USA Politics

Impeachment considers apace.

If Donald Trump withheld aid to Ukraine to gain an advantage against a domestic political enemy, it's the greatest abuse of power in American history. They've been saying that a lot of late, but I think it's really true. Nixon didn't impede the flow of money ordered by Congress in order to screw up the Democrats, for example. The Teapot Dome Scandal was nothing like this, either.

A decorated member of the US Military today said that there were important omissions from the "transcript" of the infamous Trump-Zelensky call, and that he fought to have them reinstated but was overruled.

Last week the Ambassador to Ukraine said that there was a clear quid pro quo for the release of military aid to Ukraine.
 
What a sad turn for Beto O'Rourke. That being said, the pre-primary is slowly winnowing out the unfit for the race. Probably not quickly enough.
 
Beto had no business being in the race as long as he was. He’s a lightweight on policy, he thinks he’s JFK but doesn’t have the charisma to back it up, and his “hell yes, we’ll take your AR-15” comment gave the NRA money shot footage they’ll continue to use for years to come.

Good riddance.
 
Jer said:
Beto had no business being in the race as long as he was. He’s a lightweight on policy, he thinks he’s JFK but doesn’t have the charisma to back it up, and his “hell yes, we’ll take your AR-15” comment gave the NRA money shot footage they’ll continue to use for years to come.

Good riddance.
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I had enough of him in the Senate race a few years ago
 
Beto ran a remarkably bad campaign from the start. He entered way too late, spending months playing games with the media about whether or not he will run when he could have spent that time building a strong campaign message and infrastructure. He could have positioned himself to be basically where Mayor Pete is now, but with the added benefit of being from a state that Democrats really want to win. He was going for JFK but he could’ve possibly been successful by going the Carter route instead.

Last year he had positioned himself to be a rising star in politics, but he leaves this race as unelectable in Texas due to his gun stance. He had many embarrassing debate moments. Progressives don’t seem to care for him as a general election candidate and all his weak attempts at pivoting leftward toward the end of the campaign achieved was the loss of any moderate appeal. Hard to see where he goes from here.
 
Honestly, Beto's campaign was so poor it's almost like he didn't want to do politics anymore and picked the biggest possible way to flame out to ensure he can retire and do very little for the rest of his life.
 
I have a question regarding US politics that I sincerely hope isn't taken offensively. Has anyone ever met a person who owns a truck, has a gigantic US flag flying from it, and isn't also a racist/redneck? I live in what is technically the bible belt (South East Virginia) and I find that the only people who feel the need to let everyone know just how "patriotic" they are, are usually racist bible thumpers. Again, that's a generalization based on what I've seen personally. I do NOT want to offend anyone that may fly such a flag who is not in fact racist or sexist or what have you, but I am genuinely curious if anyone else has seen such a person?
 
So I read a site daily, www.electoral-vote.com, and they're pretty libby, but they also do good writing and they get good callbacks to US history. They once made a comment about someone from Oklahoma driving a truck being guaranteed to be a Republican and got quite a few angry emails.

I think it's possible, even probable, that those people exist in pretty significant numbers, but they are almost surely more rare. I also don't think being a redneck is automatically a racist, either.
 
LooseCannon said:
I think it's possible, even probable, that those people exist in pretty significant numbers, but they are almost surely more rare. I also don't think being a redneck is automatically a racist, either.
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This is true, and I have some family members that sort of straddle this mentality. But I'm going more for generalizations here also. I truly hope there are lots of folks who are proud of their country's diversity, I've just never seen any who would also wave a flag in such a way. It's a weird dichotomy to me.
 
chaosapiant said:
This is true, and I have some family members that sort of straddle this mentality. But I'm going more for generalizations here also. I truly hope there are lots of folks who are proud of their country's diversity, I've just never seen any who would also wave a flag in such a way. It's a weird dichotomy to me.
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There are a lot of folks who are proud of their country's diversity, absolutely. Flag-waving is...excessive even in the more liberal areas of America, I think.
 
LooseCannon said:
There are a lot of folks who are proud of their country's diversity, absolutely. Flag-waving is...excessive even in the more liberal areas of America, I think.
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I think this is my hangup. If there was a venn diagram of folks who love diversity in culture, and folks who must wave the flag, there would be very little overlap between the two. And that's where I hope I'm wrong. We have an official sized US flag on a pole hanging over the garage to our house and we do not consider our selves racist/sexist/or any kind of ist. We're fairly liberal (I hate that term). But whenever I specifically see the same size flag flying on a pole in the flat bed of a pick up truck, my brain immediately goes to "racist asshole". The ironic thing is that thought process is pretty much the same as racism in itself, so I'm trying to call myself out on it.
 
chaosapiant said:
But whenever I specifically see the same size flag flying on a pole in the flat bed of a pick up truck, my brain immediately goes to "racist asshole".
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I do think that's a problem in this country right now, same thing as seeing someone wearing a red baseball cap and thinking, "Ah! MAGA supporters!" I'm guilty of it myself. I don't know if others feel this way, but I also think there's a difference between being a racist and thinking things that could be racist but aren't intended in that way by the person with those beliefs. I dunno if that makes sense?
 
LooseCannon said:
Confederate flags should be seen with the same derision as Nazi swastika flags. Full stop.
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Agreed 100%. I once used Nazi flags as a basis for my argument against the whole "heritage not hate" bullshit. I do believe there are folks that do not see the confederate flag as racist and are not racist themselves, but it's just ignorance. The confederate flag is predicated on "we wanna keep our slaves".
 
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