Not really, the basic skill sets are pretty similar. BTW, Obama could've fired Clinton or any member of his administration or any employee's of his at anytime for whatever reason as well.Originally Posted by pbrower2a
Why would you? You preferred a mid level community organizer with no executive experience.
Last edited by Classic-X'er; 08-22-2015 at 02:21 AM.
He can't fire a Senator or Supreme Court justice who gives him trouble.
I used "cruise ship captain" because a cruise ship captain cannot order any passenger or crew member to walk the plank. The captain gets what he has and has to work with what he has.Why would you? You preferred a mid level community organizer with no executive experience.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
We can fire the Senator who is giving him trouble and he can appoint a Supreme Court Justice to deal with the ones or represent a threat to the ones who are giving him trouble. Socially speaking, we are already on a major collision coarse. Trump is a doer and is running as a doer. He has already established himself as the primary candidate. Today's politicians are considered to be weak and more talkers than they are doers. So, in that sense, he has already changed the characteristics that will be required of the Republican candidate to win the support of his base and the dynamics of the Republican field. Politics as usual is no longer viable in the Republican party which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
The so-called liberals of today deserve little respect.
Respect
Well, that approach to politics is certainly common enough, and not just applied to liberals.
Trump is an entertainer and a money changer. No-one has the slightest hint of what he would do were he to be president.
I bet he would hold a lot more press conferences than any president in living memory.
Most of "we" aren't going to be able to do anything (as most of use don't live in that Senator's state and so don't get a vote) and neither can the President do anything.
No he can't. He has the wait until one of the troublesome Justices retires or dies. Most of the time he never gets the chance, instead simply replacing allies, which has zero effect on the troublesome ones.and he can appoint a Supreme Court Justice to deal with the ones or represent a threat to the ones who are giving him trouble.
Trump was a real estate executive. As such he made financial deals and rearranged capital structures. His business is an old one, no innovation there. But more recently he has been a regular player on a reality TV show. Here he does do something and it is the skill set he demonstrated on that show that is why he is a phenom now. His time as a real estate tycoon is irrelevant. There are lots of tycoons, but only one Trump.Trump is a doer and is running as a doer.
The Koch Bros. or Warren Buffet run circles around him as capitalists, but as a media figure, Trump leaves them in the dust. This is his strength. Remember the most successful Republican political figure of modern times came from Hollywood. Of modern Republicans only Trump might approach the media skills Reagan had. But Trump is rich at a level that Reagan was not. Reagan still had to kiss donor ass. Trump doesn't have to.
Only once in six years -- at an election -- and several stand to be "fired" in 2016, most of whom I figure you would rather see stick around.
and he can appoint a Supreme Court Justice to deal with the ones or represent a threat to the ones who are giving him trouble
No -- only when an opening appears due usually to retirement or death.
Course. Use of the wrong homophone in written communications is coarse!Socially speaking, we are already on a major collision coarse. Trump is a doer and is running as a doer.
Businessmen typically make poor politicians. Prime example: Herbert Hoover was a very successful businessman, a brilliant man, and a very poor President. Need I remind you of Silvio Berlusconi? Democratic politics began in an age of gentleman farmers, not really businessmen.
If the issue is intelligence, then we seem to not elect physicians, research scientists, dentists, engineers, or accountants as President. Those are smart people -- but they typically have the wrong skill set for high-level politics. Politics and industry are very different.
He has already established himself as the primary candidate.
Only for now. The Republican leader board so far looks like a wheel of fortune. Some will drop out, reducing the number of alternatives. Deals will be cut among those who drop out. "Secretary of State and I endorse you".
No, that is the result with the political climate that we now have -- gridlock. The two sides are jockeying for dominance after which gridlock becomes lockstep, and one side gets its way. That's as neutral as I can be for now.Today's politicians are considered to be weak and more talkers than they are doers.
Donald Trump, like every other Republican candidate for president, basically promises what he (or she) will do with a compliant House and Senate. He has not shown what he will do when politics becomes give-and-take, giving up something desirable to get something better.So, in that sense, he has already changed the characteristics that will be required of the Republican candidate to win the support of his base and the dynamics of the Republican field. Politics as usual is no longer viable in the Republican party which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
He is one of the riskiest main-party candidates (unless you speak of someone so absurd as David DuKKKe) in American history. I regret to say that he has plenty of company in that this time. I'll take our community organizer who learned much that starry-eyed idealists don't figure out until those realities implode upon or devour them. Example: the infamous 'limousine liberal' of the 1970s believed that crime was the result of bad social conditions instead of a combination of bad character of a few criminals and ineffective law enforcement. The 'limousine liberals' of the 2T are gone. Such liberals as are now in high office are much more hard-nosed about crime. Sure, they will address poverty because poverty offends their moral sensibilities. They also have no problem with improved police work more likely to result in the incarceration of evil-doers.
Last edited by pbrower2a; 08-22-2015 at 06:11 PM.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Probably, although no-one could predict what he would say at them, except that substantive issues would be a small part of them, and that he would shift his policies more than any president in history. I suspect he might make the Oval Office over into the set of The Apprentice, and make the presidency into a weekly reality show. He would fire someone on his staff each week.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 08-23-2015 at 07:55 PM.
Doubt it. The base who support him aren't into the idea of their elected officials playing games in Washington.
I will never understand what makes people vote for any specific person. It really just seems that some person says what the people want to hear and they automatically rally with them. Does it mean they will do the job correctly? They may be the most intelligent person on this planet, they may be prophetic in predicting our own doom. Said person would be very valuable behind the curtain, but I don't know if they would be valuable as a leader.
What history has shown us, is that closed minded leaders (specifically tyrants) do not make good leaders. I try to do everything I can to avoid voting for closed minded people for this reason. Leaders who are celebrated are leaders who expand education, liberate artists, and allow people to generally go about their lives.
I think America is very fortunate in a sense that we have so many people in this nation. We have experienced fragmentation before. We've experienced xenophobia and rioting because of this. The New York draft riots during the civil war are kind of a forgotten and overlooked event, but we almost lost control of New York City for a few days. We have so many people in this nation, which means we have so many opinions and fractions in this country. Finding any unifying voice would be very difficult for 300 million people and growing. Even the tea party (basically the angry white middle class party), cannot sustain enough voters to elect a president.
One problem in this country is that the middle class seems to think it's their birthright to be...the middle class. (The we're taking our country back mentality). Any change in their lifestyle is enormously shocking to them. "Oh I have to pay 5 dollars for ground beef?" Or "I have to pay 4 dollars for a gallon of milk? How outrageous!" It is outrageous, but what do you think people did before your time? Threw temper tantrums about it? They watered down the soup and went without milk and meat. There was a time where meat was a rarity and most people didn't even have access to milk.
They forget that their ancestors came from impoverished regions, endured unimaginable hardships and worked their asses off and ended up getting nowhere. They did this because they knew that, not necessarily their children, but their childrens' children would end up rising above their status level. We have no concept of this type of forward thinking, we have no context to apply it to, and therefore we are completely lost as a society. The "existential" angst we've been experiencing for a great deal of the latter half of the 20th century is a result of this detachment. Although some people may have struggled to work their way up to working class, they do not understand what it is to be perpetually hungry, filthy, dirty. And meanwhile, there were leeches everywhere, making their fortunes out of screwing over honest and hardworking people in the past. Again, did these honest and hardworking people throw temper tantrums? The baby boomers are the first group of adults to actually have adult temper tantrums over these things...it's kind of shameful. We're a nation full of people having adult temper tantrums..and most of the time it's over the dumbest things imaginable. "I had to sit on the phone for an hour before I could fix my internet!" My god what babies...
The things I hear coming out of their mouths is just shameful and embarrassing. Yes I understand that illegal immigration is frustrating, but there are more pressing issues to address. Even if you were to get rid of every single illegal immigrant in this country, do you really think that would magically create jobs? These companies would send those jobs overseas or get rid of them entirely, at the very least they would have an understaffed workplace. I know...I work in retail where skeleton crews are common. Of course those baby boomers living in la la land, with their office jobs, houses in the suburbs do not seem to understand reality. They are aware of the darker aspects of reality, but they don't understand them and don't contextualize them. Of course, I'm not attacking baby boomers specifically, we're all responsible for this mentality. We've had easy lives, all of us, for the last 70 years.
Last edited by Felix5; 08-24-2015 at 02:57 AM.
I think the closest we'll ever get is some form of monopoly run by the interests of corporations. Or Some variant of Mccarthyism. Europe was so overcrowded and condensed for centuries, people were living one on top of the other. We don't really have that problem in America, even in America's most overcrowded cities. There's too many people in this nation and they are too isolated from each other in order to form anything as unifying as nazism.Those whom I see yearning for something totalitarian strike me as being more Stalinist than Fascist. Shades of gray in the end. But truthfully, the American psyche, in spite of the best efforts of various apparent Europhiles, does not seem capable of having a frame of mind similar to Continental Europeans. That frame of mind was and remains a key ingredient for something like a Stalin or a Hitler to gain power. There is also, BTW, a similar but differently hatched Asian version. In any case, the Continental outlook is like oil to the water of the American psyche.
If ever Americans were to embrace totalitarianism it might have a Latin American or African flavor. Even that is a stretch.
To no small extent, it is cultural affinity. Think of the Bush II campaign that targeted people who attend NASCAR races. What does NASCAR have to do with public administration? Nothing. But the demographics of NASCAR fans well fit the current Republican Party. White, heavily-rural or with a strong rural color to their culture, working-class, corporate-friendly, distrustful of high levels of intellect, homespun, conventional? What does that have to do with good public policy? Nothing. But it is good for finding people resentful toward successful minorities of every kind including people who live 'alternative lifestyles'.
The leader who encourages people to solve problems by using imagination, creativity, and rational thought -- FDR is a prime example -- is better suited for meeting a Crisis than is a tyrant.What history has shown us, is that closed minded leaders (specifically tyrants) do not make good leaders. I try to do everything I can to avoid voting for closed minded people for this reason. Leaders who are celebrated are leaders who expand education, liberate artists, and allow people to generally go about their lives.
Size of a population is not enough. It's a good thing that America has so much cultural diversity. Much of this is tied to ethnic diversity. People can often re-invent themselves if they dislike the narrow community whence they came and like another community better.I think America is very fortunate in a sense that we have so many people in this nation. We have experienced fragmentation before. We've experienced xenophobia and rioting because of this. The New York draft riots during the civil war are kind of a forgotten and overlooked event, but we almost lost control of New York City for a few days. We have so many people in this nation, which means we have so many opinions and fractions in this country. Finding any unifying voice would be very difficult for 300 million people and growing. Even the tea party (basically the angry white middle class party), cannot sustain enough voters to elect a president.
But what can people with very different economic interests and tastes in culture have in common? Conscience! We must not simply avoid doing evil things to people -- we must resist evil where it appears.
People who seek the Good Life on the cheap through exploitation will not get it for long. Labor may have become cheap for its productivity by historic measures in the 1980s until recently -- but such is exploitation. Those who insist upon market economics must accept the harsh rules of market economics -- mainly that the person willing to pay the most gets his first unless there is competition.One problem in this country is that the middle class seems to think it's their birthright to be...the middle class. (The we're taking our country back mentality). Any change in their lifestyle is enormously shocking to them. "Oh I have to pay 5 dollars for ground beef?" Or "I have to pay 4 dollars for a gallon of milk? How outrageous!" It is outrageous, but what do you think people did before your time? Threw temper tantrums about it? They watered down the soup and went without milk and meat. There was a time where meat was a rarity and most people didn't even have access to milk.
Or "I had to sit on the phone for an hour before I could get my cable TV back!"They forget that their ancestors came from impoverished regions, endured unimaginable hardships and worked their asses off and ended up getting nowhere. They did this because they knew that, not necessarily their children, but their childrens' children would end up rising above their status level. We have no concept of this type of forward thinking, we have no context to apply it to, and therefore we are completely lost as a society. The "existential" angst we've been experiencing for a great deal of the latter half of the 20th century is a result of this detachment. Although some people may have struggled to work their way up to working class, they do not understand what it is to be perpetually hungry, filthy, dirty. And meanwhile, there were leeches everywhere, making their fortunes out of screwing over honest and hardworking people in the past. Again, did these honest and hardworking people throw temper tantrums? The baby boomers are the first group of adults to actually have adult temper tantrums over these things...it's kind of shameful. We're a nation full of people having adult temper tantrums..and most of the time it's over the dumbest things imaginable. "I had to sit on the phone for an hour before I could fix my internet!" My god what babies...
Maybe much of the problem is that we have become so reliant upon electronic entertainments that we have lost the ability to entertain (and more importantly, enlighten) ourselves. And, yes, if you want the glass of milk that you carted off from Wal*Mart in your mass-produced car.... someone had to milk the cow. Someone had to mine the coal and iron ore that made possible the steel in your car and the refrigerator in your kitchen. Someone had to forge the components of your car in a foundry. Someone had to get the oil that became the plastic container of your milk. Someone had to build the store where you shopped. Someone had to pave the highway that you drove upon. All of that work is hard, dirty, and often dangerous work. Someone had to do the numbing boredom of running a cash register at the Wal*Mart.
People are offended when President Obama reminds people that "You did not make that" even if he says something beyond denial. "I paid for it and I ordered it" is not enough.
There would be food shortages, and people would be complaining about paying $8 for a gallon of milk and $30 for a fast-food hamburger.The things I hear coming out of their mouths is just shameful and embarrassing. Yes I understand that illegal immigration is frustrating, but there are more pressing issues to address. Even if you were to get rid of every single illegal immigrant in this country, do you really think that would magically create jobs? These companies would send those jobs overseas or get rid of them entirely, at the very least they would have an understaffed workplace. I know...I work in retail where skeleton crews are common. Of course those baby boomers living in la la land, with their office jobs, houses in the suburbs do not seem to understand reality. They are aware of the darker aspects of reality, but they don't understand them and don't contextualize them. Of course, I'm not attacking baby boomers specifically, we're all responsible for this mentality. We've had easy lives, all of us, for the last 70 years.
America is in many ways a nastier place than it was in the 1970s. Maybe the "Peace-Love-Dope" faction of the Boom generation ignored the economic basis (hard, dirty work) of a prosperous society; the right-wing Boomers have come to dominate the executive suites and right-wing think-tanks; the demand the toil but trivialize the need for paying it justly.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
So they would have to desert him, because Trump is nothing but someone who knows how to play the game.
True, he knows how to play the game with politicians. He's been playing the game with them for years.
Frighteningly enough, that is exactly the sort of demographic that Fascist movements take root in. The Nazis were most popular with middle class Germans.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
I don't know what kind of world that you want for your children and your children's children. Do you want a world that the term illegal is ignored, no longer matters and is no longer addressed? A world where a word like citizenship no longer matters and is considered meaningless. A world where US citizens are viewed as equal in status with illegal aliens. You aren't forward thinking. You don't quite grasp the issue or the principles involved with the issue. My kid's kid is going to be fine after we win the next major war of independence that's coming with the modern day left. I doubt that my grand kids will care what happens to the poor leftwing bastards who are stuck in the banana republic that was once known as California. BTW, I didn't have to go very far to meet an illegal alien.
Last edited by Classic-X'er; 08-23-2015 at 02:30 PM.
Knowing this, I don't quite understand why your liberal elite continue to ignoring them and slamming them and favoring a group of people who have no legal right to be here. Back in the day, stupidity and ignorance was punished and its punishment was widely practiced and accepted in many ways. You didn't grow up in that world.
I'd rather have some more illegal aliens in my town than some of the meth fiends and heroin addicts that we already have. But to what place would we dopers? Oh, by the way -- those dopers are white.
I would not recognize an illegal alien if I met one. Who knows? Maybe I would even marry one.A world where a word like citizenship no longer matters and is considered meaningless.
If one has an older sibling who is an illegal alien and a sibling who is a US-born citizen, one can be expected to see the two as equals.A world where US citizens are viewed as equal in status with illegal aliens.
They could feel much like many current Germans do about what their grandparents did to the Jews. Start your Civil War II, and see what side the rest of the world takes. Our Blue America is going to be better than ever, in part because of the religious and ethnic refugees from your Ku Kluxistan. You will be stuck with semi-literate hicks.My kid's kid is going to be fine after we win the next major war of independence that's coming with the modern day left. I doubt that my grand kids will care what happens to the poor leftwing bastards who are stuck in the banana republic that was once known as California. BTW, I didn't have to go very far to meet an illegal alien.
I'm not surprised about your proximity to illegal aliens. Just go to a restaurant, and some of the staff may be illegal aliens.
California is too chilly for growing bananas. It has another big problem -- a drought that could turn the state into the Atacama or Namib Desert of America.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
A few illegals aren't going to do much as far as social improvement of your town or do anything to remove the presence of the white meth fiends and heroin addicts who live there with you.
I doubt one would marry you. They're very traditional minded. I wasn't able to recognize them either. A Mexican was a Mexican to me until I became more acquainted with Mexicans. As a general rule, the family who owns the home, the business or the car is a legal immigrant. The family or individuals who live in the basement, are picked up and driven to a work site are illegal. In the case of my neighbor, the woman who cleaned his home, cooked his meals and shared his bed was illegal. BTW, I was very instrumental in changing his way of thinking, opening up his check book and completing the process to make his wife a legal immigrant. Whether they're Mexican, white American or whatever, spoiled brats tend to buckle to people of principle.
A family member would view them as equal as you stated. A political family member like yourself might consider them as equal for the sake of political interests. Beyond those, there's a very clear separation between the two, an acknowledgement of the difference and a national debate which will determine how and to what extent that our government will eventually addresses this issue.
You're challenging a Yankee. You're attacking a Yankee. Think about it. Whose principles are you running into here. Pull your head out dude.
Last edited by Classic-X'er; 08-23-2015 at 04:56 PM.
He plays the game with everybody, including all the customers that come to his casinos, all the government pols he gets to finance him, and all the potential voters who are spellbound by his entertainment skill enough to be deceived into voting for him. Trump is the ultimate elite insider, and the most typical potential Washington insider too. I hope you are not fooled into believing he will take any actual action on anything he says, if he were to win political office. He obviously stands for nothing.
And aristocratic elites. And tycoons. And executives.
Aside from the Jews, the people least likely to fall for Hitler were blue-collar workers to whom Hitler offered little but work at abysmal wages.
It's telling that the first institutions that the British, French, and Americans reconstituted in liberated Germany were the labor unions.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
The illegal aliens at least work. The dopers quickly lose their jobs and get busted when they shoplift or write hot checks.
I despise the tradition in which I was brought up. Had I ever married I would have married out of a tradition that offers few attractions. If you think that German-Americans generally enjoy wall-to-wall classical music and know their Goethe -- think again.I doubt one would marry you. They're very traditional minded. I wasn't able to recognize them either. A Mexican was a Mexican to me until I became more acquainted with Mexicans. As a general rule, the family who owns the home, the business or the car is a legal immigrant. The family or individuals who live in the basement, are picked up and driven to a work site are illegal. In the case of my neighbor, the woman who cleaned his home, cooked his meals and shared his bed was illegal. BTW, I was very instrumental in changing his way of thinking, opening up his check book and completing the process to make his wife a legal immigrant. Whether they're Mexican, white American or whatever, spoiled brats tend to buckle to people of principle.
So you did something good that you didn't get paid for. Feather in your cap!
I also see the potential for the personal tragedy of family separations just to please callow demagogues and their supporters.A family member would view them as equal as you stated. A political family member like yourself might consider them as equal for the sake of political interests. Beyond those, there's a very clear separation between the two, an acknowledgement of the difference and a national debate which will determine how and to what extent that our government will eventually addresses this issue.
So what?!You're challenging a Yankee. You're attacking a Yankee. Think about it. Whose principles are you running into here. Pull your head out dude.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
I'd rather elect an ultimate insider who knows how to play the game with politicians and get what he wants who places America first in the greater scheme of things than some liberal chump who mesmerizes people with lofty ideals and upper end language and largely unfunded promises who doesn't quite get where he lives and has a hard time relating to average Americans.
Last edited by Classic-X'er; 08-23-2015 at 09:09 PM.
