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A Deeply Fractured US

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I have 38 on my count.


The majority of the democrats are pro Israel. Sure they have their idiots in the same way the GOP has the anti Ukrainian morons.
If we could just kill off 10 or Congresional Reps from each party we’d be good.


See my post on a parliamentary House.

If the House were functioning as a parliament of individuals then the radicals would be sidelined.

But everything is viewed as a Party issue in both houses of the legislature, the presidential executive and at all levels of the courts.

The Party model has killed your checks and balances. Each of the Parties seek total control so they can implement the plan they are selling. The Parties detest uncertainty but the whole system is predicated on uncertainty.

Votes are not supposed to be predictable. Fail fast and often would work in government as well.
 


Okay go with that math, the rest of society will just shake our collective heads at what an embarrassment he is as well as the fact he's a traitor to the Republic.

Wonder what impact his words will have, if any, with Jewish voters? Assuming he runs next year.

American Jews tend to favor Democratic candidates, with 71% of Jewish voters choosing Democratic candidates on average and 26% choosing Republicans since 1968.

 
I swear Donald says shit just to see how stupid people are to still follow him.

The last several years have demonstrated a few things many who oppose Trump conveniently ignore. Yes of course Trump can say dumb things, like anyone. But what is ignored is that media and opposition will exploit/quote out of context/lie about what their chief rival says or means.

You shouldn't believe anything that is said about a political figure without yourself first seeing/hearing the full statement along with the context.

There is total political war with the purpose of preventing Trump from being on the ballot. Why? Because he might win again.
 
The last several years have demonstrated a few things many who oppose Trump conveniently ignore. Yes of course Trump can say dumb things, like anyone. But what is ignored is that media and opposition will exploit/quote out of context/lie about what their chief rival says or means.

You shouldn't believe anything that is said about a political figure without yourself first seeing/hearing the full statement along with the context.

There is total political war with the purpose of preventing Trump from being on the ballot. Why? Because he might win again.
I’m a pretty right wing guy. Trump scares me because his erratic, Untrustworthy, and a megalomaniac
 
A view from across the pond.

The Hamas war has made Trump seem far better than Biden on the Middle East​

Turns out the Middle East wasn't quieter than it has been for decades
TIM STANLEY12 October 2023 • 5:56pm

Have you noticed that the people most rhetorically committed to the “international order” are generally the worst at upholding it? The case against Trump in 2020 was that he was the chaos candidate – isolationist, reckless with alliances and dismissive of the foreign policy establishment. Yet under his leadership there were no wars. Joe Biden now has two.

Biden’s response to the Israel crisis has been strong, his speech on Thursday a model of anger and resolve. Trump is firmly on Israel’s side, too – but he has tastelessly linked the crisis to the Mexican border and criticised Netanyahu for failing to support a military action he took as president. Some Republicans have seized the opportunity to denounce the antiwar wing of their party; Hamas was emboldened, claimed Mike Pence, by the isolationist language of populists like Trump.

The Democrats, meanwhile, have marginalised the far-Left within their own ranks, denouncing calls for de-escalation and the language of moral equivalence. This is an historically Zionist party; it is estimated that it won the support of 68 per cent of Jewish Americans in the 2020 presidential contest.

Trump, of course, once claimed that Jews who voted for Democrats were “disloyal to Israel”, a silly, self-aggrandising statement of the sort that makes many glad he isn’t in charge today. But then there’s a gap between Trump’s iconoclastic image and his more constructive record. He was – we were told in 2016 – fatally pro-Moscow, so expect him to throw Ukraine under the bus. Instead, he armed Kyiv and evidently deterred Putin from invading till after he left office. It was Biden’s mad dash from Afghanistan, not Trump’s, that showed America had lost its nerve.

As for The Donald’s record in Israel - well, Israelis appear to like it. Last year, Ruth Margalit observed in a New Yorker essay that Trump sometimes did things for Netanyahu apparently without expectation of reciprocity, including recognising Jerusalem as its capital and moving the US embassy there. He brokered the Abraham Accords, which bypassed the Palestinian question to normalise relations between the Jewish state and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco (Netanyahu did reportedly suspend a plan to take territory in the West Bank). This had the added advantage of solidifying those states’ resistance to Iran, bolstered by proposed US arms sales.

Trump’s suggested peace plan for the Holy Land (the “deal of the century”) offered conservative Israelis almost everything they wished; it is speculated that had he won a second term, he might have approved annexation of parts of the West Bank, too. No wonder that a poll in 2020 found 63 per cent of Israelis would vote Republican if only they could, or that a stretch of the Golan Heights has been branded “Trump Heights” to commemorate his recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the township.

Thus it is speculated that Hamas wouldn’t have dared launch this attack had Trump been in office, though the counter hypothesis is that it was the very carte blanche that Netanyahu enjoyed in his handling of Palestinians that made it more likely; indeed, it’s not inconceivable that Hamas attacked precisely to undermine the Abraham process just as it risked not only abandoning the Palestinians but locking Saudi Arabia into an anti-Tehran axis. This brings us to the main difference between GOP and Democrats. How does one handle Iran, the financier of Hamas?

Trump walked away from the Obama-authored nuclear deal, reimposing sanctions on Tehran. Biden, on the other hand, has drawn criticism for agreeing to unfreeze $6 billion in oil revenues in exchange for the release of hostages, money that Republicans have suggested could find its way to Hamas. Technically, this is false: the cash is earmarked for humanitarian programmes and controlled by Qatar. But, goes the counter argument, having extra money in the pot frees up Tehran to spend more off the books on destabilising the region, and anything that helps shore up that regime is a bad development. The oil sales plus Washington’s attempts to revive the nuclear deal add up to the sense that Biden has dawdled into disaster thanks to an excess of liberal good will. Only a few days ago, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said: “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

The Trumpian argument is that with the US humiliated in Afghanistan and overstretched in Ukraine, the conditions have been created for an Iranian power grab. One must note that Iranian complicity has not yet been proved; US officials seem to be downplaying it. But if Biden’s election meant a restoration of State Department orthodoxy, this elite groupthink certainly appears to be archaic, out of touch with reality – naive and reactive.

Finally, no matter how strongly the Democrats might cleave to a revived pro-Israel consensus, the fact remains that they have flirted with organisations now exposed as troublingly fringe – and with intellectual currents being used to justify violent “decolonisation” (Black Lives Matters appears firmly in the corner of the Palestinian resistance, suggesting that some lives matter more than others).

By embracing fads that question the superiority of Judeo-Christian values, the liberal-Left has helped to erode the self-confidence of the West. It should not have taken the murder of Israelis, or the invasion of Ukraine, to reunite and energise our civilisational ethic – to remind us that the sanctity of life is a universal value, not a matter for academic debate.
 
Very unpredictable - predictably unpredictable. If that makes sense.

I think you are feeling that because that is what CNN/DNC told you to feel.

"No new wars." <--- this was an actual thing despite the media/DNC saying that he'd start WWIII.

Haven't y'all noticed the pattern yet?
 
Additional perspective on the Abraham Accords.

Last week’s attacks were intended to replace the Jewish-Muslim rapprochement of recent years with sectarian hatred. The Abraham Accords have seen amazing progress, with synagogues and embassies opening in Bahrain and the Emirates. The biggest deal of all – Saudi-Israel normalisation – was fast approaching. Saudi’s Crown Prince declared last month that “every day we get closer”. As if to prove it, he invited an Israeli delegation for the first-ever official visit last week. They released a photo of a colleague praying in a skullcap, holding up a Torah against the Riyadh skyline.

Iran’s ayatollahs were stunned. They lambasted the Saudis and other Arab states, but it all looked unstoppable. Trade had doubled. Polls showed young Arabs regarding Israel as more of a trading partner than mortal foe. The idea of Jews and Muslims as mortal enemies – upon which Iranians depended – was being dismantled by a new generation. And, with it, the ideology that feeds old-school jihadi groups like Hizbollah and Hamas. History seemed to be leaving them all behind. What to do?

Last weekend’s attacks provided Hamas’s devastating answer. When Israel’s prime minister is publishing pictures of the charred remains of babies torched alive by Hamas, it explains the coming fury of the Israeli response. But it may soon be hard, perhaps impossible, for the Arab-Israeli rapprochement to continue. Polarisation will be felt, to a greater or lesser extent, worldwide. Anti-Semitic attacks in Britain are already up by about 25 per cent. Hamas apologists have been protesting outside the Israeli embassy in London. Social media amplifies the voice of fringe lunatics.



In the 1840s the muslim world started to give up slavery under duress. They were dragged to the release of slaves by the Brits during the Pax Britannica of 1814 - 1914. The effort continued through the twentieth century with some of the last holdouts being the Arabs of the Middle East.

1952 Qatar
1962 Saudi Arabian and North Yemen
1964 Trucial States (Gulf of Arabia)
1967 South Yemen
1970 Oman

In Africa

1960 Niger and Mali
1961 Nigeria and Morocco
1981 Mauritania

My firm belief is that this disruption of the natural order by the Western Powers in general and the Anglo-Saxons in particular is what is at the heart of the troubles with the Muslim community.

Their economies weren't defined by gold or oil. They were defined by slaves. Slaves, like cattle, were wealth. With the added filip that slaves defined a hierarchical, top down, command society.

The antithesis of the bottom up presbyterian enlightenment.

One lifetime is not enough time to remove millennia of conditioning. Especially when there is a difference between the treaties government signs and the laws governments enforce.

The sheikhs have not forgiven the ministers.

 
Additional perspective on the Abraham Accords.





In the 1840s the muslim world started to give up slavery under duress. They were dragged to the release of slaves by the Brits during the Pax Britannica of 1814 - 1914. The effort continued through the twentieth century with some of the last holdouts being the Arabs of the Middle East.

1952 Qatar
1962 Saudi Arabian and North Yemen
1964 Trucial States (Gulf of Arabia)
1967 South Yemen
1970 Oman

In Africa

1960 Niger and Mali
1961 Nigeria and Morocco
1981 Mauritania

My firm belief is that this disruption of the natural order by the Western Powers in general and the Anglo-Saxons in particular is what is at the heart of the troubles with the Muslim community.

Their economies weren't defined by gold or oil. They were defined by slaves. Slaves, like cattle, were wealth. With the added filip that slaves defined a hierarchical, top down, command society.

The antithesis of the bottom up presbyterian enlightenment.

One lifetime is not enough time to remove millennia of conditioning. Especially when there is a difference between the treaties government signs and the laws governments enforce.

The sheikhs have not forgiven the ministers.

Slavery is still alive and well in Africa and the ME.
 
The Party model has killed your checks and balances. Each of the Parties seek total control so they can implement the plan they are selling. The Parties detest uncertainty but the whole system is predicated on uncertainty.
The parties have lost much of their ability to make trades. They've learned to use executive power when they have it, and to use whatever part of Congress they hold as a barrier to Congressional exercise of its powers to over-rule the executive.

They can't even make simple compromises or concessions. Neither Scalise nor Jordan is a favourable speaker from Democrats' point of view, but Scalise would have been the lesser antagonist. The House Minority Leader could have gone to Scalise at any time after the Republican pre-nomination vote and offered as many votes as necessary to elect Scalise. Then he could have gone on the news to describe how Democrats are the party helping Congress to function properly and to ensure Congress can work on the next budget deadline.
 
I’m a pretty right wing guy. Trump scares me because his erratic, Untrustworthy, and a megalomaniac
Yet his administration produced three solid USSC nominations in the manner promised; sidelined the neo-con Republicans whose answer to every problem seems to be "military intervention"; advanced peace prospects in the ME a bit; stopped making life easy for Iran; came up with a useful program for accelerating vaccine development.

In all these things he was bitterly opposed by Democrats and NeverTrumpers. Of everything in my short, incomplete list, the most inexcusable was their fear-mongering over vaccines.
 
I think you are feeling that because that is what CNN/DNC told you to feel.

"No new wars." <--- this was an actual thing despite the media/DNC saying that he'd start WWIII.

Haven't y'all noticed the pattern yet?
Beggin yer pardon but I don't watch CNN nor do I subscribe to every thing the DNC says to. I make up my own mind TYVM.

Trump is a loose cannon on the deck right now and I didn't see anyone trying to restrain him when he was POTUS.
 
Apologies, I was using CNN/DNC is euphemism for the 24 hr propaganda cycle we call news. What I am getting at is the more they say something and the louder they say something, the more likely it's taken up as truth. Russia collusion, drinking bleach etc etc...

There are a few videos out there with snips showing dozens of different news stations saying the exact same phrasing on a politically sensitive topic being manipulated. That is a coordinated effort to impact public opinion a certain way - not state facts or tell the truth.

Key to estimating Trump's future POTUS performance would be to analyze (with honesty) his past performance and outcomes at the time. Also being mindful of the extreme levels of obstruction both inside and outside of his circle of trust.
 
Apologies, I was using CNN/DNC is euphemism for the 24 hr propaganda cycle we call news. What I am getting at is the more they say something and the louder they say something, the more likely it's taken up as truth. Russia collusion, drinking bleach etc etc...
Speaking of Russian collusion, did you actual read the report?
Because it was pretty clear there where attempts, but nothing directly linked to DJT

There are a few videos out there with snips showing dozens of different news stations saying the exact same phrasing on a politically sensitive topic being manipulated. That is a coordinated effort to impact public opinion a certain way - not state facts or tell the truth.
Both sides are absolutely doing this and it’s frankly despicable. There is little news out there now without a poisoned stench of political bias.

Key to estimating Trump's future POTUS performance would be to analyze (with honesty) his past performance and outcomes at the time. Also being mindful of the extreme levels of obstruction both inside and outside of his circle of trust.
it’s not as rosy as you think.
But it’s not nearly as bad as some portray either, as a lot of folks like to blame the Pandemic on then President Trump

But worldwide, he was a terrible ally, and his no new wars is a bit shaky, given he was as contemptible as President Obama for using certain legal statuses of JSOC units and the IC to conduct a lot of stuff that didn’t go through proper oversight.

My main issue with former President Trump is once he lost the election, he launched a scheme to mislead the American public, and inspired a massive criminal activity on Jan 6th at the Capital. Those actions are what truly disgust me, as well as his actions regarding the security of the Nation wrt classified documents and who was given or sold access and content of those.

He must not be President again, period full stop. I don’t want a Democrat in power either, but disgustingly I believe that President Biden is the lesser of two evils of it comes down to that choice next year.

I really want a more moderate Republican to emerge, but unless the MAGA Trump base opens their eyes, and rejects Trump and Trumpism, that is not going to happen.
 
Beggin yer pardon but I don't watch CNN nor do I subscribe to every thing the DNC says to. I make up my own mind TYVM.

Trump is a loose cannon on the deck right now and I didn't see anyone trying to restrain him when he was POTUS.
The DNC and the legacy media spent 5 years trying to restrain, depose and destroy him when he was POTUS. It consumed the House and Senate to the point they would do little else during his time. They continue unabated to this day to rid themselves of Trump almost eight years after he came down the escalator. They are not afraid of what Trump will bring to the country. On the contrary, they are scared shitless for what Trump will bring to their own corrupt careers, influence and power, which they see evaporating into the ether.

I continue to be amazed by the people that continue to deride Trump, almost three years after his presidency, for his no new wars. Slapping Russia, China, N Korea and various ME bad actors into silence and inaction. Making the US self sufficient in fossil fuels. Increasing the economy and securing the US borders, amongst other initiatives that strengthened the US and kept them on top as the leader of the Free World.

Contrasting with the silence, acceptance and support for the current geriatric genius' lies, deceit, alleged influence pedalling and marxist policies. Open support for BLM and Antifa. Wide open, uncontrolled borders, stocking the US with unknown and unlocatable foreign actors bent on the destruction of the US. Being responsible for the supposed contiinued weaponization of obama's 3 letter agencies. Gutting of the US energy programs and destroying US industry and economy. All this and more, making the US nothing but a paper tiger, disrespected and now ignored by bad state actors, and even some allies, as a weak, unorganized, undependable voice from the peanut gallery.

North America is now a cesspool of hate, division, poverty, ignorance and desperation. All of which can be laid directly at the feet of the three NA national leaders now in power. All of which are well on their way to becoming totalitarian regimes, running roughshod over their serfs and subjects.

I'd rather support a egotistical, boastful and sometimes crass bozo who ran the government like a business, but delivered on every promise possible that he made. Someone willing to stand up and call a spade a spade, no matter how uncomfotsble the truth is. Rather than a lying, deceitful, lifelong politician who uses the government for his own personal gain with zero regards for their country, except as a familial cash cow.
 
I don’t want a Democrat in power either, but disgustingly I believe that President Biden is the lesser of two evils of it comes down to that choice next year.
Unquestionably, if presidential character is the only criterion that matters.

If the next administration is Democratic, possibly:
  • one or two USSC nominations that would shift perceived ideological spending (Thomas is 75, Alito is 73)
  • VP (which so far looks to be Harris) might become the president (Biden's death or statutory incapacitation)
and probably:
  • few to no brakes on deficit
  • four years' delay on Social Security reform, which means insolvency roughly 2033-2035 and a projected 20% benefit cut
  • four years' delay reforming Medicare finances, but projected insolvency date is roughly 2028 (which is later than some previous years' projections, which means a sudden economic shift could move it from "future" to "right now")
  • no meaningful border controls on southern border immigration

The pressure to mitigate the drop in entitlement benefits will be intense, and the amounts required will be in the hundreds of billions. If Congress can't reform inputs and outputs, it could just start appropriating from general revenues. That will motivate some combination of increased borrowing, increased taxes, and decreased discretionary spending (military and non-military).

There's still some hope that Trump doesn't win the nomination, and some hope that a third-party candidate has a meaningful shot. Regardless, the president isn't the entire administration. Obviously neither Trump nor Biden was/is the guiding firm hand behind much of what has come out of the White House.
 
I see the capital building has been occupied by Pro-Palestinian (pro Hamas?) protestors.

It will be fun to watch how this needle gets threaded.
 
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