babies on the way to work every morning. The analysis would be exactly the same.

Now, obviously you disagree with the assertion that Trump and Clinton are both pro-choice (and the extent to which either of them may be likely to do anything about abortion), but that is precisely what was being discussed in this thread before you decided to jump in and give us a grand lecture on how important abortion is. Perhaps that discussion could have continued if you and others did not constantly try to lecture us.

1 hour ago, KnightofChrist said:

Does anyone actually deny any point I've just made? I'd prefer not to have it ignored again. But if it is I think I will understand why.

Yes. Obviously.

[KnightofChrist]

Uzani, his army. Shaka, when the walls fell.

[Anomaly]

53 minutes ago, Peace said:

The reason why we ignored your comments is because we did not believe that they were relevant to anything being discussed in the thread. At least from my perspective, your comments merely amounted to another lecture and additional insinuations that you care more about the issue than other people who may conclude to vote differently than you do (despite writing "we've all" in your comments). There was nothing of substance for us to respond to, to be frank.

It is not as though you are making some profound point here that has never occurred to anyone. It is a rather obvious conclusion. Yes, if people had to step over the corpses of three babies every morning on the way to work they would take the issue more seriously. If you littered the streets with the corpses of the hundreds and thousands of innocent people that were killed during the Republican war in Iraq people would have taken that war more seriously. If people saw women being raped on the way to work every morning we would all take rape more seriously. If people saw children being molested on the way to work every morning we would all take child molestation more seriously.

But you have entirely missed the point. Ice_nine's objection was that we do not need to be lectured on the importance of the issue and we do not need you to insinuate that we are less committed to the issue. That objection would be exactly the same whether abortion remains "veiled and hidden away" or whether we had to step over the corpses of 3 babies on the way to work every morning. In fact, the objection would be likely be greater under your hypothetical. We would say "we do not need you to lecture us about abortion, we step over 3 babies every day on the way to work just like you do."

Again, you made a point, but the point is irrelevant to what was being discussed. And you were ignored for that reason. You were simply grandstanding again and giving us another unnecessary lecture.

Obviously, she knows that people have a hatred of Clinton because she is pro-choice. Hasn't this thread alone made that clear?

In the context of the discussion she appears to have meant that she does not understand why people hate Clinton more-so than any other Democrat (she indicated that she is not familiar with Clinton's policies).

Perhaps you misunderstood her.

Please. Will it ever end? Will you ever stop trying to find a "gotcha" whereby you can insinuate that people do not take abortion as seriously as you do? Obviously she was talking about the fact that Clinton has political experience that is relevant to being president, while Trump has no political experience.

And as for Clinton being disqualified (in an absolute sense) - absolutely. She is disqualified. But guess what? So is Trump. He also has advocated for things that the Church considers a grave evil. And neither is he pro-life.

Just because you say it, does not make it so. In simpler words, you are wrong.

One reason, obviously, is because some of us in this thread do not believe that Trump is any more pro-life or likely to act pro-life than Clinton is. The fact that some of us believe that both candidates are pro-choice does not change whether abortion remains "veiled and hidden away" or whether we had to step over the corpses of 3 babies on the way to work every morning. The analysis would be exactly the same.

Now, obviously you disagree with the assertion that Trump and Clinton are both pro-choice (and the extent to which either of them may be likely to do anything about abortion), but that is precisely what was being discussed in this thread before you decided to jump in and give us a grand lecture on how important abortion is. Perhaps that discussion could have continued if you and others did not constantly try to lecture us.

You are obviously intelligent enough to know the difference between electing Trump and empowering the Republican Party or electing Hillary and empowering the Democratic Party.  

Even if only a small difference, there is a difference regarding possible limiting or rescinding abortion.  

There were pro-life candidates that most Catholics would not and did not vote for.  "Catholic morali principles" as actually practiced is very much a ridiculous joke.   You guys aren't any more principled or different then every other atheist, agnostic, Christian, Wiccan, whatever.  Everyone can find a priest or bishop or scholar to justify whatever they want to do and be morally justified.  It's all about committing to your personal opinion. 

[Peace]

3 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

You are obviously intelligent enough to know the difference between electing Trump and empowering the Republican Party or electing Hillary and empowering the Democratic Party.  

Even if only a small difference, there is a difference regarding possible limiting or rescinding abortion.

I already responded to this. Please feel free to go back and re-read my previous response.

3 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

 There were pro-life candidates that most Catholics would not and did not vote for.  "Catholic morali principles" as actually practiced is very much a ridiculous joke.  

The only candidate that I have cast a vote for in this election cycle was Marco Rubio. He is very pro-life, which is one of the reasons why I supported him. In fact, I created a thread on this website in which I indicated that one of the reasons that I liked him so much was because his faith seemed genuine.

As for why many Catholics vote Democrat, that topic has already been discussed in this thread as well. Please feel free to go back and re-read what I wrote.

3 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

You guys aren't any more principled or different then every other atheist, agnostic, Christian, Wiccan, whatever.  Everyone can find a priest or bishop or scholar to justify whatever they want to do and be morally justified.  It's all about committing to your personal opinion. 

It is not as though your opinion regarding this is any great concern of mine. I do not need your approval nor do I seek it.

If I were you I would spend less time thinking about who is more principled  and more time thinking about the fact that you, as an atheist, have no basis whatsoever for any principle that you profess to hold.

[Anomaly]

lol.  Yeah, I can't point to an imaginary friend who told me it's okay.  We only have different opinions.  Principles aren't tThe issue.