I’m a little tired of The Garden Island giving voice to misinformation peddlers like Ann Coulter or Stan Lake in his recent claims about “tax reform.” I don’t want to debate this but rather just point out the facts that are patently incorrect or deeply out of context.
Stan states that U.S. “corporations pay the highest tax rates in the industrialized world.” On paper that’s true, but it doesn’t account for loopholes and tax havens. According to Vox.com, U.S. companies end up paying between 13-21 percent in taxes, which is on par or below other industrialized nations. Some companies, like Walmart, end up paying less than 5 percent, far below the industrialized-world averages.
“Money flows toward where it is treated well,” Stan states. What a ridiculous truism. Does this platitude include Enron, Bernie Madoff, President Trump and his violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause and all the abusive money grabs or scams we’ve seen over decades? Please.
Stan states, “More than half of all Americans pay zero federal income tax….” These people are too young to work, retired, disabled or cripplingly poor. For instance, a family of four living on less than $27,000 per year (Can you imagine?) will pay no official federal income tax but they will pay into Social Security and Medicare. Beyond that, should we start taxing students with no income or retirees living only on Social Security? I think not.
“The top 20 percent pay over 67 percent of all taxes….” It’s now actually higher. But that means that people earning $100,000 and above—all the way up to hundreds of millions of dollars per year, pay the bulk of all taxes. I currently barely fall into this group and I’m okay helping support society because I can. It’s a privilege to do my part while I can. Perhaps we can talk about raising taxes on workers when we create higher-paying jobs, since wages have been virtually stagnant in the U.S. since the 1970s.
Stan’s gross attack on public education is absurd. Do we have real problems? Yes. Should teachers be thrown under the bus for those problems? No. Let’s remember that public education was put in place in America so we’d have an educated electorate to vote. The right has sought for decades to destroy public education, so we have a dumb, powerless working-class while rich oligarchs call the shots. I’m not a supporter of that model. Are most Americans?
Stan attacks subsidies on our renewable energy industries. Google how much we already subsidize the oil industry. Estimates are as high as $52 billion annually. Nice try, Stan. The right continues to pull out the tired example of Solyndra, which ceased operations in 2011. If there were a myriad of failures like that one, we’d hear about it every day. Strong economies support emerging industries. Sometimes there are successes and there are also failures. It’s part of innovation.
I agree with Stan on college costs. We must remember, though, that this started in the 1970s when private loans, as opposed to government loans or grants, started to become the primary source for paying for college for the working or poor. Guess which party favored this “free market solution”?
And then Stan ends with an attack on big, corrupt government. The right hates government. Here’s the thing, though: I’ve worked in huge companies that were wasteful and corrupt. I’ve worked with small nonprofits that made foolhardy decisions or had the occasional rogue employee steal something. Our sacred churches have financial scandals and worse. Whenever you get a group of people together, some things that aren’t always good are going to go down. Many times, though, wonderful things do happen. Government is no more corrupt or worse than any other large group of people trying to work together. And for all of you who want to make government the enemy, please stop driving on our publicly funded roads, flushing your toilet into our sewer system, sending your kids to school, walking on our beautiful trails or swimming in our pristine waters which are all protected by big-bad government.
It’s time for America to get off the Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart misinformation crackpipes and to start consuming fact-based, well-vetted news and media. If you hate government and taxes, move to Somalia, our best example of what really happens when you have nothing but lawlessness. I’d much rather take my chances on our messy democracy right now.
•••
Jason Blake is a resident of Lihue.
Impressive article! Thank you for writing so clearly.
Well said Jason. How about the editors aiming to more adult readers than these hacks?
A very articulate letter Jason, which took some diligent research. You may not convince the diehards but there are those of us who solidly support your views. Many mahalos.
“Government is no more corrupt or worse than any other large group of people trying to work together.”
The thing is Jason, dealing with private companies is voluntary…they cannot force you to work for them or buy their output. On the other hand, there is nothing voluntary about the federal government…under threat of force & violence you must engage with it. Disagree with its actions? Try not paying taxes to fund those policies or actions you disagree with…like perpetual wars.
The other thing is that even though the effective rate of corporate taxation is less than the nominal rate, you’ve not taken into consideration what it costs a business to get there. Lowering the rates substantially will free up corporate/business resources for investment which means more employment.
Lastly, if you don’t like Coulter or Lake, don’t read their work…instead of lobbying to have their opinions shut down altogether. Leave that to the Stalins of the world.
RG DeSoto
Right on!
Well spoken. Thank you Jake.
Ever notice that those still clinging to the ideology of “trickle down” whereby tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporate are supposed to create jobs, never provide evidence that the theory has worked.
There is plenty of evidence in the economics departments of any major university that it doesn’t work.
Please start to notice how this tired justification is never supported.
The more accurate justification is “the rich and corporate vote for us; the safety net poor do not! Hooray for our side!”
Conservatives will simply continue in their futile lifelong search for a moral justification of their own rank selfishness!
Go back and check that out Pete…you are mistaken.
See this: https://taxfoundation.org/what-evidence-taxes-and-growth/
RG DeSoto
Jason, thanks for speaking out.
RG, you say that lowering taxes on corporations will cause them to invest and increase employment. You are ignoring history that clearly shows this “trickle down” theory is bunk. The corporations will not create jobs just because we give them a tax break. Read the Paradise Papers to learn about the use of “extra money” by thousands of large corporations and millionaires around the world.
Corporations are in business for one thing and that is to make money for their owners/stock holders. If they can pay their workers starvation wages (because they are the only game in town), pollute public land and water, despoil pristine beaches, or infringe on native peoples’ rights in order to increase their profits, they will do so. They have no soul; they have no conscience; they have no civic responsibility. There are a few small business owners who run their companies with integrity, but they cannot compete with the giant corporations.
This tax bill before the legislature is a giant give-away to the very rich in our country and it will have long lasting negative impacts on most Americans. I completely agree that I hate my taxes going to perpetual wars, but I am not ready to throw out the whole system in order to show my disagreement. That is why we have elections, a democratic government, and the right to peaceful demonstrations; to allow individual citizens to express their displeasure with government actions and with the ideas of their fellow citizens.
You and many so called economists are in error. It’s clear you have little knowledge of economics or how businesses function. Read this https://mises.org/library/economics-taxation
If you love taxes so much simply write the IRS a check anytime you feel sorry for those thieves. Me, I prefer to keep what I’ve earned by hard work and effort. The feds do nothing but waste OUR money on wars and useless programs that never accomplish the BS goals used to justify taking more of OUR income and assets.
RG DeSoto
I would expect the majority of readers of TGI to disagree with me as we live in a state that heavily favors democrats and leans further to the left than California in many ways. That’s fine; I don’t mind being a minority. It doesn’t bother me that you have a different point of view or that you take your facts from Vox, a Leftist website. It doesn’t bother me that you even manage to misinterpret what I or others say or put words in my mouth. (The Right does not hate government, anarchists such as Antifa do.) I’m not even bothered by your ad hominem attacks as that is an all too common tactic of some people to fall back on emotional reactions rather than rational thought. No, the only disturbing point you tried to make was your attempt to shut down any dissenting opinion to your own views. Our country was built upon the ability of citizens and legislature to argue and debate opinions and may the one with the best argument win. But to shout down and shut out any other opinion that you disagree with, well, that sounds an awful lot like communism. The Left seems to be trying to be all inclusive of diversity Except for diversity in thought. That’s a dangerous road for you to travel on. Let ideas rise and fall on their merit, not on whether or not they are in agreement with your philosophy or fixed political ideas.
“Mommy, Mommy, they all agin me!”
Stan Lake, did Jason Blake say you shouldn’t have been allowed to share your views in TGI? What is this nonsense about people trying to “…shout down and shut out any other opinion that [they] disagree with.” Did someone spray paint your front door after your OpEd? Does this attitude belong in Kauai’s paper? Get that mainland chip off your shoulder, pal! We’ve been freely arguing this stuff dating back to when the Republicans were the majority. Jason called you out for providing no evidence to support your celebration of ideology. We’re going to pull your pants down every time you do that. We’re not shouting you out, we’re just exposing your inanity!
Speaking of which, this sentence: “The Right does not hate government…” is hilarious. You know as well as all of us that the Right Wing agenda for decades has been to downsize government and terminate or privatize as many of it’s services as possible. That’s what such references refer to and you know that full well! Any time you try this kind of disingenuous stuff we will call you on it. BTW, that’s debate; not shout down!
Furthermore, if you don’t like how the media exposes every time your fat clown embarrasses himself, you don’t get to dismiss it by the inane and tiresome “The media is all agin us, Mommy!” If you don’t like the data on Vox then tell us why it’s wrong or biased. You don’t get a free pass to dismiss everything you don’t like as communist or just plain agin ya because THAT is not debate! That is inanity!
Hello Peter- I will quote Jason Blake’s first sentence for you. “I’m a little tired of the Garden Island giving voice to misinformation peddlers like Ann Coulter or Stan Lake in his recent claims about “tax reform.” To give voice to means to allow an opinion to be expressed. If you don’t want someone to be given voice or be given a voice, you don’t want to hear their opinion or in Jason’s case, he doesn’t want The Garden Island newspaper, the most widely circulated news source we have to print any conservative view points. Who else does this? Let’s see, ISIS, North Korea, and other communist countries. Is that the company you wish to be in?
I try to be succinct in my writing as I know the average attention span these days is fleeting but I’d be happy to provide you with tons of facts that support my opinions. You think the Right hates government. If you hate something you want to destroy or get rid of it. Anarchists hate the government such as Antifa. You know, the ones you always see destroying property because they don’t want to hear another point of view on college campuses. Ironic isn’t it that the group that labels itself as anti-fascist are themselves fascist? Hypocrisy knows no bounds on the Left. Let’s be more specific. The Right hates over-bloated government, wasteful government; government that does not have the best interests of its citizens in mind, government that only seeks to get itself re-elected or perpetuates itself, government that becomes too powerful. Our government was designed to serve the citizens, not the other way around as it has morphed itself into. There is a saying that “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.” Government can only grow by taking your liberties away bit by bit. Those that champion Big Government think the government knows better how the citizens should run their lives than the citizens themselves, that the government knows better how to spend the money the citizens earn than the citizens themselves. This is done through higher and higher taxation. What is the end goal? Ultimately to have the government control everything from production of goods to distribution and since the government “knows best” what’s wrong with that? Look only to Venezuela and every other country that has embraced unfettered socialism and communism as their god. They all fail. There is a reason why people risk their lives to escape communist Cuba for the USA or North Korea for the South but no one is trying to sneak into those communist countries. So yes, conservatives and the Right in general hate over-reaching, over-controlling government. Government is like salt, it is necessary but a little goes a long way, a little more can be distasteful and too much of it can be bad for you.
At least we can agree that it is the Right Wing agenda to downsize government or privatize (inefficient) services. There is no comparison between the efficiency and effectiveness of a private, for-profit company and a government entity. Government organizations are a legislated monopoly. A for-profit company lives or dies depending on whether or not they can provide a product or service to the public at a fair price, especially when open competition is involved. Governments cannot and do not innovate; only private companies do. The civil service makes it more difficult to encourage outstanding performance and discourage poor performance. (It’s nearly impossible to fire tenured teachers for poor performance). There is no sense of urgency with the government as everyone knows who has any dealings with them. There are dozens of disparities between the two but it all comes down to the citizen having a choice when dealing with competing companies as opposed to being forced, at gunpoint if necessary, to deal with the government. Of course you think that is ridiculous. Try not paying your taxes or registering your vehicle and see what happens. You WILL comply, or else armed government agents will force you to comply under threat of loss of liberty or money. Any government law, rule or regulation can be enforced by force and there are more and more of them every year.
Government is necessary to protect our borders and its citizens. You know, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, etc. When it sticks to what it was designed to do it does a great job, when it tries to do everything it does nothing well. For instance it was not designed to take over health care. The Affordable Care Act has proven to be anything BUT affordable.
Conservatives simply want to get back to basics and let people keep more of their hard earned money to spend as they see fit. Yes, that means a reduction in government size and services that we are paying too much for and receiving too little in benefits for.
I shouldn’t need to tell you why Vox is biased but since you asked… it was co-founded by liberal columnists Ezra Klein, Melissa Bell and Matt Yglesias. It’s a mixture of news and opinion and when the lines get blurred you might think you’re getting fact based news when in fact you are getting Left Wing opinion which sounds perfectly normal to a Left Wing reader. According to NBC News, a Pew Research analysis found the media only presented 5% positive news about President Trump. The bias is astounding. In case you missed it, he just returned from another overseas trip where he roundly received positive results, he is finally gaining control over the out of control North Korea nuclear threat to our country that has been ignored for decades, unemployment is lower than it has been since before Obama, the stock market is higher even though billionaire Mark Cuban predicted it would utterly crash, he has been slashing regulations and basically doing what his constituents elected him to do despite the utter obstruction of a unified democrat party against him as well as a few RINO’s (Republican In Name Only) who feel threatened by his promise to “drain the swamp”.
Back to Vox, when you are reading any news source you need to have your mental filter set to catch obvious negative adjectives and descriptors. For instance today Matthew Yglesias has a piece entitled “The tax bill’s original sin”. Scanning through it we see the following: unappealing options, unpopular corporate tax cut, raises middle-class taxes, violates…promises, humiliating defeat, dilemma, unwilling to revisit, tragedy, and that’s just in the first few paragraphs. To be fair, I use the same filters when I hear anything from Right leaning sources as well. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.
So Peter, I don’t expect a free pass. Unlike liberals I know nothing in life is free. Either you or someone else paid for every benefit you have ever received. The fact that the media is heavily biased against the president is not even in question, you are simply aligned to anything anti-Trump so it all sounds perfectly natural, even pleasing to you. You have a natural cognitive bias to anything adversarial about our President. Your opinions, thoughts and emotions are all formed around anything negative about him; you are an undiscerning magnet to draw and cling to anything that might buttress your jaundiced view because anything else would mean you might be a little bit wrong. And you can’t be wrong, can you Peter?
Jason said he was “tired” of “…misinformation peddlers like Ann Coulter or Stan Lake…” So am I. That isn’t even close to “…shout down and shut out any other opinion that [they] disagree with.” It’s not even close, Stan.
I’ve been more than one type of professional working in several areas and levels of government as well as a manager in Silicon Valley and your hackneyed, inane ideological spew about “Gubment workers be lazy and for profit businessmen should be given sainthoods!” is beyond idiotic!
We’ll address the rest of this snow job further down:
How can you and Jason be “tired” of another viewpoint when the vast majority of the news you consume on a daily basis is anti-Trump? Does it really wear you down to see the occasional positive article? Exactly what misinformation did I peddle? I didn’t say government workers are lazy and business people should be given sainthood. I didn’t even imply or infer it, it just isn’t true. A person’s moral compass and character are not defined by whether they are employed in the public or private sector. I worked in the government for twenty years and I was a union steward fighting for workers’ rights. It’s not possible to have an honest dialogue with someone who intentionally twists what someone else has said. If you could lower the volume of your emotional rhetoric I’m sure you have something worth listening to.
Really insightful analysis. Since democrats have dominated the politics since 1970s, first amendment right and labor union rights were the main topics around the table. It had become a family concern. Health issues have also been discussed and who pays the bilk of the expenses from hospitals? Health insurance cannot cover everyone so there is a shortage of options to obtain medical. Who covers the state deficit? Tax payers. Mainly middle class that voted them in in the first place. Seniors are forced to pay for some health cost. The problem is higher health care cost, and not enough jobs going around. What can Donald Trump do then? Make more money and keep himself a billionaire.
Thanks Stan… It’s nice to hear a different voice. Your letter was great as well.
“You are a undiscerning magnate to draw and cling to anything that might buttress your jaundiced view because anything else would mean you might be a little bit wrong.” And yes Stan he thinks he can’t be wrong. I have a 42 year old daughter who thinks the same way and my experience has shown they don’t realize that some of us see people’s actions better than they ever hoped for. Best way of dealing with it is in one ear and right out the other.
Wow, it hasn’t snowed this much on Kauai since little Johnny had to write a book report on a book he hadn’t read. Let’s deal first with lie #1: “I try to be succinct in my writing…” What you produced here, in a simple comment section, has absolutely nothing to do with the word “succinct;” so please look it up!
Next, you said a great deal about VOX; but, nothing about how the data used by Jason is wrong. You failed my challenge for you to do so; rather badly!
Next, why are you still beating the dead horse Antifa? That had a couple weeks of momentum, months ago, and went nowhere! That’s because it was a handful of people that got their 15 minutes of fame and have pretty much disappeared. They didn’t represent “The Left” or any other established group of commonality. Their actions horrified those who showed up to protest white supremists just as much as everyone else.
Speaking of the “Left,” you obviously have this same perspective of the opposition as every other Sean Hannity fueled right wing extremist: There is this monolithic mass called “The Left” that thinks alike and tunes into the same radio show every morning and the same TV news every evening to find out what they’re supposed to think, without questioning, about whatever issue has popped up that day! Actually, that’s you guys who do that; “happy unity to yoooou!” Those “Left of center are interested in reforming the status quo; usually in the favor of people affected by an issue. They never say: “Let them take care of themselves like I never did!” like you guys do! Progressive leftists may want to ban the things or entities that are causing what they believe to be harmful. They may be less inclined to compromise. Extreme leftists want Bush in jail and Wall Street destroyed! They don’t represent most people left of center because the population declines dramatically as you move down the continuum to extremism. The opposite has happened on the Right over the past 30 years. This is the result of several people who have worked very hard and spent lots of money to make that happen. I haven’t met a moderate right of center individual in over 5 years. We are perhaps days away from John McCain being called a “Leftist Sympathizer!”
Finally, what in the world has trump actually done to finally gain control over NK? I don’t see it being anything but worse! He’s used bombast and the same sanction technique he used to criticize! BTW, Asia is laughing over trump’s visit, antics and statements and how he was so easily pacified and turned around simply by a Chinese dinner show that aggrandized him. That’s the Asian way and THEY WON!
You’re right that I believe you worship a racist, misogynist, bigoted clown without refinement and who embarrasses our country daily! You’re in that 33% that hasn’t seen enough yet. Well, 33% of Americans also believe the sun revolves around the Earth. At least they didn’t learn that from FOX!
I said I TRY to be succinct but you seemed to be asking for much more quantity which I provided and you chose to ignore most of what I said, picked a few points to pounce on and so here I am, trying to give you a better understanding of what I already said.
Regarding Vox- You asked me to show you why Vox is wrong or biased. An opinion can’t be wrong, it is what it is. Bias can be objectively measured. I said it doesn’t bother me that some people get their information from a Leftist website. I then provided you the facts of who the founders are- Leftist, Progressive columnists. I provided you with a brief portion of an NBC news report that shows only 5% of media news about our President is positive. I then provided you with excerpts from today’s Vox column that is riddled with negative comments and opinions. It’s plain and simple, Vox is biased.
You’re right, I shouldn’t give another moments thought to Antifa, another Leftist failure.
Yes, I find it astounding that so many people wholeheartedly embrace the Left’s ideas without understanding the ramifications of their beliefs. College kids wearing Che Guevara T-shirts, campaigning for socialism, and protesting anyone with a different point of view shows how highly effective the Left’s brain washing campaign has been. Russian KGB has nothing on your operators! If you don’t fall into lockstep with other liberals then I applaud your ability to think for yourself but be careful, many on the Left are not kind to those that disagree with them. I know I disagree with more than a few things on the Right and I don’t mind expressing my opinion and I never worry about being attacked for my opinions.
Regarding North Korea- This has been a problem that has been kicked like a can down the road since George H.W. Bush was in office. He didn’t take care of it, Clinton made it worse, the next Bush did nothing, nor did Obama. President Trump has North Koreas biggest supporter, China, on board as well as Russia to contain the problem of Kim’s nuclear ambitions. He has financial sanctions in place whereby trade with most other countries has been cut off. Face it, the soft peddling of previous administrations to ask North Korea to not build nuclear weapons hasn’t worked. All the brightest minds on both sides of the aisle weren’t able to stop or slow nuclear and ICBM testing. I’m glad we finally have a President who says what he means and means what he says. If we don’t stop them we may become a smoking, radioactive crater.
Regarding Asia- He had three core goals-insisting on free and fair trade, strengthen our alliances and economic partnerships, and unite the world against the North Korean nuclear menace. The first two may take some time to show measureable success but as for the third, it seems he has China, Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea fully on board with sanctions but we’ll see how effective they are. I’m not sure why you think Asia is laughing over his visit. China gave him the grandest greeting of any President ever because they respect him. They didn’t open up the Forbidden City to him just to put on a show. He’s the first foreign leader to dine there since the founding of modern China.
Regarding worshipping President Trump- Neither I nor anyone else knows what you’re talking about. No one worships a President and no, 33% of Americans do not believe the sun revolves around the earth but you’re not too far off. According to a 2014 poll that number came in as 26%. This leads me back to our awful education system and how bad teachers cannot be fired. But I digress.
On May 2016, trump said “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country and that’s what they’re doing. It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world.” What happened to the double-digit tariffs on Chinese imports or the “currency manipulator” tag? They’re gone because trump got played as easily as a fifth grade student who has the same language and vocabulary skills he does and uses the same taunts out on the playground! China correctly assessed the narcissistic clown and said “All we have to do is throw a big agrandizing show and he’ll walk around saying ‘China likes me, China really likes me!’ and the problem is over. China knows how to handle a fool. They’ve known for 3000 years!
As for NK, a year ago, trump and his goose stepping followers were saying that sanctions haven’t worked and why do we keep doing what doesn’t work. This year, they’re trump’s sanctions so, of course they’re saying “Look at all he’s done, these are beautiful sanctions, and China really likes him!” In the meantime, insulting, 3:00 am tweets are directed at an unhinged leader supported by millions of fanatics who have taken goose stepping uni-thought to a level not even Sean Hannity can conceive!
But NK uni-thought isn’t positive so it wouldn’t sell on FOX. What sells is somehow putting a positive spin on using the power of the U S Presidency to insult and demean a gold star widow, with no fame, who happened to make a critical remark. That kind of manifestation of mental illness can NEVER be allowed to be looked at as negative!
Accurately reporting the Tet Offensive made “the media” the enemy. Accurately reporting on Reagan’s public loss of memory and confusion made “the media” the enemy. Accurately reporting, in 2004, that the Iraq mission was “not accomplished” made “the media” the enemy. “The media” is not the enemy. Having a racist, misogynist, bigoted, narcissist clown producing unrefined, bullying actions and statements daily is going to be nearly always negative! Saying otherwise is nearly always going to be a lie!
I don’t know that the media reporting on Reagan’s loss of memory made them the enemy but do you remember that back when Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office he had suffered from polio but the extent of his paralysis was kept from public view? The press successfully protected his image just as they did by not reporting on Kennedy’s affairs which is just the opposite of today when they try to destroy our President’s image. It wasn’t long ago you enjoyed eight years of President Obama and the press roundly reported in glowing terms of whatever he and Michelle did. Grace and dignity had finally returned to the Whitehouse. The press has the ability to be kind to or even handed to or even caustic to whoever is in office depending on their judgment. The press is admittedly staffed from top to bottom with Leftists whereas years ago the political affiliation of the press was never an issue. They definitely have an axe to grind and view Trump in the exact terms you have described. Since this is what you consistently read and it agrees with your own opinions it must therefore be the truth. If you could put your bias aside for just a moment please look at some facts:
You say the President is a racist. Most likely because he wants to build a wall to keep illegal aliens out and wants vetting for people who want to enter our countries that come from predominantly Muslim nations. Followers of radical Islam are not a race. Mexicans are not a race. He is attempting to keep out of our country those that mean to harm us. If there was a problem with Canadians slipping over the border with crystal meth and killing citizens he would want a wall there too and so would I. The number one job of any government is to protect its citizens. A true racist could not stand to be in the presence of people of other races and would do all he could to eliminate them. President Trump has appointed Black people to his cabinet which is not at all in line with being a racist.
You say he is a misogynist. Again, someone who hates women wouldn’t want anything to do with them or would keep the subjugated. Don’t forget that his entire winning campaign was headed by a woman and he has appointed women to very powerful posts such as Nikki Haley, ambassador to the UN and Betsy DeVos to the head of the Department of Education and Mrs. DeVos is or was not exactly a fan of the President telling the Washington Examiner that he was an “interloper” and “does not represent the Republican party.” A true misogynist could not stand to put women in power and especially not one who would not be subservient to him or would dare speak against him.
You say he’s a bigot and of course that is someone who cannot stand anyone else who is of a different creed, belief or opinion. Actually this sounds a LOT like the Left. You can judge a person partially by what they say but mostly by what they do. You’ll need to be more specific in your allegation. Don’t forget that before he came into politics as a republican he was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor along with Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali. He was the first major contractor to have a woman run a construction site. He has been quite complimentary to the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu and we of course continue to fund their defense. President Trump certainly has a different creed, belief and opinions then leaders of most all other countries but that doesn’t stop him from working with them. A true bigot would want nothing to do with anyone not like him. You know, like when Obama, Clinton, Biden and Reid all voted against gay rights in supporting the Defense of Marriage Act? I wouldn’t call any of them a bigot as I don’t think you can paint a broad brush and define a person’s entire character based on any one action.
You say he’s a narcissist clown. Take out the clown part as that is just partisan insult. Is he a narcissist? To some extent, he might be. Anyone of his stature and his position has to have quite an ego to withstand the daily onslaught from the media without buckling. To me though, a true narcissist is one who must always have the spotlight shining on themselves, they must be the center of attention. This is where you are on really shaky ground if we compare him to President Obama who constantly peppered his speeches with “I” more than anything else. Even in a speech in the Rose Garden he defined those agreeing with him as “love” and during a eulogy he defined “God’s grace” as those who agree with him. Now THAT is an example of narcissism. In all of President Trump’s speeches, had you ever cringed enough to listen, he always spoke of “we the people, working together”, or his administration, it was not about him personally. Remember, he took a huge pay cut to take this job, he has a beautiful family and wanted for nothing. He simply wanted to help steer the country away from what some of us think was a disastrous course. Maybe he will succeed, maybe not. It seems he has more people against him than for him but he is not interested in winning a popularity contest he’s trying to do what’s needed to fix the mess we are in. I wish him well as I do you Peter, life’s too short to have hate in our heart, now let’s go have a beer! You may have the last word if you wish
Oh baby, was there some laugh out loud moments there! That was a great “straw man” exercise whereby you suggested the reasons for my trump adjectives all had neatly packaged, Sean Hannity prepared counters you could apply.
Racists, misogynists and religious bigots all have patterns they can’t possibly always conceal in their history and casual remarks (did I mention being a speech pathologist?). Trump is nothing but casual remarks 24/7. That’s why being convicted of housing discrimination long ago is relevant to his having black employees removed from the casino floors before he visited, the old comments on blacks being lazy and only jews can do his accounting, or the casual remark in Redding: “There’s my African American!” or not getting a fair shake from a judge due to his race, or the one about “many fine people” marching with swastikas. These are patterns indicating racist thought. The internet is roaring about administration employee group photos that are so white, even closeted gay Mike Pence looks less pale! It’s started whole new “Where’s Waldo” searches for any people of color! His admin. Is NOT diverse!
The old video tape about what he thought a celebrity is entitled to grab, The recent comments on a debate moderator’s menstruation, the rated by beauty appearance of female opponents or critics, the twenty women claiming sexual harassment, his stalking attempted intimidation in the 2nd debate, and oh so many casual comments, indicate a pattern of misogynist thought.
This current xenophobia is just like the old xenophobia that gave us proud American moments like The Asian Exclusion Act of 1885, or the anti catholic 1920’s when the “Pope is taking over” was heard due to a wave of immigration from Ireland and other catholic European countries. In 1924, the KKK membership included 10% of the adult American population, eager to suppress blacks, jews, catholics, immigrants and anyone else who looked, acted, or believed differently and started getting uppity. Big scandals destroyed that membership effort in the late 20’s. I wonder what a current drive would reap; especially if they advertised on FOX! The trump is completely on board.
The funniest part, and a brand spanking new one for me, is how “China likes me” trump is actually less of a narcissist than Obama! You REALLY want to go there, Stan? What was it again? Use of the pronoun “I” in speeches? Right, trump uses “We;” but, that’s because his ego is way, way too big for a single person. From the beginning (“We had the biggest crowd!”) to the daily, including today: “We’ve done more than [fill in the blank],” “We” always means “trump!” I have a DSM IV in my professional library. You should look up “Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD)” in one. It reads like trump’s resume!
OK, you’ve decided to stay with the 32% that still respects him. You’re even still trying ways to defend him! You have realized that the other 68% can’t ALL be inattentive, unfair, eaters of sour grapes. The numbers are too large. You also know that it’s not getting any better. He’s not going to become more refined. You just know he’s read only one book in 40 years. Those holding him back are being dismissed. Material for me will only increase. He really did shove that PM out of his way, wordlessly, to get in front at NATO. He really is, at best, an unrefined jerk you’d make up an excuse to not be with. So, Stan, eat right, get plenty of exercise, you’re in for a long haul!