I was working during the majority of the speech, and got a break when it was almost over. I only got to watch the end of the speech, when Obama shook Trump's hand and said "Good Job."

A true class act.

I did read the speech while on break. Trump makes a few good points, though I'm surprised any conservatives stand by it. He won't accomplish any of those things without some (sometimes major) form of government intervention.


Sent from my iPhone . Squirrel!!

Yeah, he sounds like a protectionist Democrat when talking about bringing back jobs. He IS the guy for the blue collar working man now.  He took it from the Dems because the Dems forsook them and now focus on gays and illegals and Muslim refugees and animals and trees and "the planet", anything BUT the ordinary working American citizen.

The good points you agree with might be the same ones I do, that it's time to return control of the country to the people rather than the wealthy and powerful elite class. This election wasn't about liberals vs conservatives. It's about us the people vs a governing class that has become completely out of touch with us, on both sides.

Agree about Obama and Michelle during the transition. Apparently they've been gracious to the incoming couple.  But we all need to remember, Trump is NOT a conservative. He's been on the liberal side of some issues before and supported some liberals, he can befriend liberals and work with them, so I'm not surprised there seems to be some warmth there.  Not saying he won't follow through with his conservative promises to lower taxes and reduce regulations, and build a wall and build back the military, but I think he can cross over on many other things more easily than say Cruz would have, which is what earned him the hate of some Republicans.

I'm still cautiously optimistic.

All the focus on the little people is exactly what traditional Democrats were all about.  If the left weren't hypocrites, they should love Trump. But today's leftists don't care about little people, they just care about staying in power.

I think I heard Neal Boortz say they should only be allowed to buy dry beans with food stamps.  I don't go that far, but I agree with the sentiment but only as a knee jerk emotional reaction.  In reality, it would accomplish nothing and might have unintended consequences, like more riots. 

The real problem is the lack of jobs in the inner cities and as Anthony pointed out, a couple of generations that know no other lifestyle. Even if there were jobs, who knows if they'd take them when you can make so much more money being a drug pusher. The war on poverty is a failure and the war on drugs is a failure, and only created a black market in drugs to feed to prison industry.

I'm not optimistic that even Trump can bring manufacturing back to the inner cities. The idea to educate these people with the hope that they'll all become doctors, lawyers and engineers is an equally false pipe dream.  The exceptional individual may climb out that way, but not the majority.  When desegregation took the ambitious and intelligent out of the inner cities, it took the main source of cultural stability and small business employers. Those who remained could survive with factory jobs but when that left, they were left with only two choices: push drugs, or be on the public dole.

And I'm not picking on black ghettos; white hillbillies have a similar situation. Manufacturing or industry processing plants that existed in rural white areas, such as furniture, textiles, logging, mining, food packaging, have evaporated, leaving young whites in these areas with the same two choices. It's easy to say to either of these, "Well move somewhere where there's a job," but that's easier said than done when you've been raised in an atmosphere of despair. In reality, these young people cannot escape unless luck provides them with a mentor on the outside to reorient their whole outlook.  This is the "hand up" you're talking about Lucifer. But it requires the existence of a job somewhere, as well as someone willing and able to be this savior. Both are in way too short supply.

It's easy to preach about individual choice and moral accountability when you aren't part of these demographics, but they really are products of society and the system.  (Having said that, I will shoot any criminal who threatens me or invades my property, I don't care if society is to blame for his behavior.  I'm not with the SJWs who use this fact to excuse behavior. It isn't his fault, but he is a monster nonetheless, and I've a right to defend myself.)

Given the incredible stress of these lifestyles, the sugar soda probably provides a needed dopamine high.  Any who avoid the drug and gang scene probably need it, or think they do. My opinion, it would be crazy to try to solve the massive problem of poverty by silly rules like no soda with food stamps.  It would be like sticking a Band-Aid on a hemorrhaging amputation.

But you see, the thing is, while I agree that HRC would make millions, I'm not so sure she would help the rest of us.

This is the difference.

Seems the anti-EC crowd won't absorb the brilliance of it.

Witmo, awesomely cogent and concise arguments have been laid out here and all over the documents relating to our government, showing how the EC is actually more representative of the citizenry than the popular vote. What the heck is your problem, dude? Your "arguments" are starting to sound like whining, not thinking.

As I said elsewhere, the EC in just under one generation has saved us from Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. Thus it almost can be considered divinely inspired.

I fully admit Trump is an unknown. But when Door #1 is the zonk, you pretty much have to go with an unknown, no?

They won't absorb it because it tends to work against them, that's all.  If it worked in their favor they'd be all for it.

The left is so full of hypocrisy.  If it's a third world nation and poor villagers against a rich ruling family, they're all for the poor villagers. But not here at home, because they've grown to hate "flyover country".

Strange euphoria setting in ... a president who loves America, is smart, listens, responds, actually works hard on our behalf. Picks highly qualified people, thinks Constitution is important.

I've got a "strange euphoria" this January.  Complete opposite of my normal post-holiday depression.  Maybe it's due to big, sunny, warm south Texas instead of cold, grey Appalachia.  Maybe it's that our finances are finally turning around. Maybe it's the Grandbaby.  Nah. It's none of that.   

What is the LEFT's fascination with an oppressive, violent, and totalitarian regime like Cuba that abuses its citizens regularly, and keeps them in enslaved poverty?  Why do they love the Castros so much?

It is the left's blindness to reality and to nature.  This blindness allows them to believe that man is on a "progressive" course to some utopian ideal.  They've constructed a belief that the way to achieve this vision is wealth redistribution by a centralized authority.  So they keep trying, and when it fails, as it always does, they must blame anything other than themselves. The oppression, violence, etc., is either a necessary step in the journey toward perfection, or it is a result of outside meddling by others (usually white males). Their obsession results from their rage that their experiment is obviously a failure, and their scramble to rationalize why it's the fault of anything but their unnatural ideals.

Conversely, adherents to free market capitalism can also suffer from utopian idealism.  But in general, as an economic system, capitalism works far better than collectivism.  The truth is reality is fluid and capitalism recognizes that reality; collectivism does not. Society will always change around with the flow of time. The nature of man as a living organism is to behave certain ways and make constant micro-decisions for individual and group survival. Capitalism takes advantage of this reality. Collectivism tries to kill it.

Because the left doesn't understand these realities, they're doomed to constant frustration as the world keeps insisting on working the way mother nature made it, that is: individuals seek to trade at a profit to both parties.  It's the most basic of human behaviors and the left's economic theories go straight opposite of it. Because they refuse to see humans as just another working part in the whole of nature (including such horrors as killing and eating other things with faces) they suffer from internal dissonance. They can't reconcile reality with their intellectually constructed notions.  By God they will prove that their theories work if they must torture and kill every human on earth in the process.

Just curious, do any of you know who the "hall monitor" is over at the red board?