by Jack
My daughter asked me why I wrote something critical about Trump on Sunday. She knows I can’t stand to see Hillary the Liar (and crook) become president, so why was I hammering Trump?
Of course the Trump campaign is going to ignore the criticism coming from liberals, but when when grass roots begin to complain, surely he must take note and improve his conduct, right? That’s it in a nutshell, I’m complaining about his public comments because I want him to re-exam what he’s doing to his campaign.
We’re struggling out here to find one honest and effective leader to represent us. Trump was our last best hope and he’s blowing it agains the worst candidate the dems have fielded in the last 100 years.
Financially speaking, middle America is barely staying afloat and to think of another 4 more years with democrat policies, well, its too horrorifying to even contemplate. So, we want Trump to win, but not if it means 4 years of shooting off his mouth and embarassing the nation or worse, compromising our national security over his mistatements and imprudent remarks. We can accept an amature only so far, then we begin to expect excellence from our candidate. He’s only 90 days to run, by now he ought to have learned about public speaking, diplomacy, acting presidential, so I’m worried abnd I think the party and conservatives are going to punished for backing Trump.
Right now Trump is having a lot trouble trying to walk back his comments about the Muslim parents of the fallen soldier. I have a feeling this could be a defining moment for his campaign, and not in a good way. This time his remarks are sticking like glue, will he learn and recover or is it too late?
We can’t sit quietly by and let Trump drag us down into the gutter and we can’t surrender and let Hillary win it. So what are we supposed to do? This is a Hobson’s choice if there ever was one.
UPDATE: Former Jeb Bush campaign adviser Sally Bradshaw has registered as an independent in Florida because of Donald Trump, CNN reported Monday.
I still oscillate between going to the polls (carrying along a barf bag) and just staying home.
I could just scream. Um … well … I actually do nearly every time Trump opens his big mouth.
Hillary only makes me groan in pain.
Maybe this will make you feel a bit better.
Thanks Tina, saved for later.
Also saved for later is this I just ran into —
Progressive Racism
David Horowitz’s new book unveils the Left’s vicious assault on MLK’s dream and the American social contract.
So if by definition of Hobson choice I am forced to choose between Hillary’s lack of veracity, which is clearly comprised of self-serving moral ambiguity.
Or Trump Expressing something bluntly in a very direct way that may upset some people.
I have no problem in selecting Trump
Harold I salute you!
As we’ve all noted in various ways, our candidate is not easy to support. But your simple comparison makes clear that there is no other choice. Hillary has been tested and has failed so spectacularly she disqualifies herself, absolutely!
Thanks Harold.
Yes the US economy is struggling, however what makes you think that Trump would make the situation any better?
Independent analysts have predicted that Trump’s policies would cost the US economy 7 Million jobs, and lead to a recession. The National Chamber of Commerce (who previously has always supported the Republican candidate) doesn’t endorse Trump and has been deeply critical of his proposals.
In the last election, Romney said he could bring unemployment below 6%. Well Obama has surpassed that. Additionally the US economy is in better shape than other first world countries.
At first I was optimistic about Trump, however the more I learn about him, the less I like him. From what I’ve seen, there is no way I could every support him now.
Jim when Obama was running we were told all kinds of things about how the economy would be better and deficit spending, which was “unpatriotic and irresponsible,” would come to an end. The economy under Obama has never recovered. A nation of less than 2% growth over seven years cannot offer jobs and prosperity to the middle class or a chance at upward mobility for the poor. Spending and the failure to address and reform dependency programs have caused our debt to double. Interest rates have been kept low artificially. When they rise, and they will rise, we will have a great deal of difficulty meeting our debt obligations. The unemployment figure is misleading since it doesn’t include millions of people that have given finding work and now put downward pressure on safety net spending. We were told that the healthcare plan would save a family of four over $2000 a year and get more people covered. Obama did not deliver on either of those promises. The cost for insurance is up and for those subsidized, deductibles are too high. A number of people have opted out preferring to pay a fine. Downward pressure on Medicaid funds make finding a doctor and treatment is difficult if not impossible. Medicare is being compromised to make up for rising costs. The insurance companies involved with the exchanges are withdrawing due to severe losses (they were promised a lot of new healthy customers). Even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Obamacare penciled out, initially, pretty well. That’s because Democrats wrote the legislation so that the tax burden wouldn’t kick in until after the 2012 election. In 2011 CBO wrote that “before the beginning of the next decade, Obamacare — if not repealed — would increase the national debt by $341 billion.”
And you want to know why I think Trump would do better? It would be difficult to do worse but the simple reason is that his plan to lower taxes has a proven tax record. As I have written time and again it worked under John F. Kennedy. A review by Thomas Sowell on the book, “Who’s the Fairest of Them All,” by Stephen Moore says it all:
Donald Trump will lower taxes and our economy will once again become prosperous.
Jim, I am frankly dumbfounded at the state of the American electorate. When a blustery bombastic personality is thought to be more offensive than a woman who’s policies as secretary of state led to the disaster in Benghazi and a deeply destabilized and dangerous Middle East and more offensive than Hillary keeping a secret private server, hiding her record by deleting emails, breaking laws and lying repeatedly to Congress, the FBI, and the American people.
Hillary was characterized 20 years ago in a NYT article as a “congenital liar.” Her campaign against Obama was as calculated and dirty as her campaign against Trump is:
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both led fiercely negative campaigns and both have governed very badly. Neither is criticized in the media in stead they are excused and their errors papered over and kept from the public when possible.
Obama is no better. He was elected despite disparaging remarks about Christians who “cling to their guns and Bibles.” His tone wasn’t “bombastic” but the negative, nasty campaign tactics were in full play. No media jumped on that to proclaim that this man was not presidential or unfit to serve.
Kahn appeared on stage at the convention for no other reason than to insult Trump. His son’s death was a prop just as the little pocket Constitution was. The media and lap dog republicans rushed to tell us how offended they were at Trumps defense of himself. Perhaps they should start looking behind the false veneer of respectability and genteel demeanor to see the crooked, deceptive, divisive, underhanded Saul Alinsky tactics used to deceive and control the election against work against the people.
I’m not surprised you find yourself wavering, that is exactly what was intended. The Hillary campaign and the media will work very hard to discourage people away from Trump.
You might ask yourself why the Democrats have to operate this way? Why can’t they simply run on their exemplary record? What does stooping to devious tactics, a rigged primary, avoidance of the record work for them?
I’m sticking with Trump.
Tina: “Jim when Obama was running we were told all kinds of things about how the economy would be better and deficit spending, which was “unpatriotic and irresponsible,” would come to an end.”
Yes, and Obama has cut the deficit by over half since taking office.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jan/12/barack-obama/we-have-cut-our-deficits-three-fourths-obama-state/
“The economy under Obama has never recovered.”
That is not true. It has been a slow recovery, because the recession Obama inherited was greater than any other in our history since the Great Depression. But every economist knows there has been a recovery; we are nowhere near the dire economic circumstances we were in in 2008-2010.
As Jim points out, many economists, including conservative economists, believe Trump would plunge us back into a recession.
“A nation of less than 2% growth over seven years cannot offer jobs and prosperity to the middle class or a chance at upward mobility for the poor.”
It can certainly do so better than a 0% growth rate, which is what the last Republican candidate left office with.
“The unemployment figure is misleading since it doesn’t include millions of people that have given finding work”
The U-4 and U-5 figures absolutely do include discouraged workers. Both of these figures have fallen substantially under Obama.
“We were told that the healthcare plan would save a family of four over $2000 a year and get more people covered.”
This was a campaign proposal; you said recently that Trump should not be expected to live up to any proposal he makes during the campaign, because plans will change once he gets into the White House.
Why do you believe Obama should be required to meet every promise he made during his campaign, but Trump should not be held to the same standard?
The $2000 promise was made at a time when Obama was backing universal healthcare with a government option. He later changed his position to support an individual mandate. He never claimed that the individual mandate would save families this amount of money.
“The cost for insurance is up”
For some. For others the cost has been reduced. It’s also important to note that premiums tend to go up nearly every year, and I’ve seen no evidence that the increases have been larger due to Obamacare.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/25/donald-trump/trump-obamacare-health-care-premiums-going-35-45-5/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obamacare-premiums-open-enrollment_us_562e8c3fe4b0c66bae59088d
http://obamacarefacts.com/obama-care-fact-check/
There are certainly problems with the ACA, though I’m not sure any of them are enough to overwhelm the fact that 17 million more people have health insurance today because of it. Clinton will work to fix those problems; Trump wants to eliminate the law, which would be a disaster.
“In 2011 CBO wrote that “before the beginning of the next decade, Obamacare — if not repealed — would increase the national debt by $341 billion.”
The CBO also found that repealing the law would increase the deficit by $353 billion. So repealing the law is more expensive than keeping it.
http://fortune.com/2015/06/19/obamacare-repeal-cost/
“And you want to know why I think Trump would do better? It would be difficult to do worse but the simple reason is that his plan to lower taxes has a proven tax record.”
Donald Trump does not have a plan to lower taxes. Sometimes he says taxes on the rich should be raised. He has no plan and no idea what he is doing.
It is also not true that lowering taxes always has positive economic effects. Revenue did not increase after the Bush tax cuts, for instance.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/17/ron-christie/gop-strategist-christie-tax-revenues-rose-after-bu/
“When a blustery bombastic personality is thought to be more offensive”
He is not just a “blustery bombastic personality.” He is a petulant, ignorant moron who viciously attacks POWs, gold star parents, Muslims, Mexicans, women, disabled reporters, and anyone else who criticizes him with disgustingly bigoted slurs and innuendo.
“than a woman who’s policies as secretary of state led to the disaster in Benghazi”
Benghazi was not even one of our nation’s worst attacks. Nor was it the only one that would have been preventable given different policies–there were many more under both Bush and Reagan, and the failures that led to deaths on their watch have been well documented. Never before have such attacks been used as political cudgels in the way Benghazi has been used against Clinton and Obama. Yes, security should have been tightened. I won’t address the lies about a “stand down” order or the videotape (which was cited by the attackers as motivation) because those claims have been debunked by every investigation. Clinton did fail at providing adequate security, but again, similar failures have never been used to disqualify other presidents or candidates.
“and a deeply destabilized and dangerous Middle East”
George W. Bush left the Middle East more destabilized and dangerous.
“and more offensive than Hillary keeping a secret private server, hiding her record by deleting emails, breaking laws and lying repeatedly to Congress, the FBI, and the American people.”
She did not break any laws according to Comey. Her behavior with the secret server was appalling. I believe it’s a mistake she will not repeat. I have no reason to believe Trump, who is by nature an extremely careless and irresponsible person, would not make similar mistakes and worse. Clinton is experienced and qualified; Trump has no experience handling classified material, and given his comments about Russia, there is no reason to believe we can trust him with such information.
“Hillary is famous for exploding at her staff for not hitting opponents hard enough.”
Baseless rumor. We know Trump explodes at anyone who criticizes him, because he shows us every day. You are holding Clinton to a double standard where in allegations that she engages in Trump-like behavior or damning, but Trump demonstrating the same behavior in public is not.
“Obama is no better. He was elected despite disparaging remarks about Christians who “cling to their guns and Bibles.””
Here is his full statement:
“We’ve got a couple of folks who are heading out to Pennsylvania to go door to door with us. And the question was: What kinds of questions should I expect them to get? … The places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are misapprehend—I think they’re misunderstanding why the demographics in our—in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to “white working-class don’t want to work—don’t want to vote for the black guy.” That’s—there were intimations of that, there was an article in the Sunday New York Times today that kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing. …
“Here’s what it is: In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, they feel so betrayed by government, that when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, there’s a part of them that just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by—it is true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism. (Audience laughs.)
“But—so the questions you’re most likely to get are going to be: ‘Well, you know, what’s this guy going to do for me? What’s the concrete thing?’ And what they want to hear is—you know, so we’ll give you talking points about what we’re proposing: to close tax loopholes and roll back, you know, the top—the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama’s going to give tax breaks to middle-class folks, and we’re going to provide health care for every American. You know, we’ll have a series of talking points.
“But the truth is that our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s no evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio—like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. And each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate. And they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or, you know, anti-trade sentiment [as] a way to explain their frustrations.
“Now, these are in some communities. You know, I think what you’ll find is that people of every background—there are going to be a mix of people. You can go in the toughest neighborhood, you know, working-class lunch-pail folks, and you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you’d think that I’d be very strong, and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.”
In context the line was not an insult, but a patronizing attempt to understand. He made it clear that he still needed to reach out to these communities and make an effort to appeal to them. Contrast this with Trump, who simply insults communities and then says “They love me,” and the difference couldn’t be more clear.
“Kahn appeared on stage at the convention for no other reason than to insult Trump.”
Good. Trump has insulted every member of Khan’s religion.
“His son’s death was a prop just as the little pocket Constitution was.”
That is a really disgusting thing to say, but you support Trump, so I should not be surprised.
Khan was moved to speak because his son’s sacrifice disproves Trump’s theory about Muslims–that they are all such a threat that we need to keep them out of our country.
“The media and lap dog republicans rushed to tell us how offended they were at Trumps defense of himself.”
Trump does not need to defend himself from every single citizen who publicly criticizes him. His “defense” also baselessly impugned Khan’s wife in a religiously bigoted way, assuming she was “not allowed to speak” because she is a Muslim woman. Trump is not presidential because he feels the need to defend himself from every single critic, in increasingly absurd ways. Contrast this with Clinton’s response when asked about the parents of the Benghazi dead who claim she lied to them. She did not impugn their characters, she simply said she disagrees with their memory of the events. (Bush also had similar comments about Cindy Sheehan–despite his flaws, he had a baseline level of competence, temperament and decorum that Trump completely lacks.)
This should not be a difficult choice. One candidate is experience, intelligent and qualified, but also a liar. The other is inexperienced, unintelligent and unqualified, and also a liar. Vote for the liar that is actually qualified.
That is about how I feel.
Additionally one is not only unqualified, he is in kahoots with Vladimir Putin.
Re: “he is in kahoots with Vladimir Putin.”
Nonsense. Put up some evidence or shut up.
Let us get real here folks, who has used the highly questionable Clinton Foundation to sell influence all over the globe? Who runs the Clinton Foundation currently under investigation by the FBI (who will drop the ball, again, of course)? Who is for sale here? Who sells influence through the Clinton Foundation to the most repressive and totalitarian Islamic regimes in the world where gays are imprisoned or executed and women are chattel?
Eh?
Need I provide some facts on this matter?
Vladimir Putin has a plan to control the United States and his name is Donald Trump.
Conservative columnist George Will says that Trump is working directly with Russian oligarchs. Ted Cruise went a step further saying that Trump is connected to the Russian Mafia. Of course don’t forget that his wife is from Soviet Block country and her dad was a member of the Communist party.
But wait there is more. Republican party officials altered the officials party platform in favor of Putin. If that isn’t bad enough, Paul Manafort who is Trump’s campaign manager previously worked for the Ukrainian President, who has direct ties to Putin.
Now we have the Russian hackers breaking into the Democratic party emails.
Oh and by the way, the only foreign leaders to endorse Trump are Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un of North Korea.
Blowhard Chris (Jake) is back in full force! It will not be long until he starts calling Post Scripts and anyone who disagrees with him bigoted, racist, and xenophobic. *YAWN*
The deficit is one measure, the total debt is another. Yearly deficit under Obama has had some improvements, but total federal debt? Oh puhleeese.
If a 1.1% increase counts as a recovery, I have a bridge to sell Chris.
Want ever increasing debt (at this moment 19.4 trillon dollars), an essentially stagnant economy, a porous boarder, and a country where legal immigration means nothing but illegal immigration is rampant?
Want a 500% increase in Syrian Muslim refugees who cannot be vetted and ISIS infiltrates?
Want US prestige, power, military power and influence in the world to continue to spiral down?
Then vote for Hillary.
” One candidate is experience, intelligent and qualified, but also a liar”
That candidate is sloppy, destructive, deceitful, criminally dishonest and a liar. Her experience is shallow and her rise to power, on the coat tails of a perverted, misogynistic, deceitful man, is disingenuous, especially since she counts herself a feminist. Her biggest accomplishment is a Middle East in flames, that is, if you don’t count avoiding criminal indictment over 30 years. (Whitewater, Benghazi, destroyed and hidden emails, Chinagate, Travelgate, filegate, Cattle Futures, illegal arms sales…and more) See also here.
Donald Trump has extensive experience as an executive, a decision maker, which is perfect for anyone serving in an executive position like the presidency. Advisors can fill in the blanks just as they have for Barack Obama who lacked executive experience and who’s record as a politician was shallow, or any other president in our history.
Donald Trump has constructed big projects ranging from skyscrapers, to golf courses, Casinos and hotels. He’s been in job positions from investing stock, running companies, and staring on a successful television show. He’s deal with city, state, and national officials and all of the various bureaus under them , as well as contractors and subcontractors, his legal team, and the employees of his corporations. In New York Trump took over a failing project and he built it faster and cheaper:
Compare that to Hillary’s failed Benghazi “project” and Obama’s red lines in Syria or the Iran deal…new revelations on that fiasco out this evening in the news. Obama and Hillary have no business putting Trump down when it comes to experience.
Most of Trumps money has come from building huge projects. When he first started, he worked with his father for five years. He says, “My father was my mentor, and I learned a tremendous amount about every aspect of the construction industry from him.” If Trumps children are any indication Trumps father passed strong values on to his son who passed them along to his children. People that work with him, in every capacity, admire and respect him.
I’d rather go with someone who isn’t entrenched in the crooked politics of crooked DC.