Civ, and your commentary is just inaccurate! The goal line is being moved all over the place!Civilized said:caryking said:Ok, if you look at this in its simplest form, we had two people remove classified documents from areas that should be secure. The difference is: one had a legal way of doing it and the other didn't.Civilized said:caryking said:Trump - as much as they can get away with…Civilized said:SmaptyWolf said:Civilized said:SmaptyWolf said:Civilized said:caryking said:Civilized said:
Serious questions-
What economic policies of Biden's do you strongly object to?
How have those policies harmed our economy?
What aspects of our current economy do you object to?
What did Biden do to create them?
Civ, those are all reasonable question. Perhaps you could give us your answers. Hell, we might agree on most…
Yeah I'm not the one acting like this economy is the worst evarrrr so I think these questions should be answered by those that think the Biden economy stinks because of him.
First I don't think presidents have as much of an economic effect as partisans try to convince you they do (good or bad).
Second Biden was dealt a chicken **** economy that was in the tank as his starting point. To be clear this wasn't Trump's fault, but nor was it Biden's.
Could you argue the third round of stimulus was one round too much? Yeah but that response was perfectly understandable after most economists agreeing Great Recession stimulus was too slow and too little.
Could you argue inflation is his fault? Yeah but that's a half-ass argument. Inflation spiked all around the world post-COVID and our inflation is in line (actually a little better then) most other developed nations. The Fed has wrestled inflation back down to 3% and it's probably better than that because housing metrics trail. Would Trump or anyone else significantly outperformed Biden or the rest of the world?
What else? Stock market is fine, not that that's really his doing.
Real estate market is slowing down markedly due to the Fed's rising rates to get inflation under control but that's after several years of gangbusters growth and easy money. I don't love the RE slowdown, it's pinching me personally since there are very few buyers in the market. We've got product sitting on market for months longer than previously but that problem's not going to persist forever. The market will come back and real estate is a long game anyway; you can't time the market, you've got to dollar-cost average your ventures long term.
Wage growth especially for low income workers is up markedly which is long overdue.
GDP has fully recovered from the COVID dip and is higher even than pre-COVID projections.
I'm sure there are things to complain about because everything can't be optimized at the same time but from 30k feet there's a lot going right with the economy.
But again, fundamentally, just like QB's presidents get too much credit for a good economy and too much blame for a bad one.
Should be mentioned that between Biden's infrastructure law and CHIPS act, the U.S. is currently experiencing a manufacturing boom, with levels of private sector manufacturing investment that have surprised even the Biden Admin. It's creating a boatload of jobs in rural America. Trump liked to cosplay being a Dem and pretended to care about manufacturing and infrastructure... Biden is actually making it happen.
As a bonus, the infrastructure law incentivizes free market investment to actually tackle climate change, rather than leaning on penalties or other coercion... the first significant step our country has managed to take to get real about climate change. Manchin was pissed.
Another bonus, the CHIPS act lays the groundwork for the long process of building our own advanced chips, a national security issue that we should have addressed long ago. Our global economy shouldn't have a single point of failure in Taiwan.
Between that stuff and Biden's foreign policy Master Class, I have no idea what people could possibly be up in arms about... unless you just hate continuing to be a superpower. And it's not like Trump isn't as old as dirt also. I guess that's why they have to invent ridiculous conspiracies (as always) to make the outrage possible.
Biden's two biggest positives to me are that he's surrounded himself (aside from Kamala, who is really more a figurehead than an adviser) with pro strategists and advisers and that his team has been quite effectual at spearheading legislation and EO's.
You can easily disagree with Biden's stances on issues but you can't say at this point his team has struggled to govern the way that his predecessor did.
You'd asked previously what I disagree with Biden on; if I'm critiquing Biden his single biggest misstep was the cluster-**** Afghanistan withdrawal.
I think his most rad-lib attempt was student loan forgiveness, an effort which ironically was regressive as hell and also didn't address the underlying huge problem that is cheap federal student loans driving up the cost of higher education in the first place.
As mentioned though, my biggest issue with him is a trope that's definitely been overblown by the right but is still a problem (and is with Trump too) - that being his age. It's not even so much that I think he's senile (he's not) or simply unable to withstand the physical rigors of the position (he is, albeit with some literal and metaphorical stumbles) or that I think he'll die in office (while scary, the likelihood is quite small).
It's that whatever he can do, however sharp he is, however vibrant he is, a 50-year-old would be even moreso and with hopefully more free thought and less prone to the group-think that has to take hold when you've been a career politician for the last 50 years. There's a reason (really, multiple reasons) why like six or eight Fortune 100 CEO's are over 70 and something like 1 or 2 are over age 80.
At this point the Dems are def rolling with Biden. We'll see how the rest shakes out, between Trump possibly being tried for or already convicted of a felony when the election rolls around combined with the unclear impact of a real RFK Jr. run.
Yeah, the student loan thing could definitely have been better thought out.
The Afghanistan withdraw is one that I don't get at all, though. Obviously right wingers wanted to paint it as badly as possible, and our media in general created a frankly bizarre avalanche trying to prevent withdrawal at all. But the fact that Biden endured the political pressure and got us out of there is a profound sign of character. The last couple presidents simply didn't have the spine. And the fact is Trump had already promised the Taliban that the country was theirs and drawn down our forces to a point where staying wasn't possible anyway. Our time was up.
That being the case, did anyone honestly think pulling out would be easy peasy? Outside of the awful bombing that killed 13 soldiers, I can't see how it could have gone better. We got a ton of people out very quickly. Of course if Biden had pulled everyone out gradually 6 months prior he would have been blasted for showing no confidence in the Afghan government we'd spent 20 years propping up and ensuring their collapse. But the government quickly collapsed anyway, because it was always a mirage... which is of course why we had no business staying there a minute longer.
Are there things you think they should have done differently?
As far as his age, it's funny... given how foreign policy has suddenly become a huge issue, I'm actually very happy we've got a guy in there with FIFTY years of foreign policy experience. The dude knows what he's doing, knows every world leader well, and commands respect. Here's a quote from frickin' Putin after they met a couple years ago: "Biden is a professional, and you have to be very careful in working with him to make sure you don't miss anything. He doesn't miss anything, I can assure you." I'll take that any day over some 50 year old who's barely been out of the country.
I agree that Biden generally acquits himself very well on the world stage.
Regarding Afghanistan, obviously having the balls to actually do the thing other leaders (including Obama) have only given lip service to was the right move, it just felt like it was 95% planned and the last 5% at the end was chaos that colored the other 95%.
There was the tragic bombing that killed the 13 soldiers which wasn't good at all. The other most troubling aspect to me was the myriad reports of Afghanistan informants, interpreters, and other vulnerable allies that got left behind in the mad scramble. How many were there? Impossible to say, but you see numbers quoted from the low hundreds to 1k or more that were eventually killed by the Taliban. It sounded like the CIA got essentially all of the American citizens and most vulnerable Afghan allies out but that thousands more were left behind in varying states of vulnerability to retribution from the Taliban. I hate thinking about any number of Afghani people who helped us and trusted that we'd do right by them when the day came and then they got left behind.
Regarding Biden's age, we have choices other than "ancient, with decades of experience" or "50-year-old that's never left the country." And again, a not-insignificant part of my objection to his age is the electoral susceptibility it brings. It matters less how senile he actually is and more how senile people think he is.
Regardless, it's moot for 2024. Hopefully his legislative productivity, genteel manner, and centrist history (although not as much in practice the last four years) will carry the day with swing independent and moderate voters and we can avoid the Insurrector Part Deux.
Semi-relatedly, what would you stake the odds at that Trump or Biden ultimately experience criminal justice consequences from potential malfeasance?
Biden - well, Hurr said today, no further actions needed…
Hur's purview is just classified docs though right? It's never seemed like there was much smoke there with Biden.
The Biden malfeasance risk is almost exclusively in the eventual Burisma findings I think.
It really is that simple.
Hur decided one's actions didn't require further investigation. The other is being parade through virtual hell.
Trump's not in trouble for removing the docs. He's in trouble for withholding and concealing info from investigators when pressed to return them.
Initially (typically inadvertently) keeping some small number of classified documents when leaving office is fairly common. Obstructing the effort to get them back is unheard of.
On the illegal or criminal immigrants…
“they built the country, the reason our economy is growing”
Joe Biden
“they built the country, the reason our economy is growing”
Joe Biden
