(04-30-2019, 10:32 AM)David Horn Wrote:(04-30-2019, 09:00 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:(04-22-2019, 11:41 AM)David Horn Wrote:(04-20-2019, 11:39 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The fault with Donald Trump is obviously not in his stars, as the Mueller report shows. We have no Presidency with this level of known scandal, but also no precedent for the consequence of so many and so pervasive scandals.
He got elected with the aid of electoral misconduct in which he is complicit. Close as the 2016 election was, Trump may have little legitimacy as President except for the legal presumption that electoral results are valid even if they prove wrong after the fact.
Scandal only counts if people can be scandalized. Trump has managed to make scandal into a social game by playing it in the press as theater with lines that change at every performance. 10 years from now, we may look back and be embarrassed. But, for now, hoi polloi thinks it's all fun and games.
Perhaps. Or perhaps more accurately, PBR only sees what he wants to see and believes only things that he wants to believe like everyone else does.
It is a fact that Mueller found nothing on the President worthy of further investigation. He couldn't find much dirt on his cronys either (and yes all presidents have those--don't let PBR try to persuade you otherwise) other than a ten year old money laundering charge (that cost more to investigate than they will ever recover) and he hired a dumbass as a lawyer once, oh and his tenants might have some scandals (seriously do we drag the local slum lord out and try and lynch him cause his tenants are smoking the crack in the stair well? No.).
Mueller did what he was supposed to do: he investigated interference by the Russians, and referred the rest to other offices. That hardly qualifies as an exoneration. Several career prosecutors have stated unequivocally that they have successfully prosecuted others with much less than the incomplete info in Mueller's report.
I read most of the Mueller Report... and it left clear to me that Donald Trump cheated to win. Cooperation with a foreign power hostile to American democracy to become President (or to get elected to any significant office) discredits one. Russian intelligence groomed Donald Trump as a useful idiot, and it seduced him with gain and the satiation of his bloated and empty ego. People around him have been convicted of statutory offenses. It's not one rogue; it is a pattern.
Money-laundering is itself a crime. One needs not hide honest transactions.
Kinser Wrote:I would argue that the President is able to "play the press" the way he does because he knows how the Lame Stream media ticks. He's been playing them for years. Indeed if one really wants to know what the President is doing, saying or thinking one would be better servedjust following him on Twitter.
Not to be missed: POTUS TV, also known as Fox News, is no longer the most followed. Now it's MSNBC. I suspect that's telling.[/quote]
I prefer English-language services of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and France24, and when available NHK -- they don't have people screaming some agenda.
I no longer get cable, but I saw a change in MSNBC in seeking to get dissident conservatives on the air. The liberal base will not be enough to take down Donald Trump. At this point I can think of solid conservative reasons to want the Trump nightmare to come to an end in electoral defeat. Anyone who says that there are good people on both sides when one of the sides is neo-Nazi scum who shout "Jews will not replace us!" would scare the Hell out of me. If I were a conservative, I would want educated minorities to see a free market as an ally and not as a means of keeping people poor. (I will say this -- the black bourgeoisie cares more about poor black people than either the super-rich whites or middle-class suburban whites care about poor white people. I can say the same of Hispanics and Asians).
To the chorus of It's a Long Way to Tipperary:
It's a long way to Appalachia,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Appalachia
Though it's pretty, yes I know!
Stay in familiar suburbs (or),
Visit places much the same!
It's a long long way to Appalachia,
Destitution's not my game!
Quote:Kinser Wrote:Indeed if one simply sits back and observes the Democrats they are defeating themselves at every turn.
There's is truth here. The Dems have a genetic death wish that seems to emerge when things are looking brightest for them.
Resolution of this vile, but not yet decided 4T can go well only if the best of us commit to no longer doing the self-sabotage at which most good people are prone.
Kinser Wrote:Kinser's Prediction for 2020: Donald Trump will be re-elected (with the Popular and Electoral vote) defeating any Democrat that the DNC manages to come up with.
Possible, but highly unlikely, unless Trump and his cronies can pervert the electoral process with fraud and intimidation.
Quote:[/quote]Kinser Wrote:And it will likely be Biden--who was Obama's Gaffmaster and is seen by many who aren't true blue Dims as "Creepy Uncle Joe".
This isn't even the pot calling the kettle black. This is the cesspool pointing fingers at the swimming pool for not being crystal clear.
Indeed! Trump has done more to debase American politics than Senator Joseph R. McCarthy or any segregationist pol of the old "Ku Kluxistan".
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.