Our Next President?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

It was John Havens.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Our Next President?

It was John Havens.

Did not know the name of the man.... a very long story..

[Woodsman]

Re: Our Next President?

Always plenty of free cash to print and give away to the rich, no strings attached, though. And the infanticide thing is a laugh. How many abortions you think that orange man fathered in his time? How about all the billionaires in the Chinese rub and tug down in Jupiter? Heard they wrapped the CFO of Citigroup up in that one too. Greedy pricks got billions of dollars and girlfriends a third their age, but they still want to dump their loads into some poor sex slave who lives in a strip mall for $60 an hour. Ah, the vaunted morally superior business elite. Good thing we gave Kraft and Co billions in public money...maybe if we all dig a little deeper to give him another tax cut he'll spring for a real escort next time...

Boss, where in any of my thousands of posts do you see me rooting for these giveaways to fat cats? For the record, I don't and never will. Me, I'm waiting in vain for the Fortress America EJ keeps predicting. I look foward to the day when all these gimmiemores from Davos to Detroit have to pay their own freight. I understand that after a lifetime of seeing socialism for the rich, these young poors want a piece of that action. I empathize and sympathize, but won't play ball. EJ once said that socialism (paraphrasing here) isn't in the DNA of America and I think he's right. Obviously, we're way out of kilter and it seems like the ship of state and economy will have to keep listing until it capsizes before we get our collective heads out of our butts and restore America to something we can all agree on. But socialism, for the rich or the poors, isn't the way. It looks like you'll get your wish soo er than later and watch the money printing buy all sorts of goodies like free healthcare, college, reparations, and everything else on the wish list. Only we'll do that AND still keep a military budget 60x bigger than the next 12 countries combined, while keeping the sugar flowing to every other blood sucking elite banker and similar vampire, per the iron law of oligarchy. Which in the end only precipitates the fall even faster, thus my enthusiastic support for Bernie and Tulsi in 2020.

As for the rub and tug, don't knock it until you try it. Me, I can still get it for free - God bless it, but I'm not about to judge Kraft or any of the poor shlubs who were collared with him. Dudes who don't get regular chakra releases get really weird and goodness there are too many incels out there already. Free the Jupiter Dozen and get your consenting freak on, free or for profit.

And my, aren't we judgmental today?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

You, EJ, Louis Hartz, whatever. The idea that forcing 10s of millions of Americans to eke by without health coverage and millions more to go bankrupt or choose between x Ray's and dinner is the only American thing to do and any attempt at solving the problem is Stalinisim is just plain hogwash. Was the USA socialist before daddy Reagan was governor of California, back when public tuition was free? I'm just imagining Kingfish labeled as a "socialist," rational sense be damned. So as long as we're cranking the rhetoric up to 11, and facts don't matter, I say, screw it, why not play the game? As for consent, I think you got a funny definition of it. Don't think too many little girls grow up dreaming of sleeping chained to a massage table in a suburban Florida strip mall. And it ain't like billions aren't enough of an aphrodisiac to get even the ugliest old bachelor some legal tail with minimal effort. But here we are. 2019. All morality is relative. Judging billionaires for buying sex with trafficked girls for $60 is somehow now striking out beyond The Pale. If no crime the rich commit is worth judging, and no amount of free money they get is socialism, but everything the rest of us do is worth judging and spending money on literally anything else is socialism, then bring on the gulags, because we already live in hell. Alternatively the rhetoric is overblown and stupid. You decide.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

Anyways, you've got to give me a bit of leeway on this one. To a New Englander, it's all just a rerun. We watched the last time Manafort and Stone were slithering around here, putting Eddie "the envelope" DiPrete on the throne of Vo Dilun. Not a whole lot different than his dad in New Britain. But at least Patriarca had enough sense to hand out a few hams come Christmas. Anyways, it ain't like the Kennedies didn't have their own past that proves Balzac's adage. But that's where I always feel the kids today get misunderstood. It's not all about material things. The dream got crushed on them. Now you need to be born into wealth to do anything. Not so long ago a Boy Scout from corn poke Ohio could, with a lot of talent and luck, become the first man to walk on the moon. Now if you wanna go, you need to be a billionaire and pay Musk for the ride. Not so long ago, a kid from Yorba Linda sat in the Oval Office. Now just to be a Senior Advisor or a cabinet member you gotta marry In to the royal family or have a daddy who started the Amway pyramid scheme. They haven't built a new middle class ranch in your town in 25 years. Can't bring your kids to a damn Patriots game without blowing 5% of your household's net annual income anymore. But old Bobby still ain't decent enough to use that ticket money to order a working girl who's not a slave. You can keep thinking it's all about the money, and jealousy, and sour grapes if you want. But so long as you do, you're missing the point.

[Woodsman]

Re: Our Next President?

Anyways, you've got to give me a bit of leeway on this one...

You got it, boss.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

You got it, boss.

Sooner, rather than later, through action or through inaction, thy will be done.

https://youtu.be/v0nmHymgM7Y

[vt]

Re: Our Next President?

First, it's both sides. They both have elites. Democratic socialists have elites that will bankrupt the country and leave all poor.
And the right wing elites that have their elites that try to keep all for self.

However socialism in all forms destroys economies and fairly regulated free markets allow poor, uneducated hard working people
break out and create a larger middle class. It's all about freedom and the current progressives want to stifle it.

As you may recall I disliked both candidates. In 2016 I stated numerous times that Democrat Jim Webb was the best candidate running, and one who could unite the nation.

I also stated ban all money from all sources for political candidates. Give them a stipend to spend and that's it. Get the money out of the system.

I came from blue collar and went to public schools that probably the most diverse in the country. Best friends of all races and nationalities.

I stated why did the progressive fail to try the banksters and politicians that caused the crash. Of course it was the big bucks that they so gladly accepted to be bought off.

There's a pox on both houses and the holier than thou progressive, media supported lackey party doesn't want to admit there part in the payoffs.

Hopefully we see a third party get rid of these two divisive political party charlatans.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

I don't know how much more clearly I can explain this. One more try. There's two theories on how to stimulate the economy at this point. There is no austerity party. There is no third party. It is a binary choice.

Option 1: Cut taxes for rich people hoping it spurs investment.
Option 2: Invest in the health and education of workers, hoping it spurs productivity.

The story of the last half century has been choosing option 1 every time as hard as we can, and even cutting access to option 2 and making it more expensive over time, to the point life expectancy is going backwards, people are despondent, and homeownership rates are back down to Hoover levels for the youth.

You gotta pick, 1 or 2. Can't be neutral on a moving train. You and I both know you pulled the straight ticket R lever. You can't even criticize a single thing they do. I can. Clinton wanted to cut taxes for the rich too. Just like her husband. Just like Carter. You called all them socialist too. But they were really more like Tony Blair, who was just Thatcher in a suit. He was so right wing and deep in Rupert Murdoch's business, he ended up sleeping with his wife, the Chinese spy after he cooked up fake and poorly forged intel to get into the Iraq War, introduced tuition fees, and cut back on nurses.

That's what centrism is. That's what the pox on both houses people mean. Pick option 1 every time, cut back on option 2. Obamacare was a Heritage foundation plan, cooked up by John Chafee, the Rhode Island Republican and implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. But when a right wing Democrat tried it Nationwide, you called it socialism and tried to destroy even your own plan.

Don't you see? The boy cried wolf too many times. If Republican plans cooked up by Republican Senators and the Coors family's Republican think tank back in the 1990s are branded socialist in the 2010s, then everything is socialist. Canada is socialist. Venezuela's socialist. China's socialist. Everywhere and everything is socialist. Pretty soon, it means nothing. You just use the word to describe anything you don't like.

So you see what happens, right? Kids know you don't like them. They know that anything that might make their lives better, or really any change whatsoever at all except tax cuts, you will just brand as socialist. So more and more they're starting to just take up the label. If Canada's socialist and it seemed nice up there, why not try it, right? Be careful what you wish for. You call right wing Democrats and 1990s tax levels and Republican market based healthcare exchanges socialist long enough that I think nobody will believe you when the real wolf comes. They'll just go, "Oh, that's just grandpa, he always mutters some nonsense about free markets and socialism. I think it's probably something about the cold war from when he was a kid. Anyway, don't mind him."

Then the kids will hop online and talk to their friends from other countries where they see threads and Instagram photos of outrageous tuition and medical bills every day and every Brit and Canadian and even the Aussies send their pity and advise the broke American to emigrate. But in that environment, your solution is even more tax cuts for the rich. Just keep hitting that same note. Health and education are socialism. Unlimited tax subsidies for billionaires is the only path forward.

[jk]

Re: Our Next President?

i really appreciate the level-headed way you deal with this stuff, dcarrigg. i'm always happy to read your posts and writing less myself helps control my blood pressure.

[vt]

Re: Our Next President?

Yada, yada.

Paint anyone who disagrees with a left wing agenda as a heartless person who wants to deny health care and education to little children.

Bill Clinton was a centrist and his administration did well. Democrats and Republicans were both centrists before 2000.

You have no idea how any one voted or even if they voted. Not sure today's leftists really want to solve problems, just get control.

Have those on the left who use the race card and other lies ever lived exclusively with the poor on a poverty wage? Did you come from working poor? Have family that came from dirt poor poverty?

Maybe those that want to throw even more money at the Democrat controlled education and health care rackets just want to create more high paying bureaucratic, unproductive paper shuffling jobs pay off their educated party elite, than to help the poor improve health and education and become middle class individuals.

They'll keep going down that same old tired road to failure, but still getting votes to stay in power because they "care".

As Woodsman said the left and right elites have no idea what they are doing and that their days a few. They will be replaced as independents with real innovative ideas to solve problems are voted into power and unite the nation.

[geodrome]

Re: Our Next President?

You gotta pick, 1 or 2. Can't be neutral on a moving train.

Gotta pick? Must pick? Can't be "neutral?"

Imagine a voter turnout of 15%. A big FU from the people. No mandate. What then?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

2018 turnout was the highest in a midterm in over 100 years. Extremely high on both sides. In another environment maybe that happens. But I don't see it as a possibility in the here and now. The electorate is less centrist and less complacent than any time in living memory. Conversely, they are more active and more polarized than too. The idea that they'll all just suddenly give up the ghost and become centrists or non voters without some massive intervening event seems super improbable given the trends.

I'm on about what I think will happen, not what I think ought to.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

Yada, yada.

Paint anyone who disagrees with a left wing agenda as a heartless person who wants to deny health care and education to little children.

Bill Clinton was a centrist and his administration did well. Democrats and Republicans were both centrists before 2000.

You have no idea how any one voted or even if they voted. Not sure today's leftists really want to solve problems, just get control.

Have those on the left who use the race card and other lies ever lived exclusively with the poor on a poverty wage? Did you come from working poor? Have family that came from dirt poor poverty?

Maybe those that want to throw even more money at the Democrat controlled education and health care rackets just want to create more high paying bureaucratic, unproductive paper shuffling jobs pay off their educated party elite, than to help the poor improve health and education and become middle class individuals.

They'll keep going down that same old tired road to failure, but still getting votes to stay in power because they "care".

As Woodsman said the left and right elites have no idea what they are doing and that their days a few. They will be replaced as independents with real innovative ideas to solve problems are voted into power and unite the nation.

What ideas? What problems?

We can't even agree on what facts are.

There's no way to innovate out of those loggerheads.

We'd first have to agree that there are problems. We'd then have to agree on what those problems are. We'd then have to agree on acting to solve them. And that's all before we even get to the point of discussing solutions.
.
I don't see it happening. People are just gonna get more polarized until one vision or another comes to fruition. If we get to the 2030s it seems either we'll have no corporate or estate or cap gains taxes, or we'll have universal healthcare and affordable college and more progressive taxes. Either way, the deficit is going towards 150% of GDP. Those are the choices I see.

I don't see a middle ground. The status quo is not a stable state. It's like civil unions, they seemed like a good compromise between gay marriage and no gay marriage, but the middle was actually an untenable position that couldn't last. Doing nothing at this point and clinging to the status quo will create change just as fast as doing something.

There are folks who labeled Uncle Sam a beast, and they set out to starve him. They did a pretty bang up job too. Now he's hungry. Either they'll push until the job is done and they've starved him out, or he'll feast. Either way, I expect the next 10 years to be much more interesting than the last.

[vt]

Re: Our Next President?

Voter turnout has been declining historically. There are at least 40% that do not vote:

http://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present


I have a theory that many of the actual voters for Clinton and Trump were not necessarily strong supporters. They may well have been voting Against the other candidate than For who they vote in favor of.

There are likely more than enough voters to gain 34% of the vote to win a Presidental election. Not high percentage odds but doable. Perot polled at least that high and lead for a short period.