Assuming that would have been true, although Congress would still have been controlled by the GOP, what if Trump gives us war with Iran?
Armchair prediction: million people in the Mideast dead. Hamas dirty bomb somewhere in the US. Complete clusterfuck fail of nation building in the ME again. Hopefully Trump is old enough to not repeat the USA’s mistakes in Iran again.
He still hasn’t ended our presence in Iraq, Syria and Afganistan. Not sure there’s any surefire way to “win” in the ME.
Do we cede the entire region to Putin’s influence (even more) by withdrawing? That worked so well when we withdrew support for Chiang Kai-shek and Fulgencio Batista and left those peoples to twist in the wind.
And is that better than Hillary?
Good old reset button? Don’t know what conflicts she would have gotten us into or extended. Maybe she would have put more US boots on the ground vs ISIS.
I hope that some smart people have gotten to Trump and are pitching that there is no victory anywhere in the middle east. Least of all Iran. Human costs aside, I don’t believe anyone in any party in the US is seeing good polling numbers for “start another pointless expensive war”.
Trump fires smart people if they try to ‘get to him;’ ie, to tell him things he doesn’t want to hear. Then he replaces them with sycophants and/or like minded whack jobs. (See, eg, John Bolton.)
But hey–deregulation and less taxes are so important we’ll take 'em any way we can get 'em, right?
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Yeah he’s a definite downgrade from “the most transparent administration in history”. Don’t mind the extension of the patriot act, indefinite detention, Gitmo, Drone Strikes, FISA court abuse, vanishing emails at the state department and the IRS etc…
At least with all Trump’s employees hating him and leaking we can get some information out of government while the courts swat down most FOIA requests.
I get it, you don’t like him. I don’t either. But you won’t convince me that Hillary Clinton was the better choice for liberty. Not that you’ve tried. So far you’ve complained about Trump’s rude management style and suggested he’ll start a hot war with Iran. Which he hasn’t done.
Trump is nothing if not a pragmatist. I don’t think he can look at Johnson or Bush 2 and think that starting a war that wasn’t 100% provoked is a good idea politically. But time will tell.
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I would hope so but Trump does bow down to Saudi Arabia so it’s not a given.
You don’t seem able to respond without whatabouting.
Other than the (irresponsible) tax cuts and deregulations (ditto), you can’t point to a single thing Trump has done to advance liberty. Meanwhile, you are apparently ignoring the liberty-related implications of his anti-democratic statements, his flouting of the rule of law, and his nonstop assault on the free press.
In short, if it’s not already patently obvious that he is a disaster for liberty (and light-years worse than HRC would be), I can’t help you.
With respect to his personal needs, yes. But that’s the problem. If he decides a hot war is in his personal interest (and it’s easy to see how he could conclude such), he’ll do his best to start one. Which doesn’t mean he’ll succeed; apparently, the military is already disobeying his more unhinged orders:
"After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.
Mattis told the president that he would get right on it. But after hanging up the phone, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” The national security team developed options for the more conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered."
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Its only whataboutism when comparing in a negative light. If we were blowing Obama while throwing Bush under a bus no one would be calling “whataboutism”. That little piece of argumentation never even entered the common use until the end of Obama and the beginning of Trump.
Prior to that comparing a previous president with a current one and viceversa was 100% fair game.
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Comparing the job performance and promises of chief executives/candidates to evaluate who to vote for out of the depressing lack of quality candidates = whatabouting in your world then. Good to know.
Words hurt too ya know. He does love violent dictators, but so far that hasn’t resulted in people jailed or deprived of any rights.
Which time? Be specific. As many have pointed out we have a two tiered justice system where laws don’t apply to the rich and the pols. This isn’t a big departure from any president or candidate since Lincoln. I don’t like it, but that’s how it works regardless of who you vote for. If the other “co-equal” branches can impeach/imprison/depose him using the rule of law then they should do so.
How many FCC permits have been pulled? How many journalists have been arrested, “disappeared” or died in a suspicious fashion? How many news outlets have been targeted by the IRS?
“CNN Sucks” and “fake news” =/= government oppression of the press. Try being a journalist in Beijing or Moscow if you want to see what oppression looks like.
Freedom of speech applies to the president as well. It doesn’t mean you have to listen to him. You can watch CNN if you want to. It’s okay.
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Hmm, I guess I missed the memo that HRC was a POTUS.
Paraphrasing our original exchange:
You: ‘I’ll take lower taxes and regulations any way I can get them’
Me: ‘You have a funny definition of libertarianism’
You: ‘HRC’
Nope, I still don’t get it.
Sure about that?
You’re being tendentious, but just this once:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/03/politics/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-justice-department/index.html
Like I said, tendentious. Just this once, once more:
You’re whatabouting again.
So, OK by you no matter what he says? That’s your play?
Why you insist on carrying Trump’s water when it’s so painfully obvious there’s a big hole in the bucket, I have no idea. Sunk-cost fallacy perhaps?
I almost forgot why puff wrote you off entirely. Mischaracterize the target’s position-> ignore their rebuttal entirely-> obfusecate-> condescend-> cherry pick-> yell “whataboutism”
It’s like sophist bingo.
Fixed.
And you never will. We can’t even agree on the definition of human life. Partisanship is a real bitch ya know?
Might want to read your articles there Zep. The state department being thorough and actually doing their job? Asking for more information if someone was born via a fraudulent midwife or holds two countries’ birth cirtificates? The horror:
Full disclosure: I hate the damned state department, they cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and my business, so it’s hard to praise them for anything.
“The government alleges that from the 1950s through the 1990s, some midwives and physicians along the Texas-Mexico border provided U.S. birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico. In a series of federal court cases in the 1990s, several birth attendants admitted [to providing fraudulent documents].”
“A document labeled “Domestic issuance/denials along the southern border involving potentially fraudulent birth documents” said that in 2017, 971 people, or 28 percent of those in the category, were denied passports, a smaller percentage than in any of the four previous years.”
On to the Sessions Tweet. Stupid, boorish and tribalistic yes. “Good job jeff” illegal… meh. Unless we discover him ordering Jeff how to behave, he can berate his employees all he likes. Like I’ve said before he was my last choice out of the 16 Rep candidates… still better than HRC! 
“Enemy Of The People’: Man Echoing Trump’s Words Charged With Threatening Newspaper”
So is this man employed by Trump or the Federal Government? How is this an example of executive/governmental oppression of the press? Trump inspired one crazy guy to be a keyboard warrior and issue threats?
Your claim of whataboutism is classic eyedentist deflection.
- You claimed Trump is oppressing the press.
- I said mean words don’t equal government oppression and mention real places where government oppression of the press actually happens, because you’re misusing the concept of oppression.
- You say whataboutism like it’s a totem to keep the bad man away with no argument. Then you post an article where an unrelated nutjob uses similar words to Trump as proof that the Federal government is oppressing the press.
Getting a journalism degree doesn’t mean people have to respect you more than the average citizen. I’m sorry they don’t like the mean guy with the orange hair driving their ratings down with mean tweets… but that isn’t oppression, by definition.
I’m doing no such thing. He’s an odious human being and I wouldn’t even hang out with him if you paid me. The argument you started was whether he was better for liberty than HRC. Which I still maintain and you haven’t addressed.
The two party system mean those two assholes were the only real choice. It’s like trying to choose between liver and burnt kale for dinner.
I await your eloquent, sophist, master troll response. We won’t ever agree… but by God we will enjoy arguing about it.
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You should look into this one a bit more
I read the article he posted. Which doesn’t say what he thinks it does. 'Additional documentation?" The horror! I thought lefties loved the administrative state. Denials are down, requests for documentation are up. Would you prefer that denials went back up or State didn’t do their job?
"In its statement, the State Department said that applicants “who have birth certificates filed by a midwife or other birth attendant suspected of having engaged in fraudulent activities, as well as applicants who have both a U.S. and foreign birth certificate, are asked to provide additional documentation establishing they were born in the United States.”
"“The State Department’s domestic passport denials are at the lowest rate in six years for midwife cases,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert in a statement after the story was published.
But those numbers appear to leave out key data. The State Department declined repeated requests from The Post for additional information.
In the majority of cases reviewed by The Post, passport applicants delivered by midwives in South Texas receive repeated requests for additional documentation, but never receive formal denials from the State Department.
The State Department did not respond to requests for statistics on these cases.
The State Department also would not provide details on who falls into the category of “potentially fraudulent birth documents” along the southern border, which it included on its data sheet."
The overarching topic does, which is why I suggested you look into a bit more.
Oh I don’t really care. you were the one looking for liberties being taken, not me
Not the facts presented in the article. Just the slant of the Washington Post and the anecdotal cases they encountered. Denials were higher under previous presidents, but let’s not worry about that.
If one is not an anarchist or communist you agree on the necessity of a state. States need borders by definition. Borders that aren’t enforced aren’t borders at all. One of the few legitimate functions of government is controlling borders for national defense, taxation, trade etc… and thanks to marxists we now have to pay for safety net programs of anyone who can sneak in and fraudulently claim to be a citizen. Putting a higher burden on citizens.
Enforcing borders and ensuring citizenship (and all the lovely benefits conferred) are legitimate functions of government.
Only the Trump administration could deny less passports than a previous administration and still get bad press. Attack the press and they attack back I suppose.
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Whatab…
Oh wait. I don’t know if that is good or bad.
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Eh. You’ve clearly made up your mind. Plus you keep saying things only a 3 minute google could provide. No biggie.
Still showing a glaring lack of the basic research that you’d normally do before coming to this conclusion.
Bad. Mainly because stalling inquiries and delaying denials (ie, all reports are or self reported official denials) are much scarier, as you can’t fight the lack of denial, only the denial.
But hey, I think most people expected MAGA to result in 3-4x the response time for something like ‘am I a citizen?’
You fixed nothing. My point–for the 5th and final time–was the bizarre nature of your definition of liberty/libertarianism: ‘More money in my pocket, and to hell with any- and everything else.’ That’s not libertarianism–it’s rapaciousness.
My point had nothing to do with who is president, or who isn’t, so any leaps in that direction were made by your grasshopper, not mine.
Nice try. I said he is nonstop assaulting the press. Do you deny he’s doing that? Do you deny it’s having an effect on the public? Do you deny it’s physically endangering journalists?
You do realize that whataboutism is considered a fallacious form of argument, yes? So yeah, pointing out that you’re whatabouting is in fact ‘keeping away the bad man with no argument.’
No, that was your argument. But either way, Trump is better than HRC for liberty only under your, um, unique definition of liberty.