If you want your vote to be your business alone you don't wade into political discussions and tell people about who you will or won't vote for. Once you do that questions about your reasons are fair game.
You have a perfect right choose not to answer the ‘why’ questions that often quickly follow the ‘what’ questions.
@ChastMastr
Yep that is him. He is an interesting cove. An academic who is an expert in classics and ancient history and very knowledgeable in military history. I honestly don’t think he is a fan of Trump as in ‘uncritical’ but he does an incisive analysis. From memory, Victor Davis Hanson seems to be very sympathetic to immigrants he lives in a farming community in Southern California.
If you want your vote to be your business alone you don't wade into political discussions and tell people about who you will or won't vote for. Once you do that questions about your reasons are fair game.
You have a perfect right choose not to answer the ‘why’ questions that often quickly follow the ‘what’ questions.
Of course. And because this isn't a US court we can infer from non-answers as well as answers. A reasonable inference, for example, is that someone wading into a political debate, announcing their choice and refusing to discuss the reasons either knows that their reasons don't stand up to scrutiny or are aware that their reasons are socially or morally unacceptable.
Wasn’t the USA energy self sufficient when he left office? Did he not reduce troop commitments abroad and bring a lot of soldiers home?
Was inflation a lot lower? I know it was Biden who pulled out of Afghanistan but I think Trump might have been working towards that.
Forgive me, I vaguely remember some of the details of the Steele Dossier. Seems like Trump was forced to appoint a special investigator (Mueller) who verified the facts stated in the document. He then turned his conclusions and recommendations to Attorney General Jeff Sessons who refused to prosecute. Correct me if I am wrong, but just because the Attorney General refused to prosecute, does not mean the Dossier is invalid.
Would you happen to remember what evidence Mueller presented to verify the urophiliac allegations?
Did he not reduce troop commitments abroad and bring a lot of soldiers home?
As far as I can tell from googling, he did not. He seems to have wanted to reduce the number of troops in Germany from about 34 000 to 25 000, but this does not appear to have happened.
Apart from that and Afghanistan(where, as you say, it was Biden who ultimately concluded the pullout), I can't find anything else about Trump reducing troop levels anywhere.
@MPaul This thread is now running under Epiphanies rules. That means we pay closer attention to the quality of sources.
Victor Davis Hanson, as @alienfromzog has already pointed out, has a history of racism. That makes him an inappropriate resource for this thread.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Really? I do not accept that assertion (which may well be slanderous so be careful) but am open to you proving it but also nor have I cited any particular specific source. Chastmastr did that after I simply mentioned him as an academically reliable source.
@MPaul This thread is now running under Epiphanies rules. That means we pay closer attention to the quality of sources.
Victor Davis Hanson, as @alienfromzog has already pointed out, has a history of racism. That makes him an inappropriate resource for this thread.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Really? I do not accept that assertion (which may well be slanderous so be careful) but am open to you proving it but also nor have I cited any particular specific source. Chastmastr did that after I simply mentioned him as an academically reliable source.
Hostly beret on
If you wish to dispute my ruling, please take it to the Styx.
There are reasons why people tend to avoid ‘religion and politics’ if they want to stay friends.
Well, that's a pretty limited friendship if so. Significant friends can talk about and share these kinds of important things, and are all the better friends for doing so, IMO.
@ChastMastr
Yep that is him. He is an interesting cove. An academic who is an expert in classics and ancient history and very knowledgeable in military history.
Here is a Xitter thread (in convenient threadreader format for those who don't want to use Xitter) explaining why Victor David Hanson is a punchline among more serious military historians. The short version is that VDH distorts ancient history quite egregiously to fit his intellectual priors. The long version is worth reading though, and it's not that long.
Wasn’t the USA energy self sufficient when he left office?
Energy self-sufficient is a fairly nebulous term. The U.S. has achieved net energy exports largely due to fracking, but still imports a lot of energy. I'm not sure that exporting a lot and also importing a lot can be called "self sufficient", but at any rate this was achieved during the Obama administration. Yes it was still true when Trump left office, but giving him credit for achieving this is perverse.
Yes, inflation was lower at the end of Trump's term, largely because of the recession. Having the economy come to a screeching halt does tend to keep inflation down, but I'm not sure "have a recession to keep inflation down" is a net win for the country or its citizens. GDP declined by 19.2%, which is a truly spectacular number (and not in a good way) for a developed country.
Donald Trump is a ‘motormouth’ and it doesn’t take much convincing to believe that but what actually happened when he was in power seemed to me neither extreme or draconian. (I know what happened when he lost the election and like everything else about him it seemed exaggerated by his enemies and the media..just sayin.)
The problem is that what you are "just sayin" is unsupported by evidence or even credible reason.
The facts are that Trump repeatedly incited the January 6th insurrection. His supporters that stormed the Capitol genuinely believed that, as he had told them, he "really won" the election, and the election was being stolen from the people by some sort of deep state Democratic conspiracy.
Trump is responsible for this. He encouraged this behavior with his words, with his actions, with his rhetoric. This wasn't some lone wolf who really likes Trump and was upset that he lost. This was Trump's fault.
@Moyessa brought up the attempted assassination of Trump, and asked whether that was worse, to which I think the answer has to be "we don't know". I don't believe the investigation in to the circumstances of Trump's attempted assassination has been completed; we don't know whether the shooter was a lone actor or part of a conspiracy. If he was just a guy acting alone, for whatever reason, then no, it's not nearly as bad as January 6th.
You have a perfect right choose not to answer the ‘why’ questions that often quickly follow the ‘what’ questions.
If you aren't willing to defend your position, you have no business taking part in a discussion. Because that's the point of discussion - we explore the reasons behind our opinions, and perhaps one of us changes the other's mind, or perhaps we just come to a better understanding of the other's position, even if we end up remaining in disagreement.
Obviously there's no legal obligation - you can just list all your opinions and say "these are my opinions, and you can't make me justify them", but that's not a useful or interesting discussion, is it?
From memory, Victor Davis Hanson seems to be very sympathetic to immigrants he lives in a farming community in Southern California.
He lives in rural Fresno County, which is in the Central Valley, nowhere near Southern California. My parents were both born on farms in Fresno County, and I still have family there, and I've lived my whole adult life in Southern California. They are very different places.
@Moyessa brought up the attempted assassination of Trump, and asked whether that was worse, to which I think the answer has to be "we don't know". I don't believe the investigation in to the circumstances of Trump's attempted assassination has been completed; we don't know whether the shooter was a lone actor or part of a conspiracy. If he was just a guy acting alone, for whatever reason, then no, it's not nearly as bad as January 6th.
@Moyessa specifically asked which was worse "for our country", wanting to look at the question from that specific perspective.
Everything I've seen about the shooter indicates he fitted the all too common lately pattern of a young man wanting to go out in a blaze of glory by murdering a bunch of people at a mass public gathering. If this is the case the opportunity to murder a former (and potential future) president alongside other bystanders would have been quite the draw. I will note that if you leave aside the job description of one of the victims that wasn't even the worst mass shooting in the U.S. that day.
Forgive me, I vaguely remember some of the details of the Steele Dossier. Seems like Trump was forced to appoint a special investigator (Mueller) who verified the facts stated in the document. He then turned his conclusions and recommendations to Attorney General Jeff Sessons who refused to prosecute. Correct me if I am wrong, but just because the Attorney General refused to prosecute, does not mean the Dossier is invalid.
Would you happen to remember what evidence Mueller presented to verify the urophiliac allegations?
Thank you for asking. I looked up the Mueller Report Summery on Wikipedia. Turns out, the Mueller report had two volumes.
The first volume dealt with Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Steele Dossier was part of that investigation. Mueller's team faced a lot of resistance from the Trump administration which did not give them unfettered access to the facts, In the end, it concluded the Russians did interfere with the election and Trump benefitted from it, but did not have enough evidence to say there was any collusion.
The second volume dealt with obstruction of justice charges after the firing of FBI director James Cromey. It determined it could not charge Trump with obstruction of justice--but there was enough evidence there for Congress to do it through the impeachment process.
Jeff Sessions had already been fired by the time the Mueller conclusions came out. William Barr was the Attorney General. It was Barr which refused to pursue further investigation.
Wasn’t the USA energy self sufficient when he left office? ...
Was inflation a lot lower? I know it was Biden who pulled out of Afghanistan but I think Trump might have been working towards that.
The key phrase to your series of questions is "when he left office." When he left office the world economy was on the verge of total collapse because of the pandemic. Economic activity had all but stopped. Consequently, there was no inflation, true. The concern was there might be rapid deflation. Trump and Biden both tried to counter that with a series of stimulus checks.
The United States became energy self-sufficient during the Obama administration through fracking and development of the shell oil fields. At the end of the Trump administration, the oil companies could not give it away, because of the near collapse of the world economy.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was agreed to by Trump and the Taliban. Biden tried to extend the timetable, but the Taliban refused. Biden had long wanted to end the war anyway, so he honored the commitments that Trump had made.
There were several convictions in investigations that spun off it. Including, the ceasing of illegal earnings that meant the investigation turned a profit of tens of millions.
Volume 1 documents clearly that Russia interfered with the 2016 election to try to aid Trump's campaign. The Trump campaign welcomed this and cooperated on some levels. There was not sufficient evidence of intent to make a conviction likely but in layman's terms Trump and his people definitely colluded with Russian agents. Steele's Dossier was only a very small part of how this got started. Part of the reason - imv - that conviction of Trump himself was not possible was because of the clear obstruction of justice.
Volume 2 documents 10 episodes of obstruction of justice by then-president Trump. Seven of these have a very high likelihood of conviction if brought to trial. (Of course this is before SCOTUS decided that the president may be immune to such things). Mueller couldn't charge Trump as he was bound by Justice Department policy that a sitting president could not be charged.
Both volumes are totally damning of Trump.
In a sane world he would have been impeached immediately and then charged. Seriously it is way beyond a political consideration, it is a gross travesty of justice that Bill Barr and GOPs members of Congress were able to quench the power of this. Future law students will study the report and be stunned.
Donald Trump is a ‘motormouth’ and it doesn’t take much convincing to believe that but what actually happened when he was in power seemed to me neither extreme or draconian. (I know what happened when he lost the election and like everything else about him it seemed exaggerated by his enemies and the media..just sayin.)
I am not an American
I am, and I can only say your assessment of exaggeration strikes me as seriously uninformed, your American relatives and acquaintances notwithstanding.
However, did he actually pose a constitutional threat? And/Or, did he tap into a populist groundswell of discontent with the traditional leadership of both sides?
There were several convictions in investigations that spun off it. Including, the ceasing of illegal earnings that meant the investigation turned a profit of tens of millions.
Volume 1 documents clearly that Russia interfered with the 2016 election to try to aid Trump's campaign. The Trump campaign welcomed this and cooperated on some levels. There was not sufficient evidence of intent to make a conviction likely but in layman's terms Trump and his people definitely colluded with Russian agents. Steele's Dossier was only a very small part of how this got started. Part of the reason - imv - that conviction of Trump himself was not possible was because of the clear obstruction of justice.
Volume 2 documents 10 episodes of obstruction of justice by then-president Trump. Seven of these have a very high likelihood of conviction if brought to trial. (Of course this is before SCOTUS decided that the president may be immune to such things). Mueller couldn't charge Trump as he was bound by Justice Department policy that a sitting president could not be charged.
Both volumes are totally damning of Trump.
In a sane world he would have been impeached immediately and then charged. Seriously it is way beyond a political consideration, it is a gross travesty of justice that Bill Barr and GOPs members of Congress were able to quench the power of this. Future law students will study the report and be stunned.
The apparent ease with which Trump manages to get away with crime after crime beggars belief, but Nemesis - perhaps Ms Harris? - will hopefully catch up with him one day.
Meanwhile, reports here in the UK indicate that Ms Harris' campaign is going well, so there is indeed hope...
The apparent ease with which Trump manages to get away with crime after crime beggars belief, but Nemesis - perhaps Ms Harris? - will hopefully catch up with him one day.
One factor which I've recently mentioned is the way supposedly disinterested parties are eager to make excuses for Donald Trump. For example, @MPaulrecently said Trump's post-election attempt to overthrow the government "seemed exaggerated by his enemies and the media". It seems to me that trying to overthrow the government after you lose an election is pretty bad by itself and would be hard to "exaggerate". By framing it this way @MPaul is minimizing and normalizing Trump's attempt to seize power, implying the only reason anyone would object is if they were Trump's enemies.
The Washington Post published an opinion piece [ gift link ] today by Joe Biden. He's calling for three specific reforms of the Supreme Court.
First, I am calling for a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It would make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office. I share our Founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators.
Second, we have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years. We should have the same for Supreme Court justices. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court. Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary. It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come. I support a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.
Third, I’m calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. This is common sense. The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced. Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt.
It's unlikely that Biden will be able to enact any of this, let alone all of it, in his remaining six months in office, but I think it sets an important tone. It establishes the Democrats as the party in favor of the rule of law and against corruption. Republicans will have to find some way to deflect the impression that they're against the rule of law and in favor of corruption. This will also keep the issue in front of the public during the presidential election, which seems like a good time to debate such things.
I was somewhat amused that the Post's byline simply said "The writer is president of the United States".
Reuters has an article concerning the chilling effect Trump is having on Clean Tech. There are numerous projects with European companies wanting to invest in development of clean energy (and related projects) in the United States--which would, of course, also lead to American construction jobs and American employment in those factories and projects. Biden's push for "green" is not just good for the planet but is great for American job creation and a boost to the American economy. But the investors are right to be cautious, because Trump would throw all that away in a heartbeat to pander to the climate change deniers in his base (and to suck up to the oil company execs who finance him).
Apologies for the sark, but you've really got to be doing a bit more self criticism if you are going to criticise/support a politician because they do or don't laugh in public.
Maybe we can consult the several decades worth of video recordings we have of Jesus (just like we have of Donald Trump) to see whether this is the case.
In other presidential election news, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has apparently declined consideration to serve as Kamala Harris' running mate. The subtext here is that Cooper's Lieutenant Governor, Mark Robinson, is a Republican who is running to replace Cooper as governor. (Cooper is term-limited and cannot run for re-election.) Robinson is also a MAGA extremist and would be acting governor if Cooper leaves the state. (To run for election as vice president, for example.) The possibilities of Robinson using the governor's office for mischief or election stunts are nearly endless.
My grandmother always said Jesus clearly had a great sense of humor; otherwise, he never would have gotten so many dinner invitations.
Personally, I think there’s a lot of humor in the parables. And I have a hard time imagining that the guy who called James and John “So s of Thunder” or Simon Peters “Rock” (“Rocky” in modern English?) didn’t laugh.
But seriously, I strongly suspect @Gramps49 was alluding to how Trump has mocked Harris’s laugh, not seriously giving his criterion for selecting a candidate.
I don't care about Jesus laughing. I don't think anyone should care about politicians laughing. If this whole thing has been generated by Trump making a stupid comment about Harris then anyone seriously entertaining this as a criteria for choosing a presidential candidate is not only falling into his trap, they're an idiot.
I don't care about Jesus laughing. I don't think anyone should care about politicians laughing. If this whole thing has been generated by Trump making a stupid comment about Harris then anyone seriously entertaining this as a criteria for choosing a presidential candidate is not only falling into his trap, they're an idiot.
No.
Trump is mocking Harris's laugh in his usual pathetic way that he will attack everyone. It is purile and speaks to his dark soul. Similarly, Trump lacks a sense of humour. That's well documented by people who know him. He does not laugh. He smirks. It is part of his sociopathy.
So this criteria is actually a beautiful surrogate for character and ability. Hence it is a very reasonable way of deciding who to vote for.
AFZ
P.s. I'm certain Jesus laughed.
As Michael Card put it: The Nazarene could hunger and the Nazarene could cry,
And he could laugh with all the fullness of heart
And those who hardly knew him and those who knew him well,
Could feel the contradiction from the start.
He came, he saw, he surrendered all,
So that we might be born again,
And the fact of his humanity was there for all to see,
He was not like any other man
And yet, so much like me.
So Donald Trump addressed the Believer's Summit at Turning Point Action last night. He rambled on for over an hour, and towards the end he told his followers that if elected he would end American elections, presumably with himself as dictator for life.
This I’ll push back against a bit. As far as I could find, he never actually said he’d end American elections. He said “you will never have to vote again.” That he wants to end elections is certainly a reasonable interpretation of his promise that “you won’t have to vote again,” given many previous statements and actions. It’s perhaps the most reasonable interpretation.
But what he said could also be interpreted as “we’ll fix all the problems so well that you on’t feel like you’ve got to vote to keep America great, and you can skip it if you want to.” Maybe not as reasonable an interpretation, but one that may be strengthened a bit by his comments on the right to vote just beforehand.
What he said—“In four years you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote.”—is quite egregious enough, and definitely ought to be getting grilled about it. But I’m not sure what’s gained by saying “he told his followers that if elected he would end American elections” when he didn’t actually say that.
Following up on Trump's promise to end future voting in the U.S., he was given the opportunity to deny that's what he meant on Fox News and he decided to double down.
Former President Donald J. Trump on Monday repeated his recent assertion that Christians will never have to vote again if they vote for him this November, brushing aside multiple requests to walk back or clarify the statement.
Mr. Trump’s initial comments, to a group of Christian conservatives on Friday, were interpreted by many Democrats as evidence he would end elections. On Monday, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham urged him to rebut that framing, but he offered instead: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true.”
At this point the refusal to believe Trump means to do what he says is becoming downright pathological. For those who are interested the video of Trump verbally dancing around and doing everything except denying he wants to cancel future elections can be found here. Particularly brazen was his claim that voters he was addressing (Christian Nationalists attending a Turning Point Action event) are low turnout voters.
So Donald Trump addressed the Believer's Summit at Turning Point Action last night. He rambled on for over an hour, and towards the end he told his followers that if elected he would end American elections, presumably with himself as dictator for life.
This I’ll push back against a bit. As far as I could find, he never actually said he’d end American elections. He said “you will never have to vote again.” That he wants to end elections is certainly a reasonable interpretation of his promise that “you won’t have to vote again,” given many previous statements and actions. It’s perhaps the most reasonable interpretation.
But what he said could also be interpreted as “we’ll fix all the problems so well that you on’t feel like you’ve got to vote to keep America great, and you can skip it if you want to.” Maybe not as reasonable an interpretation, but one that may be strengthened a bit by his comments on the right to vote just beforehand.
What he said—“In four years you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote.”—is quite egregious enough, and definitely ought to be getting grilled about it. But I’m not sure what’s gained by saying “he told his followers that if elected he would end American elections” when he didn’t actually say that.
Following up on Trump's promise to end future voting in the U.S., he was given the opportunity to deny that's what he meant on Fox News and he decided to double down.
Former President Donald J. Trump on Monday repeated his recent assertion that Christians will never have to vote again if they vote for him this November, brushing aside multiple requests to walk back or clarify the statement.
Mr. Trump’s initial comments, to a group of Christian conservatives on Friday, were interpreted by many Democrats as evidence he would end elections. On Monday, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham urged him to rebut that framing, but he offered instead: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true.”
At this point the refusal to believe Trump means to do what he says is becoming downright pathological.
Good thing I’m not refusing to believe he means to do what he says. I specifically said your interpretation of what he said was reasonable, and perhaps the most reasonable interpretation.
My push-back was simply on the difference between “he said he’d do away with elections” and “he said they wouldn’t have to vote again, which it’s hard to understand as meaning anything other than that hed do away with elections.”
So Donald Trump addressed the Believer's Summit at Turning Point Action last night. He rambled on for over an hour, and towards the end he told his followers that if elected he would end American elections, presumably with himself as dictator for life.
This I’ll push back against a bit. As far as I could find, he never actually said he’d end American elections. He said “you will never have to vote again.” That he wants to end elections is certainly a reasonable interpretation of his promise that “you won’t have to vote again,” given many previous statements and actions. It’s perhaps the most reasonable interpretation.
But what he said could also be interpreted as “we’ll fix all the problems so well that you on’t feel like you’ve got to vote to keep America great, and you can skip it if you want to.” Maybe not as reasonable an interpretation, but one that may be strengthened a bit by his comments on the right to vote just beforehand.
What he said—“In four years you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote.”—is quite egregious enough, and definitely ought to be getting grilled about it. But I’m not sure what’s gained by saying “he told his followers that if elected he would end American elections” when he didn’t actually say that.
Following up on Trump's promise to end future voting in the U.S., he was given the opportunity to deny that's what he meant on Fox News and he decided to double down.
Former President Donald J. Trump on Monday repeated his recent assertion that Christians will never have to vote again if they vote for him this November, brushing aside multiple requests to walk back or clarify the statement.
Mr. Trump’s initial comments, to a group of Christian conservatives on Friday, were interpreted by many Democrats as evidence he would end elections. On Monday, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham urged him to rebut that framing, but he offered instead: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true.”
At this point the refusal to believe Trump means to do what he says is becoming downright pathological. For those who are interested the video of Trump verbally dancing around and doing everything except denying he wants to cancel future elections can be found here. Particularly brazen was his claim that voters he was addressing (Christian Nationalists attending a Turning Point Action event) are low turnout voters.
Actually, Trump is telling the truth. No-one will ever have to vote for Trump again. He can only serve two terms.
I think he's just being mischievous in how he expresses it, knowing that people on the left will get their knickers in a twist about him trying to cancel future elections
Actually, Trump is telling the truth. No-one will ever have to vote for Trump again. He can only serve two terms.
I think he's just being mischievous in how he expresses it, knowing that people on the left will get their knickers in a twist about him trying to cancel future elections
Well, this will be the last election where Trump runs, either because he follows the Constitution or he doesn't. I found it particularly telling the way he jumped back as if stung when Ingraham said "they won't have to vote for you because you'll have four years in office" and Trump immediately redirected the conversation. It's at about the 1:20 mark in the video.
Honestly at this point "he can only serve two terms" is on the same level as "he has to accept the results of the electoral college".
So Donald Trump addressed the Believer's Summit at Turning Point Action last night. He rambled on for over an hour, and towards the end he told his followers that if elected he would end American elections, presumably with himself as dictator for life.
This I’ll push back against a bit. As far as I could find, he never actually said he’d end American elections. He said “you will never have to vote again.” That he wants to end elections is certainly a reasonable interpretation of his promise that “you won’t have to vote again,” given many previous statements and actions. It’s perhaps the most reasonable interpretation.
But what he said could also be interpreted as “we’ll fix all the problems so well that you on’t feel like you’ve got to vote to keep America great, and you can skip it if you want to.” Maybe not as reasonable an interpretation, but one that may be strengthened a bit by his comments on the right to vote just beforehand.
What he said—“In four years you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote.”—is quite egregious enough, and definitely ought to be getting grilled about it. But I’m not sure what’s gained by saying “he told his followers that if elected he would end American elections” when he didn’t actually say that.
Following up on Trump's promise to end future voting in the U.S., he was given the opportunity to deny that's what he meant on Fox News and he decided to double down.
Former President Donald J. Trump on Monday repeated his recent assertion that Christians will never have to vote again if they vote for him this November, brushing aside multiple requests to walk back or clarify the statement.
Mr. Trump’s initial comments, to a group of Christian conservatives on Friday, were interpreted by many Democrats as evidence he would end elections. On Monday, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham urged him to rebut that framing, but he offered instead: “I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true.”
At this point the refusal to believe Trump means to do what he says is becoming downright pathological. For those who are interested the video of Trump verbally dancing around and doing everything except denying he wants to cancel future elections can be found here. Particularly brazen was his claim that voters he was addressing (Christian Nationalists attending a Turning Point Action event) are low turnout voters.
Actually, Trump is telling the truth. No-one will ever have to vote for Trump again. He can only serve two terms.
I think he's just being mischievous in how he expresses it, knowing that people on the left will get their knickers in a twist about him trying to cancel future elections
Nah. It's just incoherent gibberish.
"Christians don't vote" seriously???
Actually, Trump is telling the truth. No-one will ever have to vote for Trump again. He can only serve two terms.
And he has to pay bills when they come due, and he has to pay his taxes, and he has to follow the law. Except he doesn't. There is no reason to think he'd let a little thing like the US Constitution stand in the way of getting what he wants.
I think he's just being mischievous in how he expresses it, knowing that people on the left will get their knickers in a twist about him trying to cancel future elections
But he's never mischievous. Devious, or sneaky, maybe. Duplicitous. Insincere. But not mischievous, because that implies a certain playfulness, and this guy is not playful.
Apologies for the sark, but you've really got to be doing a bit more self criticism if you are going to criticise/support a politician because they do or don't laugh in public.
Then you don't know Jesus. He told some very funny jokes. Some we know as parables.
I think he's just being mischievous in how he expresses it, knowing that people on the left will get their knickers in a twist about him trying to cancel future elections
But he's never mischievous. Devious, or sneaky, maybe. Duplicitous. Insincere. But not mischievous, because that implies a certain playfulness, and this guy is not playful.
It looks to me like a rather straight-forward case of dog-whistle politics, only Trump is not very subtle about it.
I think he's just being mischievous in how he expresses it, knowing that people on the left will get their knickers in a twist about him trying to cancel future elections
But he's never mischievous. Devious, or sneaky, maybe. Duplicitous. Insincere. But not mischievous, because that implies a certain playfulness, and this guy is not playful.
It looks to me like a rather straight-forward case of dog-whistle politics, only Trump is not very subtle about it.
I also like that she calls Trump's attacks and speeches as weird. That will only get him more angry.
Plus Vance. The couch thing was false (and even if it wasn’t, it’s frankly kinky but innocuous, as long as it was his own furniture—it’s everything else about him that’s repulsive), but he’s also got the “weird” thing going on. (Not the good kind of weird, of course.)
Vance’s whole spiel about how “we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it” because they’re childless is particularly rich coming from someone who converted to a church run by men (and women, if nuns are included) who don’t have children.
Vance’s whole spiel about how “we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it” because they’re childless is particularly rich coming from someone who converted to a church run by men (and women, if nuns are included) who don’t have children.
Weird indeed.
JD Vance is Roman Catholic, an organization led by childless men for 2000 years and never had to raise a family. (I know that's not quite right, but go with the thought.)
Comments
You have a perfect right choose not to answer the ‘why’ questions that often quickly follow the ‘what’ questions.
@ChastMastr
Yep that is him. He is an interesting cove. An academic who is an expert in classics and ancient history and very knowledgeable in military history. I honestly don’t think he is a fan of Trump as in ‘uncritical’ but he does an incisive analysis. From memory, Victor Davis Hanson seems to be very sympathetic to immigrants he lives in a farming community in Southern California.
Of course. And because this isn't a US court we can infer from non-answers as well as answers. A reasonable inference, for example, is that someone wading into a political debate, announcing their choice and refusing to discuss the reasons either knows that their reasons don't stand up to scrutiny or are aware that their reasons are socially or morally unacceptable.
Was inflation a lot lower? I know it was Biden who pulled out of Afghanistan but I think Trump might have been working towards that.
Would you happen to remember what evidence Mueller presented to verify the urophiliac allegations?
@MPaul This thread is now running under Epiphanies rules. That means we pay closer attention to the quality of sources.
Victor Davis Hanson, as @alienfromzog has already pointed out, has a history of racism. That makes him an inappropriate resource for this thread.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
As far as I can tell from googling, he did not. He seems to have wanted to reduce the number of troops in Germany from about 34 000 to 25 000, but this does not appear to have happened.
Apart from that and Afghanistan(where, as you say, it was Biden who ultimately concluded the pullout), I can't find anything else about Trump reducing troop levels anywhere.
Really? I do not accept that assertion (which may well be slanderous so be careful) but am open to you proving it but also nor have I cited any particular specific source. Chastmastr did that after I simply mentioned him as an academically reliable source.
Hostly beret on
If you wish to dispute my ruling, please take it to the Styx.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Well, that's a pretty limited friendship if so. Significant friends can talk about and share these kinds of important things, and are all the better friends for doing so, IMO.
Here is a Xitter thread (in convenient threadreader format for those who don't want to use Xitter) explaining why Victor David Hanson is a punchline among more serious military historians. The short version is that VDH distorts ancient history quite egregiously to fit his intellectual priors. The long version is worth reading though, and it's not that long.
Energy self-sufficient is a fairly nebulous term. The U.S. has achieved net energy exports largely due to fracking, but still imports a lot of energy. I'm not sure that exporting a lot and also importing a lot can be called "self sufficient", but at any rate this was achieved during the Obama administration. Yes it was still true when Trump left office, but giving him credit for achieving this is perverse.
Yes, inflation was lower at the end of Trump's term, largely because of the recession. Having the economy come to a screeching halt does tend to keep inflation down, but I'm not sure "have a recession to keep inflation down" is a net win for the country or its citizens. GDP declined by 19.2%, which is a truly spectacular number (and not in a good way) for a developed country.
The problem is that what you are "just sayin" is unsupported by evidence or even credible reason.
The facts are that Trump repeatedly incited the January 6th insurrection. His supporters that stormed the Capitol genuinely believed that, as he had told them, he "really won" the election, and the election was being stolen from the people by some sort of deep state Democratic conspiracy.
Trump is responsible for this. He encouraged this behavior with his words, with his actions, with his rhetoric. This wasn't some lone wolf who really likes Trump and was upset that he lost. This was Trump's fault.
@Moyessa brought up the attempted assassination of Trump, and asked whether that was worse, to which I think the answer has to be "we don't know". I don't believe the investigation in to the circumstances of Trump's attempted assassination has been completed; we don't know whether the shooter was a lone actor or part of a conspiracy. If he was just a guy acting alone, for whatever reason, then no, it's not nearly as bad as January 6th.
If you aren't willing to defend your position, you have no business taking part in a discussion. Because that's the point of discussion - we explore the reasons behind our opinions, and perhaps one of us changes the other's mind, or perhaps we just come to a better understanding of the other's position, even if we end up remaining in disagreement.
Obviously there's no legal obligation - you can just list all your opinions and say "these are my opinions, and you can't make me justify them", but that's not a useful or interesting discussion, is it?
He lives in rural Fresno County, which is in the Central Valley, nowhere near Southern California. My parents were both born on farms in Fresno County, and I still have family there, and I've lived my whole adult life in Southern California. They are very different places.
@Moyessa specifically asked which was worse "for our country", wanting to look at the question from that specific perspective.
Everything I've seen about the shooter indicates he fitted the all too common lately pattern of a young man wanting to go out in a blaze of glory by murdering a bunch of people at a mass public gathering. If this is the case the opportunity to murder a former (and potential future) president alongside other bystanders would have been quite the draw. I will note that if you leave aside the job description of one of the victims that wasn't even the worst mass shooting in the U.S. that day.
Thank you for asking. I looked up the Mueller Report Summery on Wikipedia. Turns out, the Mueller report had two volumes.
The first volume dealt with Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Steele Dossier was part of that investigation. Mueller's team faced a lot of resistance from the Trump administration which did not give them unfettered access to the facts, In the end, it concluded the Russians did interfere with the election and Trump benefitted from it, but did not have enough evidence to say there was any collusion.
The second volume dealt with obstruction of justice charges after the firing of FBI director James Cromey. It determined it could not charge Trump with obstruction of justice--but there was enough evidence there for Congress to do it through the impeachment process.
Jeff Sessions had already been fired by the time the Mueller conclusions came out. William Barr was the Attorney General. It was Barr which refused to pursue further investigation.
The key phrase to your series of questions is "when he left office." When he left office the world economy was on the verge of total collapse because of the pandemic. Economic activity had all but stopped. Consequently, there was no inflation, true. The concern was there might be rapid deflation. Trump and Biden both tried to counter that with a series of stimulus checks.
The United States became energy self-sufficient during the Obama administration through fracking and development of the shell oil fields. At the end of the Trump administration, the oil companies could not give it away, because of the near collapse of the world economy.
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was agreed to by Trump and the Taliban. Biden tried to extend the timetable, but the Taliban refused. Biden had long wanted to end the war anyway, so he honored the commitments that Trump had made.
There were several convictions in investigations that spun off it. Including, the ceasing of illegal earnings that meant the investigation turned a profit of tens of millions.
Volume 1 documents clearly that Russia interfered with the 2016 election to try to aid Trump's campaign. The Trump campaign welcomed this and cooperated on some levels. There was not sufficient evidence of intent to make a conviction likely but in layman's terms Trump and his people definitely colluded with Russian agents. Steele's Dossier was only a very small part of how this got started. Part of the reason - imv - that conviction of Trump himself was not possible was because of the clear obstruction of justice.
Volume 2 documents 10 episodes of obstruction of justice by then-president Trump. Seven of these have a very high likelihood of conviction if brought to trial. (Of course this is before SCOTUS decided that the president may be immune to such things). Mueller couldn't charge Trump as he was bound by Justice Department policy that a sitting president could not be charged.
Both volumes are totally damning of Trump.
In a sane world he would have been impeached immediately and then charged. Seriously it is way beyond a political consideration, it is a gross travesty of justice that Bill Barr and GOPs members of Congress were able to quench the power of this. Future law students will study the report and be stunned.
As I said, it's worth reading.
AFZ
Definitely “and,” not “or.”
*seizing* not *ceasing*
Idiot alien...
Meanwhile, reports here in the UK indicate that Ms Harris' campaign is going well, so there is indeed hope...
One factor which I've recently mentioned is the way supposedly disinterested parties are eager to make excuses for Donald Trump. For example, @MPaul recently said Trump's post-election attempt to overthrow the government "seemed exaggerated by his enemies and the media". It seems to me that trying to overthrow the government after you lose an election is pretty bad by itself and would be hard to "exaggerate". By framing it this way @MPaul is minimizing and normalizing Trump's attempt to seize power, implying the only reason anyone would object is if they were Trump's enemies.
It's unlikely that Biden will be able to enact any of this, let alone all of it, in his remaining six months in office, but I think it sets an important tone. It establishes the Democrats as the party in favor of the rule of law and against corruption. Republicans will have to find some way to deflect the impression that they're against the rule of law and in favor of corruption. This will also keep the issue in front of the public during the presidential election, which seems like a good time to debate such things.
I was somewhat amused that the Post's byline simply said "The writer is president of the United States".
Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post [ paywall ]:
This is pretty remarkable for someone with as lengthy a media presence as Donald Trump.
Apologies for the sark, but you've really got to be doing a bit more self criticism if you are going to criticise/support a politician because they do or don't laugh in public.
Maybe we can consult the several decades worth of video recordings we have of Jesus (just like we have of Donald Trump) to see whether this is the case.
Seriously, if Donald Trump is going to try to make an issue out of Kamala Harris' laugh, he's made his own weird lack of laughter an issue.
Trump OTOH seems more like an attempt (by an alien race) at creating a Human Being, but they haven't made all that good a job of it...
Personally, I think there’s a lot of humor in the parables. And I have a hard time imagining that the guy who called James and John “So s of Thunder” or Simon Peters “Rock” (“Rocky” in modern English?) didn’t laugh.
But seriously, I strongly suspect @Gramps49 was alluding to how Trump has mocked Harris’s laugh, not seriously giving his criterion for selecting a candidate.
Consider the possibility, @KoF, that as a non-American, you might be missing a lot of context and undercurrent here.
No.
Trump is mocking Harris's laugh in his usual pathetic way that he will attack everyone. It is purile and speaks to his dark soul. Similarly, Trump lacks a sense of humour. That's well documented by people who know him. He does not laugh. He smirks. It is part of his sociopathy.
So this criteria is actually a beautiful surrogate for character and ability. Hence it is a very reasonable way of deciding who to vote for.
AFZ
P.s. I'm certain Jesus laughed.
As Michael Card put it:
The Nazarene could hunger and the Nazarene could cry,
And he could laugh with all the fullness of heart
And those who hardly knew him and those who knew him well,
Could feel the contradiction from the start.
He came, he saw, he surrendered all,
So that we might be born again,
And the fact of his humanity was there for all to see,
He was not like any other man
And yet, so much like me.
Following up on Trump's promise to end future voting in the U.S., he was given the opportunity to deny that's what he meant on Fox News and he decided to double down.
At this point the refusal to believe Trump means to do what he says is becoming downright pathological. For those who are interested the video of Trump verbally dancing around and doing everything except denying he wants to cancel future elections can be found here. Particularly brazen was his claim that voters he was addressing (Christian Nationalists attending a Turning Point Action event) are low turnout voters.
My push-back was simply on the difference between “he said he’d do away with elections” and “he said they wouldn’t have to vote again, which it’s hard to understand as meaning anything other than that hed do away with elections.”
Actually, Trump is telling the truth. No-one will ever have to vote for Trump again. He can only serve two terms.
I think he's just being mischievous in how he expresses it, knowing that people on the left will get their knickers in a twist about him trying to cancel future elections
Well, this will be the last election where Trump runs, either because he follows the Constitution or he doesn't. I found it particularly telling the way he jumped back as if stung when Ingraham said "they won't have to vote for you because you'll have four years in office" and Trump immediately redirected the conversation. It's at about the 1:20 mark in the video.
Honestly at this point "he can only serve two terms" is on the same level as "he has to accept the results of the electoral college".
Nah. It's just incoherent gibberish.
"Christians don't vote" seriously???
But he's never mischievous. Devious, or sneaky, maybe. Duplicitous. Insincere. But not mischievous, because that implies a certain playfulness, and this guy is not playful.
Then you don't know Jesus. He told some very funny jokes. Some we know as parables.
You might like to read this Bible Study
I also like that she calls Trump's attacks and speeches as weird. That will only get him more angry.
It looks to me like a rather straight-forward case of dog-whistle politics, only Trump is not very subtle about it.
A whistle we can all hear, easily.
It will be the bigliest, the bestestest,
"amazing / beautiful / best / big league / brilliant / elegant / fabulous / fantastic / fine / good / great / happy / honest / incredible / nice / outstanding / phenomenal / powerful / sophisticated / special / strong / successful / top / tremendous / unbelievable"
maybe even
"big / huge / major / many / massive / numerous / staggering / substantial / tough / vast"
(Borrowed from The Atlantic, "How to talk like Trump", March 2018 Issue).
Plus Vance. The couch thing was false (and even if it wasn’t, it’s frankly kinky but innocuous, as long as it was his own furniture—it’s everything else about him that’s repulsive), but he’s also got the “weird” thing going on. (Not the good kind of weird, of course.)
From Newsweek:
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-manchin-takes-swipe-jd-vance-very-weird-comments-1932293
Weird indeed.
JD Vance is Roman Catholic, an organization led by childless men for 2000 years and never had to raise a family. (I know that's not quite right, but go with the thought.)