The Republican Utopia

[TGHusker]

9 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

This past week George Will had an excellent op-ed wishing, hoping the Dems don't blow this opportunity by picking some looney tune far left wacko bird - Ok Will use more sophisicated words.  He said the Mueller report hopefully will bring sanity into the election - that it will force trump to defend his record instead of just running against the conspiracy to get him.  And the Dems should make the election about his record and about better policy offerings.   But that aside, the article you posted is spot on.  I think many conservatives hope the Dems nominate someone they can vote for - I know I do.  Regardless, we probably have no choice but to vote for whomever they nominate. 

 

From the article this important quote which reinforces my belief that we have the Cult of Personality at work.  Trump supporters by and large are 'all in' because any thing less is heretical to them and to the Cult leader.  That is why so many Trump supporters in media and in politics have to twist themselves into pretzels to explain why they support a certain policy or stand by some stupid thing trump said or action he took.  :
 

Quote

 

Trumpism is singular in that it doesn’t allow people to pick and choose with only conditional support. You can’t be a cafeteria Trumper and say, “Yeah, I’m here for the wall and judges, but I’m not signing on with tariffs. And the North Korea stuff is terrible policy.”

You don’t see a lot of that, do you? Instead, Trumpism demands that people be all-in, for everything. No matter how stupid or malignant the policy or behavior.

This is a new development in conservative politics. In 2012, no one thought they had to support Mitt Romney all the way down the line. In George W. Bush’s administration, conservatives rebelled against a SCOTUS nomination and against immigration reform, which was the primary policy initiative of his second term. No one thought that the binary choice of Bush-Kerry meant that they had to contort themselves to defend everything he said.

It’s different with Trump.

And this dynamic seems to apply not just to Trump himself, but to his supporters in the media. There are exceptions, of course. But I don’t see a lot of people in conservative media saying, “I support the president, but Denise McAllister and Alex Jones are nuts. And those other racists and weirdos ought to go away.”

Instead, there seems to be some sort of omertà where being a Trump supporter grants you blanket immunity in conservative world—and often a media platform to go with it.

Frankly, I don’t understand this dynamic. Maybe it’s that negative partisanship overrides everything, full stop. Maybe it’s that conservatives actually do love violence-porn race-war fantasies. Maybe it’s that people truly believe that the sexual abuse of children is just “screwing around” instigated by the kids. Maybe threatening to sic your lawyers on a 20-year-old because of his tweets is standard operating procedure.

Maybe these are all perfectly normal things and I’m the crazy one.

Or maybe it’s as simple as this: Trumpism corrupts everything it touches.

 

 

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

5 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

He said the Mueller report hopefully will bring sanity into the election - that it will force trump to defend his record instead of just running against the conspiracy to get him. 

 

I don't see that happening.  Trump is going to do nothing but drill constantly about the crazy left who can't handle losing so they created this illegal investigation into him and his administration....bla bla bla......

 

We all remember his last election.  He has no talking points other than attacking, threatening and third grade name calling.  I don't expect any different with this and the Mueller report is going to be front and center constantly.  

 

So, the Dems have GOT to figure out a way to confront it head on that doesn't make them sound petty and backed by substance and fact.

[TGHusker]

31 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

I don't see that happening.  Trump is going to do nothing but drill constantly about the crazy left who can't handle losing so they created this illegal investigation into him and his administration....bla bla bla......

 

We all remember his last election.  He has no talking points other than attacking, threatening and third grade name calling.  I don't expect any different with this and the Mueller report is going to be front and center constantly.  

 

So, the Dems have GOT to figure out a way to confront it head on that doesn't make them sound petty and backed by substance and fact.

yes, trump's big Michigan rally was a foretaste of the campaign.  I'm thinking the Dems need to contrast Trump's words wt reality  - what he says he's accomplished and what has actually occured. that also means confronting what he claims happened good under his watch but what actually occurred under Obama or by the initiative of someone else (counter the trump taking credit for everything good and blaming others for what goes wrong).  Regarding the investigation - the Dems need to point out the convictions, the rash of bad people Trump surrounds himself with and paint him as a mafia boss.  But in a year, we may see more news coming out from SDNY - and the House investigations.  Trump isn't out of the woods yet.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[TGHusker]

18 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

Some real good quotes in that article

 

 

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It seems strange now to say NATO saved the world. Most people have no idea what NATO is, or why it exists. (William Crowe, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, some years ago quipped to one of my friends that most U.S. Navy officers thought “NATO” was a Japanese admiral.) In America, President Donald Trump has  tried to depict NATO as a scam or a racket, in which lazy Europeans collect American largess while doing nothing for themselves.

 

 

 

 

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This is not only a tragedy but also a danger, because we face a similar, if scaled-down, threat from the Russia of Vladimir Putin as we did from the old Soviet Union.

The Soviets, in their day, could not conquer and hold all of Europe. They had every intention, however, of attacking the Western outpost in divided Berlin and then drive deep into Western Europe if trouble reared its head somewhere else, such as in the Middle East or Asia. Soviet leaders assumed that at some point, the Americans and their allies would sue for peace and surrender to Moscow’s demands rather than face columns of Soviet tanks headed for Paris, Brussels and Copenhagen.

This was more than a hypothetical danger. In 1965 (in an episode unknown until after the fall of the USSR), Soviet military leaders raised the possibility of  attacking West Berlin in retaliation for American moves against North Vietnam and in the Caribbean as a means of making the Americans back down and retreat to their own shores. 

But because of NATO, an attack in Germany meant courting war not only with the United States but also with the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Portugal, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands and even tiny Iceland and Luxembourg, as well as countries that did not otherwise cooperate with each other, such as Greece and Turkey. The result would have been to embroil the Soviet Union in conflict with millions of people from Anchorage to Ankara, a military nightmare that would have carried the immense risk of an eventual nuclear disaster.

Today, the Kremlin regime under Putin still identifies the United States and NATO as its  chief enemies. Like his predecessors, Putin is not under any illusion that he can create a new Russian empire from the southern shores of Italy to the ice fields of Norway. Rather, he is addicted to using force around Russia’s borders in order to distract his increasingly restive citizens. Like every autocrat facing his twilight years, Putin is fanning the flames of nationalism and turning the screws of military adventurism as a way of keeping himself and his cabal in power.

There is only one thing that can stand in his way: NATO.

 

 

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Sadly, this platinum anniversary is marred by Trump’s hostility to our most important alliance. The president does not know why NATO exists and cannot comprehend the notion of an alliance because he is unable to grasp anything that does not offer to turn a profit. But Trump’s dereliction of his duty as NATO’s leader should not prevent the rest of us from marking this milestone with respect and gratitude.

Every person who now walks through the streets of Berlin — and Toronto, and London, and Athens, and yes, even New York and Seattle and every small town in between — should reflect that they do so freely, without the shadow of either physical or political walls looming over them. They do not live in fear, as many of us once did, that every problem in the world will fall into the dark gravitational pull of a divided Europe and lead to the end of human civilization.

We should also be grateful not only that we live in freedom, but that we are alive at all. Our cities are gleaming spires and green parks, instead of piles of radioactive ash. For this, we have NATO to thank, and instead of writing yet another premature obituary to the most powerful alliance ever formed, NATO’s over  half-billion citizens must find the fortitude to oppose yet another Kremlin regime that seems incapable of living at peace with its neighbors.

Previous generations accepted that challenge. So must we.

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

THAT'S RIGHT!!!!  ..........As long as they don't investigate the Dear Leader.

 

 

 

[Danny Bateman]

2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

THAT'S RIGHT!!!!  ..........As long as they don't investigate the Dear Leader. 

 

 

 

'

Considering this is from the guy who joked to a bunch of police officers to rough up suspects, he can politely go f#ck himself.

[Danny Bateman]

I'll admit I haven't read this, but it's been open in a tab all week and I"m looking forward to diving into it when I get home later. I anticipate it will be very good.

 

It's hard to convince people you're not being hyperbolic when you talk about how much of a force for evil Fox News is. It's just the same old rich pricks trying to spread their influence as far as they can across the globe to accrue continually more power and wealth.

 

Screw the Murdochs.

 

 

[commando]

stephen moore says he isn't a believer in democracy.   only the best people 

 

 

[knapplc]

And now Republicans are just wholesale lying to you to protect Trump.

 

This isn't the Republican party that I used to belong to.

 

 

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Mick Mulvaney rewrites history, claims Trump never promised to release his tax returns

The White House might want you to forget about it now, but before and during the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to release his tax returns.

 

In 2014, Trump said that if he “decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns. Absolutely. I would love to do that.” In 2015 — months before launching his presidential campaign — Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that “I would release tax returns ... I have no objection to certainly showing tax returns.”

 

Candidate Trump reiterated that vow during the first presidential debate with Hillary Clinton with a now-familiar caveat, saying, “I’m under a routine audit and it’ll be released, and as soon as the audit is finished, it will be released.”

 

Trump, of course, never followed through. He continues to cite an audit that seems poised to outlast any of our natural lifetimes as the reason he won’t release his tax returns. But now that House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) has formally asked the IRS to turn them over, the White House is pretending like Trump never said he’d release them at all.

 

 

In case anyone has forgotten (and there's more besides this)

 

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

 

[commando]

42 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

he is executing the law altright

[Ratt Mhule]

 

[BigRedBuster]

The amount of refund has nothing to do with if it’s doing what’s intended or not. 

[Moiraine]

20 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

The amount of refund has nothing to do with if it’s doing what’s intended or not. 

 

 

It's a part of the equation for some people though. It just doesn't tell the whole story by itself because for many people it could just mean they paid less during the year. But there is talk (from the Twitter thread) of certain work-related deductions not being available anymore. I don't know anything about it other than that, but if that's the case, for those people the refund being less was due to the new tax plan taking things away from them.

 

 

IMO the real way that it's not working is I know of companies with record profits that are reducing benefits for their workers.