The same could be said of the right.
Would this be much different than the 8 years of constant shrieking from the right over Obama? The guns that were going to get swiped, the move to full blown socialism, the horrible Obamacare that Republicans said they would repeal and replace and never did?
Are you saying in four years you think Trump will concede the election? He’s yet to congratulate Biden on a victory btw. Because even remotely pretending like he handled his loss like anything other than a giant whiny baby is full stop madness. I fully get it if Trump fans don’t want to truly analyze what he and his supporters did and tried but come on.
You can do this with any administration. Did you truly feel Trumps kids were qualified for the roles they took? How about Betsy Devos being in charge of education when she and her children had never attended public school?
Biden’s old and his best days are behind him. It’s incredibly possible we see a full scale type Regan breakdown from him no doubt. And yet he easily bested Trump in the debates and has acted far more Presidential than Trump at every turn. Of course the bar was really low. If you want to call Trump fully functioning and Biden not I won’t stop you. But a fully functioning Trump was a terrible human to have as a President on a daily basis with his behavior. I don’t really care if Trump came in with good intentions or not. He is an embarrassment of a person, with the character of someone we should have never allowed to hold such a position and hopefully never will again.
You can compare their handling of a disaster. Texas a red state is hit by a blizzard and Biden approves the declaration and visits the state. Fires hit California and Trump attacks the state and tells them maybe they will have to pay for it.
You can compare their handling of Covid. Do you prefer Biden talking about the toll of it across the nation and having silence for the dead? Encouraging people (and delivering massive amounts) to get vaccinated and be diligent as we move forward. Or do you prefer it will all disappear like a miracle? Comparing it to the flu? It’s going to fade away. It’s under control. Or how about this terrific line:
“And that’s despite the fact that the blue states had had tremendous death rates. If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level. But some of the states, they were blue states and blue state-managed.”
Maybe that shows how over Trump people really were? They voted him out even when their other option was an even older man. And they were over the party that had let him run wild like a lunatic with no backbone and went ahead and gave full control to the Dems.
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Like the war on drugs?
The right went from being mad about Obama saying he would even talk to dictators to openly rooting for them for some reason.
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You can find states in Republican strongholds at the bottom of this list.
Who is this Thomas Sowell fellow? Sounds like a white supremacist to me.
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Thatcher debated Soviets on Soviet television and knocked them into next week.
She was a cut above the standard politico though.
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Probably because I didn’t hear it… I’m not sure when this quote was but it should have been called out. Or maybe people thought it was so absurd it didn’t need it. Or, a final option, is that our collective fatigue from hearing absolute bullshit spouted and tweeted every day for years on end has inured us to other batshit statements to the point where we don’t call them out and simply roll out eyes. Fatigue in this sense works on people besides its intended target - in other words it incurred collateral damage.
EDIT: I’ll illustrate the effect of fatigue with myself - through the last 3 administrations I tried to keep well informed and up to date on all manner of policy and political action. During the last year of the Trump administration I finally became so fed up with everything, every day, that I turned off and ignored most all political news not directly connected with the campaign (important for voting) or virus (professional interest).
I have not reversed that policy, and I’m happy with it. But it also means things like the statement you mentioned go unnoticed because I simply don’t give a fuck any more. I’m tired of the BS.
And I’m not the only one who’s reached a limit.
If HR 1 passes, its over. Shit will get out of hand real quick.
That’s totally fair. I misunderstood.
These two thoughts are incompatible. I do not see how, short of abject and utterly unobjective partisanship, one can come to BOTH these conclusions at the same time. I can see coming to the conclusion that BOTH Trump and Biden are acting from good intentions or both are acting out of self-first egotism… But not this. Any criteria Biden satisfies on this scale Trump satisfies 10 times over. Trump has been a case study in saying anything and everything be thinks will play well. You are simply not being objective.
Again, this is just as much if not more applicable to Trump. Trump had an aversion to being wrong so much that he would double down on obviously false statements just to avoid even thinking the words “I was mistaken”.
Ok, we both agree Joe ain’t the smartest. Fine. We also actually agree that his appointment of more progressive people to posts of power is a significant problem and concern. What you said though here is, in my view, simply unsupportable.
I absolutely agree.
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True on both counts. They couldn’t stand that fact that a woman was leading and decided they had to show how “superior” the leadership of the USSR was on TV… And paid dearly for it.
But, that was also a different era and less of a troll job than what Putin was doing this week.
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The line about one-party rule seems a little dramatic. Republicans control a majority of governorships, a majority of state houses, and enjoy an overwhelming conservative majority in the Supreme Court. Let’s not forget that just a few short years ago they controlled the White House, House and Senate.
Republicans need a message that appeals to voters. In months Biden’s been President, they’ve railed against cancel culture, opposed a stimulus bill with substantial popular support, and punished their own members for coming out against Trump. I don’t see how this get them votes.
I don’t know enough about HR 1 to have fully formed an opinion, but from what I can tell, these are the highlights - allowing for no-excuse mail voting, at least 15 days of early voting, automatic voter registration and restoring voting rights to felons who have completed their prison sentences. Which of these 4 outcomes are bad for democracy and why?
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Point taken, I was merely pointing out it has been done, I wasn’t recommending Biden actually do so.
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Returning to this.
Firstly it depends on what one means by “conservative”, as that covers a spectrum and certain aspects may be considered as primarily economic, social, or philosophical. I’ll try to be brief and practical, mostly because I don’t want to write a thesis and I don’t want to get into philosophy.
Partly is that I was very conservative growing up, so unless one falls off to the fringe moderation is more likely - the more firmly one holds to a view the more holes one eventually sees with it. Twojarslave had an opposite experience with early liberalism.
Partly is that I find it very rarely to be the case that I fettered capitalism is good for EVERYONE. All things tend to coalesce around an oligopoly whether it’s tech, fashion, banking, or politics. This is one reason why limits are needed in politics, banking, and economy. Ayn Rand doesn’t work in the real world. I still favor more conservative fiscal policy for numerous reasons, but I also recognize that there are some things more important than the dollar and the economy. Sloth posted months (maybe a year ago) about why he was fed up with the pure capitalism caricature of modern times and had moderated. He’s still conservative, as am I.
Additionally, a part of it is that as I age I see more gray. This is a problem with research… We see all the shades and are rarely afforded an all-or-nothing view. It also carries into other areas of life (at least most of the time).
Generally my views fit the conservative mold rather than the liberal one, and I am certainly not a “progressive” wing. Objective results are important. But, as the inimitable Dr. Richard Feynman put it, “You must always make sure not to fool yourself. And you must always remember that you are the easiest person to fool.”
Left wing is not the only wing prone to self-righteous, self-fooling behavior.
I don’t like this, but I’ve already posted on it.
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I’d be interested to hear why. Registering to vote is such a trivial process as it is now, I don’t see how automating it would change anything.
In short I feel that it is precisely because it is trivial that it should be maintained. One can’t plausibly argue (IMO) that it represents a significant enough hurdle to disenfranchise people, while one could argue that holding elections on a Tuesday does in factact limit people who would otherwise vote if they are working that day.
I believe that people who want to vote should at least show enough interest that they take the trivial time to deliberately choose to register. One can’t eliminate trolling at the booth, but I don’t think one should automate it to make it easier to troll out of boredom.
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I’m not objective, no, and I’m presently guilty of mind-reading which I try not to do. The fact remains Trump has only had one term as a public servant that came very late in his life. He entered loaded, left loaded, and I don’t see any reason to believe that personal enrichment was on his mind while in office. Whether enriching his massive NYC Rich Guy ego led the way or was simply the vector through which he tried to do some good things, I can’t say for sure. Maybe he could go camping with Andrew Cuomo and they could sort it out around the campfire with a cooler full of Old Style.
Biden IS the swamp. He’s a career politician who’s never had to be good at anything besides getting elected, at which he excels. What Biden considers to be a good idea depends on which way the wind is blowing, and there’s no unifying principle you can apply to his voting pattern and policy ideas other than following those winds over the decades.
Now we’re here, where Biden’s finally circled back to openly supporting a myriad of race-based policies along with the entire basket of bad modern Democrat policy ideas that can’t stand up to basic scrutiny.
Again, guilty as charged when it comes to mind-reading, and nobody should consider me an authority on knowing the thoughts and motivations of others. But I’m pretty sure somebody’s got some real bad shit on Joe Biden. Why in the hell else is he trying to play President at his age and in his condition? He could be fishing in Maine or partying in Dubai with his kid.
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It’s incredibly dramatic. To think of the position that Republicans are in now and think we are close to one party rule? They are getting ready to once again own an effect with gerrymandering that will make sure that even if Dems get a massive amount of votes they will have limited representation in some states. The conservative Supreme Court majority isn’t going anywhere for a large chunk of the rest of our lifetimes unless unforeseen deaths or absences take place. As you said they control at what state level by no small margin and they should at the minimum be favored to take back one chamber of Congress if not both in 2022.
I think this is the bigger problem. They have been shellacked in the popular vote for a while now. They spent 8 years obstructing Obama and talking about the ideas they would do and then when given everything they simply didn’t deliver. They didn’t build a wall, they didn’t replace Obamacare, didn’t do anything about the deficit except add to it despite having a healthy economy.
I don’t think Republicans are a party of ideas right now and it would be great if they went back to that. Say what you will about people like Paul Ryan but they at least talked about the things they would do and had some type of proposals. In 2020 they ran on a platform of Donald Trump which voters rejected. Trolling and owning the libs seems much more important than saying what type of things they would like to do.
But they will be fine they just need to adjust. Democratic ideas are popular, Democrats are often not. Florida went big time for Trump while easily passing a big minimum wage increase. Hitching their wagon to a guy who lost the popular vote in two elections by over 7 million votes seems odd though.
I think Republicans can be fine saying they are against that. With that being whatever Dems are for. But at some point they need to determine what they are for and be clear with it to voters.
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Again this can be said at probably even a higher level about his predecessor whose principles never existed. That’s the luckiest thing for Biden. When you follow someone with as many flaws you’re going at worst look the same in comparison and almost always better.
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