"you can whittle him down to basically a good government type."

I disagree.

addendum: on second thought, you're right, he is a 'good government type'. It's simply that his notion of 'good government' (large, centralized, and in charge) conflicts with my notion of 'good government' (minimal, dispersed, and firmly under heel).

#

"the right wingers blew it by over-playing their hand."

As I see it: both sides (of the coin) have overplayed their hand (and continue to).

"I'm trying to understand your position on those things"

Yeah, I'm a kind of minarchist, Bruce. I've written about it, debated about it (with Happy Monkey, for one) several times, in-forum.

Where were you?

"Reality is 'extremists verses moderates'"

No, reality is 'the mob (and its directors)' vs 'the one (and his conscience)'.

At UT:

Sure it's all about perception. AOC exists in part because Paul Ryan's work cutting taxes and ballooning deficits threatens all Federal spending including Social Security and Medicaid, but also because the Democrats took working people for granted. For years the political center in the US would have looked middle right from a European perspective. Center right (Third Way) Democrats became a force pushing solid middle right market liberalism raising the poor in much of the world but leaving American trade unionists and the working poor unrepresented. The GOP finds itself in a bind for voters and finds discontented rust belt workers, farmers, social conservatives, and pro-lifers an easy target. They turn up the nationalism, blame environmentalism to get farm votes, blame public education, and act like they're reconsidering their commitment to free trade. It's less deceptive than it all looks. The GOP won the market liberalism argument a long time ago but when the Democrats adopted their position they had no where to go. It's kind of a mad scramble. The elite in the Democratic Party seem to have the economic center right and social left covered. AOC and company don't have the same economic agenda and and the fear triggered by Ryan etc... feeds a lot of the Democrat electorate so she is carving out a space within the party.

That's quite a word salad. I'm not sure it makes any sense or if my thinking makes any sense.

We've moved too far right for too long, and when someone says they're gonna push back left, voters like it because that's what people want. The Democrats always could have gotten elected by doing that, but they don't actually want to move left unless it's in response to a specific soundbyte.

"That's quite a word salad. I'm not sure it makes any sense or if my thinking makes any sense."

It makes sense, but you're overthinkin' it.

It really is simple: the fundamental schism has always been between those who would direct (along with those who want direction) and those who self-direct (and resent bein' told what to do).

You can label the schism a lot of ways...

many vs one

we vs i

communitarian vs libertarian

tribe vs solitary

...but labels aside, it's about folks who think they know what's best for everyone vs folks who say 'no, you don't, so leave me be'.

"We've moved too far right for too long, and when someone says they're gonna push back left, voters like it because that's what people want. The Democrats always could have gotten elected by doing that, but they don't actually want to move left unless it's in response to a specific soundbyte."

Yeah, no, that ain't close at all.

The U.S. has become communitarian (a state encompassing most of the repub and dem parties [the right & left], a state even infecting the libertarian party [a group of folks who ought to know better]).

I'd hope we could have a "country" that includes the left and the right.

I'd hope we could have a country of self-directing, self-responsible, human beings...
 

...instead of the zoo of undisciplined animals we have now.

Nobody in wheelchairs, though, right?

if those in wheelchairs (or Daleks) are self-directing and -responsible then...
 

...absolutely they're my kinda people.

I was in the peanut gallery watching a reasonable discussion of opposing views, unlike you and tw throwing Molotov cocktails.
They only way to do the things I mentioned is on a federal level. There are many others that can only be done efficiently on a federal level.

Yeah yeah I know, efficient doesn't come to mind when thinking about federal projects but neither does the state or local projects. There's politics, kick backs, and greed involved... always. It adds to the cost but the results are still worth it for the most part. And those vices could be at least reduced if the voters actively held the politicians accountable.

OK, maybe it's a pipe dream that fat and happy citizens would actually get involved, but there's no question it can/would work if people would stop letting other people run the show.

Bruce,

As I say: I'm an advocate for the 'night watchman' model.

OK, just wanted it clarified for my little pumpkin head.;)

It did, and thanks!

Henry, this is what I see...

Dear ghod. I actually agree with Anne Coulter.

https://i.imgflip.com/2tt012.jpg

Hell has finally frozen over.

That's the new White House salute. It's modelled after Millions stand behind me; but, means Millions stand in my way.

yeah, them ain't libertarians
 

Libertarians are the ones on shore watchin' the idiots dismantle their boat.

Them idiots on the water are (currently) livin' & workin' within the confines of the Democrat Party.

He can even read the name on the boat. And still denies it.

the name on the boat
 

put there by comme extremists (like you)

typical, comical, pedestrian propagandist tactic

That does not compute, the Right has been bitching all along the Democrats are alway trying to build a bigger boat. :haha:

meh

I know you can do better at insulting people. Try again.

'meh' isn't an insult, you moron...'meh' means 'i don't care'...as for you, try this:
 

凸(-_-)凸

henry quirk ran out of new ways to insult people. His newest insult (because worships Trump tactics) is "I don't care".

It even explains why he approved of Trump supporters attacking the BBC cameraman.

"he approved of Trump supporters attacking the BBC cameraman"
 

When did I do that?

When did you stop?

yeah, sure, whatever...meh
 

:zzz:

Snow day here, and we just did our taxes.

Bottom line, between my slight increase in income from working longer hours, and slight increase in taxes, it appears as though my Federal tax burden remains virtually unchanged under Trump's "tax cut" from a year ago.

HOWEVER, the major change was to deductions. He eleminated many of the deductions that we can take, and raised the standard deduction at the same time. So we took the standard deduction. If we hadn't, our taxes would have gone UP by a few grand. The unfortunate side effect is that under Virginia law, if you take the standard deduction on your federal filling, you are required to take it on your Virginia filling as well. And the Virginia standard deduction is several thousand less than our itemized state deduction would be if we could use it. All this is to say that our state taxes went up by several hundred dollars.

If we go back and try to itemize or federal deductions to get the itemized state deductions, then the federal taxes go through the roof and it's not worth it.

So the Trump tax plan increased my state taxes.

What is Virginia going to do with this bonanza?

I dunno. Give our leaders blackface sensitivity training?

Gonna go back in the Wayback machine to when it happened?
I'm sure they're aware of it now.

"So the Trump tax plan increased my state taxes."
 

Tough break.

You're probably almost as miffed I as I was when the ACA cost me my insurance.

:eyebrow:

Trump's creating a climate change denial committee, the Presidential Committee on Climate Security, to be led by non-climatologist William Happer:

That is definitely absurd.

:facepalm:

Wow.

It's almost like he reads the Cellar and was like "oh yeah, I need to get back on that."

Trump meets with Fatty III.
Trumps lifts sanctions and profits from future business.

Fatty III says he'll stop testing nukes, but he can't get rid of them because he has to counter South Korea's much more technically advance military
and use them to switch the blame of the bad economy from poor fiscal management to the cost of the nukes.

Then Fatty III raises money to help the economy by selling nukes to Iran.
Trump sucks up to the Khashoggi killers by giving them nukes to counter Iran.

Invest in fallout shelter stocks.

Wait, if we elected a mobster to run our country are we all made men? Suck it Sicilians, you ain't all that!

Something is seriously wrong with that scenario. The Kardashians do not have a piece of the action.

That's actually quite funny, tw. Keep them coming. :lol:

They do not have a piece of the action YET. ;)


Mr. Nadler wants to turn the President’s exercise of his normal constitutional powers into impeachable offenses.

Some good lines here. It's long, sorry. Maybe read the high points?



Dave Rubin – So what is Trump then? You’ve interviewed
the guy a bunch of times..What actually in the scheme of what
your book is about, sort of where America’s at at the moment
is he just the great “wrecker” that we sort of needed so that
this “ship of fools” wasn’t going to sink and take everybody
down with it.

Tucker Carlson – Well, he’s certainly a wrecker but look, here’s
what he’s not. Trump is not the guy that comes to Washington
and transforms the system. He’s not capable of that, he’s not
interested in that. Washington is a very specific town,ok, so the
legislative process is highly complex. He doesn’t understand and
doesn’t seek to. He’s not going to be the guy that runs on these 9
policies and then affects them once elected. Get’s them through the
congress, gets them through the agencies. HE CAN’T. That’s not his
role. It’s very frustrating actually if you’re from DC like me to watch
“Hey, wait a second get the energy department under control!”
It’s not going to happen. There’s 3 million executive branch employees
versus Trump, ok.

Trump’s role-

Dave Rubin – Is that right? That’s not right. There’s 3 billion?

Tucker Carlson – Million executive – I think there are 3 million
branch employees, that might include the military by the way.

I’m just saying that the permanent class in DC and I live right in the
center of them, they hate Trump. He’s a threat to them. But why
do they hate him? They hate him not because he’s a right winger.
They hate him because he’s the guy that says the obvious things.

So like, we went to Helsinki last summer and interviewed him during
the Putin thing. This was crystallized in an conversation I had with
him off camera.

I asked him something about NATO and he goes “Why do we have NATO?"

And someone who is a cold war kid I go “I like NATO”, thinking to myself.

“The Soviet Union fell in 1991. Wasn’t the point of NATO to keep them
from Invading Western Europe? But they don’t exist any more, why
do we still have them?”

And I tried searching for a good answer and I couldn’t find one.
So Trump repeats this in public and everyone’s like “Well..shut up!
What, are you, working for Putin?”

And then I thought, this is what Trump does, he comes in in his kinda
autistic way and asks the obvious question at the core of whatever
the issue is, that is the one question that everyone’s been avoiding
because they don’t have the answer to it.

So, why are we signing a trade agreement and letting all the other
signatories ignore the terms? Why don’t we have a border? I don’t
know, these are like not complex questions, very obvious questions
but because they are unanswered and unanswerable in some cases,
they expose the mediocrity of our ruling class. That they actually
don’t know what they are doing, is the truth.

Slang,

As I say elsewhere: I hired Trump to wreck shit (not save, reform, or refurbish). Trump is sugar in the gas tank, a spike in the tree, a big tarnished wrench thrown into the works.

He's the large oozing zit on the vain bitch's nose, the one that presents itself on the day of the prom; he's the piles keepin' the fat bastid from sitting comfortably during his steak dinner; he's the mongerol what shits repeatedly on the manicured lawn; he's the glitch flummoxing your laptop right when Christy Canyon is about to cum; he's the chimp flingin' soft shit through the bars at gawkers; he's the cancer that takes a steroid abuser's testes; he's the crow swoopin' in to steal the chips offa the picnic table, the one who shits on heads as he sails away.

He's a broken bottle jabbed into the face; laxative in the brownies; the rake that slaps a body upside the head when stepped on wrong.

He's corrupt, backstabbing', whoremongerin'...he lies, cheats, steals.

Yep, he's garbage...MY garbage...he's MY middle finger to a whole whack of folks...he's largely doin' what I hired him to do...and he's gonna have a second term (four more years to piss on 'their' heads).

Yes, he's a lot of things. That's a pretty good list there.

I believe what I would like him to do next is to declassify incriminating documents that clearly show the soft coup that Obama allegedly orchestrated in the final days of his presidency. And how ass hats like Comey and McCabe tried desperately to assist in that.

Or maybe I'm just mad as a hatter. It's possible.

They do exist and they have invaded neighboring states. Recently.

"That's a pretty good list there."

Just coverin' all the bases.

#

"declassify incriminating documents"

I'm thinkin' he's holdin' back on all the good stuff till mebbe true shit comes down the pike (i.e. 'I'm takin' all you motherfuckers down with me!').

##

"They do exist and they have invaded neighboring states. Recently."


And NATO did what exactly in response?

They weren't NATO members.

(which is why the states could be invaded)

Neither were Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Libya, Greece, etc members of a defense alliance when Hitler decided to invade them. So clearly neither Britain, France, nor Russia had anything to fear.

Same people who wanted to 'wreck shit' also recommended letting Hitler have all of Europe. Using defeatist concepts that The Don also uses to promote himself. He even believes everything Putin has told him while saying American generals and intelligence agencies are not as smart as he is.

We are already seeing a recession beginning.

"They weren't NATO members."
 

And if they had been, what woulda happened?

I reckon nuthin', nuthin' and more nuthin'.

##

"We are already seeing a recession beginning."

No, we're not.

reckon away

"reckon away"
 

I do.

NATO is *worthless: it does nuthin' 'cept make 'us' responsible for (and to) all of 'them'.

To hell with that.









*just like the U.N.

Reckon hell, it almost killed 'em.

Y'know, when it comes to examples of why Trump should not be President, we're all spoiled for choice. Literally spoiled, he's made his behavior so loud and so incessant that it's just impossible to sustain the outrage it deserves, much less keep up with all the shit this guy says and does. The fashionable term is "normalized". I'm not normalized to his ... everything, but I am fucking tired of it.

Here's a textbook example. You say, and you're well advised to say such a thing, what self-destructive idiot would ever suggest such a thing?!?!


what? We have a caller on Line One? Ok, patch him through.

Yeah, that guy.

A couple of hot takes on why this is bad and should be avoided.

1 -- It's a dumb thing to say because nobody wants their entitlements cut.

2 -- It's dumb because he opens his mouth before his brain's in gear.

3 -- I'm sick of having The White House, and god knows how many apologists tell me what Trump meant. The man really should be able to speak for himself.

4 -- Scandalously, the walk-backs, the re-interpretations, the corrections and clarifications are often 180 degrees from what Trump actually said. Listening to him trying to do it for himself awhile ago when he was *explaining* what he said about his understanding of Putin's position about election interference. First he said "why would it be?" then a minute later, and by a minute, I mean one brutal news cycle, he said "why wouldn't it be?", just exactly the opposite.

Riiiiiight. He probably thinks I'm as stupid as he is, or worse, that he's as smart as I am. He's wrong either way.

So, back to your point UT, what do you think about this politician pledging to cut entitlements?

It's fine. Trump doesn't parse the word "entitlements" like vox.com does; and in the context of the conversation, he doesn't parse it at all, before he's on to his answer.

Everybody who was watching understood that, too.

See, the game where Trump's words are carefully parsed for the least charitable take is a LOSING game. Here's the secret, if you want to know how Trump's supporters listen to the interview:

Stop parsing words and just listen for the emotional appeal.

I know how much you enjoy parsing, and how much the media enjoys it. You get to read vox.com articles and get your dopamine fix. The media gets their "Trump bump" of clicks and ratings. It seems like winning. But the words are not the important part. Pay attention to the emotions. The emotions of vox.com are negative, loser emotions. The emotions of Donald Trump are winner emotions.

Furthermore, you should parse a conversation like a conversation, and a joke like a joke, if you want to understand. That's the part of Trump that is immediately appealing; that's how he expects to be parsed. Old-school politicians speak slowly, carefully, measured, studied, stiff and teleprompted, facts at the ready, so that nothing they can say can be parsed incorrectly. The problem is, nobody in our everyday world talks like that. If they did, we wouldn't trust them!

Words have meaning, don't you think the leaders he talks to around the world parse what he says when he's representing the US?

He's running the country like he ran his businesses... run up a huge debt, pocket as much as possible, then walk away.

Well that's the biggest problem with the Trump Presidency - foreign policy works along a different game theory than the game theory he uses. The techniques that worked being a Manhattan real estate bro, also worked on television audiences, and on the electorate. What's needed on the world stage is significantly different, I think.

Putin needs a cold war, an enemy he can blame for any unpopular moves and shortages at home.
Also to convince as many leaders between him and the Mediterranean as possible that he is from their hood, and will always be close by to be their savior not us. He can coerce them into thinking my friend's enemy is my enemy, when Trump blusters.