[blackjack21]

My civic duty tells me to vote, but Trump is bad and Biden is bad.

I didn't cast a vote in 2008. That's an option for you. A lot of people vote for Trump and don't necessarily like him. The purpose of voting for Trump for me is to keep the neoliberals/neoconservatives out of the White House. Frankly, I'm not comfortable at all with the way the establishment is using emergency powers. We're well past the point of flattening the curve and preventing hospitals from being overrun. There is no excuse for emergency powers six months later. Legislators can convene and pass laws with input from the people. There is no reason for dictatorial power at this point, but that's what the Democrats are loving right now. For that reason alone, I would vote for Trump if I were you. Everything they told you they were afraid he would do? They're doing it. Who is telling you that you can't go to church? It isn't Trump.

I am a very ''law and order'' type Statist, so that would seem to favor Trump, but his conflicts with the Establishment Swamp have rocked the whole world since he's been in office.

The establishment's rule cannot continue either. That's why Trump won. People have had enough of Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama/Clinton|Bush/Biden, which is exactly how the establishment wants things. To them, if they can control the ballot, it doesn't matter who wins or loses, because they always win. Trump represents them losing.

Agreed. We went through worse shit than 7/7 almost every week back in the 1970s and 80s at the hands of the PIRA, and there was no hand-wringing hysteria then, so why after 9/11 or 7/7? I couldn't understand it at the time, and I still can't understand it now.

9/11 killed over 2000 people. PIRA never got close to that in a single attack. Additionally, PIRA was domestic terror, not a foreign entity. So why do you pay taxes if the government cannot protect you? That's why they overreacted, because these events show that the government despite its largesse can be largely ineffective. Look at covid for example. China, even with totalitarian controls, fucked up miserably. The WHO did their bidding and made it worse for the rest of the world. The medical establishment panicked. On and on. Do we pay these people to panic? No. We pay them to be competent. They aren't.

Look at the polls,

What for? They're always wrong. Look at the Trump rallies and compare them to the Biden rallies.

Republicans cried wolf a hundred times too often..

Oh sure... Russia! Russia! Russia!

Anyway, back to the fun: Media outlets offer bizarre defenses for CNN star Jeffrey Toobin amid masturbation scandal

Toronto Star columnist Vinay Menon wrote that Toobin "didn't cover himself in glory ‒ or regrettably, anything else ‒ in that fateful Zoom call, but CNN and his country need him."

We need him? These people are seriously deluded. At any rate, what do you think this means? Is #MeToo over now?

"Granted, there are few things more unprofessional than masturbating during a company meeting. Toobin is a lawyer. His judgment is now suspect. I get it. All I'm saying is we need to forget this ever happened. Block it out."

Really? Does that go for everyone else too? Can we all start jerking off in meetings now? What does the bizarro ruling class have in store for us now?

[annatar1914]

@blackjack21 ;

I didn't cast a vote in 2008. That's an option for you.

Definitely an option to be sure, although I am rather civic minded when it comes to voting.

A lot of people vote for Trump and don't necessarily like him. The purpose of voting for Trump for me is to keep the neoliberals/neoconservatives out of the White House. Frankly, I'm not comfortable at all with the way the establishment is using emergency powers. We're well past the point of flattening the curve and preventing hospitals from being overrun. There is no excuse for emergency powers six months later. Legislators can convene and pass laws with input from the people. There is no reason for dictatorial power at this point, but that's what the Democrats are loving right now. For that reason alone, I would vote for Trump if I were you. Everything they told you they were afraid he would do? They're doing it. Who is telling you that you can't go to church? It isn't Trump.

Since eventually the Coronovirus situation will someday soon be history in the larger scheme of things, I have to look at the bigger picture. Almost nobody is a real Authoritarian in America in an emergency, and it shows. Mind-boggling hysteria (deliberate for political objectives or otherwise) and incompetence across party lines and on a state, local, and federal level.

So an appropriate response for me is hard to suggest to myself. If I err, I'd rather err on the side most approximating normalcy however.

The establishment's rule cannot continue either. That's why Trump won. People have had enough of Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama/Clinton|Bush/Biden, which is exactly how the establishment wants things. To them, if they can control the ballot, it doesn't matter who wins or loses, because they always win. Trump represents them losing.

This is also true to an extent, although I'm certain that Trump represents a faction of the Establishment himself, ''hired'' to carry out an agenda that saves America from itself, or so they believe.

[blackjack21]

This is also true to an extent, although I'm certain that Trump represents a faction of the Establishment himself, ''hired'' to carry out an agenda that saves America from itself, or so they believe.

In that sense of the word "establishment," I agree. You are a religious person. Are you allowed to go to church where you live? Look what the Democrats have done where there governors are in charge and locking down--allowing riots, which are not dangerous, but disallowing church services, which are somehow a great danger. I want to see these people removed from power. I think the world would be better off without those people in power.

[annatar1914]

@blackjack21 , thanks for your reply, you said to me;

In that sense of the word "establishment," I agree. You are a religious person. Are you allowed to go to church where you live?

We're allowed now, but subject to restrictions which have actually divided people with regards to them.

Look what the Democrats have done where there governors are in charge and locking down--allowing riots, which are not dangerous, but disallowing church services, which are somehow a great danger. I want to see these people removed from power. I think the world would be better off without those people in power.

Can't say I disagree. I'm for peaceful protests, and for open places of worship, just as I'm for masking and other responsible behavior and for prophylactics like Hydroxychloroquine. All of this has been horribly politicized.

Then after all this is said and done, we can address any reasonable systemic changes in society for the common good. President Trump was (once?) in favor of a universal health care system... And he's a Statist in a way that turns off the more Libertarian leaning ''Conservatives''. If he's in the tradition of President Theodore Roosevelt and so-called ''Big Government'', I'm all for it as a start.

It's not the Big Government part of the Establishment that bothers me; it's the interlocking of Big Business with that Government and the combination of State and Corporate power in the same people which is corrupting things.

[blackjack21]

President Trump was (once?) in favor of a universal health care system...

As I've said countless times, the US system cannot be socialized until costs are brought under control first. Trump has taken some steps to do that with drug pricing.

It's not the Big Government part of the Establishment that bothers me; it's the interlocking of Big Business with that Government and the combination of State and Corporate power in the same people which is corrupting things.

I agree wholeheartedly; although, big government and its predilection to inefficiency also bothers me.

We're allowed now, but subject to restrictions which have actually divided people with regards to them.

In retrospect, I think most of this stuff should have come down as a requirement that businesses be advised of the dangers of covid, the risk mitigation factors they can take, and the risk mitigation factors that employees and customers should take. This lockdown business has led to some of the most arbitrary and capricious use of dictatorial power I've seen in the United States in my lifetime.

If the establishment didn't understand why we don't trust them before, they should really start beginning to understand it now.

[annatar1914]

@blackjack21 , you said in response to my comments regarding Trump and universal health care that;

As I've said countless times, the US system cannot be socialized until costs are brought under control first. Trump has taken some steps to do that with drug pricing.

As a ''Big Government Man'', President Trump can be said to be a ''welfarist'' as the German Second Reich was; he knows just like Kaiser Wilhelm and FDR, that if he's to keep Capitalism going, you have to take care of the people whose labor creates it and whose income buys consumer goods. As incredulous as some of our ''Orange Man Bad'' TDS types here and elsewhere may think of it, Trump has been called a ''Socialist'' and a ''Liberal'' for his economic policies by more than a few Conservatives of the old school.

Now, as I mentioned, it bothers me (as an anti-capitalist too) that there is this union of the State and the Corporations, never so plainly seen as in this 2020 election by the way. And so you said about that;

I agree wholeheartedly; although, big government and its predilection to inefficiency also bothers me.

Of course, I also knew that you'd be more concerned about the government end of things than the capitalist hydra's head of private wealthy interests involved

I don't see the ''inefficiency'' when I see the examples of the Manhattan Project, the Space Program, and the TVA, to use just our American experience... But anyway;

In retrospect, I think most of this stuff should have come down as a requirement that businesses be advised of the dangers of covid, the risk mitigation factors they can take, and the risk mitigation factors that employees and customers should take. This lockdown business has led to some of the most arbitrary and capricious use of dictatorial power I've seen in the United States in my lifetime.

My problem with it-although I understand different regions and states have different needs in this crisis-is that it goes to show our basic lack of government due to our innate Federalism. Really, we're multiple countries, loosely held together.

If the establishment didn't understand why we don't trust them before, they should really start beginning to understand it now.

Everyone was pretty stupid about the COVID-19 crisis at first, and I think the entire world was partly the victim of a psychological warfare operation designed ad hoc to cover up another countries' ineptitude from the start. Not necessarily the people at the very top, and possibly designed to destabilize that other country as well as a bonus.

We should mend fences with them if possible, for the world's greater good.