(01-17-2019, 12:20 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (Nancy Pelosi is) a political schemer, a backroom deal maker
That is how American politics used to be done -- and it worked. I see us going back to what worked, with the most blatant difference in a recognition that America has changed in ethnic composition and that the technology is more advanced.
Quote:and a major threat to those on the Democratic side who are foolish enough to oppose her and the views of wealthy blue political donors who she represents for the most part.
Nobody gets everything that he wants except as a coincidence, but nobody gets completely rejected, either. Such is a consequence of democratic give-and-take, and not of My Way or the Highway politics as Trump tries. It's back to the style of Sam Rayburn or Mike Mansfield.
Quote:But, she's not much of an actual leader per say. You ever see how she acts when the heat/pressure/emphasis is on her. She babbles, says stupid stuff and acts like a snotty teenager.
Which is what I expect from you because you see disagreement as evil.
Quote:Well, I'm not all that interested in the opinions or positions of a spoiled rich bitch who acts like a over protected female who reminds me of a teenage girl and someone who would support a fascist in order to keep her wealth and privilege.
She does not need a fascist to protect her wealth and privilege. A free market with an adequate welfare state will do that for most Americans -- and it is the absence of a welfare state that fosters extremism, Left or Right.
Quote:As far a political power, the Senate has power over her at this point because the fate of strengthening American border security is in their hands at this point and the Senate has power over the House in general because nothing gets passed without Senate approval.
The border wall and any efforts to privatize the public sector to Trump cronies die in the House for the next two years. Maybe she can hammer out deals with Republicans in Texas for highway projects instead of the border wall. Maybe we rush the I-69 project in southern Texas intended to connect Houston with Corpus Christi and such cities as Harlingen, McAllen, and Brownsville.
Quote:What you have to be concerned about are Democratic voters and traditional non voters who may have shared your view of Trump a couple of years ago who have seen and have been watching a president who they didn't trust enough to vote for in 2016 who has been actually trying to deliver on the campaign campaign promises that he made to the American working class voters who supported him.
I look at the polls, and President Trump seems to have lost the voters who swung from Obama to Trump. Trump made contradictory promises and appealed to identity. People who disliked both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump voted heavily for Trump -- and they now see what they are getting. I also look at the 2018 election for the House of Representatives, and I see an unambiguous rejection of Donald Trump and his policies. Better good roads than a bad wall.
Donald Trump has cast off some of the old virtues of conservatism in the recent American past, and what do we get as compensation? A Commie-style personality cult with a President who sees politics as an unending campaign of vilification of any real or imagined opposition. Big government at its most pathological -- something of little use, but full of built-in graft. He melds the style of an old-style urban boss onto fascistic contempt for the poor and helpless. At the least the old-style urban bosses made sure that the children of poor people got fed and went to school.
Quote:I didn't misspeak, I chose terms that I thought were more closely related to the so-called liberals view of them instead of mine. I'm quite capable of viewing things/people the same way as the so-called liberals. But you're right, I do view them as illegal aliens who have no legal right to be here at all.
We need to see ourselves as world citizens as well as Americans. We need to see any pointless human suffering as an affront to us all. People without empathy invariably become cruel overlords of the unfortunate, whether the religious and ethnic pariahs of the time, the poor, or those of inadequate education. Even 'model minorities' can go from doing well to being beaten, robbed, and killed. The only significant difference that I see between myself and German-speaking and Yiddish-speaking Jews is Jesus.
Quote:I view them as people who don't have a right to receive healthcare benefits or welfare entitlements or the right to take away classroom space or the attention of American teachers or other educational resources away from an American student/school or view them as having the right to infringe upon the rights of American citizens and the right to screw up or severely impact the lives of American citizens.
I see them as fellow human beings. Some of them have fled the violent crime in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador related to gangs over drug money that 100%-American addicts supply to drug-trafficking cartels. Do you want to blame Mexico? Net immigration from Mexico to the United States is now negative (many Mexican-Americans retiring to Mexico, where Social Security funds and proceeds from the sale of American real estate go further).
Let us remember that the children of illegal aliens are often themselves citizens, and the divide between an older sibling who came to America as a toddler and a younger sibling born in America is not so clear in the family dynamics. Medical coverage for children is comparatively inexpensive in contrast with what it is for the elderly. Illegal aliens have a tendency to become citizens, as many end up marrying US citizens.
Consider this: if I am dating, is the first question that I ask someone for whom I start to develop an interest about status of citizenship? Shared values and interests matter far more.
Quote: How long is it going to be before we start hearing and seeing and talking about bad stuff that's happening to so-called liberal officials and so-called liberal groups or so-called liberals in general? I think the blues or so-called liberals have a major wake up call that'll be coming their way one way or another that will be beginning to occur not so far down the road.
And when do you start showing concern for the plight of poor white kids in Appalachia and the Ozarks?
...I look at our advanced technology, and it can take away millions of jobs while enhancing productivity (including computer power). The world is changing faster than you recognize in ways that you fail to contemplate. We will need to change the priority of school from training people for a miserable first job that practically everyone outgrows quickly to one that teaches how to enjoy life to its fullest. I look at Donald Trump, who is close to being a fascist who thinks that life is rightly preparation for suffering and death, and see a reactionary fool. We will need to tax machine-based productivity and easy money from property rents to develop a welfare system that allows people to fully assert their precious humanity despite unemployment. The alternative is either a Bolshevik-style revolution that overthrows elites who indulge themselves in the presence of mass suffering or the rejection of modern technology that can enrich us.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.