2018 Poet of the Year
Gloria ....
Another Trump Weave
Trump, referring to Cheney as "a radical war hawk," went on to say, "Let's put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face."
While Liz Cheney has been labelled a war hawk because of her strong defense of the military (and her father) she hasn't been directly involved in making any war decisions. So Trump using her name in that context is absurd on its face. With the nine barrels I think Trump was alluding to the nine members on the Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. So is that a threat? Possibly, and it might be interpreted as an invitation to violence uttered by a cunning man. Trump doesn't appreciate that Cheney was invited to participate in a nonpartisan effort to find the truth.
Trump's weaves are a distraction to hide the fact he knows nothing about policy and especially economics. MAGA just uses Trump as a decoy to draw attention away from what they are doing elsewhere while they publicly defend the indefensible.
RE: Another Trump Weave
Hi Gloria, I haven't followed all the stuff with Liz Cheney, and maybe you're right on that. I'm just gonna take on your last paragraph.
Trump has had success negotiating deals with economic components: Iran sanctions, the Abraham accords, NATO defense spending. You can say that Trump himself didn't do those things but his team did. That is functionally a semantic distinction. Biden has left in place his policies on China tariffs. Some parts, like Trump's implementation of steel tariffs, are flawed. Protectionism is in for both parties. The threat of big tariffs could be a serious problem, but inside talk and prior evidence suggests it is largely a negotiating tactic to ultimately reduce tariffs other countries have placed on American manufactured goods.
Compare to the Biden administration. Biden unnecessarily made an enemy out of Elon Musk instead of working with him -- he has undermined Starlink contracts and NASA launches, and sidelined Musk from EV discussions. Ukraine, Israel and America are all being attacked with Iranian hardware paid for by the US. The Ukraine war has ground on and on with just enough tepid support to kill hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, to the point their entire military is gone. Israel has lost the propaganda war despite military victories. War deaths across the world have risen massively since Trump left office.
These are the primary reasons to consider voting for Trump, or at least to NOT vote for Harris, who says she is different from Biden yet cannot articulate a single policy where she demurs or would execute differently.
2018 Poet of the Year
Gloria ....
RE: Another Trump Weave
Hello H. Always good to hear from you. I know you are smarter than a whip, but please don't bother talking to me about Biden. I see him as a tired, old man rotting from the hubris that surrounds his dumber than a box of rocks intellect. I realize you have more respect for him than I do and that likely arises from you knowing more about him than I do.
The U.S. has provided significant military aid to Israel and Ukraine, but the idea that this aid directly funds Iranian hardware is a bit of a stretch. The Iranians paid for that hardware themselves. And, Trump's threats to break away from NATO came across as a betrayal, like a spouse walking out on a long-term marriage with no notice, even though I agree that Canada really does have to increase its defense budget. Perhaps a few nukes of our own.
I would never vote for Trump because he has no centre. He doesn't stand for anything but self-aggrandizement. IMO he is an entitled, dilettante, aging playboy who should return to his TV show where we can change the channel when he bores us with his tedious repetition.
RE: Another Trump Weave
Your reasons not to vote for Trump are just, and they are among the reasons I have not voted for or supported him thus far. The reason I bring up Biden's actions and policies is simply because Harris has declined to differentiate herself from his policies. If she cannot do so, then she is tacitly supporting those policies, and will likely continue them.
I have a close relative who worked in the State Department on Iran policy. The current administration unfroze $10 billion of Iran oil funds frozen through sanctions. One can say it was "their money". Well, it was using the US banking and currency, so that means we were helping them. Four years ago, Iran was on the ropes. Now they have enough fuel to produce multiple nukes AND they have used that $10 billion to fund terror all over the world. And due to lack of sanctions enforcement, both Iran and Russia are shipping their oil all over now and funding all their stuff. We could have seized or bombed all those shipments. If we did, there would be no funding for their aggression towards other countries.
On this particular issue, in this ape's opinion, Trump's policy was effective and Biden's (and by extension, until she says otherwise, Harris's) is ineffective and very expensive. Trump threatened to break away from NATO but he didn't. He got them to increase their budgets. If that had continued, the Ukraine invasion might never have happened.
2018 Poet of the Year
Gloria ....
RE: Another Trump Weave
Of course Harris should have separated herself from that very sinkable turd. It will be a quiet, yet deadly civil war.
RE: Another Trump Weave
Message edited:
I hope the civil war is confined to within the Democratic Party. The most dangerous scenario for the country would have been a narrow Trump loss which was disputed again. I hope the Democratic Party uses this disheartening setback as an opportunity to reject crony capitalism, DEI and suppression of femininity, and returns to its roots protecting freedom of expression, creativity, real science, exploited workers, and the unborn. And I hope Trump uses his second term to be less of a bully and dictator than his rhetoric makes him out to be, and doesn't let down little countries that need American support.
RE: Another Trump Weave
Oh, as an actual woman, I'd love to hear what a male gorilla thinks femininity is that the democrats are 'suppressing'.
Is it possible that what has actually happened is that women are being allowed to choose to reject overtly masculine notions of what femininity is and choose for ourselves?
Is there any hope that rather than simply protecting the 'unborn', somebody, somewhere actually thinks the way to do that might not be legally forcing women to bear all the consequences of unwanted pregnancies and terminations as a result and actually holds the men accountable?
Could we, instead of looking at the plummeting birth rate as a failure of women, start asking what the MEN are doing to help women feel a bit less like producing and rearing the next generation isn't all their responsibility?
Maybe we start asking celebrity men in interviews why they aren't having children, instead of just the women?
RE: Another Trump Weave
Message edited:
When I said repression of femininity, I'm not talking about any of those things you are talking about. I'm talking about dudes competing on women's sports teams and invading their bathrooms. And I'm talking about encouraging women to abort their babies, and both sexes being tricked by the plastic surgery industry into sterilizing themselves. This is the most anti-science movement ever to infect our culture. A generation ago, liberals were against genital mutilation. What the hell. Who do they think they are, pushing this notion into the minds of kids? This is NOT liberalism.
There is in fact a cost to men of having children, and it's called child support. It can be very expensive and it depends on the state.
There is in fact a cost to men of having children, and it's called child support. It can be very expensive and it depends on the state.
And yes I agree with you that male celebrities should be asked why they don't have kids. It's just that it is physically obvious when a woman becomes pregnant, and not obvious when a man becomes a father.
RE: Another Trump Weave
The dudes in dresses thing is a rather different point. We don't disagree on that.
However, I will fight tooth and nail for anybody's right to prevent pregnancy. Sterilisation is a much better option than abortion, and infinitely better than forcing women to risk their lives shoving humans they don't want out of themselves.
I'm sorry, maintenance payments are the easy option, the cop out. Bringing up another human is exhausting. Women want men to share the workload and it still isn't happening.
I might have had kids if all I had to do was chuck money at them once a month..
RE: Another Trump Weave
On a whole, humans need to reproduce for society to thrive and perpetuate itself. Kids are messy and expensive. They can also be fun, and they keep us young and relevant. I consider the following mostly an anecdotal response rather than a rebuttal.
STERILIZATION
If a grown adult doesn't participate in the gene pool after parents and society (in most cases) invested resources in them, well, there was a funny story about this recently. This also reminds me of this totally opposite scenario: when India tried to force sterilizations.
The current trend in the US seems to be heading towards the latter example. It seems now like majority of my white non-religious friends who are married have decided not to have kids. I think that's weird. Why would anyone who isn't in a gay marriage even bother getting married if they didn't want to have or at least adopt kids? Just for tax purposes? Maybe they will change their mind later. Who wants to be cared for by strangers later in life? Meanwhile there are gay people who want to adopt.
Little Sasha lives next door to one of my brothers in an affluent New England neighborhood. Sasha has a weird younger brother who has anger issues, but she is always friendly and respectful to my nephew and niece, and keeps her younger brother from being too much of a jerk to him when he invites himself over to my brother's yard to play on their trampoline. Sasha seems to be a healthy and normal girl.
One day, the neighbors start flying a giant ugly trans flag in front of their house, and Sasha cuts her hair short. Poor Sasha is confused. She apparently has a male name she sometimes calls herself but she introduces herself to me as Sasha. Sasha is about 12 years old, and someone is putting ideas into her head.
A few weeks later, Sasha's voice has gotten lower. It sounds like she is on some of weird hormones to lower her voice. She doesn't know who she is yet, but the trans industry has its claws in her now.
Trans genital mutilation "surgeries" are six-figure operations, and it might then cost another $40k every year in perpetuity to keep their victims functioning. That's an enormous financial incentive to convince kids to change their sex.
Here's how this plays out a few years later. Three miles down the road, an employee is suing this same brother's company to make them pay to have his dick chopped off. He is still "working" there, despite having taken a settlement check from the insurance company, which violated his employment agreement and will make the costs of all his coworkers go up. By "working", I mean he sits in his car playing on his phone while clocked into work, and everyone knows it. This case will be tied up in courts for years, funneling money into the pockets of rich GLAD lawyers.
Many adults don't have kids because the right person just never came along. Or maybe they didn't have the income, or the inclination, for whatever reason. I am not here to blame these folks, cause I am one of them too, for now. However, entertaining the whims of children (under significant propaganda) to stop or subvert puberty and sterilize themselves is predatory, and up there with sex trafficking. Public schools that make teachers use pronouns are able to pay their staff way better than private religious schools, thanks to the government subsidies.
ABORTION
Agreed that sterilization is better than killing a baby. This gorilla does not support legal abortion on demand after the first trimester. Third trimester abortions with a viable baby are clearly murder. Hmm, should I raise my baby? Give her up for adoption? Or just murder her? I am aware that views in the UK are different. Maternal death from childbirth in the West is pretty much not a thing anymore. Most pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, the US mortality stats reported are inflated because they are measured differently, and our ethnic distribution is more diverse than Europe's (maternal mortality diverges widely by race).
Killing babies is dumb, racist, and misogynist. Dumb because the majority of these babies would grow up to be voting Democrats, racist because they are more likely to be Black or Hispanic, and misogynist because a majority of them around the world are female. Liberals like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore used to be pro-life. What happened to "safe, legal and rare?" The change is because abortions are a cash cow. Fetal organs are super valuable for research. Fetal tissues are sought after by cosmetic companies. Fetal stem cells can make people feel young again. It's brutal regressive taxation of the weakest members of society, a direct transfer of life from the poor to the rich.
CHILD SUPPORT
My observations on child support are filtered through the close friendship I have with a childhood friend who has one son. His wife, who grew up wealthy, left him a number of years ago and moved to Washington, which is about as pro-woman a state as it gets on custody and child support. He allowed her to take his son, although by all rights he could have prevented it.
My friend's ex-wife lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion overlooking the sea provided by her parents, and paints to amuse herself, while he works his ass off as an Amazon subcontracted driver and lives in poverty. Every month he has to send her large child support payments. He lives on about a dollar a day for food. He gets to see his son every two weeks. At Christmas and around the year his son receives lavish presents from her family, while he struggles to keep the heat on and hunts in the junkyard for spare parts to keep his car drivable. Recently he filed for personal bankruptcy from all the medical bills he accrued paying for both of them, but he still has to pay all his student loans (since Biden's debt write-offs were not applied even remotely fairly or equally).
This might be an extreme situation, but it's the one child support situation I know of.
RE: Another Trump Weave
The whole trans issue is, for me, a separate conversation. In America, it may be different, but over here minors cannot have gender-altering surgery. The (very small) number of adults who do have this surgery have to undergo an awful lot of Psych evaluations for it to even be considered and it would be private, so a lot of money.
Nobody, however, is forcing anything either here or in the States. It's an option, not a legal requirement, but I do agree largely with what you say on the subject.
I don't agree with abortion beyond the first trimester either. But I don't agree with jailing a terrified teenage girl who has been ill-advised over it, whilst the man who provided the sperm walks away without comment. Whilst women might now rarely die from birth complications, birth is traumatic on juvenile female bodies and can cause lifelong problems.
The birth rate is slowing down globally, not just in America and Europe, except for in some nations, notably those where education levels for women are low, survival rate of children is low and (chillingly) women are viewed as in a subservient class to males.
The truth is, when women don't have to be stuck at home popping out babies, more and more are choosing not to, and we do need to ask the question of why. The reality is that women are still reporting that they still carry the mental load of child-rearing even though most are also working full-time. A woman I work with spoke to me of her exhaustion last week as she is up at 5am every morning to get the washing on, do the household jobs, get the kids ready for school etc before she starts work at 8:30. She does all the food shopping, cooking etc. she isn't a single mother. All her husband does is go to work. And she isn't alone. Whilst the 80s feminist idea that women can have it all was embraced, women found in the long run this means 'doing it all' because overwhelmingly, still, men, even those with less demanding careers than their wives, aren't stepping up to share in the daily grind of childcare. Yes, kids are 'fun', when all you have to do is play with them and sadly that still sums up a lot of male roles in their children's lives.
Having children will always be, by necessity, a greater burden on women. There's a lot men could do to ease that, and some are doing it, but sadly still many aren't. And it's still expected that women will do the work by society at large and stay at home fathers are still rare.
My stories of child support are friends who had to fight just to get the basic payment, exhausted single mothers who wish they could live like their exes and only have the kids one weekend in four, to be honest.
My own father had holidays abroad and went out for meals most nights with his new wife. Yes, he paid child support, but my mother did all the damn' work whilst he waltzed in once a month, took us somewhere fun and got to be the hero in our eyes.
If men were the default carers, if custody was automatically granted to men, I think there would be a lot more vasectomies happening, to be honest. The impression I have always had is that most men that want children don't expect to do the work. We haven't got to a stage yet where most men have been brought up in households where the woman isn't doing most of the childcare, even though it is now much rarer for one parent to stay at home.
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