I still think Trump is a pig, but he's our pig now.  It's up to us to make sure he keeps his promises, and doesn't turn away from the messages that bought him a win.

Agree. I didn't vote for Trump in the primary.  But during the campaign, I received email from the Trump campaign asking me, personally, what my problems are and what I would like Trump to do to fix them. The email included space to write UNLIMITED CHARACTERS my suggestions and opinions. Then Trump issued the Contract with Voters and I saw that he listened and addressed my concerns. (Oh I know he didn't personally read them, but mine plus millions of others like me, he DID listen to.)

It remains to be seen if he actually does what he promises. I still have some problems with some of his proposed policy and position on some issues.

And he is still unlikeable, even a bit repulsive to me.  But here is the bottom line. He heard and responded when I said our retirement fund is not growing. He heard when I said several of my family members were laid off their jobs. He heard when I said I am crushed under too many regulations from a distant government who doesn't understand how my quality of life is eroded by their meddling.  He heard when I said our taxes are way too high. He heard me say several of my doctors have quit their practices and my health insurance premiums have gone up.

Trump heard all this, HILLARY DID NOT.

Trump is still a pig, but I am 60 years old and face my old age, during which I would like to be comfortable, have some cash to spend, have good doctors, and maybe even be able to leave something for my children.  I have a new grandbaby I do not want to leave a decayed corpse of a country to.  At this point I don't care if he is a pig and he grabs women's pussies.  I am going to be selfish FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE.  I voted my wallet and my future and the future of my children and grandchildren because if Hillary won, things would only continue to get worse. That much was crystal clear.

Will Trump keep his promises to me?  Will he fix this country?  I have no idea.  But at least he asked me about my pain, and responded to what I said.

I hope the Republican party elite is hearing the message too:  We suffering middle class, working class and poor are SICK of you political elite.  My eyes were open in the last two months of this campaign. I was with you up to and past the primary, but some of you in your lack of support for Trump to defeat Hillary showed your true colors, and this spoke loud and clear: You too are disconnected from the suffering of me and the rest of "everyday Americans".   Screw you, along with the whole Democrat party.

I just read in "Freakonomics" that it's not money that wins an election, it's appeal.  People think the candidate that gets the most donation support wins, and there may be a correlation, but it's not the cause.  Actually it's the candidate with the most "appeal".  Well, if that is true, I'm hoping Donald has more appeal than Hillary. As despicable as he can be, he is at least entertaining. Hillary comes off as an ice queen.

On the other hand, there are two things that really worry me. First, the groundwork was set for this sex scandal to hurt Donald. It didn't hurt Bill Clinton because that was years ago, before the onset of the current climate of paradoxical Victorianism.  In today's world of filthy sexual content everywhere you look, the idea that actual men want actual sex is now condemned. Young first time voters know no different. Females in the 18 to twenty-something year old category, have actually bought the idea that males should respect a "bubble" around them, never to cop a feel, and men should see women wear the skimpiest most skin tight revealing clothing without so much as having a sexual thought.  Girls today actually think this way. They are beyond clueless.  And young males buy it hook line and sinker. Because young males want young females, and they will believe anything they think the young females want them to. So you have a whole generation of first time voters who are shocked, shocked I tell you!  at the Donald tape.  I'm not sure Trump can survive this. I think a lot of young voters were considering Trump because they're not so naive as to have completely missed how Hillary is now the entrenched corrupt "establishment" and may have gone to Trump for being an outsider. But they're SO brainwashed about sex - they are the generation raised on "pedobear" hysteria - that this tape has leveraged it to the max, I fear that generation is hopelessly lost. I still feel they dislike Clinton but now may go third party instead. Which incidentally, will be Jill Stein because they're just as brainwashed about climate change being the country's biggest problem.

The second thing is I believe the corrupt Democrat party and Hillary and her cronies will do ANYTHING at this point to hold onto power and we have seen nothing yet. They are going to sink so low, I would not be surprised if they get a woman to flat out make up a rape story about Donald.  Or maybe try to get him assassinated.  At the very least there will be massive voter fraud.  Worst case scenario, they'll cook up a reason for Obama to declare martial law and suspend elections.  I don't want to be too tin foil hat conspiracy theory about it, but I just have a feeling about this. The leftists have been on a long journey from outside to inside, climbing the ladder of power in the U.S. and now that they've attained it, they're not going to let their grip slip for anything. 

So I'm feeling pessimistic right now that Trump, or any non-leftist, will ever again preside over our country.

I listened to that whole thing.  If males DON'T behave like that the human species is done for.  This is entirely 100% normal male homo sapiens sapiens behavior. Trump has nothing to apologize for. Any males shocked are liars or have been so weakened by all the soy in our food supply or other sources of osmotic estrogen dosing (feminism in the media, trying to date today's entitlement brats of young females) that they truly believe this horseshit that men should not talk this way about women.  If anything is natural and evolutionary, this male behavior is. All Trump proved here is he is a virile male, or at least talks like one.

Any females shocked at this are either so young that they've swallowed hook line and sinker today's politically correct climate that all males are pedophiles and potential rapists, or are aged feminists who would like the male gender to be reduced to hobbled sperm donors and bank accounts, nothing more.  Anything hinting of testosterone is contemptible.  THAT is what the reaction to this video is proving: That this society is so anti-male today with the rotten fruits of bitter feminism and the most anti-nature ideology ever cooked up by man (leftism) that any display of normal male ardor can now be weaponized against any male not approved by the elite leftist machine.

The odds of my home being victim to some sort of armed incursion are laughably small.  And I am not sufficiently stupid to risk my life defending insured property.

It's not the odds, it's the stakes. And it's less about defending insured property than defending your life.  Just a few blocks from my mother's house someone entered the home of an elderly lady and killed her, then took her property. I can list many other stories close to me,  including the young pregnant wife of my coworker, kidnapped, forced to get money from the ATM, then killed and her body dumped over a bridge into a river.  THAT funeral was a heartbreaker. By the way, she was white, they were black, but that doesn't make me hate all blacks or go riot in the streets. It does alert me to the level of hatred from SOME blacks toward whites, but I don't discriminate; I'm equally alert to white threats. My brother was approached alone in a dark parking lot by men (white) who began to flank him with obvious ill intent. He let the breeze blow open his jacket to reveal his pistol, and they stopped, backed off and left.  So you don't even need to USE a gun for it to save you. You don't even need to show it, hell, you don't even need to own one for gun rights to be protecting you. In areas where gun carry is legal your chance of being a victim is greatly reduced.  You're welcome.

I can't tell you the exact odds of my ever needing a gun, but it's simple and easy enough insurance to have. If it ever happens, I am ready, and I will live to enjoy my grandchildren. 

If you correct that to "folks haven't anything easier to do", then I'd agree with you.  There are better things to do, they just take a bit of hard work, getting up in the morning, not staying out late at night, being cordial to customers, etc...the adult things.  But to say that people are criminals because there are not other opportunities for them is just not believable.

To say they just don't have anything better to do (steingar's words) is kind of misstating it but I know what he means.  The way you put it in your last sentence is more accurate, they do it because there are not other opportunities.  I'm talking about the poverty stricken inner city folks.  At its most basic, people do what is most rational for their particular circumstance.  The deeply disenfranchised may actually, literally, have NO other opportunity.  Heck if I had zero job prospects, zero chance of a college education, had a low IQ from whatever drug my welfare mom did when I was a fetus, and whatever poor nutrition I was raised on, and lived with cockroaches, I might escape into drug using and drug pushing too.

I used to believe that inner city blacks were completely at fault for their own circumstance.  Personal accountability and all that.  And I still believe in personal accountability as a guiding principle, but a person can be accountable for only what is within the limit of their potential, their environment and their circumstance.  The things that got them trapped in the ghetto in the first place are forces beyond their control and so strong only those endowed with unusual intelligence and drive, plus no small amount of luck, escape. For the rest, at this point, many generations deep in that culture and lifestyle, it becomes almost a virtual impossibility to be anything different. THIS is the core problem that the Black Lives Matter movement is trying to express, although they are deeply stupid, criminal, misguided and evil.  The police are NOT the problem and not the enemy but they're too stupid to figure it all out.

For example, one major reason there are no jobs is that manufacturing vanished from the cities.  So what about entrepreneurs and small business?  Desegregation allowed the smarter, more ambitious blacks (the ones who started small businesses and the professionals, the doctor, lawyers and teachers) to move away.  It was a good thing for them, but a bad thing for those left behind, who no longer could benefit from the jobs that the ambitious blacks provided when they were confined to black areas of town AND from the stabilizing influence of those "higher quality" individuals in a neighborhood. Segregation is evil and it was right to end it but this was one of the unintended consequences.  No, railing against the police, who more than anything protect blacks against crime committed by blacks against their own selves is to COMPLETELY miss the point.  They should be railing against our trade policies that killed industry in the U.S., over regulation that has strangled small business, welfare and housing programs that have ruined the family and created generations of fatherless kids, raised without male discipline (who then turn to gang leaders as their alpha male role models), and last but not least, the insane "War on Drugs", a dismal failure on every front and possibly THE most damaging factor in all this mess, sending most of the males to prison before they have any chance at becoming a decent MAN.

So that's the black inner cities. What about everybody else?  In addition to the SAD making brains unhappy, I believe our culture has collectively become enablers.  In this I completely agree with you.  It's taking the easy way out to just do drugs instead of working for your next meal.  Assuming there IS a job out there for you, if it's not a fun job, and your parents let you live in the basement rent free, then why flip burgers? I think this pretty much defines the typical white middle class drug addict (excluding elderly disabled "accidental" addicts).

As for the rich Charlie Sheen types, drug addiction among celebrities is pandemic. What on earth makes people believe being rich and famous equates to being happy??  Those people are MISERABLE.  Ever put yourself in their shoes?  Being a famous musician or actor has got to be one of the most high pressure jobs possible, living under a microscope with the whole world judging you. Throw in any kind of complication such as being bipolar or having been abused as a child, and then being steeped in the partying scene and expected to be "on" for people all the time would make it very difficult to "just say no".

So it IS believable some people do it because there are just no opportunities, but others do it because the opportunities just aren't good enough to be worth it, and those I think are being enabled.  If you have a job that is very meaningful and rewarding, you're less likely to do drugs but if you get your engineering degree and can't find a job other than flipping burgers, and someone enables you by paying your rent and groceries, you escape worrying about your dismal career prospects by doing drugs. 

A lot of it is the work ethic is no longer being transmitted to the younger generations. Our whole culture is too soft on them, bubble wrapping them and making them expect robots and technology to do all the labor and all their thinking for them.  So I agree with you that the lack of work ethic is also a big contributing factor.

Welcome to Spin!  Good to see you here.

Last year, the screeners at LAX ruined a pair of shoes for me.  They sliced open the heels.  When I got off the plane at ORD the heels fell off.

Thanks!  Wow, you could try to file a claim.  I know you can do that and in theory they're supposed to make it right, but the problem is proving they did it.  I don't see how you can do that if you don't know the damage happened until you get to your destination.  It would probably be a waste of time.