American Politics

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2825288]I posted a link that cited the stock market performance for every president going all the way back to McKinley, as measured by the Dow because the S&P 500 Index did not go back that far.

Did you?

If you are not familiar with the historical timeline on that, I assure you Reagan's and Carter's results are cited in that link that I provided but you did not. Oh, also Coolidge's, Hoover's, FDR's, the presidents who served less than 4 years like JFK and Ford and all the others. Sorry I can't provide a link to compare Harrison's and Lincoln's stock market performance to all the others.

I was the one, the only one here, to finally clue in the desperate Repub Trumpsters that now the superior measure for the broad USA Stock Market is the S&P 500 Index, not the Dow and, hey look, guys, your twice Impeached, 37 Federal Crime-Indicted, Mass Murdering, one term Presidency, House and Senate-losing hero, Donald Trump, actually presided over a dramatically higher gain by that measure than by your silly Dow.

Did you?

I even generously rounded up his performance results on that Index to "70%" in my initial citing of his overall 4 year gain when it is actually closer to 69.5%.

I cited both Biden's current "a bit less than 2 1/2 year gain" as it was at the time of my writing. I did not bother to divide that one by your unproven mathmatical figure of 2. 37 to provide the Average Annual Gain breakdown for a president who had not even completed 2 1/2 years of his first term because I really did not see the value in providing that at a glance comparison courtesy when I suspect even the Repubs here can figure out an 11.2% gain in just over 2 years is going to be about 5% or less per year. You seemed to believe otherwise. Well, you're the expert on that. So you decided doing the math and showing your work was indeed necessary for the Repubs here.

However, I ALSO didn't bother to break down Trump's approximate 2 year gain of only 3. 5% in order to cite his Average Annual Gain and for the same reason I didn't bother to do it for Biden's. I would call that further evidence of my lack of partisanship based solely on Party rather than overwhelmingly on results.

By stark contrast, you chose to break down Biden's 11.2% gain at the approximate 2 year point to cite its Average Annual Gain but mysteriously and conspicuously left Trump's 3. 5% gain at roughly the same point in his presidency untouched. And that gain occurred with none of the Trump's Pandemic Mass Murders, Worldwide Economic / Supply-Chain Destruction, Hyper-Inflation-Triggering headwinds going against it while Biden's 11.2% has had all of that going against it.

Why did you do that, Tiny? Why did you treat those Repub vs Dem results so differently on such a, to you, critical factor after I treated them exactly the same?

Exactly. Your and my lampooning of the need for an absolutely mathmatically accurate to the 100th of a decimal on what I and many other "analysts" provide merely in order to make it easier for the casual reader to see at a glance how a 2-4 year presidency's results compare to the 8 year presidencies vs your Per Annum Growth / Decline Rate equation for each year of each presidency presumably going back to George Washington including Jefferson Davis makes my case quite nicely. Thank you.[/QUOTE]Congratulations Tooms! You may not understand the math, but you’ve proved there's a spurious correlation between the party of the president and S & P 500 performance between January 20,1989 and January 20,2021. Now, I have a new mission for you. Please show that the earth is the center of the universe and the stars and planets rotate around it. And please show that the Democratic Party is the reason one of those stars or planets hasn't crashed into earth.

Good luck!

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2825420]Then the financial analysts over at Kiplinger Investing must be bad, ignorant, dishonest and deceitful because their breakdown for each year of the past several presidencies showed Trump's per year Market performance to be 13.7% while you overstated it at 14%.

Maybe they're just using a different E=MC equation than you use. But it is also a suspicious sign that your pro Repub partisanship has leaked into your Tiny Math.

Meanwhile, at least a couple of results out of 5 from my way of simply breaking it down by the number of years in office to provide an at a glance per year comparison are pretty darn close to what Kiplinger arrived at from their calculations, within a fraction of a percentage point or by two ultimately irrelevant percentage points. You know, the kind of difference you suggested about tracking it from the day after election day instead of on election day and all that:

[URL]https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/602714/best-and-worst-presidents-according-to-the-stock-market[/URL]

However, I will point out that my way of simply breaking it down by their number of years in office for the sake of Dem apples to Repub apples comparison and nothing to do with producing a tedious Per Annum Growth / Decline Rate result overstated the Annual results of all of those 5 full term presidents, Dem and Repub alike. BFD. Hardly a sign of partisanship. And in neither my nor Kiplinger's nor I suspect your calculation was the order and pattern of the full term Dem results surpassing those of the full term Repubs altered, correct?[/QUOTE]Come on Tooms. You could make be making hay with Trump's indictment instead of trying to argue math with someone who's a much better mathematician than you.

First, Kiplinger's number's are all within 0. 4% of my numbers, for every president on your list except Biden. That is, for George H W Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barrack Obama, and Donald Trump. Biden's is significantly different because we didn't use the same end date. You were complaining about me carrying a date to three significant digits earlier. Well, if you just carry the percentages to two significant figures, Kiplinger's and my numbers are the same. Your numbers on the other hand are way off from Kiplinger's, because your method of calculation is bogus.

Furthermore, my numbers are right. I'll repeat our posts below, which show starting and ending values for the indices. You conveniently picked Trump instead of, say, George W. Bush, because Trump's a Republican and Kiplinger's number is slightly lower than mine.

Anyway, 2271 x 1. 14 x 1. 14 x 1. 14 x 1. 14 = 3835.

For Kiplinger, it's 2271 x 1. 137 x 1. 137 x 1. 137 x 1. 137 = 3795.

You'll note below I was using 3841 for the ending value. Your 3851 was actually the correct number. Kiplingers number is a little low, but not off by much. You and I are both using January 20 for start and end dates. They may be doing something slightly different.

And yes, when you just look at George H. W. Bush through Donald Trump, like what you did originally, then the Democratic terms look better. That's why I congratulated you on identifying a spurious correlation. You add say Biden, Reagan and Carter and the Republicans may look better. I don't know and I don't care because trying to a prove spurious correlation (correlation which isn't causal) is a stupid exercise.

Your math exaggerates the performance more during the Democratic presidencies because both served 8 years, while two of the three Republicans served just one term. I'm not going to try to explain why because this is like trying to teach calculus to 7th grader who believes math is some kind of political propaganda.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2824599]
GHW Bush, 286 to 433 = 52% gain, divided by 4 = 13%.

Bill Clinton, 433 to 1342 = 210% gain, divided by 8 = 26.25%.

GW Bush, 1342 to 805 = -40% "gain", divided by 8 = -10%.

Barack Obama, 805 to 2271 = 182% gain, divided by 8 = 22.75%.

Donald Trump, 2271 to 3851 = 69.5% gain, divided by 4 = 17.3%.

Joe Biden, 3851 to 4284 yesterday = 11.2%.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Tiny 12;2824569]
The numbers in your table are wrong. Here are the per annum gains in the S&P 500 Index during each presidency. Bush was handicapped by a recession that he had little to do with. Trump similarly was hurt by a pandemic that he could not have prevented, contrary to your belief. And Obama was helped by taking the reins at the bottom of a recession.

GHW Bush, 11%/ year. [b] (Kiplinger: 11%/year)[/b]

Bill Clinton, 15%/ year. [b](Kiplinger: 15.2%/year)[/b]

GW Bush, -6%/ year. [b](Kiplinger: -5.6%/year)[/b]

Barack Obama, 14%/ year. [b](Kiplinger: 13.8%/year)[/b]

Donald Trump, 14%/ year. [b](Kiplinger: 13.7%/year[/b]

[/QUOTE]


[QUOTE=Tiny 12;2824712]We're actually using exactly the same numbers except for the number at the end of the Trump administration. I was using 3841.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2825601]Come on Tooms. You could make be making hay with Trump's indictment instead of trying to argue math with someone who's a much better mathematician than you.

First, Kiplinger's number's are all within 0. 4% of my numbers, for every president on your list except Biden. That is, for George H W Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barrack Obama, and Donald Trump. Biden's is significantly different because we didn't use the same end date. You were complaining about me carrying a date to three significant digits earlier. Well, if you just carry the percentages to two significant figures, Kiplinger's and my numbers are the same. Your numbers on the other hand are way off from Kiplinger's, because your method of calculation is bogus.

Furthermore, my numbers are right. I'll repeat our posts below, which show starting and ending values for the indices. You conveniently picked Trump instead of, say, George W. Bush, because Trump's a Republican and Kiplinger's number is slightly lower than mine.

Anyway, 2271 x 1. 14 x 1. 14 x 1. 14 x 1. 14 = 3835.

For Kiplinger, it's 2271 x 1. 137 x 1. 137 x 1. 137 x 1. 137 = 3795.

You'll note below I was using 3841 for the ending value. Your 3851 was actually the correct number. My number is closer to the truth than Kiplinger's, but only slightly closer.

[b]And yes, when you just look at George H. W. Bush through Donald Trump, like what you did originally, then the Democratic terms look better. That's why I congratulated you on identifying a spurious correlation. You add say Biden, Reagan and Carter and the Republicans may look better. I don't know and I don't care because trying to a prove spurious correlation (correlation which isn't causal) is a stupid exercise.[/b]

Your math exaggerates the performance more during the Democratic presidencies because both served 8 years, while two of the three Republicans served just one term. I'm not going to try to explain why because this is like trying to teach calculus to 7th grader who believes math is some kind of political propaganda.[/QUOTE]The "spurious" relationship between superior economic and stock market performance under Dem presidents vs Repub presidents goes back about as far as any financial analyst can go. That has been documented, calculated and proven mathmatically so often and by so many financial analysts and publications I really didn't think I needed to go back any further than 2-3 Dems and Repubs this time. Even a 7th grader could look it up and know it within minutes. Pretty much the same reason I did not feel the need to break it down to precisely how much Per Annum Growth or Decline a dollar invested on January 20,1989 would experience until today, 0. 36 or 0. 37 or perhaps 0. 38 of the way into 2023:

[B]Who is better for the Stock Market: Democrats or Republicans?
Arthur Stein Financial, LLC | Sep 9, 2012[/B]

[URL]https://www.arthursteinfinancial.com/blog/who-better-stock-market-democrats-or-republicans[/URL]

[QUOTE]J.P. Morgans June, 2012 Guide to the Markets report detailed the affect on stock market returns of political control of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives from 1940 to 2008.

The results are surprising.
[b]According to the report, the stock market performed best when the President was a Democrat. The weakest returns occurred with Republican Presidents.[/b][/QUOTE][B]Democratic presidents are better for the stock market and economy than Republicans, one study shows[/B]

[URL]https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-election-democratic-republican-presidents-better-performance-economy-gdp-2020-8-1029528932[/URL]

[QUOTE][b]Contrary to popular belief[/b], the stock market and economy have performed better under Democratic presidents than it has under Republican presidents, according to data going back to 1946.

Liberum, a UK-based investment bank, pointed to historical stock market returns and annual GDP growth to make the case that a Republican president's drive to cut taxes and reduce government spending often leads to lower economic expansion and stock market returns than when a Democratic president is in office.

Since 1947, the S&P 500 has posted a total annual return of 10.8% under Democratic presidents, versus 5.6% under Republican presidents.

And if you exclude the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic, both of which happened under a Republican president, the data still points to stronger returns for Democratic presidents versus Republican presidents.[/QUOTE]How did that utterly mathmatically inaccurate "popular belief" come about?

Why, from the tireless efforts by pro Repub Mainstream Media and pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersiders to spread such nonsense, of course.

Actually Kiplinger's and my numbers are the same, except I rounded to the closest percent. Since you were criticizing me for using 2.37 years instead of 2.4 years it’s going to be interesting to see how you’ll try to show my rounding is partisan.

Oops, I guess you already did.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2825601]Come on Tooms. You could make be making hay with Trump's indictment instead of trying to argue math with someone who's a much better mathematician than you.
[/QUOTE]Because Repub criminality, even Anti-American criminality and Un-Constitutional criminalty is totally irrelevant to whether or not he or another Repub gets into the White House to produce their classic Great Repub Economic Disasters and Massive Job Losses.

All 74 Million numbskulls who voted for Trump in 2020 would enthusiastically do so again in 2024 even if he was sitting in a prison cell locked to leg irons. If anything, a higher percentage of Repubs would do so than in 2020.

The only chance that some Repub numbskulls might stop voting for Repubs instead of Dems is for their eyes to be opened to the historically mathmatically proven fact that a Repub in the White House is really shitty for their wallets, contrary to what pro Repub Mainstream Media and pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersiders try time and again to con them into mistakenly believing.

Trump being proven to be an America-hating, High National Security Risk Felon many times over won't do it. It might even improve his standing with Repub voters.

"Now that my favorite president, Donald Trump, is facing a 37-count indictment from the feds, I join with my brothers and sisters in MAGA, and with all sensible Republicans, in saying this: I'm not sure I want to live in a country where a former president can wave around classified documents he's not supposed to have and say, "This is secret information. Look at this," and then be held accountable for his actions.

I mean, what kind of country have we become? One in which federal prosecutors can take "evidence" before a "grand jury," and that grand jury can "vote to indict" a former president for 37 alleged "crimes"? Look at all the other people out there in America, including Democrats like Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, who HAVEN'T been indicted for crimes on the flimsy excuse that there is no "evidence" they did crimes. THAT'S TOTALLY UNFAIR!

Or as Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn tweeted: "Where are the investigations against the Clintons and the Bidens? What about fairness? Two tiers of justice at work. "

TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don't like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.

It's like America has become a banana republic, as long as you do as I've done and refuse to look up the definition of "banana republic. "

And of course, you know who's behind this travesty of justice, right? It's so-called President Biden, who is both frail and senile and also a laser-sharp master at conducting witch hunts.

Sure, they'll tell you the indictment came via a special counsel investigation, and that the federal special counsel statute keeps such investigations walled off from political influence. But that's complete nonsense, unless we're talking about special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr while Trump was president and tasked with investigating the NEFARIOUS LEFT-WING CRIMES committed in the Trump-Russia probe. Durham was above reproach, and the fact that the New York Times reported he "charged no high-level F. Be. I. Or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either" is something I will ignore.

Current special counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand — he's bad news. I know this because Trump has said repeatedly that Smith's investigation is a witch hunt, and I've never known Trump to lie about anything.

Keep in mind, in 2016, Trump said: "I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law. ".

So after he said that, you expect me to believe he didn't protect classified information? Just because, according to the indictment, there's a recording of him holding a classified document in his office at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and saying to two staff members and an interviewer: "See, as president I could have declassified it. . Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret. ".

You call that "damning evidence," I call it, "What about Hunter Biden's laptop?

Now I can already hear all the libs out there whining and saying that if it was Biden or Hillary or Hunter getting indicted, I wouldn't be saying a word about two-tiers of justice or the weaponization of the department of justice or anything like that.

Well, those whiners would be right, but the difference is I believe Biden and Hillary and Hunter are all guilty and should be locked up for life, whereas with Trump, I believe he is great and innocent and the best president America has ever known.

It's like this: If Hillary got indicted for murder, I would say, "Yes, she is absolutely a murderer. Lock her up. ".

But if in some outrageous scenario President Trump was indicted for murder just because he told a bunch of people that he did a murder, I would say: "How dare you charge this man with murder when others in the USA have not been charged with murder! There are clearly two tiers of justice, one in which my favorite president, who said he murdered someone, is charged with murder and one in which people who haven't murdered are not charged with murder!

And that, my liberal friends, makes perfect sense to me and my MAGA companions. So watch out. The Trump Train's a comin'. "

[URL]https://news.yahoo.com/dont-want-live-country-where-080013662.html[/URL]

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2825620]The "spurious" relationship between superior economic and stock market performance under Dem presidents vs Repub presidents goes back about as far as any financial analyst can go. That has been documented, calculated and proven mathmatically so often and by so many financial analysts and publications I really didn't think I needed to go back any further than 2-3 Dems and Repubs this time. Even a 7th grader could look it up and know it within minutes. Pretty much the same reason I did not feel the need to break it down to precisely how much Per Annum Growth or Decline a dollar invested on January 20,1989 would experience until today, 0. 36 or 0. 37 or perhaps 0. 38 of the way into 2023:

[B]Who is better for the Stock Market: Democrats or Republicans?
Arthur Stein Financial, LLC | Sep 9, 2012[/B]

[URL]https://www.arthursteinfinancial.com/blog/who-better-stock-market-democrats-or-republicans[/URL]

[B]Democratic presidents are better for the stock market and economy than Republicans, one study shows[/B]

[URL]https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-election-democratic-republican-presidents-better-performance-economy-gdp-2020-8-1029528932[/URL]

How did that utterly mathmatically inaccurate "popular belief" come about?

Why, from the tireless efforts by pro Repub Mainstream Media and pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersiders to spread such nonsense, of course.[/QUOTE]Well, yeah, a spurious relationship between a Republican controlled House of Representatives and favorable stock market performance goes back a long way too. It's not causal either, although I do give some credence to the belief that a Democratic President and Republican House has historically been the best for America. Budget bills originate in the House. When one party controls the House, Senate and Presidency, it goes crazy with spending. We saw that recently in 2021 and 2022. And this year the Republican House, with a Democratic President, was able to claw back $1. 5 trillion of the $5 trillion+ in unfunded spending passed by the Democrats the previous two years. And no reasonable person would question the clawbacks, in their totality.

Your view that the party of the president is one of the main determinants of stock market performance is incredibly simplistic.

This is from the CNBC link below.

Sam Stovall, CFRA chief investment strategist, looked at how the market has performed under six political scenarios: a White House and Congress all under the same party, a White House with a split Congress, and a White House and Congress hailing from two different parties. Stovall included election data going back to 1945.

Of all the possible combinations, stocks appear to perform best when a Democrat is in the White House and the Congress is split. The second highest returns happen when a Democrat is president and Republicans control the Congress.

But ultimately, Stovall said, investors should be wary of reading too much into these numbers.

[b]"It's a good example of how you can have data tell whatever story you want," he said. "If you want to favor the Democrats, talk about the presidency. If you want to favor the Republicans, talk about House control. ".

Bob French, director of investment analysis at McLean Asset Management, agrees. "We can go in and slice and dice the data however we want and most of the time come up with whatever answer we want. ".[/b]

[URL]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/are-republicans-or-democrats-better-for-the-stock-market.html[/URL]

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2825635]Because Repub criminality, even Anti-American criminality and Un-Constitutional criminalty is totally irrelevant to whether or not he or another Repub gets into the White House to produce their classic Great Repub Economic Disasters and Massive Job Losses.

All 74 Million numbskulls who voted for Trump in 2020 would enthusiastically do so again in 2024 even if he was sitting in a prison cell locked to leg irons. If anything, a higher percentage of Repubs would do so than in 2020.

The only chance that some Repub numbskulls might stop voting for Repubs instead of Dems is for their eyes to be opened to the historically mathmatically proven fact that a Repub in the White House is really shitty for their wallets, contrary to what pro Repub Mainstream Media and pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersiders try time and again to con them into mistakenly believing.

Trump being proven to be an America-hating, High National Security Risk Felon many times over won't do it. It might even improve his standing with Repub voters.[/QUOTE]How can Trump be more popular among Republicans than people like Tim Scott, Chris Christie and Chris Sununu, good prospective candidates for president who wouldn't divide the country? Why is it that Trump currently has a slight edge over Biden in the average of nationwide polls?

[URL]https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html[/URL]

Well, part of the reason is that many Americans are sick and tired of the arrogance and sanctimony of Democratic leaders like Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. They don't like being called stupid, deplorables and dregs of society. By supporting Trump, they're giving a big FU to Democratic politicians, as well as the so called "RINOS. " And Trump gave a big FU to the DOJ and FBI, when he didn't turn over confidential documents and lied to them. I'm going to be surprised if they don't nail him. You don't tell the Man to get fucked and get away with it, even if you're an ex-president. But ironically this may increase Trump's popularity among the faithful.

The belief that members of the opposing party are criminals, anti-American and idiots, which you express above, is emblematic of why we're so divided. It's a sad state we're in.

[QUOTE=PVMonger;2825727]"Now that my favorite president, Donald Trump, is facing a 37-count indictment from the feds, I join with my brothers and sisters in MAGA, and with all sensible Republicans, in saying this: I'm not sure I want to live in a country where a former president can wave around classified documents he's not supposed to have and say, "This is secret information. Look at this," and then be held accountable for his actions.

I mean, what kind of country have we become? One in which federal prosecutors can take "evidence" before a "grand jury," and that grand jury can "vote to indict" a former president for 37 alleged "crimes"? Look at all the other people out there in America, including Democrats like Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, who HAVEN'T been indicted for crimes on the flimsy excuse that there is no "evidence" they did crimes. THAT'S TOTALLY UNFAIR!

Or as Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn tweeted: "Where are the investigations against the Clintons and the Bidens? What about fairness? Two tiers of justice at work. "

TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don't like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.

It's like America has become a banana republic, as long as you do as I've done and refuse to look up the definition of "banana republic. "

And of course, you know who's behind this travesty of justice, right? It's so-called President Biden, who is both frail and senile and also a laser-sharp master at conducting witch hunts.

Sure, they'll tell you the indictment came via a special counsel investigation, and that the federal special counsel statute keeps such investigations walled off from political influence. But that's complete nonsense, unless we're talking about special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr while Trump was president and tasked with investigating the NEFARIOUS LEFT-WING CRIMES committed in the Trump-Russia probe. Durham was above reproach, and the fact that the New York Times reported he "charged no high-level F. Be. I. Or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either" is something I will ignore.

Current special counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand he's bad news. I know this because Trump has said repeatedly that Smith's investigation is a witch hunt, and I've never known Trump to lie about anything.

Keep in mind, in 2016, Trump said: "I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law. ".

So after he said that, you expect me to believe he didn't protect classified information? Just because, according to the indictment, there's a recording of him holding a classified document in his office at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and saying to two staff members and an interviewer: "See, as president I could have declassified it. . Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret. ".

You call that "damning evidence," I call it, "What about Hunter Biden's laptop?

Now I can already hear all the libs out there whining and saying that if it was Biden or Hillary or Hunter getting indicted, I wouldn't be saying a word about two-tiers of justice or the weaponization of the department of justice or anything like that.

Well, those whiners would be right, but the difference is I believe Biden and Hillary and Hunter are all guilty and should be locked up for life, whereas with Trump, I believe he is great and innocent and the best president America has ever known.

It's like this: If Hillary got indicted for murder, I would say, "Yes, she is absolutely a murderer. Lock her up. ".

But if in some outrageous scenario President Trump was indicted for murder just because he told a bunch of people that he did a murder, I would say: "How dare you charge this man with murder when others in the USA have not been charged with murder! There are clearly two tiers of justice, one in which my favorite president, who said he murdered someone, is charged with murder and one in which people who haven't murdered are not charged with murder!

And that, my liberal friends, makes perfect sense to me and my MAGA companions. So watch out. The Trump Train's a comin'. "

[URL]https://news.yahoo.com/dont-want-live-country-where-080013662.html[/URL][/QUOTE]It's going to be interesting to see if some prominent Republicans change their view after they read the indictment. It changed mine. Hillary's mistakes potentially were far more damaging to national security than Trump's. But Trump for some crazy reason appears to have intentionally misled the DOJ and FBI, and lied to them.

Here's a link to the indictment, if you're interested.

[URL]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.3.0.pdf[/URL]

And this is why I believe Hillary's oversights were potentially more damaging.

[B][I]The personal email account Hillary Clinton used for business purposes during her tenure as secretary of state was almost certainly hacked by countries like Russia or Iran, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense under Bush and Obama) said Thursday.
[/I][/B]
[URL]https://theweek.com/speedreads/600728/did-russia-read-hillary-clintons-emails-robert-gates-says-odds-are-pretty-high[/URL]

[B][I]Michael Hayden, former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency said "I would lose all respect for a whole bunch of foreign intelligence agencies if they weren't sitting back, paging through the emails."
[/I][/B]
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy[/URL]

[B][I]Clinton repeatedly claimed that she did not send or receive any information that was marked classified in her personal emails. Thats false. FBI Director James Comey said more than 2,000 emails contained classified information and some of them bore markings indicating the presence of classified information.[/I][/B]

[URL]https://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/clintons-handling-of-classified-information/[/URL]

I don't think Hillary Clinton deserved to be prosecuted though. Trump, probably, assuming he doesn't end up in jail. All that's my Libertarian side speaking. Maybe home incarceration with an ankle bracelet would be the best punishment for Trump -- enough time to keep him out of the 2024 primaries, so that hopefully a Republican who can beat Biden will be nominated. I might vote for that if I were on a jury.

The Biden and Clinton cases (also the Pence case) [B]are not[/B] the same as Trump's. It's [B]the facts[/B] that are controlling, and I predict that Trump is going to be convicted for being the shifty idiot that he is. He did it to himself, and now he's going to pay a price. Twice impeached, liable in a rape case, indicted in a hush money case, and now this. And an indictment in Georgia for election interference coming. What a moron and the worst President [B]ever[/B]. Lady Justice shall prevail!

[URL]https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/11/clinton-biden-classified-documents-trump-indictment/[/URL]

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2825853]It's going to be interesting to see if some prominent Republicans change their view after they read the indictment. It changed mine.[/QUOTE]Tiny, I would vote to indict but the big one is the lead. Here is a link from a NY Post article:

Trump apparently made the admission during a meeting with a group that included his communications aide Margo Martin and were helping to write an autobiography of Mark Meadows, Trump's last White House chief of staff.

The autobiography later recounted that during the meeting, Trump talked about "a four-page report typed up by Mark Milley himself.

It contained the general's own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency. " (Sources who spoke with CNN disputed that Milley authored the report.).

Trump expressed frustration that Milley refused to take responsibility for the attack plan and added that if he could release the document, it would undermine Milley's account he gave in a July 2021 article in The New Yorker.

In that telling, Milley pushed back against plans by Trump to strike Iran after the 2020 election, telling him at one point: "If you do this, you're going to have a fking war. ".

End of link.

And this is the alarmist article from General Miley, [URL]https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/youre-gonna-have-a-fucking-war-mark-milleys-fight-to-stop-trump-from-striking-iran[/URL].

We will see what happens Tiny but my preliminary take is this general is a lying war mongering POS who is hiding behind the top secret classification system so he has not outted as a liar. This is exactly the kind of bullshit CYA swamp shit that I want made public. If a journalist would have gotten his hands on this document and published it a la the Pentagon Papers, he would win a Pulitzer.

And my take as of now is this general is a way bigger threat to our way of life than Trump is. The government will try to limit the extent of the conversation but I do not think this judge who was appointed by Trump is going to place strict limits on testimony.

Best of all if Trump wins in 2024, then the first thing he will do is declassify this document so is it really that big of a deal? I am not buying now that it is, but we will see. Given Russiagate, Ukrainegate, the bullshit about 1-6, and the intelligence agents and Hunter Biden's laptop being classic Russian disinformation, this sure looks a lot more like the swamp protecting its own than a threat to our nation.

It seems to me we have a disgusting swamp full of liars desperate to keep Trump out of office so he cannot expose them, but we will see.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2825849]Well, yeah, a spurious relationship between a Republican controlled House of Representatives and favorable stock market performance goes back a long way too. It's not causal either, although I do give some credence to the belief that a Democratic President and Republican House has historically been the best for America. Budget bills originate in the House. When one party controls the House, Senate and Presidency, it goes crazy with spending. We saw that recently in 2021 and 2022. And this year the Republican House, with a Democratic President, was able to claw back $1. 5 trillion of the $5 trillion+ in unfunded spending passed by the Democrats the previous two years. And no reasonable person would question the clawbacks, in their totality.

[b]Your view that the party of the president is one of the main determinants of stock market performance is incredibly simplistic.[/b]

This is from the CNBC link below.

Sam Stovall, CFRA chief investment strategist, looked at how the market has performed under six political scenarios: a White House and Congress all under the same party, a White House with a split Congress, and a White House and Congress hailing from two different parties. Stovall included election data going back to 1945.

Of all the possible combinations, stocks appear to perform best when a Democrat is in the White House and the Congress is split. The second highest returns happen when a Democrat is president and Republicans control the Congress.

But ultimately, Stovall said, investors should be wary of reading too much into these numbers.

[b]"It's a good example of how you can have data tell whatever story you want," he said. "If you want to favor the Democrats, talk about the presidency. If you want to favor the Republicans, talk about House control. ".

Bob French, director of investment analysis at McLean Asset Management, agrees. "We can go in and slice and dice the data however we want and most of the time come up with whatever answer we want. ".[/b]

[URL]https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/are-republicans-or-democrats-better-for-the-stock-market.html[/URL][/QUOTE]I have repeatedly agreed that the relationship between Repub presidents and every Great Depression, Great Recession and Massive Jobs Destruction and none of the Great Recoveries, Great Economic Expansions and Historic Jobs Creation since the late 1920's is "spurious", "a wild coincidence" and "bad luck for Repubs ".

The same as the next Great Depression, Great Recession and Massive Jobs Destruction that happens under a Repub and not a Dem.

And the one after that.

And the one after that.

And the one after that.

And so on.

[QUOTE=PVMonger;2825727]"Now that my favorite president, Donald Trump, is facing a 37-count indictment from the feds, I join with my brothers and sisters in MAGA, and with all sensible Republicans, in saying this: I'm not sure I want to live in a country where a former president can wave around classified documents he's not supposed to have and say, "This is secret information. Look at this," and then be held accountable for his actions.

I mean, what kind of country have we become? One in which federal prosecutors can take "evidence" before a "grand jury," and that grand jury can "vote to indict" a former president for 37 alleged "crimes"? Look at all the other people out there in America, including Democrats like Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, who HAVEN'T been indicted for crimes on the flimsy excuse that there is no "evidence" they did crimes. THAT'S TOTALLY UNFAIR!

Or as Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn tweeted: "Where are the investigations against the Clintons and the Bidens? What about fairness? Two tiers of justice at work. "

TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don't like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.

It's like America has become a banana republic, as long as you do as I've done and refuse to look up the definition of "banana republic. "

And of course, you know who's behind this travesty of justice, right? It's so-called President Biden, who is both frail and senile and also a laser-sharp master at conducting witch hunts.

Sure, they'll tell you the indictment came via a special counsel investigation, and that the federal special counsel statute keeps such investigations walled off from political influence. But that's complete nonsense, unless we're talking about special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr while Trump was president and tasked with investigating the NEFARIOUS LEFT-WING CRIMES committed in the Trump-Russia probe. Durham was above reproach, and the fact that the New York Times reported he "charged no high-level F. Be. I. Or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either" is something I will ignore.

Current special counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand he's bad news. I know this because Trump has said repeatedly that Smith's investigation is a witch hunt, and I've never known Trump to lie about anything.

Keep in mind, in 2016, Trump said: "I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law. ".

So after he said that, you expect me to believe he didn't protect classified information? Just because, according to the indictment, there's a recording of him holding a classified document in his office at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and saying to two staff members and an interviewer: "See, as president I could have declassified it. . Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret. ".

You call that "damning evidence," I call it, "What about Hunter Biden's laptop?

Now I can already hear all the libs out there whining and saying that if it was Biden or Hillary or Hunter getting indicted, I wouldn't be saying a word about two-tiers of justice or the weaponization of the department of justice or anything like that.

Well, those whiners would be right, but the difference is I believe Biden and Hillary and Hunter are all guilty and should be locked up for life, whereas with Trump, I believe he is great and innocent and the best president America has ever known.

It's like this: If Hillary got indicted for murder, I would say, "Yes, she is absolutely a murderer. Lock her up. ".

But if in some outrageous scenario President Trump was indicted for murder just because he told a bunch of people that he did a murder, I would say: "How dare you charge this man with murder when others in the USA have not been charged with murder! There are clearly two tiers of justice, one in which my favorite president, who said he murdered someone, is charged with murder and one in which people who haven't murdered are not charged with murder!

And that, my liberal friends, makes perfect sense to me and my MAGA companions. So watch out. The Trump Train's a comin'. "

[URL]https://news.yahoo.com/dont-want-live-country-where-080013662.html[/URL][/QUOTE]No joke and no exaggeration, that mirrors the stated sentiment of every 2016 and 2020 Trump voter I know personally. And I know several.

Frankly, I am surprised wingers have not yet floated what I might call the "See? Trump was not indicted for wearing his wife's panties!" deflection response to this as they have continued to float with their "Russiagate! See? Mueller did not charge Trump with collusion!" deflection response to the Mueller Report.

Uh-huh. That would be because, like the issue of collusion regarding the Mueller investigation, Trump wearing his wife's panties might be embarrassing for him, but it is not illegal and the prosecutors and Grand Jury here were not even looking for it.

But there is still time for wingers to come up with something like that.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2825852]How can Trump be more popular among Republicans than people like Tim Scott, Chris Christie and Chris Sununu, good prospective candidates for president who wouldn't divide the country? Why is it that Trump currently has a slight edge over Biden in the average of nationwide polls?

[URL]https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html[/URL]

Well, part of the reason is that many Americans are sick and tired of the arrogance and sanctimony of Democratic leaders like Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden. They don't like being called stupid, deplorables and dregs of society. By supporting Trump, they're giving a big FU to Democratic politicians, as well as the so called "RINOS. " And Trump gave a big FU to the DOJ and FBI, when he didn't turn over confidential documents and lied to them. I'm going to be surprised if they don't nail him. You don't tell the Man to get fucked and get away with it, even if you're an ex-president. But ironically this may increase Trump's popularity among the faithful.

The belief that members of the opposing party are criminals, anti-American and idiots, which you express above, is emblematic of why we're so divided. It's a sad state we're in.[/QUOTE]Here is a link for a Polling Service that is a bit less Winger-Leaning than RealClearPolitics:

[URL]https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/[/URL]

Since that one shows results more favorable to Biden, they make it unnecessarily difficut to find the pertinent polls on that default link. So you might get to them easier by following a Google Search for "538 polls 2024 presidenial election. ".

Anyway, Biden either beats or ties Trump in 6 out of 8 of the most recent head-to-head match ups since late May. Biden also beats or ties DeSantis in 6 out of 7 of those head-to-head recent polls in that same timeframe. This Polling Service apparently does not do a running consensus on that question and I did not bother to do the math to see if Biden beats Trump and / or DeSantis by 1. 8 points as Trump does over Biden so far in that Winger-Leaning RCP consensus. If you do the math on it, please let us know what the results are since late May.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2825853]It's going to be interesting to see if some prominent Republicans change their view after they read the indictment. It changed mine. Hillary's mistakes potentially were far more damaging to national security than Trump's. But Trump for some crazy reason appears to have intentionally misled the DOJ and FBI, and lied to them.

Here's a link to the indictment, if you're interested.

[URL]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.3.0.pdf[/URL]

And this is why I believe Hillary's oversights were potentially more damaging.

[B][I]The personal email account Hillary Clinton used for business purposes during her tenure as secretary of state was almost certainly hacked by countries like Russia or Iran, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense under Bush and Obama) said Thursday.
[/I][/B]
[URL]https://theweek.com/speedreads/600728/did-russia-read-hillary-clintons-emails-robert-gates-says-odds-are-pretty-high[/URL]

[B][I]Michael Hayden, former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency said "I would lose all respect for a whole bunch of foreign intelligence agencies if they weren't sitting back, paging through the emails."
[/I][/B]
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy[/URL]

[B][I]Clinton repeatedly claimed that she did not send or receive any information that was marked classified in her personal emails. Thats false. FBI Director James Comey said more than 2,000 emails contained classified information and some of them bore markings indicating the presence of classified information.[/I][/B]

[URL]https://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/clintons-handling-of-classified-information/[/URL]

I don't think Hillary Clinton deserved to be prosecuted though. Trump, probably, assuming he doesn't end up in jail. All that's my Libertarian side speaking. Maybe home incarceration with an ankle bracelet would be the best punishment for Trump -- enough time to keep him out of the 2024 primaries, so that hopefully a Republican who can beat Biden will be nominated. I might vote for that if I were on a jury.[/QUOTE]So the conclusion by some experts was that, despite there being no evidence of Clinton's server being hacked, it "probably" was.

How would that make her intention and effort for security "potentially more damaging" than restricting the emails to the State Department's server, which, along with the Pentagon's server, show an abundance of evidence that it was absolutely and most certainly hacked at a historic level?

[B]Pentagon, State Department among agencies hacked: report.
12/15/20[/B]

[URL]https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/530357-pentagon-state-department-among-agencies-hacked-report/[/URL]