JCauto

It was what we call "a witty riposte", wherein one uses one's debate opponent's words to demonstrate their paucity of depth through pointing out how they can't even correctly spell the word they relied upon as the basis for their post. Sort of like how I'm now pointing out now how the supposed ones baying for freedom and lack of oversight immediately go crying to the moderators when yet again being publicly flayed for their poor attempts at posting.

If you read long enough, you eventually get to a point where there is some concurrence. I completely agree with you! This is one of the biggest problems in US politics, the massive amount of money that has been dumped into political campaigns. It skews elections and gives far too much voice to people who already have far too much influence - those with huge wealth. Why should oligarchs who already have oversized influence over the public be further allowed to entrench their interests by donating huge amounts of money to politicians who then after being elected turn around and do favors for those who funded them?? Anyone on any side of the political spectrum can see this is wrong. Now that we're in agreement, do you know where this all came from and why it didn't used to be this way? Look up "Citizens United", the court decision pushed for and gained by the Right to eliminate any guardrails against money influencing politics. This is ultimately where democracy died if Trump wins this election.

Okay. And if that turns out not to be the case, will you do same? I'm guessing "no", since you, like us, are particularly interested in the results of the US election which is the only real measure of the truth of these statements. I'm going to be here for all of it. Hope you're along for the ride, I've bought a LOT of popcorn!

Great post. You are going to learn however that whenever one makes the effort to put together posts with attribution and sound arguments backed up by fact, you're only going to receive the same response as when two trolls are going at it. It's unfortunate, but we don't really have an eloquent interlocutor on the Right who is willing to engage in substantive debate based on fact. A few have started down this road but almost immediately start losing the arguments and revert to insults, deflection and whataboutism. I would say Hanugama is probably the closest we're going to get, at least he can put together some coherent thoughts where two sentences are actually connected logically sometimes. Thaibeachlovers' specialty is misconstruing the posts meaning and replying with responses that are both about something completely different and incorrect in their facts. The remainder basically just troll.

No, that was the spelling police. Grammar is a different thing. Spelling and grammar errors reflect upon the poster and provide evidence of a lack of thought and care in posting. When the spelling or grammar mistake is in service of an attempted insult against the people debating, it is doubly ironic and irresistible to observe and point out.

Absolutely looking forward to it! Why wouldn't I? Remind yourself when you start to realize how bad it is going for Trump, "She was a public prosecutor. He is a convicted felon."

So you're saying there's ALSO WIDESPREAD FAMINE IN AMERICA! OMG! CALL THE NEWSPAPERS! EVERYONE IS AT FOOD BANKS BECAUSE THEY CAN'T AFFORD GROCERIES! Seriously, y'all are living in some parallel universe that does indeed appear to be a hellhole. The rest of us are just wondering where it is and why it is putting a convicted felon and failed businessman in charge would do something to fix it. Check the actual statistics. Crime is down. Inflation is moving in the opposite direction that you think it is. Corporate profits and price gouging are the reason for why grocery prices have risen. The President doesn't have much to do with it. Perhaps Biden should invite some of his big donors to the White House so he can put their products on the Resolute Desk as a way to reduce prices? That was perfectly ethical and a way that Trump reduced grocery prices, right?

Why is it you guys on the Right have such hatred for America? You seem to think it's an awful hellhole, whereas it was all unicorns and rainbows despite having the worst economic performance in modern history in terms of presidential terms and killing as many Americans as died in the Vietnam War. All the riots and unrest and hatred, the rise of Fascism in America, unthinkable really. Now we've got one of the best performing economies in US history after pulling out of the mess with sound policy and it's nothing but doom and gloom from the Right. Just remember, sunny days beat depressing darkness in presidential elections. Your man is spiraling downwards, and the Democratic ticket is rocketing past in an unprecedented way. You're still gonna be crying after the election I'm afraid, Dick.

Why not just give us a lecture explaining supply-side economics, you know, the Republican policy that set the US economy on its current course and ran up the debt starting with Reagan. Sounds a lot the same, no? So you're on board, correct?

What calibur are you? Not the size that can spell, apparently.

Tough as a man? LOLOL! You mean like the babyman who couldn't defend his country because of bonespurs? That tough? You need to move on from where you're currently stuck, which appears to be the 1950s...

Just my opinion - but you did indeed! He's a very sensitive one too, probably blubbering away in the corner at this point.

Quite an alternative reality that you're living in. Going to be hard to face the facts once mid-November rolls around and there's no doubt whatsoever that, like 2020, the American people have AGAIN roundly rejected Donald Trump for the second consecutive election. On the bright side, he will be the BIGGEST LOSER in presidential history, having blown an election despite the advantage of the incumbency, then blowing a second election by being caught unawares by savvier political operators. SAD! As to "always"...he lost the 2020 election and despite claims to the contrary hasn't been able to show any evidence acceptable to the courts so he has no basis to claim that the election was stolen. ...he lost his court cases to E. Jean Carroll and his felony case about business fraud - another first! He's the first President to be convicted of a felony offense! ...he lost six companies to bankruptcy including multiple casinos! How is that even possible to lose money on casinos?

Sorry, smart guy, but what does this word salad mean? Why do you go that? It's "you're" when using a contraction of "you are", but of course a genius like you would know that right? I shouldn't mock you guys at such a difficult time but it's hard to resist. It was going so so well, and now you're staring at "what could have been" and instead are about to get 8 years of Harris/Walz and probably will lose the Senate and House in the bargain. Must be difficult to cope with to the point of forgetting your native language (note that "your" is a possessive form of the homonym for "you're").

Keep on slingin'! The contrast between Trump's dark vision of America and Harris' sunny worldview is exactly the contrast we need. She'll be talking coherently and maturely about actual issues, Trump will rely on his usual fusillades of lies and insults. She'll have practiced some good jabs to get under his skin, and once those hit, you know DJT won't be able to keep his composure. What happened to his demands of Fox News or nothing? Desperation taking hold, now Don is hiding from everyone and holding rallies in Montana while Kamala and Walz are filling huge arenas to capacity. What a change in three weeks! Even you guys must be impressed, no?

There's an interesting study that just came out that's germane to this discussion. https://www.psypost.org/republican-voters-show-leniency-toward-moral-misconduct-by-party-members-study-finds/#google_vignette "The results showed that Republican and Democratic voters differ in their desire to punish politicians for moral transgressions. When the perceived severity of a moral violation was low, Republicans exhibited a stronger desire to punish than Democrats. However, this punitive desire was significantly reduced if the transgressor was a member of their own party. In contrast, Democratic voters demonstrated a higher overall desire to punish politicians for moral violations, particularly when the perceived severity was moderate to high. Notably, Democrats did not show an in-party bias; their punitive responses were consistent regardless of the politician’s party affiliation." This jibes well with the discussions on ASEAN Now. As numerous posters on the Left have stated, we've no problem whatsoever with Hunter Biden being punished for breaking the law. Do the crime, do the time! Yet we have also observed, the posters on the Right are willing to overlook pretty much anything that their favoured politicians do because they're heavily partisan and allow that to skew their judgement. As the authors note: “Overall, we reinforce earlier findings that moral foundations are not a clear bedrock on which our beliefs about how to respond to transgressive politicians rest,” Redlawsk explained. “Instead, partisanship seems to be able to override moral foundations, especially among Republican voters in our studies and especially when the violation is perceived as less severe.”

Do you even comprehend how dumb a comment this is? Glaciers don't shrink and expand like you are imagining; they're enormous and would hardly change at all due to the seasons. They're formed by accumulation of snow and ice over centuries, and the only thing that causes them to change like this is long-term climate change. Plus, any observer could see that the travelers pictured are wearing t-shirts and shorts in BOTH photos. Humanity is lost when this kind of stupidity becomes the norm.

If I was in the military, I'd be looking for a non-combat role. Just common sense.

Oh yes, I'm SURE he's going to get a nice big settlement for a journalist starting facts about a presidential candidate! I mean, look at all the court cases he has won doing just that... But I won't rant further since I am such a big fan of both Big Star and Alex Chilton's solo work. Man was a genius and gone far too soon.

"should have", or if you prefer, "should've". Sorry to be a grammar Nazi but that one is annoying.

Then they sure are incompetent when you consider how flailing and failing their response has been. But we already knew that from when they were the administration, so good to see nothing has changed on that front.

' And those people are on the Left as well. That's why the two parties get pretty much 95% of the vote every election and these regular folk are the ones whose votes comprise the vast majority. That you see music, movies, or art as "unnecessary" demonstrates a fundamental difference in philosophy, and perhaps this indeed is why the Right is lacking in such people. But for whatever reason, the Right keep trotting out the artistic mediocrities like Kid Rock, Scott Baio and the like to their rallies - why? They're unnecessary, no? I guess you want to get bigger crowds and more buzz as well as have the people there entertained. But the policies that you advocate for are so antithetical to those of the artists that Republican people also love to watch that you can't even get permission to play their songs at GOP rallies. This is informative. Another aspect is the push for book bans - that the Right is so afraid of books that give readers different ideas and messages shows how bankrupt their philosophies are. The people who supposedly wish for "freedom" seem to care a lot more about using government power to oppress those who have different thoughts than they do. It's good that you understand that the regular working folks are the ones who are really needed to make an economy work as COVID-19 showed us. So why are Republican policies so focused on helping the wealthy at the expense of these workers? Why, for example, in the Trillion dollar budget-busting deficit-creating tax cuts that Trump passed during his term did the ones for the regular folks expire, while the Capital Gains tax cuts and Corporate tax cuts were permanent? How does this help those folks? And why do all the unions back the blue? They're the ones who have fought for pretty much all the benefits that have accrued to the workers since the dark days of child labor and penury. Food for thought, no?

Yet another in the long long series. Just a reminder about our friends from the Right - every accusation is a confession!

I've been asking you guys these same questions, and none of you has given me a reasonable attempt at an answer. Why are all the great musicians, actors and other creative artists ALL on the Left? Like, do you HAVE to be Woke to be any good at all in music or acting or art? Why are the Right so uncreative and boring? Fortunately the answer can't be found in a Kid Rock song otherwise I'd have to actually listen to one. Just keep spouting those buzzwords and diving deep into misogyny and racism, I'm sure that's going to bring the votes of the undecided and independents over to Trump/Vance.

Yeah, right. I'm SURE it has to do with the legal issues, similar to the reasons why he couldn't provide his tax returns since they were "being audited". How's that audit going 8 years later? I think it may have ended up with the incredible, amazing, way way way better than Obamacare Health Care Plan and now that the lawyers have it, sorry, you STILL can't see it years later. Unfortunately the Infrastructure Plan was accidentally included with the Health Care Plan, and it's now in the hands of the lawyers too! If ONLY they would let these amazing incredible plans be released, we'd all see how intricate and brilliant they are, after all Trump's always had a major interest and command of all those details - did you know his uncle was at MIT, very smart!