American Politics

[Elvis 2008]

Odds are high you had it right the first time when you said "baloney. " Your typical older expat living in the 3rd World is there to try and stretch a meager to modest retirement income. That's even though you'll meet more than your share of real estate tycoons, various mega-millionaires, billionaires, and especially Navy Seals in 3rd World monger watering holes. Wink. Just pull up a seat at the bar and start a conversation with the guy next to you. You'll hear about it in no time. LOL.

Best description I have heard of typical ISGer right there.

[Paulie97]

Russia did unilaterally try to interfere in the election. Putin was out to get Hillary because he believed she interfered in the 2012 Russian election.

You completely skip over the fact that isolationist and traitorous and Trump was by far the more Russia friendly candidate. Just as you are quite a Russia friendly poster, and continually betray your true agenda while calling yourself center right and Libertarian.

[Tiny 12]

2016.

June 9: Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. The Trump aides say her information was not useful and that the meeting primarily focused on adoption policy.

June 19: Papadopoulos offers in an email to a high-ranking campaign official to travel to Russia to meet with officials if Trump is unable to. He states he is willing "to make the trip off the record if it's in the interest of the Mr. Trump and the campaign to meet specific people. ".

Week of July 18: Three Trump national security advisers Page, J. The. Gordon and Walid Phares meet with Kislyak in Cleveland. Theytell him they hope to see improved relations with Russia.

July 20: Sen. Jeff Sessions, an early Trump endorser who led his national security advisory committee, meets with Ambassador Kislyak and a group of other ambassadors at a Republican National Convention event.

July 27: Trump calls on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails from the private server she used as secretary of state.

"I will tell you this, Russia: If you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said at a news conference. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. ".

Aug. 14: The New York Times publishes an expos on Ukrainian documents that appear to show that $12.7 million in cash was earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned Party of Regions.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, a prominent Trump surrogate, meets in his Senate office with Kislyak.

Trump tells the Kremlin-backed Russia Today inan interview that "it's probably unlikely" Russia is interfering in the election.

Nov. 10: A senior Russian diplomat, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov, tellsInterfax news agency that there "were contacts" between the Russian government and the Trump campaign during the election campaign. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later tells the Associated Press that the contacts were "quite natural, quite normal" and took place with both campaigns.

December: Flynn and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner meet with Kislyak at Trump Tower.

Dec. 28: Obama signs an executive order to sanction Russia for its interference in the presidential election. The sanctions are to take effect the following day.

Kislyak contacts Flynn.

Dec. 29: Obama orders the ejection of 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the country and imposes sanctions on two Russian intelligence services as retaliation for the election-interference campaign.

Flynn has a series of phone calls with Kislyak. He would later acknowledge that it was possible they discussed the newly imposed sanctions, but he "couldn't be certain. " According to The New York Times, the phone calls came after Kislyak was brought to the State Department and informed of the sanctions, and became "irate and threatened a forceful Russian response. ".

Court filings later reveal that Flynn asks Kislyak to refrain from escalating the situation in response to the sanctions. This conversation takes place after Flynn confers with a senior official on the Trump transition team about how to address the sanctions.

Flynn calls the transition official after his conversation with Kislyak to update him on the call.

Flynn goes on to lie to the FBI about this on Jan. 24.

https://www.politico.com/trump-russi...line-of-events

That's only a 6-month timeline. Shall we continue?

Yes, please. Continue. This is entertaining. It sounds a lot like the logic that the alt Right uses to link Joe Biden to billions in bribes from China and the Ukraine. Again, yes, I believe that Russia did try to interfere in the election. And believe that Trump perhaps colluded when he asked Russia on national television to try to find Hillary's emails.

[EihTooms]

If Eisenhower were a Democrat, you'd love him, and you'd try to somehow pin the blame for Vietnam on Richard Nixon. Hell, if Trump had remained a card carrying member of the Democratic Party, you'd love him too.

Think about what you wrote Tooms. That's crazy. See deaths by year in Vietnam here.

https://www.archives.gov/research/mi...lty-statistics

During Eisenhower's term in office, during 1956 to 1960 (or from 1954 if you prefer), a total of 9 American servicemen died in Vietnam. From 2000 to 2006, five servicemen died there, and we weren't at war with Vietnam. According to Wikipedia, we had fewer than 1,000 advisors in Vietnam during Eisenhower's administration. That rose to 23,000 advisors under Kennedy. LBJ ramped that on up to 549,500 servicemen. Ultimately 58,220 Americans died in Vietnam.

What I really don't understand is that you apparently believe this war was just and good, because you praise LBJ's escalation of the war effort. (I disagree on that BTW.) Yet you criticize Eisenhower, for doing what we've done in many countries all over the world -- provide military advisors to friendly regimes.

Eisenhower's total commitment to replacing the defeated and retreated French and fight in their stead by word, deed and treaty was voluntary. But once commited and then having the USA troops present, thanks to Eisenhower's by then 10 years long commitment to his Domino Theory, be attacked, LBJ's decision to make it legal for us to fire back was far more inevitable and unavoidable than voluntary.

Unless, like Reagan in Beirut, you wanted LBJ to turn tail and run in response to our being attacked and thereby teach opposing forces in the region and elsewhere in the world that they can count on America to respond that way to any attack or show of aggression in the future.

If Eisenhower had been a Dem he still would have had one of the most atrocious economic and worst jobs creating records of all time. He would have been an impossible to believe outlier among the ranks of Dem presidential economic stewardship in modern times.

If Trump had remained a supposed Dem he never would have entered politics as one. To run and win as a Dem he knew very well he would have to actually work hard, pay attention, Know Something and Do Something to produce positive results for America while avoiding those "once in 100 years catastrophes" that due to wild coincidence of course only develop under Repubs and MSM would never notice or praise him for it.

That would be anathema to someone like Trump and he knew it. That's why he, Reagan and other losing celebrity types who decide to try politics for a change switch from Dem to Repub before they do.

Besides, even if Trump had somehow missed that obvious difference over his decades of observing MSM's love affair with those alarming disaster headlines the Repub Party provides them over and over and over again, he never would have made it past the first Dem debate in his bid for the nomination.

Dems tend not to fall for failed businessmen / blatantly obvious con men whose only chance to win might be his extraordinarily tight collusion with Russia and whose rare stated goal was to place enough Federalist Society judges on the bench to outlaw Sex For Pleasure and make sure all acts of sexual intercourse are solely for the purpose of procreation.

[Paulie97]

Baloney.... I'd say that's what you should worry about, but you benefitted greatly from the last period of Republican control of government. Maybe you will again, the next time that happens. With the corporate income tax cut and the Qualified Business Income deduction provided to owners of rental real estate like you and Trump, your mutual fund and real estate investments put together are worth perhaps 15% or 20% more than they would be otherwise.

Odds are high you had it right the first time when you said "baloney. " Your typical older expat living in the 3rd World is there to try and stretch a meager to modest retirement income. That's even though you'll meet more than your share of real estate tycoons, various mega-millionaires, billionaires, and especially Navy Seals in 3rd World monger watering holes. Wink. Just pull up a seat at the bar and start a conversation with the guy next to you. You'll hear about it in no time. LOL.

[Xpartan]

Team Trump never colluded, other perhaps than Trump encouraging Russia to pursue Hillary's email messages on national television. Russia did unilaterally try to interfere in the election. Putin was out to get Hillary because he believed she interfered in the 2012 Russian election. I don't know whether she, the State Department, the CIA, NSA or DOD did or not. I do know that the sanctimony and moral outrage that some Democratic politicians like to direct at certain foreign leaders and Republicans can backfire.

2016.

June 9: Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner meet at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. The Trump aides say her information was not useful and that the meeting primarily focused on adoption policy.

June 19: Papadopoulos offers in an email to a high-ranking campaign official to travel to Russia to meet with officials if Trump is unable to. He states he is willing "to make the trip off the record if it's in the interest of the Mr. Trump and the campaign to meet specific people. ".

Week of July 18: Three Trump national security advisers Page, J. The. Gordon and Walid Phares meet with Kislyak in Cleveland. Theytell him they hope to see improved relations with Russia.

July 20: Sen. Jeff Sessions, an early Trump endorser who led his national security advisory committee, meets with Ambassador Kislyak and a group of other ambassadors at a Republican National Convention event.

July 27: Trump calls on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails from the private server she used as secretary of state.

"I will tell you this, Russia: If you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said at a news conference. "I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. ".

Aug. 14: The New York Times publishes an expos on Ukrainian documents that appear to show that $12.7 million in cash was earmarked for Manafort by the Russia-aligned Party of Regions.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, a prominent Trump surrogate, meets in his Senate office with Kislyak.

Trump tells the Kremlin-backed Russia Today inan interview that "it's probably unlikely" Russia is interfering in the election.

Nov. 10: A senior Russian diplomat, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov, tellsInterfax news agency that there "were contacts" between the Russian government and the Trump campaign during the election campaign. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later tells the Associated Press that the contacts were "quite natural, quite normal" and took place with both campaigns.

December: Flynn and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner meet with Kislyak at Trump Tower.

Dec. 28: Obama signs an executive order to sanction Russia for its interference in the presidential election. The sanctions are to take effect the following day.

Kislyak contacts Flynn.

Dec. 29: Obama orders the ejection of 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the country and imposes sanctions on two Russian intelligence services as retaliation for the election-interference campaign.

Flynn has a series of phone calls with Kislyak. He would later acknowledge that it was possible they discussed the newly imposed sanctions, but he "couldn't be certain. " According to The New York Times, the phone calls came after Kislyak was brought to the State Department and informed of the sanctions, and became "irate and threatened a forceful Russian response. ".

Court filings later reveal that Flynn asks Kislyak to refrain from escalating the situation in response to the sanctions. This conversation takes place after Flynn confers with a senior official on the Trump transition team about how to address the sanctions.

Flynn calls the transition official after his conversation with Kislyak to update him on the call.

Flynn goes on to lie to the FBI about this on Jan. 24.

https://www.politico.com/trump-russi...line-of-events

That's only a 6-month timeline. Shall we continue?

[Tiny 12]

Well, since you have fessed up about the humorous tone of all your other posts on this topic it is nice to see you admit that, contrary to your "wouldn't vote for Trump" claim, you are actually quite happy to help Trump win any and every election thanks to your stealth pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersiderism rather than by voting directly for him. The latter of which is not really necessary to help Repubs win elections, as your beloved Repub Party and I am sure you know perfectly well, considering their foremost strategy for winning elections has for decades been to challenge, obstruct, suppress, deny, not count or overturn likely Dem / Lib votes.

That has been understood by politically ambitious "Conservatives" for decades, even before Repub Chief Justice Oath of Office Gobbledygook's Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in order to better facilitate that now critical Repub election strategy and certainly for every Trump-involved election ever since.

Of course, you know it is fine and dandy for you to proudly proclaim you would not vote for Trump. You and The Party know very well your Bothsider / Neithersiderism and any vote not for a Dem works almost as well to help Repubs win as a direct vote for one. You just don't have to openly admit your stance is really a vote for Trump anyway, that's all.

Baloney. A Democrat will be the next president if Trump's the Republican nominee and there's no popular 3rd party candidate. Why? Because some Republicans and right-of-center independents like me either won't go to the polls or won't vote for Trump. And because Democrats and Democrat leaning independents are mad as hell at Trump and will show up to the polls in larger numbers.

Now if No Labels succeeds in nominating a popular, reasonable Democrat or left of center candidate like Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin, then Trump will win. There are a lot of independents and moderate Democrats fed up with the direction that Biden and the progressives are taking America. They'll vote for the third party candidate. I'd say that's what you should worry about, but you benefitted greatly from the last period of Republican control of government. Maybe you will again, the next time that happens. With the corporate income tax cut and the Qualified Business Income deduction provided to owners of rental real estate like you and Trump, your mutual fund and real estate investments put together are worth perhaps 15% or 20% more than they would be otherwise.

You sound like admirers of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, only you're a Democrat. The Republicans "challenge, obstruct, suppress, deny, (do) not count or overturn" votes and steal elections. Right.

[Tiny 12]

It's similar to the Repub delusion applied to their "no Russian collusion by Team Trump" claim. Putin and Russia knows very well they colluded with Team Trump to help Trump win those elections even if Team Trump was too ashamed to openly admit it or too stupid to realize it was happening all around them all along.

Team Trump never colluded, other perhaps than Trump encouraging Russia to pursue Hillary's email messages on national television. Russia did unilaterally try to interfere in the election. Putin was out to get Hillary because he believed she interfered in the 2012 Russian election. I don't know whether she, the State Department, the CIA, NSA or DOD did or not. I do know that the sanctimony and moral outrage that some Democratic politicians like to direct at certain foreign leaders and Republicans can backfire.

[Tiny 12]

LOL. Clever of you to omit the first war listed at the very top of your link, The American Civil War, where 620,000 Americans were killed in that one alone, every one of them killed on a Repub President's watch in a war begun on his watch, possibly by whoever was Speaker of the House I suppose, but for sure started by America and by no other country. And the Per Capita American Fatality rate for that Repub war must have been astronomical. I suspect it was much higher than it was for WWI and the Korean War combined.

Again,

Yes, it is curious that Tooms is compelled to label the Civil War as a Republican War. Presumably if he maintains that the present day Republican Party should accept responsibility for the Civil War, then he believes present day Democrats should accept responsibility for slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow and repression afterwards.

Do you really believe that what happened during the Civil War, over 150 years ago, has anything to do with the propensity of modern day Democratic and Republican presidents to wage foreign wars? Given that I've said there's no cause and effect between the Party of the President and wars, and that Democrats are somewhat less anti-war than Republicans, I don't understand why you're focusing on this. Again, I just pointed out the correlation between deaths and Democratic presidents to highlight a spurious correlation (correlation where there's no cause and effect), like yours between Republican presidents and GDP and job growth.

[Tiny 12]

There seems to be confusion and misunderstanding about the words "Escalate" and "Increase" as they pertain to Eisenhower's Vietnam War. I assure you that confusion has been going on since the 1960's. Please note; one cannot "Escalate" or 'Increase" military presence and involvement in a war that had not yet begun or wasn't ongoing. The typical year cited as the beginning of the Vietnam War and America's involvement in it militarily is 1955, not 1963 and not 1964.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution merely legally and officially authorized USA Forces to shoot back after the North Vietnamese had provoked an armed response with their multiple attacks on USA Navy Destroyers, as reported by USA Military commanders on the scene.

U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin and Escalation, 1964

https://history.state.gov/milestones...gulf-of-tonkin#text=On%20 August%207%2 see%201964%2 see%20 Congress, and%20 security%20 in%20 southeast%20 Asia.

Of course, USA Forces would never have been in a position to be provoked into an escalation and increase in our presence by multiple attacks from the North Vietnamese or to shoot back had President Eisenhower not made it his mission as early as 1954 to commit the USA Fully, totally and unambiguously by word, deed and treaty to fighting North Vietnam on behalf of South Vietnam.

Sure enough, it turned out once we started shooting back the fatalities rose on both sides. On the other hand, no one knows how much more lopsided the USA Fatalities would have been by the end of it if LBJ and the USA Congress had not reacted or done anything at all in response to those reported multiple attacks on our troops. Would North Vietnam had said, "Well, that was interesting. Nevermind. Let's change the subject and do something else" or would they have been emboldened to engage in more and bigger attacks on our troops without them shooting back or retaliating?

As was typical then and now, Mainstream Media and even this site spent decades bending over backwards to keep beloved old WWII General Eisenhower's name out of it, despite him being the President who committed us to fighting that war in the first place, putting us in harms way for the North Vietnamese provocation, making it necessary to shoot back, retaliate and escalate our involvement and despite his apparent idiotic expectation that we would or could fight and win it for sake of Democracy by only being shot at but never shooting back.

Notice how even this site pretends as though Eisenhower's zealously guarded, super secret pseudonyms during his presidency were "the countries" and "The United States".

See, they had no qualms about naming names for these military commitments to the Vietnam War as long as it was Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon. But, strangely, they seem to think "the countries" and "The United States" were some disembodied entities without a first, middle and last name. Hey guys, they had one alright. It was Dwight David Eisenhower. They even had a nickname; Ike.

If Eisenhower were a Democrat, you'd love him, and you'd try to somehow pin the blame for Vietnam on Richard Nixon. Hell, if Trump had remained a card carrying member of the Democratic Party, you'd love him too.

Think about what you wrote Tooms. That's crazy. See deaths by year in Vietnam here.

https://www.archives.gov/research/mi...lty-statistics

During Eisenhower's term in office, during 1956 to 1960 (or from 1954 if you prefer), a total of 9 American servicemen died in Vietnam. From 2000 to 2006, five servicemen died there, and we weren't at war with Vietnam. According to Wikipedia, we had fewer than 1,000 advisors in Vietnam during Eisenhower's administration. That rose to 23,000 advisors under Kennedy. LBJ ramped that on up to 549,500 servicemen. Ultimately 58,220 Americans died in Vietnam.

What I really don't understand is that you apparently believe this war was just and good, because you praise LBJ's escalation of the war effort. (I disagree on that BTW.) Yet you criticize Eisenhower, for doing what we've done in many countries all over the world -- provide military advisors to friendly regimes.

[EihTooms]

Private sector adds 497,000 jobs in June, more than double expectations, ADP says.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/06/adp-...ndroidappshare

Private sector jobs surged by 497,000 in June, well ahead of the 267,000 gain in May and much better than the 220,000 estimate.

Leisure and hospitality led with 232,000 new hires, followed by construction with 97,000, and trade, transportation and utilities at 90,000.

The unexpected jump in payrolls comes despite more than a years worth of Federal Reserve interest rate increases.

We used to attribute these kind of results to the economic stewardship stated, campaigned on, won on, proposed, promoted, fought for, negotiated, legislated, signed and passed by the President. Like Joe Biden has done over the past 2 1/2 years.

But now some folks are passionately and repeatedly arguing that these results are really due to the brilliant and heroic efforts by the Repub Squeaker of the Pink Tinkle House NOT to once again within those same years apply brilliant Repub economic stewardship to Crash Worldwide Economies and Wipe Out millions upon millions upon millions of jobs by defaulting on the debts largely produced due to and in response to previous typically horrific Repub economic stewardship.

Well, anyway, that would be the only notable accomplishment by this particular Pink Tinkle House that could possibly be related to the ongoing jobs creation and avoidance of even a medium size recession, much less a Great Recession.

Now, back to pro Repub MSM reminding us heading into an election year how much better most people think Repubs are at handling the economy than Dems.

Lololol.

[EihTooms]

There seems to be confusion and misunderstanding about the words "Escalate" and "Increase" as they pertain to Eisenhower's Vietnam War. I assure you that confusion has been going on since the 1960's. Please note; one cannot "Escalate" or 'Increase" military presence and involvement in a war that had not yet begun or wasn't ongoing. The typical year cited as the beginning of the Vietnam War and America's involvement in it militarily is 1955, not 1963 and not 1964.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution merely legally and officially authorized USA Forces to shoot back after the North Vietnamese had provoked an armed response with their multiple attacks on USA Navy Destroyers, as reported by USA Military commanders on the scene.

U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin and Escalation, 1964

https://history.state.gov/milestones...gulf-of-tonkin#text=On%20 August%207%2 see%201964%2 see%20 Congress, and%20 security%20 in%20 southeast%20 Asia.

In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. This resolution became the legal basis for the Johnson and Nixon Administrations prosecution of the Vietnam War.

Of course, USA Forces would never have been in a position to be provoked into an escalation and increase in our presence by multiple attacks from the North Vietnamese or to shoot back had President Eisenhower not made it his mission as early as 1954 to commit the USA Fully, totally and unambiguously by word, deed and treaty to fighting North Vietnam on behalf of South Vietnam.

Sure enough, it turned out once we started shooting back the fatalities rose on both sides. On the other hand, no one knows how much more lopsided the USA Fatalities would have been by the end of it if LBJ and the USA Congress had not reacted or done anything at all in response to those reported multiple attacks on our troops. Would North Vietnam had said, "Well, that was interesting. Nevermind. Let's change the subject and do something else" or would they have been emboldened to engage in more and bigger attacks on our troops without them shooting back or retaliating?

As was typical then and now, Mainstream Media and even this site spent decades bending over backwards to keep beloved old WWII General Eisenhower's name out of it, despite him being the President who committed us to fighting that war in the first place, putting us in harms way for the North Vietnamese provocation, making it necessary to shoot back, retaliate and escalate our involvement and despite his apparent idiotic expectation that we would or could fight and win it for sake of Democracy by only being shot at but never shooting back.

Notice how even this site pretends as though Eisenhower's zealously guarded, super secret pseudonyms during his presidency were "the countries" and "The United States".

After the end of the First Indochina War and the Viet Minh defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the countries meeting at the Geneva Conference divided Vietnam into northern and southern halves, ruled by separate regimes, and scheduled elections to reunite the country under a unified government. The communists seemed likely to win those elections, thanks mostly to their superior organization and greater appeal in the countryside. The United States, however, was dedicated to containing the spread of communist regimes and, invoking the charter of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (1954), supported the South Vietnamese leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, when he refused to hold the elections. Diem held control of the South Vietnamese Government, but he could not halt the communist infiltration of the South. By 1959, the Viet Cong, South Vietnamese communist guerillas, and the Viet Minh, began a large scale insurgency in the South that marked the opening of the Second Indochina War.

See, they had no qualms about naming names for these military commitments to the Vietnam War as long as it was Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon. But, strangely, they seem to think "the countries" and "The United States" were some disembodied entities without a first, middle and last name. Hey guys, they had one alright. It was Dwight David Eisenhower. They even had a nickname; Ike.

[EihTooms]

Tooms, please see below. The good parts are highlighted!

Again, this post, like all my others on this topic, is satirical. Like I said, there's no cause and effect.... I do not believe Democrats are any more responsible for war deaths than Republicans.

LOL. Clever of you to omit the first war listed at the very top of your link, The American Civil War, where 620,000 Americans were killed in that one alone, every one of them killed on a Repub President's watch in a war begun on his watch, possibly by whoever was Speaker of the House I suppose, but for sure started by America and by no other country. And the Per Capita American Fatality rate for that Repub war must have been astronomical. I suspect it was much higher than it was for WWI and the Korean War combined.

And "Democrat" President LBJ "started" the Vietnam War? In 1955, eight years before he became President? LOL. Oh wait. Who was Speaker of the House in 1955? Maybe we can pass the buck of blame for that one to him.

Well, since you have fessed up about the humorous tone of all your other posts on this topic it is nice to see you admit that, contrary to your "wouldn't vote for Trump" claim, you are actually quite happy to help Trump win any and every election thanks to your stealth pro Repub Bothsider / Neithersiderism rather than by voting directly for him. The latter of which is not really necessary to help Repubs win elections, as your beloved Repub Party and I am sure you know perfectly well, considering their foremost strategy for winning elections has for decades been to challenge, obstruct, suppress, deny, not count or overturn likely Dem / Lib votes.

That has been understood by politically ambitious "Conservatives" for decades, even before Repub Chief Justice Oath of Office Gobbledygook's Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act in order to better facilitate that now critical Repub election strategy and certainly for every Trump-involved election ever since.

Of course, you know it is fine and dandy for you to proudly proclaim you would not vote for Trump. You and The Party know very well your Bothsider / Neithersiderism and any vote not for a Dem works almost as well to help Repubs win as a direct vote for one. You just don't have to openly admit your stance is really a vote for Trump anyway, that's all.

It's similar to the Repub delusion applied to their "no Russian collusion by Team Trump" claim. Putin and Russia knows very well they colluded with Team Trump to help Trump win those elections even if Team Trump was too ashamed to openly admit it or too stupid to realize it was happening all around them all along.

[Tiny 12]

Yes, the list of wars fought by Americans are many more than most can even recall. Under both Parties. I will leave calculating the overall number of American fatalities under this or that POTUS to the noted Mathematicians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._United_States

However, if we just look at the big wars with American involvement that resulted in notable numbers of American fatalities that most of us even know occurred it should at least be among the ones where someone in American leadership, either the President or the Speaker of the House and I'll go with it being the President on that, voluntarily committed us to by word, deed and / or treaty and not because we were provoked into it by a direct attack on our soil, our troops or by an official declaration of war against us.

So in order to at least compare Repub vs Dem Presidents on that issue, why be so cavalier about American War fatalities and omit that first really big one where a true comparison could begin, The American Civil War? Yeah, I'll put that one on the Repub President at the time. Started by Americans and nobody else on his watch, no argument about it.

Then there was Eisenhower's Vietnam War. He plunged us into that one voluntarily by word, deed and treaty. Sure enough. We were not required to take over for the French when they were defeated and retreated. There was no direct attack on our troops prior to Eisenhower choosing to do that.

George H. W. Bush's Gulf War. Again, not provoked by an attack on our soil or troops.

George W. Bush's War in Irag and Afghanistan. Again, neither of those nations attacked our soil or troops.

Well, that leaves WWI and the Korean War to the Dem presidents up to now. Although I think Truman probably should share a bit of that with Ulysses S. Grant. Yep, Grant. Look it up.

Now, noted Mathematician that you are, I always wondered why you never applied the most rudimentary factor to just about any calculation regarding what happens to some people within a population; the Per Capita number rather than the raw number. Shouldn't we be less cavalier about American fatalities in those wars by at least considering the Per Capita number of Americans killed in them?

Oh, but then I realized going back to at least that first Repub President for the Dem vs Repub comparison, Lincoln and his American Civil War, that Per Capita thing would not be helpful to your cause.

Then I wondered why someone as adamant about deflecting responsibility from Presidents for just about anything negative, passing the buck to others, well especially Repub presidents since almost every really bad thing that has happened to America over the past several decades has happened on a Repub President's watch and extremely little positive, which as we all now know is a wild coincidence of course, why you didn't deflect and pass the buck for all those big war fatalities from the President's responsibility to that of the Generals? That would even apply to the provoked wars.

I mean, much like the Speaker of the House is to the President on economic results, shouldn't you be arguing that those American fatalities in war are the Generals' responsibility? Aren't they the ones who take the basic agenda and goal of the ineffectual and unnecessary President and "originate", "pen" and "control" the details and produce the results?

But then I remembered who the Party affiliation of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Force in Europe was during WWII and realized that would not serve your purposes either.

Oh, and the Party affiliation of the Supreme Union General during The American Civil War.

And the Party affiliation of the Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front during World War I.

And the Party affiliation of the USA General of the Army during the Korean War.

And the Party affiliation of the Commander of Military Assistance and Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the Vietnam War.

And, well, you get the idea I'm sure.

Tooms, please see below. The good parts are highlighted!

Out of the 623,715 USA military fatalities during the 20th and 21st centuries, 602,450 occurred under Democrat Presidents:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/...-1775-present/

Most of the 21,267 deaths under Republicans occurred in Vietnam, when President Nixon was extracting us from that conflict, which LBJ started.

So Democrat Presidents are responsible for over 95% of the deaths of our young men and women.

Democrats are a bloodthirsty lot. A Democratic Party president will start a war at the drop of a hat to boost his approval rating. Democrats know the best way to win an election or pull the country out of a recession is to start a war.

And this post, like all my others on this topic, is satirical. Like I said, there's no cause and effect. For some reason Tooms feels compelled to argue against what I'm labeling as a spurious correlation. I do not believe Democrats are any more responsible for war deaths than Republicans.

Reply to Paulie:

Yes, it is curious that Tooms is compelled to label the Civil War as a Republican War. Presumably if he maintains that the present day Republican Party should accept responsibility for the Civil War, then he believes present day Democrats should accept responsibility for slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow and repression afterwards.

Reply to you:

Agreed except for the Vietnam War. Only two Congressmen voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, so it's not fair to pin the War entirely on LBJ. However you mischaracterize Eisenhower's role. Only nine out of 58,220 American casualties in Vietnam occurred during the Eisenhower administration.

https://www.archives.gov/research/mi...lty-statistics

Now that I've cleared that up, it would be nice if you'd admit that Republican Presidents weren't responsible for recessions in 1981, 1990, and 2008, and the 2020 pandemic.

Again, this post, like all my others on this topic, is satirical. Like I said, there's no cause and effect.... I do not believe Democrats are any more responsible for war deaths than Republicans.

[EihTooms]

These are the first words in our Constitution, Article I, Section 1:

"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

Yes, the president does have the power to veto legislation, although Congress can override his veto.

Our founders did not want to recreate a European style monarchy in the United States of America, let alone some kind of command and control style economy directed by a single person.

A Speaker Pelosi or Speaker McCarthy works for and serves at the pleasure of members of her or his party who are members of the House of Representatives. The actual power is vested in the 435 voting representatives.

As I've stated repeatedly, Fed policy, population growth, innovation and technology, oil shocks, changes in productivity, a pandemic, what's happening outside the USA, Congress, and the business cycle have collectively affected GDP and jobs growth, much, much more than the Presidents. And policies and legislation which presidents helped implement often don't affect the economy until after they've left office.

Given that I said I would not vote for Trump for dogcatcher, you should assume I would also not vote for him as a representative in a house district.

As to wars and national security, I'm not sure that either party has done a better job than the other. You can credit Reagan for helping end the cold war, and criticize LBJ and George W. Bush for getting us into stupid wars. You guys of course argue that every war pursued by a Democratic President is right and just, while those pursued by the Republicans are wrong and stupid. Which can become confusing when wars overlap presidencies. And which makes you look warlike and cavalier about the lives of our young men, given that (coincidentally in my view), Democratic presidents have presided over more wars and American fatalities.

Yes, the list of wars fought by Americans are many more than most can even recall. Under both Parties. I will leave calculating the overall number of American fatalities under this or that POTUS to the noted Mathematicians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._United_States

However, if we just look at the big wars with American involvement that resulted in notable numbers of American fatalities that most of us even know occurred it should at least be among the ones where someone in American leadership, either the President or the Speaker of the House and I'll go with it being the President on that, voluntarily committed us to by word, deed and / or treaty and not because we were provoked into it by a direct attack on our soil, our troops or by an official declaration of war against us.

So in order to at least compare Repub vs Dem Presidents on that issue, why be so cavalier about American War fatalities and omit that first really big one where a true comparison could begin, The American Civil War? Yeah, I'll put that one on the Repub President at the time. Started by Americans and nobody else on his watch, no argument about it.

Then there was Eisenhower's Vietnam War. He plunged us into that one voluntarily by word, deed and treaty. Sure enough. We were not required to take over for the French when they were defeated and retreated. There was no direct attack on our troops prior to Eisenhower choosing to do that.

George H. W. Bush's Gulf War. Again, not provoked by an attack on our soil or troops.

George W. Bush's War in Irag and Afghanistan. Again, neither of those nations attacked our soil or troops.

Well, that leaves WWI and the Korean War to the Dem presidents up to now. Although I think Truman probably should share a bit of that with Ulysses S. Grant. Yep, Grant. Look it up.

Now, noted Mathematician that you are, I always wondered why you never applied the most rudimentary factor to just about any calculation regarding what happens to some people within a population; the Per Capita number rather than the raw number. Shouldn't we be less cavalier about American fatalities in those wars by at least considering the Per Capita number of Americans killed in them?

Oh, but then I realized going back to at least that first Repub President for the Dem vs Repub comparison, Lincoln and his American Civil War, that Per Capita thing would not be helpful to your cause.

Then I wondered why someone as adamant about deflecting responsibility from Presidents for just about anything negative, passing the buck to others, well especially Repub presidents since almost every really bad thing that has happened to America over the past several decades has happened on a Repub President's watch and extremely little positive, which as we all now know is a wild coincidence of course, why you didn't deflect and pass the buck for all those big war fatalities from the President's responsibility to that of the Generals? That would even apply to the provoked wars.

I mean, much like the Speaker of the House is to the President on economic results, shouldn't you be arguing that those American fatalities in war are the Generals' responsibility? Aren't they the ones who take the basic agenda and goal of the ineffectual and unnecessary President and "originate", "pen" and "control" the details and produce the results?

But then I remembered who the Party affiliation of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Force in Europe was during WWII and realized that would not serve your purposes either.

Oh, and the Party affiliation of the Supreme Union General during The American Civil War.

And the Party affiliation of the Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front during World War I.

And the Party affiliation of the USA General of the Army during the Korean War.

And the Party affiliation of the Commander of Military Assistance and Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the Vietnam War.

And, well, you get the idea I'm sure.