1) Donald Trump is either clinically insane or a manipulative want-a-be dictator or perhaps both.

2) Any vote for anyone other than Hillary in a contested state is a wasted vote that increases the chances that Trump could win. At the very least, such "political purity" feel-good votes are likely to also take away critical support for down ballot progressive candidates.

3) Many people will suffer and some will die unnecessarily if Trump is elected. The fact you may personally not be at risk, doesn't relieve you from the moral obligation to keep this orange haired real life monster out of the White House.

I for one think that Obama was bought off, bribed, did a quid pro quo, whatever you want to call it. He needed the campaign contributors to "donate" to his campaign in 2008 and 2012 so he "compromised" his campaign promises. PERIOD.

Please remember that Obama was the first candidate to not accept public financing since public financing was inaugarated. Why did he do that? It is simple arithmetic as Bill Clinton so eruditely discussed endorsing Obama in 2012 at the Democratic Convention. To be sure, Obama and his team simply added up how much the uber rich and other contributors would contribute and how much they could garner from public financing and the former choice was as easy as addition and subtraction to arrive at the difference between the two choices.

When ANY politician receives a sizeable donation the contributor has at a minimum access. I suggest that viewers that can retrieve HBO watch "Meet the Donors: Does Money Talk?". After watching it you will probably wonder how could any one believe the malarky that the mega donors on the documentary suggest that they have NEVER, EVER received an economic advantage from bribing our kleptocrats.

Anyone that accepts the disembelling answers from the mega donors to Alexandra Pelosi's questions have no discernable or a very limited amount of critical, analytical skills or plain old common sense in their frontal and temporal lobes.

I would suggest that those that do buy into the plutocrats answers read the below link then decide.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/2/new-evidence-suggests-that-the-rich-own-our-democracy.html​

Please explain how no matter what happens in the news the stock market goes UP UP UP... ALL the time. Times are tough for Americans but not for the market. How will it ever end and get that money back into circulation for the rest of us?

The 2nd is also about citizens being able to keep and bear arms against a tyrannical government.

Most ignorant individuals think the 2nd is about the right to hunt. It is not. It is to protect civilians rights to own weapons similar to the ones used by the government, so the people can rise up and retake the government, if necessary.

Seem to recall that Candidate Obama suggested he'd put NAFTA in the trash where it belongs, yet dispatched an emissary to Canada(?) to reassure folks that he didn't mean a word of it... (...you can look it up.)

"Both parties" - the Greens and the Libertarians?

Don't vote yellow, vote Green!

I consider myself a 75 yr old progressive & I suggest that you Dreamers face reality, that is every time the US followed protectionism as a policy we have eventually ended up in war'

You want change stop acting like spoiled childern having a tantrum, do what Thom suggests and do what the neo cons have been doing for years. Get involved run for office fill those school boards, planning commisions, state leg!

This will not happened overnight but only YOU can make it happen

It is called hypocrisy. And as Hannah Arendt put it "hypocrits are rotten to the core".

We have not had a real human being as president since Jimmy Carter. We now have what the corporate monsters want- a kind of hypocritical, sweet talking hollow man.

We should just shovel the whole bunch of democrats and republicans into a barrel and send it down a river we don't mind polluting and hold our noses as the stench of conservatism rises into the air.

"Conservatism discards prescription, shrinks from principle. disavows progress and having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present and makes no preparation for the future". It is what Ben Disraeli called an "organized hypocrisy".

Still love ya, Thom, but you're getting a little crazy.
It's alright, these are crazy times.

Voting for either party of the duopoly is to go along with the plan, it's to deliver yourself to H.G. Welles' cannibals. The political spectrum in the United States has been incrementally moving to the right because Wall Street and big business, by contributing heavily to both parties, determine the nominees of both parties. They then place a Darth Vader, monster Republican against a corporate shill Democrat forcing a choice between evils.
Bernie is not a "socialist", he's a New Dealer. 30, 40 years ago nobody would've even noticed him, he would've blended right in.
Where Trump is today the Democrats will be in another 3 or 4 election cycles.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fr09AFDPTpA

That Obama Pushes for the TPP

{… a limerick …}

This tergiversation Obamanous

is a characteristic ominous

of the non-Progressive

Centrist-obsessive

tendency to be embalmin’ us.

=======================

I suggest anyone that wants to know about trade flows and its affects on GDP read Michael Pettis' book, The Great Rebalancing. Mr. Pettis in arcane free language that anyone with modicum of understanding how GDP is calculated describes savings, investment, wage, productivity, import tariffs, export tariffs, currency manipulation, exports, imports and how they affect a country and their trading partners GDP, respectively.

As much as I respect Thom, he doesn't know as much as Mr. Pettis on the ramifications of trade flows. The former is an articulate, educated and well versed person that has an eclectic background and Mr. Pettis is an expert on how trade flows between countries in a closed economy (the world).

Mr. Pettis is not an advocate of "free trade" either so liberals keep your diatribes in check.

Thom's advocacy of a VAT, imporverishes household consumption, which will cause an increase in savings, which will also further impoverish most households unless the government that receives this additional revenue also spends or incentivizes that money on investing in the real economy thereby increasing production and output and/or provides subsidies to those impacted by the reduction in household income so it in effect ameliorates or entirely subsidizes the affected household's impoverishment.

In short, institututing a VAT without corresponding measures to take into account those increased taxes will only hurt household consumption thereby exacerbating the income and wealth gap.