Trump is not a sideshow

No, that is what it means. In the name of "rewarding jobs creators" they cut taxes for the rich, slash regulations of big business, etc. It isn't like they set up some program where they give people a tax credit for hiring people or something, they just say that the rich create jobs (which is false) and therefore we should reward them. The end.

 

Well put.

And it's weird to hear the Right moaning like banshees about Obama's horrific tax policies when they are virtually identical to our worst president's effective tax rates, check now and the early 2000's on this chart.

 

If you get the vapors and break out in the hives when someone points out that "job creators" (small businesses, primarily) do indeed create jobs then I can't help that (speaking of chugging down your leftist Kool Aid).

It's still a fact. Meanwhile Barry Obama won his fight to increase free trade within the Pacific Rim and that sucking sound that Ross Perot alluded to goes on unabated while you still whine about Ronald Reagan.


When someone stops and looks rationally and intellectually at who is getting fat and happy during the Obama years (that top one percent) it's pretty apparent that "trickle down" on steroids (that would amaze Reagan) is happening under your nose yet you choose not to see. Why not?
I guess I pushed your buttons but I'm not the one presiding over the end of the middle class or advocating it. Take a breath and calm down.

 

Well, this makes the third time I have to point out that the job creators I refer to are small business owners, primarily. You'd think you would catch on after the first two times.

Your first post on the issue said this: "You guys really have no idea even which party is on which side on economic issues, do you?" Yet when I point out that it's been under Obama that the top one percent has made
95% of income gains (in his own words http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/15/news/economy/income-inequality-obama/) it really seems to make no dent on your consciousness.
You waste my time.

 

The best way to deal with Trump is just to let it all play out. I don't know if you read some of the polls on illegal immigration or not.

you had this: Both of those positions are outside the mainstream as far as most voters are concerned. Only 34% of Likely U.S. Voters favor Obama’s immigration amnesty; 55% are opposed. Sixty-three percent (63%) now think gaining control of the border is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers already living in the United States, the highest level of support for more border control since December 2011. Just 30% believe it’s more important to legalize those already living here, the lowest finding in two years.

and this:

Contrast that reaction with the media firestorm that erupted after Trump noted the high level of criminality among illegal immigrants. Yet as Rasmussen Reports discovered this week, most voters (53%) - and 76% of Republicans - agree with Trump that illegal immigration increases the level of serious crime in America.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/pub...utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter

How ever one feels about Trump, he has caught onto something here. The polls do not match up with what the media is saying. But I have a suspicion the Democrats are quite happy with this. They plan on getting more Hispanics to vote for their candidate than the 71% who voted for Obama in 2012 and add them to their black vote and around only 35% of the white vote, viola they win.

I think the Democrats figure that those oppose to Obama's amnesty program and to illegal immigration which is as they figure is mostly white who will not vote Democratic anyway. So they play this up and go against the majority of Americans. Call it early election politics. I think it may work.

But Americans have short memories and this will all blow over in a month or two. Or before if some other major events takes its place. Remember the government shutdown was suppose to doom the Republicans for the 2014 midterm, but the shutdown became ancient history as soon as the botched ACA rollout occurred. Besides where it is important, the group who are independents are not paying any attention to this. They are more interested in their favorite TV programs and sports teams. Very few people pay any attention to politics like we do on these forums.

 

I don't care what you refer to. We're talking about the platform of the Republican Party.

Most definitely, ever since 1980, the rich have been rapidly pulling away from the rest of us. All those trickle down policies are still in place. We need a whole ton of legislative action, both at the federal and state level to fix it and that has not happened. Until it does, the rich will keep pulling away faster and faster.

But, is certainly is less extreme when we have Democratic presidents. I showed you how the income brackets have fared under presidents of each party.

 

The other lesson is, we can't depend on the government to sustain a middle class either.

Well it's certainly not going to happen with government intervention. The weasels in Weaselton DC have been doing everything they can to wpie out the middle class.

I agree that the tax policy needs to be corrected, immediately. The idea of the rich getting richer on the printing of worthless currency is NOT what anyone would call a "real economy".

The reality is that American industrialists and investors are getting wealthy on the backs of cheap foreign labor, at the expense of American jobs.

And they're trying to snowball us about it too, with all this hullaballoo about "free trade" - while the reality is that none of those benefits exist. Not one. Jobs are leaving, wages are declining, and it's all because of corporate America's profits (erm... it isn't even that, it's CEO bonuses, which are handed out before profits are calculated).

 

The Trump problem doesn't have much to do with illegal immigration. Most the Republican candidates lay out ridiculously over-the-top positions on illegal immigration. What makes Trump such a problem for the GOP is that the GOP normally tries to position it as "we are passionate about illegal immigration because we think the legal formalities are really important." Nobody ever really bought that. One doesn't get THAT passionate about legal formalities. They don't get that upset, for example, about businesses that sell liquor without licenses or people who exceed the speed limit. The real reason for the degree of rage they have on the issue has always struck many Americans as clearly being about racial or cultural bigotry. But, they've generally been very careful to avoid actually saying that.

Trump blew the lid off that. He flat out said that the reason he is so passionate about illegal immigration is because he thinks Mexicans are criminals and rapists and we need to keep them out. He did not even limit it to illegal immigrants, he said all Mexicans who are crossing the border, so that would include legal immigrants. But, even if he had limited it to illegal immigrants, that wouldn't have helped really, since he still is making the issue be about the type of people who come from Mexico rather than the legal formalities. Hispanic people don't view undocumented immigrants as being a different species from legal immigrants. They know they're just the same, normal, people like anybody else.

 

Yes. That's the problem.

No...YOU are, to the exclusion of everything else like the democrats have had zero hand in,or effect on, economic policy since Ronald Reagan left office which isn't all that sharp.

And Obama has accelerated that process, as I've documented. You desperately want to believe the republicans are the source of all our problems and this is like looking at the world with a hand over one eye.
I don't know how to get through to you.

What's Obama done to turn things around? http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/18/

This is pointless: You claim we are driving towards a cliff but the democrats drive slightly slower?

 

It seems that you've lost track of the discussion. You were saying we should vote Republican because the Democrats are bad for the middle class. But the Republicans are openly against the middle class. Their economic policy is trickle down which both in theory and in practice is anti-middle class and pro-rich.

No, no. The Bush recession accelerated the process, not Obama. Obama has done his best to decelerate the process. They pushed through the ACA and the payroll tax cut when they had the legislature for example.

 

Then why, as I've cited several times now, have 90% of the economic gains made during the Obama years gone to the top one percent?

I have given you enough play. Bye bye.

 

I already answered that. Again: Most definitely, ever since 1980, the rich have been rapidly pulling away from the rest of us. All those trickle down policies are still in place. We need a whole ton of legislative action, both at the federal and state level to fix it and that has not happened. Until it does, the rich will keep pulling away faster and faster.

 

I know they don't, but a lot of legal immigrants do. My wife is one of them having married me in Bangkok, then went through the rigmarole of visas, passports, background checks, waiting time, fees, the whole nine yards. Allowing illegals to stay here according to her is a slap in the face at every legal immigrant that did things right.

So there are hard feelings on the other side of the ledger too. But they are not the kind to be vocal or protest. Call them the silent majority to use a phrase from the Nixon era. This whole thing will die down in time. Like I said, Americans have short memories and what is hot today replaces what was hot yesterday and what will be hot tomorrow makes what is hot today ancient history.

I am not worried at all about. I know in the final rundown the election will probably end up being Bush and Clinton. A match up the majority of Americans do not want. 54% of all Americans want the Democrats to run someone else besides Clinton and 61% want the Republicans to run someone else besides Bush. Then 64% of all Americans say neither Clinton or Bush holds their values. Two business as usual candidates.

If Clinton can win by relying on Hispanics and Blacks with very little white support, more power to her. If the Republicans win by relying on whites only, more power to them. It really doesn't matter the way the two political parties have fractured America. Turning one group against another, making one group hate another group in search for votes. In the end the candidate who gets more voters to hate the other guy or gal than him or her will win.

Hate is what our election process has burned into. I am just tired of it. I try to give honest opinions, but in the end that too does not matter. Sorry for the rant, but there you have it.

 

That's right. Some legal immigrants- although certainly not the majority- harbor resentment towards illegal immigrants because they didn't go through the same legal process. That's why the GOP normally tries to position its opposition to illegal immigration in those terms- they paint themselves as defending legal process. That angle does appeal to some legal immigrants and doesn't garner as much resentment among Hispanics, which is why they do it that way.

Trump took a very different approach. For him, it isn't about legal process, it is about letting bad people from an inferior culture in. That resonates very, very, differently with minorities and legal immigrants. Think, for example, if he had been talking about Thai people instead of Mexicans. She may sympathize with the standard Republican argument about line skipping, but would she sympathize with the argument that the problem was that too many Thai people were coming in and they were criminals and rapists?

It isn't a matter of Trump supporting a particular policy that is the problem, it is that he revealed that his reasons for supporting that policy are overtly racist, anti-immigrant and xenophobic. Like, here, the reality is that many Hispanics have been looking at the Republican position on immigration and trying to decide if the Republicans are so up in arms over it because they just don't like Hispanics or for various non-bigoted economic or legal reasons. Most Hispanics think it is because Republicans just don't like Hispanics, but some have decided to assume the best and were still potentially open to voting Republican. Trump, or rather the massive outpouring of support Trump got, just slammed that door on a lot of folks. It is pretty hard to convince yourself that bigotry against Hispanics isn't at least a major part of the motivation behind the over-the-top rhetoric about illegal immigration at this point.

 

The only people who would vote for trump are far right racists and corporate executives who know he will back them.

 

I hope he's committed to going all the way. I want to hear more of his constructive ideas. Sadly.... he's the only one thus far that has excited the masses.

 

Because tax policies have not been changed.

- - - Updated - - -

Constructive ideas?

He makes up stuff as he goes along and throws it out there to see what sticks.

So far, it's all about the Mexihate. Although he apparantly revived birtherism again.

You don't get constructive ideas out of carnival barkers.

 

Somehow I doubt things are that simplistic.

 

I'm not going to worry about Trump or the GOP. In fact I am not worried about the Democrats. It doesn't matter as both parties have split this nation apart pitting one race against the other in the search for votes. Our political system is broken and no one realizes it. So we keep chugging on for 10 years and then implode or something. We will wonder why does everyone hate everyone else, the answer is simple. In order to get votes the two major parties has pitted each of us against each other. I have no love for either major party. They are the problem.

 

I hear you, but from where I sit, it looks to me like really what we have is the GOP trying to do that and the Democrats trying to get them to cut it out.

 

Let them dig their own grave is that is what they want to do. The best thing is just to let all this play out and to see where the chips land.