How the Republican Party has changed, the country too and not in a good way. I think chaos is going to erupt heavily in his new administration. It’s very depressing to feel so alone in this country. I honestly was watching the election hoping he’d get thrashed, and not because I wanted her, far from it. She would’ve been a lame duck with a GOP Congress. But here we are, it seems this era will never end
Most voters did not want him back, they wanted her less. I personally am less unhappy than I would have been had Kamala won. and I didn't vote for either of them.
>>Most voters did not want him back, they wanted her less.
I agree. Trump won because of Hillary. Biden won because of Trump. Trump won because of Biden/Harris. Still, most Americans decided that trying to overturn U.S. democracy to stay in power, and causing a deadly insurrection (and refusing for hours to do anything to stop it), were not disqualifying for the highest office in the land. That's an ugly and telling reality.
>> I personally am less unhappy than I would have been had Kamala won.
Not me, and I'm clearly no fan of Harris. I think a Democratic president with a GOP Senate majority would have been a better outcome for conservatism and the country than a GOP Senate backing whatever Trump wants to do. Maybe the GOP Senate will surprise me, but I have little reason to believe they will. Those unafraid of getting on Trump's bad side have mostly all been purged from public office at this point.
John, are you against a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine? And don't you think Biden has slowly escalated the war by not providing the necessary weapons in a timely fashion? I don't see Putin, who we all recognize as an international terrorist, giving up the Sea of Azov. Former NATO commander James Stavridis laid out a path for Trump on Smerconish. We now have Putin putting in NK troops that meaning some kind of payment to Kim Jung Un.
>>John, are you against a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine?
I am if it's effectively a negotiated surrender forced by a U.S. president's desire to appease Vladmir Putin. I'm with Admiral Rob Bauer, NATO’s top military official, who says that any negotiated peace deal with Putin must absolutely not amount to a victory for Putin (for the reasons I've described in my writing). The ramifications would go well beyond Ukraine's borders.
>>And don't you think Biden has slowly escalated the war by not providing the necessary weapons in a timely fashion?
Escalated? No. Hindered Ukraine's defense strategy? Yes. Though from what I understand, it was the Republicans' months-long delay of Ukraine funding that really put the country in a bind.
>>We now have Putin putting in NK troops that meaning some kind of payment to Kim Jung Un.
NK has been aiding Russia's invasion of Ukraine this entire time, and in more significant ways than sending over troops. The troops are more window-dressing than anything.
Don't blame me, I voted for John A. Daly! I guess I will consider this your concession speech. I actually predicted Trump would win. I do have sympathy for the many kind, decent people who are sincerely troubled and disturbed that Trump won. He is still a sack of feces. Hopefully his new Chief of Staff has the power and skill to positively manipulate him for the good of our country. QED
I figured he would too. He's always underpolled a bit, so when it was virtually a tie in most of the swing states, I knew that couldn't fare well for Harris.
>>I do have sympathy for the many kind, decent people who are sincerely troubled and disturbed that Trump won.
For sure. I think some of the fears were/are irrational, but the reasonable ones are plenty bad enough.
>>He is still a sack of feces.
Kind of like a crap-sandwich (call-back!)
>>Hopefully his new Chief of Staff has the power and skill to positively manipulate him for the good of our country.
"This included the jurors in his [ OJ's] trial — some of whom later admitted that they freed Simpson out of spite for the institution that had tried to hold him accountable."
In an ESPN doc several of them admitted on camera that they were never going to convict OJ. Truly unbelievable. I figured the fix was in when they came back so quickly with the verdict.
At the time, I assumed most of the jurors were just exhausted, wanted to go home after such an excruciatingly long trial, and sort or caved to the loudest voices of in the deliberation room. Turns out, it was an insanely biased jury.
Here is a shortened, pre-election piece I wrote on Facebook in response to a pro-Trump piece.
I’m not at all clear what a second term for Trump would be. Here, past is not necessarily prologue. I’ve watched Trump over the last nine years. He’s not the same person he once was. His over-the-top rhetoric has ratcheted way up. At times he sounds (more) incoherent. And here, I’m not talking about remarks I don’t like but about remarks and behavior that are nonsensical or irrational. If re-elected, a President Vance might emerge within the next four years.
In a second Trump term, a President Trump will know his way around. He won’t need experienced advisors. He might not have the so-called “guard rails.” Quite possibly there’ll be no more Gen. Tillys or Gen. McMasters (hello Gen. Flynn?) to talk him down from his schemes. A second term President Trump may well name bootlickers for cabinet members and advisors. Yes, cabinet members must be confirmed. But if a President Trump has enough bootlickers in the Senate, which it appears he has and will have, then confirmation will not be a block.
President Trump made noise about pulling out of NATO. He asserted that the U. S. will not defend NATO countries if Russia attacks them and if their military budget is not at least 2% of their GNP. He has questioned our military presence in S. Korea. Then President Trump said protestors should be shot in the legs by our military. Private citizen Trump has said that, if necessary, he'd order the National Guard or our military to take care of “the enemy within,” naming Rep. Pelosi and Rep. Schiff. These are only among the many extremist things he has repeatedly said.
Would a second term President Trump attempt to do these things? Who knows? But if he did, there’d be chaos.
And what about the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? He says he’ll settle the war quickly, but how so? Ceding a large chunk of the Ukraine to Russia might be agreeable to Putin, but the Ukraine would not agree to it. Bolstering Putin’s hardline stance would be Trump’s rhetoric about the U. S. senselessly pouring money into the Ukraine’s war effort. And I wonder what Trump and Putin have discussed in their many phone calls after Trump left office. Let’s not forget, Putin probably is the only world leader who former President Trump didn't bad-mouthed but has engaged with in a bromance. Initially, President Trump had a contentious relationship with N. Korea's dictator. But then, in President Trump's words, "we fell in love."
I’m fairly confidant that a second term President Trump would fulfill his promise to place a 20% tariff on all foreign goods with a 60% tariff on China’s goods, at least for a while. That’d create massive inflation and mass chaos..
In addition, it’d be hard for a second term President Trump not to try to fulfill his promise to immediately deport all illegal immigrants. This would be a logistical nightmare. This would put a tremendous strain on law enforcement. Mixed legal and illegal, and otherwise law abiding families would be raided and torn apart. Because the targeted immigrants have due process rights, it’d put an enormous and senseless strain on our judicial system.
I suspect that a new President Trump would talk about this and then say – as he said about replacing Obamacare – “No one knew how complicated this was.”
The dirty little secret is that illegal immigrants contribute mightily to our economy. One restaurant owner in Texas said that if there were no illegal immigrants, his prices would be prohibitive. Illegal immigrants do the necessary work that no American will do. I’m NOT saying that we should ignore illegal immigration – far from it – but we should be deliberative and practical in dealing with it.
On Obamacare, it’s not clear what he’d do. During his first term, President Trump gleefully oversaw the repealing of the “individual mandate.” He also oversaw efforts to repeal Obamacare. He viscously attacked John McCain when McCain entered a determinative vote against repealing Obamacare. When campaigning in 2016, Trump said he’d replace Obamacare with a system that would provide medical care for all but would not have any unintended consequences. He said “it’s so easy.” When pressed on this during his presidency, he said “No one knew how complicated this was.”
But recently, candidate Trump said he helped Obamacare. Yah, right!
Yes, there was some prosperity under President trump. But he also increased the national debt by $7.8 trillion during these 4 years, the bulk of it pre-covid spending (covid came about when President Trump had less than a year left of his term). To paraphrase former VP candidate and Senator Lloyd Benston (sp?), "I too could give the allusion of prosperity if I were to write hot checks." That's almost an exact quote during his debate with then VP Quale in 1988. (There was almost no mention of the budget deficit and national debt by all the so-called fiscal conservatives during President Trump's term, when they - national GOP leaders and conservative pundits like Bill O'Reilly et al. - excoriated President Obama on this issue.)
Trump should be disqualified from ever being president because of his conduct in fomenting and allowing to continue the riot on 01/06/241 During President Clinton’s impeachment saga, many said that President Clinton’s conduct disqualified him from being president PERIOD. There was NO “Hey man, Al Gore is a better option.” President Trump’s conduct vis-à-vis the 2016 election results was no better than President Clinton’s. In fact it was far worse. President Trump’s conduct struck at the heart of our constitutional system of governance.
On covid, kudos to President Trump for overseeing the "warped speed" development and distribution of vaccinations. But President Trump's legacy is tarnished - to say the least - when he downplayed the seriousness of covid while privately telling Bob Woodward that covid was five times as lethal as the seasonal flu.
In a sense, the POTUS is a national cheerleader. He should elevate dialogue. Especially in these times, he should try to heal division and to promote mutual respect to the extent possible. He should serve as a national role model – conducting himself with integrity.
Trump has a serious deficit of introspection and empathy. He tries to build himself up by putting others down. He has a persecution complex and is needy. All the blowback he has gotten was brought on by himself. He is largely amoral, saying things that look good in the moment irrespective of the truth. He tends to see things as zero-sum. VP Harris is flawed, but comes much closer to fitting this job description.
I too am chagrined by the choice we have. I think Gov. Wes Moore (sp?) of MD would make a stellar POTUS. I’d also prefer to see Gov. Shapiro of PA or Gov. Bashir of KY or Gov. Cooper of NC run.
What would a President Harris actually do? I’m not sure, but my hunch is that she’d more-or-less continue President Biden’s policies. She might try to implement some of her promises – e.g. $50,000 tax credit for business start-ups or $5,000 tax credits for the first year of a newborn – but they’d probably not pass Congress.
Our economy is a world-wide beacon. Now that inflation is tamed, all economic indicators are way up. The dollar is strong. The stock market has gone through the roof. Inflation and unemployment are down. Real wages are up. The widely predicted recession never happened. Americans will feel much better about the cost of living if things continue, i.e. if Trump doesn't screw things up
Almost immediately after being sworn in, President Biden proposed an comprehensive immigration bill, which would have provided for border security, seasonal visas for quest workers – so our fruit and produce wouldn’t rot in the fields as has happened, and a fair and humane way of dealing with illegal immigrants – including the so-called “dreamers” – currently in the country. The bill was negotiated on a bi-partisan basis in (I think it was) 2014. Was it perfect? Of course not, but name one thing in this world that's perfect.
Then in late 2023 and early 2024 another bi-partisan immigration bill that was negotiated. It would have ended catch-and-release, made it harder for immigrants to legitimately claim amnesty and made it much quicker for amnesty claims to be processed. Congress was all set to vote on it when Trump made some calls to bootlickers in the GOP Congress to kill the bill. Bill O’Reilly said that the bill was bad but let it slip that he thought it was unfair for the immigration issue to be removed from the presidential campaign.
Recently, President Biden entered executive orders that have largely tamed illegal immigration. Yes, he should have done this at the beginning of his term. But that’s also in the rearview mirror.
These are among the reasons I voted for VP Harris.
After the polls close tomorrow, we all ought to keep quiet until the results are in. Then there can be recounts or audits if desired. There can be be court cases. if there's a good faith basis. But once the states certify their election results in December, the COTUS dictates who our next POTUS will be. Life should go on.
I agree with most of that, of course. I don't think there will be mass deportations, however. I think it's the same B.S. as all the border talk from 2015/2016. Once Trump won and had congressional majorities, he did absolutely nothing on the issue (and no one cared). It wasn't until the Dems won back down the House did Trump even try anything, and he got virtually nowhere.
It's a mess.
Yup.
How the Republican Party has changed, the country too and not in a good way. I think chaos is going to erupt heavily in his new administration. It’s very depressing to feel so alone in this country. I honestly was watching the election hoping he’d get thrashed, and not because I wanted her, far from it. She would’ve been a lame duck with a GOP Congress. But here we are, it seems this era will never end
I hear you.
Did you hear about the break in at Kamala's house? someone broke in and stole her treadmill.........she had nothing to run on.
It was stolen by Joe Biden ;-)
*ba-dum-tshh*
I can't believe most voters wanted him back.
But here we are.
I'm more concerned about the global implications of a Trump presidency rather than what happens domestically. The countdown is on!
If I lived in another country, I'd worry less about U.S. domestic policy too. Lol.
Most voters did not want him back, they wanted her less. I personally am less unhappy than I would have been had Kamala won. and I didn't vote for either of them.
>>Most voters did not want him back, they wanted her less.
I agree. Trump won because of Hillary. Biden won because of Trump. Trump won because of Biden/Harris. Still, most Americans decided that trying to overturn U.S. democracy to stay in power, and causing a deadly insurrection (and refusing for hours to do anything to stop it), were not disqualifying for the highest office in the land. That's an ugly and telling reality.
>> I personally am less unhappy than I would have been had Kamala won.
Not me, and I'm clearly no fan of Harris. I think a Democratic president with a GOP Senate majority would have been a better outcome for conservatism and the country than a GOP Senate backing whatever Trump wants to do. Maybe the GOP Senate will surprise me, but I have little reason to believe they will. Those unafraid of getting on Trump's bad side have mostly all been purged from public office at this point.
John, are you against a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine? And don't you think Biden has slowly escalated the war by not providing the necessary weapons in a timely fashion? I don't see Putin, who we all recognize as an international terrorist, giving up the Sea of Azov. Former NATO commander James Stavridis laid out a path for Trump on Smerconish. We now have Putin putting in NK troops that meaning some kind of payment to Kim Jung Un.
>>John, are you against a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine?
I am if it's effectively a negotiated surrender forced by a U.S. president's desire to appease Vladmir Putin. I'm with Admiral Rob Bauer, NATO’s top military official, who says that any negotiated peace deal with Putin must absolutely not amount to a victory for Putin (for the reasons I've described in my writing). The ramifications would go well beyond Ukraine's borders.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/world/europe/trump-nato-putin-ukraine.html
>>And don't you think Biden has slowly escalated the war by not providing the necessary weapons in a timely fashion?
Escalated? No. Hindered Ukraine's defense strategy? Yes. Though from what I understand, it was the Republicans' months-long delay of Ukraine funding that really put the country in a bind.
>>We now have Putin putting in NK troops that meaning some kind of payment to Kim Jung Un.
NK has been aiding Russia's invasion of Ukraine this entire time, and in more significant ways than sending over troops. The troops are more window-dressing than anything.
The biggest loser in all of this is Joe Biden. As for Trump, all we can do is hope for the best. I’ll try and be optimistic.
Don't blame me, I voted for John A. Daly! I guess I will consider this your concession speech. I actually predicted Trump would win. I do have sympathy for the many kind, decent people who are sincerely troubled and disturbed that Trump won. He is still a sack of feces. Hopefully his new Chief of Staff has the power and skill to positively manipulate him for the good of our country. QED
>>Don't blame me, I voted for John A. Daly!
That's what heroes do. 😉
>>I actually predicted Trump would win.
I figured he would too. He's always underpolled a bit, so when it was virtually a tie in most of the swing states, I knew that couldn't fare well for Harris.
>>I do have sympathy for the many kind, decent people who are sincerely troubled and disturbed that Trump won.
For sure. I think some of the fears were/are irrational, but the reasonable ones are plenty bad enough.
>>He is still a sack of feces.
Kind of like a crap-sandwich (call-back!)
>>Hopefully his new Chief of Staff has the power and skill to positively manipulate him for the good of our country.
One can only hope.
"This included the jurors in his [ OJ's] trial — some of whom later admitted that they freed Simpson out of spite for the institution that had tried to hold him accountable."
Do you have a link for this?
In an ESPN doc several of them admitted on camera that they were never going to convict OJ. Truly unbelievable. I figured the fix was in when they came back so quickly with the verdict.
At the time, I assumed most of the jurors were just exhausted, wanted to go home after such an excruciatingly long trial, and sort or caved to the loudest voices of in the deliberation room. Turns out, it was an insanely biased jury.
Yes, I put it right there in the column. Here it is again: https://www.thewrap.com/oj-simpson-juror-not-guilty-verdict-was-payback-for-rodney-king/
Here is a shortened, pre-election piece I wrote on Facebook in response to a pro-Trump piece.
I’m not at all clear what a second term for Trump would be. Here, past is not necessarily prologue. I’ve watched Trump over the last nine years. He’s not the same person he once was. His over-the-top rhetoric has ratcheted way up. At times he sounds (more) incoherent. And here, I’m not talking about remarks I don’t like but about remarks and behavior that are nonsensical or irrational. If re-elected, a President Vance might emerge within the next four years.
In a second Trump term, a President Trump will know his way around. He won’t need experienced advisors. He might not have the so-called “guard rails.” Quite possibly there’ll be no more Gen. Tillys or Gen. McMasters (hello Gen. Flynn?) to talk him down from his schemes. A second term President Trump may well name bootlickers for cabinet members and advisors. Yes, cabinet members must be confirmed. But if a President Trump has enough bootlickers in the Senate, which it appears he has and will have, then confirmation will not be a block.
President Trump made noise about pulling out of NATO. He asserted that the U. S. will not defend NATO countries if Russia attacks them and if their military budget is not at least 2% of their GNP. He has questioned our military presence in S. Korea. Then President Trump said protestors should be shot in the legs by our military. Private citizen Trump has said that, if necessary, he'd order the National Guard or our military to take care of “the enemy within,” naming Rep. Pelosi and Rep. Schiff. These are only among the many extremist things he has repeatedly said.
Would a second term President Trump attempt to do these things? Who knows? But if he did, there’d be chaos.
And what about the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? He says he’ll settle the war quickly, but how so? Ceding a large chunk of the Ukraine to Russia might be agreeable to Putin, but the Ukraine would not agree to it. Bolstering Putin’s hardline stance would be Trump’s rhetoric about the U. S. senselessly pouring money into the Ukraine’s war effort. And I wonder what Trump and Putin have discussed in their many phone calls after Trump left office. Let’s not forget, Putin probably is the only world leader who former President Trump didn't bad-mouthed but has engaged with in a bromance. Initially, President Trump had a contentious relationship with N. Korea's dictator. But then, in President Trump's words, "we fell in love."
I’m fairly confidant that a second term President Trump would fulfill his promise to place a 20% tariff on all foreign goods with a 60% tariff on China’s goods, at least for a while. That’d create massive inflation and mass chaos..
In addition, it’d be hard for a second term President Trump not to try to fulfill his promise to immediately deport all illegal immigrants. This would be a logistical nightmare. This would put a tremendous strain on law enforcement. Mixed legal and illegal, and otherwise law abiding families would be raided and torn apart. Because the targeted immigrants have due process rights, it’d put an enormous and senseless strain on our judicial system.
I suspect that a new President Trump would talk about this and then say – as he said about replacing Obamacare – “No one knew how complicated this was.”
The dirty little secret is that illegal immigrants contribute mightily to our economy. One restaurant owner in Texas said that if there were no illegal immigrants, his prices would be prohibitive. Illegal immigrants do the necessary work that no American will do. I’m NOT saying that we should ignore illegal immigration – far from it – but we should be deliberative and practical in dealing with it.
On Obamacare, it’s not clear what he’d do. During his first term, President Trump gleefully oversaw the repealing of the “individual mandate.” He also oversaw efforts to repeal Obamacare. He viscously attacked John McCain when McCain entered a determinative vote against repealing Obamacare. When campaigning in 2016, Trump said he’d replace Obamacare with a system that would provide medical care for all but would not have any unintended consequences. He said “it’s so easy.” When pressed on this during his presidency, he said “No one knew how complicated this was.”
But recently, candidate Trump said he helped Obamacare. Yah, right!
Yes, there was some prosperity under President trump. But he also increased the national debt by $7.8 trillion during these 4 years, the bulk of it pre-covid spending (covid came about when President Trump had less than a year left of his term). To paraphrase former VP candidate and Senator Lloyd Benston (sp?), "I too could give the allusion of prosperity if I were to write hot checks." That's almost an exact quote during his debate with then VP Quale in 1988. (There was almost no mention of the budget deficit and national debt by all the so-called fiscal conservatives during President Trump's term, when they - national GOP leaders and conservative pundits like Bill O'Reilly et al. - excoriated President Obama on this issue.)
Trump should be disqualified from ever being president because of his conduct in fomenting and allowing to continue the riot on 01/06/241 During President Clinton’s impeachment saga, many said that President Clinton’s conduct disqualified him from being president PERIOD. There was NO “Hey man, Al Gore is a better option.” President Trump’s conduct vis-à-vis the 2016 election results was no better than President Clinton’s. In fact it was far worse. President Trump’s conduct struck at the heart of our constitutional system of governance.
On covid, kudos to President Trump for overseeing the "warped speed" development and distribution of vaccinations. But President Trump's legacy is tarnished - to say the least - when he downplayed the seriousness of covid while privately telling Bob Woodward that covid was five times as lethal as the seasonal flu.
In a sense, the POTUS is a national cheerleader. He should elevate dialogue. Especially in these times, he should try to heal division and to promote mutual respect to the extent possible. He should serve as a national role model – conducting himself with integrity.
Trump has a serious deficit of introspection and empathy. He tries to build himself up by putting others down. He has a persecution complex and is needy. All the blowback he has gotten was brought on by himself. He is largely amoral, saying things that look good in the moment irrespective of the truth. He tends to see things as zero-sum. VP Harris is flawed, but comes much closer to fitting this job description.
I too am chagrined by the choice we have. I think Gov. Wes Moore (sp?) of MD would make a stellar POTUS. I’d also prefer to see Gov. Shapiro of PA or Gov. Bashir of KY or Gov. Cooper of NC run.
What would a President Harris actually do? I’m not sure, but my hunch is that she’d more-or-less continue President Biden’s policies. She might try to implement some of her promises – e.g. $50,000 tax credit for business start-ups or $5,000 tax credits for the first year of a newborn – but they’d probably not pass Congress.
Our economy is a world-wide beacon. Now that inflation is tamed, all economic indicators are way up. The dollar is strong. The stock market has gone through the roof. Inflation and unemployment are down. Real wages are up. The widely predicted recession never happened. Americans will feel much better about the cost of living if things continue, i.e. if Trump doesn't screw things up
Almost immediately after being sworn in, President Biden proposed an comprehensive immigration bill, which would have provided for border security, seasonal visas for quest workers – so our fruit and produce wouldn’t rot in the fields as has happened, and a fair and humane way of dealing with illegal immigrants – including the so-called “dreamers” – currently in the country. The bill was negotiated on a bi-partisan basis in (I think it was) 2014. Was it perfect? Of course not, but name one thing in this world that's perfect.
Then in late 2023 and early 2024 another bi-partisan immigration bill that was negotiated. It would have ended catch-and-release, made it harder for immigrants to legitimately claim amnesty and made it much quicker for amnesty claims to be processed. Congress was all set to vote on it when Trump made some calls to bootlickers in the GOP Congress to kill the bill. Bill O’Reilly said that the bill was bad but let it slip that he thought it was unfair for the immigration issue to be removed from the presidential campaign.
Recently, President Biden entered executive orders that have largely tamed illegal immigration. Yes, he should have done this at the beginning of his term. But that’s also in the rearview mirror.
These are among the reasons I voted for VP Harris.
After the polls close tomorrow, we all ought to keep quiet until the results are in. Then there can be recounts or audits if desired. There can be be court cases. if there's a good faith basis. But once the states certify their election results in December, the COTUS dictates who our next POTUS will be. Life should go on.
I agree with most of that, of course. I don't think there will be mass deportations, however. I think it's the same B.S. as all the border talk from 2015/2016. Once Trump won and had congressional majorities, he did absolutely nothing on the issue (and no one cared). It wasn't until the Dems won back down the House did Trump even try anything, and he got virtually nowhere.
"I agree with most of that...."
I'd be offended if you agreed with ALL of it. :P
Ha!