Mr.Mystery
Mr.Mystery's JournalWho was the worst Republican president after Nixon?
Before you say Trump, consider how bad Reagan, Papa Doc, and Baby Doc Bush were.
TRUMP--
* minimized Covid threat and 1 million Americans died
* gave vent to the worst id impulses of the American psyche: enshrined selfishness, encouraged violence and race baiting
* ran roughshod over legal and civil traditions such as conceding election loss, protection of secret documents, and not fomenting a riot when one loses and election.
* used the office of the Presidency to enrich himself by bribes and graft--foreigners shoveled money into Trump-owned businesses, he charged the secret service to stay in his hotels etc.
* refused to set up blind trusts and never revealed tax returns as promised
* uttered over 30 thousand confirmed LIES while President
* spent some 300 days over four years on the golf course, at a cost of 144 million dollars
BABY DOC BUSH
* unlike Trump's claims about Biden, Bush actually DID steal a US Presidential election by not allowing a recount in Florida, where he technically "won" by 537 votes out of 6 million cast
* ignored Clinton's warnings about terrorism resulting in 9-11
* watched Bin Laden and his terrorist cabal escape capture for eight years
* cynically manipulated the country's outrage about 9-11 to gin up an invasion of Iraq
* killed directly or indirectly 200 thousand Iraqi civilians to steal their oil
* spent 1.6 TRILLION US dollars in Iraq
* ignored housing bubble which collapsed the US and world economy
REAGAN
* cut a deal with Iranian terrorists holding American hostages to not release those hostages until after Reagan took office, to help insure his victory. They released the hostages on Jan. 20, 1981, the same day that Reagan was sworn in.
* later, re-paid these Islamic terrorists by shipping them arms to oppress, imprison, and murder their citizens and start a war with Iraq, and used the money to fund a right-wing death squad (the Contras) in Nicaragua. Ignored evidence that Iran used poison gas in Halabja and vetoed sanctions Congress placed on Iran.
* ignored the AIDS crisis which killed about 100 thousand Americans in the 1980's
* invaded Grenada, which put the US back into the League of Big Country Imperialists (after the sobering lesson of Vietnam)
* put US troops into Lebanon until 200 Marines were killed by a suicide bomber, proving that the suicide bombing is effective against us -- which led to two decades of suicide bombing attacks against the US including the embassy bombings in Africa, the US Cole attack, and of course 9-11.
* spent 1.35 TRILLON dollars on the military in his first four years, or 6,000 dollars per person. This sent the National Debt soaring after it had been steadily going down since WW2.
* despite the massive increase in military spending, he cut taxes on the rich ( "trickle down economics" ) while raising taxes on the working class
* signed into law federal income taxes on Social Security for the first time in its history
* crushed the PATCO (Air Traffic Controller's union) strike by bringing in scabs and signaling to his rich, corporate backers that union-busting was now perfectly legal
So . . . who's the worst one of them all?
Midterm elections: Four important lessons we learned . . .
I. "Democrats steal elections" is not a winning strategy for Trumpublicans.Except for blood-red counties in blood-red states where Dick Cheney is considered "too moderate," all the election-deniers went down to ignominious defeat.
Consider just three supposedly "competitive" Governor's races: “Douchebag” Doug Mastriano for Gov. in PA, "Krazy" Kari Lake in AZ, and Tudor "Rhymes with Nixon" Dixon in MI. Only Lake managed to keep it close, but she's on her way down.
Meanwhile, one of the notorious howler monkey pair--Rep. Lauren Boebert in CO--is predicted to be sedated with a tranquilizer dart and returned to the wild very soon.
II. A Trump endorsement is more of a kiss of death than a motivator for voter turn out.
What the Republican leadership, the same people who willingly planted wet kisses on Trump's majestic ass, forgot in their calculations is that the American voter is easily bored by the same old schtick. Trump's allure was always "he's so OUTRAGEOUS! Just look at the OUTRAGEOUS way he owned the Libs today!"
But even outrageous becomes old hat. One can watch only so many skateboard videos where a kid tries to slide down a stair rail at a public park, loses his board, and straddles the iron railing crushing his scrotal sac while his friends howl with laughter . . . until it becomes passe.
Remember John Anderson and Jill Stein and Ross Perot who ran influential third-party Presidential campaigns and sucked down all kinds of media attention for many a long month before the election? Yeah, nobody else does either, which is exactly my point.
The surprise is not that Trump will run again for President: selling his name and notoriety is his sole business model. His "brand" is his only marketable asset.
The surprise is that Republican leadership doesn't understand that this ship has sailed . . . and sunk. Trump is soooo 2015, and the American people are soooo over all that.
Trump is the dial-up Netscape of American politics, and the Cons don't even know it yet.
III. Republicans campaign on no real issues.
Inflation? Really, they're going with inflation? Joe Biden is apparently responsible for inflation in Germany according to Republicans.
How about gas prices? Gas prices are no higher vs wages than they were ten years ago, and guess what, a lot of folks weren't driving when they quarantined at home during peak Covid pandemic months.
Crime? The murder rate--but no other types of crime--has ticked up in a few places, but that's only because it was so low compared to its peak in early '90's. Oh, and did I mention the pandemic?
They got nuthin'. And even if these problems were as serious as the Republicans tried to portray them, what would they, of all people, do about it? Give everybody a free gun? More subsidies for Exxon-Mobile?
IV. Repealing Roe v Wade is a losing issue for Team Red.
While the Pro Choice backlash may not have been as decisive nation-wide as we might have wished or predicted, it definitely had a significant impact in this midterm cycle. The Kaiser Foundation found in their study that more than 35 percent of respondents said it makes them more likely to vote. It's hard to quantify what this meant for Democratic candidates on November 8, but despite Biden's low poll numbers, we Dems didn't lose anywhere close to the four Senate seats and 28 House seats, the average loss for the power in power during the midterms.
At the very least, the "enthusiasm gap" between the opposition party and party in power was seriously blunted in this election cycle.
Dear Conservative Supreme Court Justices, it sucks to be you right now, doesn't it.
What's up with the math on the Senate?
The NYTimes is showing the Senate tied at 48 each.
Okay, that's 96 votes with four still to go.
One is the Warnock race in GA. (runoff this Dec.)
One is the Kelly race in AZ.
One is Cortez-Masto in NV.
And what is the last one?
ON EDIT--Politico is saying after Fetterman's win, DEMs have 48, and after Ron Johnson's win in Wis, REPs have 49.
So that clears up the confusion:
97 + Warnock (GA) + Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) + Mark Kelly (AZ) = 100
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/09/uncalled-races-senate-control-hangs-in-balance-as-arizona-nevada-counts-continue-00065905
My pet peeve--all the posts slamming Twitter side-by-side with posts linking to Twitter
Anybody else see a contradiction there?
FYI—I’ve never been on Twitter and never going to be on it. Not on Facebook either.
Top 10 Great Live Bluegrass Performances -- No. 8 Mark O'Connor
Mark O’Connor has been a fixture in American bluegrass since he burst on the scene in his early teens. A virtuoso on the guitar—he won the National Flatpicking Contest held yearly at the Walnut Valley Bluegrass festival at age 13—he has mostly played fiddle in the ensuing decades . . . And played with absolutely everyone: Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Tony Rice, Alison Krause as well as popular country acts such as Johnny Cash and Marty Stuart.
He also collaborates with classical and jazz musicians.
Here’s one of the finest bluegrass tunes ever written by Bill Monroe and Kenny Baker, “Jerusalem Ridge,” with its haunting minor chord Scotch-Irish feel.
This isn’t exactly a “great live performance” since there is no audience, but the sound quality is better than any actual on-stage versions I could find.
Notice how at about the two minute mark, they turn the tune into a “round,” with one fiddle playing the melody while another plays the same melody but a few beats behind. Sounds like a symphony.
10 Great Live Bluegrass Performances -- No. 9 "Rocky Top"
The Osborne Brothers put this song in the legendary bluegrass canon back in 1967. Bobby Osborne’s high tenor voice did as much as anyone to give traditional bluegrass that “high and lonesome” sound. The brothers worked with some of the early greats including Bill Monroe, Jimmy Martin, and Red Allen.
This piece became so popular that the University of Kentucky band plays it every time the football team makes a touchdown.
Even though it sounds like straight-ahead barn-burner bluegrass, it has a little “Irish” twist to it in the chorus—it drops out of the expected G—C—D chord pattern and uses an F. This is characteristic of an Irish tune such as “Drunken Sailor.” Doc Watson’s “Salt Creek” has a distinctive sound using the F chord in the key of G as well.
Here they are some fifteen years after its release playing “Rocky Top” on some variety show at the time, with Sonny Osborne introducing the song.
10 Great Live Bluegrass music performances -- No. 10, The Tony Rice All Stars
Tony Rice was a flat-picking phenome, starting out with truly great J. D. Crowe and The New South.
J. D. Crowe is considered by many to be the best traditional banjo player in the style of Earl Scruggs, but the band he put together really went places--besides Rice, Ricky Skaggs sang and played mandolin, along with Jerry Douglas on the Dobro, who went on to play with Bela Fleck and Alison Krause & Union Station.
Here's Tony Rice with a group of other bluegrass luminaries: besides the aforemention Jerry Douglas, we find on stage Mark O'Conner on fiddle, Sam Bush (of Newgrass Revival) on mandolin, and Mark Schatz (Nickle Creek) on bass.
Two quick trivia points--these guys are so pure, they don't even plug in their instruments but play straight into the mic. Also, Tony Rice found, bought, and re-habbed Clarence White's old Martin D-28, which he plays here.
"Nine Pound Hammer," a simple song, but listen to how they take it up, up, and away . . .
The main reason why polls fail to predict elections, imho, based on
an informal search of on-line sources.
There are many reasons why polls fail to predict the outcome of an election:
* a lot of people refuse to answer phone calls from numbers they don't recognize
* to use data correctly, the pollster needs not only the responses, but also personal information such as age, education level, income etc., and people do not want to reveal that to a stranger
* all that information needs to be "weighted," and that is an imprecise guesstimate. For instance, if uneducated white males make up 18 percent of the respondents, but they are predicted to be 26 percent of the voters, their responses would have to be multiplied to reflect that
* sample size may seem large, but it's not that large -- only 38 people out of 1000 need to flip their support to shift Candidate A from an "overwhelming" +12 lead to "almost tied" +4 lead.
the biggest reason polling is inaccurate however is this
* about 40 percent or so of people responding to the poll will not vote on election day. Conclusion, poll respondents can easily say who they prefer in an election when answering a poll, but are those same people motivated enough to go out and vote on election day?
Pollsters have no good way of determining this.
Bottom line: It's all about turn-out.
Here's the Supreme Court before the term "diversity" became undefinable
and mysterious to right-wingers like Clarence Thomas benefiting from a push for diversity.
Photo of Supreme Court Justices in 1941:
Do you see any similarities among the group?
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Thought experiment: imagine the right-wing response if HRC wins in 2016 and
1. Refuses to release her tax returns after pledging to do so repeatedly
2. Promptly puts daughter Chelsea and her husband on gov’t payroll as “Presidential advisors” (on edit, they drew no salary for those positions . . . See underpant’s comment below)
3. Actively manages all her business interests instead of putting them into a blind trust like all other modern presidents
4. Does nothing about the first wave of Covid and claims it will miraculously “go away” in the Spring
5. Tells Antifa to “stand back and stand by” in a Presidential debate
6. Texts an angry mob to protest at the Capitol Building to prevent the formal count of the Electoral College . . . “Be there, it will be wild”?
7. Carries off thousands of pages of government documents to keep in her personal possession.
Just imagine the right-wing scream machine if this were HRC instead of Cheetolini.
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Member since: Mon Oct 3, 2022, 04:06 PM
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