Thanks for affording me the opportunity.
There is one World Series. There are 50 States and 538 Electors.
You have an interesting take on the topic of Trump’s lies. I can’t say that I agree, but I appreciate how civil you are when arguing your case.
As to this statement, my personal contention would be that he lied about the severity of the coronavirus and that it would “all disappear”. As such he also did not really take the response seriously and therefore cost many more people than would have been killed their lives.
I realize this is up for debate and I also realize nobody should get a response perfect to a new, rapidly evolving pandemic. But I think his statements (read: lies) and the actions that followed them on his part directly led to increased loss of life of our citizens and dramatically increased economic pain. Your mileage may vary. This is my personal opinion.
I’d agree with this. I was openly critical of a TON of Obama decisions/policy. He could not speak well without his teleprompter and his briefings, which is why I think he lost all the debates, not just the first one (although he gave a better showing in the last). I just don’t see “empty suit” as equivalent to Trump’s behavior personally. Again, your mileage may vary.
Not at all. I do understand though that speaking fees (at least in my areas of expertise) are significantly more than the hourly rate and also include travel costs and lodging. This is the Clintons you’re talking about and they both have profited immensely from stacked (read: exorbitant) fees. I’m not sure I’d call many politicians “extremely wealthy”, although there are exceptions and Clinton’s are top of that list.
Also IMHO CaliforniaGrown’s point is pretty good…all corporations lobby politicians in the form of speaker fees among other things. Do I think it should be killed off? Sure, but there’s no chance of that happening. I agree with you that we have corruption up and down the chain.
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I actually think Trump’s behavior makes him fit the empty suit more than any modern predecessor. Depending on what definitions when you google Oxford said a prominent person lacking substance, ability, or personality. He certainly has a personality, retaliation and bullying when questioned, immature snap decisions, etc. I guess I’ll take a calm demeanor and measured response. I call that just being an adult.
I’m not sure I can consider much substance when his health care plan while running was I’ll cover everyone and it will be cheaper and it will be easy. And I know more than the generals, etc. And his debt solution is to default and strike a deal. What does he have substance on? The only thing that’s really consistent with him is that if questioned he flips out.
As for ability well I don’t think a President has ever had less understanding about the position before coming in and hasn’t really tried to learn. His administration has been a complete revolving door with chaos and dysfunction widely recognized. In his first year he had close to as much turnover as some Presidents had in two.
Do they hold best out of seven elections?
You would quote the OED lol.
To me empty suit means less in terms of personality and more in terms of inability to think on your feet, improvise, etc. All things Obama did not do well IMO. Not as much active shortcomings in behavior, etc. But I can’t say you’re wrong either.
This is my main knock against him other than his behavior (which I view as foundation). But I admit I’m biased.
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It’s a phrase I’ve heard often and understood the general idea, but had never seen the actual definition to know exactly what was meant by it. I’m a bit of a sucker for specific definitions since so many people use terms that can be a bit vague.
Example: By the definition used I’m a feminist as the typical definitions are essentially about equal rights. However people often use the term feminist to describe people who do things that I disagree with. The people who I think don’t advance the idea of equal rights in the same or most effective way (the man hater types).
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Okay; let me get this as right as I can (considering it involves Trump):
“President Trump threatened to “strongly regulate” or shut down social media companies on Wednesday, one day after Twitter added fact-checking warnings” under two of the president’s tweets about mail-in voting".
“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen”.
It really is getting tiresome calling Trump on his hypocrisy and bullshit; but the man just makes himself too hard to ignore.
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Trump doesn’t give a damn about “conservative voices” any further than the Votes it will get him. He is pissed beyond comprehension that someone would question his “alternative facts” about mail-in balloting. (That he, and many Red States use, by the way).
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Let me make sure I get this right; he is going to use censorship of Public Publishing Platforms in order to correct his perceived notion of…censorship? (I am waiting for the apologist defense of this).
Where are all of the “free speech” and First Amendment protesters who “found their voice” when President Obama was in office? Would they have been silent had President Obama threatened something like this?
Where are the thousands of “Tea Party/Don’t Tread on Me” people protesting on the Mall and nationwide? (I probably need to give things a little time to organize, right?..my bad…)
@thunderbolt23 and especially others who may agree or not agree.
(…and PLEASE don’t tell me “all President’s do it”, or I’ll lose it more than I already have when it comes to Trump…)
MAGA
4 more years.
They’re still waiting for Obama to take their guns and rejoicing that they avoided Hillary’s fascist dictatorship.
Agree…and Covid or no Covid…there would have been both a will and a way to protest President Obama.
Guaranteed.
They’re busy protesting in the streets over increased deficit spending. Oh wait…
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You always seem to wonder what conservatives are up to and why we aren’t busy protesting. Well, I’m usually working and don’t find myself upset enough to use any of my vacation time for protesting this year. I don’t think that’s an uncommon situation among conservatives.
I don’t agree with Trump’s position on Twitter but to pretend that the situation is as cut-and-dry as you describe is silly. There is legitimate concern that platforms like facebook, youtube and twitter are de-facto publishers while enjoying the legal protections afforded to them by claiming to be platform providers (or whatever the legal term is). They’ve been clearly adversarial to him, so I find this sort of response from Trump to be entirely in-character and suspect that the world will continue to turn, despite his tweets.
There is legitimate concern over voter fraud. Isn’t that obvious? This seems silly to me from a business perspective, where we take active measures to prevent fraud all of the time. That’s why we don’t allow a single person to, say, create a vendor, cut a PO and receive the PO, let alone process payment.
If I thought about business security like a Democrat thinks about election security, I suppose I’d argue the benefits of allowing anyone in the company to execute those transactions. It will speed up the process, you see. You won’t need to wait for so-and-so to do their part, you can just do it right there yourself. Fraud is very rare, after all, and it would be silly to believe that any of your valued and respected co-workers would do such a thing. It is best to leave the window for fraud WIDE OPEN. It is in everyone’s interest, you see.
We’re at a curious time in history where we, as a society, need to figure out how the internet works. Presidential executive order won’t be the solution and won’t pass any sort of legal test I can imagine. I don’t particularly like the idea of trans-national media giants having this much influence over the public discourse, and I don’t like the idea of mail-in voting being the norm.
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Of course, otherwise shrill e-mails such as this wouldn’t be sent around without any basis in fact, right?
Didn’t Trump claim in 2016 that he had proof of massive voter fraud committed by the Dems? How did that go? I’m sure in three years’ time his commission acquired all the information about this colossal conspiracy…
Let’s apply this thought process to business to show how silly it is.
I have no evidence to believe anyone I work with intends on committing fraud. There are a few situations which have raised eyebrows, but nothing we can prove. I’m concerned about mitigating fraud that might happen in the future, but a bunch of people are telling me that I’m silly for even suspecting such a thing might happen.
Should we go ahead and do away with our system security measures? It could really speed up the process if we didn’t have to wait for Tonya all the goddamn time. What do you think?
It doesn’t raise your eyebrows that one party is insisting, using extremely flimsy arguments, that all mechanisms to identify voters be done away with? No ID necessary. No need to even be a citizen. In fact, we shouldn’t even bother checking to see if you are a living, breathing person.
Nothing to see here folks, just more good governance from the Democrats.
Ah yes, the new Trump GOP seems already resigned to concede an election loss due to massive voter fraud. (sarcasm)
It raises my eyebrows that one side is claiming five months in advance that if they lose it means the elections are rigged. By the way, Trump already said so in 2016.
How can non-citizens vote?
Voter fraud is real and mail-in voting will afford more opportunities for it to occur. To deny that is to deny reality.
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Nothing new about this debate. It goes WAY back. The Democrats have been insisting for decades that requiring ID to vote will disenfranchise millions of unnamed people who can’t find the local DMV.
How can you stop them, if no ID needs to be shown? Isn’t this obvious?
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[quote=“Aragorn, post:1905, topic:257948, full:true”]
You have an interesting take on the topic of Trump’s lies. I can’t say that I agree, but I appreciate how civil you are when arguing your case.
As to this statement, my personal contention would be that he lied about the severity of the coronavirus and that it would “all disappear”. As such he also did not really take the response seriously and therefore cost many more people than would have been killed their lives.
I realize this is up for debate and I also realize nobody should get a response perfect to a new, rapidly evolving pandemic. But I think his statements (read: lies) and the actions that followed them on his part directly led to increased loss of life of our citizens and dramatically increased economic pain. Your mileage may vary. This is my personal opinion.
I suspect I did a poor job explaining my position or perhaps people hear what they want. I don’t condone most of what Trump says and think we’d all be better off if he’d respond to his critics in a manner befitting the office he holds. However, I will stand by my statement that he is just as untrustworthy as his predecessors. Moral equivalency is just not my thing.
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Since I have been accused of trying to read you mind; I’ll ask you straight-up:
If President Obama was threatening the exact same thing via Executive Order; attacked and vilified any Press that disagreed with him on a daily basis; and showed greater respect to dictators and depots more than elected officials, INCLUDING avid supporters of his (like Jeff Sessions, so Pelosi doesn’t even have to be brought into the discussion)…
Would you so eloquently be defending him and his actions?
Give everyone a free ID card with a picture when they reach adulthood and you’ll solve this and also avoid the stealth poll tax.
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