Trump and Clinton Duke It Out Onstage: a Moderate’s Post-Mortem
So the first presidential debate is history now, and the republic survived. The verbal slugfest garnered more viewers than any of its predecessors, and it was a remarkable spectacle on several counts:
- A female contender entered the ring for the first time in U.S. history
- After a reasonably impressive first round, the male contender punched himself out in response to his opponent’s quick left jabs
- The female contender looked poised, perky and well-prepared (some say a little too well-prepared, contending that she had been fed the questions a week in advance by partisan network brass)
- The male contender had an unaccountable case of the sniffles, undermining his perpetual pose of macho bravado
- The male referee appeared to favor the female contender
- The female contender forced the male contender to the ropes several times, trapping him into admitting that he paid no federal income tax, discriminated against blacks early in his career, and even (say it ain’t so!) dissed a Latina beauty pageant winner for packing on some extra poundage
- The male contender landed several punches (trade agreements, ISIS, 30 years of “bad experience”) without staggering his opponent
- Neither contender delivered a knockout blow, but the female contender earned a decision on points
- The male contender insisted that he won, then blamed a faulty microphone for his underwhelming performance
Of course, it was only the first debate. Obama slept through his first debate with Mitt Romney and stormed back to win re-election. But Trump will always be Trump, and Mrs. Clinton is just too clever for him.
Unless world-class hacker Julian Assange derails the Clinton Express with a damning election-eve revelation of criminal hijinks, we can probably look forward to inaugurating the first-ever female U.S. president this January. That’s not such a bad thing. Our current male politicians have been, with a few decent exceptions, an embarrassment to the venerable sex that invented philosophy, the electric light bulb and the eight-track tape player.
I respect Mrs. Clinton’s intelligence and preparedness for high office. I even like her compulsively bright-eyed public persona: she’ll always come across as the smartest kid in the class, she knows it, and I admire her unwillingness to hide it. I oppose her positions on numerous policy points, but on the whole I prefer them to her opponent’s irresponsible, scattershot (and frequently scatterbrained) approach to the issues.
So why, I wonder, was a small but obstinate part of my brain rooting for Trump to acquit himself in the first presidential debate? Could I be an irredeemable male chauvinist? Am I a covert member of Trump’s downtrodden white supremacist cheering section? Do I harbor a national death-wish — or at least a desire to see American politics transformed into yet another grotesque reality show? (Too late; it’s already happened.)
Here’s how I’d explain it. In common with so many less-educated Americans, I’m increasingly hostile toward the global elite that pulls the political strings in Washington and elsewhere. This self-appointed ruling class straddles political lines; the Clintons and Bushes alike are members in good standing, along with those pampered denizens of Wall Street, Davos, Bilderberg and other richly carpeted sanctuaries for the top one percent of the one percent.
For all his storied wealth and bluster, Trump is still an outsider. He looks like an outsider; he talks like an outsider; he thinks like an outsider. (Of course, the same could be said of Hitler, so outsiderness alone is no qualification for leadership.) For a purported billionaire, Trump has something approaching a common touch: in his case, the ability to tap into that uniquely American strain of vulgar grandiosity… the driving need to be (as Frank Sinatra once sang) “king of the hill, top of the heap, A-number one.”
Trump is loose; he’s unsubtle; he’s the anti-Hillary. I could imagine him being more at ease than his opponent at a black church gathering or a firehouse dinner. For an autocratic braggart and bully, he can be endearingly self-deprecating. He makes comical rubbery faces to put his fans at ease.
Trump also emits sparks of danger and unpredictability, which appeals to people who like danger and unpredictability. By contrast, Mrs. Clinton is eminently safe and predictable; she’s been given the Goldman Sachs seal of approval.
And what about the nominees’ shared penchant for playing with the truth? Trump is a blatant and perhaps pathological liar; no mystery there. Mrs. Clinton is merely a master of devious behind-the-scenes manipulation. She doesn’t lie so much as create artful deception.
Would I vote for Trump? Not unless he happened to be running against Attila the Hun. But an admittedly primitive, puerile, contrarian part of me was eager to see him rattle the complacent Mrs. Clinton and her sniffish progressive minions. He didn’t. Not yet, anyway.
Of course, anything could happen between now and November. But this much is fairly certain: no matter who emerges on top when the final votes are tallied, America is in trouble.
If Clinton wins, we’ll be looking at four to eight more years of unofficial oligarchy, with an unsettling undercurrent of white anger in addition to all our chronic black anger. If Trump wins, we’ll be looking at four to eight years of… TRUMP.
Rick Bayan is founder-editor of The New Moderate.
All material copyright 2016 by Rick Bayan.
THE NEW MODERATE 
haha, well done, Rick! Light-hearted and incisive. You get it.
Drat you Riot, you were too fast for me. Don’t eat all the or’doerves.
Pat! Woo Hoo! ‘Bout time 😉
Great piece, Rick. I do think that the second debate now becomes decisive for many undecided voters. Hillary hit Trump with just about every character assassination blow that she had (wait, don’t pounce Jay and GW, I’m making an observation, not necessarily saying she was right or wrong) and she will have to give more substantive issue-oriented answers in the town hall debate. Trump, on the other hand, despite his overly hot mic (did the sound check guys do that on purpose? The sniffing was quite distracting for me ~ although my son , with whom I was texting throughout, barely noticed it) was very substantive in his answers on the economy, and then played defense – badly, and sometimes stupidly – for the rest of the time. Of course, Lester Holt put him on defense, and opened the door for Hillary to launch her zingers on racism, misogyny and tax returns. Not cool.
Hopefully the townhall questions will focus on issues rather than personalities. I think that, by this point, everyone knows that 1) Hillary has more experience in government, both good and bad 2) Trump is bombastic and egotistical 3) Trump does not intend to release his tax returns 4) Hillary does not intend to disclose her 30,000 deleted emails (I’m not to the Bernie Sanders “sick of the damn emails” point yet, but close).
The people who have already chosen a candidate, as well as those who are still deciding, have baked these things into the cake. It’s time for each of the candidates to speak directly to what they will do as president. How will Trump bring jobs back to the US without starting trade wars? How will Hillary give away free college and forgive student loan debt without taxing the already struggling middle class or causing a financial crisis? What should our relationship with Russia be? Cold War, or uneasy allies against ISIS? What is Aleppo? (Sorry, Ron, couldn’t help throwing that in.)
I have, up to now, had great respect for Anderson Cooper as a moderator. I hope he can be fair. Martha Raddatz has been more aggressively partisan. I don’t really understand why we need two moderators for a debate that focuses on questions from voters, but I guess we shall see…….I miss Bob Schieffer.
“Hopefully the…questions will focus on issues not personsalities.” Yes, please, PLEASE!!! Then again, we’ll get sugar-coated “every child rhetoric” from Hillary and semi-coherent “outsider sound bites” from Donny. What can we expect? Wouldn’t it be great if a candidate came on with props and PowerPoint and actually explained how their plan would work?
Hopefully the townhall questions will focus on issues rather than personalities.
Why would you expect that ?
Honestly, who is paying any attention to anything else ?
Neither of them are ?
Both their platforms and proposals are mostly horrible.
Further who really beleives either of them are going to do what they claim or that congress will let them.
There are many things that are going to happen after this election.
Almost none have anything to do with either of their platforms.
They are dictated by both political and economic realities.
And frankly the outcome will not be much different regardless of which one is elected.
We are highly unlikely to do what we should.
We will do what we have to.
And the next president will likely be dealing with what we have to – not whatever their platform says that no one has listened too for the past year.
So what substance is it you want to focus on ?
The moderators are not going to ask the real questions,
the candidates are not going to answer them honestly if asked.
Possibly more so that ever before – their platforms do not matter.
Pat: Thanks, and good to see you back in the pack! I always look forward to your eminently reasonable comments.
Priscilla: Thanks, too — although I wish I had said more about the ideology (or lack thereof) of both nominees. Maybe in a future column. Hillary skews right on militarism; Trump skews left on strong (although not necessarily “big”) government. Both are corrupt, although Trump is more reckless. Hillary knows how to push Trump’s buttons and get out of the way; I can’t believe the amount of verbiage he’s wasted on that Latina beauty queen.
I find your assertion that Trump is corrupt odd.
Apparently you think that doing well in business is inherently dirty.
Or do you beleive that legally avoiding taxes is corrupt ?
They are both somewhat reckless.
Some degree of recklessness is acceptable privately.
It is not publicly.
Trump has failed and succeeded privately for a substantial net gain.
Clinton has been reckless and failed publicly.
That Clinton used Machado was a desparate gamble.
That it succeeded and that anyone is buying it is disturbing.
Machado essentially admitted to being a criminal on Anderson Cooper.
Fat shaming may be offensive – but it is part of the game for beauty queens.
Slut shaming is very offensive. How many women has Hillary called sluts and bimbo’s ?
Yet you are more offended by Trump calling a beauty queen “miss piggy” ?
If Clinton pushed Trumps buttons – so what ?
While he seems to shoot from the hip and get riled easily.
He doesn;t do anything about it.
Does Trump have a long enemies list and a reputation for serving up revenge cold ? No that is Hillary.
Does he have a reputation for getting riled and going off and doing something stupid ?
“I find your assertion that Trump is corrupt odd.
Apparently you think that doing well in business is inherently dirty.
Or do you beleive that legally avoiding taxes is corrupt ?”
Doing business isn’t inherently dirty; but twisting and bending and in many cases ignoring the laws is indicative of an unscrupulous nature. And of course he has broken the law frequently: documented by numerous court fines; his misuse of Trump Foundation funds and improper licensing for example; and dozens of out of court settlements for other wrongful financial machinations. Surely you haven’t closed your eyes to the dozens of reported incidences of loophole antics Trump has engaged in to screw people, or his bullying threats of suing small businesses who complain publicly, or his borderline bribery of public officials with campaign contributions to make legal investigations disappear?
“Yet you are more offended by Trump calling a beauty queen “miss piggy” ?”
In light of the recent releases of recordings confirming Trumps inappropriate groping of vaginas and attempts to seduce and copulate with a married woman, and inappropriate kissing of unreceptive beauty contest young woman, have you concluded your assessment of his moral deficiencies were somewhat insipid?
Ha, First at the buffet and open bar. Time to get fat and happy (Oooooo, politically incorrect!)
Your inner Nixon supporter is drawn to Clinton! I was suspecting that earlier today, heh, heh.
Oh no, drank too much already, I’m off to bed. My head hurts.
GW: You know, I never thought about the parallels between Nixon and Hillary before, but the similarities are considerable. Both smart, pragmatic, able to win party support despite centrist views… a bit awkward in public and given to forced smiles… secretive and ruthless behind the scenes…married long-term but not blissfully (Pat refused to sleep with Nixon after the early ’60s; Bill sleeps with everyone)… both vilified by their many enemies and more respected than beloved… both prone to scandal. (Maybe that’s worth a column, too.)
And what does that lead you to expect a Clinton Presidency will be like ?
GW, recently you have mentioned mud wrestling, “tail feathers,” and fat. Are you running for office?
I thought it was a decisive win for Gary Johnson, the whole debate left me less willing to vote for a Trump the clown or Hillary’s corruption.
Gary Johnson is no picnic, either. I was impressed when I saw him interviewed earlier this year, but the guy is a blank slate when it comes to foreign affairs. (And he favors Citizens United.)
I got lots of problems with Gary Johnson, he is still 10,000 times better than either of these bozo’s.
Just today, a video of Trump talking about women in the most crass way was released. Even when some call this “locker room talk” I found much of it revolting and remembered the slime balls in school that thought they were gods gift to women and left nothing to imagination concerning those girls they were able to bed. Didn’t take long for that reputation to get around and if those girls felt wronged, to bad. Trump is the bottom feeder of this locker room gang.
Shortly after, Wikileaks dumped a bunch of hacked e-mails showing just how slimy Clinton is. You can do some searches and most likely will find many of her speeches to Wall Street businessmen and leaders analyzed that show just how correct Bernie was concerning her ties to Wall Street. They also back up what I have heard before and have stated in comments here that she says one thing in public and one thing in private. Her comments on borders and trade support that theory.
Johnson has a snowballs chance of winning, but at least he is honest and trustworthy, unlike these cesspool turds we have chosen to represent America when one is elected President.
Whichever candidate wins, America loses. The house will still be GOP and the senate is looking much more a Democrat win, so nothing gets done for another 4 years other than a constant house investigation into Clinton’s prior activities or blockage of anything Trump wants to do by the senate. The only given is a liberal SCOTUS with this scenario should Clinton win..
Could this be the beginning of the end of this democracy as we know it? It has been written that democracies only last 200 years and we are will past that timeline.
So you believe that government can tell you that you can not spend your own money to produce and air a movie about a public figure ?
Because that is exactly what the Citizens United decision is about.
Of course Johnson favors CU.
What is disturbing is that it was not a unanimous decision.
Political speech is the most protected form of speech.
Can the FEC shutdown your Blog ?
There were 4 liberal judges that said the FEC could do that. After clintons win, there will be 2-3 more.
I hear you, dtriebel. The control of our mainstream media is so strong, so pervasive. Genuine folks can’t buy a seat at the table. Right now the propagandists are running a story on Gary Johnson’s mistakes. It’s like a totalitarian nightmare.
OK, as one of those “propagandists” on some tiny scale myself, let me see if the inverse statement makes sense:
It does not matter and no one should care that a potential US president polling in the high single digits and affecting the race cannot name a single foreign leader, not even when prompted with the names of foreign countries. The media should not report this. The media also should give said candidate a pass if he cannot associate Aleppo with anything, because knowledge is just an elite trick to fool the common man (oops, I got sarcastic there.)
Priscilla, some “narratives” you see clearly, others you participate in enthusiastically with complete oblivion. Oh, the same can be said about me I’m sure, except that I could care less about the new conservative buzzword, “narrative”. I’m too busy using the liberal tendency to see everything connected with conservatives as “dark” to worry about narratives.
But to be clear, sarcasm aside, yes it matters that Gary Johnson apparently is either even more innocent of knowledge of foreign policy than even your man trump, or he gets so buzzed all the time that he can’t remember much of anything. Yes, the media is doing its job reporting it. Your point is completely absurd. Stick to conservative news outlets, then you can pass on hearing anything narrativy like this from the dreaded corporate MSM.
(Weld I like, He might be a good president.)
Oh my, I was addressing your comment, Pat, NOT Priscilla! Yuge apologies to Priscilla. One more red face in socialist Vermont.
And, Take That, Pat Riot, your argument is absurd.
Haha, GW, we simulposted on Johnson and I didn’t see yours until after you clarified. I’ll preemptively accept your apology and apply it to some future time that you consider me oblivious (you know it will happen!) 😉
I certainly agree Gary Johnson has some issues, and his foreign policy is downright scary (although Trump or Clinton are downright scary too in there own ways) He won the debate by not being there, I lost faith in both the candidates that did attend.
I’ve tried so hard to like Gary Johnson as a candidate. He’s got more class than Hillary and Trump combined. I do think that he would do very well on the debate stage with the two of them, and possibly keep the whole thing more focused.
But, I can’t get over the fact that he’s an admitted stoner, even though he’s promised to stop using pot as president (can you imagine Trump or Hillary saying that?), I find Weld to be pretty flaky, and I just don’t think that his isolationist approach to foreign policy, and his open borders immigration policy make any sense. Plus, he can’t win, so the SCOTUS issue gets us back to the binary choice.
Priscilla, other than the fact that after prohibition ended and alcohol was made legal since the liquor companies had the money to get it legalized, but Marijuana was left as an illegal substance, what is the difference between an individual that uses pot compared to one that uses alcohol. No one seemed to have an issue with “W” when he was an admitted alcoholic and stopped drinking.
I just find the whole issue with it being fine for someone to go off and get drunk on their ass legal, but someone who smokes a joint and gets high is held to a different standard. Both lead to poor decision making. If marijuana is illegal, so should liquor be illegal. They both provide the same outcomes.
He has stopped some time ago.
Bill Clinton is an admitted stoner and he was president.
I am looking forward to the day when Pot is actually legal in this country – federal state and local, because then I am trying some hash brownies.
In the meantime I am a 58 year old square that has never had ANY illegal drug.
Does that mean you would elect me president ?
Johnson has also started a business selling legal pot.
I admire that. I think that is smart.
Personally I am with Ron Paul – if all Drugs were legalized tomorow, how many here would rush out and shoot heroin ?
And don’t forget Obama did drugs much harder than pot. No one says a thing about that. Other than himself in his own book.
Right now the propagandists are running a story on Gary Johnson’s mistakes. It’s like a totalitarian nightmare.
When an absolutely legitimate news story provokes this kind of reaction from you its time to take a look at yourself and try to remove the dark, dark, dark glasses one layer at a time and try to see things in perspective.
If I fall into your path of thought then perhaps You are the “totalitarian nightmare” you seem not to want me to be able to read something that you deem propaganda. I’m an adult I can choose for myself whether Gary Johnson’s “mistakes” are newsworthy. Some Libertarian you are!
Clinton found it acceptable to lie about who attacked us at Benghazi – is that acceptable to you ?
Trump seems to think ending up a POW while fighting for your country is something you should be embarrassed by – is that acceptable to you ?
Ask Johnson what mountain is highest on each continent, and how high each is – I am sure he will have that right down to the meter.
Benghazi
Did H. Clinton intentionally lie to two of the Benghazi families about who killed their relatives? If so, why would she do that? How would that advantage her?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/feb/09/what-did-hillary-clinton-tell-families-people-who-/
After reading the Politifact time line explanation there’s no clear evidence she did lie intentionally. Or any reason offered WHY she would lie about it. And the family of the killed Ambassador absolves her of any responsibility in his death; and so has the previous Republican Sec of State. It’s fair to criticize her for sub par and misdirected response to attack, but equally responsible for that was slow sub par feedback from various other US sources.So what else exactly did she do wrong there?
On a scale of 1 to 10 I give Hillary a 5 for overall performance as Sec of State. She doesn’t seem to have done any better or worse then her last three predecessors. Partisans on each side of the political chasm will skew that rating to fit their prejudices, but even partisan critics like Gingrich had congratulated her foreign policy acumen on issues he agreed with, like the early U.N. sanctions that paved the way for the Iran nuclear deal (a horrible Obama initiated deal to my mind; worthy of criticism) and restoring visible U.S. leadership in Asia.
She wasn’t an innovator of sweeping new doctrine; but she worked for Obama, who preferred a more low key managerial model, and kept her reigned in.
“Right now the propagandists are running a story on Gary Johnson’s mistakes. It’s like a totalitarian nightmare.”
Not meaning to pound this into the ground but this is what you said and I think that the way I interpreted it was the dark, dark, dark way you meant it. You get too cute Pat. You run away from the meaning of the little stories you write sometimes, where “they” all get together and decide which strings to pull so that the elite can control us. That is what you believe, you have made it clear. Totalitarian state? Perhaps its always going to feel like that to people with a sufficiently strong libertarian bent, no matter where they live. It seems to me to be a completely absurd idea that we are living in a totalitarian state. N. Korea is a totalitarian state, a real one. You are way out there in the weeds on that element of your political thinking, in spite of having plenty of thoughtful moderate tendencies on plenty of subjects. Thinking that our American society has a governmental form that resembles N. Korea is absurd. Lack of perspective. All government is force, yes. Lack of a realistic level of government would lead to much worse elements using force and then they would become the government and most likely have a lot in common with N. Korea. I’ll take the government we have and its level of force. Despite my rather rebellious nature It has not nabbed me since I was 18 and it sweetly let me go in about an hour when it did (small bag of pot). Hasn’t bugged me in a personal way about anything since.
You want that people should be able to read all the great things and ideas about a candidate who polls about 8% which gives him a probability of winning of less than 0.1%. They can there is this thing called the internet. There are other candidates, dozens, even more obscure and unlikely to hold the presidency. What, the mainstream news outlets should cover all their campaigns? Because you say so? Anyone who has an interest in all the details of Johnson/Weld or Stein/whatisname can find it, Google, its a thing. That is not a media conspiracy, its a business following the capitalist model of returning money to their stockholders by selling their customers what they want. No one thinks its the ideal way of getting news, but its what our social and technological evolution produced. Yes, Vast impersonal forces.
Now, I will just go take some more of my prozac. My form resembles a violin. My wife’s looks like a garden.
So what if the media is bent ?
There are bazillions of sources of information today. I have not watched Fox, or a major network talking head in eons.
If I go to the NYT, or some falling off the edge edge of the world site – or some similar right site – I know where I am going and what I am getting.
I’ll be back to clarify what my argument is. You must be jumping to conclusions because certainly my argument is not absurd. At the moment I’m working and paying taxes to support what is increasingly becoming a corporate-controlled totalitarian state, not a democracy where reasonable bottom-up voices can be heard, from candidates and from John Q. Public and Suzy Citizen, and so I haven’t read let alone digested the latest comments. (Maybe at lunch time) I’m no devotee of Gary Johnson. My argument is not about Gary Johnson. Where are the journalists covering his attributes? Where are the objective news outlets being objective? Is it not predominantly prop up Hillary and smear the competition from one side, or smear Hillary and prop up a GOP agenda from the other side, ala Jerry Springer? Where are the citizen-funded or privately funded forums for the other voices? Being hauled away in zip tie handcuffs?
This is very funny (Mr. Garrison as a Trump-like candidate, wearing orange make-up….
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/south-park-damned-debate
https://newmoderate.com/wp-comments-post.php
Sorry, ignore my last comment. I lost the original which lauded RB’s post, reamed Trump and Hillary. I read the post on TMV, where I am keeping my comments very very short due to a censure, so I needed a little more room to expound. Very mad at the Rep base, the RNC, and the greedy media for letting him get so far. Likewise, Hillary the political robot is a DNC and money, has been foisted on us. I am a registered Rep, but if it is at all close, I will be voting for her anyway cause Mama Duck didn’t raise no idiot.
Hey, dduck, good to see you back here. I’ve been surprised by the number of liberal commenters at The Moderate Voice; they make me feel like a reactionary sometimes. I’ll definitely be holding my nose when I vote this November; I can’t remember a more regrettable pair of nominees, but I suppose I’ll be voting against Trump because he’s… Trump. He’d be an amusing president, but I’m not that starved for entertainment.
GW you did indeed go on a tangent following an incorrect assumption. You apparently assumed that I thought the story about Gary Johnson was not newsworthy. Of course it is, and for some of the reasons you mentioned.
But don’t you see that it is “front and center” for days? (2nd to the lead story for some of us via Google News algorithm.) What else has bubbled up to the surface for us to know about Gary Johnson? Does he have any good ideas for our constitutional republic? Is he a good Dad, brother, engineer? I don’t know because that isn’t presented. Oh, we have to go dig for that on our own? Nothing else about this candidate is news worthy? C’mon man…you and your impersonal forces Prozac! It’s either manipulation or a despicable media machine or combination of both.
Here’s a separate point/question: with all of the consultants and experts available, who are at a POTUS’ beck and call, is it more important that a leader know foreign leaders or be a trustworthy, intelligent person/leader? I don’t know Gary Johnson so let’s depart from him. If a smart candidate’s views matched most of yours, regarding climate change, economics, musical taste, family vales, whatever, would it really be critical if they didn’t yet know where Suriname was on a map?
Now your next move might be to say Suriname is not as important as Syria right now, and that would be correct, but that doesn’t negate my question from my last post regarding what we need in a leader, especially compared to the choice we’ve ended up with.
So, GW, back to my original point with dtriebel regarding “control by the mainstream media” which you see as me wearing my dark sunglasses. Just google “mindless media videos” and watch newscasters all across our blessed nation mouthing the same top-down scripts, word for word. If a few of those videos don’t convince you we live under top-down propaganda vs. bottom up journalism with integrity, than you’re wearing some really thick, rosy red shades!
And because I’m a moderate, I don’t think the Oligarchs are all bad. They are pushing technology and learning etc. I’m grateful for many things. They’re just mistaken about a few things, philosophically, and pragmatically with regard to the overall context, I.e. our planet, and the idea that the American people are expendable, or not their problem while they generate unprecedented billions, while water is unsafe to drink…well some of those ideas need to be amended.
“Just google “mindless media videos” and watch newscasters all across our blessed nation mouthing the same top-down scripts, word for word.”
I’d say that the news is as similar as most other products, say automobiles. Each darned one has a steering wheel, a stereo, seats, doors, a motor with pistons. There is a reason that they are so similar, its what functions and people want. The news is a competitive business so it is compared to other news outlets and then people chose. The result is what you see. If the product seems stupid, maybe consider that the average person is not exactly a genius, especially at 6:00 p.m. after work. What 40% want is trumps form of political entertainment, say no more, we get what we want as a group, and with the internet, even individually. Society is not on average anywhere near as intelligent as you are and so citizens consume mindless media videos and Jerry Springer and soap operas, brangelina, the kardashians, etc. Its just life. You can try to change it (the human race) but I’ve got other stuff that is more likely and important to me. And our “totalitarian. government lets me do it, while keeping real barbarians from my door so far.
What am I to do, with the Grand Wazzoo? If you were to say to me, “I don’t want to know the truth!!” then I would leave you with your illusions, your logic-blocking walls and defenses, your Prozacs and your bliss. But you do not concede, Black knight! There are objective truths. Nobody knows all things but there are some objective truths. Did you see the movie Concussion w Will Smith about our beloved NFL? Did a group of people keep the facts hidden from the public or not? Was it a far-fetched conspiracy fantasy or did it happen? Is it too much of a leap for you to accept that owners of our broad art media manipulate what we see and hear?
Our media is not a monolith. There is an element of it for every ideological taste today. It cancels out. You are considering it as a single thing. You are waiting for an American public, most of whom have IQ considerably below yours, to do what You would do. When that does not happen you lump the media into a single devious directed thing that wants a devious long-game outcome. You are attributing intention to unintentional blind evolution. Maybe its a religious difference between us?
The media does not even come close to cancelling out.
There is something for every taste. but of the major outlets, we have Fox for one specific flavor of the right and the remaining networks representing some permutations of the left.
Outside of those narrow views – you have to go looking.
No the media is not some evil cabal.
We find lost of segments of society reflect specific biases,
Generally I expect that ministers are likely to be religious, probably beleive in god, and possibly lean left – unless they are fundimentalists.
The media is biased – so what ?
If you do not like that – start your own network. That is how we got Fox.
What we do not need is government telling us who we can support, how we can spend our money and what viewpoints we have to espouse.
Broad art media? Oh that evil auto correct man!
Was I debating the Grand Wazoo or Dhlii Dave?? Lots of clarifications needed from above interpretation of my comments. I did not say we live in a totalitarian state. I said “increasingly becoming…” and “like a totalitarian nightmare…”. That’s figurative. Lets not miss the nuance and put words in my mouth! I’m already verbose enough!
If its increasingly becoming cloudy that means its cloudy already and getting more so. If its increasingly becoming totalitarian that means that its totalitarian and becoming more so. Words have meanings. Don’t blame me if I take totalitarian to mean, er, totalitarian. Now, I am sick of having to correctly spell totalitarian, so why don’t you claim something that is easier to type out, such as oligarchy (well, that is not much better). Pat, you chose that word because its what you really think. Then, your moderate side gets shy about it and tries to tell me that I’m putting words in your mouth.
People are going to extremes and exaggerating our actual problems and coming up with cures such as trump that are far worse than the disease. How would you like to have the problems of 1929? 1939? 1968?
Like Dave I am saying that things are better than people are making them out to be, that idea is one that Dave and I do have in common.
Now, I am going of to find more Randy Rainbow videos, my prozac for today.
Hi Pat! Hey GW, Ron, Rose, and Jay. I recently finished reading a book about the Liberian civil war, I think the title was “And peace still did not come” or something close to that. Ghastly horrors for years, and then the tremendous challenges of restoring hearts and minds. For example an older woman sees a bunch of her immediate family killed, she escapes but loses contact for a couple of decades, she finally makes it back to her home and finds one of her daughters survived, is married, has school age children and seems to be very happy with her husband and family. Only problem is the Mom, and now grandma, recognizes her daughter’s husband as the one that murdered her other family members. How to deal with that? Wreck the life of her daughter by telling her? Act nice and sweet to the man who murdered your own husband and other children? Really tough situations. I guess I’m a “little” off topic, but let me tell you, I’m reading, and often re-reading and reflecting on most every comment each of you make. Even when I don’t get a chance to give you all feedback. I read the others too, I just didn’t mention their names as they haven’t posted recently. Pat has been around for a long time but first time I’m commenting with Pat “present”. Pat if you haven’t figured me out yet, I’m pretty much just about Peace, Love, Guns, and protecting the 2nd Amendment, yeah! (Although there hasn’t been much talk about guns lately, fine, I know these things circle around and I’ll catch the next train when it comes.)…hmmm I don’t recall seeing dduck12 before..we’ll see if dd12 hangs around or not.
@MH. I haven’t commented on TNM for a while. I’ve been hanging out at another “moderate” blog where I am sorta persona not grata right now, but catch RB’s great posts there.
You have some witty people here and they don’t seem to take themselves so seriously, and that is a compliment, so I may see you guys around.
OK, dd, now that I know you have been here before, I’ll start looking for your previous comments and hopefully learn more about your ideas.
DDuck12 was here 10/09/09
Again, I agree with most of your observations but it’s an inescapable consequence of democratic governments, and dictatorships too, that cliques gather around vortexes of ruling power.
Oligarchies are as natural byproducts of the process as mushrooms spawning in compost. The U.S. has always been ruled by oligarchical elites – the Founders were mostly members in good standing of an oligarchical class of wealthy educated politically influential individuals.
Let’s just hope whatever happens we come through it relatively unscathed.
This was a reply to Rick’s post; WordPress tripped me up once again.
Yep. Exactly. May as well as try to eradicate mushrooms as elites. Don’t anyone get me wrong, Its good that we Americans distrust powerful people and institutions and constantly cynically investigate and even sometimes punish, but it can go to far, because, well because Jay, what you said.
Jay, do we really have enough data on democracies to come to a conclusion? I don’t mean it as a rhetorical question, maybe we do. We have had some forms of democratic governments from Greek and Roman times, but, I’m kind of cynical on this point, we seem to have so few in ancient history, and the modern ones often seem to give more lip service to democracy while being very undemocratic in so many ways. My gut feeling is that quite a number of ruthless dictators started out as truly wanting what was best for the people they represented, then when they succeeded in overthrowing whomever, the power they had either made them paranoid and thus repressive or corrupted them. I’m quite certain many dictators just were hell bent on total power from day one, but I thing a number of them started with good intentions. I think the USA just somehow hit the jackpot of a power balance system that has been such a blessing to the entire world. I don’t think either Hillary or Trump are going to COMPLETELY unwind that, but that they will unravel it more from its already unwinding condition.
I would add that, in the past, American presidents were generally held to a standard of public service and expected to conform to a general expectation of ethical standards that were accepted by the oligarchs of both parties. A former first lady, who had done little to distinguish herself as a senator or SecState, other than to amass a huge fortune and acquire a deserved reputation as a liar and lawbreaker, would not have remotely met these standards. Similarly, a business mogul, known primarily for making a fortune in the ethically dubious worlds of real estate, casino gambling and entertainment, and famous for his PT Barnum-style personality and his marital woes, would never have been nominated.
The American public no longer accepts its ruling elite. because it believes, rightly so, that the ruling elite is no longer worthy of its respect. Our oligarchy has ceased to be one that sees its role as one of duty and service, but rather considers itself a privileged class, entitled to use power for the purpose of acquiring personal wealth, while redistributing taxpayer wealth to its chosen constituencies. Donald Trump at least pays lip service to the idea that he is running to change that new reality ~ Bernie Sanders did as well….and that pretty much single-handedly explains their success.
No matter who wins, the fact is that the public trust has been lost. There will be other Donald Trumps and Bernie Sanders’s, and they will be far more dangerous, having realized that tapping into this distrust and anger is merely a matter of telling the public that they can fix what has become essentially unfixable, by getting rid of the ruling class. The over-the-top hysteria over Trump, the calling him a fascist and a tyrant, will play right into the hands of future demagogues. They’ll simply point out that the elite oligarchs and the media are liars and cannot be trusted. And they’ll be correct.
Well, first I had to look up oligarchy, again. When did you first become so concerned about this oligarchy of ours? Its not a rhetorical question, when did the idea that we are an oligarchy first get its grip on you? I hold that its a left wing idea a Howard Zinn idea, an ISO newspaper idea. I don’t believe it. Immune to it. We have as much of an oligarchy as we ever did and ever will. Its just a meme that escaped the left wing camp and took root. Its an unhelpful idea because it does cause a loss of confidence.
I will say that confidence in congress being at about 10% for many years now is a real indicator of loss of public trust. Our politicians have always had a corrupt element, I don’t think it got larger, but the internet news culture has now magnified it. Its like the diagnosis of some disease that is no more prevalent but is now being diagnosed more often and so seems to be increasing.
What caused this? Osama bin Laden, the Iraq war, the financial crisis, all produced a shock to American exceptionalism, wow, nasty things were happening Here and not in some foreign country, it produced a chasm in opinion on how to deal with economic and foreign policy issues. At the same time the greatest generation became too old to be president, that is another factor.
I have no way of knowing if there will be more trumps and Sanders and that they will be more dangerous. It depends on whether the American public can talk itself down off the ledge that it finds itself on due to the things I mentioned above. trump at least may be a one-off. I suspect that the millennials supporting Sanders will age and join the workforce and undergo the usual age related moderation of youthful left ideology.
Its all mass psychology, fueled by the internet. Calmer heads will have to prevail or there Will be a downward spiral that is out of proportion to our actual problems, which are not small but nowhere near so large as they were in 1938 or 1929. Those generations survived, beat the Axis powers and rebuilt prosperity, I don’t know if they would have succeeded if the internet had existed, they might have all just gone crazy and run like lemmings into the sea. We will have to learn to cope with all the access to dark information that we now have, learn not to OD on it as a culture or we are really going to die of self-inflicted wounds.
“When did you first become so concerned about this oligarchy of ours?”
I used the term “oligarchy” as a response to its use in Jay’s comment that “The U.S. has always been ruled by oligarchical elites – the Founders were mostly members in good standing of an oligarchical class of wealthy educated politically influential individuals.” I took that comment to mean that Jay believes that Hillary is an oligarch in the mold of the Founding Fathers, and I objected to it on the grounds that she is nothing of the sort, nor is Trump.
“We have as much of an oligarchy as we ever did and ever will.”
Correct. But it is an oligarchy with different ethics and standards.
“Its all mass psychology, fueled by the internet.”
Perhaps some of it is. But if, by that, you actually agree that Bill and Hillary Clinton are some latter day version of James and Dolly Madison, then I disagree.
Plus, Obama has ceded control of the internet to internationalists. If that transfer of power is successful, we should see some changes over the next decade or so. In my opinion, those changes will be for the worse, but, then, I am a pessimist and a nationalist.
“Correct. But it is an oligarchy with different ethics and standards.”
Vague, but ominous. I suggest that you read a big pile of Mark Twain’s political rants and books and look up the robber barons.
People are people. The idea that our times are the darkest ones is just in the human DNA i guess, wired into the brain, must fear danger.
Having a president’s wife run for POTUS is a sort of an end run around the 2 term limit. I hate it. She does happen to actually be capable of the job unlike her opponent, which makes the stinky choice necessary. If the dem party had produced any person of weight to run against her that would have suited me very fine.
The simple times of the Madison’s are long gone with all their quaint and easy problems, like slavery and the capital be burned down. Oh, for those morally clear times that never existed!
Ominous, perhaps. Not so much vague, as a difference in terminology perhaps.
I don’t consider the words “politics” and “government” to be synonymous, and, in fact they’re not. I know that you know this, I’m not so sure about the majority of voters.
People who have no experience in government can still be very skilled politicians. Trump, for example. And, I would say Obama, as well, although, by now, he’s had enough on the job training that I would hope that he’s better than Trump. On the other hand, in 8 years, he never once demonstrated that he could govern as a constitutional executive; that is, working within the clearly defined limits of his office. If you can think of an example, I’d be interested to discuss that. As far as Hillary is concerned, I would say that she has a great resume, with no real identifiable skills as either a politician or a public servant. In my view, she has articulated no reason that she wants to be president…she just seems to believe that she deserves it.
Anyway, politics is, and has always been, a dirty business. Mark Twain was particularly good at pointing that out. Governing ,at least in a republic, depends upon the rule of law, and demands a respect for one’s duty under the law. It’s why public servants swear an oath to obey that law. Politicians swear no such thing, and if they do , they usually have no problem violating that oath.
I think that there was a time, in the not so distant past, when we held our politicians to the standards of the office to which they were elected, and that politics was views as the necessary means to that end.
We’re fast reaching a point where our oligarchy are all pure politicians, and none are public servants. That’s my point, I suppose…..
*viewed* not views. I should proofread.
Jay: You’re right about the Founding Fathers, but the early and mid 20th century saw the growth of a powerful middle class. Sure, we still had an aristocratic, Ivy-educated elite, but they seemed to take an interest in the public good… which brings me to Priscilla’s distinction between politicians and public servants. I’m probably too much of a romantic, but in the old days we had presidents (like both Roosevelts, Eisenhower and JFK) who were genuine leaders of the nation rather than allies of special interests or self-interested careerists.
I’ve been thinking about the whole notion of presidents as “public servants” and why it no longer seems relevant in today’s presidential politics. And, a few things occurred to me:
We no longer expect our presidential candidates to have served in the military, which previously represented the sacrifice and investment expected from all good citizens, certainly from any citizen expecting to be the Commander in Chief. We no longer consider it a big deal for a president to have broken the law, particularly if the law-breaking involved drugs or alcohol. We no longer expect that our presidents should have honored their marriage vows. We expect our presidents to lie, and, as long as it’s not a “big” lie (your mileage may vary on what’s big) it’s all part of the process of getting into the Oval Office.
So, sacrifice, discipline, personal integrity, and honesty are all off the table. Oh yes, charity as well. Unless it’s your own foundation, apparently (easy there, Jay, I’m talking about Trump too). Why would we expect service to the public to be valued by politicians who don’t value these other things?
Also, the idea that politicians can become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, simply by winning elections, also works against the idea of service. When you are far richer and more powerful than those who elected you, and can take their money by force, with little to no consequence, the term “servant” seems a misnomer.
“So, sacrifice, discipline, personal integrity, and honesty are all off the table. ”
Whoa, thats a big leap! All the things you mentioned have not really changed other than military service, we just have more information. Presidents were breaking marriage vows like anything (my father the historian is full of the stories going all the way back).
I’m not ready to take all those virtues off the table and I doubt I am alone. This is an example of you and for example Pat start from a reasonable set of expectations and then wind up talking yourselves into thinking that our politicians and their cronies are now of a much worse or even disastrous character character. Some of our presidents have been heels, for example lets face it, Kennedy. It does not mean that we have to believe that all future presidents will be held to no standards of human decency, integrity etc. All those good qualities still may not produce a good president, both Carter and W were people of integrity but are going to be seen by history as poor presidents. We are not doomed by some sort of a terrible or inevitable decrease in presidential character. This election may be a one off, it certainly does NOT have to be the model of the future.
“Presidents were breaking marriage vows like anything”
But who knew? It was common knowledge among the White House press that JFK was almost constantly unfaithful, but the rest of us didn’t find out until after his death. All we knew about was Camelot.
I don’t want to write a long post about all of the ways that public morality and attitudes towards drug use, religion, marriage and military service have changed. I think that it’s pretty obvious that attitudes HAVE changed, and that those changes, at least in part, account for the fact that we’re in the position of choosing between Hillary and Trump as our next President. The next leader of the free world will either be a political wife who was in charge of handling her husband’s “bimbo eruptions” or a reality show star, previously most famous for putting his name on buildings. Hey, we always learned that anyone can grow up to be president!
I’m glad that you think that this is not the model of the future, it gives me some small hope.
Laughter is still great medicine, alway will be.
Donald’s Foundation has no legal foundation (Hillary’s chugs along for now).
They’re both despicable.
Ooops, wrong clip. This is it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkIFQXQ1iiY
Ah ha, you ducks can seriously dance. Who knew that old Walt was into disco?
I’m replying from a room Walt once lived in, briefly, nearby the original Disney Studio in LA. And no, this isn’t Donald Duck quackery. He rented the room for a few months, while his own house was being built. A 10′ x 20′ space, perfect for frugal Walt, who was only a five minute walk from work.
🙂
Just to be even handed (and then I think my Randy Rainbow binge will have run its course):
I’ve been following these through the night Trump Tweets.
There’s something seriously mentally wrong with this guy.
He’s like some joke paranoid cartoon loony, cursing the walls of a padded cell.
This is SICK.
Perhaps he Really does not want to be president? The more likely explanation is that he is just as psychologically damaged as he appears to be.
Perhaps he doesn’t want to win. I’ve thought that more than once.
I don’t think that he is “psychologically damaged.” I do think that he is stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that the tactics that have been successful for him in the past, don’t necessarily work in the situation that he’s in.
Think about it. He bought the Miss Universe pageant. That year, the winner was a girl who gained almost 60 pounds in the months after she won. Sponsors such as Kelloggs wanted to fire her, but Trump decided to support her, hire a personal trainer, and get some publicity by having her get back into beauty queen form before the next year’s contest.
The ex-beauty queen became an accessory to murder, threatened the life of a judge, had sex with one of her co-stars on a reality show – on the show! – despite the fact that she was engaged to another man. After that, she became a hard-core porn star, and now is being held up by the Clinton campaign as a role model for young women who are “bullied.”
Yep, if I were being attacked by this b**ch, and the media were ignoring the fact that all I ever did was try to help keep her from losing her friggin’ beauty queen title, I’d probably try to get that information out there any way I could. If that’s being “psychologically damaged” then I guess I don’t really understand the meaning of the term.
Priscilla, she was not a porn star. Bunk. Which took me 30 seconds to find out. The other stuff I don’t know about but I would be surprised it much of it would stand up to scrutiny based on the porn star hogwash. You sound, for gods sake, like trump’s mother! He’s a good boy, he did nothing but try to help, so kind, so considerate and selfless. The trump no one knows outside the family.
Your universe and mine just keep moving further and further away during campaign season.
Here is video the press conference that Trump held to help publicize the way that Machado would get back into shape. He is very self-deprecating and funny, as he often is in one-on-one interviews, and is very defensive of Machado, telling the reporters that they could stand to lose some weight weight, too. (She was a porn star by the way, but now says that the woman in the movies merely “looks like her”)
Bottom line: Trump should have ignored this obvious PR attack, coordinated by the press and the Clinton campaign. He’s either a fool or he wants to lose, because, regardless of what a lowlife this woman is, the conversation has changed from Hillary and her problems to The War on Women, starring Donald Trump.
But, watch the press conference….if you think he’s humiliating Machado, then we really do live in different worlds.
Roby (Wazoo) mostly summed up what I was going to say in response to your unprincipled regurgitation of sex tape allegations – which were immediately dispelled by numerous news organizations as false. But here you are, perpetuating a false story to rationalize #DeplorableDonald irrationality.
Why are you stuck in your own morass of self delusion?
There’s a fatal flaw in Trump’s psychological-intellectual-moral make-up. He’s Caligula with orange hair and a corporate jet.
“She was a porn star by the way, but now says that the woman in the movies merely “looks like her”)”
Your source?
I think you must have a filling in one of your molars that receives rightwing crank radio.
She was his product, he did his best sales job, he can be funny, so what, Hitler could be funny. I hate this campus phrase fat shaming, but he has been documented to be a complete shit to women without pausing fro breath for decades. There are a few moments when he lets up, I’m not going to say bravo for those moments.
Comically, you are twisting yourself into knots defending a man who if elected will give us our first slovenian nude model as a first lady half the age of the POTUS, while you take up the attack on the former miss universe. I’m getting to be pretty surprised at how far you will follow the partisan thing.
At the rate your universe is receding from mine even the most powerful radio telescope will be hard pressed to detect it.
GW, you do not get me at all. Of course, I am voting for Trump, so there is obviously a bias, but for me this is about the utter dishonesty of Hillary Clinton, the fact that her career has been one of scandal, corruption and incompetence. She will say anything and do anything to win power, wealth and influence. I may have my doubts about Trump- and I do – but I find her to be utterly despicable.
If the Democrats had nominated anyone that I could vote for, maybe we would be having a different conversation. This election, for me and for you as well, is truly a choice between the lesser of two evils. I resent the fact that the mainstream media is so blatantly biased ~not because I am partisan, but because it muddies the water and makes it hard to determine what is true and what is not.
I don’t believe Machado, she is a scumbag, hired to help the Clinton campaign goose up the female and Latino vote. It’s disgraceful, but it’s working, So, be happy that your candidate is back on top.
Isn’t Trump a scumbag to associate himself so closely with soft-porn! And then project his deviant sexuality on others?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1891353/donald-trump-appeared-in-playboy-porn-movie-pouring-champagne-over-a-limo-while-surrounded-by-bunnies/
And you’re going to vote for a crude hypocrite who wants to smear Hillary for Bill’s affairs, when he himself defended Bill, and advised him to chose better looking woman next time?
https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/trump-defended-clinton-during-lewinsky-scandal-against-moral?utm_term=.wkm3BbgY2#.nwwK8R3Dz
A crude hypocrite who bragged about sleeping with married women?, the wives of his friends?
Also, a reminder: reasonable, intelligent people disagree on politics all the time.
Reasonable people may disagree about politics, but unreasonable people have lost their minds if they back a DISASTEROUS political candidate as untrustworthy and erratic and obtuse and boorish and dishonest as Trump has already proven himself to be.
You need to rescue yourself, Priscilla, before you make a voting mistake that will haunt your conscience.
Since I am back in full political addiction mode, after having taken a healthy break from it but now I am driven by fear of a trump presidency to be obsessive I do have a few more points.
First, What is the conversation about? policy as it should be? or jerry springer stuff? Why is that? If Lindsey Graham or Rubio or Kasich or any other sane normal “establishment” candidate was the GOP nominee would the debate and the general conversation resemble this clown car one or would we be talking much much more about policy and Ideas? The answer is obvious. This is the trump election, its driven by his character and his nature, and the nature of the primary voters who passionately wanted him. Clinton is more than up to discussing policy given a sensible opponent. I’m quite sure she would prefer that.
Second, Clinton just wants to be president, for no good reason, not public service, not the good of the country, she just is simply driven by ego.
Anyone crazy enough to want to be president is driven and is not lacking a really substantial ego. Perhaps Jerry Ford fell accidentally into the job and had a more normal ego, but other than that this is a field for people with super sized self worth. Hillary has public service in mind, she has her ideals, her causes. You don’t like her ideals and causes because they are liberal, but also moderate judging by Clinton I, and therefore successful. There is no vacuum of idealism in Hillary, quite the opposite. you just dislike the ideals.
“Also, a reminder: reasonable, intelligent people disagree on politics all the time.”
Yes, they do and sometimes they remain in each other’s esteem, and sometimes they don’t. I know people in families across the former Soviet Union who have dissolved all ties over the Putin Invasion of Ukraine.
You have doubled and tripled down on machada, you call her a “scum bag.” Without convincing evidence you say and then double down on it that she is a porn actress. You are just as distracted as your donald is buy ugly disgraceful bullshit and you are taking the same path, while saying its wrong.
Its too much for me Priscilla. I’m going to just let our conversation lapse for the duration of this mournful election and hope that we are in a better framework to enjoy talking with each other when its pretty long over.
Priscilla, he IS psychologically defective.
The point to criticizing his nighttime tweet rants is that they ARE OBSESSIVE AND IRRATIONAL.
Yes, the woman gained too much weight during her beauty contest reign; but why is a candidate for president of the US ranting about it in the middle of the night; not merely bad mouthing her weight, but her personality, her morals, questioning her recent citizenship, and falsely insinuating she was in a porno movie ( turns out Trump has better credentials for that)- and actually telling the American public to check out the alleged PORN site. Get it – an American candidate telling Americans to watch porn!
This is the kind of fool Republicans have nominated for President: petty; irrational; defensively paranoid; and worse – unable to recognize his own fractured reputation for constant lying. Remember how he told the American people from the debate podium he would respect the results of the election and support Hillary! Today, at a NY Times interview, he’s already reneging on that assertion.
You need to stop rationalizing the mountain of lies, idiotic utterances, double talk, and just plain unacceptable things Trump has said this last year. He is the ultimate FUBAR Candidate, and it is UNCONSCIABLE not to loudly reject him.
I better book my flight to London tonight before the payoff ratio drops to ten to win one.
Not ten to one yet, but getting there in Vegas:
https://electionbettingodds.com/
I will say this, Jay. When Hillary throws out the bait, Trump takes it. I imagine that his staff simply can’t get his phone away from him. And, as I’ve said, his lack of discipline disturbs me.
The Clintons have been playing this game for many decades ~ they are ruthless when it comes to destroying their opposition. Trump clearly thinks he can beat them at their game, but its simply not being played on a level field.
If he loses, which is more likely than not, it will be because of his ego and lack of discipline, not because he is certifiable.
“If he loses, which is more likely than not, it will be because of his ego and lack of discipline, not because he is certifiable.”
All of the above.
Plus all of the below:
A pathological liar.
A childish narcissist.
An attention demanding neurotic.
A serial adulterer.
A sexually manipulative cad
http://theslot.jezebel.com/donald-trump-reportedly-pressured-marla-maples-to-pose-1785615966
Another traitor to the GOP speaks:
“The end of the election is now in sight. Some among the anti-Hillary brigades have decided, in deference to their exquisite sensibilities, to stay at home on Election Day, rather than vote for Mrs. Clinton. But most Americans will soon make their choice. It will be either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton—experienced, forward-looking, indomitably determined and eminently sane. Her election alone is what stands between the American nation and the reign of the most unstable, proudly uninformed, psychologically unfit president ever to enter the White House.”
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-hatred-derangement-syndrome-1475192121?mod=trending_now_
Sorry idiots but you losers need to get your a$$ handed to you.
This line should be for Obama,are you kidding me me.What a bunch of brainless cucks and liberal weak fools on this site.
Her election alone is what stands between the American nation and the reign of the most unstable, proudly uninformed, psychologically unfit president ever to enter the White House.”This is what should be ENGRAVED ON Obamas statue and on all of your liberal foreheads.Idiots all.
Thank you for taking the time and making the effort to be Exhibit A. Your work was excellent.
GW- I have for quite a while known that I don’t crumble or feel upset at being personally attacked, but today, after reading Dindunuffins post, I was surprised to realize how calm I could be when my group is attacked. I do feel a bit defensive, but as I ponder between A) counter attacking for sake of the group, or B) not wasting time with such “Ipse Dixit” , I find myself quite comfortable with letting it slide. But for this surprise epiphany, I wouldn’t have even mentioned this poster’s profile name.
More Dump Trump’s Rump reasoning
And one more sensible commentator puts Trump’s behavior in perspective:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/09/30/donald-trump-tops-his-own-reputation-for-undisciplined-campaigning-with-twitter-rant/ft1ZM5z7ZNt7D8IxNPqQDN/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign=
This leaves me speechless!
Or should I say song Less?
The real mcFats
The best – ( you have to let it play)
That Putin guy, he seems so charming, maybe someday he could run for office, like Governor of California or something.
I see him as the first on-air shirtless commentator for FOX NEWS. Will quickly become their highest rated celebrity.
When diversity was encompassing..
So, for what it’s worth, I’ll relate something that I happened today, and my thoughts about it….I was with a fairly large group of people, at a very enjoyable picnic (it’s one of the last, if not the last weekend in Jersey that has suitable outdoor picnic weather). A good friend of mine, a woman that I’ve know for many years- decades, really – arrived, and we greeted each other warmly. Then she said. “I’m SO happy about those 3 am tweets that Trump sent out. I think he’s finally done.” Now, although we’ve been friends for years, I had never told her about my political change of heart some years back, nor that I was voting for Trump, because we are great friends, and I knew that it would upset her that I was “one of them,” as she is a big lib and a Hillary supporter. She’s super-smart, funny and beautiful. Being a liberal is her only flaw (I kid, I kid).
Anyway, she scanned the group, and said, “I think we can talk about this, because only Bill and Jeff are Trump voters, I think. God help them.” So, I just smiled and said “Nope. Me too.” At which she laughed, and then realized that I wasn’t joking. (here is the part where my life flashed before my eyes). I really did think that she might no longer want to be my friend.
So, thankfully, that didn’t happen. Although, she did start apologizing profusely and, of course I said no apology was necessary, and we moved on amiably to other topics. I’m sure that, at some point, she’ll work up the courage to ask me why I have lost my marbles, and we’ll have that discussion.
So, my thoughts on this little exchange: 1) Only Trump voters keep their preference to themselves in social settings (polite society?) 2) People who think that you are smart, assume that you would never even consider voting for Trump. 3) Admitting that you are “one of them” creates great awkwardness for a bit, but does not erase years of friendship. 4) Although I am still pretty certain that I will vote for Trump, I also kind of hope that he loses, because I really don’t want this great awkwardness to go on for 4 years, or however long he would be president before being impeached. My life will stay pretty much the same (I hope), and a lot my friends who vote for Clinton will likely regret it, and I will have the satisfaction of saying “Hey, you said she knew what she was doing!” 5) I’ll have the same opportunity here on TNM. 😉
(3 guesses, Rick)
Hey Priscilla, I meant to say thank you for last week when you say I speak plainly. I try hard to keep things simple enough for GW to understand…..I’m waiting for him to slap me on the side of the head with a book now for that remark…..Anyway, I’d like to play out one assumption and then the opposite, and see if we can conclude that a fact that is in dispute is a completely worthless fact regardless of its truth or falseness. 1) Let us assume for a moment that this lady did voluntarily participate in an adult act that was filmed for commercial purposes, so what? Does that make what Trump said about her weight any more or any less wrong? No, if she did it, it is irrelevant to the issue. 2) Let us assume now that the allegation is completely false. This proves what? That Trump lies? Already known. Does it damage Ms. Machado? Maybe, but how so? It doesn’t hurt her already lost celebrity status, if anything it might help her career if she is seeking the limelight. Probably one could imagine her having to take some people throwing insults at her that she may not have to have dealt with had she not been lied about. But, when someone puts themselves out on a national stage like that, one thinks she probably knew or should have known there would be some backlash as well as many sympathetic people assisting her that she otherwise would not have gotten had she not gone national.
I’d hate to think these sharing of ideas would cause a rift to the point of people not wanting to talk to each other, but if such a rift must occur, at least make it over something of more substance than someone saying something 20 years ago that “objectified” another person that was in a competition of objectification.
The fact that Trump is dwelling on a 20 year old incident with a beauty queen with 4 am Tweets is a loud warning alarm something is clanging loose in his goofy mind.
It’s like the story, true or not, about Nero fiddling while Rome was burning: makes you cluck your tongue in anguish over such a boob-like response.
And Booby Brain Donald has already reverted to obnoxious form:
“Trump mocked Clinton’s health episode tonight at PA rally. Drooped his shoulders and inched forward, descending as he moved.”
Robert Costa@costareports
With respectful apologies to the Beetles:
Help us if you can, We’re feeling down
Watching Trump drag us to the ground
There’s something in his brain that is unsound
Won’t you please, please help us be freeeeeee
Of this miserable SOBeeeeee!
Very true, Mike. This Miss Universe thing is Machado about nothing. 😉 It’s certainly not misogyny to argue that a beauty contest winner ~ who voluntarily entered into a contest to be judged only on her beauty ~ has an obligation to maintain that beauty during her “reign”. And the whole “Miss Piggy” thing is he said/she said, junior high school nonsense.
The argument that Trump tweeting at 3 am makes him a little crazy? That takes me aback somewhat (hey, at least he’ll be awake for the 3 am phone call). But, it’s still Clinton that brought the sleaze…Trump’s the one who got down in the mud with her. And, that’s the thing about the Clintons. They always bring the sleaze.
This is the stuff that makes me really, really regret that Gary Johnson isn’t in the debates. Regardless of his faults, his very presence would change the dynamic. He’s just too laid back for mud wrestling. And, you know he would study up on Syria, so maybe we would hear something of substance.
“But, it’s still Clinton that brought the sleaze…Trump’s the one who got down in the mud with her. And, that’s the thing about the Clintons. They always bring the sleaze.”
You’re in irrational denial of undeniable facts, Pricilla.
From the start Trump was the Emporer of Sleeze.
Are you denying he sleezed ALL of the Republican candidates who who dared to stand up to him; denying the sleezy remarks he made about Carley; and the sleezy insults he directed at Cruz and his wife; and at Carson and Rubio and Christie?
He has single handedly lowered the bar for personal physical insult and personal ridicule from press denial candidates – and has all but obliterated civility from the political stage.
And you seem obtusely oblivious to who has been the mud slinger supreme between Trump and Hillary. HE was the one who INTENTIONALLY with premeditation tagged her with the “Crooked Hillary” name calling; I heard him say that on TV: “crooked Hillary; I like how that sounds; that will stick; let’s start calling her that now!” And he has, unrelentingly. He is the Sleeze Sloganeer.
Do you consider his remark that “if Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” an appropriate barb for a political opponent? Or his distasteful illusions about her using having to use the bathroom as “disgusting?”
Nevertheless you intend to vote for him. Trump will be a permanent dividing line for many Americans for future judging of friends and foes. You may think your long time New Jersey friend reconciled your Trump support; but I’m betting she hasn’t. She’s going to perceive you differently going forward; when the cat eats the canary you thereafter observe tabby with alert skepticism.
I was standing there for part of the conversation, but I’d know who it was even if I hadn’t been. (She looked at me a little strangely when I mentioned my blog for moderates; I think she wanted to make sure I wasn’t for Trump.)
Beats me how a former investment banking executive could be such an ardent progressive. Maybe she’s part of that Goldman Sachs – Davos – Bilderberg global conspiracy to found a “New World Order.” (Nah.) Or maybe it was her time at Smith, the Betty Friedan of the Seven Sisters. Or it could be that she just absorbed the popular notion that smart people must be progressive to distinguish themselves from the rabble. (Someday I’ll have to write a column on the similarity between progressives and missionaries.)
Anyway, I’m happy and relieved that she still talked to you after your image-shattering revelation. She’s not a fanatic, after all. Maybe she’ll realize that not all intelligent people march in lockstep politically. I think she already knows that; I remember her reaction when Ron M. confessed his fondness for Sarah Palin at a picnic about eight years ago.
Anyway, I’d be very surprised if she soured on your friendship over politics. She’s bigger than that.
@ Priscilla. I am a registered Rep that is NOT voting for Trump, and indeed I will vote for HC if it is close. In a couple of weeks, my wife’s family will invade from NJ and they are all liberals, some fervent, few rationale, so I can sympathize with you as I will be gang tackled even though I abhor Trump, but because I try and act as a moderate.
Rational works better. Hope you guys get an edir function someday.
dduck, I have no problem with anyone not voting for Trump, or voting for Hillary, or Gary, or Jill, even! Sometimes I can’t even believe that I’m voting for him.
Good luck with the NJ in-law invasion!
My voting for HC is a wasted vote in liberal/Dem NY. I should like to trade it per this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/opinion/anti-trump-republicans-dont-waste-your-vote-trade-it.html?_r=0
Priscilla, I thought your line “Machado about nothing” was very witty. Did you come up with that one yourself or were you relaying it?
Jay, you make a good point on how Trump wasting his time on such an issue should be a red flag to those not already opposed to him. The debate between TNM commenters on whether or not Machado was in a porn film, I felt was something perhaps a bit below our level of discourse, not below the candidates, but below ours. It would be hard to really prove either way. You can’t take DNA of a film, at best you could have people claiming one thing or another. Confirming someone’s identity with certainty could be quite challenging, but if someone were to have to watch the film repeatedly and carefully, well, I guess I could volunteer to do it.
It was quite witty, I thought. Can’t take credit, however ~ I saw it somewhere else, can’t remember where, but it stuck with me.
Seriously, though, regardless of who becomes president, s/he is going to be faced with a gigantic mess, domestically and internationally. I don’t think that any of the candidates are up to the task, to be honest. And, to Pat’s earlier point, I doubt that we would hear anything really substantive even if, as I hope, the next debate is more focused on issues.
But that debate is a week away ,,,you’ve got plenty of time to check the films and decide whether it really is Alicia!
Priscilla, you win this year’s New Moderate Excellence Award.
You have managed to maintain a level of rationality and insightfulness despite the two hecklers “nipping at your heels” (to re-use a phase from earlier in this year’s U.S. Propaganda Cycle). Priscilla when you bring up a point or two in your posts you typically try to look at “both sides,” you will admit a few caveats about your position, and then tell us why, despite those caveats, you have decided to think the way you do. It’s good knowing you are over there in the Garden State.
Mike Hatcher, hello. You also seem to be a “calm” voice of reason. I don’t know enough yet about the details of your political tendencies. I like your own self-summary of “Peace, Love, Guns, and protecting the 2nd Amendment,” and I’m open-minded and rational enough myself not to assume things about you, as many liberals would (or people who only know guns from TV) just because you mention guns. Gun owners and hunters can be as varied and different as the general population. It’s not a central foundation of personality as many mass media outlets erroneously paint it to be.
Ron P, Rick B and others, forgive me but I want to get to the two hecklers…
Jay and GW, you two have become TNM’s own little “amen corner” for Trump bashing. Congratulations. You’ve reached the conclusion that Trump is an idiot, a narcissist, etc. You two have taken the bait. What bait? This bait: Vote for Hillary to keep more despicable Trump out of office. Given our present beyond disappointing choices, that will be many people’s decision, and that’s their right, and yours too But I don’t hear you two being objective anymore. Mostly I don’t hear you two being balanced and respectful anymore. I don’t hear you lamenting Hillary’s shortcomings, chameleon viewpoints, her dubious connections, etc.
Jay, wow, you are going to dismiss the 21rst-century transnational Oligarchy because there were Oligarchies in the past? Wow. And GW, you want to dismiss everything troubling except Trump, as other disturbing revelations are just conspiracy hype. When your points get challenged you get heated, then you go away to your music. Back in the day you used to re-consider things. I remember.
Pat – Priscilla, to quote Bob Dylan:
“I’m gonna let you pass
And I’ll go last.
Then time will tell just who fell
And who’s been left behind,
When you go your way and I go mine.”
I’ll continue to drop in relevant election comments, and respond to other topics – but I’m done responding to Trump rationalizers.
Well, weak man that I am I will take the bait.
You are right, Jay and I must be hecklers, because those who are not either conservative or libertarian are a distinct minority here, going back forever. So, imagine, a foreign amen corner invading YOUR amen corner.
I checked before posting this and there still is no credible evidence that Machada appeared in porn film in fact its been disproven according to snopes. Whereas the GOP nominee did appear in a porn video, if one calls playboy videos porn. Accusing Machado and then doubling down and tripling down on her of being a scumbag and a porn actress are YOUR idea of winning the moderate award, not mine. To me its an invitation to just bug out of beating my head against the wall of absurd conservative propaganda until after the election is long over. I’m sorry Pat, you describe yourself as a libertarian, is it OK with you if I choose to spend my time on Bach rather than endless attempts to hear trump supporters rationalize his wretched character ?
As to being a trump supporter, no you don’t have to be stupid to support him, and that is distressing to my poor little liberal mind. I can accept that stupid people support him, stupid people doing stupid things is expected. Tens of millions of intelligent people doing a stupid thing with huge consequences over a prolonged period is really painful to watch. trump has a neon sign on his forehead that says “disgustingly unfit to be POTUS.” Conservative newspapers that have endorsed only conservative republicans for president for more than 100 years have written scathing editorials saying that trump is so unprecedentedly unfit to be POTUS that they endorse the moderate liberal democrat Hillary.
As to me not lamenting hillary’s shortcomings, you have turned off the objective part of your own brain and this is the evidence. I’ve said much more against her and Bill than for them, all here know it. Fail. Your own objectivity is in the toilet. Worry about that.
What you really want me to say, and then I will be objective according to you, is that your rants about an increasingly totalitarian state have substance. I think they are crazy shit. I replied to your efforts to be cute and have it both ways about this theory of your above, I did not see any reply. Who are you trying to fool with this line of crafty nonsense, me or you?
As to me, I have better things to do than go over this stuff ad nauseum, a less obsessive person than myself would have dropped this long ago. When I turn the obsessive part of my character to Bach, really wonderful and rewarding things happen. What is my reward for trying to reason with someone who insists that Machado is a scumbag who made porn movies and that a man who is the king chauvinist pig of all time and a vacuous shallow uninformed narcissist was being very nice to her and is fit to be president? What is my reward for beating my head against the wall of trying to discuss the science of global warming with someone who’s answer to the views of most scientists on the issue is that the important thing to her is that Al Gore is a phony? Priscilla is a great lady and I am sure there are things we could enjoyably discuss, but not politics, not now, perhaps not ever if she does not escape the hold that the conservative media have on her.
You have a crazy theory that you constantly state and then cutely disavow as being merely a lighthearted figure of speech, it ruins you in my book as a person to spend so much of my time discussing politics with, in spite of your sensible qualities outside that overarching theory of yours. We are never going to agree and we have spent a lot of time on this.
GW, you insist on putting words into my mouth (words onto my keyboard?).
I did not say that Trump was being “nice” to Machado. What I said was that he supported her in losing the weight, when he could have fired her. Now, I suppose you could say that he was being “nice,” but it may also have been his way to get a little additional publicity for the pageant that he had just recently bought, so that it would gin up ratings. And I posted a video, which you very clearly did not watch, that showed him holding a press conference with Machado, in which he chided reporters for calling her fat, and said that some of them were overweight.
If Trump is the king of all male chauvinists, I wonder what we would call Bill Clinton? King of all sexual harassers? I’m sort of stunned that both you and Jay (but mostly you, because you really are more moderate and reasonable, as a rule) have been totally silent on the subject of Hillary’s enabling of Bill, the kinds of things she said about Monica Lewinsky ( that she was a “narcissistic looney toon”), trying to make a 22 year old intern ~ 22!~ who had been used by her husband, the President, in the most disgusting ways, appear to be a stalker. And both of them denied that Bill had a sexual relationship with Gennifer Flowers, until Bill had to admit it under oath. Trump has had a rocky marital history, but ~ and this is key ~ he was not running for president, was not the governor of a state or the President. He was not lying, repeatedly, to the people that had elected him.
How you and Jay miss that distinction, I don’t know. If anyone around here is rationalizing, I don’t think that it’s me. I’ve said plenty of negative things about Trump. Hillary gets a pass from you guys on all of the allegations that she has bullied the women that her husband has abused.
Whether or not I’m a great lady is up for debate, but I have won the coveted New Moderate Excellence Award, so perhaps I am….. 🙂
So, to get back to the debates……
The VP debate is this week. I’m thinking it’s more important than in the past, given that 1) whichever candidate wins, s/he will enter office as the most unpopular president ever, right off the bat. Assuming that the House remains in GOP hands, impeachment is a possibility, and 2) with all of the speculation around Hillary’s health, added to the fact that Trump would be the oldest and Hillary the second oldest president ever on inauguration day, increasing the odds that the VP would need to step in, in the case of serious illness or death.
How do you think Kaine and Pence will match up? And will the moderator (Elaine Quijano, who I never heard of) ask fair and balanced questions of each?
I think that they’re both pretty articulate and likable. Certainly much more so than their running mates. Pence seems a bit more articulate, but that is my opinion based only on their convention speeches.
Stop saying I’m cute. That’s condescending.
True Moderates and half-decent Moderates don’t operate from an “amen corner.” Rick Bayan for instance will write that the Left is saying this while the Right is saying this, but that he wonders about this, and what about that? Rick Bayan might be a tad right of center on some issues, and a tad left of center on other issues, but he hardly writes from an amen corner. And he twists phrases and plays on words and is interesting. And, since TNM revolves around Rick’s posts, TNM is hardly an amen corner.
If an intelligent voter like Priscilla (not Priscilla but LIKE Priscilla) repeatedly says she “can’t believe she’s voting for Trump” and wishes Trump would get his act together or would shut up and stop de-railing his own campaign, etc., then that’s hardly an amen corner. Obviously a voter like that senses something or believes something WORSE about the other candidates.
I DON’T TRUST TRUMP OR HILLARY CLINTON. I detest them both. Trump IS an asshole. Many think the plans of Hillary’s backers (TPP, North American Union, “open borders,” etc.) will be worse for the American people than Trump’s asshole personality, and I was right there for awhile, desperate, but for months now I don’t know who is worse and will not vote for either. And without the corporate media behind one of the other 3rd party candidates, a vote that way is hardly more than a quiet protest.
But, to say again and again, in a variety of ways, that Trump is the worst scum and Hillary is “Presidential,” and to be condescendingly sure about it, is an amen corner. And that’s because that “Never Trump” camp avoids or denies THE VERY REASONS that so many people are desperate to look beyond Trump’s foolishness. GW, you may have admitted Clinton faults with regard to infidelities and indiscretions, and maybe even a few policy decisions, but you have consistently been in denial of what I’ll call, for the sake of time, the “bigger allegations” (related to a new type of Oligarchy, the military-industrial ’empire building failures, globalist agenda, etc., etc.) You’ll have to do your own research on those, as I can’t seem to prod you to re-consider some of your conclusions.
It’s best for me if I just think of you as someone taking care of himself and his family up there somewhere in New England.
Pat, I probably shouldn’t act like I know how Jay and GW think, but against my better judgment, I’m going to do just that. Both Jay and GW have made statements that essentially concede that they don’t know the future. However, they are coming from a position that they believe it is possible a Trump presidency would be innocuous, it is highly likely that it will do immense damage. So, unlike other arguments, will passing XYZ law produce a net benefit, or a net loss, either way, it will not destroy the country, this for them is extremely important. thus, with such a high level of concern, it is much harder for them to “give credit” to opposing views. The fact that you reference that they were not like this in the past, seems to indicate that they aren’t always so pushy.
Their reaction to your comments, also IMO, indicate that they hold your opinion in high esteem, thus your rebuke is rather stinging to them. They didn’t rant at Dindunuffins comment, GW made a short remark but for the most part they (correctly in my opinion) ignored it. I might add here that when I read your profile comment: “…I think you should look at my words and look at my ideas, but don’t look at me..” I instantly put you, and hold your ideas in high esteem as well.
My perspective is there is a high probability that either Hillary or Trump will do some damage to the country, and they both have a real, albeit low probability, of doing catastrophic damage as leader of our country. Jay and GW clearly think the odds are much different, Trump being highly likely to cause tremendous damage. So, if my assumptions about them are correct, and if my other assumption that you see their strident “intolerance” on a Trump presidency as an anomaly to how usually reasonable they are on other issues, Then, I would think one could continue to disagree with them as much as one is inclined, but at the same time tolerate their, what could be described as “intolerance” on this one issue.
One of my grade school teachers identified my habit of run-on sentences. I reviewed that last, 69 word sentence, and it makes perfect sense in my mind. 🙂
Mike, your 69-word sentence and the rest of your comment make perfect sense. I could indeed step back a bit and tolerate GW’s and Jay’s intolerance of Trump, and the danger and embarrassment associated with a Trump presidency, and that’s not too difficult for me because I agree that Trump’s personality/character/temperament/demeanor is/are un-presidential, embarrassing, dangerous, disappointing, frightening, etc.
And that agreement and tolerance of their intolerance is in spite of the fact that when Priscilla further examines a particular backlash against something Trump said or did, I often tend to agree that the backlash is sometimes overblown and somewhat PC and squeamish and a double-standard (my words not Priscilla’s). If we had video cameras following our past Presidents the way the media is in everyone’s faces today, I’m sure even the “great ones” who led the U.S. into periods of prosperity could easily be portrayed as sexist, racist monsters. Nonetheless, I agree that Trump lowers the bar way down in our present history.
What I can’t tolerate, and where Jay’s and GW’s positions anger me and disappoint me, are in 2 main areas:
1) Their apparent lack of empathy and concern for the American who is a reluctant supporter of Trump and who is, say, a forklift driver who is on his third company because the other two companies closed up. There are MILLIONS of men and women like the forklift driver who show up on time every day, even when they are a little bit sick, and they are decent parents and responsible sons and daughters, et cetera, and the usual let-them-eat-cake lines we get from many upper class Americans is “oh they should go back to school and get a better job” (so everyone should be a college professor or a consultant? We don’t need forklift drivers?) or “hey, everyone is responsible for themselves…” (what? the rules of the game, the realities of our nation don’t matter?????) It’s sad and troubling when people who live in good circumstances think they got there themselves, and that everyone who is in dire straits must be doing something wrong. And all Trump supporters are deplorable idiots. Yeah, that’s a real nuanced, admirable position.
2) will have to wait until I calm down, and my post is so frigging long anyway.
This linked article is 5 years old from The Atlantic Monthly. I’ve posted this before. It’s a relatively long article, but brings up some good points about a new type of transnational Oligarchy, one that is a network of global cliques that don’t care much about their countries of origin. This article is mild. These are the folks that Bill and Hillary like to hobnob with. And I’m not saying that wealth and capitalism are bad. Please don’t jump to conclusions and put words in my mouth.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/308343/
Yep, nice job, you understand my point of view exactly. Thanks.
Ha, went precisely the wrong place. It started life as a reply to Mike, who correctly has understood my point of view.
Pat thanks for your clarification on your views on the election.
The many vignettes you have written over the years about hypothetical conversations between members of a monolithic oligarchy that has the power to place someone like trump in the race to further their interests have been taken seriously by me. You’ve written quite a few of them. You could have written a different set of vignettes, but you wrote those ones. There is an intention behind that. When treated as though that is your actual point of view you protest that I am taking you all wrong. Well, you are certainly are making that very easy, along with ranting about our totalitarian situation.
Only mild attention to my many words recently and over many years would have made it impossible for you to state that I am not critical of the Clintons. You really get off in the weeds at times.
Clinton is the status quo, not wildly different from say G. Bush or B Clinton in her politics and connections. trump is something never before seen and I hope never again, but he is only a few point behind the status quo with a 33% chance of becoming POTUS. If I need any more reason to be wildly upset about that, my wife’s son lives 50 miles from Syria in Israel, with his beautiful wife and new daughter. Israel is one of the places that would be in the greatest danger from having a complete ignoramus as POTUS. I am not accepting trump blindness from intelligent people. In my opinion the idea that he is even capable of being president qualifies as trump blindness. Many conservative politicians and commentators have been able to easily and strongly see that, it really is not hard. This could not be more serious to me.
2) and the other big area where Jay’s and GW’s position deeply offends and disappoints me is how their fear and loathing of Trump has apparently caused them to refuse to explore or accept the horrors of the administration and war machine for which Hillary is the grandmother Barbie puppet, to include a hundred modern day atrocities such as “taking out Gadaffi” which this grandmother says with a smile during the first debate with Trump (this doesn’t sicken you to see Hillary talk about “taking out Gadaffi” with a wave of her power blazer hand? Do you supporters of Hillary understand our attack on Libya in relation to the petro-dollar? Do you not want to know?) and let’s not minimize or forget what globalist policies have been doing to America systematically for decades. The TRILLIONS of dollars spent in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere overseas, could that not have been spent for water treatment plants in Michigan? Ah but the propaganda machine would say focus on our domestic issues was becoming “protectionist,” as if there were no moderate ground between decadent Empire building and backward protectionism.
If intelligent people like Jay and GW are swallowing the mainstream rhetoric bullshit, how is there hope for us?
Ah,Pat, just remember, as long as she says “no boots on the ground,” she can do whatever she wants.
There is no correct answer Pat. Its basically the foreign policy we have had since WWII. Its impossible to physically fight evil without doing evil things and becoming evil as well. Its also impossible followingn WWI and WWII to ignore the evils that Stalinism and Islamic radicals represent, as well as various ethnic cleansings. Everyone makes their devils choice. I believe that the world is better off with America being the major cop, even though our military has the job of killing people and breaking things, many of whom are collateral innocents. All of asia could be N Korea had we chosen to go home from the world after WWII. All of eastern europe could be a stalinist society which would not have ended there. I have no way of knowing which is the better world, the one where we don’t meddle or the one where we do. Of course we could meddle better and cleaner and it always seems clear in hindsight what we should not have done.
My instinct is that WWIII or a totalitarian tendency worldwide would be the result of not having a US led police force and that it would be far worse even than the situation as it is now. Most of the situations that have gone sour were not the easy choices you may think they were.
Pat, You may well see this as another case of the oligarchy protecting itself. I see it as another lifelong prominent responsible republican making the adult choice in the real world in which the US is NOT the worst actor. I do not share your populist view of events. Given a choice between your view of things and this I choose the one the US government has pursued since the last World War. It does not mean that I do not understand the costs and hate them.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article105624876.html
Whitewater prosecutor who investigated Clinton endorses her for president
“Twenty years ago, Michael Chertoff was near the top of the Clintons’ enemy list. He was the lead Republican counsel on the Senate Whitewater Committee, one of the first of many congressional investigations into Hillary Clinton.
Clinton later cast the only vote in the Senate against him when he was nominated in 2001 to head the Justice Department’s criminal division. She was also the lone no vote against Chertoff in 2003, when he was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the third circuit.
All of this, though, was before the Republican Party nominated Donald Trump as its presidential candidate. This has shaken the party of Reagan. Chertoff, a lifelong Republican, will now be voting for the Democrat in November.
Over the weekend, Chertoff — the former secretary of Homeland Security — told me his decision came down to national security. “I realized we spent a huge amount of time in the ’90s on issues that were much less important than what was brewing in terms of terrorism,” he said. For Chertoff, Clinton “has good judgment and a strategic vision how to deal with the threats that face us.”…”
GW, America being the world top cop comes at a price. And that price is the cost of Americans tax dollars and American lives. It also energizes politicians to make decisions that are not in the best interest of the country to fulfill a personal need. (ie the second invasion of Iraq and the need for W to look strong in the wake of an attack on America).
Now I will say that Americans dollars can be spent and they can ignore the cost of policing the world and the debt that is created by these activities. However, we can not ignore the cost of lives being lost and the cost of injuries that we seem to ignore with any conflict a politician decides to become involved in.
So how do we solve the issue with America being the top cop and becoming the commissioner of a national alliance of countries that have an interest in world peace. We begin with:
1. All countries should be required to participate in any conflict when America becomes involved to protect the immediate countries in danger. If they don’t participate, we do not send our soldiers to fight and die.
2. All countries should be required to spend an equal amount of their GDP on defense as does the USA if we are to be expected to be the lead dog in any issue they may face.
3. Much of the cost of any conflict should be repaid by the benefitting country that the USA pays in their defense.
4. Every individual that turn 18 years old in America should be required to spend 2 years in the military or provide 2 years of community work. No longer should a handful of young Americans be expected to fight and die for others have less than a gnats ass full of knowledge concerning conflicts that cost lives or injury while they live a life of freedom in ignorant bliss.
5. Congress needs to write regulations that cover VA medical facilities much the same as those written by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Hospitals and when any facility fails to meet those standards, the senior leadership (two top supervisory levels) are placed on a 90 day probationary period and after 90 days the facility is reinspected and if it fails again, then those individuals employment is terminated. The JCHA standards provide for minor up to major infractions, so passing or failing is based on different standards for different issues.
Our prior generations made decisions that required some countries to refrain from forming a military after they were defeated in a war. The world has changed and no longer can archaic thinking dominate our thinking today. And no longer can we have the Colon Kaepernick’s of the country and those like him demonstrating against the country when they have had no personal loss in defending the country. Once you have stood up and defended the constitution, then maybe you have the right to demonstrate against it or the country. You know what it takes to defend freedom. Give us 2 years of your life and then you can kneel.
Ron, here I am trying to take a political vacation and you go and make a thoughtful reply to my comment.
I understand the sentiment and logic of most of your ideas, and in an ideal world we would do these things. I don’t think any of them can actually be put in place.
I disagree with you about those who demonstrate, they have the right. I think that the football player who’s name I can’t spell is misguided and that his actions are more likely to hurt than help, but he has the right. You have the right to wish his daddy had spanked him more or something but he has the right to kneel.
Two years of public service is an idea that almost all will side with until it comes to their kids and then many will find it inconvenient. It a beautiful idea in principle, the logistical issues with people’s plans (college, work) are not surmountable. I’ll be in Israel for 10 days soon, a country where they do what you are talking about. But they are at permanent war.
GW, as I said in a comment to Mike, these were just my thoughts on America being the policeman and how to address the issues where both foreign countries and some in America thinking we should provide all the protection without cost to anyone else. I know they have -0- chance of ever being even a discussion. But when you have skin in the game, you become much better informed as to the game that is being played.
As for kneeling at the playing of the anthem at a game, yes it is the “right” of everyone to act in whatever manner they wish. But what many have forgotten is that right was insured by thousands who have died fighting for that right. Since millionaire athletes (and college band members, ECU 10-1-16) have done nothing in their lifetime to insure this right continues, then I can not support their use of that right in a cause that is not impacted by the constitution. I do not find a link between blacks that may or may not have done something illegal getting shot by cops that may or may not have been out of control, some of those being black themselves. But that is a story separate from this election.
GW you are too comfy with the status quo.
I never said a “monolithic oligarchy” or a monolithic anything. I know how even the most coordinated efforts can be a cluster-f–k. I’ve worked for a major University and the U.S. Navy.
I also did not say we live in a totalitarian state. There is tremendous freedom, wealth, and prosperity in this country. I had a beautiful day the other day, including in a bank, where three little girls came in with their father, and the girls recognized a former teacher who gave them a hug, and every person I encountered was courteous and well-spoken, and I was realizing the exchanges among the people were as good as anything I witnessed during the 60s or 70s, and when the little girls couldn’t reach the lollipop bowl next to me at the high teller counter, I grabbed the bowl and lowered it to them, and I joked, “hey just take this lollypop bowl and run, they’ll never catch you…” and the girls and the teller laughed, and the 3 girls all said, “Thank you” and I thought of you, GW, and I was thinking, I know everything is not bad, and I know there is tremendous good, but that doesn’t erase the fact that there are bad actors out there, at the lowly criminal level on the streets, and up in the higher seats of power…
You consistently try to make bogeymen and cartoon characters out of my legitimate concerns. I’m not a sky-is-falling fear-monger, but my eyes are open. TPP is real, U.S. military suicides are real (why?), Syria is real and so is Ferguson Missouri, et friggin cetera. If you’ve got to hid your head in the sand or music to survive, then maybe you’d better.
Pat, your example of a fork lift operator is something that is very easy for me to understand. If nothing else, having a snit at me for supposedly not saying things that I have actually said many times has forced you to write something much more to the point than your monolithic super-powerful oligarchy scenarios (which you have written, whether you want to own them now) or rants about our totalitarian state which you have also done unless that is someone else writing under your name.
I’m sorry old buddy, but you have done a shitty job of communicating, both on the listening half and on the making your own thoughts easy to understand half. If I think you have an overarching conspiracy-theory view of the international elite, you have made it extremely easy for me to believe that. If you think that I don’t see the faults of both the system and the Clintons, then you just have not read what I have written with your full attention or have somehow forgotten every word I have written that does not fit in with your present caricature of my opinions. You’ve also not read or tuned out a great deal of what Jay has said, he was attracted to trump initially in his posts here and sympathized with trump voters for the same reasons that you do.
Perhaps you weren’t around the several times when I described my own work history. I’ll give the expurgated version. I was a lousy student, ADD as hell, did not graduate until I made up credits a few years later. Got my first job as a janitor at ORC research while in high school. First jobs out of high school (ungraduated) included really hard manual labor digging up trees at a plant nursery and different factory jobs where I was exposed to carcinogens and other shitty work conditions with no concern by the management, who were uniformly buttholes. My coworkers were largely black. I’ve worked construction, and as an auto mechanic. I built a luxury kit post and beam house with a rich guy who’s family owned a potato chip factory in Long Island who spent every second giving me his valuable perspective as a guy who was born with an executive job in the family business on what was wrong with the way I run my life. I’ve served in the infantry national guard. I’ve met all kinds of Americans. If I don’t want to eat the rich (and their surrogates and factory managers) its only because in the second phase of my life I went to college and took economics courses and figured out why that would not fix anything. (To say nothing of the perspective I got in the 5th phase of my life as a person who has climbed deeply and personally inside the culture and history of a former communist country and seen the aftermath of its collapse, including old people everywhere begging for money on the street). I don’t believe in the &^%$#^% revolution, or to put it more as you would, creative turmoil and shaking things up. It does not mean I don’t see the situation that you are so pissed about, I’ve been there personally and know many people who are still there working for bad companies. How much did I grapple with Dave about exactly this? You have forgotten a LOT that I have said in nearly millions of words here.
trump is an American disaster, a place we never should have gone. I’ve only ever had one opinion of trump (and I’ve only ever had one opinion of the Clintons, decades of consistent disgust with their characters). Today for the first time you made it clear that you see trump’s character clearly as I do and Romney does and all those decent conservatives and libertarians like Ron do, and now you finally have rejected it. That is good news. But you have bounced all over the place in your ideas on his candidacy. Last I heard before today you were going to vote for him to shake things up and you were trying to persuade me of the trump rough cut but capable business guy scenario. I can only hope that by Nov 8 the intelligent people who are toying with voting for trump will reject that idea, because trump is nothing but pure blatant damage to American values and our place in the world. A firm and clear rejection of the trump phenomenon would not put an end to the issues that you are upset about but it would at least surgically remove a lethal tumor that we could then pray has not metastasized. We have to be respectably alive if we are going to try to solve our problems.
Hillary is an American disaster, as well. The only arguments on her behalf are that we need someone from the current oligarchy to maintain the order of things and that she is the most qualified person to ever run for president.
Both hogwash.
GW,
Neither Trump nor Hillary is being elected the sovereign ruler of the United States. We are not electing King Donald or Queen Hillary. On the other hand, there seems to be an impression, on both sides of the debate, that, whomever is elected will have omnipotent powers to heal or destroy the country. Both candidates play into this theme, and to a very large extent Obama has actually behaved in this way, claiming that he could use his mighty pen and his phone (okay, he didn’t say “mighty”) to get around the CO-EQUAL branch of government that is supposed to make the laws of this country. I blame that co-equal branch of government for not using all of their powers, but I also understand that there have been huge stumbling blocks to doing that ~ the mainstream media, which now functions as a propaganda wing of the Democrat Party, forcing conservatives, many libertarians, and Republicans to get their news from other non-traditional sources, some very good, some very bad. This whole idea that either Hillary or Trump could singlehandedly save or wreck the country, stems directly from what our current President and Congress have been doing.
My decision to support Trump stems directly from the fact that I know that Congress will restrict him. Why do I know this? Because, by and large, they despise him, they distrust him, he is not one of them. And they know that that, the very first time he makes a false move, they can impeach him and throw him out. The media will celebrate their action and cheer them on, because they to despise him, as they have shown in countless ways.
Hillary will get the same treatment as she does now ~ kid gloves. If she acts outside of her constitutional powers (and she certainly will, she has already said that she will “declare” amnesty for all illegals) Congress will fear removing The First Woman President, just as they feared The First Black President (and I don’t mean Bill, although he originally claimed that title). Why? Because the media will crucify them, specifically the Republicans, because nothing is ever the Democrats fault in the eyes of the press. They will make excuses for her, just as they did for her husband, who perjured himself “just for sex, it was not anything important.”
There are plenty of other reasons why I think that Hillary would be a terrible president, do terrible damage to our system worse than Trump could do, but this is my central argument, along with the SCOTUS one.
You and Jay refuse to ever answer this one. Jay attacks me personally, calls me names, and tells me that I should be shunned and gleefully claims that my close friends will drop me. You simply say that you won’t engage my arguments until after the election. All if this because I am voting for someone different than you guys? It’s comical in a sense ~ my vote is meaningless…I live in f**king NEW JERSEY, for god’s sake. It’s just ridiculous.
Rant over.
Priscilla, I’m just so sick of talking or thinking about this election. You are so strongly partisan that much as I respect you and have a high opinion of your character outside of your opinions on political issues, we’ve been over and over this ground, and its a waste of time. Foreign policy as we both know, cannot be contained by congress. Congressional oversight does not allow us to have a trump as president. We disagree, completely.
We both have other outlets that are much more enjoyable. We don’t need to be locked in combat, this conversation in purely voluntary. I volunteer to take a break from it. If I understand correctly you don’t discuss politics with your liberal friends. That is a good decision, and there is every reason to apply it to me. Completely different views on something are best not driven into the ground with old friends.
Fair enough, although I have often been persuaded by your more moderate “rants.”
Don’t leave entirely, though. (I feel like we’re antagonistic exes at the same dinner party: “Oh, please don’t leave on my account.”) I’ll just assume that you won’t engage on the subject of Trump or Hillary, and that you won’t really read my posts, unless they seem more moderate than they have been lately.
You are an important presence here, no matter what your screen name is 😉
Thanks Priscilla. Not to worry.
I am finger typing on my little phone. Dave gave his email about a month ago then seemed to disappear. Well, I ‘m going to give mine now and if I disappear, feel free to call “coast to coast ” radio with any wild theories. But I doubt that will happen. Anyway, my email is word Rwanda then the word “boy ” smashed together as one word. Followed by at hotmail dot com. I’m not planning on going anywhere, but thought I would throw that out there if anyone wanted it.
Mike?
Arrgh, forgot my password, well maybe it is for the best, the anonymous email in the previous post is mine. Mike Hatcher
The comments to Rick’s previous post went to about a thousand comments I think, without me chiming in. I don’t want to clear the room. I’ll back off. I just couldn’t take what seemed to me a smug attitude in calling Trump supporters stupid. Americans are wedged between a rock and hard place. I thought I was being passionate and sincere. I didn’t think I was being nasty.
GW, I mentioned a few comments up that I was seeing a difference from earlier Roby posts from the old days to the latest posts from the Grand Wazzoo and Jay. So maybe it was a case of “what have done for me (said) lately?” Whatever. We disagree strongly about the impact and consequences of people who hold high places in our world today. Some of these discussions would likely be easier in a hotel conference room where we could benefit from body language and voice tones, flip charts and PowerPoint to prevent some misunderstandings and assumptions.
I need a break too already.
Noooooo! (Flings self on ground, in utter despair)
Hahaha. I already took a tantrum. Not you too!
I am one of those old white guys that have seen a lot in my lifetime. But I have become aware of how divided this country is and how that has happened in the last 10 years..
If you are old, white and support Trump, you are a “deplorable”
If you are old, white and support the police, you are a racist.
If you are black, conservative and support Trump, you are not only deplorable, your an “uncle Tom”
If you are black and are voting for Clinton, your a welfare dependant druggie.
If you are young white supporting Clinton, you are cast as living off your parents and expecting handouts.
If your hispanic and support Clinton, your an illegal.
And I could list more and more, but never have I seen the country as torn by various demographic groups in more directions than I see today. Even in the 60’s with segregation, there was one major issue dividing the country and politicians (other than southern Democrats) worked to correct that problem. In the 70’s it was the war and that one major issue divided the country and it was solved by the young demonstrating until that became a major negative power on both parties. In each of these situations, people came together to fight for a cause.
But today, the major political figures have divided the country into multiple groupings where only a small minority has to come out on top to be the major winner. When they say, divide and conquer, no other political year can provide a better example of what is happening this time around.
And when looking at history and other countries where the minority took control. it was not until people were pitted against each other that the minority achieved its objective. And I see that happening more and more in America than ever before.
We have over 312 million people living in America and no one can tell me that the two people running for President are the two best individuals available. But we argue over who will do the least amount of harm to the point of personal attacks when our thoughts do not agree.
Excellent comment. One quibble, I as a Rep think Trump dragged us all into the slime. Can’t stand Clinton, BTW.
And he is the product of a mass division between individuals that voted in the Republican primaries. And I might add, there were many comments made that many individuals that supported Trump in the primaries were not registered Republicans and many were first time voters after years of sitting out elections. As I said “But today, the major political figures have divided the country into multiple groupings where only a small minority has to come out on top to be the major winner”. It does not have to be party against party. And it does not need to be general elections. Start at the bottom and work up to insure division.
A, Bless you and B who can? (stand Clinton).
Carry on, please.
I also think Ron’s observations are spot on. And I don’t disagree with dduck that Trump has appealed to many of the, shall we say, baser elements of the base.
But, I don’t think it was Trump who dragged us all into the slime. I think his candidacy is sort of the “cry for help” that is the result of the divisions and hatreds that have come about over the last decade, fanned by slimy politicians. Hillary is definitely one of them, but she is not the only one, not by a long shot. And they come from both sides of the aisle. The success of the Democrats in repeatedly playing the race card and in convincing poor minorities that successful white people have achieved their success by way of privilege rather than hard work has been poisonous, as has the failure of Republicans to reach out to those poor minorities with something other than platitudes about hard work.
So, blaming Trump has become the thing. This is not his fault. Don’t blame the symptom for the disease.
Nah, without him and a candidate like Kasich, or even Bush, we would not be in the slime. My three cents.
Well, I have to agree with you about Kasich and Bush. Without those two, we probably wouldn’t even have Trump as the Republican nominee…….
Ok, Rick. I’m stubbornly not leaving. Ron hasn’t announced his departure and dduck just returned. So, you’ve still got us. (I’ll try not to piss everybody off, lol).
Don’t you think I at least need a timeout in the corner?
That was me about the timeout.
Oh, Mike is still here too. I think.
Priscilla you got the coveted New Moderate Excellence Award and I get probation. I could have come across less angry.
Pat, I think that this election has begun to make everyone a little angry. It’s an angry-making election. Both sides – or I guess I should say all sides – think that they have been treated like crap. And the truth is, that they’re right. Everybody’s been treated like crap. Some of those people probably deserve to be treated like crap, but they probably don’t think so.
But none of us here deserve it (except maybe Jay sometimes, he’s so mean to me 😉 ) So, let’s not all stop talking to each other (or is that typing to each other?).
Ok, your timeout is over.
Pat, There are a group here who never get in anyone’s hair, not trying to change anyone’s vote or way of thinking, Ron, Mike, DDuck, Priscilla, Rick. The calm ones. Then there is another group, Me, You, Dave, JB, Jay who get pretty loud about not being able to understand why some poster has the opinions they do. We do it with varying degrees of tact and taste. So, We hotheads who just cannot sometimes understand WTF some other poster is thinking when they hold some opinion and jump up and down about it are the nuclear fuel rods, we produce the heat. The first group are the control rods, although their thoughts to varying degrees get the fuel rods heated up. The format works, that is why its been around so long (that and Ricks great writing talent).
You did not do anything that penetrated my skin, don’t fret. Its good that you have the thought to give yourself a timeout, its just evidence that you are not completely nuts 🙂 But you don’t need to continue it, note taken of your self discipline.
I’m not pissed at Priscilla or you, just sick of the whole election and thinking about it. As well, there is a limit to how profitably people can disagree after a very, very long discussion on something where they simply have completely different worldviews. So, I am going to try to take my hot head on a political respite from headbanging, which the year of trump has produced in me and others. Nothing personal about you at all, all cordiality still intact on my end. TNM goes through many commentator permutations and this present one is a good one, I am quite enjoying the relatively new Mike and DD, I am not the calm one but I appreciate the calm ones, most particularly Ron over the years.
This is Mike Hatcher, still cant login with my phone, but GW, awesome comment!
Yes, I was the one giving my email address in a previous post today. I know I read something by Ron earlier that I wanted to challenge. But I think I will re-read it so it is fresh in my mind.
Ron, I hate to be a naysayer, but I see IMO major problems with everyone of your ideas except for #5. I don’t much understand #5 so I don’t have an opinion on that one. Number one, all countries have to participate or we don’t participate. All which countries? All 200 plus on the planet? I guess that would be fine if you are advocating complete pacifism. If you are speaking of all NATO countries or some other group, what then if you have a group of , I don’t know, 9 countries and 8 of them all find there is a noble and necessary military intervention needed somewhere, then are you saying that if 8 go, but one objects to going, we, the U.S get “controlled” by the one abstainer, we can’t participate because the 9th one would not participate?
Mike. every idea needs objective review before becoming effective. These were my ideas and I expect comments where I need to defend or adjust my thinking.
As for #5, this comes due to the continuing numerous problems with the VA health system and the very apparent situation where our government places attention on the problem until some other problem comes along, and then they conveniently forget . In 2014, the Fayetteville NC VA hospital was cited for unsafe surgical practices. In 2014 the hospital was cited for not reviewing hospital deaths within 30 day of the death. Last week, the hospital was cited for failing to conduct adequate evaluations of patients before surgery, they failed to review patient deaths within 30 days of the death and they failed to provide adequate instrumentation in the surgical areas for surgical procedures being performed. So my thoughts are the senior management has 90 days to correct these problems and if not fixed in 90 days and the hospital has these same problems when reinspected, then the top management is FIRED.
As for being the top cop, my ideas are based on the fact that we have countries like Japan, Germany and other allies that benefit from our military spending, but provide just a fraction of the same spending in their own countries budget. And every situation requires a different response, but before we commit our human and military assets to any conflict, I would expect those countries that benefit the most to provide their own assets at the level they can to the endeavor before we do the same.This is not pacifism, it is expectations that those with an interest in the outcome provide to the effort to achieve the outcome they desire. For example how much should we spend patrolling the seas around Japan and how much should we expect Japan to that effort?
I think my views on our younger generation was clear. You may not agree with that position, so we don’t need to discuss that further as either individuals spend two years in support of their country in some way or they do not. And my idea is open only to what is considered “support of their country”.
Yes, I support the overall spirit of your ideas, I think there is much that can be done in terms of keeping the USA strong militarily yet others helping a lot more with their own self defense either with troops or more financial support. I seem to remember some cliché about having no one ride for free. Gas, grass or…oh I forget now in my old age. 🙂
Number two, that one might be workable, but it is hard to compare apples to oranges when it comes to economy, Closely related to that is number three- Oh my, a country gets ripped apart by a war, we come in and save that country, and while they are picking up the pieces of the wreckage, we hit them with a bill? That might work in some degree for places like Kuwait, but say some poor country gets invaded, they don’t get help unless they can afford us? How would that work, If we saved the Kurds from some entity trying to commit genocide on them, do they have to send people to our country to pick our lettuce or something?
Like I said, each situation has its own set of circumstances. As for the Kurds and being invaded where we have to lend support, I would expect the Kurds to provide military on the front line along with our men and women. As for the bill, the Kurds may not be able to pay off a bill, but in areas like Iraq, that is not true. We have spent more than 7 billion since August 2014 when the campaign against ISIS began. Iraq is supposedly broke. Not true, they have money, but spending it unwisely. They could repay some of the cost, but they have the same governmental mismanagement of funds as we have.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraq-is-broke-add-that-to-its-list-of-worries/2016/03/04/2cf42594-d4af-11e5-a65b-587e721fb231_story.html
Number 4, mandatory two years of service. My understanding is there is soon to be released a movie about Desmond Doss, talk about a super hero, yet a conscientious objector that would not pick up a gun even when running across a battlefield dodging bullets and saving lives. Forced labor of any kind to me is a very risky proposition, maybe it can be done in a prudent way, but there is a lot of danger involved that you might injure otherwise good and honorable people. While walking the tightrope to not becoming a tyrant to your own people, on the opposite side, whether you want it or not, there will be those lefties that will insist that all those compulsory servers get an endless list of “accommodations” they will insist that in every town where there is either a civilian or military camp of these kids, you will have to build a Hindu Shrine, a Mosque, shower accommodations for all twelve genders. No end, no end, someday you will have to build a fighter plane that can be flown by the visually impaired. You can’t discriminate at let only sighted people get to fly all the planes. Oh yeah, all at government and the taxpayer’s expense. There may be a day when compulsory service is a valid necessity, but in the US military today, there are no shortage of recruits, making someone serve that doesn’t want to serve only takes a job away from someone who does want that slot.
Mike, You’ve got more common sense than the rest of us combined. Bottle it and sell it somehow.
I wanted to leave a reply to Ron’s comment regarding Johnson being a stoner, which is way up there, above the fray, so I decided to leave it down here, to avoid a lot of scrolling:
I partially agree with you , Ron, on the similarities between pot and alcohol, but I think I disagree more than I agree.
It does seem unfair that alcohol is iegal ~ there are many more alcoholics than there are stoners (well, at least, everywhere except Colorado), being drunk off your ass seems more physically debilitating than being really, really high, marijuana has been shown to have some seriously important medicinal and pain killing properties, while alcohol seems to have lost its value as an anesthetic, somewhere around the early nineteenth century. Also, drunks get rowdy and agressive, while stoners tend to be mellow and laid back. Very mellow and laid back.
Based on the above, I am very much in favor of legalizing medical marijuana in all states. I know, based on my frequent trips to LA, that anyone who wants medical marijuana can get it. There are any numbers of doctors who have set up storefront practices, and will provide prescriptions for insomnia, stress, muscle soreness, etc. After getting the script, one can have it filled at any one of hundreds of little dispensaries. It is pretty expensive, compared with buying weed from your neighborhood dealer, but you know you’re getting some quality stuff. The cost of legal medical marijuana, however, has kept the local weed dealers very much in business. So, I suppose that that fact would encourage the advocates of legalization to push for legal recreational marijuana as well, and I’m not in favor of that.
Just because drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco are bad for you, doesn’t, in my mind, justify adding another potentially dangerous, dirty bad habit. In addition, the common arguments that marijuana is neither addictive nor dangerous are false. Cannabis addiction is real ~ I have had experience with the reality of it in my own family, and, although it may not be so for most people, for those who are addicts, it is an extremely difficult addiction to overcome.
Most importantly, early studies have shown a direct link between marijuana use and abnormal brain structure, with cognitive and memory impairments, as well as more serious effects, resembling schizophrenia. These studies have shown that these effects are worse and more common in those who begin using marijuana heavily in adolescence. The Dutch are only just now realizing the mental health costs of exposing young children and teenagers to constant marijuana use.
Do we really want to let this genie out of the bottle?
Do we really want to let this genie out of the bottle? Nope.
OK Priscilla and dduck, what genie are we addressing? I think I am missing something.
Oh heavens! I agree with you 100%. I know many life-long users and they are uniformly less intelligent and less reasonable than they were born to be. Its a type, Gary Johnson lends us a moment of humor, but who really wants their kid to be like him, memory and brain actually working wise? Cheech runs for POTUS.
Now, I have exhausted my well of commentary on an agreeable note and I am off to Opus’ dandelion patch dream of a trump (and assange etc.) free world.
The genies out of the bottle. It’s been out of the bottle since the late 60’s. We have had two know drug using presidents, both admitting they have used drugs at one time or the other in their lifetime. Obama and Clinton (yeah right, tried it once and did not inhale, my ass!) Obama even used C as he wrote in his book. “W” stopped drinking because he over indulged. Not sure if it was ever admitted he was a true alcoholic, but he came close. So if you have a number of states allowing for this use, then is this really a big deal. It’s a personal choice.
Now I do beleive tight controls need to be on these just like Alcohol and tobacco and I know there will be some under age people getting their hands on it, but having it illegal has not worked.
So is Trump’s and Clinton’s decision making better than one that may use pot? And that paints a broad spectrum, not just Johnson as he has no chance of winning.
Oh, I know THAT genie’s out of the bottle.
The genie that’s still in, is the one that says that there is a penalty to be paid for selling marijuana to be used recreationally. I suppose you could say that my case boils down to the old “two wrongs don’t make a right” argument.
Alcohol and tobacco addiction take countless lives every year, not to mention the healthcare costs of treatment and the anquish of families forced to deal with alcoholism and diseases directly linked to tobacco use. I don’t think that adding another legal drug into the mix is going to do anything to help the situation. If it is controlled to the extent that its use is permitted with prescription, then the prescribing doctors take on the responsibility for prescribing. No, that won’t necessarily keep it out of the hands of children or adolescents, but it will be a deterrent.
Legalizing a dangerous substance for recreational use, especially one that has been shown to alter the brain, seems insane to me, especially while we’re restricting things like sugar. And the fact that we have both scientific and anecdotal evidence that it is both addictive and harmful, and may, in fact, cause serious mental illness in some people, should be reason enough to prohibit recreational use.
Now I can’t say for sure one way or the other if selling this stuff is legal or not in the states of Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, the District of Washington D.C.and the cities of Portland and South Portland Maine or Keego Harbor, Michigan. All have legalized the use of marijuana for both recreational as well as medicinal purposes. So in these cases, any genie you address is standing right in front of you when it comes to possessing and using that substance. I would think if that is the case, then the sale is also legal, except maybe for the cities where it is still illegal statewide. Going forward voters in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada will also vote on ballot initiatives this November that would repeal prohibition of the drug. I suspect California and Maine would have a good chance passing, not so sure about Arizona and Massachusetts. However, if Arizona, California and Nevada pass those initiatives then most all states west of the Rockies will have legalized the drug, putting a huge dent in the DEA’s effort to continue classifying this the same as heroin, LSD, and ecstasy and the fed’s needs to support big pharma that wants to keep it illegal for profit reasons.. And then there is good ol’ Vermont where even though it is illegal, 25% of the population say they have used marijuana in the past year making it the second highest usage state behind Alaska. And it is illegal in Vermont for now. (Now I understand Bernie!!!)
So for a HUGE (Trumpism) portion of the population, two wrongs don’t make a right as it is right to begin with.
Times are changing. The same arguments that are now used against marijuana are recycled American Temperance Society arguments used against alcohol. And the same ineffective fight that took place during prohibition is taking place today. Never worked then and won’t work now.
It’s spelled YUGE, Ron 😉
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2016/10/05/marijuana-may-not-perfectly-safe-but-that-shouldn-make-illegal/n5uztLYIjJ59ZM4ucKBiyN/story.html?s_campaign=email_BG_TodaysHeadline&s_campaign=
As pot becomes more widely legal in more states and those states solve much of their budget problems off the taxes they collect, the feds will do the same, legalize it and then tax it. When it comes to safety, morals and taxes, taxes to the feds wins out. They use the safety issues now, but that will lose out when revenues get to the point the feds see tax revenues slipping by.
I just wonder what all those businesses selling pot do with all the cash they generate since banks can not accept pot money. Armored trucks pick up tax revenues and take them to the state tax offices. But where does all the profits end up? Anyone know?
Some answers here:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/cash-708945-marijuana-pot.html
Jay, I had read somewhat the same information with just a couple of differences. One article had an owner of a dispensary saying all of his personal accounts including a college 529 plan he had through his bank had all been cancelled since the bank could not be sure the money in those accounts were not “pot” money.
But this article does not actually answer the question. It states there was about 5.4 billion in pot sales last year. Assuming that most state taxes are in the range of Colorado’s right about 30%, that means about 1.6 billion in cash was turned over to the state revenue offices. That leaves somewhere in the range of 3.8 billion in cash floating around somewhere. Maybe the 266 banks have risk it and that is where this money is stored. But say you are somewhere where one of these banks are not located and say you have a profit of 1 million after taxes for the year, where is that money? Seems like somehow this much money is getting laundered somehow to make it almost impossible to track so it can get into a bank account or investment account somehow. Could be it is moved out of the country to a bank where they don’t care.
Mumm. Billions in cash floating around. That sounds like an ideal situation for someone with devious instincts and a lot of lawyers on the payroll with scamming experience – will Trump Weed Inc be his next Grrrreat business enterprise?
All points taken. And I am reasonably persuaded, in some respects, by most of them.
There are still serious issues to be considered, such as 1) people driving, operating machinery or performing in jobs that require good judgement, quick reaction time, concentration, etc. 2) How does marijuana affect an unborn baby? Early studies have shown that while babies may appear healthy at birth, their long term brain development is affected. 3) What is the effect of marijuana use on those who self-medicate for mental illness? Can marijuana exacerbate their symptoms, or cause new ones? Can habitual use cause mental illness in some adolescents (some studies have indicated that it can, particularly suicidal depression and/or delusional psychoses)?
I understand that alcohol has many of the same dangers, and some others. And tobacco as well. But both of those have been integrated into our society for centuries, and have been carefully studied.
We’re legalizing a drug for recreational use, and we don’t even know enough about it to warn people of its effects. Just the opposite, we’re telling people, young people in particular, that it is safer than alcohol.
And, we really have no idea.
Marijuana has been described in a Chinese medical reference and has been considered to date from 2737 B.C. Its use spread from China to India and then to N Africa and reached Europe at least as early as A.D. 500.The focus was on its powers as a medication for rheumatism, gout, malaria, and oddly enough, absent-mindedness. The Muslims too used it recreationally for alcohol consumption was banned by the Koran.
In 1545 the Spanish brought marijuana to the New World. The English introduced it in Jamestown in 1611 where it became a major commercial crop alongside tobacco and was grown as a source of fiber. Marijuana was listed in the United States Pharmacopeia from 1850 until 1942 and was prescribed for various conditions including labor pains, nausea, and rheumatism. Its use as an intoxicant was also commonplace from the 1850s to the 1930s. It was not until the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classified marijuana along with heroin and LSD as a Schedule I drug, i.e., having the relatively highest abuse potential and no accepted medical use that put stricter controls on the drug. Scientific research does not agree one way or the other on the effects of marijuana. There is more data showing that marijuana is not a gateway drug than there is showing it is. No scientific data shows marijuana as having the “highest abuse potential” like heroin.
As for your issues you listed, all of these are personal choices. You can not legislate personal choice and behaviors when perceived harm only happens to the person actively involved with that behavior. At one time the numbers game was illegal. People had to be protected from their own vices as it made them hooked on betting. Crime rings operated those until the government found out how much they were losing in tax revenues, so now we have national games and somehow that personal vice is no longer bad.
This issue will go on for years with those that want to control other peoples personal behaviors arguing for it to be illegal while those with more Libertarian views on personal behaviors either not taking a position or supporting legalization. Much the same as with alcohol where it is still illegal in some counties of the country.
Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one, Ron.
I am not someone who wants to dictate or control the behavior of others. But when people are out-and-out told that there is little to no risk to using marijuana, that it is a benign substance? That using the drug for recreational purposes will not harm themselves or others? That’s not the truth. We don’t even have the equipment capabilities of testing products for THC levels (such as marijuana cookies or lollipops, which are now sold all over Colorado) or quickly assessing how high an impaired driver is.
People need to make informed choices and local governments need to be prepared for the legal and healthcare costs of overconsumption and impairment.
I can’t fathom why this is the battle that libertarians want to have.
“I can’t fathom why this is the battle that libertarians want to have.”
Priscilla, this is the image that the main stream press, christian conservatives and others have created concerning the Libertarians. For the true Libertarian, pot is not the issue. Individual freedoms ARE the issue. Check the Libertarian platform and you will find that the Libertarians believe anyone should be able to pursue a life that they want as long as no harm comes to anyone else in the pursuit of that happiness. They place as much emphasis on repealing helmet laws for motorcycle riders as they do legalizing marijuana. They fight for women’s rights as much as pot heads rights. (And in my thinking there is harm to another individual when some women’s rights are practiced).
But to make the Libertarians look like a huge fringe element, those that believe their moral beliefs or candidates beliefs should be practiced by all regardless of whose individual rights are trampled upon, the media and others (like social conservatives) use pot as the prime platform issue which is wrong..
I don’t think that Libertarians (big L) are all potheads or think that legal weed should be highlighted as the primary platform issue, Ron. But, the issue is one that has been highlighted by the media; partly because of the number of people who want to legally use weed. Many people are sensitive not only to the apparent hypocrisy of outlawing marijuana when alcohol may be an equally dangerous, or even more dangerous, drug, and others point out the people who who have been arrested and jailed over the years, for merely possessing a relatively small amount of marijuana. Marijuana is indisputably less dangerous, than, say heroin or cocaine, and may be less dangerous than alcohol.
It seems to me that Libertarians highlight the hypocrisy, without seriously addressing the concerns. Gary Johnson is a good example….he argues that prescription drug abuse has killed many people, but that there are no documented deaths due to marijuana. He also claims that legalization will produce less overall drug abuse, which I suppose means that less people will be arrested for using drugs. He says flatly that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol.
No doubt, the issue gets a lot of press, to the detriment of the libertarian (small L) positions on other issues. And that’s probably something that the big L’s need to address, if they want to be a national party.
Sugar may damage your brain: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/04/496560373/this-scientist-is-trying-to-unravel-what-sugar-does-to-the-brain, could excessive alcohol and pot also be bad,especially if pot proliferates and has the badge of legitimacy? I think so, and please don’t offer to criminalize sugar as a balance. 🙂
Well, dd, according to some, sugar is MORE dangerous than weed:
“In a recent interview with The New Yorker magazine, President Obama said, “As has been well-documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” And despite claims to the contrary, marijuana hasn’t been directly linked to death.
Sugar consumption, however, has been linked to many health problems, with the most apparent of them being obesity. It’s added in so many things we consume, both food (cookies and pastries) to beverages (soda and juice), and comes in many different names, including anhydrous dextrose, maltose, and high-fructose corn syrup. As overconsumption leads to obesity, people put themselves at risk of weight-related health problems, including heart disease, which is the leading cause of death for both men and women, as well as diabetes and certain types of cancers.”
http://www.medicaldaily.com/sugar-more-harmful-our-health-marijuana-many-americans-think-so-271179
Thanks, sugar, er, honey, er, I mean female biped. 🙂
DANGER WARNING! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL!
Omg, I have sugar overdose just from watching the video!
I have some questions:
If Clinton is as clearly sharp and intelligent as you claim, how is it that she can also be the dumb blonde that AG Comey investigated ?
If Clinton is as clearly sharp and intelligent as you claim, how is it that her public performance record is so appallingly dull.
I did not watch the debate, and still have seen none of it.
I have no intentions of doing so.
I really want to see or hear from each of them as little as possible,.
I really do not think what either of them say means much at all.
They each will say whatever they think they need to, to get elected.
They are both seeking to carve a majority of votes out of their particular portion of the political spectrum. They can not deviate too far in one direction or another without alienating more votes than they gain. But what they say has only the remotest connection to how they will govern.
We have the best information regarding Clinton has she has not only been a public figure for a long time, but acted inside the literally public sphere – aka government for much of her life.
However smart she purportedly is that record is not impressive.
If elected Clinton will likely be far more lackluster than Obama.
To his credit Obama has managed 8 years as president and while that term has been marred by all kinds of failure, none of it has touched him personally.
Most of us like Obama – even if we do not agree with him on anything.
No one sees him as crooked. He has not used the public interest to line his own pockets.
No one seems to think he is owned by Goldman Sachs.
As badly as he may have done, possibly more so than any president in a long time, he seems to believe in what he has tried to do.
Does anyone think any of those things about Hillary ?
We can fight about the Clinton foundation as we please, does anyone really beleive the Clintons really give a Fig about people in Africa, or Haiti ?
Hillaries entire framework for life is about power and influence and trading power and influence.
We only know about Trumps conduct in the public part of the private sphere.
That is not the same. The rules are different. Public trust is completely different from private success. Clinton has betrayed the public trust, Trump has never had it.
Regardless of the fact that he is a carciture of a person, he has inarguably been incredibly successful – even if the worst claims about his start and ends are taken as truth.
He is a pompous ass – but he is an amazingly successful pompous ass.
Anyway I am not looking to defend Trump – I do not like him,
I think much of his platform is crap – though Clinton’s is worse.
But I do not really beleive much of what either of them say.
Nor do I beleive either of them will even try much less get to do more than a tiny fraction of what they say.
In the end we have a choice between evil and lessor evil.
And I am increasingly certain I am voting for Gary Johnson.
Atleast I will be able to look at myself in the mirror after election day
In 2000 I thought Bill Clinton had been a disastrous president, that he would be little more than a foot note in history.
Today, how many of us would take him back in a second over either his wife or Trump – atleast if we can get past the lying under oath, the blue dress, and the subsequent stories about dozens of trips on the lolita express.
After Clinton somehow we had a choice between Gore and Bush – until now I thought we could never have two so abysmal choices.
Bush was a thoroughly unimpressive president, maybe not a total disaster, but not anywhere near the top of the Presidential list.
Obama has been atleast as bad as Bush – despite a radically different agenda and personality, there presidencies are quite hard to distinguish.
Now we have a choice between Trump and Clinton.
Everyone is portraying this as the the impending end of the world.
Everyone get a clue – it is NOT.
We have alot of problems. It is unlikely either of these two will fix any of them.
Probably they will make them worse.
But neither of them will end the world as we know it.
If you are on the right there is nothing Clinton can actually do that will be worse for the country than things that have already been done by past left wing nuts.
Further she is more criminal than ideologue and we have endured those before.
If you are on the left, get a grip Trump is not going to start a nuclear war.
Frankly he is less likely to than Clinton. Trump is a non-interventionist. He has little interest in messing arround in the rest of the world. It is Clinton that has the history of military misadventures.
If Trump is elected PPACA is going to die – guess what, it is dying anyway, and Clinton can not save it.
When Obama was elected I prayed that absolutely everything that I was near certain of economically and politically was wrong and that doing all the wrong things would somehow work.
I prayed that quite sincerely. I would much rather have been proven wrong and had left wing ideology and economics actually work and be seeing 4% growth over the past 8 years.
But that has not happened.
We have F’d up in myriads of ways – and we are still here.
Doing as well as we should – not be a long shot. Still headed for the cliff ? Yup.
But still here.
Economically electing Clinton if she even comes close to trying to follow her platform or those who appear to be her advisors, will be 4-8 more years of the crappy economy we have now – with possibly another recession in their.
I am betting on a recession in the next 9 months no matter what.
Electing Trump offers some chance of improvement. Not much, but atleast a chance.
That chance depends on beleiving he is lying regarding trade, and in his plans to match Clinton in spending. Regardless he is unlikely to be worse.
Further facts on the ground come close to dictating that neither is going to be able to do anything all that bad.
We have problems with govenrment spending.
They are not going away.
We can not bring it down.
But no one, not Trump not Clinton is going to increase it all that much either.
Our path is unsustainable – if things are going to hell in the next 4 years that will happen regardless of which one is elected.
Further everything is not bad.
In Rand’s mythical Atlas shrugged it took an incredible amount of government failure to choke “the engine of the world”, today it is pulling along at less than half speed.
But it is pulling.
If it is humanly possible to do so – and it always has been in the past, it will either break the chains holding us back – or grow strong enough to drag them along anyway.
The biggest problem with left wing progressive nonsense is not that it will bankrupt us – though I do worry, but that it DOES significantly reduce the rate of improvement.
It does NOT prevent things from improving.
Even after 8 years of Obama and 8 years of Bush the US is STILL doing better than nearly all of europe, and much of the world.
Again the point – left or right, Trump or Clinton. The world is not going to end.
Those who tell you it will are lying – regardless of which they are looking to blame.
I generally agree, Dave. Although it’s depressing as hell to know that we’re looking a major tax increases, an austerity economy, and an ever growing bureaucracy, red tape as far as the eye can see. I hope that the Republicans are able to hold Congress.
Wow! Dave is back! I’ll have to check and see if he responded to my email I sent him awhile back. Anyway, for all the talk about marijuana on this thread, about 18 years ago after joining the Army I was interrogated as part of being granted a top secret clearance. I told them I had never used any marijuana nor had I even been around anyone that used it in my presents. That’s my story…and I’m sticking to it. (Somehow I suddenly feel a closer kinship to the candidates and the stories they tell now.)
After putting up my comment, I realized Dave had made a similar claim to mine. So to avoid any potential confusion, I do believe Dave’s claim about having not taken any illegal substances of any kind, I do not believe my own claim that I never used such substances.
Oh Boy, did Romney ever nail it, and many months ago. Vindicated he is.
Today:
“Multiple Republican strategists predicted in interviews with RealClearPolitics that Trump’s comments, unearthed and revealed by the Washington Post, would mark a defining moment in the campaign, perhaps one from which Trump will not recover. The political path forward for Trump, they agreed, is now narrow and highly challenging.”
Sometime in the next month?:
Today revelations that Donald Trump has been selling the information from his classified security briefings to the Russian Government to finance his casinos sent his campaign reeling. Multiple Republican strategists predicted in interviews with RealClearPolitics that Trump’s traitorous actions would mark a defining moment in the campaign, perhaps one from which Trump will not recover. The political path forward for Trump, they agreed, is now narrow and highly challenging.
So today there are three basic variants of GOP opinion that I read in the news from various GOP consultants politicians and commentators.
First this won’t hurt him, we already know who he is.
Second, these remarks are terrible, he must immediately show real contrition or it might be a problem.
Third, this is the end of trump.
The existence of the first variant is the most astounding, no small number of GOP people have expressed it. The second variant is still pretty morally oblivious. A major problem with trump for the gop is that he has turned off the part of people’s brain that senses danger because he survives everything that should be fatal. People won’t live long if they think that maybe they Can jump out of an airplane without a parachute. A large part of the GOP now believes that perhaps the GOP nominee can simply be invincible, he can jump out of an airplane, nothing is ever lethal to him. Imagine that some unlikely miracle occurs and he recovers from this and wins. It will be proof. Imagine what he will do to the GOP and much worse, the country, then, this invincible immortal man who can do absolutely anything and has no need for the fear portion of the brain. Imagine what he could do regarding foreign policy and military actions that are beyond congressional oversight.
Barring a miracle, trump IS dead and the GOP by dithering about saying so and taking half measures that are a huge moral contradiction is considerably compounding the damage trump has done to the brand. We Need a GOP brand that can counter the excesses of Dem/liberal ideas. And yet we are watching the death of the GOP as a presidential party if not more. The chances that this wound to the soul of the GOP will heal at some point after the election are fading away. That one man could do such damage is astounding, no matter how many millions of enablers he has.
You nailed it!
Its sad Jay. I am completely sincere when I say that we Need a GOP that functions as a coherent party to balance the Dem excesses. How will millennials progress ideologically as they age, how many will morph into GOP voters according to the traditional progression? Today the GOP is on the ropes as a presidential party but alive as a congressional one. Twenty years from now the GOP may be defunct as a congressional party as well exactly because of the impression that this election will make on the younger generations today, a complete violation of respect for women and decency and the general values of young people has been accepted by GOP leaders and voters. In Vermont, there is just one party, in effect. It really can happen, in spite of hubris, failure and excess of one party rule. Tomorrow the US?
Unfortunately one inherent problem with politics and politicians is that they have little incentive to think beyond immediate crises. Somehow rationalizing trump so that they don’t lose the deplorable wing of the party today is the immediate dilemma of people like Ryan and McCain (who I respect and have some sympathy for). For the sake of their chances in this election they are choosing thus far to endanger their future. Its sort of like making the wrong bullpen decision by Showalter, but with much higher stakes.
GW, I am not sure this country can continue with a two party system. I say that because the greatest majority of voters that support the democrat party are social liberals. Who cares if we have fiscal nightmares in the future, states are not able to have right to work laws, businesses are dictates to as to wages and benefits and the host of other issues that the democrats face as long as individuals have the right to live the way they want to live and be supported by the government in those pursuits. As I have stated many times, we then have a second party that tries to appeal to a vast number of differing opinions , but holds true to fiscal conservatism (or that’s their story and they are sticking to it). No way this party will find candidates in the future that are not slimeballs like Trump, puritanical social value dictators like Cruz or some other darling of the a minority wing of the GOP. The democrats can come together to support their candidate regardless of their differences because their differences do not include the major platform of the party. Social values. The republicans will find it hard to come together behind anyone because one that may be acceptable on the economy may well be unacceptable on social issues and the divide will never heal.
That is why the GOP is a congressional party. People of like values seem to live in like areas. The red part of the states and country get redder, while the blue parts of the country get bluer. There are many fewer swing districts today compared to years ago. And I would argue that is not due to gerrymandering since the democrats did that when they had state controls just like the GOP is doing it today (Original NC 12th congressional district)
So I agree with you that the GOP’s chances of another president has decreased substantially for the future and not unless the leadership realizes that people do not want the government in their personal lives will those chances improve absent a democrat presidents total failure. The other issue is the money and where those with fiscal conservative policies begin sending their money. Once they find some other place to support, that will also doom the GOP chances.
Ron, in truth I have a hard time believing that the 2 party system can really die, people have an inborn drive to settle out into at least two opposing groups.
My moderate liberal wish is that the GOP collapses into a deplorable party, the libertarians become much stronger inheriting fiscal conservatives, the Dems inherit moderate GOP voters and sensible conservatives and liberals and become a moderate to liberal party, and the loony left splits off into a progressive Jill Stein free everything party. In my dream view power would mainly be split between Libertarians and a moderated Dem party, with the main bone of contention being taxes and spending. Libertarians and the GOP would unite on some issues. Social issues are going to increasingly lose power due to demographics and aging. I don’t know about racial issues, they may never leave us.
GOP = GROPE
From Jonah Goldberg:
“If you’re shocked that Donald Trump was capable of being this much of a pig, you let yourself be deluded. If you’re surprised that the Clinton campaign — or some allied party — found something like this, you willfully chose to live in a fantasyland. If you think there isn’t more of this stuff waiting, you’re doubling down on your delusions and fantasies. The grab them by the p***y video is the perfect October surprise two days before the debate, when early voting is really coming online, and when Trump’s Achille’s heel is his poor standing with moderate suburban college educated women. That is not a coincidence. I can’t imagine what the Clinton campaign would be unloading if Trump were five points ahead. Donald Trump is a fundamentally dishonorable and dishonest person – and has been his whole adult life. The evidence has been in front of those willing to see it all along. And there’s more to find. And there’s more in the Clinton stockpile. Character is destiny. The man in the video is Donald Trump. Sure, it’s bawdy Trump. It’s “locker room Trump.” And I’m no prude about dirty talk in private. But that isn’t all that’s going on. This isn’t just bad language or objectifying women with your buddies. It’s a married man who is bragging about trying to bed a married woman. It’s an insecure, morally ugly, man-child who thinks boasting about how he can get away with groping women ”because you’re a star” impresses people. He’s a grotesque — as a businessman and a man full stop. If you can see that, but still think Hillary Clinton would be worse. Fine. Just be prepared for an endless stream of more embarrassments in your name. And, for my friends in the media and in politics, if you minimize, dismiss or celebrate his grotesqueness out of partisan zeal, just keep in mind that some people, including your children, might think you mean it. Or, they might know you don’t mean it. Which means they now know you lie for a living. And if you can’t see what a hot mess Donald Trump is yet, I doubt you ever will and I wonder what fresh Hell will allow the realization to penetrate your consciousness. Either way, this video is not an aberration. It is not a special circumstance. It’s him. There’s no pivot in him. There’s no “presidential” switch to flip. He’s Donald Trump all the way down. And he will humiliate and debase his defenders so long as they feel the need to defend this indefensible man.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/440859/trumps-piggishness-surprises-beguiled
More verification of unwanted groping and kissing and attempted seduction:
http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-words-echo-womans-allegations-507763
He may find himself in Cosby’s shoes at this rate.
In one poll a whopping 60% of GOP voters or leaners and only 6% of Dem voters or leaners believe that trump respects women. Completely Different Universes. The same party that tends to think that global warming is a hoax believes that trump respects women. They are going to have a hard time selling their party to young voters.
The Arnold has given The Donald the Middle Finger:
“For the first time since I became a citizen in 1983, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for President,” began his statement posted to his social media accounts on Saturday morning.
He goes on to say that, like many Americans, he had been conflicted about who to vote for in this election. “I still haven’t made up my mind about how exactly I will vote next month,” he writes. “But as proud as I am to label myself a Republican, there is one label that I hold above all else — American. So I want to take a moment today to remind my fellow Republicans that it is not only acceptable to choose your country over your party — it is your duty.”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/arnold-schwarzenegger-wont-vote-republican-trump-936582
And McCain has Dumped the Donald too –
The cruelest cut?
TicTac USA DENOUNCES TRUMP:
Tic Tac respects all women. We find the recent statements and behavior completely inappropriate and unacceptable.
Nice on Jay! Now we need to have entertainers like Bruce Springsteen refuse to play in any venues that sell Life Savers candies because Life Savers hasn’t come out to denounce Trump like Tic Tac has.
Heh, well, Jay and GW, feel free to indulge in a bit of schadenfreude at my expense, as well as glee over the implosion of Trump and the glorious impending Hillary Clinton Presidency. You’ve earned it 🙂
Despite Trump being my 3rd or 4th or 5th, etc. (count to 16) choice in the primaries, I did decide, after he won the nomination, that I would support him as the only real alternative to a Clinton victory. I underestimated both the size of his ego and the weakness of his character. I very much doubt that I will now be voting for him, or for anyone else this year. You couldn’t pay me to vote for Hillary, possibly the only candidate that I find more detestable than Trump, and there will be no competitive local or congressional races on my ballot.
While we’re all condemning Trump for his coarse language and sleazy attitudes toward women, I hope that we throw a little shade at the coarseness of our culture in general, and the disgusting slop that passes for music and entertainment these days. And let’s not forget the hypocrisy of those feigning outrage over Trump’s remarks, while revering cigar smokin’, blue dress stainin’, ole Bubba, the soon-to-be First Gentleman.
As far as the likelihood of another GOP president in the future? I tend to doubt it….the GOP is a fractured party in a leftward-moving society. While the party itself may survive, as a congressional party (assuming redistricting doesn’t kill it off), it’s future may lie as a part of a coalition with other minority parties. That may even be true of the Democrats eventually; as the socialists push out any remaining moderates, and orphaned identity groups look for safe haven.
Anyway, I’m out for now, at least until after this God-forsaken election.
Honestly, I feel no need to be gleeful over your pain.
“While we’re all condemning Trump for his coarse language and sleazy attitudes toward women, I hope that we throw a little shade at the coarseness of our culture in general, and the disgusting slop that passes for music and entertainment these days.
With the greatest ease and enthusiasm. Remember, though, its international, the shit has spread worldwide. I saw a lot of it last time I was in Russia and made a scene about it in a public place! The imagery and talent level of cultural objects was much prettier in the golden age of radio and the early age of TV, if society itself may have been no better.
“And let’s not forget the hypocrisy of those feigning outrage over Trump’s remarks, while revering cigar smokin’, blue dress stainin’, ole Bubba, the soon-to-be First Gentleman.”
Well, that would not be me, I think that they are two very similar egotistical pigs with no self control and shitty values regarding sexual behavior. I will say that there is a difference in their public attitude towards women and sex, with trump being openly vile and often proud of it due to compensation for something else that must be inadequate. It does matter that he is quite loud about his ideas, it amounts to promoting them along with himself. That is intolerable in a POTUS. The actions of Bill and trump are very similar. Both actions and words matter in a POTUS.
What I find so amusing is the party of the bible pounding Christians, the “in-your-face”, “I’m- telling-you-how-to-live-your-life” social value do gooders and the morally higher than thou elite is now led by one of the most disgusting, repulsive and unacceptable humans this country has ever witnessed. How can a fire and brimstone preacher in a Southern Baptist church get up on a Sunday morning and preach the love of Jesus and turn around and promote Donald Trump for President. The same goes for Jerry Falwell And how can Franklin Graham compare Donald Trump to Moses and King David saying they all have huge flaws. Flaws is one thing, being a Donald is something quite different.
The chickens have come home to roost and now the Republicans have to live with their chosen leader. I just feel bad that good elected officials like Kelly Ayotte, Richard Burr and other GOP senators are most likely going down to defeat since so many moderate independents and republicans may not vote at all. I suspect the best the republicans will do is 50-50 in the senate, giving the democrats the tie breaking vote.
Ron, I was struck by the fact that some of the trump evangelical religious advisors, Ralph Reed is one, who are the leaders of evangelical organizations claimed that this is all nothing and no one will care and then went on what sounded a hell of a lot more like a rightwing political speech than the speech of a religious leader to make the case for trump. They seem to be more nationalist politicians than religious leaders.
GW: you made so many valid points, one of them that I wanted to pile onto is how our culture/society while may not be entirely vulgar and immoral, it certainly has a strong element that is. We objectify and sexualize women, and perhaps to a slightly lesser degree, men in advertising, cinema, music, seemingly everything, but go bonkers with outrage when and individual is caught doing what is so accepted in other forms. One thing you said both intrigued and puzzled me: “made a scene about it in a public place”. What? You were in Russia and you made a scene in a public place? I can’t imagine what you are talking about, but whatever it was, it sounds quite dangerous, at a minimum they could kick you out and deny you reentry. But again, here I am at a loss of understanding what you were describing.
Well, yes I did, more than once (make a scene) The one about the decay of musical culture I am probably being over dramatic about. I was sitting in a waiting room in the office of an actuary with my wife’s sister who needed soem wretched piece of paper to meet some bureaucratic demend on her life (endless in Russia, you would not believe it) The Russian equivalent of MTV was playing on a tv for the line of bored people waiting their lives away. Fake music by fake performers sort of the Russian equivilent of 80-90 music, mostly female singers with huge fake real estate, music itself of no taste or talent. And I sat there loudly saying so to my sister in law while the Russian waiters in line sat despondently looking at their shoes. I covered the ground somewhat maliciously of how good Russian music was in an earlier era and how music everywhere had decayed. Actually I blamed the US for the cultural leadership in this sorry trend. Not really a scene, I exaggerated, but I certainly embarrased 10 or 15 Russians about the shit they were listening to (my sister in law is a free spirit , an artist, she did not cringe or complain, just agreed with me).
I did make a real public scene in Moscow once, in the airport after they would not let me leave the country because an idiot bureaucrat had neglected to give me back my stamped form stating that I had registered that I was staying in a Russian home. It happened at about 5 am after I had been denied the right to leave, fined by a miserable ugly rude slavic in the worst way woman in a little cage, and found out that the airline was going to get another $250 out of me and my wife for our tickets when we did finally get the right to leave. I lost it and was shouting things like I hate this country, Now I understand why everyone wants to leave Russia, its miserable, and other stuff, in english though. 2003 it was I believe. THere were plenty of Russians around, looking a bit astonished.
Nobody shot me or arrested me, it was 2003. Today, I would not want to try it as an American there.
http://www.postandcourier.com/20161009/161009524/fox-news-gop-should-start-over
Jennifer Rubin: “We’ve increasingly felt that the GOP is — to borrow a phrase — irredeemable.
Beyond Trump, his enablers, the spineless Reince Priebus and the horde of anti-immigrant talk-show hosts, there are the GOP regular voters and nearly all elected officials. They’ve all embraced Trump, allowing themselves to be intellectually corrupted and morally debased.
How would such a party ever regain its integrity and shed the stain of Trump?
In essence, either the #NeverTrump or the Trumpkins (along with their enablers) control the GOP. If it is the latter, the former must decamp to set up a party that would, in Daniels’ words, stand “first of all for freedom and the assumption of human dignity that goes with it, that we are not mere victims, that it demeans the dignity of people to render them dependent on the state, tell them that they need the protection of their benevolent betters to get by in life.”
We know the model for that new party — the party of Daniels, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Evan McMullin, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. It’s a party that believes in limited government but does not hate government. It believes in free trade, immigration reform (not mass deportation), fiscal sobriety and responsible international leadership.”
Well, it finally happened: Trump has come crashing down in a stinking heap. I thought it would have happened before he won all those primaries; I’m amazed that he survived as long as he did. I’m also sorry that I cut him as much slack as I did; I wouldn’t have voted for him, but I was hoping his candidacy might challenge the Clinton-WallStreet oligarchy and expose its rottenness. Instead, they exposed his. Yes, I’m sure Bill Clinton has made even more piggish comments about women, and Hillary has been recorded (in print) verbally abusing innocent staffers and other low-level personnel in the foulest terms, but the case against Trump is just overwhelming at this point. It’s an epic disaster for the GOP and for America. Trump has earned himself a spot in the history books — but not the way he wanted.
Well Rick, with the political death and burial of the Donald. I guess the burden is now on you to have a new topic. I don’t know what it would be. But it could be anything, even the Supreme Court taking up an NFL related case. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/29/495945690/supreme-court-takes-up-trademark-case-that-could-affect-redskins-name
Mike and Rick, how about how the GOP can salvage the senate, somewhat the same as they did in 1996 when many in the party abandoned Dole and where able to gain seats. Is there any comparison where the party can abandon Trump and go all out for the senate and retain control?
Hopefully the groping episode has persuaded previously undecided voters to Dump Trump; but his ‘proud deplorable’ base is having none of it. Bill was worse; Hillary is far worse; the MSN, distorting the story, is multitudes worse.
Like boxers blinded by an unexpected sucker punch that buckles the knees, they’re out there swinging in arcs of desperation, hoping to hit something. The TwitterSphere is filled with it: Rapist Bill; Rapist enabling Hillary; Crooked Hillary emails; crooked Hillary wealth; Dying Hillary Seizures. Even Tucker Carlson, falsely charged with rape in the past, was out there this morning ressurecting Bill’s past Indiscretions.
Tonight’s debate will be enlightening: will Trump make his sincere, believable apology – before or after he tries to savage Bill’s sexual excesses? 😏. Will he then smear Hillary; insinuate as he has recently that she has cheated too?
I personally hope Hillary takes the initiative and attacks first! When they come out on the stage to shake hands, she should raise a Viking battle shield in front of her crotch. Or give some out to women in the audience.
When it comes to TV tonight, its New York Giants at Green Bay Packers!!! Who wants to waste 2 hours listening to two liars and the press that allows them to do that.
Honestly the thought of this debate completely turns my stomach. I will not watch any more than I willingly would watch an execution by hanging. I will go to bed early and in the morning read the news and see what is left of our candidates. Anyhow that is what i am saying now.
More replies to all in the morning.
Ron, I should have done more cuts of things I liked about GW’s comments, but I’ll do it with yours:
“red part of the states and country get redder, while the blue parts of the country get bluer….not due to gerrymandering” Very interesting, I never thought of it that way, but I think you are on to something there.
“so amusing is the party of the bible pounding Christians,…led by one of the most disgusting, repulsive and unacceptable humans this country has ever witnessed.” Yes, I find it quite hilarious too, however it does lead me to an answer to one of your questions:
“How can a fire and brimstone preacher in a Southern Baptist church get up on a Sunday morning and preach the love of Jesus and turn around and promote Donald Trump for President?” The answer to that, IMO is easy, the type of person you are describing sees pro-choice, and by platform, the Democrat party, as murderers of hundreds of thousands of innocent children. Trump is in their eyes, is merely a sinner, and a slave to lust of the flesh, a concept most of them can tolerate. So between slime ball and someone they see as perpetuating and/or expanding a form of genocide, they have no problem voting for and even promoting Trump. It is fun to see them squirm on such discussions though.
I did watch the debate. I wanted to comment prior to listening to any news anchor’s comments or written summaries. I felt the Donald was vastly improved from his prior debate. He still did a whole lot of interrupting which reinforces the image that he his like a child that can’t take an insult without crying out. But his outbursts were much more subdued and he was much more focused on his attacks on his opponent. I felt the moderators seemed relatively fair, pushing Clinton hard at times as well as Trump, fair with one shocking exception. Trump made an argument that the administration should not have announced their attack on Mosul in advance, and asked why would anyone do that? The one moderator, rather than give Hillary a turn to answer, tried to answer it herself. That stunned me, she apparently was arguing on behalf of Hillary. Speaking of Hillary, she seemed to do a pretty good job dodging questions, not answering what was asked, as Donald did on occasion as well. But she did seem to struggle under intense attack at times. I thought it was very sweet how it ended, both candidates giving a somewhat kind answer about the opposing candidate. Who won, objectively probably Hillary, but subjectively, seeing the vast improvement in Trump, it felt like Trump won.
I am fine with having Bill Clinton embarrassed over the Broadderick accusations, suits me fine. Deserves it richly. Should hopefully subdue him a bit in his role as first lady chaser. If trump wishes to expend his capital on hunting his old golf buddy, that is his choice. From what I read he did not make any sincere attempt to apologize. So he blew it. But, who would he apologize to, how do you apologize for bragging about committing sexual assault? There is no one to apologise to except his actual targets, which he cannot admit to having. Apparently he more or less dared the media to find evidence of actual suxual wrong-doing. I remember when Gary Hart did that and how it worked out for him. His buddy Ailes can explain it to him over a beer someday. After the campaign is over the one with a chance of prison or at least a courtroom drama, may be trump himself.
The throw her in prison crowd, gleefully fed by Bannon-trump, is in ecstasy this morning I am sure. We will see by week’s end if they should be.
Oh my, that is some typo.
GW – Thanks for sharing those events you had in Russia. It reminds me of how hard it is to predict human behavior. My cultural bias would assume you would have been to fearful of the authorities to make a stink at the airport. Also, I had not heard the term “first lady chaser” before, did that come out before or after the Colin Powell email leaks?
From the HuffPost, more of a propaganda machine than a news organization but all the same here is a name, Jill Harth, that will move front and center in the coming weeks. Move over Cosby you are going to have company on your slow-motion descent into hell:
“Former model Jill Harth recently spoke to New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff about having felt victimized by Trump.
She said Trump groped her under a table and grabbed her crotch during a trip to Palm Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know how to handle it. I would go away from him and say I have to go to the restroom. It was the escape route,” she told the Times.
At the time, Harth and her then-boyfriend ran a pageant company that Trump was interested in forming a business partnership with. A subsequent lawsuit alleged that Trump also tried to have sex with a female friend of theirs, but that she fought him off.
But Harth’s description of Trump grabbing her by the crotch reads like a near-exact account of the kind of behavior Trump bragged about in the 11-year-old tape released Friday.
“When you’re a star they let you do it,” Trump can be heard telling Bush. “You can do anything. … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.””
Also in the pipeline is the rape charge court hearing, Trump accused by woman who claims she was 13 years old at the time
Federal Judge Orders Hearing in Donald Trump Rape Lawsuit:
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/federal-judge-orders-hearing-in-donald-trump-rape-lawsuit-case/
That’s only a preliminary hearing, not until December 16, 2016, but every time Trump tries to dodge his groping habits, critics should drop in the Spector of Child Rape as counterpoint.
I would hope the GOP has learned its lesson and come up with something that prohibits another candidate like Trump to be nominated ever again. Trump runs, no one expects him to win, liberal media (along with Fox for some other reason) decides that openly they would talk Trump down, but then secretly promote his campaign by covering every stop he made on the campaign trail giving him millions of unpaid advertising, Trump wins and the GOP is stuck with the candidate the liberals wanted to run against. WHAT A DEAL!!!
I just hope that the big money political action committees (like the NRA political action fund) takes all their remaining moneys these last 25 or so days and redirects that to a “save the senate” campaign where that money is used to promote republican positions where there is a senate race going on. Can we afford a senate led by Chuck Schumer who will railroad through anything Clinton wants?
Ron- I agree in spirit to everything you said, but in method, I am hoping the demise of the GOP might lead to something better, the GOP has far too long failed to deliver on any of their promises. I am hoping for better, but sadly I also realize that if the GOP became a 3rd party or a weaker than 3rd party, that the replacement party, whatever that party would be, might end up being something even worse.
Mike, I believe if the GOP had closed primaries and super delegates that for the most part the candidates that would end up with the nominations would be a Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, etc and not a Ted Cruz, Donald Trump or Rick Santorum. I think the majority would come together behind one candidate and the fringe elements of the party would not have the influence they had this election. And with the latest information that is being released from Clinton’s leaked e-mails, it appears that the democrats did whatever they could to promote Trump as much as they could since a couple insiders made the comment that clinton could not defeat a Republican unless it was Trump.
This information may not be correct and may just be a reporters interpretation as to what someone said in writing.
But I feel certain when Clinton is elected, her administration is doomed from the start unless she does what her husband did and moves to the middle to work with a republican house to get anything passed. But that may be in jeopardy since the house will be intent on email investigations, unlike when her husband had not been accused of affairs with Monika yet,
No, the Republican Party needs and deserves a humiliating ass whooping across the board.
What they’ve allowed to happen requires political chastisement.
Jay they are getting their ass whooping this election. Just like the democrats in 72 and 80. After they lost those two elections, the democrats decided more input from party insiders was needed and though the years since they have tweaked their system to the one in hand today. That system basically locked out Bernie Sanders even though he was extremely popular and had all delegates been pledged through primaries, he may have captured the nomination.
So going forward, if the GOP does not want another “Ass Whooping”, they need something close top that system the Demcorats use now.
Cynical me: nothing is going to change either party long term; like spanking a recalcitrant child, the corrective benefits dont last long before the bratty behavior returns.
The vortexes of power – media, mega money donators, and the ‘usual suspects’ – behind the scenes power brokers – will resurrect the same system with new politicians to squeeze and control. This recurring pattern seems to be the ‘norm’ in all Democratic governments – so we may see realignments of voting blocks after this election fiasco; but not much else will change or improve down the road.
This is my one cup of morning coffee analysis. Maybe I’ll brighten up after breakfast: French Toast & Poached Eggs w/ Homefries may improve my optimism …
(It’s this kind of intentional willful deception that makes Trump so dangerous to our security).
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-was-told-russia-was-blame-hacks-long-debate-n663686
Notice the words of condemnation from the US Intelligence official: “willful misrepresentation”
This fool Trump should not be given any additional security briefings because they will be going straight from his ears to Putin’s.
Jay, that seems to be quite a big jump you are making. First let us take as a given the words of unnamed senior intelligence official as absolute truth. However those words do not clearly say what type of interference the Russians are attempting to do, nor does it say what type of success, if any, the Russians have achieved. Even though it is quite likely the Russians have attempted to hack just about everything, and plausible that they have succeeded in some areas, to take a statement of Trump’s that: “Maybe there is no hacking.” and make it into an accusation that Trump is relaying his intelligence briefing information to the Russians, seems quite unfounded.
If anything, the opposite case could be made. Suppose for example, the candidates were briefed that a country ABC has developed weapon type XYZ, and then Trump said, we don’t know if country ABC does or doesn’t have weapon XYZ. A statement like that doesn’t give away any classified information nor the sources of secret information. An official coming out and saying, “That is willful misrepresentation, both Donald and Hillary know that country ABC has weapon XYZ.” That, in my opinion gives away more information than what Trump said.
More of a hop and a skip, Mike.
This isn’t the first instance of the intelligence community voicing reservations about sharing sensitive information with Trump. Some senior intelligence officials have refused to participate in briefings with him.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/candidates-poised-for-classified-briefings-despite-spy-agency-worries-over-trump/2016/07/28/865cd686-5500-11e6-bbf5-957ad17b4385_story.html
Have you ever heard anything like this before, from high level individuals responsible for protecting and safeguarding our security?
Why are they expressing skepticism of Trump’s suitability to reveive national security information? Makes me think they know something they’re unable to release publically that has tripped warning alarms.
Interesting that even here the Trump clown ship is sinking any mention of the leaked Clinton e-mails over the weekend.
on, that, IMO is another excellent observation you made. The way “The Donald” news just permeates everything, even the new negative information on his opponent can hardly breath. I think I will do a count on this thread, in the comment section alone, how many times his last name is written verses every instant of the Democrat nominee’s first or last name….stand by for ratios, I’m even going to count her husband’s last name reference, or daughter’s if the last name is used….
It was fun for awhile, re-reading all the posts, counting Donald, Donny, and Trump, Hillary, Clinton… but after perhaps 60 to 70% of the way, I just got sick of it. When I stopped the Trump count was 135 and the Clinton count was 99. I think I’m going to have to take a break from all this myself. 🙂 for, I don’t know, two weeks or two hours. I don’t know.
Jay: I think I read that one link previously, but I re-read it and noticed this: “Only the winner of the election in November will be given a detailed briefing on the most sensitive U.S. secrets, including clandestine CIA operations and capabilities overseas.” So it seems as though they aren’t getting the full scoop at this time, which is fine with me.
No, I never recall an intelligence official threatening to refuse to brief anyone authorized. I can respect virtually anyone willing to give up their livelihood for standing up against something they believe is wrong. However, to say anonymously you would do something, which could be just posturing, vs. actually doing it, well it is hard to say how valuable the views of that source is. I remember the author of the book “About Face” a Colonel Hackworth gave up his career because he did not agree with some of the methods the Army was doing in officer rotations in the Vietnam war, basically officers would be put in charge, make mistakes that cost soldier lives, then they would learn from those mistakes but get rotated out for newer officers to learn the same lessons at the expense of more lives. I would highly recommend that book to anyone, it is not about just that one issue, it covers his commando operations during the Korean War, lots of close hand combat stuff as well as big picture military stuff.
But if the Intelligence community doesn’t trust him with ‘un-sensitive’ info ( and he’s already breached that level of confidence by misrepresenting the Russian hacking connection) how can he be trusted with the full package of intelligence?
Answer: he can’t be trusted.
More Trump-Russian Connection:
“Russia govnt falsified an email. Then Trump recited the falsified email at a rally. Only those two knew it. How?”
http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-benghazi-sputnik-508635
With trump having about a 10% chance on Nate Silvers nowcast, the election is now a side issue to the GOP civil war. Even Christie and Giuliani have called trumps sexual assault confession unacceptable. Ryan, McCain, and a new round of other join Romney. These guys understand something about America, elections and politics that the others don’t. And yet you have the deplorables still claiming it locker room talk and not important. There are many such division points in the GOP between the, as Priscilla called them, vulgar elements, or as Clinton called them, deplorables. With apparently 75% of GOP voters and a larger number of its politicians still behind trump, he has turned a party in which 30% of its members were the vulgar element into one in which 75% is. This is called leadership. Leadership is not always benevolent.
I agree wholeheartedly with the views expressed by George Will, in the linked article below. A respected pillar of Conservatve Republican values, his observations on Trump and the 2nd Debate, match my own Centrist-Liberal point of view on matters Trumpian.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440925/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-debate
Ah! I can laugh again! Life is good. I read that Trump said the shackles have come off. No more Mr. Nice and modest decorum that has been holding Trump back, now we’re going to see the real, hard-nosed Trump. It is about time, I’m tired of all his gentle, stifled reactions, once he lets it really rip, the voters are going to love it!
So, Rick if you are out there, here is a suggestion your the next piece: Are there opportunities for the formation of a moderate party in this mess? Could one of the major parties become a centrist party? I say that the Dems could gather the 25% of GOP politicians/voters who are not caught up in trump madness, not evangelical and not populist to make them into the blue dog democrats and leave the GOP to the evangelists, tea partiers and trump followers (overlapping groups.)
The place where it could begin to happen in a de facto manner is congress in the next four years. Moderate conservatives could negotiate with moderate liberals to defeat the Stein free stuff to everyone progressives and the nutty base of the GOP. They may have more in common with moderate liberals than they do with the GOP base.
This nutball race could in the end be the salvation of moderates. I do not see how the two main factions of the GOP can continue to reside in the same party. One will have to de facto leave by not voting for the flavor that becomes dominant. I believe that the worst flavor will win the war for the soul of the GOP leaving Romney et al looking for a new home.
I have left libertarians out to simplify but perhaps they will be a new 7% party that hangs in there and continues after this election that could grow in the future, mostly from GOP defections.
GW..Follow the money. If moderates are too moderate and do not support the controllers of money in the USA and their policies, then the moderates do not hold a chance of getting elected. There will only be a handful of Joe Manchins in congress at any one time.
GW: A few years ago I might have concluded that traditional Republicans would be forced to abandon the GOP. Those were the days when Grover Norquist (whatever happened to him?) threatened to run right-wing candidates against every moderate Republican. But I think Trump has so discredited the GOP that the traditional Republicans might actually take back the party, forcing the wingnuts to fend for themselves. That’s not to say that the traditional Republicans will move the party to the center; they’ll just move it away from nutjob populism. In short, I don’t see a moderate party emerging from this mess.
A footnote: I’m afraid that Trump has given populism a bad name for the foreseeable future. The GOP will probably use superdelegates in the future as a safeguard against unfettered democracy, just as the Democrats did. I’d love to see a principled moderate outsider win a major party nomination someday, but it’s looking increasingly unlikely. A moderate party? I’m not holding my breath, unless the Bernie Democrats eventually take over their party and force the more moderate Democrats out.
Rick, “The GOP will probably use superdelegates in the future as a safeguard against unfettered democracy”.
Democracy to some is having the ability of groups of people to choose the candidate of their choice. Those groups are now, for the most part, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Libertarians and the Greenee’s. The Democrat’s, Libertarian’s and Green’ees all have individuals from their party gather in some form or fashion to pick a candidate that represents their political views and platforms. The Democrats use super delegates to insure fringe candidates like McGovern (72) don’t take control of their party again. The Republicans have taken the position that anyone and everyone has a voice in the selection of their candidate, so they end up with a candidate that has little relationship to the political views of the republican party. What happens is independants, some democrats and some “every now and then” voters go to the polls and vote for a fringe candidate that gets enough votes in the early primaries that propel themselves to the later primaries by knocking out the money flowing into the main stream GOP candidates coffers after a few early close defeats.
This to me is not “democracy” since three parties have the candidate of their choice and the other has someone that does not represent the party’s views and platforms at all. We are stuck with a candidate that represents a minority of the voters in GOP primaries and how many of those were actually registered Republicans?
Had the GOP run a McCain or Romney like candidate that are “true” republicans, Clinton would be well behind in the polls and the GOP would be headed for victory. Now they are fighting to keep themselves from an ass whoopin in the Senate along with the Presidency as the swing state senators up for reelection are in no win positions. Say you support Trump and those that are on the fence decide to vote for Clinton and the democrat senatorial candidate as they say they can not support someone supporting Trump. Say they don’t support Trump and those Trump supporters say they are not voting for the GOP senator because they are not supporting the party.
And America loses!
I would not be a bit surprised if plenty of women come forward to accuse both Bill Clinton and trump. Only, A, Bill Clinton is not running for president and B. trump has already been caught bragging about it.
I wonder how many times some GOP politicians can play I endorse, I unendorse, I endorse, I unendorse.
Jessica Leeds, 74, told the Times her story in a video accompanying the article. She said that Trump groped her while sitting next to her on an airplane in the early 1980s. She was given an upgrade to first class in a seat next to Trump, and they exchanged pleasantries.
Later, she said Trump lifted the armrest, grabbed her breasts, and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
“He was like an octopus,” she said. “His hands were everywhere.”
Rachel Crooks told a story from 2005, when she was a 22-year-old receptionist at a company that did business with Trump, and Trump forcibly kissed her after she introduced herself to him outside an elevator in the building:
Aware that her company did business with Mr. Trump, she turned and introduced herself. They shook hands, but Mr. Trump would not let go, she said. Instead, he began kissing her cheeks. Then, she said, he “kissed me directly on the mouth.”
It didn’t feel like an accident, she said. It felt like a violation.
“It was so inappropriate,” Ms. Crooks recalled in an interview. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.”
The Times also spoke to friends and relatives whom Crooks and Leeds had told about the incidents. Crooks told her sister about it immediately after it happened; Leeds told people more recently, when it became clear that Trump might have a shot at the presidency.
None of the three women reported the assaults to the authorities at the time.
Leeds pointed to how different the culture around sexual assault was at the time she says Trump groped her. “We accepted it for years,” she said. “We were taught it was our fault.”
When reached for comment about the Times article, Trump began shouting at the Times reporter who questioned him and threatened to sue the Times if the allegations were published. “You are a disgusting human being,” he said.
Trump’s senior communications advisor Jason Miller released a statement in response to the Times article:
This entire article is fiction, and for the New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous. To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election.
It is absurd to think that one of the most recognizable business leaders on the planet with a strong record of empowering women in his companies would do the things alleged in this story, and for this to only become public decades later in the final month of a campaign for president should say it all.
“There is no truth to this whatsoever,” Trump’s press secretary Hope Hicks told the Palm Beach Post in response to McGillivray’s allegation. “This allegation lacks any merit or veracity.”
Now wait a minute mr. pr guy. “To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault” So, you are saying that what trump is now threatening to do to bill clinton is wrong? Oh, I’m so confused.
trump is going to have a hard time denying these things, its exactly what he bragged about.
Its just a disgusting spectacle.
More Jonah Goldberg, my favorite line is a bit poetic: “Governor Mike Pence went into hiding, searching for bits of his soul like lost change in the couch cushions.”
“The GOP took to Trump because of its failures and failed all the more because it took to Trump. In August, I wrote: “Republican candidates at this stage have no excuses to offer if they decide to repudiate Trump other than naked self-interest.” It turns out I was wrong. The “grab them” tape was shocking enough that many discovered their integrity, insisting that this transgression was so much worse than all the others. But others waited. Governor Mike Pence went into hiding, searching for bits of his soul like lost change in the couch cushions. If Trump imploded on the debate stage or Hillary Clinton delivered the fatal blow, the decision would have been made for them. Neither happened. He gave a strong performance (albeit while lying relentlessly and vowing that under a President Trump, Clinton would be in jail). Trump’s base loved it, oblivious to the fact that he needs more than his base to win. And once again, conservatives who’ve made a career thumping their chests or their Bibles about the importance of character and morality found themselves making excuses for a man who personifies everything they claimed to oppose. It seems the moral arc of many Republicans is short and bends toward celebrity. Such is the gravitational pull of a star. “If you’ve got ’em by the balls, their heart and mind will follow,” LBJ famously observed. It turns out he was right, even if in this case the anatomical analogy is slightly off. ”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440969/donald-trump-video-shows-his-obsession-celebrity-not-just-sexism
Meanwhile a Putin friend (not really, but the media is being careless) Zhirnovsky is telling the US that we had better choose trump or face a nuclear war, while trump is telling the media they had better not report any of his sexual escapades or he and wild man Bannon will nuke the Clintons. Seems we get nuked no matter what. Geez. Some of us are lucky to be troglodytes, they may be able to dig deep enough to survive this.
“Putin ally tells Americans: vote Trump or face nuclear war
By Andrew Osborn | MOSCOW
Americans should vote for Donald Trump as president next month or risk being dragged into a nuclear war, according to a Russian ultra-nationalist ally of President Vladimir Putin who likes to compare himself to the U.S. Republican candidate.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant veteran lawmaker known for his fiery rhetoric, told Reuters in an interview that Trump was the only person able to de-escalate dangerous tensions between Moscow and Washington.
By contrast, Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton could spark World War Three, said Zhirinovsky, who received a top state award from Putin after his pro-Kremlin Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) came third in Russia’s parliamentary election last month.”
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN12C28Q
I am disappointed with the content of the comments here on TNM lately. Still talking about sexual assaults and the latest dirt the Jerry Springer-ish corporate media is releasing? Must the discussions here be prompted only by the latest headlines?
Where are the original, creative ponderings and political hypotheses I used to read in the comments here on TNM?
While it is true that the subject of Rick’s post was “debate” between Donny and Hillary, that doesn’t necessitate an apparent addiction and/or morbid fascination with Trump’s character. We all get that.
By Jove, have you seen the latest by that despicable man running for office? Quite despicable! It’s madness I tell you! Madness!
What is happening to the perception that people around the world have of America thanks to these two final candidates and the incessant focus on the dirt rather than details of policies, etc.? Could America lose sympathy from allies? Could Americans and citizens of other countries conclude that American-style “democracy” no longer works because it resulted in these two choices? Would that make it easier for something else to replace it? How would a Russia/China war vs. the U.S. and Israel go if some or many former U.S. allies conclude that the U.S. is irreversibly corrupt and might deserve what it gets?
“…vulgar elements, or as Clinton called them, deplorables. With apparently 75% of GOP voters and a larger number of its politicians still behind trump, he has turned a party in which 30% of its members were the vulgar element into one in which 75% is.”
Ug. Again, that’s comes across to me as so very arrogant, prejudicial, and labeling.
NOTE: I’m challenging some views recently expressed here. I am not attacking the people responsible for such views. Also, I’ve regained my equanimity and will discuss rationally and calmly. I’m not being holier-than-thou. I’m expressing my opinions.
Pat- Your idea is quite challenging, in a good way, how does one stay informed on major developments in business, politics, and such without reading/listening through the “buzz/trash” of all the worthless sensationalist stories? Candidly, some of those stories I know I could avoid just by not clicking on them but they are so alluring. “High school teacher in Florida makes 17 boys sleep with her for them to get an A in her class.” Wow, what happened? What does she look like? Then, even if we avoid that type of junk, there are our social networks, a recent story just “reported” a ranking of countries and their treatment of women, I did not read the story, but when I see my friends on facebook or elsewhere talking about the USA ranked 33rd behind countries like Algeria, well I can easily denounce that as a bunch of hooey but there is that desire to “educate” others on the errors of such a story and I get caught up into it. I guess perhaps we just have to hope and trust that are fellow associates can see through most of the garbage themselves so we don’t have to spend much time wallowing in it ourselves.
That being said, one could argue that silly stuff can be used as an “ice-breaker” of sorts to lead into deeper , more serious issues. I guess I don’t have an answer for you other than to state that is a very good question you raised. So back to the ramifications of choosing a competent criminal vs. a clueless clown. (Admitted hyperbola there)
Oh! One other thing, did we not see this coming months ago, neither candidate had much anything good to run on, so we knew this was going to be the mother of all mudslinging campaigns. Now that we are drowning in mud, it isn’t any fun, but it was certainly predictable, was it not?
I’m sorry Pat but you and I live in different universes. It was only recently that you stopped selling trump here as a change agent. THis campaign is all about the character of trump and his supporters. When they are in the dustbin of history, where they and their most of their ideas belong then I will relax. I’m sorry that the flavor is bad, but that is trumps flavor.
I can find worthy ideas among the trump campaign. I can find worthy ideas in Marx or the ISO. I can probably find a few ideas that have merit in mein kampf. Those ideas come however, with a package.
Its a shame, but the populist revolution you want at this point has been swallowed by the unfortunate characters of the people who are the leaders of the political movements that are using it as fuel, so its doing badly. My point in one of my post above above is that if the aftermath of trump is a restructuring on the political system your ideas may get a better hearing IF they become the platform of a movement that is led by people who are thoughtful and believable they may have a better chance.
I don’t believe in your populist revolution at all, 0%, but it deserves a better hearing than its going to get under present circumstances. You can blame me for being utterly terrified of even a 5% chance of a trump presidency if you wish and for running around with my hair on fire about it, but I will tell you one thing, I’ve been consistent about trump (and bill clinton) and I’ve been correct. I judged both of their characters accurately from the beginning and it was not hard to do. The fact that you did not see through trump and tried to believe a fantasy about a rough cut but effective change agent ought to make you examine your own framework, something there might be off.
Mike-you are correct that the mudslinging was predictable. As soon as the choices were narrowed down for us I remember hearing and reading forecasts of “going to be the ugliest election ever…”
I’m so glad I was raised in an American culture before our current “mass media culture”. Our current addiction to mass media is well beyond disturbing, and I’m intermittently guilty of the addiction. My brother gave up his TV years ago in disgust. (He lives in a major metropolitan area, not in the woods next to a pond like Henry David Thoreau.) Being away from TV for long stretches, he used to tell me how amazed he was at so many people repeating/mouthing the same things, the latest buzz, men with nothing to talk about but the football game, etc. Pre-packaged points of view he used to say. Now he is frightened and angered by it, like me.
Along these lines, and steering back to politics, and forgive me if this was discussed here in previous posts, but consider when the GOP had that long line of podiums on stage at the beginning of the GOP Primary…were the things Trump said back then really worthy of the constant coverage received, to the point of ignoring and not exploring things the other candidates were saying, and was this really driven by a public thirst for Trump’s comments, was it really driven by cold impersonal forces, or was the coverage chosen for us top-down by a media network owned by 5 corporations? Are media campaigns not launched for products?
“were the things Trump said back then really worthy of the constant coverage received, to the point of ignoring and not exploring things the other candidates were saying, and was this really driven by a public thirst for Trump’s comments, was it really driven by cold impersonal forces, or was the coverage chosen for us top-down by a media network owned by 5 corporations? the coverage chosen for us top-down.”
So your theory is that the trump campaign became the focus of media attention because the 5 companies (not accepting that as fact, its wrong) wanted trump and deliberately foisted him on us? THat is a conspiracy theory, whether you admit it or not. Or will you hide from the implication of your question and claim you were simply throwing the question out there? Because Pat that is what you do, you throw bombs and then say you didn’t really. Once, just once in your life here, explain absolutely clearly what you really mean without being facetious. Connect all the dots as you see them and don’t leave us to try to answer facetious questions.
My theory is the opposite, the MSM hated trump from the beginning and individual people without any collusion or discussion between the big bosses in 5 corporations all individually made the choice that when Americans saw trump they would reject him and that coverage would do him in, not launch him, because he is so clearly a useless jerk ignoramus. As well, he was interesting and people googled him and news responds to public interest. Unfortunately there was this incipient populist movement that wanted to hear trumps ideas, they loved them. No matter how much scorn the media put on trump your populist movement hates the MSM and just took that as more fuel, more google searches, more coverage, more bizarre trump statements. A positive feedback loop, impersonal and out of control.
IF THERE ACTUALLY WERE A 5 CORPORATION MEDIA COLLUSION THEN THEY WOULD HAVE GOTTEN TOGETHER AND STOPPED COVERING TRUMP, SINCE HE IS A VIOLATION OF THE VALUES OF THE MSM.
Your mind is trapped in its conspiracy theories and can’t see its way out.
The villain here is the populist movement with its conspiracy theories about the MSM and hate of it to the extent that they will automatically do the opposite that the believe the MSM wants. Oh, don’t I wish the MSM COULD get it together and collude and make a blackout of an interesting story like trump for our common good. But its impersonal forces that triumph, the feedback loop.
Agree 100% with your assessments: coherent and convincing explanations of the disastrous ‘useless jerk ignoramus’ Trump ascendency.
My two cents worth (and that is over priced!)
“IF THERE ACTUALLY WERE A 5 CORPORATION MEDIA COLLUSION THEN THEY WOULD HAVE GOTTEN TOGETHER AND STOPPED COVERING TRUMP, SINCE HE IS A VIOLATION OF THE VALUES OF THE MSM.”
I don’t believe this in a heart beat. The corporate leaders and broadcasters wanted the least formidable candidate possible for clinton to run against. No one can convince me that all the news outlets did not cover Trump ad nauseum in the primaries while ignoring the other GOP candidates to give him a boost in his run. Had the press ignored Trump like they did the others for the most part, Trump would be an after thought in this election.
I disagree with one cent worth, Ron.
Here’s my penny worth:
If Trump had run as a Democrat with as large a group of candidates, Hillary included, and led in the early polling, he would have received the same coverage.
That’s because of the Tabloid-azation ((word?) of American media. Outlandish celebrity behavior sells advertising space. Entertainment TRUMPS policy.
And the other contrary evidence to your misguided assumption that the media conglomerates favor Hillary is the HUGGGGE number of conservative owned newspapers and tv stations nationally who HATE Hillary, like the Murdoch owned powerhouse FoxNews and New York Post.
It is true though, that the media woke up after a while to the danger a Trump presidency would present to the nation, and their current coverage of his wacky irrational unhinged statements at rallies and over social media is a necessary reaction to the disastrous outcome. They have a patriotic duty to warn us that there’s an iceberg in our national waters directly ahead, or suffer the Titanic effects of electing someone as unsuited for public office at any level of government, let alone as President of the US as Trump.
Jay, guess we will never really know one way or the other. Bernie received a lot of coverage, but he was a completely different candidate and held positions closer to the MSM than Trump. But Trump would have had a snowballs chance in hell getting the nomination in the Democrat Party due to Super Delegates that almost insure someone like Trump from stealing the nomination. Clinton had the nomination sued up in 08 until a young black senator came along, got some backing in early primaries and then the Super Delegates switched to Obama. That would never had happened if that had been Trump.
And would it happen if the GOP had closed primaries where only people aligned with GOP principles were the ones selecting the nominee?
Pat, here’s a positive deflection from the tabloid Sex Perversion headlines.
(But of course we are free to interpret the lyrics as prophetic warnings come to fruition)
Bob Dylan Wins Noble Prize For Literature
(for creating ‘new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.’)
Some examples:
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’, 1963
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA FALL, 1963
Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’m a-goin’ back out ‘fore the rain starts a-fallin’,
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’,
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’,
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Jay, et al, here are some lyrics for you:
“And when you trust your television
What you get is what you got
Cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want” – John Mayer
I am going to try my best to remain friendly and light, but GW you are EXHAUSTING because your replies to my posts are so full of conclusion-jumping, misunderstandings, labels, and boxes. Part of me wishes for mutual permission/agreement to be over-the-top flippant, facetious, and snarky, because it might be more amusing, but maybe best if we attempt good old-fashioned courteous debate.
There are perhaps five or eight serious impediments to communication I find in your last two posts, GW. If we can’t proceed amicably through those then we might as well forget it. I’m not trying to get you or Jay to agree with me. I will try to get you to understand my points and positions so that I’m at least not misrepresented here.
Deep breaths…
Partial list of impediments to communication either directly stated or implied in recent posts:
1. The idea or belief that a person cannot raise questions for discussion without being guilty of hiding some singular connect-the-dot theory. Just as military strategists can conceive of a handful or a dozen reasonable conclusions about what an enemy or enemies have been up to, are thinking, or might soon do, so too a thinking person can examine the political landscape and the world and conceive of several viable, reasonable possibilities without sitting on some unified grand theory.
2. Along the lines of number 1 above, the word “conspiracy” has to be left out of the discussion. It has too many negative connotations and is an insult. It’s a poke and a distraction. Are you willing to refrain from that word?
3.You keyboarded, “5 corporation media collusion”. Ug. We’ve been down this road before. Are there no moderate gradations for you between drifting in the wind organic natural forces at one extreme and a cartoonish, unrealistic, sinister secret meeting with all parties on board at the other extreme? If any mention of something as natural to human nature as a “hidden agenda” automatically has you shouting “crack pot conspiracy theorist,” then I leave you to your comfort zone.
4.The idea that I desire the chaos of unrest or chaotic revolution. This couldn’t be further from the truth for me. I’m all about holding society together, preserving what we as a species have accomplished, while we transition intelligently away from self-destruction and toward let’s call it sustainability. And I’m not talking some unrealistic utopia.
and I don’t think the Miami Sound Machine (MSM) plays that much of a role in all this!
Pat, I have no desire to misunderstand you to your discomfort. It is obvious that you are very good hearted guy who is worked up at the situation of the common man, the little guy. That comes through very clearly.
As to your overarching set of beliefs about what has gone wrong and how it can be fixed, explain what you DO mean, it a clear straightforward way. You talk a lot in riddles and rhetorical questions it seems to me. You make it very easy to misunderstand you, and you of all people, with your writing skills and as you put it verbosity, ought to be able to make your actual thoughts pretty clear.
Here is one source (?) that somewhat supports my thoughts about non-republicans nominating Trump. There are some other articles on the internet that support this position also. And since they are on the internet they have to be true, right? (~-~)
http://www.redstate.com/diary/creinstein/2016/06/25/12-million-democrats-voted-republican-primaries/
Ron, yes, agreed! Obviously at least SOME of the Broadcasters / Corporate Execs kept Trump in the limelight purposely, by decision, ad nauseum, and gave him a boost. As we know, “good press” and “bad press” is all good press when trying to sustain a marketing blitz.
And no, GW, it wasn’t “monolithic” or one big smooth operation, but anyone who doesn’t think phone calls were made and meetings held is naïve. Indeed it would be against human nature for there to NOT be manipulation. I’m one of the most compassionate do-gooders I know, but I’m not about to have my livelihood or my family’s future threatened by populations of strangers. I’m going to do everything in my power to protect MY livelihood and MY family. And so we don’t have to know every billionaire and oligarch personally to know that they are not about to have THEIR billions threatened, and so of course there is manipulation via what gets aired and what doesn’t, just as different types of shootings are front and center, and other types of shootings are glossed over, and it’s ludicrous to think it’s about which types of shootings “sell” better to the public. It’s a choice as to what is aired and what is not, and much (I didn’t say all) of our media these days is top-down, not bottom-up.
I have one problem with your analysis.
The News business is extremely competitive.
Years ago, in my wiry youth, I had friends who worked for major NYC newspapers, as reporters and producers – one as a columnist for the Village Voice; another as a TV exec. They never did anything to help the competition. They didn’t have a win-win mind set. It was we win, you lose. And though that’s eons ago, I don’t remember hearing any stories of CEOs or Editors or Owners even shooting the breeze with each other.
Maybe times have changed. But it doesn’t feel intuitive to believe it’s changed that much. trump is the perfect storm of Ignorant Unimaginable Consequences.
I hear you on that, Jay. I partially agree. But not completely. I see it as a combination of those Ignorant Unimaginable Consequences (GW’s impersonal forces–undeniably a major part)-we see it working throughout human history–people and nations of people being swept into this and that like puppies in a river torrent–but also very influential campaigns of groups and individuals. Did you see the History Channel series on Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt et al, the Captains of Industry, I forget the title? Now imagine them with digital technology, and making Billions not millions now in an unprecedented consolidation of wealth. It’s different. It’s new. There is this archetypal human tendency to say, ah, nothing new under the sun, we’ve always had such and such…” Not always. The splitting of the atom for instance was a new milestone. Whole new reality from battle axes, though we’ve always had warfare. Typing quick, hopefully back to you on that…
Using the phrase “conspiracy theory” or just the word “conspiracy” is a bit like using the word “nigger”. It’s a derogatory label.
If I ask an angry, old-school racist to not call someone the n-word, but the angry, old-school racist refuses to comply and insists angrily that the someone “is a n-word,” then I’m dealing with a partially closed mind, and how productive can conversation be then about racial discrimination?
On the one hand I may have interpreted your ideas somewhat accurately based on years of reading your comments and storing them in my noggin, on the other hand I may be wrong, you may simply be a person who when frustrated uses colorful exaggeration without realizing how it sounds to others that I take too seriously. You make it very, very easy to interpret your words the way I have. I keep asking you you Pat, put your ideas on the control of our lives by a small group of elite into a really concrete form that I can process. Just put our whole internet relationship on a sound footing more to your liking by explaining yourself very clearly without using colorful expressions like totalitarian for me to take as your actual meaning.
I am sorry the word(s) conspiracy theory irritate you Pat, you used to use the word sheeple which did likewise to me, but you gave that up after I complained. So I will give up the phrase conspiracy theory in our conversation (unless you really go off on a rant that is describable in no other way!) I don’t actually try to insult you or irritate you, the internet is too full of that!
Do we have a consensus of opinion that Trump is acting irrationally now?
Striking out at ANYONE who criticizes him? Ryan. McCain. The ‘Republican Party.’
Isn’t it now obvious he is mentally and tempermentally UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT.
And NOBODY is able to control these scary outbursts.
trump has always seemed to me to be delusional and mentally damaged by his inherited wealth. Nothing has changed in my time of observing him. His mind is not well. It doesn’t mean that some part of it does not function in a way that lets him walk among us non-delusional people. I don’t think he is schizophrenic, i.e., truly “crazy.” He is one step short of the general who set the bombers on Russia in Dr. StrangeGlove. But he could do equally stupid things out of unrestrained offence to his ego. He has no sense of boundaries, other than the exaggerated boundaries of his own fragile dignity. He is a psychopath (which does not mean what most people think it means, in fact its not a true psychological term.)
While I held my tongue on one subject at the time. I will share it now. I did support Pat’s declaration of Priscilla winning the highly coveted New Moderate Excellence Award. She has maintained her cool under pressure and I admire that. Grand Wazoo on the other hand has self identified as part of the nuclear fuel rods that fire up this site, I think that an apt description. That being said, I am creating my own new award, the Bury the Hatchet” award which I hereby grant to THEE Grand Wazoo, for his comment at time stamp: October 13, 3:35 pm – I believe the spirit with which that was said was one of true reconciliation.
Pat: I don’t have you figured out yet (do we ever figure out anyone including ourselves?) but I’m convinced that although you seem passionate, I don’t think you are quite as heated as GW gets with his feeling on these subjects. While you may have tried to keep things calm, (I remember you giving yourself a “timeout”, I thought that was cool) some things, no matter how hard you try to avoid it, are going to set some people off. How many times did Jesus Himself, with all His love and kindness, say things that infuriated people? Well, anyway, I’m not trying to compare you to Jesus, but I’m wondering if you see or acknowledge GW’s efforts to be gentle despite his harsh opposition to your ideas.
Thanks Mike, winter is coming to Vermont, I can use another hatchet. Pat and I go way back, we are just a pair of fiery brothers in my opinion, the ties are stronger than the disagreements. I have a big hope that he will give such a clear description of what he sees and wants that I will be cured of all my wrong ideas on his beliefs.
From the NYTimes and I could not agree more. I will be really disappointed if GOP voters swallow trump en masse, especially when it becomes clear that he will not win and beating Clinton is not an excuse for overlooking trump’s sleazy to the core character:
“WASHINGTON — Several of the Republican Party’s most generous donors called on the Republican National Committee on Thursday to disavow Donald J. Trump, saying that allegations by multiple women that Mr. Trump had groped or made inappropriate sexual advances toward them threatened to inflict lasting damage on the party’s image.
To an elite group of Republican contributors who have donated millions of dollars to the party’s candidates and committees in recent years, the cascade of revelations related to Mr. Trump’s sexual conduct is grounds for the committee to cut ties with the party’s beleaguered standard-bearer, finally and fully.
“At some point, you have to look in the mirror and recognize that you cannot possibly justify support for Trump to your children — especially your daughters,” said David Humphreys, a Missouri business executive who contributed more than $2.5 million to Republicans from the 2012 campaign cycle through this spring.
Bruce Kovner, a New York investor and philanthropist who with his wife has given $2.7 million to Republicans over the same period, was just as blunt. “He is a dangerous demagogue completely unsuited to the responsibilities of a United States president,” Mr. Kovner wrote in an email, referring to Mr. Trump.
“Even for loyalists, there is a line beyond which the obvious moral failings of a candidate are impossible to disregard,” he wrote. “That line has been clearly breached.”….”
Very perceptive, Mike.
A few times in my efforts to stand my ground I have crossed the line into being… semi-belligerent, maybe snarky, but usually I was NOT heated most of the times I was suspected of being heated. Those misinterpretations are an unfortunate side effect of this form of online communication.
GW-Roby-(I forget his earlier handles) and I have so far always chilled out enough to remain online friends or compatriots or fellow human beings. I hereby 2nd the motion to give GW the esteemed TNM “Bury the Hatchet Award” or BHA. The Hatchet award from Hatcher…okay so Mike if Trump gets your section of the USA nuked, and some of us are left alive, we will just make it the Hatcher Award (or HA) in your honor.
I’m working on a post that hopefully will clear some things up without getting stuck along too many tangents. (So many tangents and rabbit holes!) It may be a mega-post, but trying to avoid a supersized mega post.
PART 1: THE CRUX OF THE BEEF
Version 1 here is sincere from alongside GW in the Never-Trump camp (I was in this camp): GW, thank you for your deep commitment to stopping the nightmarish scenario of psychopath Trump as POTUS.
The potential (and even highly likely) disasters with that grotesque pig as Commander-in-Chief range from almost daily national embarrassments to childish, narcissistic spats with world leaders to domestic U.S. civil war, to conventional wars abroad to limited nuclear wars, to a very real Armageddon, because the same type of unfortunate confluence of uncontrollable impersonal forces that resulted in this throwback brute somehow becoming the GOP candidate (wtf? It’s surreal)…
…those same difficult-to-control impersonal forces can easily come together in other unfortunate combinations of spiraling-out-of-control world events that will get my family killed and…and so one of the most patriotic things we can do these days—one of the most important things as HUMAN BEINGS can do NOW, is warn people about Trump every chance we get…
I get that. I really do. The possibilities of disasters with Trump are not just fanciful imagination and hyperbole. Trump’s campaign has proven that the embarrassments would be a given. The wars are not as certain, but if we look around the world present-day at other countries that have quickly unraveled, and if we look at history…
Version 2 here is where I see GW’s position from a slightly different position:
GW, your zeal/obsession with stopping Trump has temporarily blinded you to other positions. Because you focus so steadfastly upon the potential disasters of buffoon Trump as POTUS, you then have lumped any supporters of Trump into the category of stupid, deplorable, misguided, brainwashed by right-wing rhetoric, going to get us killed (or whatever, no time to get hung up on the title of this super-sized Hefty trash bag category).
We’re getting closer now to my beef with your posts.
It’s become NO TRUMP or TRUMP with you and those in your camp, and that makes sense from a VOTING standpoint. But the position of “NO TRUMP and anyone who can support that fool is an idiot” is not correct or admirable from a…hmm…Human Survival Standpoint or Human/Moderate/Rational standpoint or… Ug, that’s too vague so this:
I’m not defending deplorable Trump or ignorance or mob mentality or populist movements or bloody revolution or misogyny or…
I’m objecting to your sweeping generalization of Trump supporters and the dismissal of some of the OTHER DANGERS they are seeing, because you are throwing a lot of great Americans under the bus, good people who have the same intention as you—I’m defending them, and because—get ready for the irony coming up here, this may seem harsh, but that kind of “sorry, but it has to be done” certainty and sweeping generalization I’ve seen lately in your posts is akin (in thinking, not action) to the Nazis in in the late 1930s, etc.
What? How ironic that a zealous anti-Trump mindset could be construed as Hitler-like, when Trump’s nationalistic core followers are the ones who are Nazi-like! How can that be?
Please let us wake up in 1969 with this all as a bad dream to warn us!!!
It’s the same kind of dangerous rationalization that, say, an oil company uses (with the help of government bribes) to seize land and dismiss and trample the rights of an indigenous population because “sorry, we need energy…”
If you had prefaced or alloyed your anti-Trump choice by acknowledging that some Americans see our recent administrations as already well into the process of taking America off the cliff, and that many wince and cringe at Trump but see him as the only desperate, current choice (thanks in part to those damn impersonal forces) to avert a different version of American destruction… for example as a result of U.S./Western business-driven meddling, etc,
e.g. this is now a quick FOR EXAMPLE and not a synopsis of my position or reluctant Trump supporters’ position: to stop anti-American hatred from coalescing around the world into something resembling the Allies against Germany early 1940s, (USA becomes the loathed Germany this time around—hey people around the world, look at the Jerry Springer guests, look at the hatred, look at what their corrupt democracy produced as Presidential candidates….sorry but the once great U.S. jumped the shark and had to go..) while at the same time neglecting domestic U.S. needs, see U.S. infrastructure, see U.S. jobs…
and so if you would have said you don’t see possibilities like that as imminent a danger as Trump’s instability, (and I think you may have said something similar at some point),
I couldv’e allowed your different viewpoint to stand over there a-ways from mine,
but instead lately you’ve been lumping my hard-working, caring, peace-loving, good American friends, even people like my deceased, good-hearted “McGyver-like” father who would be one of the best persons to be marooned on an island with because he could probably make a steam engine out of coconuts, and who would have definitely been a reluctant Trump supporter, into a caricature of blue-collar, redneck shallowness and stupidity, and that’s not what a Moderate does, that’s what extremists in amen camps do, that’s what an unruly mob does, that’s what the worst of both sides of this horrible divide do, what the Mass Media feeds off of and feeds into, and I know from your posts in previous years you’re better than that, and I had to object.
A possible misinterpretation is that I am defending “the common man.” No, not quite. That’s another prejudicial, misleading label. The most highly-specialized, educated persons are often fools in other contexts and often the most dangerous to humanity, and those who appear from a distance to be common women and men are often the most heroic holding society together at its many seams, but also the converse is often true–that intelligent people in positions of power often hold the unruly masses together with prudent choices, and jobs, and inventions, and…
And so I object to the archaic practice of rating people from a distance into a hierarchy, and sweeping generalizations that dismiss people from a distance, and I cherish that our Founding Fathers gave us a document to attempt to allow all people to be treated as being created equal rather than squeezed into corrupt hierarchies.
This concludes PART 1. (Geez Louse!)
I am going to cut and paste a comment I wrote on the blog Liberal Values” the context was a discussion about abortion, but the larger picture, related to what you are saying Pat, is how “Trumpers” could conceivably come after me with violence, and extremist “Anti-Trumpers” could also come after me. Maybe not tomorrow or in a year, but mix in a few more natural disasters with international conflict and we could have, I believe, highly organized wide spread violence in this country. Anyway, here is what I wrote:
I have always considered it a real possibility, (albeit low), that someday I could be carted off to some “camp” by leftists because of my simple beliefs of a God who created the world in under 160 hours. However, I have also considered it even more likely that I could someday be put to death by so called “Christians” because I don’t hold identical beliefs to those same labeled “Christians”. To borrow someone else’s comparison, when a infant is born, it could become an adult, but it isn’t born an adult. When a fetus is growing, it could become a person, but is not yet a person. Thus, I don’t believe abortion is murder. I say all this pre-amble, to get to my point, that Ron (Chusid), you are correct, that many Christians see stopping abortions as a primary concern since they equate the perhaps half million abortions every year as equivalent to the millions murdered during World War II. Thus, yes, as disgusting as the Donald may be, they see him as far less evil that the pro choice party democrats. Now back to my high fat, processed food diet which is far more likely to take me down before either the left or right extremists come crashing through my door.
My only edit is I added the last name, Ron Chusid to avoid confusion to the Ron that write on this site.
OK, I’ll jump in briefly.
I agree, Mike, both the extreme loony Left and regressive Right are dangerous to our freedom. And both Clinton and Trump are disreputable candidates. But here, now, Trump is far more dangerous to our freedom, safety, and well being: a clear & present danger. Even Charles Krauthammer, an arch conservative with whom I have profound differences of opinion, has come to the conclusion Trump is detrimental to long established traditions of American democracy. Referring to Trump’s constant reiterarations to ‘lock her up’ yesterday he said:
“Such incendiary talk is an affront to elementary democratic decency and a breach of the boundaries of American political discourse. In democracies, the electoral process is a subtle and elaborate substitute for combat, the age-old way of settling struggles for power. But that sublimation only works if there is mutual agreement to accept both the legitimacy of the result (which Trump keeps undermining with charges that the very process is “rigged”) and the boundaries of the contest.
The prize for the winner is temporary accession to limited political power, not the satisfaction of vendettas. Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and a cavalcade of two-bit caudillos lock up their opponents. American leaders don’t.
One doesn’t even talk like this. It takes decades, centuries, to develop ingrained norms of political restraint and self-control. But they can be undone in short order by a demagogue feeding a vengeful populism.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/trump-chilling-lock-threat-article-1.2829857
THE CRUX OF MEXICAN BEEF – STEW
(A non political lull in political stomach churning for the Fall Weekend ahead)
INGREDIENTS:
1-1/2 to 2 LBS Chuck, cut in 1-inch squares
1-1/2 Cup Onions, chopped
4 Large Cloves Garlic, chopped
5 Green Chilies, roasted & sliced, or canned
1 Serrano Chili (optional)
3 TBL Olive Oil
1 CAN [14.5 oz] Stewed Tomatoes
Approx. 8 OZ Water
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Cumin
¼ Teaspoon Red Pepper
1 Beef Bouillon Cube
Serve with Black Beans, Sour Cream, Rice, Fresh Tortillas,
Guacamole Salad.
DIRECTIONS:
Coat Meat with Flour, and brown. (Trick: shake in brown bag with ½
Cup Flour). Set aside.
Sauté Onions & Garlic approx. 4 or 5 minutes
Add Chilies, and Spices, and sauté 3 minutes.
Add Tomatoes and Water, and beef.
Cover and simmer at least an hour and fifteen minutes. Two hours is
better, especially if meat is tough. Add more water if it looks too
thick
Serve with tortillas & guacamole & Mexican beer
I’m planning to make Crux of Mexican Beef Stew this weekend. If it or my Part 2 rant look too thick or fiery, I will add more water.
It’s really tasty!
And I’m going to try to take this article to heart:
(Priscilla, are you there?)
https://hbr.org/2016/10/how-to-build-an-exit-ramp-for-trump-supporters
If it or my Part 2 rant look too thick or fiery, I will add more water.
Please Pat, no. For once I want to hear the complete story of your opinion of the issue of the Clintons, the global elite, the media and the little guy. Nothing watered down. Just leads to confusion.
Hummm
http://www.nbcnews.com/card/former-nuke-launch-officers-trump-should-not-have-his-finger-n666106
The statement: “Black lives matter” could and has been interpreted by many to be exclusionary, showing racial bias. No doubt, some who have advocated that statement, truly are exclusionary and heavily biased. However, one could also take it to mean, as it most likely was originally intended, that there are people who believe that society is treating blacks as if their lives don’t matter, and they have “black lives matter” as a rally call against their perception that others are dismissive of their lives.
Compare this to the chant” Lock her up” Sure, they don’t chant, charge her, give her due process, have a trial, and then if she is convicted, lock her up. That chant doesn’t roll off the tongue so well. I’m sure that some that chant that would be fine with agents wearing dark glasses would just grab her as whisk her away KGB style, but I’m more convinced that the chant is born out of a frustration that collusion between entities of the government did not give her a “fair chance” at being convicted. Thus, had things been done correctly, the chanters speculate the results would have been someone would lock her up. So to, the conclusion that had the police acted correctly, the black lives matter people, believe that some blacks would still have their lives.
I’m quite aware that Trump made statements showing his lack of knowledge of how special prosecutors work, but to conclude those who chat lock her up, are in favor of extrajudicial incarceration, is as overly a generalization as to claim that those who say black lives matter, distain all life, except for black ones.
On a wild side fiction. Imagine Hillary having a jury trial on criminal charges, what would jury selection be like! They would have to get people that had been in comas for 30 years or had been in some type of Gilligan’s Island isolation.
Mike Hatcher, I like your logic in your post above, and haha on the extended chant:
The mob, carrying torches, gathered at the wharf:
“CHARGE HER !”
“GIVER HER DUE PROCESS!”
“HAVE A FAIR TRIAL WITH A JURY OF HER PEERS!”
“THEN, IF SHE IS CONVICTED, LOCK HER UP!”
“If you had prefaced or alloyed your anti-Trump choice by acknowledging that some Americans see our recent administrations as already well into the process of taking America off the cliff, and that many wince and cringe at Trump but see him as the only desperate, current choice (thanks in part to those damn impersonal forces) to avert a different version of American destruction… for example as a result of U.S./Western business-driven meddling, etc,”
You really ought to go back and read my posts on just the last 2 of Ricks pieces. I have made exemptions till I’m blue in the fingers.
I have a completely different opinion of trumps ENTHUSIASTIC supports than his reluctant ones.
I gave Jay a little lecture about lumping all the trump voters together, its 40% of the population I said. Its a matter of you say po-tay-to and I say po-tat-to, I said. That’s my opinion and I stated it clearly.
I’m not going to write that into every sentence of every single post I write but its all over my posts here. You are blind.
What I think is really is at the base of your complaint with my words that leads you to completely miss all my many, many words that clarify who I am scorning at any one time, is the root cause: I do not agree with your assessment of the Clintons and their establishment world, the media, the global elite. That is what really has you hot at me. My own non angelic patience may blow my bury the hatchet award at any second and become lost over this, because I have been quite clear that enthusiastic trump supporters and general voters who are holding their noses are two different camps with whom I have different complaints.
As far as the enthusiastic trump supporters, the ones who listen to trump and just love the sound of his voice, his ideas, his persona, who forgive, deny or admire his behavior, I consider those people to be complete idiots, not matter what their IQ is (on average lower than normal but there are many exceptions) or no matter whether they are wealthy or rural rednecks.
“but instead lately you’ve been lumping my hard-working, caring, peace-loving, good American friends, even people like my deceased, good-hearted “McGyver-like” father who would be one of the best persons to be marooned on an island with because he could probably make a steam engine out of coconuts, and who would have definitely been a reluctant Trump supporter, into a caricature of blue-collar, redneck shallowness and stupidity”
I just did a search in these comments for the word redneck. I have not used it, in fact the only instance of its use is in your comment. The same goes for blue collar. You are putting words in my mouth. You don’t like that I don’t buy your view of the Clintons and so you are maligning me. F%$#^ my award. You are being a jerk.
“sweeping generalization I’ve seen lately in your posts is akin (in thinking, not action) to the Nazis in in the late 1930s, etc.”
You know what Pat? You and I are done.
I’m surprised at your heated response, GW. I took a long time and lot of words to clarify my objection to your consistent and blanket mockery of Trump supporters.
Referring to your posts I said “lately.” You want me to comb through a thousand comments from earlier posts to find when you were more discerning?
You are heated, not me. I took so much space to carefully give my opinion that Dhlii Dave drove the “Long Winded/Verbose” award to my house. It’s up on my mantle right now. All you had to do was disagree with me and give the reasons. That’s debate.
You think your Nazi reference may have pushed him over the line?
And I’d love to challenge your opinion of all the ENTHUSIASTIC Trump supporters, because I believe you are AT LEAST lumping all of them, and some of them are not idiots either, but I don’t think you can handle it.
Once I was in a conference room where the decision was being made to let a lot of employees go. I understood the reasons from a business standpoint. It had to be done and some things in life are not easy. What I didn’t like, and will continue to dislike, was the one manager’s attitude of “F— them, we don’t owe them anything.” The lack of compassion, the closing of the heart, the arrogant separation, those are on the path of what keeps humanity destroying itself.
I realize that can come across as preachy or holier-than-thou. I happen to think it’s the truth. It’s my opinion.
The writing-off and disdain for large groups of people. What? They don’t speak well? They don’t dress the same? They didn’t take Psyche 1 and Psyche 2 in college? They like things you don’t?
Even the less sophisticated in the group have intuition. They see the boarded-up factories. They hear foreign languages being spoken more and more when they’re at the store. They see the crumbling roads and bridges. They’re not supposed to be enthusiastic when they think they have a champion? (I didn’t say they’re right and that Trump really would be their champion, but they think so or they are hoping.) They’re not murderers. They’re a variety of Americans who want better opportunities, just like the people crossing the borders illegally, except that the former are citizens of a country.
The disdain I feel for the people you describe isn’t over their fears, disappointments, concerns – most of which we all share. It’s their stubborn blockhead willingness to back someone as fraudulently ill equipped mentally, morally and emotionally to be president. voting for Trump is equivalent in my judgement to hiring a Race Track Tout to pilot a jet plane with your family as passengers.
Im not going to be thrilled with a Hillary presidency. She’s had to make deals with the PC Left for election backing that Im sure will infuriate me if she governs to that mandate. But I’m hoping she will retain the center-left balance she maintained as NY Senator, and appoint moderate SCOTUS judges, like the one Obama offered and foolhardy republicans stymied.
But she will be a way more rational president than Dingbat Donald, and a dignified president, and one smart enough to take advice from equally smart and experienced people, and not an insecure ranting moron tweeting insults in the middle of the night to heads of state who slight him.
Man this Trump vs. Clinton jazz just goes on and on and on. Jay I can’t disagree with your comparison of smart-enough Hillary vs Dingbat Donald. Actually we know, and all sane people know, the chasm between them is much bigger than that.
I also appreciate your analogy of an inexperienced moron trying to pilot the jet plane with family in the plane. That’s a good one. OK now let’s go further…
Just temporarily, play along. Now suppose the airport is being overrun by terrorists. Innocent people are being gunned down left and right. Now you’d get on that jet plane if it were your only available means of escape. You’d take your chances with the moron.
Now suppose you had evidence that Hillary was allowing the terrorists into the airport. RELAX IT’S STILL AN ANALOGY!!
The hypothetical is a no brainer: you chose Hillary to get you & family out of immediate terrorist danger at the airport, and address the pourous terrorist prevention policy after you’re all safe & sound.
This old course is a common theme in movies and fiction: ne’er do wells who have to be relied on to bring innocents to safety: i.e. The Magnificient Seven, Romancing the Stone, etc. and the semi-villains usually turn out to be redemptive heroes at the end – Horrible Hillary become Halo Hillary by her 2nd term. 😇
“Even the less sophisticated in the group have intuition. They see the boarded-up factories. They hear foreign languages being spoken more and more when they’re at the store.”
Pat This is your typical way of saying things without saying them outright. Plausible denial. Its a game. I understand you pretty well I believe, although there is almost no chance you are going to come out and say what you think straight out.
I’m tired of your word games and have lost respect.
You have your universe, be a good libertarian and allow me mine. Your less sophisticated group as a whole loath me and the things I believe in. I went to school with them, worked with them and there are good and less good among them. Served with them in the Nat Guard Infantry as well. In general they earn the opinion my sort has of them. You are going to have to stop it with the pathetic reverse political correctness and allow my group its own opinions and state them. First amendment and all.
I honestly don’t know what word games you are talking about. I think my recent posts were straightforward. Maybe you are trying to guess “between the lines” at my world view instead of just reading what I’m saying in particular at the time.
I tried to consolidate my worldview but it is too long for this forum. This forum usually bubbles up through the political filters of Republican and Democrat, Left and Right, and now Trump and Clinton. I try to weigh in where I can on politics because this is a moderate political blog, but I was drawn to this site in 2011 because I was re-visiting the principle of Moderation, ala Aristotle, ala every person I’d ever witnessed in my life who put their hands up in the middle of a seemingly untenable situation and found alternate viable solutions to the feuding extremes.
My worldview is macro from somewhere out in space where “Republican” and “Democrat” and even America as we know it are but lumps of sand on the beach, blips in eons of existence. My worldview cannot be placed inside a political spectrum.
Your worldview will not be described here and I was certain of that when I asked you to do it. So, I suppose I myself am playing a game. No one is perfect.
Your worldview is something you would be free talking about with like-minded people, here you speak in leading questions and implications without coming out and saying explicitly what you mean and are offended or pretend to be when someone takes your implications as you implied them. At this point I am too pissed at you after being compared to a 1930s nazi (shades of your totalitarian comment) to care about your taking offence. Your worldview as you have revealed it in comments and vignettes about the controlling behind the scenes elites over many years and comments about traitorous politicians is a sort of a spin off of the john birch international conspiracy theory, Rockefeller, and all that hokum. I am flat out sick of you and not as much because of your actual beliefs but because you play games about revealing them and are dishonest in your arguments.
I continue to believe that you are actually a well meaning and kind and generous person, just consumed unfortunately by a worldview that is so misguided that you won’t reveal its real form. But, time is precious and I don’t have any more to spend on a conversation that is fundamentally flawed.
“My worldview is macro from somewhere out in space where “Republican” and “Democrat” and even America as we know it are but lumps of sand on the beach, blips in eons of existence.”
Did you paraphrase this from Spock, Star Trek 1st Season ?
😏😎😁🚀🚀🚀
Nope. I didn’t plagiarize Michele Obama either. I wrote it on the fly, after unloading the packages from the supermarket. Apparently I’m very mysterious and playing games.
I was just bantering, Pat.
Relax and enjoy the sharp elbows 👏✌️️
Yeah, Ian, instead of having dinner with my wife and putting up the Halloween decorations, I’m going to descend down to your current level of ridiculousness and attempts at labeling.
I objected to your generalization of Trump supporters, and my objection stands. You validated nothing I said in my long rant, but instead just picked out the thorns that incensed you. I’m not playing any games at all. I’m trying to express myself. But when you go low, I’ll go high!
I was bantering back. Bantering is welcome.
GW, you think I am going to start blowing up balloons so that you and Jay can stand there and pop them with your pitchforks before they can take shape? Haha, do you think I am crazy, man?
I’d have to start with facts about human nature, that any reasonable person would have to agree to, and then we’d journey a bit through history, and eventually we’d get to globalists and elites, and then to the politics of today, including Clinton/Obama/Bush, etc. It’s the only way I can do it. If I can condense it, I will share.
My goal is not to change your mind, but at the same time I believe my views deserve some level of receptivity/ open-mindedness, which, no hard feelings, I don’t expect from you in your present state of understandable Trump-fear and Trump-hatred.
It seems to me that we may have progressed off of the completely discredited Trump candidacy, and moved on to “analysis” of Trump supporters. I personally have no problem with that transition, although if I had everything my way, I would probably rather focus more on discrediting Hillary and being entirely as unfit as Trump.
However, the Trump supporter discussion is intriguing. Pat seems to take the position that the intense fear and/or intense opposition to whatever percent you want to assign to the most dangerous of Trump supporters among his supporters, is, in turn, just as dangerous, or more so, as the perceived danger they oppose. I’m rapidly running out of time to post this but I’ll get in what I can now, and address more later. Pat: am I pretty close to your position in how I stated it? If so, then my question to you would be: If one perceives a group, or movement, as dangerous, what is the correct way to oppose such a movement? And more narrowly, what is wrong with deriding, even insulting them on a blog? (To give my own partial answer to my own question, insulting them is probably quite ineffective, and may at times be counter productive, but I’d like to here your answer.)
GW: According to you, Pat speaks indirectly, insinuating rather than stating things. What is wrong with that. Again, my own answer would be it may come across as being dishonest, but why not consider it just a style? If someone is indeed greatly afraid of small groups of people having undue, powerful influences on events, why wouldn’t that person speak discreetly? I have read that a number of fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood” and such were political speak that people dared not utter directly. Clearly we are not, at the moment, in such a suppressive environment, but what if one is just around the corner, or as evident to me, there is that suppression already in other parts of the world. Drats! Times up, …YES DEAR, COMING!
“, I would probably rather focus more on discrediting Hillary and being entirely as unfit as Trump.”
Really? I’d certainly be interested in hearing that analysis/comparison.
Mike, I can save you some time; here’s a reference on Evil Hillary that sums her up fully:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/10/14/the-hideous-diabolical-truth-about-hillary-clinton/
Whats wrong with it, oh benevolent bestower of awards, is that Pat has revealed quite a bit of his philosophy in small chunks over time but when you call him on the implications of his posts he says you are reading him all wrong, while being unwilling to reavel directly what he does think. Meanwhile, he is all over the case of people who do speak their thoughts directly with a sort of conservative version of PC, I’m not allowed to call people who think that trump is likable and respects women stupid. Meanwhile his chosen people are allowed to say whatever the F*** they want and I am just supposed to stew quietly. Well, F*** that!
OK, its a tempest in an online teapot, I know that. My honeydew list is also calling!
Plus, he takes advantage of my post award glow to tell me I think like a nazi and then claims to be surprised at my heated response. Somebody is playing games here. Ouch, yes I’m doing it dear, ye….
Mike, I agree with you that this has become a profiler thread and not one of political differences in the candidates. Should the discussion remain on the “deplorable” slant and why Hillary believes 50% are deplorable, then that would be justified. But it appears this is becoming something different than that, just like so many websites that allows comments from readers. I will say I find it “deplorable” when the MSP jumps all over Romney for his 47 (or something) percent figure about Obama supporters, but little from them is said about her deplorable comment.
There is nothing wrong with Trump supporters or Clinton supporters. Clinton supporters believe in bigger government, higher taxes to support government programs and more government involvement in worker and business rights. Trump supporters are an off shoot of the tea party movement. They are the one TOTALLY fed up with government. They are the ones that bought into the GOP cool-aide about replacing Obamacare, lowering government spending, reducing government involvement in the economy when it comes to government regulations and finally, stopping Obama and his liberal agenda. Nothing happened and this was the straw that broke the camels back. The GOP allowed 16 people to run with 15 of them supporting basically the same crap that the GOP voters thought they were getting when they voted in a GOP house and senate. So the one that took on the establishment and was the one that did not believe in controlling moral behaviors along with not controlling business behaviors was the one that won out.
Trump supporters continue to support Trump, not because they are deplorable, mentally ill, misguided or any other socially unacceptable reason. They are pissed off and that is the reason they support Trump and are willing to overlook his treatment of women and his misguided words concerning other issues.
He will not win. But he is blowing up the establishment GOP party. Hopefully this party will remain a legislative party and we do not end up with another 2008 where Clinton has free reign to pass her agenda.
This was me.
Well, I am going to have to disagree because the polls don’t just ask if the respondents will vote for trump, they ask if they like him and if they believe he respects women. Strong majorities of GOP/conservative voters like him and believe that he respects women. So, its more than just total disbelief in the government. From where I sit those people live in a different cultural universe and I dislike their cultural universe as much as they dislike mine.
Ron: I heartily agree with your assessment of tea partiers that have become Trump voters. While I personally have opted to reject Trump, the animosity I now hold toward the GOP is something akin to someone attracted to a hot-sexy mermaid only to discover she is a man-killer. The GOP says things I love to hear and then act totally contrary to most of their platform. Perhaps like a jilted lover having an affair to get back at the person that hurt them, the more flawed their new lover is, the stronger the statement it is to their former love.
Jay: I did not get through the entirety of your link, I figured it was going to be “tongue in cheek” , not really against Hillary, but the first part was so hysterically funny, I already feel it was worth it, even if the end part will probably try to spin things in her favor. I’ll finish it later and yes, I will try to make the case that, while a Trump presidency might be like pouring 6 ounces of rat poison in a stew that, if you don’t stir the stew, and scoop a cup from the right side, you might survive, A Hillary presidency might be like 5 ounces of rat poison rather than 6 ounces, both must be rejected. Later on that subject, thanks for the humor!
GW- Some years ago when Soto-Meyer Spelling?) was getting confirmed on the Supreme Court, there was one blog that had among some comments, cussing about Republicans/Conservatives and no reproof, but I made some comment about Soto-Meyer being racist and I was threatened by the moderator to be blocked from posting for my inflammatory comment. It was clear to me that the moderator wasn’t the least bit fair, but I learned to live with that bias. It gets a little like the crazy derivative trading described in the “Big Short” movie when we start talking about someone’s bias towards someone else’s bias towards a third person’s bias. Or, in another way, one person’s fear of another person’s fear, of another person’s fear. But as mind boggling as that is, that is in fact, right or wrong, what we are doing. It is challenging to sort those kinds of things out, however, there may be value in working through such an endeavor.
One thing that I am quite impressed with on this blog, despite my sharing my beliefs (although perhaps not everyone caught it, I’m pretty sure most did catch it) about being a young-earth creationist, I did not get the instant, “you are an idiot, flat-earth, moron not worthy of being read.” I’m rather toughened to those attacks so they don’t really bother me, and I dare claim that I think I understand that many lump those ideas equal with believing with fairies and unicorns, and I’m ok with that. So I tip my hat to everyone’s civility here, even with these passionate squabbles, perhaps some of which are unavoidable, that we go through.
No, I read it and although I am very much of the opposing camp, being among other things a trained geologist, Lyell and Hutton and Darwin and all, religious belief is religious belief and as long as the belief is not aggressively expanding then it comes under the heading of none of my business. Plus you are so rational in general and benevolent that I am prone to not care even more. If you believed that doctrine and were being a strident religious-right guy then your belief would be a bigger deal to me.
Thanks GW, also to be more explicit on my previous rambling, Trump supporters, at least a certain percentage of them, are driven by fear, fear of illegal aliens and such, you fear that their fear might lead to a president that can cause horrific damage to the world, Pat fears that your fear could lead to dictator like oppression of opposition. I do not claim to have an answer to this quandary, but sometimes identifying the issue can be a start to finding a solution.
Hi Jay, I’m tired and have about 8 or so links, so I apologize in advance for being short and snarky, for example this first one, from the daily kos, my comment , Hillary likes to cluster bomb kids. No, I’m sure she she actually doesn’t , but her actions to vote against prohibiting the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas, well they led to real world damage. Crazy Donald may or may not cause more military violence in this world, but with Hillary, she has a proven track record, she will use violence, she is a neo-con, she is pro-regime change no matter what mess it causes. You can count on her to bring more violence to this world.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/21/425303/-
Hillary thinks Obama was wrong not to take greater military action in Syria
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-clinton-obama-foreign-policy
Voted in favor of invasion of Iraq without having read the intel report.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/whats-missing-from-hillary-clintons-iraq-war-apology/372427/
She doesn’t denounce her side using bigotry if the purpose for that bigotry is to try to give her an edge against an opponent.
http://thehumanist.com/commentary/democratic-national-committees-insult-atheists
Quick to military action in Libya, based on less than great intelligence information, no plan in advance for consequences.
http://reason.com/blog/2016/09/22/regime-change-in-libya-hillary-clinton
Media doesn’t want to spend time on her negative information- 25 to 1 in time ratio
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/media/301009-is-there-actual-fire-in-the-smoke-of-trumps-media-criticism
Well, there is a point about media coverage in the MSM. But here is the flip side. The MSM should really help the Putin/Assange attempt to spread stolen information that may discredit Clinton among left leaning millennials and bring us trump? They should really do that? We have a large conservative and alt right (not to mention alt left as well) media to do that dirty work. trump has been losing by the same 6-7 points since before the sex tapes and since before most of the wikileaks info. He is losing because of who he is. The MSM has not buried the Wikileaks material, they cover it, but they don’t emphasize it, which is fine with me. As far as I am concerned the putin/useful-idiot assange stolen documents is a transparently stinking pile of propaganda that deserves only mild attention.
Here is another example of her diplomatic “finesse”.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-iran-idUSN2224332720080422
Here is a quote from Queen Neo-con”: “As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses. And we’re going to invest in protecting our governmental networks and our national infrastructure. I want us to lead the world in setting the rules of cyberspace.”
http://time.com/4474619/read-hillary-clinton-american-legion-speech/
Hillary is ready to nuke all of Iran. Hillary is ready to pick a military fight with Russia.
Are you ready for Hillary?
“Hillary is ready to nuke all of Iran. Hillary is ready to pick a military fight with Russia.
Are you ready for Hillary?”
That is over the top, really. Hillary brings the same basic foreign policy America as world cop that we have had since WWII. As Americans who have a free media we know instantly when we have screwed up and we have screwed up a lot. But I will be boring here and say that without the world structure of NATO the number of countries with a North Korean style government in Asia, Eastern Europe, even south and Central America, as well as Africa where Russia also meddled to spread their ideology. So, it would be a much worse world in my opinion without that America/NATO resolve and structure.
I’ve been to Russia, lived there and there is a lot to love there and unfortunately a lot not to love. The Russian leaders other than Gorby and Yeltsin have always deceived the Russian people and harnessed their talents to international evil. I do not believe the Hillary will engage Russia militarily, no, but the cyber attacks for example need an equal or worse response. Putin has declared information war on the west, once war is declared on you you have to participate vigorously. I’m not ready to accept Putin’s idea of the world, not nearly.
If necessary the way to win with Russia is the way Reagan did it. It will take resolve and time in the entire west, not an easy thing.
Bad things will happen in the world during the next presidency, no matter who is president because there are a lot of dark forces in the world, a lot of real totalitarians who want power or more power. Being naive is no solution to them and trump is naive as hell. That is the worst danger.
A week from today I fly to Isreal and will spend ten days there with my wife’s son and family 50 miles from Syria. A stable US foreign policy could not be more essential in that region. I trust hillary far more than I trust trump’s chaotic mess. Some of the the retired generals who are supporting trump are pretty scary members of a very right wing group, if you are looking for a peaceful foreign policy, they ain’t gonna bring it. They are the best look at the professionals trump would choose.
The devil I know looks very good from where I sit.
Trump’s nutso right wing military advisor:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/colin-powell-blasted-trumps-chief-military-advisor?utm_term=.qsooPW4Q0#.uiKZxMJRW
I wasn’t there, in the meetings, in the “war rooms,” but what I can glean from variety of sources is that what Saddam and Ghadaffi and other U.S. enemies have in common is a threat to U.S. Saudi Petri-dollar and U.S. dollar hegemony. Our foreign policy resembles mobster activity in reality and humanitarianism as a false face, just like next spokesmodel Hillary. We are making enemies around the world. This is not what the Founders envisioned or advised.
The Founders didn’t have a clue what the modern technological world was going to be like.
GW, last night I used the word “snarky” but that was a poor choice, you said: “Over the top” I think that was a far better term for my deliberate attempt to present my ideas in a provocative way. Prior to your response, I thought of contrasting it with a perspective of “What if your position is that we ought to flex our military muscle more?” One could perhaps argue that dictators and despots care very little about diplomacy or sanctions, they don’t care if their people starve. Then yes, Hillary is your candidate, she is going to deliver, as I believe Rush coined it: “Kinetic humanitarian aid” in the form of missile strikes and other military action. She has a proven track record on this. So if using our military might is better than not using it, then yes, she is a good choice. I don’t hold that view, I believe that changes in the world, the globalization that did not exist years ago, makes non-violent methods of changing other nations a much more viable option. It is much easier to “invade” another country though products and information, internet and radio, than before. Sure it still is tough in places like N. Korea, but much more plausible than before.
I’ll share one admittedly prejudicial, unfounded, baseless hunch I have about Hillary, once in power, she will at some point feel the need to test/prove her power as commander in chief. She will not only want to prove a woman can be POTUS, a woman can order troops into ground combat and win. There will be U.S. ground troops fighting somewhere that they are not currently fighting. Again, I say this with all the caveats previously mentioned.
Mike, the two biggest issues that have always faced mankind since we had nations and civilization are class and war. How to distribute money and power equitably and keep the powerful from dominating the working class and how to escape from the endless wars the humans have always engaged in.
Obviously these questions are so deep that no one has solved them very satisfactorily. I personally am allergic to the easy answers that various political and ideological movements come up with. THere are no simple naive answers to these questions and the good intentions behind the naive answers usually quickly degenerate into other ideas that are nasty in themselves, like blaming foreign accents for shuttered factories (my wife is one of those with a foreign accent). This is why PatRiot (read Superpatriot) and I are oil and water. As a tangent, you’d have to read much older posts of Pats on the trilateral commission and the Rockefellers and the international world government conspiracy to destroy US sovereignty to know that I am not just raving and inventing things out of thin air. His idea are John Birch Society descendents. But he does not have the balls to say it clearly.
As to war, it would be so nice if the US could just take the high road and not get involved and turn our energy inward. That would not work any better than it did in the between war 20s and 30s. We are stuck in this endless swamp of meddling and trying to find and support the lesser evils among ideologies and regimes and we fail regularly because its impossibly difficult, not because we are evil. It was Europe’s mess for centuries until the two World wars dumped it in the lap of the US as the richest and most isolated by water actor. Hillary is just the average product of this post WWII trend, no nicer, no meaner.
Your idea about using globalization and trade is quite good and it is the argument for relatively open borders and trade agreements that the populists are sure are just tools of the elite, blah, blah, blah. Anyone who really cares about trade should take the time to read a few economics textbooks or take a few college courses on economics and trade. Following that they may still oppose the TPP ect. but it will be less based (or not based) on the belief that proponents of the TPP are a sinister elite looking to keep the working class poor while getting rich at their expense. OK, I am ranting on tangents and I know it.
Petro-dollar with an “o” for oh shit, Pandora’s box is open.
Petro-dollar with an “o” for oh shit, Pandora’s box is open. It’s been a long time since the American people were told the truth by it’s highest admin
Typical Pat. Reminiscent of the left wing theory that Bush went to war in Iraq so his oil buddies would get rich. Which is a crock.
Supporting facts and sources? I am sure there are actually some, just like there are actual supporting facts that support the idea that W was behind 9/11. But more powerful supporting facts to say he wasn’t. Just because someone can cook up a theory and some facts even support it does not mean that the theory is valid. The best way to tell if a theory is plausible is to weigh ALL the most relevant facts.
Your little bomb does not address the actual reasons we were against Saddam and Gaddafi, and there are plenty of those.
Still waiting for that big picture post that makes your worldview actually clear, instead of your usual drive by shootings that have much more dark innuendo than solid support.
Yes, GW, I’m sure it’s all crazy talk in your mind. And Eisenhower was crazy when he warned us about the Industrial Military Complex. A total loon. What could he possibly know ad an exiting U.S. President?
Eisenhower’s statement was of huge meaning and importance and no one doubts it. But you still have to paint a complete picture instead of simply taking every dark comment or fear about American military actions married to the interests of a few rich people (oh, I know you did not Explicitly say that, why would you explicitly say Anything concrete that someone could dispute? That is not your style, imply and run and then complain that your are misunderstood, that is your style) as the whole truth.
Again, the complete picture of your worldview, where is it? And, the gloves are off. You called me a Nazi. I’m calling you a conspiracy theorist, a well meaning kook, with ideas taken from the far right, the far left, the peace movement (which I honor while not agreeing with their naive take on the world) the Birchers, the ISO, Assange, every loon with a dark theory and some actual facts mixed in for ballast.
It does not mean that there is not anything at all to your complaints with the world, it does not mean that I disagree with all of your sentiments or fears, it just means that you are doing this badly, you are pasting together only the facts that support your conspiracy theories and ignoring the other facts in a chaotic manner.
Conspiracies DO exist and you are free to theorize about them, but conspiracy thinking is rightly looked down on because the general thrust of conspiracy theory thinking only pulls more and more people into paranoia of things that are wild caricatures of real problems. Which does not help to solve the real problems.
Yeah, I’m worried about global stability and war and safety too. Both Trump and Hillary look horrible to me.
But one of them will be president. To me its obvious that the choice is between having my foot run over by a truck or having excruciating painful terminal cancer. Both choices completely suck but there is a difference all the same.
Come with me to Israel and meet my family near the Syrian border, we can talk more there.
I sincerely wish you have a good trip GW. I will assume you will likely be caught up in too much family activity to post much, if any. I’ll miss your comments for awhile and look forward to your return.
Pat, as you know, I agree with you that both Trump and Hillary look horrible. But I partly disagree and partly don’t understand. First, doesn’t the U.S. have a legitimate interest in protecting things like access to petroleum markets? Is there anything wrong with attempting to co-ordinate efforts with Saudis to bring stability to the region? I certainly do not put it past any government to be inept in attempting to achieve a given objective, but It would seem quite counter productive to try to bring stability by toppling regimes. On the other hand, if the goal is to bring instability, to raise, say the personal value of Bush oil investments or something of that ilk, why would those same leaders not take more of a leftist tact, “protect the environment by not drilling in Alaska, no to Keystone pipeline, ect.” They make a lot of moves that are self defeating in other areas if this was their objective.
My god you are rational. Yes we have a legititamate interest in protecting oil markets. Hussein had intentions of becoming the regional oil boss. Do we want the Carter years repeated? Who would escalating oil costs hurt. the rich? Or the working man and the poor worldwide <– the answer.
As well, keeping oil flowing is the way to keep the world economy stable and the opposite of the way to cause windfall profits to "Bush's rich friends." A thing the lefties were beyond understanding.
As well the idea that we are false humanitarians offends me to my core and is not at all what I would call Patriotic. My state is is full of all kinds of refugees including some I taught english to as a volunteer. The US has a long long history of real humanitarian actions that the far right and especially the far left smear. I hate that.
GW your request for my world view is a non-sequitur. Since when has a stated world view been a requirement for discussion here on TNM? You seem to want to put everyone’s thoughts here into a box with a label on it, such as Libertarian, or Right+16306214983-wing Christian or whatever. How about I’m a human being who prefers freedom, liberty, and sanity over corruption. I’m sure u will like to attach some label so you can start your ridicule and nay-saying. When did u decide there was no other choice but on the side of drones and cluster bombs, after your stocks went up? You and I are too far apart and I don’t like your style. I won’t get involved in ad-hominem name calling though it would be easy. Say what you want. You don’t impress me. To everyone else sorry for the acid!
“I won’t get involved in ad-hominem name calling though it would be easy.”
As easy as saying I think like a Nazi? You are talking self-serving nonsense. Sorry its come to this but You don’t like my style because I am asking you to produce something solid that is not clearly a wild hodgepodge of innuendos and you can’t do it. You are not even about to try.
From Fox news commentator greg gutfeld:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/10/17/greg-gutfeld-guilty-sins-wikileaks-and-our-wicked-approval.html
“…We conservatives pride ourselves on calling something as it is. We harass President Obama daily for his inability to say “radical Islam.” We openly mock the gender monsoon of pronouns offered to students; we deride politicians who call taxes “revenue.”
And yet, we’re A-OK with calling theft of personal information, a “hack.”
No kids, it’s “theft.” And, if it were happening to someone you like, you’d be screaming at the top of your lungs.
Lucky us, it’s only happening to Democrats!
Thus we see the consequence of team sport politics. We hate goons on the other side, but we love our goons nonetheless. For now, WikiLeaks is our goon.
For now. Until that goon comes for you.
It’s the crocodile that eats you last….”
Very poignant article. I believe we ought to look hard at such issues. I am not afraid to call it “Theft”. When should we permit theft, if ever? Personally, if the tables were turned, say a darling of mine, Rand Paul, was leading the polls like Hillary, and suddenly a hack/theft of his information revealed terrible things about him, I believe I may still try to defend him, dismiss the importance of the info, but be somewhat glad that those secrets were revealed. Would we not cheer if a diabolical plot by Iran or N. Korea was revealed by a theft of their secrets?
I guess I see it like a surgery, with the invasive cutting happening, prior to knowing if there is cancer inside needing to be removed. Cutting someone open for no good reason is bad. Cutting someone open to remove a cancer, is necessary damage for a greater good. Cutting someone open, having no idea if there is cancer there or not, but then finding cancer, hard to make a moral argument , but thankful anyway. Of course with Hillary and the DNC, not hard to guess you would find , corrupt, quid pro quo, cancer going on. Not the least bit surprising.
Someone hacking me personally, string them up! That’s a crime! Ah, my own hypocrisy.:)
I can’t see that anything in the hacks on the dems has been terrible. Its mostly pretty boring stuff that is geared to offending progressives who don’t understand economics or trade. I just see it as our enemy putin using our enemy assange to give us the trump virus. It does not mean that I think the Clintons don’t deserve scrutiny or criticism. But theft of personal letters is just a skeazy tactic used by skeazy people.
Conservatives as well as Liberals will use terminology that fit their needs. Each will use reasons to support or oppose politicians that fit nicely into their own personal needs. If they do not like a candidate, they will find terminology to use to oppose a candidate. If they support one, they will find terminology that will support that position.
Just look at the evangelical conservatives today where many, if not most of them are still supporting Trump. In many cases should they have been old enough, they were the ones that demanded an impeachment of Bill clinton for the Monica Lewinski issue and the lies and deceit that went with that. That used up months of congressional time for investigations, hearings and everything that went with it. They refused to compromise any of their beliefs that Clinton should be impeached causing little to get done the last years of his administration.
Fast forward almost 20 years. Conservatives who took the position that Clinton was unfit to be in office are now supporting Trump and finding ways to describe why the reports on him are not true. Somehow they have found a way to compromise their positions on sexual abuse, womanizing and crass behaviors that Trump admitted on the tape. Many of these same conservatives are the ones attacking Ryan for his compromising with democrats to get a budget passed and other legislation that required both GOP and Democrat votes.They find the “C” word one where primary challengers should take on incumbents for compromising.
I am not saying that any of this is wrong. It is just hard for me to understand how a group of individuals that had such a hard and fixed reaction to B. Clinton and have such a policy of never compromising to the point of closing down the government during budget legislation times are the same ones that can find a way to compromise their social values positions and support Trump
For me, the same hold true for Hillary. She supported a husband who was an alleged rapist (reported by more than one woman), no different than Trumps alleged sexual abuse of women he has had contact with. That’s why I can’t vote for either one. But that comes from one with 2 daughters and 3 grand daughters. I may have a different perspective than someone with neither one.
From the National Review, This is pretty much the point of view that I believe:
“…THE EXTERNAL THREATS One. Vladimir Putin, the president/czar/dictator of Russia, has made unmistakably clear that he intends to reverse the verdict rendered by history in 1989 and 1991, reconstituting Stalin’s internal and external empires and reasserting Russia’s predominant influence on the Continent. That he masks this neo-imperial ambition in the guise of the bizarre ideology of “Eurasianism” — when he isn’t proclaiming himself, even more weirdly, the paladin of Christian civilization and “traditional” values — is of less consequence than the massive propaganda and disinformation campaigns he is currently conducting, in a new form of war against the West. That “Europe” has found no adequate – meaning effective – response to this aggression, even when it involved, in Crimea, the first violent reconstruction of a European border since 1945, is one very dangerous measure of Europe’s current incapacity.
Two. American indifference to Europe is at its highest level since the 1920s and 1930s — and everyone knows, or should know, how that spasm of isolationism turned out. The next president of the United States will take office amidst any number of grave dangers. Yet foreign-policy issues — including the challenges posed to the entire West by Europe’s sclerotic condition – were rarely debated in the 2016 presidential campaign, despite the fact that the Obama administration’s “lead from behind” approach to world affairs was, to put it gently, a comprehensive failure. This indifference is, to be sure, an American problem; but it is also a threat to Europe, which has become accustomed to getting help from across the Atlantic. That help is not coming in the foreseeable future….”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441123/europe-civilizational-confidence-crisis
Here’s a dystopian prognostication for what could happen after Trump loses: An ominous American future imagined, by Damon Linker, who I assesss from previous writings as a Moderate Conservative, now strongly anti Trump
http://theweek.com/articles/655708/after-trump-loses-ominous-american-future-imagined?utm_source=links&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=twitter
Good Lord!!! My play “The making of a President” (which I shared the outline some months back) is right on except for one minor detail. He isn’t going to make millions on a reality TV show sold to networks, he is going to make millions on a complete news and reality TV network!.
You should get together with Damon and collaborate!
Who will play Trump in your play? I’m guessing you have someone other than Alec Baldwin in mind –
How about Charlie Sheen. WINNER!!! He has the same personality so he would not be acting other than facial expressions and a peach colored wig will do the trick.
GW: After reading your first two comments this morning, I was plotting an attempt at making a funny joke about you having answered a question I asked Pat, and me trying to spin that into “unveiling” that you and he are actually the same person logging into different accounts. Your fake animosity toward his ideas being just a ruse. Then you explained in your 3rd post that Pat + Riot = Patriot which I hadn’t caught and felt too silly at that point to try to joke about the former. I still have your comment of how rational I am, which I will be basking in for months, if not longer.
Ah, well, tempest in a teapot, I’m stormed out. I’m sure that your thoughtful, er, thinking, gets noticed a lot, online and in life. Everyone here writes well and expresses themself well, whether I agree with them or not. But your posts are always very balanced and reasonable, temperate, calming, excellent balance for the fiery fuel rods like myself. Now, no need to get a swelled head! Carry on.
“…and how to escape from the endless wars,,,” I can’t remember if I have repeated this idea on this website or not. But I believe it is worth repeating anyway. First, even if there was a “perfect” answer to solving war, writing it on a blog site is not going to solve much of anything. Despite the relative ineffectiveness of writing it, I believe a profound concept was stated by a Mr. Carl Wilkins, who was one of, or perhaps the only American citizen who voluntarily stayed in Rwanda during the Genocide of 1994. He claims committing genocide is hard work, the biggest key to succeeding is the two part process of A) Creating separation, us and them, then B) Characterizing the “them” as inferior and worthy of being eliminated. Thus the way to work against that, as best we can, is to, connect with others, have as little “us and them” as possible and where we fall short of connecting to every type of person possible, we avoid as much as possible making the “thems” that we fail to connect with being put down as worthless, inferior, and in need of elimination.
GW: The above referenced issue is to me the 2nd most important reason I write on a blog site like this. (The 1st most important reason for me is to get compliments like being told I’m rational or funny.
After reading what I just posted, I think I should make it CLEAR-Mr. Wilkins was AGAINST genocide, and his analysis of it, after having lived through it was for the purpose of defeating it.
Well, that’s how the cold war between US and Russia ended, people went around their governments and made friends. Only that seems to be not enough today vis a vis US and Russia. A bad leader can do a lot of harm.
I think one part of the world that would be so easy to “fix” would be North and South Korea, if one “Dear Leader” was only a real dear, rather than a tyrant. The two Koreas speak the same language , same culture , albeit, no doubt just like East and West Germany, unification would have some pains In adjusting….Oh! to only replace that one bad leader without causing another dictator to take his place. How much better, and safer, the whole world would be!
Excellent, Mike! You were asking me previously about something I was warning against…the separation, the perception of superiority–yes, it can creep in, lead to outright hatred. Better to build on commonalities where we can, etc. Important work for the human species. Mike you are good for this site. And I wouldn’t downplay the worth of writing on a blogsite. We never know when someone might stumble upon something and be inspired! Plus it’s good practice and a way to refine our thoughts!
We’ve all read enough comment sections online to know how quickly insults spiral a discussion down the toilet. That’s part of what we like about TNM: it has been a forum for somewhat deeper, civil, exploration and consideration of ideas. The tagline of Rick’s site here is “Politics and Civilization…” I’ve always liked Rick’s inclusion there of the word “civilization”.
Pat, glad you are still around. Driving you off is not a goal of mine, I promise you!
Thanks Pat and GW! I am going to say something that I’m a little afraid to say on-line. After the knife attack in Minnesota and the most recent bomb attack in New York, my feelings towards a certain religious group was feeling quite sour. I did not want to feel that way, but I was feeling quite negative. I realized that during my lifetime I had had some friends that practiced Islam, but I currently have none of which I know. Thus, I took the time to visit an Islamic center, I did not go inside, I only talked to a couple of people in the lobby. I spent about 15 minutes and I believe it helped me get back to a more balanced perspective. I know on-line I have a mild manner, and that is not faked, I am pretty mild mannered, but I think I have room for improvement. In fact, I’m hoping to find time to visit again, and perhaps make a friend or two.
Reflecting on what I just wrote- I ask, what was I afraid of? The answer, a couple of things, first of all, I have a paranoia about the use of certain words, I don’t know for sure, I always thing using a certain word that is an explosive and starts with the letter “b” causes my words to get to the next level of scrutiny by our dear national protectors that I believe grab virtually all data and then start sifting and categorizing things. The next thing I fear is admitting my own prejudice, yes, I know virtually all of us have them, but it is uncomfortable getting that specific, However, re-reading it now, I had nothing to fear about my words on Islam, now about those national actors, that’s another thing! Hey there Mr. Alphabet agency, yeah I have firearms! Come and take them!
I live about oh, 30 to 40 miles from Gonzales Texas, they have quite the picture on their water tower you can see at this link:
http://texaswaterlaw.blogspot.com/2009/07/come-and-take-it-spirit-still-alive-in.html
My 7:37 post went under Mike Hatcher’s comment. My 7:37 post is obviously directed at The Person Posting as GW, formerly Roby, formerly Ian.
We’ll see how long you remain glad. I predict soon you will be unable to look at the topics at hand from multiple angles, multiple perspectives, but will instead lash out again like an impetuous boy when he doesn’t get his way, lobbing fire crackers and sticks from your amen camp.
I found the Donald to be less horrible last night. I thought Mrs. Clinton looked shaken, watery-eyed, tired, and guilty. To me, and many Americans, the bigger issues outweigh Trump’s rich boy bad behavior regarding women and his lack of eloquence, et cetera. Unless there is some new revelation, I’m back to voting for Trump. I don’t need to defend my changing of my mind. I, and many Americans, would have preferred a much more admirable character to champion needed changes, but now it is what it is.
It is critical now for the human race to learn how to communicate better to avoid division, misunderstanding, and destruction to people and the planet, etc. etc. But I’m no pacifist. I’m a big believer in violence for self-defense. Quick and vicious is best. If some of the things directed to me above here were said in person, face to face in public, I would have given one warning to “back off.” If it persisted I would have punched the offender in the mouth old school and laid him out on the floor. But this is a civil, online forum. I won’t be provoked into an insult fest, though I am likely to have to be creatively insulting in a limited way in self-defense. I’ll pick and choose which points I feel like debating further. If I think the discussion is going nowhere or down the toilet I’ll cease and go on to something else. I’ll focus on the concepts and the logic, not the insults. The Person Posting as GW, or TPP-GW, may prove himself “unfit” for a civil forum. We will see.
“I predict soon you will be unable to look at the topics at hand from multiple angles, multiple perspectives, but will instead lash out again like an impetuous boy when he doesn’t get his way, lobbing fire crackers and sticks from your amen camp.”
Translation: You are not able to handle the fact that I don’t agree with your worldview.
I’m glad you are here, but I will leave you alone, you are looking for actual converts to your way of thinking, while being unwilling to give that way of thinking a real description. Frustration at the world has turned to frustration with a target, me, the “nazi” type thinker.
Bee in the bottle has knocked his head silly.
TPP-GW? try TPP-libertarian party, TPP-Dave, TPP-Bastiat (if he takes his libertarian economics seriously) TPP-Gary Johnson.
Trade agreements are deep stuff, intuitively, as I have said in the past I am against them. But my opinion does not count for much even with me, because I know that I don’t have the depth of knowledge of the pros and cons. A simple passionate picture of trade agreements as the bogeyman has certainly motivated the far left forever, and, recently the parts of the right have started repeating the same things that ISO english professors have been using to seduce well-meaning lefty students for decades.
Intuitively I am against them because there is such a thing as the race to the bottom, an argument I had with much vitriol with JB who claimed the entire concept does not exist. I have used that sick rich iron heiress here on TNM and her comments on what wages should be for Australian miners due to Chinese competition as an example of the race to the bottom.
So, I am not here to defend trade agreements. What I am here to defend is the fact that free as possible trade IS seen as being a winning trade off by many, in fact I would gather, a majority of economists. As, well, It is actually pretty much the cornerstone of the libertarian philosophy. At one time you stated Pat that you had already long considered yourself a libertarian. So, hanging the TPP around the neck of Hillary Clinton as some sort of typically elite plan to conspire with wall street millionaires (oh, I know that you did not use those exact words, but that is exactly the populist anti-TPP, anti trade agreement rhetoric that is used on TPP supporters and especially Hillary) to heartlessly screw the working class is piling on. She did not invent these agreements, she is not the major force behind free trade, history is. Your libertarians are. I won’t mind if the TPP does not happen in the Clinton presidency, but history seems to say that it will happen sooner or later and not for the sake of the elite but because free trade makes sense to economists, who are the people who actually can understand its trade offs. Be against it all you like and its race to the bottom of wages, but do not paint its supporters black, if you do you are slandering Dave and the libertarian world as well as Clinton.
To make the argument even emptier that you need trump to save us from the TPP, Clinton has already publicly given her promise not to further push it, it written into the dem platform thanks to Bernie. So, its dead for now. You need another so-called fire for trump to save you from.
If you think its an aggressive military policy of neo con intervention in the middle east that Hillary would pursue, then just take a look if you haven’t at trump’s military advisors. You think they are peaceniks, dove’s, mild-mannered isolationists? There are absolutely aggressive wild men chief among them, who have been denounced by the likes of rational military people such as Colin Powell. You have no idea how far trump will let them go, he certainly knows nothing himself about the military or foreign policy and openly questioned why he cannot use nuclear weapons. So, no that is not the fire that your trump is going to put out.
“Powell called Donald Trump a “national disgrace and an international pariah” and a “disaster” in emails sent this summer. Powell also said that Trump “is in the process of destroying himself, no need for Dems to attack him.” … “Powell, a retired four-star general, also trashed one of Trump’s top military advisers. In July emails to his son, he called retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn a “right-wing nutty.” “I spoke at [Defense Intelligence Agency] last month,” Powell wrote after Flynn spoke at the Republican National Convention. “Flynn got fired as head of DIA. His replacement is a black Marine 3-star. I asked why Flynn got fired. Abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc. He has been and was right-wing nutty every [sic] since. I watched about five minutes on line of his talked [sic] and switched off.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/colin-powell-donald-trump-mike-flynn-emails-2016-9
There is your savior-fireman. Excuse my inflexible little mind but I am not buying the ideas you are promoting.
I don’t care a bit about your vote, vote how you like, fighting over individual votes is never my interest. I care about the quality of the ideas that you are promoting here. They are really out in the weeds on trump and his ability to lead us out of harm. trump is harm to America in blinding flashing neon lights. You keep falling for his BS, so we are on the outs.
I’m no nazi thinker Pat, that was a disgusting ad hominem, way out there. but there is a guy who is motivating 40% of the voters who kept Hitler’s quotes by his bed and studied them, a man, like hitler, with no love in him. You should apply the same standards you are applying to me to your chosen candidate. Tell me Pat, who is more consequential in your world, a pesty internet poster who won’t agree with you or the POTUS?
“I would have given one warning to “back off.” If it persisted I would have punched the offender in the mouth old school and laid him out on the floor. ”
Ahhh, I am warned you are violent when disagreed with. Nice.
If you would read what I wrote, you would see I may resort to violence if I am persistently insulted in person, face to face. If you would read what I wrote, you would see that I said it is different here on a civil forum.
I have a long history here of logical argument and reasonableness, though people are welcome to disagree with points expressed. I am willing to debate ideas, but I don’t think your temperament can handle it. Maybe you will prove me wrong or maybe you will run.
At my neighborhood dive bar 2 long time hangers-out have an equally long standing feud.
They greet each other with snide curses, trade barbed ripostes about each other’s ancestrery/illegitimacy, challenge each other’s knowledge or lack thereof about sports, news, politics, restaurants, weather, films, tv shows, and the best or worst bartenders who have worked there the last two decades. After the requisite number of drinks, accusations, outbursts of indignation at each others blockheadness, they threaten to punch each other’s lights out or noses flat, but so far haven’t stepped far enough away from the bar to leave their drinks unattended.
Also, when either is alone, absent the others presence they seem quietly morose, grumpier, and at loose ends, and that tends to dampen the bar visit for the rest of us, who look forward to their squabbles as expectantly as auto racetrack fans anticipating a pileup. 😏🏎🏎🚑
Just saying…
Jay, your idea is appreciated. It’s tempting but….I actually had a similar thing going with a co-worker some years ago. It was no holds barred, verbally, and could get really nasty, graphic, and disgusting, but everyone else around was aware of it. Here on TNM some new visitors might stumble upon it, get the wrong idea, and be encouraged to also spew venom.
I’ve been a jokester most of my life, so I know the value of keeping it light and relaxing, but I am genuinely worried about possible upcoming “upheaval” and trouble, so getting too serious even for myself.
Hatcher might have the right idea: feel good 60s music.
I got to admit, car wrecks can be entertaining. However,….
Love, sadly is a thing that is not in trump. His relationships with women are a financial transaction on both ends. That is not just some soap opera issue for the tabloids and gossipy ladies, its a national issue of the highest importance. I have 2 daughters. He cannot be their president, he can not lead therei society in his amoral direction especially regarding how we treat women. His example would set our culture far back because one thing trump is, he IS a leader, his actions and thoughts get taken up and believed by tens of millions, e.g. when he says the election is rigged suddenly a majority of gop voters believe that. They also say (a majority of gop voters) that he respects women. He IS, god help us, a leader and he is capable of leading the country just like he has led gop voters, into truly intolerable directions of opinion and behavior. So far I have been purely astonished at the behaviors and ideas that he has led gop and some independent voters to believe are true or acceptable. People will follow an alpha male in terrible directions as history shows, even decent people. This is not me being closed minded and refusing to see something from a different direction, this is me having my eyes very lucidly wide open and not being about to be suckered.
The Clintons have very real character flaws as well, even some of the same ones trump has, self absorption, lying, greed. But they are not incapable of love, they have hearts, they care about people other than themselves. People under the trump trance or very partisan people will dispute that but Bill Clinton was hugely popular, even or especially with women, because he is a people person, and people feel it. God help me, I hate to have to write that and I spent his presidency being dumbfounded that people liked him, but yes they did and still do even. Its because in spite the shitty side of his character, there is a also a good side, a people side a side with compassion and love for people. Which makes them normal.
trump is abnormal, empty. trump may love his children in some way as being his own genetic material, other than that he is a warped character with no love for anything but money and power and himself. That character is unfit to be president (as hundreds of newspaper editorial boards, even many conservative ones no one can accuse of being the mainstream media) have clearly said.
I consider that trump has woven a spell of many good people due to his self belief and alpha male qualities. Instinctively, people want a leader and there he is, the leader of the pack, as he believes. It will be an irretrievably evil day if he is somehow elected. It would be an irretrievably evil day for the US even if he had a coronary 10 minutes after taking the oath, we already would have crossed a line. There has to be enough wisdom in this country to reject a character like trump’s as president or we are lost.
Something I first noticed with John Kasich, then I realized with seemingly all politicians, is their obsession with the word “Look”. Look, the crime rate has…blah, blah, blah. Look, the economy is … Is there some politics school that teaches the word “look” either grabs more attention or makes what you are saying more believable? Some polling group put that as the most liked word I don’t know but I’m sensitized to it now and cringe every time I hear it in political talk. That word seems to add so little to what they are saying, it almost sounds pedantic.
Thanks a lot, Mike. Now I’m going to start noticing the word, “Look.” And then I’ll be counting them when a talking head is speaking on TV. haha. Remember as a student realizing a teacher had a phrase they’d use over and over every day? Ug. Life can be torturous for observant people!
I think perhaps the fundamental political question that “undergirds” (as an architect, engineer, and home builder, I like this word derived from “girder,” a main beam that other beams rest upon) the differences between Trump and Mrs. Clinton, between red and blue, right and left, conservative and liberal, between Pat Riot and GW, is “how much central planning should there be and who decides?”
Part of the composition of this underlying girder is an opinion of human beings. Many people toward the “progressive left” (still dislike these directional labels) tend to believe the “smart, cream-of-the-crop” should do a lot of the deciding because the majority of people are morons who need to be saved from their own stupidity, and also the world needs to be saved from their stupidity. Part of the manifestation of this via the U.S. Democratic Party is and has been to collect taxes and use the money for programs to help people. This is in stark contrast to some views over there on the right which say that humans are fundamentally good, and if given opportunities, can rise up themselves. Yes I realize this is in simple form. And then there are Moderates who believe a fluctuating balance needs to be maintained between top-down and bottom-up.
Is our opinion of human beings the fundamental basis for differences in politics?
Four men including me last night in a well-manicured, landscaped suburban backyard with wings, steaks, and several brands of beer, including two homemade brews, around a fire. All four men have children at University or children who have graduated University and are professionally employed. All four are “moderately financially successful.” None of us are rabble or idiotic.
One of the four men is a progressive Democrat and staunch Hillary supporter. One life-long conservative republican cannot vote for obnoxious Asshole Trump. Two reluctantly will because, despite Trump’s despicable character, we agree much more with the outsider’s stance than Mrs. Clinton on issue after issue.
All four of us understand many of the dilemmas. All of four of us want better choices. There was some good debate about whether we “chose” these final two, or whether it is more accurate to say that these final two were “foisted upon us.’
So- three out of four of you are Republicans.
One (a third) won’t vote for Trump. If that percent of disgruntled and dusgusted Republicans shuns #DeplorableDonald in the voting booths, Hillary has the election wrapped up (as the polls are indicating).
Two of you will vote for him, reluctantly, even though he’s the WORST candidate for president in history, an anti-Republican, who espouses views and policies that would make the Gipper gag! Trump’s Putin bromance would have brought sneers of ridicule from the Republican base if he was running as a Democrat or Independant; his refusal to accept our own government’s security experts opinion that the Russians hacked Party email would be reason to tar and feather him; his groupings and lewd admittances of attempted seductions of woman, and his revelation of sexual cravings for 17 year old girls would have raised cries of outrage multiples more intense than those from the Left are eliciting now.
There is NO reason to vote for this hideous monstrosity for president. Doing so is sinful rationalization. We can get through a Hillary presidency: Trump has already sullied our moral, ethical, and competency standards of qualifications for that office; as president he will have permanently tarnished that office, and our reputation as a sane nation.
Shame on anyone who votes for him.
As many know, polling had Carter ahead of Reagan in 1980 by 47 to 39 just weeks ahead of Reagan’s “landslide” win.
Many don’t believe the poll numbers, the newspapers, or the electronic mainstream media.
There are bumper stickers that say, “Vote Trump…nobody will know!”
I would say it is a certainty that there are more “closet Trumpers” than the “mainstream media” would like to admit.
Mrs. Clinton may win this embarrassing race. But it’s no given. I could be wrong. I’ve been wrong before, but if Trump doesn’t self-sabotage (adding fuel to a variety of plausible “conspiracy theories”) I think Trump has more momentum than Mrs. C.
Jay, I respect your opinion. I’m not mocking it. But I think most of your attacks are against Trump’s character and not the issues. We’ve already established the lowness of Trump’s character. That’s the given. Though some of the backlash against Trump’s character is well-deserved, and some percentage of it is PC squeamishness. Some of the same people who eat chicken sandwiches but would NEVER, no My NEVER, kill an animal.
Techniques for polling data have improved significiently over the last 35 years, in which there haven’t been any similar polling inaccuracies in the presidential races.
One again: I was/am in favor of some of Trumps positions: I want tighter control on immigration and border control of Spanish language speakers (the entire southwest is already bilingual Spanish-English); I want less Muslim immigrants entering the US (adherence to strict Islamic teachings a threat to my non-believer agnostic safety). I’m generally pro police and anti BLM narratives; I’m pro traditional marriage (not for religious reasons); I’m against multiple sex access to showers and locker rooms (I don’t care as much about toilets – when you gotta go, you gotta go); and PC issues generally turn me off, negatively.
Trump – and enablers backing him – have sabotaged those issues for rational moderate discussion. He’s hardened the lines between the Right & Left with divisive insult. By contentiously activating absurd extremes of annomosity with those who thwart him in ANY manner, with obnoxious low standards of civility and off putting demeaning slurs, he has permanently reduced the civil discourse to gutter disrespect.
A vote for Trump is an affirmation for the continued character assassination of opponents, for making acceptable that kind of demeaning behavior in public discourse he has practiced, for rationalizing political ideology over balanced respect for democratic processes and respect for differences of opinion.
Trump is the messenger who has demeaned the message.
Imagine Charles Manson running for president as an outsider, with the exact duplicate political message Trump broadcasts – would you be voting for him using the same rationalizations you offered above at your BBQ?
Reasonable positions. Jay I would have voted for you over Trump if you were the champion of those positions. How many have wished for a reputable person of integrity to represent those positions! What if Trump were the only person of sufficient financial means and kooky enough and full of himself enough to challenge the Establishment for a regime change? Then there are other theories.
No I wouldn’t vote for Manson. Good point. My reasoning, or my rationalization to overlook Trump’s faults, does have it’s limits.
Our main difference might be on the severity of the dangers of our current “rulers” (whatever one wishes to call them and whoever one wishes to include), that forces me to look past what Trump has already demeaned.
Bing-Bing-Bing…It’s Analogy Time: if my family were in a burning, smoke-filled building, and the fireman who could lead the way out was the biggest jerk, I’d still want my family to follow the jerk out, hopefully not down into a gaping hole.
Jay, I will be very interesting when historians and analyst begin digging into the Trump rise and fall. But one thing stands out clearly in this election that has not happened in past elections. The following are votes for non incumbent years for GOP candidates. First the year, then vote totals in GOP primary, votes for the winner and votes for all others.
2000…19.5M (Total)…12M(Bush)…7M (others)
2008…20.6M…10M(McCain)…11M
2012…19.2M…10M (Romney)….9M
2016…30.4M…13M(Trump)…17M….Numbers above rounds
In each primary round, the total votes prior to 2016 (and I suspect these would go further back than 2000 if checked) totaled right at 20 million. The winner took somewhere from a low of 47% to a high of 62% of the vote. Now look at 2016 and the rise of 10M additional votes. Trump only took 3 million of those additional voters, while the other 7 million were disbursed among 16 additional candidates.
Donald Trump took advantage of a greatly divided party, one that was fed up with the good ol’ boys in Washington and the do nothing congress of mcConnell and Boehner. Donald Trump and Ted cruz were the two that were instrumental in the rise of the vote total during the primaries. But due to the greater number of candidates and their fear of Donald Trump and their desire to attracted his voters when he crashed and burned, they failed to (1) pick one candidate that could take the 17 million votes other candidates received instead of dividing those votes which would have been far more than needed to defeat Trump and (2), they were afraid of Trump because they knew what he would do to them when they tried to oppose him. Bush tried, Rubio tried and others tried, but they did not have the support of the majority, so they failed and Cruz just expected to receive those votes and never actually took on Trump until it was too late. Had one candidate been the benefactor of these additional votes, Trump would be a footnote.
Trump used the populist play book to get a hold in the election and that was to find the one thing that a larger minority of people feared. He used immigration to mobilize a large group, and then used terrorist immigration to mobilize more. These two issues got him around 25 to 30% of the opening round of support and from there he just kept winning primaries due to a splitting of the 17million votes cast for other candidate. In the end, he only received the support of 44% of GOP voters, far less than Bush and Romney.
So was it Trump who actually won, or was it a divided party that handed the nomination to Trump. And if it was a divided party, then who picks up the pieces since there are so many pieces that have to be picked up and put back together in a way they can all exist in one party.
Note stats came from chart in the middle of:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/06/trump-trumps-wins-historic-race-record-fashion/
Polling was not as accurate back then. Yes, polling today still has qualitative factors that cannot be worked in, but I would say polls are much more accurate. Sorry. Odds are good we are stuck with Clinton for 2 to 4 years (depends if she gets impeached in 2 -lol)
It could be worse: we could have been stuck with Cruz.
Jay: While there certainly is no need to agree with people, I find it rather pleasant when someone does agree with me. Your 2:23 post, I was more or less nodding in harmony with you, then, at 2:27, Cruz would be worse? Ok, what do you/ did you dislike about Cruz? I’m guessing he comes across as too religious? Too much like he is going to force his religious ideas on others. I don’t believe he would, but I would understand someone fearing that about him. But was that it? Personally Rand Paul was my favorite with Cruz a close 2nd place. It is funny, Cruz seems like such a distant memory now, if someone asked me why I liked Cruz, I would probably go “Deer in headlines” and just throw out a word like “Constitution” as if it was word association rather than a coherent position on something.
Don’t have time to offer a full vitriolic assessment of Cruz, who is a self serving moral midget with the integrity of a pickpocket at a convention of the sightless (remember his puffed up indignation at Trump for insulting wife and father and ‘principled’ oaths never to support him?).
I’d think you’d be able to answer the most obvious element of my rejection of his creepy right tilted politics from the title of this blog: there’s nothing moderate about his positions; he’s as politically unbalanced as a one legged tightrope walker.
Today’s my birthday; I got a bunch of new adult toys to play with – no, not that kind you insert into body orifices: a Sous Vide cooker; an Air Fryer; and a more traditional bottle of Jamison’s Irish Whiskey. Who says America is in Decline! Now it’s a race to see if I can get a meal cooked for me and my wife using the new utensils before I get too deep into the Jamison’s and obliterate my appetite.
The political brouhaha can wait for another day. 🎂🍾🍽
Well, damn, happy birthday. Must be nice to be young.
Unless you have hidden knowledge of future High Crimes & misdemeanors there’s no chance of a Hillary removal under the Impeachment rules of the Constitution.
Ah, most of her critics will learn to love her once they stop hyperventilating, they just don’t realize it yet. She’ll be a regular Golda Meir, the model tough old broad.
If the way the Alt-Humans in the RWM (Right Wing Media) handled Obama from day one is operative, she’ll be in for a rough ride.
Doubly so if the rumors of Trump News Nitwork (correct spelling) comes to fruition.
A pretty good segue into this from a Nat Review columnist. Just to be clear, I don’t think that the alt right crazies described in this piece are typical of the even the alt right, let alone trump supporters in general. But it is all the same important that trump excites these people and that he choose the alt-right General Bannon to run his campaign. Its a slippery slope and if you fall off it you wind up with this (please pardon the graphic racial language of the alt-right:
“…I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughter’s face in a gas chamber. It was the evening of September 17, 2015. I had just posted a short item to the Corner calling out notorious Trump ally Ann Coulter for aping the white-nationalist language and rhetoric of the so-called alt-right. Within minutes, the tweets came flooding in. My youngest daughter is African American, adopted from Ethiopia, and in alt-right circles that’s an unforgivable sin. It’s called “race-cucking” or “raising the enemy.” I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her. I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a “niglet” and a “dindu.” The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with “black bucks.” People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching…”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441319/donald-trump-alt-right-internet-abuse-never-trump-movement
Jay, “…no chance of Hillary removal..” , Now that I contemplate it, while I agree chances of her removal are slim to none, I would be willing to bet that in her first 4 years, deserved or not, impeachment proceedings will be started against her. I don’t know the procedure well enough to actually formulate the bet, if event “X” happens I win, if event “X” does not happen I lose, but I think it would be as good a bet as say, betting that some woman that we have yet to hear of, is going to accuse Trump this year of sexually inappropriate action. Real or fabricated, there will be more women coming out with stories about Trump, real or fabricated there are going to be more scandals about Hillary behaving illegally, and I think the right wing will push for impeachment. This obviously assumes Hillary is going to win the election, which I think is another safe bet. Yes I read the comments here about the problems with polling and predicting, and they are duly noted, nothing is for certain, but I’m a bit of a gambler and betting on Hillary to win, like it or not, seems to be a very good play.
Hello Chris. Good “head tilter” there to make people do a double-take on 2 to 4 years!
I suppose polling methods today may have reduced the margins of error, but many would agree that the sources are less trustworthy today.
Once upon a time local newspaper editors sent their reporters out, then sifted through bottom-up information, then decided what to run without the click-bait hysteria we have today, and without being directed top-down as part of a conglomerate. I’m referring there to the news, not polling, but the consolidation of the ownership of our information today is one of the big problems.
The J.D. Power and Associates Award is something we see and hear being referred to in advertising. I once saw first-hand how any bad feedback from customers was tossed in the trash. Only the perfect 10s were submitted. And they won the coveted award. Whip-de-doo!
And I’m not completely jaded. I just know there are a lot of hidden agendas out there. When people think they are “saving the nation” or “saving their family,” they will do any number of under-handed things.
Much of today’s news is more marketing than news. Sad but also fixable.
Ron, very cool information/stats , a lot to ponder. In hindsight, I wonder if someone like Chris Christy had gone all out against Trump early, would he have done better in the polling or worse. Seems like he could not have done much worse anyway, so, well, we will never know.
Jay: Enjoy your day! I really enjoy colorful writing even if I disagree with it. Thanks for the Cruz comments. So the reference to adult items, meaning, you are now legal drinking age this birthday? _Ha! I don’t know you guys that well yet, but I’m pretty sure you are well past that age.
GW, your October 23, 10:10 post above started out more like your old dialogue style from the pre-Trumpian era.
But you and I are now so very far apart in so many ways. It isn’t worth it to address all the points. There aren’t words enough to bridge the chasm.
The small amount I will address here includes my honest opinion that I believe you continue, either inadvertently or purposely, to misrepresent my words. I may have the Long-Winded/Verbose Award, but you have both the Word Twist Award and the Conclusion Jumping Award.
I didn’t call you a Nazi. I didn’t say you were a Nazi.
What I said, and what I hoped would be understood by anyone reading what I wrote, was that your lumping together of Trump supporters as idiots was “akin” to how Nazi’s lumped all Jews together as an undesirable menace, or how Native Americans were labelled as savages, or how…
For goodness sake, I’m talking about the slippery slope of labeling large groups. Way back in that post of mine I made a distinction between such prejudicial THINKING vs. the ACTIONS that the Nazi’s took. I wasn’t taking it that far, I wasn’t equating you with Nazi’s, but I don’t have time to argue that any more.
I see paranoia hucksters like Alex Jones, and others, as extremists. But I see you at a different extreme. I don’t see myself at either of those extremes, and it is a difficult climate for Moderates and Centrists.
You and I are focused on different things.
The page this video is attached to is annoying, but Michael Moore’s video is interesting, even though he’s a lefty stereotyping about the most desperate of Trump supporters…
http://usherald.com/video-devout-lefty-michael-moore-perfectly-explains-trump-will-win-election/#
What an election.
Michael Moore talks about the seriously disenfranchised. That’s the stereotype coming from the left. Sure there are elements of truth there, but it’s also a stereotype that is not true. I personally know several successful business persons, millionaires, who are enthusiastic Trumpers. And I know professional women who own properties who are Trumpers. And also…
I feel I have to re-state that I’m demoralized by Trump’s unprecedented embarrassing shortcomings, character flaws, lack of depth, etc. But because I believe the U.S. is purposely being undermined and unraveled, he becomes for me the lesser if evils.
Yes I’m nauseated with the situation and this worn out discussion, but Hillary vs. Trump is the topic of Rock’s post.
of…the lesser of evils
SNL had a skit called “black jeopardy” while I did not find it super funny, I did think the premise was quite profound, it essentially compared how a portion of the black community tends to think the system is rigged, much like a portion of Trump supporters, thus they have a lot more in common than many would presume.
Groper Groped
Or
Take That You Dirty Old Man!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qhL6I5eeDaE
Well the FBI has reopened the e-mail case against Clinton. Now various organizations and congress will ask for information and what evidence they are investigating and the FBI will respond that it is an ongoing case and they can not comment until it is complete. The vote will continue and on November 8th, Hillary Clinton will be elected President. During the transition period, Clinton will meet with various individuals for cabinet positions and others, including Comey, director of the FBI. Comey, following the best examples set by J Edgar Hoover, will tell Clinton she has nothing to worry about once she agrees to reappoint him Director of the FBI. Otherwise, he will be unable to insure that the case will not be sent to the Grand Jury for determination of an indictment. Hoover had black mail information on many politicians and this election is heading into the same mud as were set many years ago. Except the players are different, but the game is the same.
The fly in your analysis ointment:
If Comey was acting under the self interest you describe he would have suppressed the new email discovery until after the election, as that October Suprise hurts Hillary and aids Trump, who we know will try to drop Comey like the proverbial stone if elected.
And there is a 10 year term limit on FBI Director term of office.
To get a second term would require congressional approval.
It is so interesting how those that are supporting Clinton can find positions that make her look clean as a whistle. Good work Jay. One, had he suppressed the e-mails, all sH&^ would have hit the fan and he would have been investigated himself for “suppressing information and aiding a candidate” (whatever the legal mumbo jumbo terminology for this is) by congress. Doing it the J Edgar Hoover way is much easier and less harmful. And your belief that the FBI (namely Comey) does not have enough on key members of congress to insure approval is outstanding. Not that many people have full faith in our government and its leaders like this.
In my previous two comments I didn’t write anything that makes CLINTON look clean as a whistle, Ron; I was responding to your assertion that seemed to suggest Comey announced the new email find to blackmail Hillary to keep him on as FBI Director when she gets elected. None of which made sense, for the reasons I noted.
The problem many are pointing out is that Comey’s announcement is bizarre, in context and timing. Here’s a portion:
“Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record. At the same time, however, given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression. In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directly from me about it.”
Parsing the statement, its factual that the FBI doesn’t make public announcements about ongoing investigations, until they’ve examined evidence to see if it’s relevant or not ( they have an ongoing investigation about Trumps close advisors interaction with Russian government agents but no announcements for that). And he says they don’t know if the emails found on the laptop are relevant or not. It’s more then likely they’re duplicates of emails already examined, because Huma testified (and received immunity) that she often transferred Hillary’s private emails to her home laptop to print paper copies – Hillary didn’t like reading small text on her Blackberry. Also, news stories online today say none of the ‘newly discovered’ emails were sent by or directly to Hillery – and if there are classified documents among them Huma would be the legal culprit for transporting them to a private laptop, not Hillary.
Comey says he doesn’t “want to create a misleading impression” but nevertheless has done just that by not more specifically clarifying the vagueness of the email source and likihood they’re in the personal category, not State Department category.
I just read this: you may find it interesting: it’s an objective recapitulation of Comey’s full actions and decisions regarding his email decisions by two objective lawyers who have written about it before.
You should read the entire article (long but enlightening) but here’s their conclusion for what Comey should do now:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/james-comey-hillary-clinton-and-email-investigation-guide-perplexed
Jay..The attached link shows where Comey now has gone against the wishes of his bosses. Had he done this the first time and sent the investigation to a grand jury, most likely they would have decided to not take it to trial, the integrity of the FBI would still be intact, the morale at the FBI would still be good and this would be behind us now. But from some reports on PBS and others, the FBI morale was shrinking and many looked at the FBI as a puppet of the current administration. With this latest news, had he not brought this to the attention of the public, congress and the campaigns,I think it would have had a much more damaging impact on the FBI and most likely, those agents involved would have begun to resign and go public with their beliefs that she is guilty (Just my thoughts, no proof).
But now, based on reports I have heard, there are “thousands” of additional e-mails that the FBI has to look at. (1), they have to eliminate duplicates that they have already seen. (2), they have to eliminate personal e-mails and then (3), they have to read the remainder to determine if any had any classified information. And if classified, when did it become classified. I suspect all of this could take months, just as the original investigation did, so she will be the one in office being investigated. The first 90-120 days of any administration is the most important, and if she is fighting the FBI and a house investigation, very little to help the country will occur. Fixing the broken healthcare reimbursement system, reforming the tax code, finding solutions to the debt and a host of other issues will never be addressed. And she could be found guilty of some crime, which may vindicate the house if they continue an investigation and help reelect GOP members in 2018. If not, they risk losing the house in 2018.
http://www.yahoo.com/news/comey-sent-congress-letter-on-clinton-emails-despite-doj-warning-it-would-breach-policy-180013535.html
I have said it before and will say it again, the stench in this campaign and candidates is comparable to traveling between the mountains to the beach in North Carolina on a 90 degree day and smelling the chicken crap from Tyson Foods chicken farms in the foothills and then the pip crap from Smithfield Food hog farms in the sandhills and trying to figure out which one was more repulsive. You would not want to have either of them as a neighbor, nor do I want either one of the candidates as president. But we get what we get since we have so many low involvement voters that believe all the lies in campaign ads and internet blogs. For example, how many Trump voters really believed he could build thousands of miles of wall and have mexico pay for it. I suspect a good many thought he could.
Ron, thank you for your thoughts. I’ve always believed we do not need proof to share our thoughts and opinions, as long as we express them as our thoughts and opinions, which I believe you consistently do.
I think pig crap may be less offensive than chicken crap, haha.
I’m familiar with commercial turkey farms in a particular valley of Pennsylvania, and I believe the number of turkeys and chickens cooped in those long commercial coops, with the big, round exhaust fans in the gable ends of the buildings, release a more stinging putrid smell than the pig farms I’ve driven by. It may be that there are fewer pigs per square foot. Perhaps the odor from the pig crap is heavier in its chemical composition and is not spread to and fro by the wind as easily. Years ago when I was painting doors with strong smelling oil paint in an active office building, I would put an additive into the paint that would bond with the paint odor molecules and drop them to the ground. The nearby workers could not smell the paint, but about two feet from the doors it was still very strong. Without the additive, the whole floor full of workers would be complaining or even going home for the day. Perhaps some entrepreneurial American can invent an additive for the chicken, turkey, and pig crap to keep it from wafting into the air.
Anyway, I’m voting for the pig, though I suspect he’s largely a fraud, and hoping for the best. I’m putting most of my hope in the 300 million plus Americans, not in our leaders, but that’s a whole other discussion.
Well PatRiot..I think I am still voting for the little sparrow in the trees, the one that sits far above the pig and chicken poop, but still has little chance of being picked since it has little value to most people, but at least it does not stink up the place like the others. My hopes go to the senate and holding at least 51 seats so Schumer does not become majority leader and has the ability to reinstate the Reid nuclear option that would allow a simple majority for SCOTUS appointments. I like the 3/5ths requirement since that will require much more moderate appointments leading to constitutional decisions as opposed to political decisions by both a conservative or liberal court, whoever wins the presidency. (ie, SDO-Kennedy like decisions)
I understand and respect the choice to vote for one of the birds in the tree. I wish the American People could send more of a message with one or more of the birds in the tree.
I think if the American Public were not so horribly addicted to the dreaded…Mainstream Media, which clamped down on any real competition, the independents could have gotten the ball rolling, but we Americans don’t meet in the public square much anymore…we barely know our neighbors…we hardly…somebody give me a soap box…
If you look at countries where insurgent candidates can move in and capture the imagination of their voters, you most likely will find smaller countries where getting out and talking directly to the people allows for these elections. This also happens in states where the governor candidates are walking or driving across their states and meet with their citizens. Their voices are much more important to many races than how the media covers them and reports on them. This is how socialist in Venezuela and other countries get a foot hold and once they do then they can further restrict news.
In a country as large as the United States, this personal appearance does not have the same clout. What the media reports is much more instrumental, but Donald Trump showed at the beginning what social media can do for a candidate in limited circumstances. Had he used this media to his advantage in the general election, he might have been able to defeat Clinton, but his mental instability got in the way and caused him to go off in tangents that have had huge negative impacts on his campaign.
In not too long a period of time, there will be a third party candidate or someone like a Trump that comes into the primaries out of nowhere and uses social media as their primary source of information distribution. As the current generation that grew up with social media gains in voting age, this means of communication will allow insurgent candidates to capture the American voters without the hundreds of millions it now requires to run for president. These individuals view programming on providers where advertising is limited or they can restrict the advertising they are seeing which will negate TV advertising in the future. It will also allow for the lessening of money in election influence and will allow the moderates to gain traction with the growing independent voter rolls. In 2000, about 30% of voters were classified as independent. In 2015 that had grown to 39%. These voters are more open to positive information that can be communicated through social media than the die hard party voters that will vote for whoever the party puts up. And they can pick and choose what they want to read and hear on social media, unlike TV where you at least hear the ad unless you mute the volume.
One has to wonder if someone is already working on the next election cycle trying to perfect the social media angle to get the positive messages out and in the hands of the greatest number of people.
This is the most comprehensive account of the Clinton Email embroglio I have seen.
It puts in perspective many of the issues and assertions that have been distorted in the media by the Usual Suspects –
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-emails-2016-server-state-department-fbi-214307