The Road to 2020 - American Elections
I figured we needed a central hub for all discussion pertaining to the Democratic primary (even though it's in the beginning of its end) and the subsequent General Election, which is sure to generate quite a lot of discussion.
Curious to see who are people's Democratic candidate of choice (regardless of whether or not you are an American citizen), if they (or any Democratic candidate) can win the primary and beat Trump in the GE.
Personally, I will be voting for Bernie Sanders, and as it stands he has a good shot at being the Democratic nominee, and I think he can beat Trump in the General.
Feel free to discuss any and all topics as it relates to the American election here
Curious to see who are people's Democratic candidate of choice (regardless of whether or not you are an American citizen), if they (or any Democratic candidate) can win the primary and beat Trump in the GE.
Personally, I will be voting for Bernie Sanders, and as it stands he has a good shot at being the Democratic nominee, and I think he can beat Trump in the General.
Feel free to discuss any and all topics as it relates to the American election here
Comments (2159)
I think up to 50% approval. Governors are getting 70%. But ok. Maybe he has a glow I'm not seeing.
The facts remain: he can't attack Biden right now and the economy looks bad.
Does anybody need to attack Biden now?
Isn't Joe doing it to himself?
And now for Trump the best thing is to appear in the television talking about the pandemic.
I dont think he's doing it as well as the GOP would be. He has a speech impediment. FDR was a paraplegic. You can lead without looking like Superman.
Well, you can be Trump and be the US President. And possibly be re-elected.
Love how the Democratic frontrunner went missing for 6 days as the crisis escalated here :up:
*Shrug* I just presumed he was dead.
They need to charge his battery for nearly a full week so that he can speak half-coherently for 5 minutes.
I was 50/50 on if he had coronavirus.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kthalps/status/1242691746561167360?s=21[/tweet]
Here's the accusation:
“He used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck”
https://www.theunion.com/news/nevada-county-woman-says-joe-biden-inappropriately-touched-her-while-working-in-his-u-s-senate-office/
Consider Trump raped several women and still got elected, I have a feeling this is not going to have much impact.
The accusation is he pushed her against a wall, kissed her and penetrated her with his fingers.
If that's the accusation, it should be investigated now and widely reported.
Somehow I doubt that is going to happen. She’s already been accused of working with the Russians, so that kind of implies where this will go.
It's an unfortunate defensive reaction. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the accusation was true anyhow.
I asked myself that in 2016. I hated (and hate) Hillary with a deep and abiding passion; but I do believe that if I'd lived in a swing state I'd have voted for Hillary. I live in California so I cast a protest vote for Trump. In 2012 I cast a protest vote for Gary Johnson; but by 2016 he was just mailing it in and wasn't worth voting for. I like Jill Stein personally but I'm not a new age loon so I couldn't vote for her. That left Trump as my only viable protest vote.
But in 2020? I will vote for Trump and would do that in any state. The Dems started with their Russia lie to avoid having to take responsibility for losing the most winnable election of all time. And they've turned that into over three years of trying to destroy the president at the expense of the country.
I wish Trump would stop tweeting and would choose his words with more care and did not deliberately pour gasoline on every fire. He calls it the China virus just to tweak his haters and personally I wish he were bigger than that.
But it's Trump, and as they said about Reagan, let Trump be Trump. He's fought off everything the Dems can throw at him and Gallup says 60% of the country thinks he's doing a good job in the covid crisis.
He stood up to China and China is a country that needs standing up to. He wants to bring manufacturing back to the US. Suddenly we all see the wisdom of that.
So I support Trump, warts and all. And if you want to categorize me: I'm a non-deplorable Trump supporter. There aren't enough deplorables to elect Trump. Trump won with the support of tens of millions of disaffected liberals like myself. Instead of pumping Russiagate and Stormy and Michael Cohen and Ukrainegate and all the rest of it the Dems had tried to figure out what people like me see in Trump, they'd be far better off.
As it is the Dems are going the way of the Whigs. Joe Biden. Please!
My God, haven't you seen the Biden clips the past couple of days? Stumbled through his webcast as he lost track of his thoughts when his teleprompter failed; then doing some cable tv interview and bumbling and stumbling through that, then going on The View and bumbling and stumbling on that.
Tell me something, just between us, and remember I'm an old liberal so this is between friends.
Do you honestly, heart of hearts, no fingers crossed, think that Joe Biden is mentally competent to be the president of the United States? And do you honestly stand up forthrightly and say that you support Joe Biden for president? And that you're not utterly shocked at the fraud the Dems are trying to perpetrate? Or do you just support Biden because he's not Trump even though you have watched his recent performances and are appalled at the utter shamelessness of the DNC?
So you concede the point. While the Dems were impeaching him and calling him a racist, he was seeing ahead of the "experts."
Quoting ssu
I don't see that at all. I had the same thought a couple of days earlier. I posted here that there's no rational basis to know whether we should blow up the economy to prevent a worse outcome. It's a valid question. Trump's no panicking. He's expressing the perfectly obvious thought that we don't want the cure to be worse than the disease. We're monitoring the hell out of the situation but we also have an eye on getting small businesses up and operating again. I drove around my little town today, it's a ghost town. Trump gets this country far better than the other politicians do. He's for the workers and the little people. The mainstream GOPs and Dems aren't.
Trump's being an optimist, giving people something to hope for. You're just seeing what you want to see here. I want the shops and restaurants to be able to open, people to be able to go back to work. Don't you? Nobody's going to do that before it's medically safe. But we shouldn't mindlessly shut down our economy without asking the question.
I am in a swing state. On your behalf, I will vote for Trump. I just have to figure out how to do early voting because I'm not going to stand in line for two hours for anybody.
(I think this would be better to be answered in the Corona-virus thread, not here, but I'll answer still.)
His rhetoric afterwards and at present tells quite clearly that he's not seeing ahead. He got lucky with this call, and of course luck is important.
In this case a travel ban/quarantine of people coming from China was something close to his heart, something fitting his World view and his followers. It would go into the category of "be tough on China". Hence the ban on flights from Schengen countries, but leaving the UK and Ireland open for traffic, showed also this kind illogical thinking in the case of the pandemic. As a jab to the EU it's something else.
Quoting fishfry
Well, the question is simply how much are you willing to do to save lives? Nobody wants to make the juxtaposition like that and likely it will become a taboo to ponder it when the death toll rises, but it's obvious that containing it like China did (for the moment) cannot be done anymore.
According to Trump the measures regarding the European bans and the UK exemptions were recommended to him by “a group of professionals”. Trump later banned UK. So what evidence do you have that this is not the case, and further, what evidence do you have that it is a jab at the EU and shows his logical thinking?
Trump is a slug. He would tilt the SCOTUS a little further to the right. But he wouldn't restart bullshit with the Russians and he would continue to alienate the US from the rest of the world.
So where are my priorities? The main concern I see with RBG's spot is that it becomes more likely that Roe v Wade will be overturned. It probably should be. Trump was elected in part because he garnered more votes from white women than Clinton did. If it was important to those women to have the right to an abortion, they would have voted for Clinton.
Obamacare turned out to be legally wonky. That's why it was so easy to screw it up. If we can't manage to do it right so it will last, then again, that signifies that the people are mostly against it.
So all that's left is foreign policy. I would rather the US stop interfering with other countries. But do I care enough about that to bother voting? No.
But here's fishfry. He's angry, but he lives in a state where his vote doesn't matter. I know what that's like and it sucks. I don't care who the president is, but I live in a state where my vote could impact the final result. It makes sense that I should give my vote to fishfry. He wants Trump, so I'm going to vote for Trump.
I can't argue Trump. People have their opinions. He's incredibly divisive. Nixon was that way. Reagan was politically divisive but very personally likable. Trump rubs a lot of people the wrong way. If he got lucky, it's because he's someone who gets lucky a lot, and ... if you put aside your dislike of his personality ... you might see that he "gets lucky" because he's very good at what he does. And he did reality tv for ten years so he knows what the American public likes. A showman and, in his strange nonlinear way, a statesman.
But it's ok if you don't agree. That's why they have elections ... if they have an election.
Quoting ssu
Yes you could say that. Or you could say that his instincts are against globalization. A month ago nobody knew that China makes a huge percentage of the pharmaceuticals we use. Now everyone knows. We know we need to make our own masks and respirators. We need to re-learn to make a lot of the stuff we use on a daily basis. This is the big-picture trend on which Trump ran in 2016. America first. You can decry his rhetoric on immigration -- I do. But his instincts have been prescient. Now the rest of the world is starting to catch up.
You could see it that way, if you chose to.
Quoting ssu
100 Americans a day die in automobile accidents. If you threw the book at drunk drivers, 30 days in the slam first offense no picking up trash on weekends, hard time in the local slam, you'd save 20,000 American lives a year easy. If you banned cars altogether you'd save 36,000 lives a year.
In 2018 the CDC reported 80,000 flu deaths in the US. You probably didn't even know that. There was no hysteria. Social distancing would have saved a lot of lives that year.
You could save over 400,000 Americans every year if you banned booze and cigarettes. So "how much are you willing to do to save lives?" Maybe you should give that question some thought yourself.
SOME crises get the media hysteria treatment and SOME don't. If you don't see that, you lack perspective. Yes covid is serious. But a lot of things are serious. 150,000 humans die every single day worldwide. Every single death a tragedy. But relative to people-killers, by the numbers, covid ain't much yet. You can talk about extrapolations, but it's always a value judgment as to whether your extrapolation of vague and conflicting data justifies putting millions of Americans out of work and blowing up the supply chain leading to a depression.
That's a value judgment. A lot of people lately think their judgment is an objective fact. That's wrong. The other day Cuomo said the usual political bs line, "If we save just one life." Well some young girl just killed herself at the prospect of being quarantined. There's your one life.
There are always tradeoffs and tradeoffs are matters of opinion, not fact.
Well the real question is, in the awful and hopefully unlikely even that this covid insanity is still going strong in November, how the heck are we going to have an election?
Of course if the entire country is sheltering in place that long we'll have worse problems. People will be going insane and there will no longer be an economy. That would be bad.
It's also interesting to speculate as to the election. I've read that if an election isn't held. Trump and Pence cease to be in office on inauguration day. They are not extended, they're gone. So what happens then? Normally Pelosi is next in line but if there is no election then she couldn't still be Speaker because she wouldn't even have been reelected to the House. There would be no House and a lot of the Senators would be gone too. None of this makes any sense. I don't know what the answer is. But people saying Trump would cancel the election to be president forever are wrong. He'd be gone in January. It's just unclear what would happen then.
Uh, impeachment was already finished by that point? And who care about what anyone calls Trump? He certainly doesn't care about what he calls others.
And why are the experts in scare quotes?
Quoting fishfry
We should totally do that, IMHO. Alkoholism is really bad.
Anyways you make a good point. The core reason that this is taken as seriously as it is is that no-one wants to be the one responsible for wrecking the healthcare system. You don't want to be responsible for doctors to working themselves nearly to death while having to decide who lives and who dies.
It's a good enough reason as far as I am concerned.
Quoting fishfry
Yeah, but why choose to do that? It seems much more reasonable to assume that "presidential instincts" have fuck all to do with success or failure.
Quoting frank
What about all the other women? They don't feature in your calculations?
Quoting frank
That doesn't follow. You realise the initial plans for "Obamacare" looked different, but there was too much political resistance? There is no reason to assume people being for or against it had anything to do with the quality of the implementation.
The US has been trying to influence Russia and surrounding countries in the direction of democracy and openness. That's the interference that I condemn.
Quoting tim wood
Right. The world needs to stop relying on the US and learn to protect itself. I used to be a globalist, but I've changed. That's where that's coming from.
Quoting tim wood
I understand your concern about character. I don't really share it though. He's annoying, true. But I really admired Obama. Put Obama's effects on the world against Trump's, and it turns out the slug was less dangerous. That doesn't mean you have to go with the slug, but it means you lose nothing by doing so.
They can travel to areas where abortion is legal. Or just move. True, some women will be caught in situation where abortion is unavailable and they can't travel.
If the country as a whole decides that it doesn't want women to have that right, then on what basis would I insist otherwise? I bolded that because I want to know what your answer is.
Quoting Echarmion
My understanding is that the loophole Trump used to undermine it was a result of aggressive way it was passed.
Well if the whole country decides they'd want rape within a marriage to be legal, would that be cause to just accept it. I think it's obvious that while some questions are left to public consensus, others are not. Of course, you can argue that abortion is of the former type.
But, looking at this from the perspective of a voter, your question seems entirely beside the point. It's during the process of voting that the country decides what "it" wants. Basing your vote on the predicted outcome of that choice is circular. You vote according to your conscience.
So the only question that should matter here is whether you think abortion, with whatever strings attached, should be legal and available.
Quoting frank
Yes. But even at that point the proposals had already been watered down significantly, in a vain attempt to get bipartisan support. At least that is how I remember it. I may have to look that up again, so take this with a grain of salt.
I think that decision was already made. The country elected Trump at a time when a justice seat was vacant. Voting for Biden now just to get RBG's seat for a democrat would be a gesture. Prolife advocates are already spoiling for a SCOTUS trial. They aren't waiting for RBG's seat.
States that are strongly democratic won't illegalize abortion. States like South Carolina will.
If you truly believe that South Carolina will be doing grievous wrong by this (in the league with allowing rape), then what will you do about it?
That just sounds like you're avoiding the question. If it truly didn't matter, why did you bring it up earlier?
Quoting frank
I suppose I'll complain about it on the internet somewhere. There is probably something more effective I could do, like donate to some organisation. But to be honest I probably won't.
You're right. Voting for Biden to get RBG's seat would be standing for a principle in the face of defeat. I don't see why I should do that if large numbers of women actively caused that defeat. See what I mean?
Why do you base what you want on what other people do or do not do? That's genuinely confusing to me. I get voting tactically to get what you want, or closer to it, anyways. What you seem to be doing is actively refusing to make your own decision.
Again, you're right. If large numbers of women in South Carolina don't want abortions going on in their communities, then I believe they shouldn't have to endure it. I'm in favor of the freedom to choose.
So you're pro choice then? :wink:
But seriously, if you are going to adopt some meta-political stance based on allowing as much electoral choice as possible, you'd have to consult a detailed survey on just who would vote for what. And does it follow you'd want all supreme court decisions restricting legislation be overturned, including brown v board?
The basic idea of democracy is that the people rule. We have guardrails on that, like the Constitution, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. If a decision makes its way through that obstacle course, then we say we've done the best we can.
In the not too distant future, there will be a case before the SCOTUS that calls into question the constitutionality of Roe v Wade. It's likely that the SCOTUS will then overturn it.
If women in general truly wanted national protection of a woman's right to a safe abortion, then they would have voted for presidents that would have stacked the SCOTUS in their favor. They did not do that.
What do you want me to do about that? I can vote for Biden to give a faint voice to my attitude about the legality of abortion, but if large numbers of women don't want it, I can't say they're being victimized. If they aren't being victimized, then on what basis do I say they should put up with what they consider to be murder? And please, I know there are women in South Carolina who want safe abortions to be available. I'm sorry, but that's democracy.
Quoting Echarmion
Again, my attitude about this is related to the voting record of women. If there's a predominantly black community somewhere that wants to segregate schools, then how would that be in defiance of the 14th Amendment (the basis of Brown v Board)?
If that were the case, why would people be as unhappy with their representatives as they are? Making it through is merely the lowest rung on the ladder.
Quoting frank
What makes you think this is about what I want, or what I want you to do? I am just confused about the way you make your decisions.
Quoting frank
Err, ok. So, just how many women have to not want it for women in general to no longer be victimised?
Quoting frank
Why should you, or anyone, care what some random group of people "considers" murder? You either conclude it is morally wrong or it isn't. If you conclude it isn't morally wrong, these people are simply wrong. You can consider their viewpoint and their fears as a matter of empathy, but basing policy decisions on that is just irrational.
Quoting frank
What's democracy? People getting what they want, whatever it is? Is Roe v Wade anti-democratic? Is brown v board?
Quoting frank
I doubt very much that you have looked at the voting record of women in detail.
Quoting frank
The decision in brown v board was based on the equal protection clause, which would apply regardless of who was at the receiving end of discrimination.
And this is your answer to my previous bolded question, I believe. I understand you, I think.
:chin:
That's why his followers love him as he doesn't at all sound like a politician. And he is a great communicator for his followers. And he's a genuine populist.
Quoting fishfry
That's the basic agenda in modern populism.
Quoting fishfryThat sounds like a Trumpism. Perhaps one could assume that making cheap simple industrial things hasn't been very popular in the US. Manufacturing has left the country for cheaper labor, you know.
Quoting fishfry
I did. And I've right from the start said this: in 1968/1969 about 100 000 Americans died in the Hong Kong flu pandemic. It's a thing hardly anyone knows. A pandemic in 1968-1969??? Never heard. That's how things have changed. It's simply we don't take as granted that oh well, old people die.
No. What's really going to get under the American collective skin is if on average more people will die in the US than in other countries. If China gets away with thousands of dead, and in the US it's over hundred thousand (let's hope not), that's going to be a real irritant for Trump. We'll see how it goes in the next two months I guess.
Because what Trump does now will have an effect on his re-election. Being even a decent leader would surely make him win the re-election. If the US muddles through this pandemic, it's going to be fine. But if the response is far worse than Katrina, then it's a different story.
Because if there's one thing an observant person learns in a crisis, it's the fecklessness and unreliability of "experts." And have you noticed all the armchair epidemiologists lately? Something to behold. Why bother with a degree in microbiology when you can just parrot the hysterics you see on tv. "Exponential!" "R-zero!" "Flatten the curve!" A nation of morons who think they're smart.
Quoting Echarmion
Yes actually I fully agree. Problem is that we tried that in the US and it didn't work. Nobody stopped drinking and it led to the rise of organized crime. When will they learn the same lesson about the war on drugs?
Quoting Echarmion
Some of us independent-minded types call 'em as we see 'em.
Quoting Echarmion
Trump is weirdly intuitive about things. Whether it's luck or skill, I'd say skill. Nobody puts up buildings in NYC without some smarts about people and things.
Presidential re-elections are always referenda on incumbents (as well as incumbent legistlative parties in power). This year the electorate will :down: or :up: on twin terrors of (criminally negligent, mismanaged) Pandemic & (relative, persisting) Depression; any other considerations are just - yes, 'ideologies' be damned (re: 1932, 1976, 1980, 1992 presidential elections) - ahistorical, miss-the-forest-for-the-trees, circle-jerking - to wit: Biden, HRC, Bernie or whomever the Dems eventually nominate will be sworn-in as the 46th POTUS in 2021. :mask: :victory:
That seems to be what Trump lovers believe. Confirmation bias is a many splendored thing.
I'm always curious about the certainty with which people predict the outcomes of elections. In the event that you're mistaken, how would the re-election of Trump change your worldview?
I don't know. It would depend on what, if anything, would explain the advent of circumstances favorable to the president's reelection despite the national catastrophe of a pandemic-driven depression that, just getting started now, will continue to play-out well past November. I've no reasons yet to doubt my prediction (though, paradoxically, that doesn't reassure me).
Yes. He has a tremendous connection to the common people of this country. He connects with them. Yes he acts like a carnival barker with his rubes, but I think that's just an act. He did reality tv for ten years, he knows what Americans like. He gives it to him. But underneath that he's a very shrewd judge of things. He blasted through the cream of the crop of the Republican party before he beat Hillary. No rube does that.
Quoting ssu
I used to be a globalist. t's only recently that I've started to question it. Globalism was a good idea for a while but now it seems to be just a mechanism for the elite to stripmine the wealth of society for themselves. People are starting to notice. Trump's riding that wave. Brexit's was a precursor. The peasants are breaking out the pitchforks.
Quoting ssu
LOL!! Yes it IS Trumpism! And he's right! He was the first major public figure to call out China's trade practices. I'm on record as believing that Trump's tough talk on trade may have kept the Chinese military out of Hong Kong. Trump got Xi's attention. I believe personally that in this, Trump has been historic. It's the bookend to Nixon going to China. Trump is the first president to stand up to China. To seriously renegotiate our relationship. I don't see anyone on the political landscape who I'd rather have doing this.
Quoting ssu
Aha. This is exactly how I used to think. The world's gotten small. We have transportation and communication that couldn't be dreamed of a century ago. Someone sneezes in China and Kleenex stock ticks up in Manhattan. Total connectivity. It's inevitable, so why fight it?
But that is a myth. The wholesale offloading of the US manufacturing sector to China was a plan, not a historical inevitability. Globalists do not care about their own country. That's the definition of a globalist. The heartland was gutted. Not because technology made it inevitable; but rather because powerful interests planned it that way for their own benefit, and to the detriment of the country.
That is how we got Donald Trump. He speaks for the victims of globalism. I've come to understand and agree with this point of view. And, not to put too fine a point on it, the obscene Federal bailout of debt-ridden businesses with literally crumbs for the workers is the proof. Of the reported $2.2T bailout, probably around $360B is going for the peasants and the rest, $1.8T or whatever, goes to big corporations to bail them out of their own mistakes and greed. I swear, I am with AOC when she railed against this awful bill today.
The fat cats slaughtered the sheep again. 2008 on steroids. And Trump signed it. What else could he do? A lot of times the deep state is too big even for him. He gets to be a hero though, the bailout's very popular at the moment. That guy Massie, the only guy in the Senate who stood up and said, "Hey, what the hell are we doing?" was literally branded an enemy of the state.
It's like living in Soviet Russia near the end. Every public act is a charade to hide the evil that can no longer be hidden.
Quoting ssu
The hysteria is beyond belief. I take all the recommended precautions, I'm a stay-at-home anyway so my lifestyle's barely affected except that my formerly lively little beach town is now a ghost town. But the hysteria out there frightens me. So WHY has an official national hysteria been planned? One that required the overnight cessation of our entire economy except for the titans of industry lining up for their taxpayer-provided bailouts. You'd almost think someone's using this medical panic to fleece the public. But what kind of person could be that cynical at a time like this?
Quoting ssu
Yeah, who the heck knows what's going on anyway. Nobody trusts the Chinese numbers. And how many of infections a country has is more a factor of how many people get tested than how many actual infections. We're not even measuring the right thing. Everyone's flying in the dark, people are dying, the media are whipping up hysteria, and the politicians just sold out even more of the country to the rich. What's going to happen is that the elite will prosper with the bailouts but main street will be in a depression. The rich will buy up the cheap assets just like they did after 2008. They are doing it again but on a much bigger scale. This is truly outrageous. I'm upset but what can I do? I stay home and hope I don't get the damn virus, just like everyone else.
Quoting ssu
Trump's approval is up. I think the bailouts and Fed liquidity (QE-infinity) will probably goose at least a short term recovery before the election. I think it's Trump in a landslide right now. But if this whole thing goes south, Joe Biden could become president.
How do people think THAT's going to work out? The Hillary/Obama wing of the party back in power with a weak president who will do anything they say?
I regard that as a very frightening and very real possibility.
I find the phrase "Trump lovers" the mark of a TDS sufferer. I would say that people who make an effort to understand Trump's appeal, without being blind to his many flaws, could understand why I made the remark I did. You're wrong. I don't love Trump. I understand why he's popular. And I'm disgusted by what's become of Democrats. Starting with this "Trump lover" crap.
Rather than try to understand why Trump is popular, the Dems would rather go on about Russiagate and Stormy and Cohen and racism and one hysteria after another; as an alternative to trying to understand why they lost such a winnable election against a complete political amateur.
I regard this as a fatal loss of vision and integrity that's led to three futile years of childish hysteria, culminating in the likely nomination of Joe Biden as their presidential candidate. That's your answer to "Trump lovers?" Joe Biden? If you made an effort to understand Trump's popularity you might have found a decent candidate.
So how do you like your chances with Joe? And how about that rape charge? You believe the woman?
I'm not so sure about that. In the end it's the same discourse as we heard about NAFTA long time ago:
During that time China's economy was a little bigger than the Netherlands, I guess, so China wasn't on the forefront yet.
Quoting fishfry
I don't think that it's that. As I said at the time when I didn't believe this would be serious, this is the only way governments can react. They cannot say "This isn't our problem". They cannot say "We aren't interested". And from that they will really do whatever they can. Which I still believe is the right thing to do.
Quoting fishfry
I believe there is a truth to them. Even in China, there is a limit how much you can suppress the truth.
Unfortunately epidemics/pandemics can have different outcomes in different countries. One country takes a huge hit where another is left nearly untouched in an pandemic. The wrong way to think about it is that the country that has less infections has done it's job better than the other. That's why we didn't take the lessons learned from SARS etc. to heart as those countries that took a hit.
The complacency of Trump is quite understandable. Preventing pandemics (SARS, MERS, Ebola) had worked pretty well.
Quoting fishfry
The people who are outraged at the administration will only change.
That's just capitalism. Give me a single economic policy of "globalism" that's not motivated by the interests of capitalism.
Quoting fishfry
So, what has been negotiated so far?
Quoting fishfry
And just who are those powerful interests?
How do you know it has been planned? Of those members here who support Trump, you're one of the interesting one's (actually, I think you're the only interesting one). Please don't tell me you've gone off the deep end.Quoting fishfry
How is that different from 8 years of Obama?
Quoting fishfry
I think I partially agree with you here, but I don't think understanding Trump's success really helps much unless you want to emulate Trump. It's a movement borne of disaffection and anger. Hard to turn that into something genuinely positive (not that I think the DNC are a bunch of saints).
Would it help you to know that I was considering Yang? :victory:
I will take this under serious consideration maybe even my Mantra.
I hope you are well my friend :flower:
Well, undeniably better than Trump
Your hoping that Bernie loses the least or what?
I didn't think I'd have to explain to anyone that our economic system is as far from capitalism as can be. I've seen it described as corporate socialism. Not to pick one example over another but just the other day I ran across a story. Capital One ("What's in YOUR Wallet?) made a horrible bet and lost a billion dollars. If they had to declare the loss their stockholders would be wiped out. Don't worry, though. The government did some financial chicanery to protect them.
CFTC Quietly Bails Out Capital One
Exclusive: Capital One got CFTC waiver after oil price plunge increased swap exposure - sources
Quoting Echarmion
Are you being disingenuous? Trump has reconfigured our trade relationship with China using strong words during his campaign and tariffs now that he's president. If you're unaware of these ongoing developments, President Xi certainly isn't.
Quoting Echarmion
Read your Chomsky. Or maybe this is the first time anyone told you that the CIA writes the news you read. What kind of magic fairyland do people think we live in where everything's like it's supposed to be in high school civics, which I hear they don't even bother to try to teach anymore.
Thank you for the kind words. You're absolutely right. I meant to write "declared." Why have the media declared a national hysteria? In another post I suggested that it's not out of the question that the response is part of a larger globalist plan. But for me, "not out of the question" is never confused with "I know." I do like to speculate, and to try to put current events into the historical context of powerful people doing nasty things for their own benefit. An economic crash in an election year is always bad for the incumbent, especially one like Trump who brags about the stock market. (When he was running for president he accurately pointed out that the whole thing was a house of cards, but he evidently forgot that).
So it's not out of the question that a nasty flu came around (even Dr Fauci is now admitting that the death rate could be more like 0.1%, rather than the ten-times-worse 1% he announced last week) and the powers that be said, "This is it, tell the country to shut down all commerce, tank Wall Street AND Main Street, and Trump will be thrown out of office). I not only believe that's possible, I regard at as strongly possible. I'd go so far as to say likely.
After all the stock market was totally ready for a big fall. Everyone knows it was a Fed-induced bubble. Now the Fed's blowing yet another, bigger bubble. It's not clear whether it's going to inflate this time though.
But point being that I DO believe certain powerful interests wouldn't mind a huge financial crash this year; and certainly we didn't shut down the economy in 2016 when 80,000 Americans died of the flu (official CDC number).
So with that in the back of my mind, I said the hysteria was planned when in that particular context, declared made more sense. What I mean is, why didn't the media declare a hysteria in 2018? I'd really like a rational answer to that. 80,000 dead is a lot. I never even heard about it till the CDC announced the number in 2019. Why not? I'm curious.
Quoting Echarmion
He had his foot on the throat of the economy the entire time. In fact Obama is somewhat correct when he takes clam for Trump's (pre-crash) economy. It was the economy we would have had if Obama had let it happen. Obama did a lot of bad things, this isn't the time to go into all that but his foreign policy was Bush's 3rd and 4th terms and that's exactly what the Obama/Hillary wing would bring back if Biden became president. More wars, and the left won't say a peep if they get a few social justice programs and plenty of social justice rhetoric.
I don't want another 8 years of Obama. And neither, let me point out, did the American people.
Quoting Echarmion
The Dems prefer to call the heartland racists and deplorables, rather than come to terms with the neoliberal selling out of that very heartland the past 30 years. You say disaffection and anger. Over what? The Dems will tell you it's anger over minorities and gays. That's bs. The Dems won't come to terms with the consequences of their own economic policies. This is what the 2016 election is about and it's what the 2020 election is about. The Dems hate the country they claim to want to lead. Strong words. I'll stand by them. I've been seriously radicalized watching the Dems in action lately.
That's the old argument of "it isn't true capitalism". But that's about as convincing as the equal and opposite "real socialism has never been tried". The fact of the matter is that capitalism has always included state intervention. Capitalists try to capture the state using their economic power. It's in their interest to do so. The mythical "pure capitalism" that has never existed is nothing but a fairy tale used to conceal the downsides of the real and existing economic system.
I call the system we have right now capitalism. You can disagree with the name, but it doesn't matter what we call it. The fact is the policies you blame on "globalism" are motivated by economic interests. The interests of the holder of capital. If you don't want to contest that point, you can call the economic system whatever you like.
Quoting fishfry
That's not a negotiation though. That's the administration using what tools they have to try and get a reaction. I have yet to see evidence that anything of substance has or will come of it. The hard reality is that the american standard of living depends on outsourcing production to countries with cheap labour. If you want to get the manufacturing jobs back, you have to accept a significant reduction in the standard of living.
Quoting fishfry
That's not an answer. Are you saying the CIA is outsourcing jobs?
Quoting fishfry
It gets people to watch more media.
Quoting fishfry
I cannot think of many powerful people that benefit from an economic downturn. Powerful people are, by and large, rich people, and rich people like to make money.
Quoting fishfry
Right. And I guess the "powers that be" simultaneously control the US, Europe, China, India etc. Do you really believe in a world conspiracy? You're only one step away from "it's the jews" at this point.
Quoting fishfry
Current deaths in the US are 900 a day and rising. It'll take less than 3 months to pass 80.000 deaths.
Quoting fishfry
Because we have been dealing with the flu for centuries. The health care system can deal with infections from the flu. It cannot deal with infections from the flu and an additional viruse that is more infectious and several times more deadly than the flu. LIke, do you watch international news at all? Do you think Italy and Spain are currently putting on a show for the benefit of american voters?
Quoting fishfry
I guess we'll never know, since Obama wasn't up for reelection.
Quoting fishfry
Aren't evangelical christians central to the powerbase of the republican party? Without their religious feelings concerning gays, abortion etc., the republican party wouldn't win a single election.
Quoting fishfry
How have the democratic economic policies been different from republican ones? Reagan is the father of neoliberalism, after all.
Quoting fishfry
I'd say you have been seriously radicalised by entering a filter bubble on the extreme right wing.
And Ross Perot was right! He talked about the loss of jobs from the US and he talked a lot about our crazy aunt in the basement, the national debt. Which is a heck of a lot bigger today than it was back then. How long to people think this can go on? Longer than anyone thought, but not forever.
Ah Ross Perot. Cost Bush 41 his reelection and gave us the Clintons. Of course some argue that point too, but I think Perot pulled the fiscal conservatives from Bush.
Quoting ssu
We're talking Nixon? I think if he knew how China was going to turn out he wouldn't have bothered. The dream of "good world citizen China" isn't working at all. Nixon did see how big they'd be though. Maybe it's still too soon to know.
Quoting ssu
Well of course YOU are not the kind of terrible person who would even voice a speculative idea like that. I am, of course. It was Obama's Chicago buddy Rahm Emanuel who said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." Surely you can't believe NO ONE's using this medical panic to fleece the public. Right? So we're both somewhere along the continuum, but I'm a pretty cynical observer of politics.
Quoting ssu
Ok. Just tell me this. Why wasn't there a national panic and stay-at-home orders when 80,000 died of the flu in 2016. Yes R-zero and flatten the curve and exponential growth and death rates and so forth, I read the papers too. But really, 80,000's a lot. Nobody said a word. Why is that, exactly?
Yes I know the government has to "do something." I don't say I'd run things any better. I can't refute your point but I'm very uneasy about what's going on. Just from a civil liberties point of view, this is all disturbing.
Quoting ssu
I don't get that he was or is complacent. I seem to recall him restricting Chinese immigration while the Dems were busy impeaching him and calling him a racist for his troubles. You mistake his expressed optimism and hope for complacency. Didn't he form a coronavirus task force in January during the impeachment? I confess I don't run down every rabbit hole of point-counterpoint in these political squabbles. You use the word complacent, I say you are assuming facts not in evidence.
Quoting ssu
You are saying nothing's at stake. Maybe you're right. I don't agree. I might have formerly felt that way. I the past three years the Democrats and the left have frightened me very much. I actively oppose them now. I think the upcoming election matters a lot.
:clap:
This is of course interesting. A significant reduction in the standard of living because you can buy less cheap crap. But what would a society win if it has a strong manufacturing base? That really depends on what it would look like of course. What if it comes with increased respect for the working class, better working conditions etc.? The "less stuff" may be outweighed by intangible benefits.
That first one is really a very misleading title. They've relaxed rules for posting of collateral, which is temporary regulatory relief. Capital Requirements for banks have also been relaxed.
No, actually the time of Perot. China's economy was still rather small in 1990. Or lets say that Netherlands GDP is actually large, the 17th biggest in the World. China was small back then. Remember that the country feared famine in the 1970's and even 1980's.
Shanghai traffic in the 1970s, note the horse drawn wagon:
Shanghai in the 1980s, still bicycles:
Shanghai traffic in the 2010s:
Quoting fishfry
1) Because we have the capability to prevent pandemics.
2) Because we don't tolerate the idea of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands dying because of a pandemic in this Century.
Just how did you react to 9/11? You see, at other times you could have simply stated that it was a bad thing, yet as a crime it is a police matter: Have the FBI hunt down the perpetrators just like they had with the earlier bombing. Have OBL go to a US jail. No wars.
Quoting fishfry
It might be. What's happening in Hungary is disturbing. But ask if New Yorkers want this experience that they are now experiencing to be a re-occurring event. I don't think they will be OK with that. I think after this pandemic, their attitude will be "never again". And they won't care a shit if you or anybody else comes to say that shelter-in orders or putting people into quarantine when coming from an area with an epidemic is against civil liberties.
That is an interesting question yes. The other interesting question is what happens to the labourers in the manufacturing countries. Unless we're planning a glorious revolution, just "getting all the jobs back" might be bad for everyone involved. Livelihoods on both sides of the membrane will be seriously compromised.
If we're willing to continue with a market based approach to labour, turning back the clock is, imho, not the right way of thinking. Why not make use of arbitrage to move jobs where they're most desperately needed. Then make sure those jobs have good working conditions and. Pay relatively well.
This is first of all incorrect: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2016-2017.html
28,000 to 61,000 is the right number.
Second, the two diseases are nowhere near comparable. First of all, most people have some resistance to the flu for being exposed to it before, meaning it's less contagious as not everyone will infect another person. For CV in principle any person is capable of infecting another if you don't take precautions. The spread for CV is therefore much faster.
Third, the latest estimate for CV death rate = .66% compared to the .1% for the flu. Doing nothing would mean it would infect about 50-60% of US citizens much less than for the flu because a lot of people have (partial) resistance to the latter (e.g. only 10% is symptomatic, so possibly 20% at the most). The CV death rate would mean 1,079,100 to 1,294,920 deaths on a 327 million population for the US.
And that's still excluding the effects of deaths due to the unavailability of health care resource not directly related to CV.
80,000 is therefore entirely manageable, especially spread out over the entire flu season and the entirity of the USA, where CV is currently still more or less limited to a couple of epicenters. CV is not manageable unless you include social distancing and wait for a cure.
I agree with you and concede your point that rather than my claiming "this isn't real capitalism,"; on the contrary, what we have now is the inevitable result of capitalism. I'm not up on the details but I gather this would be Marx's prescient critique of late-stage capitalism.
I don't necessarily disagree with my own point, but I do agree with yours. I hold a little of both. What we have isn't capitalism, but maybe it is after all and Marx was right. I don't think Adam Smith anticipated the Fed bailing out the bad bets of private corporations. For what it's worth I'm against that.
Quoting Echarmion
I don't want to argue with you about Trump's handling of China. I believe that his stance has been historic, reversing decades of US policy for the better. I'll stipulate that you don't agree.
Quoting Echarmion
The only thing I don't like about that kind of response is that it forces me to go look up the spelling of non sequitur. That's "not even wrong" as the physicists say.
Quoting Echarmion
Ok so we're at least in agreement on that. That there are two thing going on: a medical pandemic and a media-induced hysteria driven by agendas having nothing to do with the medical situation. And that it's legitimate to question and analyze the media hysteria. Once you accept that, we have no fundamental disagreement. In fact I'm even surprised you acknowledged that.
Quoting Echarmion
Rich people's lives don't change when they lose a billion dollars. If that's what it costs to, say, get rid of Trump or impose various globalist agendas, they can easily handle the loss. Honestly I'm sure this is something you already know. Are you playing naive just as a way of interacting with me? You act like you just fell off the turnip truck.
Quoting Echarmion
[Mod Edit: Expression of extreme outrage and indignation.]
Thank you mod.
@Echarmion, I find your style of discourse distasteful. All the best.
No, he never said that.
I did think I read what I posted but if I'm wrong so be it. I don't dive too deeply into all the claims and counterclaims. So much conflicting information and politicized spin out there.
Seeing as you made an argument that relies on that data, you're obliged to make sure it's correct.
Anyhow here:
https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu.html
"The death rate from seasonal flu is typically around 0.1% in the U.S"
"In the study published Feb. 18 in the China CDC Weekly, researchers found a death rate from COVID-19 to be around 2.3% in mainland China. Another study of about 1,100 hospitalized patients in China, published Feb. 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the overall death rate was slightly lower, around 1.4%"
So, our best estimates right now place the overall death rate from COVID19 at 14 to 23 times that of a seasonal flu. These rates shoot up when health systems get overburdened simply because a larger proportion of people can't get treated and just die because of that. Add to that the extreme virulence of COVID compared to the seasonal flu and that's why without strong measures you are guaranteed a break down in your health systems. And even with strong measures that can still happen. For example, even after a lockdown, the death rate in Italy shot up to 10% (100 times the flu death rate) because of this effect (combined with their older demographic). If they hadn't done anything, they could have easily been heading for half a million dead.
Fishfry shouting from the rooftops that he has no capacity for critical thinking.
It’s an important point. To be explicit, Fauci and his co-authors wrote this in a recent paper.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
Supposing this is correct, that the fatality rate is closer to 0.1% than an average of 9, 10 or 36% does not mean it's more like 0.1% than 1% (implying less than 0.5%). The range of comparison here is completely different to the range fishfry gave.
One has to assume that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases to get anywhere near an influenza pandemic. So it’s a big assumption, but I think a warranted one.
I’m not sure I believe that speculation, no.
I accept that, but we're not going to get to the bottom of the exact death rate for a long time. Actual deaths, on the other hand, will be a lot easier to measure and they're what ultimately matters.
So, what's your estimate then? 3-month timeline. Shoot.
I try to refrain from fortune-telling. I simply don’t know enough. Even Fauci doesn’t want to be held to his predictions.
I just want to check that this isn’t code for “the Jews”, because it often is.
Also, globalism isn’t the problem, capitalism is the problem. We could continue to have a global economy without the capitalist race to the bottom by penalizing trade partners for having substandard worker protections, thereby encouraging them to improve in that regard of else be at a disadvantage in the global economy. Of course then other countries could do the same to us, and we’d have to do better by our workers too, and the race to the bottom would be transformed into a race to the top.
But just turning American working conditions into Chinese working conditions so we can “afford” to bring those jobs back is not the way forward.
(And such charges naturally tend to elicit strong reactions, which could fuck up this discussion).
It's not akin to fortune telling when there are scientific models to rely on. Looking at what I see, I predict 110,000 deaths within 3 months, presuming Trump remains on his recently corrected course.
Quoting Newsweek
Quoting Anti-Defamation League
Quoting The Jewish Chronicle
Ok, I just don't want to have to clean up a fight again. There's always the report button for that anyhow.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/03/30/opinion/president-unfit-pandemic/
[quote=Editors, The Boston Globe, 3.30.20]"Things fall apart: the center cannot hold", wrote W.B. Yates in 1919. A century later, it's clear: The epicenter cannot hold. Catastrophic decisions in the White House have doomed the world's richest country to a season of untold suffering.[/quote]
[i]... "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."[/i]
~W.B. Yeats
:death: :flower:
:scream:
"The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.
And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered."
WaPo 4.4.20
:mask:
“The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He’s killing his own supporters.” :eyes:
(The Guardian UK, Op-Ed, 4.5.20)
Death cult
:brow:
Talk about revisionist history...
That's nothing to brag about if we look at what actually happened.
:zip:
Where's Bernie?
Let that man speak to a national audience in prime time...
It would serve Dems right not to be able to beat Trump in the midst of the worst social and economic crisis since the great depression because they chose to nominate the human equivalent of a failing HAL. Daisy, Daisy...
Chomsky explained this, that they would get anti-semitic and burn the word "socialist" into the American landscape.
Why can't liberals on this forum stay rational for two seconds in a row? I'm curious.
I hope you didn't just refer to me as a liberal. :chin: Anyway, what you've said doesn't seem inconsistent with what I said.
:smile:
Not when he agrees with you... :lol:
The irony. The ignorance. The media puppets.
That's a slight mischaracterization of a few things actually...
Could be. What's your view?
He did refuse to open the exchanges.
I know he refused to open the exchanges. That's what I was saying. Instead, the uninsured can go to the hospital, get treated for COVID for free and the hospital will be reimbursed at Medicare rates as they would be in a Medicare for all situation. Are we on the same page? I'm being somewhat Devil's advocate here, but it's a case of Trump outflanking establishment Democrats to the left and if they keep letting him do that, he'll win easily in November.
"The Trump administration will use a federal stimulus package to pay hospitals that treat uninsured people with the new coronavirus as long as they agree not to bill the patients or issue unexpected charges.
This means that the uninsured will have lower costs than anyone, including those on Medicare or private insurance. That’s very progressive, and apparently it will cost only about $4 billion out of the $100 billion earmarked for hospitals.
This proposal is great because it sets a standard reimbursement rate for treating COVID-19 and it makes things easy on patients.
...
So what if—and hear me out on this—we just did that for every illness? For everyone. And not just at hospitals, but everywhere. We could call it, I don’t know, universal health care or something like that. Who’s with me?"
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/04/trump-administration-adopts-mini-universal-health-care-for-covid-19/
That's precisely the sort of characterization that is misleading in the sense of it diverts the focus away from socialism saving the day and changes it to who gets credit for making sure the uninsured aren't financially harmed by Covid 19. The same may happen when it comes to all the other socialist measures that have been and will continue to be put into place in order minimize the inevitable harm to Americans.
No one will state the case as it is...
Socialist measures save the day.
I think we are, but I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.
:wink:
Let's see how Bernie is going to persuade his followers to vote Biden.
For more years of Trump?
The fact that Biden is worried about the cost of universal health care means he won't do anything else than try to build on the bloated Obamacare, if it even comes to that. Other universal health care systems around the World are far cheaper than the US system. Biden likely won't do anything about things that make people worried like this:
My new motto.
Nice short though. Thanks.
Trump has no consistent principles at all and basically only does what he thinks will make people like him, so sometimes he proposes some obviously good ideas that many people would clearly like, without regard for how they fit into his party’s ideology, only to later be reigned in by his handlers. That also means he supports plenty of bad ideas that are not so obviously bad to enough people who like him; if demonizing some Other plays well to a crowd, which it often does, he’s happy to roll with that too. But during the election he promised universal health care in at least one interview. I have little doubt that if the right people in the right positions had the right relationships with Trump, he could easily be talked into supporting what learned people would call a far-left platform across the board, and he would think it was his own brilliant idea that everyone else was too stupid to think of.
Like life, it was pointless and short, but still beautiful.
Yeah, many people think that they can be the Trump-handlers who succeed in getting their agenda through Trump. Perfect example was Steve Bannon. Or Rupert Murdoch (owner of Fox).
They think that Trump is an idiot and that they could control him. Trump might be a great communicator and an idiot, but the thing is that he's uncontrollable. If people just hint to Trump that he's on a leash by this or that, Trump will have a tantrum. You see, other politicians see it as a game of trading favours, trying to get a consensus, keep your side winning. Trump doesn't see it like that. I think he takes these things personally and lacks the focus to understand complex issues.
So if you Pfhorrest think that it's a matter of only the right people with the right agenda (no pun intended with right here) getting the short focus of Trump, that isn't an answer. You see, Trump won't implement anything a push it through as his leadership qualities are nonexistent. In the end he'll just ramble and say incoherent things and nothing would go anywhere. Just think about it. He had (and still has) a firm grip of his party. His party had BOTH HOUSES of the Congress. And Trump could pass... a tax cut.
So don't think Trump will do anything. Actually, the smart Trump voters vote Trump exactly for that reason. For them it's good that the POTUS isn't an equivalent of a Ceasar. Also he makes the media take it's role seriously and do their job and not be the lapdog of the DNC as they would be otherwise.
Biden or Trump?
I think I need to evacuate myself. Excuse me.
[b]*MAGA 2020*
M_ake
A_ssmonkey
G_o
A_way
*VOTE*[/b] (AGAINST pandemic & depression ... 'treason' (re: Ukraine, etc), corruption (re: Kremlin-Oligarchs, Deutschebank, Emoluments, etc), voter & census suppression, racism misogyny & xenophobia (opportunistic scapegoating), anti-science (e.g. 'climate change' DENIAL), "deep state conspiracy" propaganda, die Lügenpresse ("enemy of the people"), hyper-partisanship, dictator/gangster-envy, BULLSHITTING (H. Frankfurt), presidency-reduced-to-"reality tv") :scream: :monkey: :shade:
Quoting 180 Proof
Well, those are all very compelling reasons. I think I threw my ballot away on accident, so I'll have to go get a new one. Unfortunately, the odds are pretty good he'll be re-elected.
HRC isn't the Dems' nominee this year. Besides, "pretty good odds" compared to other incumbents facing reelection (i.e. referendums on their first (& only) terms) during mild to severe economic downturns such as Hoover in 1932? Ford in 1976? Carter in 1980? Bush in 1992? - I don't see it, Wolfman. What am I missing?
To be sure, this race will be closer than most of those. But one thing I've learned is to never underestimate the power of lots and lots of stupid people.
No but levity aside, I’m a professional sports bettor; and while there’s a great number of variables I have to analyze prior to making a wager, one of the most difficult to quantify, and assign a percentage value, is the “X factor.” I think Trump has one and Biden doesn’t. Trump will be able to enthuse and galvanize his constituency in such a way that Biden will not be able to. Here in the SF Bay Area I’m well-insulated from right-wing politics, and I get the sense that most of us will vote for Biden because he’s the guy not named Trump. I think this will hurt Biden at some point during the election, though I cannot say when.
In February bookies had Trump as a clear favorite to win. Now both candidates are hovering around +110 odds. More fluctuations will occur, but I doubt Trump will drift much lower than this in the foreseeable future. I’ve been trying to place a large wager on Trump, but I can’t seem to find a book willing to take that much action (not for now anyway). The way I look at it is if I lose, then at least Trump isn’t in office. And if I win, at least I have some sort of consolation prize.
In any case, I suspect the 2020 election will look somewhat similar to the 2000 election, though perhaps not as close. I do hope I am wrong.
The thing I myself and predicted a month ago has happened.
Quoting ssu
Of course, the physical circumstances were now a bit different, which we didn't anticipate:
So Bernie supporters, excited to vote for Joe now? Don't think how current Bernie's program is at the present, just let that hate of Trump flow and vote Joe and listen to Joe.
Biden's first response: "Well uh, Bernie, I want to thank you, uh, umm..for that, it's it's a big deal, um, and uh, you know, I think that, uh, your endorsement means a great deal, it means a great deal to me, I think that people are going to be surprised that we are apart on some issues but we're offly close on a bunch of others and uh, I think you've made if, if I am the nominee which looks like now you just made me, umm, I uh, I'm going to need you, not just to win the campaign but to govern.
Unfortunately the CNN clip stops there, but I think the above tells a bit about the present Biden. Oh yes sure, he's going to use Bernie. Because their offly close on a bunch of things.
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/15/1937573/-Republicans-Endorse-Biden
Biden-[s]Klobuchar[/s] 2020 ...?
I was just about to say that :nerd:
Thanks for that! I miss Slavoj; going to conjure-up some of his latest, pandemic-related "talks" on youtube. :wink:
Tammy Baldwin would be better
Fortunately I live in NY so not at all required that I vote for Joe
No, definitely not. I said Bernie was too old; so is Biden. Trump is a syphilitic crypto fascist. Man, we are so far down the tubes.
Anti-syphiliticism is not allowed here, I'm afraid.
"All Day Mothafuckaz"
Sanders is the only candidate I’ve seen over there that isn’t completely full of shit and/or under the thumb of the puppet masters. You get what you deserve most of the time. In a country built on manufacturing and exporting hysteria what did you really expect your president to look like? ;)
Same (re: Georgia).
But you do understand that the ideology "my vote won't change things" is quite a dangerous one if everybody starts feeling like that?
Today on Earth One, where bad news ain't mostly "fake news" (FOX Noise), the latest global effect of the 2nd wave of covid-19 outbreaks: collapse of crude oil prices below $0 per barrel (i.e. canary in the depression mine).
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52350082
:mask:
2020 election will be a referendum on tRUMP's handling of PANDEMIC & DEPRESSION ...
https://youtu.be/ozzwMBvvUiA :victory:
c72,000 U.S. reported deaths
c1,250,000 U.S. reported infections
Ousted vaccine director files whistleblower complaint alleging coronavirus warnings were ignored
[quote=Dr. Rick Bright, HHS Whistleblower]I was pressured to let politics and cronyism drive decisions over the opinions of the best scientists we have in government ...
... I believe [my firing by White House] was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit ...
... I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science — not politics or cronyism — has to lead the way.[/quote]
:mask: ~Biden 2020
Addendum.
He just seems like the type to prefer quitting to losing and being embarrassed. There is no substantial evidence that he has ever given a rabbit poop about anyone outside his Game of Thrones family. Plus, he seems burnt out. It takes a lot of energy to bungle the handling of a pandemic. Shifting blame is exhausting. Maybe he can get some rest after quitting, take up watercolor painting, and return to his previous light-hearted self.
The novelty factor of a Trump presidency has completely worn out for everyone, most of all for DT. Alas, the Orange sun is setting... Let’s stand together to be warmed by its diminishing light (at a proper distance, of course.)
"Mourning in America" (Ad video) :eyes:
Timeline
over 100,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths (U.S.)
over 40 million filed for unemployment since mid-March (U.S.)
Referendum on November 3, 2020. :victory: :mask:
[ ... ]
We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution."[/b]
~James Mattis, Marine Gen. (retired ????), former Secretary of Defense (tRump admin - RESIGNED)
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/read-mattis-statement-on-trumps-handling-of-nationwide-protests.html
"They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace." Jeremiah 6:14.
Enemy of our enemy ... :mask:
Quoting 180 Proof
And some telling years in presidential history also to keep in mind:
[i]Hoover 1932
Ford 1976
Carter 1980
Bush 1992[/i]
"DJT 2020"
Wealthy white men have voted Trump, too. There is much debate on whether Trump actually has special appeal to a "white working class". There is a podcast episode on fivethirtyeight that addresses the question.
His warcrime, apart being part of commander in the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and ending up commanding the whole lot, was that there was a case of collateral damage? Right. Lots of war criminals then starting from all the US Presidents, Clinton and Obama included.
I don't think Mattis isn't Republican, he surely likely is a conservative, but likely he is an apolitical old school officer. Mattis retired from the position of commander of Central Command, and so is this the argument to say that he is a "resistance Republican":
Of course, Syria was the thing that lead to him to resign from the Trump administration. But perhaps in the highly polarized situation it's normal to depict everybody as having an underlying party political reasons for every action they make. And anyway, now people argue that he has come to criticize Trump far too late. Well, from the generals Trump took into his administration (Mattis, Kelly, McMaster) only McMaster didn't have an option (other to outright resign) as he was in service.
I think you might be on to something
I think you will be accompanied by many Republicans that never have voted for a Democrat Presidential candidate before.
From 1831 to 2003, Georgia never had an elected Republican Governor. During all of that history Georgia was overwhelmingly Democrat, both at the state and federal level. The first Republican Senator in Georgia (ever) was in 2003 when Saxby Chambliss was elected.
Georgians voting for Republicans is a new phenomenon. All of this has to do with the Civil War and the South's reluctance to vote Republican, the party of Lincoln. It took over 150 years to swing that vote.
In modern times, there has been a trend to vote for Republicans for President starting in the 1960s (voting for Goldwater over Johnson due to Johnson voting for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 followed by George Wallace, then of the Dixiecrat party), but there have been exceptions. Georgia did vote for Carter in 1976, but he was a Georgian after all.
Clinton won Georgia in 1992.
:up:
The Democrat Party was a bit different back then too, you know.
And notice I was talking about the Presidential elections. Sleepy Joe might get votes from Republicans, but don't think this means that they will go then all progressive. Likely the Democrats will quickly change things to normal with their arrogance, if Trump loses.
I voted for him. I voted for Mondale in 84 and Dukakis in 88.Quoting ssu
So was I.
Sleepy Joe isn't a progressive anyway.
Yes. 3-6 hours long lines in the rain. I don't believe, however, the usual voter suppression tactic of 'reducing the number of polling stations in neighborhoods and counties with black pluralities or majorities around the state' is working or will work as planned. No waiting, of course, in whiter and wealthier Atlanta neighborhoods like Buckhead where I visited to see the disparity for myself.
Yes. The line wasn't that long, but it went really slow. In the morning it was too long, so I came back in the afternoon.
How nefarious this all was, I don't know. It felt like incompetence in getting enough of the new machines to the polling places in time. Yesterday was election day and the last day to vote, but you could vote anytime last week and if you had requested a paper ballot, you could have voted and dropped off your ballot whenever you wanted.
If this was intentional voter suppression, they were mastermind evil geniuses in figuring out how to make this look like a fuck up. Gazing into the eyes of those in charge, it wasn't genuis I saw, but maybe that's part of their genius.
I'm also not sure what could have been gained even if they suppressed minority vote.. This was a primary, not the general election. No Republicans or Democrats were elected, but just the candidates from the respective parties were chosen for the general election. I'm too think the Republicans wanted their challenger to be a lesser evil in the event they lost, so they manipulated the primary? Sounds like a pretty lame plan. Should have saved the manipulation for the actual election if you ask me.
But it does look like incompetence from what I saw. It's just typical that although it affected everyone, it's again something that appears to affect black/poor communities more.
Progressive enough for a lot of Republicans! Or at least they (the Republicans) are fearful of the people that then flock the seats of power along with him. But some may start be fed up with Trump.
I think that's right. The more affluent and educated the community, the more educated the poll workers and the voters, so they're able to navigate problems better as they arise.
I suspect the number of polling places or number of voting booths per capita in communities differ as well.
They just got all new voting machines and the training on them was apparently very limited. It's not rocket science, but they have scan your driver's license, load up some card thing, have you insert the card into the voting machine, cast your ballot, print your result, scan your result, and then get a sticker that says "I Voted Today." I can say that whenever we upgrade our technology at our office, there's always someone who can't figure it out or there's some snafu somewhere, but then there's always that guy that can magically figure it out. They have fewer magicians in the poor areas.
New equipment, new procedures; a trial-run for the fall was needed.
It would be droll, since as far as I know here in our Glorious Union it's typically been speculated in fictional accounts that the military would attempt a coup only if some liberal president became too soft on commies or implemented fouridation or some such thing. Imagine it taking place in an effort to save the Republic.
Just joking, of course. God bless America!
It would be awful if he accidentally got pushed out of his helicopter while surveying one his golf courses or something. I don't think I'd be able to stand the injustice. :snicker:
Not happening. Not at least as how an ordinary coup d'etat happens in the American continent.
(I commented on the response of the military earlier here on another thread)
The only thing I can imagine is that Trump does something unbelievably stupid (and somehow is let do such disastrous moves), like postpones the elections because of the corona pandemic, and then when this is met by larger than life demonstrations, demands the country to go to martial law and the armed forces to clamp down the protests. In this situation it's likely that the military wouldn't follow Trump's orders. It would look at the situation and basically be tolerant of the demonstrators and desperately try to get the politicians to solve it. Someone could argue (and likely Trump would argue) that not following the orders of Trump would be equivalent to a military coup d'etat. It actually isn't. So it's wouldn't be like the Chilean Junta overthrowing Salvador Allende, not even like the Carnation Revolution of 1974 in Portugal, but something more closer to the events of the Arab Spring in 2011 in Egypt, what is called the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.
Notice that then the Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced that Mubarak would resign as president and would be turning power over to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The military then did actually go through with democratic elections and Egypt got the Muslim Brotherhood in power .
So not like this:
Not even like this;
Perhaps this below, if Trump postpones the elections. Yes, that is an American Abrams tank similar that the US Army has. Note the lack of hostility from the crowd as the military isn't against the people as the military has abandoned Mubarack when the picture was taken. Also note the Egyptian flags:
:victory: :mask:
https://youtu.be/g5Xpwyd4aMM
"The only ism that has justified itself is pessimism." ~George Orwell
:mask:
Quoting 180 Proof
:shade:
Quoting 180 Proof
A co-founder of the (usually) tRump-sympathizing Federalist Society argues that Putin's Running Mate's mere mention of delaying or canceling the upcoming election is grounds for another Impeachment and this time Conviction (removal from office) even before the November 3rd election.
Quoting Benkei
https://youtu.be/KsLaAbzVb9E
"Unprecedented" - The Lincoln Project
Biden-Harris 2020 :mask:
Not from the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign.
Not from the DNC or party operatives
Not from either The Lincoln Project or Republican Voters Against tRump.
Not even from FSB/GRU files (or Wikileaks).
excerpts:
"All he wants to do is appeal to his base. He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.” (re: child separation @ border)
[b]“His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God. [ ... ] I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”
“No. He doesn’t read.”
“He was a brat. I did his homework for him [ ... ] I drove him around New York City to try to get him into college.”
"He went to Fordham for one year [actually two years] and then he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams. [ ... ] SATs or whatever. That's what I believe. I even remember the name." That person was Joe Shapiro."
“I don’t know. Well he has five bankruptcies."[/b] (re: what DJT had accomplished on his own)
[b]You can’t trust him.”
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”
"Donald's out for Donald, period."[/b]
~Maryann Trump Barry, retired federal judge and older sister of DJT (taped for c15 hours in 2018-19 by Mary Trump, clinical psychiatrist and niece)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/23/donald-is-cruel-trumps-sister-recorded-saying-president-has-no-principles
...These parties need each other. It’s the increasing lunacy of the GOP that keeps frightened liberal voters satisfied with the meager crumbs of progress promised and unevenly delivered by the Democrats; and it’s the Democratic Party’s abandonment of the New Deal and embrace of shallow corporate liberalism that keeps white working-class voters flocking to a GOP that only uses and abuses them. This is the bleak symbiosis that keeps the United States steadily drifting further and further rightward as crises pile up".
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/gop-rnc-republicans-trump-insanity
https://youtu.be/Dh5tArUZ6Jw
Quoting 180 Proof
:mask:
update:
[s]full.
metal.
jacket.
asap.[/s]
"Our country's honor depends on it."
https://youtu.be/lL5PZFjkvSw
- 2,977
(COVID-19 - Hold my MF beer, tRumpkins! :point: )
Americans killed by *tRump neglected* COVID-19 outbreaks since 2/6/20
- 939 daily average (1,090 on 9/10/20)
- c196,454 YTD
:mask:
QAnon (Wikipedia)
QAnon has gone from fringe conspiracy to full-blown cult (Julia deCook; openDemocracy; Sep 2020)
Velshi: QAnon’s conspiracy cult has infiltrated the White House (Ali Velshi; MSNBC; Sep 2020)
Seems like a kindergarten, Trump feeds his ego with Christian soccer-mum votes, ...
The result of fifty years worth of bad government.
[another fucking PSA]
Prospect of 'acceptable deaths' in pursuit of COVID-19 "herd mentality" in the US - in order "not to panic" Wall Street by "keeping the economy open" - during a second term for Putin's COVIDiot Bitch:
• US pop. - c328 million
• herd immunity - approx. +60% infection rate, or +197 Million Infected
• .03% fatality rate (based on 198k fatalities / 6.7m infections as of Sept. 16, 2020) - c5.91 MILLION DEAD
FIVE MILLION, NINE HUNDRED AND TEN THOUSAND (or more) Dead Americans - mostly Elderly, mostly Black & Brown people, and mostly the Working Poor (including blue collar Whites) with jobs that cannot be done 'from home'.
:mask:
:point: Biden-Harris 2020
For people with at least one parent or grand-parent being at least semi-wealthy and academic - I can tell you this, being a guy who have travelled from the suburb where everyone works nine to five or are in unemployment to a semi posh academic area, now being one of you:
People from lower classes do not really dream.
Do not get questions on what to do with their lives.
Have a super high threshold to take a job different that which gives safe monthly pay.
They do want safety. I cannot emphasise this clear enough. When people from academic backgrounds threaten this, through neo-liberalism or activism they scare people into voting for something that seems to guarantee safety.
Whatever solution you have to problems - make sure that the "normal person" has a feeling of being safe. Which is hard living in a western country in the globalized world. The people born in the 40´s, If you behaved decently you got a decent job and had a decent life. The normal guys in Germany did not feel safe after the crash 1929 and all the US loans to Germany being reclaimed. The normal guys in my home country do not at all feel safe with a massive immigration from middle east and a lot of criminality.
Those guys will vote for parties that seem to make their general situation safe.
So whatever you suggest : Make sure that what you say keep the normal daytime workers feeling safe enough. A hell of a lot can be done within these limits. I have read a lot of posts in this thread, I do not address any specific post. See this as a sanity check for what you are suggesting.
"Baruch dayan ha'emet!"
...the shofar blows this night in your honor ...
269 days before the 2016 election:
"The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president." ~"Moscow" Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader (R-KY), Feb. 13, 2016
46 days before the 2020 election:
"President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.” ~"Moscow" Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader (R-KY), Sept. 18, 2020
UPDATE:
https://youtu.be/kw8SSQHQitg
“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination." ~Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Chmn Judiciary Cmte
I do so hope that someone in the senate quotes McConnells own words to his face on this one.
He will not give an iota of a shit; in fact he will just smile and laugh.
I still hope it is done, so others are reminded of it. Not that it will help stop a new conservative Justice from being voted in by the senate. This could be so far reaching though, with a bigger conservative majority on the supreme court, they may vote to stop the counting of mail in ballots and hand the presidency to Trump. Will be like Bush all over again.
This is devastating news. The arrogance of the Left never fails to dumbfound me. The fallout from this will be disastrous. Trump has already re-shaped the entire political landscape through the courts, which will no doubt lead to more civil unrest. This is a major loss for democracy.
Weird, the arrogance of humans now completely fails to even surprise me.
Mitchy Mitch.
Bush v. Gore was an incredibly close election which the supreme court leaned in to favor the GOP. If the conservative justices decided to just hand the election over to Trump with the mail in ballots heavily favoring Biden in such an obviously undemocratic way then that will be the end of the United States as a country. The SCOTUS might as well just call off the election entirely and name Donald "God Emperor of Trumpland" or something if they'd go that far.
• tRUMP's PANDEMIC
• tRUMP's DEPRESSION
• tRUMP's SOCIAL INJUSTICE
• tRUMP'S CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL VANDALISM.
The American Republic 1787-[b]2020???
"... IF you can keep it."[/b]
Don't forget tRUMP's (coming soon) 'Patriotic Education'—aka fascist indoctrination. And no, folks, it's not overwrought to call the cocksucker a fascist now. The idea that Trump gives a shit about democracy, the constitution, and written and/or unwritten rules or conventions that prevent him doing whatever he wants is absurd.
But Republicans want you to be worried about ANTIFA, a tiny unorganized group that no one even knows how to join (otherwise I would have) and sometimes beats up a few Nazis.
Is it arrogance or a difference in motivations? If you’re motivated by the acquisition of power and wealth then it wouldn’t be unexpected to act with cold calculation in order to secure that goal. If you’re motivated to fight for equality, justice, and democracy, and live by such principals, then maybe that’s just who you are and there’s no helping it.
Antifa isn't a group as far as I'm aware but an ideology. You're already Antifa bro! There are organised Antifa movements all over the world but there is no centralised Antifa leader nor direct communication between each group. For obvious reasons relating to what Fuhrer means.
Antifa operates similarly to the French resistance during WW2 except it hasn't killed anyone. The French Resistance was the collection of French movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and the collaborationist Vichy régime during the Second World War.
Collection of movements.
Sorry if the correction comes across as rude. I'm with you on this though. The new American Nazis should just consider themselves lucky that Antifa doesn't employ the same tactics that the French resistance did. Otherwise there would actually be a fucking death toll.
You don't need anyone's permission to beat up a few Nazi's. Although I would wait until we find out the results of the 2020 election before you grab your baseball bat. If we lose, I'll lend you mine, just don't remove any of the nails.
:up: :up:
:cheer:
[quote=It Can't Happen Here (1935)]When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.[/quote]
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-54274115
update:
"The Election That Could Break America"
The Atlantic Magazine
(Nov. 2020 print edition)
So, to those outraged by today's politicians contradicting their words of yesterday, at least respect their adherence to protecting their political interests, because they are, unlike Justices, after all, politicians.
https://boingboing.net/2020/09/23/trumps-threat-get-rid-of-the-ballots-there-wont-be-a-transfer-frankly-there-will-be-a-continuation.html
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1308896173491662850?s=20[/tweet]
There should probably be mandatory retirement ages. Maybe in 1776 (so to speak) a "for life term" was mercifully short; not anymore.
I find that many people are making proposals that I find undermine my sense of security--from both sides of the political spectrum. One group of lunatics wants to get rid of social security (my main source of income at this point) and another group of crazies (like my city council) has pledged to defund the police. A plague on both their houses.
And there are still those that claim he's not a fascist and the Republican party haven't embraced fascism. This is what you get for voting Republican, America.
Translation: Get rid of democracy and I'll be dictator forever.
This was always in the man's heart, deep down it was just a nice thought, but his power has extended so much in these last few years, he can do whatever he wants, why not, it could be in reach. This is a well developed political theory, divide and conquer. The weakness and arrogance of the Left is to blame.
This tactic of yours in agreeing with me has become very effective at limiting my rants. :wink:
Conservatives are at their heart believers in law and order. I understand the left's position that the right's concept of law and order amounts to suppression of certain groups, but the point remains that a conservative is committed to protecting the status quo and the existing institutions. For that reason, the fear that there will be a conservative rebellion in any literal sense is unfounded. Those criticisms are better levied against the left and is evidenced by the fact that is the left that speaks of radical rule change (elimination of the electoral college, increasing the size of the Supreme Court, and defunding the police) and who literally takes to the streets with riots, looting, and violence.
The right is not collecting their guns and building their fences in preparation of an offensive attack, but they are holing up in anticipation of defending themselves from the zombie apocalypse they fear will make it out to the suburbs and countryside where they reside.
Uh no the President of the United States is outright attempting to subvert the election results while not committing to concede or peacefully transfer power if defeated.
It's simply correct, despite what Robins wants to say.
I wouldn't take issue with any of what you've said... except for the fact that the person who all conservatives are rallying behind is a man who embodies the exact opposite of the things they claim to believe in.
Quoting Hanover
But they're also against lockdowns, masks, and social distancing, helping to spread a virus from a very real pandemic that could well kill millions of Americans, which BTW also killed 200K people already in the US because their president intentionally downplayed the threat.
So what’s the ideology of a conservative SC? Does it tend to serve the interests of the working class or some other class?
FIFY. Thousands of years of history in a few sentences.
There's likely going to be some effort to make the early votes not count?
So maybe assessing what would be accomplished by throwing out all the early votes?
Could be. The place where I vote is a Greek Orthodox church. It wont be too crowded. Maybe I'll wait till Nov 3rd.
The size of the Supreme Court is actually not fixed and has varied widely over time. It's a fairly recent tradition for it to have exactly 9 members all the time, and any President+Senate can change that whenever they feel like it, legally speaking.
I've been advocating recently that instead of trying to keep the court a specific size and worrying about when a Justice will die and so who will get a chance to appoint a new one, we should instead just allow the appointment of a new Justice by every new combination of President+Congress; in other words, every two years. I originally suggested every four years, as that would nearly match the rate in living memory (we'd have pretty much exactly the same court we have now if we had been doing that since GHW Bush), but checking what would have happened if that had always been the tradition, we would have run out of Justices entirely some time in the mid-20th century, so I bumped it up to every two years instead. If we had always been doing that, then we would currently have a court of 14 justices, 7 appointed by Democrats, 7 appointed by Republicans.
They've always done that, especially the clueless ones. The duopoly situation in the US makes things different.
Now what politicians want to do is to enflame the other side to attack them and portray to their supporters (and lure new people to their side) how much the other side absolutely hates the actual voters themselves. The best thing what happened to Trump (besides James Comey, which of course is now totally forgotten) was Hillary Clinton saying that Trump supporters were "basket of deplorables".
Politician promising to do something is so lame, old school. Far better to portray other politicians hating you Benkei, what you think and how you live. It works like a charm, because it will activate you once some politician running for office "is really" against you.
US COVID-19 CASES: over 7,400,000.
US COVID-19 DEATHS: over 210,000.
[quote=POTUS46]It is what it is because Donald Trump is who he is.[/quote]
:victory: :mask:
I don't think that all conservatives rally around a man who embodies the exact opposite of the things they claim to believe in. Just as not every person who sees himself or herself as a liberal was rallying around Bernie.
And usually the real energy comes from them being so annoyed about liberals and leftists. That's the trick that Trump has: it isn't so much about what Trump has done (which isn't much), it's the fact that Trump annoys so much the left. That's what get them to be so happy about Trump. Other Republican candidates don't get leftists so angry.
Quoting 180 Proof
:victory: :mask:
What utter buffoonery. I know we're not supposed to "shame" anyone, but at this point hearing something like this is laughable (if it wasn't so tragic).
A vote for Trump, given what we know about the existential threats we face (which he's accelerating), is a vote for death. Pure and simple. There's no way around it, and no argument for it any longer. Besides perhaps an argument in favor of eradicating the human species.
No one is enthusiastic about Biden. This election, the most significant in human history, is not about Biden.
I know this was 6 months ago, but as Xtrix just referred to it...
I don't understand how anyone can call this a Democrat lie. Mueller is a Republican. He was appointed by Rosenstein, a Republican and Trump's appointed Deputy Attorney General. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees were, at the time, both Republican-led. The Director of the FBI before that was Comey, a former Republican and current Independent. The FBI investigation was prompted (before the election) by a meeting with Downer, an Australian diplomat. The FBI received the Steele Dossier from McCain, a Republican. The Steele Dossier was written by Steele, a British private intelligence agent. Steele was being paid by Fusion GPS, a private research and intelligence firm.
The only Democrat involvement was Clinton and the DNC hiring Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research, which is to find actual dirt, not to fabricate dirt. And that ended after the election, with Fusion GPS continuing to fund Steele of their own accord.
And to say that you'd vote for Trump because you believe that the Democrats lied because they couldn't accept losing, whilst ignoring the many well-documented lies and conspiracies coming from Trump and the Republicans seems rather hypocritical.
DJT doesn't reject or condemn WHITE SUPREMACY because he is a WHITE SUPREMACIST whom self-professed WHITE SUPREMACISTS like David Duke, Richard Spenser, Steve Bannon, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois et al believe is - celebrate as - one of their own and therefore support him.
t-minus 32 days :mask:
Wouldn't the lesser evil be a third party?
I don't know about you, but that "debate" on Tuesday night was just more evidence of why alternative choices are necessary.
"Wasting your vote" entails voting for someone that doesn't properly represent you because you've been manipulated into thinking (like most ppl) that there are only two possible choices.
Rick Santorum says asking Trump to condemn right-wing extremists is unfair because they're his base
Not at all. In a SWING STATE (like Georgia, where I live, has become this cycle), Democratic Party candidates for congress and the presidency are "the lesser evil".
Honestly, the fact that many people are stuck on wasting the rest of the year discussing what could be decided upon in 10 minutes is proof they're overly committed to insignificant performative grievances instead of winning the war towards policy goals, the kind of thing mainstream liberals tend to be rightly criticized for. It's being consumed by electoral extravaganza, just because you're doing such in an upside down fashion doesn't mean you're not.
Terms used by ppl who've been indoctrinated to think in black and white, right and left, etc., as if there are only two directions/positions to swing.
If you live in a swing state (which @Harry Hindu just means a closely contested state, where it's not a near-certainty that any particular party is going to win), you can't afford to send that message; in that situation voting third party only helps the other of the two main parties besides the one you would have preferred.
If you live in a non-swing state -- a state where one party or another is nearly certain to win -- then regardless of which of the two main parties you would prefer, the biggest impact you can have is to vote third party. Because you're not going to change who wins your state, but you will add to the numbers that the parties look at to make sure they're getting/staying ahead. If e.g. Democrats see a lot of their votes went to Greens this election, they'll get the message that they need to appeal more to Green-leaning voters. And then those voters might actually have a Democrat they would honestly prefer to vote for.
Is this an actual political dynamic with an empirical basis that activists can use to their advantage, or is this a cult-like wishful thinking.
I frankly don’t care enough to spend much time making a fuss about it, the main reason I don’t vote 3rd party is because I think it’ll be better for the Green Party to die permanently to not distract new incoming activists.
If it’s a tiny handful, no, but if enough people do it, of course.
The alternative for someone in a safe station is to have zero impact at all. I’ll take negligible impact over zero impact.
This isn’t speculation, the Greens have repeated this strategy going back decades. It will only gather a tiny number of votes, and it will certainly be a waste of time.
Ultimately, the solution I'd ike to see is the abolishment of all political parties (group-think).
I would dare to say, even if the response is hostility from others here, that in a republic with representative democracy, the political party system works fairly well.
Assuming there isn't either too many parties or just two as in the US. Or just one, which simply isn't a democracy. Two parties simply cannot represent all the voters while having two hundred parties will make the system incapable of functioning. A party (or duopoly) that has fixed hold on the political system will create corruption and alienate the party from the voters.
[quote=Cornel West]An anti-fascist vote is NOT an endorsement of the Democratic Party [/quote]
Is Texas a swing state this year?
This is true. Ah, to get a presidential candidate to "get people to notice the party". It's psychology: people see everywhere just how fed up with the two ruling parties, want change in an instant and think it could be possible. How about getting people to notice the party at first on the local level at city and municipal level? Likely best way would to many sister parties starting at the state level, as the US is made of quite different places.
[quote=my 2020 predictions]Biden-Harris
[i]• Wins Wisconsin
• Wins Pennsylvania
• Wins Michigan[/i]
(• Wins Florida)
(• Wins Arizona)
Electoral College votes
• Biden-Harris > 313 (min. 273) :up:
• Trump-Pence > 218 (max. 258)
US Senate
• Dems +4 seats (or more)
US House
• Dems +15 seats (or more)[/quote]
T-minus 21 days. :victory: :mask:
What I really hope for is President Biden to appoint Hillary Clinton to be Attorney General just to Make That Old Fat Cheeto-face Killer Clown Lose His Shit Daily while hunkered-down in whatever Trump "Shithole" Tower or Golf Resort he still "owns" waiting for the FBI (or the "suckers and losers" at the gate!) to haul his bloated, wheezing, carcass out to prison (or a waiting noose).
I like the way you think. :naughty:
(This is presuming no more 'October surprises' for either candidate.)
Unless Biden is clearly ahead after election night or its clear the Republicans loose the Senate, expect the result to be disputed. The electors of the electoral college elect the president, and there are plenty of ways to throw a wrench into that process.
https://youtu.be/flp7gKg5G4E
Do you have to be conservative to be a republican? A Scandinavian asks.
That's much more to do with branding and identity politics, on both sides (!), than actual policy based on a political theory.
Voting for Biden or Trump seems like chosing between the plague and the cholera, to use a Scandinavian saying.
Whether or not something is conservative depends on when and where you're talking about.
Equality before the law has only been a conservative value in times and places that it was juxtaposed with e.g. affirmative action: new forms of inequality meant to benefit previously disadvantaged people.
Pre-existing inequality before the law that benefited the people already in power has always been something conservatives have supported.
By definition, they're in favor of the status quo and those whom it benefits; changes away from the status quo to benefit others is definitionally progressive.
The same is true of e.g. states' rights, where when that's a state's right to keep things the same and entrench existing power structures, conservatives are in favor of that, but as soon as it's states' rights to do new things that disrupt those power structures, conservatives are all in favor of federal intervention to stop it.
Thats depends on how you define ”conservative”. In a version of conservatism I highly adept to, probably called Structure Conservatism in English, the status As Is is appreciated. Changes are appreciated but introduced slowly and carefully. This naturally requires that the current state is generally accepted. I can say that Sweden, my home country had a development like that from say 1920 up til 2010 after which globalization issues with a very large immigration and unstable job market has caused a very unstable poltical landscape and a lot of frictions.
In a more traditional conception of Conservatism, that, say, USA 1958 is what was end of history, conservatives would not mind revolutions to quickly reinstall that preferred state
So... nothing dramatic happened until 2010???
Even if off the topic, I'd argue that a lot has happened in Sweden before that. Perhaps starting from the huge influx of Finns, half a million, coming over in the late 60's and early 70's to your country. Half a million is still a large number. We tend to overemphasize the changes of the present.
Moving to Sweden for jobs and better wages!
In the US context it should also be noted that the country has seen turmoil also... and well after it's civil war.
I'm not sure how good those models-simulations are, though.
But I did something evil last night. Like everyone else, I've been getting a ton of political calls and texts. Somebody had texted me about 100 times to ask me if I would be voting Dem. Fed up, I finally texted back and said...
"Yes, I'll be voting Dem. Unless you keep calling."
Upon which they immediately texted me back.
So I replied, "Will now not vote for the particular Dem you are working for."
But, that's a scam, fake news, as I'd already voted. Shhh, don't tell!
The phone went quiet for about 20 minutes.
Then they texted me YET AGAIN to apologize and plead for me to reconsider, more propaganda etc.
Sigh....
So I've launched a new campaign! Vote Hippiehead for Secretary Of Impatient Assholeness!!! Please add your number to this thread so I can text you 4,000 times.
As Florida, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, or ... goes for Biden, so goes the election. Like the 1980 referendum, not the 2016 choice. We'll know by 10ish EST tonight. :party:
:victory: :mask:
[quote=Charlie Cook, National Journal 10/29/20]https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/711037?unlock=SRT6SBVCJHPBFJTS[/quote]
Perhaps people don't want to stand in line for hours during a pandemic.
But the real question is how many states can get through the mail in votes.
I'll hope everything goes well. And the election doesn't turn into "the 2020 election dumpster fire / fiasco".
About 30% of them clearly don't apparently. Though ironically enough with the early in person voting and Texas limiting mail ballot drop offs to one location per county, people inevitably have to anyways.
Speaking of, the fact that Governor Abbott had to take such a move along with Texas Republicans fighting to throw out 100K curbside votes in Harris county should indicate that they're worried about the state flipping. It may not but the fact that it's a toss-up seems to have alot of people excited.
Quoting 180 Proof
Definitely a swing state now. :up:
:mask:
Mail-ins not only skew Dem, they skew 2:1 or more which is huge. There's a red mirage in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which will clear over the next few days.
Objectively speaking here, I'd choose to be Trump based upon what the numbers show. If you're Biden right now, you ain't got em where you want em.
I trust my math over yours, pumpkin.
Trump leads in every important state. They've not been called yet, so they're still unknown, but Trump is leading by a couple of runs in the 8th as far as I can see.
Baseball analogy. Look it up punkin.
1) Not so. He's losing badly in Arizona, for example.
2) As you know, this election differs in that the majority of the vote in many battleground states was early and overwhelmingly Democrat. The significance of this contradicts your thesis that Trump is clearly in a better position or whatever you said about having the runs (in my county that's not a good thing).
In Florida, yes. Elsewhere, not so much unless I'm mistaken about the late-counted vote. I stick by my prediction of a five point popular vote win for the Dems and Biden taking Pennsylvania by a couple of points, which along with Arizona, gives him a solid win.
He's behind in Arizona though, which is bad for him.
So far Trump is perhaps doing better than expected, but the map hasn't changed in his favor yet.
It doesn't look like a clear landslide for Biden, and that means it's going to be ugly.
Yes, we're more or less where we were yesterday tbh.
Oh, btw, your state is going to come down to just a couple of thousand votes. Trump loses that and he's toast. Break out the popcorn.
This unfortunately sets the US up for the nightmare scenario of Trump declaring that the election is being stolen from to try and stop the count.
What matters to Trump and the GOP is whether they can plausibly spin this into a victory, and have the means to fight it to the bitter end.
Trump hasn't lost Florida. If he did, the race would have been all but over. Georgia is close, but might well go to Trump. Trump can still plausibly win. And with control of the Senate, the GOP can challenge the election all the way to the actual meeting of the electors.
I fully expect them to launch an all out war on the vote count now.
Edit: Hey and Trump's speech just proved me right. Now we'll see whether the powers that be in the GOP have a smidgen of decency left in them. I wouldn't bet on it.
If principled means that the end justifies the means then you're just a pussy whining about details. Politics isn't about decency. This is why the left sucks monkey balls at playing the game.
With the supreme court solidly "crazy" I predict Trump will come out on top after all this. It will of course trigger complete chaos.
As a European, Trump is likely the best result (for us). It's better to have a incompetent clown in charge of the mafia (which the US government should be classified as, at this stage) than a seasoned professional, even if an older model. Like, if you could vote for your local Mafia boss, I think Trump has a lot of favourable characteristics for this position.
I also predict actual mathematical analysis of "voting machine" results and other disenfranchising tactics results will show highly likely fraud in favour of Republicans, as in 2016. Somehow the "liberal establishment", so convinced the levels of corruption are totally fine and normal (as they benefit from it too), falls for the Republican trick of first accusing the Democrats of cheating, then Democrats (feeling confidence of the polls) fall over themselves to claim the election process is totally fair and no cheating or fraud is happening (which is largely true about isolated individual voter fraud the Republicans cry fowl about) and is not a problem and the result must be respected with a "good sportsmen" attitude, and then Republicans use every single trick they can logistically accomplish, all illegal just with varying degrees of the public being aware of such tricks and accustomed to such tactics as "of course the Republicans can do it", and then Republicans "declare victory" and that "the vote must be respected, just like the Democrats have been saying".
The only solution is to purge the Democrat leadership of politicians that "just want a little bit of the corruption" and who view a Trump victory better than someone arguably not corrupt like them. So maybe a Trump victory would lead to that, but I think simply the collapse of civil society in the US is likely to happen before that.
Of course, Trump victory comes at the risk of literal nuclear war, but life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.
You beat me to it.
Pivot to political thread you haven't been lambasted in yet. More at 4am.
But democracy does require decency. It cannot work in an environment of pure power politics. It requires the consent of all involved to abide by some basic rules, like conceding and a peaceful transfer of power.
There is no way to enforce democracy by power politics.
Trump is currently ahead by 680.000 votes. There are about 1.7 million votes to be counted. If those break 2/1 for Biden, Trump's lead would remain, but only barely. If they break closer to 3/1 for Biden, he wins.
Democracy is brought to you by revolutionary wars, or then the threat of revolutionary war.
Democracy can only be maintained by a pure power politics of the majority committed to maintain democracy as something worthwhile and worth fighting for, and willing to pay a real cost: for instance, threaten the system with revolutionary war when obviously anti-democratic and nominally illegal things emerge such as gerrymandering and followup with threatening to overthrow the judiciary if it obviously participates in maintaining such crimes by absurdly (and obviously corruptly) declaring gerrymandering a political issue that can only be resolved through voting in gerrymandered elections.
Your idea that when a minority criminal cabal breaks laws, abuses established customs, entrenches anti-democratic policies by passing anti-democratic laws or appointing anti-democratic judges, and does whatever it takes to gain and maintain power, that the only thing that can and should be done about it is "be nice", has no basis in reason nor history. It is the wishful thinking of cowards.
A country that engages in revolutionary war every four years isn't going to last long.
Quoting boethius
I didn't say anything of the sort.
My first impression was that this is good. A Biden tidal wave would have been much better of course. But lacking that, it looks like Trump is about to totally over play his hand. All the other forces within the power structure may soon be concluding that this is an emergency situation which can't be handled with the usual procedures. Keep in mind that the White House staff has no guns. The only real hard power they have is that their orders are followed.
The US military swears an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.
I find it hard to see anything good about the results. Biden is still favoured (even heavily so if AZ flips), but the result still seems to validate a politics of extreme polarization.
The GOP got three SC Justices, tons of lower level court appointment and in general a free reign to try every strategy they might want out of the Trump presidency. They will now get an opportunity to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the electoral system and see what sticks. Even if this doesn't save Trump, they'll have massively solidified their powerbase and, given likely results in the house and senate, did not pay much of a price for doing so.
Trump or no Trump, this is a not at all good for anyone hoping for an improvement in US politics.
As to power politics, this is precisely the only way you can keep a semblance of democracy alive in the US because of the winner-takes-all system. You don't build common ground, you don't compromise and you should win at all cost. If people can't tell the difference between us and them it will cost us votes. If we don't win and give voters what they want, it will cost us votes. This has nothing to do with decency.
The only reason Democrats need to act "decent" is because they try to appeal to 20.000 different groups instead of providing an overarching story that transcends modern identity politics and goes back to people vs. corporations, workers vs. capitalist, poor vs. rich etc. take your pick. Not "not Trump". But Democrats are too scared of losing their Wall Street backers, who, despite record spending and outspending of Trump, can't even decisively deliver victory, if at all. The story is wrong, the politics naïve and shows that it's basically the Democratic Party that is in crisis - in light of the challenges they don't offer anything new, they just double down on the same old thinking. Donkeys indeed.
"A Republican in North Dakota has won a seat in the state legislature — nearly a month after he died of complications from Covid-19.
David Andahl was 55 when he died on Oct. 5, after winning a heated primary with an incumbent committee chairman. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) had endorsed the Bismarck rancher, saying, “we need more Trump Republicans in the State Legislature.”
And jokes aside, the situation is now critical re that animosity in a way it may not have been if Arizona and Georgia had been counted first and Pennsylvania had been allowed to count absentee ballots in advance of the election. Large swathes of Trump voters (judging by their voluble online presence) really believe Trump has won, the MSM are lying to them, and the left are trying to steal the election. Unfortunately, some level of violence now seems inevitable should Biden eventually triumph (as I think he will).
Can anyone explain to me why some states choose to count their ballots early and others not? It seems like the US system is specifically designed to make things as chaotic as possible.
Yes, that's how it looks to me too.
I'm not really disagreeing. I'm trying to articulate the following...
Most of the people who voted for Trump are Republicans, not fascists. To date Trump has been a closet fascist who has been able to convincingly play the role of being an exciting Republican. To the degree Trump over plays his hand in the coming days that facade may collapse.
When Trump says he's won before the votes have been counted people just laugh at Trump being Trump. But when the President of the United States says we should stop counting votes, that's different. Most Trump voters are not fascists. They don't want somebody on top deciding whether their votes should be counted. They want to vote and they want to win of course. But they don't want somebody deciding whether they get to vote.
Say you're a conservative Catholic single issue anti-abortion voter. So you hold your nose and vote for Trump. But do you hold your nose and vote for Mussolini? Such voters wish to use rule of law to achieve their ends, not abandon rule of law.
The voting is over of course, but there's still a public opinion election underway. Those with ultimate power may act if they conclude that there's a broad consensus emerging that Trump the Republican is becoming Trump the Fascist.
To the degree Trump overplays his hand and shows his true colors this becomes more likely.
That depends on how he wins. If he really does have the votes, then yea, we suck it up. If he doesn't have the votes but tries to use executive power to invalidate the election, that's something else.
Losing to Jeb Bush? Ok, there's no shame in that.
Having to fight tooth and nail to have a chance of defeating Trump? That's clear evidence that all the blame can't be aimed elsewhere. We've somehow alienated vast swaths of the population to an extreme degree. We need to figure out how that happened. Calling them a "basket of deplorables" isn't going to fix it.
I know I'm probably touching on some 2016 nerves here, but Bernie probably would've done better where Biden failed. The reason why the election is so close now is because Biden lost ground with Hispanics. He didn't reach out to them as much as he could've and focused on the white suburban vote.
Bernie's campaign was largely focused on getting out the Latino vote with the help of Chuck Rocha, which paid dividends in places like Nevada. Of course Bernie probably would've lost in Florida cause Florida is an extraterrestrial asteroid that crash landed on the US east coast 3000 years ago and happens to be full of the one Hispanic group that despises him, but he probably would've done better in places like the RGV in Texas. Whoever the next democratic nominee is in 2024, they need to hire people like Rocha so that they don't take the Latino vote for granted.
Don't worry, I'm being hypothetical about a fair victory. Biden has won this as I've been saying.
I don't really agree with that. I think "character" plays a central role in a representative democracy. The problem is that character is hard to assess.
I'm not a fan of everyone making up their mind on every single policy question and then selecting the candidate most likely to deliver. I think it's unrealistic to expect people with jobs and families to make these calls. I think Trump is far more a symptom of an undue focus on policy questions than he is the symptom of a cult of personality.
A representative is not merely a servant. I expect a representative to make decisions in my interest on the spot. That requires that I look at their personality.
Quoting Benkei
That strategy is going to fail, because people who actually want to solve problems are always going to loose this game to autocrats and demagogues who only care about power. Democracy relies on the consent of the loosers, the minority, to function. Piss them off and they're going to bring the roof down on your head. You don't need majority support to crash the system.
Quoting Benkei
The Democrats are in this spot because they have failed to deliver a vision for the future. That much I agree on. They have also failed to meet the raw power of the GOP head on, instead relying on compromise with people who are no longer interested in compromising.
But the reason for their failure isn't their "decency". It's complacency, lack of vision.
Quoting Hippyhead
The president has been saying the same thing over and over for the last couple of months. With the silent support of the GOP. How is him acting the way everyone expected him to going to just now break the facade?
I don't really care whether republicans consider themselves fascists. What matters is whether they'll fight fascism, and it appears they won't.
I've believed that Trump will win since 2016, and that won't change until I'm proven otherwise. Especially given that everything about 2020 sucks (another lockdown tomorrow, yay...).
Although I have to say that COVID and the inevitable no-deal Brexit have left me caring very little about the U.S. election (the only reason I read up on American politics these days is to distract me from the shit show at home).
But in better news, I took a body composition test at my gym yesterday and I have the metabolic age of a 23 year old (I'm 32), so I have that going for me at least.
Part of Trump's political genius is that he talks non-stop (thus dominating all forms of media) but you can never really know for sure what he's saying. So for example, we don't really know whether he's going to try to use executive power to invalidate the election or not. And because we don't know, we're off balance, we're confused, we wait, we don't act.
Yes, he's been talking for months but that doesn't mean anything. What happens next will mean something. If he does nothing but talk, then he's an exciting Republican. If he acts to invalidate the election, then he's a fascist. He's cornered and will have to choose and show his hand.
I'm not saying that nothing happened. Of course it did. But in a slow, structure'sconservative kind of manner. A slow, steady move left until the 60s. Then towards the end the madness that has struck the western world - rich young people going left - destabilized things. That was probably the biggest stir politically, but the effects wasnt all that dramatic. The immigration from finland was people seeking jobs, people with basically the same culture as the swedes. Gradually, people from southern europe came as work immigrants, The left/right positions wasnt all to affected by that.
Then, of course, effects of globalization and automation struck hard against the working classes, jobs going to low salary countries, and immigration took off dramatically, notably since 2015, people with a totally different culture than the northern europe individual and work ethic moral.
The politics, therefore, consists of a big ultranational party with nazi roots having 20-25% of the votes, and the right and left trying to manoever within that landscape. The last elections have been a total catastrophy.
A lot of the problems are, of course, due to the globalized world, not much to do about that, but also on the policies of the rich, theoretial left wing of the socialistic and environmental parties. There is a lot of flower power dreams that makes the very successful slow developments in our country fail. Not much have been done right the last 10 years.
Mail-in results like this, now being counted, might help. Hard for us to appreciate the level of disparity between how each side voted, but this is why Biden is winning late.
:victory: Some of your other predictions were rather prescient I have to say.
The problem is that you don't see that your candidate was a cartoon character as well.
Quoting HippyheadNo. It was the candidate that you put on the Democratic ticket that contradicted the very things that the Dems argued against or for. A true progressive just can't bring themselves to vote for an old racist white guy that has been in power for nearly 50 years, nor can people that have claimed that systemic racism and white privilege exists bring themselves to vote for a old racist white guy that has been in power for nearly 50 years.
The problem is that too many people get their political information from one source - the E! Channel, celebrity social media channels, etc., and that too many people simply don't have the memory capacity to remember the statements that their political party made over the years that contradict the very things that they are saying today. The media is insulting your intelligence and you want to vote for more of the same.
Just look at when Obama wanted to fill a Supreme Court seat near the end of his term and when Trump wanted to fill the vacant seat in the same body near the end of his term. The Dems and Reps swapped arguments in both instances. Both took the position of the other in the previous incident. When both parties are so inconsistent to the point that they take the position that the other party had in a previous instance, it would be difficult to distinguish between them, and the result is close elections between two cartoon characters. Go figure. It is well past the time that we stop feeding this two-headed monster with our votes. There are alternatives. Educate yourselves.
EDIT: and Penssylvania is possible too depending if the absentee ballots follow the split of 70-to 75% in favour of Biden elsewhere.
Likely so close that even some other politician than Trump might also start arguing about an unfavorable outcome.
There is a high probability that this is made a debacle. At least that I can say.
(Anyone remember the earlier Mexican elections before the last one's, the current President was then also a candidate and simply refused to acknowledge the outcome. )
I'm not sure how much it matters.
Seems Trump has legitimized conspiracy theories.
There's this thing, "in chaos all are equal" (or however it is), that seems applicable here.
Works well when you're (out-gunned or) out-reasoned, and there are a bunch of people that want to revert Roe versus Wade for example.
Actually, given how Trump says one thing one day, and another (or the contrary) the next — demagogue'ish post-truth'ish bullshit — what he says at large doesn't seem to matter much; as long as he rattles the cage, stirs some (bull)shit, upsets the upsettable, appears different somehow, but doesn't alienate the discontent country guy and the Christian soccer mom (and such).
• Trump shattered his promise to ‘drain the swamp.’ The self-dealing would be epic in a second term. (The Washington Post, Sep 2020)
Republicans refused to allow absentee ballots to be counted first in PA for this very reason. Very different narrative and much less confusion if they hadn't decided to play dirty.
Yes. This works because he has millions of voters dumb enough to believe whatever he says. They don't understand politics, but trust him to look after their interests so they just cheer whatever crap he spouts. Note he never allows anyone to question him because allowing a questioner any comeback would deflate the garbage bubbes that issue from his ass.
The factless drivel re the election being stolen from the voters because some late votes might be allowed is a case in point. It's empty rubbish. I think he is trying to stir up the right wing militias to start violence if the count goes against him. The ludicrous stuff about the Supreme Court has been ignored even by Pence. He is the most abhorent President ever, a would-be dictator. He will do anything to steal ths election. You have been warned!
(I'm a Brit, and even I'm angered and appalled by this man!)
I checked online to see if my absentee ballot had been accepted and in one place it said it had and in another it said it was rejected for lack of signature. I do remember signing it.
Anyway, the Republicans might have suppressed a Republican vote, which would serve us right. As a Republican, I enjoy the justice inherent in sleeping in the bed I made, regardless of how unpleasant the consequences.
If only Democrats were so principled.
That's a lovely story. One to tell your grandkids. Anyhow, it's unlikely Pennsylvania (or GA or NC) will matter now. The map gives it to Biden with AZ, NV, WI, and MI.
This is how I find out you're pregnant? I'm gonna be a grandpa?
Whoever wins is gonna deal with a Democrat House and a Republican Senate and given the fact that stimulus checks haven't been passed pre-election, it doesn't look likely like they will pass post election either meaning more than just a dark winter. For the people who've lost their jobs, their health insurance, and their homes, I don't know what's gonna happen to them.
I'm already depressed even though it looks like he's winning. This bodes poorly not just for the US, but for the resilience of liberal democracy in the 21st century.
Confidence in it is at a low point, I think. If Trump wins, I just feel like we'll ve cruising into a recession, deepening of the pandemic, worsening of race relations, all with a retard at the helm.
Seriously I just want one candidate to reach 270 so I can relax already...
We're about to endure weeks and months of Trump et al, whining their butt-holes bloody about how unfair it is that they lost the election...
The right has been accusing the left of being over-sensitive snowflakes who cannot accept reality for the last decade. It's going to become clear that it was projection all along...
What it looks like is that Trump has to take Nevada too since he can't take MI, although I do like his strategy of trying to get them to stop the counting there, especially if the counting is not putting tick marks next to his name.. There is then the additional problem that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, so we may never be able to access their final tally, but that's limited to Vegas proper, not Nevada generally, but there's not much else there I don't think.
If there is a dispute over the final results, I hope the Court declares a do over. Sometimes that's the fairest thing to do.
Quoting Hanover
So... Like...
Cheat until it's become clear you have lost, and then try to call a mulligan cause fairness?
Thank you for the question.
So, in baseball, in the World Series (which is a true "world" series, with teams spanning the globe from as far as Atlanta to Seattle), it's a best out of 7 match. We ought to do that for elections. That's all I'm saying. It's not really a "do over" per se, but more just proof you didn't just happen to have a particularly good or bad day.
:rofl:
I'm definitely willing to accept that America needs at least a best of 7 to really get firing on all stupid.
I think there should be playoffs. Just have Trump beat Jill Stein 1 on 1 first.
Oh come on, not a disgrace. It's all over but the shouting. Let him shout.
OK. But this better work out better than the time you told me to let my pet monkey shave my balls.
You mean of those who actually voted. It's not like Australia where there's mandatory voting and very high turnout. Probably 1/3 of eligible voters or more still didn't turn out this election, even with he higher turnout. The projection I see is 66%.
So the question is did the 34% or so who likely didn't vote not care and were okay with the status quo, did they feel disenfranchised by the electoral college, did they feel the two parties don't represent their views, did they feel it was too difficult to vote, etc?
No, I don't. I mean that there are a very large number of folk for whom having a leader who lies is fine.
Far more nuanced than that Banno. Troublesome to say the least. The people believe Trump.
Yes, I know a few people like that. They don't think Trump is a liar. It's the other side. A key to understanding this is that at least for the religious conservatives, they have an entirely different worldview which encompasses American politics. And then quite a few more also are heavily influenced by Fox News and AM radio, which is heavy on the propaganda. The Democrats are always cooking up some left-wing conspiracy according to those sources. Even though they'll admit Biden is moderate, he's being controlled by the progressive wing, or he's going to step down soon after winning.
I don't think so. Any nuance will just be special pleading. There are a large number of folk for whom basic honesty is unimportant.
We're talking about working class mostly rural American citizens, most of whom are products of public education in America over the last seventy years, most of whom identify as Christian. Special pleading is not a problem by their standards... it's a part thereof.
Quoting Banno
Yes, and yes.
It's about power.
Thanks for sharing your complete nonsense!
That doesn't actually say anything. Yes, and...
And it will be someone else. Trump has shown the way for a future Caesar to enlist populism to overthrow the mechanism of the republic. Only his incompetence stands in the way.
:up: This is the beginning not the end
A caesar might deal with global warming more effectively. China has a caesar, so we'll see.
Unlikely. Complex issues require complex solutions. Autocrats see things simply.
Quoting frank China is not autocratic so much as run by Confucian nepotism.
"Xi's political thoughts have been written into the party and state constitutions.[3][4][5] Xi has often been called a dictator or an authoritarian leader[6][7][8][9][10] by political and academic observers, citing an increase of censorship and mass surveillance, a deterioration in human rights, the cult of personality developing around him, and the removal of term limits for the leadership under his tenure." --wiki
Is this not how he appears from your vantage point?
"If, as seems now probable, Joe Biden eventually takes office, we should expect an administration distinguished mostly by its torpor. Not only will the Democrats lack a Senate majority, they’ll almost certainly double down on their disastrous centrism, concluding that Trump’s unexpectedly strong showing means that much of America skews to the right. Obama spent eight years trying to collaborate with Republicans. Biden will, most likely, do the same, even with a GOP increasingly infected by Trumpism.
The ensuing policy paralysis will not necessarily be the worst outcome, if only because, as the late Alexander Cockburn used to say, ‘Gridlock keeps the bastards at bay’. ...More generally, the election means nothing has been resolved. Trump might be done but his defeat – if that’s what we’re seeing – wasn’t sufficiently crushing as to destroy his legacy. On the contrary, many would-be demagogues, both in the US and elsewhere, will see his surprisingly strong showing as evidence that the old culture war incantations still retain some of their magic."
https://overland.org.au/2020/11/the-incomplete-defeat-of-donald-trump/
Great idea, bootlicker. (Or sandallicker in this case)
"My four takeaways so far.
First, I hoped for better things.
Second, one Republican elected official after another is refusing to back Trump's efforts not to count the votes. The party has obviously decided that control over the Senate is more than enough to suit its purposes.
Third, with a party that many claimed always submitted itself to Trump's will (but was in fact more than happy to oppose Trump whenever it suited their purposes) not submitting to Trump's will, with tweets not having the intended effect, with street gangs not materializing on anywhere near a sufficient scale to implement the leader's will, it seems clear that Trump's only hope lies in the courts. Which may not be there for him either. But it's important to remember that, in the end, Trump's whole career now depends on what it has always depended on: not the apparatus of fascism but lawyers and judges. And that the Republicans are happy with the Senate.
Fourth, my biggest fear throughout the last four years has been that we would be facing an extended interregnum of back-and-forth, wherein an exhausted neoliberal Democratic Party trades power and office with an exhausted right-wing Republican Party. Last night's results (insofar as we know them) seem to confirm that that is where we are. Biden's presidency will be an awful lot like Obama's second term and even Trump's presidency: not in terms of content or substance, but in terms of having to rely, almost exclusively, on executive orders and action, and not being able to push a legislative agenda through.
In other words, four years of stuckness. Which is definitely better than the alternative of four more years of Trump, but not really moving us anywhere either."
---
4 years of an ineffective, frustrated government while the underclass of America (>60% of it) continues to rot? Trump, or someone like him, will be back in 2024, and US politics will continue to be dragged into the gutter that is right-wing neofeudalism - as anyone with a working brain knew would happen when Biden got nominated. The only relevant question defining the American path forward is how much its gangrenous decay can be insulated from the rest of the world, and at what rate.
I see you've never read about Leto II Atreides.
:rofl: love that term.
Quoting StreetlightX
That is the definitely the big concern. Wealthy americans will need somewhere decent to immigrate once the putrefaction of the country has thoroughly festered.
I'd not let my guard down just yet. There is still plenty of room to influence the electoral college. The GOP might not be willing to openly challenge the counting of votes, but they might still be willing to prevent the counted votes from actually taking effect on charges of fraud.
I agree with most of what you say, but my focus is on the imperative of removing Trump. Gridlock is fine while Trump is ushered off the stage and put back in his box. It's possible that he will rally his forces and return next time, but I doubt the party will submit to his mealy mouthed madness, he may even make them unelectable for a while. But the crisis of a second term of Trumpism has been averted.
My perspective is shaped by the UK Trump happening at the same time. Johnson is also a showman, not so much a snake oil salesman, as a clown. But he can do more damage than Trump because the UK Prime Minister has a great deal of power and is currently reaping havoc in my country and turning us into a laughing stock and rogue state, while trashing the economy. Now Trump has descended into a vindictive burbling man child, some of Johnson's gloss will have tarnished and we can start to reign him in and possibly topple him now.
True. I hadn't thought too much about the internationalist dimension of a Trump loss. Interestingly, in my neck of the woods, alot of South East Asia has been hoping for a Trump win because of his utter indifference to human rights abuses, and moreover, China has been somewhat ambivalent about America's descent into full-blown dementia (favourite quote from the linked article: "I had a Chinese scholar say to me: If we could convince all the countries in the world to come together and damage those pillars of U.S. strength, we could not be as successful as Donald Trump has been single-handedly,” said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing").
From an internal US perceptive through, even these tight, undecided results already mark out a certain path of doom for the country.
Fair point.
- Georgia: by 0.5% with estimated 95% counted, 16 electoral votes
- North Carolina: by 0.5% estimated 95% counted, 15 electoral votes
- Pennsylvania: by 2.6% estimated 86% counted, 20 electoral votes
- Alaska: by 30% with estimated 47% counted, 3 electoral votes
These do not look probable to change, in terms of random deviations in a non-biased model, with the remaining votes in question (though it is possible).
Added to the 213 electoral votes he has, these states would put him at 267.
In Nevada Biden is leading by 0.4% with estimated 89% counted. So if this flipped in the next 11% (which is more probable due to random deviations than the above) then Trump would win at 273 electoral votes.
There's a theory that all late counting favours Biden, so if that's true then Biden has a significant advantage; however, in some places Trump has been gaining late on Biden, so it's clearly not a certain theory, and may only be applicable in a general sense and does not happen to apply to whatever votes are actually remaining (a lot of factors affect when votes get counted and reported, so factors favouring Trump may happen to dominate now even if factors favouring Biden dominated the last X %).
So, it's definitely extremely close. If anyone was wondering, especially non-Americans here, if Biden standing at 253 right now was so close as to be "almost a sure thing", it is not.
I would intuit that Biden does have the advantage based purely on the current numbers, but I am still predicting a Trump win due to the supreme court advantage. Bush vs Gore was equally ridiculous, bad faith, anti-democratic, with lot's of outrage about it, as a SCOTUS determined election this time would be, didn't stop them then and there's even more crazy people on the SCOTUS now. Although I agree the reasoning pretext that would be used doesn't seem clear right now, the Republicans have a habit of inventing preposterous pretexts overnight and ramming them through (cause the democrats are week cowards and there's no actual credible threat that Republicans would actually deal with the precedent they lay down against themselves).
However, the Republican establishment may want Trump to lose, and so not pull the needed strings or then signal to the SCOTUS that they should actually use common sense this time.
Biden victory is not necessarily good for Democrats, as the pandemic situation essentially presents a no-win situation. Republican politicians and backers may very well be frothing at the mouth at the prospect of Biden needing to "curb civil liberties" instead of Trump being forced to do something when the medical system really is in state of collapse. Likewise, much better a Democrat push vaccines etc. than a Republican administration.
One thing keeping the lid on pure insanity on the Right is simply that Trump is in charge at the moment and it's impossible to blame absolutely everything on the Democrats and it's impossible for Trump to go too far in insane discourse because he has a power to act on what he says (it's crazy and contradictory, but it could be far worse). A Biden victory will bring out a birther type phenomenon multiplied by a thousand.
For progressives, a Biden victory will consolidate the right and move it further to the right, during which time Biden does nothing constructive and the state of disaster and dissatisfaction in 4 years will likely bring a much farther right wing president to power.
Whereas Trump victory will force Republicans to implement some of the basic left wing policies the pandemic situation will force, and the status quo democrats will simply no longer be relevant (and many simply too old), moving discourse to the left.
If you don't like American Empire, a Trump victory will likely continue the radical downward spiral of international credibility upon which most of the American empire is actually based, whereas a Biden victory will likely lead to an attempt to rehabilitate Imperial control where it is on the wane leading to wars. Paradoxically, Trump is so unstable that the US establishment cannot reach consensus around a new war since it's impossible to predict what Trump would do (whereas, Lybia and Syria were new wars the US establishment could consolidate around and convince allies, under Obama even if Obama was himself skeptical about them).
Likewise, as has been noted, Trump decredibilizes right wing ideology globally. He makes it very clear what viewing greed as good thing leads to, and also says all the quiet parts out loud.
As a European, it makes me sad to say it, but a Biden victory will be immediately followed by European leaders bending the knee (with a sexual connotation if you like), whereas a Trump victory will likely consolidate an US independent European policy project.
I think this really depends on what sort of ballots still need to be counted. If it's all absentee ballots then they are all in play still, with pretty good chances for Biden due to the blue shift.
Yes, I agree that there could be a large bias towards Biden, and lot's of simple models can be made showing Biden likely will win.
But the problem with those simple models is that it's too easy to miss something in which case, it's "oh, yeah, well didn't think about that" or "well, didn't think these votes would lean Trump".
The whole point of the election is we don't know how people will vote, and polls get more and more unreliable the more fine grained we look at things (i.e. individual counties can surprise, particular batches of mail in votes can surprise; maybe Biden voters voted very early but there was a surge of Trump mail in voters later to avoid Corona and/or they're older and it's convenient, and the mail-ins are counted sequentially -- even if the right wing spin machine is downplaying corona and claiming mail in votes are fraudulent, such cognitive dissidence may not be a problem; on top of polls being simply generally unreliable these days since land-lines are no longer a thing, and likely voters are much more erratic these days also). That votes lean one way during any range does not establish they will continue to lean that way for the next range. It's intuitively pleasing that if someone is "catching up" they will continue to close the gap and either make it or not make it over the line, but whatever is fueling the catch-up can dissipate at any point (and the point of the election is we don't have the data to make a solid prediction without the election actually happening).
In other words, a story can be told Biden is a heavy favourite at this point, but it's easy to come up with a counter story that also fits our current data, or then to just say "maybe we'll be surprised by these particular voters / these particular vote counting machines". Likewise, the data upon which such stories are based can simply be wrong; for instance: maybe a large amount of votes seem to be left to count from a heavily Biden leaning county, but it then turns out that was just some clerical mixup and the votes are almost all already counted or then there's some left but from a Trump leaning county.
My basic point though, is that it's not in a situation where Biden needs 1 more state to win and there are 6 states with 50% probability of going either way, which is what a first impression of some media may lead one to conclude. The situation is closer to being down to 1 state that will be close, than it is to 6 tossups in which Biden needs only 1 victory.
The beginning of "oh shit" for Democrats. It will be very close.
One interesting detail is that Libertarians in Nevada got 10 000 votes about, and the constitution party 2000 votes, and "others" got 10 000 votes (which I hope is Kanye). Biden is currently up by about 8000 votes. So it would be of personal pleasure to me, and I think a lot of us, if Biden wins and this becomes a wedge in the Republican-libertarian-Kanye trinity.
I always assumed that Bernie was a Russian plant in the classic communist tradition.We have seen way too many like him for the last hundred years. We get lots of loose talk of 'class' struggles reminiscent of nineteenth century England or Germany, but no admitted specific plans for what to do after the despised capitalists and their bourgeois lackeys are eliminated. Nevertheless, as per either communist or fascist strategy, Bernie fragments and polarizes liberal political opinion and mobilizes his small but growing extreme.
In 2016, Bernie (with a big assist from Comey) just about guaranteed a Trump victory by disenchanting would be democratic voters.
Gangrene doesnt really spread aggressively. The fungal or bacterial infection near the juncture is what spreads, straight into the bloodstream. But we give high powered antibiotics and just let the appendage fall off naturally. For some reason that's helpful. So you have this black mummy foot that sort of wobbles on the bone until it's eventually found in the bed. It really stinks and its super painful so people just lay there sobbing, calling for a parent, usually their mom.
It's like a horror movie in real life.
That's very interesting, never had gangrene myself. You have enlightened me my friend
By the way, what do they do with the foot?
Although there's always the possibility for a late surprise, most election analysts are pretty good at forecasting votes from certain demographics based on the remaining vote. Alot of the remaining vote is from urban areas and are mail-in. Thus far in this election alone, they've been heavily democratic,
It's close so I wouldn't call it out. Trump's lead has dwindled to 13K and alot of the remaining votes are in blue counties including Atlanta. It seems likely that there will be a recount and that's not even getting into the Senate runoffs. Georgia is tight.
I take great pride in the fact that my home state is holding up a national election with global ramifications so that the crackerjack poll workers can search every nook and cranny for ballots.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I honestly don't believe there is meaningful elections fraud, but I do wonder what makes this process so protracted. Other than in Alaska where they have to dogsled ballots from remote villages, I'm not sure why it takes so long to do things in Atlanta.
It's not just Georgia. We're also waiting on a bunch of other states. As for why the election laws are made this way? Apparently the GOP legislatures in these states made it so that people can't count the ballots prior to the election when they're received, forcing this slow and agonizing process where Trump can question the results. And oddly enough it's the right that also chooses to protest and either call for the votes to be counted faster (in states where Biden is leading) or stop them (in states where Trump is), on top of the multiple lawsuits that they have sent to the courts as well, hampering the counting process even further. Just another one of the ways which Republicans complicate the election system.
Uh, well, in a large country holding national elections ought to be a well coordinated collective effort.
But for some reason, some states will get their last votes I guess next week. Then there's the recounts and the lawsuits, so enjoy while it lasts!
The rest is pretty much a sign that Democrats need to put aside conventional wisdom and start running candidates that excite people. They need to start putting their resources behind such people, just as the Republican party (and media) did with Trump. Imagine if they had? They'd have had a Bernie Sanders as president -- who did far better with Latinos. Given that all pundits and all the conventional wisdom (and polling), Biden has pulled it off mainly because people have grown weary of Trump. And that's all.
Now with Trump out of the way, but the Senate in GOP hands, and the House even closer in power, and the state legislatures remaining fairly the same -- I see next to nothing getting done legislatively. As far as the judiciary -- I imagine it'll be 2 more years (at least) of GOP stonewalling all nominations to the courts. Which is very irritating.
Museum of natural history, foot section.
Just saw this. Biden is still favoured to win Georgia. It'll be very close though.
Quoting Hanover
Republicans would not let many states count mail-ins before the election for a start. Also, in Georgia, this is the first time in years they've been working from paper.
Anyway, it will likely be over soon when Pennsylvania reports a Biden win.
If memory serves me, that's in the basement near the food court
There've always been delays for one reason or the other. This is just the problem du jour. Bush/Gore was hanging chads.
a really
long
time
to
count
all
the
votes
in
Nevada.
only
1
2
3
4
5
6
Votes
There's an infinite sequence between each one. That's why it takes so loooooooong.
And then from inside that house came shouts of “fucking Joe Biden and his fucking she-n*gg*r”, and as we walked quickly away more shouts of “Biden’s a fucking white n*gg*r is what he is” and such.
Sigh.
You haven't followed the mail-in vote saga have you? Trump encouraged his supporters to vote in person on election day, insinuating that he would declare mail-in votes as invalid. Biden supporters with respect for COVID distancing practices were more inclined toward mailing in. The result is a huge disproportion of Biden votes in mailed in votes, now being counted, especially evident in Pennsylvania.
Where do you live again?
The strategic position that the GOP is now in is perfect. Completely perfect. Flawless. And that is with a Biden win. The set up for the 2022 and 2024 elections is astounding. Had Trump won, even with increased gains from even more gerrymandering there would still have been a backlash in 2022 against the GOP. Now that backlash will be against the Dems but at a much bigger scale. And the GOP will be better positioned for the midterms than perhaps any party at any midterm ever. Seriously. This could be a midterm swing that approaches 1894 levels.
Seeing things align with such amazing symmetry has to make one wonder if there was deliberate orchestration with this exact end in mind. A barely won Biden win with the Dems otherwise in a nosedive and losing on every other front. Yet the GOP still has them there as the foil.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/04/statehouse-elections-2020-434108
People need to stop repeating this line. It's being bandied around everywhere. People need to realise the USA is full of bigoted Cunts who voted for Trump. Thankfully not all of them are of this ilk though.
You are correct, it is also full of bigoted Cunts who voted for Biden. And, also full of bigoted Cunts that voted third party, or abstained.
1. Trump lies and bullshits, followers don't hold him accountable, don't care
2. others typically encourage following covid-19 protocols, including Biden
3. on election day Trump encourages his followers to vote in person
4. Biden's supporters more likely to mail in votes following covid-19 protocols
5. Trump would know 4 (reasonable assumption)
6. come time to count mail-in votes, Trump fights tooth and nail to invalidate them, thus denying a number of voters (4)
7. a number of Trump followers (1) go look for a fight where mail-in votes are counted
And a familiar pattern is seen, Trump at the center, possibly engineered to "steal the election" in this case, ironically, since that's what Biden is accused of, or just another circus act to grab some attention...
• viruses don't care about Trump's bullshit
• Trump Administration's Mishandling of the Coronavirus Response by Congresswoman Jackie Speier
• US election 2020: Three viral vote claims fact-checked by BBC
• in addition to lying and bullshitting, Trump also divides and induces what follows from that
"Now survey data show the strategy epically failed, as Trump actually garnered even more support from GOP voters than in 2016. Indeed, Edison Research exit polls on Tuesday found that 93 percent of Republican voters supported Trump — three percentage points higher than in 2016, according to numbers from the same firm. The takeaway: There may be a lot of so-called “Never Trump Republicans” promoted in the media and in politics, but “Never Trump Republicans” are not a statistically significant group of voters anywhere in America. They basically do not exist anywhere outside of the Washington Beltway or cable news green rooms -- and after tonight’s results, we shouldn’t have to see them on TV or even see their tweets ever again".
https://www.dailyposter.com/p/six-takeaways-from-election-night
And yet:
"[Democratic] Party leaders had expressed certainty that Trump’s divisiveness and mishandling of the pandemic would help them expand their majority with wins in GOP-held districts — and yet they lost at least a half-dozen seats and failed to retake the Senate. The explanation laid out by centrists, according to multiple people who were on the call and spoke on the condition of anonymity, is that Republicans were easily able to paint them all as socialists and radical leftists who endorse far-left positions such as defunding the police."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-democrats-pelosi-election/2020/11/05/1ddae5ca-1f6e-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html [paywalled].
I.e. despite the results showing that trying to win over GOP voters is a complete failure, these fucking morons reckon the way to go is to push even harder in this direction.
Quoting Mr Bee
All I am pointing out is "there's always the possibility for a late surprise". The theory that late counting heavily favours Biden makes sense for the reasons pointed out, and also is retrospectively true in the large catch-ups we're already seen. I am simply pointing out that we cannot therefore conclude this effect will put Biden over the line in places like Pennsylvanian or Goergia nor that it is true for all the late vote counting, such as Nevada. Late counting may favour Biden but there maybe some factor that makes late-late-late counting suddenly favour Trump; if that happens, every forecaster for Biden will simply say "oh, well, we didn't know about this factor, but it makes sense because x, y, z things peculiar to these states and counties and counting protocols and logistics, put a bunch of Trump votes at the very end". For instance, there could be a tranche of a bunch of oversees military votes that favour Trump right at the very end; if this happens, forecasters will just say "yep, makes sense". If that doesn't happen and Biden wins all the close counts with the mail in, we'll also say "yep, makes sense".
We simply don't have enough information about the current situation to say Biden will win with near certainty. But I think you both agree with that. I think we all agree it is close.
The situation is similar to concluding it will rain the next minute because it's raining now; probably true, but the longer the time span we consider the less this reasoning holds as each minute there is some probability it stops raining and this probability accumulates over time. Maybe votes have been raining for Biden recently, but the rain suddenly stops and we all say "yeah, that happens too".
But, as I have said, the numbers look good for Biden right now. I'm not arguing there's some counter-intuitive thing happening that makes Trump the favourite. I'd rather be in Biden's position in terms of the numbers, but I'd rather be in Trump's position in terms of the Supreme court, which I believe could hand the election to Trump if the GOP machinery got in full swing to make that happen. However, the GOP may not want to play the supreme court hand, since as @Baphomet eloquently puts it:
Quoting Baphomet
Which I have also concluded in my analysis is the best situation for the GOP. Best let Dem's try fix the mess of the pandemic with only band-aid solutions the GOP can ideologically rail against, while their base ups the cult-crazy levels, all while pointing to the the inevitable failure due to GOP undermining any effective policy and ensuring that failure definitely happens (and weak democrats pointing to crumbs the GOP tosses them as some sort of victory while refusing any real conflict with the GOP because their donors, who are the same people, rather peace and civility). Of course, I'm fairly certain Trump does have leverage against his frenemies, perhaps enough for the GOP spin machine to dig up / invent the needed pretexts and get some SCOTUS action underway. Time will tell. At the moment, the GOP seems to be hedging its bets and distancing with Trump, but that could change overnight if the right threats are delivered to the right people, and if those threats are credible enough. We have yet to see the last of Trump.
Then again, this election did show that alot of the electorate, including a large portion of Republicans, still value Trumpism, so it does put the future identity of the party into question. Trump is gonna remember who abandoned him this election cycle and he may throw a wrench into the party's plans to go back to the Romney-type politicians. And honestly I'd say the same uncertainty applies to the Democrats as well, since even if they do win they almost lost to an idiot reality TV show host (again) so perhaps they should do some soul searching too. In a way, 2020 is just 2012 all over again with 2024 being a change year like 2016, but hopefully next time, it won't end up the same way.
I agree that this seems like the case. But we've seen the GOP posture to drop Trump before and then suddenly the ranks close and any remaining dissenters are sidelined.
So we could see a turn around on this due to leverage Trump has, or it's simply the right pretext hasn't been found yet. When it is found the base will rally around it and the GOP will go along for the reason you state.
Quoting Mr Bee
This definitely could be a factor, but there could also be genuine voter fraud (probably mostly by Trump supporters operating under any number of available delusions) as well as old people with early phase Alzheimer's and literally forgot they mailed in a ballot and woke up on election day and said to themselves "oh, an election, better go vote". Or people just generally going crazy in 2020 and doing doing crazy stuff.
Cross checking and verifying double votes has to be crazy labour intensive.
And of course, saying they've found double ballets would trigger pandemonium, so if I was them I'd want to get rid of them as silently as possible.
Likewise, they could have people who just literally can't keep count and the numbers just don't add up and they need to redo things.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and Trump will spur a split in the Republican party; if the Republicans won't have him back, he might run on his own platform, and take a big chunk of the Republican vote with him.
Have you been to the Krishnamurti school?
http://ojaihistory.com/krishnamurti-and-the-ojai-valley/
I'd prefer he get hit by a bus, but failing that, I like your theory.
You obviously know what I'm referring to better than I do, which answers my question. Ojai always sounded like a nice place, so I'm happy for you that you live there.
From your story I was concerned you might be reporting from Butthead Alabama. :-)
Thanks! I grew up here and have fought tooth and nail to remain here; California housing has gotten so expensive over my lifetime that it feels like my entire generation are going to be forced out of the state, or else live in tiny run-down trailers like I do.
I hear ya. Like hippies everywhere Baba Hippyhead once dreamed of moving to California. Had to let that one go. Much the same story here in Florida though. People will keep moving here until we finally wreck the reason people want to move here. 1,000 people a day move to Florida. Not tourists, new residents.
It's like competing against coca-cola with something "almost like coke" that leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth and genuinely makes you feel ill afterwards, but it's slightly better for your health (as in not quite as bad) and the company has slightly better corporate social responsibility lingo than does coca-cola the company. Then, after failing to convert coca-cola drinkers and dominate market share, conclude the problem is that the logo isn't quite a shitty enough imitation, within the trademark limits, as the real coca-cola logo.
I imagine their calculation is that since Trump is no longer gonna be president, then he's gonna lose the influence he has. As I said before I don't think that's exactly true since Trumpism is gonna stick around to terrorize us all, but if there's any time to dump Trump it would be immediately after an election where you have about 2 years to hope people forget about it.
I kind of wonder if the GOP leadership would get behind jailing Trump if he gets convicted after leaving office. You know, just to ensure he doesn't continue to bash the party that abandoned him through Trump TV or run again in 2024. With the exception of pathetic asskissers like Graham, I bet alot of them personally despise him anyways.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Hopefully but right now that split seems to be mainly between leadership and the voters themselves, much like the Democratic party. It's clear that most of the GOP base adore Trump for some reason, but the establishment Republicans certainly don't and would want to move on from him. If they try to disassociate themselves from him, then that may hurt them in future elections but I don't know really.
Yes, we're in agreement. One reason there's not yet a SCOTUS push is simply it's not clear yet what ruling in what state is required to hand Trump the election; where are the hanging chads of 2020 so to speak. If such a thing becomes clear, I would predict ranks closing around Trump and repeating whatever this "great scandal" is 24/7 for the reasons you state.
Quoting Mr Bee
I doubt they personally despise him, he makes them rich. I think they doubted Trumpism could work, but the fact that it does brings them significant pleasure. They now have a base completely loyal, completely unquestioning, completely impervious to criticism from the "liberal media", and who can be counted on to shout one thing one day and the exact opposite thing the next -- indeed, even hour to hour, minute to minute.
So far, I only see republican's criticise Trump whom Trump threw under the bus and humiliated, so understandable but potentially pre-mature. They have nothing to lose anyway, so better take this one brief moment to once again shine in the sun and breath the fresh air before returning to their GOP dungeon once again.
So does work, but that doesn't mean you necessarily love it. Remember, Trump disrespected John McCain's military service, insulted Ted Cruz's wife, and destroyed Session's (the first GOP congressman to actually endorse him in 2016) political career for doing his job. I'm pretty sure all of them would shed as many tears for his death as Trump would for Herman Cain.
Quoting boethius
Not if they're trying to distance themselves from Trump. In that case, they just turned a huge chunk of their party against them. Personally I think they're afraid of them and how easily they can turn on them if their dear leader happens to not feel good about them one day and sends out a bad tweet. Understand that they're not loyal to them, but to a guy who contradicts himself every other day.
Quoting boethius
Well, some Republicans are backing away from his current claims of voter fraud. Sounds like they're not gonna back him if he loses.
As of 3 minutes ago CNN reports:
Quoting CNN
So, they seem unaware if it's true.
I honestly don't think the majority of GOP politicians care about any of that. Trump won against all these people, so is just "making the world in his image" as Ayn Rand preached. Trump got the tax cuts passed, military budget increased, and the areas worst affected by the pandemic increased their loyalty and support.
The liberal media makes a big thing about any GOP politician slightly criticizing Trump or announcing principles in obvious contradiction to Trump, but this is a small quantity and all those politicians bend the knee to Trump in the end, or then basically disappear. All GOP senators bent the knee and voted to acquit Trump.
Quoting Mr Bee
Yes, but who? Romney, Christy: they were already outcasts. Everything else I've seen is just hedgy weasel words from people far down the chain who aren't sure what way the wind is blowing, such as Shapiro's "brave tweet" about counting votes; if the wind turns in Trump's favour Shapiro will be first to explain why the votes in question aren't "real votes; votes on election day; that, yes, you need to count votes that are real, but the president was actually talking about fake votes, maybe he didn't use the right words but he felt what was going on, and we'll know they're fake votes because the SCOTUS decides what's a real or a fake vote, because we live in a country of laws and the definition of a fake vote is whatever the SCOTUS decides, just common sense; let's be clear, let's be totally clear, what we're talking about here is people who saw Trump was winning in the count and mailed in, or then we don't know if they did or not and that's a tainted vote that can't count to respect the law, after the polls closed and by democrats who thought Biden was for sure going to win then seeing how strong Trump actually is, then panicking and mailing in their ballet, that these liberal weed smokers were just too lazy to do before the election, after the polls closed -- which, I remind you again, the SCOTUS hasn't even completely ruled whether mail in ballets for people who don't need them is even a legal thing in this country -- and that's wrong, that's being a sore loser and trying to change the election after the election, Trump is just defending himself" etc., etc., etc., or whatever the hanging chad issue happens to be.
I originally thought that a Republican Senate and a Democratic president would completely destroy any hopes for a stimulus package but perhaps there is a chance after all of one passing if the Democrats message themselves right. They need to make it clear that the GOP are gonna prevent any sort of stimulus package from happening if they lose these senate seats and demonstrate the catastrophic effects of inaction on the economy. Who knows, perhaps this would actually put pressure on the GOP to pass something in the lame duck, in which case awesome, but it's more likely that Trump and McConnell would not be interested and the Democrats need to point to that as proof of what they're saying. And if the SCOTUS decides to dismantle the ACA then point that out too. Make the two Georgia senators who'd rather vote for a judge then help the American people pay up for their actions. The runoff election is gonna happen in January so the Democrats better start dumping their excess campaign money into that state now.
I'm pretty sure they do, especially if you're Cruz, McCain, or Sessions. The establishment GOP live in a bubble away from the troubles of the middle class, but it's a bubble full of rich and powerful people like them. If you insult one of their buddies then they'll care.
Quoting boethius
Literally any other Republican would pass tax cuts and further fund the military (heck even some Democrats would do the latter too). As for the pandemic, polls showed that the places most affected by the pandemic saw a decrease in Trump support. Then again, that may not mean much since polls have shown themselves to be quite unreliable in the age of Trump.
Quoting boethius
They bent the knee because their political careers are on the line. Trump was still president and they were about to have an election back when they acquitted him. Those elections already happened now and Trump looks like he's about to head for the exit so the situation is different.
I mean I guess not every election since the Georgia senate race is going to a runoff. Would be interesting to see whether the senators there side with Trump in dismantling democracy or try to disassociate themselves with him. Either move could cost them, helping the Democrats in January if they manage to keep their enthusiasm up. Like I said in my post above, there's a really big opportunity for the Democrats to actually put pressure on the SCOTUS and the Senate in the lame duck since the runoff is in January.
Quoting boethius
McConnell's been distancing himself from Trump for a while now since he expects him to lose. He criticized his lax safety measures in the White House when he got COVID and he and the rest of the Senate were adamantly against the big stimulus package that he and Pelosi were negotiating, instead drawing the line at $500 Billion when Trump is asking for $1.8 Trillion. Trump's been losing his grip on his party for a while now and he's too unhinged in order to realize it.
He seems tired. I think his monstrous and obsessive ego is fighting possibly its last stand against the evidence that the world will no longer bow before it. Paranoia is not far from him already. However, if he seems to be losing the faith his once-fanatical supporters will desert him qucker than rats leaving the proverbial sinking ship. If as now seems likely the remaining results pile up against him and his empty legal challenges don't even get off the ground he could undergo a complete ego collapse. For such an ego-maniac that could bring on either insanity or suicide. All I have to say is it couldn't happen to a more deserving person.
People seem awfully quick in predicting Trump's downfall in disgrace. The counting of votes hasn't even finished, and it's a long road to Jan 20.
He still has motivated supporters. There are protests. They're peaceful for now, but things are held in suspense because a winner hasn't been announced. It's not at all clear it will stay that way once CNN calls it for Biden.
:D
Violence has been more a characteristic of leftist groups. This is all part of a divisive narrative that vilifies the opposition. Trump declares without evidence that the election has been a fraud, and here you've declared without evidence that elections officials are withholding results for fear they'll be beaten.
The reason Trump is losing is because more people voted for Biden. The reason certain states haven't been called is because they haven't counted enough of the ballots to be sure.
Violence against people more a characteristic of rightist groups, property maybe leftists.
Fake news.
As of this moment Biden has edged ahead in both Pennsylvania and Georgia, and Biden is heading for around 300 electoral votes for better than a 60 vote win. The Trump court cases are without merit but will be dragged out until Federal charges are filed against Trump and his family. If he wants to stay out of jail and ever see a penny of his future ill-begotten billions he will make a deal before January 20.
Jesus. If that passes for entertainment no wonder you want the election to take 2 years. 1.5 years of campaigning and half a year of counting ballots is more exciting and actually funny this year as we get to watch Trump's meltdown.
Why are these last few states so slow to count? Most states finished counting on Nov 3rd/4th. Nearly 3 days later and some are still struggling. Is it because projected swing-states deliberately take greater precautions and count slower as a result?
He was fired.
One reason I guess is that some states could issue mail-in votes until the last day before the election.
A good idea (that won't happen) would be that mail-in voting simply would stop in all states at the same time let's say 1 week before and the counting of those votes would be started even before the election offices close. The second issue is of course that the system isn't designed to be effective as you have things like gerrymandering.
Quoting Baden
By the Trump team?
Hope he wasn't banned.
Quoting NYT
I browse NYT regularly (usually just morning briefing Europe), and I've watched with mixed feelings their evolution from the first time when they dropped the L-bomb (there was an article from an editor at that time, explaining why they thought it was appropriate to say that Trump lied, as opposed to using a more neutral word) to this.
The lead is extending. It will be in the tens of thousands. Recounts will change nothing in Pennsylvania.Trump lost the election. It is over.
Agreement! I was listening to NPR yesterday when Trump came to the microphone. They played it just long enough to see it was going to be nothing more than the same old lies and pathetic whining, and NPR then pulled the plug in mid word, and went on to fact checking.
Nice to see that you are an optimist! :up:
I fear the incoming Trump denial and maneuvers... but let's see how much punch the bully really has got.
The popular culture under Trump was awful, although perhaps not as bad as it was under Bush's first term. The problem with parodying Trump is that he already acts like an absurd fictional character. He stares into the sun during an eclipse. He feeds the winning college football team lukewarm fastfood. He and half his administration gets COVID.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/JohnHPiette/status/1324751170511032322[/tweet]
I'm left to wonder what upshot might remain...
What about the post-Trump Republican party?
Trump billed himself as the pied-piper that was going to drain the rat-swamped capitol for us...
Is there any chance that some of the republican rats who bent over so pathetically (Lindsey et al) will now sing and dance themselves out of town as Trump takes his un-paid leave?
Heaven forbid that Trump absconds with our sweet, pure and innocent children like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz...
(personally I cant wait until Lindsey starts insulting Trump again (once his Stockholm subsides), because it's instantly going to be thrown back in his face. "Hey, you remember that time that you shredded your own dignity to be an attention hungry cock-holster for Trump?").
And you still couldn't take the senate... Dems...
I wonder if the DNC had allowed Bernie (the popular one) to actually run against Trump, that we wouldn't now be tucking in to 4 years of lackadaisical lame-duck geriatric centrism, during a time when aggressive economic and political changes are so sorely needed...
God save the rich...
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1324569910538915840[/tweet]
A sneak peak at the horrible future awaiting the US in 2024. Of course it's really early, but some of the "default" choices are hilarious. I can't wait to see Trump's son face off against Obama's wife. It'll be Donald Trump v. Obama but not exactly
2 armed Virginia men taken into custody in possible plot to attack Pennsylvania Convention Center
L.A.-area man who threatened mass shooting if Biden wins is held, sources say
Newt Gingrich: Bill Barr Should Arrest Poll Workers
Steve Bannon Says 'Punk' Twitter Boss Jack Dorsey Should Be Arrested for 'Taking Down the President'
Trump has told people he has no plans to concede even if his path to victory is blocked
Nobody saw this coming... :roll:
+ Don Jr quotes Goebbels, calling for "total war".
The more the GOP reject democracy and embrace fascism and violence, the more they destroy themselves while achieving precisely nothing. Self-destruct mode.
"QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that alleges that the world is run by a powerful cabal of Satan worshipping pedophiles, who work to undermine US President Donald Trump and his actions against them, with the cabal operating a global child sex trafficking ring. The theory also commonly asserts that Trump is planning a day of reckoning known as 'The Storm', when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested... It also claimed that Trump feigned conspiracy with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the sex trafficking ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros."
I know people like to accuse liberals of not trying to understand and reason with conservatives/Trump supporters, but if they're the kind who believe this then I can't see how that's at all possible. Some people are just a lost cause.
(And according to this, 33% of Republicans believe that QAnon is mostly true and 23% partly true compared to 5% and 4% for Democrats.)
It takes an obscene amount of effort to dissuade these folks, (See: "The flat earth movement" for a similar cast of confusion).
Wacky conspiracies are as old as Alex Jones, and the QAnon thing has been around for many years. The problem is that it takes an attention span greater than the length of time it takes to say "night of the long knives" to actually get anywhere. Given that our attention spans are presently hacked to pieces, nonsense like QAnon and flat-earth have an easier time gaining traction...
...Why can't people just believe in normal stupid shit like ghosts, aliens, and religion?
It should probably be mentioned that there are several "levels" of the conspiracy, a bit like with Scientology. The entry level is "just" the global sex trafficking ring.
It's one of these convenient theories that are so vague that you can always give up this part or that and still hold on to some other parts.
Good question. Where does the Republican party go from here?
What if they run again with Trump in 2024?
I seriously doubt he will have the energy in 4 years, but I imagine it would be a sequel to the circus we just survived.
Kanyé is going to run again in 2024. A Trump/Kanye ticket could be fun...
Either way, I don't see how the GOP can afford to keep Trump in any kind of serious play. He is and always has been a constant liability and source of stress/controversy. Now that he is no longer the president, they have less reason to part their cheeks. I suppose it might depend on how Trump's voters feel about things in a few years time...
Anecdotally, when I visited Texas, I noted two waitresses openly discussing their encounters with angels, and I don't mean the metaphorical kind.
I bet the casanovas who tried that line are laughing their asses off right now.
"Hello ladies, ever lain with an angel of the Lord? :wink:"
Why din' I think of that?? :cry:
The establishment would probably want Trump to go away and as for the voters, I dunno really. They may drop him like they did Roy Moore in Alabama. Ideally Trump would still hold on to a good chunk of the GOP base but not all of it, fracturing it's unity in the next election.
:lol:
The GOP strategy from the start has been to accuse the other side of election fraud while trying to cheat their way to victory.
Real feels (still provisional).
Also, what an utter surprise that utter fucking trash runs in the Harris bloodline.
Now is the moment for the American people to begin plotting a viable third party for 2024, to finally oust the two parties that have been ruining the country for decades. But it won't happen, because Americans are as dumb as they come...keep doing the same thing and wonder why everything sucks, idiots.
Great movie. Don't think it was ever released in US
You should keep sleeping, you do not want to see what's coming. :scream:
The notion of an emergent 3rd party in the US is something of a pipe dream I'm afraid. Strategically, the way forward is the expropriation of the democratic party appartus from under their own cowardly and oblivious noses. With the exception of the pathetic labour protection vote in California - pushed by a concerted corporate campaign with millions at its disposal - progressive politics under the democratic flag in fact had a pretty good time this week, at local and state levels. This article details things pretty well:
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/downballot-socialist-elected-election-day-dsa
Absolutely, I agree.
But, there needs to be a vote of no confidence in the current system, and that begins by not voting for the very parties that comprise it. The only real effective solution, for obvious reasons, seems to be something new and truly oppositional, not some rehash of the same old...Hardly likely though.
Quoting StreetlightX
By who? definitely not from within. That seems like even more of a pipe dream.
Quoting StreetlightX
I am only talking about the most obvious solution for reforming the highest levels. And if the state and local levels are of concern, a third party could easily carry forth a progressive agenda as well as the dems.
The solution is so simple, yet impossible : America needs to dump the two parties, definitely at the higher levels, and probably at the mid and lower levels in order to really make it stick.
I think the "permanent campaign mode" is one of the bigger problems - along with unlimited money. Read recently there are laws/restrictions on this in Europe - perhaps others here can comment - but in the US, by now the next campaign starts the day after inauguration day (or sooner?) - and the bid for 2024 is perhaps already underway. This seems to me to favor those that can afford such a thing.
I would say those are the problems, along with others, like the fact that the American people are not truly represented by either party. Of course all these problems are interrelated and are integral components to a deeply embedded system. I see only two realistic strategies, either 1) to overtake the system from within by whatever means possible and make changes via the already existing mechanisms, which means dumping the two, or 2) complete state revolution.
Interestingly enough, since 2016, money has become less important. Because it is now so easy to reach an audience, it seems like the new currency has become attention rather than money.
Ballots can arrive in NC until Nov. 12. There are about 130k ballots which could theoretically be on their way, though it is almost certainly much fewer.
I should note, that in a large dataset it it's easy to cherry pick lot's of patterns and seem to "prove" something. Absent an actual statistician doing a proper analysis of the whole dataset, with criticism from other statisticians, one should not put any stock in random graphs on the internet. That is to say, it's completely uncertain if there even is any statistical evidence of this kind at the moment. I.e. such graphs seem like good evidence but maybe nothing.
However, even if there are deviations from Benford's law, it's good "evidence" only in these that it's relevant to look at, it is not evidence in the sense of offering definitive proof. A real statistical analysis may conclude the particular conditions of this particular election should not be expected to conform to Brenfords law.
Elections have lot's of variation in voter distribution and how votes are counted, and it is easy to contrive election models that won't follow Brenford's law. For instance, you could run an election by dividing people into groups of 2, and if they report a 0 if they vote differently, a 1 for both voting candidate A and a 2 for both voting candidate B, then these are all collected into a single list. Obviously, the numbers in this list would not follow a Brenford distribution from 1 to 9, as the list will only include 0, 1, and 3. Now, we may assume it will at least follow something analogous such as there being more 0's than 1's and 2's, more ties than consensus for one candidate, but this is also obviously easy to contrive a situation where this wouldn't hold, such as the election being a landslide for one candidate or then, even in a close nearly 50-50 race that supporters are extremely regional and paired regionally, in which case we expect very little ties and to mostly see 1 and 2 in our list.
We may think from this that "well, we can at least know what kind of distribution of digits to expect form what kind of election result", but this doesn't work because we don't know the election result ahead of time! The whole point of the election is that we need to run the election know what the result of an election is going to be. Therefore, we cannot simply compare the statistical distributions of digits or other data that appear in the election and compare it to our expected election result, because that's what we don't know! No mathematical theorem is possible along these lines. The best that can be done is to make an estimate based on polling, but this is far from some sort of mathematical proof. Furthermore, polling methods are calibrated against actual election results and so fraud over time will simply calibrate polling methods to take into account the fraud and therefore simply confirm a fraudulent election rather than provide a tool of election fraud.
To make matters worse, there is also no theorem that if a numerical statistical expectation actually does hold for one candidate in one election that it therefore must, whatever it is, hold for other candidates. If there was such a theorem, then it would be helpful in the event that one candidate deviated in statistical distribution of counts from the other candidates. The obvious such model difference relevant to the 2020 elections is a large quantity of mail-in ballots for one candidate than another. If the post office groups these ballots into the same or similar quantities (i.e. they are grouped into stacks and boxes of exact or similar quantity of ballots) and delivers them with some pattern (1 or 5 or 10 boxes at a time), this can radically change the numerical distribution of digits and other statistical effects. Obviously, do not read this to mean the post office does such a thing, only that there's potential for significant differences with statistics of in-person voting.
For completeness, we can easily generate a theorem that even if we prove some epxected numerical statistical distribution of an election given how votes are counted, it is trivial that it is possible to commit election fraud while respecting this distribution. Simply inverting all of the votes of Candidate A with candidate B will have the exact same statistical result. Of course, there maybe other significant problems with such a fraud strategy in that it will completely invert regions strongly supporting one candidate with astronomically high implausibility, even with all the limitations of polling science, nevertheless we know there can exist no theorem that reliably identifies election fraud based on digit distribution in itself.
Unfortunately, simply being able to contrive situations that violate some intuitive statistical expectation, doesn't mean the US election is such a situation that would deviate from Brenford's law or some analogous numerical pattern. It just means a lot of analytical work would be required to evaluate either way.
Bringing us to this terrible paper, "Benford’s Law and the Detection of Election Fraud", published in Cambridge Political Analysis, claiming Benford type analysis can simply be ignored in the case of elections; that this is a valid "inference" in their language.
On first reading I was completely shocked real mathematician's that actually exist could actually write such a paper, but as far as I can tell the authors are not mathematicians of any kind but social scientists, which the mathematical community has already prove are mathematically illiterate and nearly a majority of their statistical claims are erroneous (there's actually a paper about this). So, all is as it should be.
The mistakes the paper makes is first of all confounding the power of Brenfords law to detect election fraud if it exist with the the appearance of a Brenford law violation indicating election fraud. That competent fraudsters can potentially defeat Brenford's law is not the same as incompetent fraudsters being revealed by Brenford law violations.
Their "simulation" is simply a joke, which I can explain in more detail if that's the case.
What's great about shitty paper's is that they often conclude with "this paper is complete garbage and we haven't proven anyways anyways" since to get into academics one often either has enough competence to hedge one's bets and have the intuition that it's a good idea to, following a series of strong statements, admit maybe one has established absolutely nothing so that if one's called out by a comptetent analysis one can say "yep, that's why I said more research and analysis is needed at the end of the paper", or then is so weak intellectually that, even if the authors are convinced by their conclusion, that some advisor forces them to put in reasonable language that indicates they've accomplished nothing.
These passages are often comically obtuse, presumably due to an attempt to maintain some level of self-respect and hold the double belief of doing both good work and completely meaningless work at the same time.
In this case, the paper literally concludes:
The duopoly has found the perfect formula:
1) Nominate Presidential candidates "Bad" and "Even Worse"
2) A third party on the ballot will automatically mean that the "Even Worse" will win, and hence Americans won't dare to vote the third party or will be accused to be the reason why candidate "Even Worse" won.
3) Depict the House of Representatives and the Senate being meaningless and focus on the Presidency.
4) And of course, portray the "primary elections" as the way how people can influence the "democratic process" of choosing the President and not by creating new political parties, which would then battle the duopoly.
5) Discourage grass roots movements that would start competing at the municipal / city / state level with the duopoly.
Duopoly rules the US.
Quoting Stephen Colbert Reacts to Trump's Thursday Election Presser (NowThis News, 3m:3s youtube, Nov 2020)
Weird. Maybe some folk are just goners and Trump managed to herd them in?
Trump's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
[/quote]
I'm sure there'll be lots more strutting and fretting, sounds and fury. ;)
But still want Arizona/Nevada called, to be safe, and make any legal action pointless..
Breitbart is calling the call. They have been avoiding actually making any statements, instead letting the Trump team supply theirs.
The consequences of having been named "Michael". Even moreso if one's middle name is "Gabriel".
Baby, I'm no angel...
I just try my best to treat people with a certain modicum of respect and dignity upon first meeting them, was named by people like you who believe in angels and answered prayers.
...
The Orange Man fled across the desert and the Old Man followed.
Boris is shitting a brick because Biden told him if he fucks Ireland over, no trade deal. Needless to say, Donnie won't like that a bit.
When has Biden talked about Ireland to the UK Prime Minister?
About a month ago, he put out a statement telling the UK no trade deal if they renege on their part of the deal with the EU that relates to Ireland. The House did the same.
He'll go down kicking and screaming and insisting he won. Grace, class, style, decency, statesmanship, sincerity, honesty: all great qualities and he lacks every one. Surely the least suitable person ever elected president.
I'm waiting to see how he plans to find the 4 million votes he needs to rightfully win the popular vote too. In 2016 he set up a commission to find them. It was quietly wound down...
His present level of sophistication is reminiscent of an upset toddler
"I WON THIS ELECTION BY A LOT, AND JOE BIDEN IS MEAN!"
70,000,000+ votes were for DT. This was no watershed victory. Even if Biden & Harris had unbeatable Democrat majorities in the House and Senate, and a liberal Supreme Court, I doubt that anything remotely radical will be proposed. Contrary to Republican certainty, the Democrats are not an insurgent socialist party. Alas, but true.
Covid 19? A lot of people are sick of the disease (so to speak), and unwilling to abide sensible public health measures. Thanks to Trump, the infection got out of control. It will be very difficult to get people to cooperate in suppressing it.
The President, let us remember, is not in charge of the economy. Business is profit bound, and if environmental safety requires significant business losses, then the environment be damned. (Besides which, a lot of undoable damage has already been done.).
The American economy is not in good shape, when you consider the long-term divestment in public services, infrastructure, health, and so on. There has been a long-term decline in wealth among most Americans. Biden can not throw a switch to change all that. The fact is that reinvestment in public service, infrastructure, health, education, environment, renewable energy, distribution of wealth--the myriad needs--is a 30 to 50 year project, not a single or double presidentiad period of time.
Still, I'm glad Donald won't be occupying 1600 Pennsylvania much longer.
Why not? Let's. The last four years have been a dystopian nightmare of mendacity and mediocrity which has cast a pall over the whole world. The fact that a simpl,e decent guy can beat that by popular vote shows that Amnerica lives!
For me, it’s mostly a repeat of Obama. W was the worst president of my life by then, ruining things after the heydays of the Clinton 90s, and Obama’s election promised to make everything sunshine and rainbows again. But none of the W-era problems got fixed in 8 years, and only the smallest bone of progress got thrown our way with the ACA, and even that just barely.
It’s great to celebrate the end of Trump, but it’s wise to actually hold Biden’s feet to the fire and let him know that merely not being Trump is not good enough, he needs to get on with actually fixing things and fast — plus, as Crank says, there’s a lot of things that simply aren’t in his direct power to fix.
I expect that unless the Democrats actually do win control of the Senate - and it's still a possibiilty, athough slight - the GOP will continue as they did under Obama, to block, obstruct, frustrate, divide, undermine and deny.
But at least we'll be free from the liar in chief.
Not being Dubbya garnered Obama a Nobel prize...
Yeah, and that was dumb too.
As if no president except Trump has lied, and even acquired power by lying. :roll:
You people's political party is no more than a religious cult. Democrats lie. Republicans lie. Thinking one does it more than another is just a reflection of your indoctrination.
You may be right, but the issue isn’t necessarily the quantity of lies, but rather the harm, chaos, destruction, etc. that they cause. I think there is at least an argument to be made regarding whose lies have been worse. Also, doesn’t all thought reflect whatever system (political, philosophical, religious, cultural, etc.) the agent has bought into?
A lot of us Americans never doubted that America lives, even if the chief executive of the nation (along with a substantial following) was disgraceful. The President, no matter who he or she is, is not the nation. The Congress isn't the nation either. Neither are the courts or the military. I believe that this is true for all countries. Of course, that doesn't mean that "the people are all good". Sometimes the The People are mistaken, or a large share of them are.
I've been reading 1877: Our Year of Living Violently, by Michael Bellesiles (2010) about the election, presidency, and socio-economic-political events during Rutherfraud B. Hayes' presidency -- 1876-1880. It was a disaster for many people--many whites, but especially for blacks and native Americans. A lot of slimy stuff happened during that presidentiad. Roughly a century was required to undo the damage, though really, for most of those years there was very little effort towards change.
Republican obstruction during Obama's administration (and probably more of the same during this administration) will also take a long time to recover from.
Through the 1870s, through everything that happened since regardless of who was in office, there was a core decent America which has abided decade after decade. This isn't a rose-colored view of the past. Decent people, in any country including in the United States, are quite capable of at least tolerating bad things being done to which ever group is the underdog. No countries excepted.
yes perhaps I chose an overly blunt polemical expression but I thought there was a lot of truth in Mary Trump's warning that his re-election would have been the end of American democracy. And I'm more than aware of the decent core of Americans, I have near and dear relatives among 'em. Every time I've visited the US I've been vastly impressed by the civility and hospitality that I was shown.
Certainly another term would have enabled him to worsen the malignancies he found or started. Whether it would be the end of democracy, I don't know... Trump was unusually and crudely self-centered. Who knows what he might have done to satisfy his needs? CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases are among my biggest worries, and Trump just didn't seem to care about global warming. Pro or con, he just wasn't interested in it. Four more years of that would have been disaster plus. (Disaster plus might happen anyway.)
No, really, some people lie more than others. There is actually such a thing as counting a person's lies. And Trump has pushed the volume meter to levels which we couldn't imagine, even from the most dishonest politicians.
Oh just wait until Biden gets into office where they'll go from downplaying 200K deaths to complaining about a man's condiment preferences.
If the GOP hold the senate then that may just be impossible. The only things that could change are matters related to foreign policy since the president doesn't have to go through the courts or congress. Biden would get the US back to the Paris Accord and get a new Iran Nuclear Deal, but domestically? It all comes down to how Georgia's runoffs play really.
America's in a really dark place even if the Democrats have complete control so although the world is able to breathe a sigh of relief the Americans will continue to suffer.
Great analysis. The game really is fixed.
The Trump speech about having the election stolen from him was truly disgusting. It was a reckless attempt to incite his base to interfere with a fair election. It was a complete disregard for everything that makes America great, most fundamentally, that it is a democracy, subject to the rule of law.
The Biden victory speech was inspirational. I've got to think the contrast has caused many to reconsider.
Good riddance.
:clap:
In Europe, everyone is happy the cryptonazi lost. A title from the French press this morning:
Trump almost alone in his bunker
(Journal du Dimanche)
Absolutely. Trump is now saying he would accept a fair result, ie beginning to build himself a way to retreat. He has failed to rouse the rabble, partly because of Biden's statesmanlike patience and inclusiveness, partly too through there being no evidence. So all but the most bone-headed right-wingers are losing the anger needed to foment violence. I believe that's what Trump was counting on. Then amid the unrest he could talk about states of emergency, mobilising troops, suspending the democratic process, emergency powers etc. That's the classic way dictators firm their grip on power. It's heartening to see that the US's democratic roots run too deep for an unscrupulous scumbag like Trump to cut them.
People also conveniently lumped all the blame on Trump when we have various levels of govt. where our mayors and governers have much more control over your lives than the POTUS has and no one wants to point the finger at them too?
I haven't bought into any system. I'm an atheist and an independent voter. I'm not the one that is indoctrinated into some system here. Atheists that are registered Democrats have simply swapped one Big Brother (god) with another(govt). Atheists that are Republicans are just confused.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do vague platitudes count as lies or truths? Vague platitudes is the language of politicians and lawyers. When you learn how to twist words to mean almost anything, then you can always assert plausible deniability later.
All you have to do is watch any news station where they interview political pundits or strategists from both sides and observe how each side spins the truth.. Its a wonder any reporter worth their salt puts a microphone in front of any politicians face, as what comes out of their mouth is just flat out propaganda.
That had escaped my notice, thanks!
Interesting, first signs of Biden's foreign policy.
Agreed, that's most likely the script for the short term. For the longer term the GOP is in a death spiral.
America is in transition from being a European nation to a world nation. As the saying goes, we'll be a minority majority nation soon, more blacks and browns than whites. The Democrats get this and so we elected Obama, and now Harris. The GOP base is built upon a population which gets relatively smaller every day.
Had the GOP run Jeb Bush in the last election they might have been able to turn the death spiral around, as Jeb Bush is intelligent and gets all of this. He's married to a Hispanic too. But, that opportunity was squandered when the GOP sold it's soul to a con man.
Credit should be given here to Lyndon Johnson. He knew that by signing the civil rights bills of the sixties he was handing the American south to the Republicans, but by doing so he preserved the future of the Democratic Party and prepared it for the 21st century. Please recall, a century of horrors in the Jim Crow south was presided over by Democrats almost exclusively. Johnson liberated the Democratic Party from that shameful heritage.
If the GOP collapses in coming years the next thing to worry about will be further corruption with the Democratic Party in the absence of credible competition. The Dems held the House Of Representatives for decades, got too comfortable, and the whole thing got pretty slimy.
If this seems like a lot to worry about, don't sweat it, as the Yellowstone volcano is overdue for another explosion and once that happens the history of America will be effectively over. :-)
A Biden administration will enter into government with an even more tenuous majority in the House, a loaded right-wing judiciary, and an intransigent opposition securely ensconced within the “The House of the Undying” i.e. the Senate. This means any hope for progress on the movement’s priorities is dead in the water. Legislative failure will breed resentment (as it did under Obama). And because the left has, during the Trump years especially, become even more structurally, politically, and demographically wedded to the Democratic Party, we will (fairly or unfairly) have to answer for every mistake and insufficiency on behalf of our senior coalition partners.
The lesson the GOP is going to take from this election is that Trumpite politics can garner support from a near-majority of the electorate. Republicans can win larger margins with a fascist program than they will by running a moderate conservative (compare Trump's narrow loss to those of McCain and Romney). They have every reason to dive deeper into a morass of conspiracy theories, escalate the culture war, and encourage popular violence against the left. Further steps will be to try to consolidate and expand demographic inroads among communities of color, as well as doubling down on voter suppression tactics."
https://regenerationmag.org/among-the-ruins-of-victory/
I'm not convinced. The popularity of Trump was down to his being a political outsider - ie not the Republican party. His personal charisma - as witnessed by a successful TV career - is considerable, whatever we think of his politics he is great at communicating with the uneducated and fearful conservatives of rural USA. One thing I have learnt from this election is that Democrats usually do well in towns, Republicans in the isolated rural backwoods. Someone else can come along and mimic his policies, but its his personal appeal that makes people abandon sense and follow the rubbish he talks. I think his will be a hard act to follow.
The rightwing mediascape - i.e. the American mediascape - is a veritable training academy for Trump-talk, and has had ample time now to perfect the art. Shamelessness, narcissism, virtue signalling (that exemplary right-wing value), and saying-it-enough-times-that-it-becomes-true is a dime-a-dozen set of skills among a swathe of wannabe Trumps who have been watching and learning for the last four years. I agree that it's not policy that's the difference - Trump was a policy failure on multiple fronts - but that 'act' is far more available and pervasive than I think you give it credit for.
I imagine that some will capitalize on the momentum of a ‘stolen election’ and therefore never concede that it was fair.
Second, the failure of anathematization means that the politics most favored by the Democrats’ increasingly college-educated base, which focus on pointing out Trump’s grotesque racism and sexism, have utterly failed to resonate with huge sections of the electorate. Ironically, Donald Trump, who took the GOP’s famous “autopsy” report blaming their 2012 defeat on their hard-line immigration policies and spit on it, clearly consolidated an increased base among Latino voters, particularly in the key states of Texas and Florida. Moreover, exit polls, which may well be unreliable this year due to the extent of early voting, suggest that he also increased his standing slightly with black voters."
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/2020-election-biden-trump-democrats
Or: anyone who thinks that demographic change is going to 'shrink the GOP voter base' has another thing coming.
I'm not sure about this. Trump's attempt to go full tilt at this is largely falling on indifferent or deaf ears as his allies - with the exception of the utterly pathetic Giuliani - drop him like the rotten hot potato that he is. Short of some still-possible court shenanigans, the vibe is that people seem to be accepting the results for what they are. But maybe that's 'cause I don't follow Q or Breitbart or whatever close enough.
Generally speaking, America is made up of the folks who had the gumption to get off their ass, take a big risk, and leave other countries that were failing them. And so, generally speaking we are um, more energetic than Europeans, both for the better and the worse. When we fuck up, we go all the way, and do it right! :-) And if you don't believe me, I'll wave some guns around in your face to prove it.
Yes, votes for Trump are fundamentally a rejection of the status quo political class. The evidence for this is Bernie Sanders, who represents the same kind of rejection on the left. Two very different candidates with two very different policies, united by their ability to speak to a loss of faith in the status quo.
What's driving this at a most fundamental level is the accelerating development of knowledge, which is driving social change at a pace faster than our ability to adapt. For every steel worker who lost their middle class union job to globalization and automation there are 20 people thinking it might be them next, and it probably will be. Perhaps the only candidate in this election to intelligently address the underlying driver of the uncertainty contagion was Andrew Yang.
The reach for extreme remedies by the broad public is going to get worse because few to none of our cultural elites, not politicians, scientists, academics or philosophers etc have the slightest clue how to effectively respond to the accelerating development of knowledge and the destabilizing social change it generates.
The heart of the problem is that the accelerating development of knowledge is challenging us to look at ever more fundamental issues at an ever faster pace. And we're just not ready.
And so a person with a rare talent for projecting confidence comes along and offers us simple solutions like Make America Great Again, and we don't know what else to do or who else to trust, so we give it a try.
Quoting Tim3003
It's more complicated than that. The "uneducated and fearful" rural folks you speak of have correctly identified that the status quo political class is corrupt, and more importantly, incapable of dealing with the challenges of the 21st century. They are united with the educated and urban folks who have come to the same correct conclusion. Bernie Sanders is even more radical than Trump because, unlike Trump, he sincerely believes in his prescriptions. Bernie Sanders would be a far bigger gamble than Trump, who has left the country largely unchanged.
Furthermore, while I'm ranting, the insistence of SO MANY liberals on insulting rural and working class Americans is an act of pure stupidity. Nothing that we liberals care about will ever be achievable and durable without bringing a great many of the red states folks on board. So long as insult based polarization persists then anything we might achieve will simply be reversed the next time the political pendulum swings.
We don't win until we make some kind of peace with all those red states you see spread across the heart of America.
OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG!
Quoting Tim3003
I have been checking Fox and Breitbart in the past days. It looks like the large GOP donors have decided to let this one go, and not take up the opportunity. Perhaps it's because of the senate runoffs, or perhaps because they have gotten all they need out of Trump. This does not look like a failure to incite action. It looks like they aren't trying.
Quoting Hippyhead
Not merely of the political class. It's part of the wider populist movement that decides societies into "the elites" and "the people".
Quoting Hippyhead
I'm not convinced we're simply not able to cope. Rather, we just did not cultivate the right culture (including political culture) to deal with change. The "West" has almost entirely lost it's vision for the future. We're all focused on managing the status quo with as few bumps as possible.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664?s=20[/tweet]
Now that he lost by a small margin the ‘stolen election’ propaganda will be potent with Trumpians.
I watched some of the 2016 presidential debates, I don't know how Jeb looks up close, but from afar, he came across as a kindly suburban accountant type, devoid of anything resembling charisma, originality or wit. Unfortunately, perhaps.
Quoting praxis
there is no 'Trumpism'. To create an -ism of any kind, even facism, you need principles. Trump has no principles, only wants and impulses, which he executes spontaneously, as they come to mind. He himself says this! He was asked once how he plans his day, he said 'I don't, I just see what happens'. How many times did we hear that from him in the last four years? 'Let's see what happens'. If Trump had written a Mein Kampf it'd be a different story. Trump is entirely a creation of the media, he only really lives on a TV screen, and there's no real identity hiding behind the mask.
I'm not sure what you mean by this 'accelerated development of knowledge'. Technological progress? I agree with the sentiment, but in its place I'd claim globalisation is the driver. The established political classes really have no answer to the perils of globalisation for the blue-collar worker. If markets globalise jobs will migrate to whichever country can pay its workers least to produce the goods. This is the cause of the fear and growing xenophobia which manifests in working class voters. Trump's nationalism plays to this audience perfectly. Yes mainstream politicians have no answers, but in what ways are they corrupt?
Personally I think Biden may have hit a goldmine in pledging $2 trillion to fight global warming. This will mean jobs which cannot go overseas. Or are you going to import 10000 Chinese roofers to insulate houses? It should also allay some of the fears about oil/coal/gas jobs disappearing.
Quoting Hippyhead
This insulting by the liberals like me is not what it may seem: nothing much can be done about human ignorance and emotionalism, so insults are pointless. The insult is aimed at the cynics like Trump who deliberately set out to exploit that ignorance and its consequent fear for their own ends. I'm not American, but the situation is just the same in the UK, where Boris Johnson has committed the same dirty deeds to get Brexit voted through, so I do understand how it works. As I said above, Biden seems to me to be making all the right noises so far to allay fears of job losses. I'm guessing that most of the fear of immigrants coming into the US is jobs based. Unlike the UK you have plenty of room to build to house incomers.
Trump surely doesn't have an ideology, but the reason he was elected in the first place isn't a mystery. Call it simply populism: be for the ordinary people against the ruling elite. A deviation from the ordinary, what Trump presented, was enough to get the Republican candidacy and finally the elections. Once, with close race the second time.
There would be a huge demand for someone that a) goes against the ruling elites, b) would fight political corruption, c) go with protectionist trade policies and d) change mainstream US foreign policy. These issues mentioned could be followed by both leftist and right-wing populists. Then add doing something for the people in "fly over" country and their jobs, it's all there for anyone to take the torch from Trump. If you are a right-wing, add there the law & order scheme. If on the left, add a spice of criticism to the robber-baron capitalism and then there's the torch from Bernie.
I think Trump was a President his supporters simply believed to be more than he was.
Used him for the tool that he is.
Vague platitudes are neither truths nor lies. But some people speak intentional lies, and Trump does it all the time. That's what sets him apart from other politicians. You cannot characterize what he says as "spinning the truth" because he speaks in outright lies.
What's driving globalization (and automation) is the development of knowledge. Globalization and social insecurity are symptoms of the knowledge explosion. The faster we develop new knowledge, the faster society changes, and thus the less secure people can be in their situation, leading to political instability.
Yes, Jeb Bush does have a significant charisma deficit, agreed. I would describe him as a competent technocrat. Conservative, but reasonable and intelligent. None of the Bushes would have anything to do with Trump.
What we fail to grasp about the knowledge explosion is that it feeds back upon itself, resulting in an accelerating process of change.
Yes, everyone will claim they know this already, but we don't think through the implications of what 'accelerating' really means. Accelerating means faster and faster. So if social change is unfolding at 80mph now, that will become 100mph, which will become 150mph, which will become 200mph etc. Accelerating means that the shift from 100mph to 200mph may happen faster than the shift from 50mph to 100mph.
A notion that we will be able to successfully manage this process requires the assumption that human beings will be able to also change at an ever accelerating pace. That's not a credible assumption.
If you plot an ever accelerating growth of knowledge (and thus social change) against the (at best) incremental growth of human maturity you will see these lines diverging at an ever faster pace. We are ever more like the 10 year old boy who has been handed a case of booze, a loaded handgun and the keys to the car.
Thousands of hydrogen bombs, which bore us. Does that sound like coping to you?
Yes, Jeb is much like his father. Decent guy, competent at governing, but not such a great candidate. Anyway, the Bushes are over, so it doesn't really matter at this point.
:rofl:
Post-truth bullshit.
If it isn't the truth, then its a lie.
You're not interested in the truth, only your ideology. But then, like I said, ethical/political truths are subjective. 71 million people thought Biden was more dangerous than Trump.
I was once Christian. But I began to question my beliefs. I actually had the humility in my late teens to consider that what I believed was wrong. I questioned my beliefs and eventually did a 180. I did something similar with my politics.
The problem today is that everyone thinks they are right and are unwilling to accept the possibility of being wrong. People are too emotionally invested in their political and religious beliefs.
It's called The Cult of Personality. People voted for him because they trusted him as one of their own. In the UK Nigel Farrage had the same appeal. He too came from outside the political establishment. Once Farrage left UKIP it floundered under several leaders. It is not as easy to replace these populist icons as it may appear. It's them, not their policies that voters trust.
I don't really buy the personality cult angle. Trump, Farrage, Bolsonaro, those are all not people known for their personal virtue, even among their supporters.
Quite to the contrary, their lack of virtue is often considered an argument in their favor, as they serve as conduits for the anger of their supporters. It's not who they are as people - it's what they stand for as figureheads. That's one reason why the obsession with Trump's personal failings on the part of the media and the left failed to have any impact.
The followers of populists actually care for the policy, not the person. They care so much about the policy that they're willing to put up with anyone who gets them closer to that goal. They'll go so far as to hail them heroes for channelling their anger and frustration.
The focus on simplified policy questions over "old fashioned" concern with the personal ability of the candidate to do their job is what has paved the way for populism.
Sorry but I can't agree with that. The followers of populists follow the person as much as the policy. It's been said many times that Trump was policy-lite. His basic stance was of simplistic anti-immigration anti-leftie anti-foreigners tropes that anyone could understand. His rise was echoed by Farrage in the UK. When he left UKIP and politics altogether it collapsed. At the last election he returned and formed the Brexit Party, which stood in the election with no policies at all, except to achieve Brexit. Millions voted for him. The idea of Brexit was agreed to by many others, but only Farrage was liked and trusted enough to get the poll ratings. (His party ended up being irrelevant because Boris Johnson removed any point in voting for him by copying his Brexiteer stance.) Populists appeal to voters who are bamboozled by the complexity of policy, and they keep it in simple primary colours. They are usually political outsiders - as the voters believe themselves to be. These voters will probably not vote at all but just moan about politicians in general until a charmismatic figure comes along to galvanise and organise them.
Where was Trumpism before Trump? His right-wing views were (probably secretly) held by many, but only when he came along as the new Messiah who spoke their black-and-white language did voters wake up and flock to him.
It might be helpful to think of Trump as the lead singer in a rock band. Think Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, almost the inventors of modern white rock n roll. Jagger's job is to channel the egos of the audience. Recall Jagger strutting around the stage and the faces he makes etc, all pure expressions of ego. The egos of we the audience have been beaten in to submission by centuries of social pressure. But our ego is still very much there and Jagger's job is to give it's real nature a public expression. We applaud wildly upon seeing our true self in the spotlight up upon the stage.
Channeling the egos of thousands of fans or millions of followers is a very heavy drug for the performer too. Jagger seems too smart to have been sucked in to actually believing the ego story he is weaving, but many performers do get sucked in and in one way or another overdose on all the ego energy they are channeling. They drink themselves to death, dope themselves to death, blow their brains out with a shotgun etc.
This is probably what's happening to Trump. Like many of us here on this forum, he's quite intelligent and very clever, but emotionally unsophisticated. And so when thousands of total strangers go wild for him at his rallies, he buys in to it, he takes the bait and believes the story. The first job of any successful salesman is to sell themselves to themselves.
At first I thought all this business about the election being rigged was just another one of Trump's games. Now I'm thinking he's probably having an ego meltdown, while his family works quietly behind the scenes trying to bring him back down to Earth. The concert's over, the lights came up, and everyone is leaving the auditorium, but Trump can still hear Keith Richards grinding the groove behind him, and he's just not quite ready to stop strutting.
I can't get no...
Fake news action!!!
No, no, no!
Policy-lite is still policy. That everyone can understand it makes it more likely that it was the reason for the success.
Quoting Tim3003
There is an alternative interpretation for the chain of events, which is that UKIP was elected by people wanting Brexit (=policy), and once that was achieved, support collapsed. Farrage, knowing this would happen, conveniently left beforehand.
So this doesn't strike me as strong evidence for personality being the deciding factor.
Quoting Tim3003
Yes. But in doing so, they actually get people to care about the policy. It doesn't stop being a policy issue because it's simplified and sensationalised. The fears they play on are real.
Quoting Tim3003
What all the populists have in common is that they call for radical change, and usually change along some simplistic model of the world.
Trumpism before Trump was Obama's "hope and change". Obama was undoubtedly more charismatic than Trump, but that did not allow him to make a lasting change to his support base. Trump just offers his supporters what they always wanted: simple, easy to understand solutions that validate their existing views, especially their fears. Politics in the US and Europe has trended towards this outcome more generally. In that sense, Trumpism is another step in the populist trend both US parties, as well as many European political parties, are in.
I don't see how you can equate anything Obama believed with Trump's world-view.
I think populists don't call for change. Just the reverse. They surf the wave of the conservative's fear of change. Brexit was not a change but a reaction to the changing nature of the EU, a wish to hold on to a notion of Britain from the past, before immigration and those Brussels burocrats started trying to control our green and pleasant land. That's why the retirement age voters went for it and the young did not.
In the same way Trump didn't call for change either, just a reversion to an America-first view that would have been the only show in town a few decades ago. It's the fear of change, and especially that threatened by globalism and climate change, that populists thrive on. Their supporters are usually those with so little imagination they can easily bury their heads in the sand instead of considering the effects of their wall-building. The word 'conservative' isn't used for no reason..
Quoting Echarmion
UKIP support collapsed as soon as Farrage left it, which was well before the Brexit deal was signed. There was however a Brexit supporting govt by then so he thought his fight was won. When Teresa May failed to get her deal through parliament he realised it might not be, so at the election the in-coming Boris was forced to call he formed the Brexit party to keep Boris honest. Voters flocked to Farrage and not to UKIP, which still existed.
I said this back on Page 50. :wink:
Not always. Even if you just look at potential for harm, their are clearly some lies that are worse than others. Lying about ones merits vs. lying about how wearing masks save lives, for example.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I assume you’ve lived for some substantial amount of time, yet you’ve somehow remained untouched by the education system or culture you were brought up in? You’re also painting very broad strokes, as if atheists and democrats can only be one thing.
It's contrary to a deeply ideological movements, for example libertarianism or the green movement, where many people can feel sympathy for the cause and the ideology, but have problems with odd leaders with the movement.
Interesting that you use the word "bullshit" here when denying that the philosophical sense of 'bullshit' exists. TL;DR: a lie presumes you know and care that what you're saying is not true: you're trying to hide what is true behind a falsehood. Bullshitting is when you don't care (and so might not even know) whether what you're saying is true: if it is, how fortunate, but if not, no problem. They're different kinds of dishonesty.
You are missing out on the best part of life if you think that everything spoken must either be the truth or a lie. You might also be missing out on the worst part of life, as well. Conclusion: your life must be very boring. What if I said to you: "Let's go run away together", how would you class this as truth or falsity? How would you class a question? How would you class rhetoric? How would you class diplomacy? I'm sorry to have to shatter your illusion Harry, but human relationships are not discussed in terms of truth and falsity.
Quoting tim wood
Come on Tim, you know that deep down you really love me and agree with everything I say, as all lovers always agree on everything.
I see this a bit in Fox (though they still provide a platform for the fraud narrative, just hedge their bets both ways).
But Breitbart as of right now has the following front page headlines:
"""
CNN’S JAKE TAPPER WROTE BOOK CLAIMING BUSH PLOTTED TO ‘STEAL THE PRESIDENCY’ IN 2000
POLL: 70% OF REPUBLICANS SAY 2020 ELECTION WAS NEITHER FREE, NOR FAIR
AG BARR AUTHORIZES DOJ TO LOOK INTO VOTING IRREGULARITIES
RICHARD PILGER, LINKED TO IRS SCANDAL, RESIGNS DOJ POST OVER VOTER FRAUD MEMO
JOEL B. POLLAK
MOST OF BIDEN’S NET GAIN IN GA FROM 3 ZUCKERBERG FUNDED COUNTIES
Chip Roy Calls for Recount, Audit, and Full Review
‘Fewer than 100,000 Votes’ Separate Key Swing States
Ex-Michigan Dept AG Alleges Detroit Counters Assigned Fraudulent Ballots to Non-Voters
Graham to Urge McConnell to Probe Mail-In Voting
"""
Although it seems no one in the Trump team came up with the correct legal strategy that went along with their rhetoric of the last months: which would be to prepare filing motions to "stop mail-in vote counting" pending the Supreme court ruling on the legality of same-day mail-in ballots (which the SCOTUS had teased is "probably not ok" but they would only rule if it became relevant). The argument to go along with this is that it's "unfair to a candidate" to have votes counted that might not qualify. Had the vote counting been paused when Trump was still ahead, it would have fully mobilized his base and lent an "air of inevitability" to the SCOTUS handing him the election.
Apparently they simply never prepared this legal strategy even though an aid did understand it and tried to explain to Trump that calling for the vote to simply stop being counted would guarantee losing the election, whereas focusing on fraud and illegal votes and the count must be stopped pending making sure all votes counted are legal would have an actual chance.
It seems one consequence of anti-intellectualism is that your team (and yourself) are a fumbling bunch of complete morons. I imagine Trump saw on Foxnews that his administration had a "legal strategy and lawyers ready to go" and said to himself "great, I have a legal strategy and lawyers ready to go, that's taken care of, I'm amazing".
Be that as it may, the narrative that the election was stolen from Trump is essential to maintain "tribe unity" and for the base to come out with a vengeance in the next mid-terms.
It can't be stressed enough that Biden only looks good compared to Trump, once Trump is in the background all the Biden legitimate as well as insane delusional based criticism will ramp up to a thousand. The Hunter Biden stuff will return, and it definitely isn't something you want your leader to have as a weakness. If Fauci was running some sort of conspiracy working for Trump, how much more of a conspiracy will he be running working for Biden.
One can also note that corporate censorship has been fully normalized in this election cycle and will continue. However, in opposition the right will adapt to this and built their networks outside corporate control, whereas the average Democrat will happily be lulled back to sleep by the "liberal media" and not worry too much if "extreme" progressive voices have been suppressed in algorithms fighting "fake news".
The "liberal media" has, overnight, returned to what politicians are wearing as big news worthy of analysis. European leaders are lining up to bend the knee as predicted and "European influence" will return to being largely just about smiling and shaking hands with the US president.
From a progressive point of view, I would say the election is a disaster, the victory of the center this time will fuel even farther right victories down the road.
There is a chance that Democrats take the senate and then are essentially forced to pass progressive legislation to manage the pandemic, so maybe this happens; but it seems more likely Republicans will maintain the senate and ensure failure of weak centrist policies that aim for a "republican compromise" and then are negotiated down from there.
Likewise, the dominant Republican SCOTUS will thwart, in any case, any progressive legislation that passes or executive actions, if they threaten one dollar of corporate bottom lines. Biden's talk of appointing more SCOTUS judges is of course just talk and a GOP senate won't let that happen anyways, and even a Dem senate would likely "restore norms" and be completely beholden to the filibuster
Of course, Trump would have been a complete and unmitigated disaster for US citizens (as he has already been), but the collapse of US influence abroad may have breathed fresh air into global politics, in particular European. It's possible Trump has done "enough damage" for this momentum to continue, but I have my doubts. A Biden administration will bring back a somewhat coherent militarism, completely entrench large corporate gains of the pandemic, continue the US climate policy of pretending to negotiate to ensure no one else comes up with an effective and binding policy with a cost on non-signatories in the form of carbon tariffs, and so on.
In short, this election has strengthened the far right ideological bubble, while completely arresting the momentum of the progressive movement, and will bring back a tepid and meaningless policy framework that will be ineffective in solving any actual problems within the US or that we face globally. Biden will take the blame for the un-going crisis of the pandemic, and the next crisis in the pipes, be it financial, environmental, a novel Covid that restarts the pandemic, or otherwise. If a "competent Trump" arises (one who proposes a coherent ideology, inspires a truly loyal cadre of close bureaucrats at the top and brown shirts at the bottom, and has a grasp of the cogs of government), such a figure will easily defeat Biden, older and even less coherent and with all the same weaknesses as today, in 4 years time.
Yep.
"Liberals" seem to believe that the right has lost and therefore learned something and have collectively come back to (the "liberal") reality, and yet nothing could be farther from the truth. It's so painful to watch.
Liberals, who are political illiterates, will indeed reckon - are reckoning, all over the place - that Trump's defeat equate to a defeat of the right. 4 years from now they will be wondering aghast at just how anyone could possibly vote for whichever new demagogue emerges to fill the void of Trump's absence. Still, my God, it'll be good to see the back of that fat, warbling fuck.
He offered something new and, in it's own way, radical.
Quoting Tim3003
I think you misunderstand how right wing populism works. Yes, it is backwards-looking, but it's not conservative in the usual sense. Right wing populists like Trump, Johnson et al did not promise to keep things stable. They promised a return to the natural state of (national / racial) superiority by smashing the "establishment", which purportedly maintains an artificial, unnatural state. They want change, but change toward some ideal version of the past.
Quoting Tim3003
But Trump's version of America first has no roots in recent history. America has been a global power since world war 2. You'd have to go back to the interwar period to find a similar isolationist tendency.
Quoting Tim3003
And is your position that, has Farrage not returned, there would have been much less support for the Brexit party?
Quoting boethius
Yeah they seem to be gearing up now. Perhaps there was some confusion over what their position would be, or perhaps they always planned to rev the machine up slowly so they'd be able to react to events.
Which of the two do you want in control of America's nuclear weapons? It's amazing to me that all the oh so very clever analysts here and elsewhere can't seem to stay focused on the biggest threat to modern civilization for more than 10 seconds. Biden too, same thing, barely a mention.
Yes, yes, I know, I know, you feel Biden is a baby killing war criminal with blood dripping from his satanic fangs etc etc blah, blah, blah. But he didn't just fire the Sec of Defense for no rational reason at a time of maximum vulnerability. Biden may be highly objectionable to leftie progressives, ok, but no one is questioning Biden's sanity.
Boring Biden is just what the country needs right now, not more hysterical screaming by the extremist "one true way" partisans on all sides.
We were talking about politicians. They don't ask questions. The reporters do. Politicians make assertions. If you aren't telling the truth or a lie then you aren't saying anything. You're just making noises with your mouth. So it seems to me that believing in the existence of statements that are neither truth or lies would be the boring life.
Asking a question asserts the truth or falsity that you are ignorant of the answer to the question, or else why ask it, unless you are lying about, or feigning your ignorance?
And if politicians aren't telling the truth or a lie and people believe that what they are saying is either or, then the politician is fooling their listeners, which equates to lying.
Now that's a good example of a lie. Or is it the truth?
IOW they’re radical regressives.
Official who once called Obama a 'terrorist leader' takes over Pentagon policy
The departure of James Anderson, acting undersecretary of defense for policy, potentially paves the way for Anthony Tata to take over the policy shop.
By LARA SELIGMAN and DANIEL LIPPMAN
11/10/2020 10:34 AM EST
Anthony Tata, a retired brigadier general whose nomination for a top Pentagon job collapsed this summer due to Islamophobic tweets and other controversial statements, began overseeing policy for the Defense Department on Tuesday.
The move is part of a high-level civilian leadership shakeup that began on Monday when President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/10/pentagon-top-policy-official-resigns-435693
It's definitely not the case that foisting Biden ahead of Bernie as the DNC nominee replaced genuine enthusiasm with status quo fan-fare...
...
Still trying to wrap my head around the logic...
Corporate America sabotages the left for financial gain, nearly costs them the election, and then starts blaming the left... for financial gain...
Yay Schumer! Yay Pelosi!
Hopefully the dems won't get the senate, so that no matter how criminally the radical socialists and their base rant and rave, Biden won't have to do a damn thing!
Corporate America will just go further off shore than they already are if leftism gains too much. This isnt freaking 1917 where the left has any kind of substantial leverage. You just eat those crumbs and be damn thankful they fell off the table onto the floor where you could get them.
If you think life would be better without them, just move to Canada and learn to hunt moose and such.
Nope. What is going on is a Trump tantrum. A coup isn't when the executive uses his power to dismiss people that he can dismiss.
Besides, last chances that Trump can fire people!
Echoing President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he would be the winner if only “legal votes” were counted, Pompeo said “I’m very confident that we will count, and we must count, every legal vote, we must make sure that any vote that was not lawful ought not be counted, that dilutes your vote if it’s done improperly, gotta get that right. When we get it right, we’ll get it right.”
It looks like those guys are preparing a coup.
Then when they say that after investigations that there has been widespread fraud etc and they won't admit that Biden vote, only then you are going into the true political crisis/civil war territory. Or when you have two competing administrations in January 20th.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1326284822982123520[/tweet]
Fuck Biden.
:100: :shade:
In other words, they are preparing a coup...
He's up to something, he's replaced most of the civilian leadership in the pentagon in the last 24 hrs. There are lots of rumours going around, my preference is to trigger emergency powers due to civil disobedience, insurgence, or war. So that he can claim that the transfer of powers is postponed indefinitely.
Notice the word when.
Likely what is happening is that the Republicans are dealing with sore loser that may in his tantrum break up the party even worse. First it should be understood that:
1) ALL Trump administration officials will not admit the loss now when that would be to directly challenge their own boss and lead them going the way of Mark Esper and others.
2) Similarly only few Republicans like Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse or Susan Collins , that basically are already against the President, have admitted the obvious that Biden won. Others fear the backlash from Trump and the especially the Trump crowd. Remember still that the elections was a close call, not a humiliating defeat for Trump. And the focus is still on the Senate race.
3) All this leads to a situation where the Republicans appease Trump and put on this show, because just what you say is enough. For example the Barr memo on election fraud is quite lame, as usual.
4) The media will of course make the situation more dramatic.
But let's think of this situation that Trump would be truly thinking staging a coup:
Quoting Punshhh
Well, Trump can fire his administration officials as much as he wants, it's a bit different with the actual armed forces. Let's just remember that TRUMP UTTERLY FAILED in using active army units to quell the rioting in the summer. They weren't used. The now fired Mark Esper was against it and especially also the top military leaders were against it. Troops from the 82nd Airborne were withdrawn from the Capital and Trump had to rely on a hodgepodge of various services, including the prison service. And let's remember that then it wouldn't have been so outrageous action as there's many case of actually the US President using active army, starting from Eisenhower. Hence when we already have an example how Trump fails in these issues, it's unrealistic that now as a lame duck Trump would be able to get the military to do something totally unheard of.
Trump is no Putin.
And that's why he was fired, to give way to people who will not object.
Quoting ssu
Maybe Putin is doing the thinking...
I think an actual military coup is pretty unlikely. Such an operation would be far too likely to turn off large swathes of the population.
If overt moves are made, it'll be interfering with the electoral college to cause a gridlock on the road to inauguration. Then the Trump administration may try to simply stay in office since no new president was constitutionally elected.
Since there are scenarios where the US Constitution just fails, this might cause enough confusion among the military and police forces to allow Trump to avoid being removed. He can then use the inevitable riots as an excuse to deploy the police and perhaps the military.
That's not necessarily what Trump and / or the GOP want though. This might all just be posturing to keep the "stolen election" alive for the next 4 years, in order to gain another fully GOP controlled Congress & presidency. Then the real power grab might happen.
Trump wants to stay in power, by whatever means. He is not posturing. He is doing it.
He doesn't stand much of a chance without the support of the GOP establishment. You can't just order a military coup in an established democracy. Without some kind of legitimate claim, such orders would simply be ignored by the rank and file.
He's got that covered. As soon as they start to see that he could possibly pull it off, dozens of Republicans will flock by his side. Keep in mind that there's much money to be made in selling off a democracy.
Quoting Echarmion
The way it's done in Africa, all you need is a few battalions backing you up. You don't need the entire army t make a coup.
...Obama’s attempt to reconcile irreconcilable forces, to paper over the chasms, arguably gave Donald Trump his opening. Rather than confronting the banks whose reckless greed had caused the financial crisis, he allowed his Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, to “foam the runway” for them by allowing 10 million families to lose their homes. His justice department and the attorney general blocked efforts to pursue apparent wrongdoing by the financiers. He pressed for trade agreements that would erode workers’ rights and environmental standards, and presided over the widening of inequality and the concentration of wealth, casualisation of labour and record mergers and acquisitions. [i.e. Fuck Obama - SX]"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/11/us-trump-biden-president-elect
King Monbiot.
In many African countries the entire army is a few battalions.
Also what is needed a) poor government, b) lacking and nonexistent institutions, c) a history of military coups and d) active or passive support from at least a portion of the people for a military overthrow.
Besides, the US armed forces don't just slavishly turn up and obey the whims of an erratic President. As I stated earlier, they already turned down Trump's call to put down riots in the summer. That should be a point here to remember. Trump called for the military and the military didn't come. Only the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff walked around the White House. As a military based on a voluntary force, the last thing they want to do is to tarnish their positive reputation with jumping on the runaway Trump trainwreck.
What is likely is just a huge crescendo of utter cacophony and craziness to the Trump administration. Trump won't admit defeat and the outcome is simply that the transition is very clumsy and the US won't focus on World events for a while. That is what is going to happen.
The show will be a spectacle, likely. Before Trump will come up with the idea to run in 2024, he will adamantly refuse the win. Maybe he will put on a shadow government (the REAL administration) at worst. Yet somehow I feel the country won't separate even in that case.
You got a) and d). Trump has got more than passive support, he's got 70 million votes and a host of extreme right militia armed to the teeth, and biding for their time. As for b) the US electoral system is very weak and open to abuse; and for c) a history of military coups, there's always a first time.
And that's what the plutocrats want. Divide et impera.
Well, just don't confuse those 70 million votes to all being QAnon believers. Or do you think that all Biden voters believe that Trump is the new Hitler?
I still believe that the many Americans believe in their Republic can get over an election. And that's what counts.
I agree many Americans still believe it. They even believe that what Trump is now evidently trying to do is impossible to achieve, that the Republic cannot fall, that this is the kind of things that happens elsewhere but not in the USA.
We are about to find out if this trust is well placed. I hope they are right, to be clear.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It depends upon your explanation of what makes a noise or scribble a word, rather than just a noise or scribble.
There is a way to make sure there aren't any more Republican president's without a Civil War. That would be to abolish all political parties, including Democrats.
If you look at right wing media, they're more or less openly discussing the strategy.
Deligitimize the result in key states, prevent them from certifying their results in time or, if republican controlled, send in competing electors, then vote Trump in via the house.
Trump is then in a position to use the police and military to quell the inevitable massive unrest.
But it'd be a huge gamble, and massively destabilising to the country. So again they might not do anything other than sow doubts this time around.
No, Hitler didn't play several rounds of golf while staging a coup. Say what you like about the Fuhrer, he made an effort.
We can all agree that the last thing you mentioned the Republicans are indeed doing.
It's one thing that Trump will never give that concession speech to Biden. Another thing that he will go on with a coup and it being successful. The Trumpists do need the "smoking gun" for election fraud, Trump tweeting of huge election fraud isn't enough.
Of course the possibility of the worst outcome is there, even if it's unlikely. I still think the most likeliest issue is a Trumpian mess, the biggest one, lots of confusion and some rioting between the most devoted Trump supporters and the most devoted haters of him. Luckily most of this activity happens online, not on the streets.
Quoting Olivier5
I urge people not to lose faith on your fellow citizens. Even if they can be annoying at times.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yep. He had a mission which he clearly stated.
What Trump wants is his devoted fans, media limelight and income after his term. What he lacks is dedication and firm determination to truly go full dictator and stage a coup. Because then he would have to do more than bitch and tweet. Just look at the wall, btw. Was it finished?
While the government is divided between those who openly back the exploiters, oppressors, kleptocrats, and oligarchs, and those who at least give lip service to the oppressed and exploited — and the people are divided between who supports one of those sides or the other — the people in general are not divided into oppressors and and oppressed: they are almost all oppressed.
Winning the confidence of the poor struggling white men etc who make up Trump’s base is important to do, just so long as it isn’t done by conceding to the rich white men in the Republican party who are exploiting them and everyone else.
Sounds exactly like what the Dems would be doing if the roles were reversed. Just like the Supreme Court vacancy fiascos at the end if the Obama and Trump administrations where the Reps and Dems reversed roles, one claiming we should wait until after the election while the other said that the president gets to select a new judge.
Its so predictable what each side will do and say in every situation that it has become boring. And the contradictions are such that neither side actually says or does anything different. You all are just a gaggle of automatons that keep voting for same BS. There is no difference between Reps and Dems when they both adopt the others position when the roles are reversed. The fact that you all are unable, or unwilling, to see it just exposes how insignificant the truth actually is to you.
We just might have the same situation in 4 years with the roles reversed and then the democrats are going to be doing the same thing as the republicans are doing right now while conveniently forgetting everything that they said four years prior.
The difference is that here, the Republicans could possibly pull it out and keep the White House.
Should any of this lead to riots, another difference is that Trump can rely on thousands of neo-Nazi sympathizers to unleash hell onto peaceful demonstrators. These violent cretins have had wet dreams for years about the Day of the Rope. Yes their dream is to hang all people of color, all white women who ever had biracial sex, as well as all politicians, journalists and intellectuals.
These guys are planning a “Million MAGA March” to “Stop the Steal” this coming Saturday in Washington DC. Let's see how many show up.
The problem with the SC vacancies issue is hypocrisy on the part of the Republicans. Normal procedure was that when a justice dies the president appoints a new one modulo Senate confirmation. With the late vacancy under Obama the Republican-controlled Senate flatly refused to even consider any confirmation, on the grounds that it was "too close to the election". It was bad enough to break with normal procedure to do that, but with that new precedent established, they should then have done the same with the late vacancy under Trump, and Democrats calling for them to stick to the new procedure that the Republicans just established four years earlier is not hypocritical with the Democrats' earlier opposition to establishing that new procedure. Both times, the Democrats were saying "don't break established procedure just to benefit yourselves". But the Republicans did break the procedure, once in one direction and then later in the opposite direction, contradicting their own earlier arguments, for their own benefits. THAT is hypocrisy.
I'm not going to defend the Democrats as any kind of paragons of virtue, both parties are FUBAR, but that doesn't mean they're both equally bad. "They're all equally bad, there is no difference" is just a lazy way of avoiding having to figure out which is better or worse, every bit as lazy as "my position is right because it just is because it's mine now shut up you're a bad wrong person".
(Hey look, it's my principles against "nihilism" and "fideism" showing up in an unexpected place, again).
Bolds added.
https://www.cisa.gov/news/2020/11/12/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election
tl;dr. "Fuck Trump".
Unfortunately two party politics are pretty much inevitable in a first past the post system of voting. Gotta switch to something like alternative vote, ranked choice, proportial representation, etc. if you want more than two parties.
This is a great example of how emotions cloud your judgment, and the power propaganda has on weak minds.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The Dems made the exact same argument when Trump had a vacancy to fill. The only difference was that the Reps had control of the Senate. So it seems clear to me that had the Dems had control of the Senate they would have flatly refused to consider any confirmation.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Thats not the argument they made. The precedent is in the Constitution. It says, "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Although the Constitution establishes the Supreme Court, it permits Congress to decide how to organize it.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The only problem is that I'm not a nihilist nor do I adopt fideism, nor does anything I've said support such ideas, so your experiencing your delusions of grandeur again.
Your problem is that you think there are only two choices. Those that can only think in black and white terms are the lazy thinkers.
I'm not really advocating for more than two parties, although that might be better than what we have now. I'm saying that we should abolish political parties altogether.
I never said it would be easy. I was thinking more of like a run-off. We would replace the primaries with a preliminary election to eliminate most of the candidates so that in the final election there are only two or three candidates.
I suppose Timothy Mcveigh was a weak mind, then. Or perhaps his victims?
The difference is that the Reps had already established a principle about “too close to the election” that had denied the Dems their rightful appointment, so the Reps then denying their own principle was a naked power grab.
You have to consider the two events together. If the Dems had been that hypocritical I would be just as critical of them, but I really don’t think they would have been, since Dems are all about the process and civility and compromise even when the Reps are making naked power grabs in response. (That’s a criticism of the Dems there, BTW; I think that’s a weakness, you don’t respond to cheaters by playing extra fair yourself).
Quoting Harry Hindu
I put those terms in scare quotes for a reason. “They’re all equally bad” applied to opinions generally rather than political parties is the “nihilism” I’m against, and “mine is right because it just is” applied to opinions generally rather than political parties is the “fideism” I’m against. I realized that the argument I’m making against you is formally analogous to the usual argument against nihilism, just regarding political parties rather than opinions generally.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I’m explicitly arguing AGAINST black and white thinking here. You act like the only alternative to naked partisanship is “they’re all equally bad”. That’s thinking the only alternative to white is black. I’m arguing that that’s not the case, that there are shades of grey between partisanship and “they’re all equally bad”, that you can recognize the faults of both parties and still see that one has more faults than the other. To deny that is lazy black-and-white thinking.
Post-Nov. 3rd election results as of 1:30pm EST on Friday, Nov. 13th:
Biden-Harris won Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, ... and flipped "red states" Arizona & Georgia to "blue" for a total of 306 Electoral votes making INDIVIDUAL-1 a one-term president (and soon-to-be-felon-in absentia).
edit1:
TR45H has lost the popular vote to Joe Biden by the largest margin (+50.9%) since 1932 when "do nothing" Herbert Hoover lost to FDR in the midst of a global depression.
edit2:
[quote=Kellyanne Conway, Trump Senior Aide]306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic.[/quote]
12:35pm - November 28, 2016 (Twitter)
[quote=Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN]306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic.[/quote]
1:19pm - November 13, 2020 (Twitter) :fire:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/1327336938865627136[/tweet]
"Of the twenty-three people who comprise the Department of Defense agency review team, eight of them — or just over a third — list their “most recent employment” as organizations, think tanks, or companies that either directly receive money from the weapons industry, or are part of this industry. These figures may be an undercount, as the writer was not immediately able to exhaustively source the funding of every employer.
...Of those remaining, one team member works for JPMorgan Chase & Co., another is retired from the State Department, a few work for universities and other organizations, and one works for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which says it strives to “prevent catastrophic attacks with weapons of mass destruction and disruption — nuclear, biological, radiological, chemical and cyber.” Lisa Coe, also on the team, lists as her most recent employer OtherSide Consulting, a defense industry consultant, according to Defense News. However, because we were unable to independently verify this, Coe is not being included in our count of team members funded by the military or weapons industry."
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/joe-biden-transition-team-war-hawks
Not that anyone expected anything different from this fuckface.
:cry:
Quoting Olivier5
Yep.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Like I said, the principle is established in the Constitution. The Congress has the power to determine the organization and constituents of the SC. You don't seem to understand that it is within the power of the Legislative branch to establish new precedents and abolish old ones with new laws and rules. They have done this many times. It is only because we citizens have allowed it to become a partisan issue that we now have fights over which side has more justices, or which way the court leans. The SC is suppose to be a non-partisan body, but thanks to the polarization of the Congress which has the power to basically design the SC any way they see fit, the SC has become an extension of this partisanship that exists. I think the Constitution should be amended to allow us citizens to vote for Supreme Court justices, and they and all members of Congress need to have term limits.
They were both power-grabbing. You are just showing you bias. The bold part just makes me laugh. I mean, where do you get all of your political news - from the DNC? You sound like a religious fanatic. "God is good. Devil is bad."
Quoting Pfhorrest
No. You're not. You are arguing for more of the same TWO-party system. Two-party = Black and White. No parties = No black or white. You seem to think that one's religion or political party makes one more moral than others with a different religion or political party. My point is that politics and religion are inherently immoral as they are both a limitation on personal liberties and freedom of thought. They are essentially a form of group-think. There are good and bad in every group, and that is simply human nature.
A principle is established in the Constitution, but other less formal principles are established through other means, including mere tradition, or self-consistency. If one group makes an argument that such-and-such is the right way to do things, when it's convenient for them, but then goes against the very thing they argued for when that would be inconvenient for them, they're violating their own claimed principles, even if they're not going against constitutional principles.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I am definitely not arguing for the same two-party system. I vote 3rd party whenever possible, including for president this year. I'm talking about the behaviors of the two parties that we currently have within the system that we currently have that makes a two-party system inevitable.
You do realize that political parties are not part of the formal framework of the US government at all, right? The constitution doesn't say anything about parties. George Washington warned against partisanship. The US is set up to be formally a no-party system. But people form parties anyway, and the only way to prevent that is to disallow freedom of association. In practice, "no-party" states are just single-party states.
And because of our first-past-the-post electoral method, it's statistically guaranteed that we will end up with two dominant parties. I don't think either of them are good. I just think one is clearly more bad than the other. And until we can somehow change things so third parties are actually practically viable, which we totally should do, it's only pragmatic to favor the one that's less bad over the one that's more bad.
That's pure hysteria. The senate map in '22 looks decent for Democrats. 2024 isn't as good.
"Joe Biden is reported to be considering Hillary Clinton for a role in his administration, with the former secretary of state in the running to become the US ambassador to the United Nations."
If Biden actually does this, I think it would be fair to say that he is, in all seriousness, a bigger moron than Trump could ever be. People - rightly - detested Hillary so much that they took to the polls to vote in a swamp creature like Trump, and now this utter fucking moron reckons it's a good idea to even want to have the slightest thing to do with her? Trump should just put Biden on his staff and get it over with. It'd do away with the pretence that Biden isn't doing everything in his power to get Trump - or someone exactly in his mould - to get reelected in 2024.
Seriously, anyone who is not as critical of Biden as they were of Trump may as well be a Trump supporter.
It's possible to be critical of Biden and agree with @180 Proof on this. Things that aren't going to change include some important stuff like the US's pro-Israel stance, neoliberal economics etc. Things that are going to change also include important stuff like courts around the country no longer being packed with unqualified conservative extremists and renewed efforts to combat climate change. There's also the issue of minorities not having to live under an openly racist, quasi-fascist nutjob. Let's have a balanced conversation about this.
Quoting StreetlightX
It was you who pointed out more strongly than anyone else that the focus on Trump for being Trump was misguided. You're making the same mistake with Biden (and Hillary) as far as I can see.
So far my posts have been spurred by the appointments to Biden's transition team and the news that Clinton is even under consideration at all from a UN posting, so I really don't think that's the case.
And as far as the caricatures of 'revolution' vs 'triage' - as if 50 years of losers calling for 'triage' and continuing to lose hasn't taught anyone anything - or the farcical idea that Biden would indeed put any kind of dent into neoliberal hegemony - that's projected idiocy designed to stop conversation. The only relevant question right now is how to prevent the next Trump, that's it. No one seriously expects Biden to end capitalism tomorrow, but holy shit he can at least pretend to try and mark a break with the very politics that catapulted Trump to power rather than chummy right back up to it from day minus-90 or whatever it currently is. That's the choice for Biden: to forcefully distinguish himself from the politics which Trump - correctly - turned America's collective anger against, or to act as a red carpet to the next piece of shit ready and willing to strike up the Trumpian embers - still glowing hot - once again.
People need to get into their thick skulls that Biden lies on a line continuous with Trump - he literally preceded and so enabled him - and that unless he flags some measure of discontinuity, of actively breaking with the politics of the present - 'revolution' be damned for all I care at this point - then the next Trump is already in the pipeline, to be lubricated by a vaseline Biden, all the better to stick up America's already bleeding rear-end.
So I really, honest-to-ever-loving-God, in all sincerity, mean it when I say - anyone who is not as critical of Biden as they were of Trump may as well be a Trump supporter.
Sounds like you haven't being paying attention to anything specific that's happened during this cycle and are just intent on repeating the same shit we already know as if we're all stupid because we're not listening to you. Nice strawman.
Here's a dose of reality on the specifics of what happened this time around. Biden got 78 million votes. That's 10 million more than Obama. The left (what there is of it in America and there isn't much) came out en masse and voted against Trump. So there wasn't a turnout issue. But even then, Biden only won because suburban moderates couldn't stand orangeman enough that they got pushed Dem. Suburban moderates don't vote for "socialists". Conclusion, Bernie would have lost (and I say this as someone who previously thought he could win). And any, even mildly, leftwing candidate would have lost. And then what? Vaseline, lube, arse on fire, Trump for another four years. Great, you may say, taught those neolibs a lesson. But then what? America flips socialist in 2024? AOC for pres? Accelerationism? What?
The reality is that the structure of the electoral college and the Senate means any shift left in the Dems will result in a concomitant shift right that will blow up any hope of even milquetoast European style social democratic politics there in the foreseeable future. The only hope I see for change is in the demographics. And those take time. As the boomers die off and minorities become the majority, politics will follow to a degree. In the meantime, it's a holding pattern against the extreme right. And it's fine for you to say "fuck it all" but you don't have to live under Trump and his growing cabal of leftist-hating apparatchiks.
But tell me I'm wrong. Tell me what the realistic alternative to Biden was or is in the current political environment, under the current systemic political constraints, that justifies the burn-down-the-village-to-save-it narrative? Or switch tack like some of us have done to accepting the US is what it is for now and looking at what the left can do tactically in hostile political circumstances to both gain some foothold in terms of policy and stave off another Trumpist-style administration. I'm just not hearing anything of substance from you that you haven't said a million times before that is relevant to the specific place we're in right now and what can be done about it.
...
About a half-dozen progressive politicians addressed protesters last week. State Rep. Chris Rabb (D., Philadelphia) called Biden “harm reduction” and said work on more liberal policies would only intensify upon his election.”
:up:
https://www.inquirer.com/news/biden-trump-victory-election-2020-progressives-green-new-deal-leftist-aoc-philadelphia-20201112.html
Quoting Pfhorrest
:up:
:up:
No worries! I'm not going to piss in a glass that's half full.
Quoting 180 Proof
Both of you on that one. :up:
What? I was critical of Biden before and now that's he poised to continue doing the very things I'd criticized him before on, I'm supposed to get a new line because, what, it's very tiring for you? As I said I've been posting in response to his transition team appointments and vetting considerations, so if that's not specific enough for you perhaps you can suggest exactly what it is you think counts as specific enough.
And gosh, it's not like I'm saying much other than to remain vigorously critical of Biden, especially in his role as a Trump lubrication machine. That this is seen as some out of touch idealism is so stupid I don't know where to begin. As for this analysis:
Quoting Baden
I can't disagree more. First, worrying about a 'shift on the right' when the right in the US is basically Nazi apologetics is simply not a concern anyone should take seriously. North of the north pole is nothing. Second, the narrative being pushed - and which I'm afraid that you're uncritically reproducing - that left-wing policy and candidates have no political viability is quite frankly empirically false. The fact is that progressive politics does well in the US when not set against the force of national-level propaganda. Case in point:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/ProudSocialist/status/1324878126116007936[/tweet]
Moreover, it is blindingly obvious to anyone that it was precisely the strategy to 'stick to the centre' that resulted in Biden's frankly dismal showing. The fact is that he barely eeked out a win over one of the most abhorrent political leaders in US electoral history, and did so only on account - as you noted - that he wasn't Trump. Add to that the fact that Trump increased his share of republican votes, and the idea of playing it to the centre is a recipe for political death. Further:
Americans are clamouring for change. The so-called centre doesn't do well - and is a recipe for Trumpism. The 'right' is occupied territory. That leaves one option, which at every turn shows up to be successful. Conclusion: I do not buy - and no one should buy - into the idea that progressive politics are a dead-end for the democratic party. The exact opposite holds true: not engaging in that policy direction is a royal road to more Trump.
How much people here love Bernie, it would have gone down just like the UK elections if he would have been in Biden's place.
Don't have much time but speaking of uncritical, just to quickly deal with this strawman.
Here's what I said:
Quoting Baden
You left out the important context in your reply.
And you demonstrate this by presenting data on a bunch of House races. This is where you are not paying attention, again. The Senate and the electoral college are set up in such a way that disadvantages the left. So, when you move left in areas that can result in local gains in liberal areas, you risk the Senate and you risk the electoral college. And I think you know this, so I'm not going to go into detail on it unless you insist on pressing the fantasy that somehow a big heave-ho left would be uniformly politically advantageous. And no, it doesn't matter that left-wing policies are actually popular with the general public because the general public does not decide who runs the country, a small group of voters in states with outsize representation in the Senate and the electoral college do.
So, where the left goes wrong and your gung-ho hang-the-bastards shtick is a good example of this (and is something I've been guilty of myself), is being crap tactically, acting like because we have the moral high ground, somehow we'll win. Sorry, but that's kindergarten-level politics.
Quoting StreetlightX
Dude, have you forgotten what got us here? Have you forgotten how Bernie got destroyed vs Biden in just the places he needed to win to swing the election? Have you forgotten how unpopular he was with voters in swing states that helped Biden scrape through in the general? Do you seriously think Bernie would have won Georgia, for example, when the southern black vote went overwhelmingly for Biden in the primaries? And the Senate? Again, the competitive races are in relatively conservative states. It's arguable that Bernie may have done better with the House and may also have won the popular vote, but the Dems have the House anyway and the popular vote doesn't mean shit. Also, I've mentioned the demographics, Bernie voters held their nose and voted for Biden, but moderate suburbanites in conservative-leaning states like Georgia and Wisconsin, who could easily have been scared off Bernie showed up for Biden. These are the folks for whom left-wing slogans like "defund the police" are anathema. And their support is the reason Biden who, according to you, had a "dismal" showing won 10 million more votes than any other winning candidate in history. Wake up, man.
Sum of my point is that tactical stupidity is rife among the left. And it's a tactical stupidity that ignores the systemic conservative bias in the US and the huge disadvantage to the left that presents, which is only compounded culturally. So, the left end up being sheep in wolves clothing. The "defund the police" slogan is a good example. The slogan being the wolf, the reality, the sheep. The police are never going to be "defunded" in any meaningful widespread way, but the slogan is primed to scare away just the voters in the places that are needed to give power to the left to do anything about the police. Circle jerks on ideological purity end up achieving nothing but filling the cannons of the right's propaganda fear campaign. You could just as easily call it "reform the police" with no substantive change in aim. But, no we must have a fight, so we can lose again. Fuck that. Enough. Time for a smarter approach. That's my central point, not a criticism of you criticizing Biden but the self-destructive and politically naive nature of your critique, which seems more about blowing off steam than any attempt to realistically further the goals of the left. What it says to me is you don't understand America and, maybe, you don't care enough to understand it because you are just too overwhelmed by contempt. Which is fine, but you're not going to contribute anything of value with that attitude.
Quoting Baden
Quoting Baden
Leftists start from the top of the ladder and climb down a couple of rungs, rightists start from the mud and climb up maybe a quarter of the way. Pragmatists have a smarter approach, they start in the middle with some facts then climb a bit both up and down. They can then make the claim and actually the appearance of pleasing both sides. Is Russia communist or fascist? I can't decide.
As for the senate, considering the change in seats is looking to be on the order of the number of the limbs I have, it's not exactly as if Biden's vacuity as a candidate was what one might call sharp litmus test here. As for this much vaunted 'smarter approach' - which boils down to what? Giving the status quo a chance? The poor thing, it's only been at work for the last 5 decades, I'm sure it really needs it - it's the same ineffectual gently-gently nothingness that got the US to where it is now. And as for forgetting 'what got us here'? No, I remember it all too well: it was the current president-elect, and everything he continues to stand for.
What you're doing is not criticism, it's venting. Biden is President-elect and all anyone on the left should care about now is what they can get him to do for the left. Period. I couldn't give two fucks whether he's evil or not at this point, I want to make it politically expedient for him to do what serves the interests of the politics I support. And if you think calling for his transition picks' disembowelling (or whatever) with the Senate still up for grabs is "criticism" in any meaningful sense then, yes, you do need to get a new line because that's not going to help the people on the ground who are going to have to live under this administration and a potential McConnell stranglehold in the Senate.
What I've written above before I saw your reply serves as mostly an adequate response to what you've added. My only other question is, given we are where we are, what exactly do you want? And what's the path there? Seems to me like you don't have an answer to that. That's my major issue.
This shouldn't need to be said but to emphasize, no, it's not about giving him a pass, it's about using him insofar as it's possible in a strategic way. That means engagement. Giving him a pass would be something like ranting about how everything is fucked and he's evil, and so giving him the opportunity of painting the left as a bunch of extremist nutjobs who he should ignore. The reality is the diametric opposite of the way you're painting it. Essentially, you're the smartest guy in the room with the worst attitude.
This is unimaginably naive. Do me favour. Take a quick read of this rundown of Biden prep appointees. We can keep Hillary and - Rahm fucking Emmanuel, an apparently new contender - out of it for now, despite the fact that Biden hasn't made immediate moves to quash the very idea of their appointments (you want something concrete? I'd start there). Anyway:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1326387797347930114[/tweet]
Get to the end of that and tell me with a straight face that anyone who isn't a neoliberal warhawk will actually manage to make any kind of policy impression on a Biden administration. You think you can use Biden? And I'm the nutjob? With that kind of a team at hand? That's fantasy. Fairytales for the easily duped. You want concrete? Read that list of actual people, with actual hands, on actual nascent policy levers. It's funny: people tell me I'm the ideologue divorced from reality, when I'm literally the only one here bringing specific, actual moves Biden has so far made to the table of discussion. Everything else has been projections of misplaced hope and fantasizing warped by the black hole of Trump to make even shit look shiny.
:100: :clap:
Christ on a bike.
Quoting Baden
And your "strategy" is just to keep repeating like a broken record how shit everything is. As if we didn't know...
:point:
Quoting 180 Proof
:strong:
I think you know I don't think you're a nutjob. And it's not about what I think anyway, it's about what can and can't be done in a hostile political environment. My disagreement is not fundamentally with your principles but with your approach.
This brought to my mind the imagined scenario of a social democrat saying this to Felix Dzerzhinsky during the Red Terror.
I'm due an icepick, aren't I? :cry:
I do like this being more creative with our murderous epithets. Everyone always makes Hitler and Stalin comparisons. Very rarely Dzerzhinsky! My go-to would be Beria, if if only because it's easier to spell (otherwise Robespierre would be up there too).
And of course no hard feelings! I just like, uh, expressive phrasing.
Hehe, I know.
Doesn't seem to matter who you vote for, though. The very act of voting merely perpetuates corruption it seems. Maybe we need Platonic totalitarianism, or enlightened despotism.
But who's the despot?
Likewise, it is the mark of a radical democrat to be able to vote against an autocrat without uncritically accepting the shil-technocrat alternative. In other words, Biden is only another step ... but neither 'forward' nor 'backward' yet. So STFD, my trolling friends; stay frosty, comrades! :mask:
We do actually call alcohol "piss" in Ireland. I'm fairly sure I can taste the difference though... :gasp: :wink:
As Voltaire said of another loathsome thing--Ecrasez l'infame! (I don't know how to do the accents, sorry).
This I totally agree with. If after 4 years of Trump and a centre candidate being forwarded and almost nobody switched camps then moving further right is just going to alienate whatever base you have and you'll still be painted a leftist commy by those who you think you're courting.
I think the Dems need to move back to their roots representing working class people and deal with their problems and recognise class warfare is alive and well and show the GOP is selling them out at every turn they can.
“Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged [for the last twenty years], and my class has won. It’s been a rout.” ~Warren Buffett, 2011
Yes, but... it's not that easy. First of all, it's a money game. Look behind the curtain and there's always a special interest pulling the levers. And those interests are diametrically opposed to the working class's by definition. So, how do you get a party that can survive and fund itself without relying on big money? Bernie got some of the way there with his grassroots movement, but ultimately failed. Secondly, even when you do have the money in your pocket, it's a culture war game. Sure the GOP is selling out the poor and the working class, but for those of this demographic that aren't already won over (largely non-college-educated whites) guns, religion, and "freedom" is in their blood and that's the easiest tune in the world for the GOP to keep whistling. A class-orientated ideological transfusion just isn't going to work when you have to drag the patient kicking and screaming to the operating table.
Kill all the boomers? Oh, sorry, that was Street's idea. :lol: I don't know is the honest answer. I need to understand the dynamics more. But I feel like it should be more like boiling the frog slowly than chasing it into the pond.
"Following a campaign promising bold climate action, president-elect Joe Biden’s transition team named one of the Democratic Party’s top recipients of fossil fuel industry money to a high-profile White House position focusing in part on climate issues.
During his ten years in Congress, Richmond has received roughly $341,000 from donors in the oil and gas industry — the fifth-highest total among House Democrats, according to previous reporting by Sludge. That includes corporate political action committee donations of $50,000 from Entergy, an electric and natural gas utility; $40,000 from ExxonMobil; and $10,000 apiece from oil companies Chevron, Phillips 66, and Valero Energy. Richmond has raked in that money while representing a congressional district that is home to seven of the ten most air-polluted census tracts in the country."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/11/joe-biden-climate-fossil-fuel-industry-cedric-richmond
As much as @StreetlightX striding around on the world's highest horse to berate everyone annoys me, I think he has a point here. You're correct when you say that the left has a problem with their tactics. But at the same time the current tactic, whole marginally more effective at getting into power, also cements the power of the right wing.
Over the last 20 years, there has been a resurgence of the extreme right wing all over Europe and the US. In many countries, new parties formed to the right of the traditional establishment. And instead of splitting the right wing vote and helping the left to sharpen their profile and win votes, as one might naively expect, the result has been the opposite. Far from the right being tainted by their association with regressive authoritarians, it's the center left, the social democrats, that have been eviscerated.
Consistently, economic considerations are pushed into the background by a culture war narrative on the far right. And instead of rejecting this entire framing and focusing on the actual factual challenges, many establishment left-wing parties have allowed themselves to be drawn into the swamp of identity politics and promptly lost. Because it cannot offer a vision anywhere near as rosy and consistent as the fake past peddled by the other side.
So I think it's true that there needs to be a new approach. Neoliberalism with some bells and whistles cannot compete with blood and soil rhetoric.
Quoting Echarmion
So, we agree. But if you do have a bone of contention with something I said, you can quote it and I'll deal with it.
Federal tax cuts also increase after tax inequality and a deficit that's the envy of the world.
Well, I think the strategy that I think is faulty is outlined in this paragraph here:
Quoting Baden
For one, while accurate for the US, several European countries have similar political trends without the same amount of systemic issues. And in those countries, too, the moderate left seems to be bleeding dry. And even if we are only talking about the US, the strategy to react to authoritarian nationalists with non-threatening moderates basically concedes the field to the authoritarians.
One of the main mistakes the left seems to be doing is that they assume that no-one wants to vote for nationalism, xenophobia, regressive social norms etc. That people who vote for these things are, at best, poor misinformed souls, and at worst a basket of deplorables. But these policies do have popular support, and will get votes. And they are very amenable to being spun into a justification for power grabs.
In order to defeat these currents, it's not enough to worry about not scaring suburban voters. You must offer something that is more enticing than the snake oil. There is no way forward if the left cannot offer a vision at least as desirable as that which the right offers it's supporters. And someone with the actual credentials to back up their words.
I don't think there's much disagreement. It's not about being moderate, it's about reality and appearances, packaging if you like. The ratio of actual policy achievement to socialist scare factor (the fuel of Republican propagandists' political wet dreams) needs to increase drastically. Wolves in sheep's clothing, not sheep in wolves'. If you can forge a loud left populist line that won't backfire where it matters in terms of gaining the power to effectuate it, great. But so far, that's been failing.
Quoting Baden
Can probably learn from what's happened to Corbyn in the UK. He's currently getting ratfucked [hide=*]([url=https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/ymchwiliadau-ac-archwiliadau/investigation-labour-party]EHRC report if you want to see the outcome)[/hide]
by a party schism. "The centre cannot hold" does not appeal to people whose career is holding the left of centre, their crisis of political legitimacy be damned.
Same principle by which Trump is managing, among a large proportion of the population, to paint the Dems as trying to steal the election: Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty. Now that calls for loud and forceful pushback.
Is definitely happening. Corbyn's suspension from the party was ended, but his position in party hasn't been reinstated. If only publicly committing to reform for the antisemitism complaints process within Labour was enough...
And that's before we get into the conflicts of interest in the EHRC. Who refused to investigate Bojo's party for islamophobia despite being presented with much stronger evidence that it was happening.
"The Biden administration will generate backlash just like that which arose in response to the Obama administration, and that backlash will be more severe than its previous iteration. This is absolutely guaranteed. You can only oppress, neglect and enrage a population so much before the discontent begins to grow. There is absolutely nothing American leftists can do to prevent this backlash from coming. They will have absolutely no say in this administration's policies or behavior; BidenCorp has no reason to listen to them, has made no pretense of having any interest in listening to them, and is even freezing Sanders and Warren out of cabinet roles already.
All US leftists will have any control over is whether this backlash will break to the left, or if it will break to the far right. ... What the left can do is get ahead of the game. Take control of the anti-Biden, anti-establishment pushback by leading the charge--sooner, more aggressively, and more compellingly than the far right does. Use the awfulness of the Biden administration to ignite a true leftward zeitgeist in mainstream America that is so strong it eclipses the inevitable rightist backlash in energy and appeal.
...But the ball needs to start rolling on this now. Not after the Georgia runoffs, not after Biden takes office, not after the midterms: now. The longer US leftists wait to start pushing this thing forward, the less of a head start you'll have on the rightists while they're fixated on Trump's recounts and legal challenges. You'll only be able to lead the backlash if you get in early and hit the ground running as fast as you can".
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/biden-will-likely-be-worse-than-obama-the-left-must-lead-the-backlash-or-the-right-will-f2cb8623d015
--
Whatever momentum and disgust people felt with Trump simply needs to be transposed and continued with the current Biden administration. The 'victory' that people got with Trump's loss was an enemy that might be more easily replaced next time. The strategy is not to 'pull Biden to the left' - a joke of a cause: it's to make a Biden-like administration impossible so that the next person does the exact opposite - and not from the right.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/transition-playbook/2020/11/19/is-the-left-wing-overplaying-its-hand-490948
An analysis from elsewhere which I love:
"It's interesting. On the one hand they're displaying their complete arrogance towards and disregard of the left: "Even though we've given the donors everything and you worse than nothing, shut up or we won't even occasionally dangle meager false promises while we're constantly running you down." The left is in the worst of abusive relationships with the Dems. But, on the other hand, being called out clearly bothers them. They need the left cover to keep the idiot Dem base on board with virtue signaling. The Dems brand relies on left cover, without which they would be seen for who they really are: Republicans.
So, we can either behave, in which case we are deceptively dangled the false friendship of the Biden administration while every post filled and policy enacted is adverse to our interests. Result: the movement dies and we get nothing. Or, wage open political war, strip them of their left cover, and out them for the Republican fascists they truly are. Result: the movement lives and we get nothing (or maybe something depending on how hard we fight)".
I really like this point that the dems rely on the left for 'cover'. And it's true that if stripped of this cover and attacked equally from the right, there's a chance the party will be left occupying a narrow strip of land with nowhere to hide their shitty corporate slavishness and be isolated as the neoliberal shells they truly are. All the more reason, again, for the left to forcefully divorce themselves from anything Biden touches.
Like "BLM" - discussed here. Apparently, reactionaries are more adept at sloganeering and selling propaganda than liberals or progressives are.
Uncalled for. Jesus. Can we discuss tactics without morally condemning others? There's more roads to Rome, not everybody approaches problems the same way and most problems have several solutions.
"Reform the Police" would have been much less inflammatory and accurate (like "Black Lives Also Matter" would have), nuance vs cognitive dissonance notwithstanding. Not to persuade but to inform the uninformed.
I was responding to an empty, substanceless quip that engaged with nothing of what I posted. Consider it a response in kind.
Quoting 180 Proof
Frankly, given Biden's 40+ year record of fucking people over and ruining lives, I've begun much too late.
Quite, anti-semitism is a reliable dog whistle because of the holocaust, it's so easy to slam Labour with it because all the conspiracy theories around Jews controlling the western world. Corbyn was an easy target because of his back catalogue of activism.
Our establishment is also endemically anti-socialist. Which would effortlessly convert anti EU smears into resentment and distrust. The EU's social democratic politics is viewed as a retrograde step, a straight jacket, or trap in which the UK's exceptionalism will become ensnared.
Now the right wing populism is in the ascendant riding this wave of resentment and distrust, the obese rump of the Tory ruling classes is exposed any figleaf of wealth creation usually employed has been ripped off by the pandemic and we see the naked beast of Tory privelidge and twattery writ large. Helplessly/blindly steering us over the precipice. The epitome of which is our very own Blojo, with the absurdity of working class folk seeing him as "one of them", " one of us", across the land.
Agreed. So stop 'titling at swastikas' for a couple of months and wait to see, like the rest of us on the barracades, what modes of critical resistance will be needed in response to Biden's policies and state actions after he's sworn in next year.
Btw, tr45h LOSES GEORGIA AGAIN. :victory: :mask:
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2020-55006188
Nice, we can put out the trash can now.
"As picks for President-elect Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team were announced, I felt concerned and disheartened about a chemical industry insider being on the list. Are you kidding me?
Michael McCabe, a former employee of Biden and a former deputy Environmental Protection Agency administrator, later jumped ship to work as a consultant on communication strategy for DuPont during a time when the chemical company was looking to fight regulations of their star chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) also known as C8. The toxic manmade chemical is used in everything from waterproof clothes, stain-resistant textiles and food packaging to non-stick pans. The compound has been linked to lowered fertility, cancer and liver damage. The Guardian reported this week that Harvard school of public health professor Philippe Grandjean, who studies environmental health, warns that PFAS chemicals, of which PFOA is one, might reduce the efficacy of a Covid-19 vaccine. This smells of the dawn of the same old. To quote the Who: meet the new boss, same as the old boss."
These scumfucks are not 'waiting' to fuck you over - in fact they cannot wait to do exactly that. Wait and see? Perhaps consider 'seeing' right fucking now. Wait any longer and these people will pull your waiting eyeballs through your mouths while waving rainbow flags.
Hopefully it will continue every day until some point around Epiphany, at which point he'll be moved to start packing his bags.
Back to normal...
2016: prior counts, Trump warns of rigged elections
2016: after counts, Trump makes fun of sore losers
2016: Trump says recounts would be a scam to delegitimize him
[I]Trump Administration's Mishandling of the Coronavirus Response[/i] by Congresswoman Jackie Speier
2020: after counts, Trump claims invalid election, shooting lawsuits from the hip
2020: some make fun of Trump as a sore loser
2020: Trump has acquired cult followers making threats, some spend their time searching for an illusive yet extensive election boogeyman
You'd think a population of 300 million could pick better, more competent, reliable leaders?
I guess, of a larger population, mad fringe can also be proportionally larger, more visible/seductive?
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/zoetillman/trump-court-loss-pennsylvania-election
:rofl:
... they claim.
("demonstrating" "Rigorous" "extensive" ... also "potential")
Can't help but wonder if they want to deny legitimate mail-voters.
Not even Barr is going along with the bullshit.
I'm curious to know what the boofer would say/do.
He's already being described as "compromised", "a fool", and "a liar" by top Trump media henchman Lou Dobbs. And those are about the nicest things Trumpers are saying about him. The mad bag of ferrets are starting to eat each other, apparently. :victory:
:chin:
[s]"Fuck the Police"
"Abolish the Police"
"Defund the Police"[/s]
Quoting 180 Proof
A more precise mantra (maybe):
'PROTECT US FROM COPS AND CRIMINALS'
:mask:
Oh what a tangled web grifters weave...
This and Giuliani farting his way through an election "fraud" hearing surrounded by drunks and racists making random shit up.
Leave it to the Republicans to squander their gains by radicalizing around the nutjobs. If Trump reemerges in 2024, I've got to hope a moderate right independent will run and grab half his votes.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/brian-kemp-georgia-brad-raffensperger-signature-audit
As I understand it, on election night at around 10:00 p.m., the election workers told everyone to go home because of a pipe break. There has never been any evidence of a pipe actually having broken, and internal emails indicated that the claims were greatly exaggerated and that there might have been a slow leak . https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/slow-leak-text-messages-cast-doubt-on-georgia-officials-burst-pipe-excuse-for-pause-in-counting/news-story/19176f5113512210517c82debe684392
In any event, all the Republican observers left, but at least 4 vote counters remained. This newly released video shows that votes continued being counted in the absence of the observers after they were told to leave. The votes counted were taken from boxes that were stored under the table, which is alleged to have been from a different location than all previous ballots that were observed to be counted when the Republican observers were there.
My understanding is that the way absentee ballots are counted is that the exterior envelope is examined by a Republican and Democrat poll worker and they then determine whether the signature matches. If it does, the ballot is opened and scanned. If not, it's placed aside for further evaluation. Once a ballot it opened and accepted, there is no way to link that ballot back to the voter. So the theory is here that there were pre-created fabricated ballots that were not in envelopes stored under the table. The poll workers made up a story about a water leak and sent the Republican observers home, and then they scanned the fabricated ballots in. The Georgia election was decided by around 10,000 votes, which means in Fulton County, a county with a population of over 1 million, they could have falsified enough votes to change the Trump outcome, and more importantly, the Perdue and Loeffler outcome, which is now headed toward a runoff.
I remain skeptical of the meaning of this video as it was just posted very recently and the other side hasn't yet had an opportunity to respond. It's the breaking news du jour, but the idea that 4 local poll workers could have pulled off this fraud isn't that far fetched. We'll see.
Another conspiracy theory to add to the list. Meanwhile, the nutjobs in their official filings can't even work out who votes were stolen from and given to.
Oh, this suitcase video BS has already been debunked btw.
"Does security camera video show a Fulton County, Georgia, election supervisor suspiciously pulling suitcases filled with ballots from under a table after telling poll workers to leave the room? And did that election official continue to illegally count ballots without required monitors in a manner that calls into question Joe Biden's narrow win over Donald Trump in Georgia? No, those claim are not true: Two high-level officials with the Georgia secretary of state's office and a state elections board monitor each told Lead Stories that their investigations revealed nothing suspicious in the video. The officials said the ballots seen in the video were in regular ballot containers -- not suitcases -- and they had been removed from their envelopes and processed while news media and election observers for the Republican Party and Trump campaign were present. The media and party observers were never told to leave because counting was over for the night, but they apparently followed workers who left once their job of opening envelopes was completed, the chief investigator for the secretary of state told Lead Stories. The observers were free to return at anytime, she said. Georgia law allows observers, but does not require them to be there for ballots to be counted, she said."
https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/12/fact-check-video-from-ga-does-not-show-suitcases-filled-with-ballots-pulled-from-under-a-table-after-poll-workers-dismissed.html
Stop reading Rudy Giuliani tweets and watching idiotic Fox News hosts or you'll start to go crazy like the rest of them.
So, let me ask you, assuming you're ideologically a Republican and that you find Ossoff and Warnock horrible alternatives, do you vote for Perdue and Loeffler even though they called for for the Ga. Sec of State to resign due to election fraud in Georgia? I'm really torn here.
I'm surprised you'd consider Purdue. Apart from the insider trading thing, didn't he post an ad that had an anti-semitic slant--was photoshopped to make Ossoff's nose look longer or something? (On this one, I haven't looked into it, so maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong). I don't know dude, as a Republican, you're not exactly well-served by your choices there. Kemp is dumb as a nail and a Trump doormat, and the Senate candidates are, at best, crooks. Maybe write in Ronald Reagan or something.
That being said, I also can't vote for Warnock because I was just visiting my son downtown who lives near Ebenezer Baptist Church (Warnock's church) and there literally was garbage strewn in the street from overflowing garbage cans. Surely he has the pull to get the city to clean up his own neighborhood if he actually cared.
I can't do a write in for a runoff. They are the only ones who qualified, so the Gipper is out.
Yeah, they did a story on the nose thing.
https://atlantajewishtimes.timesofisrael.com/perdue-campaign-removes-ad-ossoff-called-anti-semitic/
Not sure why that made me laugh. Politics is so fucked up.
I think this is how it went down:
"You sure he's a Jew? His nose ain't that big."
"All over that, boss."
:mask:
Poor Trumpsta's don't know who to follow.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1334546916886056960?s=20[/tweet]
Quoting Hanover
If you think, Mr GOP, that Moscow Mitch's obstruction & court-packing - in the midst of an already-catastrophic, 9 months-long neglected pandemic and consequent small business, frontline & low-wage workers depression - are worse for America than any likely (moderate) "relief" alternative(s), then, like most plebs of good will, sir, hold your nose and vote Country-Over-Party for both Warnock & Ossoff. If, however, partisan ideology so completely blinds you to the accelerating, self-inflicted, existential crisis currently 'unraveling' America, then, by all means, carry-on with the status quo and, in patrician fashion, ignore the superstorm laying seige to, and battering the gates of, Rome.
:down: :up:
I don't think you need to worry about reining in the democrats. If they go too far, it will be corrected by the swinging if the pendulum.
Just vote for the people who are most likely to back what's most important to you.
Yes, this is what I'll do.
"This petition falls far short of the kind of compelling evidence and legal support we would
undoubtedly need to countenance the court-ordered disenfranchisement of every Wisconsin voter.
The petition does not even justify the exercise of our original jurisdiction.
...
The petition’s legal support is no less wanting. For example, it does not explain why its challenge to various election processes comes after the election, and not before. Nor does it grapple with how voiding the presidential election results would impact every other race on the ballot, or consider the import of election statutes that may provide the “exclusive remedy.
These are just a few of the glaring flaws that render the petition [i]woefully deficient.[/i] I therefore join the court’s order denying the original action. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to share a further observation. Something far more fundamental than the winner of Wisconsin’s electoral votes is implicated in this case. At stake, in some measure, is faith in our system of free and fair elections, a feature central to the enduring strength of our constitutional republic. It can be easy to blithely move on to the next case with a petition so obviously lacking, but this is sobering. The relief being sought by the petitioners is the most dramatic invocation of judicial power I have ever seen. Judicial acquiescence to such entreaties built on so flimsy a foundation would do indelible damage to every future election. Once the door is opened to judicial invalidation of presidential election results, it will be awfully hard to
close that door again. [b][i]This is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread. The loss of public
trust in our constitutional order resulting from the exercise of this kind of judicial power would be
incalculable.[/i][/b]
I do not mean to suggest this court should look the other way no matter what. But if there
is a sufficient basis to invalidate an election, it must be established with evidence and arguments
commensurate with the scale of the claims and the relief sought. These petitioners have come
nowhere close. [b][i]While the rough and tumble world of electoral politics may be the prism through
which many view this litigation, it cannot be so for us. In these hallowed halls, the law must rule[/i][/b]."
It is actually comforting to know US courts are a bastion of reasonableness. The debates we have had over judges' various interpretative philosophies seem to be silly quibbles in light of this, as none have so far become shills for one party or the other.
My concern is that moving forward, judges won't be chosen simply on the basis of whether they are strict or liberal constructionists, but on the basis of who they wish to see in power.
Trump is probably kicking himself for not having chosen thug judges who would do his bidding instead of egghead intellectuals with curious views on statutory construction, but who otherwise have absolute integrity for searching for the truth.
God said it's OK if I call you a motherfucker. :party: Nice.
It's great the courts aren't giving Trump what he wants, or that enough of the state legislatures have decided not to vote to overturn the election. It is, however, quite worrying that there are plenty of Republicans is state legislatures who are arguing that the state should overturn the election results.
Caesar Augusts didn't create the Principate (role of emperor) himself. His way was paved by Julius Caesar, Marius, and Sulla, and with the murder of the Gracchi Brothers. The norm breaking had to start a generation earlier. And indeed, people may prefer a competent Caesar to what we have now, an inept gerontocracy. Rule by fabulously rich octogenarians.
In his "Origins of Political Order," Fukayama attributes the rise of strong, centralized states to the demands of the emerging bourgeois and the peasantry to have the kings empowered to protect them from the rapacious nobility. I think a similar dynamic is at work here. Rule of law doesn't seem to apply to the elites. The people increasingly prefer a tyrant to rule by oligarchs.
The other driving factor behind strong centralized states for Fukayama is the need to wage wars. Thomas Piketty demonstrates how war, and the need to mobilize the populace, had also acted powerfully to redistribute wealth and political power. Absent war, the returns on capital slowly allow a small elite to pull away and dominate the economy and politics.
The US and by extension Europe's sickness is perhaps an ironic lack of wars. To be sure, there are large military expenditures, and foreign adventurism, but these are not existential wars that require major mobilization. The US military is now a small professional corps. Increasingly it is a multigenerational, hereditary profession, particularly in the officer corps and particularly at colonel and above.
As Gibbon said of the Roman Army after the final Punic War, the professionalization of the legions "elevated war into an art, and degraded it into a trade." Our combat effectiveness has never been higher, neither has our separation from a citizen army in the model of old Greek city states or the Roman Republic.
The US is like Rome after defeating Carthage. The USSR/Carthage is gone, and now the wealth to loot inside the empire is worth more than what is outside of it. There is no external threat, and so the race to loot begins. China is akin to Parthia. A threat to the periphery, but far enough away (for now) to have its own sphere of influence.
Although, not to contradict myself, but in a larger analogy, I would say:
USA = Carthage. A trading state using a mercenary army ruled by degenerate elites without civic virtue.
Western Europe = Greece. A once great power still know for intellectual exports, but held in loose thrall by the ascendant cultural power of Rome/America. It helps that Rome/America copied Greece/Europe so that they can still feel culturally in charge, even as.the flood of Hollywood sweeps inland.
Russia = Persia. A once great power that is currently much reduced, hoping to move back to ascendancy but crippled by infighting and corruption.
China = Rome. A stoic and ascendant power that is remarkably self confident even as it rises to challenge established powers.
The analogy doesn't totally work because Greece is aligned with Carthage not Rome, but whatever.
--
Https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/survey-who-won-election-republicans-congress/2020/12/04/1a1011f6-3650-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html
[tweet]https://twitter.com/robbhurstCPA/status/1335557576587665408[/tweet]
(I occasionally chat with one or two of them; they are ... obsessed)
Imagine the level of retard that believes this shit, multiply by 50 million, and you've got Trump's base.
Faulty proprietary algorithms in those machines, and "statistical anomalies", they boldly claim.
Actually, their "certainty" that Trump won has been around since he lost.
I wouldn't say these particular people are stupid, but they sure as heck are personally invested.
Or liars. There's a fucking paper ballot given for every electronic one recorded, for a start, and they match. You might as well claim Biden is hiding in the machine changing the votes by hand.
My sister has just moved to North Carolina, so when I get a chance to see her next, I may just pay y'all a visit too.
Cook up those grits, Hanny!
I would come visit you, but I think I'd have to quarantine a couple of weeks before you'll let me in public. Anyone can come here. We still openly accept all wretched refuse.
They object to the mail in ballots that have now been separated from the envelope bearing the voter's signature, claiming fraudulent ballots have been stuffed in the ballot box.. Like all conspiracy theories, it could be true. If only there were evidence it actually happened, they'd have a better case. Alas, if only.
Oh, and you're welcome. So it doesn't go unnoticed, you brought up your sister, and not a single inappropriate comment from me.
I assume this is a reference to an all out war, where basically the country itself is the battlefield. In the case of the US kept secure by those two mighty oceans and an own continent without any rivals, this seems a bit odd. As it is now those "colonial wars" fought by the professional army (still made of US citizens though) are a splendid way to cash in for the elites.
Yes, he's referring to mass mobilizations. It doesn't necessarily have to be a war on a country's own land. WWII greatly reduced inequality and allowed workers to gain concessions in the US.
Wars also force elites to accept a more centralized states. This is pretty obvious in the massive growth of the US security apparatus after WWII. Theoriticians like Fukayama and historians like William Durrant both tie the growth of competent states to the need to field larger and more complex armies. This is a trend that starts with the European Wars of Religion and then truly gets under way with the Napoleonic era and the levee en mass.
I don't think they're stupid. I think leaders actually lead, which means there are people who follow. If Trump would have said the election were fair and that the solution lies in winning in 2024, then his followers would have followed. I think we'd all like to think we're not sheep and that we all exercise independent judgment, but it's part of being human that people look for the alpha dog to follow. Some of us are better at fighting this instinct than others. It is a very dangerous instinct no doubt, and those who exploit it fit the definition of evil fairly well.
tl;dr. But, yeah, grits. With that stupid hot sauce or whatever you call it. And don't try to gyp me with no fucking ketchup.
If you have fought a long war where a large part if not all of the males of the younger generations have learned only warfighting and not have been sitting at school or learning their professions, it is simply a political suicide to forget these people afterward. Things like the G.I. Bill are an obvious policy, if you have the resources to do it. The dumb mistake of leaving a huge number of soldiers just to their own was last done by the American occupiers in Iraq. The inept American leadership just left the defeated Iraqi army alone to disband chaotically without any program for the now unemployed officers and soldiers. And what do you know, in an instant you had a Sunni insurgency in the country.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Do notice the obvious changes in warfare that have taken place: the Napoleonic or World Wars types of mass armies have gone. A conventional infantry battalion is quite vulnerable today, hence manpower isn't so important.
The oddity might be my country and the Swiss, which have an exotic strategy in their defence and deterrence yet aren't thinking of using that outside their borders, actually. And then there's Israel, which also has lowered it's wartime strength. Also the Finnish wartime Army is down to 300 000 from 700 000 and the Swiss Army would field perhaps half a million, if it needed.
(Switzerland actually called roughly 4 000 of it's wartime medical staff to "arms" to fight COVID-19)
If we take out Israel from this as the country is basically at war with it's neighbors all the time, at least in an low intensity conflict, then this thinking is basically logical for the 20th Century Cold War era, but not for this Century anymore. The only occasion is if a poor country fights another poor country, like in Africa. Or if you are planning to fight a civil war. Hence I think a new approach ought to be looked on the issue.
(Levée en masse. In one of the poorest countries in the world it works still.)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/12/08/biden-picks-raytheon-board-member-to-lead-the-us-war-machine/
"The mass media are reporting that the Biden camp has selected former general Lloyd J. Austin III to be the next secretary of defense, assuaging fears among antiwar activists that the position would go to bloodthirsty psychopath Michele Flournoy as commonly predicted.
As has become the standard ritual for Biden’s cabinet picks, the mass media are holding a parade to celebrate the fact that Austin would be the first Black chief of the US war machine while virtually ignoring the murderous agendas he has facilitated throughout his career. As head of Central Command Austin actively campaigned to resurrect the Pentagon’s spectacularly failed program of trying to arm “rebels” in Syria to fight ISIS, and in 2014 he backed immunity for US troops from war crimes prosecutions by the government of Afghanistan. He helped spearhead the Iraq invasion, and he is a member of the same private equity fund which invests in defense contractors as Flournoy and Biden’s warmongering pick for Secretary of State Tony Blinken."
Sure, might be no problem, and someone like Mattis did understand that his role was different as being a secretary as before in the military. The problem is that if this becomes a habit, perhaps unintentionally, it weakens the civilian control of the military. Already with the huge military-industrial complex behind it, a secretary of defense systemically being a retired career military doesn't make it better.
(Russia for example has a tradition of the Defense Minister being an active general, something inherited from the Soviet Union. In the west military officers being defense ministers has been rare.)
People are focusing on the close ties between Wall Street, China, and Biden-as-establishment. That's not news to anyone with half a brain, despite this being highlighted by xenophobic fucksticks on the right. What's interesting is what the speaker himself flags as of paramount importance: that the decoupling between the US and China is exactly what China wants. And the opening of the Chinese financial sector will mean foreign - European and US - companies having to play by Chinese rules, and fostering a far more independent Chinese economy less beholden to (waning) US hegemony.
The real issue this raises is the willingness of capital to undertake that shift, with the carrot of a billion-person market just waiting to be plunged into. In other words: a capitalism unfettered even by the minimal pseudo-democracies of the "West". That's the real meat of the talk, not the conspirational rubbish about Hunter and Biden being a wall-street lapdog. Everyone knows that piece of shit is deep in their pockets. And Biden may well facilitate this shift to the benefit of China with wall street in tow. It'll be interesting to see how much his 'stand up to China' bluster is just that. Insofar as he's a servile wall street cuntfuck, there's every chance he'll hand China right over to them.
Initial plans for Iraq had a big role for the military in keeping order. The problem is that soldiers went home and didn't want to come back out when it was unclear how things would progress vis-a-vis ethnic divisions of power.
In a larger way, histories of the Iraq war tend to be plagued by lack of nuance and detail. Trainor and Gordon's Cobra II and Endgame are one of the only "complete" narratives I've seen.
How much of that was Iran vs the US backing the wrong Iraqi leader?
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/biden-moderate-democrats-republicans-conservative-study-john-kasich-aoc-a9699431.html
It's not like he has a record of relaying facts.
More like the opposite, we're talking alternative facts, post-truth'ery, bullshitting, exaggerating/downplaying/misdirecting opportunistically, incompetence, propagating/condoning conspiracy theories, sort of alarmist, exploiting the backfire effect, ...
Anyway, those folk apparently see "critical statistical anomalies" in data from New York Times (Edison and Scytl), here in processed json format (not the original source data): Pennsylvania, Wisconsin
(It's not difficult to parse out and plot, by the way; I can give pointers if anyone is interested.)
Other analyses: Security Debrief, Charleen Adams
Sample conversations:
Fan: "So is it over? Shit will start to go crazy?"
Conspiracy theorist: "it looks like we're approaching some kind of critical mass."
Sorry folks, the case here is just far too weak. :shrug:
Edit: Sorry, that was for and others in that line of chit-chat.
Ha, I'd consider myself both a centrist and a moderate. I guess that's because I'm not very ideologically motivated.
I totally get people drifting away from "democracy," as kind of golden ideal. Democracy hasn't helped the developing world or former Soviet Bloc in and of itself. Hell, polling shows a majority of people in most former Soviet states say they were better off under communism, and that's with the negative connotations of foreign domination for the non-Russians.
Accountable government is shown to be an important mechanism for successful states, but accountable government can take many forms. The people need a formal way to pick and remove leaders. However, this can be done in far better ways than a the current US system, which got us a moronic reality TV start as leader, followed by a cognitively declining octogenarian. Ideally you'd vote for a small council of people to pick and remove a chief executive so that they can be carefully vetted and chosen based on qualifications for the job. That's how city/county managers are picked, and they routinely outperform mayors. You could have people on the selection council elected at large for a majority of the seats, and then give carve outs for cultural regions. Keep it to 9-11 people so actual discussion happens.
Our legislature is way too big too. The percentage of people who know their reps is terrible. I'd reduce that and make it based solely on population, not arbitrary state lines.
Technocrats make better governing decisions than demagogues.
Hell, at this point, Xi Jinping Thought seems like a fat superior model for tackling the incoming climate crisis.
Americans are too dumb to pick their leaders directly. Just look at the shit that is popular on TV.
Well, some times you need a carrot and stick approach to handle potential insurgents. Or to get an insurgent force back to normal life. And it's a difficult balancing act that such inept people like Brennan simply could not fathom (when you hear him talk about it, you can see that he doesn't get it).
Besides, that "carrot-and-stick" approach was finally done by the US military with it's Sunni Awakening in Anbar province and elsewhere, which actually broke the back of the Al Qaeda in Iraq. Then military middle leadership was left to decide which Sunni insurgents weren't so bad after all. And with the Surge it worked... only to be later broken apart by the Shiite leadership after the US withdrew and Al Qaeda came back as ISIS.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That ethnic strife was something that was quite apparent for the Saudis and others, that pleaded for Bush the older not to continue to Baghdad during the Gulf War. But afterwards, it didn't matter anymore.
If the Democrats reverse this election result, I take back all condemnations I have for Trump and wish him well in his umpteenth appeal.
Trump is asking for more than just recounts in elections that were won by much much larger margins.
It's apples and potatoes.
The recount was already conducted and the Republican win was confirmed and the result certified. This is an appeal to the House to hear evidence to determine if the vote was valid. It avoids judicial review and instead puts the issue before a committee chosen by the Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
It's apples to apples. It'd be like submitting the presidential election dispute to the Senate for adjudication. How this is Constitutional , I don't know. It seems like a separation of powers violation to me to provide the legislative branch the power to conduct judicial review.
https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/government/rita-hart-us-house-appeal-marianette-miller-meeks-election-recount-20201202
Ffs, if Trump lost by 6 votes in one state, instead of tens or hundreds of thousands in multiple states no-one, including me, would be complaining about Republicans taking it to the wire. Your attitude is kind of like saying if a Dem sticks a pin in a Republican, the Republican is justified in chopping up the entire Dem's family with a machete. See how crazy that is Hanny?
Trump is no longer asking for recounts. He is asking for either state legislatures to appoint electors for him, despite the fact that he gained fewer votes in the state, or for the SCOTUS to somehow directly appoint him as President.
That's a fairly crucial detail. The other major detail would be his telling supporters he has air tight evidence of fraud, despite being unable to produce any. If he was dragging out recounts and not publicaly claiming he had won, people wouldn't be as upset.
The rhetoric certainly isn't apples to apples. The Arizona GOP showed a clip of Rambo and asked if Republicans were willing to give their lives for the effort to overturn the election. Trump's former National Security Advisor among others said Trump should have the military seize control of the country, abrogate the election, and that the military should be allowed to run a second election.
Trump is himself not appealing to non-partisan forces. He had made appeals to elected state judges and officials from his party and judged he appointed. His problem, and self-proclaimed lovers of liberty would know this if they actually read the filings, is that he has no evidence. Whilst the GOP says there is iron clad evidence on TV, the filings don't show that. The new Texas led suit does not allege evidence of fraud. Rather, the argument had to be reduced to:
1. Changes that allowed more mail in voting were illegal under states own laws;
2. The changes made it so hard to detect fraud, that you can't prove there wasn't fraud.
It's a shifting of the burden of proof, making someone prove a negative.
And, the remedy they want, Donald Trump appointed President by the judiciary, doesn't follow even if the other two were true. Wouldn't another election necessarily follow, since there is no evidence of wrong doing?
There is some surreal level of cope by GOP moderates too. "He's not trying to overturn the election, he is just pursuing all legal options to ensure the voted are counted correctly." The man has been Tweeting "RIGGED ELECTION!," and "#OVERTURN" every day.
My attitude is that I cannot support anyone who engages in undemocratic behavior. I recognize that Trump's interference with the democratic process exceeds that of what is occurring in the Iowa election. If Trump lost by 6 votes total and he was now trying to over-ride that 6 vote loss by having the Senate declare him the winner somehow, I would see that as very significant.
Anyway, it is possible to be incensed by the conduct of both parties even though one may be worse than the other. My guess is that the Republican will be seated, in part for the reasons I've pointed out, which is that it is very difficult to hold the moral high ground if your best argument is that you're unprincipled, but at least you limit your violations to a degree less than your opponent.
But this wasn't what I was responding to in @Pfhorrest's post. He said it was not apples to apples because all the Iowa candidate wanted was a recount, but that was incorrect. She was appealing the election to the House. I've not suggested that the Iowa candidate and Trump have engaged in behavior of the same degree, so your itemization of the behaviors of the two candidates wasn't responsive to my concerns. So you know, I did not vote for Trump, do not support Trump, and believe him to be as terrible an actor as I imagine you do, which ought to be obvious from my condemnation of all things undemocratic, which he most certainly is.
I agree the principle of certified elections being final should hold in the Dems case too. She ought to suck it up. I don't see anything remotely like a comparable attack on Democracy though. So, my emotional disgust is mitigated in proportion.
Well, you can't decontextualize this either. For a Democrat whose party currently holds the moral high ground on this issue, now is not the time to waver in your principles and provide your unworthy opponent an opening to argue that being undemocratic isn't a violation of principle, but instead it's a matter of nuance that Democrats know better how to apply than Republicans. Ffs, fight the good fight.
And for the record, I now know what "ffs" means because you always fill me in on all the hip terms the kids are using.
The requests from Trump since he lost his recounts haven't been for additional recounts, it's to have state legislatures award him their electors despite him losing the certified vote, or to somehow have a judge appoint him as President. The difference is "I think I may have won, count them again," vs "it says I lost but there was foul play, so I should be awarded victory anyhow."
The House and Senate probably shouldn't be in charge of recounts, but that's how the Constitution is written, and it makes more sense in the very poor quality of some state governments going back to the 19th century.
No, the issue is whatever the challenger makes the issue and the power of the House is anything from ordering a new election to deciding which of the two candidates to seat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Contested_Elections_Act
I'm all for fairness, which is what the courts are used for, not generally this rarely used law that permits legislators to act as judges. Legislators are really good at advocating for their constituency, and asking them to put aside their biases seems an unreasonable ask even should the legislator be of pure intent.
Delusional Trumptards told to fuck off yet again. Hopefully this time it will stick. Sad, pathetic, loons.
I guess it would be politically unpalatable to charge Donald Trump with sedition in that it would utterly paralyse relations between the two sides of politics. Still think it would be justifiable.
Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney are the only big names so far I've seen stand up to Trump. I suspect after the Senate races are over, more will, but Trump has already more or less succeeded in taking the Republican party down with him. He and his fellow loons are fully in charge of the asylum and I don't see that changing even when he's left office.
He'd pardon himself! Lol.
I think a lot of state-level Republicans and electoral officers have shown a lot of guts standing up to him. Also might be noted that no GOP senators joined the amicus brief for Texas. But Trump has undeniably corrupted the Republican Party, completely bent it to his will.
I still say the so-called ‘conservative media’ are co-conspirators in all of this. They’re feeding hundreds of millions of people completely lies and fantasies, there is no journalistic integrity whatever. While ever Trump’s lies are not being called out by them and the Republican Party the situation is basically corrupt.
"All of the hand-wringing after 2016 about a supposed conspiracy involving both the Trump campaign and the Kremlin resulted in a conglomerate of steadfast “resistance” liberals that felt compelled to endlessly tweet about how Trump and his base were poised to tear down every pillar of our democracy, and then pat themselves on the back when such obviously ludicrous and hyperbolic conjectures never panned out. Four years later, we now have a faction of Republicans more or less conducting themselves in a very similar manner, with the Texas GOP Chair even suggesting succession in the wake of the Supreme Court refusing to hear a case regarding overturning the victory of President-elect Biden.
Meanwhile, who suffers most of all at the end of all of this? The voters.
Two election cycles in a row now have seen grave concerns being raised and temper-tantrums being thrown at least from one side of the political spectrum over the results of the presidential election. The populace though managed to keep itself from descending into mayhem and pandemonium after 2016, and looks set to also unanimously accept the 2020 results without any widespread militant uprisings or civil wars (which were anticipated rather comically).
But the political elite and the mainstream press have a substantial responsibility in the coming years to make sure that this type of hyperbolic anguish does not nearly get the same degree of airtime and exposure once 2024 rolls around. Otherwise, is it really that far-fetched to say that Republican elites in 2024 will bemoan another loss, and claim the election was stolen by “socialists” that had hijacked the Democratic ticket? And how doubtful is it that, after a 2024 loss, the Democrats and all their friends in cable news will spout speech after speech, and run segment after segment about how a supposed “Putin-puppet” such as Mike Pence or Tom Cotton is an “existential” threat to the fabric of our democracy?"
That SpaceX first flight actually went awesome.
Yeah, in the end one of the Raptor engines didn't work. Still...way to go!!! :up:
A nice debrief of what actually happened! :razz:
Interesting.
I guess the Texas lawsuit probably went awesome too, in that it may have helped to generate more donation$ and merchandise sales, as well as giving the Trump herd something motivating to focus on.
Filing frivolous lawsuits is not an act of sedition. Stupid, harmful to political discourse, divisive? Yes. But not close to seditious.
[quote=NY Times 12 Dec 2020] Incensed by a Supreme Court ruling that further dashed President Trump’s hopes of invalidating his November electoral defeat, thousands of his supporters marched in Washington and several state capitals on Saturday to protest what they contended, against all evidence, was a stolen election.
In some places, angry confrontations between protesters and counterprotesters escalated into violence. There were a number of scuffles in the national capital, where four people were stabbed, and the police declared a riot in Olympia, Wash., where one person was shot.[/quote]
The showing takes place on TV and radios, both of which facilitate it because it makes money in advertising and subscriptions.
The media is kind of like a church where the story of the universe is told, evil is identified, the litany is spoken, and the congregation answers back with slogans like "Restaurants under siege from virus restrictions"
Locate yourself on the map provided, you are here.
People who don't watch the news have no identity. They're the real fools on the hills.
So people without a TV don't have an identity? What does this even mean man? Even as part of your party I cannot make heads or tails from this statement.
Poetically speaking. One thing you might overlook is that people who are really struggling don't have a lot of time to carry signs and gripe in unison to the lead of CNN or whoever. They're trying to keep their heads above water. They're trying to deal with an addicted family member, the recent funeral of a son or daughter, the fact that they have medical problems...
It's the relatively ok people who need some way to vent their angst from whatever source, they are the ones who try to find some flame to follow, to make themselves feel like all their anger means something in the black dead universe.
They gather round Democrats and Republicans according to their social status, fling some feces at the other side and gobble up that warm feeling that they're doing something about climate change or the lack of job security, or racism, or whatever. Their anger is so strong, it's palpable isn't it? It can't all be for nothing.
It's a whole domain that a tourist can just walk away from, but the permanently invested have gaping psychological holes from manic depression or whatever their deal is. They're locked in and subservient to the news anchor until they die, I guess. I'm just speculating. I'm a tourist.
Surely fitting that the cases have been solved.
Yes, but, of course, there was never anything to the cases. They were, on the one hand, clownish attempts at pacifying Trump's ego and, on the other, a fundraising scheme to con his gullible supporters out of hundreds of millions, most of which will go straight into his pocket. So, who knows? This may continue regardless of where we are in the process and the continued futility of the cause.
He'll have another build the wall fundraiser, except this one will be to build a wall on Texas' nothern border.
Ha, yes, exactly.
‘Honesty’ used to mean something to Republicans, I presume. If so those days are well and truly over.
In a World where there are flat-Earthers and all kind of truthers around, this surely will continue. Trump needs his hardcore followers and this is the time when he is still in the White House to get the cult going.
Also curious is the flat out (absolutist) view that there has been no voter fraud and no irregularities. The question is why no one ever says 'yes, there were errors in counting, however these are insufficient to decide the election' except for AG Barr has said in his statement.
Quoting CNN
Of course there were problems and 'errors', however this is not what is said in the macro view.
Let's look at CNN's 'misinformation' page.
https://edition.cnn.com/business/live-news/election-2020-misinformation/index.html
OK, CNN, accepted, but I have no knowledge of how the elections system works, I suspect few really do. But I will take your word for it.
"For the most part?" Does that mean that there were cases where they were not allowed? No evidence?
What would constitute evidence in a place where photographs are probably not allowed?
OK, so CNN admit 'observers were not present' and this is normal. OK. This is covered up by the statement that 'no announcement was made telling them to leave'. Of course we have no evidence one way or another. Not having observers present is a serious issue is it not?
A human error is even worse. Of course the issue was corrected. Makes you wonder about the human errors that were not corrected, however there is no way of knowing what the safeguards in place were.
The insinuation -- that mail-in ballots are potentially rife with fraud -- is one of the main themes touched upon throughout the lawsuit.
Facts First: Election experts have told CNN time and again that mail-in ballots are a safe form of voting and not subject to widespread fraud. There have been no reports from state election officials of either party of widespread voter fraud from mail-in ballots.
CNN fails to mention that the allegation is that signatures were not verified. Regardless of whether it was true or not, the allegations can only be met by a check if the signature verification actually did take place. It may have. However this is not the defense. The defence is that " Election experts have told CNN time and again that mail-in ballots are a safe form of voting" . I suppose experts have said that time and time again flying in an airliner is safe, but this does not mean there is no possiblity of something going wrong.
This does not meet the charge: that the election officials were part of the fraud. Of course they say there was no fraud.
As for the evidence: supposedly people committing crimes are supposed to leave evidence sufficient to throw their entire project into utter dissarray and get jail sentences for their agents. Surely they are smarter than that? There is such a thing as circumstantial evidence, and eye witness testimony, but these have to be met on their own merits, such a charging these people with lying, or admitting the statistical freaks that have occurred.
In the end "there was no voter fraud because CNN and Election Officials say so" does not cut it.
For the record, I do not claim to know what happened, time will no doubt tell. But people should already know thin defenses when we see them.
It’s because people generally cannot handle subtlety. Intellectuals discussing these things in detail should be acknowledging those subtleties, yes, but general reporting for the general public needs to bottom line it for them, because they’re not going to bother trying to understand the subtleties and will just run with their biases instead.
If it’s the case that any irregularities in the electoral process (of which there are inevitably some) are negligible in the biggest picture, then what Joe Public needs to hear is that everything is fine. Because if you tell him all the details he’ll add a bunch of negligibles up into something way out of proportion.
Wow, you're really clutching at straws there.
Quoting FreeEmotion
Actually, I saw it reported over and over in the media, that any irregularities were insignificant. And, what was reported by elections officials was that this was an election with an even lower degree of error than those in the past.
Quoting FreeEmotion
Why don't you just come out and say what your hinting at. More than half the American population were part of the fraud. They all conspired to 'illegally' throw Trump out of the office which he righteously deserves. Of course all those people will insist that there was no fraud, just an election. So, why do you believe that there was fraud? Because mailed in votes were counted in the middle of the night? If it happened after midnight it must be evil.
Quoting FreeEmotion
The problem here, is that we cannot just suppose that people were committing crimes without any evidence that crimes were committed. Do you see how backward that is? The election did not go my way, therefore crimes, (many many crimes required to swing elections in numerous states) were committed. Therefore I accuse everyone involved in carrying out the elections in four states as possibly having committed these crimes. You're all potentially criminals, and I'll try you all in court, until you rat each other out. Back to reality, no evidence that any crimes were committed, and no one is ratting each other out, so that's further evidence that no crimes were committed.
To make a blanket accusation of "election officials" in this way, without a shred of evidence, is extremely defamatory, corrosive, and ought to be punishable, if made by a person of authority like the president.
There are two theories we can work from here:
1. The Republicans all know that Trump lost but they're willing to pacify him by pretending otherwise so that they don't face his wrath. They realize that these efforts to interfere with the election results will amount to nothing, so they see no danger in attacking the core of American democracy, and they see their support of Trump working to their political advantage. This theory casts the Republicans as pragmatists with little conscience, but it does not suggest the Republicans would actually do something that mattered, like issuing a court ruling in favor of Trump, refusing to certify the election, or casting their electoral college votes inconsistent with the voting results.
2. The Republicans really want to overthrow this election because it is based upon fraud, but they are being thwarted by institutional barriers and by a handful of men and women (most notably judges and some Republican elections officials). While they may realize all their efforts to change this election result was a long shot, they truly believe in the justice of their mission.
My instinct is to think it's #1, but #1 requires that I impose my worldview on those of another world. That is, to accept #1, I must assume that no one could possibly believe the election was rigged. That probably is not really the case though. I also don't think that those Republicans who have been complicit in the efforts to overturn the election did so only because they believed their efforts would fail. That is, I think they are pragmatists, but I don't think they chose the road to pragmatism because they instinctively knew their attempts to overturn a valid election would fail so they were able to do as they did with a clear conscience. I think they wouldn't have had any difficulty sleeping if they actually did overturn the election.
While those in the #2 camp are nutjobs, at least they appear to be men and women of conscience. I would like to think that if this election truly had been rigged, that I would be one of those who threw every obstacle in the way of Biden being sworn in.
And so I'm left with the truth, which is that there is no evidence of election rigging and so anyone who says there is or who attempts to invalidate a fair election should be thwarted. Why people might be motivated to argue one side of the other probably varies from person to person, but it's largely irrelevant at the end of the analysis. The question is who do you want in office moving forward: Those who side with the truth or those who don't.
We could keep proliferating categories, I guess. Some of it is like the kid who plays along with the Santa myth because he really wants to believe it as much as he knows it's not true. More of it is a kind of trolling recalcitrance, "I know but I'll be damned if I'll admit to you I know". Some of it is cynical political gameplaying, and yes, there are a few full on QAnon-type nutjobs who are rallying for a cause they truly believe is righteous.
Quoting Hanover
:up:
That's kind of what I'm thinking as well. Guilty until proven innocent?
Someone had grabbed some footage, taken out some frames, added red arrows and circles, and added their comments, pointing out alleged criminals and "suspect" or "anomalous" behavior. As far as I can tell, none of the vote-handlers have been taken in and questioned. Wouldn't they at the very least be "persons of interest" or something? The allegations are kind of serious. By the way, the red arrows and circles looks like something you might find on UFO conspiracy theory sites. I don't think the footage counts as material evidence of a crime really; it's too pareidolic, too many different hypothetical narratives could be put on top of it; nah, they were likely just doing their jobs, with America tensely waiting.
The law needs material evidence, yes? Either there is none, or someone is withholding something. These lawsuits and theories go back, just about to when the counts had come in (that's not counting Trump's 2016 postulates of course).
• Suppose there isn't really much, no material evidence, which would explain the lack thus far.
Then what's the reason for the flurry of lawsuits? What's made Powell et al (apparently) believe Trump won?
• Suppose someone is withholding material evidence.
Then why hasn't it been provided, ending the waste of time/resources, getting conspirators questioned (and prosecuted), perhaps securing Trump a 2[sup]nd[/sup] term (which presumably is the goal)?
What is it that everyone supposedly is missing here...?
According to Disraeli, "[t]here is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour." It seems he was right, and I suppose you are as well. But what's of greater concern is there are people who believe that the unsupported allegations made in these legal actions are true and that their rejection by the courts is just another part of the "steal."
I think that's probably right. They're playing along, trying not to get 'the base' offside, trying to avoid being machine-gunned by Trump on Twitter, but knowing that it really isn't going to go anywhere. In a way, it makes Trump look even more pathetic - manipulated by cynics for their own gain, while in his mind, they're supporting his cause.
Quoting jorndoe
From everything I've read about Sidney Powell, she's seriously delusional, bordering on the psychotic. Part of the whole dynamic around the Trump bandwagon is that he pulls others into his delusions. That's his only power, actually. Everything else he tries turns to s***t.
Now Trump is truly in La-la-land, if it comes to the elections.
How many days is it? Still over a month to go with Trump. That's not much.
This is how I’ve always looked at Trump. He’s a loud, attention-getting, useful idiot to the people in actual power, or rather worse still, the paid puppets of those people (for the real career politicians like McConnell are in turn just the puppets of the billionaire class). He’s a puppet of puppets, doing a song-and-dance routine about how he’s got no strings, completely unaware of the irony there. The really sad part is how much of the audience actually believes that song and dance.
That said, I don't think anyone put Trump into power. Murdoch apparently thought negatively of Trump prior to his being elected but then of course had to pony up to him once he was President. Besides, Murdoch supports Fox because it makes him money, not because he believes anything on it. The Republican establishment didn't want Trump in the beginning, but they ended up being like one of those unfortunate girls in the change room who couldn't resist his clutches.
It's all been a massive f*** up and waste of four crucial years while the planet hurtles towards an emergency. Let's hope some semblance of order can be restored.
(I wonder if Twitter will freeze the RealDonaldTrump account on 21 Jan, and the Feds sieze the content on the grounds of it being protected records. That would really be a nice final twist of the knife.)
Right, I didn't mean to imply that anyone did. That's where the "useful idiot" part comes into play. They're making use of him, once he's there, but even they still see that he's an idiot, and didn't want him there in the first place.
https://bypass.theweek.com/articles-amp/950908/obama-pretender
"We are still paying for Obama's faceplant on his most important task. An increasingly lunatic Republican Party took advantage of that failure to seize control of Congress, and eventually elected Donald Trump, who is currently attempting to overturn the election he lost. It sure seems unlikely that Obama's vice president Joe Biden will countenance the extreme action now necessary to preserve American democracy.
Obama had a golden opportunity to knit the country back together after a disastrous Republican presidency and a brief moment of Wall Street helplessness. He didn't do so because he couldn't stomach the radical action necessary to heal the nation's wounds and repair the social contract, and instead invented a lot of excuses why he had to sit on his hands and do nothing. The name for such a person is a coward".
In this, Obama shares the same qualities as Trump: a slick salesman and an incompetant statesman, beholden to masters dictating their every substantive policy move. His 'Hope' being the exact rhetorical equivalent of Trump's 'Build the Wall'. God, even Trump unkept bullshit slogans were policy proposals rather than vague feel-good nothingisms.
As an aside, can anyone even remember Biden's campaign slogan?
And the elite is extremely successful in this.
Many people go along with this, thinking that they can simply win the other side as they are right and the others are wrong.
Hence nothing changes and the elite prevails.
I think the 'elite' are global entities with limited ties to the US.
The apparent division in the US comes from a political pendulum that's mostly in free fall.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/
Ezekiel Emanuel is now on Biden's COVID advisory board. Given the demographics of who COVID usually kills, it's not clear to me if Emanuel will be advising for or against COVID.
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/penn-medicines-ezekiel-emanuel-named-bidens-coronavirus-task-force
Fucking hell.
It's interesting you say that. When I think "ruling elite" the group that comes to mind would be people like Bezos, Musk, Gates, Buffet, the Waltons... I keep a loose attention to these people but unless I'm missing something I don't see them as having one common interest in keeping the country divided, but who knows I may be missing something. I view them more as unique individuals with their own plans and goals.
I think the "polarization" is a means to keep the present system up. The worse the situation is for more Americans, the more polarized and poisoned the atmosphere has to be. The objective for those in power is that the power perpetually changes from one to the another in four to eight years. You see, the candidate who is depicted as "ultra-right" or "ultra-progressive" doesn't rock the boat as there will be enough of Americans who reject them on the other side.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
You should perhaps look at those people that man the various administrations: there is a small group of people (let's remember that the US has 330 million people) that get a position in the administration after their party has gotten into power again. Or how many of them are multimillionaires (when it came to the Trump administration).
It's simply is very lucrative as a career choice to be in either of the two parties, as they are in power in a very normal manner. You can have that lucrative board room / think tank place in the private sector when you party is out of power.
Quoting ssu
Could you give me examples? I agree that they exist, I'm honestly just curious as to how many there are and whether they all have the same goals. Typically when I think of "class" I'm thinking of like tens of millions of people, maybe at the very least a million. Anything smaller - especially if its only in the hundreds, would just be a group of people. Additionally, I'd like to know how much power these people have in the grand scheme of things. Virtually every remotely big figure in politics or business or the intersection of the two is a multi-millionaire (defined as net worth at least $3-4mm) so this label doesn't mean much to me.
Sorry to bombard you with all of these questions. I'm not trying to argue with you, I'm actually curious as to the extent of this.
I really don't think there's anybody out there planning this stuff. Representation of the monied interests is in place, regardless of who sits in what office. No need for the elite to have a special plan. They will lobby regardless of whether you're a Democrat or Republican and those receiving money clearly understand that having any political career means giving them what they want or you can forget funding your next.
The objective of those in power that you describe just confuses the fact that the objective for politicians is to win and in a two-party system they will alternate as a result. There's no silent or gentleman's agreement between GOP and Democrats to share power by alternating each other. If one could always win, they'd do whatever they need to make sure that happens. So we have gerrymandering and other voter disenfranchisement because it helps the GOP. The Democrats would do the same if it would help them.
And we see that both parties are both ideologically rudderless because of money being the primary driver of decisions. Since there's no essential ideological difference anymore, the only way to differentiate is to hurl shit. So it becomes toxic due to circumstances not as the result of some grand plan of elites. It's a simple fact that money buys you votes in the US.
This is the one hopeful note about the 2016 Trump win: that the election cycle isn't just about money.
Naturally we are interested here in the Biden administration, as obviously it's now very current:
Kamala Harris: I'll leave this one as there are obvious reasons for her pick.
1) Secretary of State designee: Anthony Blinken
Blinken was the deputy Secretary of State in the Obama administration and before that in Joe Biden's National Security Advisor (to the Vice President of the United States). Blinken was then before in the Clinton administration in the National Security Council and speechwriter and assistant to Joe Biden. Blinken comes from a career diplomat family as his father was an US ambassador as was his uncle.
So this guy is working on his third Democrat administration.
2) Secretary of Treasury designee: Janet Yellen
Fed Chairwoman. Bill Clinton appointed her as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she served from August 12, 1994 to February 17, 1997. Yellen then became Chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from February 18, 1997 to August 3, 1999. Later Barack Obama appointed her as a replacement to Bernanke. After Trump appointed a replacement for the Fed Chairperson, Yellen went to work to the Brookings Institution think tank before now picked by Joe Biden.
This woman is has been basically working along all administration since Clinton, even if the Federal Reserve isn't part of the administration, naturally.
3) Secretary of Agriculture designee: Tom Vilsack
Governor of Iowa from 1999 to 2007. Then from start of the Obama administration worked as the Secretary of Agriculture until the end of Obama's second term.
Need to say anything? This guy has worked at the same job under the last Democratic administration and earlier was a governor from a state where agriculture is rather important.
4) Chief of Staff designee: Ron Klain
Biden's campaign advisor. Also Clinton-Gore campaigns advisor and Gore's campaign advisor. Served as chief of staff to Vice President's Al Gore and, of course, Joe Biden.
Again a person that has served in all three Democratic administrations, basically in the same position. Now just the President's Chief of Staff, not the VP's.
Do you notice my point here? Of course there are those politicians from the House of Representatives who are picked for cabinet posts etc. but that is very normal for political careers everywhere. But when you look at the next lower level, the story is similar. And naturally those that have worked in the Carter administration are now quite old! But they would be there, if they would be younger.
Even if we had this outrageous Trump administration and it had it's infusion of career military generals, which hadn't been the usual choice, and the odd multimillionaires, it is hardly a surprise that people like John Bolton waltzed into the White House... and waltzed out.
So please understand just how tiny these circles are in a country with 330 million people when the position are filled by only two political parties.
What special plan do you need? It's simply to a) not have a valid third party emerge to ruin the show and b) keep the people polarized as then they will vote against the party they hate? I think it's pretty clear that the whole system is based on minimizing the role of possible other political parties starting from the electoral college system. The creaming on the top is the "primaries" as this way "for people to have a say" in the system. And Americans will now surely believe in the "primaries"-system as it gave them Trump, which obviously the GOP elite didn't want and then Trump got the grip of the whole party.
You see, this kind of "deal" doesn't need any kind of written or oral agreement, it is basically like the "way of the land" as the saying goes.
Quoting Benkei
Who needs that, because NATURALLY people will get enough of one side at least after 8 years or 12 years. If you are given two political choices, the natural outcome is that enough people will be disappointed in one party to give the another a chance. Hence just look at how the administrations change.
Again don't think that this is implemented by an mutual open agreement. I doesn't have to.
Makes you wonder what the point of it all is. This scenario looks like a ship sailing across the ocean with a different party grabbing the bridge and setting course for a different destination each time. In the early days sailing ships used to trace a zig-zag course but that was with a purpose, a final destination in mind.
I am not sure if democracy is a good thing for the United States of America. More to the point, maybe a two party system is not a good system. Before anyone gets upset, remember the Founding Fathers, so revered by the American populace, did not establish America based on a two party system.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/two-party-system-broke-constitution/604213/
Of course this a just academic. It is too late to go back. It is nice to know that China has a one party system, and has done quite well with it.
Well, my point above is that it's the exact same two parties, same two cabals, which just rotate from one to the another. In a democracy it would be healthy to get new people with new ideas to power every once in a while. Not exactly the same people from four or eight years ago.
Quoting FreeEmotion
Still best option, if it only would work.
Quoting FreeEmotion
The real problem with a one party system is that once things go really bad, there is nothing to replace those in power. There is no way to know just how bad things are and if the system is a totalitarian one, it will exist in place so long as there is nothing to do and the whole system collapses.
China just shows that with economic growth, people accept any kind of system.
Which is my point. There's no agency involved, it naturally emerges from a winner takes all system where plurality is enough and bribery is legal.
Oh no, no. Not bribery. Just official acts, which may or may not include bribery. For example, bestowing lavish gifts on, or gifting money to, a politician in return for, e.g., setting up a meeting with someone influential or useful isn't bribery. The politician doesn't tell anyone what to do, he's just using his position as a public servant to facilitate a meeting between someone who's given him a nice gift and someone else they want to meet. That's not bribery, for goodness sake. Our Supreme Court has said so.
Quoting Pfhorrest
This seems to be a sad fact. I am the first to acknowledge there are 'crazies' on each side, to use the intellectual term, and it is up to each side to control its extremists. I saw a tweet the other day suggesting some negative things about Biden - give him a chance, he just got elected ( but this claim is disputed ) , and there is a lot of antagonism on both sides.
Possibly four years more of hubris and the I believe some higher knowledge will sink in to both sides slowly. Debate is alive and well. The moment people stop insulting the other side we know true progress has been achieved. I will miss it though.
That is not what I am saying, what I am saying is that the reporting has been one sided, however, some of you have seen better reporting but I will leave it at that.
Irregularities were insignificant: my view is that even insignificant incidents like this may be used to garner support for the Republican side with the battle cry of 'stealing' and 'undemocratic'. Not having any access to any evidence or not having seen any evidence yet, that is what it looks like now.
Donald Trump, Rudy Guliani and other Republicans are taking a huge 'tremendous' gamble :
1. Sufficient evidence will be found and admitted to court to overturn the election. This is what they are saying.
2. Insufficient evidence will be found to overturn the election but sufficient to preserve their reputations and standings in the Republican political sphere.
I am no saying it is unintelligent, but that it all depends on what the stakes are. I find the risks under (2) extremely high for them, and I cannot quite figure out what they are getting at.
I do no think it makes sense to cal people delusional. Politically motivated grand-standers - maybe.
We all realize that it is not true until CNN says it is true. Or BBC. It is their filter that is applied to our information, which is tragic.
There is a quote from "Moonlight Over Paris" written many years ago that is relevant here:
It's a beautiful song which echoes a philosophical view - not sure what it is called:
Does the moonlight shine on Paris
After the sun goes down
If the London Bridge is falling
Will anybody hear a sound
If you follow the sunset will it ever end
Does the moonlight shine on Paris
Oh and how can you just walk away
Is it something that I said
I see only black and white
You see green and red
You believe in the miracles
Water into wine
I believe it when it makes the New York Times
https://genius.com/Paolo-santos-moonlight-over-paris-lyrics
You have to check your laws.
It's total war, or looks like it. I agree with mostly what has been said except the claims to idiocy. Not Trump or anyone. Maybe in the end we are the idiots because we get only the information we are supposed to get, we only hear the tunes we were meant to dance to and we dance to them. Some of us can't dance.
I believe that attacking the other side is exactly what Trump is accused of doing, and not very helpful. He was elected legitimately and his supporters have the right to a view, just not the right to craziness, which we may see on our screens.
Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud 'more than sufficient' to swing victory to Trump
[i]Andrew Mark Miller
Washington Examiner
Dec 2020[/i]
I take the article itself with a grain of salt.
Haven't read the report (not yet anyway), might have to be taken with a grain of salt as well.
Either way, it seems clear that those people had decided "Trump won" and "fraud" before most of this (alleged) evidence was dug up.
Trump goes off the deep end with UNHINGED new conspiracy theory
Brian Tyler Cohen; 8m:14s youtube; Dec 13, 2020
Misc comments...
[quote=Kym Higginbottom]If he didn’t trust the machines why is he so convinced he won.[/quote]
[quote=Anita Luca]He only claims fraud in the states he lost. He is the fraud he speaks of. Guys a con man.[/quote]
[quote=Kerry Ellison]What's really scary is that a lot of people believe every word he says.[/quote]
The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy
Hahl, Kim, Sivan; American Sociological Review; Jan 10, 2018
Quoting from the report:
Also:
The fact that " some election irregularities may have existed" is basically agreed by all sides. The Trump campaign has one task remaining: to get the courts to rule in their favor with the required evidence and therefore convince the "mainstream" media, namely: "New York Times and Washington Post and cable TV networks like CNN and MSNBC" that what they are saying is true.
In any case, this will all be over January 6th. If the Trump team does not prove its case, I suggest that it will lose a large chunk of its voter base, since these Trump supporters will either will decide they are lying or decide that the Trump legal team and other similar legal groups cannot prove their allegations when so much evidence exists, which is shows an inability to deliver on promises.
Either way I am closely watching. My message to both sides is: please do not make any mistakes. The stakes are too too high.
Oh yeah, after the thousands of lies that Trump has made while in office never lost him any support, what's going to change now?
Such delirious comments from the disgraced and short lived Trump National Security Adviser made actually even the military respond to such insanity with the Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville saying in a joint statement that there “is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”
Off course what the armed forces will do, or not do in this case, doesn't matter. The only objective with floating these kind of absurd ideas was to get Donald Trump's attention, just as it was with lawyer turned conspiracy buff Sidney Powell, who has made such a splash that Trump floated the idea of her being a special counsel to investigate the "rigged" elections. Doesn't matter that under federal law, special counsels are appointed by the U.S. attorney general, not the President. That Powell was earlier declared to be off the Trump team after wild conspiracy theories just fits to the logical picture, if there is any logic, how Trump picks those who he listens to. Somebody explaining to Trump that he can easily turn the elections and get reinstated as President in January because pigs fly, will get Trump's ear and attention. Because, who could have known that pigs don't fly? It was a great idea and the person suggesting it had balls.
Trump's actions are now equivalent to a certain German leader in his bunker in April of 1945. And similar behind the scenes struggle for power is going on in the Trump administration.
I can imagine that the Trump team meeting with Powell and Flynn alongside others in this boat ended in a shouting match. This is what the end of the Trump administration looks like.
[sub](FYI, the data they have is in json format, and was used for a kind of general running overview during the counting. I think other news also relied on it, while America tensely watched, with much nail-biting it seems.)[/sub]
Sure, there are some bumps and jumps here and there in the data. And those particular ones the conspiracy theorists zoomed in on, have more Biden counts than Trump counts. It's not that the Trump curve doesn't jump, but it jumps less than the Biden curve. By itself, this stuff doesn't prove anything, could be whatever.
[sub](If anyone also wants to waste time, I can point them at the data, show how to extract things into tabular format, and load it up in whatever spreadsheet software. Getting fancy, load it up in, say, SageMath, Jupyter, Scilab, which is free software. Mathematica and Maple are commercial.)[/sub]
So, they needed to correlate the exact timing with something going on at the places where the votes were counted. Hence that footage where they'd grabbed frames, added red arrows and circles, and pointed out alleged crimes/criminals. That's what Brian Cohen commented on, in part anyway.
Sometime, they went on to point fingers at those vote-machines. "The plot thickens." Though it seems the company then warned Powell et al of lawsuits.
Ridiculous and bizarrely entertaining. :)
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
And some of them have guns. And Pompeo has railed China-fear-hate up among some, too. And socialism-phobia. "Crazies" to quote the late McCain?
And possibly to get Trump's base acclimated to these kinds of ideas, so that the next time an election doesn't go the right way, they might just seem a bit more reasonable.
It's funny you should say that, because, if the results of the election are correct, he did lose support. Or did he gain opponents? It is important to distinguish between false promises such as saying the pandemic will just disappear maybe that is a false prediction, and lies, such as... CNN, after much soul-searching has published an article on a small fraction of Trump's lies:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/31/politics/fact-check-donald-trump-top-lies-of-2019-daniel-dale/index.html
There you have it. Inaccuracies, exaggerations. Delusions? The point is that in order to lie you just know the truth. What if you believe a lie? If you believe a lie, you pass a lie detector test. Is that how it works.
When Bill Clinton came appeared on international TV and admitted he lied, that I accept. But who knows what hapenned, there was no evidence presented after all. Just reliable testimonies.
In order to lie you have to know the truth, or else what are you going to lie about? When discussing remote news items it even does not matter what the truth is: what matters is if these claims can be proven. Here we have been presented with a rare opportunity: statement that is testable, and in the short term. All this litigation and politicking is centered around two assumptions. The first is that the courts will rule in favor of the Trump campaign. The second is that members of congress will object and launch an investigation, which again will result in nothing less than the overturning of the election.
If these two things do not happen, it will be counted by Trump supporters (some of them at least) as failing to deliver on promises, which they have not seen in the past, more than 80% or the Republican voters support Trumps actions so far. If claims of election fraud are never proven, that will put Trump out of the running for the 2024 election because, and I am guessing here, they know that the forces arrayed against him are simply cannot be overcome. Voters are smart enough to be pragmatic, even Trump voters.
Trump's job approval rating is listed here by Gallup at around 39%:
https://news.gallup.com/interactives/185273/presidential-job-approval-center.aspx
Gallup also has 'approval by party' poll that shows Trump at better than 85% approval by Republicans.
Oct-20 Nov-20 Dec-20
Republicans 95% 90% 87%
https://news.gallup.com/poll/328106/public-mood-sours-satisfied-approve-trump.aspx
Democrats do not approve of Trump. No surprises here.
All very interesting, so the acid test is looming and it has dates on it: January 6,2021 and January 20, 2021. At least it will all be over. The attacks on the President will continue, whoever he/she is.
Acclimatised*
There was his semen on her dress. Only then was there the confession.
I don't compare Clinton to Trump though. Diddling the intern is really bad judgment. Trying to dismantle a democracy for your personal ego is extra.
George Washington’s farewell address is often remembered for its warning against hyper-partisanship:
The same article goes on to say
The election is over and it has been found free and fair. The fact that the Trump tinfoil-hat train lost 60 cases, including in front of the Supreme Court, underlines that they more than had their chance to demonstrate otherwise and failed miserably, so take your conspiracy-theorising elsewhere. It's embarrassingly foolish.
I saw that. The Newsmax one was quite amusing. The newscaster looked like he wanted the ground to open up...
One lies about what they believe. One need not know the truth in order to lie.
So if you were to unwittingly spread a lie that you believe was the truth you would be lying?
One lies about what they believe. One is not lying if they believe what they are saying is true. Whether or not it is true doesn't matter.
The only way to unwittingly spread a lie that one believes is true is by virtue of trusting the truthfulness of another's testimony, when the other is saying things that they do not believe(when the other is lying unbeknownst to you);Spreading another's lie.
I’m not so sure about that. They threw everything at Trump and he mostly prevailed—impeachment, fake hate crimes, a hostile press, a violent opposition, investigations into him and his family, riots, organized protests, leaks, big tech and media censorship. For years they warned us of a fascism that never arrived, but unfortunately in doing so they distracted everyone from real-world threats, leaving most unprepared for what was to come. While they distracted the American president with an impeachment charade, a virus was allowed to circulate within the country. In the end it took a once-in-a-century pandemic to do what they failed to do.
I could only imagine what his presidency might have been like had cynical, anti-Trump forces given him a chance. I suspect he won’t run again (he’s too old), but if he were to come back in 2024, I suspect even anti-Trumpers would love to fill that Trump-shaped hole in their brains.
As for Trump’s refusal to concede, I love it. I can only hope that by the end of it he declassifies everything.
Who is this "they" that controls government agencies, politicians, the judicial system, the press, BLM?, leakers (that he appointed?), big tech, and online media? The riots were not directed at Trump, btw, and if anything the rioters should hate Biden far more than Trump. Biden admits to "mistakes" but only time will tell if he puts real effort into reform.
Quoting NOS4A2
More favors for capital and fewer favors for labor, essentially, plus a stupid big beautiful border wall and a massive deficit (despite slashing entitlements).
... and if covid didn't burst the bubble there's a good chance something else would have.
The Fraudulent Universalism of Barack Obama
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/12/the-fraudulent-universalism-of-barack-obama
One of the worst passages in that God-awful burlesque of a memoir is when Obama can’t even summon up the courage to admit that he was responsible for murdering innocent children abroad, pusillanimously claiming that:
“In places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead."
Behind all that cowardly bluff and bluster is a wicked war criminal, just like the presidents who preceded him and those who will follow him.
What an astoundingly awful piece of shit.
No, his Syrian "red line" inspired Syrian rebels and his withdrawal from Iraq helped create ISIS. There's a frontline documentary about it.
The reason Democrats don't look at Syria as his fault is politics-induced-blindness.
No, he really did signal American support to Syrian rebels. When Assad called his bluff, he backed down.
Trump the turd did less damage to the world than virtuous Obama did. It's challenging to face the fact that the world works that way, I realize.
I just can't stand the emphasis on civility and compromise being presented by the centrists, trying to unite the country somehow, as if that would be a good thing. Fucking spineless. That's why I love Nina Turner; she knows who the enemies are. Would have written her in if I didn't live in a swing state.
edit: Trump and the GOP are also enemies, and I voted for Biden, if there was any ambiguity.
Political discussion on this forum, perhaps every forum, tends to be overwhelmingly dominated by emotional poses. On this forum it's often the mods who lead that parade. That's life, this forum, like all forums, is guaranteed to be worth what we paid for it.
Almost all of the criticisms of Obama made by progressives are entirely factual and indicative of a conscience, not emotional fragility. People who are resistant to such criticisms are themselves deeply emotionally invested in the idea that the ends always justify the means and that constant moral compromise is necessary. This is not the case.
Trying to bring the country together somehow = fucking spineless. Emphasis on civility and compromise = fucking spineless. Hysterical emotional pose. Sophomoric.
However, as deemed by the ruling local authorities, appropriate on this philosophy forum, so as you were, continue as you wish.
I should also add: many are emotionally invested in a narrative in which personal character and intention mean more than the consequences of actions. That being said, and you didn't ask me, I would unequivocally choose Obama over Trump or Bush.
Quoting Hippyhead
Do you really think we should compromise with the GOP? With Neoliberals? Do you think we should withhold our honest opinions or express them civilly just because we might hurt some war criminal's feelings? I don't even know what it means to unite the country; what does it mean to you? Because it sounds like the kind of shit someone who doesn't give a rat's ass about people would spew to justify compromise with even worse people.
It's called democracy.
Quoting ToothyMaw
What high school do you attend? Perhaps we could talk to your guidance counselor about this?
Yes, I'm not suggesting seizing power and instituting autocratic rule, I'm talking about pushing for the policies that are popular with most everyday people, such as Medicare for all, a living wage, etc. If anything that is the democratic thing to do.
Quoting Hippyhead
edit: do you want to have a conversation? Or are you just going to flame me?
This is judged to be entirely reasonable, so thanks for that. Given that I am after all a Hippyhead, I expect we might experience considerable agreement on policy.
So how might such noble goals be accomplished? If the Dems win the Senate and we shove all of this down the Repubs throat, they will simply repeal it all the next time they are in power. Yes, Obamacare has survived the repeal attempts, but only just barely.
If we are to achieve anything truly sustainable we'll have to find common ground with at least some Republicans. This is unlikely to happen if our focus is on yelling names like "fucking retards" and "war criminals" etc at them to get our jollies off. If we insist on yelling such names at our own committed allies, then it is we who are the fucking retards.
Many or most Republican voters are actually pretty reasonable people who have some valid concerns. Profit driven corporate media obscures this by focusing on the looney tooners. Many Republicans voted for Trump because WE lost them, as the Democratic Party has gotten in to the unfortunate habit of often ignoring and even insulting the average working person. Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comes to mind. Automation and globalization costing millions of American jobs, while our attention is focused elsewhere.
The election of Trump was OUR failure. A great many of those Trump voters have long stood with us. And we lost them. Yes, we need to reach out to these people, show them some respect, and try to win them back.
When the fuck did I say that?
Quoting Hippyhead
But if we don't get that stuff passed it won't even exist to be repealed. I'll respond to this tomorrow.
Quoting Hippyhead
Common ground with respect to how hard we should get fucked by corporate interests?
Quoting Hippyhead
Most republicans voted for Trump, but I admit that there are some reasonable, misinformed republicans, yes.
Quoting Hippyhead
What about Bernie? He never belittled working class people; he quite obviously had nothing but respect for them.
Quoting Hippyhead
I would say it was a failure on behalf of the neoliberal part of the democratic party.
Quoting Hippyhead
I have trouble believing ardent Trump supporters can be "won back". Maybe the more moderate ones can, however.
If you're really interested, watch the Frontline documentary. It's as unbiased a viewpoint as you'll find. Obama said it himself on the way out: Syria is what haunts him.
I dont think he's haunted by what he did to Wall St. I think he truly thinks he did the right thing. I believe he just postponed a collapse and I see what its doing to millennials and following generations. The US has profound income inequality and demoralized youth.
Quoting tim wood
The reason you want to hold off on this kind of accusation is that you never know when the person you're talking to is half Filipino and half black. :monkey:
Quoting tim wood
I'm not sure why this is relevant. I get the impression you really can't look at the situation objectively.
Read please. I didn't say you said that. But you do see do have some affection for the word fuck in general.
Quoting ToothyMaw
I like Bernie. Voted for him. But did you notice that he lost, twice? All angry all the time is not a winning strategy. That's much of what I'm trying to say here.
From outer space it all looks like one long bloody slog. Intentions are just shadows.
That's your dose of nihilism for the day.
This is a stupid, irrelevant question, designed to deflect.
It's not reasonable to expect reasonable dialog with Streetlight. Probably wisest to give up all hope of such and move on to greener pastures.
Come on Tim, that's a silly question, we both surely know that there would be at least........ five people still left with their heads attached if Streetlight took power.
We could say the same thing about tim as well.
Boy this thread has degenerated. A true representation of its title.
I don't know about beheading specifically but on more than a few occasions he's wished death on political opponents. Also of note is that he flat out refuses to engage the other side in discussion, which I think certainly speaks volumes. I know he's going to see this post and a snarky remark is coming, but I don't really have anything against the guy I just wish he'd get some help.
Well, there is a partial solution available. Kill all the political threads. Or perhaps shove them all in to the Lounge? A significant portion of the political analysis here is abysmal anyway....
Case in point.
Quoting StreetlightX