That car has been traveling full speed towards that cliff since GWB was POTUS. Joe has been driving the car with the Democrats navigating from the back seat.. ain't nobody in either party has any interest in hitting the brakes. You only seem interested in blaming trump and his flunkies. This little game of out of control spending preceded the dumpster by at least 16 years. If it REALLY mattered Joe would have done something about it. So what has Joe done? Rhetorical question, not a damn thing.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 07, 2022 9:21 amYa und?cradleandshoot wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 4:43 pmIf I use your logic YOUR party would be ectatic to have you as a featured speaker at the RNC convention? It could be you speak for the infinitesimally tiny number of rich white liberal Republicans who care less about the country than portraying themselves as social justice warriors for all of the down trodden common folk. If your a fiscal conservative why don't you espouse ANYTHING that remotely points out the chit hole mess our country is in financially? You claim to be a fiscal conservative but talk is cheap. What is our national debt ?? What is the game plan to get it under control???? I would vote for a Fan for POTUS in a heartbeat. As a true blue fiscal conservative.. he is the only one I know of on this forum that understands that. All the social justice in the world means jack chit if your financially watching your country circle the drain.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 2:54 pmI'm a moderate. Conservative fiscally and generally, but progressive socially. That used to be comfortable and welcome in the GOP, now it makes me a RINO apparently.LaxFan2000 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 2:48 pmThanks for clearing up where you stand politically. Sounds like you identify more with the Democratic Party these days...MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 2:29 pmI continue, stubbornly, to the a registered Republican. I've been voting in each election cycle for more than 4 decades, and I have only once voted for the Democrat for POTUS, twice voting for the third party candidate. My default, until recently, was to vote GOP at each level, unless I knew the particular Dem candidate to be a particularly good public servant. I'm not a partisan anything.LaxFan2000 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 1:39 pmThanks. Are you a republican? I've thought you have said you were in the past. This post certainly doesn't sound like it comes from someone who claims to be a republican. You are basically stating the right is guilty of this about 95% and the left about 5%. That's not in even close. It's much more prevalent on the left than you claim it to be. Whether you want to believe that is I guess up to you, and you only.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 1:27 pmWhich is why we do try to have such conversations here, and why those who actively participate here appreciate this environment.LaxFan2000 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 1:03 pmThat's only representative of an extreme subsection of the Republican Party that is unfortunately amplified via the internet medium. The internet, in particular Twitter, is often quite far from actual reality. It's best to stay away from forums like that, unless you are intentionally seeking out these people so that you can complain about them. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here that you are not doing that. Because you can't be expecting a reasonable discussion on those sites. It just doesn't exist. Same on the far left sites. Unfortunate.Brooklyn wrote: ↑Sat Aug 06, 2022 12:46 pmLaxFan2000 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:40 pm
Why do they have to have a certain political lean to think COVID is a hoax? Do you really think that only people with a certain political lean are capable of thinking this? You never thought that maybe there's a myriad of hundreds of other factors. Education, geographical location, religious bent, family influence and the list goes on and on. Life is not as simple as you make it out to be here. As politically convenient as you are making it sound, it's way, way more complex than this...
Because right wing "thinking" is just that ~ delusionalism. I have had debates on other forums where right wingers use profanities to describe anyone who dares to say the covid plague is a reality. There's just something about these people. It's utter insanity. There's no other way to describe it.
That said, I keep coming across people in my personal "real world" life who believe this garbage, hook line and sinker, swallowed whole.
We also do know that there is much greater belief in some really strange things than we'd like to admit...it's convenient (and perhaps used to be more the case) to think that such was limited to an extreme fringe...but, today that percentage is much, much larger.
Look at the belief in the Big Lie among the GOP today...Biden cheated, Trump actually won... big majority. Not all, but quite marked. Batsh-t crazy, but there we are...
I think that's because of the fragmented information/media world, in which the incentives are to attract and maintain eyeballs, which is most effective by stimulating chemical reactions in the brain and nervous system through telling a 'story' that makes people feel passionately...doesn't need to be true. Indeed, the more incendiary and 'unbelievable' the better...
That strategy earned talk radio on the right huge profits, and there was a concerted political strategy to buy up stations and dominate those airwaves with progressively more and more off the wall claims. With the explosion of cable, this was taken to TV, and then to the web...huge profits. The social media world put this strategy on steroids in terms of impact and 'permission structure'. Colossal profitability.
The left has been slower to adapt to these strategies, and provided less chemical/nervous system stimulation. Much of the mainstream media is certainly liberal leaning, but by and large they believed in journalistic integrity and their job was to uncover uncomfortable truths, as the 4th estate challenging power. But not to make shite up for profit.
Some of that now happens on the left, unfortunately, as well. But the hard right (not actually "conservative") dominates this strategy.
My opinion.
But right now, I refuse to vote for any Big Lie Republicans, or anyone that isn't willing to call it out clearly. I'm more progressive socially than the MAGA crowd, so there are a number of other key signals that will turn me off a GOP candidate in much of the current crop. I see DeSantis, for instance, a potentially more competent, thus more dangerous fascist than was Trump. Anyone even remotely flirting with "Christian nationalism" or any such dog whistle is out.
Unfortunately, that leaves very few of the current GOP to support. Just a handful.
The GOP has changed tremendously, I have not changed much.
My wife, also a lifelong Republican, had the same voting pattern as me, though voted for Obama in 2008 while I voted McCain. she voted for Romney, with whom she had worked at Bain. She has now changed her registration to Democrat.
No, the "left" media, much less the mainstream liberal media, does not come remotely close to the same level of outright lying as we have seen grow over the past two decades from the right. Not to say that there isn't a left filter on what's important to cover, or sometimes inflammatory rhetoric used (yes, there's money to be made and power to be gained) but the volume and sheer batsh-ttedness isn't on the same level. Not close.
I dunno whether 95-5, but I'd certainly buy at least 80-20...not close.
I watch plenty of relatively left leaning media to say with confidence that the crazy, crazy stuff doesn't have a viable home in the mainstream media world. Occasionally rhetoric gets hot, but sheer craziness and outright lies get shot down.
My Dem votes are primarily opposition to Big Lie/MAGA/fascist/racist trend in the GOP...I'd love for the GOP to come to its senses.
Trumpists and the GOP radically increased the national debt.
For heaven's sake, don't give them the keys to the car, the'll drive us right off the fiscal cliff.
FTR, the dumpster had to deal with the cost of the COVID pandemic. Would you have been happier if the dumpster chose not to approve the chitload full of money the politicians in DC were begging and pleading for non stop. How much of that money was the federal government responsible for with their extra 300 dollars a week in bonus unemployment benefits?? Trump could have told them to pound sand. Would you have been okay with that? If your going to whine about the spending the dumpster signed off on what would YOU have done different??? There were none of your Democrat friends whining about it at the time. No Democrats whined about the money handed to Andy Cuomo to convert the Javitts center to a temporary hospital. No Democrats whined about the money wasted to bring the Mercy to the port of NY. No Democrats whined about the money the dumpster sent to California that Gov. Newsome thanked trump for profusely. You now have the audacity to complain about the money spent to alleviate the Covid crisis. I wonder how much b***ing you would now be doing if trump had turned down all of these requests. So the dumpster is in a damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario.
