JoeWeber

Also, WE as in we self flagellating liberal reality denialists who easily could have been posting here a year or two ago that Biden was now too old and decrepit to run again instead of pretending otherwise. We who could have been writing our D representatives en masse again and again informing them that we had no intention of supporting Biden again in 2024. We who should have been clever enough to realize that our self serving, and already partially mummified, senior leaders like Pelosi, Cardin, Durbin, Blumenthal or Feinstein who hung on until she died of old age were never going to say Biden was too old to run again. The point I am remaking is that it's way too easy to blame dumb farmers who still have Trump 2024 banners on their barns instead of owning the major role we liberals played in seating this horrific administration.

Thanks for the insight. Indeed, the whole unfortunate mess is far less terrifying when viewed as just another comedic debacle.

Yes, I just saw that. Seems to me that we need to accept there isn't anything we can do that will stop Trump and the right now. Sure, if the nation rises up in protest as happened with Vietnam and during the Civil Rights Movement but those took time and a willingness to suffer that doesn't seem on offer these days. I expect most will just hang on, the deluded hoping for a miracle and the realists just hoping for saner Republican in 2028.

So, from your perch how do you see this playing out over the next 4 years?

I'm not arguing that truth. Earlier here I said: "No. But he wasn’t a national disaster in term one. Who knows who said what about running again. Probably no one." To be clearer, I absolutely fault D's in power for standing by and doing nothing effective, if they did anything, to dissuade him from running. It's a hot mess of our own making, that's the bottom line.

I passed through Red state Ohio last week and caught part of a Trump ad on tv. It was just as if they were extolling the virtues of a hero who arrived just in time to save us. Every last action and policy was working perfectly, as in breathlessly, beyond belief etc. etc. etc, closing with Trump majestically looking up and to the future. Of course the tariffs were bringing in billions. They aren't just relying on partisan news and their voters ignorance, they are taking a page from the fascist playbook. They are in control and they have no intention of letting democracy get in the way this time around. We can be as demoralized as we like pointing out facts like he is a con man and corrupt but his supporters just do not care. In fact, I think they like it. Next up: Democrats, recognizing their own impotence, start pointing out the good in all that is happening. The world is changed.

Happens anyway and 21 isn’t a big number. Until it gets into several hundred dead or more no one will see dots worth connecting, if even they can be. As long as Kentucky can’t access blue state dollars to ease the pain, we’re good.

As you so eloquently and, I must say, accurately pointed out I would have voted for a potato on a stick instead of Trump. Neither Biden or Harris were on my top 50 list but for sure Trump was at the top of my never list. I saw him for what he is and nothing since his reelection causes me to rethink that perception. However, if you didn’t see him for what he is or thought it was all a joke about destroying NATO or being a dictator from day one or if you were ignorant of the Supreme Court immunity decision, or thought that was a joke too, then for you it wasn’t a harder decision than one between a blowhard and a doddering old fool. We can blame Republicans all we want but history will show that we did this to ourselves and to our country and the world. It’s all now in retrospect but the truth is that he looked old and acted old. The truth is that we blew off the Hur report. The truth is that we should have known he wasn’t good for anything more than beating Trump one time. And we should have acted on that fact. Just the way it is, like it or not.

Tell me that’s the Onion. Please.

The argument that Biden's selfishness gave us President Trump is probably valid. He never should have sought a second term. The field should have been open from his second year. Biden's crime was hanging on, Trumps crimes are different and worse. Even in light of knowing Biden's diminished state he would have still been a better choice and that sucks.

No. But he wasn’t a national disaster in term one. Who knows who said what about running again. Probably no one.

Even more painful is knowing our R elected officials will do nothing. Trump is obviously not all there and he has control of our nuclear weapons and economic policies. He can start wars or destroy alliances on a whim, and they will do nothing.

We all know.

Clever. I wonder if any downsides were revealed. Anyway, Onion or not: "I won on the border. And I won on groceries. It's a very simple word: groceries. Like, almost, who uses the word — I started using the word — the groceries," Trump told "Meet the Press" in December. “It’s such an old-fashioned term but a beautiful term: groceries," Trump mused during his "Liberation Day" speech in April that announced tariffs. "It sort of says a bag with different things in it." "We have, uh, costs are way down. Groceries are — we have a term 'groceries.' It's an old term, but it means basically what you're buying, food. It's a pretty accurate term, but it's an old-fashioned sound; but groceries are down. Costs are down. Eggs are down. They were — the first week, they were hitting me with eggs are up 200%. And now they're down to a number that is amazing — down 97-98% from where they were." Did someone drive him by a grocery store one day and foolishly mentioned that was where voters bought food?

That's all well and good but unfortunately the choices we were offered last time were not well and good.

Sure but it's not same same in my opinion: the far right are vastly more corrosive to the sort of society that I prefer. Also, I'd wager that in addition to listening to you they were also humoring you. I believe we aren't dissuading many, if any, MAGA's now that they feel empowered and I have no intention of wasting time on the off chance I can turn one or two who became enlightened after their faces were chewed off. We simply need to humor them as we drift to the middle, pretending to or not, and hope they have had their fill of Trumpism when alone in the voting booth, and put up candidates for whom they'll vote.

Negative. Far right is leading us to autocracy and far left is leading us to a more socialized democracy. Bad as each are in my view, one of those is definitely much less desirable.

That's a great way of viewing life except when our asses are on the line. Engaging with respect for differences, thus far, has too often devolved into being empathetic until defeated. Let's be philosophic about it later, now lets get back in power by hook or by crook. If the opposition believes I'm engaging them with respect I'll take it if it gets us closer to a win. To be absolutely clear, I do not believe honest dialogue and genuine respect are possibilities at this stage; now it is time to play by their rules, odious as it may be to do so, and play to get the win.

That is very freaky in addition to damn scary. We've noticed a decline in controller abilities over the last some years at the DZ. We're out in la-la land and only have an airway and GA traffic bombing around to deal with so we're often doing more listening than talking and obeying. Many years ago I put full on traffic in all of my airplanes just to be proactive to avoid dealing with ATC nonsense: dumb holds, stupid vectors, and just plain forgetting about the restrictions given. I'm of the opinion that back in the early 90's there were much better people in the tower. We're just past 30 miles from PDX (edge of the radar screen) so they could really ignore us if they wanted to. In those day's they never seemed overwhelmed as a part of their normal day like we see now; whatever was going on in the middle of the screen many were still able to be really helpful to us, not controlling and cop like which is more the norm now. The supervisors were more in tune with first come first serve and enforced it instead of begrudging it. These day's not so much. So I'd guess that the problems have as much to do with who they hire, and how they are managed, as who they fire.

I wouldn't so characterize the point to make it appear as if we're talking about two sides of a coin. I am proposing the doing and saying of whatever it takes to win for the chance to push a completely democratic agenda. The idea is that for that to happen we will need to leave our consciouses and a wide swath of our actual desires, not to mention our always frantic need to wake everyone up before sunrise, in the sack for the time being. Today I read where the leftist purity police in California are bemoaning what appears to be Newsom's slow drift to the middle. That is exactly the sort of missing the point entirely I'm thinking about.

Not exactly. It was more of a high school level plagiarism of the end justifies the means crafted with a dollop of highfalutin jargon so as to appear noble and not cutthroat which is what I'm actually proposing.

Developing a plan is key. Central to that plan must include recognizing that we need candidates who will appeal to the shallow and uninformed several percent of the electorate that can put the ticket over the top. That, sports fans, is what we cannot allow ourselves to be talked out of regardless of how absolutely shitty and antithetical such blatant hypocrisy may be to our core beliefs. I would also vote for Kelly just as I would for Buttigeig or Moore and did for Harris. But next time around, if there is one, we cannot think that way even if the polls say otherwise. Next time we need to get things in the proper order: first win and then do what is right.

That's right. It wasn't just the debate; the right was pointing to Biden's decline before and we (as in me and my ilk) self-servingly brushed it off as we are always wont to do it seems. Certainly Trump is all that we have claimed and worse but the truth is that we own the resultant disaster of his return to the Presidency by and through our own actions and complicities. Our political leaders also lie to us and themselves to hold onto power and position at the expense and to the detriment of their electorate. Pogo's version was certainly correct: we have found the enemy and he is us.

The Constitution Explained: If you aren’t happy with it today, just wait until some new justices come along to put some more fun into fungible.

It’s every they for hirself now, I reckon.