And life would have been so much better. Instead, America has been sent 50 years back in time for at least a generation, possibly longer.
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I remember at the time of the 2016 election some people choosing to vote for Trump mainly because he would appoint Supreme Court justices that were in line with their conservative beliefs. He made a point at the time of giving a dozen or so candidates he would consider to give potential supporters an idea of what they would get.
It’s definitely true that in many ways the Supreme Court sets the direction of the nation for much longer than any one administration especially with several older members likely to be replaced during the next presidential term.
If only it could have been more. While I am well satisfied with Justice Gorsuch, Kavanaugh had me worried from the jump . . . that he could turn out to be another Roberts, I mean.
But the Democrats, bless their unbridled and unrestrained hearts, saved the day for me. They pounded that poor guy, Kavanaugh, hard and with total absence of mercy into a real conservative. After what they did to him it’ll be YEARS before Kavanaugh supports anything close to the liberal values that attacked him so viciously. Thank goodness for that.
All the above said, though, Trump needed to choose a person further to the right than Kavanaugh. You cannot count on Democrats, Mr. Trump, to complete the job you were hired to do. Though I have to admit it’s a pretty good bet they will come through and savage the next conservative that comes before them.
Mazie Hirono alone is a scream. 
So funny!! Where do they find these people? She is straight out of central casting!
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Remember when she said, “you men just shut up & stand”. 
Wonder what she says about the “defund policy”, probably goes along with it.
Instead of wearing white, now all the Congress gals will show up with those African American scarfs…
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Shinobi – I’m curious about your thoughts on a few things. If you would take the time to answer individually, I’d appreciate it.
Do you think President Trump is a person of above average knowledge of the Constitution?
Do you think President Trump really wants to reduce / eliminate discrimination towards people of color?
Do you think PT has, in the past, treated women more as objects than as equals?
Do you think PT has studied foreign relations and understands the intricacies of complex issues going on in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia? (Kurds, Iran / Saudi Arabia issues, previous balances of power, Russian / Soviet needs & desires in the area, Iran / Syria issues, Turkey / Kurds issues as a few examples)
Do you think his actions on COVID-19 related issues have been prudent from a public health standpoint ?
How do you explain PT’s apparent 180 on interest rates – adamantly against low rates before becoming president, 100% for zero / negative rates prior to the COVID-19 outbreak & after becoming president?
With overwhelming evidence that Russia interfered with the 2016 election (or maybe influenced voters), how do you explain PT’s continuing rhetoric that Russia didn’t interfere? (Note, I’m not asking about colluding with Russia – just Russian interference in swaying votes (influence / interference)
I promise to read and consider your responses. Thanks in advance!
Hilarious.
And here’s the full legal response letter:
https://twitter.com/CNNPR/status/1270802155201576962
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"President Donald Trump’s eldest son and grandson took a hunting trip to Mongolia last year that reportedly cost US taxpayers over $75,000 (£59,000).
Donald Trump Jr shot a rare mountain sheep and met the country’s president, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew).
Most of the money went to their Secret Service protection, the group said.
Researchers say the Trump family take 12 times as many trips as the Obamas.
The Crew report accuses the Trump family of draining the Secret Services’ finances with their average of 1,000 more trips per year, many for leisure, than the previous first family.
“This trip is just one example of the expenses the Trump family is incurring with American taxpayers, and if just one of Don Jr’s trophy hunting trips cost more than $75,000, it’s staggering to think how high the total bill must be,” the report’s authors conclude."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52999375
This family’s corruption knows no bounds.
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Will your consider the responses accordingly. That is, for or against your feelings & understandings?
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If that remark doesn’t make sense, I’m to tired to explain. Will go at it again tomorrow… 
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I think I’m catching your message correctly, and, YES, I have made the promise and will give proper consideration to the responses whether they are in agreement with my thoughts and understanding or not.
I asked Shinobi and will welcome any others to reply also. Feel free to respond yourself.
What part of Secret Service mandated protection details is “corruption”?
And there is going to be a huge cost difference between a family with 4 grown children who have always traveled frequently (and independently of each other), and a family with 2 small children who (presumably) always traveled together.
Do they travel a lot? Sure. Could they reign it in a bit? Of course. But you only cry corruption when you’ve already decided Trump is corrupt and thus anything that may raise eyebrows must be the result of that predetermined corruption.
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You’re dealing with hardened Democrats who believed, in their second impeachment article, that Trump was wrong to seek a decision from the courts regarding a dispute between himself, the Executive, and Congress, the Legislative. This of course is precisely the remedy provided by the Constitution of the United States of America to the Executive, and is entirely right and proper . . . . unless you happen to be a Democrat in 2020 . . . . in which instance it is impeachable!
Said another way, we are not dealing with rational people here. Their hate has consumed them to the point where very little else remains.
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I could say exactly the same thing about you.
What one person finds rational another person might not. Our decisions and conclusions are based on our own personal knowledge and experience.
And I actually don’t think their trips and the associated Secret Service protection amounts to corruption. Trophy hunting, however, especially of rare or endangered species (is that the definition of “trophy”? I don’t know), is absolutely disgusting.
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Online voting is happening for a few primaries. This is even more risky than voting by mail.
Of course now that the left has decided mass protests are more important than the virus, it will be hard to re-ignite the push for voting by mail since the economic reopening and general dismissal of the virus in the public eye means there’s a lot less of a good reason to object to just voting as usual.
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Scripta excellent post. Your post highlights something which has drawn my attention recently. Merely as an exercise:
Take your minds back to circa 1858, 1859 . . that region of the past in American history. At that time millions of Americans were able to live with the notion of slavery, the enslavement of human beings, as being OK. Millions of other Americans disagreed strongly, believing slavery to be patently wrong.
They all sought to work things out in Congress and arrive at some sort of solution to the disagreement. This proved impossible and the Civil War ensued. My opinion is that differences of opinion regarding slavery, as existed back then, were irreconcilable. I don’t know how that situation could have been settled short of armed conflict.
Fast forward to the present. As scripta makes clear, today’s differences of opinion on a variety of issues are stark. I think, in the aggregate, those differences also approach irreconcilability. We might, in fact, be there already. I dunno.
When the images of Washington and Jefferson on Mt. Rushmore are obliterated with dynamite, and the Washington monument and Jefferson memorial in D.C. are razed, I will know with certainty that we are, indeed, there.
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Update:
The Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll for today has President Trump’s approval number back down to 43%.
Sorry fellow Trump fans, but unless Trump can somehow recover, with a number like that on November third Vice President Biden will be elected our next POTUS.
Remember, the Rasmussen number is real and genuine. His is not some phony poll cooked up by the networks to make Trump look bad, as so many of the other polls are. Trump is in serious trouble at this point. His jeopardy, and ours and America’s, is real.
“the Rasmussen number is real and genuine” aka real and genuine bias towards Republicans.
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We certainly have a difference of opinion on a variety of issues approaching irreconcilability, but I’m pretty sure nobody wants to destroy images of Washington or Jefferson. If you’re trying to extrapolate the removal of confederate symbols (who undoubtedly represent the side that fought to keep slavery going) from public places, then at least Washington freed his slaves and Jefferson was at the very least conflicted about slavery.
Further, the reason we are so divided is in part due to both media and foreign influence. I have no doubt that Putin has had a huge hand in this via his troll farm that creates and then amplifies fake news sites with misleading and false articles (there are plenty of idiots who believe everything they read on the internet). Social media has played a huge role and deserves much blame. Real (mainstream) and borderline-fake (fringe) media play a role too.
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That’s not right. Actually the calls are growing.
CNN commentator Angela Rye has called for all statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to be taken down because the men they enshrine were slave owners, she said Wednesday.
Rye’s demands come during nationwide protests spurred by the Memorial Day death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, during which Confederate monuments have drawn the ire of demonstrators with dozens defaced and demolished nationwide.
‘American history is not all glorious… George Washington was a slave owner. We need to call slave owners out for what they are,’ Rye declared on the network Thursday. ‘Whether we think they were protecting American freedom or not, he wasn’t protecting my freedoms – my ancestors weren’t deemed human beings to him.
‘To me, I don’t care if it’s a George Washington statue or Thomas Jefferson, they all need to come down,’ Rye concluded.
‘I’m not going to allow us to say it’s OK for Robert E. Lee and not a George Washington. We need to call it what it is,’ Rye continued. ‘I’m not giving any deference to George Washington or Robert E. Lee.’
This is from Newsweek:
Some believe that if America is to successfully dismantle systemic racism, it needs to confront the reality of the nation’s dark history—and accept that even the nation’s Founding Fathers need to be taken off their pedestals.
Student Roman Leaphart started a petition last week, urging the University of Missouri to remove a statue of Jefferson from the campus quad due to his ties to slavery. It has since collected more than 3,000 signatures.
“Mizzou has no room for a racist slave owner on our campus… where thousands of black students pass by everyday, forced to deal with imagery of the past in the future where we should be promoting equality, diversity and inclusion,” the petition says. “A memorial of a racist has no place on [our] campus.”
Leaphart told KOMU that a similar petition had been started in 2015, but didn’t gain much traction. “I think now is the right time to bring this back up because this is one of the first, easiest steps,” he told the station.
Since his petition started gaining traction, a counter-petition has been launched, apparently by an anonymous student, to save the Jefferson statue. “Is it truly fair to judge a man based on our 21st century understanding of morality, when the man we are judging lived in a time where slavery was the norm?” it asks.
A petition to remove a Jefferson statue outside the student center at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York was started by Jaloni Owens two years ago, but has been gathering steam in recent days.
Owens wrote on the page that Jefferson’s values “aided in the construction of institutionalized racism and justified the subjugation of black people in the United States.”
The above several examples are ones I found quickly online. I did not by any means search exhaustively.
If things are permitted to continue to move in the direction we are today witnessing, I think it is pretty clear where we are headed. How long it will take to get there I do NOT know. But the direction is self evident. And incrementalism is, in any event, the hallmark of such movements. They take a bite, then they are quiet for a while, then they come back and take another bite. Rinse and repeat. In the end you are left with nothing.
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In a certain way you are correct. But likely not in the way you think.
Back in 2016 a great many polls had Trump going home following the election. Only the Rasmussen and the IBD (Investor’s Business Daily) polls gave him a chance of winning. Both could be viewed as “Republican” polls in the following sense:
When the majority of polls are purposefully skewed left to favor Democrats, any poll which is down the center appears “Republican” by comparison.
Polls today overwhelmingly are not conducted to determine public opinion on this or that issue. Today’s polling, instead, is intended primarily to SHAPE public opinion. Most of today’s polling is merely additional propaganda under guise of a different appellation.
The Rasmussen poll, on the other hand, is old fashioned. It actually seeks to determine what likely voters are thinking . . . in this case about President Trump. And as I wrote above, at this point Trump is not exactly smelling like a rose.