Which Candidate Will Lead America to Greatness?

Yes and it should be about getting the government out the business of healthcare. Send healthcare back to the private sector and free markets. They did a phenomenal job delivering high quality healthcare at an affordable price with no mandates before the Obamacare farce. If the government has to lie to pass bad legislation then it needs to be put to a referendum, let the people decide. If that had happened we would still be enjoying the best healthcare in the world.

 

What. That's just crazy talk. Health care costs has been one of the top three issues for voters since Nixon was in office. This wasn't something that suddenly appeared in 2008. Insurance premiums rose 98% from 1999 to 2006.

 

No they don't. You're just spewing partisan attempts at smearing them. My memory of the hippy days is a great hope for it to lead to a new era of peace, social justice, and prosperity. Not so much after the capitalists got on it.

 

B U L L ! ! !
You don't remember double-digit inflation of health insurance premiums for a decade or more??? Egad.

 

The problem of course is, there are no policies that unite and encourage. The two political poles are as separated as they've been since the civil war. So no, Trump can't be that leader, but then neither can anyone else since there is no policy agenda that wouldn't be hated by half the country.

 

51% of the country would be OK. But Trump is stuck with that core 40% and can't build a coalition to get to the 51% because nobody trusts him.

 

Some of us in the US have done very well using automation. It may be a growth industry. Take a microprocessor board, a couple of stepper motors, and the appropriate mechanical connections and you can do almost anything.

 

When it comes to the dems the answer is none of the above. Establishment politicians have screwed the middle class for a while now. They are lying scumbags. These folks are not interested in greatness for the country. They want to manage the decay so they can pick the bones of the American people. Clinton, Bush, obama were used car salesmen who sold us a lemon.

 

I remember that era too, it was about sex, drugs and rock and roll. I remember in Chicago thousands of these vermin waving Viet Cong flags and throwing excrement at the cops. No doubt most voted for Obama, I'm sure the communist terrorist Bill Ayers did. What nobody remembers is that there were a whole lot of that age group who weren't into rebellion and anarchy. The Democrats have been the party of rebellion since the Civil War.

 

Off topic.

 

sigh

 

Donald Trump.

 

Actually he has done more good for America than any other president in my lifetime. The division is purely emotional. If you believe he needs to be replaced then go to the polls next year. That's how it is done. Complaining about it doesn't do any more than the elected officials themselves do.

 

I have come to wish I didn't start this discussion. With a few exceptions, the comments have been well written, well argued, well thought out, and deeply troubling. What I have learned is that America is so deeply divided and angry that the emergence of a visionary leader is an impossibility. It has also been argued that we no longer disagree with one another, we feel obligated to hate those that don't share our beliefs. The opposition to Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barak Obama, and Donald Trump has been hate, not debate.

America has weathered political storms in the past, but there is no guarantee it will do so in the future. If these thoughts and arguments were from the extremist, partisans, and attack dogs of the Form, it might be a scant comfort, but these posts have come from the best among us. There is no comfort there. There is some tiny glimmer of hope that a few in Congress are attempting to work together across the aisle. The "aisle" is a crevasse and the candle is in a hurricane.

There have been periods of history like this. Nations become mired in indifference and corruption, then quietly fade and die. Or, they engage in a great civil war and either survive or become a permanent war zone of destruction and hatred. Or, there comes an outside influence that reunite the nation against a common enemy. Or, perhaps, a disaster of such monumental impact forces a reunification for survival.

Clearly, from your posts, an inspiring leader with a positive message has no chance of emerging in America today. All I see in such a situation is an America sliding down the slope of self involvement, irrelevance, and extinction. I had a couple of candidates that I thought could present an inspiring vision and lead America to it. I no longer believe this is possible.

 

Excellent post over all, One minor correction though congress didn't really punt to the presidency, they punted to an unelected and largely unaccountable bureaucracy. WE the America people tend to look to the president who is the titular head of that bureaucracy to rein in it's worst excesses because it has become clear that congress either cannot or will not do so in any real way hence the Democratic and sadly some republican solutions to the excesses at Fannie and Freddie that led to the so-called Great Recession, were to add more bureaucrats to those already on hand rather than simply passing laws telling them that they could not keep doing what they were doing. This is how we got a deep state for want of a better term.

By the way you want to do something really scary read David Webber's Honor Harrington Books and then compare the Solarian League with the current US government.

 

The problem for even wishing for an inspiring leader is that the inspiration has to be shared which is nearly impossible considering how petty politics has become. Look at past inspiring leaders and you will find that most of them only appeared to be inspiring due to a war footing. Washington, Lincoln, FDR, JFK (cold war) and their inspiration came from dealing with the results of conditions not really within their control. The moon landings were based on a war footing with Russia.

During peacetime you rarely find inspiration because it is only natural that there is enough time to imagine many other things and there will be no agreement on those things. For instance, now the politicians have to differentiate themselves from the status quo and the current crop of democrats are doing that by moving so far left that they are far outside the mainstream though the current crop of millennial's have been raised without civics or history and have only heard this and think government as a nanny is normal.

Getting the vote has become so important that one cannot 'get the vote' without huge sums of money (somewhat true but didn't help Hillary) and by not making hard decisions that will come back to bite them (Biden's problem). The last part is the reason Congress has given up so much power to the Executive branch. It is also the reason they place so much power in un-elected bureaucrats. An example of that was the ACA where the hard decisions were given to branches of the administration like the so called death panels. An inflammatory label but whenever government takes over health care decisions, cost is still a factor and limiting care and medications are the only way to cap costs. No politician will put their reputation on the line for that so faceless bureaucrats are the way to go.

 

The DC government was originally designed to have as little impact on peoples day to day lives as possible. State and local governments especially the latter were supposed to do most of the governing where the rubber meets the road. Sadly that has long sense changed Beginning with Teddy Roosevelt (some would say perhaps as early as Lincoln though Lincoln added not one single new department to the bureaucracy) and the FDA. We have added new federal departments at break neck speed.

 

True.

 

Thanks, Gary.

You are right that Congress punts to the bureaucracy. They punt to the President. They punt to the Supreme Court. They punt to the bureaucracy. Gary, they will punt responsibility to anybody rather than to take it on themselves. They will blame the other party for impasse, and yet it is all of them who ignore problems, kick the can down the road, and who refuse to compromise on anything. And they do this because they are scared to death of being responsible for anything. They are disgusting creatures who don't care about America. All they care about is reelection.

And so the mantra in Congress is that it is always better to do nothing than it is to do something. Because if you do nothing, you cannot be held responsible, and you can point the finger of blame for your inaction at somebody else.

 

One other thing here the real growth is in the number of federal agencies. No one seem right now to know the exact number but according to one congressmen they exceed 430. The real problem with this burgeoning of agencies is that it makes accountability all but impossible and chain of command impossible to track.

 

51% would be a majority, but it wouldn't be unity.

 

Which Candidate Will Lead America to Greatness?

NONE....whoever replaces Trump will be too busy in repair mode to strive for greatness.

 

Are you denying that healthcare costs have skyrocketed under Obamacare? C'mon who's talking crazy now?

 

It costs a hell of a lot more now. On top of paying for freeloaders, there are multiple thousands in deductibles. It's gotten lots worse in the quality of care. Doctors are forced to accept reduced payments for their services and are overbooking to offset those losses, 4 to 6 hour waits to see a doctor are not uncommon.This is the future of healthcare in America if we ever go single payer yet there are those fools that continue to believe in socialist fairy tales. If the states would drop their regulations that limit who gets to do business in their states the insurance industry would become more competitive and costs would come down. A simple fix that was shot down over the BS of the ACA. WE DO NOT NEED GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTHCARE!!!!!

 

How in the hell do you think MANY American elderly survive? Medicare and Medicaid and the VA - government paid healthcare. Reality - what a concept. Try it someday.