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Re: US Politics Thread
Joe Walsh: Trump Needs a Primary Challenge
The case for a contender from the right.
There’s a strong case for President Trump to face a Republican primary challenger. I know a thing or two about insurgencies. I entered Congress in 2011 as an insurgent Tea Party Republican. My goals were conservative and clear: restrain executive power and reduce the debt. Barack Obama was president then, and it was easy for us to rail against runaway spending and executive overreach.
Eight years later, Mr. Trump has increased the deficit more than $100 billion year over year — it’s now nearing $1 trillion — and we hear not a word of protest from my former Republican colleagues. He abuses the Constitution for his narcissistic trade war. In private, most congressional Republicans oppose the trade war, but they don’t say anything publicly. But think about this: Mr. Trump’s tariffs are a tax increase on middle-class Americans and are devastating to our farmers. That’s not a smart electoral strategy.
It’s one of the many reasons Mr. Trump is ripe for a primary challenger. In fact, it would buck the historical trend if he didn’t have one. More often than not, unpopular presidents face primary challengers.
Since leaving Congress in 2013, I’ve been the host of my own conservative talk radio show several hours a day, five days a week. The only time a majority of my conservative audience has noticeably broken with the president is when he signed the omnibus spending bill in 2017 that ballooned the deficit. Fiscal responsibility is an issue the American electorate cares about but that our elected officials disregard from the top down — including the Tea Party in the Trump era.
Fiscal matters are only part of it. At the most basic level, Mr. Trump is unfit for office. His lies are so numerous — from his absurd claim that tariffs are “paid for mostly by China, by the way, not by us,” to his prevarication about his crowd sizes, he can’t be trusted.
In Mr. Trump, I see the worst and ugliest iteration of views I expressed for the better part of a decade. To be sure, I’ve had my share of controversy. On more than one occasion, I questioned Mr. Obama’s truthfulness about his religion. At times, I expressed hate for my political opponents. We now see where this can lead. There’s no place in our politics for personal attacks like that, and I regret making them.
I didn’t vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 because I liked him. I voted for him because he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. Once he was elected, I gave him a fair hearing, and tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I soon realized that I couldn’t support him because of the danger he poses to the country, especially the division he sows at every chance, culminating a few weeks ago in his ugly, racist attack on four minority congresswomen.
The fact is, Mr. Trump is a racial arsonist who encourages bigotry and xenophobia to rouse his base and advance his electoral prospects. In this, he inspires imitators.
Republicans should view Mr. Trump as the liability that he is: No matter his flag-hugging, or his military parades, he’s no patriot. In front of the world, he sides with Vladimir Putin over our own intelligence community. That’s dangerous. He encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he refuses to take foreign threats seriously as we enter the 2020 election. That’s reckless. For three years, he has been at war with our federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as he embraces tyrants abroad and embarrasses our allies. That’s un-American.
And despite what his enablers claim, Mr. Trump isn’t a conservative. He’s reckless on fiscal issues; he’s incompetent on the border; he’s clueless on trade; he misunderstands executive power; and he subverts the rule of law. It’s his poor record that makes him most worthy of a primary challenge.
Mr. Trump has taken the legitimate differences that Americans have on policy and turned them into personal division. He’s caused me to change my tone and to reflect upon where I went over the line and to focus on policy differences moving forward.
We now have a president who retweets conspiracy theories implicating his political opponents in Jeffrey Epstein’s death. We now have a president who does his level best to avoid condemning white supremacy and white nationalism.
Yes, William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor, is challenging Mr. Trump from the center. But the president is more vulnerable to a challenge from the right. I’m on the right, and I’m hugely disappointed that challenge hasn’t yet materialized.
Mr. Trump’s most vulnerable against a challenger who’d make the case for strong borders — instead of warning of “invaders,” dragging us down, turning neighbor against neighbor. A majority of Americans want fixes to our most basic problems.
We need someone who could stand up, look the president in the eye and say: “Enough, sir. We’ve had enough of your indecency. We’ve had enough of your lies, your bullying, your cruelty, enough of your insults, your daily drama, your incitement, enough of the danger you place this country in every single day. We don’t want any of this anymore, and the country certainly can’t stand four more years of it.”
Joe Walsh, a former Illinois congressman, is a nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host.
Re: US Politics Thread
Joe Walsh is a mega prick. Seriously, dude attacked his own supporters who confronted him on his do-nothing record. Why the media gives these assholes any airtime is beyond me. Most tea partiers got toasted for a reason. It really irks me when it was these hucksters who went in with an obstruction agenda, did nothing, and fucked up every bill that didn't adhere to right wing purity. I guess hating Trump absolves you of all sins.
Re: US Politics Thread
misterID wrote:Socialism cannot exist under a democracy. Say Bernie gets his way, it would tank the economy for at least four years, I mean total disaster with skyrocketing unemployment, high taxes, etc. And four years is being generous that you could see even the slightest bit of positivity, where crap is a little less crappish... The American people would not stand for it and vote every socialist out. The left would then start hyping getting rid of the EC, abolishing rights, packing the supreme court, rewriting the constitution. Socialism can only exist under a dictatorship.
This is strange talk. ^^^ Socialism can only exist under a dictatorship? Huh?
Our country has quite a bit of socialism already: Medicare, Medicaid, VA healthcare, public schools, social security, libraries, public transportation, parks, firefighters, the police....on and on. That's before we even get to corporate socialism (the kind Republicans never want to talk about.) Let's not also forget that it was socialism that bailed out capitalism when Wall Street was imploding about a decade ago. Tax payers picked up the tab and kept these giant corporations afloat.
I'd also argue that most Americans aren't very good at basic math. They scoff at "high" tax rates, but are buried under student loan debt, credit card debt, medical bills, childcare etc and have very little hope of retiring. But sure, your tax rate is 25% so you're "free"...congrats.
Didn't see this before, yes, straight socialism can't exist under democracy, but that doesn't mean some aspects can't work on a small scale. And let's be honest, we're talking communism. And taxing people to death is not the answer.
If you can't afford that school, don't have a scholarship, don't go to that school and pay off a debt you couldn't afford to take on. Public school is a dumpster fire, the schools who receive the most money are some of the worst. The VA is a disgrace, a shining example of how incapable they are at handling healthcare... and they killed my grandfather. And I'm against corporate welfare.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: US Politics Thread
So.... Epstein. I'm inclined to think he had every reason to off himself, so that's where I put my money. But part of me thinks the CIA snuffed him. I have no interest in the yahoos saying the Clintons or Trump did it, but it's clear the guy was connected. The DA from the 2005 case claims he was told Epstein belonged to intel, and if you read what kind of sentence Epstein got, the idea that was true isn't a hard pill to swallow. Lots of famous and wealthy people into kid fucking - why wouldn't the intel community want that knowledge. Does that make me a truther now?
P.S. You got your wish, Buzz. So you should post.
Re: US Politics Thread
Funny, I've been meaning to post about this too.
Yeah, There's definitely something going on with his death. He was offed. Was killed, not suicide. The only way it was suicide was if he knew the powers that be (CIA, intel etc) would harm his close family & friends etc if he was forced to testify. Even just one. Imagine 'coincidentally' your neice or nephew is killed in a car crash 6 months later, that would be tough to live with.
I also think it was an entire network that needed it covered up, not just Trump or Clinton individually (not saying either is excluded from the group). I mean, in some ways its not all that unbelievable really. There's countries in pacific Asia known for child sex industry (thailand?). IMHO Epstein was probably paying top dollar for the best of them (youngest, virgins etc) and flying them high class to his private island, when those in the circle would attend parties & getaways.
Kinda sucks dude, really wish this all would unfold & get exposed. Hope the FBI has some evidence & names, but I wonder how all that works & goes down with coverups. There could be 'teams' on the FBI that secretly are only assigned to jobs like this ("We couldn't find anything further after all our research"). Makes you think it could be true about alot of the Hollywood child stars talk. Lofton was big on that conspiracy, you look at the Diffrent Strokes cast & the two Corey's and others.
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: US Politics Thread
Funny, I've been meaning to post about this too.
Yeah, There's definitely something going on with his death. He was offed. Was killed, not suicide. The only way it was suicide was if he knew the powers that be (CIA, intel etc) would harm his close family & friends etc if he was forced to testify. Even just one. Imagine 'coincidentally' your neice or nephew is killed in a car crash 6 months later, that would be tough to live with.
I also think it was an entire network that needed it covered up, not just Trump or Clinton individually (not saying either is excluded from the group). I mean, in some ways its not all that unbelievable really. There's countries in pacific Asia known for child sex industry (thailand?). IMHO Epstein was probably paying top dollar for the best of them (youngest, virgins etc) and flying them high class to his private island, when those in the circle would attend parties & getaways.
Kinda sucks dude, really wish this all would unfold & get exposed. Hope the FBI has some evidence & names, but I wonder how all that works & goes down with coverups. There could be 'teams' on the FBI that secretly are only assigned to jobs like this ("We couldn't find anything further after all our research"). Makes you think it could be true about alot of the Hollywood child stars talk. Lofton was big on that conspiracy, you look at the Diffrent Strokes cast & the two Corey's and others.
This is the kind of shit True Detective season 4 should be about and bring back Rust Cole and Marty. Everyone knows this does not pass the smell test.
Re: US Politics Thread
So.... Epstein. I'm inclined to think he had every reason to off himself, so that's where I put my money. But part of me thinks the CIA snuffed him. I have no interest in the yahoos saying the Clintons or Trump did it, but it's clear the guy was connected. The DA from the 2005 case claims he was told Epstein belonged to intel, and if you read what kind of sentence Epstein got, the idea that was true isn't a hard pill to swallow. Lots of famous and wealthy people into kid fucking - why wouldn't the intel community want that knowledge. Does that make me a truther now?
P.S. You got your wish, Buzz. So you should post.
My wish was that he'd stop doing what he was doing and engage intelligently. I'll leave it at that since he's not here to defend himself.
As for the Epstein thing, I'm much more interested in what he knows about who than how he died. I mean the Clinton connections to all these dead people are cute and all, but until someone can prove them I don't care about that any more than I care about the gazillion other conspiracy theories. It's easy to make things up that could be possible when so little truth comes out of all these government investigations.
Re: US Politics Thread
Randall Flagg wrote:So.... Epstein. I'm inclined to think he had every reason to off himself, so that's where I put my money. But part of me thinks the CIA snuffed him. I have no interest in the yahoos saying the Clintons or Trump did it, but it's clear the guy was connected. The DA from the 2005 case claims he was told Epstein belonged to intel, and if you read what kind of sentence Epstein got, the idea that was true isn't a hard pill to swallow. Lots of famous and wealthy people into kid fucking - why wouldn't the intel community want that knowledge. Does that make me a truther now?
P.S. You got your wish, Buzz. So you should post.
As for the Epstein thing, I'm much more interested in what he knows about who than how he died. I mean the Clinton connections to all these dead people are cute and all, but until someone can prove them I don't care about that any more than I care about the gazillion other conspiracy theories. It's easy to make things up that could be possible when so little truth comes out of all these government investigations.
El Chapo was in this same prison, no? I mean, how many highly connected, multi-billionaires, drug cartels and others would have liked to see El Chapo dead? Probably a whole helluva lot. But, he came out of there unscathed. He was kept safe until trial. The place did its job.
Epstein? The fact El Chapo was kept safe and Epstein is dead only reinforces suicide. Keep in mind, child molestors and child killers are amongst the lowest of the low, even in a prison population. He likely would have faced regular beatings, rapings, and possibly death. He knew this.
He killed himself. I believe that because that's what an entitled coward like him would do.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: US Politics Thread
Trump's Greenland purchase..... Isn't such a bad idea.
It’d be better if he offered PR in trade, then Denmark can have an island in the Caribbean.
