Political Roundtable Part XVI

[gtn130]

There was a period of time where 1/3 of Democrats believed that George Bush helped plan or at least knew all about the attack on the World Trade Center before September 11.

Did Ds make Hillary?

I think your anger is misdirected. It should be at the DNC, the Hillary nomination and the really bad campaign she waged.

DC, come on, dude.

I should be mad that Hillary was a mediocre candidate and couldn't prevent deplorables from taking over the country? I suppose I am mad about that, but it's pretty silly to think Hillary and the DNC are THE problem here.

Imagine an alternate universe wherein deplorable idiots have zero political capital because they're, you know, deplorable idiots. Instead these insufferable bigoted morons spend their days watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh where racism is normalized and they're told the liberals are worse than pedophiles and you should vote Roy Moore because he loves Jesus.

Maybe the GOP shouldn't welcome this garbage into their party and should act with a modicum of integrity instead of being laser-focused on grabbing and consolidating power?

The way that the Republican establishment acted during the Alabama race and that waaay too many Republicans voted for Roy Moore is proof that there is moral decay in the party.

Yeah, Doug Jones won by 1.5%. 48.4% of the Alabama electorate thought that voting Pedophile was better than voting Democrat.

Let's focus on the DNC, though. I'm sure all of those pedo votes would have swung for Doug Jones if not for Donna Brazile!

[Pointgod]

I should be mad that Hillary was a mediocre candidate and couldn't prevent deplorables from taking over the country? I suppose I am mad about that, but it's pretty silly to think Hillary and the DNC are THE problem here.

Yes, you should be absolutely pissed off. In basketball terms - you had EG running the DNC, your team didn't play defense well, didn't play offense well and did horribly in the draft. You should be throwing you computer when you see the stupid stuff you did. You can't worry about what the other team did - you worry about what you did. Period, end of story.

The reason we have a Trump is because of a vacuum. And we are all responsible for that vacuum.

Can't worry about the other team eroding every norm we have and maximizing racial divide in an effort to further empower and enrich the Trumpian 1%ers? Can't be mad that the GOP is actively trying to tear down our democracy? Ok, I'll ignore that. I'll focus instead on the DNC being somewhat incompetent!

And how are we all responsible here?

-I donated and voted for Bernie
-I then donated, phone banked and voted for Hillary
-I told literally every person I know that Trump is awful and will ruin our country

What exactly should I have done to prevent Trump from becoming president?

Centrism is dumb, dude. You think you're outsmarting everyone by thinking that both sides are equally bad, but you're plainly and obviously wrong. One side is way, way, way worse than the other.

This needs to be repeated every time bothsidesism is brought up. Many people warned against Trump and everything that would happen. Just go back watch his campaign rallies and those Presidential debates. The guy has no clue what he was talking about, he wanted to ban a whole **** religion!

The problem is two fold. Way too many deplorables and not enough people took Trump as a serious threat. Seems like people are waking up now but there's a lot of damage that has already been done.

[cammac]

Remember if you're a far left progressive Republicans will always be the worst option. They have no morals, are corrupt and show total disregard for any type of established process or non partisanship. False equivalences don't help and the Dems tearing each other down from within will only contribute to four more years of Trump.

I definitely don't support false equivalencies whatsoever, but the whole "support us because no matter what they're worse" is a horrible, horrible logic to be trying to sell to would-be supporters, and it's a big part of why Hillary didn't do as well as Obama did.

Here's the thing though I guarantee you Hillary addressed most of the left's concerns in her policies laid out on her website. Blame her for not talking more about her policies and blame the media for sucking up airtime talking about Trump instead of policies. Sometimes you have to do research first hand. And even if you only agree with 80% of a Democrats position that's most likely a lot more than the Republican counterpart.

You also have to look at the bigger picture. Liberals in America are still right of some Conservatives in other countries so not every state is going to support a far left progressive. And I'm not convinced that a Progressive Democratic minority would be more effectice than current congress. Getting more Democrats in Congress is the only way to push Liberal policies forward. Meanwhile Trump is stacking the courts with barely qualified, but young Conservative judges and he could appoint another Sumpreme Court seat or two. When that happens you can turn back the clock on progressive causes. So all this hand wringing about Clinton or <insert imperfect Democrat> is misplaced when there's even a 1% chance of giving Republicans ultimate power.

You are right I was with the Progressive Conservative Party for most of my life until it lost it's progressive label. I've been a independent ever since but even the Conservative Party in Canada would be a moderate Republican.When I labelled myself as a Progressive Conservative I would have been more liberal than most Democrats.

[I_Like_Dirt]

Here's the thing though I guarantee you Hillary addressed most of the left's concerns in her policies laid out on her website. Blame her for not talking more about her policies and blame the media for sucking up airtime talking about Trump instead of policies. Sometimes you have to do research first hand. And even if you only agree with 80% of a Democrats position that's most likely a lot more than the Republican counterpart.

I get what you're saying, absolutely. The catch here is that, depending on your viewpoint, this paragraph reads:

(a) It's on Hillary's website. Just go look, the website answers everything.

(b) Just because the information you've found thus far on Hillary doesn't make you want to support her, it's on you to do research to change your own mind.

(c) Vote for Hillary because the Republicans are worse.

You seriously don't see how that isn't a recurring issue there? I mean, if someone wanted to say "I know people perceive me as aloof and out of touch, but I want to come across as more condescending than that" this is along the lines of what a person would come up with.

[cammac]

Even Republican supporters are saying this.

“WHY ARE REPUBLICANS RAISING TAXES ON MILLIONS OF AMERICANS?”
This should never happen under unified Republican government. There are four words that no American should ever be able to utter: “Republicans raised my taxes.” … — Marc Thiessen , Nov 29

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/19/1725805/-GOP-columnist-4-words-no-American-should-ever-utter-Republicans-raised-my-taxes

[dckingsfan]

Yes, you should be absolutely pissed off. In basketball terms - you had EG running the DNC, your team didn't play defense well, didn't play offense well and did horribly in the draft. You should be throwing you computer when you see the stupid stuff you did. You can't worry about what the other team did - you worry about what you did. Period, end of story.

The reason we have a Trump is because of a vacuum. And we are all responsible for that vacuum.

Can't worry about the other team eroding every norm we have and maximizing racial divide in an effort to further empower and enrich the Trumpian 1%ers? Can't be mad that the GOP is actively trying to tear down our democracy? Ok, I'll ignore that. I'll focus instead on the DNC being somewhat incompetent!

And how are we all responsible here?

-I donated and voted for Bernie
-I then donated, phone banked and voted for Hillary
-I told literally every person I know that Trump is awful and will ruin our country

What exactly should I have done to prevent Trump from becoming president?

Centrism is dumb, dude. You think you're outsmarting everyone by thinking that both sides are equally bad, but you're plainly and obviously wrong. One side is way, way, way worse than the other.

This needs to be repeated every time bothsidesism is brought up. Many people warned against Trump and everything that would happen. Just go back watch his campaign rallies and those Presidential debates. The guy has no clue what he was talking about, he wanted to ban a whole **** religion!

The problem is two fold. Way too many deplorables and not enough people took Trump as a serious threat. Seems like people are waking up now but there's a lot of damage that has already been done.

Yes, you should continue to repeat this mantra so you don't need to actually do anything

We worked just hard enough to lose... that should burn to no end. I know it burns me.

[dckingsfan]

The way that the Republican establishment acted during the Alabama race and that waaay too many Republicans voted for Roy Moore is proof that there is moral decay in the party.

Violent agreement on this one

[FAH1223]

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

Read on Twitter

[dckingsfan]

And this is why a flat tax with no deductions is the moral and correct thing to do. And yet, I hear most from this board (preaching now) defending their deductions.

Having tax carveouts ALWAYS leads to greater income inequality.

[closg00]

I made the mistake of checking in on this thread.

Are you serious? Do you really think Trump's one-liner joke in a stump speech (a really funny joke, by the way) was actually a sincere appeal to Russia to hack Clinton's email?

Considering the numerous contacts with the Trump campaign and Russia. Add the fact that the campaign was in contact with Wikileaks about stolen emails yeah Trump wasn't joking. And you have a low brow sense of humor if that's what passes as a joke.

Use your brain.

If Trump really was in contact with Russia, and they really did lay out some elaborate scheme through Wikileaks to sabotage Hillary's chances for victory, then why would Trump openly talk about it?

OMG, I just burst out-loud laughing at work. Trump told Russians in the Oval Office that:

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

DJT is a very very dumb man. When Trump “joked” about asking the Russians to find Clinton’s emails, this was a psychological “tell” just like whenever he say “believe me”, you know that he just lied about whatever he just told you. The timing of Trumps “joke” coincides with the Trumps camps knowledge about the existence of the Clinton hacks.




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[Wizardspride]

Read on Twitter

[I_Like_Dirt]

And this is why a flat tax with no deductions is the moral and correct thing to do. And yet, I hear most from this board (preaching now) defending their deductions.

Having tax carveouts ALWAYS leads to greater income inequality.

I'm not in love with the flat tax idea, but reducing, or even eliminating carveouts while reconsidering the overall levels of flatness of tax in general. The thing with carveouts is that I really only like them in certain instances as an idea to level the playing field in specific cases, like expenses related to disabilities, etc. That said, I'm certainly not 100% sold on needing them at all, either, and can see a pretty clear path towards me being convinced to do away with them entirely - I just feel the flipside of that is that it needs to come with better government services designed to accommodate certain issues that really need to be accommodated.

To be honest, I feel that, done properly, a single payer system could also do wonders for helping to eliminate a bunch of tax carveouts that really don't need to be there. I would love to see a strong political voice for a single payer system with the intention of also using it as a tool to eliminate a bunch of those carveouts. A 100% flat tax, to me, would take a lot to convince me on, though. The power imbalance it strengthens isn't something I'm interested in. I mean, you could argue pretty easily it's better than the Republican plan or what exists right now, but those are pretty low bars.

[nate33]

Considering the numerous contacts with the Trump campaign and Russia. Add the fact that the campaign was in contact with Wikileaks about stolen emails yeah Trump wasn't joking. And you have a low brow sense of humor if that's what passes as a joke.

Use your brain.

If Trump really was in contact with Russia, and they really did lay out some elaborate scheme through Wikileaks to sabotage Hillary's chances for victory, then why would Trump openly talk about it?

OMG, I just burst out-loud laughing at work. Trump told Russians in the Oval Office that:

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

DJT is a very very dumb man. When Trump “joked” about asking the Russians to find Clinton’s emails, this was a psychological “tell” just like whenever he say “believe me”, you know that he just lied about whatever he just told you. The timing of Trumps “joke” coincides with the Trumps camps knowledge about the existence of the Clinton hacks.




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That's two different subjects. If you want to argue that Trump fired Comey because he considered the investigation a major distraction to his presidency, and maybe even a threat to impeachment, that's fine. That's unrelated to Trump joking that Putin should release the emails he hacked. If Trump really was working secretly with Putin, he wouldn't broadcast it.

[I_Like_Dirt]

If Trump really was working secretly with Putin, he wouldn't broadcast it.

Whether he intended it as a broadcast or not is really entirely beside the point. The reality is that he wrote it, and there appears to be rather strong evidence to suggest there was more than a little behind the scenes stuff going on at the same time. Personally, I'd suggest Trump really didn't care whether or not people took what he wrote literally or not because he knew he had a large section of the population that would go to bat for him regardless of the details. And if that is, in fact, his line of thought, I'd suggest he was right.

Of course, such a reality begs is, not caring about what individuals believed is one thing, but it begs a second question: why bother tweeting as such in the first place? To my mind, there are only two possible answers to that one. The first is that he's out of control and just tweets whatever comes to his mind whenever, which is kind of a big problem if true. The other, is that it's designed to provoke a certain reaction by getting his supporters to stick with him all the more as others react to his comment with concern, or something along those lines, which is honestly worse. Those two possibilities aren't mutually exclusive, either.

[Pointgod]

Here's the thing though I guarantee you Hillary addressed most of the left's concerns in her policies laid out on her website. Blame her for not talking more about her policies and blame the media for sucking up airtime talking about Trump instead of policies. Sometimes you have to do research first hand. And even if you only agree with 80% of a Democrats position that's most likely a lot more than the Republican counterpart.

I get what you're saying, absolutely. The catch here is that, depending on your viewpoint, this paragraph reads:

(a) It's on Hillary's website. Just go look, the website answers everything.

(b) Just because the information you've found thus far on Hillary doesn't make you want to support her, it's on you to do research to change your own mind.

(c) Vote for Hillary because the Republicans are worse.

You seriously don't see how that isn't a recurring issue there? I mean, if someone wanted to say "I know people perceive me as aloof and out of touch, but I want to come across as more condescending than that" this is along the lines of what a person would come up with.

I’d reframe it like this:

1. If I’m worried about climate change instead of relying on the media to relay policies, I should go on Hillary’s website to see her stance on climate change. Same goes for student loans, the economy, national security. Instead screaming well “Hillary didn’t speak to me” do your research.

2. If you don’t like what you see on her website we’ll research Trumps policies and see if they are more in alignment with progressive beliefs. (Spoiler alert they weren’t or they were straight up lies)

3. Vote Hillary because Trump is a existential threat to the country. This wasn’t between Hillary and Kasich, Rubio, Bush or Cruz. This was Donald Trump, a man who encouraged violence at his campaign rallies, showed autoritarian tendicies before the election and complete had zero clue regarding how government actually operates. You can disagree with the first four regarding policies but I can’t find an argument that they would work to dismantle democratic institutions.

4. Republicans in congress have shown zero moral authority on any topic. Given the choice between doing the thing that’s right for the country and the most cynical option Republicans will choose the most cynical. There’s no way they were going to control Trump or truly hold him accountable.

And the viewpoint I’m addressing is the people who lean left or call themselves progressive. I understand that there’s frustration with the system but not doing everything to vote Hillary is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. A good example is money in politics. No Republican controlled congress is going to vote to get money out of politics. No Republican president will sign legislation to get money out of politics. Republicans controlled federal courts won’t vote for it. Neither will the Republican leaning Supreme Court. Realistically even if you had a Democratic controlled congress and President you probably wouldn’t pass it. What it would do is force representatives to draw a line in the sand and pick a side. It puts political pressure on the Democrats and moves issues to the left. Now Democrats in primaries have to defend their position. But from a progressive perspective I don’t see how letting Republicans dictate the direction of the country is a better option than “corporate democrats”

[dckingsfan]

And this is why a flat tax with no deductions is the moral and correct thing to do. And yet, I hear most from this board (preaching now) defending their deductions.

Having tax carveouts ALWAYS leads to greater income inequality.

I'm not in love with the flat tax idea, but reducing, or even eliminating carveouts while reconsidering the overall levels of flatness of tax in general. The thing with carveouts is that I really only like them in certain instances as an idea to level the playing field in specific cases, like expenses related to disabilities, etc. That said, I'm certainly not 100% sold on needing them at all, either, and can see a pretty clear path towards me being convinced to do away with them entirely - I just feel the flipside of that is that it needs to come with better government services designed to accommodate certain issues that really need to be accommodated.

To be honest, I feel that, done properly, a single payer system could also do wonders for helping to eliminate a bunch of tax carveouts that really don't need to be there. I would love to see a strong political voice for a single payer system with the intention of also using it as a tool to eliminate a bunch of those carveouts. A 100% flat tax, to me, would take a lot to convince me on, though. The power imbalance it strengthens isn't something I'm interested in. I mean, you could argue pretty easily it's better than the Republican plan or what exists right now, but those are pretty low bars.

As soon as you go down the carveout path only for specific cases that you like - it will immediately be exploited. This is just history. The Ds had their own carveouts which made the system worse and more complex as well. And even if you liked their carveouts, you probably didn't like the unintended consequences that came with them (AMT for example).

Single payer would only affect one carveout and that is the employer funded healthcare payout. So, really it is a tax fairness issue not a services issue.

And a tax with no carveouts that was still progressive would be by far the fairest. You would have to calculate the numbers to figure out what gets you to 20% of GDP.

Example:
10% for the first 100,000
20% for 100,000 to 200,000
30% for everything above

[Pointgod]

Lol Fox News

Read on Twitter

[Zonkerbl]

Use your brain.

If Trump really was in contact with Russia, and they really did lay out some elaborate scheme through Wikileaks to sabotage Hillary's chances for victory, then why would Trump openly talk about it?

OMG, I just burst out-loud laughing at work. Trump told Russians in the Oval Office that:

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

DJT is a very very dumb man. When Trump “joked” about asking the Russians to find Clinton’s emails, this was a psychological “tell” just like whenever he say “believe me”, you know that he just lied about whatever he just told you. The timing of Trumps “joke” coincides with the Trumps camps knowledge about the existence of the Clinton hacks.




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That's two different subjects. If you want to argue that Trump fired Comey because he considered the investigation a major distraction to his presidency, and maybe even a threat to impeachment, that's fine. That's unrelated to Trump joking that Putin should release the emails he hacked. If Trump really was working secretly with Putin, he wouldn't broadcast it.

I think you've got this 100% wrong.

Here's how Trump would've handled the Russia controversy: The day after the election Trump would have stood up and said "I'd like to thank Russia for helping me beat that vile biyatch Hillary Clinton, because f@#$ Democracy - oops, I mean the Democrats - and the MSM!" And all of his followers would've lapped it up, it would've lasted a newscycle or two until Trump tweeted something else distracting and that would've been the end of it.

No, what happened is his staff were involved in a hushed up conspiracy with Russia but it was pretty low level, Russia was spending maybe a million dollars on it, tops, and low level functionaries were handling it, with some coordination from Mike Flynn. They happened to mention it in passing to Trump and he immediately blurted it out on national TV like a drunken Uncle, "HEY RUSSIANS WHY DON'T YOU *belch* HACK HILLARY'S EMAILS, lol"

Terrified that he would blurt out the whole thing, his staff quietly tamped down on the whole effort. So it was THE ONE controversy where Trump didn't know 100% about it. He didn't go "Let me handle this, dumdums - I'll just double down on it, admit right out that I did it, the MSM will go **** and my followers will eat it up and my polls will go up, watch"

I think Trump is innocent precisely because he did not immediately cop to it. "Haha, suckers, if you were as good a dealmaker as me you could've gotten my golden shower emails and instead the joke's on you!"

The problem is, Trump is the boss and is ultimately responsible for what his staff does, so even though this is a result of massive incompetence on his staff's part, and not something he orchestrated personally (his own personal style of incompetence has a different flavor) I still think when the Dems come rolling into power in 2018 Trump will get impeached *instantly* and Pence is going down with him.

[DCZards]

[stilldropin20]

OMG, I just burst out-loud laughing at work. Trump told Russians in the Oval Office that:

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

DJT is a very very dumb man. When Trump “joked” about asking the Russians to find Clinton’s emails, this was a psychological “tell” just like whenever he say “believe me”, you know that he just lied about whatever he just told you. The timing of Trumps “joke” coincides with the Trumps camps knowledge about the existence of the Clinton hacks.




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That's two different subjects. If you want to argue that Trump fired Comey because he considered the investigation a major distraction to his presidency, and maybe even a threat to impeachment, that's fine. That's unrelated to Trump joking that Putin should release the emails he hacked. If Trump really was working secretly with Putin, he wouldn't broadcast it.

I think you've got this 100% wrong.

Here's how Trump would've handled the Russia controversy: The day after the election Trump would have stood up and said "I'd like to thank Russia for helping me beat that vile biyatch Hillary Clinton, because f@#$ Democracy - oops, I mean the Democrats - and the MSM!" And all of his followers would've lapped it up, it would've lasted a newscycle or two until Trump tweeted something else distracting and that would've been the end of it.

No, what happened is his staff were involved in a hushed up conspiracy with Russia but it was pretty low level, Russia was spending maybe a million dollars on it, tops, and low level functionaries were handling it, with some coordination from Mike Flynn. They happened to mention it in passing to Trump and he immediately blurted it out on national TV like a drunken Uncle, "HEY RUSSIANS WHY DON'T YOU *belch* HACK HILLARY'S EMAILS, lol"

Terrified that he would blurt out the whole thing, his staff quietly tamped down on the whole effort. So it was THE ONE controversy where Trump didn't know 100% about it. He didn't go "Let me handle this, dumdums - I'll just double down on it, admit right out that I did it, the MSM will go **** and my followers will eat it up and my polls will go up, watch"

I think Trump is innocent precisely because he did not immediately cop to it. "Haha, suckers, if you were as good a dealmaker as me you could've gotten my golden shower emails and instead the joke's on you!"

The problem is, Trump is the boss and is ultimately responsible for what his staff does, so even though this is a result of massive incompetence on his staff's part, and not something he orchestrated personally (his own personal style of incompetence has a different flavor) I still think when the Dems come rolling into power in 2018 Trump will get impeached *instantly* and Pence is going down with him.

Nah brah,

You got it wrong. Obama and the entire intelligence communities, under Obama, per Obama's orders, declared that Russia hacked the election in November and December 2016. They then tone that rhetoric down to interfered with the election.

And CNN ran with it and has been running with it ever since.

If there was ever any evidence at all that Trump colluded with Russia first of all they would know real time because they were already surveilling almost the entire Trump team at that point.

And if they had it just nullify the damn election.

And I'm serious about that just nullify the damn election already and award HRC the damn presidency.

And deal with the Fallout if they( the Obama Administration) was wrong about collusion. And they clearly are wrong. otherwise come with the evidence already.

Just like Hillary said on October 30th to comey, "bring out what you got."

And that's just it they got nothing otherwise we'd see it already. This is a fishing expedition to find something, anything.

And nobody lives a perfect life. you put the FBI on any human being on planet Earth, including Mother Teresa, and they will find something. Even if it's not enough to convict or indict it will be enough to swing that 1% of Voters in the next election.

And that's the plan. Everybody knows that's the plan here. The plan is to swing votes. To keep this investigation as long as possible. Drip-drip-drip. Tick Tock. And take as many seats back in the house and send it along the way. And eventually take back the White House. On nothing. no charges whatsoever.

I'd like to take this time to remind everyone that it doesn't matter if Russia helped anyone at any point. The only issue is if Trump colluded with them to do so and is not acting in the best interest of the American people and instead working for the Russian government which he clearly is not.

And frankly Trump and his team of lawyers are well aware of what's going on here and they fully intend to get to the bottom of it as does Judicial Watch as does the hill has does a lot of other journalists.

This is the dirtiest of dirty politics that has been played in the modern era. This is downright Banana Republic bull crap.

Everyone sees right through it.

Brought to you all by Barack Obama himself. The Constitutional law scholar. Wow!!!!

And the bad part is that people like me are going to fully support the Trump Administration for doing the same thing to the next Administration. Eye for an eye baby.

Or we can all just grow up act like adults accept the results of the election and give Trump the opportunity to govern? He clearly is doing a very good job.

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