Come back! Need discussion...2020 PresidentialFollow

I think it was mostly older people that think they know best that voted for trump. They're scared of moving forward.

Things change - that's a fact.

That's disgusting and I don't believe that this is the generation that suffers from fat clogged arteries. That would be your generation.

Bit late, but whatever...



Trump is keeping the kids in detention for the same period of time. Nothing has changed from a legal or standard point of view in terms of how ICE manages these detention facilities. What has changed is the Left's very public and very media driven outcry about these things, specifically with the cries about "separating children from their parents", which was happening under Obama too (had to happen since the kids could only be held for 20 days, right?). The Left just decided to make hay out of the same thing when Trump was president that they didn't care about when Obama was president. Which is kind of the point I've been making here. It's manufactured outrage. If you weren't pissed off about it 5 years ago, but you are today, then it's not really you being upset about it, but you deciding to be upset based on who the president is right now. Which makes it not about the policy, but the person.



Literally, nothing in that statement is true.



Page 18 of the Mueller report is entirely blanked out except for one line defining "troll". Care to try again?

A word search of the pdf does not find any match of the name Omarosa. "Newman" shows up only once as a reference in the appendix. It's not "in the report". This comes from claims she made on various Left leaning news programs after the fact, and even then in extremely vague and purely speculative terms. Funny thing. I don't take the word of disgruntled former employees very seriously. They always make claims like this. They were treated unfairly, there was unspecified dubious stuff going on, etc. Always. Take with huge grain of salt here.



I'm sorry. Where in there is there any evidence that Trump fired Comey in order to prevent an investigation of his campaign vis-a-vis "collaboration with the Russians to rig the election"? If anything, he's saying that he wanted to fire Comey anyway, and the calculation was that the claims about the collusion were BS, but nothing he could do would change that, so there was no good time to fire Comey anyway, so may as well just do it now.

Which is what I was arguing. Trump knew that Comey was a loose cannon, who was playing political games. The wildly veering actions he took in 2016 showed that he wasn't acting on evidence in cases, but on which direction he thought the political winds were blowing at any given moment and in the process had alienated both sides of the political spectrum. He had to go. And as Trump himself said. There was no good time to do it. Any time would have been seen as some kind of political play, payback, etc. It can even be argued that Comey's actions at the time were designed specifically to make it more difficult for Trump to fire him. Think about it. He knows he's screwed up. He knows he's pissed too many people off. So he jumps on the "Russian collusion" bandwagon, pushes publicly for an investigation, so that if Trump fires him, it'll look like exactly the form of retaliation or opposition you are claiming (ie: You're being played here). It was a gambit to make Trump think twice about firing him.

Trump doesn't play those games though, and fired him anyway. At least, that's how I read the entire scenario. You're free to fall head first into the political trickery if you want, however.



Uh hun. And past presidential candidates haven't had folks on their campaign staff with similar "kinds" of past relationships with foreign governments? You still haven't bothered to establish this. Carter Page's background is not uncommon for the kind of people who are picked up and tasked to be foreign policy experts in campaigns and administrations. You don't get that experience without having those kinds of connections.

Once again, it's false outrage by pretending that something that is common and ordinary is rare and extraordinary but only when your political enemies do it. That's selective. It's also false.



That fallacy only applies if the action of the first party is actually "wrong". Given that Page was investigated as a result of "attempts to recruit him", but was found to have not been successfully recruited, he didn't do anything wrong or illegal. So saying "he didn't do anything wrong, just like lots of other people who did the same thing didn't do anything wrong", isn't a fallacy.

I'll point out, for the record, that the Mueller report also found that Page did not commit any crimes, and was therefore not indicted for anything. Shocking, right? So the guy you're hinging this entire line of argument on, didn't do anything wrong, thus his connections were not illegal or wrong, thus anyone else doing the same thing wasn't doing anything illegal or wrong (You know, like I've been saying all along), and thus arguing that Trumps campaign was somehow doing something wrong by merely having him there is also... wait for it. WRONG.

Crazy, huh? See how the house of cards falls apart when facts show up?



No, I'm not. I'm saying that it's irrelevant. The charge here isn't: "Had past business dealings in Russia (as well as numerous other countries around the world), which involved blowing the usual smoke up people's butts to make them like you that people who do business around the world do". The charge is "colluding with the Russians to affect the outcome of the election in Trump's favor". Nothing you've said comes anywhere close to this. I'll also point out that the Intelligence report on this clearly stated that no election machines were hacked, by the Russians or anyone else. So I'm not sure where that's even coming from. You're just spewing garbage and hoping something sticks.



Ok. Where's the collusion in there? Nothing in there is illegal. Want to try again, this time actually making something remotely close to an argument in support of your position?



Um... The point that it is, as you say, crap. It doesn't mean anything. It's a bunch of random stuff you've listed, that doesn't paint any sort of picture at all.

Edited, Aug 9th 2019 4:03pm by gbaji

While I have been gone I forgot how things work in Thailand and thought that he was a follower of George Will and not sell out like McConnell. Guess thank drank the kool_aid when 45 got the tax cuts passed, even though it won't ever help him.

Then thank and 45 seem to agree on what shall qualify as date rape.

What happened to the party of moral standards? I guess it only counts if the Democratic party does it.

Autocorrect changed gbaji to thank and gbajiland to Thailand. If I noticed it last night I was too tired to correct it.

I'm now living in the outskirts of Washington DC with an older man who is a member of the American Socialist Party. I call him my Red Diaper baby, as his father was even more of a Socialist than he is. He seems to be leaning towards Warren over Bernie right now, which maybe my Democratic party influence on him.

Of course we both will vote for whoever wins the Democratic primary come November. Only someone who's been drinking the right wing kool-aid would vote for Trump in the general election.

Ah. That makes more sense now. Whew! That was beyond even the normal ElneClaresse.



I'm not sure what you're talking about. My positions on various political issues have not changed. And certainly not due to who happens to be sitting in the Oval Office at the moment. What's funny is that it appears as though my unwillingness to change my position based on the person in power is what most people get upset at. I've always been for small government, lower taxes, pro gun rights, strong immigration enforcement (although I'd like to see more focus on alternative visa methodologies to go along with making it harder to illegally cross the border, which I've *also* been very consistent on). I've always been of the opinion that the federal government should focus on issues only it can do (national defense, national trade policy, international treaties, etc), and not much on the domestic except in a limited regulatory manner to deal with interstate issues.

I also, unlike most folks on the Left, don't think tax policy should be about what is best for me personally, but what is actually best in general. One of the things that always baffles me is when Liberals point out Conservatives and say something like "why would you support a tax change that doesn't benefit you". Um... All you're doing is pointing out how self centered you are if you think it should always be about what's best for "me". And while folks decry any tax cut as "tax cuts for the rich", the reality is that while a person who pays $1million in taxes who gets a 1% decrease saves $10,000 dollars, and a person who pays $10,000 in taxes who gets a 10% decrease only saves $1,000 (which is where the whole "OMG! Rich people get the lions share of tax cuts!" argument comes from), the money saved by the latter person actually benefits him far far more than the rich guy's tax cut does. The wealthier someone is, the lower the percentage of their income they actually use to provide for themselves directly. Most "rich" people essentially give themselves a living allowance, with everything made past that point going into some form of investment. So the "tax cuts for the rich" overwhelmingly result in more money in the investment side of the economy, which if we assume a consistent ratio of short term versus long term investment in portfolios across this segment, will result in a consistent increase in investments which result in economic growth, job creation, and new product development, all of which go a long way towards improving the lives of everyone who is *not* rich.

I get that many people out there just don't believe this, and thus reject it, but you could at least accept that I *do*, and thus isn't not inconsistent nor "evil" for me to support such policies, even if they don't appear to benefit me directly initially. Maybe even especially so.



Not sure where this is coming from at all. If I was a Bill Clinton supporter, you might have a point. We'll except for us agreeing on such things. But you'd be right in terms of which guy has a long history of sexual assault.



What specifically are you talking about? It's amusing to me how often these sorts of claims are tossed out there by folks on the Left, but they can never seem to be specific. Just declaring the GOP to be "immoral", doesn't make it true. Heck, you notice how the media suddenly stopped showing all these images of Trump with Epstein? Want to know why? Because all of the photos and videos with both of them in it, were back when Trump was a Democrat, and they are all at Dem party events where both of them were big donors to that party. Um... Which "side" has a morality problem again?

Hint: It's not the GOP. The Dems are so used to positive media coverage and even cover ups, that they've become comfortable assuming they will just get away with stuff they do, and over time have become so blatant about it that it's getting ridiculous. The GOP, on the other hand, will get nailed for anything the media can possibly spin into a scandal, and thus have become increasingly squeaky clean. The morality delta between the two parties is massive.

I was at my local farmers market early on in the season. I asked one of the vendors why there was no cheese/yogurt farmer there this year. His response was, "buy some goats and make your own".

So, I'm thinking of buying goats. But how many???

There is no far left in the US. None of the candidates has a far left position. They're all centre-right.

Sure but I think you're severely underestimating the number of people on the left end of your spectrum. The under 35s are much more liberal than previous generations and their engagement is increasing substantially.

Your right is in serious trouble I think.

Conservatives do much more demonizing than Liberals. Much much more. Both parties do it though.

When the right does it it's "Joe voted to steal your money and give it to liberals who can't even pay for their own doctors visits!"

When the left does it it's "He literally is a currently active member of the KKK, here he is in a robe and wizard hat"

That crowd of 35- people can't pay for their doctor visits and grew up on the internet where how people look is pretty much irrelevant. Conservatives need to change drastically or they'll be phased out as the population ages, they know this, they've been discussing it. The liberal's problem isn't support from the population it's active engagement of the population and these kids don't vote because they're too busy trying to pay for their doctors visits.

Even assuming your numbers are right they're not relevant really. Younger generations aren't going to identify as anything, they're going to vote to get Trump out whatever that vote needs to be. I think Trump can win a second term if turnout is low because conservatives WILL show up. 2016 was about Hillary. She was a horrible choice and another candidate would have won it. 2020 is going to be about whether the economy crashes before or after the election and if that's felt by the conservative base before they go to the polls because they're the one's that vote and the liberals will still be at their Starbucks job trying to make ends meet when the polls open.

It's a withch!! Burn him/her/it!!...(herym)???






Was that PC enough? I cant keep up.

Probably shouldn't get stoned and go on a carpet bombing run on peoples Karma, though. Must use my powers for GOOD