Obama probably the best President during my lifetime

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Yep. They'd be all for replacing the cross with the dollar sign.

all the better to crucify capitalist apostates.

Seriously? Look back two posts, to the one where I originally responded to you. I literally anticipated that response and already answered your question before you even asked it, and yet... Then you wonder why I'm perpetually exasperated with you.



I could make them that way, and you'd respond exactly the same, so I flavor them a bit with personality, you know, like normal people do.



You must have me confused with Jacoby, I'm hardly enthusiastic for Trump, his only virtues are not being Hillary and making liberals lose their damn minds. What do you expect, giving me Hillary Clinton as a nominee, like I'm suddenly going to forget her voting record and everything she's ever said. Given the circumstances, I'm considering this a suicide bombing, I lose either way this cycle, but with Trump, you're losing with me.



Trump has too many enemies in both parties to actually get anything accomplished, and from what I can tell, wants to hand the actual work of running the country off to his Veep anyway. Like I said, I'm screwed either way with these candidates, but Trump has some silver linings that Hillary lacks, namely gridlock and reminding the liberals that they don't own the country. I also don't want Hillary anywhere near a Supreme Court appointment, and while the Donald may well throw darts at a list for his picks, I'll take those odds over the certainty of who Hillary would pick.

But I recall you said you were going to vote Republican this year, a while back. That, and you seem to think Trump and his supporters are just so misunderstood, thanks to that evil media reporting everything racist and stupid that they say.
And what's wrong with Clinton Supreme Court appointments? God forbid that the ACA not be overturned, or that voter suppression and idiot bathroom bills be stopped!
And if Pence is the guy who Trump hands actual control of government to, then I might just prefer Trump's incompetence to Pence's malignant bigotry, as well as his march to absolute plutocracy!

one very thin silver lining if pence gets kicked upstairs, is that will free up the governorship slot for native son david letterman to try to win. I could just see him in there.

HOO HOO!

the Hoosier state desperately needs a dose of his snarky sanity.

Phew. For a second there, it looked like rational discourse was going to break out!

If you just want to throw shots at people you don't like then go and post in one of those race-bait threads that seem so popular right now.

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Whilst I am open to the possibility of market-based solutions to healthcare issues, I remain sceptical about removing public healthcare altogether. 24% of Indian households have had to cut back on essentials like food and heating in order to pay for healthcare. Doctors often disregard the patient's best interests in order to line their pockets. This is unacceptable to me. I am sure systems could be made to work better in more developed countries, but just deregulating isn't the answer.

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As for Obama, well, I don't have any memories of Clinton, and I'm not an American citizen. George Bush is generally held to be one of the worst two-term presidents in history, so Obama pretty much wins by default for me. American foreign policy has been much better under Obama. He doesn't have any Iraq-sized blots on his record. Libya and Syria were both impossible situations. He killed Bin Laden and has continued to remove leaders of terrorist organisations. He normalised relations with Cuba and greatly improved relations with Iran. Attempting to establish large free trade areas spanning both major oceans is major. And the US being party to something like the Paris agreement was unthinkable not so long ago.

I'm less impressed by his domestic policy, particularly wrt. civil liberties. I'm not hugely concerned about use of drones, although I think there's some dishonesty about the classification of people as combatants or civilians. But he's failed to close Guantánamo or end the use of torture. He's got a dodgy record on internet surveillance and has clamped down on whistleblowers. He's also failed to combat the prison industrial complex.

To me, Obama was an all-right President. He was stymied by Congress. He became a compromiser more than an innovator. In retrospect, he'll probably be seen by historians as a "middle-of-the-pack" President.

Compared to the people running for President now, Obama seems downright uber-Presidential! Obama is respected in the international community for his class and tact. Trump---not so much.

I liked it better when there were more moderates of either party vying for the nomination.

I think this is the cruz of the matter. Several candidates seem to have a berning desire to adopt the most extreme positions within each party, thus making it almost impossible to achieve bi-partisan cooperation in Congress.

It may have started with the "RINO" concept among Republicans, where a reputation for bipartisanship and willingness to compromise - formerly considered virtues and examples of "statesmanship" among politicians - suddenly became some sort of moral flaw... It has since then begun to spread to the Democrats, although thankfully not with the same magnitude as of yet...

As political compromise is what made America work so well throughout it's two hundred plus year history, it speaks of the sorry state of governance today when people who want to hammer out a deal are seen as weak and traitorous for not being idealouges.

Please tell me that's a deliberate pun, because it's brilliant if so.

Bill, you just demonstrated that you can't recall things said to you less than an hour before, how is it that suddenly you're remembering things I said months ago? I probably did say that I was likely voting GOP this year because Hillary was going to be the Democrat running and I'll go out of my way to vote against her, but what does that have to do with anything we're talking about?



The problem with you and your ilk, Bill, is that you see evil in the hearts of anyone who opposes you because you're so righteous in your cause; I'm not righteous, I'm realistic, and that means I see shades of grey where you see black and white. Go ahead, try and spin that into some conspiratorial view, it's what you do.



I don't care that much about the ACA or who uses what bathroom, which I'd think you'd know by now, you know, if you didn't have that extremely selective amnesia that makes you think everyone who thinks differently than you is a cookie cutter conservative. Given my interests, I'm surprised it's not glaringly obvious what problems I'd have with Hillary's potential appointments.



Sounds like a conservative version of Hillary...

Yes, I see evil in the hearts of everyone, including me - cynicism seems to walk hand in hand with us Lutherans, especially since, as with the Calvinists, we see all human nature as morally depraved.
As for seeing the world as black and white - the right is more likely to accuse the left as evil, godless, pro-gay masturbators.
And while I will always mourn Bernie's loss at his Presidential run, Clinton, for all her failings as an amoral political operator and stereotypical lawyer, is still light years better than Pence, with his voter suppression, and Anti-LGBT bigotry.

Probably a deliberate pun. Wish I came up with it.