Free Republic

QAnon supporters believe the president is fighting a secret group of pedophiles and sex traffickers inside the government.

BLM and Antifa believe there is institutional racism, that stealing is reparations, and if a person of color wants to beat a white person, they should just lie back and take it and never fight back, that there is white privilege, etc.

Planned parenthood believes a baby is a mass of cells until the miracle of birth(or a few minutes thereafter), when it magically transforms into a human of unknown sex until it is old enough to make it's choice about what gender it is. . .

The Democrat party believes that Trump is mentally ill, colluded with Russia to steal an election, he's secretly a dictator, he's messing with the post office to steal another election, etc.

But no one asks Biden to disavow these groups.

Yet, Trump has to disavow every person or group out there that says something that sounds odd to reporters. I'll bet more than a few reporters believe one or more of the things I listed above, though none of them are actually backed by facts or by Science!(said in the liberal tone, the way they say it for effect).

If there was anything in the book that would be devastating to the President, it would long ago have come out in the news, leaked by a reporter or by Adam Shiff. If it were old news, it would have come up during the last election. If whatever it is had happened since then, it would have come up during the impeachment mess. Since it did not come up before now, it can only mean that it's campaign opposition research material and will have little or no impact.

If anyone thought information in this book would actually have any impact on the upcoming election, we would see it in late October, not now. Therefore this book is going to be completely meaningless, except to people who already hate Trump.

Those people will take whatever tidbits are in the book and present them as, "See, this incident proves I was right all along, orange man bad!" Those people would say the same thing about any random tweet/policy/observation/opinion/breakfast cereal/ Trump has/does anyway, so not sure how life after this book will any different than it is right now.

Great memories. I remember going to the Clinton impeachment rally with my new wife, now three kids later, she and I just celebrated our 22nd Wedding anniversary. Time sure does fly. . .

I personally loathe the fact that the media is playing up the fact that this doctor is a climate skeptic, but you have to read halfway through the article to see this:

he is an influential virologist

And the article seems to be a hit piece on how this doctor opines on stuff outside of his field without somehow mentioning that is actually is his field that we are talking about, you know, the one where he is a very respected and influential virologist.

It also fails to mention other studies that support his position, his own acknowledgment of the need to get more data on these drugs, other countries doing trials, or anything that would support his position. Instead, the tone of the article is yet another "orange man bad, so what orange man say must also be bad."

He should have Republicans get behind an initiative to heavily tax those with net worths in excess of $1 billion

I think he should propose a trust fund distribution tax for any distributions to people who did not set up the fund(with exemptions for spouse and children under 18) This would get money from the "trust fund kids" that largely make up the Democrat party. People like the Kennedy family for example. Also, many of these trust funds distribute money to "non-profits" that then employ these same kids, so those kinds of distributions should also be taxed. I'd love to see them try to defend taxing trust fund distributions, since it's primarily the wealthy people who have them to avoid paying high taxes in the first place. Then when they die, their kids can live on the money for years without having the need to get a job. Let see them defend that--our slogan should be that "they should pay their fair share."

Ancient coding(~1960s) best practices dictate that you never test a brand new system in a production environment. You always, always run the old system and test the new system along side of it to make sure it covers all possible cases and that some unknown bug doesn't bring down the whole system. This is a well known lesson that prevents this kind of thing, yet we saw the same thing with the Obamacare web site roll out. My guess is that too many young people on a project with little practical experience working with actual live systems. It should be a lesson to them that this is exactly how socialism would work with the economy--see Venezuela.

It could also be that because they believe that "diversity is a strength" that they put a bunch of people in charge with no actual experience even completing a coding project, which would lead to total disaster, since the code might not have been tested at all and my not even have been finished on going live day. That would be an even worse failure, because once you go live with incomplete or bad code, the pressure to fix it will burn out everyone and the project will never be done(ie Obamacare web page, they eventually had to take code from someone else to get it working).

There was a Seinfeld episode when he had a nude girlfriend and after watching normal daily activity around the apartment, decided it really wasn’t that awesome.

It reminds me of the Benny Hill episode where he's at the a nudist colony with lots of pretty girls when a couple of girls in short shorts and low cut blouses walk by outside and all the men run to see the non-naked girls, then the girls in the nudist colony get mad and start hitting the guys for looking at other girls.

In an actual investigation, not the TV type or the democrat Star Chamber type, you would interview witnesses first. Then you would interview the accused and accuser to ask questions about details you learned from the witnesses. This makes it much harder to make up lies after the fact since all the witnesses have already given their version of the story and the accuser/accused has no idea what they said. It also grants time to get background on the accuser/accused so you can get a full report. So if they are going to interview her, it would be last so they can ask her about whatever they found.

I would definitely be worried if I were her or her legal team, because they could be digging into things that lead to uncomfortable questions down the line, and they want her questioned early so they can try to head that off, but it might already be too late for them.

The other possibility is that they can't find any witnesses who have any details about anything she is accusing, so there are no new questions to ask her. This is the most likely reason they haven't talked to her IMO.

I was just watching the discussion of this on Fox and the guests were perplexed by this phenomenon. In fact, one of the guys fell back to "but his approval rating is the lowest ever and democrats are winning special elections now". Interesting that that last part is a lie, almost as if the commentator didn't believe the first part and had to throw in something to add weight to it. The host pointed out that the polling shows that more democrats in districts Trump won are in polling trouble than Republicans in Hillary districts are, but that didn't phase the guest, who started sneering about how Trump tweets have hurt him and how he isn't fit to be president, thus making the articles points while trying to deny them. The other guest was apparently GOPe type, who seems to be invested in the "he's going to fail any day now" philosophy and said Trump needs to listen to folks like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell more.

And I kid you not, the next segment was about how a bunch of GOP congressmen might decide to retire instead of run again, and all the ones they mentioned are ones who have opposed Trump, but the Host completely missed the irony of this based on the previous discussion. Could the message be any more clear that people outside the NY/DC/FED bubble are fed up with people who just can't get anything done and want someone to come in and kick their butts? And they can't figure out how Trump isn't losing support among his base and might be gaining popularity in GOPe and Hillary leaning districts?

“Listen, Donald does well with voters who have relatively low information, who are not that engaged and who are angry and they see him as an angry voice,” the Texas senator added. “Where we are beating him is when voters get more engaged and they get more informed. When they inform themselves, they realize his record. He’s what they’re angry at.” -Ted Cruz

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people -- now 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks -- they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America." - Hillary Clinton

Does anyone see the similarity in these two quotes? I sure do. It's the kind of thing that results from believing you are better than everyone else. It's a textbook definition of hubris, where those that have it believe they are invincible and onlookers just look at them in disbelief as to how they can be so stupid to attack the people they need succeed. Has that ever worked?

Hillary’s “gaffe” was an honest statement about how liberals view conservatives... it was probably the most honest thing that’s come out of her mouth this entire campaign.

I totally agree with this, but it's bigger than just liberals talking about conservatives. Its any elitists talking about people they have power over, and that can be anyone in a position of authority that looks down on those they rule over, anyone in the bureaucracy, teachers , local school boards, politicians, lawyers, doctors, you name it.

The Trump revolution is going to be the rising up of the oppressed against the powerful who are using their positions to lord it over the rest of us and to make us comply with their whims. The elites never see the revolution coming that ends up taking away their power. How could they? They think everyone is a just a stupid peon and cannot accept the idea that the peons outnumber the elites by so much that if they all over get on the same page, they can throw the elites out of power.

When Trump wins, expect a bunch of reporters to write stories wondering how people could be so stupid as to vote out the wonderful leaders that were just doing their best to help is all, and how people were so stupid they were tricked in to voting for things that are not good for them.

“Listen, Donald does well with voters who have relatively low information, who are not that engaged and who are angry and they see him as an angry voice,” the Texas senator added. “Where we are beating him is when voters get more engaged and they get more informed. When they inform themselves, they realize his record. He’s what they’re angry at.”

reminds me of this quote from This Is Spinal Tap:

Marty: The last time Tap toured America, they where, uh, booked into 10,000 seat arenas, and 15,000 seat venues, and it seems that now, on their current tour they're being booked into 1,200 seat arenas, 1,500 seat arenas, and uh I was just wondering, does this mean uh...the popularity of the group is waning?

Ian: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no...no, no, not at all. I, I, I just think that the.. uh.. their appeal is becoming more selective.

So the way for Ted to win is to get more selective and win over the educated voter. Everyone else is just stupid.

which reminds me of this quote from plan 9 from outer space:

Jeff Trent: So what if we *do* develop this Solanite bomb? We'd be even a stronger nation than now.

Eros: [with disgust] Stronger. You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!

Jeff Trent: That's all I'm taking from you! [pistol-whips Eros upside the head]

Hope that works out better for Ted than it did for Eros there . . .

Hmmm. She's a Sanders supporter running a phone bank for Sanders votes and keeps running into Trump supporters. What does this tell us about the Democrat base? I mean I'm pretty sure they aren't calling Republicans to support Sanders so. . .

Does this mean a lot of Democrats actually want to vote for Trump instead of the current Democrat candidates?

the US doesnt elect sovereigns...... GENIUS

Seriously, buy a dictionary or learn to user google.

sov·er·eign

noun noun: sovereign; plural noun: sovereigns 1. a supreme ruler, especially a monarch.

synonyms: ruler, monarch, crowned head, head of state, potentate, suzerain, overlord, dynast, leader;

Reign ponder THAT!!

Okay, I'm pondering. . .

reign

verb

verb: reign; 3rd person present: reigns; past tense: reigned; past participle: reigned; gerund or present participle: reigning

synonyms: prevail, exist, be present, be the case, occur, be prevalent, be current, be rife, be rampant, be the order of the day, be in force, be in effect; More formalobtain "chaos reigned" prevailing, existing, current; usual, common, recognized, established, accepted, popular, widespread "the reigning legal conventions" (of a sports player or team) currently hold a particular title. synonyms: incumbent, current "the reigning world champion"

noun noun: reign; plural noun: reigns 1. the period during which a sovereign rules. "the original chapel was built in the reign of Charles I" synonyms: rule, sovereignty, monarchy "during Henry's reign" the period during which someone or something is predominant or preeminent. "these historic seconds inaugurated the reign of negative political advertising"

synonyms: period in office, incumbency, managership, leadership "his reign as manager"

I'm pondering that you don't own a dictionary and don't realize that he used the work correctly.

One---in July he told "Morning Joe" that he's a Democrat on "some" things. That in itself should be enough to take him out of the running for every conservative, considering how much we rightfully complain about RINOs.

Conservative ideas don't belong to republicans alone, it's a set of principles, beliefs and goals. I'm not going to throw out a possible good president because he only agrees with me 85% of the time instead of 100. Hell, I'd vote for a conservative democrat that agreed with me 85% of the time, if I could find one. Instead, you'll hold out for a guy that agree with you 100% and get only 2 votes, yours and theirs. Isn't Scarborough a RINO anyway though? Why are you watching his show if he doesn't agree with you 100%?

I'm supposed to disdain liberal/moderate Republicans, yet support a man who admits he's at least partially a Democrat at heart? Never happening.

So do you have issues you disagree with Trump on, or are you basing it all on what he calls himself instead of what his actual positions are?

Two---Terry McAuliffe, one of the lowest bottom-feeding, scumsucking, filthy, corrupt liberals of all time currently sits in my governor's mansion. Donald Trump contributed $25,000 to help put him there. Only a liberal Democrat would have done that.

Agreed McAuliffe is a liberal democrat and the rest, and you are certainly entitle to deny support to Trump based on that alone. But for the rest of us, who and what Trump was in the past aren't as important as the positions he's taking now. His immigration and tax reform are enough in my book to overcome these, and if he changes after the election, well that's what most of politicians do anyway("Read my lips, no new taxes" "I'll have the most ethical administration in history", etc.). However, if we elect a bunch of like minded people who agree with most of our positions to congress, it's lot harder for him to renege on these promises later--but that will be really hard to do if all of them have to agree with you 100% on everything.

If you can’t spell it out to yourself ahead of time then you’re not an informed voter or principled person of any stripe: you’re a fan of a celebrity. And what you’re watching right now isn’t a political campaign to you, it’s a slightly more sophisticated reality show than The Kardashians.

I can't for the life of me understand why attackers of Trump keep taking this line when it's clearly ridiculous. Donal Trump is a businessman, a showman, and celebrity because of his success and his ability to appeal the the average guy even though he's a billionaire. The Kardashians are celebrities because of two things--their father's connection to the OJ trial and their endless quests for publicity. Some would say they are famous for trying to be famous. There's no comparison there--the Kardashians are famous without having earned it, the Donald earned his fame the hard way. Calling his supporters stupid or uniformed is unlikely to deter them from their support, in fact it sounds like an elitist argument saying "the poor rubes are being misled, now you stupid people get back on the GOPe plantation and do what's good for ya."

It's been a long time since we had a businessman for president, one who would actually cut waste and fire people who abuse the system, so I've always though Donald Trump would run the government more like a business and that's appealing to me. Also, I want a president who will enforce the existing laws and not keep ignoring them and calling for more laws when bad things happen because of government incompetence.

So to answer the question, what would make me dislike Trump would be for him to espouse views that encourage lawbreaking, enable the bureaucracy, or to undermine the pinnings of the Constitution. After all, the Presidency is an executive position and requires an executive who has a vision, follows the rules, and makes wise choices. The leader of the US also needs to be able to persuade people if they disagree, prioritize how funding is spent based on the budget approved by congress, and reign in the bureaucracy to make it run better and follow their mission statements. It should not matter a great deal if the President is liberal or conservative as long he's a good executive and follows the rules/laws of the land.

So, having said that, what do I think of this article? Here are the points made by the author and my comments on same.
being a repeat donor to Clinton and other Democrats -- Donald Trump is from New York. He does large business deals and builds things that require signoffs by the local, state, and federal government. I'd wager that most of these donations were to keep the various governments from putting a monkey wrench into the permit/approval process. It's also worth looking back at what those candidates were saying at the time. Generally, even though they were democrats, they weren't as liberal as they appear to us now(or it was not known how liberal they were to the general public). In particular, if you look at Clinton's early speeches, they were pretty conservative in tone. Of course I knew he was lying, but a great many people did not.
I ask because I would have thought that using Michael Moore’s talking points on 9/11 might have been that point for principled conservatives.--So just because Michael Moore is a liberal whacko, we should never listen to what he says. I though conservative were about listening to the message and not attacking the messenger. Sure Michal more is wrong 99% of the time, but Bush came in promising to restore the rule of law and enforcing immigration laws, and then he didn't do it. You can make the argument that if the existing immigration laws were enforced, we'd have caught half of the 9/11 hijackers who were here on expired visas. Any of them might have talked and ruined the plan.
defending federal funding of Planned Parenthood--So this is one of those things where the media distorted what Donald said. He said if there good things PP did, we should keep funding those and cut off the funding for the abortion part of PP. So if we actually did that, most people know that abortions is all PP does and under that definition Donald actually called for defunding it, but the media chose to go with the first part, and talk about PP as a "women's health clinic"
adopting Democrat rhetoric on the need to raise taxes--Personally, I don't think anyone should pay over 25% in taxes. Having said that, I think everyone should pay something in taxes and those taxes should be fair. It is funny to me that for all the rhetoric the Democrats spout about making the rich pay their fair share, they've ignored this one particular tax that oddly low because it benefits their buddies. Why not turn their own rhetoric on them and point out this fact? Using their own rhetoric to make a conservative point is not a sin, it's actually damned clever.
publicly professing a love for eminent domain --this one gives me a little trouble because it's about property right and what the government can do under eminent domain. This one's clearly in the constitution, so that's not the problem, the issue comes down to disputes about public use, and in a city like New York where parts of the city have aged can the government step in and rebuild an area if people don't want to leave? It's not as clear cut as property right--should one or two people be able to hole of redevelopment that would benefit many more people? This is not a slam dunk in a city as it would be in the country--in the country, you can just go get more land. In the city there is no more land, so what do you do when you've a developer ready to go and everyone sells but a few?
I haven’t even gotten into the insanely liberal things Trump said and did before he decided to run for President, because apparently being an unprincipled and opportunistic flip flopper only bothers principled conservatives when the candidate in question is Mitt Romney--This is simply a lie. Romney served as governor and them flipped positions when running for president. Donald has not held public office, he was merely stating his opinions on things as he was asked about them without knowing much about them. Under these conditions, people tend re repeat the current poplar mantras, and he is from NYC, so the popular mantras tend to be liberal. If you read his books, however, you will see his opinions as far back as 2000 were not as liberal as presented in the media. Perhaps some of his comments were also sarcasm or meant to tweak the media so they would cover his project or help him make a deal. Seriously, does any remember how flip flop was invented for John Kerry, and the reason it got transferred to Mitt was that his positions were exactly the same ones that Kerry flip-flopped on?
betrayed as many conservative principles as Trump has --really, is presenting an alternate opinions betraying conservative principle now? Call me when Trump comes out for gun control, tax increases on the middle class, and open borders. Wait, he's against all those things? Wait, what conservative principles did he betray exactly?

Is it attacking the media? No, he's done that and won. Was it pointing out RINOs in congress and the media? Is it that he calls out people when they tell lies? I'm struggling to come with anything on the level of a betrayal. The closest I can get is that he supported the Kelo decision, and that's not as clear cut as everyone is making it out to be. So what is it then--is it that he's not clearly enough pro life? That he's not railed against gay marriage? Are those the only reasons I should vote against him, even though all his other positions are clearly more conservative than everyone but Cruise? And that's he's clearly to the right of Cruise on immigration and trade policies? How again has he "betrayed conservative principles?"

After a bruising campaign focused on his failings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel won a clear victory in Tuesday’s elections and seemed all but certain to form a new government and serve a fourth term, though he offended many voters and alienated allies in the process.

But apparently he didn't offend "voters" enough, or he would have lost! It's not like Obama didn't do the exact opposite, he won twice by lying about his actual political positions, and then proceeded to offend pretty much everyone except his hard core supporters. Which is better, to lay your views and positions out in the open and have the election be about real issues, or to hide your true thoughts and win the election based on lies, so you can implement an agenda you never articulated during the campaign? I know which side the NYT is on . . .

USA Today's editorial board, reading the polling tea leaves going into the election, was already deciding one of its narrative mantras would be: No more gridlock On this Election Day, more voters now say they want compromise instead of unyielding confrontation.

How can anyone fall for this crap. If they wanted compromise, people would have voted against the republicans "causing" the gridlock. Instead, they voted against the democrats. It wasn't 50/50 either, they voted lock, stock, and barrel against the democrats. Why would that imply that the American people elected republicans to compromise with the losers on the agenda the voters rejected?

Old white people who vote Republican will die someday

... only to be replaced by the much more conservative gen x and gen y folks who will also vote Republican, but may potentially be less white(or just not care about race at all). Too bad he didn't think this one through--looks to me like many of the R winners last night are much younger than the D people who managed to hold on to their seats, but math is apparently too difficult for Democrats.

What didn’t work? The president’s and Democrats’ strategy to run against Congress. Clearly Congress is less popular than the White House: Only 20 percent in exit polls approved of the job that Congress was doing, and 78 percent disapproved.

But those who disapproved of Congress voted Republican 51–47, while those who approved of Congress voted Democratic 54–45. The Democrats, in other words, got saddled with the bad job people thought Congress was doing, in addition to the president’s poor performances.

Can't be because the people who disapproved of congress actually disapproved of Democrats in the senate, can it? It's amazing the myopia the media has about their own internal bias. Every media story from every outlet today has missed this crucial point. People were mad at the senate and GOP leaderships, but they were mad at the GOP because they weren't doing enough and mad at the Senate because they were blocking all the GOP legislation. Why can't these both be true?

Why did they ask the question about generic "congress" and not about the house and the senate? Because they wanted to appear the people hated the GOP as much as they hate the Dem leadership. And then they ended up fooling themselves because of their own biases, and now can't interpret what happened properly because of it.