Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

yeah the ACA sucks. We’ve talked about this before. I do think a lot of people have benefited but it’s such pathetic reform. I know this is a hot topic for you personally. And I can’t explain that promise and your rates going up.

like I said, I’m not a fan (to put it mildly) of his presidency). He didn’t campaign for the ACA.

 

Yup agree completely.

 

This. At least the Republicans are honest (well, more honest) about the role they want a private/public monopoloy to play in healthcare.

I recall when Obama was going on and on about how tech (EHR, from which data driven "reforms" could be derived, etc.) was going to lower costs. I thought to myself "Big Fat Liar"

 

Still love you @YMO !

 

Love you too boo.

On Trump: To understand Trump, you must understand old school NYC from 70s-90s. To understand NYC, you need to study the mayors during these times: Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and of course Rudy Giuliani. To under the mayors you need to understand the NYC swamp, which spawn so much more shit than most people don't realize. Trump was very successfully in the scumbag world of the NYC swamp/power players, but is less successful in the DC swamp due to well you aren't a king when controlling 33.3% of the federal government.

Here's once quick article about the NYC swamp that Politico came out, and of course it has one nice image of Trump with his father and of course Ed Koch: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/01/swamp-that-birthed-trump-433697

To make this easy for some:

Ed Koch is old school Democrat Mayor who nowadays would be considered a moderate GOP mayor. Didn't take shit from anyone, and call out the BS of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (go to any NY Jewish house and you will hear tons of N word and the S word about these two) plus calling out the welfare programs being wasteful (which pissed off a lot of minority groups in NYC). He was very very pro-police but hated unions with a passion since they keep eating up the NYC budget.

David Dinkins was as of today the only NYC mayor who was black, and was pretty hated by the whites and the Jewish population due to race riots under his belt. He was actually not a bad guy, but his image as being soft on crime soured so many of the NYC voters, who wanted to elect someone else who is hard on crime..... However, he forgot to play this important rule: Learn to not take shit from anyone.

Rudy Giuliani: Didn't take shit from anyone, took the playbook from Ed Koch and give the police unlimited resources to do their job and clean up the streets. For the most part a good mayor. Too bad after he finished being mayor he went off the far end.

Those voters back in the day were Democrats, but as of today they are consider the moderate Dem/GOP votorers of today. Help people, but not too big government. Don't get rid of welfare, but cramp down on welfare queens. Be hard on crime, get more votes. Not the most social conservatives type of people out there, but some are pretty hard in social issues.

As I say before and I'll say it again: Trump is just a borderline Democrat who is a Republican, aka the old school NYC Democrat that he was for decades. A RINO most people will say. However, he only stays on the GOP party goals for voters to vote for him. He really isn't Pro-Life, but know in order to get votes you must help the cause. Stuff like that, etc.

How he learn to play the game? He learned it from the old NYC mayors and being in NYC scumbag environment for decades. We know he can't do everything that he promised the public that he will do, but that's normal in NYC politics/environment.

Too bad the majority of voters don't understand this, since they don't know the history of NYC.

Now those older NYC voters are in FL and they will vote for Trump in high numbers, like my father. My shock in this is zero percent.

 

It's beyond politics, policies, even rational thought. Just... please, America, PLEASE, don't give us more orange.

Your country. Your president, your vote. But you are not some insignificant little state like Britain will become. We all have to put up with the results and fall out of what you guys do. I'd so much love to be able to go back to cursing y'all for destroying the distinction between acronyms and abbreviations. Ahh... happy days!

That's my personal say, and that's all.

 

I forgot to say this since @purr1n reminded me of it.

I think both of the major political parties are at a cross roads

GOP: I'm not 100% convinced that the GOP as the political party is 100% comfortable with Trump. I have a feeling that deep down inside they prefer freer markers and not the protectionist trade war stuff that Trump has been doing and going a little bit too much of Executive power, etc... I had a conversation with my father and he fully believed that the GOP is now the party of the people like the Dems was in the 20th century. I have to disagree with that assessment, since I believe on the President race people prefer to vote on the person and less on the party. I just think the GOP as the party is just using Trump to push for their goals (court system is the biggest one for generations) and that's it.

I know Trump will do better than usual on minorities (polling #s in FL is showing this to be a reality), but I'm not 100% convinced that these voters will be long term GOP voters that the GOP really needs for long term growth. I think I said this before, but the GOP really need to think about the long-term goal and less on the short term stuff. I do know that the demographics changes aren't in favor of the GOP in the long-term, but they need to tweak their message a bit to get those voters into their party. You aren't going to have the poor working class/social conservatives whites forever, consider good bit of them were former Democrat voters. In FL the FL GOP does a very good job on not going too hard right on social issues and keep focusing on the fiscal stuff. I fing swear if the national party tone down the social conservatives big time, I have a big feeling more would join the GOP. Lil Wayne is behind Trump and I know he doesn't give a shit about the social issues of the GOP, they care about Trump. Now how to get these folks into the GOP for the long term? That's a question they will need to answer. I don't think recruiting minorities in House Seats and of course the MI Senate race is good enough. I personally know some folks who are minorities and they are conservatives, but they don't feel the GOP is the party for them. My personal experience with the local GOP party hasn't been too great, they focused more on my Jewish religion than fiscal stuff, no thanks.

The future GOP leaders also need to decide if they will promote the strong populism taking points of Sen Cotton from AR or Sen Hawley from MO, the establishment types like Nikki Haley from SC, or get our very own FL elected leaders who know how to run a purple state and not piss of their base too much like Gov Desantis, Rick Scott or Marco Rubio (which I think either Desantis or Rubio would be best picks here).

Dem: The New Democrats of the old (Clinton, Obama, Harry Reid, etc.) are at war with the Progressives (Bernie, AOC, others). They still haven't figure it out which direction they want the party to go. This reminds me so much of 1964 GOP Convention when the Liberals GOP members from the Northeast lost power thanks to the rise of the Conservatives movement of Barry Goldwater. I do believe they need to have that moment so they can decide once and for all which direction they want to go.

Of course either direction have both giant risks. Go stick to the New Democrat route and you will lose multiple generations of young voters who are turned off from the New Democrat talking points of the old, since they consider it Boomer talk (this is what is happening ATM in FL, those young Dem voters aren't really coming out for Biden, and this was highly expected). Go in the direction of Progressives and the party will lose tons of moderates, and those moderates might become future GOP moderate voters (if this happens, Dems should IMO kiss NV, AZ, TX, and most importantly FL good bye, those states IMO aren't really crazy for the Progressive stuff as people think they do, maybe NV but that's unlikely).

I do not think the marriage of the New Democrats and the Progressive will last for a long time. It will get to the point that they will need to make a decision sooner or later. In the FL Gov race back 2018 Andrew Gillum almost won since for once the FL Dems actually have tons of young voters coming out for him once. However, she was running as a progressive, some of the moderate Dems voted for Desantis instead, which is why Desantis barely won. Of course we can talk about Gillum doing crack and having sex with a gay hooker, but that's not the point here.

As expected, the young generation I am with are restless and believe the Gov isn't helping the people, and really really hate the GOP. Of course I fully disagree with that since I don't want the Fed Gov helping me out, since they make it worse most of the time!

 

The Biden campaign called a lid a few days ago until the bad polling numbers on midwestern states started coming in right before the weekend. Biden is campaigning with a fraction of the intensity of what Trump is doing right now. Trump is pulling 3-5 stops a day. I was skipping through a livestream of one of his rallies the other day and he's talking for at least 60 minutes straight at each one. Granted, he's rehashing content and they're showing the same video, but I don't know how a 74 year old man who just recovered from COVID has that kind of stamina. Whether you like the guy or not, you have to acknowledge he gives it his all in the 4th quarter.

I've ran into a few liberals who don't like Trump but have decided not to vote for Biden. They're either going to leave the box blank, write-in a candidate, or vote for Trump as a protest vote against the establishment and media. I have a feeling that the media stonewall on Hunter's laptop may have done as much damage as if they would have just done their job and reported on it with the same passion they did with the Steele dossier or Kavanaugh allegations. Maybe it's specific to California but I know plenty of moderates who don't support Trump or the far-left democrat wing, and their vote this general election is a reflection of their antipathy towards the last few years of polarization and being intimidated into publicly kowtowing towards a politically correct narrative they don't believe in.

 

To be fair, Trump has a lot of bad polling at the same time. At this point no side is taking anything for granted. He is using the rallies as a way to get the voters to vote for him on Tuesday. It isn't always a successful method (the rallies didn't help the GOP win the Gov seats in KY and LA), but the success rate is high.

When you are President you do get the best medical care in the world. Also as stated above he needs to do the rallies at all cost, it's a good turnout for the base and he needs those guys to come in on Tuesday.

However, I'm not convinced that his base is 50% of a vote in a state. As stated in a pervious post I'm curious on the softies (those who voted for Trump but not part of his base) if they will come back for round 2.

California Republic, should be California Empire under the powers of Leader Newsom.

 

2024 is going to be super interesting. I would put money on candidates like Cruz, Desantis, and Paul continuing to take up the populist torch. It's not substantial but there's a perceptible shift of Gen Y and Gen Z, blacks, Hispanics, and some East, Southeast, and South Asian demographics voting for Trump. I'm going to distinguish that they're voting for Trump and not for the GOP. The United States as a whole has shifted culturally leftwards and the majority of the country is pro-gay marriage and pro-choice (within limits), and it'll be interesting to see the polling towards anti-intervention and anti-PRC. Trump is clearly using Israel as a vehicle to push for peace in the Middle East and is courting India as realigning the power structure in Asia, and I don't know how long that will last unless another populist wins the White House in 2024.

The Democrats are in a really challenging place as they haven't had a charismatic leader since Obama. I think AOC is inherently too polarizing to unite the democrats behind her even though over 600k+ people tuned in to watch her and OfflineTV play Among Us. I know a lot of older dems who really like Buttigieg but I'm not sure if he's the one either. It felt like the DNC was trying to force Beto into the Buttigieg mold but Beto came off as inauthentic after that terrible Vanity Fair feature. I believe they'll continue to lose elections unless they lurch back to the middle but I don't think any candidate wants to take that risk given how savvy the far-left wing of the party is with social media and the press, and how vicious the news cycle is these days.

 

Oh I agree on this 100%. It isn't a huge shift, but it's there. And I'm not convinced either that these guys will stick to the GOP as actual long term GOP voters (which is what the GOP really needs right now).

Cruz and Paul has too much damaged goods. I think both won't do well in the suburbs which the GOP for the most part is losing right now. Which one of the three did a good job with the suburbs in the 2018 FL Gov race? Desantis. While he might be a Trump attack dog, he knows how to play the game. You know how to play the game if you govern a purple state like FL.

I still think USA is center-right, and not fully culturally leftwards, but that's just me. I agree on the within limits on Pro-Choice, if you do polling on this issue people are mostly in the center of this debate. They don't want Roe to be reversed, but some limitations should be accepted.

You remind me of the Israeli piece thing, I think this will help Trump the most in FL since we have the third largest Jewish population in the US behind NYC and LA. However, there's a shift of these Jewish voters going towards the GOP since they been pushing the Pro-Israeli stuff for years. In Jax most of the Jewish voters are GOP majority, and they live in a heavily red GOP House Seat district in the FL vote (which they will vote for a Non-Jewish GOP member in the FL House this year over a Jewish Dem member since they believe the Dems aren't for Israel anymore). Jewish voters will still swing for Dems but the gap will get slightly smaller as times goes on.

Ding Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner! And the clock is ticking IMO.

 

Exactly like every other before him...

 

Its amazing to see this kind of stuff. Yeah people lie.... You can't differentiate between telling people doctors are intentionally lying about pandemic numbers as a bit insane. Telling people a virus is going away when it is not. Telling people the vote is rigged when he has been in charge for 3.5 years. Lying about stealing kids from their parents. Claiming people have committed crimes with no proof.

I guess people lie. Terrible things have happen in world history. Does this really justify having no standards what so ever.

 

As if he's the first president to preside over terrible shit happening... Oh wait, it's been going on for 244 years but now with social media and the internet it's allot harder to hide dirty stuff.

I'm guessing you disliked my post because you assume that by my saying they are all liars and he's no different that I approve of his actions. FYI I think he's a piece of shit just like every other corrupt politician.

 

What does he do with these children he steals? Eat them? Baby back baby back baby back baby back....ribs

 

Andrew Cuomo is not dumb, he learned it from his father. But Ed Koch always called the Cuomo Crime Family a bunch of Smucks.

Trump wasn't a big fan of Andrew's father. See... Everything go back to NYC and most Americans don't even know.

Cuomo Crime Family are a bunch of Fiedos from Queens. I wish I can hear their families close conversations. Racist crap all over I know. But the Cuomo Crime Family don't take shit from anyone. They know the NYC rule.

 

Well, Lincoln was shot and then Garfield and then McKinley as were the two Kennedy's. We probably are overdue for a Governor to be kidnapped/raped/tortured/killed and if I was not so lazy I would Google the stats.

I have probably already said this but I am glad Trump does not play the "dignified president" game, though I sometimes wish he was better at it. On the other hand to expect more from him given his personality is not realistic. Still I think his twitter trolling is all part of the plan. He certainly has made the space for those to the right of the NYT (probably 85% of the population) to not feel like the whole world is against them. If he is reelected, I suppose it will have all been worth it.