The 2020 USA POTUS election politics, the civil war, and the world war (Part 1)

Yes, DACA is here to stay. Please, don’t misunderstand that the “good idea” was an approval of what Trump wanted to do. I wrote “good idea” in the sense that he had a clear plan in his head, not some foggy plan.

Edit: I can’t say I did nazi that coming

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And I believe there’s even less sadness if nobody knows that there was a pregnancy in the first place. One could argue that society should have a say on the matter. It would be in the interest of a rapidly shrinking population to produce more children. This could and should be financially incentivized (free services and financial support as we already discussed above, as provided by many countries in Europe and Russia), not by restricting abortion. Nobody wants to live in the world described in the Handmaid’s Tale. In the opposite example, when society is burdened by children, leading to poor and uneducated population (especially women) or overpopulation, incentives should align in the opposite direction, such as free or affordable contraceptives in Bangladesh and India and one-child policy in China.

Our society (USA) is not burdened by these problems. Our population is not shrinking. There is no societal need to control pregnancy.

This leads to what IMO is the root of the problem – religion. The pro-life movement is mostly, if not entirely, supported by religious organizations and heavily reliant on religious ideology. It’s yet another reason why church and state must be separate – the state must not ever be in a position to enforce specific religious ideology on a multi-cultural, multi-racial society.

Easy. There’s no soul, it’s a human-made religious concept. Sophisticated machinery (brain) that makes you think you are special simply because you’re capable of asking questions and not yet capable of knowing the answer. There’s no “you” after you die. You’re gone and done with. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust (literally – we come from space dust and we return to space dust). I know, it’s a very uncomfortable notion for anyone who believes in a higher power. But you can’t prove that this is wrong in exactly the same way you can’t prove that god does or does not exist.

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Morality does not come from religion.

The “soul” idea and the conundrum that the only consistent argument is a binary choice allowing all abortions with no restrictions or banning all interventions after conception and before birth is a religion issue. But not morality around abortion rules.

It does not take any religion to make the determination that murder (in general) is wrong. Some people (psychopaths) are missing things common to human biology or to the human experience and may not make that determination.

If one sees it wrong to end an adult’s life without necessity, how about a child’s life, how about a 1 year old’s? A newborn? If it’s wrong to end a newborn’s life, it’s clearly also wrong to end it just before birth – there is no significant difference before and after the birth event. (Though there is a valid position to claim that even though there’s not a physical change, the organism is independent… so that IS where some draw the line). Most that think about it come to some conclusion like ability to feel pain, consciousness, a beating heart, lungs, or something similar. The problem is none of these have a specific black and white line and you can’t even really measure most of them. So, the logical route is you pick the relevant one, say generally a beating heart is detectable at (just a wild example, I did not look up the dates and am not interested to or an expert. The example numbers are all made up) 6 months and it’s never been detectable at 4 months. So you set the illegal abortion limit at 3 months given those assumptions and do things to reduce the occurrences and add requirements. Anyways, all I’m saying it is not actually as simple as just a religion argument. The religion argument is the extreme (ALL abortion is murder) or the mental-gymnastics with inconsistent and nonsense positions (Well, just most abortion, here I’ll list all these exceptions are OK. Why? Because I say so. Even though the exceptions still have the same things I just claimed are the reasons why it’s wrong.).

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It’s not “here to stay”. The Supreme Court decision was merely procedural - determining that their plans cut corners, not that they couldnt terminate the program.

Quick question - DACA is the result of an executive order countermanding legislated law, and this was an executive order to bring practices in line with the legislated law. Wouldnt “adequate justification for ending the federal program” be the fact the whole premise of the program violates the law? I have a really hard time wrapping my head around the idea of a court requiring that the government justify their decision to follow laws already on the books. I understand that executive orders have the force of law - but worst case, Trump’s order is just doing the same thing to Obama’s order, as Obama’s order did to Congress’s law. If one stands, the other should as well. It’s a little concerning that they seem to give preference to one person’s unilateral order over a law passed by Congress.

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I mostly agree with you. Morality does not require religion, but religion influences the morality of religious people. Religiously inspired fanatics are pushing the argument to the extreme – they’d prefer to ban all abortions without exceptions. They’re the ones funding the pro-life movement, getting the pro-life candidates elected, and getting the pro-life judges on the bench. They’ve been at it since Roe v Wade (back then the issue was not that divisive as most people agreed with it), and they’re closer now than ever with a conservative majority in the SCOTUS and a bunch of cases coming up the pipe from states that made it impossible to operate abortion clinics. Another Republican term is almost guaranteed at least one, maybe two more seats. It’ll turn the country backwards for an additional 50 years. Assuming they keep the Senate majority (or get it back 2 years later), of course.

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Very pleased with Amy Klobuchar’s having opted out of the VP race. Also pleased with the added pressure she applied to Biden, saying he should choose a black woman.

Why pleased? Because Amy was a very strong candidate. Before Mr. Floyd was murdered she posed clearly, and by far as VP, the greatest threat to the Trump/Pence ticket.

Not thinking of Democrats here. They will vote Biden/? no matter what. Thinking instead of moderates, on the fence types, independents . . . all of whom would have found Amy more than acceptable.

Of the remaining black women contenders, I’m hoping Biden chooses Stacey Abrams. She should be the weakest of the lot and garner Biden’s ticket the fewest votes. A choice of Susan Rice might be almost as good.

Val Demings is the potential VP candidate I most fear. She is from Florida: not good (for Trump). If Biden wins Florida . . . . it’s all over for the good guys.

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Great news! Trump is back up to 47% in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll. Now that’s more like it!

I think it might be the obviously specious and over the top Bolton book helping him. It has come out that he went completely off the (Trump) reservation when, against Bolton’s solemn counsel, Trump refused to risk starting a war with Iran by bombing them. This happened after they shot down our very large and expensive drone. Bolton is a big war guy and he was, after all, instrumental as adviser to Bush in getting the Iraq war going, though this is denied by some Bolton supporters. Regardless, we all know how that war turned out . . . and so did Trump. POTUS is not big on starting wars, however:

Trump had has own way of getting even for the drone. Doubters need only ask General Soleimani . . . no, wait . . . you can’t! :wink:

Yes indeed…

Yesterday I listened to Rush & he says that President Trump will win this election. Of course I know he is very close to POTUS & maybe he knows more than we do.

He won last time & he will win again. MAGA !! :relaxed:

That’s a very whitewashed characterization of “the order was unconstitutional (illegal), missing sufficient legally required justifications.”

“merely procedural” is an absurd way to characterize unconstitutional illegal actions.

Yes, it could (have been in the past or) be ended in the future with sufficient justification data and explanation. That doesn’t make the illegal order any less illegal.

If he practices real hard, maybe his handlers will take the sippy cup top off his glass of water.

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1273738328702156805

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“It’s not fair!!! Anything I do you’ll say is wrong. Worst treated president in history. Worse than even Lincoln.”

Oh right… I guess Latte-gate never occurred… Oh wait that was the opposite. Walking down stairs, holding a cup of hot coffee without spilling it, AND saluting at the same time!!! What is this, an America’s Got Talent act? Three things at once! The outrage! And his toupee comb-over didn’t even get caught in the wind! We elect a President to extort foreign governments for personal gain and provide excuses for hate groups, not to perform feats of skill…

“It’s classified! Letting these facts out would damage the presi… I mean… ‘National’ security. Oh wait… Actually I mean it’s ‘false’.”

Ahahaha

I’m a bit surprised by Bolton’s book, not that much in its content since it pretty much mirrors previous books published by people who quit or were fired by Trump.

But by the repeated dynamics involved and their implications. There is self consistency in all those reports overall which leads me to believe in only two possible explanations:

  1. All the books are correctly representing the administration and Trump’s qualification as POTUS. Obviously, that’s unequivocally bad.

  2. All the books are wrong and misrepresenting Trump and this administration. Considering the books are from past employees, it is not unthinkable - especially knowing Trump’s well documented “tact” - to assume some kind of bad blood went on. And every high-stress workplace has pretty tense frictions between people at times of crisis. But then I cannot explain why Trump keeps nominating such poor characters for his staff that will end up lying about how terrible a workplace it is. Is he a bad judge of people or is it that only bad opportunistic people want to work for this WH? In any other workplace, with this amount of turn around and bad “exit interviews”, that’d be a question HR would ask.

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I’m not a puppet! You’re a puppet!

I’m rubber you’re glue!

The explanation is a marked difference of opinion between Trump and some of the advisers he unwisely chose.

Trump does stuff Trump’s way. That is what got him elected back in 2016. Too many of the people he has brought into his administration, from Sessions to Bolton and so many in between, do stuff the deep state way.

The conflict between the two approaches cannot be resolved.

So if I understand correctly, you’re saying that Trump keeps bringing him people whom he misjudged as being a good fit for this administration. It is a reasonable explanation and basically what I was suggesting as the second possibility.

But if this is the case, that puts his judgement of the character of people into question. Why keep filling essential positions with those alleged “deep state” (is that a code word for by-the-book?) actors? Wouldn’t one be able to tell that those guys will stick to what they’ve always done from before they take office?

Finally assuming he realized that they were not a good fit after seeing them in action for a while, why not try to work to get them replaced more gracefully? You know the press will gobble this stuff up gleefully. If your employer bashes you in letter of recommendations, you really cannot be surprised if the ex employee badmouths you to their eventual next employer or everyone they know.

The combination of those two, gives me the impression that a lot of those hassles are some form of self-inflicted wounds. Choosing more carefully people that you know we’ll work well with your administration style, and then - if you need to - letting them go in as amiable terms as possible, sounds like it would have saved him a lot of backlash and bad press.

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Well, you know what they say about the person who meets ***holes all day.

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To me it is not so much about their character. It’s just drain the swamp vs. the deep state. I would not say deep state folks lack, or have poor, character. But they have no interest in draining the swamp. They ARE the swamp!

You and I might be able. Trump? With no political experience whatsoever and being from NYC which is not exactly middle America, Trump lacks (or at least he lacked) the insight to realize such impending errors. Trump has learned a lot, but it is always the hard way and it takes him forever to understand what his supporters know instinctively.

Now that is humorous. Trump may be a lot of things. Graceful is not one of 'em. Bull in a China shop comes to mind, instead. :smiley: