ewsieg

The stock market keeps breaking records - Stupid way to define the economy, yet ironically it was the only thing Trump touted when he was POTUS and his supporters ate it up, yet somehow they are 'educated' enough to know it's stupid to define with this alone now..... and continue to ignore other positive factors. Unemployment is a strong thing to run on, agree wholeheartedly. When you talk "record" new jobs or "record" dis-inflation though, I don't think that hits home with most independents the way the left thinks it does. Covid came out of no where and neither side was 100% right in how to deal with it and many of the things the left called for during it participated in record job loss and record inflation. IMO, just continue to focus on getting out of Covid without a major recession. Oil producing - I feel like it's the dems themselves that stifle this talking point. It may surprise and sway an independent voters, but it could actually hurt the base. Crime and Illegals - I know the numbers are down and truly crime is not the issue the right makes it out to be, but low crime numbers can be skewed, for instance from less police to take police reports or corporations that aren't even bothering reporting theft. The easiest and most efficient way to fix migration is to destroy the economy, but that aside, Biden never did much to control the border until border GOP politicians helped ensure the entire country dealt with the economic difficulties mass illegal immigration and Dem mayors in northern cities began to complain. I do feel Harris is pointing out that she is ready to continue what Biden was late to start, better late than never.

I saw a bumper sticker on a gorgeous 2024 Tahoe yesterday (never understand why you'd put bumper stickers on your car, guess that's my conservative background showing through) that said "I don't co-parent with schools (or maybe school board), I co-parent with Jesus". I actually agree and support that idea, but I suspect we look at the meaning of it differently. Not co-parenting with the schools, to me, means letting them do their thing while I do my own. I suspect this is one of the people that goes to the monthly board meetings, not to listen and learn, but to tell them they need to change stuff to have more 'God' in it.

I don't think Russia would do much. Russia appreciates Iran being disruptive, but my guess is they'd prefer to be friendly with Saudi Arabia over Iran anyway.

I fully expect Israel to go after regime change in Iran with their attack, so military, oil, and nuke site(s). I don't think they go in until after 11/5 though. Israel isn't good at being subtle. I just hope they don't cripple the country so much that it leads to complete chaos after, increasing the chance for other militants to take over.

Lions and Politics, you can't go wrong.

I was up in Auburn this weekend and my wife was surprised to see so many Harris signs. Definitely more Trump signs, but I don't think it's anything like before. We took a long way home to enjoy our drive through the lower thumb back into Macomb county and it's very noticeable how many less Trump signs there are. At minimum, I'm comfortable saying Trump isn't getting folks excited to vote for him. I suspect like some of you, those silent Trump voters from 8 years ago are silent Harris voters now.

Local political sign.

Is it a towel? Trump never fits in any of his suits, I wouldn't be surprised if it's excess suit coat that is flared out.

They still do an international 1/2 marathon? If I remember they stopped it during Covid. I'm so stupid out of shape, but the thought of running over the ambassador has always intrigued me.

Said no one, ever!

The only thing I wish Kamala would have done more on with her response to this is call out the right wing media for letting him get away with this ****. My Trumper friends will tell me he 'says what he means' and tout that as a great trait, but in their media bubble, they don't see that he initially said X until he got called out on it, then said well really I mean Y, but not completely, because X is pretty much the right answer too, but honestly I will just say Y. He gets called out on that again and just says, I meant Y the whole time and that's all the right wing media covers. That said, by avoiding this, it does allow her to say she went into the Lions den, faced tough questions, and answered them without blaming media. I have two long time conservative friends, we all listened to Rush Limbaugh as kids, we all read reports from the Heritage Foundation and even if we didn't agree with it all, thought they made good points. They know Heritage wrote Project 2025, I have played the 'Heritage will play a big part in my administration' quote from Trump, but they still insist that Trump has denounced it and won't follow any of it. That said, I bet you if they actually read it, they would probably agree with 80% of it, it's only the few things that made it into the media that caused Trump to back. Scariest thing is, if elected, it's that 20% that he is currently denouncing that he would probably push and would ignore 80% of the fiscal stuff that probably isn't all that bad.

I won't say free markets regulate themselves, but both Democrats and Republicans have consistently instituted laws that protect the industry leaders in a market. Not saying government needs to get completely hands off like your hard core libertarians suggest, but government picking winners (the biggest guy on the block with the most money to feed them) hasn't faired well either.

A true libertarian....yes. He was the most centric libertarian candidate ever though. We would have been better today if he was voted in over Trump.

I don't think she'll do it, but I could be wrong. Like I said I think she's playing prevent now. That said, I think you're right, there may be more benefit for her if she does Fox and Rogan. Will Rogan have her though? He has refused to have Trump in the past because he was afraid it could help Trump. If he opens the door for Harris, he might be concerned that if he continues to snub Trump it'll actually help Trump with his victim mentality. If I were Harris, I'd only go on if Trump goes first, that way he doesn't back out. I do not think Rogan would play softball for Harris, but I do think an interview with Trump would come off much more contentious.

Do you ever listen to Rogan? He doesn't come across or even try to be a 'tough guy' on the podcast. I would seriously be surprised if he was combative towards her. He will force a topic back to the front if he feels it's being dodged though, but every interviewer should do that. 2 months ago I would have said her doing Rogan's show would be the best thing for her. I don't think this media blitz has done anything to make me think that anymore. I know she's not stupid, but she hasn't shown anything to indicate she's smart either. If she goes on Rogan with the same playbook she's been using, I don't think it wins over anyone and long form interviews always have a risk to them. I kind of feel like she's playing prevent defense right now and it scares me a bit, but it might be the best thing.

Iran is absolutely a concern and I wouldn't have had a problem with Kamala mentioning China, Russia, Iran, and NK as legitimate concerns to the US, but seriously, that is a seriously bad answer. Iran is a regional threat, a region which we obviously care about, but also have tons of allies in that very region as well that fight against Iran too. China has no comparison, Putin has tried to make Russia look just as tough by trying to strengthen ties with China, it's still a mockery to China to compare Russia to them. In this little media blitz Kamala has done, she really hasn't answered a single question straight on with the exception of this and she got it so horribly wrong. That's alarming.

I liked a candidate that blanked at the word "Aleppo" and once he was given a hint of "Syria" he gave a legitimate answer, one better than anything you'd ever hear out of Kamala. This very forum declared that alone made him unworthy to be POTUS. (I still contend that prior to that media blitz against him, at least 50% of the people that mocked him would have paused on "Aleppo" as well). I'm not saying she won't correct it, but it's inexcusable that a candidate doesn't know this and even worse she's our current VP.

Also worrisome that our clearly better choice for POTUS thinks Iran is the biggest adversary.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2024/10/04/michigan-teachers-to-pay-less-into-retirement-fund-in-future/75501728007/ Hopefully this is a one-off and not a 'let's govern like Granholm and pass the buck to the next governor to deal with' trend.

Evidence #135 that Trump is a democratic operative as he squashed an advantage the GOP had with this and threw his support to him.

Glad to see that. The immigration numbers are interesting as well, Walz did a pretty good job to drive home the bill that Trump told everyone not to back...after they initially backed it.

Vance presented much better than Walz. He was more smooth and you never got the sense he was going to break character. In presentation alone, Walz didn't have some good looks during a Vance answer from scribbling down notes to just the look he'd give Vance when Vance was speaking. Walz was trying to 'old school' debate Vance too, you know, stupid things like giving data to support an answer. Vance was really good at not answering the question, while at the same time not obviously looking like he was deflecting the question. The abortion answer for one, he kept saying 'we need to build trust again' or something like that as he sounded compassionate and even approving of abortions, yet he wouldn't just answer the question which should give everyone the answer they need. I will say, as a person that has had their boss put them in a no win situation, he handled that quite skillfully.... I just hope those independents and right leaning folks saw through it. The CBS fact checking.....horrible. I really feel that may have 'won' the debate for Vance. While I was not agreeing with anything Vance was saying and some of it was factually wrong, they specifically said they would give the other candidates the opportunity to fact check each other, yet would specifically call out Vance if Walz didn't respond to a specific issue they had. The whole point of Walz was to appeal and maybe even carve out some votes in those rural areas. My concern is those folks which likely already lean right but just don't want to vote for Trump saw it as the media taking sides again and may not have been as receptive to Walz' answers.

The problem with X and Facebook is it's just to easy to make a nonsense comment/reply. My mom still occasionally shares stupid stuff or comments on other peoples stupid stuff with quick 1 line responses that look idiotic. Yet if you talk to her, she fully understands many of these issues are more complicated. Most people that read anything my brother posts would assume he's full on MAGA, in his case he's just a troll.

Not sure why 6'5 makes this more impressive, 5'6 would make this more impressive.

I feel the start of this season was very similar to 2006. Unlike 2006, once the season started, this has been completely opposite of 2006.....until these last few weeks. Just unbelievable. If I told you Baez would be as worse as you thought was possible, that not only Meadows and Keith were sent down, ALSO Tork! Maeda didn't work out, but Flaherty did, so you traded him.... I would have thought we'd be in the White Sox position this year.