Trump hired Israeli intel firm to gather info on Americans

[Fru]

[knapplc]

49 minutes ago, TonyStalloni said:

It would also be nice if former Secy of State Kerry wouldn't negotiate and collude with Iran in secret like he is still the man.  It goes both ways and it isn't acceptable by either party. 

 

I remember all the howls of Conservative outrage when Kushner and Flynn were meeting with Russian nationals in Trump Tower, or Kushner with the UAE. So of course Kerry's meetings would meet with equal outrage.

 

I'll go look up all those threads started by the Conservative members of HuskerBoard complaining about that.  Shouldn't take too long to find.

[FrankWheeler]

15 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

I remember all the howls of Conservative outrage when Kushner and Flynn were meeting with Russian nationals in Trump Tower, or Kushner with the UAE. So of course Kerry's meetings would meet with equal outrage.

 

I'll go look up all those threads started by the Conservative members of HuskerBoard complaining about that.  Shouldn't take too long to find.

 

Those were now admitted Russian spies.

[BigRedBuster]

31 minutes ago, TonyStalloni said:

I apologize for interrupting your little bitch session.  Carry on.

 

Pretty difficult to keep defending the guy...isn't it?

[VectorVictor]

1 hour ago, TonyStalloni said:

I apologize for interrupting your little bitch session.  Carry on.

 

You do realize that instead of running away, you could man up, admit that Trump (and the current GOP leadership) is a clear and present danger to our democracy with his behavior, and actually start being a responsible member of our country that knows we are better than this s***show.  

 

Or you could do nothing of the sort, continue skulking away, and therefore tacitly approve of tactics and behaviors typically reserved for totalitarian regimes and dictatorships because your 'party' is currently the one on top reaping the benefits. 

 

---

 

Politics isn't a sport, folks. We shouldn't be rooting for 'sides', 'red/blue' states, or any sort of black/white myopic celebration of right and wrong. We should be supporting candidates and people that exhibit that they are attempting to do the most amount of good for the most amount of people (read: not corporations, not the richest 1% of Americans) at all times, all while doing their best to maintain integrity, consistency, frugality, and preserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

Very few of the members of the GOP, and none of the Trump cabinet (nor Trump himself) come remotely close to trying to do this.  

[Danny Bateman]

I like your utilitarian take on politics there, @VectorVictor. I dig that line about the most amount of good for the most people. Good way of looking at things.

 

I just wish we'd all render judgment equally. Liberals aren't without fault. There are plenty of areas for critique you could take up with Obama. His foreign policy in particular is a crapshoot. The Iran Deal isn't perfect (but I don't think we should withdraw from it, as we'll be doing later today, either). Libya was a clustef#ck that was handled very poorly strategically. Syria had a similarly poor outcome. Heavy drone use keeps troops off the ground but is ethically disgusting for the people we're using them on. It was dumb for Loretta Lynch to meet Bill Clinton on a tarmac given the circumstances.

 

But I don't know how somebody can look at this administration & not render the same judgments & criticisms. Nobody should get a pass just because we like their politics.

[TonyStalloni]

4 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

I remember all the howls of Conservative outrage when Kushner and Flynn were meeting with Russian nationals in Trump Tower, or Kushner with the UAE. So of course Kerry's meetings would meet with equal outrage.

 

I'll go look up all those threads started by the Conservative members of HuskerBoard complaining about that.  Shouldn't take too long to find.

You do that, meanwhile some of us actually work for a living instead of sitting here all day.

[knapplc]

2 minutes ago, TonyStalloni said:

You do that, meanwhile some of us actually work for a living instead of sitting here all day.

 

Some of us are able to do both. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[TonyStalloni]

2 hours ago, VectorVictor said:

 

You do realize that instead of running away, you could man up, admit that Trump (and the current GOP leadership) is a clear and present danger to our democracy with his behavior, and actually start being a responsible member of our country that knows we are better than this s***show.  

 

Or you could do nothing of the sort, continue skulking away, and therefore tacitly approve of tactics and behaviors typically reserved for totalitarian regimes and dictatorships because your 'party' is currently the one on top reaping the benefits. 

 

---

 

Politics isn't a sport, folks. We shouldn't be rooting for 'sides', 'red/blue' states, or any sort of black/white myopic celebration of right and wrong. We should be supporting candidates and people that exhibit that they are attempting to do the most amount of good for the most amount of people (read: not corporations, not the richest 1% of Americans) at all times, all while doing their best to maintain integrity, consistency, frugality, and preserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

 

Very few of the members of the GOP, and none of the Trump cabinet (nor Trump himself) come remotely close to trying to do this.  

I didn't come in this morning with the intention of starting an argument. All I said initially was politics had become a dog fight lately and both side were guilty but I wasn't met in the middle with any sort of agreement and I quickly realized it wasn't coming.

[teachercd]

1 hour ago, Clifford Franklin said:

I like your utilitarian take on politics there, @VectorVictor. I dig that line about the most amount of good for the most people. Good way of looking at things.

 

I just wish we'd all render judgment equally. Liberals aren't without fault. There are plenty of areas for critique you could take up with Obama. His foreign policy in particular is a crapshoot. The Iran Deal isn't perfect (but I don't think we should withdraw from it, as we'll be doing later today, either). Libya was a clustef#ck that was handled very poorly strategically. Syria had a similarly poor outcome. Heavy drone use keeps troops off the ground but is ethically disgusting for the people we're using them on. It was dumb for Loretta Lynch to meet Bill Clinton on a tarmac given the circumstances.

 

But I don't know how somebody can look at this administration & not render the same judgments & criticisms. Nobody should get a pass just because we like their politics.

My oil stocks are freaking out right now because of this!

[TonyStalloni]

2 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

Some of us are able to do both. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good for you.....you must be an incredible man.

[knapplc]

1 minute ago, TonyStalloni said:

Good for you.....you must be an incredible man.

 

Thanks!

[BigRedBuster]

6 minutes ago, TonyStalloni said:

I didn't come in this morning with the intention of starting an argument. All I said initially was politics had become a dog fight lately and both side were guilty but I wasn't met in the middle with any sort of agreement and I quickly realized it wasn't coming.

 

Because there isn't a middle ground that is deserved right now.

 

If you were here during the Obama administration, you would have seen posts from me complaining about his policies.  If you would have known me during the Clinton administration, you would have heard me complaining about them.  I complained about Hillary during the election dreading the idea of her being President.

 

But...the fact is....none of those people are our leader NOW.  Republican's efforts to deflect away from this abomination of an administration is nothing more than an effort to convince people that there is a new norm and there isn't anything we should be bitching about.

 

NO.....nothing about this should be normalized.  What really pisses me off about where we are at is that our government is going to go one of two directions.  a)  Complete takeover of the Democrats.  They will then be gloriously in power believing that they have a mandate to take the world in a more extreme liberal direction....because the Republicans have lost all credibility to govern....or...b)  America will usher in a bunch of mini-me Trumps that believe their best rise to power is to be an incompetent ass like Donnie.  

 

What a mess.

[knapplc]

3 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

If you would have known me during the Clinton administration, you would have heard me complaining about them.  I complained about Hillary during the election dreading the idea of her being President.

 

Same, same. And I didn't post here much during the W Administration, but I did at another site, and there were many times I defended Bush from ridiculous attacks. He had his faults & deserved some criticism, but the character/intelligence attacks were stupid & I spoke up on those. 

 

The difference between then & now is the anger. There's such a tone of hostility and anger from all the Trump supporters.  They're mad about immigrants. They're mad about Obamacare. They're mad about everything, just this general constant simmering of rage fueled by right-wing outlets like Fox & Brietbart. 

 

They've been talking about it for years. They've blamed everyone from "liberals" to government Democrats to Obama... but now that they have a majority in the House & Senate AND the White House... they're still angry.  It's all still the Democrats' fault, it's still the liberals' fault.  What is, they don't know, but they sure as hell are mad about it.

 

This was written five years ago.  Nothing has changed. 

 

Quote

 

Conservatives Are Angry Because They Have No Idea What They Want

 

 Conservatives are actually even more lost than Ross lets on here. They have an abstract idea that they regret the New Deal and the Great Society. But they don't actually want to undo the big entitlement programs that those agendas gave us: Social Security, SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid.

 

They're not boxed in by the electorate. They're boxed in by their own acceptance of the New Deal consensus, and their simultaneous unwillingness to admit that there is such a consensus. They think the government is too way big but they're not in favor of specific ways to make it much smaller. And when the resulting incoherence of their agenda becomes clear, they get angry, because they have no idea what the hell they are doing.

 

Take SNAP, commonly known as Food Stamps. Participation in this program is at an all-time high, with more than 1 in 7 Americans receiving benefits. Conservatives are outraged. They are attacking Barack Obama as the "food stamp president." And their radical plan is to cut SNAP… by 5%.

 

The 5% SNAP cut is not some plan that was cooked up by milquetoast establishmentarians trying to nod toward conservative goals without rocking the boat in Washington. It's the plan that was demanded by the true believers—by and large, the same House conservatives currently forcing the government shutdown over Obamacare—after they defeated leadership's plan for a 2.5% cut.

 

Or look at Medicaid. Many Republican politicians are bitterly resisting the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare. But not a single state has chosen to withdraw from the traditional Medicaid program, even though that would produce real budget savings and put a major dent in Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legacy. Even states with Republican legislative supermajorities and very conservative electorates stay in. I can only conclude that conservatives do not actually want to undo Medicaid.

 

Republicans will take big symbolic votes against the Great Society, as with Paul Ryan's budgets that would deeply slash Medicaid funding and radically restructure Medicare. But when they have actual power to deeply cut existing entitlements, they decline. This is the opposite of what you do if you are afraid of the electorate; they have no fear of saying they want to deeply cut these programs, but they choose not to.

 

But if the conservative policy vision isn't rolling back the Great Society, then what is it? Lately, what's filled the vacuum is scorched-earth opposition to anything Barack Obama wants. Before that, the idea was to cut taxes and run up big deficits in an attempt to force conservatives to come up with some ideas about how to cut spending.

 

Before conservatives fix the problem that their ideas are unpopular with the public, they first have to figure out what their ideas should be. Otherwise, they'll be left with the agenda that Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) laid out to the Washington Examiner yesterday: "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

 

 

 

 

[Moiraine]

If you're a "both sides" person you should be calling out both sides. Not defending Trump no matter what he does because "both sides" do it.