I watched the State of the Union the other night and this was proved out in so many ways, not just in the speech itself but in the commentaries that supported and explained it and the rebuttals that criticized and refuted it.

I am starting to think that the politicians on both sides of the aisle keep saying all this stupid shit, because they have become convinced that no one is really listening any way.

I have seen it said that one can tell a lawyer is lying if his/her lips are moving and that is even more true of politicians.

I long for the days of public servants that listened to and served the people rather the intellectual quagmire of professional politicians that are more interested in securing and keeping their positions than getting anything done for the people.

"We the people" have created the stage for these idiots to perform on and only "we the people" can cancel the show.

I long for the days of public servants that listened to and served the people

I long for those days for many reasons.

The GREATEST MINDS, Vic Eldred, are not those with multiple degrees, that any one buy at Wal-Mart, but those Geniuses that dropped out of school after the 3rd grade.
 
These brave children sought to ED-U-MA-KATE-DEM-SELVES with one hand, and to pleasure themselves with the other.

My sauces say this is how Miss Linseed Oil manage to rise to the Senate.

"...one can tell a lawyer is lying if his/her lips are moving..."

Good thing you can't see me but only can read what I write.

Hmmm , I wonder what that means.

IN LOUISIANA, JUST TELL EM’ I LIED! – Jim Brown's Blog (jimbrownla.com)

That is the staple of the REPUBLICAN PARTY - LIE, LIE, LIE, then LIE some more.

The Democrats/Liberals/Progressives are always willing to talk - it's the repulicans/alleged conservatives who are their way or no way and/or whatever the former 'president' tells them.

Bullshit. Democrats and Republicans are two butt cheeks on the same ass. Both sides are willing to talk but neither side is willing to listen to the other side. Their first allegiance is to their party. 

Democrats and Republicans are two butt cheeks on the same ass

Snuffy you are absolutely correct

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The Democrats/Liberals/Progressives are always willing to talk - it's the repulicans/alleged conservatives who are their way or no way and/or whatever the former 'president' tells them.

That is the exact attitude that hinders any meaningful dialog between the two parties.  They both think they are willing to talk to the other side and the other side refuses to.  In reality their definition of talk is get everything they want and the other side does all the conceding. 

Yep, one would think that at some point REPUBLICANS would stop sniffing T-Bone Head's arse, and smell the roses.

When I first saw the title of the blog, I was interested because I thought that the bowel stoppage that is Congress might be talking with each other. Now I see that isn't/wasn't the case. 

I don't long for the "good old days" because I feel that as a nation we have grown and matured in some ways but regressed in others. These culture wars over LGBTQ and abortion I feel are part and parcel of the latter and have been brought about because of a renewed sense that one can behave however one wants in public, especially if charged with testosterone and an "in your face" attitude. 

I do think that everyone, especially politicians, should reel in their rhetoric because the American public at large just listens to what is in their bubble and makes little effort to ascertain the hyperbolic nature of the content they consume. Basically, ost of the nation needs a civics class or two. Maybe then they would realize that Presidents have vanishingly little control over the things that most people consider to be kitchen table issues.

Thomas

I think we can have all of those positive changes in civil rights, freedom and progress in economics and other areas and still revert to a public servant versus a political operatives

Thomas

Good points.

I do not have the answer or I would sure be trying to get it implemented. I think it might start at the local level, where we need to get more involved and start electing public servants at the city, county, state and national level.

I do not have the answer

That is what we need more politicians to say. If they said that, it is quite possible that they are actually listening.

I think it might start at the local level, where we need to get more involved and start electing public servants at the city, county, state and national level.

Most people tend to think that they have no time to get involved. A lot of the time it is true. Life gets in the way. People have to prioritize whether they're going to any of a myriad of activities. Politics, by its nature, seems to require much time to figure out, time that people do not feel that they have. So they go for the crib notes version on election day or just stick with the party line.

If politicians said they do not have the answer they wouldn't get elected, period.

No one is going to send to any level of government that is clueless. 

That seems to be the case. But of course, the ones who say they have all the answers are just lying.

No one is going to send to any level of government that is clueless. 

That is what we have been doing and continue to do every election - "send those that are clueless to lead our government and country".  That is the problem

So far, it is working:

MJT (Marjorie Talyor Green)

Lauren Boebert

Jockstrap GYM Jordan

Paul Gosar (KKK affiant)

Tuberville "The Satan Slayer")

Miss Linseed Oil

Matt Gatz (Lover of little girls)

Ted Cruz (Strong Enough To Talk Any Defamation)

This list is ENDLESS!

I would contend that those who claim to have the answers do not. They either have the pat rote answers of their party or the flashier "If we just stop doing X, we will be all better."  You don't have to be clueless at all to not know a complicated answer to a complicated question. Instead, we get clueless people saying, "Build a wall" and, "Lock her up" without a firm grasp on what the situations actually are, much less how to go about fixing them. 

The underlying problem is that the electorate, who are supposed to be making informed decisions, does not have the patience and/or time to devote to sussing out who the best candidate is, because to do that, one has to have a grasp of the issues that the country is facing. So, they just punt and flip a coin. Fuck it.

the American public at large just listens to what is in their bubble and makes little effort to ascertain the hyperbolic nature of the content they consume.

When you are referring to "the American public at large"-- am I correct in assuming that that does not include those commenting here on NT?

Or do you feel that applies only to people here who are  "on one side of the aisle?

It was an observation of the bulk of people in general. It takes a lot to live in the world, and people, when they have finished all of the mundane have-to-dos of the day, cannot be blamed if they don't wish to spend the time that they have left over plugging into yet another debate. People are raised and set pretty much on their outlook by their 25th birthday. They know what they like, who they like and politics is largely relegated to the periphery of their lives. Do they change? Sometimes. Hopefully, they continue to grow and expand their horizons, but they are basically formed in terms of attitude. 

The problem began when PUTIN took over the NRC with out resistance.

No, absolutely not...Naughty. It include the SCHOLARS on FOX FAKE NEWS!

Today, the BOWEL BLOCKAGE starts and stops with "Dirty Diaper Donnie". When it stop one does not want to be within 50 miles of that Horse's Patootie.

The two political parties will not START talking more any time soon if this is the makeup of the January 2025 GOP agenda:

(For 2025 issues, growth, development, and reading 'pleasure')

This is what MAGAs will be up to 'day One' and continuing in 2025 if Trump wins!

( Actual reading starts at Page 36 of the PDF!)

Project 2025's "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise"

—Page  4 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

PROMISE # 1 : RESTORE THE FAMILY AS THE CENTERPIECE OF AMERICAN LIFE AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN .

The next conservative President must get to work pursuing the true priority of politics—the well-being of the American family. In many ways, the entire point of centralizing political power is to subvert the family. Its purpose is to replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones. You see this in the popular left-wing aphorism, “Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.” But in real life, most of the things people “do together” have nothing to do with government. These are the mediating institutions that serve as the building blocks of any healthy society. Marriage. Family. Work. Church. School. Volunteering. The name real people give to the things we do together is community, not government. Our lives are full of interwoven, overlapping communities, and our individual and collective happiness depends upon them. But the most important community in each of our lives—and the life of the nation—is the family. Today, the American family is in crisis. Forty percent of all children are born to unmarried mothers, including more than 70 percent of black children. There is no government program that can replace the hole in a child’s soul cut out by the absence of a father. Fatherlessness is one of the principal sources of American poverty, crime, mental illness, teen suicide, substance abuse, rejection of the church, and high school dropouts. So many of the problems government programs are designed to solve—but can’t—are ultimately problems created by the crisis of marriage and the family. The world has never seen a thriving, healthy, free, and prosperous society where most children grow up without their married parents. If current trends continue, we are heading toward social implosion. Furthermore, the next conservative President must understand that using government alone to respond to symptoms of the family crisis is a dead end. Federal power must instead be wielded to reverse the crisis and rescue America’s kids from familial breakdown. The Conservative Promise includes dozens of specific policies to accomplish this existential task. Some are obvious and long-standing goals like eliminating marriage penalties in federal welfare programs and the tax code and installing work requirements for food stamps. But we must go further. It’s time for policymakers to elevate family authority, formation, and cohesion as their top priority and even use government power, including through the tax code, to restore the American family. Today the Left is threatening the tax-exempt status of churches and charities that reject woke progressivism. They will soon turn to Christian schools and clubs with the same totalitarian intent. The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion.

— Page 5 — 2025 Presidential Transition Project

(“DEI”), gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists. Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.

In our schools, the question of parental authority over their children’s education is a simple one: Schools serve parents, not the other way around. That is, of course, the best argument for universal school choice—a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue. But even before we achieve that long-term goal, parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators should be non-negotiable in American schools. States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds. The noxious tenets of “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” should be excised from curricula in every public school in the country. These theories poison our children, who are being taught on the one hand to affirm that the color of their skin fundamentally determines their identity and even their moral status while on the other they are taught to deny the very creatureliness that inheres in being human and consists in accepting the givenness of our nature as men or women. Allowing parents or physicians to “reassign” the sex of a minor is child abuse and must end. For public institutions to use taxpayer dollars to declare the superiority or inferiority of certain races, sexes, and religions is a violation of the Constitution and civil rights law and cannot be tolerated by any government anywhere in the country. But the pro-family promises expressed in this book, and central to the next conservative President’s agenda, must go much further than the traditional, narrow definition of “family issues.” Every threat to family stability must be confronted. This resolve should color each of our policies. Consider our approach to Big Tech. The worst of these companies prey on children, like drug dealers, to get them addicted to their mobile apps. Many Silicon Valley executives famously don’t let their own kids have smart phones.2 They nevertheless make billions of dollars addicting other people’s children to theirs. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are specifically designed to create the digital

— Page  6 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise

dependencies that fuel mental illness and anxiety, to fray children’s bonds with their parents and siblings. Federal policy cannot allow this industrial-scale child abuse to continue. Finally, conservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made a mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn children. But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardently pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the hero- ism of every choice to become a mother. Alternative options to abortion, especially adoption, should receive federal and state support. In summary, the next President has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in restoring a culture of life in America again .

documentcloud

"alternative options to abortion, especially adoption". I'm all for adoption, let's list all the so called "pro-lifers" and require them to adopt the next embryo that is determined to be "not right" before birth. Have social workers check on the adopting parents weekly to be certain they are living-up to their obligation. 

You bring to the mind several interesting questions:

1. Is it better to abort "millions" of embryos or to adopt "millions" of babies? 

2. Is it better to parent "millions" of babies one does not want, or allow for the finding of millions of homes and parents for unwanted babies?

After all, adoption can become quite the "cottage industry" for babies saved from abortion. And one has to wonder how long will it take to over-saturate an adoption system with live births!

Aren't they real SAVIORS. I think Washington would be proud, don't you?

No, they are not "saviors." Washington would not be proud, as Trump plans to take a whole of government firing process (read the document; it's long; but you can scan it with your eyes) and it will be a case of the phrase: "Everything Donald touches dies.!"

Vote. 

Are political parties equally bad? No, demonstrably not! One is pro-Democracy and the other one is Trump's no good MAGA Monstrosity. You see, the defining characteristic of a false equivalence is that it is false. It doesn't matter how often a lie gets told. It is still false. They are goddamn LIES...