2020 US Presidential Election

No but it's missing the point.

 

My investments have gone considerably higher than before Trump was elected, and a sizable percentage of that increase was during the worst public health crisis in 100 years. What is the point that you are trying to imply, that I am "missing"? There is no doubt in my mind that having Trump in the White House had a lot to do with this incredible, surprising, increase. If there was another election tomorrow, I'd gladly vote for Trump for the 2nd time. He got us the vaccines, which apparently work, and that is more important than money. Biden? He's done nothing, so far, except screw up.

 

I disagree with your assessment but I especially disagree that he’s setting us up for a loss. If he passes his jobs and family plan this year and gives away free preschool, daycare, college and other tax credits, then I’d be shocked if he lost. You’ll have way too many people scared the Republicans will take away their new goodies.

Just as an aside, I’m happy to see you back in this thread and hope you are doing well.

 

Thanks very much.

Biden's giveaways are not "free", they are paid for with taxes. Republicans will be quick to point this out. I personally do not care about daycare, preschool, free college, etc., and do not feel that the American taxpayers should be made to finance these benefits.

 

You will probably never acknowledge this because you admire Trump too much but he often takes credit for things he has nothing to do with.

He was already touting record stock numbers early in his presidency when he hadn't enacted any policy that would have affected them. He was coasting off of Obama's policies.

I suppose you could argue just Trump's presence added an additional "bump" (because investors knew he doesn't care about having market oversight) the same way Elon Musk's tweets affect the tech market or the price of Bitcoin or Dogecoin but that's again smoke and mirrors.

 

All I know for sure, is that my portfolio is higher than I ever would have expected it to be at this point, even without the virus. I don't know anything about Elon Musk's tweets, or Bitcoin/Dogecoin. That's OK, though, I'm enjoying this spectacle of Biden and his pathetic VP choice, messing up. If they cause the markets to drop, I'll be happy to buy otherwise good securities that people who panic and dump at a loss to themselves. For the good of the country, though, Trump would be a far better person to have in office from 2021-2025, than Biden.

 

Well Biden's tax plan only targets .7% or so of tax payers, so I think Republicans will have a hard time with that message. I can respect your view that the government shouldn’t be paying for these benefits but I think that in the long run, we’re going to need them. Our nation can’t continue to have our birth rate stagnate as people can’t afford to have kids. We don’t want to have the problem Japan has.

 

If people cannot afford to have children, or do not want them, the government has no business encouraging a population increase. With all of the people who are coming to the United States, and the many we turn away, we do not need to create more people. We would be far smarter to have more legal immigration of educated, hard-working people - not illegals which Biden encourages.

 

How many smart, hard working educated immigrants even want to come here? Remember Trump complained that most don't and he was right to believe that, they don’t for the most part. I don’t think that’ll be the answer to our population dilemma.

In addition, the idea that a large segment of American society can’t have kids is pretty depressing. Are we, the wealthiest nation on earth, really going to deny the working class the ability to affordably have kids?

 

I actually think this is what happens. There’s an assumption that conservative policies benefit the market and therefore they invest more because they have this belief and as a result it looks like conservative policies help the market.

And I believe this because after Trump won, consumer confidence jumped but this happened before he was even inaugurated and could do anything. So it couldn’t have been his policies, since they didn’t take effect yet. I believe it was because people perceived him as the economy guy and therefore went with it. The stock market is largely just rich people’s feelings to be honest. That and Trump was way better at marketing than Obama.

 

If people cannot afford to have children, then it is not the financial responsibility of hard-working middle-class people who choose not to have children, to pay for other people's hobbies of having and raising children. IMHO, most people, including myself, aren't qualified to be good parents and if they are financially unprepared, then they are even less qualified. Biden and the Democrats love to throw other people's money at potential voters, which often never even makes it to its intended target(s). There are already enough people, there is a population explosion, we have wars, starvation, disease, and other sufferings due to this and it's my opinion that the fewer people there are, the better.

 

Can't disagree with much of your thoughts @Luman. Now let's get ready for stock market profit taking. Too much national and state debt and bonds rates will raise. Republicans did well with commercial property ownership - corporations. The Democrats did well with housing ownership - with free assistance money for renters. All rich did well with high price real estate.

 

Almost one in three Americans live below 2 times the federal poverty line (widely used as the metric to describe those who are low income or worse). I have a hard time picturing such a large segment of the public as unfit parents, and I’m quite the misanthrope.

I see your point about enough people, again I’m a misanthrope, but if we don’t have enough kids, America will fall behind other first world countries who do incentive their people to have children. In addition, who will take care of all these aging people if we don’t have kids? What will happen to the social security and Medicare systems?

 

As I said, there are people from all over the world who would like to come here. We are almost as large as Canada, yet have 297 million more people. Australia, which is about 73% as large as the U.S, only has 25.5 million, which is less than Texas. They are not the only such countries who have small populations, by choice. Why does the entire world expect us to take in everybody when they do not, is this fair? We now have a man in office who is agreeing with those who would like to see America destroyed even further. I believe in immigration - legal, hard-working, and not those who are looking for handouts and charity.

 

I’ll tell you what. I’ll get a Biden tattoo on my butt cheeks that says “cmon man” if it cures my tinnitus lol.

 

Those countries both have social programs to help people have kids though. Their populations are smaller but not too top heavy. If America doesn’t have more kids, it’s not the population size that’s the problem, it’s the fact that a disproportionate amount of people will be too old to work, which isn’t good for anything.

And if these immigrants want to come here, why aren’t they in numbers we need?

 

I do not agree with programs that encourage people to reproduce. Programs that discourage it, should be in place, for the good of the human race. We have overbred, far too much.

We have far more immigration, with more diversity than numerous other countries that are doing fine. At this point, we only need the best and the brightest, not "Your tired, your poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse...", etc. It's time for other countries to STFU or take more of that type, we have enough problems, already with immigration, thanks to Biden and previous administrations both Democrat and Republican.

 

We may need a new thread, Biden vs. Trump 2024 if this article proves true.

Biden sees Trump rematch as real possibility

 

What's your stance on abortion and/or sex education? It's been a while.

Also, I doubt Biden vs Trump will happen. I genuinely think Biden won't last that long.

 

Neither of them will, IMO.

 

I support sex education, birth control, and abortion. As for the legality of abortion, I believe that the states should be able to decide whether to allow it or not.

Biden has to say that he may run, whether it's true or not.

 

I’ll say this, anyone underestimating Trump does so at their own peril imo. Trump will EASILY get the nomination if he runs again, the only way he doesn’t is if the party literally blocks him from running.

Now at this time, I’d see him as the underdog against Biden but Biden still has a long ways to go and I could see tons of things that come that could handicap him in the future. It would be for sure the most interesting presidential election of our lifetimes (again).

 

Lol, @FGG, is the Charlotte Observer considered a highly esteemed newspaper in NC? This article really cracks me up.

Madison Cawthorn is a Republican creation and North Carolina embarrassment
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
JANUARY 28, 2021 12:42 PM,


We’re all for public officials being attentive to the “public” part of their title. It’s good for everyone when elected representatives explain what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. But on behalf of a whole lot of North Carolinians, we have a request regarding one of those officials:

Can someone please keep Madison Cawthorn away from the cameras? And the microphones? And really, most situations in which he publicly tries to turn words into meaningful thoughts?

The first-term, District 11 U.S. House member has been an embarrassment to the institution, to his party, and to his state. In the last month alone, he:

▪ Helped incite the U.S. Capitol invasion with a Jan. 6 speech that lied about election fraud and stoked anger, then less than 24 hours later said the president’s election falsehoods played a role in the riot while claiming his own, similar election lies weren’t a factor. Cawthorn wasn’t alone in that kind of whiplash-inducing pivot, but he was the only lawmaker calling for unity after Jan. 6 who also sold “Cry more, lib” T-shirts on his web site. (He later removed the listing.)

▪ Faced questions about claims that he was a legitimate candidate for the 2020 Paralympic Games. Cawthorn has suggested so more than once, including telling a Christian podcast host that “I had an opportunity for the Paralympics for track and field.” This is not accurate, as The Nation reported, and it’s an insult to the Paralympic athletes who invest their time and effort to compete at an elite level.

Typed this actual sentence in a Jan. 19 email to Republican colleagues obtained by TIME: “I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation.” That commitment to messaging, rather than understanding and participating in legislating, might have been something that interested his constituents before they voted to send him to Congress.

▪ Struggled through an excruciating interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown in which he finally acknowledged Joe Biden’s legitimate victory yet continued to allege that states subverted the U.S. Constitution in changing election rules. That’s not true, and when Brown noted that election rules also were changed in North Carolina, Cawthorn said he wasn’t aware of those changes. Either Cawthorn inexplicably doesn’t know what’s going on his home state, or he lied. (The latter is very possible given Cawthorn’s volatile relationship with the truth. During his campaign, he created the impression that he was headed to the U.S. Naval Academy before an accident left him partially paralyzed. The reality: Cawthorn was rejected by the Naval Academy before his accident.)

Cawthorn’s strategy for these kinds of mishaps? It’s apparently to keep doing interviews, which results in more head-shaking headlines and national ridicule. It’s why the North Carolina freshman is on the medal stand for worst new member of Congress. It’s also why at least one prominent supporter has expressed regret, and why Republicans are surely not looking forward to two years of cringing.

It’s difficult to feel sorry for GOP leaders, however, including those in North Carolina. Cawthorn is a creation of their making, a product of legislative gerrymandering his state’s Republicans engaged after their 2010 victory in the N.C. House and Senate. Those maps resulted in some of the most gerrymandered districts in history, and even after courts intervened for fairer maps, a Republican is still all but assured to win in NC-11.

As has happened in districts across the country, such gerrymandering squeezes out moderates who thoughtfully consider the center. That leads to awful candidates and elected officials, and as lawmakers embark on a new round of map drawing in 2021, they should keep Cawthorn in mind. It might be nice to get easy election wins, but it’s not good for your party or the people you’re supposed to serve.​

Read more here: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article248826769.html

 

Lol, of course he's only on the medal stand and not guaranteed the gold.



Also, he is an unfortunate result of gerrymandering, which @FGG has alluded to.

 

Wrong. It actually costs about $5 for a pair of bootstraps, so the actual cost of a home in Brooklyn is $100,005.

 

$900,000 is the average price for a home in Brooklyn New York. These people have no inkling of what people here have to face. You can't get a rundown apartment for $100,000, in Brooklyn.

 

Maskers act and look like morons.

 

...fixed that for you.

 

I am not so surprised that the GOP is more focused on trying to game the system for political power than actually trying to develop policies that help the average Joe/Josephine or even convince them to vote for the party with honest political messaging (instead of disenfranchising people with anti-vote laws).

Can the federal government actually help redraw the lines? As in: setting up a non-partisan commission that could look at redrawing the map in several states to make it more competitive for parties to gain a few seats here or there?

 

Let me wear my 5 masks ok lol.