Put yourselves in Trump's shoes and you are on stage with Putin in front of the world.

What do you say? Do you pick a fight right then and there?

"I had a good meeting with President Putin and we are going to work hard to develop a closer relationship that has recently been strained. However, the U.S has basic principles that we have to stand up for and so we will continue to condemn the aggression that Russia has shown in the Ukraine, Crimea and in Syria. Our country is built on freedom and the exercise of the free right to vote. Our intelligence agencies have been unanimous in their conclusions that Russia was interfering in our election and we will never accept a foreign country interfering in our basic rights."

I wrote that in less than a minute off the top of my head but it shows someone standing up for basic principles and not simply agreeing with Putin after a short meeting with him. It shows diplomacy and is not really that difficult. I'm convinced Putin has something on him and he likely reminded him of that just before the press conference.

Wow, strong language there. As someone on the right, Obama's failure to work with anyone outside of his party was very frustrating. In fact I believe it caused significant division between our political parties. And while I do recognize the obstruction that was generated by those in Congress on the right ("I did recognize above that some of them may have felt the color of his skin was a problem."), I don't believe that the majority of the right in the country cared (This is the tone deafness of the political elite with the actual voters). It was his policy of not listening to anyone outside his party that pissed us off the most.

And just like Trump now, where he has to settle (See tax plan) to appease some on the right to get their votes, Obama did the same thing. So as to Slowman's assertion " i fail to see how obama is to blame, except of course he's a democrat and he's black" , I disagree that color was the reason the right didn't like Obama. And the reason that a disrupter was wanted is because they had the best chance of beating Hillary (the annointed). And I also believe that many on the right felt that just continuing on the current globalization path was not a good thing.

Honestly, I rank Barack Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, in the pantheon of the mediocre when it comes to presidents.

W. Bush? Stumbles galore after Afghanistan (and even in Afghanistan, after awhile), especially after his party lost control of the House in 2006. Like his successor, he was well-meaning, but ultimately futile as a president.

Barack Obama? President Hope-and-Change quickly morphed into President Goldman-Sachs, President Red-line, President "I'm Serious This Time Guys...Cut It Out!"... the list is long an (un)distinguished.

In the case of both men, I'd say the middle class probably asked themselves the same question: "Am I better off now than I was 8 years ago?" and decided on an answer that likely doomed Hillary Clinton and assured the election of a certain loose-cannon disruptor.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

If you don't get that the Republican Congress was 100% at fault for the obstructive, "make [Obama] a one-term President" attitude in Washington, there's nothing that anyone can say to convince you otherwise. Have a nice day, Comrade.

additionally every single piece of legislature passed by obama (except for the ACA) had bi-partisan support (at least 1 GOP vote). And during the ACA there were multiple conferences with both parties, obama himself went to the GOP retreat to discuss and take questions about the ACA. There were bi-partisan support on recovery act, dodd-frank reform, surveillance reform, tax cuts, well form reform, etc. obama had at least on republican member of the cabinet,.

This alone shows that obama was willing to work with others outside of his party. In fact, a lot of dems disliked obama for giving into concessions.

i don't dispute this, but it does make me scratch my head. since reagan the cycle has been: republican president digs the country into a financial hole, democrat digs it out, republican takes that good economy, passes a tax cut, gets the country into debt, crashes markets, democrat digs it out, rinse, repeat.

obviously this appears counterintuitive to you and i get that, and i've read the republicans' convoluted explanations as to why this happens, nevertheless the facts and the chronology is plainly there. maybe it's freak republican bad luck. i don't know.

but to the point, in this particular cycle, i can understand why hillary is not attractive as a candidate, but if a middle class guy asks your question, am i better off now, in 2000, than i was in 1992? or, boy, it's just the shitter here in 2016, i so long for 2008, when all my savings in lehmann bros went up in smoke and i got foreclosed on.

i've got to hand it to the republicans. how they sell that tripe to johnny middle class is gods own mystery.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Want to know what I've learned about all this, in observing the goings-on between Republicans and Democrats since 1972, when I actually became interested in who that Richard Nixon fellow was? Nowadays, it's this:

By the time I learn enough about a news story relating to politics to realize I just don't care, the story turns out to be BS anyway. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

It's quite simple, really. Republicans on the whole are poorly informed - see FOX NEWS.

whoa! I agree with BK!!

that's the most sensible thing I think I've ever read from you.

So how long before the middle class, the lower middle class and all those blue collar workers who thought Trump would turn their lives around realise that he's just in it for himself (estate tax) and his big business pals, and their lives aren't going to change a bit? Actually they might. Their shot from Walmart will cost more when he slaps more tariffs on consumer goods, and mortgage rates could end up much higher.

We all need to get a life. One where this guy, and politics in general, doesn't occupy so much of our time. ;-)

"It helps, too, if your point of arrival in the US isn’t California, where a ragtag pro-Hillary resistance movement remains active. Instead, I flew direct to Dallas before commencing a forensic multistate listening tour through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, and Oklahoma.

As it happens, all of those states voted for Trump. But their larger cities tended to side with Clinton, so a certain balance was available. If people from either side of the alleged Trump divide wished to speak out, I was there to hear them.

Except that nobody wanted to talk about Trump, Clinton or politics in general. This wasn’t due to apathy or lack of engagement. It was because there are more interesting topics of conversation, such as, well, just about everything. Work. Family. Sport. Music. Weather. Cars. Food. The semi-trailer carrying a few tons of bourbon that crashed and caught fire on the interstate. You know, topics people care about outside of election years."


Well on my way to learning five new songs this week on my Fender Jazz Bass. I call that time well spent. Discussing these politicians and their foolishness? Ehhhhh...

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Lee Atwater (the man who gave us Willey Horton), explained it a long time ago:

"You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

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“Read the transcript.”

How can he have given aid to an enemy? He did not push any buttons. Besides, the button was already pushed. Russia is not an enemy since:

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev