You know what bugs me about the liberals, and its not all of them, but it's sort of the defining image of their party. The complete and utter disregard they have towards other people, towards the truth, and even towards their own party members. They are a party of liars and manipulators. They are a party of authoritarians, do as we say, think as we do and you're fine. They want to take our freedoms, and they do it in a sneaky, manipulative fashion, to chip away bit by bit at what we hold most dear. I'm not naive or delusional enough to not realize that type of thing goes on on the right side of the isle as well, but its to a far lesser degree. Unless you're talking about the alt right, most conservatives aren't looking to control you, aren't looking to judge you. They do have this bible thumping thing going on, and I'm not religious, and some of that scares me, Mike Pence scares me, he seems like a religious zealot. Yes, I think the republicans are too hard on the quite MURIKA, mentality. They are like over-patriotic. I don't hold with anyone who says  something about people not being american because of this reason or whatever. We're a melting pot, we pretty much always have been, and that's fine. We're not a homogeneous nation like some are, and some want to be, like Hungary don't want to take any migrants, which I honestly have no problem with. But we are a melting pot, we're many people. Lately, our pledge of allegiance has lost some of its meaning, that about being indivisible really is falling apart rather quickly. I think it started a while ago, but Obama really brought it to the forefront. He was one of the worst presidents I think we've ever had. He struck me as a silver-tongued devil, a snake charmer, and a manipulator. I was hoping he'd win in 2008, because I thought it was about time we had a black president, or a woman as president. I still think we should continue on that trend, I would have liked to see Sarah palin win. I hope she runs in 2020, but I don't see her doing it, I think she's happy where she is. That being said, I think we'd do well to have a woman president. Nothing about my dislike of Obama has anything to do with his race, but everything these days is a racial issue.

You know what else, I've had it up to here with this political correctness BS. It's utterly ridiculous pussification of our country, and the world. You know what, people need to start growing the fuck up and acting like adults. Everything is about sparing feelings, no matter what the issue is. People are growing highly allergic to the truth, they don't want to see or hear it. They will buy anything the media says, no matter how they may lean either left or right. To me, it seems like the majority of the media don't lean left, they sway left. The stats are out there, the facts are out there, but people won't do their own research, they just eat what they are spoon fed.

I agree with post 3, for the most part (not the liberal thing though). I'm by no means very articulate when it comes to American politics, but why can't people just use common sense and refrain from taking everything heard in the media regarding left this and right that seriously. People on the right bash people on the left and vice versa. It's rediculous if you ask me! Look, I will probably start a war here, so I'll just preface this next statement with saying that I am probably a bit biased, so if you attack me, just know that I have my opinion and you have yours. I feel like the current American president has definitely sparked a rivalry of sorts, and some of the issues that have thought to have been eliminated are revealing themselves once more. Yes, I'm playing the racism card. Now, I'm not trying to imply that the president had such intentions, but he started a discussion, and the flame is quickly becoming a strong fire. I don't consider myself liberal or conservative, but I would like to believe that when I vote, I am voting for the president that makes the most sense. Oh crap! I'm starting to sound naive. lol

I tend towards the more conservative myself. Even if the libertarian influence is rising in me merely as a result of my increased cynicism related to government actions.
I tend to think of Obama as the one who covered the place in gasoline while Trump exists as the spark. To be more precise of my thought, I think Obama (most likely unintentionaly) made a healing wound open up again. It started as something rather simple. The matter shouldn't have been as bad, but one thing lead to another, and we were back to some of the old problems. Trump isn't helping, though, likewise it is unintentional, but news organizations needs their money. Even if the truth has to suffer as a result of that greed. Now information is just muddy, and only a few people even have the time to sort through all of it. It seems, that as a result of all that's been going on, many people have lost their sense of internal consistency. My hope is that all of this burns and blows over quickly so we can have an actual meaningful discussion over policy, but that's probably not going to help. Revolutionaries love to try to work quickly, but as a result of a lack of patience, the cleanup takes way longer. That being said, as much as I don't like it, something has to give, it's just that is there a good way to finally resolve the issues without putting in place any further tools for tyranical rule. Laws and policies are dangerous for that reason. Anyways, sorry for the long ramble.

First, forgive me if I offend in this response. I tried not to show my biased opinion, simply because I make it a goal not to express a dislike towards politicians, or anybody for that matter. Yes, call me naive or what have you, but the truth of the matter is that division is not a good thing. OK, too late for the unbiased opinion thing now.
I guess I would like to address some of the points that post 7 made. Some of what was written in post 7 is what I call unspoken truths. Yes, media has to make money, resulting in sacrifices being made left and right (figuratively and literally), but I've noticed new lows in recent news casts regarding politics. Has it always been the way of journalists to criticize and exaggerate stories such that opinions strongly favor one-sided political ideologies? I mean, I thought that Journalism 101 taught that unbiased opinions are key. Also, post 7, I think you're getting really close to what I call a slippery-slope fallacy. At the end of the day, America's founding was based on acceptance and re-initiating a society with multiple co-existing cultures. We could argue history all day, but I am trying to angle at the fact that it is safe to assume that more likely than not, in the US, there will be opposition to policies that lead towards a tyrannically-ruled society.
Post 8, I am in agreement with you regarding the president's anti-illegal immigration policies and his inability to articulate them with intellect. At first, I was trying to give him the benefit of a doubt regarding these policies, but he has continually gone too far with his racist and hateful remarks. From my point of view, I am in full agreement that we need to control illegal immigration to some extent. At least, from the perspective of societal and law benefits. However, the emotional part of me understands the troubles and hardships of people who want a better life for themselves. One could just as easily say, "Well, if you want to come to this country, do it legally. Apply for visas, etc ..." It is just not that easy as it sounds. I understand this because I experienced this first hand from one of my family members. Most of my family has been fortunate enough to have had connections and live in a closer country to the US so as to facilitate legal status in US. But I can understand how things could go wrong, not to mention South American countries that are filled with violence and cruelty. Oh, sorry, I digress. I just feel a certain way about the whole legal vs illegal thing. I'm hinting at the fact that it is really hard to separate emotion from the practical But at the end of the day, despite my feelings toward the current president, I choose to believe that he will find a way to lead this country towards something. Whether that something is good or bad remains to be seen.

One issue I'm afraid I constantly see in debates about "liberal" or "conservative" is that a lot of Americans seem to assume that it ultimately comes down to supporting democrats or republicans, thus, policies which are actually not necessarily liberal such as positive discrimination tend to get lumped into the "liberal" camp, likewise belief in unrestricted free trade ala Ayne rand tends to be thought of  as conservative.

As I've said before, there used to be a wonderful site called the political index. It noted that the spectrum of left/right did not encompass all beliefs about society, since say someone like Stalen, a left wing authoritarian is actually miles away from karl Marx, a left wing libertarian, just as Ayne rand a right wing libertarian, is a  long way from Adolf Hitler, a right wing authoritarian.

Instead, it proposed a graph, with left and right across the bottom, and authoritarian/libetarian up the middle.

I will admit myself I'm a left wing libertarian, or at least moderate libertarian, but this in turn doesn't necessarily mean I'm a democrat either, or indeed would be if I lived in the states.

Actually I'll confess that the adversarial nature of us politics was something that very much put me off, with both sides essentially forming cliques, and thus assumptions in any debate always made about the other side's views simply based upon the fact that they were! the other side, heck my parents in law's political spectrum basically ran democrats equals abortion equals bad, republicans equals christian equals good, and had little else in terms of views aside from that.

Likewise, what I saw of most of Us news seemed to be more bent to depicting one or other political tribe in a bad light than either reporting the facts or debating issues with any degree of clarity.

As a disclaimer I will say that British politics has its own share of pretty major issues too, not the smallest being the government's habbit of getting more taken up with the constant cricket match of inter party politics to the point that the political situation is so utterly divorced from reality it has nothing to do with what is actually going on with the country, hence why labour, the so called "left wing" party go and privatise most British services, and only later discover that that was an amazingly bad idea .

Either way, myself I always take views that talk about "the liberals" or "the conservatives" or "the left" with a huge great spoon of salt, since in the end, people have different opinions on different issues, even those under the banner of the same political ideology, and however much people like my in laws would like to see politics and society  in terms of a simple battle of the good and righteous republicans against the evil democrats, ----- or in fairness often the other way around, matters are rarely that simple.

Hell, despite being a card carrying Marxist myself, I've seen plenty of so called "liberals" whom I certainly do not! agree with at all .

I'll tell you that even though I do tend to go with the democrats, I am neither in favor of dismantling ICE or the electoral college. ICE definitely needs to be reformed so it doesn't have the same tendency to tread over basic human rights, but an organization that deals with immigration and customes laws is extremely necessary, and ICE is that body.

I also know what is really behind the electoral college thing. If it were removed, democrats would have a lot more power and pretty much a candidate could just grab a few major cities that were democratic-leaning anyway to score a national election, and that stomps over so many that it could easily become a tyranny of the many over the rights of the few.

so as said above, a lot of us aren't mololithic cult followers and those particular Democratic policies I am definitely against.

+1 Mirage, I'm also very happy to see how civil and polite everyone has been!

Depending on the issue, I lean conservative or liberal, sometimes only slightly and other times quite harshly.  I think the trick is to always learn enough about the other side (of whatever you're focusing on) so that you could fill in for them in a debate and have at least a fighting chance to win.  If a co-worker were to bring up a gripe about the plot of the Matrix movie, we can examine the workings of that universe and support it or pick away at things that may be plot holes.  We can both put ourselves into that fictional universe to logically and reasonably debate it's inner-workings without either of us believing that any of the movie is true.  Religions can be handled in exactly the same way.  Even if I don't believe there is a literal god Zeus sitting on mount Olympus, I can learn the stories and engage in discussions/debates about it.  I believe a well rounded person should be able to teach to a class, the basics of their own religion/political party, and should also be able to teach that same class about their rival religions/political party... and I mean teach it as if they are on that side.

I like to imagine our political differences as a saw-style game show with 2 men sitting at a table.  They are given test questions 1 at a time, and if their score ever gets too low each will be lit on fire and die.  The 2 men are polar opposites and tend to disagree on nearly everything, to the point where they each generally think the other is a bad person because of how "backward" their opinions are.  They bicker and argue about every question, sometimes going with the first man's answer, and sometimes going with the second man.  Every time they go with one man's answer, the other man proclaims that "This is the end!", believing whole-heartedly that the answer is going to be wrong and they are going to burn.

Time passes and the men stay alive.  Hundreds and thousands of questions are presented to them, and at no point do they ever let either man take total control.  Coming up with each answer is a bitter battle of name-calling and insults, and in the end their long chain of past answers is pretty even mix of the two.  From this we can conclude that both men are wrong, but we can also conclude that both men need to believe they are right every time.  If either man had been left to make all of the decisions, they would have been burned alive long long ago.  Each time the first man got his way, it means the other man would have picked the wrong answer if it were left solely up to him.  The same is true for when the second man got his way.  They've only made it this far by working together, but if either saw it as working together (and stopped fighting so hard for his own side) then the answers would have started to sway too far toward the man still fiercely fighting to have his way.  It's a tug of war that would kill both, if either stopped pulling with all his might.

Now it's not a perfect analogy (since none ever are), but it's a way to look at things.  Our country has had endless law and policy changes over it's history dealing with situations as they arose.  We've constantly gone back and forth between conservative and liberal ways to make those changes.  Things are by no means perfect, but we've lasted an awfully long time.  Looking back at even our greatest historical civilizations, we can see how they eventually drove themselves into the ground with political choices.  If you make too many mistakes, you end.  We haven't ended yet so So far, we've needed this back and forth.

Like the 2 men in the story, if our country had only been run by conservatives or only been run by liberals, we would have been getting a whole lot more wrong than we did.  The whole place likely would have come crashing down and there would be a new nation (or multiple) living in this location right now.  Now I'm not saying we should just hold hands and stop bickering, because if one side stops fighting so hard then things will begin leaning too far toward the one still fighting just as hard as before.  We still have to fight to get our own side to win, but maybe deep down in the back of our minds we need to remember that this is team work.  Like soldiers battling each other who at least have a respect for the others, understanding that each is defending their own nation with honor.

Wow I've rambled for a long time. 

I don't like the ada and most of that stuff I don't support.

I feel like the demacrats just use us. They don't even include us in there so called divirsity push. I mean look at he access transet in LA. I have heard from disabled that its the worst in the country and this is suposed to be a liberal progressive city. What about the disabled vets who are homeless. The demacrats don't like people who thought for america.

It is baffling to me that any blind person in the US would be against the ADA, as without laws such as the ADA, the percentage of people with disabilities who are employed would almost certainly be much, much worse. Businesses, especially the larger ones, are only concerned with money, and if they think it will cost them more to employ someone with a disability, then that person will probably not be hired.

@hurstseth405: About the ADA. Without the ADA things would be catastrophic and that's putting it lightly. Not everyone was raised to accept differences as far as disabilities are concerned, and if they get the upper hand then we all know what happens next.

Tell me then, out of the hundreds of job listings the next guy has access to, how many they really actually can do. A person with a disability can't just strike a position at a retail establishment, because not all of them are accessible. Most of the time people aren't aware, and once it's brought up there's a pretty good turnaround. But there are bad actors in the field who simply refuse to make things their stuff accessible. They look at it from an investment vs return point of view and choose to lose potential customers and employees with the way they're going. And guess what, that's with the ADA around. And It's bad enough with the ADA being so lightly enforced. Companies having so much leniency when it comes to deadlines to change stuff. Granted no everything can happen overnight, especially a building change, but deadlines should be handled on a case-by-case basis rather than a hard fast deadline. Especially if said remedy is software-defined, making a terminal accessible for example. If the employee is perfectly qualified and has politely requested their accommodation you have this much time to get it up and going, and if you need more time then deploy a guaranteed copilot solution if you will until it's set up. And if the effort isn't sufficient enough and you choose to lay off the employee because of that they are within their right to sue for wrongful termination. See how it should work? So, while I'm all for a more strongly enforced ADA, I simply cannot agree with lack of an ADA, because not everyone is decent enough to be trusted without an ADA.