The Next President is...

[Sim]

 

"totally not biased". 

[GrndPndr]

9 hours ago, drewpey said:

<snip>.

The scary old man might tax the rich, alleviate student debt, and give people healthcare, but hardly anything "radical".

It won't be cheap, so maybe it is radical, and who will pay for these things?

[slackline]

You know, we all recognize that our infrastructure needs a major overhaul, healthcare sucks, etc... People ask how to pay for it, but no one's willing to fork out another dime in taxes. "Fix my problems, just do it without my money" is the mantra. Republicans have done such a bangup job fixing these things so far, how do you recommend we do it without tax raises? D's or R's are unwilling to get rid of waste in spending, so what's the alternative? Honest question from a hater of both parties. I'd be willing to pay a higher tax to fix our country, but again, not guarantee it also won't get wasted...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sim]

11 hours ago, drewpey said:

At this pace I don't think Hunter Biden is going to win this presidential election thing.

Please watch this. Wonderful explanation. 

 

[dream big]

3 hours ago, slackline said:

You know, we all recognize that our infrastructure needs a major overhaul, healthcare sucks, etc... People ask how to pay for it, but no one's willing to fork out another dime in taxes. "Fix my problems, just do it without my money" is the mantra. Republicans have done such a bangup job fixing these things so far, how do you recommend we do it without tax raises? D's or R's are unwilling to get rid of waste in spending, so what's the alternative? Honest question from a hater of both parties. I'd be willing to pay a higher tax to fix our country, but again, not guarantee it also won't get wasted...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Private investment and then let the private sector handle it as was intended with the way our country runs; with limited and reasonable oversight.  Why do (both sides) always run to the government for their problems? I don’t want crackpots like Bernie/Biden or illiterates like Occasional Cortex responsible for any more of my money than I already give for them to mishandle.  Also, as much as I love Trump, I don’t want him having too much power and have not appreciated many of his executive orders. 

[war007afa]

3 hours ago, slackline said:

Republicans have done such a bangup job fixing these things so far, how do you recommend we do it without tax raises? D's or R's are unwilling to get rid of waste in spending, so what's the alternative? Honest question from a hater of both parties. I'd be willing to pay a higher tax to fix our country, but again, not guarantee it also won't get wasted...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It has to come from reallocation of spending. The hurt feelings have to suck it up and realize in the prioritization of resources, spending billions for niche bullshit has to end in order to improve things for the greater good. Look at ratios; most people proportionally receive far less benefit than what they pay for. The “one-offs” of the world receive a significantly higher benefit for their contributions and often continue to benefit beyond the scope of the original intent of many of the programs the government funds. No one should be able to solely live off of government “assistance” alone, but people game the system to the point where 40%+ of Americans pay nothing in and receive a large share of the output. Meanwhile, the remainder population is either vilified (like the Top 10% who pay 90% of the tax revenue) or are at the back of the line to receive the benefits they’re expecting the government to fund (like infrastructure improvements). 

[Homestar]

4 hours ago, slackline said:

but again, not guarantee it also won't get wasted...

Ah, but therein lies the rub. 

[17D_guy]

6 hours ago, Sim said:

 

"totally not biased". 

"totally not run over with bullshit."

[TreeA10]

17 hours ago, drewpey said:

"the democratic party has been taken over by it's radical wing"

lol...ok.  The "radicals" were so successful in their "takeover" they voted in the most milquetoast old white dude they had available to them.  I get you guys are terrified of the Democrats winning, but you are going a little overboard with the hyperbole.  If Sanders was up there...sure you could start howling, but neither of these two candidates are far from mainstream politics.  In fact any "radical" ideas they have are likely just to motivate younger voters and are less likely to be fulfilled.

Republicans have continually said over the last 4 years that "the president has no effect on 99% of peoples' daily lives" I'm inclined to parrot that back to you.

The scary old man might tax the rich, alleviate student debt, and give people healthcare, but hardly anything "radical".

If you will recall the Democrat primary, Crazy Bernie was leading the pack.  Knowing that most of American would not accept his radical ideas, pressure was applied to lesser candidates to drop out and throw their support behind the person deemed not as crazy, a.k.a. Sleepy Joe.   Getting Obama and Crazy Bernie's support required Sleepy Joe to bring in Harris as VP, another radical, to garner their endorsement.  The radicals are still there and using Biden as a hand puppet and place holder until he dies or is deemed mentally incompetent which might occur on or about February 2021.

[drewpey]

15 minutes ago, TreeA10 said:

If you will recall the Democrat primary, Crazy Bernie was leading the pack.  Knowing that most of American would not accept his radical ideas, pressure was applied to lesser candidates to drop out and throw their support behind the person deemed not as crazy, a.k.a. Sleepy Joe.   Getting Obama and Crazy Bernie's support required Sleepy Joe to bring in Harris as VP, another radical, to garner their endorsement.  The radicals are still there and using Biden as a hand puppet and place holder until he dies or is deemed mentally incompetent which might occur on or about February 2021.

I hate to break this to you, but Bernie isn't a democrat.  If you knew any of the history you'd know how tenuous his relationship is with the DNC, and how he isn't pulling any strings with anyone, quite the contrary.  Just because you view anything to the left of authoritarianism as being democratic, that doesn't make it so. 

The DNC enjoys Bernie's success because he pushes for many of the same issues and drums up support outside of the mainstream centrist democratic party, but ultimately he funnels his voters towards the Democratic nominee.

And as far as Harris being "radical"...ok sure.  Move the goalposts all you want, but understand that she was by far the safe choice.  There were plenty of options that would have been "Radical", but someone who was an attorney and then a senator is too spicy for you.  Perhaps she should have been a reality TV star first to get more approval from the Republican party.

Overall it shouldn't matter if you have 3 separate but equal branches of government with functional checks and balances.  The problem is you've consolidated all the power to the executive and the legislative branch has entirely abdicated their responsibilities.  Fortunately it's shown us all the holes in our government we relied on good faith to not be exploited, but the real test will be if our democracy can adapt and strengthen itself or continue to be torn apart.

[Prozac]

43 minutes ago, TreeA10 said:

If you will recall the Democrat primary, Crazy Bernie was leading the pack.  Knowing that most of American would not accept his radical ideas, pressure was applied to lesser candidates to drop out and throw their support behind the person deemed not as crazy, a.k.a. Sleepy Joe.   Getting Obama and Crazy Bernie's support required Sleepy Joe to bring in Harris as VP, another radical, to garner their endorsement.  The radicals are still there and using Biden as a hand puppet and place holder until he dies or is deemed mentally incompetent which might occur on or about February 2021.

This is an important difference between the D’s and R’s right now. Dems know better than to nominate a candidate who is far outside the mainstream. Republicans, meanwhile, are clamoring to board the crazy train and leave their party’s traditional values behind. And I’ve got to agree with Drewpy here. While Joe and Kamala certainly espouse liberal values, they are both well within the mainstream. The idea that they are radical socialists (or controlled by radical elements) is simply untrue and is an obvious conservative trope attempting to scare people away. 

[bfargin]

You guys do realize that it's not the two numbnuts they put out front who are pulling democrat strings, right? The leftist are pulling all of the strings by using the "face" of the party (who are of course more than willing to do the bidding of whoever props them up). Both current parties are pro "big-government bureaucracy" and love spending tax payer's money which is why we continue to increase our federal debt. The leftist continue to dominate the democrat side and have all but pushed out traditional liberals who at least had respect for individual liberty and responsibility, the rule of law, etc.

There really is a push by the emboldened left to reinvent our country but thankfully at the local level in most parts of the country we aren't buying it.  Sadly, many people in population centers are being fooled into embracing feces that will come back to impact all of us.

[drewpey]

52 minutes ago, bfargin said:

You guys do realize that it's not the two numbnuts they put out front who are pulling democrat strings, right? The leftist are pulling all of the strings by using the "face" of the party (who are of course more than willing to do the bidding of whoever props them up). Both current parties are pro "big-government bureaucracy" and love spending tax payer's money which is why we continue to increase our federal debt. The leftist continue to dominate the democrat side and have all but pushed out traditional liberals who at least had respect for individual liberty and responsibility, the rule of law, etc.

There really is a push by the emboldened left to reinvent our country but thankfully at the local level in most parts of the country we aren't buying it.  Sadly, many people in population centers are being fooled into embracing feces that will come back to impact all of us.

I get what you are saying, but I think things are much simpler than a grand conspiracy of people orchestrating the compliance of the executive branch, and half of the legislative and the judiciary.  It's all about money, and yes corporations and organizations are wildly spending money to influence our government and drown out our voices as the individual level in favor for these other agendas.  Some people are bought and paid for, some less so, and I'm sure on occasion there are those who aren't at all.  There's money to be made on pretty much either side of the political coin.  It sucks, but that's the system we have until we come together and set some campaign finance laws limiting how much money can be showered onto our politicians.  Imagine if most of the money that went into elections went to something good.

[slackline]

You guys do realize that it's not the two numbnuts they put out front who are pulling democrat strings, right? The leftist are pulling all of the strings by using the "face" of the party (who are of course more than willing to do the bidding of whoever props them up). Both current parties are pro "big-government bureaucracy" and love spending tax payer's money which is why we continue to increase our federal debt. The leftist continue to dominate the democrat side and have all but pushed out traditional liberals who at least had respect for individual liberty and responsibility, the rule of law, etc.
There really is a push by the emboldened left to reinvent our country but thankfully at the local level in most parts of the country we aren't buying it.  Sadly, many people in population centers are being fooled into embracing feces that will come back to impact all of us.

I can buy some of your first paragraph. Second one sounds like a bunch of Fox News tinfoil hat crap. Thankfully neither the nuts on the left or the nuts on the right truly run the show. One side would have us living in the 1950s era US "back in the good old days" (for white dudes) and the other side would have us referring to everyone as some weird non gender specific pronoun...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Guardian]

You know, we all recognize that our infrastructure needs a major overhaul, healthcare sucks, etc... People ask how to pay for it, but no one's willing to fork out another dime in taxes. "Fix my problems, just do it without my money" is the mantra. Republicans have done such a bangup job fixing these things so far, how do you recommend we do it without tax raises? D's or R's are unwilling to get rid of waste in spending, so what's the alternative? Honest question from a hater of both parties. I'd be willing to pay a higher tax to fix our country, but again, not guarantee it also won't get wasted...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wouldn’t. Feel free to donate more money to the government if you want. Don’t steal mine slack line.

[brabus]

21 hours ago, slackline said:

I'd be willing to pay a higher tax to fix our country, but again, not guarantee it also won't get wasted...

Why are you willing to pay more before the govt does a substantial budget overhaul and some massive reallocation efforts? We spend trillions on things that are way lower priority than the big problems. Why have we given billions to those fuckstick Pakis while not funding things we need at home? Why have we spent billions on cellphones for people (newsflash, a cellphone is not a required, basic need, even in 2020)before we’ve improved education? We don’t need more revenue, we need to stop spending shitloads of money on things that are not as important as American health care, education, public safety, etc. 

[gearhog]

27 minutes ago, brabus said:

Why are you willing to pay more before the govt does a substantial budget overhaul and some massive reallocation efforts? We spend trillions on things that are way lower priority than the big problems. Why have we given billions to those fuckstick Pakis while not funding things we need at home? Why have we spent billions on cellphones for people (newsflash, a cellphone is not a required, basic need, even in 2020)before we’ve improved education? We don’t need more revenue, we need to stop spending shitloads of money on things that are not as important as American health care, education, public safety, etc. 

Sit down at your office computer, open Excel, and type $1,000,000 in cell A1. How would you convince someone that it's real, has value, and can given to them? Maybe you tell them they can also spend it and you'll accept a portion of it back in the future as a required tax payment. Perhaps you decide to spend your money on Healthcare, cellphones for the needy, or donate it to a school. Can this money you just created be wasted? Now change it to $2,000,000. Repeat.

In 2020, our government and the Federal Reserve has added approx $3.5 Trillion US Dollars to our money supply by simply snapping their fingers,  and is expected to add at least another $1.5 Trillion in the next stimulus. The early estimate of our 2020 GDP,  declined by almost 40% in the second quarter, and likely over 5% during the year. The 2019 total US Federal Tax Revenue was about $3.7 Trillion. We are now creating more US dollars than exist in the total US Budget ($4.79 Trillion).

Unelected people in power are arbitrarily creating unimaginable sums of money to maintain the illusion the system is working. If we print approximately 150% more dollars than we collect in tax revenue this year, why are we paying taxes at all? If you make $150K, you don't get a stimulus check. Your neighbor gets a $1200 non-taxable check. If you want $1200, you pick up a $1200 airline trip and contribute to the US GDP and pay taxes on that income.

The numbers are going parabolic, and we're nearing the end of the currency system. The numbers are now based on abstract concepts. If you're on the left and believe social issues will determine the path of the US, you're a pawn. If you're on the right and believe the current social issues are a deciding factor in the election, you're naive. Why isn't the economy and US debt among the topics discussed every campaign debate, town hall, and news report as they were in previous elections? Because it's an unanswerable question for everyone in public office. They're brokering deals, amassing wealth for themselves and business partners in preparation for what comes next, and they're telling us, whether we're democrats or republicans, we need to pay for it.

Edited October 17, 2020 by torqued

[slackline]

https://apple.news/A1vFDoROfTw67ktJ6TCgOhw

I get it, NBC is horribly biased, and I’d even agree with you on that, but read the words, the direct quote from this GOP senator. This is the danger of a Trump presidency. Trump is the guy, over the last 4 years, who has driven this country further left. Supporting this narcissist’s behavior, I fear, will ultimately play a huge part in the downfall of this country if we don’t figure a way to come back to center on many issues.

Totally agree with above posts about the economy and its mismanagement needing to remain the focal point of discussion. Problem is, Trump has been so incredibly polarizing that it’s impossible to do that. He bares most of the blame for that because he can’t stay focused for longer than 2” on anything substantial. He has allowed elements of the left to take the discussion away from where it belongs because he does/says stupid things. Dude literally retweeted the Bee (think Onion type satire) because it supports his narrative... Come on! My fear is that all of you who have thrown your support behind this guy for so long are just contributing to a growing divide. Instead of standing up to the crazy crap he says/does while supporting the policies you like, this country has enabled him to keep distracting from the important issues. Don’t get me wrong, I feel the left holds a lot of the responsibility for this as well, but he’s the big kid in the room, people are gonna follow his lead...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[jazzdude]

Why are you willing to pay more before the govt does a substantial budget overhaul and some massive reallocation efforts? We spend trillions on things that are way lower priority than the big problems. Why have we given billions to those stick Pakis while not funding things we need at home? Why have we spent billions on cellphones for people (newsflash, a cellphone is not a required, basic need, even in 2020)before we’ve improved education? We don’t need more revenue, we need to stop spending shitloads of money on things that are not as important as American health care, education, public safety, etc. 

What we (as a country) spend money on reflects our values. If we're not spending money on it, then it's not a problem we truly feel is important or of a significant priority...

As far as foreign aid, we are buying influence. Could be for access/basing/overflight, or for building a relationship to block China/Russia from the region so they buy american (or from our friends). This would in theory protect our industries and open (or keep open) markets.

Education and healthcare are hard fixes, because it would involve a fundamental shift in the system surrounding both fields. For higher education, what gets cut when you lower tuition for the individual? If stuff can't be cut, how would offsetting with federal/state funding be monitored for value? Or would that money be better spent at the K-12 level vs college? How much of college is training vs education?

Healthcare has a high bar to entry to practice medicine (expensive schools, limited residency programs) as well as high litigation/insurance costs? Most of the medical residencies are also federally funded already, so how do you increase the production of doctors without significantly increasing funding (which is probably why we see more nurse practitioners in medicine now)? How do you drive those costs down in a "free" market?

A single T-6 sortie could feed a family (or two) decently for a month. A single C-17 training sortie costs about the same as the median US household income in 2019.

Neither side has really cared about a balance budget. And most programs tend to grow in scope as time goes on, sometimes with good intents. Defense is no different. But to make cuts means first trimming the fat, then cutting into the meat and reducing capabilities.

[Sim]

24 minutes ago, slackline said:

who has driven this country further left.

.... LOL.  

 

[gearhog]

23 minutes ago, slackline said:

https://apple.news/A1vFDoROfTw67ktJ6TCgOhw

I get it, NBC is horribly biased, and I’d even agree with you on that, but read the words, the direct quote from this GOP senator. This is the danger of a Trump presidency. Trump is the guy, over the last 4 years, who has driven this country further left.

By that logic, one should argue Trump and conservatives were forced to move further right by their antagonists (liberals). The movement of the country to one idealism or the other is the result of the collective individual political opinions of it's citizens.

So how do most individual US citizens form their political ideology? It certainly isn't in a vacuum through deep introspective consideration of Trump's actual policies, actions, and results.

It's media.

 

[brickhistory]

One begins to understand the street respect Corn Pop paid to Joe...

 

 

[slackline]

By that logic, one should argue Trump and conservatives were forced to move further right by their antagonists (liberals). The movement of the country to one idealism or the other is the result of the collective individual political opinions of it's citizens.
So how do most individual US citizens form their political ideology? It certainly isn't in a vacuum through deep introspective consideration of Trump's actual policies, actions, and results.
It's media.
 

I get where you’re coming from, but it’s pretty hard to argue that Trump hasn’t turned things up to 11 in every facet. Zero effort to unify. He has strictly and only ever played to his base. Trump may not have started it, go back to Clinton turn the dial up a bit, then Bush a bit more, then Obama even more, then wham, Trump came in and asked, “How far can I turn this dial?”


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[slackline]

.... LOL.  
 

You’re hilarious my friend... The equivalent to this for the right would be me going out and posting a video of some militia, or white power group. Do better. No one’s arguing the nut jobs on either side of the aisle aren’t exactly that, nut jobs...


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[TreeA10]

Politics have been polarized for some time.  Who was the last Republican Presidential Candidate that the media and Democrats, but I repeat myself, called a Nazi?  Say they were going to starve old people?  Trump didn't start that, it's been going on for a while.  Trump decided not to go along to get along and refused to accept the usual spiel from Democrats and their media mouthpieces.  Blaming it on Trump is failing to look at the historical record.

Edited October 17, 2020 by TreeA10