starfire_xes said:

Well, get tired of it.  Your Butthurt does not equal my problem. 


Oh, by the way.  Anything but democrap doesn't mean republican.

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Stonehenge said:

The middle east was relatively stable compared to today. Do any of you claim obumble has made things better? He has wasted trillions of dollars and all we have to show for it is lots of blown up stuff, many dead people and lots of hate toward usa.

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Stonehenge said:

Where is the evidence trump will put palin in the cabinet? When rational people make statements, the left is quick to demand proof but they say wild things with nothing to back it up.

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Quote:

Asked on Sarah Palin's Mama Grizz Radio's "The Palin Update with Kevin Scholla" whether he'd tap Palin for a role in his administration, Trump responded "I'd love that."

"She really is somebody that knows what's happening. She's a special person, she's really a special person," he said. "She's got a following that's unbelievable."

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Stonehenge said:

There are thousands of jobs in govt, obumble gave them to his supporters without a murmur from you, but if trump does the same you will squeak.

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Quote:

Is Trump the American Berlusconi? -


For a long time Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi appeared as an impenetrable phenomenon to foreign observers. He was routinely dismissed as an exotic anomaly tied to the idiosyncrasies of Italian political culture.

Today, he might not seem so unfamiliar. There are striking analogies between Italy’s former prime minister and the current front-runner in the Republican presidential nominee race — and not just that both are flamboyant billionaires and former entertainers running for office on anti-establishment platforms.

Although Berlusconi’s political fortunes now appear to be on the wane, looking back at reasons for his erstwhile success might shed light on the current fascination with Donald Trump’s US presidential bid.

They share a flaunted machismo and political incorrectness. This is part of a well-calculated electoral strategy. What Berlusconi had already understood before Trump is that saying outrageous things gets you free media coverage and forces others to engage with what you are saying. So you get to set the terms of the political debate, while shifting its center of gravity in your favor. At the same time, Berlusconi and Trump’s political incorrectness targets a specific electoral group — predominantly blue-collar white males who feel threatened by globalization, multiculturalism and women’s rights. There is an element of revanchism in their discourse, which allows them to attract conservative votes while assuming an air of radicalism.

Berlusconi’s popularity in Italy was also due to his capacity to transform class antagonisms into cultural issues, capturing large swathes of the working-class vote. The fact that he was a billionaire never seemed to distance him from ordinary people. On the contrary, it tapped into their aspirations. Even more importantly, the fact that he had brought commercial television to Italy implied an association with popular culture that set him in opposition to the country’s traditionally left-leaning cultural elites. In the same way, Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric appeals to working-class voters who resent what they perceive as the patronizing attitude of ‘liberal elites’. This suggests the old class antagonism is now translated into a new cultural division which plays out in terms of political style rather than income.

Finally, Berlusconi’s electoral success depended on his alliance with the far-right League of the North, a xenophobic party whose message pivoted almost entirely around the association between immigration and crime. The foundation of this alliance was the convergence of interests between Berlusconi’s predominantly national business empire and the economic protectionism implied in the League of the North’s anti-immigrant stance. In the US, this alliance between business interests and anti-immigration rhetoric had not been as prominent, largely because big business saw itself as wedded to globalization. Trump, on the other hand, seems to have understood that it may be in the interest of small to medium business owners to take a stand against immigration, because it ensures that a large portion of incoming labor is illegal and therefore in a weaker bargaining position. De-linking immigration from economics and re-framing it as a question of crime and security is the best way of pulling this off.

To be sure, there are also some important differences between Trump and Berlusconi. These too may help to shed light on some aspects of the ongoing Republican primary. When Berlusconi sought to present himself as a novelty in Italian politics, there was an element of truth to his rhetoric. Both his political style and his capacity to attract business and working class votes were fundamentally disruptive of the party system that had dominated Italian politics since the end of the Second World War. Trump, on the other hand, must be situated in the context of a longer trajectory in the way in which the Republican Party has run its electoral campaigns over the past decade and a half. From George W. Bush’s early attempts to present himself as an ‘ordinary American’ to Sarah Palin’s nomination as vice-presidential candidate and the subsequent attempt by the party’s leadership to co-opt the Tea-Party movement, the Republican Party has long been toying with anti-establishment populism as an electoral weapon.

Whether they will be able to rein in the forces they have conjured up remains to be seen — but don’t forget that Berlusconi was initially dismissed as wholly unelectable. His political momentum lasted more than 20 years.

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Bigbadwooof said:

Wah said:

Stonehenge said:

People thought Reagan was a joke at first too. A movie actor running for president, it was unheard of.

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Exactly what I was thinking.

Trump 2016 is just what nobody believed Palin 2012 would become, but it's becoming.

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Trump wants Palin in his cabinet. I'm sure he'll line up some real allstars for us ;-)

Btw, Reagan broke America. Let's not forget what a disaster that turned out to be Stoney. Please don't hail Reagan on a drug website of all places!

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airclay said:

I like how in this forum the world is exactly the way Stonehenge feels and if not you're just wrong and stupid

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Enlil said:

You have a valid point, but you have to admit that Stonehenge is an extreme example.  Anything he disagrees with is labeled "left wing" regardless of whether it actually is a liberal, conservative, or moderate position.

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Stonehenge said:

The middle east was relatively stable compared to today. Do any of you claim obumble has made things better? He has wasted trillions of dollars and all we have to show for it is lots of blown up stuff, many dead people and lots of hate toward usa.

Where is the evidence trump will put palin in the cabinet? When rational people make statements, the left is quick to demand proof but they say wild things with nothing to back it up.

I never praised Reagan, simply mentioned the fact he was a movie actor and became president.

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Enlil said:

You have a valid point, but you have to admit that Stonehenge is an extreme example.  Anything he disagrees with is labeled "left wing" regardless of whether it actually is a liberal, conservative, or moderate position.

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Enlil said:

I'm at the point where I'm so tired of the black/white, left/right, pub/dem bullshit that I hardly participate here anymore.  Those dichotomies never really suited me, and it always appears that as elections get closer, this forum becomes more polarized. 

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Quote:

I'm sad that Phred is gone.  Last election he was telling us that if Obama was re-elected, it'd be the end of America.  I was kinda looking forward to his input this time around.

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royque1980 said:

In Latin America this is called a duacracy duocracy,

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luvdemshrooms said:

Some of the funniest though are those who equate income to cock size.

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Stonehenge said:

I have never labeled anything conservative as left wing. I defy you to give an example because you can't

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luvdemshrooms said:

royque1980 said:

In Latin America this is called a duacracy duocracy,

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I wish people would grow up.

It's funny, my extreme left friends tell me I'm too conservative. My extreme right friends tell me I'm too liberal.

I tell them I figure that puts me right about where I want to be. In the middle. I have some positions that both sides could take comfort in.

Some of the funniest though are those who equate income to cock size.

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