So you are agreeing, the FBI must indeed be corrupt?

@FrankZeleniuk I just think it's funny that all these Conservatives are crying that the FBI is clearly corrupt for executing a legal warrant on Trump, despite the FBI being ran by a Trump appointee who he described as having "impeccable credentials".

@JacksonNought Yeah, he was assistant AG under Bush. You'd think he was a little bit more center politically. Another commie gotcha.

@FrankZeleniuk methinks you don't know what Communism is.

So you agree Trump was lying when he claimed he always hired the best people?

@JacksonNought I know full well what communism is and it is pretty treacherous. You have no idea.

"You just have to fill the public square with enough raw sewage, you just have to raise enough questions, enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing, that citizens no longer know what to believe. Once they lose trust in their leaders, the mainstream media and political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth - the game's won." - Barack Obama.

I agree he was hoodwinked, as was Jeff Sessions and even Bill Barr. See above quote.

Recent events - Mar-A-Lago, Durham revelations - tell me the raw sewage pumping was hot and heavy from the resistance against the Trump administration - the Russian collusion hoax, Intelligence leaks the MSM gobbled up - and it doubled during and after the 2020 election and is streaming to the max today.

But then, I'm not living in la-la- land.

@FrankZeleniuk nice try. We already had this convo about the Obama quote, and I proved you wrong. And yet you still paste the out-of-context quote without the prior and following sentences which make it clear it isn't how you paint it. You are nothing but a huckster. And if you did know what Communism was, you would know it is nowhere in the USA and no left-leaning Democrat in elected office is advocating for Communism or doing anything even remotely Communistic.

Sounds like you really are living in la-la-land. Funny how you will twist yourself into pretzels to avoid putting any blame on Trump himself. So you still support Barr then? So you agree with Barr that the election was secure and not stolen and Biden won and 2000 Mules is a load of bullshit and the FBI raid was 100% warranted?

@JacksonNought If you continue to ignore what is going on you will not find yourself in a good place.

you havn't proven me wrong on that quote. If Obama knows how to win the game, I imagine the democrats do, yet more and more people are losing trust in political institutions, don't know what to believe and are losing trust in each other. Is it because Trump has all the power and the Democrats none. The State is powerless against the msinformation and disinformation coming from...umm...let me see...Fox news? Where is it all coming from, Jackson?

Tell me the border is closed and nearly 2 million people have not poured across it in the last year.

Tell me the inflation reduction act is reducing inflation. But maybe you should find out what inflation is first.

Tell me that half the population that invoke the constitution and constitutional rights, that are being battered daily, are extremists.

Tell me that concerned parents are terrorists.

Tell me that crime is not a problem or concern in democrat run cities.

Tell me that tent cities are not a growing problem.

Tell me that energy costs are not skyrocketing everywhere and brownouts and blackouts are not the future for all states not just California.

Tell me why the FBI is colluding with social media to spy on Americans?

Wait! I just realized, it is the all powerful Donald Trump in league with Tucker Carlson and a couple of renegade congressmen and senators that are the source of all the misinformation and disinformation - not only in America but in all western social democrat nations. That Trump is so powerful and the democrats are powerless to stop him....er well Obama knows how the game is won.

Trump made up all that baloney about illegal immigration, inflation, rising crime, and all the lies about Biden and Soros and the WEF. Just isn't happening. No worries. Obama knows the game and how to win it.

You believe that what you see happening before your eyes, the lack of transparency, denials, diversions, accusations against Americans are "raw sewage" from Trump and the Democrats are just trying to keep Americans believing in political institutions?

Well, it is harder to convince someone they have been fooled than to actually fool them, so it has been said.

@FrankZeleniuk well this is one of the biggest bunch of delusional bullshit I've seen lately. But's let's give you an undeserved good-faith effort to refute this.

you havn't proven me wrong on that quote

I have proven that you keep quoting a specific part that makes it seem like he is scheming and revealing his plans like some monologuing villain, and you keep leaving off the literal beginning and end which makes it quite clear he is talking about terrible things happening and how outside agitators are trying to subvert and corrupt our political system. Does that mean he knows how people are trying destroy democracy and sow discord? Sure. Does that automatically mean he is engaging in it himself? Absolutely not. You don't think Mr "I know everything" Trump knows this too? So does that mean he is engaging in this behavior himself? I am sure you will do whatever it takes to say "no not him he is perfect".

Is it because Trump has all the power and the Democrats none. The State is powerless against the msinformation and disinformation coming from...umm...let me see...Fox news? Where is it all coming from, Jackson?

Well, now the Dems do have power. Not that they have a lot, mind you. They are still obstructed by two Dems who won't let most bills pass. Everything seems to be on party lines these days. The Republicans have made it clear they have no agenda, no platform, no policy. They are 100% "whatever Trump wants" and "obstruct anything the Dems want even if it is good for the country". They are the biggest "party over country" hypocrites in modern history. Not to mention the stolen SCOTUS seats, with the Federalist Society installing multiple groomed judges to make a 6 - 3 Conservative majority, and an 8 - 1 Catholic majority. And the Republicans are doing everything in their power now to oust anyone from the party who isn't a Trump loyalist, and they have come out and admitted they will steal the next election. Hopefully people are smart enough to see this and vote properly so that the Democrats not only remain, but gain in power to stop these traitors.

And yes, Fox News is a disinformation machine. And Conservative John Malone is now forcing CNN to become a right-wing disinformation channel. Notice how quickly they all went from "gas prices are high, this is all 100% Biden's fault" to now "gas prices have been steadily dropping for weeks, Biden had nothing to do with this" or "Trump said Democrats are fascist, he is so wise and tells it like it is" to now "Biden said the Republicans who tried to overthrow the election are semi-fascist, how dare he, he is just like Hitler".

Tell me the border is closed and nearly 2 million people have not poured across it in the last year.

Biden's border policy is practically the same as Trump's, pretty much the only difference is regarding family separation. What was Trump's brilliant plan to stop it that was so good? Separate children from their families and stick them in cages to drink water from toilets and get sexually abused by ICE agents and get lost in the system to never find their families again? Build a shoddy crumbling and easily circumvented wall that would cost tax-payers billions and billions of dollars (wait I thought Mexico was paying for it?), kick Americans off of their homes for eminent domain, cede American land, and cause ecological disaster, even though the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants are ones who legally came on temporary visas (like on planes) and overstayed?

Tell me the inflation reduction act is reducing inflation. But maybe you should find out what inflation is first.

Tell me that Biden was solely responsible for gas prices rising, despite Trump signing an executive order to reduce oil production to protect oil company profits due to dramatically reduced gas purchases because of a pandemic, and despite barrels being as cheap as ever and oil companies jacking up prices and making record profits at the disadvantage of regular Americans? Tell me that despite blaming Biden for the gas price increases, he has absolutely no hand in the prices dropping consistently the past few months - the President 100% controls gas prices when they are bad but has 0% control when they are good... only when it's a Democrat. Tell me that the Republicans are acting in good faith to try and help the American people and reduce inflation, when the Dems are giving in to every single demand only for the Republicans to admit they never had any intention of working towards an agreement. Tell me Republicans care about reducing inflation and helping the American people when they vote against capping life-saving medicine costs and helping with baby formula.

Tell me that half the population that invoke the constitution and constitutional rights, that are being battered daily, are extremists.

You mean like George Floyd whose Constitutional right to due process and a fair trial were robbed as a cop knelt on his neck for 9 minutes? Or the resulting BLM protestors whose Constitutional right to protest was stolen as cops came in armed to the teeth and started beating people for no reason, shoving old men to the ground, ripping a child out of car and lying on social media that they saved him, shooting people in their homes on their porches and through their windows, blinding people and causing brain damage, all with 93% of protests being peaceful and those that ended up violent done so because of right-wing agitators who admitted to starting the violence? Like the peaceful church-goers whose Constitutional right to protest and to worship was taken from them as police shot pepper balls and gas at them so that Trump could take a hacky photo with a Bible? Like the women whose Constitutional rights to bodily autonomy and privacy were taken from them by a stolen court which credited a 17th century jurist who spent his time hanging "witches" and telling husbands they had every right to rape their wives? Like other Americans who have their Constitutional rights threatened by a court which wants to start stripping away rights to marriage and marital privacy? Like the corporations who are targeted and attacked by right-wing politicians for disagreeing with them? Like the 80-some million Americans who had their votes threatened when Trump and his sycophants tried to steal the election?

Tell me that concerned parents are terrorists.

Well then people like Matt Walsh, who homeschools, goes and rents a house in another state so he can go rant at a school board meeting and make up lies that causes a children's hospital to receive death threats, yeah he is a terrorist. When parents go to school boards to complain about something Fox News told them, like the proven lie about kids using litterboxes in schools, and they threaten school board members and teachers and make death threats and bomb threats and tell teachers they know where they live and they physically assault them... yeah, they are terrorists.

Tell me that crime is not a problem or concern in democrat run cities.

And is crime not a problem in Republican run areas? Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey have the lowest crime rates in the country... all blue states. Alaska, Louisiana, South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee are among the highest crime rates... red states.

Tell me that tent cities are not a growing problem.

Homelessness is a terrible problem. What is your solution? Criminalize poverty? Execute them? Which side of the aisle is the one trying to give corporations more power to exploit workers and hike up medication costs and buy up available homes to rent at high prices?

Tell me that energy costs are not skyrocketing everywhere and brownouts and blackouts are not the future for all states not just California.

Why don't you ask Texas, which decided profits were more important than safety precaution, and didn't properly weatherize their electrical grids and suffered immense black outs. Of course Ted Cruz would probably tell you it was all the fault of green energy and wind turbines, despite the Green New Deal never being a law and over 70% of Texas' grid coming from natural gas, coal, and nuclear sources, all of which failed, but he was too busy flying off to "shithole country" Mexico and blaming his daughters to actually care about his citizens.

Tell me why the FBI is colluding with social media to spy on Americans?

So you agree that law enforcement has too much power and should be reigned in and given less carte blanche and qualified immunity to get away with whatever corruption they want? Or do you only care now that they executed a legal warrant against the former president, after giving him over a year to return stolen classified documents? Were you complaining when Ron DeSantis had his goons point guns at children to harass a whistleblower?

Trump made up all that baloney about illegal immigration, inflation, rising crime, and all the lies about Biden and Soros and the WEF. Just isn't happening. No worries. Obama knows the game and how to win it.

Oh silly me. Here I was thinking that maybe the man who lied every time he spoke had lied again. Of course he must be telling the truth, just because he said so. I am sure he paid every one of his contractors and lawyers and never defrauded charities or blackmailed countries or stole documents. I am sure he won the election, since he said it was rigged, and told people he would say it was rigged if he lost from the beginning.

Nice Soros name-drop there. Wouldn't be a good right-wing rant without invoking the antisemitic boogeyman.

You believe that what you see happening before your eyes, the lack of transparency, denials, diversions, accusations against Americans are "raw sewage" from Trump and the Democrats are just trying to keep Americans believing in political institutions?

Well at least you are willing to admit there was lack of transparency, denials, diversions, accusations against Americans, and "raw sewage" coming from Trump and his administration.

@JacksonNought

Very interesting point of view and thank you for the effort I know you must have put into your reply.

Before I get into any kind of a rebuttal on your interpretation of reality I'd like your opinion about this fact.

The fact is that under the Trump administration TST gained religious status. I think you are aware of this as being true. If not a quick google search can verify it.

Do you agree with that as being factual?

I'm going to make an assumption of what your view of that fact might be, if you have given it any thought at all.

No responsibility for the aforementioned fact can be assigned to Trump, he cannot take any credit for it. The IRS is the agency that determines 501 status.

Would I be safe in that assumption? It may be a point, for opposing reasons, that we can agree upon.
I would see it as a negative event under the Trump administration. You would see it as a positive event under the Trump administration but we would both agree that the IRS is the causal agency. The IRS is wholly responsible, not Trump.

I don't really like to assign cause to groups or committees or agencies but to individuals because that is of what groups are composed. So some individual within the IRS or above the IRS, at least with input into the IRS decided, the TST should have religious status. We know it isn't Trump. So who could it be? Is the IRS simply following the statutes that lay out the eligibility for religious status? Did they stretch the statutes and regulations a little to make it fit? Or was it a strict interpretation? Maybe some external pressure was applied to make it happen? Well, we don't know but one things certain - Trump had nothing to do with it. Agreed?

Now, back to your post.

There is only one point you make I will directly address as being flawed. The rest of what you say is an interpretation of events I find rather skewed but I have to admire the creativity necessary to hold them as factually truthful accounts in reality.

Mark Twain's quote, "There are lies, then there are damned lies and then there are statistics." is often referenced and for good reason. The analysis of statistics is a science unto itself. Before one can say a statistic is true there are many factors that need to be taken into account, such as source, methodology, interpretation, etc. As a simple count of things, statistics can be useful in debate but the most basic compilation of numbers they can be quite misleading and need greater analysis than just their presentation as fact. I rarely use statistics in a discussion without careful analysis.

Let's take the statistics you listed here:

And is crime not a problem in Republican run areas? Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and New Jersey have the lowest crime rates in the country... all blue states. Alaska, Louisiana, South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee are among the highest crime rates... red states.

Your first question is superfluous and suggests that somewhere I have stated crime is not a problem in Republican states. It is a problem any where but high or rising crime rates must have reasons and that is what needs to be addressed.

You have to look deeper than just naming States as to why some have high crime rates and some less. For instance, crime occurs in mostly urban areas so it would be better to look at cities instead of States. We find that the hundred largest cities in America are 67% run by democrats. Urban dwellers will tend to vote democrat because they need more services than their more independent rural counterparts. so the question becomes why do people in Red States vote democrat in municipal elections and Republican in national elections and why do people Blue states vote a straight Democrat ticket. The division of the population percentage-wise between rural and urban is a factor obviously. Size of the state might also be a factor in how they vote. Cities in red States do vote Democrat. Memphis in Tennessee. New Orleans in Louisiana. Even Texas has a good number of Democrat run cities. Texas is a large State and many people live in smaller towns and rural areas which tend to vote Republican so it is considered a red State. Even most of rural New York votes republican but with about 9 million people in NYC the State is always Blue.

There are some anomalies that need further research. New Jersey, for instance. It is most certainly Democrat through and through yet shows up as having a low crime rate. I remember reading something about their decriminalizing of certain things and not including them in their crime statistic reporting. Similar to California not responding to theft under a $1000. It's no longer included in their crime statistics. Drug abuse and crime in and around tent cities are ignored.

You can look at crime rates over Trump's period in office they went down even in Democrat states.
It's only somewhat over a year now and they are sky-rocketing. Any explanation?

Here's a couple of relevant sites.
[ballotpedia.org]
[usabynumbers.com]

So take that for what it's worth.

Now the rest of your post seems to have a common thread in every argument that is an interpretation of events, that progressives will happily agree with you upon.

Time is important in looking at what is occurring. History is important in understanding where we are at present and why things are as they are. We can predict things about the future more accurately if we know the past. The more we know the more accurate our ability to understand the present and predict the future. If we erase history we will have no clue about why things are as they are.

The assignment of accountability or responsibility for events are used as blame, if seen as negative or for taking credit, if seen as positive.

But we really have to look at events on a timeline. For instance, what could make parents become terrorists and Matt Walsh do those things? Could it be the actions of progressive school boards? could that have triggered them to become "terrorists"? You know, teachers not wanting to inform parents of the curriculum, actually hiding it from them. Maybe?

The questions I asked, you did not refute as facts. They are facts but you were entirely more interested in blaming an administration that has not been in office for well over a year, for the ills occurring across the land. Even though there are many similarities in all western social democratic nations.

How about if we look a little further in the past.

Did the promise of a "fundamental transformation" of America set your heart astir? What did you interpret that as meaning? The end of capitalism? The institution of socialism?

When Obama said, "You can keep your doctor and you can keep your plan, period!" is that what occurred.

Obama recently outlined how to win the "game ", what is the game? Is he not in it? Is he just an advisor, you know, just informing his audience how to win the game. I don't think the quote I cited needs any other context. It's his game and he knows how to win?

Actually, that is the way to lose. It leads to destruction and that is the only way one can proceed to "fundamentally transform" a society and re-engineer it.

The Federal Reserve is an alleged independent government agency but privately held in trust by a dozen or so banking institutions, i.e. corporations. True corporatocracy example. Now they are blatantly hiring 87,000 mercenaries to enforce their edicts without representation upon the American people.

@Weltansicht Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve are different agencies. The Federal Reserve is overseen by Congress. The Department of the Treasury is under the President.

Fire all of them!

@DMcCreery1956 We have to do it by voting out every rep who backed them up - generally Democrats. And we should ridicule everyone who supports those people.

Yeah the states should wise up and require federal agents to get single use single task gun permits to carry, signed by the governor of the state the task is in.

@drf30 UnConstitutional

@TimTuolomne Is it? I don't recall where in the constitution it says federal agents have the right to bear arms in any state.

@drf30 No. The Constitution guarantees everyone the right to bear arms WITHOUT CONDITION, so without control (no permits) and the Feds are no exception.