[jedrider]

Pompeo is setting himself up to be Trump II. I'm a little worried about this as he doesn't look as dumb as Trump.

[Pops]

-
Goodbye Donald, wish we'd never known ya.

-

[JuanP]

I read today that Trump is claiming he will create a new political party, the Patriot Party. While I do believe that the USA needs more political parties since I consider both The Republicans and the Democrats completely unacceptable options, I also think that Trump should be the last American to found a new political party in the USA.

Goodbye Trump, hello Biden. Meet the new boss ...

[Ibon]

I read today that Trump is claiming he will create a new political party, the Patriot Party. While I do believe that the USA needs more political parties since I consider both The Republicans and the Democrats completely unacceptable options, I also think that Trump should be the last American to found a new political party in the USA.

Goodbye Trump, hello Biden. Meet the new boss ...

Short term mainstream Republicans will fear Trump starting a new party. Mid term they will be thankful he did. Why? The racist nationalists will flock to Trumps new party. This will cleanse the Republican Party of this demographic which they supported for years to their peril. Without them the Republican Party can rebrand itself, be a bulwark to over excessive social spending but compromise on major social reforms, they can then focus on increasing their base with latino minorities, African Americans and other people of color who are not monolithic but have significant conservative followings. Furthermore, such a rebranded Republican Party can appeal to those evangelicals who did not replace Jesus with Donald. This new rebranded Republican Party will also appeal to a percentage of middle of the road democrats who will be attracted back into the Republican Party when and if they see it being effective.

Think about it. If this new mainstream Republican Party compromises with D's on a livable minimum wage what do you think all of those rural folks in Ohio and Oklahoma will think when they see their wages increase? Will they still have so much fire for the grievances that Trump will be spewing and baiting them with?

Short term Trumps new Patriot Party will hemorrhage the Republican Party. Mid term it will cleanse it and make it stronger.

I for one hope Trump does initiate this new party. Give the racist nationalists a voice with no real power or majority. Just a place where deplorables can still feel validated with their primitive racism, all symbolism but no real power. Perfect.

[aadbrd]

Short term mainstream Republicans will fear Trump starting a new party.

Gosh, I hope he does that. It would be the one thing Trump does that I would celebrate.

[Pops]

trump will continue with the adderall and fundraising, being a candidate has been a great moneymaker, perhaps his best scam yet.

I doubt the republican party will fracture, they all have an authoritarian fetish after all, and besides, where the racists and snowflakes go, so goes the party, been that way starting with Goldwater '64 at least.

Indeed, 57 percent of Republicans believed that whites face “a lot of discrimination,” while just 52 percent believe that Blacks do. Among Democrats, 13 percent said whites encounter a lot of discrimination; 92 percent said Blacks do.

https://prospect.org/blogs/tap/how-raci ... cans-very/

I mean I'd be happy if they did, if a small loyal opposition formed to keep the Ds from going overboard and the rest occupied themselves trading "Biden is senile" memes and planning the Boogaloo.

[Plantagenet]

Its early morning in Alaska and I'm up to watch the inauguration right now. Its still a beautiful ceremony, even without the usual audience.

Its good to see the bipartisanship on display. Former President Obama sitting beside former President Bush. Pence and McConnell in the audience along with Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete. Kamala Harris a rainbow nation in one person. Flags everywhere.

Trump is gone.

A new day begins.

Good luck to President Biden.

God bless America.

Cheers!

[evilgenius]

I don't have to demonize Liberals. All I have to do is look at a gas pump to know why I don't vote for them. I also don't dislike all female politicians. I dislike Hillary because she is a crook. No deep thinking required.

So, while you are out putting the next sticker onto some pump that an actual hard working person has to take off, maybe you could ask yourself what evidence is there, really, that Hillary is a crook? Because you will only find the breadcrumbs. You will only see the smoke. But there is no fire. She is a human being, and guilty of what people do. I already gave you that. What she is to your emotions, though, is quite something else.

Evil,

To he quite fair there is more than enough evidence to show she is a “crook.”

Definition :

a person who engages in fraudulent or criminal practices

a very dishonest person, especially a criminal or a cheat:

One needs look no further than her statements about how she handled secure communications as Secretary of State. Her sworn testimony before the federal investigators was diametrically opposed to her statements in the Presidential debates.

This single example is very public and easy to look up. This is not opinion, demonstrated fact. As a minimum ONE of those positions was a bold lie.

When you start to delve deeper into her character it degrades more and more.

I agree she is human and has human failings. The same can be said of everyone in jail.

What are you trying to say, that whatever she has done isn't eclipsed by what Trump has done? Worse yet, by what he openly professes he will do?

I'm telling you that she is guilty of being a human being. That she is guilty of being an ambitious woman. That, as a politician, she markets herself.

The Left believe that marketing. They buy all the way into it.

Is the criticism of her resentment of that? I think, in large part, it is. Because she hasn't done anything out of the ordinary that we haven't seen from other politicians, including Trump. All the rest, are accusations. We don't accept those in civilized society. We accept convictions.

All that being said, Trump is a narcissist. The nation had best to understand what that means. He will say and do anything to get back into power. He will do what he promises he will do. He has no connection with humanity, unless it is a connection that points back to him and reinforces his opinion of himself.

That means he will capitalize upon the ultra conservative positions he has said he will. That means the loss of rights for individuals across the spectrum, so that conservatives can feel good about the world. In this thread, where we are criticizing another who acts in the same manner toward others, we automatically take the position against him. Yet, so many desire that same sort of feel good exercise of power over themselves as well. I'd like to throw up my arms and say that you all deserve what you are going to get, but I love humanity and do not want that bent human being in charge of anything ever again.

[vtsnowedin]

I don't expect Trump to be the nominee in 2024 even if he has managed to avoid being in jail. I certainly would not vote for him, not that I ever have.
Yes he draws a crowd of MAGA cult members to rallies but they are not the majority of Republicans.
The New Hampshire primary will be interesting reguardless of who decides to run.

[evilgenius]

Evil,

No one mentioned Trump.

If you want to start a thread comparing the two crooks be my guest. But it is hard to see what relevance it has here.

If you want I can seed a new thread with some of the above posts.

Not trying to shut down the conversation. Just move it if it is going to continue.

Thankyou for understanding.

I'm stressing the point because so much of the pro-Trump and anti-Hillary propaganda came out of Russia. Think chain emails with catchy slogans, and Plantagenet like images that made the point. Now, those same people are allowing their emotions, perhaps rightly, to criticize the Russians.

The Russians have done wrongly. But why no self-examination? Why the continued insistence that the Putin line of adherence to the conservative agenda at all costs is a good thing?

Because he has also been filling people's minds with that, for years. You see, we used to be able to compromise between parties. We aren't very good at that anymore. We should be asking ourselves if the Russian propaganda had anything to do with that?

It can't be the whole reason, but it may be part of it. It isn't about how Trump is some kind of Russian plant. He most likely isn't. What he appears to be is the personification, though, of a Russian meme. He is riding their wave. The country can't seem to do anything but push harder, where it is discovering that it has hurt real people who may not think like the lumpen majority, whose opinion Putin has molded. The right wing is about to take away abortion rights, for instance, and they just don't seem to care who that hurts.

Putin may be losing in Ukraine, but he is still winning over here. Criticizing Biden for not saying the magic words is right in line with this.

[vtsnowedin]

Russia Russia Russia!! I am well past it and doubt your view of it is accurate at all.

Well.. it IS the Russia/Ukraine Crisis thread. Makes sense a lot of it would be about the invading country.

Any influence Russia had on the US election of 2016 has nothing to do with the current invasion of Ukraine. What little influence Russian disinformation achieved was nothing compared to the "Anybody but Hillary" attitude of many voters and dissatisfaction with the Obama administration.
So put that into the past and you have the Biden administration come in which is even more inept then Obama was and we now have women and children being blow to pieces on a daily basis.

[Newfie]

We know how Trump fared in office. We will never know how Clinton would have performed. So this is conjecture.

Is there really anyone here who thinks that Trump, or Hillary or Biden represents the kind of leadership this country needs?

It strikes me we are arguing about the symptoms; shitty Presidential candidates. The REAL problem, and it is a doozie, is we have a failed selection process.

How the heck do you fix that? I don’t know.

But until we DO fix it we are at high risk if having more knit-wits in office.

The problem extends to the House and Senate because those bodies have become largely dysfunctional. Legislation regularly runs to 2,000 pages. That is not digestible or functional.

[vtsnowedin]

I think the first thing we could do is stop voting for anybody that would be over 70 at the end of the term they are running for. They ,even if cognizant, can't see the future as they don't have any. We should not be run by a bunch that belongs in a nursing home.

[Plantagenet]

Trump has just sued Clinton and the DNC and Jake Sullivan and all the other wacky conspirators who made up the whole "Trump is a Russian agent" conspiracy theory and then had their friends in the Obama administration and the Mainstream Media push their conspiracy theory out into the public.

trump-sues-hillary-clinton

The "Trump-is-a-RUssian-agent" conspiracy theory has got to be the most successful conspiracy theory ever. The Ds showed that if just keep repeating the big lie you can get the sheeple to believe almost anything!! Clinton and the Ds got the FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA and then WaPo, NYTimes, PBS, CBS, NBC, ABC and most of the mass media to join in their conspiracy theory and then they managed to convince virtually every democrat in American to believe in their conspiracy theory. The conspiracy theory was being actively pushed by the Ds and the MSM for years, and even today virtually no one in the mainstream media has ever apologized for pushing this conspiracy theory. As a result there are still millions of naive Ds who still believe in this conspiracy theory. Incredible! The best conspiracy theory ever!


Trump is a Russian agent! The Hunter Biden laptop is Russian propaganda! Bill Clinton didn't have sex with Monica Lewinsky! Biden is really smart! Honest!

Cheers!

[evilgenius]

Now, Plant, you know that what I am saying is not about the "Trump is a Russian" anything. I'm not really even talking about Trump, but the Russian propaganda influence. Trump just happens to coincide with it.

What really needs to happen is that the people need to stop obsessing over whether they have for themselves a holier than thou candidate. People need to stop imagining that their person is, somehow, the embodiment of purity, or whatever. When you look at Trump's people, that is the sort of delusion they are laboring under. Gary Hart was ten times the man that Trump is, but he fell to thingamy Rice. Gary Hart had a conscience, though. Trump doesn't appear to have one of those. He won't stop himself. And his people won't stop him either. But you still see him touted as if he were the embodiment. The excuses that his side makes up to keep it going don't just border upon the preposterous.

The country needs to get back to a place where sinners can run for president! Because everybody is a sinner. There are no embodiments. Judging Hillary was only a continuation of that, which was easily manipulated by the Russians. The Republicans are busy doing the same thing, but they are a true domestic organization. They need to be met with the truth on a broad front. They deserve engagement because of their place, as fellow Americans. They don't deserve it for their crap arguments, however. Strict ideological adherence as a means to control people is not an American value. We learned that the hard way, under McCarthy. Why are we trying it again? We need to get back to where we understand there are some lines that people shouldn't cross, like the difference between having an affair and being such a womanizer that it endangers one's ability to govern with self-control, as a people. We need to revisit rebuilding those kinds of taboos, which actually make sense because they are pragmatic, not idealistic.

What this has done, of course, is to take the good name of conservatism and bend it in a new direction. It has ceased to become the protector of where we have come from, where the concept of reason held that we had to examine what was proposed and argue to accept new things based upon the merits of those things, to a strict adherence system, where people have to hold to an ideological position, or they are the enemy. That's a huge swing in a single generation. I'm trying to point out how outside, namely Russian, influence has been a part of that. It's not the biggest part, Newt Gingrich was not an "ex-commie, post-commie, neo-commie," whatever, like Tucker Carlson seems to be, but part enough. And it wasn't even Newt who started this, he was just better at it than Karl Rove, who did. Yes, revenge for Nixon, for the loss of power even when that loss came for good reason.

Because what the Republicans are actually building is a system where an outright brigand, like Nixon, can refuse to resign, and still survive. They are trying to say, "It's okay, we have the votes. You might get impeached, but you won't get convicted." They are really pushing it, in the name of power that serves their ideology, not freedom. Because free people who are elected to office don't prostrate themselves before the party line like the current version of Republicans, and some Democrats, do. Free people will convict when they see a crime that actually does rise to the level of a "high crime."

And, honestly, you should title this thread something else. You can plainly see that what you did title it is misleading.

[Pops]

How the heck do you fix that? I don’t know.

The repubs say you limit who votes, like in the good old days. They are passing dozens of new laws to that end.
That was the original intent of course, white, male landowners would appoint sober, dispassionate representatives to look out for their interests. Anything rather than the proles ruled by "passion".

Which has led us to be one of the least democratic of democracies and the one least able to address challenges. There is a veto at every step, unrepresentative representative pass laws the majority are against, and "state's rights" and corporate personhood trump individual rights.


Which reminds me, I see trump sued clinton because she called him a russian puppet. From where does the evidence clinton and the DNC was planning to say bad things about him and russia originate?

The emails russians stole then released to help him get elected!

LOL.

What isn't so funny is that it became part of his preemptive excuse for not winning, then when he did, it was rolled into his never-ending campaign and desire to never be elected out. He and his mob are by far the greatest threat to democracy in my 65 years.

Perfect example of passions run amok because our corrupt and decaying system forever tilted to the rich ignored those same mob passions.

[Plantagenet]

[
The repubs say you limit who votes, like in the good old days. They are passing dozens of new laws to that end.
That was the original intent of course, white, male landowners would appoint sober, dispassionate representatives to look out for their interests. Anything rather than the proles ruled by "passion".

Which has led us to be one of the least democratic of democracies and the one least able to address challenges.

Why do you call for people to be ruled by "Passion" instead of by logic?

What you are calling for is a recipe for disaster. People ruled by their passions get overly excited and start fights or even wars and kill people. There is a long history of autocrats stirring up "Passions" in the mob....and it never ends well. "Passions" are to be avoided when it comes to governing.

The Founders understood this well, and they set up the US constitution specifically to prevent "democracy"

The bottom line her is that US isn't a a democracy. The US is a Constitutional Republic

The founders were very well versed in classic history, and they were aware of the fact that so-called democracies in the ancient world almost always turned into tyrannies and autocracies. They INTENTIONALLY attempted to create a Republic in order to avoid the risks associated with a pure democracy. Unfortunately most Americans are very poorly educated and they are totally unaware of the lessons of ancient history and also totally unaware of the intent of the Founders.


When democracy took hold in Athens they got all wee-wee'd up with "passion, stumbled into unnecessary wars, resulting the conquest and destruction of their own beloved city. They even lost their reason to "passion" to such a degree that they sentenced their most famous philosopher, Socrates to death for daring to think and speak non-PC thoughts.

Cheers!

[evilgenius]

That's another thing my conspiracy theorist friend was onto, when I spoke at length with him yesterday. He said he has had it with democracy. He couldn't see the irony, but he went on to decry how stupid the people are, and they shouldn't be allowed to vote for that reason. Now, that's likely because people like Alex Jones, actually worse than Alex Jones, are filling his head with this stuff. It's a set up for looking at your own group and specializing it, so that you can look at the rest of the groups with xenophobia. That's usually defined as fear of people from other countries, but it can be defined as fear of the outsider.

Dollars to donuts, they will be pumping some line that says people should have to pass some sort of test, before they can vote. It will likely hearken back to Jim Crow days, which they will be able to deny vehemently because they will be able to show that their test is nothing like racially discriminatory. What it will do, however, is try to sort out liberals as either mentally ill, or too stupid to be given the vote. Only conservatives will be automatically allowed. You will have to prove your dyed in the wool, red, white and blue bona fides, otherwise. It's just a trick to rile liberals, and distract them from the fact that the real opposition is not really domestic. This sh*t is coming straight from Russia. Not to recognize that undermines American opposition to what Putin is up to. We have to be careful, or we could very easily wind up trapped in an argument over who is American enough to be an American, and Putin will sit there smiling.

[Newfie]

A simple constitutional amendment.

1-No person may serve in the US Congress (House and Senate combined) for more than 20 years in combined total time.

2-No person who has reached or surpassed their 75th birthday shall serve in the US Congress (House or Senate.)

[Tanada]

A simple constitutional amendment.

1-No person may serve in the US Congress (House and Senate combined) for more than 20 years in combined total time.

2-No person who has reached or surpassed their 75th birthday shall serve in the US Congress (House or Senate.)

In Michigan they passed a law that no judge sitting a bench in any state court could be over 70 years of age. I know of at least one case where a 69 year old got reelected to the bench, then resigned on his 70th birthday so his son could run unopposed in a special election to fill the empty seat.

For your amendment you need extreme specifics, for example
1) No person shall be eligible for the House of Representatives who is younger than 25 nor older than 65 on the date of the election. No Representative shall serve more than five terms or ten years whichever is less in the House of Representatives.
2) No person shall be eligible for the United States Senate who is younger than 30 nor older than 70 on the date of the election. No Senator shall serve more than two terms or twelve years whichever is less in the US Senate.

We have 330 million residents in the USA so it would be easy peasy to find 435 Representatives and 100 Senators who meet these qualifications. Enforced turnover brings in new people with new ideas. When Michigan and Ohio enforced state government term limits a lot of old log jams on modernizing government processes were smashed wide open.