Good to see your return Susan. I'm always interested in reading and hearing from those who were stalwarts on the right, and then took refuge as an independent. Those true conservatives who quickly came to understand trump was anything but a conservative. He simply existed as a vacuum to suck up as much human debris as possible to feed his ego (and line his pockets).
If there is anything good to come from the failed experiment known as trump, it just might be both parties coming to grips with the Lincoln quote you posted. The animosity we hurled at one another over the years was detrimental to the kind of country most of us want and believe in.
Hopefully we can take the next step towards sanity.
Wow, you got the comments flowing with this one Susan. Nice to see the interesting exchanges. While i suspect the tribal aspects of the responses makes to easy to see who likes whom, one stands out as most curious.
While Curtis has never wavered, our latest joiner Cameron is truly a one of a kind. According to him, no one is worthy the vote for president because i guess the USA is now one of those shirt-hole countries that no one wants to live in. I do by the way, l love it here.
Here's the disconnect and much like the sales pitch we are getting from trump, everything is a horrible. Except; it isn't. This constant moaning and whining about anything and everything (trump and Cameron are doing) has an unusually nasal ring of two peas in that same old pod.
So sorry, CS, your efforts to convince voters to leave it blank is woeful at best and deceitful at worst. You know this site is maintained by former conservatives and convincing them to just not vote is pathetic. I don't know or care who they vote for, but not choosing one or the other would be shameful.
By the way, how about trump yet again showing us all how classless he was last night with his Arnold Palmer story. Freaking shameful. The man belongs as far away from the White House as possible. Mar A logo is a starter, Alcatraz would be better suited (yes i am being an ass, but i'm not running for president).
Actually, SGman, that's even better. Picture the money to be made as trump supporters made the pilgrimage each year to visit the old guy wasting away while howling at the moon and feasting on Big Mac's.
The sad thing is that far too many will think that Trump and Harris are equally bad, when any honest comparison will come away with Harris being better than Trump.
These people do so so as to avoid having to actually make a choice, or to have to re-think their prior assumptions and understandings.
A national reset you say? How interesting, considering how Kamala and Joe Biden have thrown in with Klaus Schwab and his quest for "the great reset," which is the global version of same. You know, where we will all own nothing and be happy, save the elites. Where the rest of us will be serfs and slaves to the all powerful such as Bill Gates, George Soros, Jeff Bezos, et al. Ridicule me if you will, but neither Harris, nor Trump are fit to hold the office of President of the United States, and anyone who votes for either needs their head examined.
I dont need to ridicule you. I think life, in general, has already taken care of that.
Meanwhile, you've got Elon Musk offering up to a million dollars in swing states to get people to register for the MAGA/Russia takeover of our nation, and I'm sure you have some cock-eyed narrative about how that's a good thing.
I guess you have trouble with reading and comprehension. Did you miss the part where I said that Trump isn't fit to hold the office of President? Or do you only see what you want to see so that you can call people names who don't agree with you?
Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are in a fight right now for who can control our nation. They want to move us to an oligarchy, and y'all are too willing to go along with it because of your hatred for Democrats/liberals - which has been driven in over decades of GOP propaganda.
Let's be very clear: the most ruthless capitalists around are Democrats, and when Dems are in office there's more GDP growth, more employment, and fewer recessions. (There's also fewer abortions)
Get out of your media and social bubble: I did so in 2015 and it's done a world of good.
The highest inflation rates were under three Presidents, Wilson, Carter, and Biden, all Democrats. To be fair, there was a high inflationary period under Nixon and Ford, who were Republicans, but they, in my opinion, were RINOS. A Democrat presided over the majority of the great depression, and a Democrat, Barack Obama, got the ball rolling on the country's indebtedness, presiding over all the corporate bailouts, and profligate spending in his 8 years. In my opinion, neither party is very good with economic issues.
Leaving Wilson out of it (as it predates our modern economic era):
Carter had stagflation due to numerous issues, not least the oil embargo.
Biden's inflation period was due to COVID recovery.
I think you need to understand cause and effect a bit more: what caused the Great Depression, and who was in office when it happened? (stock market collapse and tariffs; Hoover) It was on Democrats to clean up the mess.
The bailouts actually happened mostly under Bush, which of course was when the Great Recession started. Obama had to clean up the mess.
Trump enacted tariffs prior to COVID that started some economic troubles, and of course took actions that exacerbated COVID here in the US. It was left to Biden to clean it up.
The thing I'll note here: you didn't address GDP growth, employment, or recessions at all. Care to actually dig into that, or is that too much of a challenge to your reality?
You obviously are suffering from the same malady as Ms.Bagwell, lack of reading and comprehension. At the end of my previous post I said that both parties are economically challenged. Each party has their own weaknesses in this area. And btw, at some point an administration has to take responsibility for it's own policies.
They are not better with results. Inflation is ultimately a tax meaning taxes go way up under Democrats combined with their profligate social spending policies. This undercuts most Americans spending power. Under Biden, the average yearly salary actually went down by about $4,000. Combine that with the inflation rate and it's no wonder we can barely live these days.
Harris is an empty vessel and was chosen exactly because she would be just another puppet, like Biden. The professional managerial class that has been failing at everything they do are still convinced that they alone have the answers, despite the evidence to the contrary. The Neocon sociopaths (Blinken, Sullivan, Burns, etc..) that are currently driving policy have an insane desire to engage in thermonuclear war. They think that their bunkers will allow them to survive the congligration and emerge to a world where the useless eaters are gone. I suppose they don't think nuclear winter is real...
Allow me, but first I have to complete Hugh’s comments on Kamala. Kamala has never told the truth about anything that might affect her political ambitions. She has one theme when running for office in California. In her first attempt at national politics, she found that California was an outlier. Now, in her second attempt, she has done a 180 – renouncing all of her previous values. She has prostituted herself for her political ambition in more ways than one. She also was a principal in the worst Constitutional fraud in recent history when she failed to live up to the demands of her office and declared Joe Biden to be totally fit for office, so we do not know who is in charge. Someone on this site, Steve I think, said he was not worried. The “machine” would take care of our government. Unfortunately, the “machine” cannot be impeached.
Now for Trump. The man has character flaws. He does not know when to shut up. He has lied, obfuscated, exaggerated and misled. He has terrible character judgment when hiring subordinates. He wants to be a one-man show. He has been alleged to associate with prostitutes. He takes outrageous positions as negotiating tactics. He continues to deny the 2020 election results because if he doesn’t, that might undermine his defense against the DOJ’s lawfare in the January 6 riot case. He threatens tariffs against uncooperative foreign corporations. He threatens NATO funding. There’s plenty more.
My opinion is that a prostitute has no more moral standing than a John. At least with Trump, I know who to blame.
Trump is owned by hostile geopolitical foes. His actions while in office, and even more so, after leaving office make him unfit to serve in ANY political office, where the integrity of our republic is on the line. Kamala isnt great, and I've no doubt a Harris administration will be fraught with problems, but I'll take a bit of internal ineptitude and questionable policy over treason, any day of the week. We can deal with bad policy through the legislative process. If we cede our standing and influence on the world stage, betray the foundations of our republic, then that's it. Game over.
So, you too believe the machine will take care of us. And you are still spewing the same Russia! Russia! Russia! nonsense you ranted about eight years ago with absolutely no proof. It's not Trump peddling influence in exchange for bribes to his family. It's not Trump who is allowing thousands of foreign agents unfettered entry through our open borders. I can't imagine why anyone would think Harris / Biden have any integrity. Harris has never told the truth.
You can hate on Trump all you like but I and many others remain convinced that he is less likely to do lasting damage to the USA than four years of Kamala after four years of economic, immigration foreign policy and military disasters.
And what makes you think Harris is any better than Trump. Trump has been President. I do not see any Russians embedded in the government, but I do see Iranian terrorists in mid-east policy positions.
You have no evidence - just blather about Trump being despicable. Trump has his faults and Harris has hers. She is no better and is in some ways worse.
GDP growth is largely a product of inflation which also creates the same hardships as a recession for most citizens. When employment rate is so closely related to increase in government employment, it is not a good indicator.
A rare instance of lucidity from Biden does not make him fine. He is incapable of running the show. We still do not know who is in charge. Simply being the figurehead for releasing the cash does not mean he is a leader.
You seriously think Harris is a way out of the mess the county is in?! She has no such record. She seems to me a shallow, insincere puppet of corporate control who will lead us deeper into the quagmire we are already in. I am one of the undecided. Not a Trump fan in the least. But I cannot possibly vote for her.
I've no doubt Harris will put us in a mess. That being said, a mess of bad policy can be worked through with the legislative process. Presidents, no matter what SCOTUS says, are NOT kings. Trump, on the other hand, wants to lead us into an entirely different direction than the nation was founded to be. Fascism, hate, dark and angry rhetoric, labeling fellow Americans as "enemies" just because they oppose him? We cannot sustain a free republic with that ideology at the helm. Stopping him now is a priority. We'll deal with bad policy later.
I would vote for a Republican for President, if one were running.
Good to see your return Susan. I'm always interested in reading and hearing from those who were stalwarts on the right, and then took refuge as an independent. Those true conservatives who quickly came to understand trump was anything but a conservative. He simply existed as a vacuum to suck up as much human debris as possible to feed his ego (and line his pockets).
If there is anything good to come from the failed experiment known as trump, it just might be both parties coming to grips with the Lincoln quote you posted. The animosity we hurled at one another over the years was detrimental to the kind of country most of us want and believe in.
Hopefully we can take the next step towards sanity.
Indeed.
Good to see you, Bill, and as always, thanks for reading.
Wow, you got the comments flowing with this one Susan. Nice to see the interesting exchanges. While i suspect the tribal aspects of the responses makes to easy to see who likes whom, one stands out as most curious.
While Curtis has never wavered, our latest joiner Cameron is truly a one of a kind. According to him, no one is worthy the vote for president because i guess the USA is now one of those shirt-hole countries that no one wants to live in. I do by the way, l love it here.
Here's the disconnect and much like the sales pitch we are getting from trump, everything is a horrible. Except; it isn't. This constant moaning and whining about anything and everything (trump and Cameron are doing) has an unusually nasal ring of two peas in that same old pod.
So sorry, CS, your efforts to convince voters to leave it blank is woeful at best and deceitful at worst. You know this site is maintained by former conservatives and convincing them to just not vote is pathetic. I don't know or care who they vote for, but not choosing one or the other would be shameful.
By the way, how about trump yet again showing us all how classless he was last night with his Arnold Palmer story. Freaking shameful. The man belongs as far away from the White House as possible. Mar A logo is a starter, Alcatraz would be better suited (yes i am being an ass, but i'm not running for president).
Sorry, we turned Alcatraz into a tourist attraction.
You might have missed it, but he also - just two nights ago - said Harvey Weinstein got "schlonged".
Actually, SGman, that's even better. Picture the money to be made as trump supporters made the pilgrimage each year to visit the old guy wasting away while howling at the moon and feasting on Big Mac's.
Tourist attraction indeed.
Thanks so much for giving a voice to this. And the Lincoln quote.
I’m still undecided
The sad thing is that far too many will think that Trump and Harris are equally bad, when any honest comparison will come away with Harris being better than Trump.
These people do so so as to avoid having to actually make a choice, or to have to re-think their prior assumptions and understandings.
A national reset you say? How interesting, considering how Kamala and Joe Biden have thrown in with Klaus Schwab and his quest for "the great reset," which is the global version of same. You know, where we will all own nothing and be happy, save the elites. Where the rest of us will be serfs and slaves to the all powerful such as Bill Gates, George Soros, Jeff Bezos, et al. Ridicule me if you will, but neither Harris, nor Trump are fit to hold the office of President of the United States, and anyone who votes for either needs their head examined.
I dont need to ridicule you. I think life, in general, has already taken care of that.
Meanwhile, you've got Elon Musk offering up to a million dollars in swing states to get people to register for the MAGA/Russia takeover of our nation, and I'm sure you have some cock-eyed narrative about how that's a good thing.
You're basically a lunatic.
I guess you have trouble with reading and comprehension. Did you miss the part where I said that Trump isn't fit to hold the office of President? Or do you only see what you want to see so that you can call people names who don't agree with you?
'cause ultimately you're fine with Trump taking office again
Sooo much projection here...
Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are in a fight right now for who can control our nation. They want to move us to an oligarchy, and y'all are too willing to go along with it because of your hatred for Democrats/liberals - which has been driven in over decades of GOP propaganda.
Let's be very clear: the most ruthless capitalists around are Democrats, and when Dems are in office there's more GDP growth, more employment, and fewer recessions. (There's also fewer abortions)
Get out of your media and social bubble: I did so in 2015 and it's done a world of good.
The highest inflation rates were under three Presidents, Wilson, Carter, and Biden, all Democrats. To be fair, there was a high inflationary period under Nixon and Ford, who were Republicans, but they, in my opinion, were RINOS. A Democrat presided over the majority of the great depression, and a Democrat, Barack Obama, got the ball rolling on the country's indebtedness, presiding over all the corporate bailouts, and profligate spending in his 8 years. In my opinion, neither party is very good with economic issues.
Trump is the RINO in chief.
Leaving Wilson out of it (as it predates our modern economic era):
Carter had stagflation due to numerous issues, not least the oil embargo.
Biden's inflation period was due to COVID recovery.
I think you need to understand cause and effect a bit more: what caused the Great Depression, and who was in office when it happened? (stock market collapse and tariffs; Hoover) It was on Democrats to clean up the mess.
The bailouts actually happened mostly under Bush, which of course was when the Great Recession started. Obama had to clean up the mess.
Trump enacted tariffs prior to COVID that started some economic troubles, and of course took actions that exacerbated COVID here in the US. It was left to Biden to clean it up.
The thing I'll note here: you didn't address GDP growth, employment, or recessions at all. Care to actually dig into that, or is that too much of a challenge to your reality?
You obviously are suffering from the same malady as Ms.Bagwell, lack of reading and comprehension. At the end of my previous post I said that both parties are economically challenged. Each party has their own weaknesses in this area. And btw, at some point an administration has to take responsibility for it's own policies.
Oh, I understand you very well: you only care about the price you see, and think it should never go up.
If we're going to talk about economic policy, then we have to talk about results - and the results favor the Dems by a mile.
The issue here is that you rely on false equivalencies in order to justify your write-in/empty vote.
They are not better with results. Inflation is ultimately a tax meaning taxes go way up under Democrats combined with their profligate social spending policies. This undercuts most Americans spending power. Under Biden, the average yearly salary actually went down by about $4,000. Combine that with the inflation rate and it's no wonder we can barely live these days.
Harris is an empty vessel and was chosen exactly because she would be just another puppet, like Biden. The professional managerial class that has been failing at everything they do are still convinced that they alone have the answers, despite the evidence to the contrary. The Neocon sociopaths (Blinken, Sullivan, Burns, etc..) that are currently driving policy have an insane desire to engage in thermonuclear war. They think that their bunkers will allow them to survive the congligration and emerge to a world where the useless eaters are gone. I suppose they don't think nuclear winter is real...
Now do Trump.
Maybe you can do Trump for him
Allow me, but first I have to complete Hugh’s comments on Kamala. Kamala has never told the truth about anything that might affect her political ambitions. She has one theme when running for office in California. In her first attempt at national politics, she found that California was an outlier. Now, in her second attempt, she has done a 180 – renouncing all of her previous values. She has prostituted herself for her political ambition in more ways than one. She also was a principal in the worst Constitutional fraud in recent history when she failed to live up to the demands of her office and declared Joe Biden to be totally fit for office, so we do not know who is in charge. Someone on this site, Steve I think, said he was not worried. The “machine” would take care of our government. Unfortunately, the “machine” cannot be impeached.
Now for Trump. The man has character flaws. He does not know when to shut up. He has lied, obfuscated, exaggerated and misled. He has terrible character judgment when hiring subordinates. He wants to be a one-man show. He has been alleged to associate with prostitutes. He takes outrageous positions as negotiating tactics. He continues to deny the 2020 election results because if he doesn’t, that might undermine his defense against the DOJ’s lawfare in the January 6 riot case. He threatens tariffs against uncooperative foreign corporations. He threatens NATO funding. There’s plenty more.
My opinion is that a prostitute has no more moral standing than a John. At least with Trump, I know who to blame.
Trump is owned by hostile geopolitical foes. His actions while in office, and even more so, after leaving office make him unfit to serve in ANY political office, where the integrity of our republic is on the line. Kamala isnt great, and I've no doubt a Harris administration will be fraught with problems, but I'll take a bit of internal ineptitude and questionable policy over treason, any day of the week. We can deal with bad policy through the legislative process. If we cede our standing and influence on the world stage, betray the foundations of our republic, then that's it. Game over.
Unfortunate ring of truth to your assessment.
So, you too believe the machine will take care of us. And you are still spewing the same Russia! Russia! Russia! nonsense you ranted about eight years ago with absolutely no proof. It's not Trump peddling influence in exchange for bribes to his family. It's not Trump who is allowing thousands of foreign agents unfettered entry through our open borders. I can't imagine why anyone would think Harris / Biden have any integrity. Harris has never told the truth.
You can hate on Trump all you like but I and many others remain convinced that he is less likely to do lasting damage to the USA than four years of Kamala after four years of economic, immigration foreign policy and military disasters.
WE are the machine. If you dont vote for better, demand better, you'll always get the worst. That's the issue.
And yeah... Russia, Russia, Russia. It's 100% true. I shouldnt have to keep saying RUSSIA IS NOT OUR FRIEND.
And if you actually believe what you're saying about Trump, you should just do what he says and vote in January.
And what makes you think Harris is any better than Trump. Trump has been President. I do not see any Russians embedded in the government, but I do see Iranian terrorists in mid-east policy positions.
You have no evidence - just blather about Trump being despicable. Trump has his faults and Harris has hers. She is no better and is in some ways worse.
Economic disaster by what measure? GDP growth? Employment? Lack of recessions? Stock market level?
Seriously, look through historical data and you'll find Democrats are better on all those counts.
GDP growth is largely a product of inflation which also creates the same hardships as a recession for most citizens. When employment rate is so closely related to increase in government employment, it is not a good indicator.
Re Biden's fitness for office:
Even GOP reps that have attacked him praise him when it gets down to it, like Anna Paulina Luna just did the other week.
Biden really is fine, just old: Trump is not fine, and also old.
A rare instance of lucidity from Biden does not make him fine. He is incapable of running the show. We still do not know who is in charge. Simply being the figurehead for releasing the cash does not mean he is a leader.
You're wrong, but I don't expect you to admit it.
You seriously think Harris is a way out of the mess the county is in?! She has no such record. She seems to me a shallow, insincere puppet of corporate control who will lead us deeper into the quagmire we are already in. I am one of the undecided. Not a Trump fan in the least. But I cannot possibly vote for her.
I've no doubt Harris will put us in a mess. That being said, a mess of bad policy can be worked through with the legislative process. Presidents, no matter what SCOTUS says, are NOT kings. Trump, on the other hand, wants to lead us into an entirely different direction than the nation was founded to be. Fascism, hate, dark and angry rhetoric, labeling fellow Americans as "enemies" just because they oppose him? We cannot sustain a free republic with that ideology at the helm. Stopping him now is a priority. We'll deal with bad policy later.