Your arguments are always deliberate and well stated. and they always contain a subtle and sometimes not so subtle slight.

America may not be the kind of "isolated" that worries you, but under Obama has become more disengaged, leading many in other nations to wonder why we have abandoned our leadership role. No doubt this leaves Obama more personally liked abroad, but there is carnage that likely would not be there if he had not pulled back so hard. You mentioned elsewhere how we have to honor commitments, but I don't remember that same plaintive cry when Obama backed off of a previous US commitment to Poland regarding defensive missile systems, though by the end of his time in office Obama was hurriedly trying to show greater support there. As to Russia, I think Trump just wanted his shot at making relations the best he could (like Obama did at first), so there might be coordination on a few important issues (ISIS eg). Obama went out of his way to make that difficult once Trump won.
I think there's little that Trump has done that would be a real problem thus far, if he would just quit talking and tweeting.

it's just the double standard. the explaining away of everything he does and you know damned well he'd be skewered if it he was a democrat.

when i say he's had his benghazi it's not because i think he did anything particularly wrong, it's the double standard. if it was hillary who'd been president it would have been her second benghazi. donald won't be skewered because on that because he shouldn't be. but if hillary was president?

i get that people hate hillary. i get that people hated obama. it's just not intellectually honest to give donald the pass after pass after pass after pass in the context of how the democrats are viewed.

i don't mind your vote. or your non-vote. what i mind is very smart people leaving their brains at the door when it comes to politics. i think of donald was pro-choice you'd be singing a very different tune.

"What do you mean by oppose him?"

vote against him next time. and publicly explain why. unless the next 206 weeks are different than the first 2.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

"Your arguments are always deliberate and well stated. and they always contain a subtle and sometimes not so subtle slight."

i will try to make sure there is no slight, if you will try not to look hard for the slight. can we agree on this going forward?

californians don't look for values-based, or ideologically-defined, executives to run their governments. they look for performance-based executives. this is the point i was making. is this better?

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I would put your assessment of Trump's substance as on par with JSA's. He seems to have a lot of people misunderstanding what he is actually meaning to do/going to do and saying/meaning to say. You included.

This sort of double standard can be observed across the political spectrum; it's not solely the realm of conservatives or Republicans. For example, there are plenty of folks who gave Obama and Hillary a pass for the Libya disaster (overthrowing Qaddafi, not Benghazi), yet still take Bush to task for the debacle that Iraq turned into, despite the fact that Obama and Hillary had the benefit of hindsight. There were all sorts of democrats up in arms about Sen Bob Packwood's womanizing, but gave Clinton a complete pass on it. The fact is, a lot of people are ready to give their guy or woman a pass on many things that they won't give the "opposition" a pass on, be they Democrat or Republican.

---

___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

i'm sure you're right that both sides view their sides through different prisms. but i don't think your examples are on point. i clearly remember the lead-up to libya. obama was ROUNDLY criticized by BOTH parties for being so passive in the run-up (i'll wager you'll find relevant hits if you google "mccain" and "libya"). the french and all our nato allies were screaming at us to get involved and obama said no. finally he acquiesced and did so while keeping our involvement primarily to airborne intelligence and air strikes.

i don't think this is a "prism" of mine. i think it's an accurate accounting. i don't think this quite equates to the posture taken by america in its invasion into iraq, the lives we lost there, the money we spent there, the unrest we left there.

as to packwood and clinton, i really don't think that democrats gave either a pass. the problem republicans have in cases such as packwood, vitter, livingston, foley, hastert is that republicans draw a distinction between the base heathen democrats and republicans' higher moral standards. and then we find out with trump, in spades, that restoring dignity in the white house was always just a fraud and a sham perpetrated on republican voters.

i would be quite happy just acknowledging that there is no difference in moral sexual behavior between republicans and democrats. can we agree on that and carry on?

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

the explaining away of everything he does and you know damned well he'd be skewered if it he was a democrat.

Or anyone else but Trump. And even then, I've skewered him for what I think are his failings pretty good.


when i say he's had his benghazi it's not because i think he did anything particularly wrong, it's the double standard. if it was hillary who'd been president it would have been her second benghazi

Nope.


i don't mind your vote. or your non-vote. what i mind is very smart people leaving their brains at the door when it comes to politics. i think of donald was pro-choice you'd be singing a very different tune.

Yeah, I absolutely would be. Have I been unclear about this? I find the man personally offensive and an embarrassment. I don't think he has deeply held political beliefs other than satisfying his own pathological ego. I am on record with that. But he has staked out positions that are broadly in line with my own. So far he's standing by those positions. All things considered, I have little to be unhappy about at this point.

Basically, what I said before the election that there are two or three positive possibilities if Trump won: he'd honor his pledge to nominate a conservative judge to the Supreme Court, and the ACA would be repealed. Both of those things are vitally important to me, and complete impossibilities under any Democratic president. I said that if Trump carried through on both promises and managed to avoid causing some disaster or critical failure, I'd count that as a win. So far, so good. It doesn't mean I'm happy with even the idea of "President Trump." I cringe just saying those two words together in my head. But I'm not going to anticipate some imaginary disaster that he could cause before he causes it and reject him based on that. I think it's silly to expect me to.


vote against him next time. and publicly explain why.

It wasn't enough to just not vote for him?

More to the point, why should I vote against him next time? Let's say he carries through on those issues I care about and manages to avoid WW3. Gorsuch is confirmed, the ACA gets repealed, maybe there's another seat or two open on the SC . . . Prez Trump has continued to tweet like a spoiled four year old, but the economy has continued to limp along, and there aren't any internment camps being built.

What reason would I have to vote against him at that point, and who should I vote for to satisfy your demand that I "stand up to Trump"? Would a vote for a third party candidate count? Any third party candidate? What exactly is the point of that? Or do I have to actually vote for some Democrat, who'd be chomping at the bit to overturn the things I liked about the Trump presidency and get back to moving the country in a direction I don't want to go?

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

This is what I'm talking about...Obama and Hillary both saw the ramifications of overthrowing a dictatorship without a massive occupation force to run the country; said country devolves into chaos. Yet, they still engaged in regime change in Libya. Yes, Iraq was far more costly in American lives and treasure, but that does not change the fact that Libya, like Iraq, was a huge, avoidable mistake, especially given that the Obama admin had the benefit of seeing what happened in Iraq. I don't really care that there was pressure on Obama to act; he should have asked our NATO allies what their post-Qaddafi game plan was before signing up to this. I cannot fathom how someone can blame Bush for not seeing that Iraq would turn into a debacle, yet absolves the Obama admin for what happened in Libya.

As for Packwood and Clinton, of course Clinton got a pass. Democrats hounded Packwood out of office, and yet the Moveon.org movement was founded on pushing the country into "moving on" past the Lewinsky scandal when it came to Clinton. Yes, there is Republican hypocrisy when it comes to morality, but there is also Democrat hypocrisy when it comes to one of their own harassing women. There is example after example that can be cited that as long as your politics are "correct," the left/right doesn't care about your transgressions.

---

___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

    If Trump would just go quiet. Oh well, Obama says UK goes to the back of the line for trade deal, Trump queues them up at the front, and today gets told he's not welcome at Britain's Parliament. You'd think that at some point Trump would catch on, but it's not looking like it.

Better. Honest question - was Arnold S the best man for the job? Is/was Jerry B?

I suppose you can answer with and without hindsight. I've always wondered what CA folks think/thought.

i'll say this for the man: he's benefiting from some remarkably low expectations!

---

____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

No doubt, and no argument there. My expectations and hopes are extraordinarily low. (Have I mentioned it's Donald Trump?)

But I mean really- what business do you have with higher expectations for him? Be realistic.

---

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

because he's running the USA, i guess.

ETA: but seriously, you seem to be taking it as read that he's horrible and shitty, and that to hold him to a higher standard than i hold a 15-year-old is a fool's errand. and i'm saying that acquiescing to that is dangerous, and that you should always expect more from your leaders. it's a form of a slippery slope argument, perhaps, or just a naive call for some sort of platonic ideal of the leader, but regardless i think standards matter.

---

____________________________________
https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

"Better. Honest question - was Arnold S the best man for the job? Is/was Jerry B?"

jerry b, by far. just look at the results.

but arnold was the good version of trump; gray davis left as the state was in bad shape. did arnold fix it? no. but i thought arnold was worth a chance. he didn't make it worse. he tried his best. i give arnold no bad marks.

jerry fixed it. largely that's because jerry was a democrat so he alone could say to the democrats in the legislature go eff yourselves. he was and is a very pragmatic executive. he was roundly hated by many democrats in state leadership because he played it down the fiscal middle. hard for a republican to pull that off.

we still have a pretty bad defined benefit pension problem. i think if jerry had more runway he'd tackle that as well. jerry was my first choice for president.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Arnold couldn't fix anything because the state is hopelessly democrat. So even if Arnold saw eye to eye on many things, the partisan power politics would overwhelm any resolve issues. Success by Arnold would undermine any future democratic party agenda. A successful republican governor would surely allow some state level republicans to ride the coattails.

Not the same thing.

---

---

"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden

i think what you wrote is pretty much what i wrote.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman