"I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf." --Donald J. Trump, August, 2016

@scilynt Yeah…
I’m actually really, really conservative. For example, I was disappointed I was a few weeks too young to vote for Alan Keyes in the 2000 Republican primary.

President Trump is a Republican, but he’s not conservative. To be clear, I am NOT calling him a liberal, either. He really does seem to be veering toward fascism, I believe. It’s really weird and disappointing that President Trump has convinced the nation that this is what conservatism looks like.

The Republican party has really gone crazy. I have a hard time pointing to too many Republicans in government who are actually conservative anymore since Justin Amash left.
It was really weird to see the announcement that one of the only principled conservatives in congress, or possibly the only principled conservative was leaving the GOP only for the comment section to be full of “good riddance, liberal! TRUMP2020!” and “Don’t let the screen door hit you, RINO!”

I really wanted to give Donald Trump a chance to surprise me. Maybe his public persona prior to the election was all an act? No, it wasn’t. I was slow to come around early on because I sincerely believe that all politicians are just the sickest, most disgusting, terrible and corrupt people in the world. But the President really has taken things to a whole new level on the public, obvious, an oblivious corruption front.

@Limewater @scilynt limewater, I think you’re exactly right. I used to be conservative but now I’m actually more of a centrist. In the last several elections I’ve voted in equal numbers for Republicans, Democrats and independents.

Trump is not what I recognize as a conservative though. Tariffs, protectionist economics, suppression of freedom of speech, break down and merging of three pillars of government into one office, disrespect of military, spending on lavish vanity projects, federal government violating rights of states, pushing away military allies and cozying up to dictators… These all used to be things Republicans rallied against.

I am usually happiest when there is a balance between parties. It’s harder to get things done, but it’s harder for the craziest ideas of either party to get through. Right now though, I cringe at what Trump has done to the Republican party. He has bullied out all the common sense Republicans and replaced them with hate-politics.

Despite not liking any party to have too much control, I actually find myself hoping the Republicans get demolished in this election. Not because I like the idea of a powerful Democrat government but because I want the Republican party to be shocked thoroughly never to attempt to veer towards fascism ever again. The Republican party needs a wake up call that it is treading on dangerous ground following Trump and pushing independents and neutrals into Democrat arms.

I can’t imagine what state democracy will be in if Trump gets four more years. He is normalizing things which shouldn’t happen in democracies.

Regardless who wins, I think he has highlighted a danger to our political system. The office of President has become too powerful. The founders never meant it to be an office that could dominate the legislative and judicial branches. Whoever is the next president, Biden or Trump again, the country needs to look at resetting some of the powers of the Presidency. It has become too powerful and too capable of damaging democracy with the wrong man in charge.

@Limewater @OnionSoup exactly! Although I’m more of a liberal, sometimes even progressive, while other times more conservative, depending on the topic, I stuck to the title of “independent” because both parties, at least their establishment wings, are thoroughly corrupted and disgusting. Both will do whatever they can to obtain power and control and, in the end, money. Which is another thing massively wrong with our system, the insane ammount of money and money influencers in our system. Our two party system is broken and desperately corrupt. And neither will help to allow any other competing parties. It’s such a sham and frustrating that we basically allow and condone it by continuing to go along with it. And it’s only going to continue getting worse. Before I’d say it didn’t matter if Dem or GOP were currently in charge, they all were screwing us lol. But after 3 years of Trump becoming the leader and face of Republican party, I have to admit that, yes, in this time and age “Republicans” (at least Trump Republicans) are actually worse because they not only condone Trump’s words and actions but even help cover up, excuse and fail to offer their oversight duty in almost every situation. Although partisian politics has always sucked, it seems it used to be you could still always count of them to put “country before party” in the end. Not so anymone.

That isn’t to excuse Democrats at all. They are almost just as bad, just as sold out to corporations/donor class and screw the working class too…they just don’t feel comfortable doing it out in the open lol. Republicans don’t even bother hiding it anymore lol.

I don’t like Biden at all. He has a crappy record, often on the wrong side of history. He is super sketchy with women, especially little girls. And it’s very clear he’s on the way out mentally. I worry he will ruin the polling lead he has now with crashing and burning at the debates. Sure, Trump is also in mental degradation too but he doesn’t need to be all that sharp to just call names and spout off the same usual lies so his 3rd grade playground style of debates might actually destroy Biden. At the very least it will with his diehard followers.

And I hated Hillary with a passion. I still feel we might have been worse off in several ways with her instead of Trump, though every day that’s harder to believe lol. I do get Trump’s popularity in 2015/16… He was the “outside voice” the guy that talked crap about the corruption and he wasn’t the same old sellout politician. And he wasn’t Hillary. I can see how many people thought he was worth the risk. But yeah lol, for anyone that isn’t part of his cult like following, we can see how that absolutely backfired and how wrong that gamble was in pretty much every way. Not only way he just as corrupt and a corporate sellout as any other regular politician, he was actually worse and self enrichening on top of that. And he surrounded himself with criminals and scam artist. Not only did he not “drain the swamp” but he filled it beyond what anyone could have imagined.

Again, I’m not at all excited about a Biden presidency but I honestly believe if Trump gets 4 more years it will literally tear this country apart and be even more devastating. I never thought I’d say this but I miss the Bush Republican days . Sure, I thought Bush jr. Was an idiot at the time and felt he screwed up in a lot of ways but as dumb a he acted sometimes, Trump makes him look like a genius and a perfect statesman lol. At least with him it might just be me disagreeing with his policy based on ideology ideas but with Trump it’s an honest fear for our country and our citizens and a fear for our democracy.

I only hope there are enough real conservatives and Republicans that can not abide more Trump so it will be enough of a landslide loss that he can’t convince his cult that it was voter fraud or some other nonsense. If it’s a closer election then it’s going to be a nightmare. As crazy and alarmist as it may sound, I now actually worry about Trump trying to stoke some sort of “civil war” in his desperation to stay in power. Not just for his ego but also for his presumed invulnerability to likely prosecution worries if he’s out of office. Scary times… For way too many damn reasons. Fucking 2020! 🥴

@Limewater @scilynt Trump has very much split Republicans. I’ll use my wife’s family as an example. They are all die-hard Republicans (which is funny because my wife is very liberal).

Her father’s side of the family are all fiscal Republicans and they HATE Trump (these are people who have held fund raising events for Republicans in the past).

Her mother’s side of the family are all evangelical Republicans and they LOVE Trump. Even though they admit he is a flawed man, her mother says “God put a flawed man as President for a reason to teach us” (gag).

Now, the fact that a lot of Republicans don’t like Trump doesn’t mean they won’t vote for him. In the end it often comes down to inertia, they’ve always voted Republican… And it comes down to fear-factor of “creepy Biden”. Even my wife who is extremely liberal until last 6 years or so always voted Republican because that’s what her family did.

As for Biden, my main worry about him is, despite being a VP for 8 years, he’s a complete unknown. I’ve no idea what the heck he stands for with any confidence. The only reason I’m planning to vote for him is because I think Trump needs to be stopped before he destroys democracy.

Usually I’d vote third party if I don’t like the main candidatea, but not voting for Biden this time seems like a dangerous move… And it’s not that I don’t like Biden , it’s that he appears to be a complete unknown.

@OnionSoup @scilynt I believe I would qualify as an evangelical myself. I do not understand the alliance between American evangelical leadership and President Trump. I mean, I have some theories…

I do believe that we should be respectful of our leaders, and we are commanded to do so. And like him or not Donald Trump is the leader of our country. But by his own words the man is not a Christian, and the bizarre Christian association with him and with politics in general is just really gross, and I believe it is really bad for the Church.

@Limewater @OnionSoup @scilynt It seems that the some of the religious have bound themselves to the republican party, no matter what. It mostly comes down to a lot of 1 issue voters, that will only vote for someone promising to stop abortion. Then once trump was elected a subset of the religious leadership started calling him the god chosen leader, since he was elected: it was obviously gods will that he be elected. Never mind that other presidents had been elected before that they didn’t support in this way. The same people who had no respect for Obama demand respect for a non-religious man who’s on his 3rd trophy wife, has had multiple affairs, even on campaign trail couldn’t refrain from bragging about what he could do to women, has been know for years to be racist in attitude and policies.

@SpacedInvader
As a taxpayer, I care about $138 MILLION DOLLARS spent “entertaining” POTUS.

Especially a POTUS that is a sociopathic lying sack of shit and made the promise quoted in the topic.

Who cares what you think.

@mike808 The title has two statements, and both are lies.

@mike808 @SpacedInvader If the best they can come up with is Creepy Joe Biden, you can keep right on not caring what he thinks for the next four years of Trump’s Presidency. Classic TDS.

@cjester66 @mike808 @SpacedInvader … I guess it is a political-unreality-television thread. Why not:

You all realize you’re in a set of cults, right? Cults meant to keep their respective leaders in power.

The Trump-hating frame that’s on all mainstream media, while very much “based on a true story”, as it were, is a distortion of the truth. I’m pretty sure part of everyone’s overreactive deal is that they feel the cognitive dissonance.

Trump’s nicknames don’t even pretend not to be propagandistic bullshit. FFS. Don’t repeat that shit. It’s the death of consciousness. If you’re going to hate Biden, examine why, and then say something honest.

@SpacedInvader I have a hunch that if it were 2015 and Obama were playing all that golf, you’d care…

@Felton10 Proof that karma is still on our side.

@Felton10 Yet…

@cinoclav Two pics one with class and one of (with) an ass. Guess which is which.

@Kidsandliz

Trump may not have been either invited, or a welcome/desired presence, at John Lewis’s funeral.

Trump knew he was not welcome at John McCain’s funeral and didn’t go. Sent the Kushners instead, if I recall.

@f00l I am sure he wasn’t desired there as they didn’t get along.

@Felton10 Inhalers work good too!

@Felton10 @ThatsHeadly None of this is weirder than the stuff the doctor Trump was promoting has said.

@ELUNO @Felton10 Yeah. Who knew demon sperm was a real thing?

@Felton10 Wherever I look, I see six, not seven.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/08/01/donald-trumps-bankruptcies/

Not only is that number wrong, it’s not contextually complete enough to be an entire point. This is the problem with political discussions. Everybody does it wrong. Lying about Trump only makes him stronger.

Allowing yourself the whiff of unearned satisfaction from some half-accurate dig only

(a) makes people who disagree with you think there’s nothing there and
(b) encourages people who already agree with you to be overconfident and repeat that kind of stuff themselves.

The likes of Trump, enabled by the Republican party, can’t be clearly enough distinguished from the Democratic party, at this point. And that’s everybody’s fault. American adults, at least, are too childish to handle the Internet, is my conclusion.

This’d be a great country if the dominant cultures tried being honest. Means not ends. It wouldn’t feel safe but it’s the only thing that could work.

@InnocuousFarmer Whether it is 6 or 7, doesn’t make any difference-the man was and is totally unqualified to be President. His supporters don’t care how many times he went bankrupt, how many porn stars he had sex with while married, how much taxpayer money he is putting in his pocket-they are low information individuals who for the most part don’t have the education or mental capacity to understand what damage this disgusting despicable person is doing to this country.

@Felton10 Imagine that a hypothetical low-information voter encounters you. All they’ll see is that you’re angry and can’t be bothered with facts or true-enough stories. It’ll look like you hate Trump as a first principle, and are willing to throw anything at the wall as long as it’s compatible with hating Trump. You’re virtually demanding they ignore you.

Those people can and do change their minds when confronted with information, if they’ve got room to breathe. Not all of them, and sometimes it takes a while. Still though, that’s the approach.

@InnocuousFarmer Well maybe you have been lucky enough to meet people who voted for Trump in the past and are willing to listen to facts and maybe change their mind, but my experience has been just the opposite. Those that I have met and believe I try not to discuss politics as my true feelings obviously come out (know you find that hard to believe) are closed minded and do not want to listen to facts or reason. That is why I try to avoid such people both socially and in business.

@Felton10 @InnocuousFarmer around here few change their mind (only 268 people in this county voted against Trump). Rational, thoughtful, fact filled conversations are not possible in 99% of the cases here.

Part of the problem is blind belief in anything Trump says and the rest is “fake news”. That is a very, very hard wall to break though. Been trying on the covid subject and this is still the case even though we are headed to #1 per capita for corona, our 4 local hospitals are at capacity and have been like that for a while, including patients who are on ventilators parked in the ER for days waiting for ICU to have a bed. Person said to me this is no worse than the flu. I pointed out the current hospital situation locally and asked him when was it like this with the flu? He said that the doctors are admitting patients who don’t need to be admitted to make it look worse than it is. Sigh. I’ve found logic generally doesn’t work (any more than it is working on this thread either).

@InnocuousFarmer @Kidsandliz I know-Trump’s supporters are so closed minded and stupid-if they had any brains they would have figured out how much they were being hurt by everything that idiot does.

@Felton10 @Kidsandliz I don’t think you guys understand those people. Seems like there’s a lot of seeking confirmation that whatever is most comfortable is also most right. The Trump voters must be idiots, and non-Trump voters are normal people. Easy-peasy.

Ultimately we’re just going to have two trash parties fighting like imbeciles, never mind which side is trashier. You can see it in how people are misrepresenting that recent Trump interview. It makes him look bad enough by itself, but everybody wants to turn it into an even-worse series of misleading memes anyways.

Trump’s a focal point, but if things weren’t massively dysfunctional to begin with (or if we had a healthy culture capable of recognizing and condemning propaganda as a first principle), he’d never have gotten traction in the first place.

There’s not much point in winning against or writing off a group as large as Republican voters. All you get as a result is a situation almost as bad – we all agree, say, that the red side is a bunch of terrible people and Biden gets elected. That doesn’t solve much. All the social cultural problems just fester.

Trump voters aren’t the cancer, just (some of) the symptoms, inasmuch as they voted for him. That same human nature animates the left as easily as the right. Being simple-minded and dishonest doesn’t help.

The other side of that is, it asks too much of people to walk out of a cult in a minute’s conversation, on their own power, while they’re surrounded by people reinforcing that cult-identity. It’s well outside human nature to pull that off. The best you can do, to borrow from Christianity, is “plant seeds”. Part of that is being demonstrably, consistently honest.

To do that, when there’s as big a gulf as exists currently with the media and everything, you just can’t allow yourself to ever be motivated when reasoning. In conversations, that means when somebody makes a point instead of contradicting it, you let it sit there and then poke at it to see where it came from and to find valid parts, even if the point’s end seems repugnant. You do that for years.

I saw something recently, from a couple years ago. Look up Daryl Davis on Youtube. He’s got a TED talk about his interactions with a KKK … wizard or something. That’s the aspirational model that we need.

@InnocuousFarmer @Kidsandliz I understand that most of his supporters do so out of greed (everything he is doing has helped them financially), racism (someone finally speaks their language) or hatred (everyone he hates they hate). But where you and disagree is that regardless of why the misguided people support him, at some point one has to put the good of the world and the country first or else everything they believe in will tumbling down. That is why I question the mental competency, the intelligence, the educational background of the Trump’s supporters. They for the most part cannot be in their right mind either because they were born that way or they can’t see the big picture.

@Felton10 @Kidsandliz The same kind of people are voting in the same dumb way on the left. That’s a cartoonish representation of the enormous number of people who vote for Trump, or alternately, it doesn’t take into account how bad nearly everyone’s contribution to the entire process is, even if, basically by luck, some people happen to vote for a Democrat.

I don’t agree with what you’re saying about why people vote for him (other than a minority of them), and I think I do agree with everything you wrote after the line where you said we disagreed.

@Felton10 @InnocuousFarmer The folks I know who I am friends with who are die hard Trump supporters are very “normal” people (and there are nut cases who are not, but I am not friends with them). Except that they were susceptible to Trump’s message for whatever reason. They then uncritically believe everything he says, even if it is contradictory. They (like everyone), of course, are susceptible to confirmatory bias and that is operating big time. Cognitive dissonance is another factor/bias that keeps them on the “trump brick road”. And, as a result, their pool of information and where it comes from is very different from, for example, my pool of information (which comes from, in a large part, business and science/medical peer reviewed journals).

This makes conversation difficult as “alternative” explanations are used to “explain” “facts” and these alternative explanations tend to run towards personal character assignation (as we have seen to some degree here and to a pretty big extent in the political arena) along with a great deal of twisting of information (expected as a result of cognitive dissonance)… For example the “libertad” doctors (apparently all of them now) admitting (locally) patients who don’t need to be admitted to explain our current overflow situation at all 4 local hospitals that has been going on for a while, or all researchers are democrats who are making up information to bring down Trump (including the medical researchers), or the research comes from China so is fake news…

Trump is very skilled at selling snake oil to the crowd that is vulnerable (and there would be many different reasons those folks are vulnerable) and these folks have been sold the farm. Except that farm isn’t real. Then there is another group whose interests align (the wealthy and other “one issue” groups) and many care more about outcomes that are in their own self interests than the means that were used to achieve those outcomes, nor what is going on outside of their own interests, and then the politicians who want their careers to continue and have seen his single minded approach to destroying those not 100% blindly loyal to him (from his point of view)… and there are likely more reasons why people align with him and excuse his behavior.

I doubt there is going to be one “technique” to crack that group because there are so many different reasons why people are on the Trump bandwagon. At least with the folks I know logic and science are not working very well in the face of them changing their mind on corona virus topic. I also find interesting that the folks I know can’t articulate why they are for him other than he has their best interests at heart - no real good examples given even when I ask (and in some cases not able to articulate a single example). Umm ok. Don’t think so and gave some examples of things not in their best interests. No dice. It was the democrats who thwarted him from helping them and if that didn’t work the rest was fake news.

@Mehrocco_Mole
Um, you seem to have overlooked the more likely total of 266 outings, since our prodigious Liar-in-Chief also lies about what he was doing for five hours or so in good weather while staying at his private golf club where no press is allowed to confirm any other activity during those times that the official white house secretary simply fails to record any alternative claim of productive “work” during the 160 additional times he was playing golf.

His predecessor, on the other hand, had no pathological need to so routinely misrepresent his time with the sole purpose to deceive the American people.

And obamagolfcounter.com documents fewer outings (306) than your alleged source claims with no supporting documentation or independently verifiable means.

So, doing the proper “golf outings per month” calculation, 266/42 is 6.333 outings per month, almost twice the rate of his predecessor.

Facts do suck sometimes. They seem to suck a lot for #45. A whole lot. It’s not a good look for the leader of our country.

@mike808 He owns golf courses so of course he is going to visit them. If you would bother to read the header you would notice that 266 was the number of visits.

…with evidence of playing golf on at least 128 visits.

@Mehrocco_Mole
And more evidence of missing 5 hours of presidential time unaccounted for, most assuredly at the direction of the president himself, for the reasons I’ve already stated - he is a pathological liar and his intentions have no other explanation than to deceive the American public as to how much he really spends golfing instead of the job he chose to run for.

The white house has no explanation for the “gaps” in the time the president claims he is “working”. For the people.

The facts are that this president golfs more than twice as much as he lies about golfing, and does it only to bolster the utterly false fabrication that he doesn’t golf as much as his predecessor.

Sometimes facts suck, don’t they.

@mike808 As much as this president has the MSM on his ass 24/7 do you really think he can take a shit without them knowing? If the president tried to leave the WH or deviate from his schedule while traveling the press would be all over him and you know it. And with over 20 years in television news I definitely do. On the other hand President Trump does not have to clear his schedule with you or me. He has enough people around him to do that.

@Mehrocco_Mole
If this is the hill you want to die on, knock yourself out.

I have no reason to disbelieve that the 266 (and counting) number is anywhere close to the less than half value you want to pretend is accurate, and that not a single one of the other claimed Trump golf outings are complete fabrications, using the Bart Simpson defense.

@mike808 Where is your proof? Where is your evidence? You are obviously making this shit up. I find it so hard to believe that anyone’s hatred for a single man is so intense that they are willing to destroy a nation over it. You spew your liberal crap as facts and don’t source your material. And you liberals are so “Oh, I’m all about love and equality and inclusiveness” and then say the vilest, most hateful garbage and hide behind your freedom of speech to defend it. So much for love. And because I happen to think you are wrong and misguided you cancel me. So much for inclusiveness. You are so hypocritical its sickening.

@Mehrocco_Mole
You’re the one claiming some author/presidential historian with no link is authoritative, I provided a link to my source, and you’re the one claiming a president actively engaged in obstructing justice cannot possibly have spent a single one of the 140+ four hours intentionally missing in his official government schedule playing golf at his private golf club milking the taxpayers for every dollar he can charging the SS the maximum price he can while using that private property to keep the press from catching him and ordering his staff to not record his activities - precisely to deny the public from knowing what an utter, lazy, lying, grifting corrupt sack of worthless piece of human garbage he is. He has been proven to have told the American public over 20,000+ lies, so lying about how much he plays golf isn’t some pizzagate Q-Aanon fantasy here.

And yet, you think he is some paragon of virtue, who would never lie. Not even about how shitty his golf game is.

Facts suck. And they’re not on your side, buddy. Not now, not ever.

P.S. nice job playing the cancel victim card pre-emptively.

I’m sure it makes the 140,000 plus fellow Americans dead from Covid-19 and their barely surviving families in this disaster if an economy feel sorry for your feeling “canceled”.

@Mehrocco_Mole Typical Trumpster reply. The man is not only the worst President’e ever but he is a disgusting despicable human being. Anyone that still supports and enables that pile of human waste is no better than he is and obvious has some serious mental and psychological problems.

@Felton10 @Mehrocco_Mole You really need to see someone about your anger/hate issues. Tell them you have TDS. It’s for your own good.

@Mehrocco_Mole A hundred times yes! Dislike a president based on his policies, not how much golf they play. Obama golfed, Bush cleared brush, Nixon hung out on the waters of Key Biscayne and Truman spent so much time in the Keys they had the southern white house.
Being President is a tough job and no matter who is doing the job, they need a break. Cause even on “break” they are never really off the clock.

@cjester66 @Mehrocco_Mole If being angry about a racist incompetent narcissistic idiot who cares more about himself than the country, then yes I have TDS. Too bad you are so clueless and uninformed you don’t see what a complete POS he is. I weep for this country that there are so many of you low information lemmings around.

@allergycheryl @Mehrocco_Mole Yes being President is a tough job and I have not seen one instance were tRump is doing the job for which was elected. Every action, idea and word out of his mouth is made to enrich him or his family, build on his own personal racism, pander to his redneck low life base and to get him re-elected. Nothing he ever does is to preserve and protect the constitution of the US. The man is total garbage.

@Felton10 @Mehrocco_Mole Seriously? Not one instance is a pretty wide sweeping statement. Let’s take the removal of the financial penalty for not having insurance under the Affordable Healthcare Act. How does that enrich his family, build on the racism you claim he has, pander to what you call his redneck base? And by the way it’s pretty common for presidents to consider how his actions affect his re-election. Read some history.
I’m not defending Trump here, just pointing out that if you want to change the hearts and minds of people you might not make over reaching statements that are not based in fact and certainly don’t insult the people you want to influence.
Even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in awhile.

@allergycheryl @Mehrocco_Mole Ok you want to talk about the removal of the financial penalty under the ACA-let’s do that. The penalty was in the law to make sure as many people as possible got insurance and not only the sick people. By incentiveizing all to buy insurance and penalizing those who don’t, the costs to everyone would come down to be affordable. And lets not forget when the Supreme Court voted to uphold the ACA, Roberts reasoning for siding the the majority was that the penalty was a form of tax which Congress had the right to impose. By getting rid of the penalty, he took away that argument, hoping to invalidate the law which he had nothing to replace it with and hence take away insurance from millions of people. He promised to get rid of the ACA not because he had a better law to replace it with but because he promised his base he would and he was extremely jealous of of Obama and everything good he did and stood for.

You are going to have to come up with a better example than that.

As far as insulting Trump’s supporters, they are too closed minded to listen to reason. The only thing they understand is insults and name calling-why do you think Trump does that on a daily basis.

And your reference to blind pigs is an insult to blind pigs everywhere-Trump is much worse than that.

@allergycheryl @Felton10 @Mehrocco_Mole
The effort to undermine the ACA by removing the “opt-out of healthcare insurance but still stick the rest of the taxpayers with your healthcare bill penalty” was not in any way a Trump “idea”, “plan”, “effort”, or “achievement”. That was done entirely by the Republicans under Moscow Mitch McConnell long before Trump was just a gleam in Putin’s eye.

So to falsely claim that as your example of Trump’s “leadership” or feigned interest in “the good of the people” is pretty sketchy support for your position.

The popular vote loser and his minority of supporters fail to grasp the fact that the 65 million Americans voted for a candidate leading a party that believes healthcare should be decoupled from evermore shitty jobs whose purpose is not to enable healthcare or really any benefits for the workforce at all, but to legalize slavery as a way to eliminate labor costs entirely for the sole purpose of maximizing profit to the owners.

If the benefit of your dear glorious leader to the American citizenry was to let them opt-out of having any healthcare insurance at all, please explain what healthcare and infrastructure (trained doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, effective treatments) in a capitalist economic model would those people and their children expect and be provided by the rest of us that are paying into a system that provides all of those things, and more importantly, who would be paying for this magical healthcare coverage for those that opted out and don’t have insurance?

So, what’s your other example? Take your time. We know it will be hard to find one.

@Felton10 @Mehrocco_Mole Removing the penalty doesn’t remove insurance. And please don’t conflate health insurance with health care. They are totally separate. Until the ACA I chose to self-insure. I paid my health care costs directly. The ACA removed my ability to provide for my own care. Talk about a loss of freedom!
As for “who pays for this magical healthcare coverage” every tax payer already pays for this. Not only do you contribute to Medicaid and Medicare through your current federal taxes, most people pay tax into a public healthcare system, whether it is run by their city, state, or county. The purpose of these taxes is to support healthcare for those that are unable to pay for their own care. In addition, a portion of most state taxes goes into health care for those unable to pay. Did you know that if you receive Medicaid because of your income, you can get your hearing aids for free in most states. Yet if you are able to afford private healthcare those same hearing aids can cost $3,000 or more because they aren’t covered.
Personally, I would love to see a system of private health insurance that was based on a model of coinsurance where you paid premiums based on your actuarial risk and it was truly co-insurance. For example, you pay 20% or 30% of cost and your insurance pays the remainder. After all, insurance is nothing more than the transfer of risk. An insurer is a just a company that is willing to take on a portion of your risk for a fee.
Until TRA86, the government wasn’t even involved in dictating health insurance. We need to repeal that as a start to reform

@allergycheryl @Mehrocco_Mole They removed the penalty towards the aim of invalidating the entire law with nothing to replace it all to satisfy his ego to wipe everything Obama ever did off the face of this earth. I stand by my original statement-has never done anything that was good for the American people. And if by some chance you can run across something that is of minimal benefit, it pails in comparison to all the damage he has done (especially in the environmental and consumer protection areas) that will take years if not decades to repair

That is what you get when a bunch of racist redneck dotards come out from under the rocks where they have been living and listen to a snake oil salesman who promises to cure everything that is wrong with their shitty lives.

@Felton10 @Mehrocco_Mole I really wish you wouldn’t keep proving my point. You need to see someone about all that hate boiling up inside you. I weep for the sickness that has infected you and the rest of your kind.

@cjester66 @Mehrocco_Mole The only point I see is that there are some brain dead people who fail to realize what a danger this racist POS is and has been to our way of life. Maybe my sickness as you call it can be cured by swallowing bleach or taking hydroxychloroquine. Trump seems to think it works for everything including ingrown toe nails to bad breath. Or maybe I should make an appointment to see his new witch doctor to get the demon inside of me taken out with prayer.

@allergycheryl @Felton10 @Mehrocco_Mole
First, I don’t conflate healthcare with health insurance. I also don’t confuse highly coupled systems with independent systems. Our healthcare system is and has been directly funded by insurance as a means to pool risk, not transfer risk as you said.

As for “who pays for this magical healthcare coverage”?

You claim several times things like “every tax payer already pays for this” and “you contribute to Medicaid and Medicare through your current federal taxes”. That sounds nice, but not every taxpayer is covered by Meidcaid or Medicare. So under the pre-ACA, those were taxes that didn’t provide most taxpayers any healthcare at all.

You also claim “most people pay tax into a public healthcare system, whether it is run by their city, state, or county. The purpose of these taxes is to support healthcare for those that are unable to pay for their own care.”

Why are they unable to do that? Because the existing system of employer-provided, actuarial-cost-based insurance failed them. Pre-existing conditions, anyone? Custom per-policy employer-determined “group” risk pools?

You claim “a portion of most state taxes goes into health care for those unable to pay”. Well, that was true, before the ACA. Unfortunately, The reason that was true, was because Congress gave matching “block grants” to the states, effectively doubling their money for free.

The next thing Republican states did was to eliminate those taxes (what self-respecting Republican doesn’t love a tax cut?) because everyone was required to have insurance. If everyone has insurance that must have reasonable required coverage, then why do you need to collect taxes to pay the healthcare infrastructure (doctors hospitals, clinics, prescription benefits, etc) for uninsured people?

That is why the mandate was there. To ensure that everyone was covered, and that everyone was in included in the risk pool.

Also, after the ACA, the Republican-controlled state legislatures refused to expand Medicare and Medicaid to cover everyone that couldn’t afford a real insurance plan, or more importantly, for people whose employers didn’t have any healthcare insurance options at all for their employees.

I’m guessing that since you self-insured, you have no children, no special needs family members, never had cancer or any other illness (addiction, depression, MS, AIDS, etc) that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and are wealthy enough to have no clue about healthcare costs pre-ACA for families with both parents working multiple jobs just to get by, or having to stay at a shitty job with no future only because losing your employer-provided health insurance is an even worse option. I doubt you have special needs children or family elders that can’t afford assisted living or a nursing home for full-time care. Or any of the very real difficult choices the millions of Americans less wealthy than you have to make, often every single day, just to get whatever little bit of healthcare they can afford to provide to themselves, their children, or their loved ones instead of paying rent, their mortgage, utility bills, or putting food on the table.

Did you know that if your kid injures their knee playing sports, a torn meniscus can cost you over $16K for just the first surgery, and leave your kid with additional surgeries and disabilities for the rest of their lives? You might be able to pay that with pocket change, but for a family of four with a household income of $65K (and that’s generous, many make do with far less), that’s a choice between a house or food or a car (to get to a job), and are one doctor’s visit away from bankruptcy.

I would love to see a system of private health insurance that was based on a model of coinsurance where you paid premiums based on your actuarial risk and it was truly co-insurance.

You don’t understand how insurance works. It is actuarial-based - the problem is the system to select of the risk pool is broken. It is determined by producing a fixed profit from that particular pool of people insured by that policy.

That’s why the state exchanges and risk pools (of course, after the insurance companies cherry-picked among the employer plans they already had and didn’t cover larger risk pools to spread costs more equitably) mandated that everyone participate - i.e. get/have insurance coverage that guaranteed basic coverages.

You should try to step outside your privilege and maybe you would understand how broken the system was for the millions that had to suffer under it when you didn’t.

@Mehrocco_Mole

Where is your proof? Where is your evidence? You are obviously making this shit up.

Right fucking here is my proof/source/evidence.

From Salon, July 13, 2020:

Trump falsely claims that he golfs less than Obama during 276th golf course outing as president

President Donald Trump falsely claimed that he golfs less frequently than former President Barack Obama did while in office as he headed for his 276th golf outing in less than four years this weekend.

In truth, Trump has now visited a golf course 276 times as president, according to CNN. Obama played 102 rounds of golf at this point in his presidency, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reported. Obama played 113 rounds of golf through his entire first term, per Golf Digest.

Recognize that source, Mark Knoller?

@allergycheryl

And please don’t conflate health insurance with health care. They are totally separate.

But the problem is in many places you can’t get health care without having health insurance or enough money to pay for it without health insurance. So while they are separate in the sense of how you pay for health care vs getting health care, generally you can’t get health care unless you have a way to pay for it. As a result they are still reasonably tightly coupled.

Until the ACA I chose to self-insure. I paid my health care costs directly. The ACA removed my ability to provide for my own care.

It has’t removed it now since the mandate was removed.

As an aside because of the portion of the law that prohibited discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions, anyone can get individual health insurance if they want to. Whether or not they can pay for it, of course, is another question. I had to choose between health insurance (individual because I was under the ACA limit) and rent. I chose health insurance and lived in someone’s shed. I had to have health insurance or I couldn’t get cancer health care.

Personally, I would love to see a system of private health insurance that was based on a model of coinsurance where you paid premiums based on your actuarial risk and it was truly co-insurance. For example, you pay 20% or 30% of cost and your insurance pays the remainder.

As @mike808 said you don’t seem to understand how the risk pool works - be it car insurance, life insurance, health insurance… It’s all the same. You buy insurance hoping you never have to use it, and are thankful you have it if you need it. With everyone in the risk pool it spread the expenses over more people and so keeps the cost per person down for everyone.

As he also said paying for expensive health care would be out of the reach of most. Let me give you just ONE example (of which I have multiple ones, but one will suffice with respect to affordability). Explain to me how most people would afford this without decent insurance (and I am still in hock over this).

This is long and broken down in case you otherwise don’t believe my total.

The short version is first:

Using your example of “just” paying an unlimited 20% my health care costs for just one cancer would have cost me (not counting any meds for nausea, infections, shingles, etc. getting the port put in, several bone marrow biopsies, ER visits due to chemo and shingles, port flushing, or any other health care I needed those years) around $109,950. If you were self insuring that is only 20% of the total cost.

And that is just for one of the three cancers I have had. Two were in one year with treatment into the second year. I used the blood cancer as my example rather than the breast cancers as I know those costs as I am still paying on them and accumulating them as that one has no cure (the others are finally paid off and that is with health insurance and a limit on out of pocket expenses, although a bunch of years that limit was $7250). How, exactly, is someone supposed to pay for that, and that is at your 20% suggestion, never mind the 100% self insured amount, without a trust fund?

Here is the accounting of where that number came from if you are interested (AKA the long version):

In one year I had cancer #2 and #3. Chemo for cancer #3 - and that was just 4 rounds instead of 6 due to chemo killing most of my bone marrow so I had to stop it early, cost (adjusted insurance rate) a bit over $174,000. Let’s say I had to pay an unlimited 20% co-pay. That comes to $34,800. And that doesn’t count getting the port put in, multiple CT and PET/CT scans, several bone marrow biopsies, multiple neulasta shots to attempt to (unsuccessfully) bring my counts back up, numberous blood draws from my port (more expensive than out of a vein) and the cost of those tests, a couple of ER visits, shingles and meds, anti-nausea meds (those aren’t cheap), tests for the liver damage chemo did (which also contributed to stopping chemo early), the original biopsies and multiday hospitalizations… and then I had the late rituxan crash crisis… the total of all of that (not even including multiple follow up visits - which go on for life since that blood cancer has no cure) runs to something close to $120,000. So that is another $24,000.

Oh yeah the biopsy (failed one that included 4.5 days in the hospital, a kidney infection and the successful one that included 2.5 days in the hospital ran) to roughly $80,000. That comes to $16,000. Check up visits run about $12-13,000 so 2400-2450 a visit for that (for 14 sets of all this so far down from 4 a year to annual). Oh I forgot the other biopsy 3 years into this (and I have one I need to have that has repeatedly been postponed from late March due to covid) that ran around $6000 counting pathology, etc. so $1200… So at your 20% of costs, just for that one cancer my costs would be and that is just ONE of my 3 major cancers.

So I am up to $109,950 I’d owe if I was to pay 20% of my costs with an unlimited out of pocket just for that one cancer. That doesn’t even count other health care, anti nausea, anti viral and antibiotic meds I had to take as I had no memory of those costs other than my co-pay for the anti nausea drug was around $60 just for one of them. Exactly how would one person come up with that kind of money in a 12 month period. And that is just one cancer. Doesn’t even count the other two, nor any other health care I needed. I also had a broken foot, a cat bite that resulted in an infected bone that required an MRI, pneumonia… There isn’t a hospital or doctor out there that I know of that would have continued to treat me if I didn’t keep up with payments. I know that first hand. I had care cut off twice because I fell too far behind even with insurance and it only had a $7500 out of pocket (lost my job over 2 cancers in one year).

I’m just going to briefly interject and point out one of the big reasons why @cjester66 so condescendingly talks about anger and illness is because Rush Limbaugh, FOR YEARS, has literally said on his show, over and over again, that “Liberalism is a mental disease.”

I used to think that Limbaugh was stupid for saying that, and that anyone listening would have to be a full-on moron to believe it. But it just shows how much power propaganda has when it is being relentlessly repeated over and over and over and over again. There are now swathes of people who believe it is a fact. And apparently he/she/it is one of them.

Apologies for the interruption, please continue.

@cjester66 @haydesigner Psych studies show that when you repeat something over and over, even if people start out knowing it isn’t true, a certain percent finally end up believing it is true. Clearly the dump knows how to cash in on that.

@haydesigner Projecting your inadequacies and fears onto others is usually a sign of having been abused as a child. Please stop listening to talk shows and get some help. For your own good.

@Felton10 @Mehrocco_Mole Change is hard. Take a deep breath, pick up the phone and ask for help. It will be OK.

@allergycheryl @Kidsandliz @mike808
I’m just going to quibble with this:

As @mike808 said you don’t seem to understand how the risk pool works - be it car insurance, life insurance, health insurance… It’s all the same.

The way health “insurance” in the United States works is significantly different than how any other form of actual insurance works. It’s not all the same.

I have had car insurance for years. Not everybody can get car insurance. Some people get bad driving records and are just considered too high risk and can’t get it. When I was younger and in a higher-risk category they were allowed to charge me more for it. I have it because I am legally required to and to limit my pesonal financial risk if I cause an accident. I have never made a claim. That is insurance.

I have had health “insurance” for years. It is now considered discrimination to deny someone health insurance even if it is quite obvious that this person is clearly going to be a financial net “drain” on the system. If you know you are going to make a claim, it’s not insurance. I make claims on my health insurance every time anyone in my family goes to the dentist or the pediatrician or endocrinologist or whatever. What we have not is sort of like insurance. It has elements of insurance. It does still somewhat offer a risk pool, but it’s not really the same as insurance anymore.

I’m not making a value judgement here, or claiming that a true insurance system would be better than what we have now. Our healthcare system is a mess. We have something that almost sort of works. I worked out the solution to all of this on a napkin at the Mellow Mushroom in 2003, but waitress took it with her when she cleared our table. Thanks a lot, Jennifer! She’s who you should really be mad at.

@cjester66 Except in this case @haydesigner is giving an example of a psych bias in action. It is Trump that likely had been emotionally abused as a child and his behavior is, and his history of lack of appropriate parental attention in many ways, similar to my kid I adopted at nearly 10 who came to me with full blown attachment disorder. The outcome is similar. One big difference is that he has the position and power to ruin more lives than my kid does.

The rest of this post is about the tragedy of attachment disorder and how it affects people. Draw your own conclusions about trump from what I write about below with respect to how this explains much of his behavior.

Kids who attachment disorder at the level mine does don’t have empathy. The world is about them and how the world affects them and not how they affect the world. What they said yesterday has nothing to do with what they are saying today - as my kid has said more than one in pure bafflement, “But mom, that was yesterday. What does yesterday have to do with today?”. Cause and effect reasoning isn’t tightly coupled and any consequences (that are negative from the point of view of the kid) of poor decisions, etc, need to be immediate and clearly linked to the behavior or it becomes “yesterday”.

Their world is the size of the head of a pin and no one else in on it except them. They need to be the center of attention. Negative attention is better than no attention. So when they are not the center of attention they do something to bring the attention back to themselves even if it is totally “off topic” and inappropriate, negative or otherwise destructive to themselves in the long run. This is because their cause and effect reasoning is affected. Their ability to anticipate consequences of actions, including long term consequences, is incredibly limited. Their ability to engage in deferred gratification behaviors is seriously impaired because of this as well.

Manipulation and triangulation are their best skills. Turning people against each other furthers their self interests as then those people are distracted from taking them down and going after them, pointing out their flaws, problems… and they try to manipulate, triangulate, etc. to get what they want.

Lying is second nature because they are focused on their wants and needs; what is going on in the moment is more important than the past (see what one said yesterday paragraph), and as long as their actions get them what they want the path to get to that desire is irrelevant. (Interestingly one dilemma in ethics is: if the outcome is ethical does it matter what path was taken to get there? - people with attachment disorder would argue if I get what I want/need does it matter what I do to get it?). And their lie can be in conflict with the one the told yesterday for several reasons stated above.

They always have to be right because not to be right shows weaknesses and that is dangerous. Weaknesses are to be exploited for one’s own personal gain. And you need to do that before someone figures out how to do that to you. As a result you also need to hide your weaknesses.

Their ability to have healthy relationships with people is seriously impaired. They have had disruptions in their primary attachments which has cut them to the core (one of the reasons why moving kids in and out of foster care or moving them a lot astronomically increases their risk for attachment disorder). As a result they are afraid to love deeply because they don’t want to be rejected again (how they perceive the change over in adults who care for them - they see it as rejection - kids usually blame themselves for things out of their control and this is no exception; not to mention some foster parents and biological parents make no or limited attempts to meet a kid’s emotional or physical needs so kids learn it isn’t safe to rely on others - they just get hurt as their needs aren’t met). As a result they reject first. If they find themselves starting to attach (in the case of adoptive kids attaching to foster parents, new parents, boy/girl friends, etc.) they need to be the one to drive people away first so they are in control and not the ones hurt yet again - they’d rather sabotage the relationship by hurting the other person first than being hurt first.

My kid once broke up with her boyfriend and was crying. I asked her why she was crying since she is the one who initiated the break up. She said because what he was supposed to beg her to take him back and didn’t do that. I asked her why would he do that, she just hurt him tremendously. She asked me what that had to do with it. And that was a serious question. By coming back to her even if she is the one who hurt him that would “prove” he loved her (typically you are supposed to anticipate their unarticulated wants too because if you really loved them you’d be able to do that). As a result they are abusive in relationships. The other person has to
“prove” their love, loyalty… over and over. And it is fairly easy for them to then be with other abusers since the other abuser wants them to come back too and uses techniques of abuse for that to happen (again any attention, even if negative, is better than no attention).

They only consider what is in their own best interests because the interests of others aren’t relevant to them. As a result I had to learn with my kid how to twist what I wanted her to do by casting how doing so would directly benefit her in a concrete way and not doing so would take away something she wanted to have happen/liked. For example. She wasn’t feeding her 9 mo old solid food as he could self feed with a bottle so created less work for her. Reason and her kid’s needs weren’t relevant. I finally thought to ask her if she had an extra $120 mo because if she didn’t she’d have to cut back on chips, beef jerkey and pop (three things she loved). She asked me why. I told her because WIC isn’t giving out any more formula for a child that old so she’d have to buy it and so wouldn’t have money for food like that. Her kid would cry all the time, 24/7 if he was hungry and she’d go nuts. I told her solid food was way the heck cheaper than formula and WIC already gives her some of what she needs. She was feeding him solid food that night. LOL You have to explain, often in detail, how doing the right thing will benefit them even though doing the right thing should be what someone does automatically.

Related to that people with attachment disorder can only “love” one child at a time and kids are like expensive accessories that get them attention. They don’t have needs. If my kid isn’t hungry her kids aren’t hungry. If she isn’t cold then neither are they (which is why there are so many back ups in place with my kid so that her kids get their physical and emotional needs met).They generally act superficially loving, when someone else is around, to the kid who gets them the most attention and totally ignores any other kid. As adults this kind of behavior continues. This then damages the next generation.

It is painful, exhausting and very difficult to deal with people like this. You never know when they will lash out, be vindictive (and they carry grudges for life because, of course you hurt them even if it was by accident - there are no second chances), hurt you, create chaos and problems that then take a lot of time, effort and often money to undo - if they can even be undone… the collateral damage can be tremendous. Parenting a kid like this is even harder as you aren’t butt kissing your kid if you refuse to cave to this kind of behavior and do what you need to do as a parent. So you get explosions, self destructive behaviors and poor choices, destroyed relationships (because they then try to destroy your relationships with others - as they view that as competition - with lies, triangulation…), and other actions that result in constant chaos. Often in adults they call this borderline personality disorder instead of attachment disorder

You see this in trump. Loyalty 100% of the time, not 99% of the time matters above anything else; his attempts to distract from events that aren’t about him by his tweets and actions to turn things around to be about him again…He is a good snake oil salesman as he is highly skilled in manipulation and triangulation. To be good at that you have to be observant to see how what you do affects others so you can get the behaviors you want. Because people with this collection of problems have no ethics or moral compass there are no boundaries on their behavior. And they quite honestly don’t see a problem with this because how their behavior impacts others is irrelevant to them (they honestly don’t understand why that matters) - only how others’ behaviors affect them.

Very specialize counseling can help some (but like with all counseling people want to have help - these kids/people don’t see that they are the ones with the problem, it is everyone else that is causing the problems for them), but the damage is done so early and is so deep very few recover enough that they can live, at least superficially, a “normal” life with “normal” relationships… there typically is still remnants of the underlying damage that they have a life long struggle with. With years of counseling my kid improved somewhat, but not enough. I joke that there are good reasons for forceable sterilization and my kid is a good example of one of them. They are incapable of being a decent parent and it takes a lot of time, effort, money (they can’t hold jobs as an employee because they can’t deal with being told what to do and how to do it - they need to be the ones to do the telling - and keep getting fired due to their behavior) to try to insulate their kids from damage and meet their emotional and physical needs.

When these folks with these issues are in a family and they wreck the family; people have to walk on eggshells around them if they are unwilling/unable to call out the behavior and then live through what happens next. Put them in charge of something important like our country and they wreck the country. Why? Because they wreck what they touch for all the reasons (and there are more but this post is getting extremely long) mentioned above.

That’s @OnionSoup’s fault.

@allergycheryl @Limewater @mike808 In this state everyone can get car insurance because it is required and insurers are required to sell it to everyone (although those with really crappy driving records - which is under their control - are going to pay way more).

Health insurance is critical to getting health care, which I would argue is a fundamental need. As a result changing health insurance so that everyone is part of the risk pool makes sense. ACA and other insurers are allowed to charge older people more than younger people because older people use, on average, health care more. But a cap has been put on that. And not all diseases people get are under their control. I have joked with my parents that I want different genetic parents based on health issues I have had.

And the risk pool situation is the same. It used to be if you were too high a risk you couldn’t get health insurance either, unless you were part of an employer pool. Now everyone has to be sold health insurance if they so choose to buy it.

The purpose of large risk pools is to reduce the costs to everyone. And again, you hope you don’t need to use that insurance - ever. You’d hope that you are part of the group that pays in and never needs to “take out”. And the catch is, since you can’t see into the future, you don’t know if you will need it or not.

PS - but insurers set rates knowing that some people will use it and some won’t. With dental insurance, some don’t get their teeth cleaned twice a year even though they have insurance or have the need for fillings. The fact that they are paying premiums lowers the cost of insurance for those who need those things. As a result I would argue it is insurance. You are not paying 100% of the costs nor paying premiums as high as they would be if only heavy users of dental insurance bought it.

@cjester66 @Mehrocco_Mole The only people that need help are racist mentally defective redneck lowlifes who votes for this toilet floater, still support him, and will vote for him in November. No one with any brains can serious think this idiot is both qualified to lead this country or doing a good job. Game over.

@haydesigner @Kidsandliz You started to make a point that quickly became a diatribe about the president. I stand by my comment.

@cjester66 @haydesigner So separate the comment about insurance from my opinion about the president. I was making separate points. Accept one and reject the other if you want to. Rejecting everything someone has to say because you don’t agree with one point limits discussion. I was mostly discussing attachment disorder and from the context of what I learned about it with my kid (I knew little about that prior to adopting) and I, personally, see similarities - not to mention reporting of his childhood is consistent with a potential for developing that. If you don’t see any similarities between that and the president then discuss why there are alternative explanations for the behaviors, or discuss the ideas rather than criticizing the person who posted. Criticizing the person posting the message doesn’t usually change minds and has a tendency change the focus of the conversation to something less productive. Giving a good counter point to a post generally works better.

@Kidsandliz I commented on your anger issues and name-calling. Not your political views. Funny, you of all people, telling me not to criticize others.

@cjester66 You are making plenty of assumptions. And I wasn’t engaged in calling you names. This thread isn’t worth posting on as it is too ugly and not an intelligent discussion of differences.

@Kidsandliz and I predict it will only get worse the closer we get to November

@tinamarie1974 I’d agree.

@allergycheryl @Kidsandliz @mike808

Health insurance is critical to getting health care, which I would argue is a fundamental need.

You don’t get insurance to meet fundamental needs. You get insurance to decrease financial variance. You buy insurance against low-probability, high cost events. Needing some form of healthcare is not a low-probability event.

And the risk pool situation is the same. It used to be if you were too high a risk you couldn’t get health insurance either, unless you were part of an employer pool. Now everyone has to be sold health insurance if they so choose to buy it.

It’s not a risk pool if you expect to make claims. I rarely go to the doctor, but I make claims and I fully expect to continue to make claims. This isn’t a risk this is just shy of a certainty.

Health “insurance” does serve the most general function of decreasing financial variance, but there’s so much on top of that that it’s really more of a group payment/collective bargaining plan.

@tinamarie1974

But are you $138 million dollars entertained?

$138M that could have been spent on any of the countless things this president has single-handedly corrupted, broken, grifted, or irreparably damaged under his administration. And any of them would still leave America better off than covering up how much he putzes on the golf course to force as much taxpayer money into his pockets as he can before he runs it into the ground, just lile his casinos, steaks, university, airline, and soon to be added, tax evasion and money laundering.

There is a reason his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen is in jail. There is a reason Individual-1 is ordering his hand-picked AG Bill Barr to use the entire justice department to protect and bury any evidence, such as in his tax filings, from ever seeing the disinfecting sunshine of accountability, either on front of the judiciary or Congress. And on and on and on. There are many, many reasons he was impeached for corruption and abuse of the office of the presidency.

None of these are isolated actions. They are systemic, pervasive, and sociopathic core character traits of the man.

@mike808 ok Mike, so now you are going to make assumptions about my political affiliations becauae I said the back and forth was entertaining? Clearly you have boundary issues as it relates to politics. Leave me alone!

@tinamarie1974
No, I’m making assumptions based on the fact that you think wasting $138 million of taxpayer dollars for one man to play golf is only entertaining to you.

How many Americans have to die from Covid before you rise above passively being entertained to taking action to end this trainwreck of a presidency on November 3?

@mike808 once again putting words in my mouth. I was amused by the back and forth between you and the Trumpers but you have your head so far up your ass you want to challenge everyone.

@mike808 I had presumed @tinamarie1974 was finding entertaining the arguing that was going on here between people.

@Kidsandliz you are correct. Thank you for being reasonable!

/giphy gold star

Yeah, I’m on your side above @mike808, but there really was no need to jump down @tinamarie1974’s throat here, let alone that harshly. Handshake and make up?

@ThatsHeadly so you want 63 million people who don’t agree with the way you think to all kill themselves…
and you think the way you think… makes YOU the good guy?

@mick Yep, I do. Unfortunately most of those people are pretty goddamn dumb, so I can provided detailed instructions if required. The Percocet + vodka route has a lot to recommend it.

@ThatsHeadly You’re a sick person, get help. Seriously.

@mick @ThatsHeadly How about bleach-it is cheaper and Trump has recommended it already.

@Felton10 @mick Well… I suppose if they want to. I mean, it doesn’t taste nearly as goos as even cheap vodka, but a bleach hydroxychloroquine cocktail should do the job if that’s how they roll.

@cjester66 Thank you for your concern. Remember, I’m not advocating killing anyone, I’m just suggesting that the people doing their level best to fuck the country up with their freedumb, freezepeach, anti-science, pro-fascist, authoritarian, racist, stupidity laden agenda should solve the problem voluntarily. Detailed instructions utilizing a variety of methods can be provided upon request.

@ThatsHeadly @gary87zx@felton10@shrdlu@oldcatlady
sadly…
you have become…
what you have always hated.

I do not think it is anywhere remotely near 63 million anymore, @mick.

@haydesigner @mick It’s actually more like 133.25 million based on polling current as of this morning…

@gary87zx @mick No, I just checked. I’m not a homophobic racist with authoritarian tendencies and the IQ of a sloth.

@ThatsHeadly Yeah, that’s healthy and moral. Get help.

@cjester66 It’s perfectly healthy and moral. I’m suggesting they do that for the betterment of all mankind - I’m not forcing them to do anything. It’s just a suggestion. You seem to be taking this personally.

@gary87zx @ThatsHeadly

so you think every trump supporter is a homophobic racist with authoritarian tendencies and the IQ of a sloth? you know that is not true.

take me for instances…
my best friend of 46 years is a lesbian and i have 2 biracial grandsons who i love very much.
i am not a genius but i have owned a few homes and a business… my 2 kids went to college 1 has her own business… the other gives herself a hard life… no matter how much i help her.

stop demonizing all trump voters it is not fair and you know that.

with the stuff you are posting?
you come across as a death wishing bigot.
is that all you are?

@mick Sooo, risky place to ask, but since I already bumped the thread, why do you support Trump?

I’d honestly like to understand, especially if you’re not inattentive, which is most of what I’ve seen, where I’m close enough to a person to get a sense of their relationship to different kinds of media (which is, I think, most of what we’re talking about).

@InnocuousFarmer
i have been hesitant to reply… i am not the greatest writer and this is meh…
not the most accepting people for folks who don’t think the same as them.

okay so i voted for trump the first time because i wanted someone to go and disrupt the system and the corrupt people on BOTH sides in washington.
bring things into light and he has done that.

he did such a good job…
that you have to be blind not to see that most of the republicans are lame and pretty cowardly…
and most democrats are deceitful power hungry despots.

big problem is most of the media
most of all the news media are far leftest they lie about most everything and they support democrats so the democrats bend the knee to the far left and support fringe shit. and they get more views talking shit about trump 24 7.

so…here are some things that the media lies about and pushes and democrats support.

censorship… no free thought or speech that disagrees with their dogma.

intersectionality
cancel culture no one can ever make a mistake.
and supporting socialism? what?

if the news would tell the truth about the good polices he has done but they won’t.

so yeah… i will vote for pussy grabber again.
cause he is just about the only one looking out for the best interest of America and American citizens.

i have way more and i am decently informed. let me know.

@mick Thanks for replying. It’s interesting to see you coming at it with that angle. I’m on almost the same page about politicians at the federal level, and the cultures in their supporters. It’s just, to me, Trump’s a worse-than-average version of the same thing who isn’t up to the day-to-day job, and who seems like he doesn’t have any scruples, and is eager to help himself.

I’d have to guess that’s because I’m talking to different people and reading different stories than you are.

I would be interested in any links you have with examples of Trump doing right by the country. Don’t know if you’d be better off keeping it to whispers or not. I won’t argue unless you’re interested, but I don’t know if everyone else would be able to resist the urge.

@InnocuousFarmer
tell me the folks you are getting your info from…

you think bidden is more capable and honest than trump?

i am to sleepy to post all the polices that trump has put thru that i agree with.
he has done more than anyone on human trafficking. people act like build the wall on the borders is too just hurt… hurt people coming in.
also stops human trafficking and drugs and more hurtful actions into the states.
if we ever can have healthcare for all the usa citizens it can only be accomplished if we limit the people coming in. it is math…ain’t enough money for the folks we got now.
he just put a huge bill thru for parks and federal land.

okay… so i have been listening to this guy for 3 years… double checked everything he talked and sited about to make sure his shit was correct and he was correct more than most of the time. it is a relief for me so i don’t have to read so much and we think alike so he has the much of the same take that i do.

Tim Pool
@Timcast is his twitter you can get is youtube/bitchute channels he has 2 and a timcast IRL is a podcast he has with his buddies. pretty good. check it out lots of information. he worked for vice and fusion…

oh and has much as so many folks hate it…
you need to read trumps twitter everyday some good info on there.
let me know what you think.

@mick I heard Tim Pool on Rogan a while ago, sounded like an interesting character. Just looked at his channel for the first time and, man, I don’t know if I can deal with that clickbait headline thing. I’ll spend a little time on this and get back to you.

In general, I get information from mainstream news, such as it is. NPR’s got a podcast called “Up First” that seems ok to me. I’ve somehow found myself on the Atlantic a fair number of times, think they’re… good reading, without necessarily agreeing with them. NYT, I’ve given up on all of their tangential and opinion properties, but I think their actual news apparatus is worth having. I really like a legal podcast called All the President’s Lawyers, which is commentary on legal news around Trump, but more about the judicial branch than anything political. I try to occasionally listen to Trump himself, avoiding clips out of context when I can – watched that Axios interview twice (the second time more carefully). Sites like the Washington Post I don’t like, but I don’t think they’d lie outright about facts as much as they describe politics the way a Realtor describes a house.

Ars Technica, I like. They’re a “blog”, though that says as much about the vintage as the format, I guess. They have some stories that intersect with policy-type issues. Have science writers with degrees and so forth.

(edit) Almost forgot, I listen to Ben Shapiro’s show once in a while when I haven’t heard enough complaints about the media lately. He’s coverage of coverage more than talking about substance itself, as far as I’ve noticed. That’s probably necessary for his format. He talks often and for long stretches.

Trump’s wall is probably an example of the easiest thing to hate about him: he said a dumb thing in a rally, people liked it, so he started repeating it, and then tripled down when challenged. That’s got nothing to do with the border and immigration policy, but it’s hard to keep track of that with his mouth getting in the way, and then all the media getting Trump-rabies, because that’s better for pageviews.

I’ve got some significant misgivings about Biden. I think he will respect the better part of our institutions – career bureaucrats holding the government together, anti-corruption things like Inspectors General, the State department…

I also think he’s too old (maybe moreso than Trump), and I bet he’d “lose” a television “debate” with Trump. Though, if it was somehow a written debate, I bet he’d win, having his political background. And man, in that Axios interview with Trump, I know everybody latches on to a clip of the worst-looking part of it because they only want an excuse and don’t care about substance, but Trump clearly didn’t understand what the covid stats were or what they meant. I hope Biden would be better than that. I’m not, uh, highly confident. I’m not fully on board the liberal train, either, so… eh.

@InnocuousFarmer
i agree with you on the click bait titles.
but he is a younger dude always been a liberal… and he is pissed off that the far left doctrine is taking over the democratic party… whines about it all the time.
but if you check out his sources for his take on so many different topics. he is bias but still less bias though than most commentators. lol he never liked trump still doesn’t like the way trump talks and demeanor. watch him for a bit… will welcome your input.
cancelled my subscription to the atlantic even canc elled my sub to the week…and i liked that mag… lots of different short topics but when i backed checked up on their stories… all came with a far lefty bias. i want just the facts not the spin of their opinions of the facts.

the ny times… sad for real.
did you see this?
https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

i will check out All the President’s Lawyers never heard about it before.
yeah not a fan of shapiro. he just talks too damn much. lol

and yup…tump says some dumb shit.
i think he does it just to irritate the left.

soo here we disagree…
career bureaucrats holding the government together, anti-corruption things like Inspectors General, the State department…
i think…there are too many government folks in high postions that do not want what is best for america or american ciitzens because they want and believe in a more globalist world view…which can not realistically happen cause there are countries that don’t want that cause they want to be the super power… and they are not even as close to kind as the usa.

i feel bad for bidden… he has onset dementia…
and the people using him should be ashamed.
the whole democratic party could not come up with anyone more suited to run for president?

sometimes we don’t get what we want but what we need.
a bombastic president who loves america. i pray.

@mick I hope you’re right about Trump, but I still don’t think so. I can see how I could come around on him, but it’d require a lot of things I think I know being nullified, explained, or reframed somehow.

Hadn’t seen that Bari Weiss letter. That doesn’t surprise me, but that’s worse than I would have hoped, assuming it’s a fair characterization.

I’m not yet sold on the severity of Biden’s cognitive decline. And anyways, Kamala Harris could be the first black woman four-term president. How exciting. (Seriously though, I would like to see Biden address that – take one of those old people mental faculty tests like the one Trump was bragging about.)

I took a few swings at listening to Tim Pool. I like Timcast IRL ok. It rubs me as political chit-chat, that’s maybe a bit less journalistic, more speculative, and maybe a shade more conspiratorial than I’d like. The way he talks, I think maybe he is coming from a reddit-heavy context or something? They seem like maybe they believe things Trump says without outside confirmation, which doesn’t really comport with my sense of Trump’s relationship to factual information. Tim’s sidekick kind of strikes me as an idiot…

I’ll probably listen to it every once in a while, just to fill in some of the gaps that the mainstream leave. There’s clearly a Republican media story that’s counter to the Democratic / mainstream one that I don’t hear enough of. I was surprised that they were saying the Russia investigation from Mueller was a giant waste of time. I knew that was a talking point of Trump’s, but I didn’t realize anybody took it seriously (who wasn’t highly partisan or too credulous). Almost makes me want to go read the report (even though I can’t really spare the time).

Can’t do Tim’s monologue videos on youtube. They’re too propagandisic for me – in tone at least. I don’t think that kind of thing is healthy. If you’ve got any particular episodes in mind, I’ll watch that and take notes or something, in case I’ve got the wrong idea.

Globalism or not is an interesting topic… I think some of the idea is that if we make all the world’s nations heavily codependent, we won’t probably have another world war. I’m not old enough or historically literate enough to write intelligently about it, but it’s striking that we had two world wars in succession like that. It seems to me like America’s version of dominance has been stabilizing, and I’d rather it be America in that position than another country (China, in particular). It does seem to me like Trump threatens that world order, or may have accelerated its decline, with news talking about Trump’s administration stepping out of the leadership role, picking fights with allies, investing less in other countries, canceling agreements, that sort of thing.

Longer than I was aiming for, but I’ve been meaning to reply for a while, and gotta run.

@InnocuousFarmer

Globalism or not is an interesting topic… I think some of the idea is that if we make all the world’s nations heavily codependent, we won’t probably have another world war.

Actually, while that may be a byproduct (or not depending on who is on which side of a world war - no bombs needed, just cut off the supply chain - something we have seen to some degree already as a side effect with covid - and economies will grind to a halt - and yes our food supply chain has a good chunk that is international too) that is not how the world ended up with off shoring manufacturing, etc. Capitalism is behind that.

Economics “says” that you have a balance (equilibrium) between supply, cost and demand. Cost is related to efficiencies in supply chain (one reason why we ended up with just in time inventory), raw materials costs, manufacturing costs… It is cheaper to manufacturing things in low wage countries (even when you take into account shipping. If one company does it their costs are lower and they (presuming no quality, etc. drop in their product) will sell more than competitors. This then drives competitors to do the same thing. Repeat this across industries and supply chains for most industries (barring tariffs - many of which are regulated across “geographic or trading zones” by treaties) become pretty international. The new “equilibrium” then takes all that into account. Bingo. World supply chains.

@InnocuousFarmer @Kidsandliz

It is cheaper to manufacturing things in low wage countries

It’s even cheaper to manufacture things in no wage countries. This is what drives much human trafficking, be it exploited migrant workers from Mexico and parts South in the US, to exploited workers in Quwait and the UAE, to exploited mine workers in South Africa, to exploited factory workers in China. Seeing a pattern here?

Capitalism squeezes profit not just from the consumer, and materials cost, but also from the labor costs. Just ask Walmart, whose workforce has the highest proportion of employees on government benefits programs, and is the largest receiver of food stamp spending by their own employees. Effectively, a Walmart in your community means a net drain on government resources, a lowered net household income, and more.

That’s why the problem isn’t that you “make” more money in unemployment benefits, the problem is that employers aren’t prohibited from paying less. All in the name of driving labor costs to zero.

@InnocuousFarmer @mike808 If our government would raise minimum wage to something that means those who work full time are not below the poverty line that would help the net drain problem - although that raises costs thus raises prices. As long as the government doesn’t do that then this is a “legalized” net drain (eg being able to pay low enough wages such that many full time employees are still eligible to get government services in the USA) that benefits businesses.

@Kidsandliz But those world supply chains occur in the context of trade agreements, which are deliberately created, no?

@InnocuousFarmer First there was trade, individual tariffs with some but certainly not all countries, etc. then trade agreements as countries realized all of this would be easier with agreements, free trade zones, the world trade organization to try to act as the world enforcer of those, etc. The least developed nations and third world nations generally liked that manufacturing moved to their countries as generally speaking it increased the standard of living as more people had jobs (yes there were other problems with this just as the industrial revolution created issues in the USA and Europe), improved the infrastructure (can’t manufacture or “export” without a big enough electrical grid, water, decent roads, ports, etc.), taxes helped fund their governments… Yes there were (and are) problems in the countries doing the manufacturing as many were and in some cases still are, missing labor laws, etc. (just like the USA in the early parts of the industrial revolution)…

There is a book out there called The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (somewhat dated at this point as it is 15 years old) that discusses (amongst other things) how this interconnectedness has, in some respects, removed country boundaries when doing business.

@OnionSoup If he was “golfing” at places he didn’t own, or at least covering the costs of rentals and rooms for the secret service detail, it would be easier to stomach. Honestly, I doubt he’s that much of a golfer, he probably always used golf just to do business, making contacts while playing a few holes, and I doubt that’s changed, and most of the business he does there probably has nothing at all to do with being president, except the increased contacts he can make due to the position.

@kevinrs @OnionSoup

Apart from Trump’s financial relationships to golf courses and golf social clubs, he has a really strange relationship with the sport itself.

According to this book (shown below), he is one of the great perpetual cheaters. (His golfing companions just put up with it.)

@OnionSoup
You’re forgetting the hours and hours of “presidential time” he spends each day, on top of the golf.

@IWUJackson
It’s not just “we” who are creating it. The Russians and the Chinese are helping, specifically as the invited accomplices of the Republican party seeking power in 2016 (and now to retain it) at all costs, no matter what deal with the devil they must make or how despicable or currupt of a human being they must enable to be their party leader.

There is a difference. And I don’t believe the “both sides are corrupt” - that is itself a lie promoted by the Republicans to deflect from their own actions. Is there corruption on both sides, or in all parties, yes. So, given that - which future vision of America do you think is one where we all continue to be a world power, with willing partners in other countries to achieve global benefits for everyone, a driver of science, technology, innovation and development, a high standard of living for all, a healthy, educated citizenry that is a beacon of light in the darkness for other governmental systems?

Whitewater? Benghazi! Emails!
/image butter emails

@IWUJackson @mike808 It doesn’t take much to compare the differences between the parties in regards to how many arrests, charges, indictments, etc. there have been. I don’t think I need to say which party is essentially a mafia.

@IWUJackson @mike808 Both sides are corrupt. Much in the same way that a guy who breaks the speed limit, and a guy that robs a bank are both criminals.

Given I spent enough time (didn’t take much) around Illinois to watch multiple mayor and governor’s arrests, indictments, and/or sentences, I can only assume you’re referring to the Ds, but I assure you there’s plenty of criminal activity going around, just happened to be heavy on the left most places I’ve been… Maybe that’s just a poor choice of location.
However it’s not hard to quote lies of every administration for quite some time. I’ll skip Trump:
Obama: “if you like your insurance, you can keep it”
Bush Jr.: “… weapons of mass destruction…”
Clinton: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”
Bush Sr: “read my lips…”

Need I go on? That’s just the guy at the top…

@Felton10 Yeah, but I’ve heard he uses a short club and his rounds don’t last very long.

@JT954 He has never done anything successful only destructive and BTW-he played golf 2 times over the weekend.