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@TheUnderdog
The left may occasionally say, "Trump's Mr. Jan 6". If Trump never did Jan 6, then I would be way more open to be willing to vote Trump over Biden; the left wouldn't be; so it's not a genuine concern they have.
I know of very few people who profess to oppose Trump only because of January 6th, and anyone who does is almost by definition not on the left.
If you ask myself or any similarly minded individual why we oppose Trump so vehemently most would go straight to January 6th and all of the events that surrounded it. We do that because it is probably the clearest single example to show how deeply unfit Trump is to be put back in the oval office and even if he fixed every other issue he had, January 6th on its own would still be a disqualifier. The fact that we would strongly oppose him regardless in no way cuts against the genuineness we have about it.
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@Greyparrot
My grocery bill is burning in 2024MakeAffordableGroceriesAgain
Would be a compelling case to make of you had any evidence that Donald Trump being sworn in in January would make any significant difference in your grocery bills. You of course don't.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
...but telling them to go home is supposed to work?
It literally did. Many of the rioters started clearing out as soon as he sent that video.
You keep arguing that sending any kind of communication to them was futile because they wouldn't have listened, but when I make the point that he did nothing for 3 hours your immediate response was to jump to his Twitter post to say he did. So which side of the fence is it?
which cuts entirely against the argument that he never expected violenceYou always expect a few crazies.
You don't send in 10,000 troops to deal with a few crazies. Again, if Trump was offering these troops it's only because he recognized a very real threat of violence on a massive scale. You can't have it both ways. He either expected it, in which case his decision to proceed the way he did was inexcusable (from the standpoint of anyone who doesn't want violence), or he didn't in which case this talking point is a lie. Pick one.
There is a difference between inspiration and advocacy, and the difference is made clear by words like "peacefully" even if they are said only once they are explicit calls for non-violence with no explicit calls for violence to stand against them.
We don't assess someone's intentions and/or motivations merely by picking out the things they say explicitly, everyone over the age of 8 knows this. We look at their actions, we look at the totality of their words, and we put two and two together. When someone speaks 11,000 words with violent underdones, in a context where violence is the only possible answer to the problem he spent the prior two months telling you is very real, you don't throw it all away because he used the word peaceful once in the middle of that speech with no emphasis whatsoever.
You've got a hammer on one side of the scale and a feather on the other, and you're telling me the feather weighs more. That's absurd.
You (claim to) see no excuse for him not magically stopping a riot.
No, I see no excuse for him doing absolutely nothing to stop it while instead watching it on TV for those three hours.
It's insane haw the same crowd that spent the past 4 years attacking Joe Biden for being weak and boasting about how strong Donald Trump is claiming that with Trump in the White House there's no way Ukraine would have ever been attacked, also believe that when the US Capitol right down the street was under attack there is just nothing he could do to stop it.
But this debate isn't about how effectively Trump could have stopped the attack, it's about what his purposeful inaction says about him and how that is not an unquestionable disqualification for office. To that all you've offered are whataboutisms and moving of the goal posts, because there is nothing else you could possibly offer. The man is manifestly unfit for office, those 187 minutes proves that.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
First of all, he tells them to "be peaceful" after violence was well underway, which seems kind of silly on its own."be extra peaceful" rofl
No, he could have told them clearly and unequivocally so that no doubt was left (you know, like he does when he talks about how awful the left is) that he didn't want violence and wanted them to leave.
Telling a crowd to "be peaceful" after they have already gotten violent is silly. It's like a teacher walking up to two students throwing fists at each other and saying "be nice". It's a meaningless half baked attempt to look like you're actually doing something when everyone knows you're not. That's why the rioters looked confused when they looked at the tweet, they didn't know what to make of it so they just kept on marching because they felt that what they were doing was right (as in what Trump really wanted), and their instincts were correct because everything I just said is common sense.
Accusing Pence of failure does not speak to his opinion about violence.
It absolutely does when the tweet was written while the violence was on going.
The crowd he just finished speaking to and just finished telling that they were all counting on Mike Pence to deliver for them otherwise they "weren't going to have a country anymore" is in the process of beating their way past police barricades after Mike Pence failed to save the country and your response is to tweet about how Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what needed to be done?
I really don't know why this is so complicated for you. If the crowd is rioting, they're pissed. If they're pissed, don't rile them up further. And if you do, then clearly you see them as acting in accordance with what you want. This is common sense.
When I first learned of Trump's 2:38pm tweet it did make me wonder if I needed to adjust my assessment, but it doesn't take long to realize something wasn't right here.lol, there is no way he could say "peaceful" more than once in the same day huh?
Again, you love to pretend he said "peaceful" in a vacuum. As if the prior two months didn't happen. As if the rest of the 11,000 words he uttered he didn't actually utter. As if the hang Mike Pence *wink wink* tweet wasn't also sent. I can see why though, because pretending that everything else which happened didn't actually happen is the only argument you have.
There is no world in which a person who does not want violence spends 98% of his words and his actions inciting violence, and two percent of it telling people to 'be nice'. There absolutely is a world in which someone who wants violence makes his point clear but them throws in a few false exculpatories so that cultists like yourself will pull them up after the fact and use it to backwards rationalize his innocence. This is common sense.
I'm talking about how he didn't make a single phone call, didn't talk to a single person involved in national defense.He did that before the protest started.
Irrelevant deflection. Even if we were to believe the lie that he tried to secure the Capitol beforehand (which cuts entirely against the argument that he never expected violence) and that protection was rejected, that is absolutely no excuse to sit on your hands as the violence breaks out.
Imagine I offer my wife a life vest before getting in the water and she refuses, then I sit and watch her struggle till she drowns to death. Was my offer beforehand an excuse? Of course not. This is common sense.
He doesn't have a coherent excuse because he was fence sitting.
So after offering all of these incoherent defenses you agree with me?
Sitting and doing nothing during that time signified nothing beyond that he had no plans for a coup
During the time the rioters took over and Congress was in hiding multiple members received phone calls urging them to use the delay as further reason to stop the certification and send it back to the states. That was the plan from the start and the actions of his attorney make that clear.
And then it all made sense when we would later learn that Trump didn't write that tweet and didn't want to send it. That was Dan Scavino who wrote it and a few other aids begging Trump to do something.I trust nothing out of the fake trial known as the Jan 6 hearings.
I know, it's how conspiracy theorists maintain their psychosis. Just hand waive away any piece of evidence that contradicts the conspiracy, that way all that's left is evidence for the conspiracy.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
What will you do with this information?
"Do" with it? Nothing really, tack it onto my understanding of the world just as I do with any other information I come across.
This is just one person's viewpoint (yours) though, so I take that for what it is. Others will suggest it's wrong like ILP5 implied, but notably he didn't even bother to address the OP and/or offer an explanation which only plays further into the point.
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@WyIted
You mean when like leftist deep state actors were trying to ban free speech on social media platforms?
We believe in freedom. That includes the freedom of private companies to decide that they don't want their platforms being used to spread dangerous misinformation.
Notice how a rich billionaire decided to purchase the largest platform on earth and is now using it to amplify right wing propaganda while banning left wing speech he doesn't like. Do we approve of that? No, of course not. Is anyone on the left claiming this is a violation of our free speech? No, we're not that stupid. Elon can run "X" however he wants no matter how brazenly hypocritical and disgusting, the rest of us can decide whether to use the platform or not (I don't for that reason). That's how freedom works.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Left-tribe propagandists aren't too good at math:2:38 p.m - 1:25 p.m = 73 minutes
When I first learned of Trump's 2:38pm tweet it did make me wonder if I needed to adjust my assessment, but it doesn't take long to realize something wasn't right here.
First of all, he tells them to "be peaceful" after violence was well underway, which seems kind of silly on its own. But more importantly, he didn't even tell them to leave the Capitol. If he didn't want them there he would have said so and in fact would have said far more than that. As usual, Trump does just barely enough so that he could point to it later on as a defense even though it clearly wasn't enough at the time which everyone in real time knew.
It also didn't make sense because well after the rioting began he put out that tweet targeting Mike Pence, so he clearly didn't care about the violence then.
And then it all made sense when we would later learn that Trump didn't write that tweet and didn't want to send it. That was Dan Scavino who wrote it and a few other aids begging Trump to do something.
But beyond all of that, when I said he was missing in action I'm not talking about his social media. He's the president, he was in control of far more than his Twitter account. I'm talking about how he didn't make a single phone call, didn't talk to a single person involved in national defense. While the entire government is scrambling to figure out a response he just sits there watching TV. Do you have any response to that?
That does not matter to you because if it was zero minutes you would not change your determination of culpability
That's because his culpability is based on far more than his speech as I explained to you for weeks at a time. As I said in the OP, you do not need the 187 minutes to determine that he incited the attack, but the 187 minutes is what confirms beyond any reasonable doubt that this is what he wanted to happen. Up until that point he could have said "whoops my bad, I didn't think they were crazy enough to do it". Three hours later, that excuse is long gone.
as you have implied many times by dismissing the words "peaceful" in his ellipse speech.
This excuse never ceases to amuse me. You pick out one word of an 11,000 word speech and really think that's a rational basis to claim the message he was sending to them was that and not the other 10,999 words pointing to the opposite.
But following the assassination attempt the disingenuousness of this defense became that much more obvious. The charge against the left over the past few weeks is that the left is responsible because we said mean things about Trump.
Basically, if you say something that might make someone feel like the right thing to do is to commit violence, you are morally responsible for that violence when it occurs, even though we've been told for the past three years that Trump didn't literally tell them to attack and his literal words are all that matter. So forget that he told them to fight 20 times, and forget that the only logical conclusion from the central allegation he spent two months pushing is violence, the transcript of his speech didn't say "attack the Capitol", so he's not responsible.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
So was that the goal? to make them admit it?
The goal is to see what arguments Trump defenders have, cause everytime I bring this up they tend to offer a tepid non sequitur before trying to deflect to something else. So far my presumption that no one has a serious defense to offer is proving correct.
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@WyIted
I am telling you what leftists are foo. Do you deny there is a movement to allow kids to transition?
There's 300 million people in this country, there's always a movement out there in support of some crazy proposition.
Your original charge was that the left "wants to cut the penises off of children" which is an egregiously false statement as you worded it.
But even setting aside your intentionally dishonest framing, what you're claiming here is that the left is for children transitioning which the overwhelming majority of people left and right are against. What separates us if anything on this topic is that I along with most on the left actually do believe in the freedom right wingers love to pretend to care about, so I think decisions likes this are medical decisions best left up to the individual, their family (if we're talking about a minor) and their doctor.
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The was another presidential candidate once accused of not being American enough to run for president. Gee, I wonder if they have anything in common.
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@Greyparrot
At least they pretend to have elections. DNC didn't even put up that much effort to install Kamala.
This is such a stupid argument, but it's been floating around right wing circles so let's for a minute pretend it's actually serious.
Democracy is a system by which voters choose their own government leaders. What is not an element of democracy is forcing someone to run for office after they made their own decision to exit the race.
By the time Biden made that decision, the primary races were already over. There is no practical way to set up an entire primary process over again at this point, that's common sense.
Moreover, when democratic voters voted for the Biden/Harris ticket, they literally voted for Kamala to be the replacement for Biden should he ever exit politics, regardless of circumstance. So replacing Biden with Harris is the only choice which honors the will of those who actually voted.
That's not the end of democracy, it's how democracy works.
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@HistoryBuff
let me get this straight, if the democrats put up a candidate for an election, that's the end of democracy? The republican candidate tried to overthrow an election through violence, but it's kamela harris that is ending democracy?
It's a classic argument tactic that has shown itself quite effective. I believe it's called "I know you are but what am I?"
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@WyIted
Your entire conception of what you're voting against is purely a product of your imaginatioI have relatives that are leftists. I know what is going on. There is a reason I stopped being one
This is like metting someone who claims they used to be an atheist because they hated God. Just because you claim to be aligned with a group doesn't mean you understand anything about them. And I've already seen how your ability to translate words works, so the fact that your relatives are leftists ads no reassurance.
You love to pretend you understand the left very well, from what I've seen that couldn't be further from the truth.
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@Greyparrot
Same way as you would excuse the dozens of political killings, assassination attempts (there were many) and riots from the far left.
I don't excuse any of those things. As usual, you argue with your own imagination.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Once you come to accept that Wylted's reply to me directly rejecting democracy is not some false personality that he is putting on for entertainment but instead a serious sentiment that he shares with many others you will be nearly ready to understand the answer to your question and, subsequently, to take the first steps towards enlightenment.
It's not really enlightenment, myself and plenty more on the left have been saying the MAGA right is anti democracy for years, the problem is that the MAGA right continues to pretend to be for it. What I wasn't expecting was for someone to come on here and actually say it, normally what I get are silly arguments like the deflections Wylted just tried, allegations of "you too", or more typically they just run away from the topic because they don't want to say it out loud.
So far from enlightenment, what I'm hearing from you is that I'm right... All of these half baked attempts to defend Trump is just pure BS, everyone knows he was trying to overthrow American democracy and that's exactly why they want him back in the White House. That right?
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@WyIted
We also know that jan 6 was just a protest, and there was in fact less damage done in that protest than the BLM riots that killed over 30 people across the country and caused billions in property damage.
The BLM riots is an entirely different category of event, and on January 6th we saw the United States Congress evacuate for their protection after the US Capitol was overtaken by a mob that injured 140 police officers on their way. It wasn't just a protest, what a ridiculous thing to say.
Regardless, I didn't ask you about any of that. I asked about Trump's actions during the three hours the rest of the country watched in horror. Do you have any thoughts on that or just deflection?
It's hard to support the party that wants to cut the Denise's off of children, band guns and have open borders.
Not one prominent figure is advocating for cutting kids penises off, no one is calling for guns to be banned, and the open borders claim is so stupid. Nearly all of the democrats are on board to pass the toughest legislation on the border we've seen in our lifetimes, it's the republican party following the orders of their cult leader who have decided to keep the border "open".
Your entire conception of what you're voting against is purely a product of your imagination.
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Looking at the current state of our politics it baffles me to no end that people really look at Donald Trump and think this guy should be our next president. The reasons why it baffles me are endless but of I had to point to one thing that I would want any supporter of Trump's to explain it would be his hiatus on January 6th as the US Capitol was under attack. If there is anything that should be an immediate disqualifier, I think that would be it.
So my question to anyone who supports this guy is; what do you make of those 187 minutes? How do you explain it and why would you even consider voting for him after it?
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@IlDiavolo
I called you a cultist at the very moment you tried to defend the undefendable which is the Bidenomics.
I didn't defend Bidenomics, I pointed out the fact that every indicator we have used to measure economic strength for the past century says the economy is strong. The takeaway there is not that Bidenomics is wonderful, it's that your claim is nonsense.
Check any inflation chart over the last 2 periods and you'll see Trump's inflation is flat, Biden's is a big mountain.
Correlation/causation fallacy. Just because Biden was president while we had inflation doesn't mean Biden caused it. Inflation is a global phenomenon, do you think Biden caused inflation worldwide? If so, how?
Inflation is the result of a number of factors, but most notable is the aftermath of COVID with all of the supply chain disruptions which was later compounded by price gouging. There is absolutely nothing Trump could have or would have done to stop it.
It never ceases to amaze me how right wingers seem to think the entire world's affairs are entirely dictated by the person sitting in the oval office. As if being sworn in is some magical ceremony straight out of Harry Potter.
When Trump was sworn in he took over an economy Obama left him that had been growing for 7 straight years. All Trump did was continue the same trajectory it was already on. He didn't do or accomplish anything special, in fact there were more jobs created in the three years prior to Trump's arrival than the three years after he was sworn in. He didn't do anything.
Biden meanwhile inherited the mess Trump left him. It never ceases to amaze me how Trump supporters want to wipe out Trump's last year in office because we can't hold him responsible for thre destruction of COVID but then hold Biden responsible for the ashes COVID left behind. It's as if you think on January 19th 2021 COVID was present and detrimental, then on January 20th it just vanished. How convenient.
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@WyIted
Another source indicates that the resignation letter is not official letter head and the Democrats have Biden on ice and are just pretending to be him
Are you going to be at all embarrassed after Joe is seen publicly again and this is all shown to be complete bullshit based on nothing?
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Let's just keep pretending that all the people who lied to you about it are trustworthy.
Perhaps this is how you go about deciding what to believe so it makes sense to you others like myself would do the same. It's called projection, and your projection is irrelevant to my position.
The data is a result of propaganda breakdown
Spoken like a true propagandist.
It's also true that the deep state which is puppeting Biden is attempting to imprison political opposition and inspiring assassination attempts
Trump was indicted because he committed obvious crimes, and we do not know the shooter's motives. Much had been made about his $15 donation, meanwhile folks peddling this nonsense ignore that he registered as a republican 8 months later, was a gun enthusiast and was described by his classmates as a political conservative. Anyone who claims the motive here is clear is a liar.
An honest Biden and deep state would not have attempted a propaganda campaign to hide Biden's mental failure until it was too late to put it to a vote.
Wow, a politician and his inner circle attempts to hide negative information about himself from the public so he can win election. Stunner.
Imagine how shocked you will be to learn that his opponent once paid $130k to a porn star to hide the affair he had with her while his wife was him with his new born child.
Convenient, why let democracy ruin a perfectly good deep state anyway?
No meaningful point detected.
Uh huh, "the rules" lol
I know, how crazy that we would create rules so that we know what to do in a situation where the nominating process doesn't go as planned. Stunner.
yes it's completely reasonable and foreseeable that a demented figurehead for a fascist takeover would be unpopular.
"I know you are but what am I?" worked in third grade.
What is inexplicable (without a deep state) is why the demented fascist figurehead won a primary and a flock of "journalistic" organizations did their very best to hide and confuse the facts up until total defeat was looming over them.
You have no evidence that anything was done intentionally by "the media" to hide anything. Just more accusations born in nothing more than your imagination.
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@DavidAZZ
Why did all the mail in ballots turn out so much for Biden when the graph climbs for both candidates at a consistent level? Then all of a sudden, Biden voters came in like a flood with the mail ins?
The reason mail in ballots went so heavily for Biden is because as HB already explained, Trump politicized the issue thereby turning his supporters against mail in balloting. But also, remember that we were still going through COVID. So whatever you think about the virus and its risks, you can't argue that anyone who took COVID seriously was far more likely to vote by mail to avoid exposure to the crowds.
This was plainly obvious heading into the election, so it isn't suspicious in the slightest. We all knew those votes were going to swing heavily towards Biden, that's why republicans in key battleground states made sure that mail in ballots were not allowed to be touched until election night.
Think about how ridiculous that position is. Mail in ballots take very long to process, they need to verify the envelopes to registration data before they can even get to the ballot itself, the manual labor involved in that not to mention just opening thousands of mailed in ballots takes days. Anyone who is interested in having the results in a timely manner would want that process started as soon as possible, but that's not what republicans wanted. They wanted this to look suspicious. They wanted to discredit the votes they knew were going to swing towards Biden. This was planned because they knew people like yourself could be manipulated into thinking exactly what they wanted you to think.
Contrast those states with Florida, who has more mail in ballots than most states in the country. They did the common sense thing and had those ballots ready to go so on election night as soon as the polls closed it showed Biden with a big lead, and then all of a sudden you started to see Trump catch up and then pull ahead as same day votes were counted. Did anyone think that was suspicious? Of course not.
John Oliver among many others explained this on his show weeks before the election. Everyone knew to expect this, except those listening to Trump.
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@Tidycraft
Yes, he ran away from Maga Morons. A little man.
I didn't really have an opinion on whether he should stay in or drop out, but one thing that is so nice to watch is the MAGA right losing their minds over this and continuing to attack someone who's no longer the nominee. Before I would have felt compelled to defend against attacks on Biden given how disingenuous those attacks are considering the moron he's running against. Now I can just watch and laugh.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Just in time to have the new nominee chosen by elites in backroom deals rather than the public, how predictably deep state.
Biden was the only person who could have made the decision to drop out and he did for obvious reasons; the data right now says he's going to lose. From there we do not have time to set up another primary process, so the delegates will choose the nominee as is how the rules work. There's nothing "deep state" about it, it's all very foreseeable and reasonable to anyone looking at this with a hint of common sense.
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@WyIted
Donald trump put the country before his own ambitions. He could be in Maui drinking margaritas and fucking pornstars. Instead he has chosen to face false charges that are politically motivated and literally be shot at and risk his life, rather than do the selfish thing.
All of the charges Trump is facing were long in the works well before Trump announced he was running again, and reporting going all the way back to 2021 talked about how Trump was definitely going to run in order to use his candidacy to claim the prosecutions are political. Even without the reporting, it was plainly obvious he was going to do just that.
Trump is the biggest narcissist we have ever seen in American politics, and that's saying something. The idea that he's doing all of this for the good of the country and not to fulfill his own needs and ambitions is ridiculous.
The moron statement has been fact checked and trumps IQ I'd 150
You can't seriously be this gullible. Trump has the vocabulary of a third grader and has never in his political career shown any mental acuity beyond that. For god sakes he is still bragging about "acing" a test for dementia.
You're also talking about a man who has made bolstering his public image his entire mission in life which included sueing anyone who threatened to release his college records and pretending to be his own publicist so he could brag to reporters about himself. To think he wouldn't lie or otherwise find a way to get them to report a fake IQ score is remarkably naive.
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@IlDiavolo
What I'm arguing here is that Trump is better option than the decrepit old Biden, and he sure is without any doubt.
In order to make that case you'd have to explain why it is worse to have a candidate who is old than a candidate who fundamentally opposes the most basic principals the country he is leading was founded upon. You have offered nothing even close to that.
I considered very carefully all your points and all what I see is resentment and hatred against Trump. There might be some common ground but in general I only see unjustified outrage in your words.
Then you didn't actually read them. My posts offered a point by point breakdown of the differences between this Trump administration and 2017, all supported with facts and examples. If all you saw is outrage you are either lying and didn't read them at all, or when you call me a cultist that is pure projection. It couldn't have been better laid out in terms of just sticking to the facts and leaving emotion out of it.
Well, this is the very reason I gave up on you. You're a cultist. Haha.
Calling me a cultist while demonstrating that you are a cultist. How ironic.
So yet again, I present facts and examples and you don't even attempt to respond to a single thing I said. We both know why, because you don't have anything meaningful to say, just insults.
Yes, I engage in debates for that, to change people's mind. Don't you?
No, that's a waste of time. The main reason I engage here is to test my position. So I lay it out there and I see what those who disagree with me have to say, because I believe they are the best people to show me where I'm wrong. When they repeatedly fail to do so, it doesn't prove me right but it does indicate that there aren't any good arguments against it.
So far you're the second person I've engaged with on those long posts explaining the danger Trump poses to democracy with Schedule F being the prime example. The other didn't really have anything to say about it, and you just call me a cultist without offering a single criticism to demonstrate that you even read it. I find that very telling, which only strengthens my convictions that I have it right. Maybe someone will come along and actually want to have an intelligent conversation about it. Till then...
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@Tidycraft
So your current president is simply incompetent for not enforcing existing law. I can agree.
Arguing with your own imagination is not a good look.
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@IlDiavolo
Trump is a business man and he thinks in a different way to a lifetime politician like Biden.
Correct, that's exactly the problem. America isn't a business, it's the most powerful nation on earth and is so because of the basic principals upon which it was founded. Principals that Trump in his "different way" of thinking not only disregards but berates anyone who follows them.
Either way, you're not going to change your mind about Trump because you hate him, so I feel I'm wasting my time with you.
If changing other people's minds is the point of why you engage here then every post you write is probably a waste of time. But if a productive rational dialog is your goal, the way to accomplish that is to point out the flaws expressed within someone else's views, as opposed to, say, just labeling someone else a cultist while ignoring the very detailed arguments they made explaining their position.
the US is getting into a profound economic crisis as many experts are predicting
Almost every single economic indicator which we have used to measure economic strength for the past century says the economy is doing good, and experts have been predicting an economic crisis "around the corner" for all of the past 15 years. These are talking points taken straight out of the Trump campaign and amplified by right wing media. It's pure nonsense.
Again, if Trump were sworn in today he would immediately brag about how good his economic numbers are. And this isn't even hypothetical. In 2016 Trump claimed all of the jobs numbers reports were fake, then after being sworn in the very next jobs report came out and he bragged about it despite not even implementing any meaningful changes in policy yet. When confronted directly about this his press secretary delivered a pre written response from Trump to the media: "the jobs numbers were fake before but they're very real now".
No halfway intelligent person would take this man seriously.
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@Tidycraft
I'm not opening strange links, and you have said nothing about enforcing existing laws
Because as I started off saying, I'm not debating someone on immigration who won't acknowledge that Trump purposefully stopped congress from improving the situation so that he could campaign on it.
If you are trying to tell me you need an act of congress to enforce a pre existing law
I'm not. The link explains how your insinuation that Biden is not enforcing the law is not true.
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@Tidycraft
Trump isn't your president (yet)Not sure why he has anything to do with the question I asked. You have existing laws that are not enforcved.
The link addresses your claim.
Are you seriously implying that Trump is not the reason why the bill James Lankford co-sponsored is not law? Do you know what happened there?
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@IlDiavolo
is there any chance that he did all what you said he did because of his ignorance about how the government works? Based on his background as a business man and not a lifetime politician like Biden, it seems to me he didn't know exactly what he was doing
I really don't understand what you're asking, and again, this was all addressed in detail in the link I provided.
What I explained was how Trump's ignorance necessitated that he surround himself with people who knew what they were doing, which in turn kept him in check, and how none of this will be the case in a second Trump term.
If you're going to tell me you think I'm a cultist, the least you can do is read what I've said about this and respond.
Let's not consider the Jan6 events which is very polemical.
Not consider them? How on earth do we not consider his incitement and apathy towards an attack on the US Capitol? In what world is that not relevant to whether we should hand him back the presidency?
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@Tidycraft
Why does your president need to negotiate with your congress to enforce existing laws? Does your president have no power to do this?
Again, not worth typing words about this if you're unwilling to acknowledge Trump's role in maintaining the problem you purport to care so much about.
You really don't know where the money is going. Nobody does.
If Trump was president right now you guys would be bragging every single day about this economy.And they would be lying just like you are.
Lying about what? Please... Break it down.
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@DavidAZZ
He wouldn't have such a following if it didn't resonate with the people. If he were looney, then he would have only nuts as his following, but since majority of the right is on Trump's side, I think Trump was more of a spark plug to the MAGA engine.
I'm not arguing that Trump is creating the frustration many on the right are feeling, I just believe those frustrations are wrongheaded and any good faith intelligent conversation would expose that. But Trump is not bound by the political laws of physics, so he gets to say absurd things and it does nothing to him, allowing him to point that anger in all sorts of directions that are extremely harmful because they're disconnected from reality.
The way I see it, the issue undergirding all of our political frustrations is the natural evolution of capitalism and it's role in consolidating wealth to an increasingly tiny minority. This is destroying the middle class and making us all feel like the America we were taught was so great feel like a fading dream. The question is why is this happening and what can we do about it?
This is where Trump's blaming of everyone from immigrants to lazy homeless people to drug cartels to elites to those trans people coming for your children all comes in. Anger is a natural human emotion. It can be the most useful emotion we feel but the problem with it is that it needs a target. Trump provides that Target and because for some reason he isn't bound to reality like the rest of us he gets away with sending his troops to fight battles that don't exist or have nothing to do with the issues at hand.
While a sightly different take, this is a great video on Tucker Carlson and how he also plays into the phenomenon I am describing.
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@IlDiavolo
I had to take the services from despicable people many times. I did it because they are good at work. This is an intelligent decision, not mixing emotions with business.
An intelligent decision is one that considers all of the ramifications of said decision, not just one piece of it. The president of the United States is far more than just a guy who sets policy. Our country is held together in large part by our political norms, things like conceding elections for example. A president who doesn't follow those norms can cause great damage as Trump definitely has. No intelligent decision would disregard thesev impacts.
An intelligent decision would also take into account whether someone was actually good at their job, or just lucky enough to have presided over circumstances that were already in place to make their job easy, like inheriting an economy that had already been growing for 7 straight years and was likely to continue that trajectory no matter who was put in place to do that job.
I have to say I agree with Daivd. You're hyping the impact of Trump's government on democracy. Trump has already been president and everything was ok back then. I don't know what your concern is.
I addressed this directly in the posts I linked you to. Did you read them? Do you have any thoughts on them?
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@IlDiavolo
Yes, you never said it but it's implied in your argument. People get angry and fearful because of how impulsive Trump is when delivering his speech.
That has absolutely nothing to do with anything I argued. A strategy of fear and anger is when you rally your folks by consistently telling them that they are the victims and pointing to the "other" as the source of all their problems. That's why he focuses so hard on immigration, especially at the southern border. The message is that if you're not doing well in life it's because of those brown people over there taking your jobs. Or be afraid of those trans people coming for your kids, or maybe you'd be doing better if you didn't have to pay for all those "inner city" people on welfare, etc.
And you're right, it's not a strategy, it's an impulse, which is why Trump is able to lie so freely. Because when you're talking squarely to people's emotions facts don't matter.
do you have any comment about the illegal inmigration?
If you support Trump I couldn't care less what you have to say about immigration. Biden had his team negotiate with one of the most conservative republican senators in Congress and came up with the most extreme immigration bill drafted in our lifetimes and Trump killed the bill because he wanted to campaign on the border. If that doesn't bother you then you are a brazen political hack.
what about the woke agenda for schools and universities that Democrats are imposing?
Show me the bill Biden and Congressional democrats are pushing on this. I'll wait.
What about the unnecessary spending on Ukraine war?
Do you even understand why were defending Ukraine?
And are you aware that the money being spent on Ukraine defense is going to Americans right here at home?
Not to mention the disaster in the economy that Biden is leaving.
Are you joking? If Trump was president right now you guys would be bragging every single day about this economy.
Please show me one significant traditional economic indicator that is doing terribly.
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@DavidAZZ
Maybe his parents were so caught up in the MAGA movement that they had no time for him. So he wanted to destroy the MAGA King.
I actually think you might be very close. We know the kid was bullied, so it's very likely he just wanted to do something that would make him feel bigger than everyone else.
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@DavidAZZ
Bad news and a likely civil war coming soon. I feel the USA is a tinder box ready to explode.
I agree generally, and I believe Trump is primarily responsible. Trumpism doesn't survive without Trump, once he is no longer driving out politics only then do we have a chance to rebuild.
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@IlDiavolo
There are many examples of people ranting on Trump, saying that he's a threat for democracy and the US. I'm not referring to you, of course, but you have lots of TV figures speaking of Trump in this way
People (myself included) have on many occasions said Trump is a threat to US democracy... Because he is. That's a fact. Recognizing reality for what it is is not an incitement of violence.
What I find funny is that the logic of your statement is that if the logical implications of someone's speech leads to a conclusion that violence is justified, then the speaker is morally responsible when that violence occurs. Yet for three years every single Trump defender I've ever heard talk about January 6th claimed that when Trump told the crown to go to the Capitol to "fight like hell or you're not going to have a country anymore" he wasn't responsible because he didn't tell them to be violent explicitly. So which is it?
Trump is probably the most despicable candidate in history, he has more defects than virtues, but if you're enough intelligent you have to vote for him at least holding your nose.
Voting for the most despicable candidate in history is a really strange way to display one's intelligence.
As a final remark, I think you hate Trump for his bad manners but you're unable to realize that the elite and the deep state hate him because he's against the status quo that is destroying the US.
I hate Trump because he is an existential threat to everything this country once stood for that made us the envy of the world.
I laid out some of the case here (this post and the follow up a few posts later). You are more than welcome to read it.
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@WyIted
Watch CNN for one hourI heard them just earlier claim the shooting was not politically motivated because the kid googled biden also. As if killing biden wouldn't also harm Trump's chances of winning.
What is your point? I don't want to assume your argument, could you please connect those dots?
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@DavidAZZ
Stop making everything in life about DEI
You mean stop recognizing that there are other people out there who are not like you and entertaining the notion that it is in the best interest of all of us to understand eachother?
Stop such perverseness such as gays and trans.
So other people need to stop being who they are because it bothers you despite having nothing to do with you?
Stop the pork spending.
This has been happening on both sides for as long as legislation has existed. It's a product of a representative government and will never change.
Stop the reaching into everyone's life.
Agreed. Let's start with women.
Stop the spreading and support of false narratives of global warming, evolution etc.
So you're anti science. Got it.
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@IlDiavolo
Do you really think the base supports Trump because of his impulsiveness?
I never said anything about impulsiveness, you made that up entirely, something I've grown exhaustingly used to from the right wingers on this site. One has to wonder if their arguments are so wrong why everyone needs to make up imaginary arguments to refute.
The base supports him because he's against the status quo.
Against the status quo is not a meaningful argument in any sense. All you're saying is that Trump is different from the others, and you're absolutely right. Unlike everyone else, Trump gets away with saying outrageous, vile, ignorant, bigoted, and insanely false things. That's why he stands out. It's entirely emotional and it's entirely negative.
If we (the political left in this country and the political right) were having a real debate the right wouldn't need to lie so brazenly over and over again at their own convention. How many times are they going to claim crime is out of control when it has fallen below what it was at the end of the Trump administration? How many times are we going to here about how Biden made us energy dependant while the US produces more oil than at any time in the nation's history?
They lie because they have no plan and no vision. So when you have no coherent policy platform to run on all you have is demonization of the other. Hence the strategy of fear and anger.
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@Best.Korea
It wouldnt surprise me. MAGA would be dumb enough to fall for it.
They might believe it but the question is how do they feel about it? How will a base of people primarily driven by fear and anger suddenly respond to a platform of love and unity? It's difficult to imagine.
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@IlDiavolo
He did tell a reporter after the shooting that in that moment everything changed. I remain skeptical of that because nothing has ever caused him to change before, but tonight we'll get a better picture.
What I find interesting is if he really has changed how the base will respond. Trump's entire political strategy is based on making people angry and fearful. If he suddenly tries to run as the neighbor loving optimist how is that going to play out?
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@IlDiavolo
Trump very likely didn't realize he was inciting violence because he called for a peacefull walkout: "Peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard", said Trump in one of his twits. And this is the main reason why he wasnt found guilty so far.
He hasn’t been found guilty because he’s used every trick under the sun to avoid a trial, not exactly the actions of someone who thinks they are innocent.
I’ve discussed J6 at length on this site so I won’t go through it all, I will just point my two main points here. First is that quote was not a tweet, it was one single sentence cherry picked out of an 11k word speech. Nothing we saw from Trump before or after in that speech aligned with that sentiment nor any of Trumps actions over the prior two months. It was a very obvious false exculpatory, something Trump learned very well from his mentor Roy Cohn.
But more importantly, we can argue about his speech all day long, the one thing that is beyond any rational dispute is what the next 187 minutes after Trump’s speech would look like. There is no reasonable case to be made that he did not want that violence considering that he did absolutely nothing about it for the next 3 hours except to watch the attack on TV while everyone around him begged and pleaded with him to tell them to go home.
I think you're overestimating the danger of allowing this kind of speech from the left in social media.
We’re not talking about what steps social media should take to censor its users, and if we were you would have to acknowledge that the right, not the left, are the ones who have been screaming from the mountaintops for years about how free speech is under assault because of what social media companies have done to censor this kind of vile. It's the right what would be responsible if anyone.
The most prominent place by far for this kind of speech is X, so go complain to Elon Musk about it.
are you going to deny that this violent comments in social media comes from the left?
I never denied that there are people on the left that spread violent rhetoric, I am responding to the silly argument that a bunch of morons on Twitter is representative of the political left.
Again, there are over 330 million people in the US and plenty more chiming in around the world, of course you are going to find this filth out there on any political side. The question is how do you tell the difference between a bunch of morons who scream louder than everyone else, and a sentiment that is significantly correlated to a set of political beliefs?
The answer is to look at the people who ascend to the top of these political camps. Those are the ones people are actually voting for to represent them, those are the people that others are tuning into to listen to. That’s how you know the difference, and it is relatively non existent on the left.
Where does this left mindset come from? Doesn't it come from left politicians and left activists that support these politicians?
If it did then you would have examples of prominent left wing figures spreading this nonsense. Feel free to provide some.
This wacko that attempted to kill Trump didn't do it alone.
You’re entirely making this up, there is no evidence to support that.
Maybe you didn't notice that you live in a country where most people are armed which make it more dangerous.
lol yes I noticed that. There are more guns in this country than there are people, but I am glad folks like yourself are finally coming to the realization that this is not a recipe for a safe and prosperous country. Welcome to the club.
And if you want to debate which political party is the most violent, I think you're going to lose by far because the history of humanity teaches us that the left has been the most violent... and still.
History is irrelevant to the objective facts that are on the record when it comes to what filth has been coming from each of the sides. It is the political right that nominated a man who among so many other things'; told his supporters to beat up protesters, regularly calls the opposition pedophiles and marxist communist thugs, posted a video of his opponent being hog tied to the back of a pick up truck, made fun of an assassination attempt on the former speaker of the house that resulted in the brutal hospitalization of her husband, and incited an attack on the US Capitol that he watched live on TV instead of stopping it… to be the next president.
You will not find a single example of a prominent left wing figure anywhere doing or saying anything remotely like this without being called out by the rest of their party.
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@Tidycraft
I don't recall anyone ever resigning in your government
I don't know what this means. Al Franken resigned for taking an inappropriate picture with a female staffer. Trump is a civilly liable rapist and that only pushed MAGA more firmly towards him. They're not the same.
If you're talking about Menendez, he's refusing to resign which I can understand based on the insane double standards here but his political career is over because of this, he does not have a shot at reelection. Turns out democratic voters really don't like convicted felons. One would figure that sentiment be felt more strongly in the party that peaches law and order, but words on that side couldn't be more empty.
Those base values are to hold on to power by any means?
You can feel that way all you want, but you'd need argument if you wish to present yourself as being reasonable here. So far all I've seen from anyone who has tried to push this narrative is projection.
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@Best.Korea
I support whoever has the best chance of ensuring our next president isn't a convicted felon who is not even allowed to run a charity let alone a country and didn't incite an attack on the US Capitol.
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@Swagnarok
Senator Bob Menendez (D--NJ) has been convicted
Biden's weaponized DOJ strikes again.
To save face, several Dems have publicly called on him to resign, though it goes without saying that they privately wish he doesn't, given how slim their Senate majority is at this time.
The fact that they at the very least feel they have to pretend to care about this speaks to what their base values. Meanwhile the candidate on the other side of the aisle gets convicted and they support him even more. It really says something about the difference between the two sides.
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@IlDiavolo
I'm not impressed at all that a wacko tried to kill Trump if the social media is full of lefties stirring up the crowd with real violent comments. You can't compare it with Trump's comments in Jan 6.
You're right, a bunch of whackos on the internet do not compare to what a president of the United States tells his followers as he is inciting them to revolt against what's happening in real time at the US Capitol.
This is one of those things that really demonstrates the intellectual depravity of the political right - the false equivalences when comparing the two sides. Any moron on the internet can say anything they want, and we live in a country of over 330 million people so there will be no shortage of them. Twitter is not "the left". Twitter is where morons go to smear their feces.
What's telling about the left vs right debates is what each side puts forth as their best representation of the other side. When right wingers talk about the absurdity of the left they point to anonymous idiots on social media or they'll point to some school administrator somewhere in Minnesota. When right wingers talk about the ridiculous left wing policies that fuel their ire it's almost entirely a rant filled with positions no prominent left wing figure has ever advocated for.
Meanwhile when the left criticizes the right, more than half of the things we're talking about is coming straight from your nominee for president and unequivocal leader of your movement. And the positions we criticize that he hasn't endorsed can be found all over Congress and all over former members of his own administration.
There's a reason we call politicians "leaders". They are the people who actually represent the things we as a society value. Morons on Twitter do not.
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@DavidAZZ
Can you expand on the schedule F from the 2025 project?
Schedule F is an executive order Trump signed towards the end of his administration which Biden immediately reversed. Project 2025 calls for Trump to reinstate it while providing the apparatus for Trump to maximize it's impact.
The way our government is currently structured, the executives within it's many agencies report to the president, so the president can fire any of them at will. This goes down a few lawyers, these individuals are normally referred to as "political appointees". They're the positions every administration must fill at the beginning of each term.
The people who work under them are what we call "civil servants". These are the people who are not appointed, they are in their positions because they are subject matter experts and serve through multiple administrations. Think of the scientists who work at the FDA, or prosecutors that work for the DOJ. These people do not report to the president so he can't just fire them, he would have to order his political appointees to fire them and fire his political appointees if they refuse.
The reason the government is set up this way is to add a layer of protection to our civil servants. These are the people who know what they're doing and are notoriously apolitical, so we do not want these people to be subject to the political whims of the day. By protecting them, a president who is trying to get them fired for the wrong reasons would have to go through multiple layers likely gaining massive negative public attention. Think of Richard Nixon and the Saturday night massacre.
What schedule F does is reclassify these people such so that Trump can fire them directly without jumping through any hoops. So if a prosecutor for example wants to investigate a shady deal Don Jr. was involved in, or if Trump wants fake charges pressed against Hilary Clinton, Trump can just fire them himself if they don't act according to his will without jumping through any hoops.
The only reason any president would do this is so that he could gain total control over every element of our government. So next time he wants to argue that he was right about the trajectory of a hurricane he won't have to draw on a map with a sharpie, this time he'll be able to call up the national weather service and tell them to re-project the hurricane's path to meet whatever he claimed it was.
The result of this a serious degradation of public trust in all of our institutions, so next time we're told a medication is safe and the are political implications, we'll all have to worry if that's coming from the doctors involved or if they're just saying whatever Trump wants them to say.
But what project 2025 calls for goes even deeper. It's plan is to automatically fire nearly every civil servant in the government and replace them with pre-vetted candidates. Basically, what they're doing is interviewing an army of people right now to fill all those positions, their primary qualification being loyalty to Trump.
Essentially, Schedule F is the lesson Trump learned in his first term that he will be correcting in his second. I'm not exaggerating when I say there will be no more adults in the room. In 2016 a slew of Trump sycophants staffing the federal government was a pipe dream, now it's a documented plan backed by some of the largest right wing groups in the country. It's literal point is to get rid of all the guard rails people like yourself seem to think will protect us because it did last time.
I also think it's worth pointing out, what's driving this is really all those "deep state" conspiracy theories. Like any conspiracy theory, they're almost always based on a nugget of truth. Trump was stifled the first time because there are a lot of people in the federal government fighting back against his agenda. Where they get it wrong is that it's not a bunch of politically biased liberals who just hate Trump. It's people who have been in their fields for many years and know what they're doing so they understand how batshit crazy Trump's impulses are. When Trump said to shoot protesters in the leg, these are the people who said "no we can't do that" because unlike Trump they know better. These are the people Project 2025 calls on to replace.
I hope it's not the case because then we are all screwed no matter who we vote to be president.
That's just not true. No matter how old and scenile you think Biden is there is nothing on his agenda that even compares to this. The fact that Biden reversed this order goes to show the massive disparity between what these two men value.
We can get through 4 years of bad policy and/or incompetence, we cannot get through a president taking a wrecking ball to everything we have spent centuries building.
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@DavidAZZ
Either way, I don't see it in that light but probably because I support Trump and I don't gobble up the media narrative.
It's not about gobbling up any narrative being fed to you, it's about recognizing facts and then connecting the dots.
I just laid out the case from A to Z. Is there any part that you dispute on factual grounds, and if not, what part of what I said does not logically connect?
I still think the media has hyped up the "Destruction of Democracy".
It's a mistake to think of the threat to democracy narrative as some kind of watershed moment where we go to bed a democracy and wake up a dictatorship. With that expectation of course the narrative you are thinking of will be wrong.
Trump has already done tremendous damage to our democratic institutions, another Trump term will continue that decline and I believe will supercharge the pace.
This video gives a good insight into what I'm talking about if you'd care to learn more about where I'm coming from. It is a bit dated but still clarifying. And especially take note of the tone of this video, it's remarkable - you can really see how much further in the wrong direction we've gone just by how benign these examples feel by today's standards.
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@WyIted
And BTW, since you seem to have found a whole new appreciation for the danger of words that could be interpreted as a call to violence... Have you changed your mind on Trump telling the crowd at the elipse to "fight like hell or you're not going to have a country anymore"?
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