(08-02-2018, 09:40 AM)FBT Wrote: [quote pid='1133859' dateline='1532358426']
mikesez
While I have plenty of left wing friends, I'm not a liberal myself.  Believe it or not, it is possible to be friendly with people you disagree with.  I'm proud of this.  You should try it sometime.
As for getting catapulted into star status, initially it looked like a "David beats Goliath" story.  She knocked on doors herself, and defeated a longtime incumbent.  It's the kind of feel good story that catapults folks from left and right to stardom.  Remember David Brat?  Same thing.  
As for the Democratic Party, "They don't have a choice" because by New York State law her name will appear on hundreds of thousands of ballots with the word "democrat" next to it.  any attempt to disown her because she's saying bad stuff now would be futile.
This is similar to, but smaller than, the problem Republicans had in 2016 and still have today with Trump.

I have friends and family from all over the political spectrum.

You keep deflecting with the "I'm not a liberal myself" line, but your words tend to betray you more often than not.

Republicans didn't have a problem with Trump.  The establishment did.  The very fact that he won is a testimony to how people in the middle have been completely ignored by the elite on both ends of political discourse.  The truth is, republicans are fine with Trump based on the latest polling numbers showing that he's holding on to more than 90% of his base at this point in his presidency.  

(07-27-2018, 04:00 PM)mikesez Wrote: 9 million is about the number first time voters Obama brought out in 2008.
I'd guess these are mostly the same people and they just crave a celebrity vibe.  I'd guess they have no ideological opinions.

So, you're saying that people who were hoodwinked by the king of the teleprompter readers turned tail on the democrats and voted for Trump?  We should just ignore the fact that the rust belt completely flipped for Trump.  This was all about the ignorant masses that Obama brought out to vote in 2008?


Much like your fellow libs have done before, I think you're misreading what actually happened in the Trump election.  While I'm sure there was a small % of voters who were just looking at the "celebrity vibe", I think the overwhelming majority of those who supported Trump did so because he represented a complete deviation from the normal politically correct candidate who says all the things we want to hear but delivers on very little.  Trump touched a nerve in the heartland that completely changed the dynamic of the election in 2016.  He said things that reverberated with people who had grown accustomed to being ignored, or taken advantage of for their vote by professional politicians.  He represented the anti-establishment in a way that no other candidate in that election cycle came close to, and he irritated the very people in the establishment who have been guilty of making all sorts of promises in the past that were never realized.

(08-02-2018, 12:09 AM)lastonealive Wrote: What's wrong with taxing the rich and corporates?

So you would prefer to take services from the poor?

The way libs whine about people paying their fair share, why are we targeting the rich, who actually create things with their wealth?  Let's tax the poor too.  Since 90% of tax revenues come from the top 1% of earners in this country, and we're setting records for tax revenues on a monthly basis even after the Trump tax cuts, we might as well start looking at where we can get more revenue.  I say tax the poor.  They're the ones that receive those services you're so concerned about them losing, so if they want them, they can pay a little more for them. 

Seriously, I actually would prefer to take services away from the poor in order to break the cycle of generational poverty.  The only way to get someone back on their feet is to push them to do so, and if they understand that the government assistance is not a finite thing, and that there is a deadline, it might actually spark them to try to improve their life situation, and based on the opportunities that are available right now, that would benefit the poor, and add to the taxpayer roles overall. 
 

(08-02-2018, 07:59 AM)mikesez Wrote: Did Congress discuss cutting spending while they were discussing Trump's tax cuts? I don't think they did. Why should we?
In fact, Congress admitted that those tax cuts would increase the deficit by 1.5 trillion dollars. They budgeted for that.  As they moved dollars around, the idea was to keep the total right about there.  
Do we really think that we know the budget better than they do?
All else being equal, tax cuts increase the deficit.

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Congress did actually discuss cutting spending during the tax cut debate, but they balked at doing anything other than the tax cut because it wasn't politically expedient to start "cutting" government programs as part of this effort.  In fact, the speaker of the house was consistent in saying that the tax cut was only the first phase of the plan, and that spending cuts would be the next component.

The CBO projected the increase of the deficit as a result of the tax cuts.  Revenues have actually increased, but so has spending.  This is the same CBO that also said ObamaCare was deficit neutral.  Go figure.
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I'm a registered Republican and have been a registered republican since 2005 or 2006.  You can call me part of "the establishment" if you want but I never felt "established" politically.  One time my father in law called me to hear some political opinions.  My wife asks me from time to time but she doesn't really change her mind based on what I say.  I don't think I've ever had power or influence over anyone else.  In any case, more than half of the Republicans who bothered to show up for the 2016 primaries voted for someone other than Trump to be the candidate.  I did.  It's only because of our party's silly plurality-winner-takes-all rules that he got any momentum at all.  As far as his approval rating "among Republicans" remaining high, perhaps you should be taking a closer look at those same polls.  The fraction of people who will tell the pollster that they are Republican is way down since Trump got into office.  That's bad for the party and for Trump.

As far as how Trump got 9 million extra votes, I think we're both right.  I'm right that a lot of them had voted for Obama in 2008, and you're right that a lot of them were in the Rust Belt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama-Trump_voters.

As far as "taxing the poor," you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip.  Even if you're right that it would be the ethical thing to do, it's not going to make a dent in the deficit.  A lot of government assistance has an expiration date today.  Maybe more should.  I'm open to that idea.  But I don't think it dovetails with "taxing the poor". 

I'm aware that Paul Ryan talked a good game last year about having a multi-step plan to lower spending.  He's been talking about it since he got there.  It's always in the form of reports and power point presentations and it never seems to make it into legal text on thomas.net.  Ryan's a flim-flam man.  A faker, for going on twenty years.  He had me fooled for a little while too.

I'm aware that last month was a good month in terms of federal government revenue growing compared to the prior year.  But the ones before that were bad months.  The full year numbers aren't in yet, but signs aren't good.  Tax cuts decrease revenue.

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