(OT) Maybe sort of a kinda

This tirade against president Obama , a man of honor ,class and dignity who was subjected to a lot more abuse than any other US president because of the color of his skin(the birther movement y'all) and which he handled with class and dignity without stooping to the ignorant,racist level of his attackers, reminds me of the words of LBj:""If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

Chuck, since as you well know it's a close-knit group of people here who speak their own minds (no matter how different the conclusions we sometimes draw,) it would be better to either put your ideas in your own words or just post a link. We all know how to click on a link, we do it all the time, we surf all ends of the political dialogue every week, have magazines and libraries at our command, etc.

I have to laugh at the comparison of D. Trump to General Patton because there really isn't any. Well, that's not quite true. They both loved publicity, they were both erratic with it, both were driven. Patton was substantially smarter and he was a brilliant, ball-busting, warrior which we need sometimes don't we, but his behavior eventually got him relieved of command of the 3rd Army. Maybe that's the thing that the two of them will end up sharing in common; being relieved of command. We'll see, but General Patton Trump certainly aint.

Lastly, I'm both a liberal and a conservative; and I couldn't have it any other way because I need a balanced comprehension of the world, of life. I take it as an insult when someone makes a statement like "We know that Liberals (left) are idiots..." especially when it comes from someone who isn't enough smarter than me to make it stick. If you know what I mean. Or even if you don't.

Alba Said: Were not at war. your state of mind is at war .in medical terms is called paranoid schizophrenia.

We're not at war. your state of mind is at war .in medical terms is called paranoid schizophrenia.

CIAK Said: We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized collegiality as John McCain? We tried propriety has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob. I dont find anything dignified collegial or proper about Barack Obamas lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I dont see anything dignified  in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I dont see anything statesman-like in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was articulate and polished but in no way was he in the least bit dignified,collegial or proper. The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the ˜60s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they have fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one the violent take-over of the universities till today. The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety. With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is Americas first wartime president in the Culture War. During wartime, things like dignity collegiality are not the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, cannot spare this man. He fights. General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich. Trump is fighting. And whats particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommels he is shouting, You magnificent bastards, I read your book. That is just the icing on the cake, but its wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he is defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul Alinskys Rules for Radicals a book so essential to the Liberals war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clintons senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer. Trumps tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after the fake media and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as the most powerful weapon of all. Everyone gets that its not just CNN in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose reporting is in no way significantly different than CNN. CNN is just a piker. Most importantly, Trumps tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. With Trumps ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat. They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices. They can either go high (as Hillary would disingenuously of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obamas close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wrights church. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administrations cover-up. This makes going high a non-starter for CNN. This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next nothing burgers and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how its worse than Nixon. This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do. The problem is that, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious. Each new effort at even faker news than before and faker outrage only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media. And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes. Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case) libel laws protecting the media, they have had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly. Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme. This threat to release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family -- a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasnt meant just for him. If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their deal with him public. Instead, CNN playing by Chicago Rules was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated. This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule. So, to my friends on the Left and the #NeverTrumpers as well -- do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be collegial and dignified and proper Of course I do. These arent those times. This is war. And its a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years. Evan Sayet

Holy crap!!! That is the most reasoned post I've seen in a long time! You put into words what I think, but lack the vocabulary to reduce to sentences.

We Right-thinking people have tried dignity. There could not have been a man of more quiet dignity than George W. Bush as he suffered the outrageous lies and politically motivated hatreds that undermined his presidency. We tried statesmanship. Could there be another human being on this earth who so desperately prized collegiality as John McCain? We tried propriety has there been a nicer human being ever than Mitt Romney? And the results were always the same This is because, while we were playing by the rules of dignity, collegiality and propriety, the Left has been, for the past 60 years, engaged in a knife fight where the only rules are those of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago mob. I dont find anything dignified collegial or proper about Barack Obamas lying about what went down on the streets of Ferguson in order to ramp up racial hatreds because racial hatreds serve the Democratic Party. I dont see anything dignified in lying about the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi and imprisoning an innocent filmmaker to cover your tracks. I dont see anything statesman-like in weaponizing the IRS to be used to destroy your political opponents and any dissent. Yes, Obama was articulate and polished but in no way was he in the least bit dignified,collegial or proper. The Left has been engaged in a war against America since the rise of the Children of the 1960s. To them, it has been an all-out war where nothing is held sacred and nothing is seen as beyond the pale. It has been a war they have fought with violence, the threat of violence, demagoguery and lies from day one the violent take-over of the universities till today. The problem is that, through these years, the Left has been the only side fighting this war. While the Left has been taking a knife to anyone who stands in their way, the Right has continued to act with dignity, collegiality and propriety. With Donald Trump, this all has come to an end. Donald Trump is Americas first wartime president in the Culture War. During wartime, things like dignity collegiality are not the most essential qualities one looks for in their warriors. Ulysses Grant was a drunk whose behavior in peacetime might well have seen him drummed out of the Army for conduct unbecoming. Had Abraham Lincoln applied the peacetime rules of propriety and booted Grant, the Democrats might well still be holding their slaves today. Lincoln rightly recognized that, cannot spare this man. He fights. General George Patton was a vulgar-talking, son-of-a-bitch. In peacetime, this might have seen him stripped of rank. But, had Franklin Roosevelt applied the normal rules of decorum, then Hitler and the Socialists would barely be five decades into their thousand-year Reich. Trump is fighting. And whats particularly delicious is that, like Patton standing over the battlefield as his tanks obliterated Rommels he is shouting, You magnificent bastards, I read your book. That is just the icing on the cake, but its wonderful to see that not only is Trump fighting, he is defeating the Left using their own tactics. That book is Saul Alinskys Rules for Radicals a book so essential to the Liberals war against America that it is and was the playbook for the entire Obama administration and the subject of Hillary Clintons senior thesis. It is a book of such pure evil, that, just as the rest of us would dedicate our book to those we most love or those to whom we are most indebted, Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer. Trumps tweets may seem rash and unconsidered but, in reality, he is doing exactly what Alinsky suggested his followers do. First, instead of going after the fake media and they are so fake that they have literally gotten every single significant story of the past 60 years not just wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, from the Tet Offensive to Benghazi, to what really happened on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri Trump isolated CNN. He made it personal. Then, just as Alinsky suggests, he employs ridicule which Alinsky described as the most powerful weapon of all. Everyone gets that its not just CNN in fact, in a world where Al Sharpton and Rachel Maddow, Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof are people of influence and whose reporting is in no way significantly different than CNN. CNN is just a piker. Most importantly, Trumps tweets have put CNN in an untenable and unwinnable position. With Trumps ability to go around them, they cannot simply stand pat. They need to respond. This leaves them with only two choices. They can either go high (as Hillary would disingenuously say of herself and the fake news would disingenuously report as the truth) and begin to honestly and accurately report the news or they can double-down on their usual tactics and hope to defeat Trump with twice their usual hysteria and demagoguery. The problem for CNN (et al.) with the former is that, if they were to start honestly reporting the news, that would be the end of the Democratic Party they serve. It is nothing but the incessant use of fake news (read: propaganda) that keeps the Left alive. Imagine, for example, if CNN had honestly and accurately reported then-candidate Barack Obamas close ties to foreign terrorists (Rashid Khalidi), domestic terrorists (William Ayers), the mafia (Tony Rezko) or the true evils of his spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wrights church. Imagine if they had honestly and accurately conveyed the evils of the Obama administration weaponizing of the IRS to be used against their political opponents or his running of guns to the Mexican cartels or the truth about the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the Obama administrations cover-up. This makes going high a non-starter for CNN. This leaves them no other option but to ratchet up the fake news, conjuring up the next nothing burgers and devoting 24 hours a day to hysterical rants about how its worse than Nixon. This, obviously, is what CNN has chosen to do. The problem is that, as they become more and more hysterical, they become more and more obvious. Each new effort at even faker news than before and faker outrage only makes that much more clear to any objective observer that Trump is and always has been right about the fake news media. And, by causing their hysteria, Trump has forced them into numerous, highly embarrassing and discrediting mistakes. Thus, in their desperation, they have lowered their standards even further and run with articles so clearly fake that, even with the liberal (lower case) libel laws protecting the media, they have had to wholly retract and erase their stories repeatedly. Their flailing at Trump has even seen them cross the line into criminality, with CNN using their vast corporate fortune to hunt down a private citizen for having made fun of them in an Internet meme. This threat to release of personal information to encourage co-ideologists to visit violence upon him and his family -- a political satirist was chilling in that it clearly wasnt meant just for him. If it were, there would have been no reason for CNN to have made their deal with him public. Instead, CNN playing by Chicago Rules was sending a message to any and all: dissent will not be tolerated. This heavy-handed and hysterical response to a joke on the Internet has backfired on CNN, giving rise to only more righteous ridicule. So, to my friends on the Left and the #NeverTrumpers as well -- do I wish we lived in a time when our president could be collegial and dignified and proper Of course I do. These arent those times. This is war. And its a war that the Left has been fighting without opposition for the past 50 years. Evan Sayet

B) :) :) B) Deep Down In Florida Where The Sun Shines Damn Near Every Day

Roofguy Said:

preferred Hillary over Trump .

. Our society has become intellectually lazy. The toilet needs to be flush.

Amen to that.I feel the same way anytime I watch the circus in the WH and wonder about the people that elected the clown in chief.

preferred Hillary over Trump .

And this admission is why I buy guns and ammo. Our society has become intellectually lazy. The toilet needs to be flush.

Roofguy Said: Alba, you preferred Hillary? Simple question, lets get passed that much first shall we?

Secondly, your analogy wasnt very good. 40 million armed rednecks spread across 48 states is gonna be a little harder to attack than a conclave of ISIS fighters in a cave.

Social Security was paid into by citizens, they deserve a return. Most would prefer it not be taken to begin with.

Police brutality? Youre delusional! He made a funny joke about not covering the heads of criminals as they put in a police car. Calm down.

Even though I would have preferred for the democrats to have picked a fresh face ,I preferred Hillary over Trump . His joke wasn't so funny since many police chiefs around the country including the head of DEA quickly had to remind their cops that such actions are against the law .

Alba, you preferred Hillary? Simple question, lets get passed that much first shall we?

Secondly, your analogy wasn't very good. 40 million armed rednecks spread across 48 states is gonna be a little harder to attack than a conclave of ISIS fighters in a cave.

Social Security was paid into by citizens, they deserve a return. Most would prefer it not be taken to begin with.

Police brutality? You're delusional! He made a funny joke about not covering the heads of criminals as they put in a police car. Calm down.

[

[i]And as impractical as it sounds for a few million rednecks armed with Glocks and AR-15s to take on a nuclear-equipped military, that is the whole premise of 2A, to have the government fear revolt by an armed-citizenry. It is pretty much principle at this point, and less practical, but having a well armed militia is critical to freedom.

All that said, as unlikely as the scenario might be, there are now thousands of highly trained former military snipers and other operators who would oppose any government attempts to disarm citizens. Those on the other side have to know that theyd be picked off one-by-one from different zip codes. There have been well armed populations who have taken on the US army before, like in Iraq, Afghanistan , Vietnam and it hasn't worked out quite as well or as easily as you make it out to be for them.But I guess the rednecks are smarter and better.Could you explain the paradox of being a constitution aficionado and voting for a president who routinely says , preaches and endorses unconstitutional actions , i.e police brutality like he did the other day? Anyway we started this discussion about "socialism" and "progressive" which are dirty words especially in republican states.medicare and social security are socialist things .before medicare was passed in 1964 , 75% of americans over the age of 65 didn't have health insurance.I live in a state where the elderly vote heavily republican .but if you take medicare and social security away from them , those armed rednecks that you talk about I bet you will march on Washington dc.

Sun Tzu said it better than I could.

Alba, they are 2 very different issues. I don't disagree that wars have frequently been fought because there is profit for those powerful people/entities who equip us to fight them.

And as impractical as it sounds for a few million rednecks armed with Glocks and AR-15's to take on a nuclear-equipped military, that is the whole premise of 2A, to have the government fear revolt by an armed-citizenry. It is pretty much principle at this point, and less practical, but having a "well armed militia" is critical to freedom.

All that said, as unlikely as the scenario might be, there are now thousands of highly trained former military snipers and other operators who would oppose any government attempts to disarm citizens. Those on the other side have to know that they'd be picked off one-by-one from different zip codes.