Whats more likely, a recovery after a global economic downturn, or fudging/massaging the numbers to a guy who fires people who gives him numbers he doesnt like and requires sycophantic loyalty?
This is the economic equivalent of trumps caddy dropping the ball for him the other day. “Wow sir, you hit the economy right next to the green!? Whats that, you saw it go into the rough? Oh no no no, he hit it right here!”
To be clear, I’m in that “phase” you quoted not due to feelings, but due to my observations over the last 15 years and especially the last 5 years of observing how Maine Democrats operate on a local level when they have the house, senate, and governor’s house. When it comes to major policy, I’m completely against just about everything they stand for in 2025. I was quite liberal prior to Obama’s 2nd Term, but the party was distinctly different at that time.
As far as your marriage goes, I can sympathize. My mother was shunned by my brother and his family when she worked on Trump’s first campaign shortly after my father passed away. I thought it was great for her, especially since it got her out of the house and socializing, but they thought she was - you guessed it - campaigning for literally Hitler.
My brother and his wife are both well-educated people living in West Roxbury, MA, who are unable to explain anything about the Nazis, or fascists for that matter. They get ANGRY if you express any level of disagreement. They have gone in on every media narrative of the last 10 years, and continue to do so even after so many have proven to be complete fabrications. They shunned me and my stepson after he refused to get the COVID vaccine. Uninvited from all family functions, all over a shot that didn’t even work as Biden told us it would and I’m glad he didn’t get. I wish I hadn’t gotten it.
In my case, I’ve now officially lost the assumption of good faith in the entire Democratic Party. I mean, they are finally coming out as Democratic Socialists openly. They are telling you who they are now, after pretending to be the same party of Bill Clinton. I’ve been calling them Democratic Socialists for years on account of the policies they implement in Maine, along with how the Biden administration operated.
I would challenge you to try assuming good faith in MAGA, as well as considering the possibility that we’re all the victims of a psychological operation of propaganda from the mainstream media over the last 10 years, done at the behest of establishment interests. Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Harris was no coincidence. I would encourage you to reflect on all the media narratives you were really upset about in the past, then ask yourself, did it even turn out to be true?
I would encourage you to consider the possibility that everything I’ve documented in this thread about Lewiston is true, and that the shocking decline of this once peaceful, affordable, well-functioning working and middle-class town is nearly entirely due to one party political dominance and their policy implementations at local and state level.
If you agree with contemporary Democrat policies, I would encourage you to look up the Democratic Socialists of America’s policy platform for a glimpse of possible future policies. Mass migration, censorship, actual government propaganda coming from “private” media outlets, election rigging, race-based policies and spending priorities, defunding the police, decriminalizing crime, and using public funds to import a new voting bloc aren’t “right wing myths”. They are all fairly well documented and in the public record at this point.
In short, a lot of people are going to need to confront the possibility that they were unwillingly suckered into supporting a socialist coup, because that’s what appears to have played out since Obama took office, who I voted for first term. The evidence continues to mount, but you would never know it if you watched CNN, MSNBC, or read the daily 3 minutes hate of Heather Cox Richardson. Give Matt Taibbi a try, if you consider yourself a 1990’s moderate Democrat like I still do in many ways. He’s never shied away from calling bullshit on any side, and he’s calling MAJOR bullshit on the whole Biden administration and mainstream media right now, with actual documentation of said bullshit.
Finally, I would encourage you to look up some of HCR’s old posts that millions of people took as gospel when they were written, and see how wrong she was about all of her wild speculation. You could also do that with old threads here. Look at how spectacularly wrong so many of the anti-Trump narratives have turned out to be over the last decade.
Biden was not compos mentis, Harris was dumb as a brick, but the people running the party’s script were not at all. They are exceedingly cunning and ruthless in their pursuit of power. I watch it play out all the time in Maine, even to the point of harassing single moms who dare to speak out at a school board meeting to stick up for her brutally beaten daughter (which I documented in this thread). It’s not just “same stuff on both sides”, not here in Maine. They operate like a rainbow mafia.
Trump isn’t perfect by any means, but he’s getting us out of the danger. Don’t be surprised that men are sensing it when women are not, either.
Many people, including Republicans, were unhappy with Pres Bush and the “Neo Con” faction of the Republicans after the Iraq war. President Trump was able to distance himself from War on Terror and other “dumb” ideas associated with Republicans. While keeping the base of the party intact.
Is there a Democratic leader charismatic and skillful enough to Turn the Page on what democrats have been doing lately? And return them to a less extreme version of Democrats?
Years ago, in the Democratic primaries before 2020, Biden said that Ultra left democrats would damage the party by pulling to far from the center.
Is there anyone who can take this message farther? Someone who can come out and say propping up infirm Joe Biden was a bad idea? And unrestricted immigration wasn’t doing us any good. And censorship is bad?
Like when Pres Trump said Republican leadership was bad and took things in a new direction?
This is one of the largest differences I see between the right and the left.
The right is generally okay with calling out it’s own bullshit. We have a lot of infighting.
The left does not call out its own bullshit, and anyone who does is treated worse than they treat republicans.
I do not believe we will see a figure on the left who can stay true to left values without kowtowing to the most extreme limbs of their cult.
A lot of the same can be said about the MAGA cult, too. But MAGA isnt the entire right wing.
My wallet has been feeling a lot better with gas prices.
Fudged numbers or not, I saw gas at 3.79/ga in southern california last week. It peaked at >7/ga under biden and only briefly returned under 5/ga (when it started at 3.30/ga).
Economy feels a good bit better to me. Biden economists literally changed the definition of “recession” to make it seem like things weren’t as bad as they were.
But im sure you can find a way to rationalize all that.
We got tired of being loathed for being straight white men raised in two parent households.
Tired of being told that patriarchy is bad when it has developed the entire world into the safest, most equitable system that has ever existed.
Tired of being taxed up to the tits to support people that hate us.
So we gave them what they’ve given to us.
Honestly the left should be thankful we’ve only changed our demeanor towards them. If we rioted the way they do - they’d finally have justification for the fear they have of us.
My condolences for the toll this has taken on your marriage. This is where we’re coming from.
After decades of hostility, Armenia and Azerbijan have signed a peace deal at the White House. Azerbaijan will allow access to an Armenian enclave within its borders. In exchange, the US will give both nations better trade terms and cooperation.
+1 for Trump
Hopefully Russia/Ukraine will go that smooth.
+1
I used to believe it was good intentioned incompetence.
There’s no way this can be true. No one is that retarded.
People create what they fear.
Leftists fear a leader that is as bad as their imaginations will allow, so that’s what they’ve turned Trump and Maga into.
Maga and a lot of others fear gun grabbing leftists that will turn this nation into a rainbow brigade of purse swinging nazis.
Neither side will see the other as anything else because it’s their own lense they’re looking through. And neither side is really doing anything to help or allow the other to see them any differently than they already have chosen to.
Ugh. Now Saudi Arabia is raising hell about Netanyahu’s plan to occupy Gaza. The 2 countries now seem pretty far from normalizing relations, like they were talking about before the Oct 7th attacks.
-1 for World Peace.
Screw it. Turn that whole place into a big glass skatepark. They’re all at war with peace. They hate it.
Honestly I used to be pro Israel about this conflict.
Now I’m pro “everyone in both countries dies for the betterment of the world”.
Crazy how fast that happened too.
The Democrats have undergone many transformations throughout history, always finding new ways to stay in power by explaining how one group is deserving of another group’s wealth and productivity. In 2025, I think this is best explained by realizing that establishment Democrats and establishment Republicans are, in fact, two sides of the same coin and have been for a few generations at least. They kept us divided and kept up the illusion of a two party system - and there were indeed significant differences on major policies - but both parties were in on the grift.
For all of the perceived flaws and actual flaws, MAGA and Trump are addressing this in meaningful ways, as is this congress. Defunding the propaganda machine overseas and domestically, defunding the mass migration machine, securing the border, and enforcing long-standing immigration policy are all firmly within traditional American political thought that prioritizes individual rights and freedom. Democratic Socialists don’t see it that way for one main reason; they don’t believe in the concept of US Citizenship as the basis for voting rights. Why would they, after going to all of that trouble to import millions of people using our own money while lying about the scope, scale, and intention the entire way?
Democratic Socialist know-nothings love to throw out a term called “late-stage capitalism”, seemingly because they think it makes them sound smart. It probably does, if they’re in the presence of other know-nothings. I’ll invent a new term right now called “late-stage Democrat”, because this seems to be the Democratic Party’s final form. I don’t think it can de-radicalize itself at this point. Their base is their base, and their base are Democratic Socialists and the non-socialists who still haven’t gotten the memo about what that party is all about. People like my retired physician Godparents, who I love dearly, but only get their news from their newspaper and from mainstream media.
If I read the Lewiston Sun Journal, which is now actually owned and operated by a Soros nonprofit enterprise, and if I watched the local news on television, along with listening to Maine Public Radio and reading Heather Cox Richardson, believing all of that to be good-faith journalism and political analysis, I’d have a completely different view of the situation in front of me.
I actually do all of those things, but I also watch school board meetings, city council meetings, pay attention to state-level legislation, and do analysis of public records. I know I’m an odd duck and most people don’t share my hobby, but that’s part of what compels me to write about it here, where we all agree that squats and squat variations aren’t optional.
By virtue of being president from 2021-2025 Biden was left to deal with most of the economic fallout of Covid and everything that caused. Gas prices spiked up, came back down, and are still at the same level they were at in January when Trump took office more or less, find a website you trust to confirm the numbers since every time I link something it gets dismissed as libtard propaganda
As for the recession definition, that’s typical political posturing, they didn’t officially change the definition in any meaningful sense they just tried to paint the economy in as good a light as they could while still acknowledging the two quarters of GDP contraction. AKA “sure the economy contracted for two quarters but by every other metric it looks healthy so I don’t consider us in a recession”
There is zero percent chance Trump would ever even acknowledge the contraction if it ever does happen, and then he would fire the people who posted the numbers and have the info deleted from government websites.
Do you believe the policies he (or his string pullers) implemented helped the economy, hurt it, or kept it the same as what he inherited?
FWIW I watched gas prices on day 1 of Biden in office shoot up 0.30/ga and did not return again to anything even close to this until Trump was in office again. I do not think this is a coincidence that the price climb happened on the same day he took office and killed the Keystone Pipeline, but maybe you do.
It could honestly go a little bit more east, west, and south.
I guess southwest too.
And west-southwest.
Huh…
If we actually pursued a focused renewable energy program and cracked down on the separation of church and state, it could happen.
I’m still hopeful for peace and an outcome like this!
Generally speaking, MAGA is fine with faith practice. Trump pursues deportation on the basis of immigration status, not race, color, or creed.
Democratic Socialists will tell you that Trump’s deportation policy is inherently racist because it disproportionately impacts marginalized groups.
This reasoning rests on the preposterous notion that we are all interchangeable widgets, and that the government can somehow guarantee our life outcomes, aka achieving “equity”, by applying racist and transgenderist thinking in public policy.
