Well if the election were Trump vs. the mayor of Chicago, you might have a point. Lucky for us, it's not. And we have four years of Trump's other reprehensible actions on which to pass judgment.
But you do you. Picking the leader of the whole country based on what's happened over a few weeks in a few cities seems like good judgment.
Well if the election were Trump vs. the mayor of Chicago, you might have a point. Lucky for us, it's not. And we have four years of Trump's other reprehensible actions on which to pass judgment.
But you do you. Picking the leader of the whole country based on what's happened over a few weeks in a few cities seems like good judgment.
First, we do not have to like our choices but they are the ones we have. Neither of these parties or their leaders are going to address all of our issues in the way we want.
We could sit and bitch all day and probably agree on the fact that we need more parties with differing perspectives.
So then....on what basis do we choose?
1. War & Peace - Every president for the last century, maybe longer, has gotten us into a military conflict of some sort but lets just go back to the early 90's. Bush Sr. got us into Iraq. He was probably right and he probably handled it in the right way but we got into a war. Bill Clinton got us into Bosnia. Bush Jr, went nuts and got us into Afghanistan (justified originally) and then Iraq and thought he was going to change the middle east. Instead, we blew up the middle east resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and more of our soldiers killed and maimed and our treasury wiped out. Then comes Obama who rightly or wrongly refused to get us out of the places Bush Jr. got us into and THEN at the behest of his Sec State (Hillary) helped overthrow Ghadafi in Libya (turning a healthy country into a failed state) and then got us into Syria and a potential conflict with Russia and Turkey with more dead civilians, more dead soldiers and another near failed state. To top it off, Obama authorized the assassination of US Citizens overseas using drones.
For all of the hand wringing and prognosticating, what has Trump done? He is pulling troops our of Afghanistan. Tried to do the same in Syria with some success. BUT...NO NEW WARS! (think maybe that might be why the intel community and the defense establishment hate him? He is bad for their business)
So...on War and Peace...Trump earns a vote.
2. Economy: Until COVID hit, the US economy was humming along nicely. Trump challenged the Wall Street and Silicon Valley orthodoxy on free trade, a role that would have been filled by democrats prior to Bill Clinton, and Trump was right to do so. He reworked NAFTA, an agreement that in the end everyone knew needed to be updated. He challenged China, a country that never should have been admitted to the WTO, and for that was called a Xenophobe when in fact everyone now sees that China has been raping us for two decades and using that to rebuild its military.
He has worked hard to shut down the flow of people over the southern border and to cut back severely on work visas like the H1Bs. RACIST! No. It is about supply and demand. He is limiting the supply of labor so wages can rise. Guess what, they WERE rising which is why Silicon Valley and Wall Street were so ticked off at him. Nobody wanted to talk about that so they just played the racism card. Neither of these is an inherently racist action to take.
I would point out that the republican establishment and the democrats are very very tight with Hedge Funds, Wall Street generally and Silicon Valley. Trump went after the orthodoxy of both and made enemies in doing so.
I would also point out that Trump killed the TPP, a deal that would have hamstrung our national authority to regulate business and turned it over to an uneleced board of international business people who would have had the authority to award monies to businesses that failed to realize their expected profits if a country changed a regulation. In short, if a foreign company invested in the US and we changed labor laws or environmental laws and that foreign company did not make what it thought it would the US government would have to pay them. THIS is what Hillary was supporting, what Biden was supporting and what Wall Street wanted. Trump killed it. BTW....a new version of the TPP is now circulating. Think Biden will back it? You bet.
3. Foreign policy? What, he tried to get along with the Russians? Is it better that we be in constant conflict with them? For all the griping here about them, the Europeans are more than happy to do business with them. Germany just completed a major gas deal with Russia. Turkey, our supposed ally is buying weapons from them. The Chinese are a much bigger threat, do you think we can take on both Russia and China or might it be better to partner with Russia to challenge China?
Trump just managed to get the UAE to recognize Israel and normalize relations. Any other president had done that and they would be guaranteed a Nobel.
Does North Korea seem like a bigger or a smaller threat? How about Iran? Remember the panic that killing off the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was going to bring on WWIII? The man masterminded the killing of our troops and terrorist actions all over the Middle East. Dead. No new war. Trump made the right choice, it was a gamble and he won. Iran is weaker, poorer, and with the UAE now at peace with Israel, less of a threat.
Have we overthrown any more governments? Hillary, under Obama, went after Libya, Syria and helped overthrow the elected government of the Ukraine because the president of Ukraine wanted to get along with the Russians. Never mind that a large portion of the Ukrainian population is ethnic Russian. Never mind that the Crimea is of major strategic importance to the Russians. That action under Hillary is what triggered the Russian invasion of Crimea. Think the Ukrainians are thanking us? Belarus saw that and they are now hostile towards us because of it. Oh good. How nice.
I could go on and on...but I wont. I will however conclude with these two points.
1. Not reelecting Trump would be to fail to repudiate the actions of rogue intel and FBI leaders who attempted to effect the outcome of a US election and then when they failed to do that attempted to effect the removal of a sitting president. THAT is simply not something that we can allow to be condoned or to continue because it WILL lead to a formalization of an oligarchy.
2. To not reelect Trump would be to fail to repudiate the actions of the far left, indeed it would empower them, and undermine the ability of the center left to reassert itself. Until such time as we have a multiparty system, we need the center left in the democratic party to maintain balance.
The Dems have not disavowed these riots. Any political party who even thinks rioting and looting is okay is an enemy of law-abiding citizens. This is a major problem regardless of when it happened. I donтАЩt care if it happened in the last few months. The fact that they wonтАЩt disavow any of it at all should be a huge wake up call to anyone.
Well if the election were Trump vs. the mayor of Chicago, you might have a point. Lucky for us, it's not. And we have four years of Trump's other reprehensible actions on which to pass judgment.
But you do you. Picking the leader of the whole country based on what's happened over a few weeks in a few cities seems like good judgment.
First, we do not have to like our choices but they are the ones we have. Neither of these parties or their leaders are going to address all of our issues in the way we want.
We could sit and bitch all day and probably agree on the fact that we need more parties with differing perspectives.
So then....on what basis do we choose?
1. War & Peace - Every president for the last century, maybe longer, has gotten us into a military conflict of some sort but lets just go back to the early 90's. Bush Sr. got us into Iraq. He was probably right and he probably handled it in the right way but we got into a war. Bill Clinton got us into Bosnia. Bush Jr, went nuts and got us into Afghanistan (justified originally) and then Iraq and thought he was going to change the middle east. Instead, we blew up the middle east resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and more of our soldiers killed and maimed and our treasury wiped out. Then comes Obama who rightly or wrongly refused to get us out of the places Bush Jr. got us into and THEN at the behest of his Sec State (Hillary) helped overthrow Ghadafi in Libya (turning a healthy country into a failed state) and then got us into Syria and a potential conflict with Russia and Turkey with more dead civilians, more dead soldiers and another near failed state. To top it off, Obama authorized the assassination of US Citizens overseas using drones.
For all of the hand wringing and prognosticating, what has Trump done? He is pulling troops our of Afghanistan. Tried to do the same in Syria with some success. BUT...NO NEW WARS! (think maybe that might be why the intel community and the defense establishment hate him? He is bad for their business)
So...on War and Peace...Trump earns a vote.
2. Economy: Until COVID hit, the US economy was humming along nicely. Trump challenged the Wall Street and Silicon Valley orthodoxy on free trade, a role that would have been filled by democrats prior to Bill Clinton, and Trump was right to do so. He reworked NAFTA, an agreement that in the end everyone knew needed to be updated. He challenged China, a country that never should have been admitted to the WTO, and for that was called a Xenophobe when in fact everyone now sees that China has been raping us for two decades and using that to rebuild its military.
He has worked hard to shut down the flow of people over the southern border and to cut back severely on work visas like the H1Bs. RACIST! No. It is about supply and demand. He is limiting the supply of labor so wages can rise. Guess what, they WERE rising which is why Silicon Valley and Wall Street were so ticked off at him. Nobody wanted to talk about that so they just played the racism card. Neither of these is an inherently racist action to take.
I would point out that the republican establishment and the democrats are very very tight with Hedge Funds, Wall Street generally and Silicon Valley. Trump went after the orthodoxy of both and made enemies in doing so.
I would also point out that Trump killed the TPP, a deal that would have hamstrung our national authority to regulate business and turned it over to an uneleced board of international business people who would have had the authority to award monies to businesses that failed to realize their expected profits if a country changed a regulation. In short, if a foreign company invested in the US and we changed labor laws or environmental laws and that foreign company did not make what it thought it would the US government would have to pay them. THIS is what Hillary was supporting, what Biden was supporting and what Wall Street wanted. Trump killed it. BTW....a new version of the TPP is now circulating. Think Biden will back it? You bet.
3. Foreign policy? What, he tried to get along with the Russians? Is it better that we be in constant conflict with them? For all the griping here about them, the Europeans are more than happy to do business with them. Germany just completed a major gas deal with Russia. Turkey, our supposed ally is buying weapons from them. The Chinese are a much bigger threat, do you think we can take on both Russia and China or might it be better to partner with Russia to challenge China?
Trump just managed to get the UAE to recognize Israel and normalize relations. Any other president had done that and they would be guaranteed a Nobel.
Does North Korea seem like a bigger or a smaller threat? How about Iran? Remember the panic that killing off the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was going to bring on WWIII? The man masterminded the killing of our troops and terrorist actions all over the Middle East. Dead. No new war. Trump made the right choice, it was a gamble and he won. Iran is weaker, poorer, and with the UAE now at peace with Israel, less of a threat.
Have we overthrown any more governments? Hillary, under Obama, went after Libya, Syria and helped overthrow the elected government of the Ukraine because the president of Ukraine wanted to get along with the Russians. Never mind that a large portion of the Ukrainian population is ethnic Russian. Never mind that the Crimea is of major strategic importance to the Russians. That action under Hillary is what triggered the Russian invasion of Crimea. Think the Ukrainians are thanking us? Belarus saw that and they are now hostile towards us because of it. Oh good. How nice.
I could go on and on...but I wont. I will however conclude with these two points.
1. Not reelecting Trump would be to fail to repudiate the actions of rogue intel and FBI leaders who attempted to effect the outcome of a US election and then when they failed to do that attempted to effect the removal of a sitting president. THAT is simply not something that we can allow to be condoned or to continue because it WILL lead to a formalization of an oligarchy.
2. To not reelect Trump would be to fail to repudiate the actions of the far left, indeed it would empower them, and undermine the ability of the center left to reassert itself. Until such time as we have a multiparty system, we need the center left in the democratic party to maintain balance.
I wasnтАЩt to bothered about voting this year but you make a very compelling argument (I live overseas).
The Dems have not disavowed these riots. Any political party who even thinks rioting and looting is okay is an enemy of law-abiding citizens. This is a major problem regardless of when it happened. I donтАЩt care if it happened in the last few months. The fact that they wonтАЩt disavow any of it at all should be a huge wake up call to anyone.