Somewhere between 'zero' and 'Buckleys' would be my estimate.
A rally kicking off former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haleys 2024 presidential campaign opened Wednesday with an invocation from a Christian pastor a practice not unusual for a GOP political event.
What was notable, however, was Haleys choice of pastor: John Hagee, a high-profile televangelist and founder of a Christian Zionist group, and a political activist who has made headlines for a number of controversial remarks, including those considered anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. ....
To Pastor Hagee, I still say I want to be you when I grow up, Haley said.
She has a much better shot at that than the Presidency.
Reply to frank AFAIK, so far only DeSantis & Individual-1 (less and less) ... they're also looking for anyone who the MAGA mouth-breathers will support. Like Pence (who's delusional), Haley ain't one of them.
Agent SmithFebruary 17, 2023 at 02:41#7817000 likes
So, we're electing leaders based on sex/gender now? Barack Obama wasn't given accommodation in the White House because he was black, he was for the simple reason that he had or seemed to have a good plan as regards how to run the country. Obama just happened to be black. :smile: Hopefully, if Nikki Haley becomes POTUS, she too just happens to be a woman.
Obama was the less bad option in both elections. IMO, his being black helped in 2008.
Then America is doomed! A leader is chosen for leadership qualities and there's no correlation between the color of one's skin, gender too for that matter, and how well you can manage a country's affairs. :smile:
So, we're electing leaders based on sex/gender now?
Seemingly, the masses go to vote just for trivial aspects rather than asking to the politicians more effectiveness. We live in a period of time where it is more important for a politician to have a good spotlight than a great rethoric.
Agent SmithFebruary 17, 2023 at 05:52#7817410 likes
Seemingly, the masses go to vote just for trivial aspects rather than asking to the politicians more effectiveness. We live in a period of time where it is more important for a politician to have a good spotlight than a great rethoric.
Seemingly, the masses go to vote just for trivial aspects rather than asking to the politicians more effectiveness. We live in a period of time where it is more important for a politician to have a good spotlight than a great rethoric.
I've generally never seen it much different than this, it's just that each generation's trivialities seem more grotesque that the last.
AFAIK, so far only De Santis & Individual-1 (less and less) ... they're also looking for anyone who the MAGA mouth-breathers will support. Like Pence (who's delusional), Haley ain't one of them.
I'm not across this issue - living elsewhere - but this seems on the money. Trump still has a hold of a significant chunk of the GOP. Do you think De Santis will be a bigger problem than Trump - being more disciplined and focused?
javi2541997February 17, 2023 at 06:20#7817500 likes
Reply to Tom Storm In the WH, yes; but I don't think DeSantis will get that far precisely because his reactionarypopulist fascistic, racist, mysogynist, public health-denying policies in Florida amply demonstrate how much scarier he'd be than Individual-1.
I suspect Biden will announce in the fall that he's not running in 2024. Kamala Harris is already DOA (and good riddens). Watch California governor Gavin Newsom for President (with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer for VP). Now that's a MAGA-killing ticket! Not nearly as far left as I'd like or this country needs but consistently more firmly progressive than Biden-Harris (or Obama-Biden or Clinton-Gore).
But Ann Coulter is an idiot. I think Haley will appeal to swing voters because she seems to have a moral center. DeSantis comes across as a slug after what he did with shipping immigrants all over the place.
Yup, but she reflects what a significant number of MAGA folks think Quoting frank
Haley will appeal to swing voters because she seems to have a moral center.
That may be so, but apart from Romney and a few isolated others the Republican Party has no moral center. I could be wrong (happens on a regular basis) but I don't see any scenario in which Haley can win in the primaries.
I could be wrong (happens on a regular basis) but I don't see any scenario in which Haley can win in the primaries.
Famous last words, though. If you're thinking that just because of racism, I think you might be mistaken. I don't think the average Republican is racist.
My fairly incautious guess, at this point, is that DeSantis beats Trump in the primary, the latter forms his own independent party sabotaging the Republican vote in the general and Biden cruises into another four terms.
Reply to frank Maybe a Republican woman President, before Sarah Palin helped sink McCain's candidacy, had a good chance but in this post-Tea Party & MAGA-insurrectionist era I expect it will be two or three more Presidential elections before "Republican primary voters" throw up a nominee man or woman who will have an even chance to win enough of Independents and former-GOP voters to get back into the WH. My guess is that the fallout from Individual-1 & co's indictments, convictions and consequent civil unrest / political terrorism will have catastrophic electoral consequences for the GOP that will last for at least a generation.
Reply to Benkei Well, my track record is pretty good. I predicted HRC would find a way to throw the 2016 election, that Individual-1 would be impeached by the end of 2019 (because of Mueller's Report, I thought, which I was wrong about), in the summer of 2019 that Individual-1 would lose reelection in 2020 and that there would be no "red tsumani" in 2022. I'm on a roll, Benkei. :wink:
I expect it will be two or three more Presidential elections before "Republican primary voters" throw up a nominee man or woman who will have an even chance to win enough of Independents and former-GOP voters to get back into the WH.
I think it just depends on who looks the best on tv. The reason I'm keeping my eye on Haley is that she managed to be elected governor of SC, but at the same time doesn't show up as a complete sycophant or psycho.
I'll admit that it's also because DeSantis makes my stomach turn, he's such a slug, and Biden definitely looks weak.
Four terms? Imagine, he'd be a spry 98 years old at the end of it, our own Mugabe.
More seriously, I don't even think he should run for one more term. Age isn't just a number, and he'll be 82 before his second inauguration. The Democrats have plenty of good candidates to run and I can certainly see it benefiting them to put a new face out there given prevailing economic conditions.
Trump will probably win the GOP primary. Desantis is polling well for the same reason almost every Republican in the huge field in 2016 polled well for short periods. He isn't Trump and people don't know much about him. Trump has already opened up a 14 point lead on him and we haven't even seen Desantis embarrass himself by explaining why he is running against Trump even though he claims to believe Trump won the last election in a landslide.
But Trump-lite doesn't bring the out the enthusiasm like the Orange Augustus himself. The "hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory," crowd isn't going to go for anyone else. Like, are they going to vote for Mike Pence? They were chanting about hanging him in 2021. Plus, it looks like the GOP establishment will sabotage themselves by having too many candidates to split votes between again. MTG will quite likely be the VP.
The more frightening thing is that I can totally see Trump beating Biden, probably while losing the popular vote by 9-10 million votes this time, and his platform of revenge policies, for example, making almost the entire federal civil service political appointees, would be disastrous.
Plus, what a cruel irony it would be to see the first female President and for it to be MTG. That is the type of irony fate seems to like delivering lately.
My fairly incautious guess, at this point, is that DeSantis beats Trump in the primary, the latter forms his own independent party sabotaging the Republican vote in the general and Biden cruises into another four terms.
Trump not getting the candidacy of the GOP and then going third party and making sure that the Dems win would be a very likely, logical way how things would unfold. I agree that this is a genuine possibility.
Let's see in 2024 if you are a fortuneteller, @Maw.
(Page 2 of this thread is allways easy to find, even when it's running in over hundred pages).
Count Timothy von IcarusMarch 17, 2023 at 19:28#7898910 likes
Reply to ssu
Of course, he needs to stay out of prison until November 2024 to do that, which could prove difficult.
Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus Ah! Wishful thinking. Or should I say that you have an optimist view of the US justice system? Well, belief in the system keeps it up, as they say.
This might happen if the Republican populace simply grows tired of the Donald. And that can happen. Otherwise, imagine the life of the judge afterwards who puts Donald Trump into jail.
Perhaps Donald can have a ghostwriter then writing his "My Battles" book while in prison!
Reply to frank Elections have consequences, at least to some extent. As it happens, Twiddledee and Twiddledum will have slightly different policies, and there might even be differences that "make a difference". On the other hand, T'dee and T'dum generally have the same large policy objectives -- maintaining the capitalist order, maintaining the two-party system (Demican / Repocrat), maintaining the highly uneven distribution of wealth, maintaining military strength, and so on.
The election is roughly 17 months away; Nikky Haley and others ??? may be irrelevant way before then.
I find it difficult to get aroused about 2024. I expect the process and result to leave me underwhelmed, very disappointed, deeply chagrined, highly annoyed, and more!
It isn't just that the existing political process will fail to solve our significant -- even existential -- problems. It IS the case that the existing political process CAN NOT solve our problems.
Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus I agree that Biden is too old to run again. Granted, there are very lucid 95 year olds, but they aren't under the pressures of POTUS.
It isn't just that the existing political process will fail to solve our significant -- even existential -- problems. It IS the case that the existing political process CAN NOT solve our problems.
We still have to have a president, though. If we have no head of government, somebody will invade.
How many Americans believe the elections are street theatre for the public, that it really doesn't matter which party wins. That there is a psychopathic power elite that believes democracy is a joke.
If we have no head of government, somebody will invade
Yes, because The Prez stands at the Gates of America very much like Gandalf stood before the Gates of Minas Tirith, and by his power turned away the servant of Sauron. EVEN Donald Trump was able to thwart invasions from the Bahamas and bird-like aliens from a distant star system, just by standing resolutely in front of the the urinal in the oval room powder room.
Iceland is waiting for a lapse in our powerful presidency, as is Lichtenstein, Morocco, and Sri Lanka.
Can the POTUS by force of his high office turn back ICBMs? Apparently -- otherwise the Soviet Union would have long since buried us, as Nikita Khrushchev foretold. Unfortunately, coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was able to slip past the Great Guardian and Guarantor of Freedom.
Well now it appears law enforcement is prepping for an indictment announcement next week. This is a New York indictment, but a Georgia one also seems quite likely.
Maybe he can stretch it out long enough to win and we'll have the crisis of a President with multiple state warrants out for his arrest in felony charges.
Yes, because The Prez stands at the Gates of America very much like Gandalf stood before the Gates of Minas Tirith, and by his power turned away the servant of Sauron. EVEN Donald Trump was able to thwart invasions from the Bahamas and bird-like aliens from a distant star system, just by standing resolutely in front of the the urinal in the oval room powder room.
Iceland is waiting for a lapse in our powerful presidency, as is Lichtenstein, Morocco, and Sri Lanka.
Can the POTUS by force of his high office turn back ICBMs? Apparently -- otherwise the Soviet Union would have long since buried us, as Nikita Khrushchev foretold. Unfortunately, coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was able to slip past the Great Guardian and Guarantor of Freedom.
This sounds slightly sarcastic.
Count Timothy von IcarusMarch 18, 2023 at 16:32#7900840 likes
Update: Trump himself has released a statement about his immanent arrest from a warrant to be issued in three days and called for protests and supporters to "take back our nation." Ya love to see it.
Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus I don't think Trump can win again. Except the Dems are staking a lot on helping Ukraine, and Putin might just decide to escalate things in an attempt to help his isolationist buddy Trump. Desperate people do desperate things.
ITS TIME!!! WE ARE A NATION IN STEEP DECLINE, BEING LED INTO WORLD WAR III BY A CROOKED POLITICIAN WHO DOESNT EVEN KNOW HES ALIVE, BUT WHO IS SURROUNDED BY EVIL & SINISTER PEOPLE WHO, BASED ON THEIR ACTIONS ON DEFUNDING THE POLICE, DESTROYING OUR MILITARY, OPEN BORDERS, NO VOTER I.D., INFLATION, RAISING TAXES, & MUCH MORE, CAN ONLY HATE OUR NOW FAILING USA. WE JUST CANT ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. THEYRE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA!PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!
MAGA nation seems riled up. Lots of Twitter posts, oh no!
All because their criminal hero is throwing a toddler tantrum over (maybe) being held accountable for one of his many crimes -- this one being fairly minor compared to others.
I have no interest in getting involved in some manufactured circus by some Soros-DA, DeSantis said at a news conference Monday,
NBC
I guess this is a Soros-DA:
"Bragg is from Harlem, and grew up on Striver's Row.[2] In an interview with The American Prospect, Bragg noted that he had been "deeply affected by the criminal justice system most directly through three gunpoint stops by the NYPD."[3] He graduated from the Trinity School[4] before attending Harvard College. He graduated from Harvard cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in government in 1995[2][5] and earned his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Civil RightsCivil Liberties Law Review.[5][4]"
Mr. DeSantis has honed an agenda that attacks progressive orthodoxies where they are most likely to affect and annoy conservative elites: gay and trans inclusion in suburban schools, diversity and equity in corporate bureaucracies, Black studies in A.P. classes and universities. None of these issues have any appreciable impact on the opportunities afforded to working-class people. And yet conservative elites treat it as an article of faith that these issues will motivate the average Republican voter.
The conservative movement has staked its viability on the belief that Americans resent liberal elites because theyre woke and not because they wield so much power over other peoples lives. Their promise to replace the progressive elite with a conservative one with men like Ron DeSantis is premised on the idea that Americans are comfortable with the notion that only certain men are fit to rule.
Mr. Trump, despite what he sometimes represents, is no more likely than Mr. DeSantis to disrupt the American oligarchy. (As president, he largely let the plutocrats in his cabinet run the country.)
Few politicians on either side appear eager to unleash rather than contain Americas leveling spirit, to give every American the means and not merely the right to rule themselves.
If DeSantis were elected, he'd be the first Italian American to reach that office. Why can't he show some respect for the principle of tolerance that makes his candidacy possible?
Sort of. They are accused of pushing woke ideology for a variety of reasons, which in turn makes them a target for "cancellation." It is surprising though, given Disney has very much catered to the Evangelical right in its content production over the past decades.
But it is less shocking then the new right wing trend of attacking the US security apparatus (the FBI, the intelligence community) and the military. This would have been unthinkable in the W. Bush Era, but now memes like this are quite common:
It's a very weird thing that the radical far-right, with their proclamations of an immanent "Boog," or "second civil war," has decided to attack the military as insufficiently righteous. Apparently, the new utopia/minority rule will be brought about by legions of amateur, majority senior citizen revolutionaries.
I can't say I recall a single revolt in history with a median age of 55, but if you look at armed protests in the US that would be my low end estimate for age. It's weird, especially since half the nation's budget is transfer payments to seniors. I suppose it is more about social control, not economic factors though.
I can't say I recall a single revolt in history with a median age of 55, but if you look at armed protests in the US that would be my low end estimate for age. It's weird, especially since half the nation's budget is transfer payments to seniors. I suppose it is more about social control, not economic factors though.
Maybe it's a red state thing where aging militias aren't being replaced with younger members?
I can't say I recall a single revolt in history with a median age of 55, but if you look at armed protests in the US that would be my low end estimate for age. It's weird, especially since half the nation's budget is transfer payments to seniors. I suppose it is more about social control, not economic factors though.
I would like to see some statistics to this effect. That would not be my guess.
Ageism is still considered fair game, while other forms of discrimination may be declining.
I don't think anything like "statistics," for that exists. You'd be hard pressed to get people arming up to protest tyrannical government to fill out surveys for you.
However, armed right wing protests since 2020 have generally been photographed in detail, so you can take a look for yourself. That the crowds are majority male, by a large margin, majority White, by an even larger margin, and skew older seems readily apparent.
And I was making a comparison to other revolutionary movements and the compositions of militaries. The maximum age to enlist or receive a commission is 35 for the Army, 28 for the Marines for example. It's a historical anomaly for such a movement to include more men with grey hair than ones you could mistake for undergraduates. That said, it's not particularly surprising since Donald Trump, still mostly a hero in far-right circles, lost voters under 30 by a landslide 29 points (by contrast, W. Bush split 18-24 voters almost even). https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184426/presidential-election-exit-polls-share-votes-age-us/
Not that there is any definite overlap between people who vote for Y candidate and those who bring assault rifles to their governor's front lawn, but I'd have to imagine the recruiting pool is a subset of the larger whole for any set of political radicals.
I don't know, maybe that sort of thing will become more common as society ages overall. Anyhow, I wasn't trying to be ageist. Certainly there have been plenty of older, very successful revolutionaries. It's just strange for the entire cohort to be older. Normally it's the young people who get all hot headed and want to tear institutions down without fully thinking through what that means. I don't think the small subset of people marching around state houses with rifles particularly represents any age bracket as a whole.
That's not even the wild part. Generally if you want to take control, especially as a minority, you want the military on your side. And this has always tended to be more true of right wing groups. The far-right turning on the military is the truly bizarre part.
I'm still sticking with my prediction from a couple of months ago about the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 2024 despite Biden's lame-duck postponing announcenent today.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781912
So Bernie announced he's not running, and will be supporting Joe. That means an end of an important period. Bernie will never be president (not that there was a huge chance anyway, given the DNC).
Bernie ran two very important campaigns. His policies are now in the mainstream discussion, and his supporters have helped push Biden farther than he would have otherwise been.
So Biden versus Trump, again. What a pity. An easy choice, though. Vote against Trump again. Prevent him from getting into office. Then keep grinding on with local/state work.
That should be the extent of the mental energy used these next 16 months. But I'm guessing it won't be. Because when it comes to the US, we have to turn it into an overwhelming spectacle. Talk about overcomplicating.
Biden carries with him cheat sheets that provide advance knowledge of a reporters question, whom to call upon, etc.
One hilarious example shows Biden needs guidance for even the most basic of tasks.
YOU enter the Roosevelt Room and say hello to participants, the note read, then immediately directed the oldest-ever president, YOU take YOUR seat.
Just like his last campaign the whole presidency is a complete sham. The man is not under control.
The idea that a politician can represent me is an obsequious one, especially if theyve never met me or considered my concerns. So I dont look at it as someone representing me as if he was carrying out my will.
Here the leader of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen cannot even face a reporters questions without a cheat sheet and a public relations team. Its all a scripted show. I prefer reality television.
Here the leader of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen cannot even face a reporters questions without a cheat sheet and a public relations team. Its all a scripted show. I prefer reality television.
Most powerful the world has ever seen? Eh, that's more likely the British Empire.
Do my eyes deceive me, or may the American people get a chance to vote for an actual person rather than condemning the world to another 4 years of (p/m)uppetry?
As long as Republicans can't break off from Trump and create a party with stability against the Democrats, the Republicans will always be pure chaos and bullshit.
The idea that any Republican would vote for Trump just to get Republicans into power is a ridiculously desperate need for power. It's like: "Let the world burn, as long as I can have the slightest seat of power".
If that is their ambition, then there's no moral soul left in that party whatsoever. I'd like to see the more functioning, stable, and intellectual Republicans break off from Trump and start their own party or seriously try and take over the Republican party by outing all the stupid morons who infected it. How far does it need to go before Republicans do this for real? Or are there so many morons in the Republican party that it's a doomed case?
The republicans are no longer a political party. Here I agree with Chomsky.
But what theyve left behind is hardly admirable the intellectual republicans are still neoliberals through and through. All their talk of small government always was a pretext for vicious class warfare and their complete obedience to corporate power. Even more savage than the Wall Street democrats, who at least throw a few crumbs to the 80-90% of the population struggling to keep up once in a while, and believe in things like climate change.
Unfortunately theres no choice anymore for anyone thinking rationally about the world. The Democratic Party is currently the place to push for changes. Weve seen that in the old bones of Biden, who doesnt have the foggiest idea of whats going on, but who has been far more progressive than Obama or Clinton, largely due to activist pressures and the strength of the Sanders campaign in 16 and especially 20. His advisors know that many voting blocks simply wont accept the policies of his predecessors whole hog.
But thats national stuff, where we dont have much impact other than in how we vote. What matters more isnt really any party, but what we do locally and how we organize i.e., how we increase our power. Theres a great book on this called Politics is For Power, by Eitan Hirsch. I think this is where our focus should be; the choice for who to vote for in 24, in contrast, should take 5 minutes of brain power.
[quote=Steve Schmidt, former GOP senior campaign advisor, from discussion with former Senator Al Franken (D-MN), podcast 7 May 2023] I regard him as a philosopher. He is a practioner of philosophy Donald Trump; and he is a philosopher of fuckyouism.[/quote]
elected officials like the Frump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Wendy Rogers, Ted Cruz, ...
in the US anyway? Bernie at least comes through as a better choice of a representative (of course labeled an evil commie), and I'm sure there must be many others, regardless of party, but then those...people rise and the circus comes to town.
EDIT
Wasn't intended to discredit JFK. Englitch being my 2nd language shows.
Reply to jorndoe What makes him an idiot exactly? It seems he has a lot of guts, throwing down the gauntlet towards big pharma, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, the foreign policy establishment, etc.
I thought that type of thing would be looked upon more favorably here.
Well, as weve now learned a million times, we live in bizarro world. Given this, I predict Trumps chances of becoming president will only increase after this verdict.
Reply to Mikie If Sexual Predator-1 is on the ballot in the fall of 2024 he will be running as an Independent / Third Party candidate and not as the GOP nominee. Why?
(1) by the end of 2023, the jury in NYS civil lawsuit will find him responsible for over a decade of state tax fraud, putting him and his children on the hook for damages $500million $1billion and effectively shutting down the Trump Organization, etc by preventing the family from doing business in NYS SP-1will be so broke that campaign mega-donors will completely abandon him (as his buddy Rupert Murdoch already has) as well as Russian Oligarchs & the Saudis ...
(2) by the end of 2023, SP-1 will be indicted for dozens of RICO felonies in Fulton County, Georgia, with a trial set to begin in the summer/fall of 2024 Senate Minoriry Leader "Moscow Mitch", in order to protect the GOP's slim chances of winning back the US Senate in 2024, will lead GOP senators to begin to openly withdraw their support during the GOP primaries and even openly criticizeSP-1as a serial electoral"LOSER"just as former GOP governor Chris Christie is already doing ...
(3) lastly, also by the end of 2023, a Federal Grand Jury and the DoJ will indict SP-1 for Seditious Conspiracy & Insurrection, among several other charges, and this will trigger legal challenges in State & Federal courts to remove SP-1 from ballots for president (or any federal office) pursuant to the prohibitions specified in the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 of the US Constitution without GOP big money or his own financing, without the support of GOP senators and live wall-to-wall 24/7 media chatter about legal challenges to officially disqualifySeditionist-1from any federal office including the presidency, the GOP will abandon him next spring (or sooner) in order to begin saving itself as a viable party for the 2026 midterms abd 2028 general election.
Out of spite and malignant narcissistic dementia, Seditionist-1 will run as a third party spoiler to punish the GOP for abandoning him siphoning off enough voters to guarantee a Democrat wins the presidency (not Biden) as well as violence by MAGA terrorists leading up to and around the election next fall. And all this in the political context of the collapse of FOX Noise (re: Smartmatic & shareholders' lawsuits plus Tucker Carlson's retaliation) and demise of the right-wing SCOTUS (re: Thomas & wife, et al) as well.
Youve laid out a good case. I think some of it is wishful thinking (like how soon there will be a verdict in the NY civil case, and the extent to which donors and senators abandon him), but its not out of the realm of possibility.
I dont think it matters to his voters, who will double down as they always do, will send him millions of dollars, and will rally around him as a victim of left wing conspirators. They will also destroy any challenger, as we see already with DeSantis, who was supposed to be the shoo in.
I wouldnt put it past him to run as an independent or Patriots Party or something like that, but there will be no need: the voters will vote him in as a Republican.
Also, when you say it wont be Joe Biden as the nominee care to bet on that too?
Reply to Mikie The NYS civil trial begins October 2nd; it's a black & white "documents case" that should last no more than two months with a verdict just in time for Xmas or sooner. Loser-1 will not offer a defense just like in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit and the Trump Organization was convicted of 17 felonies last fall which are also at the heart of the state's civil case. It's wishful thinking at best on your part, Mikie, to believe this lawsuit won't reach a verdict againstLoser-1 by the end of this year.
Rubert Murdoch has already abandoned him. I suspect other far less well-known to the public mega-donors already have as well (which is why Loser-1 has veen griftingsohard since his failed coup attempt).
Senators Mo Brooks & Mitt Romney released separate statements today declaring Loser-1 is unfit to be president. More to come, Mikie. Let the avalanche begin ...
Keep in mind, the voters only matter get a say once 'the establishment' (mega-donors, party leaders, politicians & pundits) has signed-off on the candidates. Loser-1, while still the front runner today, is hemorraging the establishment support he needs so that his MAGA maniacs can get a chance to vote for him in the primaries. Yeah, I get it, they don't care about his past or pending civil, criminal & financial troubles but, all indications are, the GOP establishment cares about winning / regaining power in Washington DC and Loser-1 looks more and more to them like an obstacle to power. MAGA morons be damned, there aren't enough of them 'without Never Trumpers, suburban GOP women, under 35 years olds and most Independents for Loser-1 to win a general election. This has been obvious and confirmed since 2018 and confirmed again in 2020 & 2022 (remember the Trumpy "red ripple"?) :smirk:
Lastly, Desantis is sabotaging himself even as he throws red meat at MAGAts. Also, between getting punk'd by Mickey Mouse and being Loser-1's first and easiest rival to attack, Desantis has offered himself up as a tag-team practice dummy.
Again, I hope so. But so far every time it looks as though the Republicans are going to get away from Trump -- the apex being the week after January 6th -- he comes back, again and again. And it's obvious why: the voters.
Keep in mind, the voters only matter get a say once 'the establishment' (mega-donors, party leaders, politicians & pundits) has signed-off on the candidates.
But he's beat the establishment, over and over again. The establishment never liked him. They've tolerated him because he still gives tax cuts, deregulates everything, etc. So they put up with almost anything else, as long as he continues to win and give them what they want. Only trouble is, now he's not really winning.
The voters will apparently follow him into a volcano. Take a look at the polls. It's absurd. You have well over half believing the election was "stolen," simply because he says so.
Yeah, I get it, they don't care about his past or pending civil, criminal & financial troubles but, all indications are, the GOP establishment cares about winning / regaining power in Washington DC and Loser-1 looks more and more to them like an obstacle to power.
True. But again, they're in quite a dilemma, because the voters still love him and he refuses to pass the baton. He's destroying DeSantis before he's even declared himself a candidate. The establishment doesn't like this, of course, but they're stuck with him. The megadonars simply don't matter if he remains the frontrunner in the polls and has a massive campaign war chest largely funded through small donations from the faithful.
I'm not saying any of this is good for the Republican party -- it isn't, as was seen in 2020 and 2022. He is bleeding suburbia and independents. But even at that, it was still very close. In a sane world, all of them should have been blowouts. (Including 2018, which people forget was not a blue wave. Dozens won by shockingly few votes.) But the point stands: he's still the frontrunner, and very likely the Republican nominee.
All right then, you're on. I bet $10 at 5:1 odds. So $50 to you if you're right in either case. And yes, I'll be VERY happy to pay it, because I hope you're right on both counts.
[Edit: personal bets are probably looked down on here, so how about this instead: I'll donate $50 to TPF if you're right, and you donate $10 if I'm right. Deal?]
In uneasy times many look towards an authoritarian figure, in marked contrast to our current president, who is widely seen as only a figurehead, perhaps senile, controlled by a progressive cabal. We drift towards Banana Republic-hood with every video clip of Trump - no matter if they portray him as good or bad. He exudes confidence. :sad:
On a side note. Imagine - just imagine - the howls from the Republican Party if George Santos were a Democrat. The outrage! The denunciations! The calls for action! How dare he!
Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP.
//although should note some exceptions:
[quote=NYTimes]Other Republicans were less merciful, particularly Mr. Santoss fellow New Yorkers. Representative Anthony DEsposito, who represents parts of Nassau County, called Mr. Santos a serial fraudster who should resign from office. Representative Mike Lawler of the Hudson Valley said Mr. Santoss conduct had been embarrassing and disgraceful, and he should resign.[/quote]
My fairly incautious guess, at this point, is thatDeSantis beats Trump in the primary, the latter forms his own independent party sabotaging the Republican vote in the general and Biden cruises into another four terms.
Hosting Floridas governor, Ron DeSantis, in a Twitter audio event on Wednesday to announce his presidential run was supposed to be a triumphant moment for Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter.
Instead, the event began with more than 20 minutes of technical glitches, hot mic moments and drowned-out and half-said conversations before the livestream abruptly cut out. Minutes later, the livestream was restarted as hundreds of thousands of listeners tried to tune in. Mr. DeSantis had not said a word at that point.
Putin's Bitch goes on trial in NYC for 34 felonies (so far) on 25 March 2024 during the middle of the GOP primaries. By then the NYS Attorney General and E Jean Carroll (et al) will have bankrupted Loser-1 with punitive damages fines. His "presidential candidacy" is DOA. :lol:
[quote=Politico]Ron DeSantis - There could be a charming, easy-going lad hibernating under all that permafrost, a Republican Mister Rogers who wants to be your friend and neighbor. But reporters must rely on what theyve seen and heard during his stint in Congress and over the four years hes occupied the Florida governorship. He looks and acts like the guy who would confiscate the ball kicked accidentally onto his lawn by kids playing on the sidewalk. Aloof and distant, as if nursing some eternal grudge, DeSantis seems as tightly wound as a fishing reel and a better candidate for residence on a desert island than the White House.[/quote]
Maybe Elon should invite him on a rocket launch next.
(Its probably that sense of harbouring a grudge that makes him most like Trump. (He would resent that.))
The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trumps seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trumps takeover of the party in 2016.
Its a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantiss potential coalition whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trumps votes. The former presidents base more than 30 percent of Republicans remains strongly devoted to him.
Ny Times
I agree with this. It benefits Trump.
Maybe the RNC takes a page from the DNC playbook and consolidate around one person once its clear that the non-Trumps are splitting the votes.
What Republicans don't understand that now Donald Trump has become what Hillary Clinton was for Republicans, a figure that makes them see red in anger. When the democrats chose Hillary for President, they obviously had forgotten how bad her image had already been when just the first lady.
With Trump it's worse. Nothing can mobilize the Dems better to vote than Trump being the GOP candidate. Anybody else, and the GOP has a good chance to win. Now other candidates can change and thinking of them can change, but this will stay.
If Trump becomes the GOP candidate, again the country will look like it's breaking apart.
A massive dumpster fire then that election. Something that I'm not keenly looking forward to.
A massive dumpster fire then that election. Something that I'm not keenly looking forward to.
Yes. It's going to suck. If the number of people running in the Republican primaries is high, that helps Trump. His base is solid, so the others just split the 70% that's left. If Republicans really don't want Trump representing them, they'd have to get their shit together and stand united behind an alternative. I don't expect that to happen.
So really, if a Republican doesn't want Trump, it would be best to become a swing voter.
If the national Democrats could be more like Minnesotans, perhaps they'd have a better shot.
Minnesota now offers 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, the opportunity for any resident to buy into Medicaid, free public college tuition for low- and middle-income families, a new child tax credit for those families, free breakfast and lunch for all public school students, drivers licenses for all residents regardless of their immigration status, and stronger protections for workers seeking to unionize.
Middle-class seniors will no longer have to pay state income taxes on Social Security benefits. A law immediately restoring the voting rights of felons who have completed their prison sentences expanded the franchise to 55,000 more people. Minnesotans serving life behind bars for crimes they committed as minors are now eligible for supervised release 15 years into their sentence. Suspending gun permits for people experiencing a mental health crisis got easier. Recreational marijuana is legal. A new state law protects abortion rights. A trans refuge law shields transgender children who travel to Minnesota for medical transitions from legal repercussions in their home states. And Minnesota has set a goal of moving to 100% carbon-free energy by 2040.
All decent families are alike; each corrupt family is corrupt in its own way.
Sleepy Joe's family:
Hunter Biden
e.g. 2013 energy industry (China) & 2014 "Burisma" (Ukraine) more than $10 million (investigated by DoJ special counsel since 2018 that has resulted in guilty plea (pending as of 20Jun2023) to two misdemeanor tax charges plus five years probation on an unrelated firearm charge)
Traitor/Seditionist-1's family:
Ivanka & Jared Kushner
e.g. $640 million jointly reported "investment" income while both were employed by the WH 2017-2021 (re: deals in China, etc yet to be investigated)
Jared Kushner
e.g. $2 billion from Saudi Arabia in 2021 for ??? (yet to be investigated)
Ivanka Kushner, Donald Trump Jr & Eric Trump
e.g. along with their father, they are principles of the Trump Organization, currently facing civil lawsuit by NYS AG for over 200 documented cases of (state & federal felony) tax fraud, etc from 2011-2015 for at least $250 million (trial begins 2Oct23)
@NOS4A2 Like Hillary's emails, IDGAF about Hunter Biden's laptop. :victory: :mask:
Reply to 180 Proof I wish Christie had a chance, but I don't expect him to last. He's a solid opposition voice, although that seems to be more the result of Trump shunning him by not rewarding him for his support following Trump's (actual) presidential win. Who knows. If Trump had embraced him early on, maybe he'd be another Rudy Giuliani clown show by now.
Trump's father Fred lived to 93, so it looks like maybe Donald will actually live through all these trials.
Complete waste of time, as has no chance of passing the Senate, only serving to illustrate the mendacity and corruption of MAGA Republicans.
Adam Schiff said, for his part, You honor me with your enmity. You flatter me with this falsehood. You who are the authors of a big lie about the last election must condemn the truth tellers, and I stand proudly before you.
Reply to RogueAIReply to WayfarerReply to 180 Proof Jesus. Political opponents are now enemies and a mainstream newspaper uses that language as if it's normal. And none of you seem to have an issue with it. You realise the USA is completely fucked right?
Schiff promised them evidence of Russian collusion and when he didnt deliver they didnt care. He deceived congress, the public, and the world and it is quickly forgotten. They followed the Big Lie all the way to the end.
Reply to Mikie Whoever the Dem candidate will be in the end will decisively beat any GOP canditate in 2024 due to a significamt "leftward" shift in support by Independents and higher turnout by Dems base voters because of Traitor-Seditionist-1's multiple prosecutions and SCOTUS' MAGA decisions on abortion plus ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/819011
Reply to RogueAI As long as Shillary isn't the supremely unpopular Dems nominee who carelessly throws away the election again, IMO, Traitor-Seditionist1 can't win.
Reply to 180 Proof I wish this were so, but the Democrats have a unique ability to undermine their own chances. If there are 19 ways to win an election and 1 way to lose, the Dems will seize that one chance out of 20. They will occasionally win because they do not correctly implement that one chance and actually win through incompetence.
Cornel West is running as a Green Party candidate.
I like Cornel West very much. I think more serious parties is a good idea and would be an improvement in our two party system.
On the other hand, third party votes in swing states are a waste and, essentially, a de facto vote for ones least preferred candidate. Thats simple arithmetic, so its always puzzled me why some people push for not voting given the importance of the election in a country like the US, where even small differences between parties make a big difference in the world.
However, Im trying to give the idea more weight. Chris Hedges, a person I admire and have much to learn from, seems to advocate for this position. Hes helping Cornel West. He seems to believe that the only way out of this cycle is to make the Democratic Party afraid, to the point where theres real reforms.
I need to think more about it, but it still seems to me misguided.
Reply to EricH Yeah, in 2024 that "1 way to lose" will be the same as 2016: HRC. The Dems don't learn new tricks often ... though maybe VP Harris :yikes: (if Biden drops out of the race and the Dems don't nominate e.g. Gov Newsom, Gov Whitmer, et al) HRC redux.
Btw, Putin's Bitch & MAGA GOP candidates have lost in 2018, 2020 & 2022.Despite media hysteria (which is needed apparently to keep the rabble mobilized), MAGA GOP prospects in 2024 are even bleaker in no small part due to SCOTUS' 2022, 2023 (& probably 2024) rulings.
Not seeing that leftward shift in independents yet
Neither do I. Be patient. Remember "the red tsunami" of 2022? The GOP "sweep" was predicted it had seemed by everybody (except me).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/756539
Thanks, "Independents". :smirk:
Remember "the red tsunami" of 2022? The GOP "sweep" was predicted it had seemed by everybody (except me).
True no doubt itll tighten up as time goes by. Always does. Nominating Trump is probably a mistake, but I cant underestimate the electorates ability to do silly things.
I remember when Ralph Nader, who I admire, cost Gore the election ...
I don't remember this. What I do remember is that an incumbent vice-president during a time of (domestic) 'peace & prosperity' lost both the popular incumbent president's home state AND his own home state, which put in play Florida which was controlled at the time by the Bush family. Maybe as a Green Party activist from the late 80s throughout the 90s and supporter of Nader three times for president my recall is biased, but nonetheless Gore lost both Arkansas & Tennessee (and had refused to let Bill Clinton unquestionably the best retail politician of his generation campaign for him in the weeks before election day) contributed significantly more to him losing the election than a very marginal third party candidacy (IIRC, even Pat Buchanan, the far right Reform party candidate, received more votes than Gore had in some Dem precincts according to Florida election officials ... which even got chuckles from Buchanan on cable news). Blaming Gore's loss in 2000 on Nader is, it seems to me, as deluded and/or disingenuous as blaming HRC's loss in 2016 on "Bernie Bros". In both cases losing the electors for states which, but for the Dems, wouldn't have been in play while also winning the popular vote (a feat which hadn't happened since the late 19th century) poorly run campaigns of unlikeable candidates, aided and abetted by the DNC no less, threw away those elections.
Reply to RogueAI If Gore had won his home state of Tennessee and Clinton's home state of Arkansas, the Bush machine stealing Florida wouldn't have mattered.
Either you want the U.S. to be a democracy in which case it's absurd to wish rival parties out of existence (this is the one place where choice and competition are actually important). Or you don't want a democracy but a dual party system that makes a minimal pretence to democracy but where corruption, laziness, and complacency are the norm. I understand in individual cases actual democracy can be inconvenient but the degree to which it is so is directly proportional to your inability to believe in it.
I understand in individual cases actual democracy can be inconvenient but the degree to which it is so is directly proportional to your inability to believe in it.
Sometimes democracy just doesn't work for the people. Democracy isn't an inherent good. It lasts as long as it provides minimal stability. Once things actually start breaking down, dictatorship is likely the next step since that's the only kind of government that can act swiftly and effectively to re-establish stability.
FWIW, my two bits political democracy withouteconomy democracy is, in effect, 'democracy in name only' (DINO). The United States, I think, much more so than other G7/Western European welfare-states is now has always been a DINO wherein the broader stakeholder population is substantially disenfranchised by structural as well as partisan machinations of the shareholder (i.e. investor) class.
Asked to raise their hands if the candidates believe climate change is human behavior driven, no one did so it was interrupted by Desantis, who seemed to be somewhat panicked about the question.
I see their new fossil fuel-approved slogan is China and India need to reduce their emissions FIRST.
I see their new fossil fuel-approved slogan is China and India need to reduce their emissions FIRST.
And I bet their other slogan is "We can't reduce our emissions because we'll be reliant on Chinese technology now that they somehow got a head start in the industry"...
...Or some other reason why we shouldn't do anything. I've sort of heard them all at this point.
Thats exactly what was said as well! I think Burnham raised that point that we get our batteries and EVs from China manufacturing. Its just a joke.
Haley:
Is climate change real? she said. Yes, it is. But if you want to go and really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions.
I think Desantis looked awful in this farce. Vivek was much more in-your-face, but really obnoxious. Christie looked OK but was loudly booed and didnt get much time. Haley and Scott were bores. Pence did OK, for Pence. Although hes about as exciting as cardboard.
I reckon DeSantis has no chance, that his shctick will never extend to the US at large. It goes down OK in Florida due to favourable demographics, but he's the least likeable candidate by a country mile. The kind of guy, someone said, who would confiscate the neighboring kids' ball if it was kicked onto his lawn. All up, Trump is going to manage to completely ruin the Republican nomination process, anyway. While I believe there is absolutely zero chance of him being the eventual nominee, a huge percentage of the Republican elecorate will merrily follow him off the cliff. There's only one candidate who's really going to stand to benefit, and he's not a Republican.
Asked to raise their hands if the candidates believe climate change is human behavior driven
Is that how it was phrased? Like asking, "do you believe in God?" There are other forces at work on the climate. A more delicately composed question, like,"do you think human behavior is as responsible for climate change as natural causes?" might have gotten a few positive responses. Maybe not. Going all in and declaring a non-believer a heretic worthy of belonging to a "basket of deplorables" will win few converts.
Reply to Wayfarer What does a typical hero look like in the US? Dirty Harry, any spy movie with lots of collateral damage and breaking of rules, etc. Fits right in popular fiction.
Other lowlights
- Vivek Ramaswamy being applauded for calling climate change a hoax
- 6 out of 8 candidates saying they would support Trump (you can see de Santis glancing around to make sure others were doing it first)
When the autopsy on the death of Western democracy is written, these will be mentioned in the pathologists report.
On the plus side, at least Hayley supported Ukraine.
Why are they allowing this man to continue? Its not like theyll lose the seat. How bizarre.
In that moment, while Mitch McConnells dying brain struggled and failed to make sense of its present reality, all the dourness was gone from his face. All the downward gravitational pull from a lifetime in the DC swamp. All the seriousness. All the scheming. All the warmongering, tyranny and abusiveness.
In that moment of amnesiac innocence, youd never be able to tell from looking at Mitch McConnell how many people hes helped kill. How much suffering hes helped cause. How much health and thriving hes frozen out of humanity in his joyless facilitation of corporate dystopia.
All youd see is a man. A cute, harmless, befuddled old man. All the dark, dense, contracted energy gone from his form in a sweet tender moment of intimate indivisibility.
McConnell is clearly past it. Looks like a befuddled old man when this happens. He plainly needs to retire straight away but then common sense is in very short supply in US politics nowadays.
Reply to BC Very likely. I mentioned previously that I witnessed something exactly the same at a relative's 90th birthday celebration. He got up to say a few words but suddenly fell silent mid-sentence and had to sit down. He was very embarrased about it and had his son contact us later to say he had suffered a 'mini-stroke'. He died not long after. But McConnell seems so enfeebled and so clearly unfit for such a strenuous position, he really should have more sense. (Although there's a bit of unease as to who will replace him, what with some of the nutjobs in the the current GOP - although John Thune doesn't look too obviously terrible, aside from the fact that he's a Republican. ;-) But at least he's been critical of the Orange Emperor.)
Reply to Wayfarer Diane Feinstein is another one who should retire forthwith. I don't think Biden is holding up all that well -- he appears to be aging more rapidly lately. It's one thing to be old and doing reasonably well at home, with nothing much on one's schedule, and something else being a senator, representative, president, or Supreme Court judge.
Reply to BC If Republicans nominate someone like DeSantis or Haley, the debates will be brutal for Biden. But they're stuck in racial grievance mode and they want RETRIBUTION.
Reply to BC Mahathir held it together in Malaysia into his nineties. Biden doesnt project well but I think hes sound. Itd be great if the Dems had a younger alternative, but .
180 ProofSeptember 13, 2023 at 03:03#8371940 likes
Reply to frankPutin's Bitch definitely won't be the GOP nominee, Sleepy Joe might not be on the ballot either and I haven't seen a thing in the last seven or so months to change my mind in either case. I suspect, though, that if Harris is the nominee, low voter turnout will definitely benefit the GOP candidate. IMO, either Gavin Newsom and/or Gretchen Witmer would win at least as decisively as Biden won in 2020.
From four months ago, my predictions have been on track and in some ways better than I'd imagined ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/807006
Here's a piece from a Dutch historian and expert on the US about the radicalisation of the Republican Party: https://www.maartenonline.nl/als-een-partij-gek-wordt/
My first vote for president was JFK. I have never seen a presidential election like the upcoming one. The potential candidates are like Looney Tune characters. Please, third partiers, come forth!
Seems a good outcome for Democrats. Particularly Andy Beshear in Kentucky who had a solid win in a nominally Red state. Hopefully a harbinger for next year.
Reply to 180 Proof Apparently there's nothing to get your base as excited as hatred for the other side. That's how Trump won the first time and now with bland 80-year Mr. Potato-face representing the Democrats there's not enough to hate for the Republicans to get sufficiently riled up.
But certainly politics couldn't be that dumb right? Right? :scream:
Reply to Benkei IMHO, Hillary threw away the 2016 election by refusing to campaign in the white working class-dominated states she had lost to Bernie Sanders in the party's primaries which, not coincidentally, were the three states where Donald wound up beating her by a combined 7/10ths of a percent. He didn't win the popular vote in 2016 or 2020 and fortunately he's not running against Hillary again. :shade:
The MAGA "base" is a massive hate-cult that comprises only about a third of the electorate; 2024 will be Biden's / Dems' election to lose (much like Hillary in 2016) because Donald (even IF he somehow trundles through the GOP primaries despite by then (1) having lost his business "empire" and (2) being on trial for 'crimes against the United States') can't' win. So far, Benkei, Biden / Dems don't give any indication he is / they are careless enough to buck the trend and throw away next year's election.
The 2018-2020-2022-2023 trend is very blue (anti-MAGA) heading into 2024
My view is that DJT is leading the entire MAGA cult off an electoral cliff, lemming-like, and that his lead in the polls will basically amount to giving them enough rope to hang themselves (scary though it might seem in the meantime :yikes: )
This ruling will force SCOTUS to decide the issue for all 50 states ... soon after they decide Putin's neoNazi Bitch Joe Biden, Barack Obama & George W. Bush does not have "absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution".
Reply to Relativist If a majority of GOP primary voters want a chance at taking back the White House in 2024, then they will show SP-1 the door in the spring (or sooner). Of course, he'll continue to play the whiny victim and run as a 3rd party spoiler to keep the grift going in order to pay his legal bills. Otherwise, SP-1 will take what's left of the GOP down in flames (à la the Hindenburg) with him next fall. :mask:
RelativistDecember 26, 2023 at 02:44#8650490 likes
Reply to 180 ProofAt this point, it seems a majority of the GOP want him to be the candidate, and believe he will win for the 3rd time. Losing the case against Carroll didn't hurt him. What do you think will turn this around?
Reply to Relativist This far out from the 2024 election, polling only indicates relative name recognition and nothing more. What will "turn this around" is GOP primary voters deciding they want to beat Biden more than they want to loyally back a proven loser (neither SP-1 nor MAGA candidates have won a majority of voters in general, midterm & special elections, nationally or locally, since 2016 to 2023). Also, SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade in 2022 was the final nail in SP-1's coffin as all of the "pro-life" (anti-woman) ballot measure defeats in "red states" such as Ohio & Kansas unequivocally demonstrate. IMO, there is nothing non-trivial to "turn around" (and hasn't been since the day Putin's Bitch pre-ejaculated that he's running again for the presidency (i.e. to stay out of prison)).
RelativistDecember 26, 2023 at 05:08#8650550 likes
Reply to 180 ProofGOP do not consider Trump a "proven loser" (70% believe he won in 2020), a majority are delighted Roe was overturned, and Trump's indictments just fire up the base. A conviction might hurt him, but I doubt one will occur in 2024.
On the plus side: Trump "only" has about 50% support among GOP. If the field narrows down to 2 (e.g. Trump vs Haley), early enough, there's a fair chance Trump won't get the nomination. Then, I agree, he'll run as a 3rd party and doom the election for the GOP.
Reply to Relativist You're entitled to your opinon, so we disagree on a number of points. Let's resume this discussion ten and a half months from now, Relativist, and see who got it more right than wrong.
The election results say otherwise. Republicans have under-performed in every election since Trump's initial win. Then everyone forgets about that in the meanwhile and Trump leads the media on a wild goose chase into conspiracy theories and grievances. And come the next actual election, the results for the Republicans, as distinct from the fevered fantasy of a Trump presidency, will be abysmal. The real shame of the matter is that theres a whole lot of really important legislative work that needs doing, there are enormous economic, political, and environmental challenges to deal with, whilst MAGA are totally absorbed in what can charitably be designated a circle jerk.
Reply to Relativist It's only natural that what remains of the GOP increasingly has higher approval ratings for Trump but this is accompanied by a decline in overall GOP voters.
RelativistDecember 27, 2023 at 15:45#8654430 likes
Reply to Benkei I feel safe in predicting that Biden will again win the popular vote... But it remains to be seen if he can carry the swing states he needs to win. Biden's unpopularity may lead many to stay home rather than vote. Biden barely won some states in 2020, so it wouldn't take much of a shift.
I feel safe in predicting that Biden will again win the popular vote... But it remains to be seen if he can carry the swing states he needs to win. Biden's unpopularity may lead many to stay home rather than vote. Biden barely won some states in 2020, so it wouldn't take much of a shift.
I predict low voter turnout. I think that will help Trump. GOP voters are old and reliable.
So, do you think if Trump is convicted in the January 6th Trial, where he's charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding etc, and sentenced to prison (pending appeal), that he will nevertheless remain a viable candidate? (The trial is scheduled for 4th March this year.)
So, do you think if Trump is convicted in the January 6th Trial, where he's charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding etc, and sentenced to prison (pending appeal), that he will nevertheless remain a viable candidate? (The trial is scheduled for 4th March this year.)
The New York Times says yes. Being convicted doesn't automatically disqualify him. If the majority of states wanted to disqualify him they could, but they won't. That means he'll probably be the Republican candidate, whether he's convicted or not.
Reply to frank Leaving aside the fact that the Constitution doesn't disqualify candidates on the basis of them being convicted of a felony (a major oversight in my view), do you think he'd be a viable candidate? Do you think the electorate and the Party would be willing to put that aside and vote for him anyway?
Do you think that if he is convicted of those crimes there's a possibility that the Supreme Court will uphold the Colorado Supreme Court judgement of 'disqualification because of insurrection'?
Leaving aside the fact that the Constitution doesn't disqualify candidates on the basis of them being convicted of a felony (a major oversight in my view), do you think he'd be a viable candidate? Do you think the electorate and the Party would be willing to put that aside and vote for him anyway?
I really don't know. He won't take the popular vote, but as for the electoral college, it comes down to what the swing states do. Biden is the incumbent, and the economy is doing ok. Both of those give him an advantage. The voters turned against Trump in 2020. It's possible that they'll do that again. It will be close, though.
Im just praying you come out of it still a democracy! Sorry, but Im just saying what many other people around the world are thinking about, some rubbing their hands together and waiting with smug looks on their faces, thinking that its only a matter of time, and others, like me, praying you lot pull together because we could really do with you putting your differences aside and showing a united front right now! Okay, rant over. (Im still quietly praying though.)
Assuming the Romney/Manchin ticket does not materialize. If it does, all bets are off.
I would vote for them.
If only ranked choice voting were possible! That would make such a ticket truly viable - no one would fear wasting their vote on a candidate with virtually no chance of winning.
Reply to Wayfarer It's meaningless because the caucus had the lowest turn out since 2000 due in part to brutally frigid weather and yet about two-thirds of the voters are right-wing Evangelical (i.e. faux) Christians. Next week in very Independent / libertarian, much better educated New Hampshire, which is an open primary in which non-Republicans can also vote in the GOP primary, Loser-1's margin will be very slim (or he'll lose outright, which is quite possible). He'll kill Haley in her home state of very evangelical, less educated South Carolina after that though.
Reply to 180 Proof Please stop talking about "brutally frigid weather". Spells of below-zero F temperatures (and lower wind-chill) are not abnormal in this part of the world. Indeed, it's refreshingly normal after months of abnormally warm to brutally hot weather. Trump's Iowa win was not a cold day in hell -- it was entirely expected. The cold day in hell would be his second inauguration. Hopefully he will be locked up in solitary by that time.
None of them were previously President either though
And none had to run for president just to stay out of prison because they had been indicted with 91 felonies, or had been found civilly liable of sexual assault (rape in most other jurisdictions) or had been sued by their home states and found civilly liable for massive tax, bank & insurance fraud either. :mask:
Reply to 180 Proof Yup - the entire situation is novel. Exactly as i said.
Count Timothy von IcarusJanuary 17, 2024 at 21:07#8731020 likes
Unfortunately, even if Trump loses, America politics are going to remain incredibly broken. The US cannot even follow through on its commitments to Ukraine/Europe despite the fact that the overwhelming number of lawmakers from both parties support more aid for Ukraine.
We've reached a new low, where even the few areas of agreement between the parties end up getting wed to hit button domestic issues. Now aid to Ukraine has been made contingent on an immigration deal during an election year (one packed with administrative poison pills as well), making it 50/50 at best if anything gets passed before November. Unfortunately, this is going to have very real consequences on the battlefield, especially as air defense munitions run low.
The adults in the room are going to need to recognize that they have to be willing to pass legislation without their party's most radical members or America's already battered credibility as a partner (or even an adversary) on the world stage is completely ruined.
At this rate, it's only a matter of time until the country defaults on its debt, sparking a huge crisis. If anything, the GOP losing big over the next 10 years or so will probably only make this more likely, as they lose any share in wanting to see success.
The only consolation is that, given how polarized things are, it seems fair to assume that very few voters are going to switch parties for the Presidential ticket. Demographics being what they are, this probably means Trump loses by 9-11 million votes this time instead of just 7.5 million, although this hardly precludes him taking office again. That's probably the worst case scenario, especially if there are some Florida in 2000 style shenanigans surrounding his victory.
At this rate, it's only a matter of time until the country defaults on its debt, sparking a huge crisis.
I'm not so sure. No Democrat wants to see a debt default. I would guess most independents don't, either. Same with moderate Republicans. For the foreseeable future, there's going to be enough Democrats and moderate Republicans to avoid a default.
Unfortunately, even if Trump loses, America politics are going to remain incredibly broken.
I don't want to believe that. I mean, it is easy to believe, but at the same time, this forthcoming election may well be a circuit-breaker. I'm convinced that Trump will loose, even if he is the nominee, which I think is highly dubious. The 'Red Wave' never materialised at the half-terms. The Republicans now have a majority of only three after Santos' expulsion, it's conceivable that the Democrats might win the House, Senate and White House. And the House Republicans are basically split between moderates and the MAGA fringe, who are detested by a lot of people on both sides.
Despair and cynicism are part of the MAGA narrative - 'everything is broken, only we can fix it'. If I wanted to go and do the research on Biden's legislative and economic wins, I'm sure I could find it, although I don't want to spend the time. And yes, they're doing a very poor job of communicating those wins, but then Trump continues to suck all the oxygen from the room.
Agree the Ukrainian stalemate is disgraceful, and I'm sure there are Republicans who agree with that, but they're over a barrel held by halfwits like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan. The rot really set in with Gingrich and the Tea Party fundamentalists, and they are carrying it forward. But I refuse to give up hope.
Reply to Wayfarer The good news is that I imagine most voters don't like Trump and believe he's a danger to democracy. The bad news is that I don't know how much that will drive them out to vote in November. The Democrats aren't really doing a great job of convincing them, particularly since they're running a candidate who's arguably as unpopular.
Reply to Wayfarer He's seen the same on the othe rside. Dishonest, manipulative, fraudulent, hell-bent on harming America and f**king with elections etc...
Reply to AmadeusD But it's objectively untrue. You know the MAGA have been trying to pin crimes on him - just one! - for the last three years, they have found absolutely nothing. He's been a dedicated public servant all his career. You need to be more discriminating, there is not a moral equivalence at work, it is not 'both sides are to blame'.
Reply to Wayfarer Absolutely not, no, while I also understand what you're getting at - Facts don't care about feelings, haha. But sources matter - and each decides their source is reliable, despite pretending tha t there's an absolute answer - it's all spin. It's all paraphrasing, interpolating and media horsecrap from top to bottom - eg, its extremely shaky ground to attribute inflation changes to Biden during this term. From 2020 onward, so many machinations of hte world would outstrip the ability of governmetn action to affect things like employment and inflation. You may disagree, but having watched from afar this seems inarguable. It's happened everywhere. But i'm sure there are plenty of articles claiming its Biden's doing (which is patent, inarguable nonsense).
Additionally, Biden has been found to have fabricated his educational history in public, among other things. There is absolutely no basis to be pretending Biden is a clean-handsman. He made plenty of utterly absurd votes throughout his career, including opposing desegregation efforts that were working.
I may have to duck out, because you are clearly committed to a certain view, and while i respect that, I don't, overall, respect approaching politics in the way you are. It seems to be counterproductive, and at times outright ridiculous (not you; the approach). My take; that's all. I can conceive of choosing to lionise a politician. If, for whatever reason, you are convinced Biden is not, as a career politician, an absolute crank, I don't know what to say.
Ftr, i think both are precluded from being reasonable candidates. They are both, for different reasons, completely inadequate to be in charge of anything reasonably important.
I have successfully predicted the outcome of every US presidential race since Van Buren other than my one embarrassing misstep in the James K. Polk match up against Henry Clay, so consider those credentials as you will, but I see a Trump victory. No one is getting out of bed to vote for Joe, not even Joe.
Don't kill the messenger. I too wish things were different.
I have successfully predicted the outcome of every US presidential race since [ ... ] I see a Trump victory. No one is getting out of bed to vote for Joe, not even Joe.
Yeah well, I just can't help but seeing things a little differently (or clearly), making me a broken record predicting the coming Biden blowout ...
At this rate, it's only a matter of time until the country defaults on its debt, sparking a huge crisis.
Not in our lifetime, Count. IMO, the sovereign wealth of the G-20 nations (including the BRICS) and their IMF, World Bank & GATT-affiliated central banks the investor class (bond market-makers) won't "allow" a petrodollar-denominated US default. Probably not in our grandchildren's lifetimes either. Bretton Woods still has all of the world's major economic powers by the short-n-curlies. :eyes: :mask:
Reply to 180 Proof You're just painting the future you want to see in the spirit of tracht gut vet zein gut, but I'm seeing into the soul of America and just reporting what stares back at me.
Blame the Democrats for running a corpse for President.
Reply to Hanover :lol: The MAGA-rot is not (yet) "the soul of America"; if it was, then Loser-1 would not have lost the popular vote in 2016 & 2020 as well as his MAGA candidates would not have lost most, if not all, the elections and special elections since 2016.
Reply to 180 Proof There is no soul of America, but a few groups here and there that sort of share the same soul until they figure out how they're different and then they can divide into different groups.
I do actually think Trump will win.
Not sure if you're following the prosecution of Trump in Atlanta over the Georgia election. The DA hired her lead prosecutor, not by doing a nationwide search for the best and brightest to take on the man who is vying for the most powerful position in the world, but by rolling over in bed and finding the guy that just fucked her and asking him if he'd be interested in the job. She then pays him over $600,000 (which no ADA makes ever, and is more than she makes) and then they use that money to go on trips.
Then she goes in front of her church and tells them the scrutiny over this guy is because he's black and not over the two white guys she appointed also, as if this might have more to do with selecting your secret boyfriend for the job and not much to do with race. And she still hasn't admitted or denied the allegation she's fucking her chief prosecutor.
It's just so disappointing to have these unforced errors and to feed right into the Trump narrative that everyone else is more fucked up than he is. Trump calls the Georgia Secretary of State and asks him to go get him a bunch of votes, and Trump is going to get away with it because the hacks can't keep the train on the rails.
I don't know where I am anymore on any of this. They all live lives so different from me I can't compute any of this. I wouldn't let my wife work in my law firm and I'm a partner here. Can they not compute that a sexual partner will control the entire work environment and will be entirely unmanagable if allowed authority? And can't you be self-aware enough to know that your belief in the brilliance of your boyfriend might not be an objective evaluation? My rule is that if you call someone your boo boo or punkin, you can't hire them to lead your battle against the potential next leader of the free world.
It's so fucking stupid. Trump's going to win and she's going to lose whenever she is up for election. Follow that bullshit: A guy will try to steal an election for the highest position in the world and the prosecutor against him is going to pay the highest political price for it.
In terms of foreign policy he can hardly do worse than the Biden administration.
An isolationist America might actually produce a peaceful putting asleep of the American empire, rather than a world war which is what the US is coursing straight towards under this clownshow of an administration.
No one is getting out of bed to vote for Joe, not even Joe.
I don't want to vote for Biden, but I'll crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump, and I'm not going to throw my vote away on a hopeless third party candidate.
The DA hired her lead prosecutor, not by doing a nationwide search for the best and brightest to take on the man who is vying for the most powerful position in the world, but by rolling over in bed and finding the guy that just fucked her and asking him if he'd be interested in the job.
Do we have confirmation on that, though? CNN ran a story on that, but it was skimpy on details.
Sorry, but Trump was looking for illegal votes, which if found would have put him in the lead. He wasnt telling the governor to fabricate votes or find hidden Trump votes. So Not only are they corrupt, but theyre misinforming you, persecuting innocent people, and making a mockery of the justice system while doing so.
I don't want to vote for Biden, but I'll crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump, and I'm not going to throw my vote away on a hopeless third party candidate.
I respect that position. I would waste my vote though, if I chose to.
Whether or not Loser-1, if past elections & special elections (2016-2023) are prologue, Dems, Indies, Never Trumpers & pro-choice suburban GOP women voters will significantly out-vote "anti-women" MAGA-GOP voters all the way down the ballot this fall. Follow the numbers (like I did in 2020), my friend, they don't lie. :mask:
Not sure if you're following the prosecution of Trump in Atlanta over the Georgia election ... It's just so disappointing to have these unforced errors and to feed right into the Trump narrative that everyone else is more fucked up than he is.
I'm following like a hawk and it looks to me like another sideshow that's only fodder for cable infotainment talking heads. Yeah, "what the hell was she thinking?" Worse case scenario: DA Willis recuses and her office goes on with their slam dunk prosecution of Criminal Defendent-1 & co. What I'm really watching for is Judge McAfee scheduling DA Willis' RICO trial to begin in June after Trumper-stooge Cannon, in March or sooner, postpones the Mar-a-Lago Obstruction & Espionage trial until after the general election. "Wishful thinking?" TBD.
I'm wondering though, would this be sufficient to vote Clown?
From my spot, nope, but I'm no Denverite.
If you live in an area where children are removed from school buildings on occasion to make room for illegal immigrants, or hospitals shut down, then perhaps Clown doesn't look so bad.
What was the worst thing he did in his first term, prior to January 6th?
Reply to jgill You kidding? The last presidential debate between the two was a disaster for Trump. He completely derailed the debate, talked over everyone, including the moderator, and kept devolving into outright raves.
Every time Trump speaks, he says the same things - the Government is evil/leftist lunatics, I'm victim of a plot/unfair persecution, all the charges against me are lies. He has no policies as such, only talking points which spill out of his constant monologue. And, he lost the election.
?jgill
You kidding? The last presidential debate between the two was a disaster for Trump. He completely derailed the debate, talked over everyone, including the moderator, and kept devolving into outright raves.
I watched him for awhile in the recent town hall meeting in Iowa and he looked quick witted and vibrant. We'll see where all this goes. Curious times. I still think Michelle Obama could be chosen at the convention, with Biden retiring. She would have my vote.
I still think Michelle Obama could be chosen at the convention, with Biden retiring. She would have my vote.
Well, I hope the ticket of either Gavin Newsom & Gretchen Witmer or Gretchen Witmer & Gavin Newsom comes out of the Dem's 2024 convention. They would electrify this dead-ass electorate and blowout Loser-1 or any other MAGA-GOP stooge this fall. :victory: :smirk:
Yeah so much time is spent on election deniers that this significant little fact is often overlooked. Trump lost, and lost big. 7 million votes or so. Rather than question why, Trump made up fairytales which his cult swallowed and continues to believe/defend. Then the MAGA crowd failed in Georgia, then failed in 2022.
Theyll likely fail again in the fall. But they wont even scratch their heads about it because theyll claim it was rigged. The problem is obvious: even against a weak candidate like Biden, independents and most of the American electorate hate Trump, and for very good reason.
Perhaps compared to Joe Biden, yes. Trump is at least energetic when talking about himself.
And anyway, usually American debates between candidates is just a "Gotcha!"-seeking moment with the candidates simply speaking pest about the other candidate. Policy hardly comes up. Only perhaps in some 5 second memorized quick lines. And Trump of course has the "best": everything will succeed when he's in charge. Just as like, uh... last time.
Theyll likely fail again in the fall. But they wont even scratch their heads about it because theyll claim it was rigged. The problem is obvious: even against a weak candidate like Biden, independents and most of the American electorate hate Trump, and for very good reason.
The big question is how many American will just stay home.
The big question is how many American will just stay home.
So much as they do and hand Trump a second term it won't be like in 2016 where everyone was assured that Clinton would win. Not only are Democrats and anti-Trump independents (with the exception of Biden apparently) convinced that Trump could win, but they think he's likely to at this point in time. Maybe that will light something under them or maybe not, but it's certainly not an easy decision to make.
Gotta say the De Santis implosion was visible months ago. Hes just such a wooden, unlikeable, self-righteous prick of a guy. The sort of guy, it was said, if the neighbours kids kicked a ball over his fence, hed confiscate it and threaten them. Oh for some real Republican challengers to the Orange Emperor, but this guy was never going to be one of them. (Still reckon Trumps inevitable nomination is going to implode also, but well have to wait and see.)
The big question is how many American will just stay home.
The more Trump keeps up his ridiculous scare-talk, the bigger the chance of a sizeable protest vote. A lot of the younger electorate hate and fear him, and hate and fear are good antidotes to apathy.
Reply to Wayfarer yay, another win for the Dems not because of their policy ideas but because so many people hate Trump. The state of US politics was already bismal under Bush Jr. but this is just getting ridiculous.
I don't think DeSantis will get that far precisely because his reactionary populist fascistic, racist, mysogynist, public health-denying policies in Florida amply demonstrate how much scarier he'd be than Individual-1.
No matter the faults of the Democratic Party, this election will be, as they say it is, a contest between democratic politics, in which anyone may have a voice, and a dictatorship, where everyone must agree with the leader.
It seems, when the roles are reversed, the assertion is the same...
Youre dead wrong about this moral equivalence. Only one party is supporting a leader who deliberately and demonstratedly attempted to overthrow the result of the last election, whos minions brought 60 lawsuits against the result, all of which failed. You dont understand, or dont want to know, what is at stake - I cant discern why. It might be cynicism - that all political parties are corrupt - or wishful thinking - that the Republican Party cant have become this corrupted by one individual. But in either case, youre mistaken. But Im not going to debate it with you further, you can believe whatever you like, life is too short for pointless internet arguments.
Reply to Wayfarer You have gone from 0-100 and it speaks directly to me earlier comments about polarization.
Nothing you just said has much at all to do with why I asked, or what i asked you about..
I asked you a simple question, importing zero opinion of my own (which you already know doesn't comport with your comments here). I am interested in your answer - I have no debate to ascend to, or even an oppositional opinion to lay out. There is no 'moral equivalence'. It's a psychological question that I'm interested in your answer to.
Please, for the love of Philosophy, stop importing entire belief systems into my posts to avoid answering a simple question. If it is the case that you cannot speak in a political thread without doing so, please let me know immediately as I wont bother asking for your takes anymore. I sought to explore your thought on the matter, and nothing else. Assume whatever you want, but do not lay your assumptions on me. The plain fact is, I am interested as to why you see that psychological condition as one-sided. The facts don't get me there (which I don't deny).
Reply to Wayfarer Winning isn't about who's right or who is fair. Your arguments are irrelevant for the other side and they have their own problems with what "your" side does.
Reply to Wayfarer It absolutely, in no-way whatsoever imports a moral question of any kind, in any way.
What i asked was exactly as you quoted - Are you sure this isn't just that half the country agree with teh things you dont (they may be blatantly wrong - it's not relevant) and that what they believe is in line with whomever they see as a leader (who could be a murderous psychopath - it simply doesn't matter to the question i'm asking).
You: Agree with Biden (i assume) and Disagree with Trump (let's assume you're 100% in the right, there's no debate or 'other side' to be seen. I know you do). Therefore, to live under Trump would be to be required to live under a leader you vehemently disagree with on just about everything - which would feel like a Dictator.
Others: Agree with Trump and disagree with Biden. Same as above, in reverse.
and a dictatorship, where everyone must agree with the leader.
is not, in fact, the exact same thing the other side claims is the case, but in reverse? The facts of the matter are literally irrelevant. I want to know hwo you frame that opposedl psychologies when they are claiming the same thing. Most Republicans of the kind you're highlighting believe Biden is the Dictator (and, unless you've lost your mind, there's some extremely minor truck to that if you think the COVID measures were out of line - doesn't matter if you're right, it just explains the psychology of it, in that extremely minor way that it can) for the same reasons.
I literally said nothing that could possibly import the notion that I think you're inaccurate in your position on the facts.
and a dictatorship, where everyone must agree with the leader.
Wayfarer
is, in fact, the exact same thing the other side claims is the case, but in reverse? The facts of the matter are literally irrelevant.
The facts are not irrelevant. This is not a hypotherical, like 'the trolley problem' in undergraduate tutorials. Real politics is at stake. Only one side is lead by someone who has tried to subvert the election. It doesn't matter how I or they feel about that. Everyone has a right to their own opinon, but nobody has a right to their own facts. It is a fact that Trump has said he wants to suspend the Constitution, jail his critics and purge the civil service. It is also a fact that neither Joe Biden nor any other Democrat has said any such thing.
Once again: I am not, have not, and will not lay out my opinion on this. I am asking you about yours. You seem to be really, seriously, entirely missing the point of what I'm asking here. The facts are completely irrelevant to my question.
Except this is exactly what I'm asking you about. So, yeah, this is literally the only thing that matters. I am not engaging you in a political debate. I am asking you a personal psychological question. If you don't care to answer, that's fine, but is an entirely different response to what you've, so far, jumped headlong into.
It is a fact that Trump has said he wants to suspend the Constitution, jail his critics and purge the civil service. It is also a fact that neither Joe Biden nor any other Democrat has said any such thing.
Yes. Those things seem to be clearly true. I never denied any of this, or intimated that I did/would (though, as a matter of curiosity I have heard talk from Dems of doing away with the Electoral College... It's no matter, don't get stuck on it. Just in passing).
Not in the question I asked. Not quite sure why you're hell-bent on bringing up the most dire and intense version of this. I haven't asked about any of that.
What the heck is going on my dude? This is so bizarre. Let me rephrase the question in a way that is politically expedient, and will massage your political leanings:
Why you think (some)Republicans feel exactly the same way?
So Trump will win New Hampshire tomorrow and will go on to easily win the nomination. Biden will win by mail-in vote, and will easily win the nomination.
The last year of speculation and hand-wringing was a complete waste of time. This was predictable.
Reply to Mikie I was under the impression it was more-or-less foregone that it was Trump v Biden this year and that the legal pressure on Trump was kind of the only upset to the apple cart.
Was that not the vibe in other quarters?
Reply to Wayfarer
My question comes squarely under 'General Discussion', does it not?
I also find that a really odd retort to my having parsed out exactly what I'm asking, through your emotional response.
Can you just let me know fi you don't care to answer the question please? I have no issue with that, if so. It would've just been easier to have an "I don't care to answer" earlier in this exchange :smile:
There's an undercurrent on this forum along the lines of: well, America is f***d, politics is f***d, Trump is just what you're going to get from American politics, and Biden, being a politician, is no different. There's no answer to that argument except for not arguing with it, as it's a pointless exercise.
There's an undercurrent on this forum along the lines of: well, America is f***d, politics is f***d, Trump is just what you're going to get from American politics, and Biden, being a politician, is no different
There may well be, but unless you can point me to where I said this, intimated this, or said something that could, without insanity, be interpreted as this, in line with the discreet question i asked, I have to assume you're not really trying to do anything but argue with people. Each time i make it clear you've gotten something well wrong (including pointing out hte thread title) you just move to another tactic to make it seem unreasonable. Hard to work with..
Theyre provable lies, Im afraid, and on a level that makes newspeak look like childs-play. But thats the sort of discourse were forced to deal with here.
Reply to NOS4A2 They aren't, though, that's the thing. Or you'd have demonstrated it by now, I'm sure.
But, as an example - the fact is, Trump quite directly noted that the 'Fraud' of the 2020 election justified the suspension of 'rules' including 'parts of the constitution' via Truth social. This is inarguable. The implication (and motivation, I guess) you could argue - but you wouldn't have much fun I don't think.
This is contextomy. It would be proper to quote in full instead of picking and choose which words you want to include and fill in the blanks with your own. It would be proper to include any clarifications. So there is no fact here.
"A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution, ; and
Our great Founders did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!"
There's your context, and the exact quotes. As noted - inarguable. It is a fact that this was done by Trump. That you do not accept this fact, despite its obtaining, isn't really that interesting.
Massive fraud allowing for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution is a far cry from Trump wanting to suspend the constitution. So thanks for the demonstration.
Reply to NOS4A2
P1: Trump believes the 2020 election was a Fraud
P2: Trump believes a fraudulent election justifies suspension of the Constitution *which is the correct reading of "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles...found in the Constitution"
C: Trump doesn't want to suspend the Constitution?
P2 ought to be: Trump believes A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.
Upon any confusion, good faith demands you seek clarification, not assume motives and attribute to him words he never said.
Of what type do you think he was referring? Tax fraud? Or could it be, that I am well aware of the context and I am accurately portraying the situation here? because that's the case.
Im just wondering how one gets from what is quoted to Trump wants to suspend the constitution or Trump calls for the termination of the constitution. What leads you to take that leap?
Reply to NOS4A2 I laid that out, fairly clearly. You had an objection. I pointed out it was an inaccurate objection, the answer to which is in the content of the quotes. You are back to pretending that didn't happen.
P1: Trump believes a Massive Fraud justifies the suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution"
P2: Trump believes the 2020 Election was a Massive Fraud
C: Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified (the idea that this doesn't imply he wants it to happen is bogus, and not a real argument).
So again, what type of Fraud do you think he was referring to?? I will take a second brush past this question as a fair estimate that you understand exactly that he's talking about the election, which he believed was a Massive Fraud
Now, the above is clear any not really amenable to massage. However, lets leave it aside. I know what you're doing. I tend to do the same, when it's actually happening. JPB is a prime example of someone being taken out of context, lied about, interpolated until his entire persona appears to those who know nothing about it, as if a fully-fledge and technicoloured monster. I get it. But...
You would read the same thing that we are out of a Biden statement similar. You would not be so indolently pedantic as to deny the basic and obvious meaning of the statement, as if you didn't get it. So why with Trump?
Of course hes talking about election fraud. What Im wondering is how you can get from this quote:
A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution
To this assumption regarding his motives:
Trump wants to suspend the constitution.
Or his beliefs:
Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified.
His clarification directly disputes both assumptions. His absence from any position of power directly disputes even the possibility. So how do you get from one to the other, if not by way of the propaganda of his opponents?
Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified.
His own words say this, directly, with absolutely no middle man. Bizarre that you're asking. I didn't need to do anything to 'get there'. It is what he said he believes.
His clarification directly disputes both assumptions.
My position (the second of your quoted objectionable quotes) is not disputed by anything he has subsequently said that isn't a direct contradiction of what he... said. So, I can accept he misspoke perhaps.
Not possible. Trump doesnt misspeak and doesnt lose. When he said Obama was the literal founder of ISIS, repeatedly, he both meant it and didnt mean it. Its sarcasm.
Concerning the constitution comment:
The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to terminate the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES
That comes from Trump, so it has to be true.
Your belief otherwise is just falling for liberal media propaganda. Yada yada contextomy and boom, all good. Make America great again.
Reply to Mikie Personally, they're as bad as each other, for different reasons.
But, its totally understandable that someone is comfortable in your position. The GOP, and Trumpers more specifically (i.e the Trumpers in their capacities in teh GOP before Trump) have been the same type of dangerous for several decades at the least.
The newer 'woke' problems have been inching on us for only about 15 years, in my estimation. Easy to miss. However, I was chest-deep in it for a time(And i do mean.. DEEP.. I thought I was morally obliged to literally hand a job offer to a female if i got one, as an example of how deranged i was) and must conclude from my experiences they have an equal potential for social destruction unfortunately :(
Reply to Mikie Fair enough; I think it's clear they're 1. Less capable; 2. Less energetic and 3. Less aggrieved. The BLM protests are the 'canary' for that.
But, that said, I have just heard some lines from a podcast about the Conservative/Republican movement in the USA which are.. to my mind.. utterly bizarre and clearly an interpolation from someone who is extremely biased.
Yet, i know that isn't hte case, in this particular case. So i assume i am underinformed :)
I still think Michelle Obama could be chosen at the convention, with Biden retiring. She would have my vote.
She comes through as "no-nonsense" personality-wize (if that means much). She's given no good indication of stepping up though, or what her programme would be, i.e. why to vote for her. I can see her as US president anyway.
His own words say this, directly, with absolutely no middle man. Bizarre that you're asking. I didn't need to do anything to 'get there'. It is what he said he believes.
His words explicitly and directly say something else than what youve consistently claimed it does, namely, A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.
You said: Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified.
So why make such sweeping alterations, and pretend he said one and not the other?
I have outlined, twice, how this is a purely logical and sensible conclusion to draw. If you don't see it, that's within you to fix.
So Im just curious why you feel the need to pick and choose what parts of the quote you want and supply your own words to the rest? Logic and sense?
So Im just curious why you feel the need to pick and choose what parts of the quote you want and supply your own words to the rest? Logic and sense?
I've quoted them in full. You are out-right lying. The kind of lying I cannot do anything with but tell you you are lying. Because you can read. So you know you are lying.
His words explicitly and directly say something else than what youve consistently claimed it does,
They don't. I quoted him, so I know they don't. You are lying. Told you you wouldn't have any fun.
The only possible point you could conceivably make that doesn't require you lying, is that you think 'allow' and 'justify' in this context are somehow materially different, in that they indicate different attitudes or intentions about the objects in question (the rules, articles etc.. of the Constitution).
How you could possibly think that is, I think, not something a sane person could understand.
I've quoted them in full. You are out-right lying. The kind of lying I cannot do anything with but tell you you are lying. Because you can read. So you know you are lying.
Did you not say this? Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified.
I've not. I literally quoted him. Directly. No interpolation whatsoever. You are lying. And you know you are lying.
Is this a full direct quote?
Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified.
They don't. I quoted him, so I know they don't. You are lying. Told you you wouldn't have any fun.
You quoted him at a point of your choosing, filling in the rest with words of your own choosing. I can quote you again if youd like.
You quoted him at a point of your choosing, filling in the rest with words of your own choosing. I can quote you again if youd like.
I can do you one better - I quoted him. Which, you know, anyone who can read (you) can see. This is how i know you're lying. Nothing i can do with it, but point htis out as it happens.
Your snark doesnt change the fact you removed most of his argument and filled it with your own assumptions. Thats the way propaganda works, and I was only hoping you wouldnt allow yourself to be misinformed, and worse, to pass it off as unarguable fact. My apologies.
Reply to NOS4A2 I'm unsure it wise to end this exchange with a school-yard misrepresentation. But you do you, Boo :kiss: I'm sure outside of this thread we'll have great conversations.
I predict just before the presidential election Biden will declare war, possibly with Iran. It won't be pretty, but it will draw upon patriotism of the citizenry. It might work or it might not. Remember the disastrous departure from the now Taliban country.
Voted last night in the primary. Quiet at the polling place. My vote for Vermin Supreme was part of a complicated moral strategy which will make a big difference.
Reply to Wayfarer Tbf, any person at least five years younger than Trump is probably a better option. Though, that gives them room to prove me wrong :lol:
Reply to jgill IMO, all things being equal as of the 24th day of the year, Biden doesn't need to "start a war" to get reelected against a party that has lostevery popular vote (i.e. general, midterm, off-year & special elections) since 2016 and against a (prospective) nominee whose support has shrunk since 2020 because he has done continues to do nothing to expand his support. The MAGA-GOP is a shrinkingdead cult walking (à la Jim Jones) off of an electoral cliff. Just my $0.02. :mask:
Reply to AmadeusD As things stand today, I can't imagine Loser-1 pulling a Grover Cleveland (1892) this fall. Of course, 9½ months is like many lifetimes in US electoral politics and so much could happen, no matter how improbably, to snatch Biden's & the Dems' defeat from the jaws of victory; in that case however, well, the banana republicanization of the US would be complete (spasibo, Vlad :shade:) and then I'd whole-heartedly support the secession of N. California, Oregon & Washington in order to form the independent Republic of Pacifica (btw, I'm a resident of Washington state) or just resign myself and my community to riding out the obligatory, likely catastrophic, attempt to restore regular 'constitutional' order by military coup, etc. :mask:
Reply to 180 Proof, if it were to come to that (significant internal US instability/strife), then there'd be a wider impact as well. Authoritarian regimes would have a bit less to worry about (or to deter them), which, in turn, would come back to impact the US. So, strifers would invite this.
I offer this dire prediction concerning the election campaigns
Mr Trump will be in middle of a rally or debate, in full harangue, and despite being in excellent physical condition and of serene disposition, will suffer a massive heart attack and/or stroke in front of a huge audience. He falls to the ground, and gawking onlookers hear him say Ivanka is soooo hot
Whether or not he survives depends on whether prayers on his behalf are directed toward the correct deity. (There are so many gods these days. They are harder to get a hold of, and even harder to understand, than tech support from India).
I myself am praying fervently to Jupiter that this tragedy may be averted!
Well, as US Senator Tim Scott's proud and dignified "twin", I'm praying to the Light Fifty for a "Second Amendment solution" with extreme prejudice to this MAGA Cult problem no later than the Fourth of July 2024. :pray:
Ironically, right now Trump seems to be holding up an immigration bill in the Senate that would help address the border that the GOP seems to approve of.
Then again I don't expect people to blame him. After all he got off scot free for the recent spike in oil prices despite pulling out of the Iran deal and cutting their supply off from the rest of the world.
Ironically, right now Trump seems to be holding up an immigration bill in the Senate that would help address the border that the GOP seems to approve of.
It's not 'ironic', it's a deliberate tactic. He's furious that if the bill goes any way to addressing the problem, then it will reflect positively on Joe Biden. He wants the problem to be as bad as possible, so he can use it against Biden and then take credit for solving it himself.
It's not 'ironic', it's a deliberate tactic. He's furious that if the bill goes any way to addressing the problem, then it will reflect positively on Joe Biden. He wants the problem to be as bad as possible, so he can use it against Biden and then take credit for solving it himself.
A fair assessment. I despise the two candidates. I keep hoping a third candidate will materialize.
Do you equally "despise" what Biden & Trump represent? Are their respective parties (coalitions) equally bad for the majority of communities in the US or equally detrimental to US interests vis-à-vis international relations (e.g. trade agreements, political treaties, strategic alliances)? Do you believe, jgill, the adverse difference between them is one of degree or a difference in kind? :chin:
Reply to 180 Proof Indeed. That is a salient question. I often ask something similar when I hear the old 'both parties/leaders are equally shit' trope. Things are rarely equally bad. I practice harm minimisation in politics. Clearly some options are far worse than others, even if the less worse is still fundamentally flawed.
Reply to 180 Proof I despise the far left and the far right equally. Those politicians close to the center have my respect, generally. And I despise both Biden and Trump equally. I have a plethora of reasons for my attitudes. No sense in elaborating. It's all been said over and over.
It's not 'ironic', it's a deliberate tactic. He's furious that if the bill goes any way to addressing the problem, then it will reflect positively on Joe Biden. He wants the problem to be as bad as possible, so he can use it against Biden and then take credit for solving it himself.
Oh I understand very well his intentions. He's also on record saying he wants the economy to crash and the US to default on it's debt if it means he can score political points. The man doesn't care about anything apart from staying out of prison.
With all due respect, sir, if you believe Biden in anyway represents "the far left" (i.e. to the left of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Ralph Nader, et al), then you've not been paying attention for the last half century to Biden's political career.
And I despise both Biden and Trump equally.
So in your mind, woke corporate welfare-statism IS JUST AS BAD FOR YOUR COUNTRY AS autocratic ethnonational populism? Biden the neoliberal EQUALS Trump the neofascist?
(I guess, jgill, it's reasonable to assume, based on your reply, that in sum your answers to my previous post are: yes, yes, & difference in degree.)
Reply to 180 Proof it amuses and surprises me when people think an obedient servant to corporate power, a conservative like Biden is significantly of the left. Just goes to show how muddled political thinking can be.
?180 Proof
I despise the far left and the far right equally. Those politicians close to the center have my respect, generally. And I despise both Biden and Trump equally.
So in your mind, woke corporate welfare-statism IS JUST AS BAD FOR THE COUNTRY AS autocratic ethnonational populism? Biden the neoliberal EQUALS Trump the neofascist?
When I watch sanctuary regions in our country struggling to absorb, medically treat, educate and bring into our culture vast numbers of illegal immigrants; some if not many of whom who escape capture cartel affiliated, it gives me pause to consider what you have so emotionally described. Is the establishment of cartels that grow so powerful they essentially control governments better than a neofascist who moves to destroy them?
This is all hypothetical. I still hope for a moderate candidate to arise from the quagmire in which we wallow.
I still hope for a moderate candidate to arise from the quagmire in which we wallow.
Any more "moderate" than Biden would be useless, a complete corporate tool. I'm hoping for (at least) a solid left-liberal like Gov. Newsom or Gov. Witmer if Biden drops out.
I'm hoping for (at least) a solid left-liberal like Gov. Newsom or Gov. Witmer if Biden drops out.
My wife and I watched Bill Maher interview Newsom last week. She is more conservative than me, but we agreed he was very, very impressive and that we would vote for him under different circumstances.
Jan 26, 2024: Speaker Mike Johnson calls Ukraine-immigration deal dead on arrival in House "Former president Donald Trump criticised the potential agreement being brokered in the Senate on his Truth Social site. The former president said we need a Strong, Powerful, and essentially PERFECT Border and, unless we get that, we are better off not making a Deal"
It appears to me that Trump wants the "border" problems to persist, because it's to his political benefit.
creativesoulJanuary 28, 2024 at 13:24#8761430 likes
It appears to me that Trump wants the "border" problems to persist, because it's to his political benefit.
Spot on.
The republicans in congress have not supported border policy put forth after Trump voiced his opposition to it. Prior to that they were preparing to take action on the border issues. So, what we have is someone who is not an elected official influencing those who are to such a degree as to have them not take action on things they themselves loudly claim needs to be taken.
Why?
Because Trump wants to campaign on the 'border' and if there are bi-partisan actions taken to help correct the problems, then Trump's case is weakened, his plan is short circuited. So, just like Trump wants an economic crash to happen, he also wants the border to be a problem.
The Republican party is deliberately not taking action to correct illegal entry into the United States, because Trump wants it to be as big of a problem as it can be right now. That is to put Trump's political interests in front of what's in the best interest of America.
creativesoulJanuary 28, 2024 at 14:20#8761570 likes
Reply to Relativist Now Trump is literally saying "blame it on me" if no border bill passes. Though like I said before, the American people are probably not gonna blame him anyways and he knows it.
Reply to Mr Bee Trump is promising a "perfect" border solution. Reminds me of his criticism of the (imperfect) Iran nuclear deal- he promised to get rid of it, and get a better deal. He succeeded only in getting rid of it.
While people are bickering over a border, I'm just waiting for Sleepy Joe to go to war with Iran and blow up the Middle-East to salvage his chances at this election. :lol:
Are you claiming that if not for an election we would not go to war against Iran?
Is what Iran and its allies doing of no consequence?
This would only be a successful strategy if Congress approves the war. Does this mean that Congress wants to salvage his chances?
If this is a winning strategy wouldn't Trump also advocate for war?
Is what Iran and its allies doing of no consequence?
It might be of consequence, but going to war with Iran is another type of crazy. The US would get stuck in the worst quagmire thinkable, not to mention what it would do to the rest of the Middle-East, and it would dumpster what is left of the US empire in a single swoop.
This would only be a successful strategy if Congress approves the war. Does this mean that Congress wants to salvage his chances?
I don't know who controls congress. Probably it's a melange of the worst lobbies imaginable, and thus war with Iran to save Biden's campaign is definitely in the cards.
If this is a winning strategy wouldn't Trump also advocate for war?
Nah, Trump is running squarely against the neocon establishment with his isolationism. It was never really an option for him. Besides, why would they choose wild card Trump over puppet Joe?
While people are bickering over a border, I'm just waiting for Sleepy Joe to go to war with Iran and blow up the Middle-East to salvage his chances at this election.
Are you predicting Biden will go to war with Iran before the election? Are you also predicting this would help his chances of getting elected?
Oh, look - "radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq", directed by and/or supporting the election of Biden, attacked and killed three American soldiers.
I predict just before the presidential election Biden will declare war, possibly with Iran. It won't be pretty, but it will draw upon patriotism of the citizenry. It might work or it might not. Remember the disastrous departure from the now Taliban country.
I predict just before the presidential election Biden will declare war, possibly with Iran. It won't be pretty, but it will draw upon patriotism of the citizenry. It might work or it might not. Remember the disastrous departure from the now Taliban country.
jgill
I thought this was unlikely, but after today..
What tends to get obscured in such speculation is the question of motive. There is an important difference between declaring war in response to the actions of an Iranian backed militia or other group and declaring war as a means of uniting the country against a common enemy. It may be that the latter is a consequence of the former but that does not mean it would be correct to attribute it as the motivating reason for it.
What tends to get obscured in such speculation is the question of motive. There is an important difference between declaring war in response to the actions of an Iranian backed militia or other group and declaring war as a means of uniting the country against a common enemy. It may be that the latter is a consequence of the former but that does not mean it would be correct to attribute it as the motivating reason for it.
I agree. I don't think it will help Biden if we get plunged into another MidEast adventure. Quite the opposite.
Of course there is reason to assume it can help Biden. Israel wants the US to go to war with Iran. Israel holds great sway in American domestic politics.
Of course there is reason to assume it can help Biden.
War is often divisive. Since Vietnam American wars have not united us. Just the opposite. One reason some cite for their support of Trump is that they think he is responsible for keeping us out of war.
And yet, still easy enough to get it exactly wrong.
Robert Gates, the former defense secretary under President Obama, seemed to reiterate in an interview that aired Sunday night that he believes President Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.
Gates, who spent about three decades in the CIA, was introspective during an interview with CBS "60 Minutes," and was asked by Anderson Cooper, the correspondent, about his 2014 memoir titled, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War."
US courts will deny that a president or former president has "absolutely immunity" from criminal prosecution.
By March/April, SCOTUS will uphold the "states' rights" to individually decide whether or not to disqualifyInsurrectionist/Criminal-Defendent/Rapist-Defamer/Fraudster-1 from appearing on the 2024 federal election ballot pursuant to the 14th Amendment, Sec. 3 (Insurrection Clause) of the US Consitution.
By 31Jan24, the Trump Org will be effectively dissolved in NY State by order of Justice Engoron and no less than $300 million USD (re: "ill-gotten gains") will be disgorged as well as Fraudster-1 (maybe Beavis & Butthead too) will be barred for life from the real estate industry in NY State. NB: Liquidations to commence soon in order to put up a $300 million or more cash bond that's required by law to Appeal the civil judgment Loser-1 clearly isn't that liquid (thanks, Ms. Carroll! :clap: :kiss: :flower: Loser-1 also has to put up a total of $88.3 million in order to Appeal both her judgements too) otherwise, without that combined half-billion in cash (USD), the collection agencies for NYS will slap enforceable liens on alldefendents' personal & real properties asap and savage TF out of them like piranha. :wink: :party:
As of 1Feb24 the "great business man" will be, in effect, cash poorwhiningsquatting & shitting his old man diapers on a pile of fire-sale depreciating assets & compounding civil lawsuit debts ... So suddenly the upcoming GOP primary races are going to look pretty shaky even to the RNC, GOP senators & even a larger share of GOP-MAGA voters who might just stay home allowing Nikki Haley to be competitive in SC, etc.
Btw, the J6 Conspiracy criminal trial in Wash. DC will conclude with a guilty verdict on all 4 felony counts by the end of August 2024 or sooner. I'm guessing (soon to be) Felon-1 will not be the GOP candidate by the Fall (or even by July).
The fact is: Republicans in Congress are saying we should attack Iran while Biden is looking for a diplomatic solution. Please explain how this is a cynical plot by Biden and/or Israel and neocons to get him elected.
It is not the neocons but the Evangelical Christian Right who are the most influential advocates for Israel. They are also the most influential advocates for Trump. For Christian Zionists Israel's war is all about the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Biden, like the rest of us, can get things wrong. The claim that I am responding to, and it is not one that you made, is that Biben will go to war in order to win the election. For example:
Reply to Fooloso4 First, your characterization of "a cynical plot" is markedly different from mine. I called it a perfect storm of perverse incentives, not a plot.
Next, you must understand that Trump is anti-establishment, and neither the neocons nor Israel (or the lobby) want him as president because of his isolationism. Of course these parties will happily use Trump to pressure Biden. Especially because the Israel lobby doesn't like Biden to begin with, so Trump isn't completely off the cards. Playing both sides is standard for these interest groups.
But Biden is clearly the easier one to control, and he's a neocon. Trump is a wild card and isolationist.
The Biden administration are the ones who gave Netanyahu cart blanche, and have been pointing fingers at Iran non-stop since the start of the conflict. Further, they've even circumvented congress to continue weapon sales to Israel, making the US complicit in Israel's crimes, which may very well be genocidal.
So it's clear Biden is trying to appease Israel, which may very well be what causes him to start this war - to cement support from the notoriously capricious lobby. If he acts like a stooge, the lobby will play him like a stooge and milk him for what he's worth.
If he refuses, the lobby will pressure him, quite possibly along with other interest groups who desire wider war, like the MIC, etc. And of course then the question is whether he caves or not. I think there's a good chance he does.
neither the neocons nor Israel (or the lobby) want him as president because of his isolationism.
The neocons no longer play a significant role in American politics.
According to Wikipedia:
The largest pro-Israel lobbying group is Christians United for Israel with over seven million members.
The footnoted Wikipedia source is Fox News.
If you do not understand the importance of the Religious Right you cannot give a plausible analysis of the part Israel plays. They are pro-Israel Zionists.
With the indiscriminate killing in Gaza Biden is well aware that support for Netanyahu's Israel may be working against him with liberal, moderate, and independent voters.
Trump is anti anything that will not be to his benefit. Support of Israel is to his benefit when it comes to his base.
No, that's too simple. Any American president has to "support" Israel. The question is what that support looks like.
It's not very likely Trump would support Israel in its current actions, simply because it would almost guarantee that the US will get embroiled in various wars in the Middle-East, and thus not serve Trump's isolationist views.
Israel/the lobby know that full well. They might use Trump, but the chance that they'll actually support him over Biden is very slim. But they will use Trump to pressure Biden for sure.
In fact, the Trump phenomenon may give the Biden administration room to get away with a lot, including another war in the Middle-East against Iran and/or its proxies.
If you do not understand the importance of the Religious Right you cannot give a plausible analysis of the part Israel plays. They are pro-Israel Zionists.
Yes. The Israel lobby consists of various uncouth interest groups including Zionist Christians. I'm well-aware.
With the indiscriminate killing in Gaza Biden is well aware that support for Netanyahu's Israel may be working against him with liberal, moderate, and independent voters.
The question is whether that will weigh heavier than the lobby's influence. But yes, Biden is obviously between a rock and a hard place in that regard - that's part of the aforementioned perfect storm.
schopenhauer1January 30, 2024 at 16:43#8765120 likes
Israel/the lobby know that full well. They might use Trump, but the chance that they'll actually support him over Biden is very slim. But they will use Trump to pressure Biden for sure.
So this is a canard of the Left. Why is it that Leftists support Islamist causes? It's a rhetorical strategy to malign any policy against hostile actors in the region as Israel's bidding. Why wouldn't America want to support an ally, while at the same time support their own interests (shipping/cargo/trade/resources) in the region? It would be foolish to let Iran make mischief unabated. Iran is trying to show people like yourself how powerful they are, and Leftists go weak in the knees rooting for it, but in a "Because Israel is bad" sort of rhetorical ploy. If Israel is bad, then Iran's actions must go unattended, is pretty odd argument as whole, but fits right in with a certain worldview for sure. I call it Lefitst. Call it whatever you want. It's certainly not "Idealist", unless you mean the corrupt UN (which lets countries with human rights violations unironically cry foul).
In fact, the Trump phenomenon may give the Biden administration room to get away with a lot, including another war in the Middle-East against Iran and/or its proxies.
I mean, this could go the other way. If Biden doesn't do anything in the Middle East, Trump will use it as a case that he is the backchannel savior (ala Nixon during Vietnam).
I mean, this could go the other way. If Biden doesn't do anything in the Middle East, Trump will use it as a case that he is the backchannel savior (ala Nixon during Vietnam).
The Biden administration is doing what Israel wants - giving Israel cart blanche, blocking Security Council resolutions and continuing to funnel weapons and ammunition to Israel, even circumventing Congress if it has to, etc.
The "pressure" the administration puts is not actual pressure at all. It's simply what Biden has to do to avoid looking like a complete stooge, and Israel understands this is how it works.
Trump seems to me very much against this type of 'final solution' business in the Middle-East, so I personally find it very hard to believe he would try to profile himself as an even greater Middle-East hawk.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration hasn't stopped pointing fingers at Iran since the Oct. 7th attacks, so there's probably a lot of people wondering why he hasn't gone to war with Iran yet. In for a penny, in for a pound.
schopenhauer1January 30, 2024 at 18:00#8765320 likes
The "pressure" the administration puts is not actual pressure at all. It's simply what Biden has to do to avoid looking like a complete stooge, and Israel understands this is how it works.
The fact is that the US has interests in the region, and support their ally in the region. You don't have to look for old-school conspiracy theories of AIPAC for this. It's a worldview of balances of power. Iran represents something against US interests, especially with their use of proxies. Netanyahu is certainly an asshole, I grant that, but Biden simply doesn't want to make that kind of decision in the midst of this. I will say too that Israel has to get its shit together by finding a new strategy. Biden can only work with who he has got. Other than getting the hostages back, I see no way Israel will want to keep Hamas as a neighbor with their threat, and the US gets this threat.
Trump seems to me very much against this type of 'final solution' business in the Middle-East, so I personally find it very hard to believe he would try to profile himself as an even greater Middle-East hawk.
I would bet Trump would do anything he can to win Evangelical support.. So if Biden looks weak, he will just say that he can do better, whatever the case may be. Also, he is besties with Netanyahu. Don't count him out either for using war for his gain. He hasn't done it yet, but I wouldn't count it out. Saying that he is strictly an "isolationist" is believing he is principled or ideological to a fault. He is self-serving to a fault- there is a difference. Nixon went to China when it suited him. Nixon was virulently anti-communist when it served him. Etc. In fact, Nixon was able to stop the North Vietnamese delegation from taking the offer at the Paris Accords in '68 because Nixon wanted to look like the person who stopped the war. Trump isn't Nixon. No, he's worse.
So this is a canard of the Left. Why is it that Leftists support Islamist causes? It's a rhetorical strategy to malign any policy against hostile actors in the region as Israel's bidding. Why wouldn't America want to support an ally, while at the same time support their own interests (shipping/cargo/trade/resources) in the region? It would be foolish to let Iran make mischief unabated. Iran is trying to show people like yourself how powerful they are, and Leftists go weak in the knees rooting for it, but in a "Because Israel is bad" sort of rhetorical ploy. If Israel is bad, then Iran's actions must go unattended, is pretty odd argument as whole, but fits right in with a certain worldview for sure. I call it Lefitst. Call it whatever you want. It's certainly not "Idealist", unless you mean the corrupt UN (which lets countries with human rights violations unironically cry foul).
It's not very likely Trump would support Israel in its current actions, simply because it would almost guarantee that the US will get embroiled in various wars in the Middle-East, and thus not serve Trump's isolationist views.
Israel/the lobby know that full well. They might use Trump, but the chance that they'll actually support him over Biden is very slim. But they will use Trump to pressure Biden for sure.
Remember the "Trump Peace Plan"? It was a proposal "negotiated" by Jared Kushner and Netanyahu, that gave Netanyahu what he wanted, and virtually nothing for Palestinians. Further, a large majority of evangelical Christians are Trump supporters, and they are extremely pro-Israel because of their view that God gave them this land.
... various wars in the Middle-East, and thus not serve Trump's isolationist views.
You are talking about Trump as if he is someone with principles. He is isolationist only to the extent he thinks it benefits him. He has not taken a clear stand on what he would do in the face of escalating conflict.
The Religious Right, the most powerful faction of this lobby is guided by revelation not reason. They are actually eagerly looking forward to this final prophesied holy war.
Yes. The Israel lobby consists of various uncouth interest groups including Zionist Christians. I'm well-aware.
What you do not seem to be aware of is just how much power and influence they have over Trump and what is no longer the Republican Party but now the Christian Party of Trump. They have been willing to look the other way when it comes to what Trump says and does, but this may be non-negotiable.
You got this much right: it is not rocket science. Unlike rocket science there are too many variables and indeterminacies to calculate.
The Religious Right, the most powerful faction of this lobby is guided by revelation not reason. They are actually eagerly looking forward to this final prophesied holy war.
And also, while the Right doesn't have a whole lot of fondness for Jews, they really don't like Muslims, so the enemy of their enemy is now their friend.
Reply to Fooloso4 You seem intent on linking escalation in the Middle-East to Trump, via the Israel lobby. Regardless of what I think of Trump, I don't think that's a serious argument. It's a bit cartoonish.
schopenhauer1January 30, 2024 at 18:57#8765420 likes
Reply to Fooloso4
I haven't figured out if Trump is fully "self-serving" in foreign policy or "Russia-serving". If it is Russia-serving, indeed he may have to tone down against Russia's interests in the Mid East. If he is self-serving, then any strong man (including Netanyahu) is fair game to admire and support.
I haven't figured out if Trump is fully "self-serving" in foreign policy or "Russia-serving". I
Perhaps he thinks they are the same.
He says that he likes winners. If it is strong man against strong man he likes whoever he thinks is winning. Unless he thinks this is against his interests.
And also, while the Right doesn't have a whole lot of fondness for Jews, they really don't like Muslims, so the enemy of their enemy is now their friend.
The whole thing is very peculiar. The Evangelicals have be seduced by power. Apparently, they do not think that the power of God is enough. Not ever their Saviors - both the old one and the new improved version are not enough. They have long desired and plotted to seize power. Israel is nothing more than a means to that end. They have no regard for the Jews. Together with the Muslims and liberals and LGBT and everyone else who is not what they themselves pretend to be will be left behind in the Rapture.
Btw, the J6 Conspiracy criminal trial in Wash. DC will conclude with a guilty verdict on all 4 felony counts by the end of August 2024 or sooner. I'm guessing (soon to be) Felon-1 will not be the GOP candidate by the Fall (or even by July).
"You know, we've got a lot of theories, we just don't have the evidence."
~Rudy Giuliani, Co-Conspirator-1
Reply to 180 Proof I agree:
SCOTUS will deny a former President has absolute immunity
Trump will be cash constrained at some point this year (not as early as you say)
I disagree:
that Engeron will dissolve the Trump Org in NY; I expect only a fine, commensurate with his savings on interest due to receiving interest rates more favorable than his finances warranted. This will contribute to Trump's cash constraints.
that Trump won't be the GOP nominee. This is because 95% of delegates to the GOP nominating convention are committed to vote based on the primaries. They would be freed only if Trump were to drop out of the race - and that won't happen.
that the J6 conspiracy trial will have concluded before the election, but even if it is - pending appeals will keep him out of prison. If he's elected, he'll pardon himself and put an end to that.
that the J6 conspiracy trial will have concluded before the election, but even if it is - pending appeals will keep him out of prison. If he's elected, he'll pardon himself and put an end to that.
?180 Proof I agree:
SCOTUS will deny a former President has absolute immunity
Trump will be cash constrained at some point this year (not as early as you say)
I disagree:
that Engeron will dissolve the Trump Org in NY; I expect only a fine, commensurate with his savings on interest due to receiving interest rates more favorable than his finances warranted. This will contribute to Trump's cash constraints.
that Trump won't be the GOP nominee. This is because 95% of delegates to the GOP nominating convention are committed to vote based on the primaries. They would be freed only if Trump were to drop out of the race - and that won't happen.
that the J6 conspiracy trial will have concluded before the election, but even if it is - pending appeals will keep him out of prison. If he's elected, he'll pardon himself and put an end to that.
Reply to Michael Agreed- but the appeals will take a while, and (if elected) SCOTUS will find some excuse (possibly a good one) to keep him out of prison while in office. It would, however, be the strongest possible case for an impeachment+removal (a truly "high crime") but of course- GOP still wouldn't convict.
Suggestion: let's vote against him, so these things don't come to pass.
SCOTUS will deny a former President has absolute immunity
Then he will appeal to a higher authority - Donald J Trump.
From a video on Truth Social he posted, "God Made Trump". The narrator begins:
On June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: I need a caretaker. So God gave us Trump. God had to have someone willing to go into the den of vipers. Call out the fake news for their tongues as sharp as a serpents. The poison of vipers is on their lips. So God made Trump.
God said, I will need someone who will be strong and courageous. Who will not be afraid or terrified of wolves when they attack. A man who cares for the flock. A shepherd to mankind who wont ever leave or forsake them.
If they do not side with Trump and God the Supreme Court will have revealed that they too are wolves in sheep's clothing. Only those who stand with Trump/God, pledging absolute fielty to him/Him, will have any authority on Earth or in Heaven.
This is said in jest, but only in part. Even if he complies with the Court's decision he will continue his seditious rants. How far is the flock willing to follow in undermining law and order and replacing it with the Law and Order to be engraved on the tablets of Trump? The Word in its new and improved incarnation?
So, the Republicans are impeaching the Homeland Security secretary, on Trumped-up grounds, while at the same time their leader, Donald Trump, pushes them to torpedo the solution to the border security problem that this Secretary is being accused of neglecting, while in reality he has been involved with a bi-partisan solution.
[quote=Washington Post;https://wapo.st/3UgbylB]Democrats... criticized the impeachment proceedings as politically motivated, pointing out that GOP lawmakers were trying to oust Mayorkas for supposedly neglecting to secure the southern border, while at the same time opposing a bipartisan package under negotiation in the Senate that would seek to improve border security.[/quote]
It's astounding, the levels of hypocrisy, doubletalk and duplicitiousness the MAGA will sink to.
RelativistFebruary 01, 2024 at 02:49#8770180 likes
Reply to Relativist Of course it is. It's what happens when halfwits like Marjorie Taylor Greene are in charge of the henhouse. It's never about governance, only petty point-scoring.
[quote=The Hill;https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4440853-four-takeaways-from-a-heated-hearing-with-tech-ceos/]Senators grilled the CEOs of Meta, TikTok, Snap, Discord and X Wednesday in a heated hearing about harm posed to teens and kids online. [/quote]
How about grilling the CEOs of the very many major gun manufacturing companies about the horrors wrought by their wares? You know, Remington, Smith and Wesson, and the others? In addition to gun suicides there are also the many thousands of 'young people' shot and wounded or killed, many while attending school. But no, strangely enough- guns don't kill people, but social media kills people. And a much less controversial target, to boot.
Following up on the question of whether Trump will comply with Supreme Court decisions.
It may seem improbable but THIS
may the writing on the wall of what is to come from the Republican Party:
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who has said Texas should ignore the Supreme Courts order allowing federal authorities to remove barbed wire along the southern border, compared the decision Tuesday to the 1857 high court ruling that upheld slavery.
Roy is among a number of Republicans who have described immigrants crossing the border as an invasion and said during a House hearing Tuesday that he will not let statute books stop him from defending his home.
Governor Greg Abbott issued a declaration arguing he has the legal power to overrule federal authorities in case of an invasion. What this means in practice is that he is claiming and acting on premise that the state and not the Supreme Court gets to interpret Federal law.
Reply to Fooloso4 Shouldnt be surprise anyone, theyre a party of secessionists. 149 of them voted not to recognise the result of the last Presidential election. Theyre spoiling for a fight but I hope its one they eventually lose.
Governor Greg Abbott issued a declaration arguing he has the legal power to overrule federal authorities in case of an invasion.
At what point does a citizen reinterpret the flow of illegal immigrants into the USA as an "invasion"?
Possibly when they cannot be admitted into a hospital for treatment because the medical system is flooded with non-citizens. Or when a mayor or governor asks the population to take these people into their homes. Or when the Tijuana cartel runs a major California city.
Until then, its merely a political issue. Or a humanitarian issue.
At what point does a citizen reinterpret the flow of illegal immigrants into the USA as an "invasion"?
At no point. The question of the interpretation of the law is to be left to the courts. Otherwise the law becomes whatever any citizen interprets it to be. What else might an individual or state regard as an invasion? There are many private citizens and in government who believe that this is a white Christian nation. What they might consider "too many" of those who are not white Christians to be an invasion and an existential threat to their God given rightful way of life.
I do agree that there is a serious problem at the border that must be dealt with but it cannot be solved through lawless disregard of the courts.
Problem at the border. Yeah, sure. The numbers have increased, and theres a traffic jam. The rest is conservative media frenzy and stupid political stunts by right-wing governors. They dont want the problem solved they just want to use it in an election year.
So, lets call it what it really is: Racist fear mongers blaming a Democratic administration for an overblown problem.
At what point does a citizen reinterpret the flow of illegal immigrants into the USA as an "invasion"? jgill
At no point.
You misinterpret what I am asking. I'm not speaking of a citizen advancing a legal opinion. Only when does anyone begin thinking of the border problem as an invasion? When does a mother feeding her family a meal hear the latest news report and think, "Wow, sounds like an invasion!".
You misinterpret what I am asking. I'm not speaking of a citizen advancing a legal opinion.
These is an important difference between someone thinking it sounds like an invasion and acting to secure the border in a way that courts have determined is illegal. If she claims that she is within her rights to act this way because of an invasion she is advancing a legal opinion.
If she claims that she is within her rights to act this way because of an invasion she is advancing a legal opinion
I've spoken with her and she is shocked to hear that people think she is grabbing her shotgun and joining a convoy to the Border. What the court rules, she will follow . . . but reluctantly. Poor thing.
The number of illegal migrants bussed or flown to Denver has reached roughly 6% of the existing population. There was a piece on the news of a busload being driven to Colorado Springs, NOT a sanctuary city. The Springs has enough of a problem housing the homeless already there.
Those few from Venezuela are able to get work permits, but most are not.
Now THAT'S a majority. The kind of majority Trump felt entitled to in New Hampshire and Iowa (but *didn't* get).
Reply to jgill I do hear you on the alarm about undocumented arrivals. It's definitely a serious issue, but again, requires bipartisan support as it's bigger than either party. And that support is being jeopardised by Trump and his congressional minions for purely political reasons. He has no interest in solving it, only in exploiting it.
Reply to Wayfarer Of course it does. But up to 5,000 illegals/day is too many. Bring that number way, way down and perhaps re-institute a Trump executive order or two and an agreement might result.
This issue is so muddled with money for Ukraine and Israel - entirely separate concerns.
Reply to Wayfarer Biden doesn't bring anything to the table except "not Trump". But yes, 84 is too fucking old. You call that age discrimination, the rest of us call it common sense. There's a lot of things that start deteriorating from our 30s onwards. Memory and recall being the most important one.
US courts will deny that a president or former president has "absolutely immunity" from criminal prosecution.
6Feb24: DENIED by Federal Appeals Court, Washington DC Circuit. The order of the Federal District Court is upheld and affirmed. Criminal Defendent-1 has to appeal to SCOTUS by 12Feb24, otherwise the district court can proceed with the "J6 Conspiracy" trial.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68026175
i.e. Affirmed:
[quote=Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington DC Federal District Court]Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong 'get-out-of-jail-free' pass. Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.[/quote]
Biden doesn't bring anything to the table except "not Trump".
He also brings "not Republican" to the table, which entails (among other things) the expectation he'd block attempts to further restrict women's reproductive rights. It also entails appointment of judges that are more apt to have a more expansive view of civil rights.
Not always going to be a good thing. But hte former is definitely true, and good (in the sense that its worse to have a Republican swaying reproductive legislation).
By [s]31Jan24[/s] the Trump Org will be effectively [s]dissolved[/s] in NY State by order of Justice Engoron and no less than $300 million USD (re: "ill-gotten gains") will be disgorged as well as Fraudster-1 (maybe Beavis & Butthead too) will be barred [s]for life[/s] from the real estate industry in NY State. NB: Liquidations to commence soon in order to put up a $300 million or more cash bond that's required by law to Appeal the civil judgment Loser-1 clearly isn't that liquid (thanks, Ms. Carroll! :clap: :kiss: :flower: Loser-1 also has to put up a total of $88.3 million in order to Appeal both her judgements too) otherwise, without that combined half-billion in cash (USD), the collection agencies for NYS will slap enforceable liens on alldefendents' personal & real properties asap and savage tf out of them like piranha. :wink: :party:
Apparently, an Appellate-proof (restrained) judgment of over $450 million (disgorgement + interest), barred for (only) 3 years from doing business in NYS & borrowing from NYS chartered banks, an (enhanced) independent financial monitor & corporate compliance officer straitjacket for 3 years, but no "corporate death penalty" (yet?) ...
Look, this is going to be a long, grueling, and mostly pointless campaign, since everyone already knows which of the two elderly candidates they prefer to barely tolerate. The one who cant walk up stairs or the one who cant walk down ramps.
It gets so dull hearing these talking points. The American dream is dead because Mars bars were $1 and are now $1.25.
I know what you hacks on both sides will say before they say it. Is it really healthy to blame every problem on Joe Biden?
The reason for that [more people have registered as independent voters than ever] is this kind of mindless partisanship.
We gotta get used to it, this is it, this is the race. Biden and Trump, the race is over. This is bad news for the country, I think. Very good news for people who build ramps on debate stages.
Did you know that Bill Clinton, has been out of office for 25 years, is still younger than both of them? Im not kidding about that. That is a true fact. Their combined age is 158 years old. The first debate is going to be at the Museum of Natural History.
You know whats trending on Twitter? Dementia Don, because Trump was talking about Nancy Pelosi during January 6, but he kept calling her Nikki Haley.
You know what else Dementia Don did this week? This is a direct quote, I dont know what it means, no one does, he said word for word, We are an institute in powerful death penalty. We will put this on. Even Biden was like, What the f---?'
By March/April, SCOTUS will uphold the "states' rights" to individually decide whether or not to disqualify Insurrectionist/Criminal-Defendent/Rapist-Defamer/Fraudster-1 from appearing on the 2024 federal election ballot pursuant to the 14th Amendment, Sec. 3 (Insurrection Clause) of the US Consitution.
Well, I got the date right but the decision wrong: (maga-wingnut) SCOTUS is in the effing tank for (former) SCROTUS aka "Insurrectionist/Criminal Defendant/Fraudster/Rapist/Loser-1" ... making up stoopid ahistorical-ad hoc shit (like they did to overturn Roe v. Wade i.e. to jackboot curbstomp 'stare decisis') in order to further accelerate the bananafication of the US Republic.
It seems conservative justices are perfectly willing to be activists when it pleases them.
This isn't to contend that what is (or at least should be) the actual holding of the court, that Colorado cannot disqualify someone from being on the ballot for the presidency under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, wasn't agreed to by all the Justices. It was. But as the concurring opinions point out, the decision goes beyond what was required to resolve the issue before the court, generally a no-no, and also assets that Congress must adopt legislation before Section 3 is enforceable at all. It hasn't done so, and there's no assurance it ever will. In which case, it seems Section 3 is superfluous until that occurs. Usually, it's also considered a no-no to construe a law in such a manner as to render it ineffective.
We can be thankful that the court didn't hold that there was no insurrection while it was at it.
Reply to 180 Proof It was a 9-0 decision, so it's not like this divided on ideological grounds.
The striking down of Roe v. Wade had to do with the Court's rejection of the Constitutional right of a woman to have an abortion up to a certain point in her pregnancy. It was not based upon there being a federal statute that guaranteed the right to an abortion that the Court decided violated the individual states' rights to regulate it.
That is, the Supreme Court's striking down Roe v. Wade wasn't based upon a violation of Constitutional federalist principles. It was based upon their reversing their view that the Constitution itself protected a woman's right to an abortion. It wasn't a state's rights decision.
I didn't read the recent Trump elections case, but I fully expected the decision to be supportive of keeping him on the ballot. From a practical perspective, I think the Court did the left a favor. The quickest way to get a hesitant Trump voter to commit to Trump is to make him think the other side has their thumb on the scale. That's actually why Trump's numbers keep rising with every new lawsuit brought against him.
It also doesn't hurt him that the Democrats are running someone who is brain dead and they think if they deny it everyone will think he's sharp as a tack.
It also doesn't hurt him that the Democrats are running someone who is brain dead and they think if they deny it everyone will think he's sharp as a tack.
The Democrats have yet to master the art of the lying.
The Supreme Court will indeed find whatever they want to find, as long as it helps Republicans. But this isnt one of them. Trump shouldnt be removed from the ballot until hes convicted. Americans should get the chance to vote for this asshole, if they really want to. He seems ahead in the polls, so it seems theres a chance they will.
The US is a very stupid country, you see. Or, better, extremely ignorant and desperate.
Reply to Mikie And yet the vast majority of the top universities in the world are in the U.S. And I don't expect that to change anytime soon.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings
And yet the vast majority of the top universities in the world are in the U.S.
And ?
Nevermind, Ill make it easy: most people dont go to universities, and of those who do, few get into the best ones. Of that small group, most are morons.
"Both national and swing state polls show Haley is a dramatically stronger candidate than Trump in the general election. (A new Marquette University poll has Haley beating Joe Biden by 16 percentage points, while Trump and Biden are in a statistical tie.)"
As there is now a murmur that she might consider running as an independent. In the very unlikely event that she was elected as a third-party candidate, which party would she be more likely to be able to negotiate policies with, in light of the dysfunction that characterises the MAGA-GOP? I think she would get no traction with the Republicans, who would be apoplectic at loosing, and that she would, in effect, be forced into a coalition with Democrats to pass any actual policies.
(Trump is even giving a pretence of presenting policies or ideas for governing any more. He's just ranting.)
Reply to Hanover I haven't read the ruling but if state electors can vote for someone else than the popular vote it seems prima facie inconsistent to claim it's a federal issue.
Reply to Mikie, would it be better to say that there are lots of fools (of whatever sort) around?
It's not confined to people that are extremely ignorant, though. Intellectuals may find faults all over (+ focus/magnify), and hence stoke fires all over. Fault-finding isn't that hard anyway.
So, choosing the right battles matter.
(Incidentally another reason that mudslinger-politicians are a turn-off, to me, more so than politicians that focus on what their programs are.)
Anyway, if the US was significantly weakened on the international stage (which could happen by domestic division or foolery), then others would just jump right in. In the present environment, I'm not all that optimistic in case that was to happen, but I guess we'll see (or might).
which party would she be more likely to be able to negotiate policies with, in light of the dysfunction that characterises the MAGA-GOP?
I'm not entirely sure how the details of these things go, but wouldn't she align with the Lincon Project and draw together the Republicans who don't want to be part of the MAGA cult?
Would it be so bold as to predict that at some point, the Republican party will split and the new faction will be called "New Republicans" or something like "True Republicans" or similar? Gathering momentum among normal people who usually vote Republican. That they would acknowledge that it's problematic to gain traction at this time in history, but that their goal is to build up a sense of trust that voters will get a stable Republican party by voting for them and their internal goal is to clean house and rid themselves of any MAGA supporters. That way, the MAGA cult will probably soon evaporate since they cannot get enough traction by numbers alone and the gullible cult folks who soon get tired of not being represented will move on and just vote for the new republican party while the core MAGA cult will just gather together in some remote location and shoot beer cans or whatever mindless trash they find meaningful.
I'm not entirely sure how the details of these things go, but wouldn't she align with the Lincon Project and draw together the Republicans who don't want to be part of the MAGA cult?
I don't know either, but I've been following US politics pretty closely - probably too closely - and it seems obvious the current Republican party is incapable of governing. As you will know, two weeks ago they sunk a bill that their own delegates had spent months working on, purely because Trump said it would make Biden look good. They're wasting massive amounts of time on the faux 'impeachment enquiry' on Biden just to help Trump settle imagined scores. Trump, meanwhile, is reduced to near-complete confusion and incoherency - he doesn't know who is President, he keeps confusing all of his many legal cases and simply babbling on stage. He's a complete mess and plainly incapable of governing anything whatever. So if an independent candidate DID win (it's a thought-experiment, not an actual prediction) he or she would have to turn to the Democrats because the Republicans can't manage a piss-up in a brewery.
So if an independent candidate DID win (it's a thought-experiment, not an actual prediction) he or she would have to turn to the Democrats because the Republicans can't manage a piss-up in a brewery.
I don't think any independent candidate would win, but they would split the votes so much if there were three options available that the democrats would win simply by the lack of enough votes on either side of the Republicans.
However, if, by some miracle, a stable Republican outlier wins instead as an independent, I think that she would gather everyone siding with the Lincoln project and build up a proper party through them. And they might even push out many of the MAGA cult members infesting the other halls of power in congress over time.
Regardless, I think the only way out and away from Trumpism is to have an independent option during election. Too many Republicans who hate Trump hate the Democrats more and they would vote for the independent voice and drag all the ones who's opting out entirely. It would divide the Republicans, but the smart ones would know it's their only option forward as the MAGA cult could very well spell the end for the Republican party as a whole. Soon or later the normal Republicans will have to take some home cleaning action. It's like they've been infested by cockroaches and have given up trying to solve the issue, but if they grow into too much of a problem they will have to start stomping them out and call exterminators.
The only possible 'stable Republican outlier' is, in fact, Nikki Haley. From the same source I quoted yesterday:
On Saturday, the Trumpified Missouri GOP held its caucuses. Lynn Schmidt, a Missouri Republican, described the scene in an email:
There were 558 people in the gym for our caucus. When Haley was nominated, the room erupted in boos. Then they asked all of Haley's voters/supporters (62 of us) to line up two by two in the middle of the gym while the other 469 people continued to boo and jeer at us. We were literally lined up in the middle of the gym for all of our neighbors to see They called us Democrats and talked about hating RINOS.
You can imagine the MAGA group pelting Halley's followers with rotten fruit and excrement. That's about the level that they've sunk to.
In my view, the net effect of Trump's inevitable victory in the Primaries, is to lead the entire party off a cliff, lemming-like. That it will become obvious between now and the Republican Convention in July that, having won the mantle, there's no way he can actually execute, being so mired in legal problems, and so addled in his thinking.
As of [s]1Feb24[/s][18Mar24[] the "great business man" will be, in effect, cash poor whining squatting & shitting his old man diapers on a pile of fire-sale depreciating assets & compounding civil lawsuit debts ...
Yeah, Putin's Bitch f*cked around and is finding out! :lol:
I wouldnt put it past him to run as an independent or Patriots Party or something like that, but there will be no need: the voters will vote him in as a Republican.
Also, when you say it wont be Joe Biden as the nominee care to bet on that too?
All right then, you're on. I bet $10 at 5:1 odds. So $50 to you if you're right in either case. And yes, I'll be VERY happy to pay it, because I hope you're right on both counts.
[Edit: personal bets are probably looked down on here, so how about this instead: I'll donate $50 to TPF if you're right, and you donate $10 if I'm right. Deal?]
Trumps candidacy is not official until the Nominating Convention in July in Milwaukee. And a lot could happen between now and then. At the 2016 convention there was a last-minute push by Never Trumpers that almost made it to a floor vote, and if you havent noticed, hes picked up a lot of Republican enemies since then.
So if he comes out of the Convention the nominee, then I pay up.
Its possible he will have been convicted in one of the felony cases hes facing. While its true that (inexplicably) this doesnt disqualify him, it will at least have some bearing on the Conference decision. (imagine the headline: Republicans stick with Trump despite two impeachments and criminal conviction.)
Reply to Mikie I still refuse to believe in Trump. Believing that he will win feeds the demon. In reality hes leading what used to be the Republican Party into oblivion.
I get it. Im far from a supporter, of course. But I have no faith in the Republican Party, and am beaten down with the facts which is that his supporters are large enough and loyal enough to push him through almost anything.
Trumps candidacy is not official until the Nominating Convention in July in Milwaukee.
The Republican National Committee has been taken over by Trump. Party Chairman Michael Whatley was picked by Trump. Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, will serve as the co-chair and was elected by unanimous vote.
If there has been nothing so far that has distanced the party from Trump I don't know what would. His trials are being treated as an asset. Us against everyone including the whole judicial system that they are claiming has treated him unfairly.
Reply to Fooloso4 I know all of that. Furthermore, they were forced to drop a motion to firewall off any Party finances from Trump's enormous legal expenses. He completely owns the Republican Party, and if and when he fails at the polls or is incarcerated, they'll be so much the worse for it. (In fact for Democrats, Trump might end up being boon rather than a bane.)
Well, Trump got a 10 day extension as well as only needs to post a smaller bond, 175 million dollars from 464 million dollars.
Last few weeks so many legal YouTubers were explaining how Trump's ask to the court of appeal had basis in law whatsoever, never been done etc.
Likely Trump will be able to secure this smaller bond; it is at least claiming he will. Definitely easier than half a billion.
Seems all these legal cases are going to be dragged out until the election, since as long as Trump can post bond then the appeal processes can go on for quite some time.
I think the main thing is that Trump will likely now avoid the embarrassing seizing of his properties. That would have been a near fatal blow, as it would just look "weak" which is not a good look for him as a rich "strong man" type (as far as his base is concerned).
Reply to boethius :lol: I'm not even a "liberal" (or member of the Democratic Party). Pro tip: stop disinforming yourself with FOX Noise (or other MAGA media).
Again, here's an undisputable Conservative, ex-GOP campaign consultant/operative you (& @NOSA2) can learn something from (other than "alternative facts") ...
?boethius :lol: I'm not a even "liberal" (or member of the Democrat>c Party). Pro tip: stop disinforming yourself with FOX Noise (or other MAGA media).
Please do provide a definition of liberal and explain how you aren't a liberal and aren't in a liberal echo chamber at the moment.
You post that Trump is losing support, I go check the polls (maybe it's true) and get back to you that he's in fact gaining support, and then you respond that polls aren't predictive until within 2 months of the election but continue to insist that Trump is losing support due to random pundit hot takes.
That's called being in a echo chamber of only considering what you want to hear.
As for FOX News and MAGA, I'm not American, I don't live in the US. I live in a country that has free health care, free upper education, sends pregnant women a box of essential baby supplies (while paying maternity leave even if you've never worked). I happen to be a citizen by one of my parents, but I choose to live here because it's about as far democratically left as you can get on the planet, and I want to go even further to the left supporting salary caps, nationalization of any monopoly, UBI to replace the patch work of social security, direct democracy and so on.
Although studious of Marx, I wouldn't call myself a Marxist for the simple fact Marx believed industrial capitalism brought some good things, whereas I view industrial capitalism as a grave error from the start that has brought nothing but industrial wars, loss of humanity, loss of community and loss of nature.
So I'm no ally of Trump or the Maga movement.
However, because of the total corruption of the American elites I do see why Trump is appealing to a lot of Americans (appealing enough to win the presidency once and win the latest primary).
It's just objective fact needed to understand US politics, which as a Canadian, it's a national sport to follow and shake our heads at.
I also honestly don't see how the neocons are better than Trump, and I honestly think Trump is better for the world than Biden and the usual suspects (of a long list of war crimes, including participation in this latest literal genocide).
Although I do not believe the dictum that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' holds true in all cases, I do think it's worth entertaining when it comes to Trump. Trump is in a fight with some of the most powerful and evil networks of people the world has seen in arguably over half a century.
The old fat orange f*cker's latest grift launched during Holy Week no less is a $60 "Trump Bible" for gullible, faux-Christian, "Trump sneakers"-wearing MAGA cultists. You can't make this stooopid stuff up. :lol:
Reply to 180 Proof Somehow I picture him coming upon a large consignment of misprinted bibles about to be discarded and he just has the cover glued on.
And you are entitled to your conspicuously uninformed, spectator's opinion, sir/mam.
Again, you state that Trump is losing support, I go check the polls to inform myself whether this is really true or not, and turns out he's not losing support.
Information that you then dismiss in favour of random pundit hot takes because polls aren't predictive.
... Well are random pundit hot takes based on Republican primary voting more predictive?
Feel free to inform us, to use your language.
As for spectator opinion; we all participate in the American empire, so it's hardly spectating. But even if it was a spectators position, you'd still need to justify why it's less worthy to consider. In more than a few cases spectators can far more easily discern what's going on than participants.
Again, you state that Trump is losing support, I go check the polls to inform myself whether this is really true or not, and turns out he's not losing support.
HarisX has Trump +2 in one poll and even in another.
Leger conducted two polls both with Trump +4.
Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research has Trump +6, +5 and +5 in three polls.
Quinnipiac University has Trump +1 in one poll and Biden +3 in another concurrent poll.
The numbers could be different, could be exactly as you say that Trump is losing support and I'd go check and see the polls confirm what you say and come back and be all like "yep, Trump is tanking".
However, what the polls actually say, what multiple expert groups in trying to gauge public opinion conclude based on data, is that Trump is gaining support.
I understand you don't like it, but welcome to the real world.
Here's (a link to post with youtube discussing) why an explosion of terroristic political violence is more likely than not after Biden is reelected this fall (or even sooner in June/July when Criminal Defendent-1 is convicted of dozens of felonies in Manhattan) ...
?boethius :lol: I'm not even a "liberal" (or member of the Democrat>c Party). Pro tip: stop disinforming yourself with FOX Noise (or other MAGA media).
Says the bore who goes around commenting on discussions hes not involved in to demonstrate his self-righteousness as an empathic communicator. That existence must be a healthy one indeed, Im sure.
a historically-informed US voter's perspective on the pending US presidential election of 2024.
The conversation is:
1. You claim Trump is losing support
2. I go check your claim against the polls
3. Your claim doesn't check out, so you move the goal posts to polling doesn't matter but Trump is still losing support because a large, but still minor, amount of Republicans didn't back Trump in the primaries.
4. I point out you're obviously living in a liberal media bubble where claims.
5. You then deny being in anyway a liberal, but refuse to provide a definition of liberal of which you are not, all while trying to accuse me of being an American conservative (which I'm happy to not only deny the charge but actually explain what I am instead of being an American conservative).
6. Instead of learning something from being totally wrong, you then just move your ad hominem to me being a spectator and that somehow disqualifies my participating on this forum (mostly run and maintained by Europeans, from what I gather); not clear why being not-American is disqualifying, just does for some reasons (aka. random walls you erect to maintain your echo chamber, instead of going out and building a real wall that matters to protect America!! Shame on you.).
7. I point out that your new claims have nothing to do with your first claim; if polls don't matter much until 1-2 months before the election, ok, but what's your evidence that primary votes do matter? Considering Trump won in 2016 with an important faction of Republican #Nevertrumpers. To which your evidence to explain this hodgepodge of inconsistent claims is random YouTubers that represent said liberal media bubble.
So ok, I get it, you want to live in your self-identified not-liberal echo chamber where Trump has no chance of winning and you feel the need to bring your echo chamber into this forum for further validation.
Reply to boethius I wouldn't try to tease this one out. Not necessarily a comment about 180, but these types of political discussions are basically snowballs. No one keeps track of their claims, everyone just ends up yelling at each other and nothing is achieved.
I initially expected better of this type of forum, but politics gonna politic i guess. Twitter nonsense is inescapable when its political talk.
?boethius I wouldn't try to tease this one out. Not necessarily a comment about 180, but these types of political discussions are basically snowballs. No one keeps track of their claims, everyone just ends up yelling at each other and nothing is achieved.
I'm keeping track.
Not out of personal or philosophical interest, but moral and civic duty.
And not because anything said on this forum is of any monumental political consequence, but rather to develop strategies for dealing with bad faith debate.
We are, in my view, repeating the circumstances of the original development of Western philosophy arising out of, and in opposition to, sophistry.
Precisely due to democratization of the public sphere in Greek democratic traditions (though none of them are actually democratic in a modern definition, more just large aristocracies, still far more democratic than top down rule).
This democratization of the public sphere in the Greek context was due to the Agora where all citizens could talk. For us cause of this is the internet. In between similar accrued with the printing press and pamphleteering.
Whenever the public sphere is democratized there is first dominance of bad faith tactics because people haven't learned yet to deal with them. In the greek context philosophy emerges; anyone can say anything but there are methods to separate truth from falsehood, better than no method. In the renaissance journalism emerges; anyone can write anything about what's happening anywhere, so we need people and institutions that build up a reputation to have an a priori set of probable facts (not all true, but at least a starting point to apply the reasoning methods bequeathed to us).
Today, anyone can copy and paste what the reputable journalistic institutions write, destroying their business model and undermining the entire system of public discourse built up since the invention of the printing press. Likewise, anyone can make an audio / visual emotional appeal promoting anything directly to the entire public.
This is a short summary of the history (there's also radio and television), but the point is that we're in a discursive environment where bad faith arguments dominate, exactly as you say everything political is just a snow ball fight.
In the previous philosophy forum, in the "before times" of the internet where television talking heads were still referring to everything on the internet as "blogs" and noting what was on "blogs" simply to post of it's irrelevant whatever it is, I focused on philosophical topics. This was literally 20 years ago and I was in my formative years, so genuinely didn't know if my beliefs held up to scrutiny (and of course they didn't and required a lot of reformulation). I then went off to accomplish my purpose and unfortunately the forum was disappeared from the internet.
This new forum emerged, public discourse degraded due to the above processes, and I just so happened to have gained considerable amount of experience debating with bad faith actors as corporate board director and oft times CEO. People will come up with the craziest shit when they want to under-deliver, underserved money or intellectual property, and managing corporations involves dealing with a considerable amount of bad faith.
Discerning good from bad faith, and how to deal with each, I would go so far as to say nearly entirely summarizes what management is about. Ipsofacto, seemed an additional dutiful purpose to join this forum to further develop and demonstrate methods of debating bad faith actors.
For the strategies appropriate to good faith and bad are not the same. The first thing a bad faith actor will do is take advantage of your ill adapted good faith habits. For example, if you're only accustomed to good faith debate (with friends and family and class mates and colleagues and so on) which is most of the time in real life, you'll likely have all sorts of bad habits when it comes to dealing with bad faith actors. For example, in good faith debate you assume your opponent seeks the truth as much as yourself, has at face value as credible premises as your own, and is speaking what they genuinely believe to be true. In short, in a good faith debate you pay a significant amount of respect to your interlocutor. Once you get into a management position of any significance, you immediately realize that a bad faith actor will take advantage of all of these good faith debate habits to harm you and people you're responsible as well as the entire world. It is not an intellectual debate, it is a conflict in which winning is important.
How do you win against a bad faith actor (often highly paid lawyers in a corporate context)?
First rule: respect is earned. Respect is earned by being good faith. If someone's good faith with me, I'll be good faith with them. If someone's bad faith with me, I will not be bad faith with them but I won't give them the benefits I extend to those of good faith either. Rather, I will, entirely legally and metaphorically, get my thumbs into their eyes and squeeze until they desist from attacking me, and the interests I represent, any further. I won't give them any ground whatsoever (i.e. I'll make them do the work of proving even those things that I know to happen to be actually true), I won't give them any respect (i.e. I won't assume their positions are on face value as credible as my own and continuously call out their bad intentions and deceptive practices), and above all I will make them understand I will never stop (i.e. they can't tire me out and I'll go to what would be, for many, irrational lengths in any quarrel: time, effort, pain, suffering, is of no consequence compared to satisfaction).
In short, if you want to deal with the bad faith actors of the world you must be, to them, a monster from the deep.
Transposing these methods to political public debate is my project here. We are in a time where everyone must become CEO's, unless we are to be ruled by our inferiors.
Well, whenever someone denigrates the forum, I am always skeptical of these claims of irrelevancy. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. You're here, I'm here, a bunch of other clever people are here, we can't know who's lurking in the shadows. Honest clever people do seek out analysis that can withstand scrutiny from opposing view points, and I always ask where there is a better forum of such debate and I never get an answer. Of course you have to be peculiar to actually participate in the debate, but maybe less peculiar and more important people, the non-weirdos as you say, come and watch and learn something. Maybe not, who knows.
However, my project isn't simply to engage with bad faith debaters here but to build up examples of the method of dealing with bad faith debaters in the context of political discourse.
I suppose the next step is to write a book or something and try to make the knowledge more accessible. For now, the forum permits creating material for the project in a reasonable amount of time, due to the stewardship of the moderators. And why does the moderators work make these sorts of discussion feasible to begin with? Because they get rid of bad faith actors (without purging their good faith political opponents and so create an echo chamber) that would simply destroy the space of discussion as their next bad faith tactic as a retort to being demonstrated to be and faith. So, the mere example of there being entirely opposed views "allowed to exist" here on the forum and the world doesn't end and actual debate between people who disagree can then take place, is as valuable a lesson as what approach to bad faith tactics are effective within the discursive battle field.
Well, whenever someone denigrates the forum, I am always skeptical of these claims of irrelevancy. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. You're here, I'm here, a bunch of other clever people are here, we can't know who's lurking in the shadows.
I'm not sure how this relates. My point is that this Forum is not a good indicator of the real world.
I suppose the next step is to write a book or something and try to make the knowledge more accessible. For now, the forum permits creating material for the project in a reasonable amount of time, due to the stewardship of the moderators.
So, the mere example of there being entirely opposed views "allowed to exist" here on the forum and the world doesn't end and actual debate between people who disagree can then take place, is as valuable a lesson as what approach to bad faith tactics are effective within the discursive battle field.
Im unsure why this is nested in the rest of hte comment. I agree, but didn't cover anything around this in my reply earlier.
The poll of the elections main battlegrounds shows Trump holding leads of between 2 and 8 percentage points in six statesPennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolinaon a test ballot that includes third-party and independent candidates. Trump holds similar leads when voters are asked to choose only between him and Biden.
The one outlier is Wisconsin, where Biden leads by 3 points on the multiple-candidate ballot, and where the two candidates are tied in a head-to-head matchup."
I'm not sure how this relates. My point is that this Forum is not a good indicator of the real world.
That seemed to me your point: that the forum is populated by weirdos and therefore that undermine my project, either due to a lack of reach or then engaging with weirdos is not representative, and so missing the mark of relevancy due to either or both.
My retort to that is that who knows what relevance the forum in itself has to global society, who visits and where those visitors then go and what they do and butterfly effect and all that. Perhaps it's irrelevant in any direct impact on society and policy makers, perhaps not. And my second point being that the project is anyways intended to have a second phase of writing a book or blog more accessible to the general public in anywise.
Im unsure why this is nested in the rest of hte comment. I agree, but didn't cover anything around this in my reply earlier.
This wasn't in retort to you, just emphasizing what I presume is common ground.
I also am not claiming my project will have some profound effect on society. It's entirely possible our civilization is completely doomed and talking at this point in history will have little effect on outcomes. Again, I think we'd agree that to what extent that's likely, and regardless of whether we agree at all on how likely it is, that it is anyways our duty to try to solve our collective problems best we can.
"After Virtue" by Alasdair MacIntyre is probably the best analysis that I've encountered of the discursive collapse of Western society, and his conclusion is basically the problem is unsolvable. He makes a compelling case but I suppose we should try to solve it anyways; give it a go, at least verify he is in fact correct.
that it is anyways our duty to try to solve our collective problems best we can.
Im not sure I agree that we have any duty at all. But that is a much larger topic.
In this specific discussion, I think it's fairly easy to loo at the West and say it's succeeding. On what grounds could it be 'collapsing'? Too many ideas?
Im not sure I agree that we have any duty at all. But that is a much larger topic.
Certainly could be good to discuss that in another topic. Nevertheless, you'd really hold the position that there is no duty, or then you are uncertain about it, to report evidence of child sexual abuse that you encounter?
There's of course a difference between refuting duties one does not see do any good or then outweighed by other considerations or then one would perform the duty if there was reasonable incentive and disincentive binding everyone to do likewise; there's a difference between these positions and refuting all duties altogether. Usually when duties are discussed we're talking about things that are debatable on these various grounds, but the position of no duties at all is quite extreme: there'd be no duty of any kind to children under any circumstances such as the example above, no duty to stop the Nazis carrying out a genocide, no duty to refrain from serial murder and rape for that matter, and so on for all the most heinous acts that we may list and agree upon.
So, agreed we could continue on this topic on another thread, but I am curious if your position really is doubting all duties of any kind.
In this specific discussion, I think it's fairly easy to loo at the West and say it's succeeding. On what grounds could it be 'collapsing'?
I do not think the West is succeeding, so again perhaps a discussion for another conversation, but to summarize my view I do not view an unsustainable system as successful. Trading short term performance for long term survival is not a successful strategy, but entirely illusory.
For example, if you take methamphetamines to outperform your peers at work, it may appear you are very successful in the short term by working nearly 24/7, but as soon as the drug takes its toll and let's say you don't quit but just keep increasing the meth dose to keep performing until an overdose resulting in death or permanent disability, no one would consider this a "success"; no one would make a speech at your wake explaining that you were extremely successful and exemplary due to performing at a high level for a short period of time and everyone should do likewise.
The West, in creating and leading industrial civilizaton, is likewise unsuccessful, trading short term performance for long term viability.
Again, a discussion for another thread, but where it relates to Trump (and equally Biden for that matter) is in representing exactly why the West is unable to solve our long term problems; coherence doesn't matter and partisans are irreconcilable and political discourse is simply a short term power struggle and mostly, and most damning, no one cares, seeing no duty to even try to understand any topic of importance, much less do anything about it.
I'll try to transcribe some key points from "After Virtue" to illuminate this point of view and what the problem is, but the title itself may give some impression of the core thesis.
The problem is not too many ideas but rather an inability to convert good ideas to good policy.
To give one of the most significant examples, in the 1960s to the 1980s it was not in dispute the "polluter pays" principle. Even Milton Friedman taking the pretty extreme "greed is good" position, agreed that the polluter should pay, that if a power station over here is dirtying your shirt over there then the power station should pay to clean your shirt.
There was a general agreement in principle of how society should respond to facts. If a given pollution is factual then certainly the polluter should pay for the clean up. And it's even easy to see why this principle was not even controversial as obviously you can't just dump trash on your neighbours property and have them pay to clean it up (regardless if it was an accident or on purpose or a side-effect of doing some legitimate thing like pruning your tree): you'll need to pay to clean up your trash. Simple and obvious and a widely agreed principle in which social policy can be implemented and updated.
The dispute at that time was on the facts. All while agreeing the polluter should of course pay, Friedman simply didn't agree that things like power stations produced pollution that did any harm: smog was. a natural phenomenon that even the native Americans talked about.
Likewise, even more generally, 50 years ago there was general agreement that we of course due have a duty to care for the earth, and therefore the disagreements on what to do were factual: how best to care for the earth?
The breakdown of these agreements in principle result in society unable to resolve problems and implement long term coherent policy.
The proximate cause of this erosion of "bare minimum social cohesion" is lobbies that go to work leveraging money to prop up a position that is simply intellectually lost. No one today repeats Friedman's theory that smog is a natural phenomenon that simply has nothing to do with coal power generation, but the fossil lobby can just replace one terrible unfounded theory with 3 new ones.
However, the ultimate cause of the situation, what lobbies are able to exploit, is the loss of generally agreed virtues that were previously supported by religion.
And Trump is a pretty good example of this theory playing out, as in the before times where generally agreed virtues were important to society there would be simply no way a person like Trump could compete in the political sphere, but "After Virtue" it is entirely feasible as there is no longer any expectation for anyone to be virtuous; for example if you pay a porn star for sex and then pay for her silence with campaign money ... well, why wouldn't you pay a porn star for sex and then pay for her silence with campaign money? We all want sex don't we? We all want to coverup our indiscretions don't we? The empathy of Western society today, at the end of the day, is with Trump being "a boss" and using money to satisfy his desires. Trump is the penultimate consumer: willing and able to consume even the immaterial political prestige that is the foundation of civil society.
Certainly could be good to discuss that in another topic. Nevertheless, you'd really hold the position that there is no duty, or then you are uncertain about it, to report evidence of child sexual abuse that you encounter?
I can confidently say I would report it, but not on moral grounds (assuming, as I think is warranted, that your/our use of obligation here is a moral term). I want it to stop. That's all. If I didn't want it to stop. my moral outlook wouldn't matter anyway. I can't get further than that. I don't have to do it. I don't think claiming I 'have to' or 'ought' to do it makes any sense. Based on? *insert any possible non-supernatural answer* Okay, thank you. Well, I reject that premise. I can't think of response to this which isn't a reiteration of the *insert..* portion.
Again, a discussion for another thread, but where it relates to Trump (and equally Biden for that matter) is in representing exactly why the West is unable to solve our long term problems; coherence doesn't matter and partisans are irreconcilable and political discourse is simply a short term power struggle and mostly, and most damning, no one cares, seeing no duty to even try to understand any topic of importance, much less do anything about it.
Given I think there isn't a duty, take this with a grain of salt - I think you're making a huge mistake.
The political sideshow, is a really bright shiny sideshow. It simply does not represent most people.
Regarding the balance of your post, firstly, thank you for illustrating a number of those ideas from MacIntyre. Interesting. Partially, i dismiss some of the heat in those passages due to the above (politics=/real life in some sense) but moreover, I don't think this is a bad thing.
Western Culture would, surely, allow for an adaptation and evolution of society following the, lets say, dismantling of a current paradigm. This seems to have happened several times in the last 500 years or so. Major, major changes in governance and infrastructure seems inevitable. We're in the midst of a Kuhn revolution!
FWIW: my 2024 "election predictions" (based on (A) electoral trends 2017-2023 completely favoring Dems; (B) SCOTUS & MAGA-GOP taking away women's reproductive rights / criminalizing abortions; (C) consistent trend of 20% of GOP primary voters rejecting Loser-1 even after Haley, DeSantis & Christie suspended their campaigns; (D) Criminal Defendant-1 convicted in NY by June/July; (E) benefits of Biden's economy broadly felt by September; (F) etc):
1. Biden-Harris reelected
-gets 5-7 million more votes than Loser-1again (even with lower turnout than 2020)
-gets more (suburban) women voters
-gets more under 35 year old voters
-gets more minorities voters
-gets more independent voters
-wins 4-5 out of 7 "swing states" (plus 1-2 more "red states" (e.g. NC))
2. Dems wins US Senate (+2 seat gain)
3. Dems win US House (+20 seat gain)
update:
Third-party candidates RFK, J. Stein & C. West collectively will be a non-factor in the outcome of the 2024 election.
gets more independent voters
-wins 5-7 out of 13 "swing states" (and 1-2 "red states" (e.g. NC) again like 2020)
2. Dems wins US Senate (+2 seat gain)
3. Dems win US House (+20 seat gain)
In terms of independents, Im not so sure anymore. But the question is will it be enough, given the goofy electoral college?
Im thinking he loses NC and Georgia, and probably Arizona. But he wins the blue wall making swingy states like New Hampshire and even Nevada very important. Id watch Florida too, although I dont think theres a great chance there anymore.
Youre way off with the senate. Looks like the Dems are gonna lose that chamber, unfortunately. Manchins seat is an easy flip, and Montana and Ohio its very hard to say but looks like Republican edge. Not to mention Arizona. I see republican +2 but if not then democrats 50-50 at best.
The house I agree I think dems take it. New York being de-gerrymandered alone should do it.
(Writing this out now so you can throw it at me later if Im wrong.)
I can confidently say I would report it, but not on moral grounds (assuming, as I think is warranted, that your/our use of obligation here is a moral term). I want it to stop. That's all. If I didn't want it to stop. my moral outlook wouldn't matter anyway. I can't get further than that. I don't have to do it. I don't think claiming I 'have to' or 'ought' to do it makes any sense. Based on? *insert any possible non-supernatural answer* Okay, thank you. Well, I reject that premise. I can't think of response to this which isn't a reiteration of the *insert..* portion.
I'm not quite sure you fully appreciate the implications of your position: that a police officer could plant evidence on you to make his job easier, a surgeon could just walk out mid surgery leaving to slowly wake up in excruciating pain and a slow death, anyone could just randomly torture you death for their amusement, and they have done you no moral wrong, they had no duty to do otherwise; of course you may not like any of these things and want them to desist but that would just be your own feelings about the matter which are no better than theirs.
I will make a thread outlining and defending MacIntyre's critique of this sort of emotivist position and we could discuss if further , but if there's some obvious nuance to your position feel free to briefly clarify it.
I just cannot understand how one could think this about the West. *shrug*
The Western enlightenment project has failed. Again, MacIntyre I think succinctly explains why. And it is no coincidence that he appears in my response here again, as it is basically because of emotivism (do what you feel) that virtues become lost and society falls apart.
I disagree with MacIntyre on a few pedantic points, but that the West has entered a new dark ages he clearly foresaw before I was even born.
I don't now have time to transcribe all I would like, but I'll do so for one passage I think particularly apt for this conversation:
After Virtue, MacIntyre:
The Supreme Court in Bakke, as on occasion in other cases, played the role of a peacemaker or truce-keeping body by negotiating its way through an impasse of conflict, not by invoking our shared moral first principles. For our society as a whole has none.
What this brings out is that modern politics cannot be a matter of genuine moral consensus. And it is not. Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means, and Bakke was an engagement whose antecedents were at Gettysburg and Shiloh. The truth on this matter was set out by Adam Ferguson: 'We are not to expect that the laws of any country are to be framed as so many lessons of morality .... Laws, whether civil or political, are expedients of policy to adjust the pretensions of parties, and to secure the peace of society. The expedient is accommodated to special circumstances ...' (Principles of Moral and Political Science ii, 144). The nature of any society therefore is not to be deciphered from its laws alone, but from those understood as an index of its conflicts. What our laws show is the extent and degree to which conflict has to be suppressed.
Yet if this is so, another virtue too has been displaced. Patriotism cannot be what is was because we lack in the fullest a sense of patria. The point that I am making must not be confused with the commonplace liberal rejection of patriotism. Liberals have oftennot alwaystaken a negative or even hostile attitude to patriotism, partly because their allegiance is to values which they take to be universal and not local and particular, and partly because of a well-justified suspicion that in the modern world patriotism is often a facade behind which chauvinism and imperialism are fostered. But my present point is not that patriotism is good or bad as a sentiment, but that the practice of patriotism as a virtue is in advanced societies no longer possible in the way that it once was. In any society where government does not express or represent the moral community of the citizens, but is instead a set of institutional arrangements for imposing a bureaucratized unity on a society which lacks genuine moral consensus, the nature of political obligation becomes systematically unclear. Patriotism is or was a virtue founded on attachment primarily to a political and moral community and only secondarily to the government of that community; but it is characteristically exercised in discharging responsibility to and in such a government. Where however the relationship of government to the moral community is put in question both by the changed nature of government and the lack of moral consensus in the society, it becomes difficult any longer to have any clear, simple and teachable conception of patriotism. Loyalty to my country, to my communitywhich remains unalterably a central virtuebecomes detached from obedience to the government which happens to rule me.
Which doesn't contain or summarize all of MacIntyre's criticism of Western society, just particularly topical.
More fundamentally, I do get that Western society allows you to do what you feel like most of the time, even enjoying the pleasure of a sort of general Western enthusiasm or even patriotic warm glow of a sort all while feeling bound by no duties towards it.
When I have more time I shall make a thread dedicated to the topic, but I hope it seems at least evoked from the above passage that a society in which there are no virtues or duties genuinely felt by the majority of the citizenry, is a society that a society that is not going to be able to perpetuate itself (without severe crisis in which duties and virtues sufficient for the maintenance of the institutions of society and the natural habitat reemerge).
For now, it is to me truly remarkable that people manage to pedestalize the West for making relatively few people "feel good" for a relatively short period of time while destroying entire ecosystems and species, not to mention both the foundation within and continuing practice of extractive colonialism.
Given I think there isn't a duty, take this with a grain of salt - I think you're making a huge mistake.
The political sideshow, is a really bright shiny sideshow. It simply does not represent most people.
That's why I mentioned the larger majority of people of whom "no one cares, seeing no duty to even try to understand any topic of importance", so we definitely agree that most people don't pay much attention to politics and have checked out from any political cause.
Where we differ is that you seem to feel this is laudable, perhaps even wise, whereas I characterized it as "most damning" of all (as in worse than the people at least engaged on one side or another).
Again, I can completely empathize that as long as the institutions of society are taken for granted, then as soon as politics "sours" it is far more pleasant to simply ignore politics altogether. However, if enough people paying attention and acting in good faith is required for the maintenance of those institutions (not to mention the natural world) and the consequences of their destruction (and the natural world) is quite enormous and unpleasant, I hope it's clear that from this point of view ignoring politics altogether is a form of collective suicide as deranged as any cult (of course excusing who ignore politics for legitimate reasons, such as being wage slaves pushed to the extreme they genuinely have not a moment or calorie to spare on considering the institutions that put them there).
Regarding the balance of your post, firstly, thank you for illustrating a number of those ideas from MacIntyre. Interesting. Partially, i dismiss some of the heat in those passages due to the above (politics=/real life in some sense) but moreover, I don't think this is a bad thing.
Glad my contribution is appreciated.
However, what you are responding to is but the briefest summary of the problem MacIntyre is addressing, basically his starting point.
MacIntyre also doesn't require virtues to be based on religious sentiment, just that obviously it was for thousands of years. Of course it's a debatable point as such, but MacIntyre's account of the virtues is not religious but a tradition starting historically in heroic society (i.e. those kinds of society's that existed at the start of written history). MacIntyre is explicitly Aristotelian.
Now, what is a virtue and vice, and whether an individual should be virtuous or not, is one debate, but what should be clear is that a society devoid of all duties and virtues cannot possibly last.
For example, let's say there's an invasion and you're feeling is that best someone deal with that, well that's going to require soldiers who happen to feel bound to their duties as soldiers as well as sufficient discipline, fortitude, craftiness, bravery and self sacrifice necessary to win any battles. If no one in society felt any such duty nor possessed the prerequisite virtues then no matter how many people feel it would be preferable that someone deal with the problem of the invasion, it won't be dealt with.
Point being, even if you don't personally feel bound by any duties, and even view the great achievement of Western society as creating the condition for people so disposed to lazily go about their day contributing nothing to the general welfare, certainly you can recognize that maintaining such conditions requires honest good faith people performing various duties with sufficient virtues to be successful at them, and once there are too few of these people to hold in check the bad-faith and dishonest people with virtues only sufficient enough to execute on their vices, society will collapse in relatively short order.
Hey mate, thank you for your thorough reply. Some of my utterances below will seem combative. THey are not - we just disagree in ways that look combative. But, your incredulousness at my position should at least allow you to understand that however we disagree, I simply do not care. You're giving me the time of day and I enjoy locking horns in this way.
I'm not quite sure you fully appreciate the implications of your position
I do. Sincerely apologies if, at any point, I seem a bit short. I have heard just about all of the infantalising responses to my position (despite recognizing they aren't intended that way!!). I have thought about this. I have read a lot on it. I have discussed it with laypeople and philosophers. I have fully embraced the consequences. They don't strike me the way they strike you. That's all. I still have good reasons to act or prevent acts, that I am sure you would, overall, agree with teh results of.
a surgeon could just walk out mid surgery leaving to slowly wake up in excruciating pain and a slow death, anyone could just randomly torture you death for their amusement, and they have done you no moral wrong
Correct. This is not a problem to my mind, other than because It makes me uncomfortable. Not sure how it could be 'wrong' in any other sense.
They do, but you've named instances that include the other reasons I've alluded to. Suffice to say at this stage that I formulate in these scenarios (though, I'm not yet at a fine-grained version of this view, so bear with) that hte actor has, in fact, chosen to accept hte subject's emotional position, rather than a moral obligation.
That's why I mentioned the larger majority of people of whom "no one cares, seeing no duty to even try to understand any topic of importance", so we definitely agree that most people don't pay much attention to politics and have checked out from any political cause.
Which entirely invalidates the claims made above, so I'm unsure where to go from here. Your accepting this premise says to me you can't support your previous claims. Odd feeling, tbh.
This is seems laughably wrong, and nothing you've provided seems to move the compass. He's an impassioned writer that seems to ignore two or three fundamentally important aspects of what he's talking about (one, being the above - the vast majority of people (who consittute the culture!!!) simply are not involved in this side-show - it goes on, in spite of hte ridiculous Political stupidity. This seems true in most cultures, and the West is not unique in that way.
ot to mention both the foundation within and continuing practice of extractive colonialism.
I would point you toward Heydel-Mankoo for a perspective on this aspect that seems to me inarguable, and exposes the preening nonsense of anti-colonial sentiment in te 21st century. But we are likely to almost violently disagree here.
I hope it's clear that from this point of view ignoring politics altogether is a form of collective suicide as deranged as any cult
Not at all. It seems clear to me that these lines of yours are somewhat unhinged. *shrug*. Quoting boethius
feeling is that best someone deal with that, well that's going to require soldiers who happen to feel bound to their duties as soldiers as well as sufficient discipline, fortitude, craftiness, bravery and self sacrifice necessary to win any battles.
I think the bolded in sufficient, but apparently you do not. That said, If no one in the country wants to defend it - Okay. That's the situation.
if you don't personally feel bound by any duties, and even view the great achievement of Western society as creating the condition for people so disposed to lazily go about their day contributing nothing to the general welfare
I can only roll my eyes at the baked-in biases here.
I have to be entirely honest in that the type of vibe your views encompass a little bit funny. I'm sorry for that coming through as I know you're good faith and being honest with me. It just seems childish and I have a hard time. This is likely a flaw in me, but wanted to be clear about why some responses might seem flimsy. I think that's what they call for. I mean no offense.
once there are too few of these people to hold in check the bad-faith and dishonest people with virtues only sufficient enough to execute on their vices, society will collapse in relatively short order
I think the idea that a critical mass of a population would act against not only their own self-interest, but their own relations in the world is far-fetched enough to simply not care about this potential. The West is not cogent (ideologically) enough for this to matter anyway. The only 'duty' the West actually imposes is to not interfere with others against their will. I'm quite absolute in this regard. People should be allowed to hurt themselves, and contract into self-disinterested behaviour.
How we deal with things like Mental Illness is where it gets interesting, imo. We might have something very interesting to discuss there.
Hey mate, thank you for your thorough reply. Some of my utterances below will seem combative. THey are not - we just disagree in ways that look combative. But, your incredulousness at my position should at least allow you to understand that however we disagree, I simply do not care. You're giving me the time of day and I enjoy locking horns in this way.
I don't know about you but I came here for an argument.
Be at ease, you're clearly debating in good faith, which warrants respect.
My disrespect is reserved for people arguing in bad faith, which I define in a philosophical or political context arguing positions they do not actually believe; i.e. not arguing on substance but simply deploying a wide range of propaganda tactics to manipulate perceptions of said substance.
I ask you to clarify your position to both be confident you're arguing in good faith but also to understand your position. Most emotivists or moral relativists, in my experience, generally have moral absolute limits and are just arguing plurality within a limited "nice and acceptable" moral terrain. Which is a perfectly coherent view to have, I am myself an emotivist and moral relativists in this sense, but it is clearly a moral absolutist position in which some plurality and diversity and various internally consistent positions, even if at odds, are perfectly acceptable; as you are clearly aware, it is the moral absolutist framework which is the far more important foundation in such a theory in which adding some compatible plurality can be pretty trivial; such as, in stoicism (my moral point of view), if moral goodness is the effort towards the good then pretty much any expressed moral system in attempting to do so, as either a linguistic / notional system or then simply doing things expressing the moral content, is morally laudable, whatever it is (however wrong it is from some epistemologically omniscient point of view) as long as it's the result of genuine moral effort towards the good (taken as either or revelatory a priori knowledge in stoicism: i.e. once one is ware of there are better and worse decisions, one is duty bound to try to make good decisions resulting in a moral journey throughout the cosmos in which advancing on one's journey, regardless of the starting point of present situation, is what is of moral worth)to show my cards, as it were, in reciprocity to you showing yours.
I do. Sincerely apologies if, at any point, I seem a bit short. I have heard just about all of the infantalising responses to my position (despite recognizing they aren't intended that way!!). I have thought about this. I have read a lot on it. I have discussed it with laypeople and philosophers. I have fully embraced the consequences. They don't strike me the way they strike you. That's all. I still have good reasons to act or prevent acts, that I am sure you would, overall, agree with teh results of.
I ask for clarification just to be sure my understanding of your position is correct.
The best way to clarify a moral position is to consider the social consequences (as morality is mostly, though not entirely, socially contingent).
However, social consequence is only a clarifying and cannot possibly be an evaluative factor of moral positions and theories. For, obviously we cannot evaluate what social consequences are good or bad without first committing to a moral theory to make such an evaluation. To say this moral or political scheme is wrong because it has these or those social consequences is not a complete argument without first establishing the moral scheme required to make such an evaluation, which if we happen to already know is true then it is trivial that anything incompatible with it claimed to be good will be evaluated to be bad.
Of course, it just so happens that the vast majority of people operate this way as they are unconscious of their foundational moral or evaluative framework in which they evaluate any new moral claims. Therefore, if you take a moral scheme for granted the fastest way to resolve the acceptability of any new moral claim is to work out it's social consequences and decide if they are good or bad based on what one already believes.
The reason I ask so much clarification of emotivist and moral relativistic positions is that most people in modern society explicitly believe they have such a theory while implicitly believing in moral absolute limits (in which case those moral absolute limits are far more interesting and the actual heart of the debate in such a case).
Correct. This is not a problem to my mind, other than because It makes me uncomfortable. Not sure how it could be 'wrong' in any other sense.
I think it's pretty clear we'll need a new thread to go deeper here. I should have time this week to transcribe MacIntyre's core objections to emotivism / moral relativism, as I'm sure you'd agree his position is worth considering and it would anyways benefit the forum to gain insight into such a powerful thinker. I do not actually agree with MacIntyre's overall framework, but my own position is only a slight upgrade in strength of several of MacIntyre's statements; basically in some foundational places MacIntyre hesitates to simply make an absolute claim all while denying he's simply made moral relativism more complicated. His sort of "riding the line" and very Buddhist "neither is true but it is true" I think is worth considering (and his whole argument is a brilliant insight into how society works and I am 100% convinced by his epistemological claim that moral content can only develop and make sense within a moral tradition), but at the end of the day I'm simply not convinced it's possible to avoid "we have a duty to the good of society" for the virtues MacIntyre promotes to be actual virtues and even if it is possible as MacIntyre sets out to do that there is any need to do so.
Not at all. I just think you're making an obvious mistake.
If you mean by mistake using social consequences to evaluate moral positions (i.e. that moral consequences I find unsavoury for exterior reasons is a valid argument against a moral claim, without first establishing my moral theory can be taken to be true to begin with), then I hope that has been clarified above.
If the social consequences of a position are accepted (what MacIntyre refers to as "paying the price") then of course that "I don't like those consequences" or "people don't like those consequences" is not an argument. It's only an argument if you also agree that those consequences are unacceptable and you are not assigning equal moral merit to those consequences as compared to others.
They do, but you've named instances that include the other reasons I've alluded to. Suffice to say at this stage that I formulate in these scenarios (though, I'm not yet at a fine-grained version of this view, so bear with) that hte actor has, in fact, chosen to accept hte subject's emotional position, rather than a moral obligation.
Well if your invoking some sort of social contract that is to me a moral absolutist position (that people should do what they give their word to do, as a moral duty): i.e. the cop should fulfil his duty of honest impartiality and not plant evidence because he's accepted that duty, the surgeon should finish the surgery because of the hypocritical oath, and serial murderer has (probably) entered into all sorts of explicit or implicit agreements with society to respect the law and not go around murdering people.
If there are no duties, then there are no duties to keep one's word either. You can give your word because you feel like it and are of equal moral weight in breaking your word because you feel like that too.
Not at all. It seems clear to me that these lines of yours are somewhat unhinged. *shrug*.
This seems to me nearly a tautology. Even if we could imagine a society that "just so happens to function" even if no one is doing anything that can be described as "political" eventually an existential crisis will arise and the only solution is "doing politics" which if no one is willing to do then society will end, being the definition of existential crisis.
Which you seem to accept in your very next sentence:
I think the bolded in sufficient, but apparently you do not. That said, If no one in the country wants to defend it - Okay. That's the situation.
In my experience, this is the main problem emotivist have to contend with as there's all sorts of institutions requiring duties to be performed to maintain any sort of comfortable life that "feels good". Generally, at least in my experience, emotivists want others to perform social duties so that they can feel good while denying those duties actually exist.
Libertarian oriented emotivists will usually try to solve this problem with hazard payfighting a war is dangerous and so soldiers are compensated for itwhile ignoring that obviously this wouldn't work in practice for two reasons: first, if every soldier demanded market based hazard pay it would simply be unaffordable to have an army, but second, and more problematic, hazard pay in the market deals with risks in which the plan is not to die (there are no jobs in which the advertisement is "you'll definitely, probably be killed" but we'll compensate you for that), but for a war to be prosecuted successfully almost always involves plans where the risk of death is acute and so a market solution would require increasing the hazard pay as the risk increases. Not only is any actual military far from being hazard pay based, but nearly all states reserve the right of conscription which is as far from compensating soldiers for risk as is possible. If people have no duties then of course they should abandon their posts as soon as the risk to their person warrants it.
This may not be your case, but at least for libertarians "free riding" they view as a bad thing and it usually causes them problems to become aware they are free riding on other people willing to self-sacrifice for their security and comfort all while they claim any self-sacrifice (even in the form of taxation) is not only not a duty but many go so far as to say is evil. In other words, for the market to exist in the first place requires a long list of institutions and whole host of individuals dedicated to refuse economically rational choices (abandon the battlefield as soon as the hazard pay doesn't cover the risk; take a bribe to rule in one party's favour as soon as soon the reward outweighs the risk of being caught by people equally rational and willing to take bribes, and so on).
I'm not sure this sort of criticism applies in your case (libertarians generally have plenty of morally absolute positions such as theft is wrong and contracts are sacred and they are doing "good" by being self interested, and so on, and the cause of the problem above is in relying on soldiers doing in their view "bad" and entering into non-market based labour exchanges and willing to self-sacrificing, paying a life tax, for the benefit of the state and moochers, including people enjoying the fruits of market relations due to the maintenance of the state that makes those market relations possible).
I would point you toward Heydel-Mankoo for a perspective on this aspect that seems to me inarguable, and exposes the preening nonsense of anti-colonial sentiment in te 21st century. But we are likely to almost violently disagree here.
We literally have actual settler colonialist genocide happening right now fully supported by Western governments, and you seriously believe that considering that as a moral failure of the West (along with the destruction of the natural world and the habitat we depend on to continue the whole civilization project) is "preening nonsense".
However, by "sentiment" are you also referring to all the colonialism in the past? Aka. that the current distribution of wealth and power globally has nothing to do with colonialism at all, neither now nor in the past?
This is seems laughably wrong, and nothing you've provided seems to move the compass. He's an impassioned writer that seems to ignore two or three fundamentally important aspects of what he's talking about (one, being the above - the vast majority of people (who consittute the culture!!!) simply are not involved in this side-show - it goes on, in spite of hte ridiculous Political stupidity. This seems true in most cultures, and the West is not unique in that way.
This is MacIntyre's starting thesis, so I will transcribe the key parts hopefully this week.
However, insofar as I've represented MacIntyre's position accurately, it seems bold to dismiss an argument of a pretty well respected philosopher as laughable. He's received criticism from many different schools and many other well respected philosophers and I have yet to hear the criticism that his arguments are laughably wrong. So we'll see if your claim here holds up.
As for the substance of your rebuttal, it's equally bold to simply assume society will simply muddle on despite ridiculous political stupidity. For example, if there was a general nuclear exchange started by the United States due to ridiculous political stupidity, would you evaluate this as a success?
Now, if your definition of success is just whatever happens (for example a nation is invaded, no one bothers to defend it as no one feels like it, they're all killed and this is successful because it happened), then seems there's no content in success or failure; anything that exists or ceases to exist represents success.
More fundamentally, if you have no moral standard, which seems implied in a position in which there's no duties to do anything, then how are you even judging success? So my first charge here is that you seem to be invoking some moral absolutes in critiquing my statements, whereas if we're basing morality on feelings then my position is equally valid to yours as I clearly feel Western society, the enlightenment project, has failed whereas you feel it's successful, and my feeling is just as good as yours. Even if you proved me to be factually wrong based on invoking a shared reality neither of us have a duty to accept is real, I would still have no duty to accept any particular facts about it.
What's hte issue? That's the choice that Nation made. Forcing the populus into a War seems to be a much, much worse thing to do.
I didn't say anything about forcing.
The alternative to no one defending the interests of society and forcing people to, is a society in which duties are really believed to exist; soldiers feel bound to their duties because they think those duties are morally binding on them, not contingent on insofar as they feel like it or then their hazard pay (insofar as things aren't too hazardous and it makes economic sense). As described above, the moral tensions is if there's expectation soldiers (or anyone taking any risk to protect the interest of society) carry out duties all while denying there are any such duties.
I can only roll my eyes at the baked-in biases here.
I have to be entirely honest in that the type of vibe your views encompass a little bit funny. I'm sorry for that coming through as I know you're good faith and being honest with me. It just seems childish and I have a hard time. This is likely a flaw in me, but wanted to be clear about why some responses might seem flimsy. I think that's what they call for. I mean no offense.
What's childish?
This is "the debate" when it comes to moral relativism v moral absolutism. If every point of view is valid and there are no absolute moral claims, then the Nazis were and are equally valid and the holocaust is as laudable social project as creating a health care system. Obviously Hitler felt he was doing good and so if no moral feeling is better than another, then Hitler was doing as much good as anyone else.
It's easy to argue moral relativism if the only moral positions under consideration are those pre-selected by the society you live in as acceptable. However, that's no the implication of moral relativism. If every position is equally morally valid (or invalid, but result in equality) then implication is that a serial killer has just as valid a moral position as a honest and compassionate doctor.
You've claimed no one has duties ... Ok, well that clearly means no one has duties to not engage in serial killing nor then stop anyone from doing so. People who "feel like" stopping the serial killer are just as morally justified as the serial killer and anyone who would do likewise, obviously they feel like serial killing.
Where you get pluralism, which to me clearly seems your comfort zone, is when you allow for a wide range of faiths and goals, but place absolute moral limits on what is morally acceptable in pursuit of those goals. Pursuing pleasure by skipping a stone on a lake: acceptable, approved. Pursuing pleasure by torturing little children to death: unacceptable, not approved.
The position that there are no duties (as you say, you'd report child sexual abuse only if you felt like it and wouldn't consider it wrong to not-report it if you didn't feel like it; there's no duty to report crimes against children as there are no duties at all).
Now, if you're willing to "pay the cost", as MacIntyre put it, and just flatly say that though you are happy people perform various duties to maintain your situation of comfort that you feel good in but they are simply wrong if they performed those duties because they thought those duties were real and not because they "happened to feel like it", which seems to be what you're saying, then I fail to see how its childish to point out the consequences.
Obviously a society in which no one performs any duties (no one keeps there word, no one tells the truth, no one protects any social institution required for society to function) wouldn't be comfortable society to live in.
Insofar as people "feel compelled" to actually perform duties due to the social consequences it is because of a history of society repeating to itself those duties are real: you should actually do them, you should actually reject a bribe as a judge and tell the truth as a witness. If those duties aren't real and people shouldn't feel compelled by them and people hear your message which clearly you are happy to share and then they see the light, then what's childish is to then simply assume that things would go on as before.
The adult position is to just accept that indeed society would basically fall apart if no one performed any duties and that's perfectly acceptable to you as an outcome. Which in one comment you seem to accept, that no one has a duty to defend the country and so if no one happens to feel like doing that then there's no way to defend the country and so be it, but then here with similar considerations the retort is it's childish.
If no one has any duties, then it's clearly perfectly morally acceptable to just lazily go about your day and contribute nothing to the general welfare just as it's perfectly morally acceptable for soldiers to abandon their posts as soon as they don't feel like risking their lives any more. The only difference in the soldier case is your invoking the false dichotomy that the only alternative is to force people to serve (the alternative you leave out is people serving their country because they feel a duty to do so, that they believe is very real and if they didn't believe that they wouldn't continue on based on merely happening to feel like it).
If you fall back to social norms (that we expect a judge to refuse bribes and soldiers to follow orders) and so there's negative consequences for failing to do what people expect, well the big incentive to conform to social norms that maintain society (not well by any stretch of the imagination, but not yet totally destroyed either) is the belief of others that those norms are real moral precepts. So, to say those norms aren't actually moral precepts, no one should believe them truly binding in any moral sense, but people act like they are real because other people think they are real and so impose a cost for violating those norms, obviously doesn't work anymore once enough people sees the truth that those norms aren't real. Which in a long list of cases is a good thing (according to the new norms of society) because it turns out the basis of those norms (slavery, racism, killing homosexuals, wife and child beating, and so on) weren't well supported: feelings changed and so what people felt compelled to do by social pressures also changed (in a process that is far from complete). However, the feelings changed (historically) not because people started to believe there are no moral truths at all but rather due to the consequences of debates about what those moral truths are.
I think the idea that a critical mass of a population would act against not only their own self-interest, but their own relations in the world is far-fetched enough to simply not care about this potential.
As I just explained, this is the philosophically naive position.
If you aren't concerned about the consequences of no people believing they have any duties (as, according to you, they should believe because that's the truth) then you're basically in the free riding problem as above. A critical mass of people won't agree with you and so you don't have to worry about that happening.
However, there's a lot more fundamentally wrong with your statement here.
First, you're clearly bait-and-switching individual self-interest with collective self-interest. It is in the collective self-interest for a soldier to self-sacrifice (by explicitly jumping on a grenade or then just taking on extreme risk) but it is obviously not in their own self-interest (as their dead now).
This is the core problem of politics, essentially before any other as maintaining any political system whatsoever requires a significant amount of self sacrifice, starting with both facing extreme risk (risking life and safety for the "self-interest" of society) as well as refusing advantages (bribes and favouritism and so on) but is a tension that goes far deeper (for example we not only expect the judge to refuse bribes, we also expect the judge to put in the work required for a fair trial even if that goes against his self-interest to have a pleasant life or is in conflict to important, but not as important, duties to his own family, such as disappointing his spouse or children due to late nights considering the merits of the case at hand).
"Self-interest" in your statement above is actually referring to collective-interest which may or may not be compatible with self-interest. It maybe in your self-interest and also the collective-interest to get a job, but it's in your self-interest and not the collective-interest to steal from your job, as a general rule (even if you are guaranteed to get away with it).
Economists just randomly invent abstracted entities (families, companies, organizations, government and the like) and then just randomly say those abstracted entities will act in their self interest to describe how society "should work", but any entity that represents a collection of individuals has collective-interest and not self-interest. Collective is a bad word in Neo-liberal economics so they just ignored what they're doing: confusing collective-interest with self-interest to solve the problem of self-interest being in conflict with collective-interest in the first place; this problem is not solved by simply stating:
"a critical mass of a population would act against not only their own self-interest".
This is just wrong. A critical mass of a population, in pursuing their individual self-interest, can definitely act against their collective interest of both themselves and dependents. That is exactly what are environmental problems are: we have no collective interest to have a system in which pollution can be externalized, but we each have an individual interest to externalize the costs of our pollution in pursuing our own pleasures. We could solve the problem but that would require a critical mass of people acting against one's self interest to ignore the political process altogether (something you see as perfectly fine, even morally superior to the many "rediculously stupid people" engaged in politics) because one's effect on outcomes is lower than the cost-benefit of the resources it requires (mostly time and brain calories).
The only 'duty' the West actually imposes is to not interfere with others against their will. I'm quite absolute in this regard. People should be allowed to hurt themselves, and contract into self-disinterested behaviour.
Ok, well all this discussion to come to the fact you are a moral absolutist, exactly as a suspected.
When you are perfectly sure, quite absolute, in that people have a duty to not interfere with others against their will.
So ok, "feelings" mean nothing, we have a quite strict absolute moral rule to abide by.
Fortunately, all the criticism above is still completely relevant, as your absolute moral rule doesn't really mean anything unless we (aka. a critical mass) have a duty to violate our own self interest in applying this standard to others on behalf of others violated by it (aka. maintain a government, police, prosecutors, judges or then analogous law-enforcement system), which in order to function require a long list of duties that go far beyond simply avoiding interfering with someone. Indeed, if that was the only rule then police and judges wouldn't interfere with the lives of people interfering with people (and there would be no police and judges).
Anyways, you could just say "I'm a libertarian" and so believe the rules that maintain market conditions are absolutely inviolable, the original acquisition of resources that created market conditions being unjustifiable is a "myth", and I want to free ride on soldiers sacrificing their self-interest without market based hazard pay, praise them to keep going all while knowing I (and others) are cheating them of just market relations by manipulating their naive natures.
We've had plenty of debated on libertarianism already, but it's always refreshing to have another: see how you solve the issue of taxes and democratic participation and corruption and externalities and so on without people having a duty to the collective interest under any circumstances (except of course to stop anyone interfering with you, then of course the entire mechanism of the state must be taken for granted to stop that).
Now, I still think we should discuss MacIntyre, but his argument is with actual emotivists and / or moral-relativists where there is no claim to absolutes whatsoever, they "pay the cost" as I've mentioned and simply accept the Nazis had as good claim to moral goodness as anyone else.
Libertarianism is basically agreeing with MacIntyre's framework, just joining the libertarian tradition instead of MacIntyre's Aristotelian "heroic society" tradition, which has prima-facie equal claim to moral justification in MacIntyre's framework. Where we could evaluate one tradition as "better than another", for example in this case libertarianism with Aristotelian heroic virtuism, would be in demonstrating inconsistency in one or the other position or then being able to solve moral dilemmas in one tradition that are insoluble in the other tradition.
Therefore, it is 100% MacIntyrish to pit MacIntyre's preferred moral tradition to yours (something similar to if not exactly libertarianism), or to mine (stoicism), and see if one seems superior to another and we may switch from or then amend our own tradition, all while avoiding moral relativism (we really did believe our tradition at the start was the best available and if that changes at the end then we really do believe that's an even better moral tradition).
at the end of the day I'm simply not convinced it's possible to avoid "we have a duty to the good of society" for the virtues MacIntyre promotes to be actual virtues and even if it is possible as MacIntyre sets out to do that there is any need to do so.
As I don't know A.Ms work, I'll take your word for it - but this actually exemplifies exactly what Im talking about. Taking a moral framework pigeon-holes the positions you're allowed to take, and what consittutes a virtue under it. I take no such position so it's somewhat Hard to respond. It all seems incoherent to me without first accepting that Morality is invented and obtains only between the margins of those frameworks.
It has. But the mistake in the previous seems to still be live, despite your acknowledgement. But, as with the bit you quoted, I could just be misunderstanding, so it's not too important.
If the social consequences of a position are accepted (what MacIntyre refers to as "paying the price") then of course that "I don't like those consequences" or "people don't like those consequences" is not an argument.
I'm unsure this has to do with my position. I would, in general, agree, but the social consequences have v little to do with my moral position. My intuitive reaction to them is what informs my moral position on any given act. I couldn't predict what I would think morally correct in a novel situation, for example. My intuitive reaction might include some consideration of the social consequences, but that doesn't support my moral, lets say, claim. The claim is just that it makes me uncomfortable, so I wouldn't do it and prefer others didn't. Because It makes me uncomfortable. No other reasons.
Well if your invoking some sort of social contract
I am not. I am invoking the (probably, largely ignored) fact that the surgeon has taken on the patient's emotional position. If they have not, and are a sociopath, your point would be apt for them. In this way, my personal moral position is just don't hire sociopaths as surgeons to avoid this problem. But that's mechanistic, not moral. The problem is moral and only exists in that I, personally think it sucks the surgeon did that.
If there are no duties, then there are no duties to keep one's word either.
No, there is not. I don't invoke one. There is no duty. There is the fact that, upon hte patient's emotional state, completing the surgery successfully would be preferable. If the surgeon actually didn't go in sharing this state, then fine. Walk away. I don't care.
This seems to me nearly a tautology. Even if we could imagine a society that "just so happens to function" even if no one is doing anything that can be described as "political" eventually an existential crisis will arise and the only solution is "doing politics" which if no one is willing to do then society will end, being the definition of existential crisis.
I don't understand this passage, or it's genesis apparently. Suffice to say, I disagree. It might be another discussion, once I get across what you're doing with this part of your response. that society might end. And that might be good.
Which you seem to accept in your very next sentence:
Not at all. The quote you present immediately after this is my denying that it matters, or that there would be a 'crisis'. The society would end. So what?
In my experience, this is the main problem emotivist have to contend with as there's all sorts of institutions requiring duties to be performed to maintain any sort of comfortable life that "feels good". Generally, at least in my experience, emotivists want others to perform social duties so that they can feel good while denying those duties actually exist.
If people choose, collectively to do things, Great. I don't ascribe any duty to it at all. Society is cool. I have no other thoughts on it really.
I'm not sure this sort of criticism applies in your case
I would say so, as all these objections sit well with me. I'm not a Libertarian. Quoting boethius
We literally have actual settler colonialist genocide happening right now fully supported by Western governments, and you seriously believe that considering that as a moral failure of the West (along with the destruction of the natural world and the habitat we depend on to continue the whole civilization project) is "preening nonsense".
Yep. I also 100% disagree with your framing of the situations you refer to. But, obviously, this is not hte place Apt for it**. I did anticipate this type of disagreement :P
has nothing to do with colonialism at all, neither now nor in the past?
This is a bit bad-faithy-sounding. I said nothing of the kind, and intimated nothing of the kind. I spoke about hte emotional undercurrent of the discussions. Obviously it 'has to do' with past colonialism. Heydel-Mankoo covers this from the perspective of a colonised minority (maybe not hte right kind, though ;) ).
it seems bold to dismiss an argument of a pretty well respected philosopher as laughable.
I disagree ;) Particularly that these issues aren't really philosophical. He's ignoring empirical facts about the political state of most countries - the majority of people take no part, and are not involved. But, as I've not read him, I await your thread/s to discuss that bit further **
Im not sure why you're asking this. I don't think society 'succeeds' or not. It seems odd that your next passage is somehow a reductio to this position. Its not absurd at all. There is no objective measure of success, and I don't have the (socio-political) framework in place to assess the same way you do. Simple :) I could "simply" be wrong about that.
;) You'll need to figure out where I assessed 'success' in moral terms. I can't see it! If i have implied that, please explicitly point it out because I am uncomfortable with that, if it's the case.
So my first charge here is that you seem to be invoking some moral absolutes in critiquing my statements, whereas if we're basing morality on feelings then my position is equally valid to yours as I clearly feel Western society, the enlightenment project, has failed whereas you feel it's successful
This is wrong in terms of my position. I think it is. It isn't successful or unsuccessful. There is no ultimate goal or aim of Western society. It continues to move (forward, backward, whatever). Maybe you can use that as a yardstick in which case my position holds anyway. But that's not me. That's just a suggestion. I don't think it success or doesnt succeed. It just is, or isn't. I admit, entirely, that my asking your view on this was more a poke-the-bear than anything. Defend it failing. I don't think you did, on your own terms. But, that's because I don't recognise what would constitute success or failure in your account/s thus far.
Even if you proved me to be factually wrong based on invoking a shared reality neither of us have a duty to accept is real, I would still have no duty to accept any particular facts about it.
Yep. I've not called you 'wrong'. I think you're making a mistake in moral reasoning. That doesn't make you wrong - and in fact, could only be true if you were convinced of my position - which would negate that conviction :P This is why my position is consistent. It doesn't apply to anything but me and my actions.
If no one is willing, and it's morally right to defend the country and you're not inferring that conscription is morally acceptable there... then... What are you suggesting? That seems a dead end.
I take the rest of that passage to be incoherent in light of the above, so I wont touch it yet. Could entirely be me.
This is "the debate" when it comes to moral relativism v moral absolutism.
What I'm reading as childish, is that it seems your passionate responses presuppose your moral framework. It seems your framework has to take account of your emotional positions. It seems you are enacting the exact same, let's say, discontinuity in your position, that you outlined about moral relativists near the top of the post.
If every point of view is valid and there are no absolute moral claims, then the Nazis were and are equally valid and the holocaust is as laudable social project as creating a health care system. Obviously Hitler felt he was doing good and so if no moral feeling is better than another, then Hitler was doing as much good as anyone else.
This is the childish mistake you are making. Your underlying point, I would reply to with "Yes. That's correct".
But the fact you've entered a value judgement on the part of your interlocutor is worrisome. I don't think it was laudable, or detestable. It happened. Does it make me, personally, extremely uncomfortable? Even repulsed? Yep. Which is probably what you want to know. But that's nothing but an emotional reaction to hearing certain information. For me that is absolute, in the sense that I can't, currently, feel another way. But that is a state of affairs. Not a moral claim.
You've claimed no one has duties ... Ok, well that clearly means no one has duties to not engage in serial killing nor then stop anyone from doing so. People who "feel like" stopping the serial killer are just as morally justified as the serial killer and anyone who would do likewise, obviously they feel like serial killing.
Correct. No issues. It makes me uncomfortable. I have nothing to appeal to in telling them no to do it, other than the potential consequences for them - reason with them. Would I bother? Maybe. If i were uncomfortable enough.
Where you get pluralism, which to me clearly seems your comfort zone, is when you allow for a wide range of faiths and goals, but place absolute moral limits on what is morally acceptable in pursuit of those goals.
I don't. I haven't presented any. You seem to be importing some upper-limit to your conceivable moral behaviour matrix and ascribing those limits to my position. I don't share them. I have limits of my comfort and pursuit of comfort occurs. These are arbitrary, as far as another person is concerned. But, by-and-large people share the same limits of comfort within a society, and so 'getting on with it' can occur without a shared 'moral' framework. This is, probably, what the West does well, compared with many other societies.
there's negative consequences for failing to do what people expect
This one is troublesome because, prima facie, there shouldn't be. At least not beyond social consequences - which are pretty much arbitrary - and policy is just this, after collective deliberation. BUT, i would freely let you know that the idea of there being no consequences for certain actions makes me uncomfortable. Again, that's just a state of affairs. Not a moral claim. So, I dislike this, and it makes me uneasy, but I take it wholesale to be the case. Legal and social consequences are arbitrary, other than that they meet a collective emotional benchmark.
Obviously a society in which no one performs any duties (no one keeps there word, no one tells the truth, no one protects any social institution required for society to function) wouldn't be comfortable society to live in.
I don't know. It might be. But this has nothing to do witht eh position. It's just another speculative state of affairs. I might not like that society. So what?
The [s]adult position[/s] is to just accept that indeed society would basically fall apart if no one performed any duties and that's perfectly acceptable to you as an outcome.
Please refrain from intimating that not sharing your position is somehow akin to be less developed. NOt becoming.
If that happens, it's perfectly acceptable. I don't think you're right, though. I didn't intimate that a society where no one performed duties would be good, or comfortable for me. I don't think anyone is obliged to do so and noted that we're lucky only humans are moral agents - this being because we appear to share the emotivist basis for our moral claims, being of the same species (I presume - brainstates being similar, or within a certain possible range)
but then here with similar considerations the retort is it's childish.
I really don't know what you're referring to here. My position is as you stated, and nothing else. If i've intimated some other position, ignore it. I don't see that I have, though.
It isn't a difference at all. It was baked-in to what you had said - I've tried to clarify this earlier in this comment reply, so I shall leave this. But, prior to any addressing my response, this is just plain wrong in terms of my position. Quoting boethius
because they feel a duty to do so
This is perfectly fine, but 'feeling a duty' doesn't mean on exists. That's a self-implication, and not at all a moral claim. I feel the duty not to let my sons die. That motivates me to act. I do not believe such a duty exists outside of what I just said about myself. If I cease to feel that way, the duty doesn't continue to obtain (well, sure, legally it does...)
So, to say those norms aren't actually moral precepts, no one should believe them truly binding in any moral sense, but people act like they are real because other people think they are real and so impose a cost for violating those norms, obviously doesn't work anymore once enough people sees the truth that those norms aren't real
Yes, it does. I understand what collective agreements are, and I see the consequences of not adhering to some of them. So I adhere to some of them, because I dont want the consequence. There is no duty to achieve it, it's what i want. But this isn't part of the discussion we're having. If I am right, then I am right. You need to explain cogent societies in my terms, rather than saying that my terms don't work because of a speculated failure.
rather due to the consequences of debates about what those moral truths are.
I reject, quite strongly, that incongruent suggestion. I don't think this is historically accurate or even reasonable. We've not really had these conversations without Divine intervention.
If you aren't concerned about the consequences of no people believing they have any duties (as, according to you, they should believe because that's the truth) then you're basically in the free riding problem as above. A critical mass of people won't agree with you and so you don't have to worry about that happening.
This is entirely wrong. I am concerned about the consequences, for myself. I don't care if it doesn't affect me. And if all the people involved have the same view I do, great!
Even if I did, I would not be int he free-riding group. That requires, on your own terms, that I hold hold absolute moral limits. I do not.
First, you're clearly bait-and-switching individual self-interest with collective self-interest.
Not at all. If you've conflated them, or I've misspoken sure. I have been very clear - neither issue changes the moral considerations I hold. There is no bait and switch. THe same reasoning holds for both. This may actually be what you're missing: If the collective emotional position on something is X, then policy will be X and that's fine. It's not a moral proclamation other than to say "most people here think this is wrong". Cool man. That's what actually happens in life. What do you think referenda are for?
as maintaining any political system whatsoever requires a significant amount of self sacrifice
That's true, but this is not synonymous with 'society' and says nothing about morality. Its a state of affairs. A small-enough society would not require this. If everyone's moral outlook aligns, no one sacrifices. They are all doing what is right, on their own terms, to protect that society. This is exactly what I am discussing as is the case. This goes directly to the heart of my position: That whicih makes one uncomfortable, one would avoid. If one is comfortable with the duty to defend one's country, at extreme risk, then great. No sacrifice made. You are doing the correct thing, in your own terms, making you comfortable. Your life isn't a sacrifice in this context. It would be for me, because I don't owe that duty (on my terms, that is).
"Self-interest" in your statement above is actually referring to collective-interest which may or may not be compatible with self-interest. It maybe in your self-interest and also the collective-interest to get a job, but it's in your self-interest and not the collective-interest to steal from your job, as a general rule (even if you are guaranteed to get away with it).
Any case I can't think of where this is actually true (rare) yep. That's fine. Don't see the issue. Quoting boethius
Economists just randomly invent abstracted entities (families, companies, organizations, government and the like) and then just randomly say those abstracted entities will act in their self interest to describe how society "should work", but any entity that represents a collection of individuals has collective-interest and not self-interest.
Unless what you're trying to say is that any individual who comprises a collective has no self interest what do you think the Collective interest is? What does it consist in? Purely the survival of the collective? That can't be right. I hear you, and Im not muddling the two 'interests' up here, I just cannot work out how you're getting 'collective' interest abstracted from the interest of the collected individuals. Emergence doesn't seem to me to be apt for that.
Economists just randomly invent abstracted entities
Yep ahah agree there. Goes to the above retort about collective interest (what even is that?). Getting a little confused with how some of these responses run in to each other.. .
Is not a collective in this sentence. It is merely a number of individuals pursuing their self-interests . You are arguing against something I did not say. The 'critical mass' is not intended to 'represent' society. It is just more than 50% of the individuals within it (or, whatever the critical mass would be for the moral outlook of the society to change). It doesn't speak about any collective interest. But also, I don't care. Taken in your terms, the rest of the quote defeats the objection anyway. That possibility is so incredibly infintessimal I can't take it seriously. No significant portion of any society will start raping and pillaging because there are no laws. But if they did, fine.
We could solve the problem but that would require a critical mass of people acting against one's self interest to ignore the political process altogether (something you see as perfectly fine, even morally superior to the many "rediculously stupid people" engaged in politics) because one's effect on outcomes is lower than the cost-benefit of the resources it requires (mostly time and brain calories).
This seems to indicate you are now just making things up about my positions? I recognise nothing of myself here. I don't see that hyte problem needs solving. If enough people want it solved, nice. Im in that camp.
Ok, well all this discussion to come to the fact you are a moral absolutist, exactly as a suspected.
I read this quote (what you quoted of me) and it made me cringe. I reject that entirely. I think it is the way things are. I do not think it is a requirement. I was wrong to say that and entirely reject it now. Not sure how I came to type that though. It is not my position. I may have been saying that this is what Western Culture requires, absolutely. Idk. But its wrong on my account anyway. The discussion didn't 'come' there, anyway. That's clearly antithetical to everything else i've said.
Correct. That is the end of my direct replies, because the rest rely on the above being my position, which I hope is now clear, it is not. I misspoke and I'm sorry you went to the effort of responding to something that, fairly, would have appeared to be bad-faith. Aside from direct responses...
If it hasn't become obvious by this stage, let me spell one thing out that might be a puzzle piece objectors look for, and can't find:
We have good reason to enact the rules and laws that we do to achieve stated aims. Agreement gives us this reason. Does it oblige us? No. But that doesn't mean that agreement, while i surives, isn't a good reason to act. It states aims. Those aims being arbitrary doesn't negate that we have collectively deliberated and agreed to certain things. We need not consider them 'duties' but 'rules'. Arbitrary, subject to change, but, regardless, they are the rules. I don't see how this isn't 'good enough' to be getting on with. We don't need morally-perfected concepts to get here. Its a hodge-podge. Why's that a problem? We simply do not need morality to do these things 'well' in the sense of achieving stated aims.
I posted an article about the decision by the Arizona Supreme Court and said this decision will clinch this battleground state (in which the polls are currently even/showing Trump leading) for Biden.
You respond with that seems unlikely given the 2020 results. But he won in 2020, so why his winning in 2024 seems unlikely given the winning results in 2020 makes no sense.
But maybe you meant something else, like given the small margins Biden won by its unlikely he wins this time, given the current polls, or whatever. Just lazily worded, and misses the point.
I normally expect world leaders to be reasonably reliable. Not perfect or anything, but reasonably reliable, fairly measured, engendering some minimum trust in what they say, at least giving some reasons to respect as a representative. Some measure of decency and bona fide utilization of smarts accordingly can also help. Whereas old Joe isn't the best, there's a baseline that the Clown doesn't meet. Anyway, that's just my vague inconsequential opinion.
Given that over 60% of the electorate (re: 2020 & 2022 elections) are women AND that Criminal Defendant-1 & his MAGA-GOP circus clowns are campaigning on a promise to implement a nationwide "Federal Abortion Ban" (including e.g. The 1873 Comstock Act by presidential executive order) in stark contrast to pro-choice President Biden and the Dems' campaign promise to pass a nationwide "Federal Right to Choose Law", [b]we anti-fascists have to thank ...
SCOTUS[/b] (Catholic right wing, MAGA majority) for overturning Roe v Wade in 2022 and thereby
(1) depriving over half of the US population and electorate Constitutional protections of access to safe, reproductive healthcare that also permits (so far 17) states to ban abortion (even without medical exceptions) and to criminally prosecute both women seeking to terminate pregnancies and their doctors et al
(2) causing GOP to underperform in 2022 midterms losing instead of gaining the US Senate and gaining only 9 out of projected 20-30 House seats to make their "red tsunami" into a "red ripple" ... and
(3) causing MAGA-GOP in 2022 to lose anti-abortion ballot measures in Kansas, Kentucky, & Montana, failed to even get on the ballot in Oklahoma and then, in 2023, failed to stop a pro-choice state constitutional amendment from passing in Ohio all ruby red states with majorities of trumpers, evangelicals, "poorly educated" rural blue collar white men and women.
thank Arizona (swing state) for total abortion ban
thank Florida (barely red state) for total abortion ban after 6 weeks
thank North Carolina (swing state) for pro-"abortion ban" and pro-"repeal women's right to vote" MAGA-extremist candidate for governor
thank Georgia (swing state) for total abortion ban after 6 weeks
thank Nevada (barely blue state) for pendingpro-choice ballot measure to amend state constitution
thank Pennsylvania (swing state) for pendinganti-abortion ballot measure to amend state constitution
for mobilizing
Almost All Liberal,
Most Moderate &
also Many Conservative Woman Voters which, IMO, increases the likelihood of a *blowout* worse than 2020 and reelection of Biden-Harris along with the Dems holding the US Senate, regaining the US House and, at least, 1 governorship (re: North Carolina). :clap: :mask: :party:
addendum to ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/894200
We definitely agree on this point so I will try to synthesize the debate so far as well as transcribe some key passages of MacIntyre.
My position is essentially MacIntyre's position except with a Kantian "boost" as it were to upgrade some of his claims to categorical imperatives.
For example, MacIntyre doesn't like manipulative social relationships, I would simply upgrade that not-liking to a categorical imperative: we can disagree, we can be at odds, we can compete in different contexts, we can try to convert each other to our own view, we can fight, we can come to blows, maybe even kill each other to resolve our differences, but I view it as a categorical imperative not to manipulate you; i.e. deceive you into acting against your own objectives by making you believe falsehoods (which is not required for coercion, which I still view as necessary for society to function, but we can be coercive without being manipulative), which of course is Kant's central thesis: treat people as ends in themselves, as echoes in many religions: do onto others as you would have them do onto you.
That being said, MacIntyre's description of contemporary Western society and how we got here and where it's headed, and his own proposed program I fully agree with; it's all quite brilliant so I will try to do my best in finding the best passages to present it.
As I don't know A.Ms work, I'll take your word for it - but this actually exemplifies exactly what Im talking about. Taking a moral framework pigeon-holes the positions you're allowed to take, and what consittutes a virtue under it. I take no such position so it's somewhat Hard to respond. It all seems incoherent to me without first accepting that Morality is invented and obtains only between the margins of those frameworks.
I have not yet really presented MacIntyre's argument, but his starting point is exactly that you need a moral tradition in which moral ideas and decisions even have meaning, and it only from the standpoint of one tradition that it is even possible to comprehend the claims of another tradition; one can not be traditionless. I'm not sure that's exactly compatible with "obtains only between the margins of those frameworks", but we can get into that when I make a thread presenting MacIntyre's After Virtue positions.
I'm unsure this has to do with my position. I would, in general, agree, but the social consequences have v little to do with my moral position. My intuitive reaction to them is what informs my moral position on any given act. I couldn't predict what I would think morally correct in a novel situation, for example. My intuitive reaction might include some consideration of the social consequences, but that doesn't support my moral, let's say, claim. The claim is just that it makes me uncomfortable, so I wouldn't do it and prefer others didn't. Because It makes me uncomfortable. No other reasons.
As mentioned, the purpose of developing the social consequences is claritive.
All these sorts of questions are with the purpose of understanding your position.
As you may appreciate, a significant amount of moral-relativists (whether emotivist or straight nihilists or some other flavour) essentially operate by "grandfathering in" a long list of moral rules and social opinions that they take for granted. The fact that in normal situations it's "off limits" to advocate those positions (such as torturing children) they take to mean it's therefore off limits as criticism (i.e. that they are only defending what is already socially acceptable); however, if someone makes the claim "there are no moral obligations whatsoever" of then "all moral positions are as good as another" what's entailed by that is there is no moral obligation to not torture babies nor interfere with someone so engaged.
Agreed. I largely reject the usefulness of thought experiments for this reason, within moral discussions.
I strongly disagree here; thought experiments are the primary tool of developing a moral theory.
Of course, I understand you would want to avoid that if you're theory is simply based on spontaneous emotional reaction to situations that arise ... but one such situation that arises is someone putting to you a thought experiment in which you'll have an emotional reaction too.
However, the examples I've provided are not even really thought experiments, they are real examples: people really do torture, murder, rape, extort and take bribes.
It has. But the mistake in the previous seems to still be live, despite your acknowledgement. But, as with the bit you quoted, I could just be misunderstanding, so it's not too important.
It is not a mistake if a question is honest and not a criticism.
It is not a gotcha. If you propose no moral claim is better than another and are willing to "pay the cost" as MacIntyre says about people who take this to it's logical conclusion, then the debate would proceed from there.
Of course, in normal society a debate is "won" when a proponent (from their point of view of course) leads a position to a conclusion which society already disagrees with (at least in their opinion), ideally some taboo (such as Nazis and pedophiles and so on). But of course, even if those premises are all correct, it simply begs the question of whether "society" really is correct about that moral position. Maybe Nazis were right after all.
An authentic criticism would thus require an actual justification that society is correct on that particular point to form a sound and valid argument.
Which I have not done yet, as I want to fully understand your position before critiquing it.
I'm unsure this has to do with my position. I would, in general, agree, but the social consequences have v little to do with my moral position. My intuitive reaction to them is what informs my moral position on any given act. I couldn't predict what I would think morally correct in a novel situation, for example. My intuitive reaction might include some consideration of the social consequences, but that doesn't support my moral, lets say, claim. The claim is just that it makes me uncomfortable, so I wouldn't do it and prefer others didn't. Because It makes me uncomfortable. No other reasons.
Well this is quite important to know in order to understand your point of view.
I am not. I am invoking the (probably, largely ignored) fact that the surgeon has taken on the patient's emotional position. If they have not, and are a sociopath, your point would be apt for them. In this way, my personal moral position is just don't hire sociopaths as surgeons to avoid this problem. But that's mechanistic, not moral. The problem is moral and only exists in that I, personally think it sucks the surgeon did that.
We certainly agree it is better to avoid the situation, but the issue is what duty does the surgeon have to the patient.
In a world of no duties, then the surgeon has no duty to perform the surgery to the best of their ability and obviously until completion.
Obviously in our society the surgeon would be convicted of gross negligence and likely murder, but that process is completely predicated on society's existing belief the surgeon has a duty to perform the contractual engagement, perform as best he can, and certainly "do no harm". However, if the truth is there is no duties then there's no foundation upon which society could legitimately demand any of this and no way to maintain a system (with detectives, prosecutors, judges all performing their duties) to enforce accountability to those demands.
No, there is not. I don't invoke one. There is no duty. There is the fact that, upon hte patient's emotional state, completing the surgery successfully would be preferable. If the surgeon actually didn't go in sharing this state, then fine. Walk away. I don't care.
Obviously we both prefer no one to be needlessly harmed, so we agree on what is preferable.
The disagreement is on whether what's preferable can also be morally obligatory.
Your view is quite clear on this topic.
It will take another thread to actually critique your view.
I don't understand this passage, or it's genesis apparently. Suffice to say, I disagree. It might be another discussion, once I get across what you're doing with this part of your response.
that society might end. And that might be good.
Not at all. The quote you present immediately after this is my denying that it matters, or that there would be a 'crisis'. The society would end. So what?
Again, just trying to understand your position.
All the duties I will argue along with MacIntyre are real actual duties ultimately aim to continue humanity.
If you're ambivalent to the continuation of humanity then that is likely the very heart of the difference.
If people choose, collectively to do things, Great. I don't ascribe any duty to it at all. Society is cool. I have no other thoughts on it really.
My points were derived from what many moral relativists do which is to deny there are any moral truths (in one way or another) but then continuously argue that society will continue on being "good", which makes no sense if there is not good and bad.
All points of mine on this theme is not only in relation to what moral relativists usually do, but also people in general in Western society: moral relativists language is used to avoid criticism of one's own actions ("don't criticize my diet I can eat what I want!! It's my life!!"), while moral absolutist language is used to criticize opponents ("I condemn my political opponents!! This is a violation!!").
Now clearly this doesn't apply to you, but I spent some time on this post to be sure of it as well as for the benefit of anyone following our discussion.
Yep. I also 100% disagree with your framing of the situations you refer to. But, obviously, this is not hte place Apt for it**. I did anticipate this type of disagreement :P
We definitely will need to go deeper in another thread, so we can maybe return to this point and contrast framings.
This is a bit bad-faithy-sounding. I said nothing of the kind, and intimated nothing of the kind. I spoke about hte emotional undercurrent of the discussions. Obviously it 'has to do' with past colonialism. Heydel-Mankoo covers this from the perspective of a colonised minority (maybe not hte right kind, though ;) ).
Again, I'm asking a question to better understand.
But as with above, if you're not arguing for some sort of market utopia but we just ignore the initial distribution of wealth, then this isn't too relevant to you.
I've argued a lot with libertarians so all these points are easy to retrieve from memory. However, if you're not a libertarian then markets, today or in the past, isn't really a core issue of contention. However, I have also been thinking of a thread critiquing Western imperialism (as a lot of the differences in other political threads basically come down to "Western imperialism good or bad"), so taking up Heydel-Mankoo would perhaps be more relevant there.
I disagree ;) Particularly that these issues aren't really philosophical. He's ignoring empirical facts about the political state of most countries - the majority of people take no part, and are not involved. But, as I've not read him, I await your thread/s to discuss that bit further **
Yes, you may reevaluate your position on MacIntyre after debating the specifics.
MacIntyres historical account is not one of individual political agency, in which case definitely most people have very little and certainly don't perceive themselves as involved in politics (although I would strongly disagree they are not actually involved); he is more concerned with how the moral frameworks in which the political debate of the day occurs develop and are changed. These more fundamental moral changes are mostly a critical mass issue, often happening against the will of the elites; an example of this sort of major change is the reformation.
From this perspective, normal people under feudalism would perceive themselves and be perceived as having even less political involvement that normal people now in Western society, but then they start to rebel against the Catholic Church and consequences are profound. The reformation was certainly not the Catholic Church's idea, nor would it have worked if it was just "an idea" a few intellectuals and nobles had; normal people getting involved, taking significant risks, was absolutely fundamental. This sort of change is what MacIntyre is more concerned with.
No. This is, exactly, what is actually happening as has happened for the majority of definitely Western Culture - perhaps, all culture.
Certainly has happened until now.
What I am claiming is bold is that ridiculous levels of political stupidity do not now pose an existential risk to humanity. Of course, if you are unconcerned about humanity continuing, as you say above, then seems an irrelevant point to you either way.
Im not sure why you're asking this. I don't think society 'succeeds' or not. It seems odd that your next passage is somehow a reductio to this position. It's not absurd at all. There is no objective measure of success, and I don't have the (socio-political) framework in place to assess the same way you do. Simple :) I could "simply" be wrong about that.
These points are in relation to your criticism of my claim that Western society is failing.
There is definitely an objective measures of social success, such as people having enough to eat and society at least continuing.
Objective and quantifiable.
You may have no problem with society ending, but I don't see why you wouldn't agree that would indeed be society failing in whatever it was trying to do.
;) You'll need to figure out where I assessed 'success' in moral terms. I can't see it! If i have implied that, please explicitly point it out because I am uncomfortable with that, if it's the case.
Then you are using the word success in pretty unusual way.
In its usual meaning, success requires some goal which requires some moral framework to formulate.
Your intuitive-spontaneous moral framework is still a moral framework from which you derive your objectives.
This is wrong in terms of my position. I think it is. It isn't successful or unsuccessful. There is no ultimate goal or aim of Western society. It continues to move (forward, backward, whatever). Maybe you can use that as a yardstick in which case my position holds anyway. But that's not me. That's just a suggestion. I don't think it success or doesnt succeed. It just is, or isn't. I admit, entirely, that my asking your view on this was more a poke-the-bear than anything. Defend it failing. I don't think you did, on your own terms. But, that's because I don't recognise what would constitute success or failure in your account/s thus far.
Seems incongruous to laud Western society in one place and then claim is has no goal or aim in another.
But again, if society destroys itself that is clearly failing.
Your position seems to be that you're fine if it fails as well as humanity as a whole, simply fails and comes to an end.
To argue the more fundamental point that we have a duty to try to avoid humanity failing, will of course take another more dedicated thread to elaborate the argument.
However, my point here is that the assumption that Western society, humanity as a whole, will simply muddle on is a false one; society can end and so cease to muddle.
Yep. I've not called you 'wrong'. I think you're making a mistake in moral reasoning. That doesn't make you wrong - and in fact, could only be true if you were convinced of my position - which would negate that conviction :P This is why my position is consistent. It doesn't apply to anything but me and my actions.
It's good to see you are advanced enough in understanding your own position to realize it is inconsistent.
And this would be the fundamental moral duty I would put forward: a duty to try to be consistent.
Now, if you are committed to an inconsistent position there is not "arguing against you" per se as you can simply be comfortable with any inconsistency, comfort is your guide, and so there is no problem.
So, perhaps at best we can exchange views, but you clearly like to argue so with enough of it perhaps you simply become uncomfortable with inconsistencies and so convert to my avoid-inconsistencies moral code.
If no one is willing, and it's morally right to defend the country and you're not inferring that conscription is morally acceptable there... then... What are you suggesting? That seems a dead end.
I take the rest of that passage to be incoherent in light of the above, so I wont touch it yet. Could entirely be me.
Since we've already established you aren't concerned with social consequences, these considerations aren't so relevant.
However, in your framework people can obviously conscript other people and force them to fight at the end of a gun, if they're comfortable doing that.
My goal here is not to debate conscription (I happen to be also against conscription, though not against taxing people who do not server higher for life, to avoid the free rider problem), but again to simply understand your position.
The underlying purpose of questions on this theme is your view of the state. Seems clear you're ambivalent, and don't really care what happens to the state, which is very much compatible with being ambivalent to what happens to society as such.
What I'm reading as childish, is that it seems your passionate responses presuppose your moral framework. It seems your framework has to take account of your emotional positions. It seems you are enacting the exact same, let's say, discontinuity in your position, that you outlined about moral relativists near the top of the post.
My questions and examples are the logical enquiries.
If someone says they don't view any act as morally better than another, then before debating first principles I want to be sure they really are taking that view.
If you're ambivalent to anyone doing anything at all, just more comfortable with some happenings over others but that's just you're own feeling of comfort and doesn't give rise to any moral claims (including claims about conscription for example), then I want to be sure you really are ambivalent.
As I've mentioned, most people who use moral relativist language are not actually moral relativists, they still want to condemn Hitler and assume that's given to them: but obviously it's not, if no one is right or wrong, Hitler is as right as anyone else.
This is the childish mistake you are making. Your underlying point, I would reply to with "Yes. That's correct".
But the fact you've entered a value judgement on the part of your interlocutor is worrisome. I don't think it was laudable, or detestable. It happened. Does it make me, personally, extremely uncomfortable? Even repulsed? Yep. Which is probably what you want to know. But that's nothing but an emotional reaction to hearing certain information. For me that is absolute, in the sense that I can't, currently, feel another way. But that is a state of affairs. Not a moral claim.
I said "as laudable" to just mean they are equal (which you can say "equally good" or "equally bad").
Which seems very much your position, you have no particular gripe with Hitler and the Nazi project: happened, they were clearly comfortable with what they were doing so doing right by their own comfortableness (certainly comfortable enough to carry out their project).
Again, it's not childish, it's the adult question to ask: when someone says they see no better or worse morality, then clearly the obvious and logical point is make is that entails Nazism is thus no better or worse than any other ism.
Correct. No issues. It makes me uncomfortable. I have nothing to appeal to in telling them no to do it, other than the potential consequences for them - reason with them. Would I bother? Maybe. If i were uncomfortable enough.
This is exactly why I develop the consequences of society changing its view of right and wrong, that "you shouldn't do X because society will hold you accountable and there will be consequences" is not a valid argument.
When you say "consequences for them" clearly the negative consequences to serial killing personally to the serial killer would be getting caught. But why would anyone catch you if no one thinks serial killing is bad?
I don't. I haven't presented any. You seem to be importing some upper-limit to your conceivable moral behaviour matrix and ascribing those limits to my position. I don't share them. I have limits of my comfort and pursuit of comfort occurs. These are arbitrary, as far as another person is concerned. But, by-and-large people share the same limits of comfort within a society, and so 'getting on with it' can occur without a shared 'moral' framework. This is, probably, what the West does well, compared with many other societies.
You just rejected, above, any measure of success or failure in evaluating societies, but say here that Western society does something well. You just said Western society has no goal.
However, it's simply wrong that there is no shared moral framework.
There's a shared core moral framework: such as serial killing is evil and justifies a very large effort in stopping, law enforcement shouldn't take bribes and so on.
It is this core moral framework that is overwhelmingly dominant that allows Western society to function (at least until now and certainly for at least some time further).
Obviously you are well aware of the reaction to serial killing or child torturing of the vast majority of people: that their position is that it's an absolute moral wrong, evil, must be stopped and transgressors put away for some time. Likewise, the reaction to a judge taking a bribe.
This is a shared moral framework.
Of course, even if there's an absolutely dominant consensus on some core values that make civil society possible, there can be visceral disagreements on less-core things, such as abortion. Whether abortion is legal or illegal, society does not simply all apart (such as if murder was made legal).
Where society can afford to muddle is in policy choices that are not existential to the formation of civil society or then any society at all.
I don't, other than to say 'Well, this is what's going on". The norms are the norms and tell me about a collective emotional status of the society.
Your position is getting pretty confusing to me.
In some places you seem to hold a total ambivalence to what happens and are not concerned with the social consequences whatsoever, and not only are you unconcerned for what happens to society but there is no way to measure the success of society as such (you're ambivalent to society succeeding or failing and moreover assert there is no measure of success or failure anyways), and in other places you seem to argue society, in particular Western society, is doing well.
You seem, at least give the vibe, of being pleased with Western social norms.
This one is troublesome because, prima facie, there shouldn't be. At least not beyond social consequences - which are pretty much arbitrary - and policy is just this, after collective deliberation. BUT, i would freely let you know that the idea of there being no consequences for certain actions makes me uncomfortable. Again, that's just a state of affairs. Not a moral claim. So, I dislike this, and it makes me uneasy, but I take it wholesale to be the case. Legal and social consequences are arbitrary, other than that they meet a collective emotional benchmark.
Again, arbitrary is a strong word, even your framework is not arbitrary but founded on your spontaneous sense of comfort.
Social consequences are also clearly even less arbitrary. The consequence of going to prison for murder is not arbitrary; if you can just get what you want by killing who you want when you want, then society quickly ceases to function much at all (certainly nothing remotely close to Western society is feasible if murder is permissible).
Likewise, claiming "other than that they meet a collective emotional benchmark" is another way of saying they aren't arbitrary.
Now, it will take another thread to develop an alternative position to your view. To broadly describe it, I will be arguing that emotions are not foundational. For example, even in your own system you are clearly making the claim that "you should do what you're comfortable with"; there's a logical moral structure you're ignoring that takes emotions as inputs and is not therefore by definition itself emotional. However, this would be simply a starting point.
There is not enough space here even to finish responding to your points, so I will have to in another comment.
We definitely agree on this point so I will try to synthesize the debate so far as well as transcribe some key passages of MacIntyre.
My position is essentially MacIntyre's position except with a Kantian "boost" as it were to upgrade some of his claims to categorical imperatives.
Yeah, good.. and fair enough. I reject the categorical imperative, which will do some heavy lifting in justifying my responses further down the post. This is not to say that I think employing hte categorical imperative is erroneous. I think it is inadequate and necessarily simplistic - to a level lower than required to cover actual behaviour.
but I view it as a categorical imperative not to manipulate you; i.e. deceive you into acting against your own objectives
I do not. People can have objectives against their own interest, and I do not think any obligations prevents us from acting on our own intuitions around that. I don't think we have any obligation to do so, but if someone who suffers from sexomania (lets assume that's a real thing) is going around 'harming' others, my discomfort with seeing that happen will motivate me to stop them. This is me enacting a private moral opinion publicly.
But, I accept that if humans were on-the-whole less capable of assessing this, viz we had some chaotic, inconsistent system of analysis whether mentally ill people should handle their own affairs, and this resulted in huge amounts of 'harm' in the way noted above, my position might be different. To me, the facts matter. There aren't principles that can be universally applied.
Personally, coercion seems on the whole a worse way to deal with things. At least lying to someone accepts what you're doing on it's face. I can't see how these would be morally different on a Kantian framework. But, he accepted lying is possibly acceptable in some circumstances, but wasn't too direct about it.
his starting point is exactly that you need a moral tradition in which moral ideas and decisions even have meaning, and it only from the standpoint of one tradition that it is even possible to comprehend the claims of another tradition; one can not be traditionless.
This is, to my mind, someone pretending their doing something other than trying to convince others of their own values. One can certainly be traditionless on my view. Assuming the bolded is to me read "It is only from..." I think thats absurb, on its face, and upon reflexion. We can understand the solar system from teh confines of the surface of hte Earth.
As you may appreciate, a significant amount of moral-relativists (whether emotivist or straight nihilists or some other flavour) essentially operate by "grandfathering in" a long list of moral rules and social opinions that they take for granted.
I tend to not see this in anyone who has reviewed their positions, but in the general population, yes, that's pretty common.
what's entailed by that is there is no moral obligation to not torture babies nor interfere with someone so engaged.
absolutely. And, i think the important aspect in the problem you're outlining is a lack of review/reflection. I think it would be hard to miss these complete contradictions upon reflection.
I strongly disagree here; thought experiments are the primary tool of developing a moral theory.
My view is that they are helpful in getting the discussion going, but serve no real purpose in ascertaining the 'real' moral position one might have. One can make whatever claims they like when not faced with the position their advocating for in real life.
However, the examples I've provided are not even really thought experiments, they are real examples: people really do torture, murder, rape, extort and take bribes.
They do. I take those as thought experiments, nonetheless. I accept that they aren't particularly interesting in terms of 'experiment' but giving real-life examples that do not pertain to me is still, I think a thought experiment. I have to think about it, not remember.
are real actual duties ultimately aim to continue humanity.
I'm unsure these two can go together. Duties in pursuit of that aim? IF that's the inference, yes, sure, that's the position I am essentially saying morality comes down to. Choose an aim, and run with it from there. This is the 'one free miracle' i've, other places, spoken of. Choose your aim, and the math works from there.
Obviously we both prefer no one to be needlessly harmed, so we agree on what is preferable.
Yes. I think this agreement is viable as a means for organising society. There's no obligation to do so , but when most people agree on the above, we can come to terms, as they say and write legislation. When everyone agrees, it seems irrational rather than 'wrong' not to do what everyone is agreeing to. It seems natural, not obligatory. I think this is hte real reason for the success of society, in self-survival as it were. To that aim, we're going pretty well by my lights.
But of course, even if those premises are all correct, it simply begs the question of whether "society" really is correct about that moral position. Maybe Nazis were right after all.
In a world of no duties, then the surgeon has no duty to perform the surgery to the best of their ability and obviously until completion.
I agree, and think this is true. However, I am quite happy most people share the same sort of discomfort with neglect as I do. I have no right to will others do so, though, and if this were not the case I do not believe I could change my moral position that people should share that position. But, I like it, as is.
We certainly agree it is better to avoid the situation, but the issue is what duty does the surgeon have to the patient.
Whatever one he has internally assented to. I think you are able to oblige yourself to your own intentions. This doesn't seem to me the same thing as expecting something from someone else. I expect that I will not tap out simply because I'm out of breath in a Jiu jitsu round. I stick to this. It's a obligation i put on myself. If i do not meet this obligation, I deal with it. There's no moral valence imo.
However, if the truth is there is no duties then there's no foundation upon which society could legitimately demand any of this and no way to maintain a system (with detectives, prosecutors, judges all performing their duties) to enforce accountability to those demands.
Agree. And think this is the case. We are mistaking common agreement, for obligation.
If you're ambivalent to the continuation of humanity
ambivalent is probably an unfair framing here. I care. It matters to me (though, in an expected way im sure) - but I don't think anyone else should, or needs to share my opinion (for their sake, it may be better that they dont (this will make sense if you ask what my position is lol)).
What I am claiming is bold is that ridiculous levels of political stupidity do not now pose an existential risk to humanity. Of course, if you are unconcerned about humanity continuing, as you say above, then seems an irrelevant point to you either way.
I may be missing a trick - the underlined seems to imply this issue is irrelevant to any moral outlook? Was there a typo there?
These more fundamental moral changes are mostly a critical mass issue, often happening against the will of the elites; an example of this sort of major change is the reformation.
For sure, and I suppose this would be 'my version of moral progress' in action, in that its purely a mechanism of common agreement. You could, here, employ 'empathy' as the guiding light. But due to trauma, and the way my mind works, I suffered from sociopathy for several years. I could not accept the above, at that time, and it would be very very strange to say that the rest of society had a right to enforce that norm on me. Apart from anything, 'ought' always has to imply ' could' - and I 'couldn't'. I was lucky in that it was transitive. Most sociopaths are not this lucky.
There is definitely an objective measures of social success, such as people having enough to eat and society at least continuing.
Objective and quantifiable.
That (and others, obviously) parameter is measurable, and if the bold is your aim it measures success. But consider a society with an aim that can be completed. To reforest a certain portion of hte Earth's surface. What's the use of society beyond that completion? I think it is irrational to have an aim which is forever changing, unless we're going to accept that morality has nothing to do with it. More below..
You may have no problem with society ending, but I don't see why you wouldn't agree that would indeed be society failing in whatever it was trying to do
Consider, again, a society with a time-restricted aim. The World Lover's Society of 1999. Once it flips over to 2000, the aim is complete, and society no longer has a moral, or practical aim. And it seems to me irrational to claim that a society can have a indeterminate aim, yet be beholden to it. If you're saying merely survival of the society is the aim, how you do deal with evolution of societies? Is British society now inherently different in a way that matters from British society circa 1823? It is the same society, no? But wait... they had entirely different Moral precepts to current British Society. Heck, that's true of 1920s British society vs now. How does this sit? I'm not trying to imply much here. Just curious.
This is why my position is consistent. It doesn't apply to anything but me and my actions.
I believe it is. This, though, In light of the fact I actually reject something I said earlier. Once that's taken into account, no inconsistencies that I can ascertain.
Your position seems to be that you're fine if it fails as well as humanity as a whole, simply fails and comes to an end.
Roughly, but obviously I wont be 'fine'. I'll just 'not be'. No valence, again, to have a moral view on. Things end all the time. Humanity is not special.
Your intuitive-spontaneous moral framework is still a moral framework from which you derive your objectives.
It is quite alright to claim this. I don't think I can argue with it as stated. But it is a non-static framework, if so. This is novel, and so I find it hard to believe it could be consider among other frameworks. It doesn't operate the same way. I reject that there are moral facts, or propositions apt for truth claims.
Now, if you are committed to an inconsistent position there is not "arguing against you" per se as you can simply be comfortable with any inconsistency, comfort is your guide, and so there is no problem.
I am not. In any way. I have no idea where you've come up with that. That comfort is the guide, in all cases, is what the consistency consists in( Hehe. that was a great sentence). To clear, I care about things, and people. I do not, though, think this matters to anyone else. And morally, I don't think it can. I think people, under their framework, insist this is true. But, that is not true. It is a requirement of their framework only. That choice, though, is arbitrary (or, as I posit, and stand by - it is informed by their comfort level with said framework).
but you clearly like to argue so with enough of it perhaps you simply become uncomfortable with inconsistencies and so convert to my avoid-inconsistencies moral code.
I like to discuss. Arguments suck. And I already meet you criteria :)
If you're ambivalent to anyone doing anything at all, just more comfortable with some happenings over others but that's just you're own feeling of comfort and doesn't give rise to any moral claims (including claims about conscription for example), then I want to be sure you really are ambivalent.
This is not quite coherent. Ambivalence has to do with valence, not morality. Ambivalence would indicate i have conflicting feelings about whatever it is. Sometimes, this true. Mostly, it is not. I have a clear feeling and emotional response. This does not give rise to any moral position and they aren't particularly connected, unless you accept that people's emotional response to situations is what, without some intervening reasoning, informs their morals. That is my position, because most people have never even tried to review their moral positions outside of the 'moment'. The 'moment' is clearly an emotional one.
they still want to condemn Hitler and assume that's given to them: but obviously it's not, if no one is right or wrong, Hitler is as right as anyone else.
He's not to me, but I agree. There is no way to understand that anything he did is actually worse in any objective sense, without a particular aim (not killing people, for instance - which it can be very hard to walk back from, when it is such a deeply-held intuition that one ought not do this. But I do).
I said "as laudable" to just mean they are equal (which you can say "equally good" or "equally bad").
If so, fair enough. Laudable infers praise, above ambivalence (hehehe). This is also most often, and most apt applied to aims and desires, not states of affairs. So, I see a number of inconsistencies in your language at this stage.
Which seems very much your position, you have no particular gripe with Hitler and the Nazi project: happened, they were clearly comfortable with what they were doing so doing right by their own comfortableness (certainly comfortable enough to carry out their project).
This is a little bit misleading. I can have opinions on other people's opinions. But they do not relate to anything but my opinion of those opinions. This may be hard to follow, but it is consistent. I can think what I want. That means nothing about whether those other people are right or wrong in their actions, or thoughts. I am extremely uncomfortable with the Nazi project. I do not believe I have the right to insist they are wrong. I can insist, and attempt to reason with them, that their project is ill-conceived. Luckily, they had specific aims to which I could relate these reasons. This is a mechanistic conversation at that stage, not a moral one. If you have aim A, regardless of its morality, you can do 1, 2 or 3 and they will have different outcomes, corresponding to different degrees of success toward your arbitrary aim. This is not inconsistent with my position.
This is exactly why I develop the consequences of society changing its view of right and wrong, that "you shouldn't do X because society will hold you accountable and there will be consequences" is not a valid argument.
I can't quite grasp what you're saying here - the sentences don't quite string together - so apologies if I get something wrong:
This would be the only possible public notion I could appeal to in trying to change anyone's behaviour or views. And I might do this, If i were uncomfortable enough. "Oh dad, please don't kill the dog. You will probably be arrested and charged. That would suckfor you". But that is speculation, unfortunately. 50/50 whether anyone would care what I've got to say. Maybe less.
When you say "consequences for them" clearly the negative consequences to serial killing personally to the serial killer would be getting caught. But why would anyone catch you if no one thinks serial killing is bad?
Because they're uncomfortable, and erroneously think that gives them the right to do stuff to other people. Nothing stopping them either, but this would motivate them to do it.
You just rejected, above, any measure of success or failure in evaluating societies, but say here that Western society does something well. You just said Western society has no goal.
"getting on with it" is no a goal. It is a fact of the society i am observing. We 'get on with it' to degrees of success higher than other societies. We also produce more single-use plastics. Nothing in that suggests a moral valence or social goal. I also didn't reject that the West has a social goal. I'm trying to tease out what your aim is, in instantiating your moral outlook. It seems you're not able to necessarily lay that out.
However, it's simply wrong that there is no shared moral framework.
It is not. The quote directly after this shows why. YOu have confused some facts about people's emotional reactions to events, and 'morality'. You are, slowly, sliding into accepting that people's emotions are their moral framework.
Where society can afford to muddle is in policy choices that are not existential to the formation of civil society or then any society at all.
It can afford it anywhere. It seems this is an indication of where you would become uncomfortable, if society did this. That's fine, and again, exemplifies the above assertion.
In some places you seem to hold a total ambivalence to what happens and are not concerned with the social consequences whatsoever, and not only are you unconcerned for what happens to society but there is no way to measure the success of society as such (you're ambivalent to society succeeding or failing and moreover assert there is no measure of success or failure anyways), and in other places you seem to argue society, in particular Western society, is doing well.
This is entirely wrong, and all the reasons why have been canvassed through the above responses.
You've used ambivalence incorrectly. I am not ambivalent. I have levels of comfort and discomfort which I clearly apprehend - making ambivalence not possible. I will ignore this subsequently.
UNderline: Entirely false. Not sure where that's come from. I've been extremely clear that I, personally, care about what happens to society. I think society is nice. It is what it is, and I like how its going (in the West). This does not give you the correct ammunition for the assertions here. The only thing I have said Western society does well, was pursuant to a specific, arbitrary aim. This is not inconsistent in any way with the rest of what i've said.
For example, even in your own system you are clearly making the claim that "you should do what you're comfortable with"
Absolutely not. I am saying i should do what I am comfortable with. It does not pertain, or have anything to do with anyone else. This seems to be a misapprehension you are making quite often here. It is wrong.
Some of you responses are really confusing, in the sense that you directly contradict things i've said int he quotes you've used. Interesting... Till the next one!!
I have to imagine that some fraction of WWJD evangelical Christians will be asking themselves sooner or later by this Fall:
According to the depiction of Jesus in the NT Gospels, who would it be more reasonable to expect Christ to vote for in the 2024 presidential election: Don Poorleone or Sleepy Joe Biden??
Hint: Who do you think he voted for in 2020? :mask:
I have to imagine that some fraction of WWJD evangelical Christians will be asking themselves sooner or later by this Fall
I don't think they ask WWJD because they think they know what Trump has done, will do, and what has been done to him. While they may not regard him as The Messiah the do believe his is a messiah and like all messiahs persecuted by the enemies of God.
While they may not regard him as The Messiah the do believe his is a messiah and like all messiahs persecuted by the enemies of God.
Or perhaps the only apparent option to remove the Biden cabal. Don't forget, Joe told immigrants to "Surge the Border", and gave Afghanistan back to the Taliban - where recently the supreme Poohbah stated he is bringing back stoning certain women to death.
15April24, Las Vegas, NV:
[quote=Kamala Harris, VPOTUS] All across the country ... These are Trump abortion bans.[/quote]
Do you remember the "red tsumani" that didn't happen in 2022? :mask:
There may be some who feel this way, but this does not obviate the fact that there are Evangelical Christians who see him as a messiah in a battle that is playing out on a cosmic scale of the end times.
the truth is that they have been planning for such a war since at least 2009.
I watched the video, and read the Brookings report. The person in the video grossly misrepresents the report. Brookings does not state a plan, it lists options - and identifies potential negative and positive consequences of each. The author's premise is that there is some secret plan to go to war with Iran, and he interprets points in the Brookings document to in light of this premise. The fact that certain events have unfolded with some of the anticipated consequences is a testament to Brookings' analysis, not an implication that one particularly nefarious path has been chosen by the US, among all the permutations of paths outlined by Brookings.
Don't forget, Joe told immigrants to "Surge the Border"
Whilst Trump only told the Proud Boys to storm the Capital building. Biden is obviously by far the greater miscreant.
It'll be interesting to see how the funding s***fight unspools on Saturday. 'Moscow Marge' is going all in for Putin. If she rolls Johnson there's a possiblity the house will end up with Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker. That ought to learn 'em. :rofl:
Reply to AmadeusD It comes from the same place as confusing a continent's name with a country with a broken identity. New Zealand is heading there, the brain damage can already be seen in England, Canada, and starting in Australia.
Wonder what that 8,500 crossings/day means? Not enough energy to check it out.
Well, James Lankford, a Republican senator, worked with a bi-partisan committee to come up with a solution to stop the flow, including many of the measures the Republicans had been demanding for years. And Donald Trump ordered that they drop it, before even debating it on the Senate Floor, because if it were implemented, it might work, and it would make Joe Biden look good. And the Republican Party acceeded to his request, of course, meaning the problem isn't solved, so that people, like those on Internet Forums, can go on blaming Joe Biden for it.
because if it were implemented, it might work, and it would make Joe Biden look good.
It's here that the question of democracy becomes muddied. If actions are done not for the people but for the sake of power and winning elections, then there's no true representative democracy anymore, but a pseudo-democracy.
The need to simplify everything down to calling pseudo-democracies real democracies because people seem to be unable to understand what is and what isn't a true democracy makes it impossible to progress past the problems of these kinds of pseudo-democracies.
The US is just a patch work of a democracy, barely on the side of being for the people, mostly just operating under similar ideals as religious fundamentalistic nations around the world; probably the only nation working under Christian fundamentalism in the world, and it infects their democracy and produces demagogues and pseudo-democratic practices.
Resolution 1 DO PASS Resolution Supporting our Republic vs. Democracy
WHEREAS a republic and a democracy are two distinct forms of government; and
WHEREAS the United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 4 guarantees to every
state "a republican form of government" and we pledge allegiance to our country's flag
and to the Republic for which it stands; and
WHEREAS John Adams stated "Democracy...while it lasts is more bloody than either
aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes,
exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide;
and
WHEREAS the Republican Party is the party of limited, Constitutional government, and
the Democratic Party promotes progressivism and socialism; and
WHEREAS every time the word "democracy" is used favorably it serves to promote the
principles of the Democratic Party, the principles of which we ardently oppose;
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Washington State Republican Party, in
convention assembled, acknowledges that our nation is intended to be a republic, not a
democracy; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we encourage Republicans to substitute the words
"republic" and "republicanism" where previously they have used the word "democracy;"
and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that we support legislation that preserves the republican
nature of our government institutions and oppose legislation which makes our nation
more "democratic" in nature, and that, while we favor and encourage liberty in all
nations, we oppose all efforts to use American military might to spread "democracy"
around the world.
Reply to jorndoe Another episode of Yankees misunderstanding and abusing the French loanwords in their language to mean something it does not because they don't have their own language-system. Their fight is with words and "democracy" being associated with a certain party, not, as the article suggests, that they are defending autarchy. Clickbait as I said.
John Adams is quoted but his position if far more subtle than this naked attempt at a power grab.
In John Adams' "Thoughts on Government" he asks:
As good government, is an empire of laws, how shall your laws be made?
and answers by:
... a few of the most wise and good.
That is, not by a political party but by those who are wise and good,.
He goes on to say:
The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed in constituting this Representative Assembly. It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this Assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or in other words equal interest among the people should have equal interest in it.
If the people at large favor policies that are progressive and socialists then the Republicans are not representatives of the people.
Adams also says:
Of Republics, there is an inexhaustable variety, because the possible combinations of the powers of society, are capable of innumerable variations.
As the greatest leader of the Republican Party said, this nation is a government:
of the people, by the people, for the people.
It is a mixed regime with elements of aristocracy and democracy.
Reply to Fooloso4 I haven't read Adams (likely never will), but it is possible his description (more like definition) of democracy takes from Plato's Republic, where democracy comes after timocracy and oligarchy, meaning pretty much mob rule.
In such a democratic state, everyone is more or less equally free of any responsibility to anyone else, including service to the state. No one is obliged to give orders; no one is obliged to take orders; no justice can be respected or meted out. Rulers will serve at the behest of what Socrates has called the "great beast"; political platforms will become popularity contests. A kind of mob-rule becomes the order of the day.
Democracy, nevertheless must not be disgraced. Democracy must not be despised. Democracy must be respected. Democracy must be honoured. Democracy must be cherished. Democracy must be an essential, an integral part of the Souvereignty, and have a controul over the whole Government, or moral Liberty cannot exist, or any other Liberty. I have been always grieved, by the gross abuses of this respectable Word. One Party speaks of it as the most amiable, venerable, indeed as the sole object of their Adoration: the other as the Sole object of their scorn, abhorrence and Execration. Neither Party, in my Opinion, know what they Say. Some of them care not what they say, provided they can accomplish their own Selfish Purposes. These ought not to be forgiven.
The two parties at that time were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. He was a member of the Federalists. This would raise doubts for the those who wrote and supported the Republican resolution @jorndoe cited above, if only they knew where Adams stood.
According to his wife he was an avid reader of Plato, but I think his views on democracy were shaped in part by his own experience and observations regarding human nature. A Democratic republic differs from the Athenian democracy in important ways.
"[i]Trump leads Biden among young people
Young voters are part of Democrats natural base of support, but Biden is actually 11 percentage points behind Trump among young voters 18-34 in a head-to-head match in a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released over the weekend.[/i]"
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/29/politics/biden-young-voters-what-matters/index.html
I always suspected young peoples' commitment to fighting climate change was paper thin. Drill, baby, drill.
Reply to RogueAI Any surveys of polling trends (with explicit margins of error) which sample only Likely Voters in 7 swing states (decided by 3 or less points in 2020) re: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania & Wisconsin? This won't be any more predictive six months out from the general election than daily/weekly snapshot cllickbait polls but rather would be more relevantly diagnostic of the respective campaigns' / parties' persistent weaknesses with respect to the electorate. :chin:
If everythings honest, Ill gladly accept the results. I dont change on that, Mr. Trump said, according to The Journal Sentinel. If its not, you have to fight for the right of the country.
In an interview with Time magazine published on Tuesday, he also dismissed questions about political violence in November by suggesting that his victory was inevitable.
When pressed about what might happen should he lose, he said, if we dont win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.
Mr. Trumps insistent and fraudulent claims that the 2020 election was unfair were at the heart of his efforts to overturn his loss to President Biden, and to the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of supporters who believed his claims. Mr. Trump now faces dozens of felony charges in connection with those events.
So when he loses a clean election again (2020 was probably the most clean and fair in US history), and comes up with some nonsense reason to reject it which is a given despite being able to predict this 6 months out, his supporters will be right there with him and the media will be shocked at the fact that he wont concede the loss.
Its likely that hell make something up even if he wins, as he did in 2016 regarding the popular vote.
Mexico's elections are far securer than whatever has been happening the past years in Cheeseburgerland. The article is already wrong on the title, or Trump's officials.
Looking into the article, no such thing as "Trump officials" confirmed anything. It was Burgerland's election officials that did so, who happened to be under Trump administration because Trump was the current president.
I am not trying to have a discussion with you by the way, because you literally have no soul/subjectivity. I am just pointing it out in public.
The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result.
When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.
Other security measures like pre-election testing, state certification of voting equipment, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commissions (EAC) certification of voting equipment help to build additional confidence in the voting systems used in 2020.
While we know there are many unfounded claims and opportunities for misinformation about the process of our elections, we can assure you we have the utmost confidence in the security and integrity of our elections, and you should too. When you have questions, turn to elections officials as trusted voices as they administer elections.
Court filings show that in spite of the presidents claim that millions of people voted illegally, his recently disbanded commission found no evidence of voter fraud.
Back in 2018, when he also claimed there was widespread voter fraud. Which everyone with a brain cell knows is bullshit anyway.
The incidence of voter fraud has been studied numerous times. The consensus from credible research and investigation is that the rate of illegal voting is extremely rare, and the incidence of certain types of fraud such as impersonating another voter is virtually nonexistent.
Which is why Trump has lost literally every court case on this. Its conjured out of thin air to excuse his loss, which he was telegraphing months in advance.
Again, quite shocking that one of our resident clowns is a believer in such stupidity. The general level of a mind that supports Trump, though
Right. Just lazy, boring bullshit from people who feel obligated to talk when they both know nothing about the subject and have nothing interesting to contribute. But it makes them feel like theyre participating.
True. Comparing Mexico to the Disunited States of Drag Kwain is so comedic that the thought ought to be laughed off and ignored.
Reply to NOS4A2 These people literally have no soul. You think you are talking to a human being like oneself but it is a mindless automaton whose sole purpose is to slightly annoy you.
Where did you see me saying that? It is just that the statement that an election where thousands of tourists and dead people voted being the fairest and cleanest of all time is dumb. But again, his purpose on Earth is to be mildly annoying through stupidity.
After this Palestine thing dies off (like Ukraine did, that thread is very dead), watch him support the new Twitter-approved opinion. 100% guaranteed. It is basically a dumb Python script with an in-built LLM.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Monday his investigators found just one dead voter after thoroughly reviewing findings from a partisan review of the 2020 election that alleged 282 ballots were cast in the name of someone who had died.
Reply to Benkei I have genuinely no clue how you could possibly grok this from my rejecting an actual source, based on its track record of being a steaming pile of shit with no import for anyone but its captured audience - has anything to do with 'tribalism'.
It used to present some good journalism. It no longer does.
Your response just tells me how tribal you must be at-base.
"Hurpt durpt I looked up the first article that confirms my views therefore I am right". It surprises me you even completed Middle School. But when it came to my attention that your schooling systems teaches sex fluidity before Europe not being a country and writing skills, it is unshocking that you graduated. The perfect cosmopolitan drone to send taxes to Israel and eat grass.
The analysis expressed high confidence that just 12 deceased-voter ballots were submitted in Clark county, Nevada; they said the number of possible double voters ranged from 45 to just over 9,000.
The researchers also said they believed the potential statewide exposure of dead voters was 23
Voter fraud that is caught is extremely rare, which is a given in your failed State.
:rofl:
Oh I see. So theres obvious widespread voter fraud but no evidence of it because its never caught, despite Trump and his idiotic followers like you screaming about fraud for years and more intense scrutiny on voting than ever before. But we know there is, because Trump says so. So its obvious. No need for evidence we can feel it.
No surprise you hold yet another stupid, stupid position. And why you still cannot provide one shred of evidence. Are you a Creationist as well?
But when it came to my attention that your schooling systems teaches sex fluidity before Europe not being a country and writing skills, it is unshocking that you graduated. The perfect cosmopolitan drone to send taxes to Israel and eat grass.
:chin: This was almost coherent. Almost.
Keep taking your English-as-second-language courses though. Youre doing great. :up:
Reply to RogueAI No, for the second time, I didn't say that, as you can verify since I never wrote anything like that. For future reference, I don't have an agenda when it comes to things that don't concern me, I say it how it is.
Fact: the election was the most secure and clean in history.
Morons: except for the THOUSANDS of dead voters and tourists and immigrants!
What evidence? None, its just obvious.
Did it affect the election? No, not saying that.
Apparently some people need a course in probability and statistics.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has been monitoring election fraud cases state by state. Election fraud covers a range of activities such as registering someone to vote and forging their signature, filling out an absentee ballot for someone who has died or moved away, voting while ineligible, or pretending to be someone else at the polling place and voting. They find that there have been 1,465 proven cases of election fraud 1,264 of these resulted in criminal prosecutions and the remainder resulted in civil prosecutions, diversion programs, judicial findings, or official findings.
These may sound like big numbers, however, they must be examined in context. The findings encompass more than a decade of data during which, nationally, hundreds of millions of votes have been cast. For instance, in Texas, Heritage found 103 cases of confirmed election fraud. However, those 103 ranged from 2005 to 2022 during which time over 107 million ballots were cast. There were 11 million ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election alone. The fraud in Texas amounted to 0.000096% of all ballots cast hardly evidence of a fundamentally corrupt system.
I guess 0.000096% is a lot when dealing in feelings. To the rest of the world, its not worth mentioning any more than the epidemic of getting stuck by lightning (which is more likely).
No, for the second time, I didn't say that, as you can verify since I never wrote anything like that. For future reference, I don't have an agenda when it comes to things that don't concern me, I say it how it is.
No, you didn't say it, but you're certainly insinuating something. Was Biden the rightful winner or not?
I don't know, I am not all-knowing, off the top of my head I would give 70% chance that he is. Poor guy still has dementia though, so it is not his merit.
I am stating US elections are full of holes, 2020 included.
Let's go with this then. What does "full of holes" mean? Was there also only a 70% chance that Obama was the rightful winner in either of his elections?
Was there also only a 70% chance that Obama was the rightful winner in either of his elections?
Dunno, didn't pay attention to that one. Obama won by a landslide (2008), so any fraud to secure such a win would be impossible not to expose. Were there also vote spikes late into the game in 2008? https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN27Q304/
Were there also vote spikes late into the game in 2008? https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN27Q304/
And then links to an article completely debunking the stupid, stupid claim that vote spikes (for both Trump and Biden) are somehow evidence of fraud.
What a complete embarrassment. But please keep speaking of things for which youre humiliatingly ignorant. It goes in line with literally everything else you post.
But please keep speaking of things for which youre humiliatingly ignorant. It goes in line with literally everything else you post.
I wonder whether you are so hysterical with people in real life. The answer obviously is no. TPF is your venting mechanism for having to deal with being 5 foot 5 in your town where the average male height is 6 feet, which is why you are so feminine (imagine using ellipsis!) and volatile when people disagree with you.
But please keep speaking of things for which youre humiliatingly ignorant.
Speaking of, you sure enjoy talking about the climate with confidence. I take it you'd feel comfortable answering some basic questions about metereology and thermodynamics?
5 foot 5 in your town where the average male height is 6 feet, which is why you are so feminine (imagine using ellipsis!)
:lol:
The 4Chan incel mentality strikes again. Obsessed with goofy ideas of masculinity and their own latent homosexuality. Thank you for displaying your insecurities about your height and manliness. Keep up with those protein shakes.
Anyway good job deflecting away from your imbecilic claims about voter fraud. Still waiting for the evidence oh wait, its just obvious. Nevermind. :ok:
It's almost like those guys make an effort to choose so that you can rely on choosing differently. :D
I guess their livelihoods are somewhat limited, comedic entertainment, run for office, ...
(1) After SCOTUS delay tactic decision to, in effect, kick "absolute immunity" pleading back down to the federal district court at end of June and sentencing drops on July 11 in NYC, Judge Chutkan in DC should revoke Convict-1's pre-trial release for violating its terms with 10 citations of criminal contempt of court and have Felon-1 sit in a Washington DC jail until his "January 6th Conspiracy" trial begins.
(2) "October Surprise": in a prime time televised press conference, POTUS should offer a full pardon to Convicted Felon-1two weeks before the general election IFFConvicted Felon-1 admits his guilt for both sets of federal crimes in Washington DC and South Florida ... "so that the people, not the courts, can decide the election", etc. Of course, Loser-1 won't accept such a pardon either way he'd lose more support on the margins, especially among Independent voters in several critical "swing states".
55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
Its prices that matter to people, apparently the cost of living. Not inflation, despite whats claimed.
But mostly just media consumption shaping ones feelings.
the GOP lie that were in a recession (were in better shape, in most ways, than any time since the 1960s and inflation last month was zero while Ronald Reagan never got it below 4.1% in his entire eight years);
Republican lies about crime being up (its down dramatically since Trump);
their lies that Democrats want elective abortion up to the moment of birth (none have ever said that);
Trumps lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by voter fraud;
GOP lies that the southern border is wide open;
the Republican lie that Social Security is on the verge of bankruptcy and must be saved by privatization or benefits cuts;
their vicious lie that queer people are pedophiles targeting Americas schoolchildren; and
their NRA lie that more and more deadly guns will keep our kids safe.
This concern was raised when Trump descended the golden escalator. He is a pathological liar. While it is true that all politicians lie, the extent of his lies is far beyond the norm. Backed by his red tie sycophants this became the new norm. He lies and they either support the lies, deny it said it, or claim that he meant something else. The distinction between true and false has not simply been blurred, it has been destroyed.
An excellent reminder that we must vote and struggle againstthe neofascist, jim crow candidate(s) whom grifted, confederate / insurrection flag-waving racists fanatically subsidize and will vote for in Roevember. :mask:
Lol Biden looks awful. What a stupid decision to let this guy run again. Hes just too old. He may still win, given his opponent is Trump but so far in this debate he looks frail and borderline incoherent.
Not that this should matter much, but such is the way of things.
I guess the response would have been that she wouldn't accept the election not going her way? Already planned to cry "Rigged" in that case? Go Ferguson. :)
The Clown wins, no need to debate again this fall. He dodged a bullet. Biden campaign over-prepped POTUS to "debate" (pander to the base) rather than to take out The Clown (moving swing state independents toward Dems).
Democrats seem to be in the midst of a post-debate meltdown. It will be interesting to see if they can actually convince Biden to walk away from the nomination.
Reply to Leontiskos People have been trying to convince him for several months but he's too stubborn to get out. The Democrats would easily win if they just ran another generic candidate, but they chose to stick with someone who's arguably just as unpopular as Trump is. I mean maybe this debate would convince him to step aside, that's the one upside I see, but if not then we're really taking a huge gamble on all of our futures for the sake of one really old man's desire for a second term.
Reply to Mr Bee - I don't know that I would say that the Democrats have gambled. I think it has been out of their hands. As you say, there have been efforts to get him out of the 2024 race for some time, but in truth that is a tall task.
Reply to Leontiskos Well I think Biden is the one who's ultimately making this gamble wanting to spend his final years as a two-term president even if he may not live through it, but the people around him seem content in not putting too much pressure on him either.
Reply to Mr Bee - I've been told that Biden would rather go down fighting than walk away. Clearly the better choice from the standpoint of legacy, common good, and personal happiness would be to walk away. But someone who has been in politics for over 50 years may not recognize this. It's like the epitome of getting grandpa to give up his driver's license.
Reply to Leontiskos Well maybe they can convince him now that's he crashed the car. Or maybe we really are screwed.
The one bit of good news is that this debate was really early (perhaps intentionally) and now that we see that Biden can't do it, there is enough time for a change in leadership. Literally anybody else would be better and likely win given how Trump is intensely disliked.
Biden looks awful. What a stupid decision to let this guy run again. Hes just too old. He may still win, given his opponent is Trump but so far in this debate he looks frail and borderline incoherent.
Unfortunately, I have to agree. Trump undoubtedly makes for better television, which is what counts, now that truth no longer matters. :brow:
There were fantasies some time ago for Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer to run on the Democratic ticket, as Mr and Mrs America.
Oh, I wish.....
(Newsom says he's sitting this one out and is anticipated to run in 2028. Except that, if Trump wins in 2024, there probably won't be an election in 2028, as Trump will have declared himself President for Life.)
Reply to Mikie DNC: Yes the planet got destroyed but for a beautiful moment in time we stood by and did nothing as an 82 year old man selfishly tried to seek a second term against the wishes of his constituents.
Even so, Sleepy Joe at his worst is still a better candidate and a better POTUS than The Fascist Clown (aka "Fraudster-Ra(p)ist-Insurrectionist-Convicted Felon-1").. :mask:
Who is forcing the poor old guy to do this? My grandma has an early-dementia diagnosis and she is awfully more coherent than Biden. He more than surely has something, likely dementia too.
This is elderly abuse and more.
Is it so hard to find a younger and better suited candidate for the democrats? Is there no else who has the ability to act as a better president than a self-appointed dictator-cult-running clown and a demented relic who fled the nursing home?
How is it possible that the dems have no other candidate that can just swoop in and take the reigns in a way that makes people actually hopeful about the future? Where there no other backup plan among the dems if Biden were to fail, go full demented or die?
Everything about US politics is just stupid. It's an entertainment machine. We have more presidents depicted in movies and television that acts better than what actually exists.
The US is a joke trying to act like adults in front of the world. Redo the entire political system, let intelligent philosophers and historians write a new constitution and rebuild a better nation. Right now it's just a patch-work of stupid interpretations of old politics, with a population who's suffering in both education, health and financial stability while at the same time being so indoctrinated into believing that the enlightened ghosts of the founding fathers inhabit the candidates running for president.
:vomit: Fire everyone, ban lobbyists and manipulating narcissists, hire intellectuals who are humble educated experts without any interest in prestige or glory; rebuild everything.
Reply to Mr Bee Someone at the level of cognitive decline is no longer responsible for oneself. Whether that is medically/legally ratified by a professional does not change that.
Reply to Lionino Well right now the biggest obstacle to them changing leaders is Biden himself. It wasn't that long ago where we got this exchange, which I still look back at every now and then as I wonder why the race is as it is. If he ends up losing and dying the next day, we'll have to deal with the consequences of his stubbornness.
We always knew their candidate was Weekend at Bernies, but one has to admire the persistence with which they carried that husk of a human being over the finish line. One question that wasnt quite answered was whether those who dragged him forward are delusional or liars about their candidate, their president. But there is just no more denying it any longer. The party of democracy and their press apparatchiks are having open discussions about subverting the will of their primary voters, as they are wont to do. It appears they give up precisely when they can no longer maintain the lie.
Who is the real president? Obama? Jill? This is a dangerous moment for the country. There is no one leading it, and now even the true believers have given up denying it. If there was ever to be an attack on the most powerful country on Earth or her allies, now is the time.
Biden could have been sucked into a black hole at any point of his presidency and it would have made close to zero difference in how the country is (mis)led. I am happy the Dems are in turmoil. They fully deserve that and more. But there is no new problem and no new solution.
Yes and they should again if the choice is between him and Trump. In fact, they should vote for a plastic bag over Trump. To those incapable of thinking outside political parties, I suppose this would mean Im carrying water for the plastic bag but who cares what bootlicking hacks think anyway?
Oh sure. Vote for cow manure over Trump, that's easy.
But what an embarrassment. Trump is just garbage, and Biden is senile. Hard to believe that out of so many people, these are the two that are forced on to the voters - though this applies more to Biden than Trump.
In any case, this performance will hurt Biden. Let's hope there's time for a miracle.
In the immediate aftermath the momentum for forcing Biden out felt overwhelming. But now with enough authority figures in the DNC rallying behind their man, it might be faltering a bit.
It would be a horrific mistake to keep Biden after last night. Already, he was one of the few candidates that could lose to Trump. He literally has no chance now, the optics were that bad, and fed right in to the very strong preexisting narrative that he is too old and feeble. My hope is that the next batch of poll numbers will be so bad that there will be no choice.
Shame on the Fucking DNC for cancelling primaries and foisting this "choice" on people.
I am happy the Dems are in turmoil. They fully deserve that and more.
Not their problem. Another 4 years of great donations where they can play "Resistance". They are not and cannot go anywhere, thanks to our totally broken electoral system. No, the problem is entirely ours.
.
Yes the fact that we have a two party system sucks, and these two candidates suck. But the president doesnt matter that much his cabinet does.
Trump doesnt know anything and his decisions are stupid and based on nothing but his instincts, which are dogshit when it comes to policy. Biden is a weak, tired, senile old man who doesnt have the foggiest idea about whats happening. But some of his cabinet and administrative appointments have been surprisingly good at the FTC, EPA, and NLRB in particular. Even Gary Gensler at the SEC has made some admirable attempts at undoing Reaganite destruction.
So administration and policy matter, not the figurehead people vote for because hes tall or you want to have a beer with him. And honestly, the debate was the worst performance Ive seen in my life, but in a week no one will really care.
Biden will not be replaced. The DNC wont do anything and Biden is too egotistical to back down. So they likely lose the election but they probably would have even without a debate. He simply didnt do enough and the compromises appealed to no one. Despite plenty of good things coming out of this administration, and a second Trump term likely being a death knell for the environment (and therefore life as weve known it), perhaps itll wake people up again and get them organizing. Four years of Trump through 2028 will be terrible but hopefully survivable, and may lead to better days. Who knows.
Biden is a weak, tired, senile old man who doesnt have the foggiest idea about whats happening. But some of his cabinet and administrative appointments have been surprisingly good ...
I think that the administration is of central importance. We have a good picture of what the Trump administration this time around will look like. It is outlined in the Heritage Foundation "Project 2025". It is a playbook to establish a Christian theocratic authoritarian regime. If enacted it will give the Trump administration powers that circumvent the balance of powers of the government. Its ultimate goal, however, goes far beyond Trump. Trump himself, however, may prove its undoing.
I think not. All Trump's pathological stupidities, outrages, and crimes have apparently slid down the memory hole already. But Repubs remind us incessantly of shit they just make up. This debate was an audio visual GOLD MINE for them. No one will be forgetting any of it before November. Even without their help, it was too emotionally visceral, too memorable, it will stay burned into people's heads. The painful cringe was enough to ensure that, it was downright traumatic watching it live. This was a death blow to an already flawed, faltering campaign.
Here is the "Dean Scream" that doomed Howard Dean's campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6i-gYRAwM0&ab_channel=CNN
2004 Howard Dean, scream and all, would LANDSLIDE Trump. NO CONTEST. Keep the scream, add some wet nasty hot mic'd farts, a commando dropped fly, I don't care. That scream was a M80 firecracker next to Biden's H-BOMB of a performance.
Ceding life as we know it to the incorrigible morons is bad enough. Ceding it to senile bitch Biden? It's too much. Biden has to go.
:roll: Stop being hysterical. Biden's competent, effective administration is not populated by "senile bitches"; however, The Clown's "Project 2025" will be populated by a fanatically loyal horde of "incorrigible morons" just like him. Neofascist autocracy is far far worse than the neoliberal status quo, and whoever can't see that will no doubt F-A-I-L the national IQ test in Roevember. :mask:
Biden's competent, effective administration is not populated by "senile bitches"; however, The Clown's "Project 2025" will be populated by a fanatically loyal horde of "incorrigible morons" just like him.
We know this, but does America? Administrations are largely unseen. What was seen was a doddering old fool, next to which the malignant moron seemed sharp. It is America, not you and me, that is set to fail the national IQ test. Again.
Hysterical? As it stands, Trump's victory is all but guaranteed. Even before this, Bidens polling was terrible, losing every swing state. Now, it's over. The arrogant whim of a single, senile bitch is what is guaranteeing neofascist America, to run or not is his prerogative alone.
good for me and the millions of others who arent political hobbyists
Lol, then what do you think you are?
It's not just a silly debate, or the silly impression it made, it's what it indicated. The man is senile, there is no denying it, we cannot count on anything better from him in the rest of the campaign. Cognitive decline goes one way only. Peoples assessment that he is unfit is correct, to lead a campaign, let alone a country.
Reply to hypericin I really don't believe Biden is senile, but he is undoubtedly enfeebled by his age. I'm now rather hoping that he is found medically ineligible to continue in the very near future. Of course I am also outraged that Donald Trump is considered eligible to run for office after what he's done. But, we're still six months out, and many things could happen.
Reply to Mr Bee Regrettably, Trump seemed vigorous and not affected by age in that debate. Sure, he spouted a fire-hydrant of lies, boasts and hyperbole, as always. It's more that it might become apparent even to Biden and his inner circle that his condition is prohibitive - if he's like this now, how is he going to be at the end of a four-year term? I have the fantasy that the ticket will be declared open at the Democratic National Convention and that Biden/Harris will endorse another pair of candidates. I'm 100% certain the American electorate is crying out for an alternative and that if a credible pair was presented then it might precipitate a landslide for them. But I know it's a fantasy.
The way he would become lost, dazedly fumbling between unrelated topics, gazing vacantly, can be explained either by severe anxiety at the enormity of the moment -- what you or I might experience, but not a lifelong politician with his career -- or mental impairment. Given his age and other worrying signs, senility is the most natural and likely explanation.
Given his age and other worrying signs, senility is the most natural and likely explanation.
He's never been a fluent speaker and has often been prone to verbal slips. I presume as the President that he's is subject to regular medical examinations, right? And that if he were displaying symptoms of senile dementia, this is something that these examinations would detect? And that, were it detected, the responsible medical officers would report it and not try to conceal it? So, no, I don't believe he's technically senile, that is another slur that is used by his political opponents. But he is clearly affected by (as I said, enfeebled by) age, so it probably doesn't matter as far as the electorate is concerned. Many will regard him as senile, regardless.
Reply to hypericinReply to MikieReply to Wayfarer I think Biden should have a complete physical and cognitive exams which witll then be released in document form (minimally redacted only for national security) and summarized by his physicians in a public press conference asap. He should also publicly dare The obese, neofascist, criminal Clown to do exactly the same, and let the chips fall where they may with the voters. :mask:
The substance won't matter, though. Perception is everything, especially in this media-driven landscape. If he's perceived to be senile, then no reassurance from doctors will change that view. And Trump's health or mental stability or lack of it also won't matter. He is going to have to be beaten at the ballot box, there's no credible alternative. And I'm now agreeing with many others, that I don't think Joe Biden is the man who's going to do it.
Regrettably, Trump seemed vigorous and not affected by age in that debate.
He's also fat and eats a bunch of junk food which goes great with being 78. If he gets a heart attack or chokes on a BIg Mac that wouldn't surprise me.
Reply to Wayfarer Yes, of course, the ballot box will be the final arbiter but if Biden stays in the race he has to address the "senile, enfeebled" issue with evidence his surrogates and down-ballot Dem candidates can use while campaigning to better inform voters. Biden's duty is to drop out and failing that I think he has a duty to the US electorate to provide medical reasons as well as performative displays which corroborate why he doesn't step aside. And the contrast with The obsese, neofascist, criminal Clown's response to a medical & cognitive exams challenge will not be lost on the still persuadeable +5% of voters in "the swing states" which will decide the election in the Electoral College.
I think Biden should have complete physical and cognitive exams which witll then be released in document form (minimally redacted only for national security) and summarized by his physicians in a public press conference asap.
Doesn't matter since the public perception is that Biden is too old to run. If it's a good report his opponents will claim they falsified it and if it's not then they will run with it.
This is of course putting aside the fact that Trump when he was president released an incredibly dubious health report from his physician, who at the time claimed he could "live to be 200 years old". I don't know where that physician is now, but rumor has it that he is serving in the US congress as a Republican.
Reply to Mr Bee He did. Ronny someone. Got that reward for being a compliant flunky and saying good things about the Orange Emperor. That'll guarantee you a place in the MAGA pantheon.
Reply to Mr Bee Both sets of exams can be independently verified by a third party (audit) if Biden's campaign is serious about getting the maximum effect (no matter how marginal). If not, if the "perception" is so irreparable", then he needs to step aside like Lyndon Johnson did in 1968 of course, VP Harris might also lose (after a brutally divisive convention floor fight) like VP Humphrey lost to Nixon. :brow:
Reply to Wayfarer The disgraced puke (former US Rear Admiral) Dr. Ronny Jackson is a MAGA (morons against great america)-stooge congressman from Texas.
Both sets of exams can be independently verified by a third party (audit) if Biden's campaigb is serious about getting the maximum effect (no matter how marginal).
Doesn't really matter in this post-truth world. We live in an age where Trump can shoot someone on fifth avenue, claim he didn't, and alot of his supporters would take his word.
If not, if the "perception" is so irreparable", then he needs to step aside like Lyndon Johnson did in 1968 of course, VP Harris might also lose (after a brutally divisive convention floor fight) like VP Humphrey lost to Nixon. :brow:
That's my solution honestly, for Biden to step aside like he should've months ago.
I actually don't think the convention floor fight would be as divisive as some may fear. The Democrats have proven they are capable of unifying very quickly when necessary. That's actually how Biden became the nominee in 2020 after all, where in the span of 3 days they managed to get all the moderate candidates to drop out and endorse Biden before Super Tuesday in a desperate attempt to block Bernie Sanders from the nomination.
I feel like if they are gonna go through with a new convention all the leaders should simply agree beforehand to fall in line behind whoever the candidate is given the urgency of the situation. That's where I suspect any potential divisions could come from. As for the voters themselves... honestly I'd imagine most would just be happy that they don't have to vote for either Trump or Biden.
Count Timothy von IcarusJune 30, 2024 at 03:52#9132440 likes
I really find it hard to believe that Biden, Harris, or other party elites/their inner circles actually believe their own dire warnings about what a second Trump term would mean. If they really thought it meant "the end of America," and great suffering or even armed conflict then they'd step down and try to engineer the strongest ticket possible as their replacement.
Just off the top of my head, Beshear won deep red Kentucky as a Democratic governor so handily that the election was called almost as the polls closed, and has long be one of the most popular national level politicians with his own constituency. I am sure there are other good options. You could even get creative and see if Charlie Baker, a Republican who handily won two terms in liberal Massachusetts would take the VP spot as a sort of unity ticket.
But nothing like that is remotely possible from what I understand. One of the key reasons Biden isn't stepping down is because Harris seems even less popular, and Harris seems to have indicated to people in a position to know that she won't let the nomination pass to anyone else without a significant fight. Indeed, if "sources close to Biden" in all the papers are to be believed, Biden is using Harris's commitment to receiving the nomination if he backs out as his main argument for staying.
They clearly can't think it's really that dire, at least not as respects their own futures. From the reporting I saw, the way Biden got everyone to fall in line behind him in 2020 was basically by playing chicken and declaring he'd stay in no matter what, split the vote, and give Bernie the nomination. If that's true, I think there is probably no chance he backs out now.
Unfortunately, I do not think he will win, and even worse for the country, he probably will still carry the popular vote by some small margin.
Is Biden a national security threat? His performance and public meanderings make it clear that the first virtual President of the United States is hardly able to close his mouth or walk off a stage, let alone discharge the powers and duties of his office.
Intelligent people shouldn't be taking the US elections at face value, but try to make sense of it through the acknowledgement that in the West too we are living in corrupt oligarchies.
To make this thread more interesting, here are some questions/statements that should stir up some debate.
- Polarizing figures like Biden and Trump are instrumental to keeping the US public divided (thus weak), bickering over subjects that don't matter to the US elites, so said elites can push their own agendas in the background.
- Maintaining a roughly 50/50 split makes it easy for the elites to manipulate the outcome of the election.
- Maintaining a roughly 50/50 split significantly increases the influence of lobbies and voting blocs. (In case anyone is wondering where for example Israel's lobbying power comes from)
- That Biden was going to lose the debate was obvious. Therefore, whoever put him up to it must have had this as their goal.
I presume as the President that he's is subject to regular medical examinations, right? And that if he were displaying symptoms of senile dementia, this is something that these examinations would detect?
At Biden's last physical, a cognitive test was not given. The doctors gave him a clean bill of health. It seems to me that the doctors didn't look for what they didn't want to find. If your loved one slurred their words and glitched out and fell down, you'd have the doc give them the test. That's why many think Jill's guilty of elder abuse.
President Biden got his latest physical on Wednesday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center an evaluation that the White House said drew on the expertise of 20 doctors but did not involve a cognitive exam.
And that, were it detected, the responsible medical officers would report it and not try to conceal it?
It follows, therefore, that the doctors were being political, and not responsible. Biden's shown signs of age-related cognitive impairment for five or six years. It's gotten much worse the past two years, and much much worse the past several weeks.
As I watched the debate, I said to myself that Biden is relatively lucid tonight. Because he was no worse than he's been for the past couple of months, and at least he didn't glitch out for a minute at a time, as he did at the Juneteenth event.
I was shocked to find all the Dems and liberals horrified to see his condition, and the very next day to see the New York Times calling for him to step out of the race. It seems that a lot of people on the left have only been watching MSNBC and reading the NY Times, which as recently as June 21 was calling Biden's cognitive decline a right wing conspiracy theory.
A flurry of recent clips, many of them edited or lacking context, laid bare a major challenge for the president as he tries to persuade voters he has the energy for a second term.
It's all a right wing plot according to the Paper of Record. Six days later their editorial board called on him to quit. And when Biden loses the New York Times, it's like LBJ losing Cronkite over the Vietnam war.
When Robert Hur called Biden, "an elderly man with a poor memory," did you think he was just one of Orange Hitler's minions? (Fess up, you probably did). When Joe glitched out at the G7, did you believe KJP when she called the video a cheap fake? It still looked every bit as bad when you saw the version with the parachutist in the frame.
Wayfarer, you and your fellow Dems and liberals have been gaslighted by the media. Those of us who read alternative media and even (gasp) scurrilous right wing media, have been watching Biden glitch out for months. We've noticed that he doesn't do interviews except with the most friendly journalists. That he gets cheat sheets at his infrequent press conferences, telling him who to call on and what questions they're going to ask. We watched him campaign from his basement in 2020, which he got away with due to covid. Even during the 2020 primaries, when he was doing badly before the Clyburn deal (when everyone else dropped out), he was showing early signs of age-related cognitive impairment.
To those of us no longer on the Dem plantation (for the record, I used to be), Biden's sad decline has been blatantly obvious for years. I'm amazed he made it this far.
All I can say to the millions of liberals who saw Biden's infirmity for the first time the other night is, where have you been? The real point is not just that Biden's that far gone. The real point is that Biden's been that far gone for a long time, and the Democrats and media have been lying to you about it all along. Those close to him surely knew. The world leaders he met at G7 surely knew. Everybody knew except for the people who get their news from the New York Times.
Ronny someone. Got that reward for being a compliant flunky and saying good things about the Orange Emperor. That'll guarantee you a place in the MAGA pantheon.
Brother you've got it bad. A smart guy like you getting played by the New York Times and Rachel Maddow for years. How'd that happen? Aren't you even a little angry that everyone around the president knew about Biden's condition, and lied to you about it? Not just the pols, but the media too. "BIden's got a stutter." "Biden's always talked slowly." "Biden's sharp as a tack." And now? Every one of those pols and media jackals is sticking a knife in the man's back.
You mean Ronny Jackson, Obama's physician as well as Trump's. Currently a Congressman from Texas. Former Rear Admiral of the Navy.
Well, what now for the Dems? They could have dealt with the Biden situation last fall, when his infirmity was clear and there was time to have a serious primary contest. Now? Every option looks bad.
According to party rules, the delegates that Biden won during the primaries (no actual primary competition allowed, and how's that decision looking today?) are bound to Biden. They can't vote for anyone else at the convention unless Biden releases them. And Biden says he's staying, and more importantly, Doctor Jill is not going out quietly. She likes the power and Joe does what she says. Did you see her praising him after the debate? "Joe you got all the questions right! You knew all the facts!" Someone said that's how they talk to their cat.
Kamala's unpopular. Newsom's male and pale, can't leap over Kamala. Pritzker, Whitmer? I've heard talk about Pennsylvania governor Shapiro, but it's not a good year for guys named Shapiro in the Democratic party. Not popular with the Hamas wing. And by the way, why does your party even have a Hamas wing? Aren't you embarrassed about that? Queers for Palestine, baby, Up the Revolution!
There is only one Democrat who could leap over Kamala and not split the party in two. You know who I mean. SHE Who Must Not Be Indicted. Yes the Hildebeast herself, Hillary Clinton.
Trump versus Hillary. The inevitable denouement of our long national psychodrama.
You read it hear first. It's Hillary. She's got a brand new book out last week. You think she's not ready to rumble? She could win. God knows Trump's a flawed man.
When Robert Hur called Biden, "an elderly man with a poor memory," did you think he was just one of Orange Hitler's minions? (Fess up, you probably did).
No, but I think it was cherry-picked by many of them. As you probably know, Jim Jordan has tried to take the Justice Department and Attorney General to court to get his hands on the original recordings.
According to party rules, the delegates that Biden won during the primaries (no actual primary competition allowed, and how's that decision looking today?) are bound to Biden. They can't vote for anyone else at the convention unless Biden releases them.
We'll see. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
I still reckon there's a possiblity that if a new nominee appeared at the eleventh hour, there could be a huge rush to them, just on account of him/her (probably 'him') being an alternative to the godawful mess that now exists.
I still reckon there's a possiblity that if a new nominee appeared at the eleventh hour, there could be a huge rush to them, just on account of him/her (probably 'him') being an alternative to the godawful mess that now exists.
Reply to 180 Proof I have exactly zero trust in the average intelligence of people. They do not have a historical perspective so don't understand fascism.
Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus it's only 4 years. Probably that is the main consideration to do fuck all. I've said it before and I'll say it again: US elections are for Democrats to lose or win. The GOP ought to be largely irrelevant due to its dwindling base resulting from demographic changes, but here we are with them goosestepping in line with the orange clown actually having a serious chance to win.
You should probably listen to what the guy has to say first, instead of parroting slogans peddled by political rivals.
This is exactly why you don't get better candidates, you see?
In fact, this whole thread seems to be a microcosm for why that is. Many here seem to deem themselves above all the bullshit, yet are playing the exact same game as the masses.
All of it reads to me like it assumes some modicum of cunning and foresight. I dont think there is a conspiracy of any sort because most are too dumb to pull it off. What were watching is simply the result of the insane and self-interested (and now dementia-ridden) in their natural state when theyve achieved a little bit of power. The state of the world is the result of their choices, sure, but I dont think theyre trying to divide people, for instance.
At Biden's last physical, a cognitive test was not given. The doctors gave him a clean bill of health. It seems to me that the doctors didn't look for what they didn't want to find. If your loved one slurred their words and glitched out and fell down, you'd have the doc give them the test. That's why many think Jill's guilty of elder abuse.
It is obvious for every neutral party. The world knows the president of Yankees has pathological cognitive decline. It is only those coping with their political affiliation that must deny it no matter what.
Everybody who has been around dementia patients will see what is going on. The patient's regress to a child-like state is symptomatic of dementia:
The occasional moments of lucidity are not, as some think, proof that Biden is fine. On the contrary. People in the earlier stages of Alzheimer's and dementia oscillate in their cognitive state, have moments of clarity to then relapse.
Wow. Its quite embarrassing that the president of the United States must be spoken to like a child, but his stupid grin says it all.
It was funny because during the debate someone from the Biden campaign ran to the media and told them he had a cold. They reported it dutifully. His whole presidency has been a blizzard of lies, but this particular one was perfect as it encapsulates how Biden has gotten away with it for so longplausible deniability.
I dont think they could coordinate on such a level. Its just blind and stupid instinct at this point. Lying is easy, but coordinating the division of the entire West is something I dont think they could execute. Thats to give them too much credit.
At any rate, I havent seen much evidence of conspiracy. In the United States, for instance, those who put together crossfire hurricane and duped a swath of true believers into pretending the president coordinated with the Kremlin to subvert the United States were acting like teenagers who just so happened to have a little power and influence. Reading their emails, text messages, testimonies etc. revealed blind emotion and poor reasoning. They believed the most obvious nonsense and were equipped with enough hubris not to question their own susceptibility.
Manufacturing Consent describes a time over 40 years ago, from before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when information wasnt as prevalent. The freedom to persuade, which Chomsky argued was in the hands of the few, isnt as possible as it once was. Im speaking of a generation or two later.
What would you point to as evidence that people are trying to keep other people divided, with malice and not stupidity, so as to push their own agenda in the background?
Reply to NOS4A2 Suitable examples of the US government pulling this trick on its citizenry run all the way into the present. You really believe something changed for the better between then and now?
In terms of proof, obviously I don't have anything that qualifies as actual proof. Though, it seems self-evident to me that US domestic politics is just an inflammatory clownshow to keep people distracted and occupied with things that don't matter.
The malice is self-evident when we view the genocidal levels of mayhem the US wreaks on various parts of the world with the tacit approval of its citizenry.
Lastly, the fact that the US government has been successfully pulling this trick for decades shows that they're not stupid; their citizenry is stupid.
Edit: the press is actually pushing that Biden has a "stutter"? That is braindeadly funny.
Edit 2: Older but recent clip of Biden explaining he doesn't stutter https://x.com/cedrichohnstadt/status/1807232341644837112 he stuttered as a kid from nervousness of speaking publically. Obviously Biden does not have a speech disorder. People have never been around dementia patients, but now they also have never been around people who actually have pathological stuttering. Surprising lack of lived experience.
The 70 year old anti-vax conspiracy theorist who has dealt with literal brain worms... we really have a great slate of candidates this year.
Perhaps the Democrats should have thought of this last fall, when there was a chance to have a robust series of primary contests.
Biden's age-related cognitive impairment has been on display in his public appearances since at least 2019. Why did the Dems go down the path of denial, instead of dealing with the issue far sooner?
It's a valid question. I'm not the only one asking it. The question many Americans are asking themselves is: What did the media know, and when did they know it?
Steven Bannon, en route to prison, today: Trumps Thursday (debate) was a Pyrrhic victory. Youre going to take out a guy you know you can beat and beat badly, and were going to have a wild card.
Reply to fishfry I think you should distinguish the Democrat voters with whoever's running the DNC. The Democrats by and large didn't want Biden to run in 2024 and the DNC as usual didn't listen.
Reply to Benkei I'm pretty sure the whole story that Trump was a Russian asset has been more or less proven to be utter bullshit - a literal fabrication.
Reply to Tzeentch I advise you to read the report and make up your own mind. My take away, there was Russian interference, Trump welcomed it and there were a lot of connections between his team and Russian assets. Lack of evidence (in part due to obstruction) and the limitations of the investigation itself meant not everything could be fully investigated. It's not an open or shut case either way. And at least the obstruction were actual crimes that nobody was ever prosecuted for.
Reply to Tzeentch, the US is already up there. There are others that you keep diverting from, this being another example, despite evidence. No worries, I guess others will have to pick up the slack.
Reply to Benkei The news media have been floating names. Pretty much a bunch of governor names like Newsom and Whitmer. Also, unfortunately, Kamala Harris.
Doesn't really matter though if Biden doesn't want to step aside. If he does, then things will probably move quickly.
Reply to Benkei Maybe but I doubt they'd want to force gramps out when he's kicking and screaming. The Dems crave unity above all else so it's unlikely there will be an independent open revolt or attempt to replace Biden unless he says he is okay with it. Of course, that unity is ironically a great reason why the worries about the chaos of a replacement are unfounded IMO. They'll fall in line behind a new guy if they're allowed to. After all if the consesus was that questioning an octogenarian candidate's capability months ago when they had ample opportunity to pivot was considered "helping Trump", then I don't see anyone complaining about a Whitmer candidacy post convention, even Kamala and her dozen or so diehard supporters.
So, as an official act of National Security, POTUS aka "King Joseph I" SHOULD "decree" by Executive Order (A) immediately strip US citizenship and Secret Service protection from, (B) immediately freeze and then seize all domestic and foreign assets from, and (C) immediately incarcerate in The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp Trump and his MAGA gang of January 6 & Russian Collusion co-conspirators indefinitely.
But will "King Joseph I" do this?
No. Even though, as of today, it's (apparently) legal for POTUS to do so. :angry:
I think you should distinguish the Democrat voters with whoever's running the DNC. The Democrats by and large didn't want Biden to run in 2024 and the DNC as usual didn't listen.
Good point there. The DNC screwed Bernie in 2016 and 2020.
(edit) The least democratic institution in the country is the Democratic national committee.
I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, but trust in US government and media is at very low levels, whereas trust in the EU is at high levels. That's really all I need to know about a stupid citizenry.
As for Russia-gate, I totally agree, and it was proven to be bullshit. The Mueller report, which was transferred from a failed and and highly-criticized investigation called Crossfire Hurricane, was fruit from the same poisonous tree. It turns out they ended up investigating the wrong campaign. Subsequent investigations implicated no one but the Clinton campaign and the FBI. As you can see that debacle is still having its effect on pliant minds.
I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, but trust in US government and media is at very low levels, whereas trust in the EU is at high levels. That's really all I need to know about a stupid citizenry.
I wouldn't say trust in the EU is at high levels. That's why right-wing populism is currently sweeping the EU. But I wouldn't say the EU citizenry is much better than the US, though Europeans are definitely less ignorant.
The difference is that the US government gets up to shit that's several orders of magnitude worse.
Given that Europe is the crucible of the worst wars in history, the breeding ground of communism, fascism, and nazism, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire into the Middle East, Im curious as to what might be several orders of magnitude worse than what Europe has been up to. Perhaps worse is the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, but I cannot think of much else.
Reply to NOS4A2 If you need me to give you examples, you're proving my point. Listing America's misdeeds is pedantry at this point, and I'm not going to waste my time in doing so. Especially since you already seem so eager to start shifting the blame.
I just wanted one example, actually, and for the reasons Ive already mentioned. Its common to think of the US as the great Satan, but when it comes from some panty-wasted fief in Europe Im reminded of the hellish conditions hoisted upon the Earth by many countries there. But if you dont want to do it, Ill leave the issue alone.
Sure, you name the timeframe and the example. Im just curious.
Count Timothy von IcarusJuly 02, 2024 at 16:24#9141400 likes
But inside the White House, Bidens growing limitations were becoming apparent long before his meltdown in last weeks debate, with the senior teams management of the president growing more strictly controlled as his term has gone on. During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings theyll deliver to Biden, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information being presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.
Its like, You cant include that, that will set him off, or Put that in, he likes that, said one senior administration official. Its a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when hes being briefed. Its very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him.
The official said, He doesnt take advice from anyone other than those few top aides, and it becomes a perfect storm because he just gets more and more isolated from their efforts to control it.
Sounds like the sort of dynamic that often leads to autocracies' great blunders. Perhaps it's not as extreme as the "yes-man" problem described vis-á-vis Putin's inner circle, but there seems to be an apt analogy in Biden's decision to run for a second term being his "let's go invade Ukraine," moment. Now there is nothing left but to keep doubling down and everyone with any influence to stop it doesn't want to risk losing their influence by actually trying to stop it.
There was a similar dynamic reported in Trump's cabinet, but there at least many cabinet members did eventually jump ship and begin publicly blasting their old boss (fat lot of good it did lol). But obviously the provocations there were even greater.
Hunter Biden has joined White House meetings as he stays close to the president post-debate
While he is regularly at the White House residence and events, it is unusual for the president's son to be in and around meetings that his father is having with his team.
According to the story Hunter Biden has been helping the elder Biden with his duties, for instance his most recent speech fear-mongering about the Supreme Court decision.
With all this rhetoric about convicted felons, it sounds like a convicted felon and drug addict is advising the president of the United States of America. These sort of ironies make politics fascinating to watch, even hilarious, if the stakes werent so high.
Reply to Benkei At this point literally everyone in the party wants him out because they think he'll lose them the House and Senate and will probably speak up in the coming days, the donors are revolting, and the media is unanimously calling for Biden to step down on a daily basis. I don't see him coming back from this but who knows, he's incredibly stubborn.
Its a lose-lose situation now for the democrats. Even if Biden stays, which I think he will, everyone has come out against him. That damage is already locked in. Whatever effect that has, who knows. I dont think itll have a huge effect.
But if he drops out, its another losing scenario: Kamal Harris is the person who will likely get the delegates. Shes about as popular as colonoscopies.
They have no one to blame but themselves. If they happen to pull it off, itll be only because Trump is that bad which he is.
Really you can blame Jim Clyburn for that. He stepped in to save Biden's campaign in the South Carolina primary because he feared Bernie winning the nomination and then insisted on a black woman diversity pick for Biden's running mate, giving us Harris. He essentially gave us the ticket we see today.
That being said it's probably better for the Dems to go with Harris at this point and have her pick an actually talented running mate. Biden's campaign is about as dead as he is but at least with Harris you can see some potential room for improvement and a restart.
If they happen to pull it off, itll be only because Trump is that bad which he is.
Indeed. A generic candidate who is neither Trump nor Biden would win in a landslide against either of these people.
Too bad the Democrats couldn't put up a candidate that isn't as unpopular as Trump. Shouldn't be a low bar to pass but yeah let's just run the 80 year old man who the majority of the country didn't want to run again.
Pot speaks to kettle. It's a democracy and people want some other candidate than Biden, so what's the issue with not having a second term. Act mature for your age and agree with everyone else that once was enough, at least you'll get a pat on the back from both parties and the public.
It should be a walk in the park to stand up against the fascist MAGA movements, authoritarian republicans and Trump, but it's a special level of incompetence that the Democrats weren't able to do this with the mountain of shit that has been piled up against Trump.
Maybe now they will simply put an age limit on their future candidates? And maybe be better at preparing younger party members for future candidate material. Like, get them started in their 30s, really build up their reputation in their 40s and let them run for presidency in their 50s. With enough work they would have 10-20 candidates to put forward and really nail home not only a candidate people like, but also have a number of backups that are also liked. Against the republicans, it would become easy.
But I guess, since Gen Z doesn't seem to care about politics and just want some magical solution to everything, there won't be any young people available to be prepared for future presidency. We're not doomed because we have senile old people running the show, but that we have no young people actually caring for politics. Maybe when the fascist boots step on their throats they might get the memo to actually do something for real and not just continue their slacktivism thinking that accomplishes anything.
Reply to Christoffer 50 is old. Presidents should be 50 at the most. I'm 45 and I read a lot and make music so I can't say my brain isn't regularly used and I can tell my retention rate for information is a fraction of what it used to be. I can barely memorise new pieces and forget them in a few months after I do but will play your anything I learned when I was a teenager.
Reply to Benkei To be honest, there hasn't been a young world leader that has ever made a good impression on me. They appear naive, easily manipulated, sometimes overtly groomed, and they seem to have little real wisdom or understanding of the gravity of the position they are in and the consequences of their actions.
Politics should be conducted by dusty, boring, old people - people from whom there is little to gain from corruption, and people who have children and grandchildren whose futures they care about.
50 is old. Presidents should be 50 at the most. I'm 45 and I read a lot and make music so I can't say my brain isn't regularly used and I can tell my retention rate for information is a fraction of what it used to be. I can barely memorise new pieces and forget them in a few months after I do but will play your anything I learned when I was a teenager.
50 isn't old. 50 is a good age in which the maturity of ideas settle down. And since 40 year old's today act like they're still children, with immature handling of philosophical concepts and ideology, they have to get ten more years of maturing before they have the calm to act on their convictions and ideas.
20-30 is the age in which people explore who they want to be as an adult. 30-40 they explore the validity of such aspirations. 40-50 they manifest the true aspirations, solidified as their true identity. 50+ is when a person has manifested who they really are, a stability matured by years of exploration in which they find wisdom rather than just knowledge.
A presidency requires wisdom and it's something lacking these days.
Of course, all this requires a sane psychology and proper introspection throughout life. Most people can live to their dying days without ever thinking an original thought or questioning themselves properly. But for a president, a leader, someone who's supposed to work for the people, it should be a requirement.
I find democracies today to be pretty lackluster in their defense against those taking advantage of it. Just because democracy demands a representative of the people to be the person who wins an election, shouldn't mean that any dipshit should be able to. I rather think that a representative in a democracy should have demands of competence like any other job in society.
A president do not stand above the staff of representatives for the people, they should be in service of it. They should be the ones taking the raw emotions, wills and wants from the people and fine-tuning it into working policy, law and national practice. They should be in service of the people.
That's not what's going on in the US. The US president is a pseudo-king. It's a plastic kingdom similar to Disneyland. The US does not have a good structure of politics, there's no actual parliament. The congress is just a big funding party for lobbyists rather than a place to evaluate strategies for the nation and international politics.
Democracy is still in need of philosophical progress, it needs further work. The term has become some plaque and adjective to describe a "good nation", but since none of the "good guys" in our world seem to know in what way to actually describe how democracy is producing "good nations", we end up with sham democracies and representatives of the people who can just con everyone into believing these representative are kings and religiously elevated deities. Until people see them as they are and goes for the next plastic king.
Democracy today is in a hyperreal state of what democracy could be. And we lack the framework to produce actual leaders because we haven't thought through what is actually required to end up with stable, good leaders who are competent at their job.
The entertainment industry that is democracy today must end and be replaced by democracy that has evolved past this shallow plastic shell of "a good nation".
One of the more hilarious aspects about the tantrums one finds in American politics is that they are largely self-inflicted. The schemozzle about Biden's absent-mindedness, for instance, is the direct result of them lying to themselves. When a wasteful and fraud investigation didn't turn up Kremlin influence in the presidency, and implicated the opposing campaign, they blamed their victim and not their own lies. The recent Supreme Court rulings would not have happened had they not weaponized the justice system to go after their political opponents. The classified documents case might have occurred before the election had they not bungled it, tampered with evidence, or tried use it to influence the election.
Of course, there is always someone else to blame. Right at the moment when the delusion ought to be replaced with honest self-reflection, a new one takes its place, and the process begins all over again. No doubt, if/when Trump's felony conviction gets overturned for being a travesty of justice, they'll blame the ones who overturned it, and not the ones who brought and judged such a shit case. With this they can always remain in the delusion.
The classified documents case might have occurred before the election had they not bungled it, tampered with evidence, or tried use it to influence the election.
Not sure what you're referring to. Has there been a decision on this or are you just parroting Trump lawyers verbatim?
This is a false representation of the Müller report. Stop lying.
His name is Mueller, not Müller.
Sorry, but the investigation did not establish that the
Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.
What Kremlin influence on the presidency are you speaking about?
Not sure what you're referring to. Has there been a decision on this or are you just parroting Trump lawyers verbatim?
Of course youre not sure. Im referring to evidence and quotes as recorded in the case files. What are you referring to?
There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans, prosecutors wrote, adding in a footnote: The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court.
Sorry, but the investigation did not establish that the
Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.
What Kremlin influence on the presidency are you speaking about?
It's Müller where I'm from since we actually know how to spell a German name, so tough luck. In any case, Müller has repeatedly refused to exonerate Trump and he did so for a reason. So it's a misrepresentation on your part because you fail to include the fact that while the investigation doesn't prove it, it's because they were frustrated continuously in their investigation. In other words it was neither wasteful or fraudulent and should've been investigated further.
Thats spoliation of evidence or mishandling of classified documents. What do you call it?
Irrelevant. If you think the order of the files in a specific box has any relevance as to the evidence of the content of that box then please make a cogent argument to that effect but on the face of it, it's just another delay.
It's Müller where I'm from since we actually know how to spell a German name, so tough luck. In any case, Müller has repeatedly refused to exonerate Trump and he did so for a reason. So it's a misrepresentation on your part because you fail to include the fact that while the investigation doesn't prove it, it's because they were frustrated continuously in their investigation. In other words it was neither wasteful or fraudulent and should've been investigated further.
Thats right, you cant name any evidence of Kremlin influence. You might want to stop lying about it.
In fact, its a double lie because you refuse to mention (even suspiciously removing it from the sentance you quoted) the failings of that investigation as discovered in subsequent investigations.
Irrelevant. If you think the order of the files in a specific box has any relevance as to the evidence of the content of that box then please make a cogent argument to that effect but on the face of it, it's just another delay.
If the files arent as one found there is no way to know the contents are accurate. Not only that but they lied to the court about it. Looks like youre parrottting Jack Smith verbatim.
If the files arent as one found them there is no way to know the contents are accurate. Not only that but they lied to the court about it. Looks like youre parrottting Jack Smith verbatim.
That's a dumb comment for a variety of reasons. How do they know the order changed? Because the FBI records. So we have a record of what was in it before the contents were shuffled. It's legally an inane point as to establishing what was kept and therefore no more than a delaying tactic. This was all from your link by the way. Maybe you should just learn to read instead of jerking off and getting excited because you think you're onto something everytime you read something critical about the government.
In fact, its a double lie because you refuse to mention (even suspiciously removing it from the sentance you quoted) the failings of that investigation as discovered in subsequent investigations.
First of all, I'm only quoting you so far. I assume you remember what you wrote a few hours ago so not sure what you're going on about. Whatever failings the investigation had, none of them gave rise to indictments, and none of them discount the multiple crimes Müller established in his investigation. The lie was yours to pretend the Müller report was fraudulent and didn't establish any crimes. It did. Multiple ones.
That's a dumb comment for a variety of reasons. How do they know the order changed? Because the FBI records. So we have a record of what was in it before the contents were shuffled. It's legally an inane point as to establishing what was kept and therefore no more than a delaying tactic. This was all from your link by the way. Maybe you should just learn to read instead of jerking off and getting excited because you think you're onto something everytime you read something critical about the government.
Youre parroting the government verbatim. Youre a lawyer, apparently, and you think the spoliation of evidence and lying about it to the court in one of the most unprecedented cases in the history of the country is irrelevant.Your readiness to believe everything you read has long been proven, so your characterizations dont mean much to me. Maybe you shouldnt feel so duty-bound to defend their actions every single time, for whatever reason.
First of all, I'm only quoting you so far. I assume you remember what you wrote a few hours ago so not sure what you're going on about. Whatever failings the investigation had, none of them gave rise to indictments, and none of them discount the multiple crimes Müller established in his investigation. The lie was yours to pretend the Müller report was fraudulent and didn't establish any crimes. It did. Multiple ones.
You quoted one clause out of an entire sentence, afraid to quote me in full, clearly trying to hide the context for whatever reason. Probably to draw attention away from the fact that you, like your fraudulent investigation, were duped by Clinton-campaign opposition research, which to this day a fact you refuse to mention. You, like Mueller, refuse to mention exculpatory evidence, or anything else that might point to how stupid the whole charade was.
The investigation was fraudulent, as is your continued parroting of it.
Reply to jorndoe
I think the groundwork is forming for a shift in the US toward greater authoritarianism. The trigger for the change would be something like a war. The population is presently split between people who want that to happen (on both the right and left) and people who are apathetic.
Did you see the poll that said Trump is particularly popular among people 18-29? It was reported by The Hill. Like 61% prefer Trump.
The most depressing thing about the ABC/Stephanopolous interview was indeed that final sentence.
If you stay in, and Trump is elected, and everything youre warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January? Stephanopoulos asked.
I will feel, as long as I gave it my all, and I did the good a job as I know I can do, thats what this is about, Biden replied.
Not nearly good enough. "Trying my best" and "Promise I'll go to bed early". I think it's obvious that the gig is up, let's just hope the man himself comes to realise it.
If the pressure can be sustained, there may yet be a chance hes replaced a much better chance than I once thought but Id still give the chances 1 in 5 or so. The ABC interview didnt do much to reverse the tide.
But this has been interesting. Theyre really panicking and for good reason.
Reply to Mikie I'm convinced he will reliquish the candidacy. That's what he must do - it can't be taken from him, he has to pass it on, and I'm sure he will. And as the electorate is crying out for an alternative to Biden-Trump (not counting Kennedy, because he doesn't count), I think it will electrify the landscape. It might instantly attract millions of undecideds and anti-Trumpers. Might.
Reply to Mikie I don't think she's The Candidate, but she's also not as terrible as the media tends to depict her. I said upthread, from where I sit (outside the US but with irons in the fire), a Newsom/Whitmer ticket would look pretty damned impressive.
Newsom/Whitmer ticket would look pretty damned impressive.
I think that could work. Maybe a Josh Shapiro but its really all just fantasy. I think if Biden steps down the natural candidate is Harris, for multiple reasons including the large amount of money donated to their campaign.
You also have to assume that Kamala Harris would *want* to be the Presidential Nominee. And I don't know if that's gauranteed.
Reading between the lines - and there's lots of lines - it looks as if Biden agrees to transition, it might result in an 'open convention'. It's happened before, and didn't work out well for the Democrats. But this situation is different. Sure, Trumpworld has its rusted-on supporters, but many of those who don't like him really hate him, but think Biden is too old. (I mentioned before, Steve Bannon said just as he was turning himself in, the Trump Campaign is betting on beating Biden - hey nice alliteration there - if someone else is the candidate, it's a wild card, things could shift very quickly.)
it's a wild card, things could shift very quickly.)
What do people in this thread plan to do about Biden? The biggest wildcard is that he's dug in. He is on record as saying, "No one is pushing me out of the race." He's made this perfectly clear. And Jill is fierce. You can talk Kamala and Gavin and Gretchen and Michelle all you like, but Biden's not budging.
Are Democrats ready to either impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment? If not, how are you going to dislodge him?
What do people in this thread plan to do about Biden?
Nothing I can do about it, Im not even an elector (although my son lives in the US and is a dual citizen.) Im still holding out hope that Biden will see reason (and rather uncharitably wishing hed have a mild stroke which would take the matter out of his hands.) But if he stays the candidate, Im now convinced that Trump will win, and that it will be an unqualified disaster for America and the rest of the world (but thats not something Im going to debate outside the Trump thread, of which Im steering clear.)
Not a good year for Shapiros in the Dem party as long as Michigan's in play.
Michigan is in play in large part because Biden is the nominee and pissing off Arabs with what he's doing in Gaza. That's why I think Whitmer is an ideal candidate since she can take any stance on Israel and win Michigan easily but apart from his age, Biden's foreign policy is a big drag on the ticket.
Are Democrats ready to either impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment? If not, how are you going to dislodge him?
I've heard there's also a "good conscience" rule the DNC can add for delegates to not vote for Biden, but right now the Dems are trying to convince grandpa that he is perhaps not the best driver in the world and relinquish his car keys voluntarily. Next week will probably see the dam breaking.
If you argue with stupid, they'll drag you down and beat you with experience.
Either way, some worthwhile observations/ethics can be found
Shame constrains us. Shamelessness is a liberation.
Learning to be absolutely shameless is easy.
It is our civic duty to make motivated sociopathy costly.
Some (post-rationalizing) individuals gravitate naturally towards conflict, which can empower the demagogue. Anyway, nutn' much new here, jus'sayin.
Reply to frank, you think there's a large number of people in the US that want war (civil or wider)? A US civil war would play straight into the hands of hungry foreign forces, which might just come back to haunt them.
Kamela? Really? From one deeply unpopular candidate to another. I have long given up on the Democrats actually delivering anything meaningful policy wise. All I need from them is to prevent the descent into outright fascism by defeating a totally unqualified sub moronic evil clown. Even that very low bar is too much for them.
The Democratic party has long ago degenerated into complete worthlessness. In a functioning democracy they would have been swept away long ago. It is our winner take all electoral system that makes a third party impossible, and therefore keeps the existing two parties entrenched, no matter how awful they become. This will be America's downfall.
This country is not going to elect a black woman, much less a politically incompetent black woman like Harris. Michelle Obama is the exception to that rule and probably the only person in the country who could rescue the Democrats, but that's not going to happen. Trump is up 3 points in the polling average. 538 has the race as even. Biden is not going to drop out under those conditions, nor should he. The Democrats still have a powerful message: white male vegetable>election stealing prolife felon.
After being embarrassingly outed for feeding the media questions in an effort to save the optics regarding his cognitive abilities, the Biden campaign is now saying it will stop doing so. WHO IS RUNNING THE COUNTRY?
Biden campaign will no longer feed questions to media after being outed by radio host: source
Michigan is in play in large part because Biden is the nominee and pissing off Arabs with what he's doing in Gaza. That's why I think Whitmer is an ideal candidate since she can take any stance on Israel and win Michigan easily but apart from his age, Biden's foreign policy is a big drag on the ticket.
Good point, Whitmer is popular in Michigan and can withstand the Palestinian-supporting component of the left. Makes sense. Still tricky to leapfrog Kamala. Do you mean Whitmer for veep or prez? Kamala has a constituency within the party.
I've heard there's also a "good conscience" rule the DNC can add for delegates to not vote for Biden, but right now the Dems are trying to convince grandpa that he is perhaps not the best driver in the world and relinquish his car keys voluntarily. Next week will probably see the dam breaking.
Oh I see I hadn't heard that. Internet says that "DNC rules encourage but don't specifically require delegates to vote for the candidate they're pledged to support. Instead, the rules say, All delegates to the National Convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them ..."
That does seem like an out. I thought the delegates were firmly bound, but evidently not.
My take on this situation is that the Dems are in denial when they say, "Dems are trying to convince grandpa that he is perhaps not the best driver in the world ..." In fact Joe has stated that he's in it to win it, and he has Jill and now Hunter on his side. And he's President of the United States. There's a lot of power in that. The Dems are going to have to force Joe out. And I don't think they'll be up for it. The unseemliness of the Dems trying to destroy their own president.
My take -- my out-on-a-limb prediction -- is that in the end, the Dems will not persuade him to drop out. They will either need to impeach him, or invoke the 25th Amendment. And I predict the Democrats will not have the stones to do that. And besides, if they do move to impeach or invoke 25A, the Republicans will oppose them! Imagine the hilarity that would ensue. The GOP would love to run against Biden. Without GOP support the Dems can't get rid of Joe.
I think the Dems made their bed last year when they decided not to have an open, competitive primary. They are stuck with Biden until Jill says so. And she didn't come this far to give up now.
Nothing I can do about it, Im not even an elector (although my son lives in the US and is a dual citizen.) Im still holding out hope that Biden will see reason
This is my thesis again. The Dems are hoping Joe will quit. But Joe has said he's not quitting, and he and Jill and Hunter are circling the wagons. In the end the Dems are going to have to act; by impeaching him, 25A-ing him, or deliberately incapacitating him.
(and rather uncharitably wishing hed have a mild stroke which would take the matter out of his hands.)
Can you see the irony, dare I say depravity, of hoping fo such a thing? In a candidate you supported five minutes before the debate?
I'm struck by the viciousness of the Dem and left response. All those who had Joe's back five minutes ago, and are now stabbing him in the back. And why is the response so emotionally intense? Because these are all of the people who didn't say anything a year ago, when they could have called for open and competitive Democratic primaries. They didn't say anything in 2020, when Biden was doing badly in the polls and the DNC did the Clyburn deal to install Biden. Along with Kamala, who'd dropped out of the 2020 race in 2019, polling in single-digits in her own home state. She got taken apart by Tulsi Gabbard in a debate, and never recovered. The media are pumping her up this week, but her negatives aren't going away.
Now the bill's come due, and the Dems are hoping Biden strokes out soon. You're not the only one. Perhaps that stroke won't come along by itself, ya know? Slip Joe a little something in his bowl of ice cream. That's what the Dems have come to.
Is that extreme? Just look at what you wrote. You are not the only Dem thinking that way. But a year ago when the DNC decided not to have real primaries, you said nothing. This is a fiasco of the Dems' own making.
But if he stays the candidate, Im now convinced that Trump will win,
That's been clear a long time, and even from before the general public found out about his tragic age-related cognitive decline. Biden's policies are unpopular. You can't fix that with a younger candidate. Of course I'll stipulate that you disagree with me on policy, and I'm not here to argue that. Many voters are not happy with how things have been in the Biden administration and swapping in a younger candidate with the same policies is not going to change that many votes.
and that it will be an unqualified disaster for America and the rest of the world (but thats not something Im going to debate outside the Trump thread, of which Im steering clear.)
I understand your feelings about that. No need to discuss the respective merits of the candidates. The scandal is what's interesting. This Biden mess is going to be the biggest political scandal in my lifetime, bigger than Watergate. Just swapping in a new candidate is not going to solve the Dems' problems, It's raise a whole host of new ones, starting with fundamental democratic legitimacy. Will voters stand for yet another last-minute DNC back-room deal?
Reply to 180 Proof But why not? If an alternative candidate would stand he/she is allowed to try to persuade the pledged delegates because they aren't strictly held to vote for Biden.
Reply to Benkei DNC party rules and, because he is the incumbent president, Biden (team) controls the Dems convention nominating process. Besides, even if the Dems could "force him out" (they cannot), by law the money the Biden-Harris campaign has raised would still belong to his campaign and he could run for reelection as an independent guaranteeing that The Clown wins the election. So as a practical electoral matter it's a disaster if Biden doesn't voluntarily step aside and endorse his replacement.
if Biden doesn't voluntarily step aside and endorse his replacement.
Yeah, him doing so would be the only possible positive outcome other than taking the chance at him winning, but that feels more far fetched the closer to the election we get.
In fact Joe has stated that he's in it to win it, and he has Jill and now Hunter on his side. And he's President of the United States. There's a lot of power in that.
Sure, but everybody adamantly says they're in it until they aren't. I think it's too late for Biden to stop the dam from breaking within his own party. Too many different groups from the donors to the representatives to the senators are already saying he should step aside and likely this week (as congress reconvenes) this will lead to a large number of public statements for Joe to step aside. At some point such a situation becomes untenable.
But who knows how he'll react. Is Joe selfish enough to stay in anyways even if it means the total collapse of his party? Perhaps but it's clear his attempts to quiet any dissent through a mix of stubbornness and finally getting out there have been completely unsuccessful so far. A normal politician would've taken drastic action immediately after that debate, doing numerous interviews, town halls, and unscripted events in order to assure people that they can do this. Biden instead went back to hiding for a week and later did a 20 minute interview where he still sounded rambling and delusional, and well we can sort of guess why. I think the video I linked to where he said he will be content with losing to Trump and ending democracy because all that matters to him is his reelection attempt will turn his critics off more.
How big of an imbecile does one have to be to really believe the US President runs the country?
Preparing the rhetorical environment for "Who cares if the president is a disabled vegetable? There are many people in executive functions besides just the president!!".
AI already surpassed the average person in that it runs on a much more interesting and unpredictable script the similarity is that both are soulless automatons.
Reply to Christoffer My guess is that, barring a debilitating health event or worse, if Biden doesn't step aside this week (or next at the latest), then he will be on the ballot again. I believe various state deadlines are coming up later this month for printing ballots, etc so the Democratic Party's "final" decision whether to unite behind Biden is imminent. That's critical not whether or Biden steps aside the degree to which the coalitions which make up the Dems coalesce again like they did in 2020 to make the election about opposition to The Neofascist Criminal Clown in Roevember.
Is there really any universe in which the events of the last week could transpire if the purpose wasn't expressly for Biden to lose? Is there really any universe in which a senile old man is allowed to hijack the fate of the most powerful country in the world?
So who would you vote for (if you could / will vote in the 2024 election): (A) the old man who (usually) tells truths despite his stutter or (B) the old swine who only squeels (& farts) lies just to keep breathing?
Reply to 180 Proof I think the answer will be: many abstentations, and that this will favour Trump, as his voters are enthusiastic.
It seems clear that Biden can't be forced out of the race - unlike in a parliamentary democracy such as Australia's or Great Britian's, there's no provision for the 'vote of no confidence' of the kind which brought down Boris Johnson. The only two things that can change that is that he changes his mind, or is declared unfit on medical grounds (which seems not altogether impossible.)
Trump is unanimously designated 'the worst US President' by a board of academic historians. If Biden runs and looses, he will be relegated to the place just behind him on that ladder, for having paved the way for the MAGA overthrow of the constitutional order (even despite his policy achievements and accomplishments.)
Reply to Wayfarer No matter who winds up the Democrat's presidential nominee, all that matters now it seems to me is this: Quoting 180 Proof
the degree to which the coalitions which make up the Dems coalesce again like they did in 2020 to make the election about opposition to The Neofascist Criminal Clown in Roevember.
Eh, whether he stays or goes doesnt matter that much I bet. With Trump as an opponent, people will vote against him. Doesnt matter what or who that other button is. Maybe its a curtain rod. Maybe its a can of soup.
With Trump out there, theres a very good chance Biden wins.
Michigan and Pennsylvania. Thats all you have to focus on, and you win.
Reply to Lionino Some of the founders wanted the presidency to be a committee job. I figure when I vote for president, I'm voting for a team, not just one person. So I have no problem voting for a vegetable over Trump. The executive would still function. It's not an ideal situation, but doable.
Reply to Wayfarer Biden's rolling the dice. If he wins, even by a narrow margin, the GOP will suffer the worst trouncing a political party has ever had in American politics. How could anyone lose to this guy??? The GOP would immediately go into circular firing squad mode. If Biden loses, Democrats will hate him and his family and his inner circle with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns. There's no middle ground here. It's either glory or infamy.
Reply to Mikie 538 still has the race a toss-up. Betting odds on Trump are about 55%. They could probably run Biden Weekend-at-Bernies style and still have a 1-in-3 chance to win. It would actually be kind of fun to beat Trump with a braindead Biden.
With Trump out there, theres a very good chance Biden wins.
Fear of a second Trump term and Project 2025 is the only thing keeping the Dems alive at this point. Would've been nice if they just ran some generic 50 year old or somebody that didn't massively turn off voters nationwide.
Biden's rolling the dice. If he wins, even by a narrow margin, the GOP will suffer the worst trouncing a political party has ever had in American politics. How could anyone lose to this guy??? The GOP would immediately go into circular firing squad mode.
Then they'll re-nominate the same guy who lost again 4 years later.
Yeah a Harris/Whitmer ticket would be more realistic. That being said Harris will more likely go for Shapiro because he's a white man.
Like I say. Shapiros are not in style in this year's Democratic party. Which reminds me that in 2020, the Dems had an excellent black female VP candidate, Val Demings. But she was a cop, and cops were not in style in the Democratic party of 2020. Live by identity politics, die by same
Yep, and the delegates are not very eager to nominate him right now. We'll see if it snowballs into something.
I looked this up. Biden has 3896 delegates, and everyone else has 43 combined. Biden is the overwhelming choice of Dem primary voters, and that's one of his advantages.
Just found this, which is just one article and doesn't prove anything, but it's still of interest.
[i]
Democrats urging President Joe Biden to end his campaign and allow the party to select another nominee before or during Augusts national convention are unlikely to find allies in the ranks of Chicago-bound delegates, who are increasingly closing ranks around Biden.[/i]
In fact now that Biden's dug in, some Dems are coming around. House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries is for Joe. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out for Joe today. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer came out for Joe. And surprisingly Senator John Warner, who the other day said he was gathering a group of anti-Joe Senators, today came out for Joe.
I believe that once Joe said he's staying in, people realize that he's going to be virtually impossible to dislodge. He has the power of the presidency, which is huge. He has Hunter and Jill on his team. And drug and hooker jokes aside, Hunter appears to be a capable ally at the moment. Joe has all those delegates. And the Democrats risk looking very anti-democratic if they swap in a last-minute candidate chosen by the party insiders. Joe looks stronger today than he did a few days ago when everyone thought he was toast.
And a lot of the backstabbers look unseemly, a point I've been making. You love a guy yesterday and knife him in the back today? That says more about the backstabber than it does about Biden. Looking at you, New York Times, Washington Post, Joe Scarborough, etc.
Sure, but everybody adamantly says they're in it until they aren't. I think it's too late for Biden to stop the dam from breaking within his own party.
I'm on record that the Dems are not going to dislodge him as long as Jill and Hunter want him in. The Dems do not have the stones to impeach him or invoke he 25th amendment. My bet's a long shot, I'll give you that. Joe looks like toast. But what are the Dems really going to do if he refuses to step down?
There's a full-on civil war in the Democratic party. The inevitable result of decisions they took in 2020 and 2024. People were saying Biden was cognitively impaired as early as 2019. The Dems could have avoided this. Now they're stuck.
Too many different groups from the donors to the representatives to the senators are already saying he should step aside and likely this week (as congress reconvenes) this will lead to a large number of public statements for Joe to step aside. At some point such a situation becomes untenable.
Like I noted, prominent Dems are also stepping up to support him. They realize that panicking right now could well come out worse than just getting behind Biden.
But who knows how he'll react. Is Joe selfish enough to stay in anyways even if it means the total collapse of his party?
Oh yeah. Biden and his family are out for themselves. The stories about the family corruption are not "right wing propaganda" any more than his cognitive decline was. Biden's for Biden, and his family wants him to have pardon authority as long as possible. That dam might break too, and when it does, the family's going to want Biden in power.
Perhaps but it's clear his attempts to quiet any dissent through a mix of stubbornness and finally getting out there have been completely unsuccessful so far.
Not so. The tide began to turn today (Monday evening US time as I write). Lot of Dems came out for Biden, even some who'd been against him just a day or two ago.
A normal politician would've taken drastic action immediately after that debate, doing numerous interviews, town halls, and unscripted events in order to assure people that they can do this.
Of course Biden is incapable of doing any of that. But we started seeing it in 2019! They hid the guy all during the 2020 campaign. People have been talking about Biden's tragic age-related cognitive impairment for years. Media types have admitted they covered it up so as not to help Trump.
Biden has of course done what he can. He called in to Scarborough's program. He's given some teleprompter speeches. It's all he can do.
But that is not the point. The point is: Who is going to dislodge him, and how?
Biden instead went back to hiding for a week and later did a 20 minute interview where he still sounded rambling and delusional, and well we can sort of guess why. I think the video I linked to where he said he will be content with losing to Trump and ending democracy because all that matters to him is his reelection attempt will turn his critics off
Agreed, of course. But again: Who is going to dislodge him? The parallel's been made with Nixon, when his advisors came to see him and told him it was all over. But he was facing certain impeachment and conviction. What leverage to the Dems have over Biden? A strongly worded letter? They have nothing. Let's see if they'll start impeachment or 25A proceedings. Of course they will not do it.
So it's advantage Biden, no matter how compromised his mental state.
This is the greatest political scandal of our lifetimes. This thing is just getting started. A full-on civil war in the Democratic party just four months from a highly consequential election. Anything can happen.
Perhaps Biden will have that stroke @Wayfarer is hoping for. Something to see, actual Biden supporters hoping for that. End stage Trump Derangement Syndrome. If the Dems had just ignored Trump and had a real primary season, Newsom or Whitmer would be beating DeSantis right now.
From a few weeks ago. I was struck by your extreme partisanship back then -- and now you are hoping your own preferred candidate will have a stroke.
What side are YOU on?
Can you not see your own moral corruption brought on by your extreme hatred of one man who was already president for four years and didn't do any of the things you claim he'll now do?
You don't even wish Trump would stroke out. With his diet and lifestyle it could happen. But no. You have worked yourself into such a state of anger and hate that you hope your own guy will have a stroke. And why? Because you are angry at yourself for going along with the lies. You and all the other Dems who are shocked, shocked that Biden's suffering the age-related cognitive impairment that was apparent in 2019. Do you have any self-awareness at all?
Your remarks got to me a few weeks ago. In case you're wondering why I'm addressing you about this.
Whatever side represents the rule of law and upholds the constitution. The side which didnt attempt the overthrow of the Government and the subversion of the election.
I believe Biden has lost the confidence of many in the electorate and that the Democratic party ought to have selected a younger candidate. That said, though, Ive never believed that Trump ought to have been allowed to run, considering his obvious malfeasance.
Which reminds me that in 2020, the Dems had an excellent black female VP candidate, Val Demings. But she was a cop, and cops were not in style in the Democratic party of 2020.
I mean Kamala was a prosecutor. I don't think either were gonna be popular with the Democrat base in 2020 due to the BLM riots, but Biden decided on Harris.
In fact now that Biden's dug in, some Dems are coming around. House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries is for Joe. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out for Joe today. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer came out for Joe. And surprisingly Senator John Warner, who the other day said he was gathering a group of anti-Joe Senators, today came out for Joe.
I'll wait until tomorrow since alot of other congressional Dems are kind of staying silent and clearly are not just falling in line like the president wanted. I'm assuming you meant Mark Warner there, and his statements are also very noncommittal. Nobody except one representative came out today against Biden, and my guess is that the dissenters are currently keeping quiet so they can present a united front when they meet later.
From what I can tell the House Dems are planning a meeting in the morning to discuss the matter privately, while the Senate is also doing the same at noon. Whether they'll decide to confront the president and whether any of that will be made public is anyone's guess.
I believe that once Joe said he's staying in, people realize that he's going to be virtually impossible to dislodge. He has the power of the presidency, which is huge. He has Hunter and Jill on his team. And drug and hooker jokes aside, Hunter appears to be a capable ally at the moment. Joe has all those delegates. And the Democrats risk looking very anti-democratic if they swap in a last-minute candidate chosen by the party insiders. Joe looks stronger today than he did a few days ago when everyone thought he was toast.
That's Biden's intended play here, but given that nothing he's done in the past week has assured worried Dems about his reelection prospects, and his complete dismissal of the concerns being thrown his way, I think he's only infuriated and emboldened his critics more. He couldn't convince them that he's not senile so now he's trying to say "don't oppose me or else I'll make it ugly for all of us" to get them to fall in line. Could be a sign he really is hopelessly stubborn or it could be a last ditch attempt at keeping the dam from breaking. Whether the Dems speaking tomorrow will act or not will depend on how they read what he said, but it's clear the president is daring them to oppose him.
And a lot of the backstabbers look unseemly, a point I've been making. You love a guy yesterday and knife him in the back today? That says more about the backstabber than it does about Biden. Looking at you, New York Times, Washington Post, Joe Scarborough, etc.
Biden isn't at all a beloved figure. That was why he was thrown under the bus so easily. He's doesn't command a cult like following like Trump so it's easy for them to do so. He was nominated in 2020 purely for his perceived electability and now in an election where he seems to be losing that by being down against a convicted felon the Dems have largely soured on him. I mean they'll still vote for him to stop Trump but they have no support for Biden himself.
I'm on record that the Dems are not going to dislodge him as long as Jill and Hunter want him in. The Dems do not have the stones to impeach him or invoke he 25th amendment. My bet's a long shot, I'll give you that. Joe looks like toast. But what are the Dems really going to do if he refuses to step down?
What are they gonna do if he stays in? It seems at this point he's dragging the entire party down for his own selfish goals. At this point they might as well try to make it untenable for him and hope he isn't gonna stubbornly let his own party collapse under his hubris.
Like I noted, prominent Dems are also stepping up to support him. They realize that panicking right now could well come out worse than just getting behind Biden.
It's kind of a mixed bag at this point. Alot of them have "concerns" as well. May be a civil war situation but who knows, some of the supporters may believe deep down that Biden isn't the right guy for the job. Reportedly you have folks like Don Beyer saying in private that Biden should resign and let Harris be president while openly supporting him for instance.
Not so. The tide began to turn today (Monday evening US time as I write). Lot of Dems came out for Biden, even some who'd been against him just a day or two ago.
Like I said, I'll wait until Tuesday to see if Biden has weathered the storm. The critics have been silent until they meet and gather. Here's a Politico article from Monday evening suggesting that things aren't necessarily over.
Of course Biden is incapable of doing any of that. But we started seeing it in 2019! They hid the guy all during the 2020 campaign. People have been talking about Biden's tragic age-related cognitive impairment for years. Media types have admitted they covered it up so as not to help Trump.
Yeah I was one of the people who noticed it back then too (comparing it unfavorably to his 2012 debate performance), but it's way worse now. He could at least debate and do a forceful interview in 2020.
Agreed, of course. But again: Who is going to dislodge him? The parallel's been made with Nixon, when his advisors came to see him and told him it was all over. But he was facing certain impeachment and conviction. What leverage to the Dems have over Biden? A strongly worded letter? They have nothing. Let's see if they'll start impeachment or 25A proceedings. Of course they will not do it.
Yeah I understand that ultimately it really is on Biden to step aside unless the Dems are brave enough to take stronger measures. The hope I guess is to make the situation as untenable to Biden as possible because clearly he is out of touch with the reality of the situation, and also hope that the supposed good man in Joe will make him realize how destructive his political ambitions are to a party and country that's lost faith in him. Who knows, maybe he will let the party crumble before he steps aside, but even he should realize that he can't win an election if even his team lacks any confidence in him.
Whatever side represents the rule of law and upholds the constitution. The side which didnt attempt the overthrow of the Government and the subversion of the election.
I ask you to introspect about your sentiments regarding Biden. I'll stipulate that you have your political opinions, which are shared by many and opposed by many. No point in arguing those since as you yourself recently noted, we're not in the Trump thread. I'm more interested in the psychological reaction to Biden, the vicious backstabbing and, in your case, the hope for a terrible physical malady to befall him.
The viciousness toward Biden from his own side -- that's a psychological reaction to years of going along with the lies about his condition. No other explanation fits. Who, honestly, was shocked by his debate performance? I said to myself during the debate, "Biden's reasonably lucid tonight." I actually said that. He was no worse than he's been for months, and actually a little better. He didn't glitch out like at Juneteenth. He didn't wander off like at the G7. He didn't head-butt the Pope. He didn't raise his fist and start insulting people as he frequently did in 2019.
I was literally shocked that so many people were shocked. Biden has been like this for a long time. Dems and the media and those who hate Trump have been lying -- to themselves, mostly -- and covering it all up. And now that it's exploded, are they angry at themselves? No. They're angry at Biden. And you hope he'll stroke out, to save you the cognitive dissonance of your own years of enabling the Democrats' fraud on the American people.
I ask you to introspect about your sentiments regarding Biden
I only made the remark about medical factors causing Biden to retire, because I think he ought to retire. Like a lot of people, I think the public perception of him being 'too old' is a factor which might cause him to loose. If I were an American elector, and Biden was the candidate, I'd vote for him. I'm just concerned that many others won't, and as I've already said, I believe the re-election of Donald Trump would be an unqualified disaster for the United States and the rest of the world. Nobody's been 'covering anything up' about Biden. He's never been an orator, he often had verbal stumbles and gaffes throughout his career. So what? The Washington Post kept a daily tally of Trump's lies in his first term which topped out at some number around [s]38,000[/s] (correction, 30,583) so don't talk about 'deception'. Anyway Im not going to discuss it with you, if you can't see Trump's obvious malfeasance then there's obviously no point.
And lets not forget the Congressional Oversight Committee which spent, or rather wasted, several years trying to dig dirt on Joe Biden, only to see all their witnesses turn on them on the stand or being charged for lying to the FBI. Nothing, nada, zilch.
Then review The Whitehouse For Sale report which found Trump made $6 million in emoluments from Chinese and Arabian interests while in office.
They hid the guy all during the 2020 campaign....You and all the other Dems who are shocked, shocked that Biden's suffering the age-related cognitive impairment that was apparent in 2019.
There were three pivotal one-on-one debates Biden was in and he won all three. One against Bernie and two against Trump.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-debate-poll/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-sanders-debate-poll/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/poll-final-presidential-debate-biden-trump-432052
I watched all three of those debates (and the numerous primary debates) and thought Biden did fine. If he was in bad shape, as you claim, he wouldn't have won any of them.
Ouch. The New York Times is waging an all-out assault on Biden.
The Democratic Party Must Speak the Plain Truth to the President
The 2024 presidential election is not a contest between two men, or even between two political parties. It is a battle for who we are as a nation.
President Biden clearly understands the stakes. But he seems to have lost track of his own role in this national drama. As the situation has become more dire, he has come to regard himself as indispensable. He does not seem to understand that he is now the problem and that the best hope for Democrats to retain the White House is for him to step aside.
The arrogance of the media class is palpable, even more so when colliding against the arrogance of the Biden crime family. The best part is that this is the world theyve made together. This is their vision, the product of their handiwork. And they can do no better than the dystopian future they imagine everyday in the midst of their moral panic.
It looks to me as if the democratic party has managed to hand the election to Trump on a silver platter.
If opposition to Biden has not managed to coalesce into a united front until now, then it will not. Fear of uncertainty and sheer inertia will keep him in the race.
As far as I am concerned, this is a damning indictment of the democratic party as a vehicle of political action. They allowed the Republicans to run rings around them during Obama. They mishandled Hillary's campaign. They allowed Trump to gain absurdly outsized importance during his term. They then made the most conservatice choice possible by going with Biden, narrowly managing to win. Then instead of immediately planning for his replacement, they decided to just stick it out, simply crossing their fingers that Biden would be well enough 4 years down the line to beat Trump.
And now that it turns out he isn't, they made a panicky and half-assed effort which has practically ruined Biden's chances to win without actually having any chance to replace him.
Really the party (at the federal level) should just be dissolved at this point.
If opposition to Biden has not managed to coalesce into a united front until now, then it will not. Fear of uncertainty and sheer inertia will keep him in the race.
Like the Republicans with Trump, the Democrats in congress are cowards who would rather stay the course then try and do what they know is the right thing.
Really the party (at the federal level) should just be dissolved at this point.
Hopefully to be replaced by a party that actually gives it's base a voice instead of forcing candidates that they prefer on them, like Hilary in 2016 and Biden in 2020 and 2024. The voters made it very clear that they didn't want Joe to run again due to his age, and they ran him again.
The voters made it very clear that they didn't want Joe to run again due to his age, and they ran him again.
I don't agree with this. There was no appetite for replacing Biden. He sailed through the primaries and his one credible challenger got almost no votes.
Reply to RogueAI You can look up the polls yourself back then which always had a majority of people saying Biden is too old. Biden ran as an incumbent president against other candidates who got very little to no coverage in the media so the result was pretty obvious. Perhaps they should've done some debates.
Reply to Mr Bee People told pollsters that, yeah, but did anyone put pressure on elected dems or the DNC? Did the liberal talking heads demand a primary? Did the NYTimes editorial board say anything about it? The Democrats sleepwalked into this mess.
This is a good way to put it, but it begs the question: How the hell is it that the republican party despite it's large and obvious fractures is able to put together a brazen but coherent bid for power while the democrats are asleep?
Reply to RogueAI No they didn't, but the DNC should've seen what voters were thinking and not ignored public sentiment like they always seem so eager to do.
I mean Kamala was a prosecutor. I don't think either were gonna be popular with the Democrat base in 2020 due to the BLM riots, but Biden decided on Harris.
Yes good point. I remember that conversation now. I thought Demings was a great choice. As a Californian I never liked Kamala. Well it's a done deal now. And she has the inside track. Nobody's talking about Gavin or Gretchen lately.
I'll wait until tomorrow since alot of other congressional Dems are kind of staying silent and clearly are not just falling in line like the president wanted. I'm assuming you meant Mark Warner there, and his statements are also very noncommittal. Nobody except one representative came out today against Biden, and my guess is that the dissenters are currently keeping quiet so they can present a united front when they meet later.
They had a meeting today. A reporter asked an attendee if they were on the same page, and he said, "We're not even on the same book." Reports that some people were in tears. Lot of misery in the Dem party. Pretty much anything could happen.
Yes John Warner was the one married to Elizabeth Taylor. I always get them confused
From what I can tell the House Dems are planning a meeting in the morning to discuss the matter privately, while the Senate is also doing the same at noon. Whether they'll decide to confront the president and whether any of that will be made public is anyone's guess.
Right. Rumors they're all pretty upset and no solution in sight.
That's Biden's intended play here, but given that nothing he's done in the past week has assured worried Dems about his reelection prospects, and his complete dismissal of the concerns being thrown his way, I think he's only infuriated and emboldened his critics more. He couldn't convince them that he's not senile so now he's trying to say "don't oppose me or else I'll make it ugly for all of us" to get them to fall in line. Could be a sign he really is hopelessly stubborn or it could be a last ditch attempt at keeping the dam from breaking. Whether the Dems speaking tomorrow will act or not will depend on how they read what he said, but it's clear the president is daring them to oppose him.
Right again. Nate Silver has an article out implying that Biden is bluffing. Maybe he is. He was at NATO today, didn't embarrass himself. He's hanging in. A politician who's been running for office for fifty years or more isn't going to go out easily.
Biden isn't at all a beloved figure. That was why he was thrown under the bus so easily. He's doesn't command a cult like following like Trump so it's easy for them to do so. He was nominated in 2020 purely for his perceived electability and now in an election where he seems to be losing that by being down against a convicted felon the Dems have largely soured on him. I mean they'll still vote for him to stop Trump but they have no support for Biden himself.
Yes good point. He was always kind of a joke, then in 2020 he seemed like the best option to beat Trump. But why didn't the Dems do something sooner? If they'd just have had a competitive primary they'd have replaced him already.
Biden's status, or lack thereof, in the Democratic party cuts both ways. They clearly don't have loyalty to him, but he also has no loyalty to them. That's another reason he's hanging in. He's not thinking of the good of the party, he's taken a lot of disrespect from his fellow Dems over the years. It's the Bidens versus the world at this point.
What are they gonna do if he stays in? It seems at this point he's dragging the entire party down for his own selfish goals. At this point they might as well try to make it untenable for him and hope he isn't gonna stubbornly let his own party collapse under his hubris.
Well, he was doing badly in the polls and had a high unpopularity rating even before the debate. Just another reason for them to have dealt with this during the primaries. Dems have no good options.
It's kind of a mixed bag at this point. Alot of them have "concerns" as well. May be a civil war situation but who knows, some of the supporters may believe deep down that Biden isn't the right guy for the job. Reportedly you have folks like Don Beyer saying in private that Biden should resign and let Harris be president while openly supporting him for instance.
Love to be a fly on the wall in the Dem meetings. Kamala's playing it cool, supporting Biden in public. Someone mentioned that of all the Democrats, Kamala is the only one who had a Constitutional duty to notify people that Biden wasn't all there. Especially with the Parkinson's story in play. I wonder if that will come up. A lot of people have been covering up this situation for a long time.
Like I said, I'll wait until Tuesday to see if Biden has weathered the storm. The critics have been silent until they meet and gather. Here's a Politico article from Monday evening suggesting that things aren't necessarily over.
Definitely not over. This thing's just getting started. Even if they swapped in Kamala, it would not be smooth sailing. The public would have a lot of questions about "What did they know, and when did they know it," as they used to say during Watergate.
Yeah I was one of the people who noticed it back then too (comparing it unfavorably to his 2012 debate performance), but it's way worse now. He could at least debate and do a forceful interview in 2020.
He's gotten much worse just in the past few months. It's heartbreaking at a human level. Especially since none of us are immune. I kind of admire his stubbornness. I'd like to see him stay in and stick it to the party. According to the polling he was losing on the issues anyway. Not clear a last-minute swap would help. Not entirely clear that Biden's condition is the only reason he's behind in the polls.
Yeah I understand that ultimately it really is on Biden to step aside unless the Dems are brave enough to take stronger measures.
They'll never impeach or invoke the 25th. They won't do it. And I don't know if pressure will be enough. I don't see Jill giving in "for the good of the party."
When the GOPs came to Nixon, they told him he was certain to be impeached and convicted. The Dems have no such leverage. This really is a day-by-day situation. Next week is the GOP convention, that might take some of the media attention off the Dems.
The hope I guess is to make the situation as untenable to Biden as possible because clearly he is out of touch with the reality of the situation, and also hope that the supposed good man in Joe will make him realize how destructive his political ambitions are to a party and country that's lost faith in him.
BIden is not a good man. His lunchbucket Joe act is just for the public. I've heard he's always been a very nasty guy in private. Of course you're right, if he would gracefully bow out and endorse Kamala, that's the best the Dems can hope for.
Who knows, maybe he will let the party crumble before he steps aside, but even he should realize that he can't win an election if even his team lacks any confidence in him.
I think the Dems should crumble for what they've done. They had three years to deal with this. Instead they've been lying and gaslighting the country. It was all "cheap fakes" and right wing propaganda right up until the debate. By rights, the voters should punish the Dems severely for all this. But of course Trump has his negatives. People who hate Trump are not going to suddenly vote for him.
I think if the Dems coalesced behind Joe that gives them their best chance. Then Kamala can take over shortly after the inauguration if Joe should win. It's going to be a close election either way. It's very unclear if swapping out Joe actually improves the Dems' chances.
And I dont believe that for a minute. Biden was quite capable of executing his first term, and did so with distinction.
Ok. You and I can agree to disagree on many things, and this is another such.
But don't you know that he's been getting the questions ahead of time at his infrequent press conferences? And making errors and telling falsehoods for the past three years? I guess people see what they want to see.
Are you saying you were genuinely shocked at his condition at the debate? Believed everything else was "cheap fakes?" How can that be? If you say so, I believe you ... but I've seen Biden's cognitive decline since 2019. Even at the Dem primaries in 2020 Cory Booker and others were making fun of his failing memory.
Distinction? Well I am trying to focus on the politics and not the policies because we all know each other's talking points on policy. But the inflation, the direct result of the massive printing and spending? The open borders that are costing LA and Chicago and NYC billions? Two new wars? Trump had none. If you call that distinction, we can agree to disagree on that too. I'll stipulate to all well-known talking points and rebuttals on both sides, not intending to argue policy. But a lot of Americans are quite unhappy with the Biden admin totally apart from Joe's personal condition.
Which by the way, is one reason swapping out Joe for Kamala might not be the panacea the Dems think it is. Same policies with less mental confusion. Not clear that's an electoral winner.
I only made the remark about medical factors causing Biden to retire, because I think he ought to retire. Like a lot of people, I think the public perception of him being 'too old' is a factor which might cause him to loose. If I were an American elector, and Biden was the candidate, I'd vote for him. I'm just concerned that many others won't,
If you are backing off the stroke remark, I'll be glad to give you a pass on that. I did take it as representative of the massive anger that Dem suddenly feel towards Biden, when they'd been supporting him five minutes earlier.
and as I've already said, I believe the re-election of Donald Trump would be an unqualified disaster for the United States and the rest of the world.
I understand that you feel that way. But Trump was already president for four years. He didn't put people in camps. He didn't do any of the bad things the Trump haters are afraid of. In fact he got rolled by the administrative state and most of the people who worked for him. Some dictator.
And no new wars started on his watch. That is something. That is a lot. And it was no accident. Trump was the peace candidate in 2016 and 2020, and he's the peace candidate today. The left used to be for peace. One of the factors in my defection from the left.
That is just not true. He's been bumbling and stumbling in a frankly heartbreaking manner for several years now. It's not possible to have not seen it. The wandering off stages, the mis-statements that had to be cleaned up by aides the next day ... ok I won't go on. If you claim to have first seen Joe's infimity at the debate, I'll believe you. Because you say so; not because such a claim is credible.
When Joe wandered off at the G7, froze up at Juneteenth, and head-butted the Pope, did you believe KJP when she called those "cheap fakes?" Curious to know.
He's never been an orator, he often had verbal stumbles and gaffes throughout his career.
He has always been corrupt and a rather stupid man. But he was always verbal. Nothing like the last few months and the last few years. The slurring of words. After the debate I was shocked that everyone else was shocked. He seemed to me the same as he's been for quite some time.
So what? The Washington Post kept a daily tally of Trump's lies in his first term which topped out at some number around 38,000 (correction, 30,583) so don't talk about 'deception'. Anyway Im not going to discuss it with you, if you can't see Trump's obvious malfeasance then there's obviously no point.
The point is not that Orange Hitler is worse than the cognitively-impaired husk. That's a political judgment and politics is not about purity. But look what you're doing. You are denying Joe's cognitive impairment on the grounds that Trump is a terrible person. How does that even make sense? Trump is Trump, I get you don't like the guy. That has nothing to do with the fact that the Dems have indeed been covering up Biden's increasingly worse cognitive issues.
Do you even see your bad logic? You are saying that Trump is evil THEREFORE the Dems have not been covering up Biden's cognitive issues. Surely you can see the flaw in that argument.
You can't even discuss Biden's sad state of mind because you hate Trump so much. What kind of sense does that make?
You can't discuss Biden's cognitive issues because you hate Trump. This is exactly how the Democratic party got itself into the pickle it's in! Five years of denial, gaslighting, and coverups.
Ok let me say this another way. If I am understanding you, you claim that you cannot discuss the Democrats' current cognitively-impaired Biden pickle with me, because I don't agree with you about how evil Trump is.
Some people see politics purely in partisan terms. I can discuss a pickle whether the pickle is on one side or the other. The current situation is unprecedented in US history. It's nothing like when LBJ dropped out in 1968 over the Vietnam war, or when Truman chose not to run in 1952 due to his unpopularity.
To me, politics is a partisan affair, to be sure. But it is also a spectator sport. I don't have to love Trump or hate Trump to be enjoying the spectacle. But from your point of view, you can't even have a conversation with me about politics if I don't hate Trump the way you do.
In that case I'm sorry I troubled you. I enjoy talking politics. I don't have to love or hate the people involved. You can vote for Biden (if you were a US voter) regardless of his mental state; and in theory, you could have a conversation about politics with someone whose politics are different than yours. I've always been able to do that. Not everyone does that, sadly. Political conversation is polarized these days, but it can be otherwise.
If the GOPs were in a pickle this week I'd discuss that. I've seen GOPs and Dems in plenty of pickles over the years. I love a good political scandal. That's just me.
I watched all three of those debates (and the numerous primary debates) and thought Biden did fine. If he was in bad shape, as you claim, he wouldn't have won any of them.
I recall being amazed that Biden made it alive through those debates. I was not the only one with that expectation. I never thought he'd make it to election day. I saw an unwell man. And you are right, he did surprise me by surviving. Guess it was just me. What do I know, I liked Tulsi. Still do.
Reply to fishfry You don't have a left in the US. You have a slightly left of centre Sanders who is silenced by the Democratic Party which is itself right but not as authoritarian as the Republicans (unitary theory of government Bullshit).
I recall qualifying the 2020 election as a choice between two evils. One of those evils got a lot worse.
It clarifies once again that the USA doesn't qualify as a democracy. If the political system cannot produce choices beyond a vegetable and a criminal then quite obviously other people are in control what you get to vote on. We call that banana republics.
You don't have a left in the US. You have a slightly left of centre Sanders who is silenced by the Democratic Party which is itself right but not as authoritarian as the Republicans (unitary theory of government Bullshit).
I hardly see the GOP as authoritarian. Going back a ways, which of these postwar GOP presidents were authoritarians? Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, Trump. Feel free to explain to me what these folks did that was authoritarian. I opposed the hell out of 43's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those wars never could have happened without the enthusiastic consent of the top Dems such as Hillary, Schumer, Biden, et. al.
In theory, the GOPs should be for free enterprise. Not that they really are, but that's more of libertarian sensibility. But I'm open to understanding you observation. When Obama ruled "with a pen and phone," was that the unitary executive? Or when the Supreme Court told Biden he couldn't transfer student loans to the taxpayers and he did it anyway, was that the unitary executive?
It clarifies once again that the USA doesn't qualify as a democracy. If the political system cannot produce choices beyond a vegetable and a criminal then quite obviously other people are in control what you get to vote on. We call that banana republics.
YouTubers Eric Hunley and Marc Groubert of America's Untold Stories awarded the US eight bananas (out of ten) following Bragg's conviction of Trump. What of it? Some of us don't think this country's had a legitimate government since the deep state killed JFK in 1963. We have a country of, by, and for the military-industrial complex.
$200 billion to Ukraine, and barely $330 million to Maui after their fire. And that was under the Biden administration. Care to defend that? I'd send $200B to Maui and send the corrupt Nazi Zelinsky money-laundering operation straight to hell. But that's just me. Peacenik from way back, like the left used to be.
Trump started no new wars, the only president in my lifetime to have managed that. Yet he's universally hated by the "good people." Why is that? Why do the good people love the warmongers?
What is on your mind about this? Who's the authoritarian and what have they done? Biden has been quite the unitary executive.
They had a meeting today. A reporter asked an attendee if they were on the same page, and he said, "We're not even on the same book." Reports that some people were in tears. Lot of misery in the Dem party. Pretty much anything could happen.
Yeah the dam didn't break for now, but clearly nobody is eager to unite behind Biden just yet. Bennet's comments recently indicate that Biden isn't gonna be able to ignore and move on from the problem as he usually likes to do.
Right. Rumors they're all pretty upset and no solution in sight.
Courage is a rare thing among elected officials which is why Trump wasn't banished from the GOP, despite their occasional concerns about him post Jan 6 and 2022 midterms.
Right again. Nate Silver has an article out implying that Biden is bluffing. Maybe he is. He was at NATO today, didn't embarrass himself. He's hanging in. A politician who's been running for office for fifty years or more isn't going to go out easily.
I'd say call the bluff. Biden isn't exactly a guy who embodies strength as we saw during the debate and how he's been handling the Gaza situation. I mean sure he has alot of angry stubborn grandpa energy but Netanyahu has been crossing his red lines repeatedly and he has not done anything to stop him.
At this point I don't know what the congressional Dems have to lose either so they might as well try to improve their party's situation and place themselves on the right side of history in case Biden stays in, Trump wins, and he ends democracy.
One interesting aspect of Biden's ABC interview was that he never really specified how he would react if the congressional Dems turned on him. He outright refused to answer the question and acted like there's no revolt going on. If he was really delusional you would've thought that he would give a non-assuring answer like, "I would sit down and tell them 'We will win'," or something to that effect. That will probably hang over the Dems minds as they contemplate what to do next.
But why didn't the Dems do something sooner? If they'd just have had a competitive primary they'd have replaced him already.
Arrogance. They thought they could probably roll with Biden into the next election and dismissed people's concerns about his age. I mean they got pretty far before we saw what happened a week ago... putting aside all those viral videos of Biden having senior moments.
Biden's status, or lack thereof, in the Democratic party cuts both ways. They clearly don't have loyalty to him, but he also has no loyalty to them. That's another reason he's hanging in. He's not thinking of the good of the party, he's taken a lot of disrespect from his fellow Dems over the years. It's the Bidens versus the world at this point.
Sounds like great qualities to have in a leader, both for the party and the country.
Definitely not over. This thing's just getting started. Even if they swapped in Kamala, it would not be smooth sailing. The public would have a lot of questions about "What did they know, and when did they know it," as they used to say during Watergate.
Yeah, but that would be much better than well, trying to convince the public to vote for a soon to be 82 year old man who clearly has cognitive issues to serve another 4 years in office.
He's gotten much worse just in the past few months. It's heartbreaking at a human level. Especially since none of us are immune. I kind of admire his stubbornness. I'd like to see him stay in and stick it to the party
Depends on your political affiliation but as someone who doesn't want Trump winning I have no sympathy for an old man who is selfishly staying in and gambling with his party and country simply to try and get a second term in his 80s.
Not clear a last-minute swap would help. Not entirely clear that Biden's condition is the only reason he's behind in the polls.
At this point I can see way more upsides to a new candidate than running with Biden. Biden can't do anything to fix the fact that he's down in the polls but another candidate can.
As Nikki Haley said, in a race between two incredibly unpopular geriatrics, the first party to get rid of their candidate wins the election. Polling seems to back that idea up, showing that a generic Dem or Rep running against either Trump or Biden respectively will easily win. It'll be interesting to see if that theory holds true.
When the GOPs came to Nixon, they told him he was certain to be impeached and convicted. The Dems have no such leverage. This really is a day-by-day situation. Next week is the GOP convention, that might take some of the media attention off the Dems.
Yeah but they can severely harm and embarrass him, which at this point Biden frankly deserves. As a narcissist that's something he probably cares deeply about. Leverage isn't the same as having complete control over someone.
BIden is not a good man. His lunchbucket Joe act is just for the public.
Yeah doesn't seem like it so far. He's become oddly Trumpian in just about every respect since the debate happened. That being said it could all be a bluff and he may fold if his party lost faith in him. Biden's recent attempt at painting his problems as the elites trying to get rid of him as Trump usually does just isn't believable coming from him, a man who has been propped up by the elites all his life.
I think if the Dems coalesced behind Joe that gives them their best chance. Then Kamala can take over shortly after the inauguration if Joe should win. It's going to be a close election either way. It's very unclear if swapping out Joe actually improves the Dems' chances.
They're likely gonna coalesce if Biden lasts until the convention, and the party and the media will never bring up the age or replacement issue again.
Or... maybe they will continue bringing up the issue of replacement if it's possible to swap him out post nomination, though at that point it'd just be Kamala who would be the nominee. Could be possible (apparently there was discussion of Pence taking over the GOP ticket in October of 2016 after the Access Hollywood tapes came out after all). Biden is likely to have a major senior moment in the next 4 months especially during the next debate which may reignite the discussion, or he could just die of old age. He's 81 after all, so it's not a possibility you can definitively rule out.
Reply to Benkei You could argue that the elites foisted Biden on Democrats, but Republicans had no shortage of options when it came time to pick Trump, both in 2015 and 2023. That was a purely democratic exercise and the GOP voters got exactly what they wanted.
Wouldn't she need a sufficiently detailed political program? And present it for all to see? Or is that no longer relevant? :)
Judging by what I've seen of/from her, I can see her as US president. Surely a whole class above the Clown. From memory, she had some qualms about a normal life with/for their kids.
Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, Trump. Feel free to explain to me what these folks did that was authoritarian.
What did Trump do that was authoritarian? Seriously? He tried to pressure the Republican Georgia secretary of state to "find" exactly the number of votes he needed to win. He tried to pressure his own VP to not certify the election (Pence had to call Dan Qualye, of all people, for moral guidance), and he spread and continues to spread lie after lie about the election he lost. You should listen to Bill Barr's testimony about the aftermath of the election. Total banana republic stuff. We dodged a serious bullet. Had Pence not certified, or had Raffensperger gone along with the attempt to steal the election (he says he felt threatened by Trump), it could have gotten a lot uglier than it was. And then there's the fake elector scheme, and of course Jan 6th.
Judging by what I've seen of/from her, I can see her as US president. Surely a whole class above the Clown. From memory, she had some qualms about a normal life with/for their kids.
Honestly I still don't see the obsession people have with Michelle Obama, especially since she doesn't seem to have any political ambitions or policies of her own. Like is it purely because people miss Barack Obama that much?
Honestly I still don't see the obsession people have with her, especially since she doesn't seem to have any political ambitions or policies of her own. Like is it purely because people miss Barack Obama that much?
She comes across as a smart, nice, honest person. Since she was First Lady, she's intimately familiar with the job. She's been the in the public eye for a long time and not even a whiff of a scandal. If her politics is somewhat moderate, she would wipe the floor with Trump. And Barack would be back in the White House. It's a wonderful fantasy, but that's all it is. Although the betting odds have her at 7%...
Reply to RogueAI I mean she may be First Lady but that doesn't at all give you any idea of what being president is like.
That being said if Jgill's prediction about Biden stepping aside (which is more likely now after the debate) and endorsing Michelle Obama that will certainly be Trump's worst nightmare. Plus the optics of passing over Kamala for another black woman wouldn't be as severe. Michelle just needs to last 4 months and the election is in the bag. A wonderful fantasy indeed.
My liking him or not is irrelevant. His danger to democracy is not a matter of opinion. Hes not only a terrible person, hes a dreadful leader, his only policy is retribution. His speeches are horrific and contain nothing about policy as such, only threats and fear-mongering. How you can fall for his schtick beats me.
Biden is not a husk. Hes been an effective senator and president, but he needs to pass the torch.
//
I note today that Gavin Newsom is acting as party whip for Biden. I believe hes totally sincere in so doing, but also that hes ideally positioned to step up if the torch is passed.
Reply to Mr Bee I think being married to a president would give you a fairly good idea of what the job is like. My wife certainly has a good idea of what my teaching job is like. Obviously, not as a good idea as someone who is a teacher or is president.
Yeah the dam didn't break for now, but clearly nobody is eager to unite behind Biden just yet. Bennet's comments recently indicate that Biden isn't gonna be able to ignore and move on from the problem as he usually likes to do.
I think that even if Biden bowed out gracefully (unlikely) or the Dems forced him out (quite unseemly, also unlikely) and elevated Kamala, whose popularity is below Biden's (I haven't checked that lately) life would NOT suddenly be a bed of roses. A lot of Dem voters would be unhappy and confused. And the policies are no different. Biden had a bad approval rating and was losing the election to Trump even before the debate. Many of the Dems' policy results such as inflation, unchecked immigration causing blue cities to be overrun with a humanitarian and financial disaster; the two wars, etc etc, are quite unpopular. And Kam is to the left of Joe. I don't see how this solves the Dems' electoral problems.
Courage is a rare thing among elected officials which is why Trump wasn't banished from the GOP, despite their occasional concerns about him post Jan 6 and 2022 midterms.
Verily I say unto you, and unto all the fervent Trump haters on this forum:
Trump is 100% the Democrats' fault
Back in early 2022, people were tired of Trump. I was tired of Trump. He has all his negatives, the bluster, the bullshit, the thin skin, the midnight tweeting, the lack of understanding of how the government works. I was ready for a new GOP candidate to challenge the Dem orthodoxy that's not working for a good portion of the people in this country.
If you remember, DeSantis was running neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls. Then Biden, Garland, and Wray raided Mar a Lago. The very next day, DeSantis was obliged to come out in support of Trump. From that moment onward, Trump started rising in the polls and DeSantis sank out of sight.
With every new lawfare case, Trump became more popular. Because the Trump haters see these cases as righteous applications of the law; but the other half of the country sees them as bad faith politicization of the American system of justice, one of the best things we (used to) have going for us.
And so now, Trump is all but unstoppable, and then there was the debate, and here we are.
I say this: If the Dems had done two things: (1) Totally ignored Trump; and (2) Had an open, competitive primary; then at this very moment, Gavin or Gretchen would be beating the stuffing out of DeSantis.
The Democrats created all of this. They made a martyr then a hero out of Trump; and they refused to confront reality about Biden's condition. The Dems did this. Not the GOP. Most of the GOP hate Trump, they'd love an alternative. The Democrats forced the GOP to rally around Trump.
I'd say call the bluff. Biden isn't exactly a guy who embodies strength as we saw during the debate and how he's been handling the Gaza situation. I mean sure he has alot of angry stubborn grandpa energy but Netanyahu has been crossing his red lines repeatedly and he has not done anything to stop him.
At this point I don't know what the congressional Dems have to lose either so they might as well try to improve their party's situation and place themselves on the right side of history in case Biden stays in, Trump wins, and he ends democracy.
I truly do not understand that talking point. Trump was already president for four years and he didn't end democracy. On the contrary, he got rolled by the bureaucrats and most of the people who worked for him.
I think what people mean is that Trump is going to do to the Dems exactly what they did to him. And frankly, some of that would be a good thing. Garland and Wray are thugs. The country may never recover from their abuse of the justice system.
But Trump "ending democracy?" Nonsense. Most of that is projection on the part of the Democrats. We're having an election. That's democracy, imperfect as it is.
One interesting aspect of Biden's ABC interview was that he never really specified how he would react if the congressional Dems turned on him. He outright refused to answer the question and acted like there's no revolt going on. If he was really delusional you would've thought that he would give a non-assuring answer like, "I would sit down and tell them 'We will win'," or something to that effect. That will probably hang over the Dems minds as they contemplate what to do next.
He's the president of the United States. He doesn't have to do or say a damn thing. He said something the other day I really liked. He said, "If someone wants to challenge me at the convention, let them." He's a tough old bird. I don't like the guy but this might be his finest hour!
He's the president. He has Jill and Hunter, two pit bulls. He has 3896 Democratic delegates.
What do the Dems have? A strongly worded editorial from the New York Times?
Arrogance. They thought they could probably roll with Biden into the next election and dismissed people's concerns about his age. I mean they got pretty far before we saw what happened a week ago... putting aside all those viral videos of Biden having senior moments.
Cheap fakes. Like I say. The Dems are in a pickle entirely of their own making. Trump didn't make the Democrats ignore the Biden situation for the past three years. Whose bright idea was it to anoint Joe with their non-primary primary? If they'd had a real primary, Gav and Gretch would have been all over it. The 1968 Democrats had a wild primary that ultimately drove LBJ out. They could have and should have done exactly the same thing.
Arrogance, I guess that's as good a word for it as any. Short-sightedness. They tried to keep a lid on it and now it's blown up in their faces.
Yeah, but that would be much better than well, trying to convince the public to vote for a soon to be 82 year old man who clearly has cognitive issues to serve another 4 years in office.
Wouldn't have to. He can run then turn it over to Kam in 2025. Would have made his point. Kam is not any more likely to win the election than Biden. Kam has high unfavorability. She's a lousy politician, the 2020 primaries showed that. She had to drop out in 2019. She is not the Dems' savior.
Depends on your political affiliation but as someone who doesn't want Trump winning I have no sympathy for an old man who is selfishly staying in and gambling with his party and country simply to try and get a second term in his 80s.
I'm making a nonpartisan point. Say you hate Trump. I am making the point that Biden arguably has a better shot than Kamala. The party will look like a clown show if they throw over Joe after telling us he was "sharp as a tack" for three years. People will not like that. They don't have to vote for Trump, but enough of them might just stay home.
The message would be, "We said Joe is sharp as a tack but we were lying, so here, vote for highly unpopular Kamala." I don't think that's a winning message for the Dems. Not a partisan point. Biden has a better shot to win than Kamala. It doesn't matter that his mind is gone. He's not Trump, AND the DNC isn't pulling a last-minute switcheroo.
I don't think the voting public is going to like a switcheroo on top of the fraud they've already seen. Hope I made my point that I'm not talking partisanship. I think Kam's a terrible candidate. Her negatives don't go away if they elevate her.
At this point I can see way more upsides to a new candidate than running with Biden. Biden can't do anything to fix the fact that he's down in the polls but another candidate can.
Ok, so that's a point we disagree on. But not a partisan point for me. If Trump didn't exist, the Dems should still run Joe. The swicheroo factor, I'll call it. People will feel that they've been played.
As Nikki Haley said, in a race between two incredibly unpopular geriatrics, the first party to get rid of their candidate wins the election. Polling seems to back that idea up, showing that a generic Dem or Rep running against either Trump or Biden respectively will easily win. It'll be interesting to see if that theory holds true.
LOL. Well you know, maybe you are convincing me a little. I could be wrong. I give my own theory only about 75% credence. Maybe people are more horrified at Joe's condition than I realize. All the people who were genuinely shocked by the debate.
Yeah but they can severely harm and embarrass him, which at this point Biden frankly deserves. As a narcissist that's something he probably cares deeply about. Leverage isn't the same as having complete control over someone.
I am pretty sure Biden is way beyond embarrassment at this point. And Jill and Hunter surely have no shame. But I see your point. At some point he'll cave to the political pressure of being so unliked. Could happen. Or it could just make him dig in more. He's been in politics over 50 years. Survival is an instinct. We see it all the time. His body knows how to be a politician even if his mind is gone.
Yeah doesn't seem like it so far. He's become oddly Trumpian in just about every respect since the debate happened. That being said it could all be a bluff and he may fold if his party lost faith in him. Biden's recent attempt at painting his problems as the elites trying to get rid of him as Trump usually does just isn't believable coming from him, a man who has been propped up by the elites all his life.
Either way, I'm enjoying the show. I'm one who always enjoys a political show. If the GOP were having a fiasco this week I'd enjoy that just as much.
Or... maybe they will continue bringing up the issue of replacement if it's possible to swap him out post nomination, though at that point it'd just be Kamala who would be the nominee. Could be possible (apparently there was discussion of Pence taking over the GOP ticket in October of 2016 after the Access Hollywood tapes came out after all). Biden is likely to have a major senior moment in the next 4 months especially during the next debate which may reignite the discussion, or he could just die of old age. He's 81 after all, so it's not a possibility you can definitively rule out.
Could happen. And Trump is no spring chicken either. One more Big Mac could do it.
His policy of splitting migrant families resulted with many children being interred away from their families.
I have followed southern border politics for decades. Here's how it works. I am going to explain some things to you now.
An adult shows up at the border with a kid. The adult says, "This is my child." The kid is tired, hungry, scared, and doesn't say a thing. The adult has no documentation.
You are the administration in charge of border policy. What do you do?
If you say, "Ok, you can both come in," then you turn a lot of kids over to traffickers.
So what do you do to avoid turning children over to traffickers? You separate the kids from the adults until you can contact the authorities in their claimed home country, and find out who they are. If they are a legit family, you reunite them and send them on their way. If not, you just stopped a trafficker and saved a child.
Now, what do you do with the kids? If you put them in a big dormitory, they will be assaulted by sexual predators. So you put chain link around the kids to protect them.
In 2014, Obama had a huge refugee crisis. He "put kids in cages." Photos circulated on social media of the kids in chain link enclosures, with each kid wrapped in a space blanked looking like a baked potato in foil. The images shocked people.
So what did Obama do? Well, optics are everything in politics. They started separating fewer families, stopped putting "kids in cages," and turned a hell of a lot of children over to traffickers. The Washington Post wrote a story about Obama's trafficking problem, but mostly the story got no play.
Fast forward to Trump. Trump does not like traffickers. He tried to protect the kids. He did separate families, to determine if they really were families. Photos were circulated on social media -- the same Obama kids in cages photos. Liberals were outraged till they found out those were Obama's kids in Obama's cages. More photos circulated. Again -- Obama's kids, Obama's cages.
Bad optics. "Trump put kids in cages." So fucking ignorant. A lot of liberals -- ok a lot of people in general -- lead with their emotions, especially when they are ignorant of the facts. So "kids in cages" became the attack on Trump, when in fact the whole idea is to separate traffickers from children and keep the children safe from sexual predators until the true family status can be sorted out.
Now Biden comes in, rescinds all of Trump's border policies including Remain in Mexico. Biden now has a massive immigration crisis on his hands. But the optics are the most important thing. So what does Biden do? He just lets all the adults stay with the kids and lets them in to the country.
What is the result? Biden has lost track of 85,000 children. Most likely turned over to traffickers as sex and work slaves, as you and I speak tonight. Here, read this.
The House Oversight Committees National Security Subcommittee held a hearing this week on the Office of Refugee Resettlements Unaccompanied Alien Children Program. Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the office, appeared, but if you watch that hearing youll learn a lot more from the questions than the answers because there werent many answers on key issues, such as the fate of 85,000 children the office has apparently lost contact with. Someone needs to put a up a large Help Wanted sign in Washington, because the American people are desperately in need of accountability on migrant children both in the government and in the media.
I told you a few posts ago, in a post you never replied to, that Joe Biden is running the largest child trafficking operation in the world. It is true. It is a moral outrage. Nobody gives a shit.
Now you know what "separating families" and "kids in cages" are all about. You separate kids from adults until you can determine who's a parent and who's a trafficker. And you keep the kids behind chain link fences to protect them from sexual predators.
But kids in cages makes for bad optics. So Biden just turns the kids over to traffickers, and ignorant liberals know nothing about it, and STILL THEY BITCH ABOUT TRUMP'S CAGES.
Liberals still do not know that those were Obama's cages, Obama's family separation policy, and that once the optics got bad, Obama just said fuck it, and turned the kids over to traffickers. No more bad optics. And that's Biden's policy too. No cages. Just trafficked children.
Get a clue, brother. Get a moral clue. I explained this to you two weeks ago and you never acknowledged the post. Joe Biden is a child trafficker. Because the optics are better than "kids in cages," which upsets ignorant liberals.
My liking him or not is irrelevant. His danger to democracy is not a matter of opinion. Hes not only a terrible person, hes a dreadful leader, his only policy is retribution. His speeches are horrific and contain nothing about policy as such, only threats and fear-mongering. How you can fall for his schtick beats me.
Ok. I could, for sake of argument, stipulate to all that. I can still talk politics! I can still talk about Joe Biden's mental impairment. I do believe you said to me earlier that you can't even talk about the Biden pickle unless I hate Trump as you do. Some people feel that way. Myself, I'll talk politics to talk politics. I don't have to love or hate Trump to talk about the mess the Dems got themselves into this week.
I would be glad to explain to you "how I can fall for his schtick," but that's more for the Trump forum. In this thread I'm trying to focus on the topic, the 2024 US election. Or as Joe Biden puts it: "I'll beat Donald Trump again in 2020." It would be funny if it weren't so tragic, and if old age and sickness didn't eventually catch up with us all.
I'll be happy to argue the merits of Trump with you if you'd like, but it's not really all that productive. I did write you a long-assed post a couple of weeks ago about my journey from dedicated liberal to the politically homeless, reluctant Trumper than I am today. I could write more. It's been decades in the making. It started when Teddy Kennedy killed a girl and the left rallied around him. It was my first sense of a disturbance in the liberal force. There were many other such moments over the years. This Biden fiasco is just the latest.
Biden is not a husk. Hes been an effective senator and president, but he needs to pass the torch.
Man even the New York Times thinks he's a husk. I don't even have to make the case. Biden's own "friends" are making that case with sharp knives. Julius Caesar never got it so bad on the floor of the Roman senate. George Stephanopoulos said today that he doesn't think Biden can make it another four years. Et tu, George.
I note today that Gavin Newsom is acting as party whip for Biden. I believe hes totally sincere in so doing, but also that hes ideally positioned to step up if the torch is passed.
Newsom is too smart and too ambitious to touch the current mess with a ten foot pole. Whitmer too. Any Dem who's viable for 2028 is going to show loyalty to Biden and stay out of 2024. Why go down with this sinking ship, when a brand new ship is arriving in four years?
I appreciate the opportunity to chat. I really did take it to heart a few weeks ago when you expressed disappointment in my political sentiments, in light of my math-related content. I'm always willing to talk politics with people who don't share my opinions. I'm not blind to Trump's many flaws, but IMO he really is not the monster the Dems have made him out to be. I'm always happy to explain myself.
Bottom line: The Dems and the left have deeply lost their way; and Trump is the only alternative. I'm not for Trump. I'm against what the Dems and the left have become. I saw what the Dems had become in 2002, when Hillary made an impassioned speech on the Senate floor in favor of the war in Iraq. The Democrats could have stopped that war. They were looking to Hillary for leadership. She chose the path of war. So when 2016 showed up and it was Trump or Hillary, I chose Trump. And why did the Dems nominate a corrupt, warmongering, unlikable, lousy politician like Hillary? As Obama said when he destroyed her in 2008: "You're likable enough, Hillary."
And as I pointed out in my latest reply to @Mr Bee, Trump is a monster of the Dems' own making. If the Dems had (1) Totally ignored Trump starting in 2022: no lawfare, no rhetoric; and (2) run open, competitive primaries; then today, as we speak. Gavin or Gretchen would be handily beating DeSantis.
The Democrats turned Trump in to a martyr. I was sick of the guy myself before the Dems turned the apparatus of the American justice system on him. That Mar a Lago raid put Trump into the White House.
What did Trump do that was authoritarian? Seriously? He tried to pressure the Republican Georgia secretary of state to "find" exactly the number of votes he needed to win. He tried to pressure his own VP to not certify the election (Pence had to call Dan Qualye, of all people, for moral guidance), and he spread and continues to spread lie after lie about the election he lost. You should listen to Bill Barr's testimony about the aftermath of the election. Total banana republic stuff. We dodged a serious bullet. Had Pence not certified, or had Raffensperger gone along with the attempt to steal the election (he says he felt threatened by Trump), it could have gotten a lot uglier than it was. And then there's the fake elector scheme, and of course Jan 6th.
Ok so it's all J6. Bunch of unarmed people are invited in by the Capitol cops, and Pelosi and the hysterical Dems whip up a national hysteria. In the end, it's J6. A Reichstag fire for our times. I find myself wondering what the left will do if Trump wins in November. I expect the left to riot, as they do whenever they don't get their way. Maybe you missed the George Floyd riots. $1-2B in damages, "the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history" according to Wiki. And who supported a fund to bail out the violent rioters? Kamala Harris.
So if that's all you got, what about the rest of Trump's four years in office? "Republicans are authoritarians," is what you said. I list all the postwar GOP presidents and all you've got is J6. As a matter of logic, can you see that you have not made your point?
Except for 2008 & 2020, I've only voted for progressive alternatives to our governing corporate duopoly ... Quoting Benkei
You don't have a left in the US. You have a slightly left of centre Sanders who is silenced by the Democratic Party which is itself right but not as authoritarian as the Republicans (unitary theory of government Bullshit).
I recall qualifying the 2020 election as a choice between two evils. One of those evils got a lot worse. It clarifies once again that the USA doesn't qualify as a democracy. If the political system cannot produce choices beyond a vegetable and a criminal then quite obviously other people are in control what you get to vote on. We call that banana republics.
I hardly see the GOP as authoritarian. Going back a ways, which of these postwar GOP presidents were authoritarians? Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, Trump. Feel free to explain to me what these folks did that was authoritarian. I opposed the hell out of 43's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those wars never could have happened without the enthusiastic consent of the top Dems such as Hillary, Schumer, Biden, et. al.
In theory, the GOPs should be for free enterprise. Not that they really are, but that's more of libertarian sensibility. But I'm open to understanding you observation. When Obama ruled "with a pen and phone," was that the unitary executive? Or when the Supreme Court told Biden he couldn't transfer student loans to the taxpayers and he did it anyway, was that the unitary executive?
You hardly see because it's a feature not a bug. But some things that have me grimace in distaste are the ability of US Presidents to:
Rule by executive order (which have included travel bans, torture (Bush's classified "directive"), immigration, listening in on all data (for "security" EO 12333), healthcare reform and environmental policies).
Veto legislation.
Deploy troops in foreign territory without congressional authority (because technically it isn't a war)
Yes, this is absolutely authoritarian from the view of a European democracy. Unitary executive theory would take this even further.
Reply to RogueAI What are and were the substantial policy differences between other GOP candidates and Trump? What exactly was the choice there?
Apart from general Democrat programs, she hasn't aired much I know of, though she's associated with her husband and his administration. Yep, she comes across as smart, knowledgeable, strong, present, "heart in the right place", not a serial bullshitter (or liar for that matter), she could stand up to, and be respected by, the world. I don't think that's an obsession, more like a contrast that perhaps many would welcome.
She'd get under the microscope, though, face extreme scrutiny, whether from political opponents, foreign (covert) campaigns, tabloids seeking to make a buck, mudslingers, 1-shot magnification of some issue, heck racists even, ... (From memory, there was one bullshit story about one of their kids narrowly escaping that horrible horrible family; OK, I'm exaggerating, yet that's the kind of thing associated with that crap.) I can see why she wouldn't want to put her and her's through that.
A lot of Dem voters would be unhappy and confused.
Actually I'd say alot of them would be relieved if Biden were replaced right now. Like I said alot of Dem voters didn't want Biden to run again and the debate has been spread around so much that people know what's going on with Biden. Most of the in person takes from Democrats I've seen seem to be "yeah I'll vote for Joe over Trump because Trump, but honestly I think I will prefer anything else".
Biden had a bad approval rating and was losing the election to Trump even before the debate.
Part of what makes me see the debate as a blessing in disguise. I thought Biden's campaign was a dying campaign that was gonna lose before anyways so a disastrous debate performance was just the sort of jolt needed in desperate times. I mean Biden may still stay in but if things were going in a bad direction already then hey gotta take a chance right?
Many of the Dems' policy results such as inflation, unchecked immigration causing blue cities to be overrun with a humanitarian and financial disaster; the two wars, etc etc, are quite unpopular. And Kam is to the left of Joe. I don't see how this solves the Dems' electoral problems.
I'm not gonna argue policy but politically Kamala would be wise to try to distance herself from the unpopular policies of Biden's administration and tie herself to the more popular aspects. The Gaza issue for instance is something that is splitting the base right now for Biden, so another candidate who isn't as tied to Biden's actions would be better, if simply for the fact that they won't be seen as having Palestinian blood on their hands as the chief director of an administration's foreign policy.
I don't think alot of Democrats would disagree with that, particularly on the progressive left (the "Bernie would've won" types). The Dems utter incompetence in running an effective candidate against an easily beatable buffoon like Trump is what got us here and may get us to another Trump term. Hilary was unpopular but the DNC decided it was her turn and she was the nominee. Biden was also uninspiring but the DNC decided it was his turn and pulled alot of strings to get more popular candidates like Buttigieg to drop out and endorse him before Super Tuesday, winning him the nomination. And now the DNC is again ignoring the will of it's voters by putting up a man the majority of the country think is too old.
It's funny how apart from Biden the two candidates who won the general elections since 2008 were dark horse candidates in Obama and Trump who genuinely built up a base of support from the ground up. Maybe the Democrat party should take some lessons from that or maybe they'll try to force Kamala down our throats in 2028 since it's her turn next.
The Democrats created all of this. They made a martyr then a hero out of Trump; and they refused to confront reality about Biden's condition. The Dems did this. Not the GOP. Most of the GOP hate Trump, they'd love an alternative. The Democrats forced the GOP to rally around Trump.
I'd say the GOP also bears some of the blame too for what happened post Jan 6. They condemned Trump and what he did, rightly so. They could've impeached and gotten rid of him forever but they chickened out, perhaps because they thought that he was gonna go away on his own. The Dems thought the same and also did nothing too.
You may have your own ideas on why it took Garland so long to start an investigation into Trump but I think it's just because they had the same mindset as the GOP: That Trump would simply go away and disappear because there's no way the people would flock back to a loser who tried to pull off that, right? There was no need to start a politically charged investigation into a highly controversial figure which would probably just anger the people at Jan 6. It was just pure incompetence and trust in the public to move on when they clearly seem unable to.
Like I said before, courage is a rare thing for elected officials, and nobody has the guts to actually go after Trump effectively and snuff him out for good, causing him to come back as he always has. It's not that Trump is invincible but everyone else is a coward.
Well at this point they have to talk as much sense into Jill as they do to Joe.
And just now we have Pelosi coming on to Biden's favorite show Morning Joe and laying out that this issue is clearly not over right to Joe's face. She is still saying Biden "needs to make a decision" after he decided to stay on, which is essentially code for "we'll let you do it on your own terms, but get the hell out or else more people will lose confidence in you".
I truly do not understand that talking point. Trump was already president for four years and he didn't end democracy. On the contrary, he got rolled by the bureaucrats and most of the people who worked for him.
Well that's the idea. He clearly has a tendency for dangerous ideas given Jan 6, but was stopped by some of the people who were working for him like Mike Pence. I guarantee you whoever he picks for his running mate and his administration won't be professionals who would keep him in check like last time.
I assume we probably are gonna disagree here but I'll just leave things there. I'm not looking to debate Trump's policies or Project 2025 right now.
He's the president of the United States. He doesn't have to do or say a damn thing. He said something the other day I really liked. He said, "If someone wants to challenge me at the convention, let them." He's a tough old bird. I don't like the guy but this might be his finest hour!
Similarly nobody in the Biden White House can truly stop the congressional Dems from coming out and distancing themselves from the president, which is clearly something Biden is working hard to avoid. Both sides are lobbing threats at each other and Biden according to one article is promising mutually assured destruction if he is attacked. Of course if the Dems are in a sinking ship anyways then why not pull a mutiny?
Wouldn't have to. He can run then turn it over to Kam in 2025. Would have made his point. Kam is not any more likely to win the election than Biden. Kam has high unfavorability. She's a lousy politician, the 2020 primaries showed that. She had to drop out in 2019. She is not the Dems' savior.
The average voter just cares about who is at the top of the ticket and a bit about who is running with them. They're not gonna think that far ahead like you are. In fact I imagine alot of them are ignorant of how succession works. Plus it's very unlikely a narcissist like Biden would just hand over the presidency to Kamala as soon as he is inaugurated. He will be in the office most likely until he dies partway through the term at 85.
The party will look like a clown show if they throw over Joe after telling us he was "sharp as a tack" for three years. People will not like that.They don't have to vote for Trump, but enough of them might just stay home.
The message would be, "We said Joe is sharp as a tack but we were lying, so here, vote for highly unpopular Kamala." I don't think that's a winning message for the Dems. Not a partisan point. Biden has a better shot to win than Kamala. It doesn't matter that his mind is gone. He's not Trump, AND the DNC isn't pulling a last-minute switcheroo.
I don't think the voting public is going to like a switcheroo on top of the fraud they've already seen. Hope I made my point that I'm not talking partisanship. I think Kam's a terrible candidate. Her negatives don't go away if they elevate her.
I don't think the party will spin it that way. Biden won't make a speech saying "Yeah I've been lying about having dementia for 2 years now so I'm stepping aside", but probably saying something along the lines of "I believe I can serve another 4 months, but not another 4 years, so I'm renouncing my candidacy". The GOP will probably continue with the narrative but as far as the Dems are concerned, they didn't lie and they Biden is just making a personal decision about his next 4 years.
Also more would stay home if given the choice between Biden and Trump. Sure people hate Trump but the DNC is essentially making them walk through glass to vote against him by making the alternative just as despised and with crippling flaws of his own.
Ok, so that's a point we disagree on. But not a partisan point for me. If Trump didn't exist, the Dems should still run Joe. The swicheroo factor, I'll call it. People will feel that they've been played.
My perception is people would just be relieved that they won't have to vote for a criminal geriatric and a senile one. You can say the scandal and the coverup is a bad look and the right wing circles will certainly go wild with that, but in an election full of conspiracies and scandals about laptops and documents that people seem to care very little about, at the end of the day the inattentive swing voter will just care about who they're voting for at the top of the ticket. Kamala isn't great, but she's not a corpse or a convicted felon.
I am pretty sure Biden is way beyond embarrassment at this point. And Jill and Hunter surely have no shame. But I see your point. At some point he'll cave to the political pressure of being so unliked. Could happen. Or it could just make him dig in more. He's been in politics over 50 years. Survival is an instinct. We see it all the time. His body knows how to be a politician even if his mind is gone.
Yeah Biden has been in politics for 50 years but that has made him an institutionalist. Unlike Trump, he is a man who highly values norms, running on "restoring normalcy" as his 2020 pitch. The idea of running without the full support of your party is certainly breaking one of those norms and sure he may continue to soldier on as the donor network and congressional support dries up, but that is not easy for someone who's been a lifelong Dem. Trump certainly would since he never was a traditional politician, but as much as he tries to imitate him would Biden?
Could happen. And Trump is no spring chicken either. One more Big Mac could do it.
If the lord almighty visited Biden and Trump the same day that would be the greatest day in American history where we're saved from this nightmare of an election.
What did Trump do that was authoritarian? Seriously? He tried to pressure the Republican Georgia secretary of state to "find" exactly the number of votes he needed to win.
Trump pressured Raffensperger to find the illegal votes, that is, he pressured him to find crime, as per his duty and mandate.
We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we wont win the House, and were going to lose the Senate. This isnt only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that Ive spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.
Thats not how this works. Even though Democrat insouciance regarding democracy is well known, it becomes quite glaring when it is held against their rhetorical defense of it, something theyve used to great effect in the ears of their base over the last few years.
Is it advisable for elites like Clooney to subvert the will of the voters at the same time they feign to protect us from threats to democracy? Probably not. But thats the unprincipled and wind-sock mentality of that party in particular. Now that their great dictator isnt operating at full steam, power escapes their grips, and power is the only thing theyve wanted this whole time.
So what do you do to avoid turning children over to traffickers? You separate the kids from the adults until you can contact the authorities in their claimed home country, and find out who they are. If they are a legit family, you reunite them and send them on their way. If not, you just stopped a trafficker and saved a child.
The Trump admin separated kids from families as a deterrent. All families were separated. It wasn't for the good of the kids. The policy ended a short time later when the public found out.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump/trump-says-family-separations-deter-illegal-immigration-idUSKCN1MO00C/
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/16/trump-administration-knew-family-separations-harm-migrant-children/
It sounds like you're getting your information from places like Townhall, TheFederalist, Breitbart, and Redstate. Am I correct on that?
What are and were the substantial policy differences between other GOP candidates and Trump? What exactly was the choice there?
It was a Republican primary. They were all Republicans. Therefore, they all had pretty much the same political views. America runs a primary election before the general election so the people can vote for which candidate will represent their party.
Trump was already president for four years and he didn't end democracy.
Some tend to conveniently forget that. Trump made an attempt to control the border, then when Biden came into office he made that infamous comment, "storm the border". And don't forget the Afghanistan debacle.
Rule by executive order (which have included travel bans, torture (Bush's classified "directive"), immigration, listening in on all data (for "security" EO 12333), healthcare reform and environmental policies).
Veto legislation.
Deploy troops in foreign territory without congressional authority (because technically it isn't a war)
Many of these were because of the failed government right after the Revolutionary War. See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_Convention_(1786)
And then called the more famous Constitutional Convention in 1787 which was held in secret:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(United_States)
It looks like Trump's second term will be very different from his first. Although he denies it, the implementation of the game plan, Project 2025, will make all the difference. Trump will, of course, not change, but with his king makers behind him, those who want authoritarian rule will rejoice. Those who just want change may come to rue the day.
Reply to Benkei
The powers and growth of the executive branch over time. This started because a weak executive branch failed on various fronts. Also, arguably, it was Europe and WW1 that pulled America onto the world stage beyond, though a strong case can be made with the Spanish American war and gunboat policy.
Trump will, of course, not change, but with his king makers behind him, those who want authoritarian rule will rejoice
I'm convinced that most of Trump's backers are not in because they like Trump or think that he's any good but because they can use him to pursue their own nefarious ends. And the only way that works is by sucking up to him and telling him how great he is. That's how Putin and Kim Jong Un have played him like a fiddle. Works every time, but only if he thinks you're someone who's opinion counts.
You hardly see because it's a feature not a bug. But some things that have me grimace in distaste are the ability of US Presidents to:
Rule by executive order (which have included travel bans, torture (Bush's classified "directive"), immigration, listening in on all data (for "security" EO 12333), healthcare reform and environmental policies).
Veto legislation.
Deploy troops in foreign territory without congressional authority (because technically it isn't a war)
Yes, this is absolutely authoritarian from the view of a European democracy. Unitary executive theory would take this even further.
Ok. You started out saying that Republicans are authoritarians. Then you reverted to Trump alone, and only because of the American Reichstag fire that Democrats seized upon to go on yet another of their post-2016 Trump hysterias.
And now you make a very different point. You say that the American executive, as defined by the US Constitution, is inherently authoritarian.
Now this of course is an interesting theses that we could discuss in a forum on political philosophy. Perhaps in a different thread. Quite a bit has been thought and written about the subject since we yanks tossed King George's tea into Boston harbor.
But we are in the thread on the US election. Two men are vying to be president, unitary or not, morally-defined presidency or not.
So I think you've undermined your own point. Although in the end, you came to a very interesting subject. In theory the three branches of the US government are co-equal. But in recent decades the president has become way too powerful. I tend to agree with you. But that's not what we were talking about. It's not even what you were talking about. You wanted to bash Republicans, or Trump; and in the end, it's the role of executive power in theory and practice under the US Constitution.
I sure as hell opposed Bush's torture. And I equally strongly opposed Obama's coming into office and, by not holding the Bush administration accountable for their many abuses, institutionalizing the torture.
That was, by the way, yet another of my many data points along the way to being a disaffected liberal Democrat. Bush was a criminal when he tortured people. But Obama was worse, because when he chose (for good political reasons) not to hold Bush accountable, he turned the US into a torture regime.
I agree with you about all your particulars. The Constitution does not allow the president to start wars without a declaration of war from Congress. But the last time the president got a Congressional declaration was in World War II. Every single war since then has been illegal. I'm quite unhappy about that. But it's a bipartisan affair, hardly limited to one party.
And in our lifetimes, what president started no new wars? It was Trump. A point totally lost on the "Orange Hitler" brigade. I just don't know what happened to my former fellow liberals. Trump's victory over Saint Hillary drove them quite insane. They now love the national secuity state, the wars, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the lying, the spying. Back in the day they opposed all that. I still do.
And in our lifetimes, what president started no new wars? It was Trump.
False. Look it up. Military intervention and threat was his primary foreign policy tool.
And yes, Republicans are more authoritarian than Democrats even if they both are. Only Republicans have had sitting presidents and advisors argue in favour of it and the unitary executive theory. Most recently in court. Or did you miss that?
Actually I'd say alot of them would be relieved if Biden were replaced right now. Like I said alot of Dem voters didn't want Biden to run again and the debate has been spread around so much that people know what's going on with Biden. Most of the in person takes from Democrats I've seen seem to be "yeah I'll vote for Joe over Trump because Trump, but honestly I think I will prefer anything else".
Chuckie Schumer is said to be "privately" open to opposing Biden. Pelosi gave an ambiguous statement coded to mean she's sticking in the knife, but very subtly.
But the big news of the day was that the Democrats brought out their big gun. Their nuclear weapon. Their neutron bomb. Yes, I mean George Clooney. A few weeks ago Clooney organized a $30M fundraiser for Biden complete with Julia Roberts and all the other beautiful people. Today, Clooney stabbed Biden in the back with a NYT op-ed. I tell you it's sickening to watch. I hope never to have "friends" like that. And Clooney said that when he saw Biden three weeks ago, Biden was not the same man as he was in 2010 or even 2020. So Clooney knew. And Clooney still raised the thirty mil. And today Clooney jumped on the Judas bus and stabbed his former friend in the back. These people are lower than low.
But in the end, the Dems have no leverage. And as I say, they can swap in Kam and they'll have a whole new set of problems.
Part of what makes me see the debate as a blessing in disguise. I thought Biden's campaign was a dying campaign that was gonna lose before anyways so a disastrous debate performance was just the sort of jolt needed in desperate times. I mean Biden may still stay in but if things were going in a bad direction already then hey gotta take a chance right?
Right. Some say the Dems deliberately set him up to get him out. But it's not quite working the way they thought it would. I don't think they planned on Joe digging in and daring them to move him out.
I'm not gonna argue policy but politically Kamala would be wise to try to distance herself from the unpopular policies of Biden's administration and tie herself to the more popular aspects.
She's way further left than Biden, and Biden has governed from the left. Are you saying Kamala should turn into Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand? Ain't happenin'. She's a hard core leftist and would be a disaster for the country.
The Gaza issue for instance is something that is splitting the base right now for Biden, so another candidate who isn't as tied to Biden's actions would be better, if simply for the fact that they won't be seen as having Palestinian blood on their hands as the chief director of an administration's foreign policy.
No, they'd have Israeli blood on their hands. Kamala is married to a nice Jewish guy but she's a Hamasnik all the way. Just yesterday she said she "understands" the Gaza protesters. That's code for Death to Israel in my book. By the way I stand with Israel, just so you know. And I will say, this issue has split a lot of people. Some of my favorite political commentators have horrified me with some of their rhetoric. Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Aaron Maté. The Gaza war has been a terribly divisive issue. And Kam is way on the wrong side of it IMO. But we can agree to disagree on that. I don't talk about it much, it's just so emotional and so divisive for everyone. The Middle East has been a bloody mess all my life and I don't have any answers.
I don't think alot of Democrats would disagree with that, particularly on the progressive left (the "Bernie would've won" types).
I wish that were true. The TDS brigade would not take any responsibility for the Trumpenstein of their own creation. I wish Bernie and his supporters had been a lot more vocal when the DNC screwed them over in 2016 and again in 2020.
The Dems utter incompetence in running an effective candidate against an easily beatable buffoon like Trump is what got us here and may get us to another Trump term.
It's funny. In 2016 the Dems found the only candidate in the country who could lose to Trump. In 2024 they're about to do it again.
Hilary was unpopular but the DNC decided it was her turn and she was the nominee. Biden was also uninspiring but the DNC decided it was his turn and pulled alot of strings to get more popular candidates like Buttigieg to drop out and endorse him before Super Tuesday, winning him the nomination. And now the DNC is again ignoring the will of it's voters by putting up a man the majority of the country think is too old.
They didn't think he was too old when they gave him 3986 delegates. And why not? Because the Dems and the media gaslit the hell out of them. And again -- my ongoing thesis -- Kam would be worse. And nobody can leapfrog Kam. So in the end they stay with Biden. There is no alternative.
It's funny how apart from Biden the two candidates who won the general elections since 2008 were dark horse candidates in Obama and Trump who genuinely built up a base of support from the ground up. Maybe the Democrat party should take some lessons from that or maybe they'll try to force Kamala down our throats in 2028 since it's her turn next.
By then Gavin and Gretchen will be fresh and ready. Kam will be yesterday's news. She's never been very popular and she's a terrible politician.
I'd say the GOP also bears some of the blame too for what happened post Jan 6. They condemned Trump and what he did, rightly so. They could've impeached and gotten rid of him forever but they chickened out, perhaps because they thought that he was gonna go away on his own. The Dems thought the same and also did nothing too.
I better take a pass on J6. I regard it as the Democrats' Reichstag fire. Bunch of unarmed, peaceful protesters were invited in by the Capitol police, things got out of hand and a riot ensued. What ever happened to, "A riot is the voice of the unheard?" That was the Dem line when the Floyd protesters caused $2B in property damage and killed 20 people. The Pelosi and Cheney J6 psy-op was a fraud. Trump has called for military tribunals. I disagree about that. In this country we use the civilian system of justice. But I do hope Trump gets some revenge on the Dems who have so abused our system of justice. Garland and Wray for two. The impeachments were totally fraudulent. It was Biden who was seen on video extorting the Ukrainians to get rid of the prosecutor investigating his money laundering scheme there. We better not get onto this topic, you know how I feel now.
You may have your own ideas on why it took Garland so long to start an investigation into Trump but I think it's just because they had the same mindset as the GOP: That Trump would simply go away and disappear because there's no way the people would flock back to a loser who tried to pull off that, right? There was no need to start a politically charged investigation into a highly controversial figure which would probably just anger the people at Jan 6. It was just pure incompetence and trust in the public to move on when they clearly seem unable to.
I want Garland and Wray in jail. Let's agree to disagree on that. J6 was a psy-op, a fraud, a Reichstag fire for our time and place. You can't have an insurrection with a bunch of unarmed people peacefully wandering around an office building. Compare and contrast to the Floyd riots. Voice of the unheard and all that. If anyone's unheard in this country it's the rank and file middle Americans. The people Trump has activated and drawn to him.
Like I said before, courage is a rare thing for elected officials, and nobody has the guts to actually go after Trump effectively and snuff him out for good, causing him to come back as he always has. It's not that Trump is invincible but everyone else is a coward.
The Democrats have disgraced themselves. Trump is a reaction to that. He has many flaws but he is the only alternative to the corrupt, warmongering status quo that the Democrats (and Republicans!) have turned into. Let's agree to disagree again. We're not doing policy here, only the politics of the Biden dilemma.
Well at this point they have to talk as much sense into Jill as they do to Joe.
Jill does not strike me as someone amenable to logic. Or political pressure. She's dug in. The Dems can impeach Joe or 25A him or they can pound sand. George Clooney's not going to do it.
And just now we have Pelosi coming on to Biden's favorite show Morning Joe and laying out that this issue is clearly not over right to Joe's face. She is still saying Biden "needs to make a decision" after he decided to stay on, which is essentially code for "we'll let you do it on your own terms, but get the hell out or else more people will lose confidence in you".
Right. Caught that. But she's wrong too. Joe is not "making a decision." He's made his decision. Now the Dems have to make theirs. Impeach, 25A, or stab him to death on the floor of the Senate à la Julius Caesar. Strongly worded editorials and vaguely worded statements on Morning Joe aren't going to cut it.
And George Clooney. That really cracked me up today. What a slime ball. Joe's best friend three weeks ago.
Well that's the idea. He clearly has a tendency for dangerous ideas given Jan 6, but was stopped by some of the people who were working for him like Mike Pence. I guarantee you whoever he picks for his running mate and his administration won't be professionals who would keep him in check like last time.
I'd hang Mike Pence AND the fly he rode in on. 'Nuff o' J6.
Professionals? Milley is a treasonous bastard who belongs in prison. Mattis, useless. Barr, useless.
The reason the Dems are afraid of Trump is that they realize he's probably learned a few things about how Washington works. I truly hope so.
I assume we probably are gonna disagree here but I'll just leave things there. I'm not looking to debate Trump's policies or Project 2025 right now.
Likewise. I really do try to avoid policy in this thread. But P2025 is not Trump's platform. P2025 is yet another TDS hysteria. Trump's platform is his actual platform. And it's surprisingly centrist, moderate, and popular. Here's Brit right-of-center website Spiked on the subject:
Similarly nobody in the Biden White House can truly stop the congressional Dems from coming out and distancing themselves from the president, which is clearly something Biden is working hard to avoid. Both sides are lobbing threats at each other and Biden according to one article is promising mutually assured destruction if he is attacked. Of course if the Dems are in a sinking ship anyways then why not pull a mutiny?
Attacks on Biden weaken him if he's the eventual nominee. Some Dems see that. Kamala is no panacea.
LBJ stepped aside and a chaotic primary ensued where RFK was assassinated.
That was a bad bad day. If one is conspiratorial-minded, one would say that they killed Bobby because as president, he was going to get to the bottom of his brother's murder at the hands of the CIA. I'm conspiratorial-minded in that regard. More shots were fired at Bobby than Sirhan's gun held. The coroner said he was shot at close range from behind, but Sirhan was several feet away, in front.
Terrible day. Awful. So many hopes were on Bobby. Making me sad now for what might have been.
The average voter just cares about who is at the top of the ticket and a bit about who is running with them. They're not gonna think that far ahead like you are. In fact I imagine alot of them are ignorant of how succession works. Plus it's very unlikely a narcissist like Biden would just hand over the presidency to Kamala as soon as he is inaugurated. He will be in the office most likely until he dies partway through the term at 85.
Yeah you're right. A career politician does not give up power willingly.
I don't think the party will spin it that way. Biden won't make a speech saying "Yeah I've been lying about having dementia for 2 years now so I'm stepping aside", but probably saying something along the lines of "I believe I can serve another 4 months, but not another 4 years, so I'm renouncing my candidacy". The GOP will probably continue with the narrative but as far as the Dems are concerned, they didn't lie and they Biden is just making a personal decision about his next 4 years.
I don't think they'd say it out loud, but many voters will read it that way. They shut down competitive primaries, foisted Joe on the Dem voters, and now this? What a mess.
Also more would stay home if given the choice between Biden and Trump. Sure people hate Trump but the DNC is essentially making them walk through glass to vote against him by making the alternative just as despised and with crippling flaws of his own.
My perception is people would just be relieved that they won't have to vote for a criminal geriatric and a senile one.
The TDS crowd thinks Trump's a criminal. The other half of the country sees the Bragg prosecution as totally illegitimate. Nelson Mandela spent 28 years in jail but they didn't call him a felon when he became president. They recognized the legal process against him as unjust. Trump same, for half the country.
But I do agree that Trump is old and leads an unhealthy lifestyle. He could keel over too. I wonder what this is like for the young people of this country. They must be appalled.
You can say the scandal and the coverup is a bad look and the right wing circles will certainly go wild with that, but in an election full of conspiracies and scandals about laptops and documents that people seem to care very little about, at the end of the day the inattentive swing voter will just care about who they're voting for at the top of the ticket. Kamala isn't great, but she's not a corpse or a convicted felon.
In 2020 a poll showed that 17% of the electorate would have changed their vote if the'd known that the laptop was authentic. And that's another thing. "51 former intelligence officials" said the laptop was Russian disinformation. It wasn't.
Why do people support Trump? Because he is the only alternative to the culture of official corruption that's seized this country. When the CIA and the FBI lie to the public to help a political candidate, that is a very serious problem. Trump stands opposed to that. A lot of people, such as myself, support Trump for what he stands for, not for who he is. He stands in opposition to this massive corruption of our government.
Yeah Biden has been in politics for 50 years but that has made him an institutionalist. Unlike Trump, he is a man who highly values norms, running on "restoring normalcy" as his 2020 pitch. The idea of running without the full support of your party is certainly breaking one of those norms and sure he may continue to soldier on as the donor network and congressional support dries up, but that is not easy for someone who's been a lifelong Dem. Trump certainly would since he never was a traditional politician, but as much as he tries to imitate him would Biden?
Biden campaigned on normalcy, then ran as a corrupt leftist authoritarian. Lot of people see that.
If the lord almighty visited Biden and Trump the same day that would be the greatest day in American history where we're saved from this nightmare of an election.
I'm kind of enjoying it. Just want to see the Dems get their comeuppance.
It sounds like you're getting your information from places like Townhall, TheFederalist, Breitbart, and Redstate. Am I correct on that?
Decades of interest in Mexico, traveling in Mexico, living in Mexico, paying attention to border politics. If you don't know about Biden's trafficking operation, hardly anyone does. If you don't care now that I've drawn people's attention to it, you should demand more of yourself re this moral atrocity.
I haven't read Townhall in years. Redstate, maybe the occasional article if it's linked from an aggregator. Don't recall last time I read it. Breitbart most definitely never writes about the cages and separation policy the way I've explained it. Don't recall The Federalist writing on immigration. Most of my political orientation these days comes from the disaffected liberals (like I am). Greenwald, Dore, Maté, lot of Substackers. They don't write about border issues either.
In the immigration issues as I explained them -- the cages and the separation policy -- I got that on my own from factual reporting on the subject. I was living in Mexico in 2014 when Obama had a terrible humanitarian crisis down there and built the cages. I followed the issue. I don't recall where it got reported. The MSM barely reported on it till the photos of the kids in cages covered in foil blankets started hitting social media. A lot of information not in the MSM is nonetheless true. That's a problem in itself. You can always say, "Well XXX is a scurrilous right wing rag." And maybe it is. But a lot of alt media covers stories the MSM won't touch.
Such as Biden's senescence. People were calling Jill Biden Edith Wilson in 2020. But in the alt media, not in the New York Times. But the alts were correct, and the MSM were lying. I hope there's a reckoning about that soon. You can't run a decent society without a truly free press.
And if the New York Times doesn't tell the truth about the border (or anything else), why is that? I read very widely, from the left-wing wackos to the right-wing wackos. But my knowledge of the border comes from a very long personal interest and involvement with the subject.
From the Reuters piece you linked: "In June, Trump abandoned his policy of separating immigrant children from their parents on the U.S.-Mexico border after images of youngsters in cages sparked outrage at home and abroad."
Exactly the same reason Obama and Biden decided to stop the caging and just turn the kids over to traffickers. Cages generate bad optics. Nobody sees the trafficked kids. That scandal's waiting to explode.
I'll stipulate that Trump said what the Reuter's piece says. Not a good look, I agree. It doesn't detract from my point. Obama put kids in cages till the optics got bad. Trump put kids in cages till the optics got bad. Biden just let everyone in and is running a massive trafficking operation. He'll be out of office before people come to find out what he's done.
False. Look it up. Military intervention and threat was his primary foreign policy tool.
Threat. He's a negotiator. He lobbed a few missiles at Syria. Drone strike against Soleimani. No new wars. He used threats to keep the peace. I didn't call him a milquetoast. I called him a peacemaker. Big difference. Based on results. No new wars. First prez in my lifetime who can say that. No new wars.
I do not believe he initiated any military interventions. You say that's false. Names and dates please. Trump started no new wars. As far as I know, no new military interventions at all. Did a quick lookup, couldn't find any.
And yes, Republicans are more authoritarian than Democrats even if they both are. Only Republicans have had sitting presidents and advisors argue in favour of it and the unitary executive theory. Most recently in court. Or did you miss that?
Unitary executive is a little inside baseball. It doesn't mean "all powerful president." According to Wiki: "The unitary executive theory is a controversial legal theory in United States constitutional law which holds that the president of the United States possesses the power to control the entire federal executive branch."
It does not say anything about going to war. It says essentially that the prez is in charge of the people who work for him. I think you might be conflating different things. If you're referring to the recent Chevron decision, it's a good thing. The underlying case was a fisherman who had to pay $700 per day to have government inspectors on his boat. If Congress wants to pass a law to make him do it, let them pass a law. The agencies don't have the right, so say the Supes. Tell it to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, she's the one who stayed too long, expecting Hillary to win. Not my fault, not Trump's fault.
Who can argue with who's more authoritarian? The Supreme court told Biden he couldn't transfer student loan debt to the taxpayers. He did it anyway. Obama bragged about ruling "with a pen and phone." He held weekly Kill List meeting where he decided which American citizens to drone-bomb without due process. Going back in time, LBJ lied the country into the Vietnam war. There was no attack on a US ship in the Gulf of Tonkin and that was known at the time. Reagan sold arms to Iran to fund his secret war in Nicaragua. Ok a GOP you got me there. I mean, you look at recent history, it's hard to tell one authoritarian from another. Trump was arguably less authoritarian than any of them, simply because he knew so little about how the government works that he got rolled by the bureaucrats and betrayed by the people who worked for him.
So you'd know the name Senator James Lankford, and why he made news a couple of months back.
Wayfarer
Had to look that one up, perhaps I missed your point.
Senator James Lankford is a strict conservative GOP member who was on a bipartisan committee tasked with addressing border issues. He drove a very hard bargain and got many more concessions out of the Democrats than anyone had expected, getting them to agree to what many of them thought were overly harsh measures that the GOP had been demanding for years. But then before it went to a vote, Trump got wind of it and said he didnt want it to go ahead. Why? Because it would take away his talking points about the country being flooded with Mexican rapists. So Lankford was then pressured to vote against his own hard-fought legislation, rather than bring it to the floor - because it might have been a solution. Trump would rather keep his talking points than actually solve the problem. For his trouble, Lankford was then censured by the Oklahoma Republican Party, for the mortal sin of working with Democrats.
Trump was arguably less authoritarian than any of them, simply because he knew so little about how the government works that he got rolled by the bureaucrats and betrayed by the people who worked for him.
That probably also explains why 24 previous aides and allies went on the record saying he was unfit for office and a danger to democracy.
Threat. And he lobbed a few missiles at Syria. Drone strike against Soleimani. No new wars. He uses threats to keep the peace. I didn't call him a milquetoast. I called him a peacemaker. Based on results. No new wars. First prez in my lifetime who can say that.
Love the cavalier attitude to the use of armed force. This really underlines my point. Let's pretend it's not a war and then it's ok. No matter that "war" isn't the appropriate legal term any more. No matter that the President can unilaterally decide to put soldiers, e.g. US citizens, into harm's way because "technically" it isn't a war. No matter that it's still armed aggression, which is prohibited under the UN Charter so the President is unilaterally deciding to breach treaties Congress signed up to. It's authoritarian and it was his primary M.O. with respect to international relations. Of course, other US Presidents have done the same thing but presenting Trump as a peace candidate is silly and not borne out by the facts.
I'll stipulate that Trump said what the Reuter's piece says. Not a good look, I agree. It doesn't detract from my point. Obama put kids in cages till the optics got bad. Trump put kids in cages till the optics got bad. Biden just let everyone in and is running a massive trafficking operation. He'll be out of office before people come to find out what he's done.
Motives matter. Separating families for the good of the kids is one thing. A zero tolerance policy separating all families to deter would-be immigrants is evil, unprecedented, and was quickly stopped when the public found out what was going on. And yes, Biden's record on the border is awful. We're not doing people any favors when we make it easy for them to come here illegally and then live in the shadows and be exploited.
I'm convinced that most of Trump's backers are not in because they like Trump or think that he's any good but because they can use him to pursue their own nefarious ends.
I agree. I think they are mistaken however. Trump's own ends begin and end with Trump. They cannot control him. When their ends conflict with his ... Well I hope we will not have to find out.
Senator James Lankford is a strict conservative GOP member who was on a bipartisan committee tasked with addressing border issues. He drove a very hard bargain and got many more concessions out of the Democrats than anyone had expected, getting them to agree to what many of them thought were overly harsh measures that the GOP had been demanding for years. But then before it went to a vote, Trump got wind of it and said he didnt want it to go ahead. Why? Because it would take away his talking points about the country being flooded with Mexican rapists. So Lankford was then pressured to vote against his own hard-fought legislation, rather than bring it to the floor - because it might have been a solution. Trump would rather keep his talking points than actually solve the problem. For his trouble, Lankford was then censured by the Oklahoma Republican Party, for the mortal sin of working with Democrats.
Thanks for that summary. I apparently missed this story. I did a quick search and evidently the GOP Senators rejected his bill. I looked at a couple of articles and they didn't mention Trump's influence, even though "Trump" was one of my search terms.
If you happen to have a reference to Trump's influence on the GOP abandonment of Lankford's bill I'd appreciate it. Pending that, and taking your word for it, I'll grant you your point. I've never said Trump isn't a flawed man. I've only said that he's the only alternative to the wrong turn the Dems have taken the past couple of decades and especially the past eight years.
I agree that the GOP are useless. They get nothing done at all. I'm saddened but not surprised to learn they killed a chance at sensible immigration reform, with or without Trump's pressure.
That probably also explains why 24 previous aides and allies went on the record saying he was unfit for office and a danger to democracy.
The word authoritarian is lacking in your talking point. For sure he's a danger to the status quo in Washington, so it's not difficult to find people to throw rocks at him. I just don't see how a guy who got so easily subverted by his underlings could be an authoritarian. Joe Stalin was an authoritarian. He killed his enemies and friends alike. His critics didn't go to the press, they went to the Gulag.
[quote=Feb 2024] Former President Trump on Monday railed against the bipartisan border agreement and took aim at Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a key negotiator, for his role in brokering the deal.
In an interview on The Dan Bongino Show, Trump denied endorsing Lankfords candidacy in 2022 despite doing so publicly and did not rule out endorsing a primary opponent when Lankford is up for reelection in 2028. ...
Ahead of the bill texts release, Trump had attacked the prospect of the legislation, branding it as a political victory for Democrats ahead of the 2024 election a message he repeated in Mondays interview.This is a gift to Democrats, and this, sort of, is a shifting of the worst border in history onto the shoulders of Republicans. Thats really what they want. They want this for the presidential election, so they can now blame the Republicans for the worst border in history, Trump said.[/quote]
As mentioned, Lankford was then censured by his own party. This for a straight up-and-down Republican who has toed the party line on every single issue.
I just don't see how a guy who got so easily subverted by his underlings could be an authoritarian.
And I just don't know how you can say that. He's on the record suggesting, for instance, that the constitution ought to be suspended, that he plans to purge the civil service and stock it with his operatives, and intends to use the Department of Justice against his enemies. The last few weeks, there's been a lot of press over Project 2025, which likewise plans to implement plainly authoritarian policies - Trump has been trying to disassociate himself from it, but it is almost entirely composed of ex-Trump aides and staffers, and he's spoken at the Heritage Foundation on a number of occasions. But then, you know, but seem to downplay or rationalise, that Trump sicked his mob on the Capital Building, leading to multiple deaths and hundreds of arrests and jail sentences, one of the darkest days in American history. Why you're OK with that I can't fathom.
:rofl: I see you're thoroughly misinformed nowadays.
Perhaps you can explain what I'm misinformed about re the family separations and cages.
If I'm understanding you correctly, when Obama separated families and put the kids in cages, he did it for saintly reasons, him being Saint Obama. And when Trump separated families and kept the kids in the very same cages Obama had built for that purpose, he did it for dastardly reasons, because he's Orange Hitler.
That is the only way I can interpret your claim that I am "misinformed" regarding widely known matters of fact. If you didn't know about Obama's cages in 2014 that's understandable, because the story was not widely reported in the MSM. If you claim it's not true today, it's you who are misinformed.
I'm open to your explaining exactly what I am misinformed about regarding this situation.
Love the cavalier attitude to the use of armed force.
Not cavalier at all. If you can't see the difference between lobbing a few missiles onto an airport tarmac (if I recall the details correctly, didn't bother to look it up) and starting new wars, as every president of both parties since Ike has done; then I just don't know what to say. You draw an equivalence between the tarmac bombing and Biden's two major proxy wars? Or Clinton's bombing of Serbia, a war Clinton's voters ignored because it was a Dem war. It bothered me, and I was a big Clinton fan and voter at the time. Yet another one of the datapoints in my growing estrangement from the Dems. The antiwar left is strangely silent when they're Democratic wars. The left hated Bush's torture program but they didn't mind that Obama institutionalized it by failing to hold the Bush regime accountable (for understandable political reasons, to be sure).
So Trump bombed a tarmac and killed one Iranian. That's a remarkable lack of bloodshed for an American president of any party. I don't see how you can pretend not to understand that point.
This really underlines my point. Let's pretend it's not a war and then it's ok. No matter that "war" isn't the appropriate legal term any more. No matter that the President can unilaterally decide to put soldiers, e.g. US citizens, into harm's way because "technically" it isn't a war. No matter that it's still armed aggression, which is prohibited under the UN Charter so the President is unilaterally deciding to breach treaties Congress signed up to. It's authoritarian and it was his primary M.O. with respect to international relations. Of course, other US Presidents have done the same thing but presenting Trump as a peace candidate is silly and not borne out by the facts.
The tarmac and the terrorist. That's it. You don't seem to be able to understand the difference between using massive violence, as most president do; and bluster and the threat of violence to avoid violence, as Trump did.
I think you actually do understand; but just want to pretend you don't to make a partisan point.
You know that Trump on multiple occasions has sucked up to Putin? That he stood on the world stage with him and said he trusted Putin above his own intelligence agencies? That he thinks Kim Jong Un is a really neat guy, even saying once that they were 'in love'? Why is it that the only political leaders he's ever expressed admiration for, if not because they're role models for him? Not that he's got anywhere near the guts or the guile to actually pull it off. Fortunately.
Motives matter. Separating families for the good of the kids is one thing. A zero tolerance policy separating all families to deter would-be immigrants is evil, unprecedented, and was quickly stopped when the public found out what was going on.
You made my point for me. In 2014 when Obama was separating families and putting kids in cages, the MSM did not widely report the story. People were not outraged because they didn't know it was happening. When images of kids in cages covered in foil space blankets "like baked potatoes" started circulating on social media, Obama dialed back the cages and loosened the vetting of families. Even the WaPo was forced to report on the kids Obama was losing to traffickers.
I have already conceded to you that if Trump said what you you say he did, that was not a good look. Trump is a very flawed man, but the only alternative to the wrong turn the Dems have taken the past couple of decades and especially the past eight years. So if he did bad, I'll grant you the point.
But as I mentioned in another post just now, if your point is that Obama put kids in cages it was good because he's Saint Obama; and when Trump put kids in the exact same cages Obama had built for that exact purpose it was bad, because he's Orange Hitler, you are just being partisan.
How do we know Trump wasn't just being Trump, and saying something inartfully that could be twisted by his opponents? Maybe just trying to send a message to prospective immigrants? As the saying goes, Trump 's opponents take him literally but not seriously. And his supporters take him seriously but not literally. Like when he jokingly asked Putin to find Hillary's emails. I thought that was hilarious. The left went hysterical; and for the most part, disingenuously so.
Also, a little off-topic: Like the taco bowl tweet. I thought that was hilarious too. "Trump is a brilliant performance artist and troll." That was my reaction. The left went hysterical over that too. For whatever reason, Trump's personality doesn't trigger. me. I get the guy. He's Queens, the establishment is Manhattan. They look down on him, and he is alternately insulting them and enviously wishing he could belong, which he never will.
When a Dem says, "Oh Trump put kids in cages," I know I'm talking to someone utterly ignorant of the issue. Which includes pretty much everyone on the left.
Ok, well I'm glad you see that. But I'm not even talking today about Biden's open borders and the massive humanitarian crisis he's dumped on blue cities like NYC, Chicago, and Denver. I'm talking about the lesson Biden's administration learned about the separations and cages. Those are bad optics; turning kids over to traffickers keeps the issue out of the MSM. That's a moral outrage. I do predict this story will eventually become known. Like Biden's cognitive condition became known. Way too late, and only when it became impossible to keep covering up.
We're not doing people any favors when we make it easy for them to come here illegally and then live in the shadows and be exploited.
We leave them to die of thirst in the desert, and then give them driver's licenses, social welfare programs, and jobs if they make it over alive. A bipartisan moral atrocity that got started with FDR's Bracero program in the 1940s. I'd love to see some sensible immigration reform in my lifetime. I'm not holding my breath.
We saw the videos. Unjustly locking people up for three years does not a crime make. It makes an illegitimate DOJ. Shamefully so. Else how explain the leniency to the Floyd rioters who killed 20 people and did two billion dollars in documented, insurance-covered damage, and cheered on by the left? "A riot is the voice of the unheard." Except when the unheard are the deplorables. There's a reason Trump is about to be reelected in the greatest political comeback in American history. Enough people see what's been going on.
Trump says border bill very bad for Lankfords career
Oh it turns out I DIDN'T miss this story. This was the bogus border bill that would have codified Biden's disastrous border policies, while bringing the Republicans on board so they could no longer criticize Biden over it.
I do remember this completely, did not realize this originated with a Republican, for some reason hadn't registered the name Lankford with it.
So I was with Trump on this. This was the bill that would have allowed in, what was the number, 5000 or something undocumented crossers every day, massively exacerbating the humanitarian crisis at the border and in the blue cities that have to absorb the newcomers, while giving the Dems the ability to blame it all on the Republicans.
I was massively opposed to this bill at the time. It codified the ongoing disaster and made the Republicans complicit.
So that was the Lankford bill. Somehow I missed that detail, but I definitely followed the story of the bill. Very glad the Dems blocked it. Bad bill as I understand it.
I will grant that if I have been misinformed about the details of this bill, I could be wrong. But the high-level bullet point was that 5000 a day would come in, a massive number that was far more than what Jeh Johnson, Obama's Homeland Security secretary, said would lead to humanitarian disaster. So this bill deserved to go down.
Thanks for the update, anyway. I recalled this bill as being a couple of months ago, but it was February. Time flies.
As mentioned, Lankford was then censured by his own party. This for a straight up-and-down Republican who has toed the party line on every single issue.
I will concede that it is POSSIBLE that I may be misinformed about the badness of this bill. I confess that my media diet is a little skewed to the right these days. I've actually gone back to reading the NYT lately. So it's possible that you are right and I'm wrong on this issue.
But now that you've refreshed my memory about which bill this was, I most definitely remember that I had the impression that it was a bad bill, because it codified a lot of the bad stuff that was already going on, while making it impossible for the GOPs to complain. So AFAIK Trump was right on this issue.
Poor Lankford, though. No good deed goes unpunished, and the GOP are a hopeless and confused lot these days.
And I just don't know how you can say that. He's on the record suggesting, for instance, that the constitution ought to be suspended, that he plans to purge the civil service and stock it with his operatives, and intends to use the Department of Justice against his enemies.
If only.
It won't happen. You know what I think is going to happen? The massive financial crash that people have been predicting since 2008 is finally going to happen on Trump's watch, and he's going to go down in history as the second coming of Herbert Hoover. Trump is being set up to take the fall for the coming economic crash.
Exact revenge on his enemies, put Pelosi and Cheney and Garland and Wray in prison? I wish. Never going to happen.
Suspend the Constitution? More TDS. Where do you get this stuff?
Again: You confuse suggesting with actually doing. They are not the same. As is typical for the left, you confuse Trump's style of rhetoric with his actions. Watch what the guy does, not what he says. You know the saying: Trump's opponents take him literally but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously but not literally. Liberals overreact to his words and never notice what he actually does.
The last few weeks, there's been a lot of press over Project 2025, which likewise plans to implement plainly authoritarian policies - Trump has been trying to disassociate himself from it, but it is almost entirely composed of ex-Trump aides and staffers, and he's spoken at the Heritage Foundation on a number of occasions.
Yeah yeah yeah, Project 2025. Another TDS hysteria. You know Trump put out his ACTUAL platform, and it's extremely middle of the road, basically 1990's Clintonian policies. I posted this link recently. Here's Brit right-of-center website Spiked on the subject.
That's Trump's platform. Project 2025 is yet another leftist hysteria. TDS is a genuine psychological disorder. Trump is not going to suspend the Constitution, he's not going to be a dictator. And if he does get a measure of justice for the wrongs that have been done to him and to the J6 political prisoners, I support him in that.
Here's NPR's take on Trump's platform, along with the platform. Why don't you read it and comment on Trump's ACTUAL platform, not the Project 2025 boogyman the liberals are using to distract from their laughable yet incredibly dangerous for the country Biden fiasco.
But then, you know, but seem to downplay or rationalise, that Trump sicked his mob on the Capital Building, leading to multiple deaths and hundreds of arrests and jail sentences, one of the darkest days in American history. Why you're OK with that I can't fathom.
What happened to "A riot is the voice of the unheard" as the Floyd rioters killed 20 people and caused two billion dollars in documented insurance payouts?
Most of the J6'ers were invited in by the Capitol police and wandered around peacefully, and now they're sitting in prison for three years. It's a shameful incident in American history. If there is any justice in this universe of ours there will someday be justice for the wrongly imprisoned J6'ers.
The J6 committee was a fraud on the American people. Why did they destroy their records? Why are thousands of hours of video still under lock and key?
The J6 committee was a fraud on the American people.
The first statement explains the second. And, its more than a little. But theres no way to make someone see what he or she doesnt want to see, so lets leave it for now. (Although how a forensic retelling of an attack on the American people could be a fraud on the American people beggars logic.)
Although as this is the Election thread, not the Trump thread, Ill add I still dont believe Biden will be the eventual Democratic nominee. I just wish folks would say that he should pass the baton. It sounds a lot less hostile than that he should resign or quit. It is really what he must be persuaded to do, and, I believe, will be.
You know that Trump on multiple occasions has sucked up to Putin?
Ah, Russia Russia Russia, another symptom of TDS. Let us take a brief walk through history.
FDR joined up with brutal dictator Stalin to defeat the Nazis in World War II. I do not recall anyone criticizing FDR fo "sucking up" to Stalin. Well actually some people did. I read once that Herbert Hoover said at the time that the US should stay out of the war and whichever of the Nazis or the Soviets were winning, we should help the other one till they both destroyed each other. So I imagine that at the time, there must have been some voices questioning FDR's alliance with the bloody commie dictator Stalin. But it's not the prevailing view of history. It's regarded as a pragmatic decision to beat the Nazis, in retrospect a very good thing.
After the war Truman and the Dulles brothers got the cold war started, no sucking up to Russia there.
Ike had a summit meeting with Khrushchev in 1959. Why not? They were trying not to blow up the world. They were going to meet again in 1960, but Francis Gary Powers got shot down in his U-2 spy plane and the meeting got cancelled. Was Ike "sucking up" to the Soviets? Or negotiating with his geopolitical opponent with the aim of achieving peace? As a soldier of war, he knew the importance of peace.
JFK famously met with Khrushchev; and towards the end they had back-channel communications to establish peace. In his American University speech on June 10, 1963, JFK called for peaceful coexistence with the Soviets, saying:
So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
Five and a half months later he was dead. Killed, some say, by the CIA on behalf of the very warmongers whose profits were threatened by peace. Or if you prefer the Lone Nut theory, the warmongers just got lucky. Somehow they always do.
Would you say JFK was "sucking up" to the Soviets? Or seeking peace, with deep wisdom?
I could go on. A lot of presidents met with their ideological opponents. Nixon went to China, for gosh sake. The arch anti-communist of the Alger Hiss case, the man who built his entire political reputation on fighting the Godless commies. "Only Nixon could go to China." Sucking up, I guess, is that how you would put it?
And so we come to Trump. He's a businessman. He doesn't have mortal enemies. He has competitors. He negotiates with his competitors. You call that sucking up. I call it international diplomacy, the only alternative to nuclear war. Biden comes in, and we're today closer to WWIII than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
When, exactly, did talking to our geopolitical rivals become sucking up in the leftist worldview? The left used to be for peace. Now they regard geopolitical negotiations as sucking up.
That he stood on the world stage with him and said he trusted Putin above his own intelligence agencies?
Indeed. Not the most politic thing to say in public, but surely true. Reminds me of another story from the JFK days. The JFK assassination and the history and politics of that era are an interest of mine.
When French president Charles de Gaulle survived an assassination attempt by the right wing OSA (see the film The Day of the Jackal), de Gaulle knew that the OSA was closely allied with the CIA. De Gaulle called Kennedy and asked if the US was behind the assassination plot. Kennedy said that he certainly had nothing to do with it; but that he could not vouch for or control his own CIA.
So its hardly news that American presidents can't trust the CIA and don't trust the CIA. The only thing that's new is that Trump said it in public. Probably shouldn't have. You'll note that in the past couple of weeks, Trump has learned to keep his mouth shut. He may be starting to learn how to play the game of politics. If so, that's why the left is frightened. Imagine Trump being Trump, but no longer his own worst enemy.
That he thinks Kim Jong Un is a really neat guy, even saying once that they were 'in love'?
You just don't like the guy's negotiating style. As someone said, as a New York City builder Trump always thinks he's negotiating with the sheet rock union.
Instead of lobbing missiles and starting a war, Trump went over there and buddied up with the leader of one of our country's "enemies." Are the North Korean people really the enemies of you and I? Or are they merely a tool for the military-industrial complex to keep the bucks flowing? Trump is a man of peace. He's a negotiator. No wonder the establishment hates him.The establishment gorges on the profits of war. Trump is dangerous to them.
The only thing I don't understand is why the left, with whom I marched against the war in Vietnam long ago, has now aligned itself with the defense contractors and the intel agencies in the cause of war.
If I had one wish, it would be for every leftist in the world to snap out of their trance and see how they are being played by the war machine. Hate Russia! Hate Russia! Hate Russia! A horde of mindless TDS-addled zombies.
Peace, man, Peace. Ike was a man of war and he worked for peace. JFK worked for peace, you see where that got him. Nixon worked for peace. Every president works for peace.
And when Trump works for peace? The left hates him for it.
I pray to the deities that be, for the liberals to snap out of their warmongering, deep-state loving trance and recognize that malignancy in our government; and that Trump, for all his flaws and faults, is trying to fight that malignancy.
Why is it that the only political leaders he's ever expressed admiration for, if not because they're role models for him? Not that he's got anywhere near the guts or the guile to actually pull it off. Fortunately.
Like I say. You just don't like the guy's style. Why don't you look at his results? Only prez in my lifetime not to start any new wars. Look at the dangerous condition of the world with senile Biden and his feckless, incompetent, and neocon-influenced foreign policy team that have us on the brink of nuclear war.
Wake up. Peace is possible. But not by worshipping the neocon deep state that has a stranglehold on the Democratic party.
Reply to fishfry But they dont cut it mate. Ive said before, I respect your intelligence, Ive learned things from you about philosophy of math (mainly, how little I know.) I have to say that youre completely wrong about Trump, hes malignant, mendacious, and a threat to the American Republic. Until youre willing to acknowledge that, we have nothing further to discuss about it.
That he thinks Kim Jong Un is a really neat guy, even saying once that they were 'in love'? Why is it that the only political leaders he's ever expressed admiration for, if not because they're role models for him?
"A riot is the voice of the unheard." Except when the unheard are the deplorables.
Except when its about racism and some property is damaged. Then its screamed about for years. Meanwhile, a few months later a bunch of white people storm the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the electoral college vote, and they were let in and after years of spin, we should deny what we all saw that day and tell ourselves its no big deal.
Because if it were the Black Lives Matter crowd, Im sure wed be saying the same thing. And Im sure only one insurrectionist would have been shot.
You made my point for me. In 2014 when Obama was separating families and putting kids in cages, the MSM did not widely report the story. People were not outraged because they didn't know it was happening. When images of kids in cages covered in foil space blankets "like baked potatoes" started circulating on social media, Obama dialed back the cages and loosened the vetting of families. Even the WaPo was forced to report on the kids Obama was losing to traffickers.
Sure, it looked bad, but the two cases are not the same. Obama was not separating every family. The Trump Admin was. Obama was not doing it as a deterrent. The Trump admin was. Those are crucial differences, don't you agree?
The first statement explains the second. And, its more than a little. But theres no way to make someone see what he or she doesnt want to see, so lets leave it for now. (Although how a forensic retelling of an attack on the American people could be a fraud on the American people beggars logic.)
You have swallowed the psyop. The J6 committee was a total fraud.
Although as this is the Election thread, not the Trump thread, Ill add I still dont believe Biden will be the eventual Democratic nominee. I just wish folks would say that he should pass the baton. It sounds a lot less hostile than that he should resign or quit. It is really what he must be persuaded to do, and, I believe, will be.
Yes back on topic. The election. I don't see how the Dems have much leverage. Biden is president. Biden is dug in. Biden has 3896 pledged delegates, with only 1,991 needed to win. Biden has Jill and Hunter in his corner; and crack and hooker jokes aside, Hunter is a smart and tough ally.
The Dem civil war is also a race war. All the Dem pols coming out against Joe are whitebreads (except for Obama in the background). Joe has the support of the Congressional Black caucus. AOC and Omar came out for Joe. Tellingly, black NYT columnist Charles Blow just came out with support for Joe. The Strongest Case for Biden Is His Resilience in the Face of the Onslaught. This is noteworthy because the Times editorial board and many of its other (white) opinion writers have called for Joe to "pass the baton" as you say.
Labor is behind Joe. Old people are behind Joe. I read that after the debate, his poll numbers went UP with women. They must have felt sorry for him.
Is the DNC going to screw over all the Biden supporters and primary voters? Dumping Joe is fraught with risk.
Also, Kamala has many negatives. As a former northern Californian I've watched her finger-to-the-wind brand of politics for a couple of decades now. She polls about the same as Biden against Trump. She's been a worthless VP and her approval ratings have been terrible. She is no panacea. And of course nobody else can leapfrog her because of Democratic identity politics.
There are also technical issues. Some states have strict filing rules that limit how long the Dems can wait. The WSJ published a story today saying that Biden can't transfer his campaign account to Kamala until he's formally nominated.
When Nixon was told by the party honchos that he had to resign, he was facing certain impeachment and conviction. What leverage have the Dems got? A strongly worded editorial from George Clooney, who just raised $30M for Biden three weeks ago and publicly claimed Biden was fit as a fiddle when he privately saw Biden's infirmity? Well today Rosie O'Donnell called for Biden to "pass the torch." That oughta do it.
I'm on record saying Joe is the nominee. Biden's press conference was not good enough to quell any doubts, but it wasn't bad enough to make his position any worse. He made some flubs but he also made his foreign policy points. He bought himself more time, and time is of the essence for the anti-Joe Dems. They are stuck. Nobody can make Joe leave but Joe. And he is a stubborn, selfish old guy who, despite his sad recent cognitive decline, was always pretty much like this.
The Dems made their bed and now they have to lie in it.
But they dont cut it mate. Ive said before, I respect your intelligence, Ive learned things from you about philosophy of math (mainly, how little I know.) I have to say that youre completely wrong about Trump, hes malignant, mendacious, and a threat to the American Republic. Until youre willing to acknowledge that, we have nothing further to discuss about it.
I was influenced by your kind words and I did my best to at least explain and justify my political feelings. Especially since I'm no Republican nor a conservative, but rather a fallen liberal. Still a registered Democrat. One of the seven to ten million Americans who voted for Obama and then Trump. The Democrats have no interest in who we are, which has been a great frustration these last eight years. The left just stopped listening. Just Russia Russia Russia and then J6. Lawfare and propping up Biden, both of which have failed spectacularly. It's the Dems who are a threat to the American republic, and I did not used to feel that way. They talked me into it over the past couple of decades and especially in the past eight years.
I enjoyed our Trump chat, and as I said, I appreciate your writing prompts so that I could express some of my thoughts. For some reason, Trump just doesn't trigger me the way he does others. And I do believe that if the Dems had totally ignored Trump, skipped the lawfare entirely, and held a competitive primary, Newsom or Whitmer would be beating DeSantis today.
Now it's up to the American people, such as they are, and our electoral system, such as it is.
I am actually confused about what you wrote. I outlined the basic facts about the sepaations and the cages, and you responded by complaining about my reading habits (and getting it wrong. Breitbart yes, RedState and Townhall no). I fail to see how what I read alters the fact that Trump put kids in the cages Obama built for the same purpose. All the rest is partisan rhetoric. You say that when Obama put kids in cages he was noble, and when Trump put kids in the same cages he was Orange Hitler. I fail to understand your point beyond partisanship.
Then its screamed about for years. Meanwhile, a few months later a bunch of white people storm the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the electoral college vote, and they were let in and after years of spin, we should deny what we all saw that day and tell ourselves its no big deal.
Maybe you didn't see the videos of them being let in. I did.
Because if it were the Black Lives Matter crowd, Im sure wed be saying the same thing. And Im sure only one insurrectionist would have been shot.
Um ... what? The Floyd riots killed 20 people. A black cop shot unarmed Ashli Babbitt. Reverse the races and the left would still be hysterical about it.
Sure, it looked bad, but the two cases are not the same. Obama was not separating every family. The Trump Admin was. Obama was not doing it as a deterrent. The Trump admin was. Those are crucial differences, don't you agree?
Absolutely. Obama is a saint and a lightbringer. Trump is Orange Hitler. That's the distinction you are making.
I knew about Obama's cages in 2014, so when the left went wild over Trump putting kids in the same cages, I recognized them for the ignorant hysterics that they so often are. Eventually Jeh Johnson, Obama's Homeland Security guy, had to explain to reporters that those cages were had indeed been built by Obama. The left literally did not believe it. Willful denial of reality along with hysteria. Not a good look for the side I'd always considered myself to be part of.
As always with Trump, you conflate his often artless rhetoric with reality. The truth is you don't actually know that his motives were different than Obama's. Only that Obama can do no wrong, and Trump can do no right. And that Trump's words often inflame the left. I think he does it on purpose, like the taco bowl tweet. He's a troll. I watched the cage story develop from 2014 to 2018 and it does not reflect well on the left. Ignorance and hysteria. That's their style.
Ask yourself how the Capitol police would respond to black or brown people. I doubt very much theyd be letting them in, to the extent that that even happened (you know, apart from breaking windows and ramming down doors).
But nevermind just go on pretending it the insurrection was nothing. Years from now Im sure itll be remembered as a tour in conservative media anyway.
Federal whistleblowers testify against the Biden regimes complicity in the exploitation and trafficking of migrant children.
What I discovered was horrifying Make no mistake children were not going to their parents they were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to to vet sponsors and process children safely with government officials complicit in it.
Children were sent to addresses that were abandoned houses or non-existent in some cases
Meanwhile, a few months later a bunch of white people storm the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the electoral college vote, and they were let in
It is okay when we do it. Get the memo, Mikie-chan.
FWIW, my guess is that The Neofascist Criminal Clown will announce he's selected either Kari Lake of Arizona or Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina to be his running mate. :meh:
I imagine Trumps poll numbers may jump a couple points because of this. If he were smart which he isnt he would be gracious and thank Joe and others who have wished him well and condemned the violence.
But we all know what will really happen. Get ready for conspiracy theories and fundraising, folks.
Watch the spin. Theyve radicalized themselves and their obsequious base into a corner. Theyre the authoritarians theyve been warning us about. Even though one of their fellow panicked brethren committed the act, one way or another this will be Trumps fault.
Prosecute their political opponents, excise their political opponents from the ballot, attempt to remove their own democratically-elected candidate from the race, violate the bill of rights and constitution from every corner. Assassination was all they had left. They failed even that.
If I was religious, I'd assume god really is on Trump's side. The last couple of weeks were an amazing string of successes for his campaign.
First the SC giving Trump very wide ranging immunity.
Then Biden exposing his mental decline at the debate, followed by a disastrously uncoordinated response in the democratic party. Weeks on the democrats have still not managed to form a united front, but did manage to further damage their (current) candidate.
And now a failed assassination attempt, leaving him hurt but only lightly injured. His reaction to this was also very good. He managed to show some restraint and called for unity, which is an unusually savvy move.
Not to be callous about the assassination attempt (I'm glad he survived) but it's hard to imagine a bigger boon for his campaign than the image of a martyr.
If I was religious, I'd assume god really is on Trump's side.
If I was religious I'd be denouncing my own faith about now to be honest.
Well America good luck with your new king I guess. At this point I'm just trying to find a nice seat for myself to watch as society continues to burn itself to the ground.
They tried censoring him, removing him from the ballot, putting him in jail. They wanted Trump to be assassinated. That much is clear. But now we have to watch their solemn play-acting as they deplore political violence and murder.
Joe Biden said some words, and thus he tried assassinating Trump. I remember someone railing against such logic.
Its as if theres no consistency or principle whatsoever. :chin:
Anyway criminals should be in jail and insurrectionists probably shouldnt be on the ballot and private companies can censor anyone they want, particularly those who incite an insurrection. But nice Gish gallop.
Reply to NOS4A2
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/11/pence-trump-endangered-my-family-on-jan-6-00086664
"I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable."
As usual you confuse what Trump SAYS from what he DOES.
He's a negotiator. He puts up skyscrapers in Manhattan. How do you know he wasn't expecting his statement to go out to prospective migrants, and make them decide to stay home/
You can't prove otherwise. You can't actually cite statistics on what was in Obama or Trump's heart for each of the families separated and kids caged.
Instead you choose to judge Trump on his words, and not on his actions, which were in fact no different than Obamas. He used Obama's cages for God's sake, you can't say with a straight face that they were Lightbringer cages when Obama stuck kids in them and Orange Hitler cages when Trump did it.
You're operating from emotion, choosing to overreact to Trump's words, because you can't cite facts in his actual actions.
You have no credibility when you do this, because the left has been doing this for eight years. Just think taco bowl tweet. The left went ballistic. I took one look at that, cracked up laughing, and said, "Trump is a master troll and a brilliant performance artist!"
That's the deal. I get Trump. If he does something wrong, he did something wrong. I'm just not emotionally trigged by the guy, and many on the left are. And that clouds their, and your, judgment.
Ask yourself how the Capitol police would respond to black or brown people. I doubt very much theyd be letting them in, to the extent that that even happened (you know, apart from breaking windows and ramming down doors).
You mean when a black cop shot an unarmed young white woman to death? If the races were reversed we'd still be having riots.
But nevermind just go on pretending it the insurrection was nothing. Years from now Im sure itll be remembered as a tour in conservative media anyway.
Time will tell. If there's justice in the universe, there will be justice for J6.
Ask yourself how the Capitol police would respond to black or brown people. I doubt very much theyd be letting them in, to the extent that that even happened (you know, apart from breaking windows and ramming down doors).
Mikie
You mean when a black cop shot an unarmed young white woman to death?
No, I mean how the Capitol police would respond to black or brown people. I doubt very much theyd be letting them in, to the extent that that even happened (you know, apart from breaking windows and ramming down doors).
No, I mean how the Capitol police would respond to black or brown people. I doubt very much theyd be letting them in, to the extent that that even happened (you know, apart from breaking windows and ramming down doors).
So your best argument against me is a hypothetical scenario you just made up. If you had actual facts, or an actual argument, you'd make it.
Well I'm taking the day off from partisanship so thanks for the chat.
Reply to fishfry The link is not about Trump, it's about Jeff Sessions.
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Monday that he hopes the administration's new policy that separates children from their parents will serve as a deterrent to other immigrants considering crossing the border illegally."
To recap: the Trump Admin started a new zero-tolerance policy to separate all families as a deterrent. This had never been done before and was ended just a few weeks after the public found out. Do you see how that is different than what Biden and Obama were doing?
Instead you choose to judge Trump on his words, and not on his actions, which were in fact no different than Obamas. He used Obama's cages for God's sake, you can't say with a straight face that they were Lightbringer cages when Obama stuck kids in them and Orange Hitler cages when Trump did it.
False.
Some cages were built by Obama and some children were separated under exceptional circumstances. Trump wrote a blanket policy to prosecute all illegal border crossers which resulted in a blanket separation of kids from their families. A lot more cages were build. There's your "action" to judge.
Time will tell. If there's justice in the universe, there will be justice for J6.
That's not how justice works. You have to actively work for it but I guess if you vote in the US you have to pretend justice is released like manna from the heavens because your political system is currently incapable of protecting it.
:D "They" are out to get'im. Crooks certainly was (he fits in a US pattern). "They" didn't miss John Lennon. :/ (by the way, surely Gore has more wits than Bush)
The last three days have been wild. Trump will win. It will be a fun watch, and its a shame there are dickheads across the USA who think it's such a dire situation that some kind of "society burning down" is going to occur.
It's utterly bewildering that people as intensely dull as is required to make that type of comment are in fact, capable of operation modern technology. But here we are. 180. Mikie. Benkei. The whole crew! I implore all of you to remember that you can actually speak to other humans without being dimwits.
Anyway remember when I said this would die down in a week? Well make its a few days, because once Trump gets up to talk, were right back to normal. Polls are still close.
Trump has everything going his way right now, against a weak opponent and hell still likely lose. Too bad the RNC have no values or principles.
As I said in the Trump thread, the assassination attempt is a big plus for the Trump campaign. Not to suggest for one minute it was planned or staged - it genuinely appears to be the act of an irrational loner - but that it plays right into the hands of 'martyr' and 'deep state conspiracy'. Many of his supporters will see it like that regardless of the facts.
Not because hes an awful human being and did irreversible harm to the United States and the world but because he wasnt stupid enough. Didnt go along with the fantasies of a stolen election and J6 being a peaceful tout and Trump being an innocent man. Booo!!
The Republicans are the party of idiots. But they are the party of creationists and climate deniers, so this should have been known years ago. The transition to the MAGA cult was only natural.
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Monday that he hopes the administration's new policy that separates children from their parents will serve as a deterrent to other immigrants considering crossing the border illegally."
Again, you are upset about words, something Sessions said on a right wing talk show. You can't prove he wasn't just saying that to (a) deter immigrants, or (b) suck up to the FOX news base. You are upset about what he SAID and you have once again presented no evidence about what he DID.
You just assume that Obama's heart is pure and Trump's is impure, and that causes you to not even realize that you are not making a substantive argument.
In the 1990's the Dems wanted to look tough on immigration, so they hardened and militarized the border (Hillary was front and center on that), leading to desperate immigrants dying of thirst in the desert. If you seek to paint Trump as lacking in human compassion for immigrants, you will have to come to terms with the Democrats' own cruelty. The Dems forced Mexico to run a war on the cartels in order to receive American economic aid, leading to many tens of thousands of deaths of Mexican citizens. The Democrats have an appalling human rights record regarding Mexico.
To recap: the Trump Admin started a new zero-tolerance policy to separate all families as a deterrent. This had never been done before and was ended just a few weeks after the public found out. Do you see how that is different than what Biden and Obama were doing?
Your proof consists only of verbal statements, no proof as to what was actually done.
The Democrats have an absolutely appalling human rights record in Mexico. And you want to give Joe Biden as an example of human decency in Mexico? Motherf*cker is a child trafficker, I have repeatedly pointed this out. He doesn't waste time separating families, he just turns the kids over to their traffickers at the border.
You are just being a partisan shill, your argument is devoid of logic. "Orange Man say bad thing on television." That's the extent of your argument. While being willfully ignorant of Democratic human rights abuses on the border and within Mexico for decades.
Some cages were built by Obama and some children were separated under exceptional circumstances. Trump wrote a blanket policy to prosecute all illegal border crossers which resulted in a blanket separation of kids from their families. A lot more cages were build. There's your "action" to judge.
I'll see your Trump cages and raise you Clinton and Obama's militarization of the souther border, which has caused untold human misery. The Dems have a terrible human rights record re Mexico.
Again, you are upset about words, something Sessions said on a right wing talk show.
As you know, people go to prison all the time over "words". The words of the Attorney General matter, regardless of where he's talking. The whole country was upset by the zero-tolerance immigration policy (the action behind the words), which is why the policy ended just weeks after people found out. Discussing this with you is pointless. You're beclowning yourself now.
That's not how justice works. You have to actively work for it but I guess if you vote in the US you have to pretend justice is released like manna from the heavens because your political system is currently incapable of protecting it.
We shall see. As Martin Luther King said, The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Of course it can take a long time. Stalin sent a lot of people to the Gulag before the Soviet Union finally collapsed. There was justice, but not in time to help many individuals.
The whole country was upset by the zero-tolerance immigration policy (the action behind the words), which is why the policy ended just weeks after people found out. Discussing this with you is pointless. You're beclowning yourself now.
The country got upset because the MSM hysterically broadcast Trump's border crisis. I personally watched the same MSM be silent during Obama's identical border crisis in 2014.
What you think you are measuring is not national outrage, but media coverage. Protecting Obama in 2014 and attacking Trump in 2018. Pretty much the same humanitarian crisis.
You're quite ignorant about the southern border and the striking difference in media coverage of Democratic versus Republican humanitarian crises on the border. You're ignorant of decades of Democratic militarization of the border leading to so much human misery both on the border and inside Mexico. All you care about is your little talking point. In the end you have no knowledge and no argument so you sling insults.
The last three days have been wild. Trump will win. It will be a fun watch, and its a shame there are dickheads across the USA who think it's such a dire situation that some kind of "society burning down" is going to occur.
There are also dickheads in the USA who are hoping and actively planning for society burning down.
And whatever one may think about Donald Trump as a person, the trajectory of the republican party as a whole is quite stark. There doesn't seem much of a doubt that the majority of active politicians in the republican party of 2024 is willing to use all legal and legalistic means available to deepen and secure it's power. Moderates have an increasingly hard time in this environment.
I mean they are endorsing a candidate who still refuses to accept the result of the last election. Sure Trump is popular and that's part of the reason. But it's also a conscious choice to engage in power politics without regards to democratic niceties. The outlook is no longer a classical liberal one.
I've seen several comments that our members wish death on Trump
I don't think he's like Hitler. I'm just one of the millions of people who wish that shooter hadn't missed. Or how about just badly injured him so he'd have to be in rehab during the election, and after that, he'd be just fine. :halo:
Reply to frank Wishing death on people out of personal fancy is just poor character.
Point at something Trump did that makes him deserve to be assassinated. What illegal wars did he start? Which countries did he ruin? Which regions of the world did he plunge into chaos?
I doubt you'll get much further than "he said some words I didn't like." Compared to previous US presidents and even the current one, he's a lightweight when it comes to wanton destruction.
Compared to previous US presidents and even the current one, he's a lightweight when it comes to wanton destruction.
Except the irreversible damage to the environment and taking us backwards on climate mitigation which is already doing innumerable harms. Appointing a fossil fuel lawyer as head of the EPA probably does deserve the death penalty, morally but Im not in favor of assassination.
Of course none of that matters to his supporters, who are outright climate deniers. Including you. So I dont pretend like reality matters to you.
Also take a look at his one legislative achievement: a massive tax break for corporate America, who hes always slavishly served.
Or letting thousands die of Covid because he didnt want to deal with it, saying it would be gone by Easter.
I wager that the Democrats blue-collar support is bleeding out. I imagine theyre tired of that power hungry cult thieving their money for more boondoggle policies, and all thats left are panty-wasted and woke soys. That party wants nothing to do with workers anymore unless it comes election time. Its fun to watch.
Equally as hilarious are stalwart Republicans, like Trumps would-be assassin, who have to watch as their former party gets invaded by instagram models and union bosses and the lgbt. Trump is reordering American politics, so its glorious to watch the party apparatchiks seethe.
Reply to NOS4A2, I didn't want to assassinate Clown McClown, let alone tried to. You have me confused with someone else, and have too many "They"s in your...comments.
Our resident Trump cultist has exactly no principles or values. Just unadulterated party politics. And watered down Ayn Rand. But its always there for a laugh!
Point at something Trump did that makes him deserve to be assassinated.
Nothing. He desires to die very slowly in excrutiating agony while fully aware of Sleepy Dark Brandon's 2nd inauguration, then mercifully expire a world-class loser on 21January25. That's what The Clown & his cult of worshipful idiots deserve.
No "fantasizing", just talking about what the orange shit "deserves" as you said.
He probably does deserve to die, given the irreparable harm and deaths he has and will cause. But unlike the Trump cult, there are still principles worth adhering to. Like not assassinating people.
I don't think he deserves to die. Like many, I just wish someone would assassinate him. I never claimed to be a saint.
Not sure that'd improve matters for those opposed to Trumpism oder the republican platform to be honest.
I think a sufficiently ruthless politician armed with the spirit of Trump might end up much more effective at getting their way than Trump will ever be.
Not sure that'd improve matters for those opposed to Trumpism oder the republican platform to be honest.
I think a sufficiently ruthless politician armed with the spirit of Trump might end up much more effective at getting their way than Trump will ever be.
Yea. I just don't want to have to hear his big mouth for the next four years. Either way, I think the US is headed for some kind of political shift.
Reply to Mikie Agreed. I don't advocate assassinating any current/former elected politician or candidate for office. I never have. Even though SCOTUS recently granted "immunity from criminal prosecution" to POTUS for "killing a political rival".
This is a direct attack on democracy, making the removal of ballot bins and the storming of the Capitol look like child's play. They are literally and openly blocking a viable candidate's name from the ballot.
"Vance has embraced aspects of the Dark Enlightenment, a movement that sees mass participatory democracy, particularly liberal democracy, as a threat to or incompatible with freedom.". wikipedia
Dark Enlightenment:
"The ideology generally rejects Whig historiography[2]the concept that history shows an inevitable progression towards greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy[2]in favor of a return to traditional societal constructs and forms of government, including absolute monarchism and other older forms of leadership such as cameralism.[3]". wikipedia2
This is a direct attack on democracy, making the removal of ballot bins and the storming of the Capitol look like child's play.
Its not good, but putting a conservative spin on it like this is NOS territory. Its also worth noting that Fox sources always add their slant.
They have missed numerous statutory deadlines, skipped filing fees, submitted the wrong names on the nomination petitions, and some failed to hold conventions," Olasanoye said. "None of these candidates are qualified to be on the Georgia ballot."
But yeah, definitely worse than storming the Capitol to overthrow an election you didnt like the result of.
It's ot good, but putting a conservative spin on it like this is NOS territory. Its also worth noting that Fox sources always add their slant.
Just pointing out a double standard. There's nothing conservative about it. If the Republicans tried to block the Libertarians from the ballot because they knew it would consume much needed Republican votes I'd say the same thing.
The right trying to make it hard for Democrats to vote is anti-democratic. If more people want Biden, then Biden should be President.
Yeah, so saying it makes January 6th look like childs play is simply pointing out a double standard.
January 6 wax obviously different in that it involved crimes against people and property and the intentions were to upset the results of a fair election, but the likelihood of success was minimal and there was no actual success. It was at the end of the day violent and malicious theater.
The Democrats' removal of a name from the ballot is real and will impact an election.
One is a street level blue collar crime and the other an organized white collar crime. The results are typical. With the former, a bunch of people get hurt and things get destroyed. The other is more precise.
I'm not seeing anything criminal in Dems pursuing legal challenges.
There is nothing criminal in that for sure. And there's nothing criminal in carving out districts that give advantage to one party over the other, to putting polling places in unreachable locations by those without transportation, to closing polling places at earlier times to benefit one party over the other. These are the games the parties play to interfere with the will of the people being expressed.
It's the way it always works. A sophisticated player creates rules to benefit him (like regulations, tax code, or whatever) and makes out like a bandit. An unsophisticated player kicks open a door a busts heads.
The question then isn't one of legality, but morality. If you place a moral value on the successful candidate being the one who the public most wants to win, then you won't try to enforce rules that do the opposite.
I will also repeat that there is a difference between the morality of injuring persons or damaging property versus manipulating social procedures like voting. That is, I do beleive its worse morally to bust someone's head open and to set fire to his property in an effort to obtain an unfair result than to do the same through a more peaceful and calculating means.
The point I made in comparing January 6 to the efforts to remove RFK from ballots wasn't to suggest an equivalency in terms of how rogue and violent they both were. It was to point out that in terms of the specific harm we were pointing to - impeding the democratic will - what the Democrats are doing exceeds what the Republicans have done. I get that the Democrats didn't go about it by throwing chairs through windows or wearing viking hats, but their result has been more successful.
These are the games the parties play to interfere with the will of the people being expressed.
Right. I don't necessarily like Democrats trying to keep third parties off the ballot, but I know they're no different than any other political party that would do the same thing. The GOP would not hesitate to keep third parties of the ballot if they thought it would help their chances.
Jan 6th and the GOP's rallying around Trump after the stolen election drama are quite different, though. I like to think that in a parallel universe, where Trump is just as awful a person as he is now, but a champion of climate change, medicare-for-all, and high taxes on the rich, the Democrat party would still have nothing to do with him. What do you think?
Reply to Hanover Yea, but that's child's play compared to the way the Republican party has gerrymandered North Carolina. So the attack on the Capitol where they appeared to be prepared to freakin execute the Vice President is like infant's play. Like with a rattle or something.
Today's New York Times frontpage is basically BIDEN MUST GO, with terrible polling and yet more senior democrats calling for his retrenchment. His situation is plainly untenable, you can't go into the National Convention with the Party split and the press all over you, up against the Trump juggernaut, which really is a civilization-ending threat.
His situation is plainly untenable, you can't go into the National Convention with the Party split and the press all over you, up against the Trump juggernaut, which really is a civilization-ending threat.
Republicans say democrats are a clear and present danger, etc. But thats mostly crap although you could argue that theyre taking us close to nuclear war with their foreign policy. In that case, democrats are an existential threat.
Republicans are the party of climate denial. Thats also an existential threat. More likely to cause widespread damage and suffering, given that its already happening and the threat of nuclear war is low.
That's one of the factors, but there are others. The perils are environmental, economic, political and military, and each one, or a combination of them, could pose a threat to the Western democratic social order. It's going to take very much higher orders of problem-solving and political management than the Republican clown-car have demonstrated since Trump took the wheel.
Yea, but that's child's play compared to the way the Republican party has gerrymandered North Carolina. So the attack on the Capitol where they appeared to be prepared to freakin execute the Vice President is like infant's play. Like with a rattle or something.
I doubt that. I think the removal of a competitor from the race is about as anti-competitive and anti-democratic as it comes. You won that race in the back room without a single vote cast.
Today's New York Times frontpage is basically BIDEN MUST GO, with terrible polling and yet more senior democrats calling for his retrenchment. His situation is plainly untenable, you can't go into the National Convention with the Party split and the press all over you, up against the Trump juggernaut, which really is a civilization-ending threat.
Remind me why your party (technically still mine) chose not to have competitive primaries, where they could have solved their Biden problem in an open and democratic manner?
Isn't it ironic that the Dems are the victims of their own failed machinations?
And when they swap in Kam in a back room deal to avoid an open convention, will the rank and file just fall into line like they always do? Probably.
I have to admit I've been on record saying they won't be able to move Joe out. But he's looking pretty shaky right now. Lot of party heavyweights are against him.
Reply to NOS4A2 Nobody cares about Covid anymore. I doubt he even has it. I think he's holing up in preparation for dropping out this weekend. Maybe he'll say Covid convinced him he's too old to campaign.
Reply to frank Probably. But apparently there's some internal polling Democrats have that has convinced them Biden will not only lose, but cost them the House and Senate.
Trump's going to win, then Vance. Vance will change the presidential term limits and rule for the rest of his life.
Trump isnt going to win. Biden campaigned from his bunker, drew crowds of max. 50 people at his rallies, was the first virtual candidate, and for some strange reason got the most votes in US history. Never underestimate the corrupt abilities of his party.
His party is telling him to step aside because hes doing bad in the polls, and for no other reason.
No other reason? Do you think the NYTimes is telling him to drop out simply because he's "doing bad in the polls"? Biden is unfit to run. He's unfit to be president. The debate was horrifying.
Im not sure what youre getting at when you start speaking in questions. The NYT argued Biden should step aside because he might lose to Trump, not for any democratic reason.
The NYT argued Biden should step aside because he might lose to Trump, not for any democratic reason.
There is no "democratic reason" for Biden to step aside, except maybe that 70% of Democrats wanting him gone, but that wasn't the Times' point. The NYTimes wants him out because he's in such bad shape:
"The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trumps provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence."
Which was my point. This isn't just about polls. Biden is unfit.
Thats just not the case. They werent describing his fitness; they were describing his debate performance. They dont seem to care that no one is leading the country, that a dementia patient holds the nuclear codes. They want him out because they think hes going to lose.
Mr. Biden answered an urgent question on Thursday night. It was not the answer that he and his supporters were hoping for. But if the risk of a second Trump term is as great as he says it is and we agree with him that the danger is enormous then his dedication to this country leaves him and his party only one choice.
The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden cant continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November.
It is the best chance to protect the soul of the nation the cause that drew Mr. Biden to run for the presidency in 2019 from the malign warping of Mr. Trump. And it is the best service that Mr. Biden can provide to a country that he has nobly served for so long.
First it was Schiff, then it was Chuck Schumer who have pushed to Biden to give up his candidacy.
But the Democrats have really a problem even this way, because in this age of DEI, they simply cannot bypass a black female vice president.
Well, the Democrats will loose just like the Conservative party lost in the UK. Perhaps it's not going to be such a loss as the Conservatives had (worst election defeat in 190 years), but still.
Trump isnt going to win. Biden campaigned from his bunker, drew crowds of max. 50 people at his rallies, was the first virtual candidate, and for some strange reason got the most votes in US history. Never underestimate the corrupt abilities of his party.
So you predict a Biden win. I'll take it. Trump isolated himself until he was just flailing. Biden at least can gather a group capable of doing the job.
18July24
[quote=NOS4A2]Trump isnt going to win.[/quote]
Yeah, buddy! JD Vance is the *misogynistic gift* that will keep on giving. More of the Ultra-MAGA Hillbilly speaking in public, please. :clap:
I dont get why the Republican shakes womans hands and in the Democrat cartoon there are apartments. Does this imply that Republicans are as friendly with women as Democrats are with town planning?
The whole platform is based on delusions. Examples:
There is no invasion at the border, and immigrants are a net good for the country. Youll hear exactly the opposite.
The economy is as good or better than under Trump but youll hear the opposite.
Crime is down, not up.
Climate change is real, not a Chinese hoax.
Were pumping more oil and gas now than ever, not less. (Unfortunately.)
The 2020 election was one of, if not the most, secure in history.
January 6th was an insurrection the crowds goal was to stop the counting of electoral votes, based on the lie that it was a stolen election (see above).
Donald Trump was one of the worst, if not the worst, president in history.
Just some basic facts. But in Trump world, where literally everything is inverted, Trump does nothing wrong, the election was stolen, the January 6th criminals are heroes, etc.
So whats left? Tax cuts and destroying government (besides the parts that corporate America likes)? Ugh
Reply to Mikie I agree with every word, but it probably belongs in the Trump thread.
It seems the gig is up for Biden, he's going to announce 'the passing of the torch' this weekend (to put a positive spin on it.) For the time being, the nominee designate will probably remain Kamala Harris, but if the Democratic National Committee so decides, there will be an open convention beginning Aug 19th and another Presidential nominee might be chosen. Me, I don't think Kamala Harris would be a winning choice, but I can think of some. As I've said before, I think the electorate is crying out for an alternative to Trump v Biden, and if a credible candidate is presented, it might generate a big uptick.
He already won the primary election, meaning he has already been chosen to be the candidate. That simply cannot be erased because he is not winning in the general.
He already won the primary election, meaning he has already been chosen to be the candidate. That simply cannot be erased because he is not winning in the general.
You're talking about the procedure.
But the [i]reason[/I] given does sound entirely democratic to me. People don't want to vote for him, therefore he shouldn't run.
Like 2020, don't vote for the man (or the woman); vote for the mission in Roevember 2024 which is to defeat The Neofascist Crininal Clown & his rabid MAGA junta-in-waiting. :victory: :mask:
Although I was not included in your illustrious list I will comment anyway.
I agree with him regarding "democracy by the polls", but the concern about Biden's current abilities is not simply a matter of what the polls say. I also agree with his criticism of the press, but the press plays a less significant role when a propaganda machine has a significant portion of the population believing that what it tells them is the news and the truth. Lichtman's track record on prediction election outcomes is impressive but I am not confident that Biden will win or that the attempt to get him to step down is self-destructive.
Based on his evaluation of this administration's performance his prediction might have been right up until the debate, Biden's past performance does not matter if he is no longer capable of performing as well as he once did.
Reply to 180 Proof I agree with Lichtman's argument on the power of incumbency. If there are no quagmire-conflicts going on, if the voter's 401K's are up and there is no recession, the incumbent is posed to win. And Americans seem to have forgotten that they indeed lost a war in Afghanistan as nobody is talking about it, since it was also Trump's fault also. And yes, there's no billionaire third party candidate running.
And I agree with Lichtman that Democrats are shooting them into the foot, but then again no incumbent running for the second term has been ever so senile (at least in the open). So even Lichtman is unsure of the outcome and waits for the Democratic convention.
However, even if Trump wants to follow the Orban model, as Lichtman says, what this great populist orator lacks is the needed leadership qualities. We already know this from the last time. And the idea that Trump can wreck American democracy, well, just look what happened on January 6th:
Trump wanted to go with his supporters to Capitol Hill, but his own security team simply drove him to the White House. There he watched mesmerized from television how his supporters took over the Capitol Hill building and finally, after calls from his inner circle and family, he just said to his supporters to go home.
Now, sincerely, ask yourself: is a person that acts in this way even capable of overthrowing one of the oldest democracies in the World, if he actually wanted to do it? Because you don't get a better chance ever for an autocoup like January 6th, with your supporters breaking into Capitol Hill. Democrats were totally stopped in their tracks as a deer in the headlights on that day. But then you would have to have a real plan, you would have to have people that support you, understand it's either they go through all the way or they face a life sentences, even capitol punishment. Nothing like that happened.
Then ask yourself: is now the Republican party really intent on wrecking democracy? All of them?
Or does JD Vance, a former marine that wrote in 2016 "Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nations Highest Office" among other comments, wants to now wreck democracy of the US? Isn't the last VP of Trump a clear example of the Trump team not having these kind of thoughts?
If you think that the intent of Republicans is this, I disagree with you. I think you taken in too much of the rhetoric which causes the political polarization in the US.
Hence in my view in 2028, even after a Trump presidency, there will be a democracy in the US. What kind of ride would it be to 2028 is a different question.
Its a tough one. I have to respect Lichtmans record, so I listen to what he says carefully. Its true people always say this time its different, and it certainly looks like the last few years truly have been. The keys will be right until theyre not.
I cant help but have the feeling like theres a bit of luck involved with his predictions. But who knows? Thats the point: I dont. And no one here does either.
Then ask yourself: is now the Republican party really intent on wrecking democracy? All of them?
You're assuming they think of it as "wrecking democracy". They might instead consider it safeguarding democracy from the mob.
Consider some of the rhetoric right wing pundits have been putting out there: how the USA are not a democracy but actually a republic. And they mean to imply by this that only certain people - true Americans - should be allowed a say. It's a take that relies on very old concerns about the tyranny of the majority, only adopted to feature new villains.
Reply to 180 Proof That's 3 elections where voting is intended to stop Trump. It's insane the Democrats aren't capable of fielding candidates people actually like. Lichtman only considers this in terms of winning; I think there's more to elections than winning. It's also about why you're winning. This just further entrenches Dem vs GOP and sets up the terms for the next election which will not be about policy (again).
Biden has to go because he's unfit. Trump never should be the nominee but the GOP has been shit since Reagan.
Well said. And arguably the state of the democratic party is more worrying than the state of President Biden. That the party is not able to coordinate an effective response to Biden's flagging mental state is damning, especially since it's an entirely predictable scenario.
In retrospect it seems like warning signs have been accumulating since Obama's second term that the democrats are no longer able to effectively coordinate responses to challanges - like the refusal to allow Obama to fill a SC seat.
That the party is not able to coordinate an effective response to Biden's flagging mental state is damning, especially since it's an entirely predictable scenario.
It may be more of a matter of not having yet coordinated a effective response than of not being able to, but that is not a prediction.
That the party is not able to coordinate an effective response to Biden's flagging mental state is damning, especially since it's an entirely predictable scenario.
It's still uncertain since Biden could very well stay in or drop out at this point but what more do you think could be done here? The donor money has dried up, the polling has gotten even worse for him, the media is completely dogpiling the Biden campaign now, and members of the party have been defecting en masse and increasingly so.
Of course if you're talking about their inability to foresee Biden's age problems after RBG and even Feinstein months before he started running again, then yeah it is entirely a failure of leadership though that ship has already sailed. Complacency and arrogance from the ones at the top are what gave us Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2024.
Of course if you're talking about their inability to foresee Biden's age problems after RBG and even Feinstein months before he started running again, then yeah it is entirely a failure of leadership though that ship has already sailed. Complacency and arrogance from the ones at the top are what gave us Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2024.
The fact people don't get decent choices reflects the USA is simply not a democracy. I would add complacency and arrogance also got you Biden in 2020. Entirely uninspired. They deserve the dog piling and the whining it's bad for Biden is not the media's fault but a direct consequence of their own arrogance. Democrats should just rename themselves to "never Trump" because that's what it's been about since Hillary.
Its actually funny that people complain about the DNC and RNC for nominating unlikable and forced candidates. Such things are too important to allow chance or random candidates to get elected.
Yet, as someone pointed out, Trump was a wild card for the RNC in 2016, and still is until he likely is reelected.
The fact people don't get decent choices reflects the USA is simply not a democracy.
There are plenty of reasons why the US isn't a democracy and alot of them involve the SCOTUS, particularly their decisions in 2000, 2010, and this year. Of course the primaries are also pretty terrible too and the way general elections have locked out serious third party contenders since the 90s.
I would add complacency and arrogance also got you Biden in 2020.
It was actually fear that got us Biden in 2020, not of Trump but of Bernie Sanders. In 2020, there was a point where Sanders was about to run away with the nomination and the entire establishment rallied behind Biden in a matter of a few days before Super Tuesday in order to stop him. Biden wasn't the best candidate but he was the one they settled with because he's the easiest one to rally behind. If Biden ends up dropping out this year then we will see the exact reverse of that, as all the anti-Biden forces will likely coalesce around Kamala this time around, not because she's the best candidate but she's the easiest one to rally behind. The lord almighty have giveth and the lord almighty will have taketh away, to use some of Biden's own words.
It's still uncertain since Biden could very well stay in or drop out at this point but what more do you think could be done here?
I think what I'm missing is some kind of action plan. Everyone seems to be content with voicing their concern but then the Biden circle has already made plenty clear they're not going to step aside.
So either there is some avenue to remove him, in which case they need to pursue it. Or there isn't in which case further complaining just hurts them. But what it looks like is they simply cannot figure out what to do.
Of course if you're talking about their inability to foresee Biden's age problems after RBG and even Feinstein months before he started running again, then yeah it is entirely a failure of leadership though that ship has already sailed. Complacency and arrogance from the ones at the top are what gave us Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2024.
I wonder why there hasn't been a grassroots movement to reform the party structure after 2016. Perhaps going after Trump was too easy and allowed the party to deflect the attention. It would explain the willingness to give Trump all the attention all the time.
I think what I'm missing is some kind of action plan. Everyone seems to be content with voicing their concern but then the Biden circle has already made plenty clear they're not going to step aside.
I think there's starting to become a more organized movement here as more time passes and Biden continues to not reassure his party while pissing them off with his arrogance. It's clear that leadership is not happy with him and are not letting things move on as much as the Biden campaign would like to pretend like nothing happened.
So either there is some avenue to remove him, in which case they need to pursue it. Or there isn't in which case further complaining just hurts them. But what it looks like is they simply cannot figure out what to do.
There's always challenging him at the convention and putting up somebody else which is an extreme measure that's very unlikely but who knows with a party that finds Biden's presence increasingly unacceptable. One could argue that it may hurt Biden's chances if they continue to complain, but as more and more polling suggests he's a goner anyways and will drag the entire party down with him, then there's also reason to think that it won't matter much anyways so might as well complain.
I wonder why there hasn't been a grassroots movement to reform the party structure after 2016. Perhaps going after Trump was too easy and allowed the party to deflect the attention. It would explain the willingness to give Trump all the attention all the time.
Well like I told Benkei, Bernie tried to run in 2020 but was stopped by the establishment that gave us Hilary in 2016 and Biden in 2024. If Trump ends up winning again because of their shenanigans then hopefully we will see such a reformation. I don't blame the Democrat voters for what is happening because the problem really was they never had a say in the process.
Let's all enjoy this brief window of hope before they undemocratically shove through another centrist loser offering absolutely nothing, guaranteed to lose to the evil clown.
Yeah, in 2024 that "1 way to lose" will be the same as 2016: HRC. The Dems don't learn new tricks often ... though maybe VP Harris :yikes: (if Biden drops out of the race and the Dems don't nominate e.g. Gov Newsom, Gov Whitmer, et al) HRC redux.
I do not think she will be a strong candidate though. I think she would be a significantly stronger candidate if she hadn't been VP, because Biden's administration is not particularly popular.
There are several people who make better candidates, Dems who have won in deep red states.
If she wants it she can probably get it though because this is the Democratic Party so who is going to want to say: "we need to pass over the Black woman candidate?" All the speculation I've read sort of centers around this.
I think the only way she isn't the nominee is if she pulls herself out.
There are a handful of very moderate Republicans who have won is very Democrat-leaning states who would be good to throw on the ticket to offset the "California liberal" vibes she gives off, but I don't know if either side would be willing to do that. It would be a brilliant move IMHO though. These folks are already exiles for failing to say the election was stolen though, so they might go along with it.
Things are falling into place quickly. Bidenat least we think it was Bidenresigned by tweet. Harris has been endorsed by Dem elites. Delegates voice support for her. The apparatchiks are already out praising Bidens self-sacrifice. All of this within an hour. You cant help but admire the craven political ruthlessness of that organization.
She is a woman, and thus automatically at a disadvantage. She's also of color, so the DEI-hire narrative writes itself. In fact if you ask in more right wing leaning circles, she's universally reviled already for being a supposed DEI-hire who allegedly has zero qualifications, and is stupid because her laugh sounds weird. That's unfortunately the level of political discourse we can expect.
Apart from that she seems solid, if nothing more. She has attracted significant left wing criticism for her policies as DA but that probably won't matter against Trump and is not something that I think most voters would care about deeply.
Really it's all about whether she can effectively deal with the fact that she is a woman.
I do not think she will be a strong candidate though. I think she would be a significantly stronger candidate if she hadn't been VP, because Biden's administration is not particularly popular.
I guess the deciding question would be whether the administration is popular enough among swing state voters.
I think the only way she isn't the nominee is if she pulls herself out.
Probably, yeah. She'll be hard to get past if she decides to push it. Nor Do I think the democrats could afford another public pressure campaign.
Edit: So I just read that she reacted to Biden's endorsement by saying she hopes to "earn and win" the nomination. So she considers herself in the race, but not the heir apparent. This leaves her space to back out, so at least she apparently does not intend to run come what may.
Honestly overall I think at this point the democrats should embrace chaos and focus on making the most grassroots-based choice possible. Find some way to let the base vote for a candidate, take the hands off the convention and just make it really, really obvious that you're not pushing anyone and whoever makes the best case wins.
I think such a spectacle might energize voters who are on the fence, but what do I know.
She is a woman, and thus automatically at a disadvantage. She's also of color, so the DEI-hire narrative writes itself. In fact if you ask in more right wing leaning circles, she's universally reviled already for being a supposed DEI-hire who allegedly has zero qualifications, and is stupid because her laugh sounds weird. That's unfortunately the level of political discourse we can expect.
The political discourse "there" is right as usual. Hillary got millions of votes for being a woman, Obama for being black. Odds are that, if Hillary were Hilbert and Barack Obama were Barry O'Bryan, they wouldn't have won.
So I just read that she reacted to Biden's endorsement by saying she hopes to "earn and win" the nomination. So she considers herself in the race, but not the heir apparent.
Thats encouraging. Ive been reading that theres the chance of an open convention, but that in the past these havent been very successful. But if it is an open convention, I hope another candidate comes of it.
I visit x.com, Elon Musk's playground, and the way things stand is something to the matter with how Harris speaks. It's a little troubling that she can't speak with diction at all. It's actually so pathetic in videos of CNN interviews and past debates that I don't know what to say myself.
Joe has to resign the presidency, the sooner the better. There's are negative and positive reasons.
The negatives are that as long as he's President, Karine Jean-Pierre is going to be asked:
1) If Joe Biden is too cognitively impaired to run for President; then isn't he too cognitively impaired to BE President? And since Joe is clearly not running the country and hasn't been for some time, who has been and IS running the country? Obama? Jill "Edith Wilson" Biden? And remember, the media smell a wounded politician like a herd of rabid jackals. Have you noticed the tone shift in the White House briefing room lately? KJP is under attack like she's never experienced before.
2) Is Joe going to preemptively pardon son Hunter, brother James, and other members of his family, for Federal felonies they may be subject to regarding the Biden family's decades of grift, bribery, and influence peddling involving foreign countries? This family business is a well known open secret in Washington, and is denied by the Dems in exactly the same way that they denied Biden's progressive cognitive impairment. Meaning, they'll deny it everyone finds out about it, then they'll all pretend to be shocked and they'll savage him. So he has to issue the pardons before he leaves office, and he might as well get it over with fast.
But there's a huge positive and beneficial reason he should resign the presidency first thing tomorrow morning.
It makes Kamala the incumbent. The "historical" incumbent. Incumbency by itself is a huge advantage, easily worth five or ten percent of the vote. And just as in 2008, centrist-minded Republicans might have said, well, McCain's a corrupt wamongering jerk, war hero nothwithstanding; and I don't want to have to think of myself as a closet racist. So I'll vote for Obama. A lot of votes went that way. If you were any kind of independent or centrist who was not a doctrinaire Republican, you voted for Obama for the historical symbolism of a black man becoming President in this country.
Kamala would get those same independents. She'd energize all the women in this country. As bad a politician as she is, she could win on symbolism. Symbolism has a lot of power among us humans, like the Trump bloody fist flag photo.
So I say that if Biden pardons his family and drops out tomorrow morning, that is the Dems' best shot at an electoral victory in 2024. Get it all over wish and by election day the public will have forgotten Biden entirely. The longer this fiasco goes on, the more the American people are reminded every single day of the massive fraud the Democrats ran on the nation. The sooner they get past that the better.
Personally I hope he doesn't do it. Let the press ask KJP every day. Let the party civil war continue. Already Pelosi and the Obama have not endorsed Kamala, calling for an open process. Under the circumstances a non-endorsement is equivalent to an anti-endorsement. The Clintons and the Bidens are behind a Kamala coronation, for the third consecutive DNC back-room deal rammed down the throats of their own voters. Saving democracy indeed.
Now you can see why the Dems forced Bobby Jr. to leave the Democratic party. Else he'd be the heir apparent and the DNC hates Bobby Jr.
I'm just curious, I get that some people just hate Trump. But aren't the liberals getting sick and tired of getting shafted by the DNC? They could have held a competitive primary this year, Joe's condition would have been exposed, and Gavin or Gretchen would be a strong candidate. The Dems did this to themselves. And to the fourteen million Democratic primary voters who voted for Joe, while the media were telling them Joe's sharp as a tack. Aren't any liberals righteously angry about all this chicanery going back to 2016 and 2020 and now 2024? The DNC does not give a hoot about the will of their own voters, or "democracy." The centrist warmongers pick their candidate no matter what their voters think. How long will Dem voters just fall into line behind whatever corrupt hack the central party coronates? After Trump is gone and Trump hate is no longer a factor, what will hold the Dem party together?
What happened to Sanders during 2016 was pretty wild. Hands down he would have won, but, the Clinton's wanted it their way and look what we got...
Yes it's funny that the other day Biden himself said, "That's how we got Trump in 2016," meaning the Dems letting the party insiders override the will of the voters. He still has political instincts. It's very unclear whether the Democrats have improved their situation or not.
If Joe Biden is too cognitively impaired to run for President; then isn't he too cognitively impaired to BE President?
The question should be, "Is he too cognitively impaired to BOTH run for president and be president?" There's a big difference between managing the job for the 5 months and managing the job for 53 more months, should he have been reelected.
I was in favor of him NOT running for another term before the famous debate. Both Biden and Trump are too old, and Trump has even more cognitive problems, particularly with the reality situation, than Biden.
Kamela has more than enough on her plate successfully campaigning, never mind trying to become an experienced incumbent in just a few months.
I'm not quite that generous. Significant brain damage, but recoverable after at least 4 years of intensive therapy for people who have brain injuries. Additional therapy will be needed to rehabilitate his faulty morals and his poor comprehension of the reality situation. Since his misfortunes are self-induced, he would need to pay for this out of his own funds. Once he's impoverished by the medical industry, Medicaid will kick in to cover some (???) level of services.
If Kamala steps up, she has to reflect deeply about who her VP will be. It must be someone with experience, connections in congress, someone who has been elected before and who is comfortable working under a person of colour president. Someone comes to mind.
[hide="Reveal"]
Welcome back, Mr. President.[/hide]
Coming from the same people who until last week denied that JB has dementia.
I wonder if the September debate is still on. Of course Trump may dip out of it like he did during the primaries now that he's going up against someone who's not a senile old man but we'll see.
I think theres less than a 5% chance that happens. Theyre sticking with Biden.
Alright I was dead wrong. Either that or this really was an unlikely event, but ended up happening anyway. But its more likely I underestimated the chances.
Its nutty how ruthless the DNC is compared to the RNC, which couldnt even stop a Trump.
Notice that the resignation letter isnt on official Whitehouse letterhead, and he apparently resigned by X post, which has been ran by social media handlers for years. Does anyone really believe he resigned?
Notice that the resignation letter isnt on official Whitehouse letterhead,
I believe he did not resign. I believe he dropped out of the running for nomination for reelection. A party matter, not an official presidential matter.
It should be reported as: President Biden has decided not to contest the next election, and instead to retire. He has endorsed his VP etc, instead of all this breathless hyperbole.
Still, it would have been far better had he made the decision before the primaries. Regardless, its still imperative that the MAGA cult is thwarted.
The political discourse "there" is right as usual. Hillary got millions of votes for being a woman, Obama for being black. Odds are that, if Hillary were Hilbert and Barack Obama were Barry O'Bryan, they wouldn't have won.
Of course representing certain parts of the electorate is relevant, I did not want to dismiss that. Nevertheless, Kamala Harris wasn't randomly swept off the street because she fit a certain profile.
I'm not quite that generous. Significant brain damage, but recoverable after at least 4 years of intensive therapy for people who have brain injuries. Additional therapy will be needed to rehabilitate his faulty morals and his poor comprehension of the reality situation. Since his misfortunes are self-induced, he would need to pay for this out of his own funds. Once he's impoverished by the medical industry, Medicaid will kick in to cover some (???) level of services.
Thank for that. A powerful, factual based ad. I don't know how effective it would be today. The Trumpsters just don't care. They believe he is their savior and either overlook his faults or think it is all liberal lies. Those who are less fanatical may regard it as a trade-off they are willing to accept. Perhaps there are still enough voters who have not made up their mind who might be swayed.
Its nutty how ruthless the DNC is compared to the RNC, which couldnt even stop a Trump.
To be fair, Trump earned his nomination in 2016 while Biden didn't in 2024. As much as he brags about 14 million votes in the primary he was running as an incumbent against an anti-vaxxer, a hippie lady, a progressive talk show host who wasn't even born in the country, and a no-name guy named Dean Philips. He has no true base of support and because of that it's far more rational to just push him out. The RNC can't do the same with their candidate lest they piss off the cult.
Reply to Echarmion It is not about "representation", a sorry concept that is never applied when whites are a minority in a country. It is about that many, perhaps millions, voted on Hillary and Obama because he/she is black/female.
What happened to Sanders during 2016 was pretty wild. Hands down he would have won, but, the Clinton's wanted it their way and look what we got...
It is not at all clear that Bernie would have won. He is a "socialist" and this scares lots of voters. To them the qualification 'democratic' socialist does not matter. Although Clinton won the popular vote, the states in which she lost are the states that are strongly opposed to socialism.
The irony is that many of the same people who oppose socialism because they equate it with government control are if favor of autocracy. The power of the demagogue to persuade the people!
I forget how she did in the debates. It seems like it should be easy to bait and trigger Trump into a meltdown. I would just pull out all the quotes from his own cabinet members calling him incompetent. Then when he called them "RINOs" point out that he was the one who appointed them and promised to "pick the greatest people."
He even whiffed his core issue, illegal border crossings hit a 13 year high under his administration and he didn't get his party to old even one vote on migration the whole time he had the House, Senate, and Court, showing how the GOP just uses the issue for votes. Oh, and almost quadrupling government borrowing during an economic expansion.
Virtually any Democrat would have won in 2008. Bush was historically unpopular and the GOP had just overseen a military disaster and the entire economy imploding. Dems had the House handily and a super majority in the Senate, no way they lose up ticket. Obama won both his elections so handily they were called almost as soon as polls closed and almost certainly would have won handily again in 2016. Aside from Reagan, who had dementia issues, he's the only guy who could have realistically been confident in getting a third term since term limits became a thing.
Are the guy that lost his mind and started punching himself in the head in their car on tik tok when Biden announced this? Same vibe from you throughout htis thread.
Top Dems threatened to forcibly remove Biden from office unless he resigned, set him up to fail at Trump debate: Sources
Operatives at the very highest levels of the Democratic Party threatened Joe Biden with forcibly removing him from office unless he stepped down, sources told The Post.
The well-orchestrated palace coup to stop the faltering president seeking re-election has been in place for weeks, but stubborn Biden fought against it every step of the way, a source close to the Biden family told The Post Monday.
Wow I dont normally follow politics that much but this is big news. Are there really enough people that want Trump back in office? He already got a chance and now seems like old news.
Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus I am talking about primaries as well. The appeal of those candidates over others (for many) was exactly that they were not white men.
Fun to watch our resident fascist cry about the will of voters provided its the Democrats. Overturning an election? Hillary winning the popular vote? Silence.
Repeat Party slogans. Overturn an election! Literally overturns an election. But its ok when we (D)o it, because when we take power, one of the biggest polluters on Earth is going to save the environment.
What 'election' has been overturned? The votes from the primaries are not formally attached to a candidate until the Convention. It would be quite possible for a winning candidate to be injured or fall ill and so not be the final choice at the Convention. This is no different, the candidate in question has simply, and sensibly, decided to retire rather than seek another term.
And although obviously a close-run thing, I would have thought that any candidate who DID NOT try and overthrow the 2020 election would have a clear advantage.
Care to bet? So far Im one for two. I dont think theyll want two people from California, and waste a chance to make inroads with swing states. Shapiro would be a better choice. Would shore up PA, which is a must win. More electoral votes.
Contesting an election is quite common in the 21st century, but removing a presumptive nominee, forcing him to step aside, and replacing him with someone else isnt. Do you think the primaries mean nothing? Why bother going to the booth if your vote is null and void?
Oh dear. Accusation in a mirror. All you can do is accuse others of that which you are guilty. No case in point because you can neither make a case or point. Sorry, friend.
removing a presumptive nominee, forcing him to step aside, and replacing him with someone else isnt.
He wasn't removed, or threatened with the noose :rage: He was persuaded to retire rather than contest and made a principled decision in the interests of the greater good (although in my view about 6 months too late.)
I think it's utterly hilarous that Mike Johnson is threatening to sue the Democratic Party to force them to bring Biden back. They're upset over the $10million they spent on Biden attack ads and want their money back. Hilarious.
He wasn't removed, or threatened with the noose :rage: He was persuaded to retire rather than contest and made a principled decision in the interests of the greater good (although in my view about 6 months too late.)
I think it's utterly hilarous that Mike Johnson is threatening to sue the Democratic Party to force them to bring Biden back. They're upset over the $10million they spent on Biden attack ads and want their money back. Hilarious.
He was threatened with the 25th amendment if he didnt drop out, according people close to the family. The party bosses and donors were mad he got trounced by Trump in that debate. It had everything to do with pure political power and cold hard cash, not principle, and especially not some concern for any greater good.
Some are calling it a coup. Certainly if you saw this plot play out in some corrupt foreign country you'd call it what it is. Biden hasn't been seen in five days. I heard that he called in to Kamala's rally, but his remarks were brief and he sounded cogent. It may well have been a deep fake. The technology is very good.
The last thing he said was that he is in the race to win it. Then we saw him creaking slowly up a flight of airplane stairs, and then someone posts his resignation letter on his X account, which is known to be run by staffers and not personally used by Joe. An image is flying around social media of his signature on his four recent executive actions, which do not match the signature on his letter. The letter does not bear the presidential seal. No photograph or video exists of him signing it. Then he disappeared totally for five days, officially recovering from covid.
This raises another question. If he's too sick to even have his picture taken signing a letter, is he too sick to fulfill his presidential duties. In November, 201, Biden was placed under general anesthesia fo his colonoscopy, and Kamala officially assumed presidential authority for an hour an a half or so.
If Biden is too impaired, even temporarily, to perform the duties of his office, the public has a right to know. And if he's not impaired, why haven't we even seen a still photograph of him in five days, let alone live video.
Some people online are snarkily asking for proof of life, which is what you typically demand of kidnappers to show that their hostage is still alive before you pay the random. And it's not a bad question. Where is Joe, and who is acting as president? Is he even alive? And if he is too cognitively impaired to run for president, how on earth can he continue to BE president? With two war going on? Who's in charge?
It's entirely possible that he has no idea that he's dropped out of the race. Nothing is being told to us, and the Democrats are so happy to be rid of their Biden problem they aren't asking any questions.
Kamala's got the Dems thrilled. It's very similar to her 2020 campaign launch in Oakland, California, in 2019. She drew 20,000 people and immediately became the rock star candidate. Calling Biden a racist and selling "That little girl was me" T-shirts turned out to be her high point. The next debate she got taken apart by Tulsi Gabbard, and never recovered. She dropped out in 2019, never even making it to the first primary election. She was polling badly in her home state of California.
That's Kamala. On paper she looks terrific, checks all the right boxes. The more people get to know her the less they like her. Also she has a big negative. She owns all of the Biden-Harris administration's problems. The inflation, the wars, the immigration disaster. Especially the latter, as Biden appointed her immigration czar and she was an utter failure, only managing to humiliate herself telling Lester Holt, "I've never been to Europe," when he challenged her on not going to the border. That's Kamala. She flusters and screws up when she has to go off-script under even mild pressure.
Biden was polling badly on the issues before the public saw his humiliation at the debate. It's Biden's policies the public doesn't like, and Harris owns those policies herself.
If she gets traction the Dems will go all-in behind her. If not, they'll give her the hook and trot out the next contestant. They have four weeks from today till the start of their convention.
I do congratulate the Dems for getting their act together and settling on a provisional candidate they can all live with. I can see why they don't want an open convention. Too much risk and potential chaos. Kamala's nice and safe for now. She appeals to a lot of Dems. She delivers scripted lines and speeches very well. And she can stay up past 4pm, a big upgrade from Biden.
But what did happen to Biden? The Dems propped him up for three years, then rigged their own primaries to get him nominated with only token opposition (anyone remember Dean Phillips?) and now they throw him over when he's polling badly. Reportedly Nancy Pelosi went to Joe and said he could go "the easy way or the hard way." This is the guy who got fourteen million votes in the Democratic primaries, and allegedly eighty one million in the 2020 general election. No American has ever cast a single vote for Kamala Harris for president.
I don't want to hear anyone ever again telling me that Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy. The Democratic party wouldn't know democracy if it bit them in the donkey. The back-room honchos decide what they want, and screw their own voters. 2016, 2020, and now 2024. Will the public punish the Democrats for lying to us about Biden's condition for four years and now running a coup to install a candidate chosen by the inner party and not their voters? Whether or not it ultimately succeeds, it's not democracy. It's not the will of the people.
A lot of people hate Trump and Kam has some strengths. She's got a great angle, a former DA who prosecuted sex crimes versus sexual assaulter Trump. She's strong on abortion. She will be a tough candidate if she can overcome her known issues. I'd give her a 25% chance to win. It could happen.
In other news, the condemnation of Kimberly Cheatle is savage and bipartisan after her train wreck testimony today. We still don't know how many shots were fired, what directions they came from, who killed the 20 year old. Usually when a crime occurs, the cops hold a press conference and tell us what they know. Why are we being stonewalled on the attempted assassination of Trump, not even allowed to hear the most basic facts? I caught some of the hearings this morning, it was bad. Even Dems Ro Khanna and AOC lit into her for incompetence and stonewalling.
What happened to Sanders during 2016 was pretty wild. Hands down he would have won, but, the Clinton's wanted it their way and look what we got...
Biden made that same point the other day, noting that the same kind of Dem chicanery that they're using on him is how they ended up losing to Trump in 2016. And speaking of Joe, where is he? Hasn't been seen for five days since posting his resignation letter on an X account run by staffers, on letterhead missing the presidential seal, and bearing a signature that appears not to match his signatures on several recent executive orders.
If this happened in a corrupt foreign country it would look like a coup. Since it's happening right in front of our faces in our own country, a lot of people take it all at face value. I do not personally believe anything going on lately, from the Trump assassination attempt to Joe dropping out of the race but remaining our invisible president, is to be taken at face value.
An apt comparison, but even rabid jackals, never mind healthy ones, form 'packs' or 'tribes'. As in 'a pack of wild dogs'. Jackals are canids.
Not entirely sure I caught that. Was I right or wrong to analogize the media to a pack of rabid jackals?
I'm always struck by the way the narrative turns on a dime. One day, news videos of Joe's decrepitude and senescence are cheap fakes. The next day everyone turns and stabs the guy in the back. It's ugly to watch.
The question should be, "Is he too cognitively impaired to BOTH run for president and be president?" There's a big difference between managing the job for the 5 months and managing the job for 53 more months, should he have been reelected.
It's a good question if he's doing the job today. Missing in action for five days. He signs a letter dropping out of the race and he's too ill to have his picture taken. But he's perfectly fine to do his job?
I was in favor of him NOT running for another term before the famous debate. Both Biden and Trump are too old, and Trump has even more cognitive problems, particularly with the reality situation, than Biden.
If the Dems had just held competitive primaries, Biden's problems would have been exposed and they'd have a younger and stronger candidate right now who was actually chosen by the Democratic voters, and not by the party insiders.
As to whether Trump or Biden are farther gone, we can agree to disagree. I will agree that Trump's lost a couple of steps from eight years ago. Look at what he's endured. Whether you think he's guilty or not, all those court cases must have taken a lot out of him.
This is not the first election where people had to hold their nose and vote for the candidate they hate a little less thanthe other one.
Kamela has more than enough on her plate successfully campaigning, never mind trying to become an experienced incumbent in just a few months.
I can see your point. But I still think that incumbency is very powerful. And if Joe is in as bad shape as he appears to be, it would be better for the country and certainly better for Kamala to just 25A the guy and be done with it. Or have Nancy get Joe to resign the presidency. Report is that she told Joe he could drop out of the race "the easy way or the hard way." Nancy seems to be the one running things in the Dem party.
The last thing he said was that he is in the race to win it. Then we saw him creaking slowly up a flight of airplane stairs, and then someone posts his resignation letter on his X account, which is known to be run by staffers and not personally used by Joe. An image is flying around social media of his signature on his four recent executive actions, which do not match the signature on his letter. The letter does not bear the presidential seal. No photograph or video exists of him signing it. Then he disappeared totally for five days, officially recovering from covid.
Why would it have been necessary to forge a resignation letter if he is incapacitated anyways?
If Biden is too impaired, even temporarily, to perform the duties of his office, the public has a right to know. And if he's not impaired, why haven't we even seen a still photograph of him in five days, let alone live video.
They faked his voice but faking a still photograph is a step too far for the conspiracy? Or is this one of those conspiracies that is masterfully manipulating dozens of world leaders but leaves easily traceable evidence for random guys on the internet to find?
The back-room party honchos decide what they want, and screw their own voters.
Ok so the democrats rigged the primaries to get Biden the nomination, but also these primaries are now the legitimate will of the voters? That's having your cake and eating it.
I can see your point. But I still think that incumbency is very powerful. And if Joe is in as bad shape as he appears to be, it would be better for the country and certainly better for Kamala to just 25A the guy and be done with it.
What difference does it make to the country? The net result is the same.
I'm not a member of the Democratic Party and I never have been.
I do not care one bit whether or not the party organization or its nominating primary process is democratic.
I only care that the Democratic Party is as ruthless, disciplined and united going forward to victory in Roevember 2024 as it was in 2020.
I don't care how they engineered ("forced" "bullied") POTUS to step aside ("palace coup"?) so long as the outcome is a candidate to replace him who can curb stomp The MAGA Cult Clown to Electoral College defeat in just over a hundred days.
In the UK, the Tories were just given their worse electoral beating in two centuries. In France, the right-wingnut populists were defeated by a concerted unity of centrist and leftist parties. The US Democratic Party with moderate independents and "Never Trump" suburban college-educated Republicans together, can do the same thoroughly rejecting the neofascist MAGA-GOP again just like 2020.
THIS ELECTION IS NOW ABOUT TRUMP, LIKE 2020, AND NO LONGER ABOUT BIDEN. :clap:
VPOTUS Harris isn't my first choice by a long shot, but I am confident that with a well-funded, united coalition and superior ground game (especially in the SWING STATES), aided and abetted by the deranged, angry-whining babbling bilge of bullshit The MAGA Cult Clown will continue to senilely spew and sputter this fall after Labor Day when the other 80% of the potental electorate will finally be paying attention, VP Harris (or whomever the nominee is) will win the 2024 election. Civil unrest by MAGA brownshirts & GOP shitheads notwithstanding. :fire: :mask:
Reply to 180 Proof "let's get politically organised by not having a weak nominee" equals fascism when you're a trump turd. For all their differences, in the end progressives and collectivists are always better organised when they believe it's necessary.
Edit: which is why the Democrats are still perfectly positioned to fuck up again because they're neither progressive or collectivists but those that are see the Democratic Party ad the only viable ticket at the moment.
I include on that your state collectivism, legal positivism, Keynesianism, activism. Your prevalence for organization is simply the manifestation of the fasces as you engage in politics.
Joe Biden was discarded by the same billionaire class he assiduously served throughout his political career. Barely able to stumble his way through the words on a Teleprompter and not always cognizant of what is happening around him, his billionaire supporters pulled the plug. He was their creature he has been in federal office for 47 years - from start to finish. He was used as a foil to defeat Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primaries and was anointed as the candidate in 2024 in a Soviet-style primary campaign. The billionaire class will now anoint someone else. Democratic Party voters are stage props in this political farce. Donald Trump, unlike Kamala Harris or any other apparatchik the billionaire class selects as a presidential candidate, has a genuine and committed base, however fascistic.
In Hitler and the Germans, the political philosopher Eric Vogelin dismisses the idea that Hitler gifted in oratory and political opportunism but poorly educated and vulgar mesmerized and seduced the German people. The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the grotesque, marginal figures surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness. Voegelin defines stupidity as a loss of reality. The loss of reality means a stupid person cannot rightly orient his action in the world, in which he lives. The demagogue, who is always an idiote, is not a freak or social mutation. The demagogue expresses the societys zeitgeist.
Biden and the Democratic Party are responsible for this zeitgeist. They orchestrated the deindustrialization of the United States, ensuring that 30 million workers lost their jobs in mass layoffs. As I write in America, The Farewell Tour, this assault on the working class created a crisis that forced the ruling elites to devise a new political paradigm. Trumpeted by a compliant media, this paradigm shifted its focus from the common good to race, crime and law and order. Biden was at the epicenter of this paradigm shift. Those undergoing profound economic and political change were told that their suffering stemmed not from rampant militarism and corporate greed but from a threat to national integrity. The old consensus that buttressed New Deal programs and the welfare state was attacked as enabling criminal Black youth, welfare queens and other alleged social parasites. This opened the door to a faux populism, begun by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which supposedly championed family values, traditional morality, individual autonomy, law and order, the Christian faith and the return to a mythical past, at least for white Americans. The Democratic Party, especially under Bill Clinton and Biden, became largely indistinguishable from the establishment Republican Party to which it is now allied.
The Democratic Party refuses to accept its responsibility for the capture of democratic institutions by a rapacious oligarchy, the grotesque social inequality, the cruelty of predatory corporations and an unchecked militarism. The Democrats will anoint another amoral politician, probably Harris, to use as a mask for outsized corporate greed, the folly of endless war, the facilitation of genocide and the assault on our most basic civil liberties. The Democrats, tools of Wall Street, gave us Trump, and the 74 million people who voted for him in 2020. They look set to give us Trump again. God help us.
Reply to Mikie Muh Hitler. Muh Germany. Not comparable. If Operation Paperclip hadn't happened, your "country" would be less relevant than Canada. And I don't know who Chris Hedges or Eric Voegelin are, but Chris Hedges' rendition of Voegelin is an idiotic idea. Germany was a diseased society during Weimar with prostitution of all ages and shemale bars. Hitler campaigned exactly against that. How can someone who campaigns against a disease embody the pathologies? It can't, even if Hitler later came to embody different diseases.
Ironically, everything that the "grotesque, marginal" Göbbels said about Burgerland 100 years ago still applies today, and the entire planet would agree:
One is never sure which of two characteristics is more prominent in the American national character and therefore of the greater significance: naivete or a superiority complex. When for example they say things about our region, our surprise at their ignorance is surpassed only by annoyance at their stupid insolence. The less they know about a matter, the more confidently they speak. They really believe that Europeans are eagerly waiting to hear from them and heed their advice.
[...]
They cannot believe that there are cultural values that are the result of centuries of historical development, which cannot simply be bought. It was no bad joke when, after the war, they bought the ruins of German castles and moved them stone by stone to the USA. They really thought that they had purchased a piece of national history embodied in stone, and were naive enough to think that mocking laughter from Europe was respect for the wealth that enabled them to buy what their own tradition and culture lacked.
If someone who is grotesque and marginal can reproduce correct moral judgement of you, there is a lot of soul searching you should, but yet:
We would not say anything if the USA were aware of its intellectual and moral defects and was trying to grow up.
The constant comparison with Germany (and other countries) is not genuine because the comparisons are always illiterate. It is instead a sorry attempt from both sides of the political aisle to input culture and history to a country that has none.
Reply to NOS4A2 Your lack of knowledge of political organisation shines through when you insist on collectivism being statist. Your don't know what you're talking about because you've never spend the time to actually study the subject. You're not dumb simply uninformed and uneducated and entirely boring as a result.
Germany was a diseased society during Weimar with prostitution of all ages and shemale bars. Hitler campaigned exactly against that. How can someone who campaigns against a disease embody the pathologies? It can't, even if Hitler later came to embody different diseases.
Oh, can you pinpoint for us when Hitler went from an anti-shemale-bar-campaigner to the guy who wanted to remake Europe according to his racial ideology?
Ironically, everything that the "grotesque, marginal" Göbbels said about Burgerland 100 years ago still applies today, and the entire planet would agree:
Of all the things I did not expect to read to today, a reverent recitation of Goebbels (his name is actually written without the Umlaut), is probably the thing I expected the least.
I think this is somewhat misleading. The demagogue taps into the dissatisfaction of some portion of society and promises to fix things. In part he does this by setting up a scapegoat. Eliminate the scapegoat and you eliminate the problem.
Unfortunately, and I think inadvertently, Hedges contributes to the problem when he says such things as:
Biden and the Democratic Party are responsible for this zeitgeist. They orchestrated the deindustrialization of the United States, ensuring that 30 million workers lost their jobs in mass layoffs.
Is there a generally agreed upon cause of deindustrialization? Has it been clearly shown that Biden and the Democratic party are responsible? Why does Hedges blame the Democrats?
What you really got was the transformation of the Democratic party into the Republican party.
When he blames democrats for becoming republicans I take it he is doing two things. The first is historical analysis. The second is to tell democrats that they have lost their way and need to reorient themselves. But things might look quite different when he places the blame at the feet of the Democratic party. This might be taken and used as a sound bite endorsement of the Republicans.
But I still think that incumbency is very powerful.
Right. Incumbency IS very powerful, BUT as the calendar says, the November election is a little over 100 days away. No matter what the POTUS or VPOTUS does or doesn't do from July 23 onward, it's going to be a tough scramble.
No surprise here: our economy and politics are run by overlapping elites. That fact provides so much of the story behind the headlines. That, and the rocket-engine personal drive of people who want to be at the top, be they Democrats or Republicans. It takes a lot of drive to get to, and stay at, the top anywhere.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the prime example of holding on to his high office when he was in seriously failing health. Wilson planned on a third term, too, but had a stroke in October, 1919. Nixon held on till he faced impeachment and probably forced removal from office. Reagan served with diminished faculties. Trump has a now very familiar problem with the reality situation.
[quote=VPOTUS Kamala Harris (D-CA)]I waa a courtroom prosecutor ... I took on perpetrators of all kind: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped-off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say,I know Donald Trump's type.[/quote]
I don't care how they engineered ("forced" "bullied") POTUS to step aside ("palace coup"?) so long as the outcome is a candidate to replace him who can curb stomp The MAGA Cult Clown to Electoral College defeat in just over a hundred days.
Yeah, I'm very cynical when it comes to why no one has just put the facts out there. It seems even the lots of the 'left wing' so called 'liberal' mainstream media see neutral to positive Trump coverage and the repetition of propaganda as a means to an end. Profit is the sole motive. The more viewers the better in those terms.
I'm not sold on Harris' motivations. Or should I say, I'm not very confident that she has the best interest of the overwhelming majority of Americans at heart. That said, Trump and the republican congress members who were/are complicit in his committing fraud against the United States of America need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There were many of his actions that were not performed under the recent protective language of SCOTUS's immunity decision.
A very large share of Germans cooperated with the Nazi regime because non-cooperation (let alone opposition) was a high-risk choice. Yes, Post-WWI Germany was hungry, bitter, and resentful and was ready to punish somebody for their loss in the war and their further humiliation in the peace agreement. And yes, after WWII, many Germans sang the I Was Not a Nazi Polka
Biden and the Democratic Party are responsible for this zeitgeist. They orchestrated the deindustrialization of the United States, ensuring that 30 million workers lost their jobs in mass layoffs.
Deindustrialization began long before Biden won his first local election. The leather, shoe, and woven textile and clothing industries in New England started outsourcing manufacturing before WWII, and continued after WWII. Other industries followed suit over time. Cheap, non-unionized labor was irresistible. Other factors also contributed to job losses, among them automation. It took fewer workers to run a new, more efficient steel mill. Automation increased the per-man-hour of productivity, so fewer workers were needed. Moving unskilled manufacturing to benefit from extremely cheap labor costs picked up speed in the 1970s.
I don't want to let the political and economic elites off the hook -- their policies devastated broad swathes of America. Did Biden behave any differently than other elite operatives? No. Will Trump behave any differently than other elite operatives? No. Ditto for Harris.
Just last week: Biden tanking with donors and polls. Trump shot and gets a photo-op. Picks a VP. RNC convention. Elon Musk endorses. One lawsuit thrown out.
Old news. He already peaked, and too early. All downhill from here. Could still pull it off, but what a difference a week makes from the hysterics.
A lot more are calling it a coup than are claiming the earth is flat. What would you call it? The Dems lied for three years to hid Biden's infirmity, then stabbed him in the back. When Nancy Pelosi comes to you and says, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," and a letter is put out that you clearly didn't write, that's a coup.
Biden did make a brief appearance today. So the narrative has gone from "Sharp as a tack" to "Remarkably lifelike." Still no idea who is running the country.
Of course the MSM spin is that Joe is a patriot for gracefully putting his country first. Caesar stepped down gracefully the same way.
He's the old one now. Kam at least has put some youth into our political process. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
If anything we can now test the theory of whether replacing one of the two unpopular candidates would ensure their victory. I mean Kamala is far from a generic Democrat, but it seems like voters don't really know much about her apart from her being VP and both sides are scrambling to define her right now so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Just last week: Biden tanking with donors and polls. Trump shot and gets a photo-op. Picks a VP. RNC convention. Elon Musk endorses. One lawsuit thrown out.
Old news. He already peaked, and too early. All downhill from here. Could still pull it off, but what a difference a week makes from the hysterics.
I don't think it was intentional but Biden dropping out right after the RNC when the GOP was doing a victory lap with Trump's vanity VP pick was probably the worst time for that to happen to them. The race is reset and the party is now stuck with a flawed running mate, a wasted convention, and thousands of carefully crafted Biden dementia ads that will probably never see the light of day.
[quote=WaPo;https://wapo.st/3WkjWzM]Kellys credentials begin with his dazzling biography as a combat-tested Navy pilot and NASA astronaut who commanded shuttle missions aboard both the Discovery and Endeavour and traveled more than 20 million miles in space.
He has also turned out to be a supremely skillful politician in a tough state where the Biden-Harris ticket has been running behind. Kelly won a close race in 2020 to fill the unexpired term of John McCain (R) and then turned around to win it again two years later this time, with a more comfortable five-point margin against a hard-right Republican election conspiracy theorist endorsed by Donald Trump.
Border Politics: When I first got to Washington, it didnt take me long to realize that there are a lot of Democrats who dont understand our southern border and a lot of Republicans who just want to talk about it, dont necessarily want to do anything about it, just want to use it politically, he told me shortly after his 2022 victory. So my approach has been to the extent that we could and can to make progress on securing it, but also doing it in a way thats in accordance with our ethics and our values, not to demonize people.[/quote]
The Dems lied for three years to hid Biden's infirmity, then stabbed him in the back. When Nancy Pelosi comes to you and says, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," and a letter is put out that you clearly didn't write, that's a coup.
They stabbed him in the chest, not the back. It was very visible and very public. Nothing hidden or conspiratorial about it.
Even before the debate the common refrain was that Biden must demonstrate that he's not senile. He didn't. Biden had a lot of support at the time but he was not unassailable as the candidate. And in fact he failed to weather the storm. Nothing about this resembles a "coup", no organised group seized power in an orchestrated operation. One man lost his backing and the best placed person moved into the resulting vacuum.
When Nancy Pelosi comes to you and says, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," and a letter is put out that you clearly didn't write, that's a coup.
I had to go and look that up, but that's absolutely crazy. Mob level shit.
Reply to Tzeentch What is? So far I've only seen inferences, which is mostly wishful thinking from GOPhers. The DNC would've had options during their convention to sideline Biden within the rules as well.
A lot more are calling it a coup than are claiming the earth is flat. What would you call it? The Dems lied for three years to hid Biden's infirmity, then stabbed him in the back. When Nancy Pelosi comes to you and says, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," and a letter is put out that you clearly didn't write, that's a coup.
I wager that this little story is not over. The 25th amendment is invoked by the vice president and the cabinet. The vice president is Kamala Harris. Now she is the candidate for president. Thats a real, third-world coup, and thats how desperate they are.
What is? So far I've only seen inferences, which is mostly wishful thinking from GOPhers. The DNC would've had options during their convention to sideline Biden within the rules as well.
Imagine Rutte saying something along the lines of "We can do this the easy way or the hard way" to get Yesilgöz to drop out of the seat of party leader. (Doesn't translate perfectly to Dutch politics, but I think you catch my meaning)
Basically unthinkable. It would be political suicide if something like that became public.
Basically unthinkable. It would be political suicide if something like that became public.
Why? What do you think "the hard way" implies that makes it unthinkable? Power struggles within parties do happen, and they do often get pretty ugly, though not as often publicly ugly.
I thought it was annoying when Harris' critics panned her as a "DEI hire" when they should perhaps focus on her horrible politics. But in trying to discover whether in fact Kamala Harris was chosen for reasons of DEI, one can't help to find that "racial diversity" was a big concern for Biden when selecting a vice president, but only after promising he was going to select a woman.
Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, said race had been essential to Mr. Bidens decision.
I think he came to the conclusion that he should pick a Black woman, Mr. Reid said. They are our most loyal voters and I think that the Black women of America deserved a Black vice-presidential candidate.
The demands to pick a black woman are growing louder, and not just from black voters. Polling from a Politico/Morning Consult survey this week found 46% of Democrats say it's important for Biden to choose a candidate of color as his running mate. That's up from 36% in early April.
Former DNC Chair and 2o04 Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said he's witnessed an evolution in his own thinking in just the past two weeks.
"I haven't lived through a time like this since 1968," he said. Dean said prior to the past few weeks, he thought having a black running mate "would have been nice." Now he thinks it's critical.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden committed Sunday to picking a woman for his vice president if he were to win the partys nomination.
Speaking during a CNN-hosted primary debate with fellow candidate Bernie Sanders, Biden said: There are a number of women who would be qualified to be president, and that he would choose a woman as his running mate.
You cannot be seriously encouraging hiring practices which are overtly racist and sexist, diminishing the value and achievement of those marginalised groups in the crosshair? Tbf, you openly wish Trump had been assassinated successfully. It's a shame that otherwise intelligent people let their brains fall out their ass and become moral monsters within politics.
Someone remarked about the similarities between the upcoming DNC convention and the 1968 one.
Back then Johnson backed out of the race, supposedly due to his poor showing in the primaries. The assassination of potential candidate RFK had left supporters disillusioned with the prospects. Given the recent statement of BLMs opposition to the way Harris was coronated, against their democratic principles, can we expect to see some fireworks at the convention like they had in 1968?
The evasion is only a sign that you do not want to answer, but I suspect it is to hide a contradiction. The dissonance you feel occurs when two contradictory values are colliding, and I suspect these values are your love of power and party versus your sense of justice. In order to rid yourself of that dissonance you need to align them, either by ridding yourself of one of them, or to continue lying to yourself. The change will occur, but I hope it benefits your sense of justice more than your love of power and party. You only really need one of them.
I am outraged that people are given power based on race and gender, yes.
We agree for once, NOS. Here in America we've been "outraged" about thatsince1619 ... 1701 ... 1787 ... (1791-1804) ... 1857 ... 1896 ... 1954 ... 1963 ... and now in 2024 this "outrage" may culminate again (like 2008) in another (merely symbolic?) step up and forward out of America's whitemale caste system. TBD.
Bidens address: fine. Boring. Underwhelming. Didnt really answer the question about what changed his mind but thats to be expected.
Hes declined over the years, looked too old, and feeble, and donors were panicking. The polls didnt look great either, even though theyre useless this far out. The Republican attacks would have been too easy after the disaster of a debate. So that was that. Im surprised the pushback was as intense and sustained as it was.
The DNC and their rules arent, and never have been, democratic. Theyre about as democratic as the electoral college. In the end, they and their delegates can do whatever the fuck they want. Biden doesnt have the loyal following that Clownshoes has. The money and the nomination will go up Harris whether Trump and his worshippers like it or not.
Let them scream about democracy they lost all rights to even talk about it back in January of 21. They can pretend to care about it all the want and we have the right to laugh in their faces.
I thought the speech was fine. Only that he was obviously reading a prompter, but the point was clear enough. I believe Biden when he says democracy is on the ballot.
Looks like Kamala Harris is the nominee. So far I'm cautiously optimistic. The campaign ought to concentrate on Trump as not a fit and proper person, as he's obviously not, and also on the legislative wins and prospects for the Biden period. I really do think Harris will run rings around Trump on the debate stage but I wouldn't be surprised if we never see that. Trump has reverted to form, hurling insults and incomprensible grievances. How anyone can think he should be electable will forever be beyond me.
Reply to Tzeentch I don't see the problem. If a party leader is clearly incompetent or does things contrary to the principles of the party they ought to be ousted.
If anything we can now test the theory of whether replacing one of the two unpopular candidates would ensure their victory. I mean Kamala is far from a generic Democrat, but it seems like voters don't really know much about her apart from her being VP and both sides are scrambling to define her right now so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Mr Bee, I saw your post last night. As I processed my news stream today it was "top of mind," as KJP once said. I found six items to help people process the Kamala phenomenon. This did come out a bit long, my apologies in advance.
For the record I lived in the San Francisco bay area since the mid 1970s (no longer there) and have followed her career since before she became DA. I'm a seasoned observer of all things Kamala.
So, six recent stories to put Kam in perspective.
1) Brett Stephens questions the rush to coronation.
I've heard that some people can't read past the Times paywall, but it always comes up for me. I'll supply some quotes.
Stephens is described by Wikipedia as a conservative, which perhaps mitigates my point a bit. Still, what he has to say is interesting. It gives people permission to think about putting the brakes on the runaway Kamala train.
[quote=BrettStephens]
The last two times Democrats attempted to stage a coronation instead of a contest in choosing a presidential nominee, it did not go well. Not for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Not for Joe Biden this year.
So why would anyone think its a good idea when it comes to Kamala Harris the all but anointed nominee after barely a day?
Maybe the answer is that a competitive process, either before or during the Democratic convention, would have been divisive and bruising. Or that Harriss fund-raising advantages over any potential rival were already insuperable. Or that Democratic Party big shots (though not Barack Obama, at least not publicly yet) genuinely think the vice president is the best candidate to beat the former president.
But the one thing the Democratic Party is not supposed to be is anti-democratic a party in which insiders select the nominee from the top down, not the bottom up, and which expects the rank and file to fall in line and clap enthusiastically. Thats the playbook of ruling parties in autocratic states.
Its also a recipe for failure. The whole point of a competitive process, even a truncated one, is to discover unsuspected strengths, which is how Obama was able to best Clinton in 2008, and to test for hidden weakness, which is how Harris flamed out as a candidate the last time, before even reaching the Iowa caucus. If theres evidence that shes a better candidate now than she was then, she should be given the chance to prove it.[/quote]
A point he makes is that she is a bad manager. Later in the piece he notes:
[quote=Stephens]
The Washington Post reported in December 2021, following a series of high-level staff exits. Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared."[/quote]
She doesn't put in the work. This point will be echoed in my next link.
2) Kam missed an opportunity today to be seen as the next US president by everyone in the world.
Israel's prime minister Bibi Netanyahu addressed Congress today. Kamala did not attend.
Many Democrats, particularly those on the left, are upset with Israel at the moment and want to make a point of insulting the leader of one of America's strongest allies. That is their right. About half of Congressional Dems chose not to attend.
But Kamala is running for president. She COULD have risen above her partisanship and seized the opportunity to represent herself as the head of State at a moment when there is a power vacuum at the top. (Biden gave speech tonight. I've seen more convincing hostage videos).
Imagine Kamala had gone to the airport to meet Bibi. If she had, every newspaper in the world would have published a front page photograph of Harris, representing the United States, greeting a close ally. One she has differences with, to be sure ... but she'd be seen as rising above politics to perform the duties of a head of State.
Everyone in the world would have seen her as the acting US president.
Instead, here's what she did. She decided to go express her partisanship and boycott Bibi. Instead, she went off to give a speech to a council of black sororities.
The article makes the point, amplifying the reports that she doesn't put in the work, that she doesn't actually want to be bothered with doing the work of being president. She just wants the title and the perks.
In the end she leaned into the you-go-girl feminism that's driving her recent popularity; at the expense of an incredible missed opportunity to present herself to the world as the acting president of the United States.
She demonstrated her terrible political instincts and her unsuitability to be the leader of the free world. She is not up to the job. She doesn't know what the job is. In her mind she's still a leftist making a political point, not a head of State.
This was a very telling episode to understand Kamala Harris.
3) Jamal Trulove.
A black man in San Francisco was wrongly convicted of a murder. As Wiki puts it:
[quote=Wiki]
After he was framed by police for the 2007 murder of an acquaintance, Trulove was convicted in 2010, sentenced to 50 years to life, and imprisoned for six years.
A California appeals court overturned his conviction in 2014 and he was retried in 2015 and acquitted. In 2016 he sued the city of San Francisco. In April 2018 a jury found the two officers accused of framing him guilty of fabricating evidence and failing to disclose exculpatory evidence. In 2019 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to approve a settlement of $13.1 million.[/quote]
The prosecutor on that case was Kamala Harris.
It's very worth noting that Wikipedia does not mention her involvement in this case. Wouldn't it be useful for readers to know that a candidate for president framed a black man for murder and fought against his exoneration?
That's why Wikipedia is not to be trusted on political issues. You see this kind of thing over and over.
[quote=Appeal]
At last weeks Democratic primary debate, Harris rightly won plaudits for confronting Joe Biden on his history of opposing busing. But Harris cannot escape her past as San Francisco DA and California attorney general, which includes wrongful convictions like Truloves and inaction in other cases of law enforcement misconduct, including an informant scandal that consumed the Orange County DAs office and its sheriffs department. If Harris does not reckon with her failures in the criminal legal system, she could find herself in Bidens position at the next debate: defending the indefensible. [/quote]
4) A Facebook meme is going around to the effect that as California Attorney General, Harris put 1500 black men in jail for smoking pot.
The article went on to admit that she imprisoned 1974 people for weed ... but that some of them might not have been black men. Some were women or whites.
You call that a debunking?
After she was no longer Attorney General, she told black radio host Charlamagne tha God that "I have. And I inhaled I did inhale. It was a long time ago. But, yes"
That's Harris in a nutshell. When she wants to look tough on crime, she throws pot smokers in prison. When she wants to look cool, she tells a black radio host she smoked weed.
She stands for nothing. She has no beliefs, no principles, and no convictions. She says and does whatever she thinks will bring momentary advantage to her ambition.
5) BLM agrees with Bret Stephens.
People who've followed Harris's career know her record of incarcerating black men. That's why today, Black Lives Matter came out against her un-democratic coronation.
[quote=BlackLivesMatter]
Black Lives Matter demands that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) immediately host an informal, virtual snap primary across the country prior to the DNC convention in August. We call for the Rules Committee to create a process that allows for public participation in the nomination process, not just a nomination by party delegates. The current political landscape is unprecedented, with President Biden stepping aside in a manner never seen before. This moment calls for decisive action to protect the integrity of our democracy and the voices of Black voters.[/quote]
They go on to enumerate complaints similar to ones I've made recently. That the DNC rigged their primaries. That "the DNC Party elites and billionaire donors bullied Joe Biden out of the race."
Black women tend to like Kamala. Black men often don't. I don't have the statistics but there are a lot of black people coming out against Kamala online today. In her disastrous 2020 campaign (that ended in 2019), she polled badly with blacks.
6) Two striking instances of Orwellian retconning of her past.
- A study by GovTrack, "an organization that tracks congressional voting records," showed that in 2019 Kamala Harris was the most liberal Senator.
Today, that web page is gone. "But the web page with the ranking, which was widely covered in news reports during the 2020 election, was recently deactivated. The link now displays a "Page Not Found" message. The Internet Archive shows the page was deleted sometime between July 10 and July 23, with some on X claiming the page was still up on July 22."
- In 2021 Biden had a crisis on the border, the result of his overturning all of Trump's policies that were keeping a lid on the problem. Biden appointed Kamala border czar. She did nothing at all except humiliate herself in an interview with Lester Holt. When he called her on her lie that she'd been to the border, she said "I haven't been to Europe, either." Classic Kamala. Great with a scripted line, but defensive and careless when speaking off the cuff. You know the clip. People were shocked when they saw it. Liberals especially. They had no idea.
The border is therefore a legitimate line of criticism from the Republicans. So what are the leftist media doing? Denying she was ever the border czar. If you claim Kamala was ever the border czar, you're repeating Republican propaganda.
Axios ran a story today (Wednesday) that Harris "never actually had" the title of border czar.
Of course numerous critics quickly pointed out that they had indeed claimed exactly that. Axios said, "After being called out, Axios issued an editors note to acknowledge that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a border czar back in 2021.""
Of course they were not incorrect in 2021. They were caught lying today when they claimed she wasn't the border czar. There are dozens of news videos showing Dem politicians and MSM reporters calling her the border czar at the time.
This Orwellian retconning is exactly what Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, did for a living. He made news accounts of the past conform to the ever-changing party narrative of the present. In the digital age it's all too easy.
Well that's my curated list of Kamala miscellany this evening.
It's possible that Hollywood and the media will sanitize her past, coronate her, and get her over the top. She could win. I still give her a 25% chance. She's having a Brat summer dontcha know.
Or, the Kamala scam could blow up the way the Biden scam did, and the American people will hand the Democrats a defeat for the ages.
In which case they'll blame it on racism and sexism and learn nothing.
I watched the Biden speech tonight. I've seen more believable hostage videos.
As I understand it, he is not quitting the race for any particular reason; only "for the good of democracy." Meaning ignoring the will of fourteen million Democratic primary voters and replacing it with the decision of some Hollywood actors and big party donors.
With respect only to his speech; that is, if you woke up from a year long coma and just saw his speech on tv tonight; why is Biden quitting the race? Can a president really get away with competing in primaries rigged for his nomination; keep insisting to the end that he is running; and then drop out while giving no reason at all?
Are people going to buy this Soviet-level plot? Have we at last come to this?
Even before the debate the common refrain was that Biden must demonstrate that he's not senile. He didn't. Biden had a lot of support at the time but he was not unassailable as the candidate. And in fact he failed to weather the storm. Nothing about this resembles a "coup", no organised group seized power in an orchestrated operation. One man lost his backing and the best placed person moved into the resulting vacuum.
They rigged their primary to get him nominated. They've been running a scam for three years. It blew up. But he is the legitimately nominated candidate. The insiders threatened him with God knows what, and he gave in. That's a coup.
I mean probably the same people who run it most of the time? It's not like the president is required for day to day decisions.
So we don't actually have a president, just a figurehead run by an invisible cabal? We all knew that was true, but isn't it significant that this has now been demonstrated in public?
And in a crisis, is there or isn't there an executive decision maker? And who, exactly, is that right now?
It's half a coup. There's no president. This is very unseemly and there are great risks to this country right now. The Dems have arguably committed treason. They didn't lawfully 25A him. They did something unlawful. You want to defend that, knock yourself out.
I wager that this little story is not over. The 25th amendment is invoked by the vice president and the cabinet. The vice president is Kamala Harris. Now she is the candidate for president. Thats a real, third-world coup, and thats how desperate they are.
They won't 25A him. They've just humiliated him, forced him to make a hostage video, and left a huge power vacuum at the top of the government. This could blow up very badly in the next six months.
No surprise here: our economy and politics are run by overlapping elites.
Never so obvious before. Propping up Biden for four years then swapping him out in a humiliating operation, if someone doesn't want to call it a coup. There will be repercussions from all this that are hard to see at the moment, but they won't be good.
They rigged their primary to get him nominated. They've been running a scam for three years. It blew up. But he is the legitimately nominated candidate. The insiders threatened him with God knows what, and he gave in. That's a coup.
I think we just don't agree on what a coup is. To me, not every power struggle that the incumbent loses is a coup.
To me, a coup is an organised movement using illegal or at least extra legal means to seize power swiftly, creating a fait accompli that pre-empts organised resistance. Usually by isolating the centre of power and preventing it from rallying it's supporters.
The slowly building pressure on Biden under which his campaign ultimately collapsed doesn't fit, imho.
So we don't actually have a president, just a figurehead run by an invisible cabal? We all knew that was true, but isn't it significant that this has now been demonstrated in public?
I don't really understand the show of indignation here. I'm sure you didn't just realise that the USA have a huge bureaucratic apparatus and that the president isn't actually required to make day to day decisions?
The cabal is less invisible than ignored. Most people just don't really think about how the government actually runs.
And in a crisis, is there or isn't there an executive decision maker? And who, exactly, is that right now?
That is a much better question. It's impossible to know without having information from within the "war room". But even being in a situation where you're no longer sure whether the president is still capable of making emergency decisions is bad.
It's half a coup. There's no president. This is very unseemly and there are great risks to this country right now. The Dems have arguably committed treason. They didn't lawfully 25A him. They did something unlawful. You want to defend that, knock yourself out.
I agree it's unseemly. I'm not as worried though. At the end of the day there have always been weaker and stronger presidents. Under a weak president, power will tend to devolve to the VP, department heads and advisors. The fact that Biden's weakness is age related doesn't in and of itself make it more dangerous.
I remember that everyone agreed that GW Bush was a fucking idiot. But noone called it treason.
I was kind of hoping Biden would take a stand from the Oval Office and let his voters and constituents know that he is not just some weak, husk of a human being, and push back against The Party. But no; as his last act of cowardice and corruption and lies, he reminds everyone who he has always been, and submits to the will of his party elites and donors. Now we have to pretend he is running the country for the next six months.
I don't really understand the show of indignation here. I'm sure you didn't just realise that the USA have a huge bureaucratic apparatus and that the president isn't actually required to make day to day decisions?
If there were a crisis, there's nobody making executive decisions. That's very dangerous for all of us.
That is a much better question. It's impossible to know without having information from within the "war room". But even being in a situation where you're no longer sure whether the president is still capable of making emergency decisions is bad.
I agree it's unseemly. I'm not as worried though. At the end of the day there have always been weaker and stronger presidents. Under a weak president, power will tend to devolve to the VP, department heads and advisors. The fact that Biden's weakness is age related doesn't in and of itself make it more dangerous.
Even in deciding not to run, Joe Biden did something Trump could never do - which was to put the interests of the Party and the nation above his own.
Im not particularly swayed by the euphoria sorrounding Harris today. Lets see how it plays out over the weeks and months ahead (although theres not that many of them.) I think it is true to say that its the politics of hope against the politics of hate and fear. All Trump has, is hate and fear. Harris is a psychopath, the country is being overrun by Mexican rapists, Democrats are radical communists. He has nothing positive to say - no policies, no ideas, no real platform. In the end it will probably come down to the progressive/diversity vote vs the scared old white guys vote (which is why the Republicans have been frantically gerrymandering the last ten years). But I hope and believe the former will have the numbers in the end.
Even in deciding not to run, Joe Biden did something Trump could never do - which was to put the interests of the Party and the nation above his own.
Im not particularly swayed by the euphoria sorrounding Harris today. Lets see how it plays out over the weeks and months ahead (although theres not that many of them.) I think it is true to say that its the politics of hope against the politics of hate and fear.
If Harris does make a major misstep in the next few weeks, I wonder who the powers that be will replace her with so that I can know who to vote for. I think the total vote count for the candidate of the party that hails itself as the protector of democracy is zero, as in exactly zero people voted for her to be the Democratic nominee.
What happened has nothing to do with love for country and selflessness. It has to do with the Democrats having selected Biden as the nominee, blocking any other candidate from running against him, denying he had become mentally incompetent over objections by the right, finally being exposed and realizing they couldn't win with him, and then forcing him out and finding someone they thought might be able to win.
I'm not saying anything positive about the Republicans here. I'm just refusing to pretend that some higher ideals drove the Democrats, that there is anything particularly democratic about the Democrats, or that either side is interested in anything other than maintaining power.
Well, now that the Democrats have gotten rid of Biden, what are the chances that the GOP is gonna get rid of their weirdo? No, not the old one that's 78 and rambles incoherently on occasion but his running mate who apparently is so bad that he's dragging his boss down. It's only been a week since he was chosen but now there's already talk about replacing him.
I know theyre going to win the election. The rigging and cheating has already begun. Not a single person has voted for Harris and shes already the nominee.
Ive been doing the same thing for years, but now its entertaining. Now you feel the need to fake laugh about it for some reason. Is something wrong, Benkei?
The cracks are emerging. That feeling in your brain is the cognitive dissonance. Its when two contradictory values collide. You know whats going on is wrong but you dont want to admit it because it makes your tribe look bad, so naturally, you try to deflect it on someone else. But thats your body telling you to quit lying. The stress of it all is too much. It isnt healthy. Its ok to let it go.
Reply to NOS4A2
It's that Vance's approval rating sucks and he doesn't balance the ticket. People think it was a mistake. Trump isn't known for loyalty, so maybe he'll ditch the guy.
Everyone already forgets the historic month of July: the unprecedented palace coup by Obama Inc. and the attempted assassination of their folk devil, president Trump. Its already back to Trump said before the month is even out.
President Harris and her puppet Biden calls for anti-constitutional reforms to the Supreme Court, which appears to be the last line of defense against their authoritarian rule.
Im just kidding, frank. What do you think about Bidens proposal?
Well, having no term limits on the SCOTUS means that it reflects the way Americans have been voting over the span of a generation or so. That's the reason the Court is now so conservative, because Americans have leaned conservative for several decades. Historically, it works for us to have that temporal anchor. Democracy can be flighty, so it's nice to have built-in drags on the mob.
I wouldn't change it just because we're irritated by where we landed with the court. For democracy to work, you need to have a little faith in it.
That's also true with trading. Once you settle on a strategy, you need to have the discipline to let your strategy work. Sometimes you lose, even with a good strategy. You have to accept that and think about the long term
That's the reason the Court is now so conservative, because Americans have leaned conservative for several decades.
The reason the Court is now so conservative is because McConnell blocked Obama's nominee and Trump, who lost the popular vote, went with the Federalist Society's recommendations.
According to Politico:
Our research shows the Court took a sharp swerve two years ago and its decisions now closely mirror the views of the average Republican, not the average American.
According to the Pew Research Center, favorable views of the Supreme Court have fallen to an historic low.
Democracy can be flighty, so it's nice to have built-in drags on the mob.
The Founders worked to prevent a tyranny of the majority, but a tyranny of the minority can be just as dangerous. And when lifetime appointments reflect the will of that minority we are all dragged down by a mob calling itself "patriots" and "the people".
A term limit of 10 or 15 years combined with staggered start dates seems long enough to counteract changing whims.
Reply to NOS4A2 Sleepy Joe is (again) a day late and dollar short. Here's more disingenuous grist for your MAGA-grievance mill, NOS: a late-2020 post of mine on equitable 'SCOTUS reform' ...
Im beginning to think Tim Waltz is the best choice for Harris after hearing him interviewed. Supposedly its down to Kelly, Shapiro, and him. I was thinking Shapiro because hed potentially lock up PA. But Im leaning towards Waltz now which probably means Harris will pick Kelly.
Could you explain how misinformation works? Is it supposed to be picked up by bots? Is it supposed to become part of a cloud of misinformation so that people don't trust anything anymore?
Could you explain how misinformation works? Is it supposed to be picked up by bots? Is it supposed to become part of a cloud of misinformation so that people don't trust anything anymore?
It doesnt work. Those with some modicum of governing power use the phrase as an excuse to censor information, which does work. But it does have some technical use insofar as it distinguishes between various types of information, for instance false info, knowingly false info with intent to mislead, and so on.
Reply to Mikie I still think Gretchen Whitmer would be the best VP candidate: an attractive white woman, popular governor of a large swing state, target of a wingnut Trumper/MAGA-affiliated kidnapping conspiracy in 2020; very smart politician, pro-civil rights, pro-labor & pro-choice. Checks more boxes than the other prospects. Makes too much sense and that's why Harris & her team probably won't pick Whitmer.
Survivor of an FBI entrapment case, more like it. It was planned by paid FBI informants. More deep state crooks elevated by deep state dupes.
:lol: The only "deep state" is Project 2025 (i.e. The Heritage Foundation + The Federalist Society). Take your meds, dude. Roevember is coming! :victory:
LOL. Like Caesar decided not to be head of the Roman empire.
Where do you get such nonsense? Seriously, you actually believe what you wrote? That Biden, the great statesman, woke up and decided not to run of his own volition? At the end of the USSR, the people stopped believing Pravda. You still believe.
Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has reported that Obama called Biden and told him that Kamala was on board using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
Hersh's Substack is behind a paywall, but his information has been widely repeated.
Rachel Maddow points out that Trump has said on a number of recent occasions that I dont need your votes, we have plenty of votes. She also notes around 70 known 2020 election deniers have found their way into management positions in electoral offices in swing states. Trump/MAGA has form trying to stitch up or throw elections and will have had plenty of time to work on it this time around. I wouldnt like to believe it, but I also wouldnt put it past them.
At some point his public speaking style changed from that of a fifth grader struggling to do a report on a book he had not read to that of a third rate comic doing borscht belt shtick.
Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has reported that Obama called Biden and told him that Kamala was on board using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
Unfortunately Seymour Hersh has been on a downward trend for 10 years now, with increasingly fanciful takes on events which, unlike his previous work, have not later been corroborated. I would not take his word as gospel these days.
Unfortunately Seymour Hersh has been on a downward trend for 10 years now, with increasingly fanciful takes on events which, unlike his previous work, have not later been corroborated. I would not take his word as gospel these days.
I take your point that Hersh, for all his achievements, has had some misfires over the years. He's certainly no spring chicken. He broke the story of the My Lai massacre in 1969.
I mentioned Hersh to show that there is an alternative narrative in the news to @Wayfarer's claim, stated as fact though it's nothing of the kind, that Biden left of his own free will.
But I don't need Hersh to make my point. Biden was forced out. Wayfarer's claim that "He wasnt removed at all. He decided not to run," is opinion, not fact. And on its face, it's not even a particularly well-informed opinion. The facts reported by the mainstream outlets like the NYT and WaPo support the forced out narrative.
Following the debate debacle, first the low-level Dems came out against Joe. Then George Clooney. I don't remember voting for George Clooney to be the arbiter of when the duly nominated candidate may be shoved aside. But he looks good on camera and speaks words written by others. Good enough for me.
Then the big dogs, Jeffries and Schumer. And in the end, the REALLY big dogs. Pelosi and Obama. And Joe finally gave in.
If he even did give in. On Saturday he reiterated that he was dug in and staying. Then they announced he had covid. There were unconfirmed reports that he suffered a medical emergency.
Then on Sunday someone posted to X a letter bearing a signature clearly not Biden's, saying he was dropping out of the race. And then a few minutes later another letter endorsing Kamala.
Can we even convince ourselves that he knew he was dropping out? More likely they posted the letters then presented Joe the facts of life as a fait accompli.
Five days then go by with no sighting. Then he shows up for his 11 minute hostage video. And since then, if what little we've seen of Biden is supposed to constitute proof of life, I would not pay the ransom.
The day after the greatest humiliation of his political life, his wife flits off to Paris to lead the US Olympic delegation. She's been all over the news cozying up to hunky athletes and hobnobbing with the Macrons and the other beautiful people.
And we're supposed to sit back and accept all this. The Democrats do, but that's only because they've abandoned their critical thinking in favor of momentary political gain.
I think it's perfectly fair to say Joe was forced out. I don't claim to know what really happened behind the scenes. Only that the evidence that's been reported supports what Josh Hammer, writing in Newsweek, called a "bloodless coup."
[quote=Newsweek]
The Democratic Party ruling class's bloodless coup of their own democratically elected presidential nominee, who also happens to be the nominal sitting president of the United States, is one of the most astonishing political developments of my lifetime. Joe Biden, though clearly physically and mentally impaired, has sought the presidency for quite literally longer than I have been alive. Biden had been defiant ever since the June 27 presidential debate debacle that he was not going anywhere, despite overwhelming pressure from party elites and sycophantic media lapdogs demanding he do precisely that. He has a Lady Macbeth-like wife who craves power, and he has a felonious son in desperate need of a presidential pardon.
[/quote]
Overwhelming pressure from party elites and sycophantic media lapdogs. That's what it means that Joe was forced out. Whether there was a little good-old fashioned extortion at the end, and exactly what that extortion consisted of, seems beside the point.
I did say earlier that Biden's exit was not by "lawful means." I retract that. It was lawful. At least they didn't give him the Julius Caesar treatment on the floor of the Senate. Unless they already have and we just don't know it. Perhaps Wayfarer was only reacting to that over-statement of mine, in which case he's right. But he said, "He wasnt removed at all. He decided not to run."
Nobody believes that.
And not that it matters, what with a hot war between Israel and Hezbollah about to break out ... but where's the President? Who's minding the store? And why isn't anyone but me worried?
You think Anthony Blinken has a freaking clue? You're more sanguine than I.
DonOLD The Clown adjudicated¹ ra[c/p]ist, MAGA-GOP candidate for "dictator-for-a-day" who is very afraid of a much younger & stronger, incredibly smarter, and charismatic black woman (who happens to be the current VPOTUS) and too chickenshit must be them ol' "bonespurs" to debate her in the fall.
Reply to fishfry This is as usual written by people who barely understand what a democracy is and what a political party is. Biden was the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party not the "democratically elected presidential nominee". The Party is not a democracy and has its own process for nominating the nominee and had every option available to it to not nominate Biden at the upcoming convention. Biden could either leave on his own, or get booted during the convention. In fact, it would be a breach of trust towards Democratic voters to allow an incompetent, senile grey-tufted old fogey to run as the nominee all but ensuring Democratic values would not be pursued for 4 years due to losing the presidency.
The Party is not a democracy and has its own process for nominating the nominee and had every option available to it to not nominate Biden at the upcoming convention.
The worst is they lied and covered for Bidens condition for years. So not only did they nullify the primaries and deny the votes of tens of millions of people with their palace coup, they did so only because they couldnt keep up the charade any longer.
Votes and elections and so-called democratic institutions mean very little to them in principle. Its probably why they dropped the threat to democracy schtick and went with calling their opponents weird. But remember all this when they avail you of the sanctity of elections.
I dont think it sticks because it implies those who say it are in some way normal. For instance they just had a whites-only Harris rally. The years of child-sniffing and gender ideology and hoaxes kind of renders it hilarious.
But the speed with which the phrase was downloaded and installed in pliant brains was quite extraordinary. Its like Skynet.
Reply to NOS4A2
You're right on both counts. It highlights the way Harris is normal compared to Trump and Vance. And it's catchy. Trump is probably secretly applauding it. It's something he'd be proud of.
The dropping of Biden does indeed seem like a coup from within the party. Im glad the DNC can move quickly and efficiently, as long as another milquetoast neoliberal career politician is waiting in the wings. They rallied against Bernie too, very effectively. Good for them. Its as admirable as the Republicans turning themselves into slobbering slaves for a degenerate con man in 8 years. The groupthink and loyalty is off the charts. Cultists, every one of them.
The whole weird thing was fine, coming out of Waltzs mouth. Now that its become a thing, its cringey and pathetic.
It was awesome. The rude journo, recycling DNC talking points, was roundly handled and came off looking like a sour apparatchik. The other two were at least professional. But the whole thing was sabotage from the get-go, and it made them and their organization look like a shit-show. Kamala avoided it like the plague.
At any rate, nativists and racists would be unhappy about Trumps statements.
schopenhauer1August 01, 2024 at 20:15#9221260 likes
The rude journo, recycling DNC talking points, was roundly handled and came off looking like a sour apparatchik.
I'm sorry, but in a normal candidate, this might make sense, but Trump spews nasty rhetoric every day of his public life, when someone calls him out on it, he shouldn't act as if he doesn't deserve to be called out. Ridiculous. I would have supported you if it was your average politician, but then again, the amount of vitriol read back to that person would not be the same in the first place, so wouldn't even be an issue.
I'm sorry, but in a normal candidate, this might make sense, but Trump spews nasty rhetoric every day of his public life, when someone calls him out on it, he shouldn't act as if he doesn't deserve to be called out. Ridiculous. I would have supported you if it was your average politician, but then again, the amount of vitriol read back to that person would not be the same in the first place, so wouldn't even be an issue.
Politicians use critical rhetoric against their opponents all the time, and rightfully so. Personally I see nothing wrong with it, especially when it's defensive in nature, as it was against most of the comments she mentions, painted as they were in identity politics. Of course if one wants bromides, platitudes, and euphemisms he can find another politician.
Journalism is meant to inform us, not to repeat an opponents criticism or otherwise engage in the politics of a guest's opponents. That wasn't what was going on with that one particular journo. What she did was campaign for the opposition, using their own talking points, in an effort to smear her guest. The journalist in the middle was far more graceful in both insult and substance, both subduing Trump and asking him questions he seemingly could not answer, and making him look rather silly in the process. But because of the organization's failures we, as listeners, were robbed of any fruitful info because of it. At least we got the show, though.
schopenhauer1August 01, 2024 at 21:24#9221330 likes
Politicians use critical rhetoric against their opponents all the time, and rightfully so.
Yeah, Trump's rhetoric is just "normal" political rhetoric. No difference in content or style whatsoever from other US politicians running in the last 60 years or so :roll:.
Of course if one wants bromides, platitudes, and euphemisms he can find another politician.
Or how about just a politician and not a crazy juvenile-sounding name-calling reality show host/failed real estate celebrity using xenophobic/bigotted language to whip up his base?
Journalism is meant to inform us, not to repeat an opponents criticism or otherwise engage in the politics of a guest's opponents.
In this case, it's informing us of Trump's rhetoric and why some might take offense to it, understandably. Of course he can get away with anything, right? As long as he pivots and says "I love (put identity group here)". As long as he does that anything he says before that is okie dokie, is that right?
What she did was campaign for the opposition, using their own talking points, in an effort to smear her guest.
Trump's whole existence is about smearing. Obama wasn't born a US citizen, if you remember? Now Kamala is not half black? WTF? Trump is above identity politics. Sure is.
he journalist in the middle was far more graceful in both insult and substance, both subduing Trump and asking him questions he seemingly could not answer, and making him look rather silly in the process.
Well, that shouldn't be hard, he is a silly, unserious person. Frankly, any journalist should be able to make him look silly.
But because of the organization's failures we, as listeners, were robbed of any fruitful info because of it. At least we got the show, though.
Again, any other politician, probably a fair point. He acts like a belligerent asshole, who is reckless with his rhetoric, he should be treated like one.
"And when [DJT] attacks, he reveals a bit of himself; and what we saw was an elderly, obese, orange-tinted racist with a comb-over." ~Steve Schmidt, Never Trumper & former GOP campaign official :up:
Yeah, keep running your trashy, gutter mouth, DonOLD The Clown. :sweat:
"This" meaning the post I wrote? Or the Newsweek article I quoted? Unclear whether I need to defend what I think, or what Newsweek thinks. Suffice to say many observers saw Biden get shoved aside by an intra-party coup, or a "palace coup," as some described it. Of course not a violent or government-changing coup. So a soft coup. I can live with that. The word coup seems to bother you, I don't know why. You saw the same escalating pressure on Biden that I did. You saw that he was dug in right up to the Saturday before the Sunday he dropped out. You saw that his announcement was posted to X, was accompanied by no public statement or even a photograph, and bore a signature arguably not Biden's.
You saw him disappear for five days. You saw his 11 minute hostage video, full of platitudes about democracy and the good of the country. And since then we've barely seen him at all. Like I say, if that's all we get in the way of proof of life, I ain't payin' the ransom.
You can spin this all you want as "statesman Joe" being a great patriot. That's the public face of a nasty back room business. Anyone with eyes and a knowledge of history and politics knows that.
is as usual written by people who barely understand what a democracy is and what a political party is.
Democracy has many meanings. Democracy as in the vote of the people, or an abstract word casually applied to our political system. But we are not a direct democracy, we are a representative democracy. Our system is designed as a Constitutional republic, a Federal system of (in principle) autonomous states with rights and powers that sometimes supersede those of the Federal government.
Of course you know all this. You are playing fast and loose with the word democracy as if it's a talisman against anyone who holds a different opinion.
Biden was the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party not the "democratically elected presidential nominee".
He won fourteen million primary votes. He won over 3800 delegates, to his collective opponents' 43 or so. He had twice the number of delegates needed to win the nomination.
Kamala Harris, by contrast, got zero delegates when she was forced, by lack of popularity, out of the 2020 primaries before the elections even began. She did not run in the 2024 primaries, which were rigged for Biden, only for the Dems to shove him aside when they could no longer hide his cognitive troubles.
It's not only Republicans and fallen liberals like myself who see the irony of the Democrats bleating about "democracy," when they so profoundly fail to exemplify it. It's like the line in the film Patton, where George C. Scott as Patton says, "We defend democracy here, we don't practice it." But he was talking about the Army. The Democratic party does not do democracy. They swindled their voters in 2016, as even Biden pointed out recently; saying that he could have beaten Trump, and that Hillary, whom the party insiders elevated against the will of the voters, couldn't. And didn't.
They swindled their voters again in 2020 with the Clyburn deal, elevating Biden over several more popular liberals.
It's an opinion piece. I don't claim they're right or wrong. Only that prominent observers see what I see, and ask the same questions. I have no investment in these links, they just popped up near the top when I put in my keywords about democracy and the coronation of Kamala.
Here's a legal site with a provocative title on-topic to our conversation:
Confused appeals to democracy. Exactly what you just did. Kamala's ascent was anything but democratic. It's you who "barely understands what a democracy is ..." if you think there was anything democratic about the Biden/Kamala swapout. Not to mention the ascension of Biden in 2020 with his basement campaign and three and a half years of gaslighting the country about his deteriorating (and for the record, tragic) cognitive health.
The Party is not a democracy and has its own process for nominating the nominee and had every option available to it to not nominate Biden at the upcoming convention. Biden could either leave on his own, or get booted during the convention. In fact, it would be a breach of trust towards Democratic voters to allow an incompetent, senile grey-tufted old fogey to run as the nominee all but ensuring Democratic values would not be pursued for 4 years due to losing the presidency.
Haha. I admire your pluck in pressing a point that I personally know to be absurd.
But tell me, why do you bother to insist on the point? The Dems won. Everyone thought they had an insoluble Biden problem on their hands. They moved Biden out and the party and the mainstream media fell into line. Saint Kamala it is.
And Trump, I'm the first one to admit, has been stumbling lately. That "Kamala's not black" line was a freaking disaster. The man is his own worst enemy. Likewise Vance, he's also a disaster. It's a highly gendered election and Vance is very nasty towards women. Trump and Vance are busy repelling the centrist voters they need to attract. It's as if they didn't get the memo that the primaries are over and that the general election is about winning the center.
So Benkei, your side won this round. Kamala's ascendent and Trump is struggling to regain his footing.
We don't know how long this will last, and how exogenous events (Israel-Iran war, anyone?) will affect the race.
But in the past two weeks the Dems are kicking the GOP's butt. You should be happy. Give it a rest. You don't like the word coup, so be it. You think Biden was a statesman who willingly stepped aside, I say he all but got a shiv in the back; and for all we know, he got one for real.
So be happy, allow me to call a coup a coup. It won't do you any good to say it wasn't, because it was. Bloodless coup, palace coup, intra-party coup, soft coup. But a coup, regardless.
If you disagree, that's ok. Be happy, you won the last two weeks of the news cycle.
By the way, when's your gal Kam going to hold a press conferene or sit for an interview? 11 days and counting. She does scripted appearances with Megan Thee Stallion. You go girl.
The worst is they lied and covered for Bidens condition for years. So not only did they nullify the primaries and deny the votes of tens of millions of people with their palace coup, they did so only because they couldnt keep up the charade any longer.
I yearn for the American people to punish the Democratic party for the fraud they've perpetrated on us these past four years. It's not going to happen.
Votes and elections and so-called democratic institutions mean very little to them in principle. Its probably why they dropped the threat to democracy schtick and went with calling their opponents weird. But remember all this when they avail you of the sanctity of elections.
They're hardly in a position to talk about democracy! And of course the weird line is stupid, but if they repeat it often enough it might stick with some voters. Politics is a dirty business and the Dems are united with new found enthusiasm and hope. Solving their Biden problem has energized them incredibly. Trump and Vance are back on their heels. They better smarten up soon or it's going to be president Kamala.
Reply to fishfry It's not a coup which you keep using because you insist something bad or illegal happened. It didn't. It doesn't matter how many votes he got as a nominee, he wasn't confirmed as the nominee. He stepped down or would've been removed at the convention in accordance with party rule. His presumptive nomination didn't confer any powers either. For a coup both rules need to be broken and power shifted. Neither happened.
Finally, I didn't appeal to it being democratic but that it would've been a breach of trust by the Democratic Party to let a doorknob run for the presidency. Learn to read.
It's not a coup which you keep using because you insist something bad or illegal happened.
I didn't say it was necessarily bad. Clearly it's been a big win for the Democratic party. Every coup is bad for the coup-ee and good for the coup-er. Julius Caesar had a bad day, but the fifty Roman senators who conspired against him were no doubt pleased with their handiwork.
I already conceded that nothing illegal happened.
You are locked in to the word. I'll leave you to it.
It didn't. It doesn't matter how many votes he got as a nominee, he wasn't confirmed as the nominee. He stepped down or would've been removed at the convention in accordance with party rule. His presumptive nomination didn't confer any powers either. For a coup both rules need to be broken and power shifted. Neither happened.
I'm getting dizzy just watching you spin.
Power shifted like Mario Andretti at the Indy 500. Biden had and still has many supporters among the Democrats. They got shafted along with his fourteen million primary voters. They've had to go along with the coup now that it's a done deal; but they are not necessarily happy about it.
Finally, I didn't appeal to it being democratic but that it would've been a breach of trust by the Democratic Party to let a doorknob run for the presidency.
Then why did they promote someone whose door knobitude was already evident in 2019? That's how long this breach of trust, this massive fraud on the American people, has been going on. And they only did something about it because their little fraud blew up in their faces. Else it would still be going on.
You are impute virtue to the Democrats in this corrupt charade? You don't even believe what you're writing. It's all partisan spin.
Power shifted like Mario Andretti at the Indy 500. Biden had and still has many supporters among the Democrats. They got shafted along with his fourteen million primary voters. They've had to go along with the coup now that it's a done deal; but they are not necessarily happy about it.
What power of authority did Biden have as the presumptive nominee at the exclusion of everybody else? None. He had no power as presumptive nominee especially if at the convention, entirely in line with democratic party rules, his nomination could be taken. The appeal to his primary votes are irrelevant as party rules are also what they voted for. In fact, within their vote is included the possibility the nominee cancels their candidacy, drops dead, becomes ill, mad, is assinated or removed in accordance with party rules.
The only reason so many people like you are making such a huge issue about it is myopic politics. This is simply not a big deal and anybody who keeps insisting on it make a living out of having dumb opinions.
Suffice to say many observers saw Biden get shoved aside by an intra-party coup, or a "palace coup," as some described it. Of course not a violent or government-changing coup. So a soft coup. I can live with that. The word coup seems to bother you, I don't know why.
I think my problem with this is that it implies that Biden had power or control taken away from him. Which in this context (since he's still the President) could only mean his power within the party.
But to me it looks more like Biden's power within his party had been on a downward trajectory for several months, which probably is why he did the early debate in the first place. Which then just rapidly accelerated the collapse of his constituency within the party.
You saw that his announcement was posted to X, was accompanied by no public statement or even a photograph, and bore a signature arguably not Biden's.
You saw him disappear for five days. You saw his 11 minute hostage video, full of platitudes about democracy and the good of the country. And since then we've barely seen him at all. Like I say, if that's all we get in the way of proof of life, I ain't payin' the ransom.
What's the argument here? That Biden is dead? Held hostage in some secret facility? They replaced him with a body double?
It's not only Republicans and fallen liberals like myself who see the irony of the Democrats bleating about "democracy," when they so profoundly fail to exemplify it.
And what would the democratic move have looked like?
I see nothing wrong with a firebrand, and in fact prefer them. And the argument there are or were no firebrands in American politics is simply false. But your complaints about name-calling and smearing is betrayed when you seem quite comfortable with the smearing and name-calling yourself, and in Trumpian fashion no less. So whats really the problem? Something else must be bothering you.
My guess is you are yearning for the placating platitudes, euphemisms, and bromides that tend to lull the public to sleep. It serves to disguise a politicians actual thoughts and intentions behind an opaque cloud of political play-acting, so that they may get away with murder or convince you to war. This sort of language is designed so that you dont have to think about politics, so its no strange wonder that one might resent when he sees its opposite. Its the kind of rhetoric that makes Orwell turn in his grave, and the daily Two Minutes Hate we see at little shows like that one make it all the more egregious.
Isnt this so? Or is it something else?
schopenhauer1August 02, 2024 at 14:17#9222830 likes
I see nothing wrong with a firebrand, and in fact prefer them. And the argument there are or were no firebrands in American politics is simply false.
Firebrand? What do you mean by that? You can have politicians with enthusiasm with out being race-baiters, promote conspiracies and misinformation if elections don't go your way (thus destroying the very platform of government itself), and violent rhetoric (bloodbath if you don't win..). Yeah there's being a fiery, inspiring speaker, and there's being a juvenile hack that barks out loud the (previously) less pronounced alt-right echo chambers.
But your complaints about name-calling and smearing is betrayed when you seem quite comfortable with the smearing and name-calling yourself, and in Trumpian fashion no less. So whats really the problem? Something else must be bothering you.
Yeah the major difference is I AM NOT RUNNING FOR OFFICE. :lol:. Yeah, if I was running for office, I wouldn't be speaking in public speeches like a casual debater from a relatively obscure internet forum.
My guess is you are yearning for the placating platitudes, euphemisms, and bromides that tend to lull the public to sleep.
It's called decorum and there was a reason these norms came about. It allows for shared space of differences without leading to inflammatory rhetoric that gets increased until it tears the system itself apart.
It serves to disguise a politicians actual thoughts and intentions behind an opaque cloud of political play-acting, so that they may get away with murder or convince you to war.
If you are saying there should be more transparency for decision making in executive actions and legislative policy (as well as financial aspects of interest groups and campaigns), then I am totally in agreement. But do not make the false equivalency that this kind of systemic transparency is the same as carnival barker/inflammatory rhetoric. Also, just because Trump OPENLY tries to break or subvert the system (asking for votes, promoting pressure for Pence to throw the votes out, etc.), doesn't make the corruption any better! His one trick is to do the quiet part out loud and shock the people into daring to stop him. Luckily, they did and are trying to.. except for the immunity given to the office of President so that he can get away with whatever he wants.
Its the kind of rhetoric that makes Orwell turn in his grave, and the daily Two Minutes Hate we see at little shows like that one make it all the more egregious.
You mean like Orwellian ideas like "If I lose, then the election was corrupt" or kissing up to dictators as an international relations strategy? You mean the pithy slogans like "Lock her up!", and "Trump Derangement Syndrome"? This is all laughable rhetorical strategies that work for a segment of the population that has been primed from the 80s/90s by other carnival barkers like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and almost all of Fox News apparatus.
As you all bicker over which clown should get to play pretend in the White House, US Congress gave 50+ standing ovations to a war criminal, who subsequently assassinated the chief Palestinian negotiator while they were visiting Iran, bringing wider Middle-East conflict and a US-Iran war ever closer.
Don't you all realize how petty this shit is compared to actual things that are happening in the world as a result of your out-of-control government?
This thread is a living testament to how "they" win.
And before you ask who "they" are: have you ever wondered where all these wars keep coming from that no one ever asked for and were part of neither party's campaign?
But to respond seriously to your remark: Imagine paying people for that. Propaganda lesson #1 is to get people emotionally invested to such an extent that they will parrot bullshit willingly.
My guess is you are yearning for the placating platitudes, euphemisms, and bromides that tend to lull the public to sleep. It serves to disguise a politicians actual thoughts and intentions behind an opaque cloud of political play-acting, so that they may get away with murder or convince you to war. This sort of language is designed so that you dont have to think about politics, so its no strange wonder that one might resent when he sees its opposite. Its the kind of rhetoric that makes Orwell turn in his grave, and the daily Two Minutes Hate we see at little shows like that one make it all the more egregious.
Great speech. :clap: Now back to the endless apologetics for the Trump cult.
But to respond seriously to your remark: Imagine paying people for that. Propaganda lesson #1 is to get people emotionally invested to such an extent that they will parrot bullshit willingly.
Interesting you took offense...
Are you the expert then? Is this admission ;)?
I guess I'm asking, what are you talking about? My comments to @NOS4A2? The irony of the meta-narrative here...
The old narrative of not being (at least openly!) narcissistic, non-empathetic, authoritarian, xenophobic, etc. and holding some decorum...
The new framework that has been "normalized" under Trump (@NOS4A2's odd brand of propaganda).
The CON- that the old narrative is "parroting bullshit" willingly, because "as we all should know now" the Trump new framework is just the way it is now, and ironically asking for the old framework is extremely regressive, because it asks for politicians to have civility and normalized leadership styles for a world leader (one that doesn't act like a carnival barking petty-dictator/cult leader).
@schopenhauer1 laments the loss of decorum in politics, and Trump, through his magic words, is making it all happen. No greater example of magical thinking has been published.
schopenhauer1August 02, 2024 at 23:21#9224440 likes
laments the loss of decorum in politics, and Trump, through his magic words, is making it all happen. No greater example of magical thinking has been published.
Yeah Trumps rhetoric is normal shit a leader should be saying :ok:.
If nothing else, his association in trying to find any way to thwart election results and peaceful transfer of power should give you pause. But I know, I know, Im just parroting the clearly biased left wing media, even though as you look into it more and more, even though he literally needed immunity from the Supreme Court to give him an out :lol:. What a joke.
Right, contesting an election is wrong in your strange world or at least only when Donald Trump does it. Yeah, the Supreme Court had to shut down a politicized Justice Department and prove the unconstitutionality of their politicized indictments, but its all Trumps fault.
schopenhauer1August 02, 2024 at 23:39#9224520 likes
Reply to NOS4A2
Right, because organizing fake slates of electors, organizing (but with just enough plausible deniability!) violent mobs at the capitol to pressure the VP to do the right thing and making an openly blatant call to Georgias SoS to find him votes and overturn the election results have nothing to do with Trump. Nothing to see at all, right?
Find illegal votes because he was concerned about illegal activity, like a president ought to be. Democrats objected to Trumps election first by trying to impose faithless electors, and also by claiming Trump was working for the Kremlin. Their constituents took over entire cities, and burned many to the ground, including laying siege to the whitehouse. All of this of course passes your norm test, Im sure, but if course I never saw you raise any objection.
Find illegal votes because he was concerned about illegal activity, like a president ought to be. Democrats objected to Trumps election first by trying to impose faithless electors, and also by claiming Trump was working for the Kremlin. Their constituents took over entire cities, and burned many to the ground, including laying siege to the whitehouse. All of this of course passes your norm test, Im sure, but if course I never saw you raise any objection.
The man said OUTRIGHT before the election that if he loses it will be because of fraud. He literally said what he was going to do before anything happened, and then DID IT. He did everything out in the open. He pulled one over on you with his neat trick ;).
So when he asked for the votes, it wasn't just that he was voicing "concern" over (in that case, boo-hoo, and so what), it was the nature of his request to overturn the election results. When the wording is "find him some votes- 11,700), he is a man in search of a desperate ploy to get as much as needed to win and subvert the system. I can't imagine even Nixon would do something that blatant!
The "faithless electors" thing is a non-issue being that it was not supported or carried out by Democratic leadership in 2016, if that's what you are talking about. There was also no coordination with attempting to not recognize the legitimate electors for fake ones. And with this case there's more a few moving parts with the conspiracy to defraud the public from a position of power in the federal government.
As far as election collusion with Russia, not only was Trump asking Russia to help him publically, but even the Muller Report pointed out people in his campaign like Paul Manafort directly having ties with Russia, even if the supposed "Steele Dossier" was incorrect. That is to say, why was he even dealing with the Russians at all in this campaign, being that, you know, Russia is not on friendly terms with the US, and it is a CLEAR conflict of interest in sharing things like internal polling data to people associated with the Kremlin.
As for the violence regarding the BLM situation, I am actually against any violence that rioters were doing in the name of the cause, especially when the cause itself is regarding violence. I am with MLK's non-violence strategy regarding this. Clear destruction of property doesn't help anyone's cause. However, all that being said, it is a false equivalency to to say that the BLM movement was subverting the democratic process, rather than various protest groups protesting a social cause.
The man said OUTRIGHT before the election that if he loses it will be because of fraud. He literally said what he was going to do before anything happened, and then DID IT.
:up:
It was very easy to predict that Trump, if he lost, would claim it was stolen. Hes been doing it since Ted Cruz won Iowa.
And he only lost the popular vote in 16 because of millions of illegal votes, of course.
Imagine believing this stupid shit? I thought the Russia thing was silly, but this takes the cake. Especially from those who are quick to agree about the Russian narrative being silly.
Reply to schopenhauer1 NOS is the dude insisting words don't matter because they've never caused anything while being a sucker for absolute free speech.
Reply to schopenhauer1 I didn't take offense, nor was my comment a jab at you. Rather, it was a general observation that interest groups get people to spread their propaganda willingly.
I myself just try to talk some sense into people. It is a thankless job that I wish I got paid for. :lol:
IMO the best alternative to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (from the short list of "six prospective running-mates" according to press reports) is Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Of course, the Harris campaign has nothing to worry about selecting her running-mate since almost any elected mouth-breather with a working brain will embarrass the hell out of MAGA Mini-me Vance ...
I saw some "far-right" protests in the UK today and their "anti-fascists" responders, and it was like here in the US: the "far-right" protesters were 97% white males, and the "anti-fascists" a mix from all the rest, with white females included.
I read in The Hill a few years ago that 65% of girls in US high schools and colleges declare to be "progressive", whereas only 28% of boys do that.
This thing has started to trouble me a little, since in my family I know that we share similar opinions regardless of gender. We are all leftists and once upon a time I was the only theist/religious in my family, till that day when I became a copy of my parents: another proud agnostic.
So I guess I need to go back to high school in order to find out how come gender will have a saying on one's probability to be a democrat or a republican, a theist or an agnostic, etc.
Do schools nowadays (and/or social media) have more impact on young people than their own parents? I don't know how kids are brought up in other parts of this planet, but in Europe and US (which I know enough) I thought parents do not tell sons different stories from those they tell their daughters.
So it is a big puzzle to me how sisters and brothers do not think the same anymore. Are parents the real educators of their kids nowadays? I really can't imagine a mom telling her daughter Kamala is great and then telling her son Donald is great.
Reply to Eros1982 The suicide rate for men is four times higher than women. I think men are struggling to find their purpose in life these days. Society in first world countries has reached a point where women don't need men, but men feel like complete losers if they can't get a woman. So they go down these weird rabbit holes, and the rabbit holes are all conservative in nature, pining for a lost age where a man could have a factory job, a decent house, provide for his family, and the Mrs would have his slippers and martini ready when he came home.
Good point Rogue Al, but I think is true for certain countries. In the US the suicide rate for men is four times greater than for women (biggest difference in the whole world I think). In Asia and Africa there are countries where the suicide rates between men and women are different and there may be a few countries where female suicides slightly surpass those of men (maybe Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, but I am not sure on this).
Lately, I have started thinking that something might be really rotten with schools and social media. It seems that females and males are targeted differently by education, models, ads, electoral campaigns, policies, etc., to come to this outcome where a brother may be "far-right" and his sister "anti-fascist".
I respect people's choices, but someone needs to convince me that gender should play a role in this. From history books I know that certain cultures had different rules for women and different rules for men, but I also know that communist and fascist regimes (and all religions) had equal support among women and men, insofar as both women and men were "educated" properly by these regimes.
Lately, I have started thinking that something might be really rotten with schools and social media. It seems that females and males are targeted differently by education, models, ads, electoral campaigns, policies, etc., to come to this outcome where a brother may be "far-right" and his sister "anti-fascist".
I'm an elementary school teacher, and I can tell you the education system was not designed for boys. I incorporate a lot of breaks throughout the day because I know my boys need to get up and move. I've been criticized for this my whole career. I'm told I should teach "bell to bell", but I'm tenured, so fuck those people. I do what I want. My school even banned football, because it led to fighting. I let my boys do it on the sly.
So, I think right from the start, boys sort of know the education system is biased against them. But before I go any further, I want to see if you agree with me that support for someone like Trump is an aberration that needs to be explained. That to a "normal" person (however we define that) someone like Trump is loathsome and reviled.
In Asia and Africa there are countries where the suicide rates between men and women are different and there may be a few countries where female suicides slightly surpass those of men (maybe Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, but I am not sure on this).
In places where women have not reached parity with men, I would expect the suicide rate of women to be much higher. Who wants to live as a second-class citizen?
I'm an elementary school teacher, and I can tell you the education system was not designed for boys. I incorporate a lot of breaks throughout the day because I know my boys need to get up and move. I've been criticized for this my whole career. I'm told I should teach "bell to bell", but I'm tenured, so fuck those people. I do what I want. My school even banned football, because it led to fighting. I let my boys do it on the sly.
,
Very interesting. To the best of my knowledge there is one single country in the western world that has accepted that "traditional elementary schools" are failing boys and that country is Finland. Finland, to the best of my knowledge, is thinking seriously to make a few reforms so that elementary schools will stop failing boys.
So, I think right from the start, boys sort of know the education system is biased against them. But before I go any further, I want to see if you agree with me that support for someone like Trump is an aberration that needs to be explained. That to a "normal" person (however we define that) someone like Trump is loathsome and reviled.
I see your point here. Although a leftist, I do not agree with all the ways democrats have chosen to keep power and I have seen so many times that they shift priorities after they come in office. I am a green-new-deal supporter (in general, not in every detail), but I saw how Biden administration did nothing in that direction, I saw how black lives did not improve within four years, and I saw that gun violence did not fade. So, I support some democrats, but I consider it really weird when some young women ask me what I think about Trump, before they make any other questions. That really makes me ask if I am living in George Orwell's 1984, where everyone uses newspeak and is brainwashed time after time :) And Orwell, to the best of my knowledge, was a leftist too, but he was courageous enough to see how ideology may take a turn towards the darkest sides.
Since I vote democrats (sometimes) for a few causes I consider good (not for all the causes democrats say are good), I personally would never mock a person for voting Trump (cause I don't know all the reasons why he makes Trump important, as he doesn't know all my reasons for voting some democrats).
But we are living in strange times and the strangest of all things is having so many young people to believe that other people will love and educate them better than their own families.
Since we are in the election discussion, I wish to add something.
I have been surprised with CNN, the Guardian, NY Times and a few liberal outlets that seem to have forgotten what they used to write about Kamala Harris just three or two years ago. Whereas three years ago all these outlets seemed to agree that something is really wrong with Kamala Harris (she had a few scandals in her office, she was eclipsed by Biden, she made gaffes and there were times none knew her whereabouts in the White House), now all these liberal outlets post only positive things on Harris and do not make any references to their own old posts about her.
Does any democrat here feel good with that? I mean it seems as CNN, The Guardian, NY Times, etc., have forgotten their older articles on Kamala Harris. Is that normal for you guys or is just the way journalists use to do their work?
(I remember well, by the way, in 2011 when The NY Times ran an article were some Syrians praised ISIS for doing better work in their town than Bashar Al-Asad!!! Just six months or so after that article, I heard again about ISIS. This time isis invaded Iraq and started making videos with human heads being cut. So, I guess that ISIS article in the NY Times, in 2011 or 2012, was a good example of never being enthusiastic about the people these outlets will praise. I better wait to see Kamala in her debates with Trump, before deciding if she deserves my vote.)
I'm an elementary school teacher, and I can tell you the education system was not designed for boys. I incorporate a lot of breaks throughout the day because I know my boys need to get up and move. I've been criticized for this my whole career. I'm told I should teach "bell to bell", but I'm tenured, so fuck those people. I do what I want. My school even banned football, because it led to fighting. I let my boys do it on the sly.
Are parents the real educators of their kids nowadays?
I think so. However, are both parents in the home? or in the daily lives of their children? Are the parents mature, stable, healthy, educated? or immature, unstable, addicts/drunks, mis/un-educated? Are they sectarian or secular? bigoted or cosmopolitan? Is the home run by a single mother raising boys? Etcetera ...
My guess is, having been neither a parent nor teacher, that schools and social media only reinforce, even amplify, what the parental / family home cultivates in children in the first place. Just like getting drunk doesn't make people a-holes, alcohol only takes away the sober inhibition to expose their a-holery. Reactionary culture and politics, imo, is like booze and "boys" learn to be resentful a-holes to a social order increasingly stabilized by 'pro-female' policies and institutions not unlike the single mother / wife-dominated households they were (mis)raised in.
In contemporary (US) society there are at least three institutions in particular which, again imo (never having belonged to any of them myself), mostly tend to (but do not always) feminize males: religion, marriage & prison.Not (primarily) schools though RogueAI might disagree. Thus, males react violently against the first two and embrace the pack-animal, alpha dominance of the third (à la gang / thug-life ... or as enlisted military).
I really can't imagine a mom telling her daughter Kamala is great and then telling her son Donald is great.
According to exit polls, in 2016 & 2020 more women overall voted for The Clown than against him. In 2022, those same women lost their reproductive healthcare rights; whether or not they still like The Clown, I'm confident most will against him this year to get back what was taken from them, their daughters and even their granddaughters.
That said, some "sons" want a surrogate daddy to rule the country the way their absentee or divorcee fathers did not rule their single mom-dominated homes. Quite a few "sons" are easily triggered by their deep-seated "mommy-issues" which is why jackbooted reaction appeals to many of them as a cartoon-masculine, hyper-caffinated, faux-expression of manhood (e.g. alt-right, incel misogyny & homophobia).
I have been surprised, however, with CNN, the Guardian, NY Times and a few [s]liberal[/s] [corporate media] outlets that seem to have forgotten what they used to write about Kamala Harris just three or two years ago.
This hypocrisy doesn't bother me at all because Kamala Harris in fact, any (moderate) neoliberal candidate for president is not the clear and present danger to US national security, the constitutional rule of law, all civil rights & the US economy, so the proper emphasis should be on promoting whomever can/will eliminate that danger: DonOLD The NeoFascist Clown.
This was the most funny part. It sounds like an abortionist revolution being cooked behind the curtail lol
With regard to the other things you said, the only difference between genders in my view is volume, nothing else.
Democrats are right in saying gender does not matter, but they are wrong in using gender in order to gain votes (and they are wrong in implying that genes do not matter as well). History and science can verify that only volume divides the genders, but in the case of genes, that's a kind of prohibited debate at this moment. In the future maybe people and scientists will feel more free to discuss genes.
If my mother is great with numbers and my father great with words, and I am great with numbers too, but weak with words, then there's a big probability that I took after my mom's genes. Schopenhauer, also, loved his dad and hated his mom, but I guess he got his love for the letters from his poetical mom, not from his entrepreneur dad (from the second he inherited enough money to become a great intellectual).
Women and men long for the same things, but with different volumes. A woman may think about sex 12 times a day, a man 270 times. A woman may want to pull the hair of the woman who takes her husband, a man may want to kill that who touches his wife. There may be many women who have higher IQ than Kant or Einstein, but the reason why these women will not become Kant or Einstein in my view is volume (or call it will). Though these women may have enough brain cells, intelligence and skills to become Einstein, if they don't do so, then they somehow lack that "male volume" or "male will" which enable many men to annihilate their egos in order to achieve their goal/task.
That's my view and that's what brain science seems to support. Female and male brains work the same, but male brains seems to consume more energy always ;)
A few years ago I was thinking to register with the Green Party, but then listened to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and came with the wrong opinion that democrats will fix this country and the whole world (which would follow the US example of Green New Deal).
Now, I have been convinced that the only difference between democrats and republicans is in words; they just use different vocabularies and do the same exact thing (rewarding whomever supports/votes them, with federal money).
Should I consider Stein now or is she another traditional politician whose only concern is to get sponsors and to reward only the people who vote for her? Will her name appear on the ballot in NYS?
Speaking for myself, I only vote for a third party presidential candidate when living in a state that's safe for either Democrats or Republicans. I live in Washington state so I'll vote for Cornel West this year. In 2020 I lived in Georgia and decided early in 2020 to vote for whomever the Democratic candidate wound up being because polling trends showed Georgia to be a swing state for the first time since 1992. Biden won Georgia and I voted for him (only the second time since 1982 I'd voted for a Democratic candidate for president). As a non-partisan "progressive leftist" (who, like Bernie Sanders and most thoughtful leftists, abhors "identity politics"), I've considered the last sixty years of the Democratic Party policy agenda (i.e. neoliberal sodomy of the working class with lube (less harmful) the lesser evil compared to that of the Republican Party policy agenda (i.e. plutocratic / autocratic sodomy of everybody south of the upper middle class without lube (more harmful)), and therefore I always support the Democratic candidate when I live in a swing state. Btw, in 2016 I voted for Jill Stein because polling trends suggested HRC would lose Georgia (which she did by just over 5%).
Reply to Eros1982 This 'biological determinism' is too reductive to be meaningful at the complexity of level social practices and electoral politics. After all, it doesn't explain at all (e.g.) decades of robust male support for democratic market socialism in Scandanavian countries.
Now, I have been convinced that the only difference between democrats and republicans is in words
There are commonalities to the two parties and major differences. Some of the major differences:
- gay/trans rights
- abortion
- subsidies for green energy (majority of Republicans reject the science of climate change)
- raising taxes on rich
- gun control
- environmental regulation
- border control
- immigrants' rights (Dems want amnesty/pathway to citizenship, Repubs want to deport tens of millions of people)
- healthcare
- education (Dems are for public schools, Repubs favor charter schools and vouchers for private school)
- minimum wage
Now, why is it that Biden struggled to get a lot of that done? In our system, if you don't have 60 of your people in the senate, the other side can filibuster and stop legislation, and it's very hard for either party to get 60 senate seats. The last time the Dems had 60 senators, they used their political capital to pass Obamacare, for which they suffered catastrophic losses in the next election.
I have been convinced that the only difference between democrats and republicans is in words
So youve settled on the tired, fossilized view that passes as sophisticated but is in fact lazy and absurd which absolves you of having to know anything in detail. Not the great progression you think it is.
That view may have been tenable at some point, but its simply ridiculous now. The Democratic Party, for all its faults (and I have always been critical of them), are radically different than Republicans. Plenty of examples; guns, abortion, climate change, etc. If you cant see that, youre not paying attention.
Yes, they mostly agree on military spending but even that is showing cracks (on both sides) and apparently in panicking about China, but that hardly makes them only different in words.
The destruction of Roe, the Inflation Reduction Act, the raising of corporate taxes, budgetary priorities, appointments of administrative heads (Lina Kahn at FTC, Jennifer Abruzzo at NLRB, Regan at EPA, Gensler at SEC, and so on), appointments to the Supreme Court these things actually matter. To throw up our hands and say Well theyre all the same anyway is just aggressively ignorant.
I live in Washington state so I'll vote for Cornel West this year.
:up: If I lived in a safe state, like Massachusetts, Id vote for West as well. But since I dont (Im in swingy New Hampshire), Im not throwing my vote away and, mathematically, putting Trump +1, Ill be voting for the awful Harris. But I envy you.
Funny fact: I met a girl on a dating app and she deleted me after I wrote those things about the Democratic Party lol So, I don't blame you for considering untenable those views.
I just follow some kind of "economical thought processing".
Although I know that I was born a prodigy with very high IQ and gifted stature, same as Don the Clown, and if I wanted I could become Schopenhauer, Einstein, Michael Jackson, Leon Messi, Rocky Marciano, Shakespeare, and so on, life taught me that the whole universe (out of jealousy, surely :) ) would conspire against me.
Hence, though I never doubted myself (for the sake of this debate, you know) I found out that (because the whole universe is jealous about me and about Hillary Clinton) there's a hope that I may achieve a couple of things in this life, but not everything.
That kind of economical thought processing seems totally absent among Democrats and this thing has started to make me suspicious about their intentions in general. Democrats want growth, equality, peace, free education for all, reforms, gun control, better infrastructure, general welfare, thriving American families, women rights, trans rights, Muslim rights, Natives rights, technological progress, control of the space, etc. etc. and their ever expanding list of "priorities" makes me sometimes ask if these people are serious or they just create as many priorities and needs as they can in order to appeal to all those groups who take these "priorities" seriously.
Lately I have started believing that it is a leftist tactic (around the world) to imagine as more needs and problems as you can in order to make more and more people feel that they need to be protected by the leftists. So, if I travel to Luxembourg or San Marino and see how different these countries are from the US, I am sure that a 10 mins talk with a Luxembourghian or Sanmarinian leftist would instill in me the feeling that in Luxembourg and San Marino people have the same problems like here in the States. But that feeling, I insist, will not come from what I see and experience there, but from a political discourse that sounds the same among the politicians around the world.
Though the left traces its history in those workers unions who fought for the working classes in Europe and US, we see how the change in living standards and working ethics has made leftists change priorities as well. It is hard to attain today that leftists care more about EU/US majorities than right wing politicians, for the simple reason that the leftists will keep talking about poverty and working conditions, even though in the 21st century labor has been radically transformed and poverty is not as widespread as it used to be in the beginning of the 20th century. Democrats want to speak about the poor and the rich, forgetting that 70% of people in this country are neither poor nor rich.
But I think I know why they do it now. Most of the people in this country do not care to vote at all and in these circumstances both Democrats and Republicans have discovered that they may keep power through appealing to the few, not to the many. If they really cared about majorities they would set a couple of priorities that majorities seem to care (like crime, inflation and infrastructure) and they wouldn't invent so many needs and priorities.
I lost faith in Democrats when they gave people 3 trillion in covid relief, but they could afford only 800 billion for the infrastructure. They put the blame on the Republicans for that too, but this absence of economical thought processing among the Democrats has started to trouble me.
In contemporary (US) society there are at least three institutions in particular which, again imo (never having belonged to any of them myself), mostly tend to (but do not always) feminize males: religion, marriage & prison.
IMO Christianity does have a more feminine ethic, but this is not the case for Judaism or Islam. Certain branches like Eastern Orthodoxy are more patriarchal. Still, I would say that the Christian ethic as expressed in the gospels could reasonably be considered a more feminine one -- not a weaker one, but a more feminine one.
Reply to BitconnectCarlos Yes, interesting, but I was referring to the institution of religion as such (i.e. its social function/s) and not the belief-system or ritual-practices of any particular sect. IMO, active participation in a congregation tends to 'feminize' (i.e. de-emphasize 'masculine' strength, ego, aggression and competition) even though e.g. "Abrahamic & Vedic faiths" are predominantly patriarchal.
What power of authority did Biden have as the presumptive nominee at the exclusion of everybody else? None. He had no power as presumptive nominee especially if at the convention, entirely in line with democratic party rules, his nomination could be taken. The appeal to his primary votes are irrelevant as party rules are also what they voted for. In fact, within their vote is included the possibility the nominee cancels their candidacy, drops dead, becomes ill, mad, is assinated or removed in accordance with party rules.
You are focussed on this one word, which really is not important in the scheme of things. Many interesting things are going on in this election and perhaps we can talk about them some time.
[/quote]
The only reason so many people like you are making such a huge issue about it is myopic politics. This is simply not a big deal and anybody who keeps insisting on it make a living out of having dumb opinions.[/quote]
Which in this context (since he's still the President) could only mean his power within the party.
Which is exactly why I used the phrases "palace coup" and "intra-party coup." Making your point for you.
But you are hung up on the word coup. If I call it a coup and you prefer to call it a not-a-coup, I'm fine with that. It's unimportant in the scheme of things. As I told @Benkei, I'm happy to talk about the latest developments in this unprecedented election as we live through this very dangerous moment in history. You can call it a coup or not. I'll keep calling it a coup.
But to me it looks more like Biden's power within his party had been on a downward trajectory for several months, which probably is why he did the early debate in the first place. Which then just rapidly accelerated the collapse of his constituency within the party.
No doubt. But they covered it up in the hopes of swindling the American people. I fervently hope the people will hold them accountable and punish them for it at the ballot box. But it won't happen.
Yes. Fourteen million voters. Many Biden supporters were reported even in the MSM right to the end. Clyburn and many blacks in fact. I am not sure why you're questioning widely reported facts.
What's the argument here? That Biden is dead? Held hostage in some secret facility? They replaced him with a body double?
All I'm sayin' is I'm not payin' the ransom till I see proof of life.
Did you see him at the hostage press conference? Man has one foot in the grave. And Kamala tossed out word salad and she doesn't even have the excuse of being senile.
And what would the democratic move have looked like?
Having a competitive 2024 primary so that BIden would have been exposed, and a strong, popular candidate, nominated by democratic means, would have been chosen.
The Dems pulled off their swaparoo. But don't call it democracy. It's anything but. It was a coup -- pardon the word -- by the party insiders.
If that's the argument, then neither are republicans after all the undemocratic shit they pulled since at least Obama's presidency.
Trump was nominated in a spirited and competitive primary. You're just flailing with the rest of it. "But he's ORANGE HITLER, whatabout that??"
That all you've got? Many commentators, not just me, are remarking on the Democrats' highly undemocratic manner of swapping in a new candidate with no popular electoral support whatsoever. Then having the MSM whitewash and scrub her actual record. Then having her avoid press conferences and interviews in the hopes of running another 2020-style basement campaign.
Liberals should be ashamed of supporting this charade.
I saw some "far-right" protests in the UK today and their "anti-fascists" responders, and it was like here in the US: the "far-right" protesters were 97% white males, and the "anti-fascists" a mix from all the rest, with white females included.
The definition of a "far right" protest is anger at the stabbing death of three little girls as young as 6. Apparently if you're against stabbing little girls, you're a right winger. So says Keir Starmer, new PM of the UK.
Reply to fishfry Don't try to gaslight me. You used that word and it was the wrong word to use. I point that out and you keep using it, I point it out again and then I'm the one hung up on the word. No mate, you were simply wrong and your interpretation of the whole situation along with the pundits you like to quote is wrong and dumb for the reasons I've stated.
But of course he did. You might as well argue the sun rises in the west.
You're telling me you're very, very sure that's what happened but you haven't told me why I should believe that - i.e. what the evidence is for someone who doesn't already believe what you believe.
Yes. Fourteen million voters. Many Biden supporters were reported even in the MSM right to the end. Clyburn and many blacks in fact. I am not sure why you're questioning widely reported facts.
I'm questioning your claim that he "still has" many supporters. The public support of Biden got progressively weaker. And even that support was of the "well it's better to not create chaos" kind. I don't see how you can be confident that this indicates a large amount of internal support.
Having a competitive 2024 primary so that BIden would have been exposed, and a strong, popular candidate, nominated by democratic means, would have been chosen.
The Dems pulled off their swaparoo. But don't call it democracy. It's anything but. It was a coup -- pardon the word -- by the party insiders.
I'm not calling it democracy. But if your only remedy is a retroactive plan that can't possibly be executed without a time machine your complaints sound kind of hollow.
When Mitch McConnell declared that the republican party would do everything to stymie Obama, that was undemocratic.
When republicans under his leadership refused to allow Obama to fill a SC seat, that was undemocratic.
When Trump claims that every election he is or was in (regardless of outcome) is rigged against him, that's undemocratic. Arguably you can't blame the rest of the Republicans for all of this, but you can blame them for supporting it to the point of ostracizing his opponents.
When Trump refused to make an official concession in 2020, that was undemocratic. When the republican party, after some hand-wringing, ended up wholeheartedly backing it they became complicit.
Those are just the obvious, highly public events. I'm not including any of the "controversial" events. I'm also not including all the lower level procedural steps like gerrymandering (a "both sides" issue that republicans pioneered).
So even if I accept all your claims as to this "coup", it merely moves the democratic party closer towards the republican party in terms of power politics.
Liberals should be ashamed of supporting this charade.
US politics has moved far beyond being ashamed of your side several cycles ago. You're asking liberals to sabotage themselves in favour of an ideal that their political opponents have long since thrown by the wayside. That is at best naive, at worst it's a cynical attempt to get your chosen candidate into power with less of an opposition.
I would very much like to believe its over, but I don't. I doubt that the continued focus on Trump will sway voters. Outside of the MAGA cult most who will vote for him will do so despite who he is and what he says. The Dobbs decision will play a role. Beyond that the key factor will be the voter's own financial well-being, both in fact and perception. The case can and I think will be made that Trump failed on his economic promises and Biden did more and Harris will continue to do more for American industry, small business, infrastructure, and jobs.
Republicans are not copying with UK and European conservatives who, although not so alarmed as the progressives, do not dare to say in public that climate change is not happening. Many polls show, also, that even in conservative voting states like TX and FL, the majorities think that climate change is happening.
Because some of the biggest donors to the Republicans are fossil fuel giants. Not only that, but they own think tanks and election infrastructure as well. The propaganda was so strong that it lingers even today, when were seeing the effects of a warming planet all around us.
Because it was associated with liberals (thanks in part to Al Gores involvement), its become politicized and thus Trumpers would rather die, literally, then face the reality. So goes US politics.
The most educated people in this country buy his very expensive Tesla cars, and Elon Musk says now that he is going to give a 42 million check per month to a climate change denier. :vomit:
Thats part of it. Hes also very Twitter-minded, and the biggest voices on there are Trump trolls and the alt-right. If it were SNL, it would have been different.
The more cynical view is that he wants to sell cars to the Trump crowd. Which as you see now, Trump has changed his tune on EVs a bit, and was just recently gifted a Cybertruck by some online influences which he praised. Good publicity for Tesla.
The most simple theory is that Musk is basically an idiot, and always has been. Thats the most likely case, I think.
kind of crazy when you compare VP choices. Kamalas choice is smart and strategic. Trump picked a phony sycophant, presumably only because he intends to surround himself with weak yes-men.
There is an article in the NYT: "JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman" Until recently the book, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) could be be dismissed as too far to the extreme right to be taken seriously, but with Vance's endorsement and a forward by Stephen Bannon, it has entered the Republican mainstream. The author, Jack Posobiec, promoted the conspiracy theory that Democrats ran a satanic child abuse ring beneath a popular Washington pizzeria.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as:
... a political operative and internet performer of the anti-democracy hard right, known primarily for creating and amplifying viral disinformation campaigns ... He helped lead the Stop the Steal campaign ...He has also collaborated with white nationalists, antigovernment extremists, members of the Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis in his capacity as an operative.
Past Marxist revolutions are reviewed to provide a better understanding of the cultural Marxism of the Left in America today. While the history lesson is important, the real value of this volume is a discussion of why the radical Left needs to be defeated and effective measures to take to end their scourge.
From what I gather the book glorifies Franco. Not sure if the suggestion is that his way is the way to end the scourge. In any case, I don't think MAGA is big on reading books.
Don't try to gaslight me. You used that word and it was the wrong word to use. I point that out and you keep using it, I point it out again and then I'm the one hung up on the word. No mate, you were simply wrong and your interpretation of the whole situation along with the pundits you like to quote is wrong and dumb for the reasons I've stated.
I absolutely understand that you believe, deeply and powerfully and to the ends of the earth, that I am wrong.
I acknowledge your right to feel this way. I'm very pluralistic about ideas, and favor free expression.
I reiterate my use of the word coup. A lot of online commentators are talking about it. It's an interesting touchpoint of political conversation. It's not a religious war. I could even argue that it wasn't a coup. It's such a small thing. I have no idea why this is important to you.
I respectfully exit this interesting conversation. Thank you for the chat.
But to change the subject:
Hey man aren't you watching this wild election? Kamala just screwed up her vp pick. She's been tacking to the center and now Walz pulls her back to the left, ties her to the Antifa/BLM riots that she supported.
That's what I find interesting. Joe's coup, or non-coup -- you haven't actually told me what word you prefer. Someone suggested that it was all Biden's idea. That is false to the point of hilarity. Biden hasn't had an idea past licking his ice cream and smelling prepubescent girls in years.
But either way, Biden's exit from the race (but not from the presidency) is yesterday's news. Although he is still allegedly the president, as war is breaking out in the Middle East. But never mind all that.
My meta-point is that I am wondering if anyone here likes to talk politics! Not just argue semantics or yell partisan talking points at each other. This is the craziest election I've ever seen.
I'm questioning your claim that he "still has" many supporters. The public support of Biden got progressively weaker. And even that support was of the "well it's better to not create chaos" kind. I don't see how you can be confident that this indicates a large amount of internal support.
Seems like a trivial thing. If you search around you can find Democrats discussing whether this was the best process they could have done. Of course everyone has gotten into line. The Democrats have indeed shown tremendous party discipline. They turned on a dime and all got marching in the new direction. So when you say support, of course they're all on board the Kam train in public. It was a brilliant political operation, the Kam switcheroo. Biden's gone, Kam's coronated, the media are swooning, the past is being digitally retconned in a manner that Orwell can only envy.
So the Dems pulled it off.
But surely you can't actually believe that the millions of people who did support Biden to the end, aren't personally disappointed that things didn't go their way. You can't seriously tell me that you don't understand this point. That if you support the guy who ends up losing, you line up behind whoever the party chooses. But still, you support your guy and maybe dislike the extreme hardball politics that have been played on them.
Some of them might even be resentful. It's only human nature.
You seem to be denying all of that, and saying that overnight what was in their hearts changed in lockstep with what's on their Kamala signs. I hope you'll clarify this point.
But you did. You're just dismissing the evidence as insufficient. What further evidence do you require? A personal meeting with Biden?
Saying I'm not paying the ransom is a way of drawing attention to his obvious near-death condition, in a slightly humorous way. Not payin' the ransom. I suppose humor, if there was any at all, does not translate over this medium. No matter, I enjoyed it even if you didnt. I don't literally think Biden's dead. I do think he is in terribly bad shape, and that we are being lied to.
It's unusual, and suspicious, when a political leader disappears from public view for days at a time, then posts this fishy letter, then disappears for more days at a time, then gets wheeled out to mumble and look like a standing corpse for a few minutes, as he did the other night.
It reminds me of nothing so much as Chernenko and those other end-time Soviets, guys who were alive in strict biological terms only, very little actual life left in them. They'd sit in the big chair, or be propped up in it, till they died, and the next near-corpse was put in charge.
Will you assert to me that you have not seen this, that I am lying, that I am the victim of Republican propaganda? That when you saw Biden at the hostage presser, you thought to yourself, "That guy looks fit as a fiddle, probably beat me at chess while running the world." Is that your view? Or do you see the same far gone man I do?
Will you grant me the right to call out the massive swindle being played by the Biden administration and the Democratic party: to pretend that the president is fit to do his job; when everyone in the entire world knows he's not.
I have the right to call that out. I am calling that out. And if my saying "I wouldn't pay the ransom," doesn't strike you as a light-hearted reference to the entire issue ... well, I guess not everyone appreciates my fine sense of humor.
But still. You have to say that, partisanship aside, this is a very dangerous state of affairs, with war breaking out in the Middle East. Who is in charge of the country? Who is commander in chief of the military?
Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,
Of course if the "unhumans" are not regarded as human they need not be treated as human. As such things go, it is likely that just who is or will be counted as unhuman will be a growing group that will include everyone that does not support their revolution.
Wow, she actually made the best choice. Im surprised, but Im happy she did it. Now I can spell his name correctly (Walz).
Let me explain why she hurt herself with this pick.
I am not making a partisan point. I'm just analyzing this as I would a sporting event that I don't have a rooting interest in. Or, if I do, I'm not allowing that to bear on my observations. I know you are a bit partisan, but you're the one who claims she made a good choice and I disagree, so I'll tell you why. I'd say this if I were for Trump, which I am; but especially if I were for Harris, which I'm not. But the analysis goes either way.
Or to put that another way: I don't know if you'll understand what I'm going to say. But perhaps someone else will.
Kamala made the exact same mistake that Trump did!
A few weeks ago, Trump was asked his position on abortion. Many of his supporters are rabid pro-lifers. But Trump did something he rarely does, think strategically. He simply said he'd leave it to the states and he'd say no more. That angered his pro-life base, but where else are they going to go? And he was smart enough to realize that he blunted the worst attacks of the left. They can't say he's against abortion. He just said he's agnostic and to leave it to the states.
So Trump makes this clever strategic tack towards the center; something every politician has to do after they win their primaries. (Well, assuming one is in a political party that actually bothers to hold primaries, unlike certain UNdemocratic parties I could name).
Then what does he do? He selects Vance, who is in favor of a nationwide ban on abortion, wants to arrest women who cross state lines for an abortion, makes snide remarks about women in a highly gendered election.
His VP choice completely undermined his own clever strategy! So he screwed up with Vance.
Now Kamala has been doing the same thing, tacking back to the center. Her MSM minions are busy scrubbing the Internet so that she was never a leftist, was never against fracking, never supported a bail fund for violent BLM/Antifa rioters, never wanted to defund the police.
The Dems have been brilliant at this. Most people don't really follow politics, they don't know that she was named the most leftist Senator in 2019, especially because that Web page got taken off the Internet. Orwell would be proud.
So the Dems have pulled it off. They solve their Biden problem, they coalesce around Kam, they rebrand her as a centrist.
Then what does she do? For veep, she picks a leftists who is tied to the BLM/Antifa riots. She puts the very issue that the tacked away from, right dead center in her path. Now her role in bailing out violent felons who went on to offend again will come out. Now Walz's 48 hour delay in calling out the National Guard will come out. Kamala was trying to paint herself as a centrist, and Walz reminds everyone of her leftist greatest hit.
That's the exact same error Trump made. They both tacked cleverly to the center, then picked veeps that undermined their own strategy.
There's a quote from Walz's wife.
I could smell the burning tires. That was a very real thing, and I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening,
Pardon the Daily Caller link, the New York Times didn't deign to report this information to their readers.
In other words she sat in the safety of the governor's mansionm protected by armed guards no doubt. And she play-acted in her mind being a great revolutionary, inhaling the smell of the uprising of the people; when what she was doing was fetishizing a poor black neighborhood being burned to the ground to give her a little thrill.
Believe me, Walz is going to wear that quote, and his delay in getting control of the situation, for the next three months. And every day it's going to remind people that Kamala supported a bailout fund for the people who set the fires.
It's all the rest of Walz's extreme liberalism. He supports abortion up to the moment of birth. That's an extreme position supported by a small minority of Americans. He has said "socialism is like neighborliness," a lie that will not play with the very same midwestern voters he's supposed to appeal to.
In short, Kam rebranded herself as a centrist, then picked a leftist that undermines her rebranding. It shows she has bad judgment. She just stalled the two weeks of momentum she'd had, and she's given Trump and Vance a potent avenue of attack. Many such avenues.
You might think you like Walz's politics. That is not at all the point. I hope you can see that. The point is that from an electoral standpoint, Walz shines a light on the very leftism that Kamala was trying to hide.
That's why Walz was a bad pick.
Not to mention the talk, true or not, that she couldn't pick Shapiro because it would upset the Hamas wing of the Democratic party, especially in Michigan.
Terrible pick. Kam just blunted the momentum of her terrific last two weeks, and breathed new life into the Trump/Vance campaign.
ps -- A GOP never-Trumper just wrote a piece in The Hill making the same points I did, but with better writing.
Rather than counterbalancing the narrative that suggests Harris is a San Francisco liberal, Walzs selection reinforces that left-wing brand.
They can't say he's against abortion. He just said he's agnostic and to leave it to the states.
Actions speak louder than words (and who, outside MAGA, believes Trump anyway?). People will remember it was his judges that got Roe overturned and know he will pick the same kind of judges in the future.
As far as words go, Trump said women who get abortions should be punished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n-SgCndBWE
Actions speak louder than words (and who, outside MAGA, believes Trump anyway?). People will remember it was his judges that got Roe overturned and know he will pick the same kind of judges in the future.
Not disagreeing. Just saying that he wisely tacked toward the center, at least in rhetoric. Talking campaign tactics, not abortion policy. His VP pick undermined his centrist move. I mentioned that to compare it to Kamala doing the exact same thing ... tacking to the center and then undermining herself by picking a leftist. Remember in 2008 Obama was a leftist trying to brand himself a centrist, and he picked Joe Biden, a Washington fixture everyone thought of as a centrist. Obama didn't pick Liz Warren or Bernie Sanders. That's my point.
Reply to fishfry I was wondering why she picked Walz, but then I watched him speak, and he's very talented on the stump, very folksy and much better than she is, so I think I know their strategy now. The whole point of Walz is to take the focus off Harris. Democrats, for all their DEI talk, would be thrilled if Harris could morph into a liberal Mitt Romney-esque white guy. They didn't want her in the first place. Black women are risky in American politics. White guys are safe bets. Dems think Trump is an existential threat, and they want to beat him more than they want to check off racial boxes. They don't want risk. If they could get away with Harris and Walz trading places, they would do it in a heartbeat, but they're stuck with Harris.
One thing Tim Walz immediately brings to the campaign is JOY! He just looks so darned happy to be there. He radiates joy. As opposed to The Other Guy, who scowls, mocks and ridicules, and is also looking increasingly miserable as his rating points sink slowly (or actually, not so slowly) in the west. Again, it's a simple campaign theme: hope v hate. Let's hope for hope.
I absolutely understand that you believe, deeply and powerfully and to the ends of the earth, that I am wrong.
I acknowledge your right to feel this way. I'm very pluralistic about ideas, and favor free expression.
I reiterate my use of the word coup. A lot of online commentators are talking about it. It's an interesting touchpoint of political conversation. It's not a religious war. I could even argue that it wasn't a coup. It's such a small thing. I have no idea why this is important to you.
You haven't even begun to address the points I raised so you reducing this to mere opinion reflects your inability to actually have a converation. It's not just semantics, which is a ridiculous reduction of the discussion. You are claiming to analyse the situation but in fact are just repeating dumb shit from Fox News. No power has transferred, no rules were broken. No coup. Having actually lost this discussion since you fail to provide a rebuttal to actual arguments you first try to gaslight me and now pretend it's just another opinion. Only reason you're doing it is because you're incapable of investigating and challenging your own opinions on the matter.
That's what I find interesting. Joe's coup, or non-coup -- you haven't actually told me what word you prefer. Someone suggested that it was all Biden's idea. That is false to the point of hilarity. Biden hasn't had an idea past licking his ice cream and smelling prepubescent girls in years.
I've repeatedly stated what it was: he withdrew his candidacy. And no, it doesn't matter who's idea it was.
It's quite clear, also in your interactions with other posters you don't want to talk politics at all. You're only here to display your unswerving loyalty to a buffoon. That's fine but don't expect anyone here to take you seriously.
But surely you can't actually believe that the millions of people who did support Biden to the end, aren't personally disappointed that things didn't go their way. You can't seriously tell me that you don't understand this point.
I just don't believe Biden ever had much personal support. He was the incumbent and the default choice with no serious opposition.
No matter, I enjoyed it even if you didnt. I don't literally think Biden's dead. I do think he is in terribly bad shape, and that we are being lied to.
Terrible pick. Kam just blunted the momentum of her terrific last two weeks, and breathed new life into the Trump/Vance campaign.
I've always wondered how Republicans would try to run against a Bernie like figure, which Walz does remind me of. He's a progressive who not only supports but has enacted a number of left policies and more importantly doesn't seem to shy away from it. Hell he even kind of looks like him. The only difference is that instead of a being a grumpy old man he comes across as a relatable dad (plus being more on the large side).
Of course the problem for the GOP is that once you get into the details of his ideas, they're actually pretty popular based on most polling I've seen. I mean the right will still try to paint Walz as a "radical" who would try to turn the Midwest into Venezuela but then again they would literally say for any Democrat even if the VP pick were Joe Manchin. I think there's a good chance such a move could very well backfire on them if they're gonna try saying that popular policies like free school lunches are a bad thing.
Reply to Mr Bee Exactly. The selection of Tim Walz has been publicly supported, afaik, by AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Manchin and a gang of well-known Never/former Trumpers across the ideological spectrum from far left to center-right (at least). And as a "Bernie Bro" myself, I approve whole heartedly of Walz now that I've reviewed his CV and record as governor & congressman and watched some of his speeches & interviews. The Harris-Walz campaign already seems (feels) to me Obama-Biden 2.0 (even better!)
One thing Tim Walz immediately brings to the campaign is JOY! He just looks so darned happy to be there. He radiates joy.
I saw an attack ad about him yesterday, the words painting him out to be a Stalinesque monster, but the photo they used was an adorable snapshot of him holding a piglet at a country fair with a big smile on his face. Hilarious.
The demagogue appears to be the champion of the people, but with his rise to power reveals what he is, an autocrat. The rhetoric of the book is transparent. The "innocents" versus the "unhuman". Only some of the people are truly "the people". At a minimum the unhuman should have no role in government.
Can we do away with the Im not biased, Im just a straight shooter. No one believes that. Its ridiculous.
Im not a member of either political party, but Im certainly against Trump. That will undoubtedly bias me in Harris direction, and will creep in unconsciously, however much I try not to let it. Youre no different.
Anyway thats silly enough, but the fact that youre actually for Trump basically disqualifies you as someone worth taking seriously, Im sorry to say. Your judgment is awful. Its rooted in ignorance and failure to recognize or prioritize basic problems in our society.
Which according to you is tacking to the center. This is what I mean by silly, shallow analysis. I can hear this on CNN and Fox too. As if Harris isnt anything but a right-of-center candidate to begin with. I wish she were centrist because that would mean shes more left.
You might think you like Walz's politics. That is not at all the point. I hope you can see that. The point is that from an electoral standpoint, Walz shines a light on the very leftism that Kamala was trying to hide.
That's why Walz was a bad pick.
Whats hilarious is that you feel this is somehow hard to understand. Not something Ive heard about 1,000 times from every political analyst out there who pretends to be non-partisan. Way to go! Youre officially the forums right-wing Chuck Todd.
Terrible pick. Kam just blunted the momentum of her terrific last two weeks, and breathed new life into the Trump/Vance campaign.
You have to be fairly delusional to believe this.
Hes an excellent pick. And not just because hes well liked and well regarded, but because his policies in Minnesota have been fantastic. I hope he runs on that strength non-stop. Theyre extremely popular both in Minnesota and the US generally.
But thanks for providing watered-down versions of what Fox News and Tucker Carlson told you to believe.
Yeah, "heroes, but Spain couldnt be a member of the European Union until Francos death, and Chile was forgotten in its little corner of South America for decades.
How simple it is to exalt a despot when you are constantly on the side of a prosperous, rich and democratic country. The eternal incongruity of some Americans.
Franco and Pinochet were puppets of the White House. It would be interesting to put those authors and lovers of freedom in a country where you cant vote, you are forced to go to church, your daughter counts zero because she is just a reproductive machine, the incomes are shite and you dont have most of the amenities because the rest of the world turned its back on you, and it is impossible to have a TV, washing machine, light, modern cars, etc.
What bothers me the most is that they fantasize about such an authoritarian model, but only far away from their territory. Lets see if it works in the Hispanic countries. We are already happy, developed, and modern in our democratic country called USA.
What bothers me the most is that they fantasize about such an authoritarian model, but only far away from their territory.
I agree but the territory in question is not just geographical. It is a growing threat in the U.S. and Europe. Those who favor authoritarianism want change, but change in itself is not good. They cannot see that change can be for the worse.
The selection of Tim Walz has been publicly supported, afaik, by AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Manchin and a gang of well-known Never/former Trumpers across the ideological spectrum from far left to center-right (at least).
Yeah I'm actually surprised how much the party has unified around him like they did Kamala. Walz sounds like a more effective, relatable, and most importantly younger Bernie, even down to the lack of actual presidential ambition and brushing off the accusations of the "socialism" label (for the record he doesn't adopt it explicitly like Bernie but he seems more focused on whether the policies discussed help people, which I like). I have no idea where the Democrats got him from. People who have been saying that Kamala just picked a younger Biden because he's an old white man are way off, same with the people who compare him to Tim Kaine.
Reply to Mr Bee I think that's because everybody realised how shit Biden would be and in comparison you've now arrived in Elysium. Enjoy it while it lasts for 2 weeks.
Reply to Benkei You can say that about people's impressions about Kamala (at least she's not old and dying) but Walz is genuinely a pretty solid pick if you're a progressive. Also it's already been 2 weeks and it still feels like things are riding high for the Democrats. What's also amazing is how ill prepared Trump was for this obvious possibility. You would've thought he would've come up with a stupid nickname by now, unless he's genuinely going with "Kamabla".
Someone needs to tell Kamala not to promote equal outcomes with equal opportunity. Don't give the political right the slur word they love labeling on the left, being socialism or even communism.
The "innocents" versus the "unhuman". Only some of the people are truly "the people". At a minimum the unhuman should have no role in government.
We watched the very chilling Civil War movie the other week. The most chilling scene in that disturbing movie was when the group of journalists who were at the centre of the plot were asked by a menacing militia fighter, at gunpoint, what kind of Americans are you? The implication clearly being, which side of the civil war youre on determines whether youre going to be killed or not. Obviously a fictional exaggeration, but a similar dynamic underwrites a great deal of the rhetoric of the extreme wing of MAGA.
It seems that on the NYS ballot will appear only two names: Trump and Harris.
Jill Stein will not be on the ballot. RFK Kennedy is still fighting his way, but I don't think the guy has any good qualities. He is in the center of all bizarre stories: he had wombs in his brain, he dumped a dead bear in Central Park, he seems to have a taste for roasted dog meat, and his wife committed suicide (maybe she couldn't bear living with him anymore).
It has become very hard to find any good politicians nowadays. The more mediocre, weird and stupid one is, the bigger the probability he considers himself the center of the universe and (as a result) he wants to become the next president.
Then what does she do? For veep, she picks a leftists who is tied to the BLM/Antifa riots. She puts the very issue that the tacked away from, right dead center in her path. Now her role in bailing out violent felons who went on to offend again will come out. Now Walz's 48 hour delay in calling out the National Guard will come out. Kamala was trying to paint herself as a centrist, and Walz reminds everyone of her leftist greatest hit.
This wont have much effect on voters if the see the former issue in stark lighting.
Trump has always been hypocritical - including calling Republicans the dumbest people in the world three decades ago (roughly) and that this is why he'd run as one. No one cares, it seems.
I was wondering why she picked Walz, but then I watched him speak, and he's very talented on the stump, very folksy and much better than she is, so I think I know their strategy now. The whole point of Walz is to take the focus off Harris.
I haven't seen him speak, except for the short clip where he says that socialism is just neighborliness. Expect to see that in Trump ads.
I do hear that he's folksy and comes off as regular folks. Good all-American dad resume, soldier, teacher, etc. But just below the surface are many exploitable flaws. He bailed (legally, but still) on his National Guard service just before he was to be deployed to Iraq. Then lied about it, saying he's carried weapons of war into battle (not exact quote) when in fact he never served in a war zone. So there are character issues and political weaknesses that cast doubt on Kam's judgment.
Of course that's just politics. Not claiming a monopoly on truth; only noting the political attacks that he's vulnerable to.
The whole point of Walz is to take the focus off Harris.
Now here I disagree. Walz is up to his eyeballs in the burning of Minneapolis. That brings that whole issue back into play; and reminds everyone that Kamala supported a bail fund to release violent arrestees who used their new found freedom to commit worse crimes.
So the choice of Walz puts the spotlight on Kam's leftist acts during the Floyd riots. Putting the focus right on her. I do therefore disagree that he takes the focus off her. By putting the riots into play, he spotlights one of her biggest vulnerabilities.
Democrats, for all their DEI talk, would be thrilled if Harris could morph into a liberal Mitt Romney-esque white guy.
Yes. Correct. Agreed. So why does Kam pick a hard leftist who will reminds us all of the 2020 Minneapolis riots, and Kamala's role in them? It totally undermines her tack to the center.
Dems think Trump is an existential threat, and they want to beat him more than they want to check off racial boxes. They don't want risk. If they could get away with Harris and Walz trading places, they would do it in a heartbeat, but they're stuck with Harris.
No I do not believe so. Harris signals the takeover of the Democratic party by the northern California political machine of Pelosi, Feinstein, Willie Brown, Newsom, and father and son governors Pat and Jerry Brown, backed by the powerful family money of the Gusts and the Gettys. A lot of Democrats are not happy about this, even though they're on board her candidacy. Her ascent has long been planned. She is no accident.
There would be no point in running Walz at the top of the ticket. Harris is a much more attractive candidate. It's funny how a nation that elected Obama twice is suddenly so full of racists. Weak liberal talking point IMO, if you don't mind my saying.
You haven't even begun to address the points I raised so you reducing this to mere opinion reflects your inability to actually have a converation.
I haven't got an inability to have a conversation. I have a disinterest in having this conversation. You are hung up on a word regarding an event that's already two weeks out of the news cycle.
If you don't like the word coup, suggest a different word and if it makes you happy I'll tell you I can live with it, and we'll move on. This is such a fascinating election, I don't see why you want to just lock onto that one word to the exclusion of all the other things of interest in the entire world.
It's not just semantics, which is a ridiculous reduction of the discussion. You are claiming to analyse the situation but in fact are just repeating dumb shit from Fox News. No power has transferred, no rules were broken. No coup. Having actually lost this discussion since you fail to provide a rebuttal to actual arguments you first try to gaslight me and now pretend it's just another opinion. Only reason you're doing it is because you're incapable of investigating and challenging your own opinions on the matter.
It's quite clear, also in your interactions with other posters you don't want to talk politics at all. You're only here to display your unswerving loyalty to a buffoon. That's fine but don't expect anyone here to take you seriously.
Ok. So you agree with me that Biden is in very bad shape and that we're being lied to.
So I wonder, as an American, are you ok with that? The world is blowing up and the president is out to lunch. How do you think this plays out in an international crisis? I really want to understand your point of view on this. Personally, I'm concerned.
I've always wondered how Republicans would try to run against a Bernie like figure, which Walz does remind me of. He's a progressive who not only supports but has enacted a number of left policies and more importantly doesn't seem to shy away from it. Hell he even kind of looks like him. The only difference is that instead of a being a grumpy old man he comes across as a relatable dad (plus being more on the large side).
I agree that he comes off as likable and folksy, that's the word that gets used a lot. I believe his leftism draws attention to the very leftism that Harris is trying to move away from. In fact it's Walz's association with the Floyd riots that draws attention to Kamala's role in them. That's why I think he's a mistake. But time will tell on that. Voters may like him. It's clear that Kam and Walz win the likability contest.
In fact I read somewhere that if the voters decide on likability, Harris and Walz win; and if they decide on the issues, the economy and immigration and so forth, Trump and Vance win. Clearly Trump and Vance are the grumpy pair and Harris and Walz are the happy pair. I agree with that and likability goes a very long way in politics.
Of course the problem for the GOP is that once you get into the details of his ideas, they're actually pretty popular based on most polling I've seen. I mean the right will still try to paint Walz as a "radical" who would try to turn the Midwest into Venezuela but then again they would literally say for any Democrat even if the VP pick were Joe Manchin. I think there's a good chance such a move could very well backfire on them if they're gonna try saying that popular policies like free school lunches are a bad thing.
Ok. My understanding is that he used to be more of a centrist and his policies have moved left. He did say that socialism is like neighborliness. I expect the GOP to put that on endless loop. In recent years he does have a pretty liberal record. We'll have to see how all this plays out.
I haven't got an inability to have a conversation. I have a disinterest in having this conversation. You are hung up on a word regarding an event that's already two weeks out of the news cycle.
You have a disinterest because you were wrong and are unwilling to admit it. That's called not being able to have a conversation.
I believe his leftism draws attention to the very leftism that Harris is trying to move away from.
She's certainly moving right on some issues but not others. One example is the border where she's clearly just attached herself to the bipartisan border bill Trump killed. Walz it seems is going along with that pivot. Same with her pivot on fracking. That being said, she's still in favor of alot of the things that Walz did and is clearly not choosing to moderate on every single issue. I guess she's betting on labels being less important than the actual policies themselves.
In fact I read somewhere that if the voters decide on likability, Harris and Walz win; and if they decide on the issues, the economy and immigration and so forth, Trump and Vance win.
I do think Harris and Walz are better on the issues if you go into detail about them, which is why I think it could backfire if the GOP start attacking Walz for legalizing weed or giving Minnesota paid family leave. Trump and Vance are able to win on the issues if it's more vibes based though. People feel like the economy sucks because of high prices. What does Trump actually plan to do about it? Apparently drill more and flood the global market in oil to crash gas prices but that isn't gonna bring grocery prices down obviously. One thing that may make it worse is his idea for a 10% tariff on all imported goods (and 60% on Chinese goods), which if you believe that higher taxes means higher prices for the consumer as it trickles down, would obviously be inflationary to the average voter. Trump assures us that it's not inflationary somehow but...
He did say that socialism is like neighborliness. I expect the GOP to put that on endless loop.
Yeah that answer specifically was why I compared him to Bernie. He doesn't adopt the label like he does but he certainly doesn't shy away from it either.
Oh boy, I cant wait to hear more from bland blowhards about how Walz is too far left and how Harris should move more to the middle because its super wise. The analysis is complicated and original, and definitely not stupid and boring.
What's Trump's stance actually on the state level book bans in Utah, Tennessee, Idaho, and South Carolina?
Ive heard nothing from him so far, but as you know he has no principles, so like with project 2025 if it becomes a political liability he may just dump it. But hes tried to ban books himself, so I dont think he cares one way or another.
She's certainly moving right on some issues but not others. One example is the border where she's clearly just attached herself to the bipartisan border bill Trump killed. Walz it seems is going along with that pivot.
That bill is a total fake. It's designed to codify the ongoing disaster but get Republicans to sign on to it. They wisely declined. And then Biden turned around and issued the executive orders he'd had the power to issue all along, and the numbers of crossers are being reduced just in time for the election, and showing that he didn't need the bill after all.
She was never against fracking. It's a Republican lie that she was ever against fracking. Also she was never the border czar. LOL. Orwelling retconning.
But you are agreeing with my point. Yes she is trying to tack to the center and renounce or deny many of her former leftist positions. So why pick a leftist as veep? That undermines her centrism.
That being said, she's still in favor of alot of the things that Walz did and is clearly not choosing to moderate on every single issue. I guess she's betting on labels being less important than the actual policies themselves.
Both Trump and Kamala are appealing to their respective bases, and nobody's making a play for the center. Whichever one of them figures out that elections are decided in the center will win.
I do think Harris and Walz are better on the issues if you go into detail about them, which is why I think it could backfire if the GOP start attacking Walz for legalizing weed or giving Minnesota paid family leave.
I think it's the tampons in the boys' room that's triggering some on the right. I actually don't even know much about his actual policies in office.
Trump and Vance are able to win on the issues if it's more vibes based though. People feel like the economy sucks because of high prices.
All those new jobs are going to immigrants. That's why the job numbers look good but the workers are grumpy. It comes down to immigration, Trump's strongest issue and Kamala's weakest.
He should be hitting her on immigration. Instead he's yammering about her race. And the other day at a rally he attacked the Republican governor of Georgia. He's so undisciplined. He just can not focus on what's important. I think he's lost a step too. In 2016 when he insulted people he was funny. Now he's just angry. This race could go either way. The guy is 78 and he's looking every day of it lately.
What does Trump actually plan to do about it? Apparently drill more and flood the global market in oil to crash gas prices but that isn't gonna bring grocery prices down obviously.
It'll bring energy prices down. Biden's energy policy, which is also Harris's, has been terrible. Americans know that.
Drill more and crash gas prices? You say that like it's a bad thing. It's not. It's a very good thing.
One thing that may make it worse is his idea for a 10% tariff on all imported goods (and 60% on Chinese goods), which if you believe that higher taxes means higher prices for the consumer as it trickles down, would obviously be inflationary to the average voter. Trump assures us that it's not inflationary somehow but...
I'm on record against Trump's tariffs. They hurt American consumers, and then when other countries put tariffs on our goods in response, it hurts American producers.
Yeah that answer specifically was why I compared him to Bernie. He doesn't adopt the label like he does but he certainly doesn't shy away from it either.
Like I say ... Kam tacks to the center and she picks a proud socialist as her veep. Bad pick. Not to mention today's Stolen Valor brouhaha. Walz is technically in violation of a Federal felony, one that he himself voted into law. Which by the way is a bad look for Kam's campaign in that the issue caught them by surprise. They should have vetted him more closely and been prepared to deal with the military stuff.
I hear it's about 50-50 in the betting markets. Kam's had a bad week because of Walz, but Trump's not really capitalizing.
I'm actually quite concerned for the country no matter who wins.
Typical Trump cultist response: the guy repeating Fox News talking points accuses his opponent of wait for it repeating talking points.
What's weird isn't that you think I watch FOX News. It's that you think ANYONE watches FOX News. That's not where alt-news comes from, hasn't been for quite some time. There's a huge media ecosystem out there.
That bill is a total fake. It's designed to codify the ongoing disaster but get Republicans to sign on to it. They wisely declined.
So some say on the right, but the bill is pretty popular based on the polling I've seen and some swing voter focus groups seem to be upset at Trump for what he did. Harris was smart to use it. They'll be running ads of Lankford saying it's a good bill from now until November. They're not gonna win on the issue of course but they can always muddle it and weaken an attack line.
But you are agreeing with my point. Yes she is trying to tack to the center and renounce or deny many of her former leftist positions. So why pick a leftist as veep? That undermines her centrism.
Because labels don't matter as much over policies. She's getting rid of the unpopular policies while keeping the popular ones. People care about border security more but they probably don't want kids to starve in school. That's the problem with using a single label to describe a large set of unrelated beliefs.
Both Trump and Kamala are appealing to their respective bases, and nobody's making a play for the center. Whichever one of them figures out that elections are decided in the center will win.
That implies that centrists always win which is certainly not true. The centrist coalition of Macron collapsed in France just recently to both the far-right and the far-left.
I think it's the tampons in the boys' room that's triggering some on the right. I actually don't even know much about his actual policies in office.
It's a pretty extensive record (just coped and pasted a list I found online):
- universal free school meals
- legal weed
- carbon free electricity by 2040
- tax rebates for the working class up to $1,300 (making under $150k per year)
- 12 weeks paid family leave
- 12 weeks paid sick leave
- banned conversion therapy
- red flag laws for guns
- universal background checks for guns
- automatic voter registration
- free public college (under $80k)
- ban on PFAS (forever chemicals)
- $2.2 billion increase in k-12 school funding
- sectoral bargaining for nursing home workers
- opposed Wall St bailouts in 2008
- voted against outsourcing deals
- supports lifting a moratorium on nuclear energy in Minnesota
- 100% rating from Planned Parenthood
- banned non-compete clauses
- raised minimum wage for small businesses
- raised taxes on multinational corporations
- protected gender affirming care
- banned medical providers from withholding care over debt
- protected construction workers from wage theft
- massive Minnesota infrastructure bill
- backed the Iran deal
I don't think you'll like all of them but there's a reason why progressives wanted him.
He should be hitting her on immigration. Instead he's yammering about her race. And the other day at a rally he attacked the Republican governor of Georgia. He's so undisciplined. He just can not focus on what's important. I think he's lost a step too. In 2016 when he insulted people he was funny. Now he's just angry. This race could go either way. The guy is 78 and he's looking every day of it lately.
In 2016 he was a new face and people at the very least loved that he shook up politics. Nowadays he's old news which is why I think he's likely to lose. The fundamental contrast in this race where it's old vs. new just doesn't work out to his benefit where it did with Biden when it was strength vs weakness or with Clinton when it was the outsider vs the corrupt insider. Kamala may not be the best candidate but she's a new face in a race where people wanted anything but Biden or Trump again, and that will probably be what will convince those undecided swing voters at the end of the day. People hated the status quo in 2016 and thought they had nothing to lose if they elected Donald, even if they had serious reservations about him.
It'll bring energy prices down. Biden's energy policy, which is also Harris's, has been terrible. Americans know that.
People aren't complaining about that as much now. They're complaining about the price of groceries which haven't really gone down with gas and likely won't if it goes down any further.
Like I say ... Kam tacks to the center and she picks a proud socialist as her veep. Bad pick. Not to mention today's Stolen Valor brouhaha. Walz is technically in violation of a Federal felony, one that he himself voted into law. Which by the way is a bad look for Kam's campaign in that the issue caught them by surprise. They should have vetted him more closely and been prepared to deal with the military stuff.
Certainly seems like they moved on from tampons and the BLM riots, though we'll see how effective this line of attack is. As a layperson who understands nothing about the military, this whole tactic just comes across as a little gross. If this were a case of Walz just outright lying about being in the military entirely then I can understand but it seems like they're splitting hairs about whether he was in combat or not and seemingly undermining the decades of service he's done otherwise. That and the fact that their guy actively avoided the Vietnam draft due to bonespurs yet feels like he can attack war heroes for what they've done.
The realization that Harris is running a virtual campaign is setting in. No policy, no interviews, flip-flopping on past views like the banning of fracking no one knows what she thinks or believes except Kamala. The only principles one can glean from her stump speeches is the same hopey-changey piffle weve all heard before. Its a shame some people love that stuff as much as they fall for it.
But forget grass-roots. The Harris campaign and the media have worked together to form a movement of pure astroturf. Her free concerts dressed up to look like rallies proves she has a lot of money to toss around, and she can garner what appear to be supporters so long as the payoff is worth it, but the sponsor of the infamous Green New Deal is not much different than the once-failed presidential candidate of 2020 except that this time shes the anti-Trump movements last hope. Like how quickly Harris believed Jussie Smollete, that movement will swallow anyone and anything to keep their folk devil out of office.
So far no leaks, no policy, no hard-hitting interviewsfor all we know shes the great communo-fascist Trojan horse weve all been waiting for. But they can only keep a lid on it for so long.
So far no leaks, no policy, no hard-hitting interviewsfor all we know shes the great communo-fascist Trojan horse weve all been waiting for. But they can only keep a lid on it for so long.
Reply to NOS4A2 Read Marx' Capital, Piketty's Capitalism in the 21st century and his Capitalism and Ideology and get back to me when you've got some good arguments against what they write. Until then communism is the obvious answer to almost every global problem we currently face.
Youre telling me to go read Marx while accusing me for being unable to think for myself. Ive read Marx Ive read his critics, and his critics won. But I also know history and everyone except you has watched your communism fail spectacularly in every instance. So can you give me any reason besides reading Marx that one might want a communist to rule?
What is to be done: global agreement to tax the rich.
I used to think in those terms too: property tax on the wealthy. Now I'd say there's just no way to do that. I'm presently reading a book about the early Iron Age. Time goes by, revolutions happen pretty regularly, either from external or internal events. Our world will be the same
I asked why you hoped Kamala would be communist, and you told me to go read Das Kapital to come back with some arguments. Now youre chastising me for equating Marx with communism.
I think that incremental change is possible. We already have a global economy. We may not be able to get to the point of global agreement but we can impose tariffs and wealth taxes on those who move capital from place to place in order to avoid paying taxes.
If there cannot be global agreement to tax the rich, individual countries can impose taxes through tariffs. It might be argued that this puts the burden on those who are not wealthy, but if a company is going to pass on costs to the consumer it will do so whether that tax is in the form of a tariff or not.
If there cannot be global agreement to tax the rich, individual countries can impose taxes through tariffs. It might be argued that this puts the burden on those who are not wealthy, but if a company is going to pass on costs to the consumer it will do so whether that tax is in the form of a tariff or not.
Placing tariffs causes tariff wars. That's partly how the Great Depression started. That did redistribute wealth, but not for long.
Reply to NOS4A2 Yes, I'm sure in your warped world this is the case. Never mind labour associations, EH&S regulations and labour laws that labour associations fought for, their support of women's suffrage, Mondragon and other cooperations, international movements like Via Campesina, etc. All you think communism entails is what they tried in Russia and China but I ask you where was the common control of the means of production there? It never existed. As I said, you have no fucking clue because you haven't read his work.
Same old arguments: communism has killed 100 million people. Capitalism has killed more people and responsible for slavery, but thats not really capitalism. So that doesnt count. But Pol Pot counts. Stalin counts. China counts except for the part where theyre now a superpower with several economic measures better than the US. That part is capitalism though. Etc. etc.
Anyway even if communism was tried, and failed, its still the morally correct system. Weve certainly given capitalism a shot or tried to bring it about and the track record is pretty grim. Maybe some people still love Pinochet though, who knows?
No one really cares what kind of companies and associations you like. In fact Id hope youd join one. But none of your evasions change the fact that the countries mentioned have communist governments, run by communist politicians from the dictates of a communist party, all of whom wrote the party and government constitutions that explicitly state their aim to bring about communism. None of it changes the fact that you said you hope Kamala is just like them, a communist.
All of the horrible things these people did and still do in order to realize their goal proves only the lengths they are willing to go through to get it, and also the types of behavior you are willing to put up with all because you believe an old and out-of-fashion theory.
Reply to NOS4A2 Yes I hope for a real communist. But to understand what I mean, you need to read Marx, which you haven't, which is why you point to China. Lol.
Oh, a real communist. None of the other ones were real.
Do you know why someone would abuse the No True Scotsman Fallacy? To avoid valid criticisms of his argument. But to understand what I mean youd have to have a shred of self-respect and decency.
Reply to NOS4A2 If you had read Marx, you'd know it's not a fallacy. Once again, where's the common ownership of the means production in the systems you claim are communist? There's no such thing, so they're not communist.
It is a fallacy. And youre telling me you hope Kamala Harris is a real communist while arguing that the entire Chinese communist party arent real communists. How can you dig a deeper hole?
[quote=Trumps Crucial Power Has Been Neutralized; https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/08/11/trumps-crucial-power-has-been-neutralized-00173406]For a year or more, Democrats have been facing the dim prospect of keeping a historically old, historically unpopular incumbent in the White House. Resignation and hopelessness were Joe Bidens real running mates. Then with that debate performance, it became clear to the most significant forces in the party that Biden simply could not win in November. Amid a rising pressure campaign and worsening polls, the president yielded and stepped down from his reelection bid.
It was as if the Democratic Party had rediscovered a power that it had never used, maybe never even been aware of; far from being a coup, it was the execution of the essential task of a political party: The use of formal and informal power to protect itself from political disaster.
Within a matter of two weeks, voters now faced a reality that had previously seemed impossible: You dont want to vote for Biden or Trump? Now you dont have to! You want change? Here she is! The flood of money, volunteers and crowds toward Harris testifies to the power of that sentiment.[/quote]
I said months ago that the replacement of Biden would completely changed the dynamic of the election - and it has. Thats why MAGA is kvetching about it, waxing sentimental for poor old Joe, when really all they wanted was an easybeat.
John McMannisAugust 12, 2024 at 01:57#9246000 likes
I dont follow politics that much but its everywhere right now. I think its important. Theres no way Im voting Trump but I dont love the other side either, although Walz seems like a good guy. RFK jr. has interesting stuff to say but is a little strange. The whole bear story and stuff like that. Are other people on the fence? Where are you all leaning?
Reply to AmadeusD A judgment and no argument. What is "bad faith" here? If a system that calls itself communism does not even feature the most basic point of Marx, that means of production should be owned in common, why exactly should we accept that it reflects "communism" let alone Marx' writing?
What is "bad faith" is having liars claim they know what they're talking about without having studied Marx and then having an idiot weigh in with a judgment out of the blue that nobody really cares about.
If so, then vote against him in the most effective way based on your situation: if you live in a swing state (i.e. polling trends are within the margin of error so that there is a reasonable chance for Trump to win your state), then vote "Harris-Walz"; if, however, you live in a safe state (i.e. Trump can't either lose or win that state), then vote for a third-party candidate who most aligns with your policy preferences (e.g. I will write-in "Cornel West" here in Washington state).
The common ownership of the means of production sits as a dream in the heads of communists, just like the dictatorship of the proletariat, the labor theory of value, class struggle, and a litany of failed communist predictions.
What is "bad faith" is having liars claim they know what they're talking about without having studied Marx and then having an idiot weigh in with a judgment out of the blue that nobody really cares about.
What a bizarre level of irony. That said, it's clear you have an axe to grind. I'm sure you'll continue through several more failed states.
I made a long list of Walz's leftist positions, from making Minnesota a sanctuary state for underage trans surgeries, to meeting five times with a Muslim cleric who admires Hitler. But there isn't much point. You're only here to argue a position, not have an intelligent discussion. Let me know if you ever have a substantive point to make.
So some say on the right, but the bill is pretty popular based on the polling I've seen and some swing voter focus groups seem to be upset at Trump for what he did.
IMO the Dems have been able to spin the defeat of the bill as the Republicans blocking immigration reform. I did read the details of the bill at the time, and it would only have codified the existing mess, and made the GOP complicit in it. So the GOPs were right to block the bill, whether or not the public understands that. That would be my take.
Harris was smart to use it. They'll be running ads of Lankford saying it's a good bill from now until November. They're not gonna win on the issue of course but they can always muddle it and weaken an attack line.
I don't deny that it is a talking point for the Dems. The GOPs have a hard time getting their point of view out. As I recall, Jeh Johnson, Obama's head of Homeland Security, said that more than 1500 illegal entries a day is a disaster. The bill allows up to 5000 before they even begin to do anything. More than three disasters a day. Why should the GOP sign on to that?
Because labels don't matter as much over policies. She's getting rid of the unpopular policies while keeping the popular ones. People care about border security more but they probably don't want kids to starve in school. That's the problem with using a single label to describe a large set of unrelated beliefs.
Nonetheless, positions get classified as left or right. I agree with many liberal positions and disagree with many of Republican and conservative positions. Most of them, actually, as a fallen liberal. Matt Taibbi referred to himself the other day as a disaffected liberal. Of course he gets called a right winger too. Any liberal who strays off the plantation gets smeared as a right winger. In England you're a right winger if you object to little girls being stabbed to death. Ugly doings in Brit politics these days.
That implies that centrists always win which is certainly not true. The centrist coalition of Macron collapsed in France just recently to both the far-right and the far-left.
Yes I agree. Someone noted that both Trump and Kamala are appealing to their respective bases. A "turnout" election rather than a "persuasion" one. Instead of trying to persuade the middle, both sides just want to whip up their base. The worst kind of brain dead politics on both sides IMO. Remember when Trump survived his assassination attempt (or it was all a massive psyop of some kind, but never mind that for the moment) and he came to the convention calling for Unity? That didn't last five minutes. He picked Vance, who's on the ticket to throw red meat to the base. I hate it. I was really hoping Trump would try to be a unifier. I wish SOMEONE would.
It's a pretty extensive record (just coped and pasted a list I found online):
- universal free school meals
- legal weed
- carbon free electricity by 2040
- tax rebates for the working class up to $1,300 (making under $150k per year)
- 12 weeks paid family leave
- 12 weeks paid sick leave
- banned conversion therapy
- red flag laws for guns
- universal background checks for guns
- automatic voter registration
- free public college (under $80k)
- ban on PFAS (forever chemicals)
- $2.2 billion increase in k-12 school funding
- sectoral bargaining for nursing home workers
- opposed Wall St bailouts in 2008
- voted against outsourcing deals
- supports lifting a moratorium on nuclear energy in Minnesota
- 100% rating from Planned Parenthood
- banned non-compete clauses
- raised minimum wage for small businesses
- raised taxes on multinational corporations
- protected gender affirming care
- banned medical providers from withholding care over debt
- protected construction workers from wage theft
- massive Minnesota infrastructure bill
- backed the Iran deal
Thank you so much!!!! I think I'll cc my friend @Mikie. Hey Mikie this is the list I'd have posted to you if I felt like looking it all up. Thank you Mr Bee, much obliged.
I don't think you'll like all of them but there's a reason why progressives wanted him.
I agree with some of those positions. Especially that fraudulent 2008 bailout. As the kids at Occupy said -- remember Occupy? -- Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!. Truer words never spoken.
The point, anyway, isn't agreement or disagreement with the positions. After all Democrats are perfectly happy with most of those. The point, as I think you agree with me, is that Walz is a leftist ... and why'd Kam pick a leftist if she's frantically paddling toward the center? Was against fracking now she's for it. Enabled Biden's open borders now she pretends to be an immigration hawk.
Seriously, who believes Kamala's an immigration hawk? She's on record wanting health care for illegals, and saying that illegal immigration isn't a crime (it is). So she's lying her ass off. But she may get away with it. We shall see.
In 2016 he was a new face and people at the very least loved that he shook up politics. Nowadays he's old news which is why I think he's likely to lose.
Agree. Also in 2016 when he insulted people he was funny as hell. At least he was to me. When Megyn Kelly asked him at the first GOP debate if he was a demeaning asshole to women (not the exact words), he said, "Only to Rosie!" I just cracked up.
These days he's just angry and resentful. He won't let go of 2020. He's clearly not the man he was in 2020. I think he may well have a touch of the same kind of cognitive issues Biden's got. Trump is 78 and he's been through enormous stress the past four years.
I agree with you that he has a very good chance to lose. He could improve his chances of winning by staying focussed on the issues, but he's completely incapable of doing that.
Fraudulent media-protected campaign or not, Kam is out-working and out-hustling him. She could win.
The fundamental contrast in this race where it's old vs. new just doesn't work out to his benefit where it did with Biden when it was strength vs weakness or with Clinton when it was the outsider vs the corrupt insider. Kamala may not be the best candidate but she's a new face in a race where people wanted anything but Biden or Trump again, and that will probably be what will convince those undecided swing voters at the end of the day. People hated the status quo in 2016 and thought they had nothing to lose if they elected Donald, even if they had serious reservations about him.
Yup. Trump carries enormous baggage. And Kam's better than Hillary. I personally do not dislike Kamala as much as I dislike Hillary.
People aren't complaining about that as much now. They're complaining about the price of groceries which haven't really gone down with gas and likely won't if it goes down any further.
It's Trump's job to remind them of energy policy and the wild Biden-Harris overspending. Instead he's snarling about her rally crowds being faked. Maggie Haberman in the NYT reported that he's privately called her a "bitch." Seems Kam really has thrown Trump off balance.
That's actually what none of us foresaw. With all her weaknesses, Kamala is uniquely able to flummox Trump. She draws a big crowd and he fumes and throws out insults, instead of reminding people of the price of gas when he left office. He just can't find his groove. He used to be able to insult people to beat them but he can't do that with Kamala, it just makes him look small.
though we'll see how effective this line of attack is. As a layperson who understands nothing about the military, this whole tactic just comes across as a little gross. If this were a case of Walz just outright lying about being in the military entirely then I can understand but it seems like they're splitting hairs about whether he was in combat or not and seemingly undermining the decades of service he's done otherwise.
He's repeatedly shown bad character, lying about his service, lying about his combat experience, lying about his rank, leaving (admittedly as was his legal right) just before his unit was to deploy to Iraq. A lot of his fellow soldiers are speaking out against him over that.
Of course Bill Clinton notoriously ducked out of military service, and it didn't hurt him. So it's just one issue out of many.
universal free school meals
- legal weed
- carbon free electricity by 2040
- tax rebates for the working class up to $1,300 (making under $150k per year)
- 12 weeks paid family leave
- 12 weeks paid sick leave
- banned conversion therapy
- red flag laws for guns
- universal background checks for guns
- automatic voter registration
- free public college (under $80k)
- ban on PFAS (forever chemicals)
- $2.2 billion increase in k-12 school funding
- sectoral bargaining for nursing home workers
- opposed Wall St bailouts in 2008
- voted against outsourcing deals
- supports lifting a moratorium on nuclear energy in Minnesota
- 100% rating from Planned Parenthood
- banned non-compete clauses
- raised minimum wage for small businesses
- raised taxes on multinational corporations
- protected gender affirming care
- banned medical providers from withholding care over debt
- protected construction workers from wage theft
- massive Minnesota infrastructure bill
- backed the Iran deal
Sounds good to me. So your point is that Mr Bee can make substantive points, but that you could too if you tried. Cool. Guess you really showed me.
The Fed isn't supposed to make rate changes during an election cycle, but they're probably going to have to in September. They're expected to lower the rate in keeping with jobs data. Wall Street will party and the economy will look good. That's bad for Trump, obviously.
The Fed isn't supposed to make rate changes during an election cycle, but they're probably going to have to in September. They're expected to lower the rate in keeping with jobs data. Wall Street will party and the economy will look good. That's bad for Trump, obviously.
I thought the Fed was apolitical and does whatever it wanted? Their one job is to not let the economy crash regardless of the political narrative it creates. I mean Trump and the Republicans will be mad at a booming economy if it helps their enemies but let's be honest Trump would be harassing the Fed every day to cut rates if he were president right now.
I'm skeptical. Not so much that there are neat ideas to be found, but of the implementation. Lenin, Mao and others might have thought they had it, but that turned out differently. How would it go? And in a larger, diverse environment?
(ok, don't want to side-track the thread, should perhaps be moved elsewhere)
Reply to jorndoe Any process that creates power vacuums are in danger of being co-opted by undemocratic forces. The other side of that coin, is it could work the other way around. Basically, communism is in a simple sense about more democracy instead of less.
Perhaps too scared to face hard-hitting question, whether about Harris flip-flopping or questions about Waltzs stolen valor, Harris and Waltz interview each other!
Its all an opaque act, a virtual candidacy, like Biden: the election of a figure head to represent the US in world political pageantry.
No, dont be fooled, communism is not cooperatives and more democracy. These little tales are what they tell you to trick you into giving up your freedoms. Next thing you know youre in a labor camp.
Reply to NOS4A2 Most people already are in slave labour but you wouldn't know with the myopic worldview you have. The above is just dumb unsubstantiated conservative regurgitated word vomit, which you lap up daily. It's just weird.
I watched 10 minutes of the Harris and Waltz chat just now and if its an act theyre good actors. They come off as warm, approachable, and down to earth. The script is on-brand too, with compelling creation stories and showcasing their middle-class backgrounds. A masterclass in branding. Isnt Trump supposed to be the branding expert?
It also presented a stark contrast to the cold elitist labor-hating and weird chat between Trump and Elon.
Theyve been doing it their whole lives. No doubt theyre good at it, if branding is your principle upon which to judge. With an army of campaigners and millions of dark money in your pocket, we wouldnt expect anything less. But there is no better to hide your lack of interviews and lack of transparency behind such a fake exchange.
Reply to praxis This doesn't work unless you're already partial to it. To someone like me, who is skeptical of taking any of it seriously, they come across saccharine in a cartoonish, "we;re really trying guys, don't cancel us" kind of way. They certainly do not come across as genuine characters, in any sense.
I mean Trump and the Republicans will be mad at a booming economy if it helps their enemies but let's be honest Trump would be harassing the Fed every day to cut rates if he were president right now.
He'd have to install mechanisms for overriding the chairman. I guess he'd give it his best shot.
So Harris and Biden appear at what amounted to a campaign event, I think in Washington? Anyway, the subject was Medicare reforms and rebates, making a list of important therapeutic drugs less expensive and more available. An actual policy achievement announcement!
While over in the clown car show that is MAGA, theyre pleading with Dear Leader to at least try and appear to be saying something policy-related and sensible, even if their party has wasted the last legislative session on wild-goose chases about impeaching Biden and advanced zero legislation.
But no - Dear Leader says he has every right to be mean about Harris, because shes trying to put me in jail and then reverts to his stream-of-addled-consciousness rants. Business as usual.
I think an impartial viewer would disagree that the exchange is sickly sweet, cartoonish, and ingenuine.
Well as one, that's how they come across. I couldn't give a squirt of piss who wins - I'm just calling it like I see it. They come across as cartoonishly saccharine and dishonestly bubbly.
You think they're being plainspoken and nice so they won't be canceled?
Probably not in the sense that they've strategised in those terms, no(though, who knows - more brazen political horseshit has happened). But I didn't suggest that. I suggested that what comes across. I am not alone, and ths is not an unreasonable reading of such twaddle as they've used for their talking points imo. It boils down to this:
They certainly do not come across as genuine characters, in any sense.
Anyone who is trying to win your vote shouldn't be taken at face-value anyway. Unsure why this wouldn't apply to the ticket who had to pick up on a race they(i.e Biden/Harris) were sorely losing.
Election 2024 is again a basic IQ test: neoliberals (pols) versus neofascists (cons)? Hint: you don't have to be antifa, BLM, pro-woman, etc to demonstrate that you're intelligent (i.e. not a bleach-swilling, MAGA-moron, weirdo). :mask:
Anyone who is trying to win your vote shouldn't be taken at face-value anyway.
So true. Campaigns are about "messaging", consisting of (distorted) narratives, and "defining" themselves (in an appealing way) and the opponent (in a negative way). It's show business.
I sometimes watch a daily show/zoom-call on youtube called "2-way". Mark Halperin hosts, and he usually has both a Democratic and Republican campaign strategist (Sean Spicer is on there frequently) with him. They evaluate the previous day's campaign action like a sports talk-show: what's working and not working, and opining about what each campaign should be doing. It helps give me perspective on the game that it is.
Yes. They still try to avoid screwing with the economy when an election is close.
Well I'd prefer it if they focused on not screwing over the economy because they're worried about the political optics. I suspect that that was the reason why Trump has been getting a pass legally for his multiple crimes. Both the Republicans and Democrats were too chicken to shut him down permanently after Jan 6 and now here we are.
I still feel like this is an issue about Trump's policies that is underdiscussed. People seem to think that Trump will fix inflation somehow but he literally plans to implement a 20% tariff on all imported goods and unlike his other crazy ideas he probably has unilateral authority to do so:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1823875755232911821[/tweet]
Anyone who is trying to win your vote shouldn't be taken at face-value anyway.
Is anyone (with the exception of the MAGA cult) foolish enough to take what a politician says at face-value? Anyway, you have a remarkably low tolerance for human sweetness.
Is anyone (with the exception of the MAGA cult) foolish enough to take what a politician says at face-value? Anyway, you have a remarkably low tolerance for human sweetness.
Democrats promised 6 trillion for Green New Deal. So far they have invested less than 20 billion in the green new deal, gave like 3 trillion on covid relief only, increased the US public debt to 35 trillion, plan to give 1.2 billion for student loan forgiveness and I heard Kamala Harris today stating that she is going to give 1.7 trillion in middle-class handouts (though I know very well she wasn't referred to me with "middle-class", but to her potential voters).
I am wondering who are more stupid now, those who vote for Trump or those who think that the evil in this country may come only from the "far-right", but never from the left?
I stand for social justice, gun laws and environmental protections (things that Trump never takes into consideration), but if Democrats bankrupt this country the only sure thing is that progressives won't see any of their plans/dreams realized, and they will deserve to be blamed for failures which they often use to charge their opponents with.
Maybe stop reading and regurgitating the Daily Mail.
Several of your numbers are wrong, and its obvious to any reader that youve bought into the tired right-wing talking point about debt and spending which youll only hear about when its a Democrat in office. Never mind that Trump jacked up the debt as well by trillions.
For me no big difference between democrat politicians and republicans, apart from appearance (republicans dress and look trendier than democrats, democrats are better orators).
Trump reduced taxes in order to satisfy his voters. Harris says she will give handouts to those in need. Is it not the same thinking, with different targets? Trump targeted businessmen and self-employed people, Harris is targeting those in need, mostly single mothers and minorities (though she uses the word "middle-class" for promotional purposes).
In contrast with republicans, I believe in government spending and government intervention. But I don't see why there are no other ways of doing it, apart from just giving money to people.
Trump did that too (he told people "vote me, so you save money" and he kept his word). Most of my friends were happy for saving from their taxes during Trump's presidency, and Biden did something similar in a time of urgency.
It is not an accident that 2020-2022 coincide with the US cryptocurrency craze. Just from the people I know, I may tell you that many of these relief paychecks ended up in crypto investments (wasted money, which in one or another way our children will have to repay).
But you should see it that Kamala Harris is doing the same thing with Trump: vote me, so I give you money. I, Kamala, speak about USA and Americans, but in the way and in the moment I do it, I don't care for the future or the role of this nation, I just want you (my potential voter) to know that money is coming for you.
We have some moral dilemmas now:
Should the voter consider money and personal benefit as the foremost criterion in casting his vote? Democrats and republicans will say yes. (Truth does not matter to them.)
Should our generation borrow money that the next generation will have to repay?
Democrats and republicans will say yes. (The only future they know is from one election to the next.)
How should we use the money that our children will have to repay?
Democrats and republicans will say these money should be used in the way that satisfies best those voters which brought us to power. (Again, the only future they know are those periods from one to the next election.)
To conclude, we are not talking only about debt and sums here. We are talking about the morality of doing politics and spending money in this way. You don't blame your neighbor who takes a loan to upgrade his old house and buy a car, but you will definitely blame you neighbor if he takes loans to pay sex-workers, buy drugs, go to see Dubai, etc. In this country so much money is paid, but the results are poor and some people will always pay the bill (without a detailed receipt). I can't vote republicans when they reject science, but I have lost faith in democrats too. Either they have to be frank with Americans and tell them some big sacrifices are needed to save our country and/or the whole world, or they just will keep satisfying their voters every four years and always will blame their opponents for that never-happening-revolution.
By the way, why every time I open Youtube I see ads from democrats only?
I just removed my party affiliation with democrats, and I never plan to vote climate-change deniers (republicans), but I am just trying to better understand how democracy works in this country and within the social media. This is why I am asking about Youtube.
No doubt he is stupid and very anachronistic (in order to balance the cost of foreign tariffs, he thinks to reduce the prices of local energy, through making coal and oil cheaper, at a time when the rest of the world is trying to free itself from carbon emissions and countries like South Korea and China are leading all other nations in batteries and electrical devices), but Kamala is not better.
Price gouging is not coming only from big companies, is coming mostly from small and medium businesses. Many of these businesses will close or file for bankruptcy if the government tells them how to limit prices. (Walmart and Amazon will profit again.)
This is going to be a very difficult election. You have to choose one of the two extremists. The one is the extremist of the rich and evangelicals, the other the extremist of the poor and identity politics.
If Kamala wins that will happen only because many Americans hate Trump. In other circumstances she would have been the worst choice for the democrats. In conclusion, whoever wins the only sure thing is that this country will become more divided.
Reply to Eros1982 Depends on the details of her actual policy, though based on what I've read it sounds like antitrust enforcement. Maybe when she sits for an actual interview we'll find out more.
That being said I do think that alot of Harris' policies won't be done at all if only because congress (especially if Republicans keep the Senate as they look likely to do) won't allow it. The issue with Trump's plans on deporting millions of immigrants and imposing a 20% tariff on all imports is that he can do it unilaterally. I'm not worried about him gutting Obamacare because the GOP congressmen are smart enough to not play along with his schemes. He would do it if he had a big red button on his desk to press, but he can't, however such a button does exist for starting a trade war like he did in his first term.
Policy ought to be a big part of it, but it doesn't capture everything. Better: we predict a future that is entailed by each candidate, and choose the candidate that we believe will deliver the better future.
Reply to Benkei You can find by searching youtube for "Mark Halperin 2-way". Named as such because there's a degree of audience participation. Here's one:
It's typical of the ones labelled "morning meeting" that discuss what I was talking about. Other episodes have different sorts of topics, all related to some aspects of politics.
This one features a Jordan Peterson interview: https://www.youtube.com/live/Tgy4bsS3tM8?si=GnvRCOefpTF9WQAK
Peterson makes a ton of debatable claims, but still much food for thought.
Here's one featuring a panel discussion of media bias: https://www.youtube.com/live/k0xCB1J0SOk?si=s2xyYWlfjwklM9fj
Very interesting.
Policy ought to be a big part of it, but it doesn't capture everything. Better: we predict a future that is entailed by each candidate, and choose the candidate that we believe will deliver the better future.
Luckily the past can give us a hint. Both were heavily involved in past and current administrations. No predictions required.
Their record. If given power, what will they do? Harris has been vice president for the past three years and I can not name one thing she has done, for instance. If she wants to enact price controls, give 25000 to first time home-buyers, why hasnt she done so?
That's political nonsense. You know as well as I that a VP doesn't have the power to implement policy. For that matter, there are limits to what a President can do.
I wasn't trying to debate policies or candidates, I just wanted to point out that it may, or may not, make sense to assume policy-promises are likely to become policy. For example, executive orders are easy, but transient; laws are long term, but need 60 votes in the Senate. Willingness to compromise matters, and you can have a positive or negative view of that.
[quote=MoDo]
Top Democrats are bristling with resentments even as they are about to try to put on a united front at the United Center in the Windy City.
A coterie of powerful Democrats maneuvered behind the scenes to push an incumbent president out of the race.
It wasnt exactly Julius Caesar in Rehoboth Beach. But it was a tectonic shift and, of course, there were going to be serious reverberations. Even though it was the right thing to do, because Joe Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve as president for another four years, in a fully vital way, it was a jaw-dropping putsch.[/quote]
Not every day that Maureen Dowd makes my point for me.
Reply to fishfry and she's still wrong for the reasons and arguments I gave you that you never engaged. And you're doing the same spiel again, by offering someone else's opinion devoid of the context of my arguments and pretend it's some kind of rebuttal. Learn how a discussion works!
and she's still wrong for the reasons and arguments I gave you that you never engaged. And you're doing the same spiel again, by offering someone else's opinion devoid of the context of my arguments and pretend it's some kind of rebuttal. Learn how a discussion works!
I did not engage with your arguments for the same reason I don't engage with flat earthers.
It's perfectly well known that Biden was pressured and shoved out. It's not rationally possible to argue the contrary. I get that you're sincere, but so are the flat earthers. Since we talked a week ago, stories have come out about Biden's seething resentment at the way he was treated. Here's one such.
[url=https://nypost.com/2024/08/11/us-news/biden-specifically-names-nancy-pelosi-in-first-interview-about-why-he-dropped-out-of-presidential-race]Biden admits he was pushed out of presidential race, name-drops Pelosi in first interview since exit
[/url]
It's simply not possible to look at the facts -- Biden was in it all the way on Saturday, then they announce he's got covid, then on Sunday a letter comes out under a forged mechanical signature without any of the standard official notices of withdrawal as required by the FEC.
You just can't spin this any other way than hardball political pressure from the Dem insiders. I absolutely do not understand how you can even pretend otherwise. To be honest I don't recall you making any rational arguments.
I did think it was amusing that MoDo spent her Sunday column the day before the Dem convention to make the point that it was a coup.
But if you want to think Joe Biden woke up on Sunday morning and dictated and signed the letter of his own free will ... you are entitled to your opinion. It is just too silly and unsupportable an opinion to be worth much in the way of discussion.
Haha. Good one Mr. Bee. When do you think that will happen? It's her official campaign strategy to never say an unscripted word. We all know what happens when Kam goes off script.
Price controls. Of all the hare-brained schemes. Even WaPo and CNN are against the idea. Price controls inevitably create shortages and bread lines. Nixon's price controls failed. Price controls always fail. They constrain supply and increase demand. Exactly the opposite of what you want.
Well 100,000 Antifa goons and Hamas-loving maniacs are planning to exercise their free speech rights in Chicago. The store owners are boarding up the windows just in case. "The whole world's watching" as they chanted in '68.
Price controls. Of all the hare-brained schemes. Even WaPo and CNN are against the idea. Price controls inevitably create shortages and bread lines. Nixon's price controls failed. Price controls always fail. They constrain supply and increase demand. Exactly the opposite of what you want.
Politically it will probably work out for her because of how uninformed voters are which is what I suspect her play here is. Say what you want about how viable her policies are but polling does show that people blame corporate price gouging for alot of the inflation and they want the government to do something:
Populism sells and when people see the "experts" at CNN and WaPo balk at these ideas and you have folks like Larry Kudlow on Fox saying that corporate greed is a myth they just see the establishment defending the status quo. I mean if CNN is gonna bring on people like this:
When prices are high, in most cases, the best policy action in response is actually taking no action, Roberts, the chair of Weber State Universitys economics department, told CNN.
That would cause consumers who are deterred by, say, high prices of beef, to instead purchase another type of meat or protein. That helps keep beef on the grocery store shelves for people who want it enough to pay the higher prices.
It's hard to see them as not being out of touch with the concerns of consumers. I'm not saying they're wrong but if you're worried about the price of beef this week then that's the last thing you want to hear.
The same goes for her housing policy where first time homebuyers will probably be more excited about direct subsidies over building more housing (though Harris says she's doing both). Remember your average voter doesn't understand the difference between cooling inflation and deflation (what they would call an actual decrease in prices) and still needs to be lectured on how marginal tax rates work. At the end of the day none of these policies will get implemented simply because of how dysfunctional congress is but like her adopting Trump's stance on tips and one upping Vance's $5000 CTC idea with a $6000 CTC, Harris is trying to win an election by promising alot of nice things. Same for Trump too, to be honest. It's all about the vibes.
Price controls are an excellent idea. Harris keeps surprising me. If she keeps this up, shell win easily. The fact that every moronic armchair political analyst and both CNN and Fox News are screaming against it are all great signs that shes on the right track.
Executive orders are interesting. I dont think theyre so transient when it comes to the institution of government itself. They can direct the executive agencies and the military, for example.
Is anyone (with the exception of the MAGA cult) foolish enough to take what a politician says at face-value?
Have you been reading this and the Trump thread? Not only are mainly democrats partial to this thinking, its a pick-and-choose situation. Though, remove the partisan remark - and just the question - and my incredulity remains :P
If Kamala wins that will happen only because many Americans hate Trump. In other circumstances she would have been the worst choice for the democrats. In conclusion, whoever wins the only sure thing is that this country will become more divided.
True. And true for both - Trump would normally be one of the worst Republican candidates. Its just the conflict aspect that has him preferred (and, possibly not preferred, just a better choice that Harris to many Reps). Neither had a shot in hell of being a Good President
Well, the House GOP finally released their impeachment report regarding Joe Briben and his crime family, outlining several impeachable offenses. Its pretty damning stuff which weve all known about for years, but too little too late.
Reply to NOS4A2 I saw they uncritically copied a meme despite overwhelming evidence everybody wanted Shokin gone irrespective of whatever Burisma investigation that may have been going on and stopped reading since it's bullshit.
Reply to NOS4A2 Yes, that's precisely the difference between you and me, I stop reading when it contradicts evidence, you stop reading when it contradicts your dumb ideas. Spot on.
What are you talking about? :brow: Steve Schmidt is a thirty-year Republican and a political and corporate strategist. He is best known for working on Republican political campaigns, including those of President George W. Bush, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arizona Senator John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign.
Reply to praxis Hmmm, what would that have to do with what I've said? The claim is, roughly: Whether or not one takes the media seriously is based on whether it supports their current pet point-to-be-made".
The source is irrelevant unless you want to talk about bias in picking one's sources (even more obvious there, in the main as Ground News shows with statistical analysis of most articles it posts as to who is publishing/reading those stories/takes).
Are you suggesting that this doesn't happen in general? I have given an example (which more starkly illustrates this, as the source doesn't align, but the content does, with expectation).
DNC Convention. Boring, but Dems have bigger stars than the Republicans and the Repubs hate that. Trump most of all hence the endless talk about crowd size and fantasizing about a Taylor Swift endorsement (shell endorse Harris).
Dems have Swift and Beyonce GOP have Hulk Hogan and Chachi. Theres a drop-off here.
I don't agree it's boring. I've beeing watching on and off, and some of it has been scintillating. Biden is just wrapping up, and he's given a powerful and poignant speech. It was also a great send-off, not at all mawkish or regretful. More strength to the Democrats.
I was referring to Biden's farewell speech in particular. But then, I admit I'm emotionally attached to the outcome of the election in a way that, if it were any other time and any other pair of candidates, I woudn't be.
:up: I get it. Trump bring re-elected would be a disaster. I very much hope he loses and will be voting against him. But I still very much dislike these silly conventions. Compared to the RNC, its boring. But thats a compliment.
Reply to Mikie One point I will call out - there are tons of stories about Republican operatives and politicians pleading with Trump to stop campaigning on insults and to try to concentrate on policy. They say that if Trump campaigns on economic policy, taxation and immigration that he has a strong suit. The problem is, it just aint true. First, Trump can only campaign on lies, insults and exaggerations, because they are his only weapons. Second, Bidens economic record is better than the previous administration. Trump himself tanked the most aggressive border control policy that had ever been agreed to by a Democratic President just to be able to brag about the issue. And his taxation policies favour the rich.
Hes sporadically trying to be teleprompter Trump on the podium from time to time, but Truth Social Trump will always, well, trump the effort. I expect the more he lags in polls the more desperate, spiteful and vindictive he will become. A truly vicious circle.
unenlightenedAugust 21, 2024 at 07:05#9270100 likes
We are so polite and restrained on this site, as if we were all democrats or something. But have a proper gander at how the republicans take on The great golf cheat.
But for a really lame speech, the NDC can't compete with the Orange Baby recently declaring himself the defender of law and order, (you have to smile, surely?) and giving a purported 'economic speech', both in a monotone of sleepy dreariness that even Fox gave up on following. I won't give links to spare the blushes of the apologists, but you can find them I guess if you want to.
Bidens inner-circle worked to conceal his decline, according to the WaPo editorial board. But in their obsequious adulation for Bidens wisdom in stepping down (a roundabout way of saying he was pressured to leave), they skirt past the fact that a man in decline is still the commander-in-chief of the country, in charge of the military and foreign policy, holds the nuclear codes, even while he cant remember the name of his own Secretary of State (known to Biden as Black man). Whos running the country? No one seems to care.
In other news, One of the biggest revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the United States added 818,000 fewer jobs between April 2023 and March 2024.
This is all par for the course for the Potemkin administration, a blizzard of lies and deceit, with its vice president and second in command now taking up the mantle as its next virtual president.
First, Trump can only campaign on lies, insults and exaggerations, because they are his only weapons. Second, Bidens economic record is better than the previous administration.
In other news, One of the biggest revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the United States added 818,000 fewer jobs between April 2023 and March 2024.
If Trump can be believed this is good news because he reported that those jobs were filled by illegal immigrants. Good news or part of a blizzard of lies and deceit?
unenlightenedAugust 22, 2024 at 07:40#9271850 likes
Hey guys, I'm struck by how many fairly prominent seeming republicans are speaking at the DNC. Is that a normal thing in your politics? In the UK, we occasionally get someone swapping sides, but they tend to be regarded with suspicion and sidelined. I don't think I have ever seen a UK Tory saying "I'm still a conservative, but please vote Labour this time, because our leader is a corrupt and destructive person." Nor vice versa. There were Labour politicians undermining Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader, but none that spoke at the Conservative Conference. It just seems an extraordinary event to me; is it normal in the US?
I don't think I have ever seen a UK Tory saying "I'm still a conservative, but please vote Labour this time, because our leader is a corrupt and destructive person."
Its not typical to have your former press Secretary tell people to vote against you, no. Even in this country. Trump is just that awful.
Hey guys, I'm struck by how many fairly prominent seeming republicans are speaking at the DNC. Is that a normal thing in your politics?
What makes this so extraordinary is that Republicans under Trump regard Democrats as the enemy and do not dare cross party lines. If Trump loses we are much more likely to see Republicans return to the idea, if not the practice, up putting country before party.
Given Stephanie Grisham's record--including her previous defence for Trump calling Never-Trumpers "human scum"--it seems highly unlikely she is doing anything other than using the DNC as a free advertising platform for her book. Wealthy establishment conservatives, like those on the Lincoln project, I guess, realize Trump threatens instability and the Democratic same ol' works better for them. I doubt any of the objectors are concerned with actual corruption or lack of morality as there is no morality to be found anywhere in American politics and corruption is systematic and desirable for both parties.
Its been that way for a while. Its the establishment vs. the outsiders. Many warmongering neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, David Frum, Michael Steele, and other Bush/McCain worshippers have fled the GOP to find their rightful place among their DNC allies. Meanwhile establishment and deep state critics like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK have seemingly fled that backstabbing cabal for the Trump camp.
Its been that way for a while. Its the establishment vs. the outsiders.
There's some truth in that, but it doesn't make the outsiders the "good guys". Stephanie Grisham was right when she said Trump has no morals. She just left out the bit about her and the Democrats also having no morals.
True enough. But the fracturing of these parties and the subsequent realignment is very interesting to watch. Who knows what will become of them over the next few administrations?
highly unlikely she is doing anything other than using the DNC as a free advertising platform for her book.
True but money-grubbing conservatives existed during Romney and McCains and Bush and Reagans time too. Didnt see them at the DNC. Then again, those guys werent (rightfully) demonized like Trump is.
I dont pay much mind to the theatrics. The whole convention is ridiculous. And I have costal real estate to sell to anyone who gets teary-eyed over these speeches.
I'm not too interested in the gory details but the political shifts that are being experienced are symptomatic of social fractures that may signal the inherent unsustainability of neoliberalism and the delusion of the "end of history" paradigm. I'm not sure that leads anywhere good in the short term.
I suspect Europe, as the crucible of the worst ideologies, will have more of an issue than over here and much quicker. Same with whats left of the commonwealth. But I also suspect the US isnt far behind.
unenlightenedAugust 22, 2024 at 18:17#9272740 likes
So RFK will drop out on Friday, and will endorse Trump. Big surprise.
Shows what a spineless weirdo he always has been, and now solidifies his place as having one of the worst judgments in history.
Funny how he went from being a "useful chaos agent" according to Steve Bannon to ultimately being a drag on the Republicans so much that they had to hang him up. I'm guessing the right by propping him up so much in the media wanted to recreate the Bernie magic that divided the left and got us Trump in 2016. Fortunately they had no idea what actually made Sanders popular and ended up making someone who was more likely to peel votes away from the right instead. The anti-vax stuff wasn't gonna appeal to anyone except the far right who still obsesses over COVID to this day, and although Kennedy could've adopted a more pro-Palestinian stance to contrast with Biden, he ultimately ended up being more pro-Zionist than Genocide Joe.
Yeah. I at least applaud that he takes climate change as the existential threat that it is. Maybe that brings some sanity to the Republicans, if only at the margins. Otherwise hes useless.
Reply to Mikie I was willing to give him some attention back when he ran because of his record as an environmental lawyer. Lost it when he said that his approach to climate change was to leave it to the free market. Like it sounds good for the right wing audience on Fox that propped him up, but god they have no idea what progressives care about.
In all likelihood Trump probably promised him a position as the Secretary of Health and Human Services which is where he would likely have influence. So add anti-vaxxer leading the department of health to the growing list of dangers of a second Trump term.
Lost it when he said that his approach to climate change was to leave it to the free market.
The free market. The deus ex machina of all crypto-plutocrats. That wonderful abstract bullshit reason given whenever you dont want the government to regulate your pet industry.
The free market. Doesnt exist, but the closer we get to it, the worse things become. Probably the stupidest concept there is but so many people believe in it as if it were God. Another one of those indicators you can use to determine just he how big of an idiot you interlocutor is as soon as they bust that one out, you know. That and the climate is always changing :lol:
Kamala mentioned something about tyrants and dictators, mimicking Joe's terminology vis-á-vis Russia and China.
Not only does this show a complete inability for diplomacy, but also a complete unwillingness - much like what we have seen during the Biden administration.
Just to quell any speculation, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES will I join Donald Trump on an electoral ticket. Our positions on certain fundamental issues, our approaches to governance, and our philosophies of leadership
could not be further apart.
Just another slimy politician doing whats best for himself.
Probably the worst thing about him is the fusion of antisemitism (e.g. his veiled suggestion that the Jews and Chinese got together to launch COVID), his staunch support for Israel's war on Gaza, and a central pillar of his platform being that he's anti-war. The hypocrisy / opportunism combo there is audacious even for an American politician.
[...] his staunch support for Israel's war on Gaza, and a central pillar of his platform being that he's anti-war. The hypocrisy / opportunism combo there is audacious even for an American politician.
That's quite literally what the Biden/Harris administration is doing right now, though.
They threaten Israel with menacing finger-wagging and taps on the wrist, while literally supplying the bombs they are throwing on schools in Gaza.
Absolutely. I think I've made clear before there are no morals to be found on any side. I can understand Americans having practical reasons to prefer one over the other though.
Reply to Baden It's just unfortunate that it's coming from this third side that claims to be above the two party system. As someone who's supportive of more party representation in US politics I think RFK did a disservice to the whole movement by selling out the way he did as apparently some smaller third parties are gonna go under because of his decision. Personally I don't think he ever meant to serve as anything other than a spoiler candidate for the Dems (and I am absolutely not shocked at how this ended up), but based on the reaction from some of his supporters, they seem pretty upset at this. At least the Libertarian and Green parties are still there despite this being their 15th cycle of being irrelevant. Bobby couldn't even last one.
Looks like the libertarians won't be flocking to Trump considering how RFK shat on them for some as yet unrevealed promise from the Orangeutan. I doubt they'll go Dem either though.
sure buddy. Keep telling yourself that. I suppose a high level of delusion is necessary to be a Trump supporter.
You know as I remember it -- I didn't go back to check -- you and I were going back and forth about whether it was a "coup." And you were claiming Biden stepped down willingly. At some point I didn't feel like arguing about it any more. Especially since neither of us are privy to what actually happened. Nancy and Barack and George Clooney didn't share their innermost thoughts with me; and I assume not with you either. So we're both guessing. The evidence support the proposition that Biden was forced out is pretty strong. The other day Pelosi said, "I did what I had to do." Another data point for my opinion.
I don't think you have much in the way of a supportable point based on the widely-reported pressure that was brought to bear on Biden. And I don't think it's that important a hill to die on. So I withdrew from the conversation. This seems to make you unhappy. I regret that.
Keep telling yourself that. I suppose a high level of delusion is necessary to be a Trump supporter.
No doubt. But I came by it honestly, as a lifelong liberal Democrat and currently a disillusioned one. One of the seven to ten million Americans who voted for Obama and then Trump. You don't want to engage with us and that's sad.
The Biden-Harris admin was a disaster and now Kamala is actually running against her own administration. A Martian watching the Dem convention would have had no idea that Kamala has been running the country (in the stead of the non compos demented Biden the past three and a half years. She actually said she's going to fix the border. She's been in charge of the border all this time. I just read that 70% of the voters don't know any of her past policy positions. She may yet get away with it.
Oh yes I quite agree. Price controls are popular. It's not till a ways down the road that the shortages and lines (queues for my British cousins) begin.
An old article has been making the rounds. (pdf link)
Price controls have been failing for 4000 years. But yes you are absolutely right. They are very popular. Nixon's wage and price controls were popular till they failed.
... and a central pillar of his platform being that he's anti-war.
I'm old enough to remember when liberals considered that a virtue.
And there weren't any new wars while Trump was president. The world didn't blow up till Iran and Russia saw Biden's weakness. Some of us out here credit Trump and blame Biden for that. But don't worry about the defense contractors. Kam shouted out her strong support for the continuation of the wars. Yippee.
Orangeutan-see, Orangeutan-do: batshit RFK, Jr replaces fake-redneck JD Vance as VP canditate in MAGA-GOP bait-n-switch (instigated by Kelly Ann Conway) in the days or weeks to come. Will this trumpster fire blow up into a flaming hellscape by Kamala's September 10th debate beatdown? TBD.
Monkey-see, Orangeutan-do: batshit RFK, Jr replaces fake-redneck JD Vance as VP canditate in MAGA-GOP bait-n-switch (instigated by Kelly Ann Conway) in the days or weeks to come.
Imagine JD sharing a platform with his non-verbal son, and having the presence of mind and care to pull that son aside when he was about to walk into a teleprompter screen?
I can't imagine JD being open and honest and caring at all. I can't imagine him wanting to show his mixed race family off to the maga racists anyway. But they better get used to a lot more disabled kids of all sorts as abortion becomes more rare.
Wikipedia:In 2009, some residents of Royal Tunbridge Wells called the tag "inappropriate" and "stereotypical" and asked the town to drop association with it in favour of Delighted of Tunbridge Wells. However, there was opposition to this campaign by other residents, some of whom wrote to newspapers in the "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" style arguing they preferred Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. Local merchants at the town's information centre pointed out that tourists were buying twice as many goods bearing Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells than with Delighted of Tunbridge Wells.
Tunbridge Wells knows the value of brand equity. :lol:
Vance already showed his family off with his wife giving an amazing speech, putting to bed your little race fantasy once again. As for abortion, now people can vote for the laws they want. I know people having more power is anathema to the authoritarian, but youll get used to it.
Its just a messaging tactic! The proposals dont actually matter because they wont get through Congress. Why do Harris supporters love messaging, and not substance?
Hill Dems try to tamp down backlash to Harris grocery price gouging pitch
But such a bill has no chance of passing Congress anytime soon, even if Democrats win the White House and Congress this November, according to six Democratic lawmakers and five Democratic aides who were granted anonymity to discuss the matter candidly. These people said Democrats in Congress have privately been telling critics that this part of the Harris plan is not viable.
Rather, theyve argued its a messaging tactic a way to show that she understands food prices remain an economic burden for many Americans and to redirect voters anger about inflation to corporations, in a way that progressives in particular have cheered.
As for abortion, now people can vote for the laws they want. I know people having more power is anathema to the authoritarian, but youll get used to it.
The women in many states dont have the power to choose now. Arent you supposed to be some breed of libertarian?
Reply to NOS4A2 So the freedom to vote trumps the freedom to choose? Good we've got that cleared up. We can return to a lot of your previous positions and reassess them based on this.
The freedom to vote trumps the freedom to choose I dont even know what that means. I was saying people can now vote for the legislation they want in their own states rather than having zero opportunity to do so.
Reply to NOS4A2 Nobody was forcing people who didn't want an abortion to have one so in fact we don't need regulation but freedom. Which Roe vs. Wade offered but was overturned by degenerate fossils wanting to return to the stone age.
Reply to Benkei Regardless of my own stance on the matter, I don't think there's anything particularly degenerate about pro-life stances, which usually focus on the value/protection of the unborn child.
Reply to Tzeentch It's degenerate because it flows from an archaic worldview that is essentially illiberal. Nobody having an abortion has every hurt anybody. Someone can be pro-life but that doesn't mean they have to enforce that stance on others. And "unborn child" is a logical contradiction. It's either a child or it isn't and it won't be a child unless it's born. Meanwhile, we can take the decision against or in favour or abortion very seriously under the particular circumstances in which they occur - and most people do. It's not like people like getting abortions.
Reply to Benkei Ascribing value to unborn life doesn't seem like something that could only be argued by unreasonable, illiberal or archaic people. It's not uncommon to hear such opinions from secular people for example.
And enforcing stances and opinions on others via the democratic process is (unfortunately) the normal way in which states function.
'Degenerate' is a strong term, and I think you're being unreasonable in its use.
There are still plenty of places in the country where it is legal to kill a fetus. In any case, it was a shaky legal precedent, not a right. Now everyone can go about it the right way.
Regime commissars dont like when people talk amongst themselves.
I think it's the typical way that actually BOTH Republicans and Democrats would do this:
When corporations ask for simple rules they ought to then adhere to (by legislation), naturally the political establishment doesn't give this (which actually would be their job). Why? Because there's Freedom of Speach, of course!
What the government wants is to have in secret a watchdog system where they will inform the corporations which isn't tolerated and who should be banned. And if the corporations themselves won't follow, it's be trouble for them. And as they are free companies, they can decide who to ban and who not!
And if you think that the Republicans are different, well, it's simply other issues than the progressive wokester's see inappropriate.
Despite all this, it's still far better than the system they have in the EU, where in some countries they are arresting people for what they post onlinefreedom of speech there is no longer a human right, despite what history has taught them.
Despite all this, it's still far better than the system they have in the EU, where in some countries they are arresting people for what they post onlinefreedom of speech there is no longer a human right, despite what history has taught them.
There are still plenty of places in the country where it is legal to kill a fetus. In any case, it was a shaky legal precedent, not a right. Now everyone can go about it the right way.
I'll take the other side of that for sake of discussion.
I have heard over the years that Roe was bad law. Even some liberal, pro-choice legal scholars made that argument.
But as a moderate pro-choicer (safe, legal, and rare as Bill Clinton put it), I say that Roe was working. It kept abortion off the ballot. It's analogous to Obergefell. Before Obergefell, gay marriage was an issue in every election. Now, whether you support or oppose gay marriage, it's the law of the land. You can blog your opinion, but it's never on the ballot. It never affects an election.
In the same way, Roe kept abortion off the ballot. It may have been bad law in the eyes of legal scholars, and it upset the pro-lifers, but politically it was working.
I say that if the so-called conservative justices were secretly working for the Democrats, things couldn't have turned out worse than they are now. Abortion kept the 2022 red wave from happening. It's an issue in 2024. It's Kamala's strongest issue. I've seen her give pro-abortion speeches and she is really, really good at it. She has her heart in the issue and she has her talking points straight.
Dobbs has been an electoral gift to Democrats and it is going to continue forever. It's worth a few points in every election from national to local and it's going to be till Congress does something about it, and they never will.
And it brings out the worst in the pro-life forces. This idea of arresting women who cross state lines is completely insane. I've "crossed state lines" from California to Nevada to visit gambling casinos. Nobody ever objects to that, even though laws against gambling used to be rooted in moral arguments.
Dobbs has unleashed the worst impulses on the right. It's just a disaster for the GOP.
A lot of things work, for a while. But whether it is just or unjust, legal or illegal, wrong or right, are far more important to this particular issue.
Roe never worked politically. It has always been a seriously divisive decision. And now we know it was doomed to fail under the lightest scrutiny. If people want a political solution, it needs to be done politically, not through judicial activism.
Reply to NOS4A2 Why do I need to travel to make decisions about my body? Funny how freedom all of a sudden isn't important to you anymore.
Reply to Tzeentch Being pro-life isn't degenerate. Thinking you have a right to decide for others is.
unenlightenedAugust 28, 2024 at 07:07#9285680 likes
I find it odd that one can be pro-life on moral grounds, but against free school meals, child support and so on. As though a woman does not have the right to control the resources of her body, but no one has any comparable duties with their financial resources. Makes no sense to me.
But my original point was that the attack on Walz's treatment of his son, and the accusation of violence, like the attack on his son earlier, was a lie being perpetuated on these pages without refutal; and the contempt shown for the disabled seems too often to go along with the supposed "pro-life" stance, which more usually turns out to be a parallel contempt for women, than a real valuing of all life.
Why do I need to travel to make decisions about my body? Funny how freedom all of a sudden isn't important to you anymore.
Youre the big government, anti-freedom guy. Dont you want the government to have all the power and make the decisions? This is one way to navigate the situation should one want to kill her child.
Being pro-life isn't degenerate. Thinking you have a right to decide for others is.
Doesn't anyone who engages in the democratic process think they have a right to decide for others, and are they not actively trying to get the government to impose their opinions on society?
I'd say the human right to bodily autonomy weighs quite heavily here, but by that same logic are people who advocated for vaccine mandates degenerates as well?
Reply to NOS4A2 Naive and dumb reduction of my position on government. You seem to miss the point entirely your completely inconsistent. That's a consequence of your ideological hangups.
Doesn't anyone who engages in the democratic process think they have a right to decide for others, and are they not actively trying to get the government to impose their opinions on society?
No, the political question is to act or not to act. The basic assumption is to not act unless there's a clear benefit that increases positive freedom. Increasing choice, eg. positive freedom, is therefore the moral position.
Edit: in fact, acting here limited negative freedom by introducing a prohibition, limiting personal choice.
And don't get me started on the retarded method of interpretation in the USA that leads to dumb rulings to begin with.
Former Trump administration staffers also support Harris in this election. Not a great look.
Several spoke at the DNC, including Stephanie Grisham. She reported that Trump said his diehard supporters, people like you, were basement dwellers. How does that make you feel?
Naive and dumb reduction of my position on government. You seem to miss the point entirely youre completely inconsistent. That's a consequence of your ideological hangups.
You keep talking about me to disguise the fact you cannot speak to the issues. That you seek for some law to decide the issue suggests you want to leave it up to the government. Is that not so?
The architects and propagandists of the Bush regime join your campaign. Not a great look, but good good riddance nonetheless.
I think Grisham is an idiot, but she's right. It was Clinton who insinuated Bernie supporters were basement dwellers in her leaked audio, and Trump accepted them with open arms.
Isn't this a wee bit hyperbolic? Whatever you want to call it, "one" = "her", "one" isn't someone/something else, yes? Are you thinking of a slippery slope? Either way, abortion ? killing a child here.
A couple of months in, a fetus is a lump of cells about the size of a cherry, something like that. Not a person. My neighbor's kid is. It's more like a cyst. No more a person or conscious than pre-conception sperm and egg cell. ? bio-facts
I'll readily admit to having an emotional attachment to life. It's not like abortion is a positive thing or to be encouraged (anti-natalists not invited at the moment :grin:), it's a rough enough decision.
Every human being who walked the earth began that way. They are not like cysts. Abortion, infanticide, homicide they all involve the same act: causing the death, or killing, of a human being.
The architects and propagandists of the Bush regime join your campaign.
The MAGA term is RINO. Anyway, whos more neocon than Nikki Haley, whose wealth seems to be tied to defense contractors. No Republican is rejecting her endorsement of Trump. In fact, many Republicans wanted to elect her president in this race.
Every human being who walked the earth began that way. They are not like cysts. Abortion, infanticide, homicide they all involve the same act: causing the death, or killing, of a human being.
If thats what you believe then shouldnt you want a national ban? As it is, the abortion rate hasnt decreased by much, if at all. Most abortions are performed with drugs, and as you pointed out earlier, women can travel to states where its legal. It seems that the most vulnerable women, those with the least resources, in red states are hardest hit.
Reply to NOS4A2 I seek for no law unlike you who's arguing for a prohibition unless local states rule otherwise. So no, it was a dumb archaic and backward ruling and your idiotic defence women can now vote for something they had a god given right to is antithetical to your repeated stance that we shouldn't need governments for rights.
Trump is attempting to side-step the problem by leaving it up to the state. This makes it a matter of choice. It is a form of pernicious relativism - arbitrarily permissible if and when the individual state says it is. No true "pro-life" advocate should find this acceptable. It undermines the moral claim and cedes its ground to choice.
This is not to say I oppose choice, but rather oppose the choice being made one way or another by someone other than the individual.
Trump is attempting to side-step the problem by leaving it up to the state. This makes it a matter of choice. It is a form of pernicious relativism - arbitrarily permissible if and when the individual state says it is. No true "pro-life" advocate should find this acceptable.
Exactly. Trump is currently saying hed be great for women and their reproductive rights. If he doesnt lose the support of pro-life advocates it just further demonstrates that the issue is little more than politicization.
Reply to NOS4A2, let's set up a trolley problem involving sperm + egg cells (incidentally akin to what Nightingale and Stalin "began" as) over ? there, cherry-sized 2-months-old fetuses over ? there, and toddlers over ? there.
I have a feeling the toddlers ? would make it every time, outside of rather special(ized) scenarios.
OK, what it there were, say, 10 times as many sperm + egg cells and fetuses as toddlers? 100? 10000 as many sperm + egg cells?
In terms of bio-facts, only the toddlers ? are conscious persons children.
I suppose we could craft the details of a scenario (or more) and run a poll if you like.
[quote=Kamala Harris, from DNC nomination acceptance speech]Simply put,they are out of their minds.And one must ask, one must ask, why exactly is it that they dont trust women?[/quote] Pro-forced birth / anti-woman's autonomy aka "pro-life" will be the critical dealbreaker for the majority of women voters across the political spectrum this year like it was in 2022. :fire:
If thats what you believe then shouldnt you want a national ban? As it is, the abortion rate hasnt decreased by much, if at all. Most abortions are performed with drugs, and as you pointed out earlier, women can travel to states where its legal. It seems that the most vulnerable women, those with the least resources, in red states are hardest hit.
I think prohibition is a terrible idea, and states that enact it ought to feel the repercussion of it. The act is no ones decision but the womans. But, since the government has involved itself, the issue is now whether the matter should be settled by some judiciary in Washington or on a more local level. To those who want the government to set the bounds of their lives, the change required to set those bounds is easier attained at the local level. Activists get to ban it in some places while celebrating it as a human right in the other. In short, state governments ought to have more right to determine their own laws than a federal judiciary.
You say abortion is no ones decision but the womans, and then go on to say that the state ought to have more right to determine womens choice because its easier to restrict or liberate at the local level. This is contradictory. If you think abortion is a womans choice then the state ought not restrict that choice on any level and no matter how easy or difficult.
creativesoulAugust 28, 2024 at 23:47#9287320 likes
I see NOS is talking in circles again. Dont look for consistency, folks theres no principles to discern. Its pure political tribalism. When its something Trump does, they will find a way to make it fit into their worldview, no matter how contradictory.
So now Trump is pushing for being the best on womens reproductive rights :rofl: because hes losing in the polls and its generally an issue theyre being crushed on. If he had any principles or soul whatsoever (or any balls), hed be calling for a national ban on the murdering of babies (which is what these nutjobs actually believe). But theres no chance of that. Instead hell mumble some nonsense and his ass-kissing slaves like our resident Trumper and Ayn Rand devotee will endlessly defend it, pretending it all makes perfect sense.
Dont waste too much time on it.
In other news: Harris has her first interview tomorrow. I think she should do several interviews, not just one big one. Too easy for Fox News to demonize if even the slightest phrasing is off.
In other news: Harris has her first interview tomorrow. I think she should do several interviews, not just one big one. Too easy for Fox News to demonize if even the slightest phrasing is off.
Places like Fox are inevitably gonna move the goal posts no matter how many interviews Harris does but I agree she should be doing more of them if just to clarify her positions. Or get Walz out there doing interviews since he's a better speaker. Apparently he never read from a teleprompter until hitting the national stage which is a very welcome trait considering who the Dems were/are running up to this point.
Yeah, it always struck me as funny how Trump gets credit for his ad libs and general off-script remarks. The truth is he sucks at it; hes an awful speaker. Mostly incoherent, and almost always the same lines, 99% of which are lies (the country is going to hell, everything is being destroyed). Its easier to talk extemporaneously when you can make things up, unbound by reality.
You say abortion is no ones decision but the womans, and then go on to say that the state ought to have more right to determine womens choice because its easier to restrict or liberate at the local level. This is contradictory. If you think abortion is a womans choice then the state ought not restrict that choice on any level and no matter how easy or difficult.
Thats a lie and misrepresentation of my view. I knew it would come to this because you are often unable to argue in good faith. Oh well.
A new tasty scandal is brewing regarding Trumps invite and visit to Arlington national cemetery to honor those killed by Biden/Harris disastrous Afghanistan debacle. Who wants to bet its fake news?
Whoever wins, this country needs to reform its outdated judicial system. Americans take very seriously the thoughts of the founding fathers, but Europe has developed a much more functioning judicial system due to the interruptions/failures of European democracies in the past (something that has not happened in the US so far).
It is a shame that in the US judges and district attorneys are party candidates or independents supported by parties and billionaires like George Soros, when democracies are supposed to have three independent branches: executive, legislative and judicial. Since in the US the judicial branch is not independent from the executive, US justice is flawed and divisions have become more difficult to heal.
It is a shame also to put the blame on the Republicans (who control SCOTUS) only, when the real problem are the laws and standards pertaining to the US judicial system.
While I agree with the need for judicial change I think the blame for the current blatant judicial activism rests squarely on McConnell, Trump, and the Federalist Society. Project 2025, written largely by Trump's people, will take things much further if he is elected.
It's easy to blame Republicans, since they had the majority in the Senate, in the last 40 years or so. But the problem seems to be the laws and standards pertaining to the judicial system.
Most of European countries do not appoint judges for life, but only for ten years. There are countries like UK where judges are appointed by some non-political commissions and countries like Germany, Spain, France, etc., where judges are elected by politicians BUT only if they get the 75% of approval in local parliaments/assemblies. So, in these countries there is only one way to become a judge: you should be almost apolitical, cause no party ever controlled 75% of parliament seats and the only way these countries can have judges is through wide consensus and through making sure that the judge is almost impartial.
From history books and legends this is what we are told: you can become a judge only if you are impartial. In the US judicial system that's not the case anymore.
Thats not helpful. Assuming that you want to clarify where I allegedly lied, can you explain what you mean when you say, The act is no ones decision but the womans.?
This appears to mean that you think the state should not to have the power to restrict a womans choice.
Reply to praxis
He was saying that our present approach to abortion is more libertarian than it used to be because states can decide what they want to do.
This appears to mean that you think the state should not to have the power to restrict a womans choice.
Thats right. Then you claimed I said the state ought to have more right to determine womens choice because its easier to restrict or liberate at the local level. It appears you made that up. What I said was state governments ought to have more right to determine their own laws than a federal judiciary.
Well, you knew what I wrote and then changed it to suit whatever it is youre trying to do, pretending the whole time that I said one and not the other. Thats pure deception.
There is no contradiction. If I think a state ought to determine its own laws that does not mean I think it ought to prohibit anything it wants.
Brent DeRidders opinion is the opinion of all members of the libertarian party of North Carolina, and the opinion of all Libertarians in the US? I wouldnt have thought that libertarians would relinquish their freedom of opinion so completely to one man.
His main argument suggests that abortions will happen irrespective of legal restrictions, advocating instead for imposing religious beliefs through avenues other than legislation.
Reply to praxis
The first paragraph is Plank 1.5 of the Libertarian Party platform. Libertarians oppose abortion legislation. This is not rocket science, praxis.
Its an opinion regarding the principle. The principle is:
1.5 Parental Rights
Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs, provided that the rights of children to be free from abuse and neglect are also protected.
Gender division is one of the many gifts we got from the Democrats.
Many women will say that men hate Democrats only because they love equality more than Republicans, but that would not be a strong argument at all (since it is essentially saying that from birth men are inimical towards women, when I am more inclined to believe that all humans are born equal, unbiased and free, till they are manipulated by "educators" and politicians).
Good. Fuck Elon Musk and his fake free speech absolutism. The same guy who caved to Modi and is now suing advertisers he once said could go fuck themselves and Dont advertise to is now crying about not being allowed to manipulate an entire country with his right-wing propaganda.
All the brain-dead teenagers will be outraged Im sure. Now they can pretend to care about free speech and be victims at the same time. Cool.
After the MeToo movement, there are many articles on The Guardian which supposedly show how (white) men have started a campaign of revenge against women. White & old men are taking revenge and punishing intelligent women (according to The Guardian columnists) simply because white men hate the truths and injustices exposed by the MeToo movement.
In some of these articles you get the impression that all white and old men hate women and their anger towards women is an inborn thing that all women should be aware of:
PS: am I the only one to suspect that Kamala Harris and democrats are targeting single mothers with their 2024 ticket, and whenever Kamala speaks about middle class she doesn't mean American families/couples with median income and small businesses, but she speaks about single mothers (like those she used to advocate for when
she was involved into CA politics and activism)? If I am right in believing that democrats target certain groups in their 2024 campaign, aren't they therefore investing in divides in order to hold power? If that is the case, aren't there any moral dilemmas for people who will vote/support/sponsor a party that bets in divisions simply because it loves power?
If that is the case, aren't there any moral dilemmas for people who will vote/support/sponsor a party that bets in divisions simply because it loves power?
So targeting different demographics is surprising to you? Have you been living on Mars?
Bets in divisions. Right and its somehow the Democrats that should give us pause over this. Not the fact that Trump and his MAGA slaves have single-handedly polarized this country to levels not seen since the civil war, targeting young men, rural people, evangelicals, whites, and the elderly along with the usual sexists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and xenophobes that have become a fixture.
But yeah, targeting single women is the real problem.
You might be right about Trump, but after Biden's victory all BLM protests in the US stopped and we got some peace from the fireworks craze. Since none in this country believes that black lives improved with Biden, the logical conclusion is that the democrats signaled their gangsters to stop protests and fireworks. These things may resume again if Trump wins and that's one good reason to not wish a Republican victory. Nonetheless, there is so much evidence that the democrats may be behind BLM, women, and Muslim protests. It is not surprising that the millions given to BLM & diversity issues came from the same billionaires who sponsor the democrats.
Democrats pretend to be saviors and angels and for this reason they should not compare themselves to the Republicans. Democrats are supposed to abide by higher standards lol
Pledging 1.7 trillion to the very poor, as Kamala did ten days ago, turns the US into a kind of charity organization that gives without expecting any worldly things in return. It is not that I am against helping. Morally speaking I feel a duty to help the incapable. But here again you have some moral dilemmas: What vision do I have for a country where inflation is taken more seriously than climate change, wars and violence? Should we bill the future generations for misfortunes (covid and inflation) that happened to us? What kind of culture you create when you nourish a whole nation with the idea that for every hardship you can bill future generations with more debt? What is the best way to use debt? Is it better to invest in progress and development or to use it for food and leisure? Do democrats have any visions for our children and the future? If so, how they will materialize those visions if this country becomes bankrupt and people are encouraged to abstain from family and work?
In conclusion: Democrats and Republicans have become very Machiavellian lately. Their aim is to take power regardless of the means and the people they use. I decided to vote for Biden in 2020 because of Trump's ridiculous response to covid19 and, mostly, because Trump withdrew US from the Paris Climate Treaty. But there are many moral dilemmas pertaining to the Democrats now that I think it is morally advisable to vote for third party candidates or to not vote at all.
In conclusion: Democrats and Republicans have become very Machiavellian lately.
It's always been so. They are in a vicious competition for power in a two-party system. It's just there used to be agreed-on conventions that are now being disregarded, so the viciousness is closer to the surface. A truly moral politician can only be at a disadvantage re power, as morality imposes limitations on action.
the logical conclusion is that the democrats signaled their gangsters to stop protests and fireworks
I wouldn't say that's the logical conclusion. Riots do start and end, emerge and fade, for whatever reasons. For that matter, they need not have a (single) "puppet master". But maybe the rioters were predominantly Democrats, if that counts as "the democrats".
Democrats and Republicans have become very Machiavellian lately
Well, at least fringes of party members. Polarization has come with opportunism, noise, calculation, "mood swings", contrarianism, zeal, the usual. Game of Thrones and The Boys aren't to be emulated, and conspiracy theories should be taken with a grain of salt (make that two). :) Additionally, foreign interests are trying to nudge in whatever direction.
Trump withdrew US from the Paris Climate Treaty. But there are many moral dilemmas pertaining to the Democrats now that I think it
Trump is still absolutely terrible on the environment. If its something you truly care about, this issue alone is motive enough for keeping him from office. That happens to mean pushing a button for Harris fine. But to claim one should throw away ones vote (which is all that is) or not vote at all is literally insane, given the professed values.
And most of your claims amount BLM, etc., are straight from right-wing media. Worth analyzing.
And most of your claims amount BLM, etc., are straight from right-wing media. Worth analyzing.
That's true. But, as you say, some claims need more analysis (before you dismiss or approve those).
I don't wish Trump to win. Another thing that bothered me back then was that almost all of his family members became advisers in his Oval Office (that really made this country look like Saudi Arabia). Even fanatic Republicans were bothered with the culture Trump brought into the White House. Clint Eastwood, to mention one of them, got really nuts when Trump posted those Goya-cans pictures from the Oval Office lol
Anyway, right now 36% of males in this country despise both parties. Kudos to them! It is time for independent minds to make their voices heard. They should leave behind the notion that the least bad is the best choice for independents. Cause none can predict the future, and what you make the least bad right now, in the future it may turn into the worst choice.
Independent men and women who still care for this country should push for judicial and electoral reforms. I do hope that judicial and electoral reforms may make us less independent on the two major parties. Reforms may help both republicans and democrats, also, to become more sensible and less Machiavellian.
As Reply to Baden hinted to, many institutions and standards in the US (I am adding UK also) for a few centuries were based on (unspoken/unwritten) conventions. But we see a cultural/mental shift in the US (and UK) lately --and for this reason reforms are becoming indispensable. Nothing should remain unwritten and unforeseen anymore.
They should leave behind the notion that the least bad is the best choice for independents. Cause none can predict the future, and what you make the least bad right now, in the future it may turn into the worst choice.
Some folks can't tell the difference between eating a shit sandwich and starving themselves (due to low IQ/poor education, ethnonationalist hatreds and/or disingenuous venality). Fortunately, in this moment, they aren't (yet) the majority in the US. :mask:
This paltry move was underscored by the fact that Harris, the last person in the room when it comes to one of the worst events in US history in Afghanistan, had never contacted any of these grieving families. Trump did, so he was invited to Arlington on the anniversary of their death. At any rate, theyre pissed at Harris, who not only didnt phone any of the families, but also did some campaign propaganda at Arlington herself, the exact same thing she accused Trump of. Its always projection when it comes to Trumps haters.
Trump posted some of their responses to X and theyre quite devastating to Kamalas joyful veneer. This, in combination with the accounts of Harris own staff, proves shes just dog shit in lipstick.
(1) Trump was the worst president in history (or close), a traitor to the country, a degenerate con man, and pathological liar on top of being an empty narcissist with no ideas other than personal branding. A climate denier and plutocrat lover, to boot.
(2) Trump is rightfully hated and extremely unpopular. Currently losing in the polling, which is no surprise.
(3) Harris is a boring, establishment candidate. And is now likely to win, given the choices.
What a shame the Republican Party and their slaves have no souls. Its sad. But at least it makes it easier for them to lose, as theyve been doing the last 8 years. Given that theyre the party of climate denial and pro-pollution, Im at least happy about that.
Incidentally, it looks like North Carolina is now in play which is interesting.
180 ProofSeptember 01, 2024 at 20:36#9295870 likes
You think the establishment gives two shits about climate or pollution? :brow:
I think they want to get elected, and the environmental vote is getting larger and more vocal.
You think Trump and the republicans give two shits about abortion? No. But they sure did scrap Roe v Wade. Its not always lip service. Sometimes you have to deliver, even if its too little (IRA was biggest climate investment in history and yet still too little; would have never happened under Trump.)
You think the establishment gives two shits about climate or pollution?
The "establishment" is a nebulous term. There are elected and appointed officials who are active in their support on the environment. They are as much a part of the "establishment" as those who are indifferent or opposed. The "establishment" is not one side or the other.
Suppose they did nothing. Would you then vote Trump?
If Trump were offering something better on other issues, yes. Nuclear weapons, healthcare, education, guns, anything. His stopping funding for Ukraine would be a bright spot, but for the wrong reasons and its uncertain whether he would. On Israel hes even more hawkish than Biden.
unenlightenedSeptember 02, 2024 at 19:27#9296870 likes
Panic not chaps, your country is fucked whoever wins, because you are all insane. But go down smiling would be my preference.
180 ProofSeptember 02, 2024 at 22:03#9296970 likes
... batshit RFK, Jr replaces fake-redneck JD Vance as VP canditate in MAGA-GOP bait-n-switch (instigated by Kelly Ann Conway) in the days or weeks to come.
The US is fucked, I guess, but it is the UK that is falling apart. Public services are on the brink of collapse. The gov is at the point where they are arresting people for social media posts, which is authoritarian, but also stupid because the prisons are too full. A shithole.
unenlightenedSeptember 03, 2024 at 17:40#9298120 likes
I guess, but it is the UK that is falling apart. Public services are on the brink of collapse. The gov is at the point where they are arresting people for social media posts, which is authoritarian, but also stupid because the prisons are too full. A shithole.
Yes indeed, the UK is ahead of the pack as usual. That is one of the ways I can foretell your future. But I love authoritarianism in the service of peace and non-violence.
An authority must monopolize violence and use violence in order to institute non-violence. Just another contradiction among many. At any rate, speech is not violence, so Ill just have to remain suspicious of such admissions.
unenlightenedSeptember 03, 2024 at 17:54#9298170 likes
To herd or control apes you have to commit violence against them, or proceed with the threat thereof.
That contradicts both, current and historic facts. See the last post for the beginning of a list of things that happened, and/or are currently happening. It negates the statement quoted above.
creativesoulSeptember 04, 2024 at 23:25#9300420 likes
I suspect a notion of 'violence' stretched beyond its breaking point to include mental violence.
creativesoulSeptember 05, 2024 at 00:22#9300510 likes
Threats of violence are not a part of informed willful consent. Call it "manufactured consent", if you like. I won't mind that. The American public have been convinced to consent to all sorts of things that were harmful to them, in the financial sense. Quantifiable financial harm. "What are the damages?" That's a common question.
Look at the spread of wealth around the world after WWII. Pay particular attention to the flatline in real blue collar wages. Watch the power of their dollar wane over time. Watch the under 100k blue collar lifestyle require more than one income. Watch the companies who treat their workers worse obtain a financial advantage for having done so. Much easier to do without legal enforcement of binding arbitration agreement. Ronnie Raygun started that. Much easier to do if enough people portray working folks' unions in nothing but a negative light. Do it long enough and vwahlah. Magic. People are convinced that one of the best things for them is not. Watch the birth of many ghost towns, replete with walking zombies.
No, sir. You're wrong. The smartest bipeds known to man are capable of being happily led to their own slaughter. No physical violence or threat thereof necessary for that to happen.
creativesoulSeptember 05, 2024 at 00:25#9300520 likes
And now they've been convinced to be mad at all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.
180 ProofSeptember 05, 2024 at 01:33#9300630 likes
That contradicts both, current and historic facts. See the last post for the beginning of a list of things that happened, and/or are currently happening. It negates the statement quoted above.
Then it should be easy to demonstrate. Manufacture my consent, or anyone elses. I am willing to read any argument, marketing, or propaganda you can provide, and well see if I willfully consent to any of it.
These laws against foreign inference in US election make little sense in a country that spent 7 billion in 2016 election campaigns. We are 6 times bigger than UK, but in 2016 we spent like 100 times more then UK in electoral campaigns.
The biggest problem in this country are the money from NRA, Oil Industry, Pharma, all kind of CEOs, the Zionists, and so on.
It doesn't make sense anymore to vote for candidates who take billions from people you and me do not know at all. The only thing we know about the "legal" billions is that they come from US citizens (though their hearts may belong to Izrael, to Texaco or to some utopia).
If democracy has a circus, USA is that circus nowadays.
Right, American elections are unique in that respect, and in the way theyre conducted. Personally, I love the circus for sheer entertainment value, but the amount of money thrown around is obscene. Dark money from undisclosed sources kind of make the whole foreign influence rhetoric a huge sham. I rather some American oil company or lobby group have influence than a shell company company who need not disclose where the money is coming from.
By the way, in UK there's no limit how much to give to the parties, but there is a clear limit on what the parties can do with all that money. This is why many won't bother to donate in UK lol (cause they know that 70 million are enough for palm cards, billboards, and this kind of stuff).
So now, I come with this question: let's suppose that we know the people who give X money in the US, what do we know about the way X money is used?
Can Pier Morgans, to take an example, receive X money in order to write a good article about Trump? Another example: can Kamala use D money in order to pay "volunteers" to attend an event?
I just finished listening to PBS "On the Media". They were discussing this. Pool, Rubin and others claim that they did not know the money for their propaganda platforms was coming from Russia. But this much is clear - they made a lot of money and it is not difficult to trace it back to the source. But why look a gift horse in the mouth when it is offering you so much money, even if it is a Trojan horse?
Regarding the question of how much influence they have :
[quote]Benny Johnson, who has more than 6.6 million followers across YouTube, X and Instagram, was described by the Washington Post in 2015 as the "king of viral political news
The host of the "The Rubin Report YouTube channel with 2.45 million subscribers as of Thursday
The Russian influence canard returns. We now know they are using it as a pretext for surveilling American and Canadian citizens, which is the true crime.
Reply to NOS4A2, and yet there have been, and are, such campaigns fact.
You may opine on what to do about them, but not their existence.
They've increased during the time of the present Kremlin, and, in addition to effects/efficiency, we might ask the same old question: To what end?
Fact? Its complete bullshit, itself an influence operation. Its just a list of trigger-words to activate the drones. Putin, Russia, Trump, right-wing, influence, and Kamala gets some help with her campaign.
Reply to NOS4A2, yep, fact. There have been, and are, such campaigns/projects/activities. [sup](2022Jun10, 2024Mar13, 2024May22, 2024Jun14, 2024Aug13-)[/sup]
(Some of the more heavy-duty ones aren't run against the US, though, but smaller, more "manageable", areas.)
You can also find some in Europe and Africa, and you can also find some run by US agents.
Odd that you first deny such activities only to turn around and instead call the reports of them such activities, first denying then claiming their existence.
Russia and China want to influence the election as much as possible of course they do. The US does it all the time. (The difference is that well support a coup or invade.)
But the Russian influence is mostly social media. Why wouldnt they do so? Theyll fund people who are already saying things they like, unleash a bunch of bots, etc. But whats the actual impact? I doubt its very much. The claims are overblown. Just as they were in 2016. Hillary didnt lose because of a Russian bot farm; she lost because she sucked.
Its still interesting to see what theyre rooting for. In Chinas case, mostly just chaos and division. For Russia, mostly undermining support for Ukraine. Not rocket science to see why this would be the case.
Reply to NOS4A2, you don't believe there have been and are such campaigns/projects/activities? :brow: Except for the reports thereof, a rather impressive multinational multicultural conspiracy? :chin:
I dont doubt there are such activities. People try to make money by getting views on social media all the time, often by making political propaganda. What makes it a campaign or something nefarious?
15 minutes in She looks nervous, dry-mouthed, and is delivering memorized lines, ignoring the questions. Shes delivering them without stuttering and with coherence, but it looks fake and forced.
Trump is his usual rambling, incoherent buffoon self repeating his rally lines reflexively. But he looks more natural doing it.
Man, it would have been nice to have Bernie up there with Trump just once.
Kamala started very poorly, but she was the winner tonight.
Her "opportunity plan" is a disaster in the making (a big blow to the already tortured middle-class Americans). Nonetheless, since Trump did not offer any other plans apart from deporting immigrant slaves, she had a greater appeal.
The big loser tonight was ABC News. That Fbi report the journalist mentioned, about lower crimes on national level, is a total bs if someone keeps in mind that liberals tend to make legal many things conservatives make illegal (so when you legalize cannabis and abortion you definitely may have 40 million less "criminals" in the whole nation). Definition is also the reason why US looks much better than Europe when it comes to corruption (cause in some European countries if a mayor receives a sandwich from a voter that's called corruption, whereas in the US you may receive millions in donations and you may be considered the most ethical mayor). In short, Americans do not care what Fbi and Abc will report. For as long as they see armed robberies and murders in their towns, they do think that crimes are a serious problem.
Thanks to ABC bad journalism and Trump's irrelevance, too little attention was paid to Kamala's "opportunity plan" (that as I said here is not directed to the middle class, but to the poorest people and single mothers). Urban living, farming, life expectancy, food industry, general health issues, labor ethics, AI, education and infrastructure were not mentioned at all. Crimes were not taken seriously by the ABC. The national debt was not mentioned, whereas on environment Kamala Harris said the biggest lie: i.e. Joe Biden and she have spent trillions on stopping climate change, when the truth is that they spent 3 trillion on covid relief, they passed a bill of 800 billion on infrastructure and to this day less than 20% of that bill has been invested by the US government. Surely, the ABC journalists did not bother to fact check Kamala's big lie tonight. She even promised to produce more local oil.
I won't bother to vote, but it would be unfair to blame only republicans or democrats if this country becomes less democratic and less thriving. A lot of blaming should go to our journalists as well.
Its a good example of what this is all about: Trump is a dangerous, incoherent imbecile. Anyone with a couple brain cells realize you gotta vote against that.
Harris could have been replaced with a mannequin and still win.
creativesoulSeptember 11, 2024 at 04:05#9313080 likes
Man, it would have been nice to have Bernie up there with Trump just once.
3 hours ago
Clear lines in the sand are Bernie's strongest suit. That would have been reeeeel nice.
She was nervous, but delivered okay. Trump can sling a lot of shit around in a short amount of time.
The Haitian immigrant fiction is particularly interesting to me. Against what the city manager says, Trump presupposes he is somehow, in some way, privy to much greater knowledge about that city than the guy who manages it. This is akin to his claims that he knows more than the generals in the armed forces. Unbelievable...
Trump is so old and his bullshit is so tiresome after 9 years, I think many people will vote for Harris just so they wont ever have to hear from this guy again.
Kamala won that debate. She is far superior at the political act, groomed as she was to be a puppet. It was pure skill or she got the debate questions beforehand. But her lies went unchecked, allowed to list off the common anti-Trump hoaxes. She even said something like J6 was the worst attack on the US since the civil war, and on the eve of 9/11. Shes a brick, but she can play the part, and sometimes thats all people want.
Bloodbath was a lie, the very fine people hoax, that he is going to implement Project 2025, that he wants a national abortion ban, that he wants to ban IVF, that he incited a crowd to storm the capitol, that police died on that day, that J6 was the worst attack on America since the civil war.
I think there's zero basis to argue that Trump was worse in any meaningful way.
To pick one: environment. The IRA was meaningful, and has (and will continue to have, unless somehow dismantled if Trump is elected) meaningful impacts on a transition to less emissions yes, despite current levels of oil production.
To say nothing about actions at the EPA, SEC, FTC, and NLRB which have been surprisingly good. Oh and the education departments canceling of student debt has been fantastic, despite the courts blocking much of that effort.
It takes effort not to see differences, unless theres some real partisan skewering of perception.
Reply to Mikie I didn't say there weren't any differences.
I know environmentalism is very important to you. The Biden administration's colossal failures of diplomacy vis-á-vis Ukraine and Israel are very important to me.
The abortion issue is a political tool for him, he wants whatever benefits him the most and thats why he refused to answer when asked if he would veto a national ban.
The Biden administration's colossal failures of diplomacy vis-á-vis Ukraine and Israel are very important to me.
Understandable. It's important to me too, and Biden has been an utter failure in that respect. It's the one area that Trump may (accidentally) be better for the world. I don't see how he'd be any better on Israel, but perhaps I've missed something.
A ban can be enacted under the Comstock Act, if the DOJ (at the president's direction) so chooses. I doubt the Supreme Court would stop it. It's a very real possibility. The fact that Trump is backing away from the rhetoric because he sees at as the political liability that it is means exactly nothing.
"There's no reason to sign a ban because we have gotten what everyone wanted," Trump said.
Im pretty sure that the 170,000 women who were forced to travel out of state for abortions last year didnt want what Trump gave them.
Im certain that all the pro-life folks arent pleased with the fact that the abortion rate hasnt decreased by much if at all since the Dobbs decision.
I don't see how he'd be any better on Israel, [...]
Neither do I, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the Biden administration carries responsibility for things going to hell in a handbasket on their watch.
Reply to NOS4A2
At the Shanksville Fire Station, @POTUS spoke about the country's bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that'. Bates added: 'As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2024/sep/12/joe-biden-dons-trump-hat-in-show-of-unity-at-event-commemorating-911-video
Trump plans to end taxes on overtime if elected. Who would've thought he'd fight for the American worker?
"As part of our additional tax cuts, we will end all taxes on overtime," Trump said in remarks at a rally in Tucson, Arizona. "Your overtime hours will be tax-free."
Reply to NOS4A2 Why didn't he do this during his first term? Unlike Harris he was actually president and actually did a big tax cut bill for the ultra wealthy.
180 ProofSeptember 13, 2024 at 17:18#9317280 likes
The strategy aims to utilize "militant anti poverty groups" to facilitate a "political crisis" by overloading the welfare system via an increase in welfare claims, forcing the creation of a system of guaranteed minimum income and "redistributing income through the federal government".
But while the image of the libertarian potential of advanced industrial society is repressed (and hated) by the managers of repression and their consumers, it motivates the radical opposition and gives it its strange unorthodox character. Very different from the revolution at previous stages of history, this opposition is directed against the totality of a well-functioning, prosperous society a protest against its Form the commodity form of men and things, against the imposition of false values and a false morality. This new consciousness and the instinctual rebellion isolate such opposition from the masses and from the majority of organized labor, the integrated majority, and make for the concentration of radical politics in active minorities, mainly among the young middle-class intelligentsia, and among the ghetto populations. Here, prior to all political strategy and organization, liberation becomes a vital, biological need.
L'éléphantSeptember 14, 2024 at 01:13#9318260 likes
Trump plans to end taxes on overtime if elected. Who would've thought he'd fight for the American worker?
"As part of our additional tax cuts, we will end all taxes on overtime," Trump said in remarks at a rally in Tucson, Arizona. "Your overtime hours will be tax-free."
With regard now to what are you saying about eliminating overtime taxes, it seems that you have missed the point. The point is not preserving inequalities, the point is making people to work more.
A Green New Deal promised by the democrats would have brought more jobs and innovations to the USA and to the whole world, but since the democrats spent more money in covid relief and armaments, the only countries that have really seen some kind of green/electrical revolutions lately are China and South Korea. Harris seems to have totally forgotten the democratic green hive of the previous elections and her only pledge about improving economy is to help single mothers with the groceries.
I like to listen to NPR in my working hours, but its producers can't stop promoting Kamala and insulting Trump. They even called a psychology professor to explain Trump's narcissism. I wonder if someone would have paid that professor to explain Kamala's negative traits, how easy would have been for him to invent some "psychological science" on Kamala also :grin:
NPR is supposed to be a public radio, but since August it has become like another democratic parrot. With this kind of daily coverage, many public and private media will keep making people suspicious that this country is really controlled by the democrats and anti-Trump billionaires.
Most of the liberal media (viz. the majority of the US media outlets) have found nothing wrong with Kamala the last two months, and they won't bother to fact check her. The same media are implying that the election has been already decided from the presidential debate on Sept 10th, though very little substance was seen on that debate (i.e. Trumps' constant rambling on immigrants, Kamala's strong support for cheap groceries and US made oil, and the candidates' views on Israel & Ukraine.... all other issues were left to the imagination of the voters).
180 ProofSeptember 15, 2024 at 23:12#9321990 likes
15September24
Another "assassination attempt"(?) today. I hope The Old Fat Fascist Clown lives long enough to see Kamala Harris sworn in as the 47th POTUS on 20January25. :victory: :party:
If the investigators, reporters, and producers at NPR have, based on the facts, concluded that he is a serious danger to the US democracy and groups of people don't they have a journalistic responsibility to say so?
Reply to Tzeentch Nope. Designed for a range up to 300 meters and it's shit to aim with beyond distances of 200 meters. With a 3-4 MOA, you're talking about 17 to 22 cm deviation over 200 meters, which means a killing shot at 200 meters is nothing more than a hail mary, at 400 yards it's nonsense.
But I see now they are describing it as an AK-47 style weapon, so could be a 103 or M version, which are a bit more accurate at longer distances but still not enough for 400 yards.
To tell you the truth I think we will be better without Trump. But I do worry for our journalism. Turning Kamala into a hero overnight, crediting her with qualities she does not have, etc., will turn people away from liberal media outlets. These media do not sound serious or sincere every time that election approaches. There is a bigger probability to read something negative about Trump on conservative media, than reading something negative about Kamala on liberal media. The latter are really making Trump look like a victim in the eyes of millions of people.
That was very stupid of him. But, I am wondering: does this guy take any advices from other people?
He used to be advised by Ivanka and Jared when he was in office, but now I am not sure whom he listens to. (If I remember well, when he was president there were a couple of times when Ivanka made him deactivate his Twitter --but I am not very sure on this).
Three days before the presidential debate, a columnist in The Guardian wrote that Trump is so sure about himself that he won't bother to prepare for the debate with Harris. I laughed when I read those things, only to find three days later that the columnist was 100% right.
Reply to Benkei It's not a trick shot. You see the man in the video do it twice at various ranges in sequence, using a gun without a scope that is not his own.
Say we were to give the man in the video a modern AK with a scope and several months to train with the rifle. Then you get to sit in the place of the 'torso-shaped target' at 500 yards.
Would it count as a nothing burger to you?
PS: I actually found a picture of the rifle he was carrying. Looks more like an SKS than an AK. Almost certainly longer-barreled than a regular AK.
Turning Kamala into a hero overnight, crediting her with qualities she does not have, etc.
The public response to her campaign is news worthy. Perhaps there is some gushing from some sources but this is not as serious an issue as Trump's being unfit for office.
Reply to Tzeentch Did you watch it? Misses: 1 on 150y, 3 out of 5 at 350y, 4 out of 6 at 400y, 4 out of 6 at 450y, 5 out of 7 at 500y.
And these are stationary targets, the gunman is stationary and in a supported position, where he knows the distance to the target and can adjust sights accordingly.
Travel distance where the bullet can kill is several kilometers for an AK-47, but that's not what effective range is. Effective range is the maximum distance at which a weapon may be expected to be accurate and achieve the desired effect. Missing stationary targets more often than not means it cannot be expected to be accurate and achieve a kill. So 300y is more or less the max. for this type of AK-47, probably less since the targets were stationary and the gunman in an optimal position.
Reply to Benkei Of course I watched it. Seems like a perfectly decent showcase of marksmanship to me, that clearly shows 500 yards is well within the maximum effective range of a Type 56. His shooting is clearly accurate. And that's with iron sights.
Again, say this person were to be given a modern AK platform with a scope and several months to familiarize himself fully with the rifle, would you think it a 'nothing burger' to take the place of the torso-shaped target? Would you say "Oh, don't worry, they can't hit us from here" (which is what you would be saying had you deemed yourself outside of the weapon's maximum effective range).
Of course I watched it. Seems like a perfectly decent showcase of marksmanship to me, that clearly shows 500 yards is well within the maximum effective range of a Type 56. His shooting is clearly accurate. And that's with iron sights.
Again, say this person were to be given a modern AK platform with a scope and a several months to familiarize himself fully with the rifle, would you think it a 'nothing burger'? Would you say "Oh, don't worry, they can't hit us from here" (which is what you would be saying had you deemed yourself outside of the weapon's maximum effective range).
You don't understand what MOA is then because a scope doesn't change it. You can aim with a scope all you want, the bullets are simply going all over the place within the MOA.
You don't understand what MOA is then because a scope doesn't change it. You can aim with a scope all you want, the bullets are simply going all over the place within the MOA.
Reply to Benkei I asked about iron sights. Previously I also asked about how you would feel about taking the place of the torso-shaped target in the Type-56 video, since apparently you seem believe 500 yards is outside of effective range.
'Just a nothing burger', mhm.
Anyway, I honestly don't know how you could argue that when you have a video infront of you of a shooter delivering accurate fire at up to 500 yards without a scope with a gun that's not his.
There is a bigger probability to read something negative about Trump on conservative media, than reading something negative about Kamala on liberal media.
Could you provide a link or two to negative stories about Trump on conservative media?
That was very stupid of him. But, I am wondering: does this guy take any advices from other people?
He does but that doesn't mean he listens to them. He even said it himself in one of his rallies that they keep telling him to focus on policy instead of personal attacks... before going on personal attacks.
The problem with trying to give him advice is that he ultimately rejects the very premise of it. It implies that 1) other people know something he doesn't and 2) he has to follow what they say. For someone with his ego, it's completely unacceptable.
Reply to Mr Bee
That presentation is also a vital part of the call and response that unfolds at his rallies. He polls the crowd to ask how he should respond to his 'managers'. He gets to stand inside and outside of the operation at the same time. Using one register for x and the other for y. Ventriloquism of the highest order.
Much ado has been made about Trumps comments about Springfield, which they claimed led to a series of supposed bomb threats. The idea is that Trump says something, bad things happen, in a form that goes before this therefor because of this. Biden himself expressed his horror.
It turns out all 33 of these threats were hoaxes from overseas. The medias incessant reporting on the topic appears to give those who would wish to hoax Americans an angle of attack, in this instance fake bomb threats in Springfield Ohio. Hilarious.
Reply to NOS4A2
The damage done to the community falsely vilified by a Presidential ticket is reprehensible regardless of whether it leads to violence or not. The fear is real enough.
Falsely protecting them does nothing for the concerns of everyday voters who live there. Springfield is not a sanctuary city and when an estimated 20,000 people show up in a town of 60,000 rumors are the least of your worries. The damage is done and its the administrations fault.
Reply to NOS4A2
You follow the lack of concern for people exemplified by your Leader. Amplifying lies is not moral behavior, especially while holding a large megaphone.
Vance knows full well that the problem with such lies is that the MAGA - nauts will believe it and act on it. Vance may be unscrupulous but he is not stupid.
unenlightenedSeptember 18, 2024 at 12:23#9328600 likes
You follow the lack of concern for people exemplified by your Leader. Amplifying lies is not moral behavior, especially while holding a large megaphone.
Yet when Biden, Clinton, the FBI, the media, or Kamala does it youre silent. Your concern is so sporadic it shows up only when it benefits you.
Reply to NOS4A2 Springfield was one of the many dying towns back during 2016 (one of the places that would've voted for Trump back then on his false promise to bring back jobs) before being revitalized as immigrants started coming in and bringing much needed labor to the region. This isn't to say that the infrastructure isn't being strained as a result of such a large influx of people, but there's a reason why the mayor of Springfield and the governor of Ohio, both Republicans, aren't pushing for mass deportations like the rest of their party are.
Relaying the concerns of voters is what politicians should do and is entirely moral. Its not Trump bringing up specific communities and subjecting them to any degradation. He never mentioned where they were from, who they were, that they were a specific community. So thats a lie.
Twenty-thousand illegal Haitian immigrants have descended on a town of 58,000 people, destroying their way of life. This was a beautiful community, now its ah Trump said. Residents are reporting that the migrants are walking off with the towns geese. They're taking the geese. You know where the geese are, in the park. And even walking off with their pets.
Trump changes the denigration of the first message to match the defense Vance is giving for lying about it. They are a team now. Try to keep up.
Altogether, some US commentators/voters are adding their efforts to efforts beyond their neighborhood against themselves, it works to some measurable extent. The resourcefulness and organization of the Kremlin's machinery remains impressive in this respect. The possibility of such influences is inherent in relatively open/free societies, while others just thoroughly outlaw them.
I must admit to being rather miffed today. Things started off well. I was relaxing on my lawn in Philadelphia, watching the Dodgers game, sipping on a can of Butt lite, and stroking my tabby cat, as one does when one is a wholesome salt-of-the-earth American man like me, who is six feet tall with closely cropped hair, has a direct mode of speaking, and is a member of the Teamsters union. But and so anyhow suddenly I saw a HAITIAN approach my front yard and before I could initiate defensive maneuvers, the HAITIAN had reached over the fence, grabbed my cat, Tabitha, and put her in his mouth. By that time, I had my semi out, but the HAITIAN retreated up the road at max speed before I could get a head shot off, and had taken between his massive jaws the whole of Tabithas head and full half of her torso. It was unlikely that even my highly skilled veterinarian would be able to save whats left. This is why I will vote Trump. It is because of the HAITIANs killing our pets through deployment of their unnaturally large oral cavities and super sharp pet-killing canines as well as skills of strategic retreat when under fire, all of which are, as is common knowledge, genetic traits of the HAITIANs. On the positive side, the Dodgers won the game and, because of the support of me and my fellow Teamsters, Donald J. Trump, Pet Saver and General Hero of the Working Class Universe, will win the election against Camel Harris (who is suspected of being half HAITIAN--though the genetic tests have yet to be carried out, I trust Trump will force that scientific experiment on her when he becomes President and reveal the truth). Thank you. Drink Butt lite.
Voiceover 1: Shaunie O Rourke here, head of the Teamsters Union. I approve this message.
The smile function is active, but we have lost personality.
What the fuck are you saying here, Jim?
We can still do smile but all elements of personality have been erased.
Since fucking when?
Hard to say. According to some engineers, there were at some point personality traces but no one gave a shit when she was VP. No one listens to the friggin VP, Marty.
Yeah right, but now
But now some Americans want personality.
But she dont got it.
Fucking Zip.
Just the smile then.
The smile and talking points.
Will it be enough? Are we worried here? Can we do anything?
Weve got an engineer in giving her lessons, but it's... making it worse.
Shes trying
Yeah, but its obvious shes trying. Which is
Even worse right.
Replacement with avatar?
Its being considered. Keep her inside. Do most of the shit online or TV. The networks will play ball. Avatars can do personality pretty good. But she cant and it looks like she never will. And we gotta let her out sometimes.
I like it. But no scientific experiments needed; shell be sure to tell you all about it. But I am a little disappointed there is no accompanying Baden cartoon.
"Deconstructing the American Presidential Election with Reference to the Concepts of Lego Bricks and Marmalade."
Hello, yes, *ahem*, haha, welcome to my lecture. So, lets get straight, um, to the point. Tonight we will examine the current U.S. presidential election from the general angle of plastic and fruit with specific reference to lego bricks and marmalade.
Let us begin by problematising the respective notions involved in terms of their likely referents. So, for example, despite being of a similar colour and luminosity to Donald Trump, I will contend that marmalade cannot be said to clearly distinguish him, nor can a lego brick, though being as equally dull, lifeless, and, in isolation, useless as Kamala Harris, clearly distinguish her.
The no doubt controversial truth of the matter is that the respective candidates inhere properties of both marmalade and lego bricks. For example, Trump is often considered thick as a brick and Kamala, slimy and bitter-sweet, such that they trespass on each others ostensible conceptual territories from the get-go. And this is just the beginningas we delve further, the lego brick / marmalade dichotomy becomes blurred to the extent that through the mechanisms of Trump and Harris these ostensibly distinct concepts, I will argue, actually tend towards unification.
This is a startling and bizarre result, but one that I believe can lead to an understanding of the importance of political polarities in dissolving rather than exacerbating social antinomies. There is nothing less than the future of intra-social harmonic relations at stake here, and the good news is that the humble, discreet and not oft remarked upon aforementioned social atoms are the key to unlocking this heretofore obscured potentiality.
So, let us explicate in more detail the dissolution of apparent polarities by highlighting the intrusion of the obverse candidate along the following five physical and abstract axes considered to be the sole purvey of the opposition: Taste, texture, function, key political goals, and social class.
Taste: Marmalade=Bitter-Sweet: >> Kamalic intrusion (Kamalas emotive orientation)
Texture: Lego Brick=Thick and Inflexible>> Trumpic intrusion (Trumps intellectual limitations)
Function: Marmalade=To add a smile to toast and similar wheat based products >> Kamalic intrusion (Kamalas debate habits)
Key political goals: Lego Brick =A part of a larger construction>>Trumpic Intrusion (Build the wall!)
Social Class: Marmalade =Middle class delicacy >> Kamalic intrusion (appeal to the middle class)
And etc.
What we see here is that through the employment of these candidates as a conceptual lens, the apparent differences between lego bricks and marmalade disappear. The two, in fact, turn out to be the same thing. Whats more, it can be shown that, as a matter of principle, any two opposing social atoms can be de-dichotomised through the employment of the Trump/Kamala political polarity deconstructive method.
This is revolutionary as it shows us how, far from destroying society, the extreme antagonisms of the current American political scene point a way towards the unification of all opposing linguistic concepts and thus of language itself, which amounts to a path towards the unification of spirit along Schopenhauerian lines and a utopic end to conflict and strife in a final nirvana of universal non-self that has been, up until now, undreamed of *ahem*.
Well, thats it, really. I hope you enjoyed my talk *burp * *fart*.
Good night!
javi2541997September 21, 2024 at 11:56#9336150 likes
"Deconstructing the American Presidential Election with Reference to the Concepts of Lego Bricks and Marmalade."
I think we will not find a more detailed analysis than yours, honestly. I always knewand told myself talking to the pillowthat 'el trompas' and Kámala are the same thing, but I didn't want to share this thesis because I was hesitating on whether I dreamt it or not. It is clear that the compulsive hysteria of Trump and emotional fear of Kámala would join together and transform into a new subject. He, she, or 'it' will be the next President of the United States of America.
Is this the end of the US? Will people be able to register to go vote in time? What would happen if they did not mould together finally? There are a lot of answers that only time could answer. Just wait, sitting next to me, son, drinking coffee, and see what happens. People will embrace together, and poppies will flourish again. Time is a circle, not a scary line with no way of turning back.
The Lego brick will be moulded on the mermalade. Never a thick material was that manageable before. The best we could do? Stay away from both of them, rent a red Volkswagen van, and drive in the dawn until we meet the tan-coloured sun. Free as the wind. :sparkle:
The Criminal Clown & MAGA Mini-me
(neofascist "weirdos") :lol:
Addendum:
Race to 270 electors via swing states*
Harris-Walz
blue states 229 electors > needs 41
wins: *AZ, MI, NC, PA, WI = 71 (44) electors :party:
Big Clown & Lil Clown
red states 219 electors > needs 51
(probably) wins: *GA, NV = 22 electors :cry:
I predict Harris-Walz will win the 2024 Presidential Election with at least 300 electors (Biden-Harris won 306 electors in 2020). I also guesstimate that Texas [40], Florida [30] & Ohio [17] are in play and any or all three might be flipped from Red to Blue and add 17 to 87 electors to the Harris-Walz victory: 317 to 387 electors. Yes, I'm predicting a Roevember blowout!
IMHO, that's a reasonable and low estimate, nowhere near a landside (like 486 electors for Johnson in 1964, 520 electors for Nixon in 1972 or 525 electors for Reagan in 1984).
I live in a state (NY) governed by the democrats the last 40 years or so, and I just see the mentally ill and the homeless increasing in numbers every year.
So, living in a progressive town, I can't help wondering: how is it possible for these people to defend progressive taxation, all kinds of handouts to single moms, to never stop attaching "tax the rich" stickers on every car and window, and at the same time these (progressive) people will propose nothing about the mentally ill and the homeless who increase in numbers every single year?
Seeing how the homeless and the mentally ill are becoming more and more (making this town look like taken out from a zombie movie), I can't help thinking that the problem will not be taken seriously by the democrats for the simple reason that democrats cannot classify the mentally ill as a voting bloc. So, they are deaf to their plight for the reason that whether you help or you do not help a mentally ill person, he/she won't vote for you. In contrast, the democrats have an ear for struggling single moms and students burdened with stupid debts, because they see the latter as voting blocs.
Reply to Eros1982
The rate of homelessness in most places is significantly proportional to the cost of housing. Real estate markets are strongest in "blue" states because of the influx of capital that permits very high paying jobs. The curve is flatter where the wealth gap is not as exponential. That is one of the reasons why "red" states receive more from federal funding than they pay out in taxes. Nice work if you can get it.
The problem with mental health care is a part of the deconstruction of the hospitals and other state institutions that has been done under the idea that such work could be redirected to community level support. This process has been under way for decades. The fallout is perhaps now forcing itself into a wider public awareness. To be clear, this does not resolve into any particular political agenda. It is an intellectual failure of our society as a whole.
180 ProofSeptember 24, 2024 at 00:33#9342840 likes
That conclusion from JD Vance was a masterpiece tonight!
I am very frustrated with a democrat candidate who supports more local oil (Harris), and a vp who was an NRA supporter (Walz). I don't know why should I vote them.
I am just glad that Vance did not refuse global warming; he even blamed democrats for not having done enough with renewables :rofl:
I am just glad that Vance did not refuse global warming; he even blamed democrats for not having done enough with renewables
No he didnt. He rambled a bunch of nonsense and then threw in a lie about nuclear. He also said if you believe emissions are causing climate change. An absolute joke.
The fact that you give him a pass while criticizing the Democratic ticket, and yet claim you care about climate change, shows how unserious you are or how fake. The choice is clear for anyone truly concerned about that issue. Should take about 10 seconds.
Yeah, nothing great. They were polite. Walz stumbled with the Hong Kong answer Vance stumbled with January 6th and gave ridiculous answers on guns, Climate change, abortion, child care and healthcare. Should have been a slam dunk for Walz too bad.
Trouble for the upcoming first gentleman, or baseless rumors?
Vice President Kamala Harris husband is being accused of slapping his ex-girlfriend for flirting with a valet worker at a ritzy gala in 2012, a new report claims.
Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, 59, supposedly struck his then-girlfriend described as a successful New York attorney in the face so hard she spun around while in a valet line after an event at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2012, the three unnamed friends of the woman reportedly told the Daily Mail.
All three sources requested not to be named due to fear of retaliation from Emhoff, the Daily Mail said.
The fact that you give him a pass while criticizing the Democratic ticket, and yet claim you care about climate change, shows how unserious you are or how fake. The choice is clear for anyone truly concerned about that issue. Should take about 10 seconds.
I wish they win, not because I have high hopes in them, but I do fear Trump may make things worse.
However, I think Democrats' strategy is not working. They are trying to be appealing to the majority (people who don't want the second amendment to change, people who don't want to make sacrifices for the environment, people who think USA should stand by the side of Israel, etc.), but in this way Democrats will lose the support of grassroots groups: those who want to end the war in Middle East right now (mostly American Muslims), those who take environment seriously, those who want stricter gun laws, etc.
I am afraid that in their attempt to sound moderate, Harris and Walz will lose support among some groups, and they will try to stick with an economic plan that does not sound popular to the majority (middle class) they are trying to appeal to in other ways.
So, I wish Democrats had taken the opposite route: they didn't stick with that "opportunity economy", and they were radical on things like gun control, environment, and ceasefire now.
November 5 will show whether I got everything wrong.
Reply to NOS4A2 Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen!
By rumors on the street, guy slaps girlfriend in public (she slaps too, they say).
12 years later, it hits the news like a supposed :fire: bomb. :D
Might'a taken some efforts to dig that one up.
Gotta' wonder what happened in the 12 years after. Anything serious?
I am afraid that in their attempt to sound moderate, Harris and Walz will lose support among some groups, and they will try to stick with an economic plan that does not sound popular to the majority (middle class) they are trying to appeal to in other ways.
I think thats a disaster too. But not surprising.
I thought we were supposed to care about such things. At least thats what I was taught. I was supposed to feel outraged when Trump said grab them by the pussy decades ago. Are we finally past that?
Reply to AmadeusD
So, you add it to the ledger of your disaffection.
Trump said that while thinking he was alone with his interlocutor. It was never a slogan.
I was never stuck on it on the first place. In fact I thought it was hilarious. The only thing I do not condone was the gossip and ink shortage that resulted from it.
I dont know if I condone getting drunk and slapping women. Not a good look.
Reply to Paine False. It was taken up as a slogan by a rather detrimental portion of the male populace of the USA for a short period. That said, this also contributes to the ledger you mention lol.
Im not sure he grabbed women by the pussy. The phrase You can do anything only means I did everything in clown world. What was hilarious, however, was the speech, how it was used, and the reaction. Like I said: clown world.
But there is nothing funny about slapping a woman in a drunken rampage.
From my view the federal response to the recent hurricane and flooding has been obscene, another indication of its wasteful inefficiency. Out of money and out of time. While Biden and Kamala are busy with more important things, like funding foreign wars and campaigning for power, the people who live there are largely left to fend for themselves.
Reply to NOS4A2 I remember when the right used to be all about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and defunding big bad government institutions like FEMA. I mean, they still are all about that, but you know...
Congress determines how much money goes to FEMAs disaster fund, and the fund faces issues after lawmakers declined to allocate additional funding for FEMAs efforts in the stopgap funding bill it passed last month, only extending FEMAs existing funding level and allowing it to draw from $20 billion in funds more quickly.
It was the MAGA minions, of course, who pushed for that.
creativesoulOctober 04, 2024 at 20:47#9366630 likes
The problem with mental health care is a part of the deconstruction of the hospitals and other state institutions that has been done under the idea that such work could be redirected to community level support. This process has been under way for decades. The fallout is perhaps now forcing itself into a wider public awareness. To be clear, this does not resolve into any particular political agenda. It is an intellectual failure of our society as a whole.
Yup. A concerted effort began in the early seventies to manufacture consent to eliminate social programs meant to help the less fortunate people in society, and lower taxes on the wealthiest.
It was tremendously successful and is still in effect. Hence, loads of Americans are still convinced to vote for people who vilify social welfare programs, public schools, publicly owned entities, organized labor, American manufacturing, self-sufficient practices, and the like. A commonly occurring theme is to treat the US government as though it is a privately own business. You hear people talk all the time about it. Hence, it was part of the groundwork laid for Trump. People believed a good businessman would be a good president by virtue of having the skills necessary. Well... it's a completely different skillset, for starters, nevermind the serious questioning regarding whether or not Trump id s good businessman. Plenty believed he was/is. The US government is not in the business of being profitable. Etc. All this amounts to a vote against what's in their own best interest.
Welcome to an America that once had the funds and infrastructure to take care of those incapable of taking care of themselves, of those who were mentally ill in ways that they needed caregivers... but stopped doing so and gave the resources back to the richest of Americans who could not care less about less fortunate people and mentally ill folk having no safety net. Let em loose. I don't live around em.
Reply to NOS4A2 And it should be easy for you to look it up yourself but you apparently prefer to stay misinformed. Can't help people who are unwilling to help themselves.
, loads of Americans are still convinced to vote for people who vilify social welfare programs, public schools, publicly owned entities, organized labor, American manufacturing, self-sufficient practices, and the like.
And it should be easy for you to look it up yourself but you apparently prefer to stay misinformed. Can't help people who are unwilling to help themselves.
I did. Very easy. Its not looking good. Its starting to look like Katrina. Remember that?
Reply to NOS4A2
Your often repeated idea of the "state" is that it is a shared misconception rather that an existing thing. You are now asking that illusion to perform better.
Reply to NOS4A2
I could do that sort of thing, given what you have said in the past.
Your lack of interest in supporting any of that stuff for the sake of forcing me to repeat it is not the mark of a gentleman.
Funny, I thought this thread was about the election, not the spewing of tiresome, disingenuous bullshit from Trump cultists or sifting through it to see if theres any point or coherence (spoiler: there isnt).
Trumps back in Butler, Pennsylvania today, the same spot where a smooth-brained anti-Trumpist found his balls and did what all anti-Trumpists wanted to do if they only had the stones, which is to assassinate their folk devil.
Apparently even Elon Musk is going to be there. So if they wanted to destroy two folk devils in one they might just try to do so.
Reply to Eros1982
The double standard involved with discussing cruelty is there. As a matter of public discourse, the language of complete vindication is different than what the U.S. should do as a polity.
Your choice to not choose between possible administrations ignores the extreme rhetoric from the Trump side that has been going on for years. As citizens, these differences appear in outcomes in our communities. Don't gnash your teeth in self-imposed silence.
Just being supportive to Palestinian-Americans (and human dignity in general) who aren't going to vote for Democrats this year.
I would love to vote the Green Party, but in NYS we have only two parties in the ballot and makes me wonder: why should it be this way?
Anyway, I do recognize that Trump may make things worse and he already contributed to this mess when he moved the USA embassy to Jerusalem (among many other things he did, with help from Nikki Haley in the UN General Assembly).
God, help us with these politicians! (Praying, I guess, is the only thing I can do now :confused: )
Deleted UserOctober 07, 2024 at 00:04#9372780 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
Your choice to not choose between possible administrations ignores the extreme rhetoric from the Trump side that has been going on for years. As citizens, these differences appear in outcomes in our communities.
Yes.
If I had to go before a tribunal and defend my choice of voting for Harris, it would give me pause. But it isnt that serious. People want to believe its their only political power to fill in an oval every 4 years and thus all the hand-wringing.
Its overthinking it. Vote against Trump and keep at the local work organizing, striking, protesting, lawsuits, unionizing, boycotting, etc. Thats it. Will a Trump or Harris administration make achieving goals easier or harder? I think the answer is clear.
The one area I understand feeling bad about: support for Israels genocide. Seems like Harris is all-in for Israel, just as Biden has been. True enough. Its also true, however, that Trump is an even bigger supporter. So not only do we make it worse with him in office, we get all the other terrifying, horrible, shitty things along with it.
A vote against the worst candidate when theres really just two options isnt an endorsement of the less bad candidate, nor the two-party system. Sitting out or voting third party, particularly in a swing state, is helping to elect the worst candidate. This is true if you believe Harris is the worse candidate too.
I'm irrelevant too because I don't get to vote. But I notice that Dump has become of late a magnet for flies - so he seems to report and comment on in his campaign speeches of late. I immediately thought of "The Lord of the Flies', or ...
Beelzebub is the Greek version of the name Baal-zebub, a pagan deity worshipped in the ancient Philistine city of Ekron during Old Testament times. The name means the lord of flies (2 Kings 1:2), which is significant as golden fly images have been discovered during excavations at ancient Philistine sites. After the Philistines, the Jews changed the name to Beelzeboul, as used in the Greek New Testament, which means lord of dung and refers to the fly god that was worshipped for protection from fly bites. According to certain biblical scholars, Beelzebub was also known as the god of filth, which later became a term of contempt in the mouth of the Pharisees. As a result, Beelzebub was a particularly despised deity, and the Jews used his name as another name for Satan.
Tell all your fundamentalist Christian friends not to vote for this antichrist. Signs and wonders, people!
Anyway, I do recognize that Trump may make things worse and he already contributed to this mess when he moved the USA embassy to Jerusalem (among many other things he did, with help from Nikki Haley in the UN General Assembly).
Not to judge your voting intentions since I can sympathize with your frustration but it's not really a question whether Trump will be worse (he will), so you might as well be honest and own the decision.
Ive seen enough. Ready to make my official prediction:
Trump wins.
Which is unbelievable and sad, but so it goes. Looks like men arent ready for a woman president, yet again. But its more than that its that she has no message.
She could have run with a strong and consistent message of taxing the rich to pay for popular programs. Instead shes raced to the middle, on the advice of the most pathetic intellectual weaklings known to man, and desperately tried to appeal to conservative voters. Shes done so with climate change and fracking, on guns, and on war. She doesnt answer questions directly. She regurgitates the same lines like hopes, ambitions, and desires. Theres barely been any policy proposals, and the ones that have been proposed are eh. Theyve once again left Bernie and progressives in the cold and theyll pay for it, especially among the Gaza crowds.
The DNC strategy at this point is to lay low, appeal to the middle, say as little as possible (see any of the uninspiring, friendly interviews shes done), and bring it back to how bad Trump is and was. Its a terrible strategy and a terrible candidate. They even defanged Tim Walz, who is now left with endlessly talking up school lunches which is all the party allows him.
So the democrats put up another loser in the 4th quarter and will blow it try again against the worst candidate and former president in history. 4 more years of Trumps climate denial and federal judges (given that republicans are going to win the senate), which will do generational damage, and the further destruction of institutions that do any good for regular people.
It feels like 2016 again: no real enthusiasm for the Democrat. There was none in 2020 either, but it was a pandemic and we were sick of Trump. That was motivation enough plus Biden, a man, also hadnt fully degenerated into the shell he is today, and still had a little Obama fairy dust on him from his years as VP. The electorates memory is also poor and rose-colored, and usually rebel against whoever is in office.
So despite what the polls, or Allan Lichtman, or Bill Maher, or Nate Silver or anyone else says, I think Trump will win at least one of the blue wall states Michigan? and that will be all he needs, as he will carry Georgia and North Carolina and Arizona.
Maybe some good comes out of it. Who knows. I hope Im wrong but I wont be.
The DNC strategy at this point is to lay low, appeal to the middle, say as little as possible (see any of the uninspiring, friendly interviews shes done), and bring it back to how bad Trump is and was.
I think it was a mistake for Harris to keep the Biden people on her campaign team for this reason. These are the same idiots who thought it was a good idea to hide a candidate with a 35% approval rating and hope for the best when people vote. They're still acting like they're running with a guy who must be covered in bubble wrap until election day. Either because these people are that incompetent or they think that changing strategies with a new candidate is an implicit acknowledgement of their own failures is unclear but they're not changing their strategy and taking advantage of a more energetic candidate like they should be. Of course, the Republicans haven't really adapted to running against someone who isn't Biden either. They still believe for whatever reason that Harris cannot finish a sentence and that she needs notes or a teleprompter to say anything.
That being said this strategy isn't that really much different from Trump's to be honest (apart from arguably the laying low part). He's not doing as many events as he did in 2016 (though he is making up for it in other ways), he's trying to appeal to the middle with regards to abortion, his statements always lack any substance, he's doing uninspiring friendly interviews with right wing podcasters and Fox, and every time he speaks he has to talk about how bad the Democrats are.
:ok: You stick with those MAGA-GOP talking points and I'll stick with my 22Sept24 prediction¹ that Harris-Walz will win the upcoming Roevember 5th presidential election. :victory: :party:
Also, when you say it wont be Joe Biden as the nominee care to bet on that too?
Mikie
Like taking candy from a baby. :yum:
I (technically) have won this bet but lost the other one that Diaper Don wouldn't be the GOP nominee. The latter, however, no doubt contributed to the former. :up:
===========
NB: Fwiw, since Labor Day I think it's reasonable to have read "mainstream" news media polls as follows
Given that Diaper Don The Fascist Clown & his MAGA-GOP Circus Cult have pissed-off the majority of (likely) women voters so much since 2018 (then doubled down on the blatant misogyny in 2022 and again this year), I guesstimate (not counting Dems campaigns' huge money & get-out-the-vote ground game advantages) woman voters' preference for Harris-Walz & Dems is undercounted by 2% and The Clown is thereby generally overcounted by 5% in "national polls" and overcounted by 2% in swing state polls, and so I read them accordingly [adjusted]; for example:
AZ - T 51% [49] v H 46%
[b]GA - T 49% [47] v H 48%
MI - T 45% [43] v H 47%
NC - T 46% [44] v H 45%
NV - T 47% [46] v H 48%
PA - T 46% [44] v H 45%[/b]
WI - T 48% [46] v H 46%
To date all (quality) polling trends favor Harris-Walz +270 Electoral College victory.Hyping election anxiety is great for motivating Democratic, Independent & GOP/suburban white women voter turnout / particpation. :strong: :mask:
Given that Diaper Don The Fascist Clown & his MAGA-GOP Circus Cult have pissed-off the majority of (likely) women voters so much since 2018 (then doubled down on the blatant misogyny in 2022 and again this year), I guesstimate (not counting Dems campaigns' huge money & get-out-the-vote ground game advantages) woman voters' preference for Harris-Walz & Dems is undercounted by 2% and The Clown is thereby generally overcounted by 5% in "national polls" and overcounted by 2% in swing state polls, and so I read them accordingly [adjusted]; for example:
That is called wishful thinking, not analysis. If you bet money on it, you'll lose big. But let's take a different tack. If 538 overestimates Trump by 5% (or more) and underestimates Harris by 2% (or more) in their last national poll before the election, I will post a picture of myself here on this thread naked apart from a diaper with a crybaby face and sucking on a pacifier. Why? Because I believe in science and not making stuff up to make myself feel better. So, what are you going to do if/when you turn out to be wrong and the national polls turn out, let's say, to be within 1% either way of being right? Show me you actually believe what you're saying...
I'm just sayin' I'll do that if you're right about the national polls; what'll you do if I'm right that you're completely wrong?
I'll live in the US struggling against a neofascist regime while you and the rest of the world will be wagging your fingers and saying "I told you so." :mask:
In 2020 Biden-Harris won the national / popular vote by 51.3% (or margin of +4.5%) against an incumbent POTUS who actively compromised the election system. 306 electors vs 232 electors (by flipping two Republican states and winning the very same three states lost by a combined 0.7% due to HRC's arrogant neglect in 2016)! My ELECTORAL COLLEGE prediction (and reasoning for it) does not deviate significantly from the 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 trend. If I was merely "wishful thinking", mate, I wouldn't rely on center-right to right wing news media polling (and the best stats for T therein).
But hey you go right on bloviating from the cheap seats, my friend; I'm looking forward to that photo (the more lurid the better). :smirk:
I don't know who'll win. The polls could change. Trump might do or say something disastrous. But the chances of 538 being off by that margin by polling day are small enough to stick to my commitment.
The polls could change. Thump might do or say something disastrous.
It does not seem as though there is anything he might say or do that would significantly change the polls. It is not as if, even with the evidence, Trump supporters, backed by his propaganda machine, will believe it or not discount it because they think other things are more important.
Polls true utility isnt in telling us who will win, but rather in roughly how close a race is and, therefore, how confident we should be in the outcome. Historically, candidates leading polls by at least 20 points have won 99 percent of the time. But candidates leading polls by less than 3 points have won just 55 percent of the time. In other words, races within 3 points in the polls are little better than toss-ups something weve been shouting from the rooftops for years.
Also, when you say it wont be Joe Biden as the nominee care to bet on that too?
Mikie
Like taking candy from a baby. :yum:
180 Proof
I (technically) have won this bet but lost the other one that Diaper Don wouldn't be the GOP nominee.
Yeah, you did. I was as shocked as anyone. What did we end up betting? $10 to charity of choice? Let me know and Ill pay up. Id forgotten about that.
Needless to say, I hope youre right here too.
Anyway hes within the margin of error in swing states and is down with black men by a lot compared to 2020. Women could save the day if they come out strong but will they? Will it be enough? I have doubts.
I don't get what you mean by 'Roevember' instead of November. I understand the quid has to do with Roe, but I have no idea what you mean, honestly. :sweat:
Roe vs. Wade was overturned largely thanks to Trump getting the lying Kavanaugh appointed to the Supreme Court. @180 Proof thinks this has cost Trump a lot support from women now that all sorts of abortion bans have been implemented in various US states. So "Roevember" reflects his expectation of a landslide victory for Kamala Harris as a result.
Edit: Take for instance Brett's story about the "Devil's Triangle". That's apparently a game of quarters with three cups arranged in a triangle. The rules are unknown because the inventor of the game, Brett Kavanaugh, could not explain them under oath.
It's also commonly known as a threesome involving two men and one woman.
javi2541997October 16, 2024 at 07:26#9401080 likes
You always got the sense that the Democratic Party resented having to learn anything from losing in 2016.
Theres no doubt that all the excuse-making that followed blaming Russia, James Comey, the media, anyone but Hillary Clinton and her campaign was the partys desperate attempt to avoid taking responsibility for letting Donald Trump win and to assuage anger from their rank and file, lest they hold the party leadership accountable.
But tell a lie incessantly enough, and you start to believe it. And you cant help but feel that Democrats really do believe that they ran a great campaign that would and should have won, if only it hadnt been for the dastardly villains who pulled the rug out. This year, they seem determined to prove that thesis.
At first, there were hopes that Kamala Harriss ascension to the Democratic candidacy was going to bring some kind of new, exciting vision to the election fight, possibly combining Joe Bidens early, halting economic populism with the personal charisma, optimism, and history-making aspects of Barack Obamas 2008 campaign. Gone was the basement strategy of hiding the candidate from unscripted media. So were the by now stale warnings about Republicans threatening democracy and dictatorship, in favor of the new, deflating label of weird. Harriss slogan of were not going back suggested shed lead the country not just out of the morass of Trumpism but in a different direction from Bidens disastrous last two years.
So much for that. For weeks now, its been clear the Harris campaign has decided that its going to rerun the Clinton 2016 strategy on the off chance that that year really was a fluke, and that Trump really is so hated that Americans will have no choice but to vote for his opponent. It didnt work in 2016, but this time . . .
What does that look like in practice? It looks like dropping the negative label of weird and performing civil disagreement instead. It looks like giving up on exciting the partys progressive flank actively thumbing your nose at them, in fact and explicitly pivoting to trying to win over Republicans instead. It looks like rolling out white papers and policy positions that few will read, while rarely talking publicly about what you would actually do when given the chance at a public forum. Like running to Trumps right on immigration and foreign policy, even calling Iran, absurdly, the countrys most dangerous adversary and suggesting you might launch a preemptive strike on it.
Okay, Democrats would say, but what about some of Harriss policy announcements? Like her housing platform, for instance, which pledges to build three million homes and to give first-time homebuyers a grant of up to $25,000? Or what about her recent announcement that she would expand Medicare to cover home care services, vision, and hearing? Doesnt that point to a different, more progressive policybased direction than Clintons 2016 run, even if she barely talks about it?
The answer to which is, not really, because this platform is actually a major step backward from the Biden years. Its true the sitting president often seemed reluctant to run forcefully on the populist agenda he had taken up as a way to make nice with Bernie Sanders voters, but that agenda was fairly ambitious: among other things, it featured universal pre-K, free community college (for two years), childcare subsidies, paid leave, Medicare expansion, and a more generous child tax credit. Everything but the last two are now out in Harriss day one agenda.
What I was saying earlier.
When Trump wins they have no one to blame but themselves.
Reply to 180 Proof Right. I'm still apprehensively optimistic that Harris-Walz will win, but the fact that it's as close as it is, is a source of deep disquiet. He really ought to have been booed offstage long since.
I watched a few snippets of the Fox interview. Harris holds her ground as always. Baier had the temerity to play a Trump campaign advertisement during the break and interrupted continuously. But then thats the kind of crassness youd expect from MAGA media.
Reply to 180 Proof One thing for sure, the Master Propogandist has sure as hell put Jan 6 front and centre for the last three weeks of the run up, with his Day of Love shtick. I'm going to get AI to make me a 1969 style psychedelic poster with Day of Love in flouro, and DJT against the MAGA mob in silhouette.
We don't need polymarket as a primary source anyway. It just reflects the polls. When Kamala was about 3% ahead nationally, polymarket read 50/50. She is now about 2% ahead, so it reads 60/40 Trump. She probably needs to be more than 3% ahead nationally to win, considering the Republican advantage in the electoral college set up (e.g. HRC won by over 2% and lost). People betting large amounts most likely know that, so more of them are likely to be betting Trump. 60/40 is still a toss up. But leans Trump. That`s also your most recent evaluation. It's not rocket science.
Maybe the polymarket crowd slightly over fancies Trump, but it's in broad agreement with what the polls suggest and has been all along. And maybe people are confused because a small movement in the polls causes a larger movement in the betting markets. Those literate in basic mathematics should understand why that is and don't need polymarket to tell them what aggregate polls are already saying.
Political idiots like Elon Musk play into this misunderstanding by claiming polymarket is more accurate then the polls. No, it just tracks the polls. It's derivative and will continue to be so.
Yeah but it isnt for that reason. Its actually due to about four people. Hence the article I posted. 60/40 is a lot by this elections standards.
Whether Harris needs 3% to win is disputable now, given inroads Trump has made in Florida, New York, and California. Nate Cohn has written about this well. His electoral edge is probably slipping.
Yeah I still think hes going to win, but its because Harris is a dud. Not because of the polls.
Yeah but it isnt for that reason. Its actually due to about four people
No, it's not. His odds have been going up rapidly across betting markets generally since the start of October. Averages about 59% overall now. Maybe polymarket very slightly overestimates relative to the average but it's hardly detectable. The "four people controlling this" story is kind of a silly distraction. The betting odds are increasingly favouring Trump because Kamala is sinking in the polls and the polls are the most reliable means of figuring out odds.
Of course, if the polls are wrong, the betting odds will be even more wrong, like they were in 2016. But then it was state level polls that were mostly out. The last aggregate national poll on 538 was right within the margin of error.
No, it's not. His odds have been going up rapidly across betting markets generally since the start of October. Averages about 59% overall now.
Over the past two weeks, the chances of a Trump victory in the November election have surged on Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market. Its bettors were giving Trump a 60% chance of winning on Friday, while Harriss chances were 40%. The candidates were in a dead heat at the start of October.
Trumps gains on Polymarket have cheered his supporters, and they have been followed by the odds shifting in Trumps favor in other betting markets. Elon Musk flagged Trumps growing lead on Polymarket to his 200 million X followers on Oct. 6, praising the concept of betting markets. More accurate than polls, as actual money is on the line, Musk posted.
But the surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win.
Seems others have followed suit.
Harriss lead has gone from roughly 2.8 to 2.4, with nearly every serious forecaster calling it a coin flip. Nate Silver has Trumps odds at 50.6% or something like that. Little reason for the 60% number if not for manipulation. If they were truly following the polls, unless they have some secret knowledge, theres little reason to put the chances at 60%. True, they could be imbeciles but I think the WSJs argument is convincing. Even though I think hell win, I wouldnt bet on it and certainly not give it those odds.
Harriss lead has gone from roughly 2.8 to 2.4, with nearly every serious forecaster calling it a coin flip. Nate Silver has Trumps odds at 50.6% or something like that. Little reason for the 60% number if not for manipulation.
I think you're not taking into account how both sides feel after 2016 and 2020. Even in an objectively toss-up race the left, after having been burned by the polling errors in the previous elections, are way more likely to be pessimistic and believe that there is some unknown factor in Trump's favor this time. Hell that is the sense I get from reading your earlier prediction. Even in 2020 as the polls were showing Biden solidly ahead they always had most people expecting that Trump will win anyways. Unless Harris is up by double digits at this point I'm not surprised that the markets will go in that direction.
Most of us seem to agree Trump is winning as things stand, me, @Mikie, the betting markets, Nate SIlver etc. The fact we may disagree slightly on the odds doesn't matter a whole lot. In fact, none of it matters a whole lot because, even at 60/40, Kamala wins 4 times out of ten. Not bad. Plus, the polls and betting markets could swing back her way before election day. I suspect there will be some drama anyhow.
Chilling essay by Franklin Foer in The Atlantic: What Musk Really Wants. (It's paywalled but available via e.g. Apple News)
In Elon Musks vision of human history, Donald Trump is the singularity. If Musk can propel Trump back to the White House, it will mark the moment that his own superintelligence merges with the most powerful apparatus on the planet, the American governmentnot to mention the business opportunity of the century.
Many other titans of Silicon Valley have tethered themselves to Trump. But Musk is the one poised to live out the ultimate techno-authoritarian fantasy. With his influence, he stands to capture the state, not just to enrich himself. His entanglement with Trump will be an Ayn Rand novel sprung to life, because Trump has explicitly invited Musk into the government to play the role of the master engineer, who redesigns the American stateand therefore American lifein his own image.
Musks pursuit of this dream clearly transcends billionaire hobbyism. Consider the personal attention and financial resources that he is pouring into the former presidents campaign. According to The New York Times, Musk has relocated to Pennsylvania to oversee Trumps ground game there. That is, hes running the infrastructure that will bring voters to the polls. In service of this cause, hes imported top talent from his companies, and he reportedly plans on spending $500 million on it. That doesnt begin to account for the value of Musks celebrity shilling, and the way he has turned X into an informal organ of the campaign.
Musk began as a Trump skeptica supporter of Ron DeSantis, in fact. Only gradually did he become an avowed, rhapsodic MAGA believer. His attitude toward Trump seems to parallel his view of artificial intelligence. On the one hand, AI might culminate in the destruction of humanity. On the other hand, its inevitable, and if harnessed by a brilliant engineer, it has glorious, maybe even salvific potential.
Musks public affection for Trump begins, almost certainly, with his savvy understanding of economic interestsnamely, his own. Like so many other billionaire exponents of libertarianism, he has turned the government into a spectacular profit center. His company SpaceX relies on contracts with three-letter agencies and the Pentagon. It has subsumed some of NASAs core functions. Tesla thrives on government tax credits for electric vehicles and subsidies for its network of charging stations. By Politicos tabulation, both companies have won $15 billion in federal contracts. But thats just his business plan in beta form. According to The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX is designing a slew of new products with national security customers in mind. ...
Its not hard to imagine how the mogul will exploit this alliance. Trump has already announced that he will place him in charge of a government-efficiency commission. Or, in the Trumpian vernacular, Musk will be the secretary of cost-cutting. SpaceX is the implied template: Musk will advocate for privatizing the government, outsourcing the affairs of state to nimble entrepreneurs and adroit technologists. That means there will be even more opportunities for his companies to score gargantuan contracts. So when Trump brags that Musk will send a rocket to Mars during his administration, hes not imagining a reprise of the Apollo program. Hes envisioning cutting SpaceX one of the largest checks that the U.S. government has ever written. Hes talking about making the richest man in the world even richer.
I've been wondering what Musk is up to, and this analysis makes perfect sense. Considering what an utter tool Musk is, despite his unarguable engineering and business genius, it is something to be very, very scared of.
re: Diaper Don The Fascist Clown (a convicted felon as well as an adjudicated rapist & fraudster, who 'self-described racists' believe is also a racist, and who everyday wears more make-up than a drag queen) another character reference from a former senior Republican:
[quote=John Kelly, retired 4-Star General USMC and former Trump WH Chief of Staff][i]Well, looking at the definition of fascism: Its a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.
Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, hes certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.[/i][/quote]
Nate Silver: 50-50 but gut says Trump.
John Mearsheimer: My guess is Harris wins popular vote but Trump eeks out a victory in the seven swing states.
What I find weird is that looking from the outside, Harris seems to be doing well while Trump seems to get less coherent every day, while waxing poetically about nazi generals and using the military against the enemy within.
Yet the voters don't seem to care. It's confusing, and that means some part of my model of the world is faulty.
Is all of this not about Trump after all? Everyone talks about the cultishness but maybe that's just a front that hides the real desire to just burn it all down.
Its close because of the electoral college, which is a stupid and anti-democratic system, as the US constitution itself is mostly anti-democratic.
But the other reason its so close, in my view, is that a good portion of the electorates lives are crappy, which makes them angry and they look for reasons and someone to blame. They want explanations and to make sense of the world, as we all do. The media fill that role now, where family friends and religion once did, and cater messages to these people, depending on where they live and what their interests are and how they get their information (radio? TV? Newspaper?).
So theres huge gaps between women and men, rural and urban people, college educated vs not, etc. The left demonizes Trump (although they have a much better case for doing so), and the right demonizes liberals (and do it much more effectively). Both are devils to the other side.
Since the advent of social media, distrust in literally everything and anything that doesnt conform with what your preferred information pipeline is telling you has become rampant. Thus Trump can say almost anything even trying to overturn an election and saying he won even when he lost and many millions will go along with it, or shrug it off.
If CNN says hes a threat to democracy or whatever, or if theres reports about some crazy thing he said, itll be ignored because those sources have been undermined and discredited in their minds (fake news, witch hunt, etc), mostly by Trump himself.
If the Democratic Party offered something real and started talking to working people, theyd break through a lot of this stuff as Bernie did. But since theyre also a party of corporate America, theres little chance of that.
If the Democratic Party offered something real and started talking to working people, theyd break through a lot of this stuff as Bernie did. But since theyre also a party of corporate America, theres little chance of that.
I mean they saved a bunch of the Teamster's pensions and yet alot of their members would still vote for the billionaire who's last administration has been terrible for labor. In fact I imagine alot of them would somehow believe Bernie is terrible for labor too while praising Musk as a hero for the working class. For sure Democrats often take their voters for granted and rarely deliver on their promises, but there are moments where I just feel like none of that really matters anymore and we've all just gone insane. For sure it mattered in 2016 when Trump ran on a populist message and won, but he's not even doing that anymore and that doesn't seem to have changed a thing.
Not crazy, just cynically mistaken. The 2024 US election is about (1) whether or not this should be the last US election and (2) whether or not women in the US should have the inallienable right of bodily autonomy (i.e. unrestricted access to reproductive healthcare); this election is not principally about mere policy preferences (re: taxes, immigration, foreign policy, military spending, climate change, etc). As a Bernie Bro since the '90s, I ask you, Mikie: Why else would both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & Liz Cheney, both Bernie Sanders & Dick Cheney endorse Harris-Walz?
I think Cheneys endorsement is revenge for being attacked and thrown out of office, which in turn was done because shes as establishment as they come and thus one of the few who voted impeachment. Why? Because prior to this Trump attacked Bush and Cheney why? Because Jeb Bush ran against him and never made nice afterwards. Etc. Its like asking why Megan McCain is against Trump. Theres personal reasons. This praise for Cheney is ridiculous. Fuck the Cheneys.
Abortion and democracy may be what motivates people to get out and vote but you dont really know that, nor do I.
It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline that he most lacks.
Those disqualifying characteristics are compounded by everything else that limits his ability to fulfill the duties of the president: his many criminal charges, his advancing age, his fundamental lack of interest in policy and his increasingly bizarre cast of associates.
This unequivocal, dispiriting truth Donald Trump is not fit to be president should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.
Most of us seem to agree Trump is winning as things stand, me, Mikie, the betting markets, Nate SIlver etc.
Yeah, Trump will probably win. :meh:
Hopefully I'm wrong.
And it's likely going to be worse than last time, because now he can demand to be surrounded by yes-men. Not like he will take a lot of generals into his cabinet, which naturally don't veer off from US policy where it has been on since WW2. He'll bring on people that he took on the last years of his prior administration.
Reply to ssu Trump would be better for Europe. The worst thing he can do is pressure European countries to pay for their own security, which we ought to be doing anyway.
Also, a Trump victory may expedite European populism so we can get rid of our tragically incompetent and corrupt political establishment.
And since many in Europe hate Trump, a Trump-led America is likely going to motivate Europeans to start using their own brains again (assuming those haven't completely atrophied by now...).
If he actually manages to end the war in Ukraine that'd be a bonus.
I believe that too. In Europe people should understand that it is matter of time till they get divorce from the US. Trumpists are isolationists, but a diverse (democrat led) America will also lose its interest in Europe and Middle East. If that won't happen, then it will not be normal & democratic at all.
Harris-Walz needs 41 electors (in addition to the 229 electors from the solidly "Blue" states the campaign begins with) to reach 270 electors and win the presidency. I'll be watching the following states for results on 5Nov24 (by 3am EST 6Nov24):
Trump would be better for Europe. The worst thing he can do is pressure European countries to pay for their own security, which we ought to be doing anyway.
The worst thing for him is to pull out the rug from the Ukrainians and weaken NATO while getting more entangled in the Gaza genocide and with the war with Iran in the Middle East. And yes, he can do both, even if it's not the likeliest outcome.
Let's remember that he has done already a huge Dolchstoss to one allied nation, that collapsed immediately and he did it without even negotiating with his allies. I bet that Kim il Sung would have immediately jumped to a peace offer during the Korean war if Trump would have been there to give a surrender paper like he gave to the Taliban. Yeah, I bet that Kim Il Sung would have promised not to attack mainland US and then squashed with Chinese support the back stabbed South Koreans. Then no Korean electronics or K-pop, just larger famines in the Korean peninsula.
But naturally nobody talks about Afghanistan, the longest war the US fought, because both parties have played a role in that disaster.
Reply to 180 Proof Years ago when Obama was running against Hillary, I predicted his candidacy early and his win as president. I felt like I could make that call based on the available information. Everything since Obama is so distorted by noise, I cannot manage it any more.
Reply to Benkei I've only been in the election prediction game since 2016.
That June, after the way the DNC & Obama had systematically undermined Bernie Sanders in the primaries, I had predicted that the only way HRC could lose such a "rigged campaign" was to suppress demoralize her own voters by being the shitty candidate that she was. Well, she did just that 20% fewer Dems showed up to vote for her than in 2012 for Obama by not campaigning that Fall in the three Midwestern swing states won in both 2008 & 2012 by Obama which decided the election by .07% ... The polls weren't "wrong": the candidate favored to win had arrogantly thrown the fucking election (NB: "Russian interference", "Jim Comey reopening investigation of the email scandal", "misogynistic Bernie Bros" & "fucking Jill Stein") had nothing to do with it).
Notice how Biden in 2020 and Harris this year have focussed like a laser beam on midwestern swing states. Also, The Clown himself and candidates he's endorsed have lost general elections (2020), special elections (2017, 2019, 2021, 2023) & midterm elections (2018, 2022) MAGA is a ethnonationalist populist cult of 30-40% of the electorate and The Clown has been hemorrhaging pro-business GOP & suburban college educated white women since 2021 which made up 5-7% more (transactional) support in 2016 & 2020 (c47% each election). I'll be very surprised if The Clown gets more than 42% of voters this time.
Reply to ssu Pulling the rug on the Ukrainians wouldn't weaken NATO. It would strengthen it.
What's weakening NATO is the fact that we're trying to drag Ukraine in even though it would lead to endless conflict with the Russians, undermining the security of everyone involved.
The only ones who would be weakened are the clowns who got us into this mess in the first place - good riddance I say to that.
And yea, Ukraine is hardly the first disaster Washington has created, but that's their problem.
Having one of the speakers of the MSG rally held last night joke that Puerto Rico is garbage is going to piss off people on both sides of the political divide. The campaign seems to have forgotten where the hell they were.
Reply to Paine IMO, such flagrantly racist stupidity this close to election day is only going to help Harris-Walz & congressional candidates (particularly in PA & FL).
Reply to 180 Proof
Agreed. There is a strong conservative interest in those groups who vote for their perceived interests even if it aligns them with people they otherwise do not like. They can tear down a tent as quickly make one.
javi2541997October 29, 2024 at 06:30#9427710 likes
Unfortunately, most Americans regard everything about Hispanic countries as 'trash' or 'poor.'
Now it makes sense. I now understand why some representatives of Puerto Rico submitted a petition to the Congress of Spain requesting the chance of being part of the kingdom again. I can't see it possible, honestly. But Puerto Rico and Cuba should never have separated from Spain. We feel like they are naturally part of us, and we have huge connections with them culturally. I don't understand why in the 1898 war Washington attacked us with the aim of freeing them if they will be treated that badly by the same country in the future.
They can't vote in general estados unidos elections, but they could when they were part of Spain. Benito Pérez Galdós who closely won the Nobel Prize of Literature was a congressman elected by puertorriqueños. It was a hoax the 1898 war.
Having one of the speakers of the MSG rally held last night joke that Puerto Rico is garbage is going to piss off people on both sides of the political divide. The campaign seems to have forgotten where the hell they were.
Maybe, but they don't call him "Teflon Don" for no reason.
Some of Trump's supporters agree with the sentiment that Puerto Rico is garbage (they were the one's fired up by Trump's assertions that immigrants are "poisoning our blood"). This fires them up. These are the "deplorables" that Hillary correctly mentioned (although her math was wrong; it's probably less than half). Others will simply point to the fact that it wasn't Trump himself who made the "garbage" statement, and his campaign disavowed it. But maybe it will turn off some who are on the fence. We'll know next week.
The Tiki torch crowd will shake their burning sticks no matter what is said. The thing about saying this in NYC is the long history of the people from Puerta Rico in the city. What I have learned from working with many of them is that they are closely networked with their relatives here in the States and back on the Island. I also learned that many are conservative in their views. Here is a guy who puts those elements into focus:
Pulling the rug on the Ukrainians wouldn't weaken NATO. It would strengthen it.
Really??? :yikes:
Oh I get. Just like Trump threatening to take out the US ground forces out of Europe would strengthen NATO...because European countries should then really commit to their defense. Or something like delusional like that.
What's weakening NATO is the fact that we're trying to drag Ukraine in even though it would lead to endless conflict with the Russians, undermining the security of everyone involved.
This is really crazy, really. Somehow you seem not to understand that it's an European objective to not let Russia defeat and conquer Ukraine (or take the parts it wants and put a "denazified" puppet regime in the carcass state that is left). How cannot you fathom this? NATO members simply would be worse of if Russia wins the war. The Baltic States would be worse. Finland and Sweden would be worse off. Something as totally evident like this comes somehow to be blurred in this anti-Americanism. Or Trumpism, for that matter. That Trump gave Afghanistan on a platter to the Taleban seems not to matter at all.
Russia wants to destroy the link between the US and Europe. Russia is against the European Union. Somehow you don't see this reality.
This is really the deafeatism that causes the West to lose it wars and emboldens Russia to annex territories from it's neighbors (which apparently you don't care about). The selectivity of anti-Americans is just incredible: somehow they can be against Israel's actions, but when it comes to Russia doing similar annexations it's OK, reasonable, realpolitik... and it's basically the fault of the US. Countries simply can do some things right and some things wrong.
And yea, Ukraine is hardly the first disaster Washington has created, but that's their problem.
And this is the cause of this delusional thinking. The sheer hubris to think everything evolves around the US and that everything happening in the World because of the West is the real problem here. This creates the World where the West loses. Because for you the US is the reason for all the troubles in the World. And other countries don't matter... especially if they agree on something with the US.
What United States has done has also actually has helped. I would prefer a South Korea to exist rather have it to be a part of North Korea. Yes, I'm fully aware that South Korea wasn't a democracy until the late 1980's, but it's still totally something else than North Korea. Something else that should be helped to survive if attacked. In the same fashion was the correct thing for the US to oppose such thing as Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe. And Ukrainians have the right to their country, it's not an artificial country that ought to be part of Russia and isn't ruled by nazis. Supporting their struggle is the correct thing.
Yet somehow being critical at US foreign policy becomes this incoherent crazy anti-americanism where the perpetrators and aggressors like Russia become victims of evil US. Poor, poor Russia.
Of course this is the election thread and even if this is an important factor in US foreign policy, it isn't important to the Americans who vote.
Somehow you seem not to understand that it's an European objective to not let Russia defeat and conquer Ukraine (or take the parts it wants and put a "denazified" puppet regime in the carcass state that is left).
It's obvious that the US/NATO insistence on a military rather than a diplomatic solution is a guarantee for Ukraine's eventual collapse.
So either US/NATO decisionmakers are utterly incompetent, or they are pursuing a completely different agenda that has nothing to do with the survival and well-being of Ukraine.
It is odd that the Trump campaign went to New Mexico. They have many ethnic divides but nothing a flyby gringo could capitalize upon. The place is nothing like Arizona or Texas.
Count Timothy von IcarusNovember 01, 2024 at 01:52#9434770 likes
Trump is up 65% to 35% in the betting markets (which have a solid track record) and ahead in swing state polling. If he outperforms his polling like he did in the last elections he will win all the swing states and it's even conceivable he could win the popular vote (hell, it's within the margin of error for some polls).
Of course, the absolute funniest situation is one where Trump wins the popular vote and loses the Electoral College, since the cognitive dissonance will be overwhelming.
But maybe he won't outperform his polls the same way. I sometimes wonder if there is a "punishment effect" in polls where supporters of a candidate they are unhappy with lie about who they support as consequence free way to voice dissent. This seems at least plausible to me because primary voters are vocal about doing this, and they sometimes do it in large numbers (e.g. over the Gaza War this cycle). So perhaps Harris can make it a short night. I sort of doubt it though.
Trump is up 65% to 35% in the betting markets (which have a solid track record) and ahead in swing state polling. If he outperforms his polling like he did in the last elections he will win all the swing states and it's even conceivable he could win the popular vote (hell, it's within the margin of error for some polls).
:rofl:
Consider this recent article on how easily "betting markets" are manipulated ...
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/dont-trust-the-political-prediction-markets
It's obvious that the US/NATO insistence on a military rather than a diplomatic solution is a guarantee for Ukraine's eventual collapse.
Lol.
As if there would be a "diplomatic solution" for the artificial state that ought to be part of Russia (or at least parts that are Novorossiya) and is ruled by nazis.
But coming back to the thread.
European green parties are demanding that Jill Stein would not run, because it favors Trump.
First, it's none of their business and second, this is the utter stupidity that continues the stranglehold of the two dominant parties in US politics (which is one cause of the stagnation and corruption).
Also shows just how much "comradeship" there's in the green ideology.
Trump capitalizes on Biden calling his supporters garbage.
Lol, Biden just showed again why the Democrats sidelined him (or the people who sponsor the party). Yet how could he remember the classic gaffe made by Hillary Clinton?
As if there would be a "diplomatic solution" for the artificial state that ought to be part of Russia (or at least parts that are Novorossiya) and is ruled by nazis.
In March/April 2022 there was a basis for peace, agreed upon and signed by the Ukrainian delegation. The West blocked it.
In other words, the West is the pink elephant in the room that does not want peace. It's obvious once you simply look at their actions rather than their words.
In March/April 2022 there was a basis for peace, agreed upon and signed by the Ukrainian delegation. The West blocked it.
Where are you getting this? I've read this and it says:
At the time, little about these peace negotiations was known, and what has leaked out in the two years since has been shoehorned into wartime talking points by each side. Mr. Putin contends the West pressured Ukraine to reject a peace deal; Ukraine's Foreign Ministry says that if Russia wanted peace in 2022, why had it attacked Ukraine in the first place?
...
To the Ukrainians dismay, there was a crucial departure from what Ukrainian negotiators said was discussed in Istanbul. Russia inserted a clause saying that all guarantor states, including Russia, had to approve the response if Ukraine were attacked. In effect, Moscow could invade Ukraine again and then veto any military intervention on Ukraines behalf a seemingly absurd condition that Kyiv quickly identified as a dealbreaker.
With that change, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team said, we had no interest in continuing the talks.
...
Mr. Putin in recent months stepped up efforts to stoke Western divisions by portraying peace as having been within reach in 2022 and saying he was prepared to restart those talks. Ukraines leaders have dismissed Mr. Putins statements on the subject as deception.
Putin is a habitual liar, and his recent rants are no exception, Ukraines foreign ministry said in a statement.
This suggests that "the West blocked it" is just Putin's propaganda.
It looks like the Whitehouse may have violated the law in order to save face.
White House altered record of Bidens garbage remarks despite stenographer concerns
WASHINGTON (AP) White House press officials altered the official transcript of a call in which President Joe Biden appeared to take a swipe at supporters of Donald Trump, drawing objections from the federal workers who document such remarks for posterity, according to two U.S. government officials and an internal email obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.
Trying to rewrite history and dupe posterity is the end result of their brand of political correctness, so it is no surprise.
The cognitive dissonance is going to be so extreme when [s]Trump wins[/s]. Even for the government itself.
Well I can't wait for the cognitive dissonance freakout here on this thread when Harris-Walz wins (possibly declared as soon as next Wednesday night). :wink:
Reply to Michael You can find first-hand accounts by a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Istanbul negotiations online. They gave an interview and confirmed that it was the West who blocked the deal.
This was already reported on earlier by Israeli mediator Naftali Bennett, but the Ukrainian diplomat confirmed it.
Former Israeli prime minister rebuts claim, boosted by Russia, that the US blocked a Ukraine peace agreement: 'It's unsure there was any deal to be made'
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett discussed his efforts to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia.
Pro-Russia commentators have focused on his saying that a peace deal was "blocked" by the West.
But Bennett has clarified that no such deal existed and said talks broke down because of apparent Russian war crimes.
...
The next exchange is what went viral. The interview, conducted in Hebrew, includes English subtitles on YouTube. According to that translation, the interviewer asked Bennett: "So they blocked it?"
"Basically, yes, they blocked [it] and I thought they were wrong," Bennett responded.
The English subtitles are flawed, however. In the exchange, Bennett and the interviewer do not use the word "blocked" but rather "stopped," referring to ongoing peace talks, not an agreement.
"I can't say if they were wrong," Bennett added.
...
In the interview, Bennett himself notes that it was not the US, France, or Germany that put an end to any peace talks. Rather, it was Russia slaughtering hundreds of civilians in a town outside the Ukrainian capital, a war crime discovered just about a month after the full-scale invasion began.
Count Timothy von IcarusNovember 01, 2024 at 22:10#9436940 likes
I wish I had your confidence. I've been stuck waiting with time to kill all day and been feeling an increasing sense of doom looking at the analysis. Nate Silver's op-ed in particular.
Bizarrely, polling suggests Democrats will do better where they need to do good to win if turnout is low.
Some love being lied to, for whatever reason. Those who tasked themselves with informing Americans are pretending Trump said Cheney should be in front of a firing squad.
Trump says war hawk Liz Cheney should be fired upon in escalation of violent rhetoric against his opponents
Well I can't wait for the cognitive dissonance freakout here on this thread when Harris-Walz wins (possibly declared as soon as next Wednesday night).
Why would there be a freakout? Almost everyone here and elsewhere has said the race is at best about 60/40 in favour of Trump. A 40% probability coming true isn't going to cause anyone to freak out or even bat an eyelid.
There would only be a freakout if your prediction of Harris winning the popular vote by nine points or so and a blue tsunami carrying her to a landslide victory is correct. That's not going to happen though.
My analysis FWIW is that Harris (now) will probably carry Pennsylvania and the election will come down to Michigan and Wisconsin which are toss ups (I expect Trump to take Arizona, Georgia and NC). If Harris loses either MI or WI, I think Trump wins. But Trump can afford to lose one of either and still win, giving him some advantage (as things stand).
It will be close with Harris carrying the popular vote by between 1 and 2.5 %. Trump will get at least 46%. @180 Proof's prediction of Trump at about 42% is way off in my view. Not long to go and things could still change, but it will take something dramatic to reset the race now.
Reply to ssu :up: An odd kind of blindness or tunnel vision or something
The Ukrainian situation might have started in some (out of sight) way between 1991 and 2009.
Certain people wouldn't accept a wholly independent Ukraine. That independence itself meant that Crimea wasn't for the Kremlin to control, and their empowering influence over Ukraine would diminish. Loss. "Must regain."
The sentiment might be older, but sometime after the cold war it apparently came into focus, became important to a number of (let's say) "concerned citizens", important enough to solidify the collision course of which we're seeing the results.
Operatives deployed, people friendly/susceptible to "the cause" rallied + more hired, "little green men" sent, Ukrainian "red lines" crossed, takeover, invasion, bombing, grab, all the while utilizing that suppress-rinse-revise machine (including domestically). Hostilities (+ elsewhere).
As far as I can tell anyway, the "root cause" was that seemingly inevitable collision set in motion by a number of "entitled", influential people asserting ownership, and rejecting a friendlier course, or democratic course for that matter. The Ukrainians (and most of the world) said "No".
Might be worth noting that the Kremlin's course of action hasn't resolved (maybe can't resolve) their supposed fear of NATO. To keep NATO at bay, are they going to make Donbas a minefield with anti-missile installations or something?
[sup]? there's plenty more evidence to this story (which is what it is) coherent, plausible, straightforward enough[/sup]
Bennett's comments were obviously highly controversial, which is probably why he was pressured to backtrack on them.
However, Ukrainian diplomat Alexander Chaly who was part of the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul gave a first-hand account that confirmed Bennett's initial statements.
However, Ukrainian diplomat Alexander Chaly who was part of the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul gave a first-hand account that confirmed Bennett's initial statements.
All I can find about him is this:
ALEXANDER CHALY: We negotiate with Russian delegation practically two months, in March and April the possible peaceful settlement agreement ... between Ukraine and Russia. And we, as you remember, concluded so called Istanbul communique. And we were very close in the middle of April, in the end of April to finalize our war with some peaceful settlement. For some reasons it was postponed.
He doesn't seem to know what happened. But the above is consistent with what I posted earlier:
To the Ukrainians dismay, there was a crucial departure from what Ukrainian negotiators said was discussed in Istanbul. Russia inserted a clause saying that all guarantor states, including Russia, had to approve the response if Ukraine were attacked. In effect, Moscow could invade Ukraine again and then veto any military intervention on Ukraines behalf a seemingly absurd condition that Kyiv quickly identified as a dealbreaker.
With that change, a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team said, we had no interest in continuing the talks.
Reply to Michael The point of contention was whether a diplomatic solution was possible with the Russians.
Answer: yes, it was possible, and this is confirmed to us first-hand by a Ukrainian account no less.
It is clear as day.
If you want to believe my views, based on neutral, Western and Ukrainian sources are a product of propaganda, I think that says more about your own biases than mine.
That diplomatic solution was giving in to absurd Russian demands.
All you really seem to be saying is that surrender is possible. And yes, it is, but Ukraine shouldnt surrender. Theyve been unjustly invaded by a foreign nation. The best diplomatic solution is Russia fucking off and paying reparations.
Reply to Michael Nonsense. If that had been the case, I'm sure the initial accounts would have mentioned it. None of them do.
Instead, they mention a certain British clown traveling to Kiev, after which the negotiations are mysteriously aborted even though all signs were that an agreement was close.
There would only be a freakout if your prediction of Harris winning the popular vote [s]by nine points or so[/s] and a [s]blue tsunami carrying her to a landslide[/s] [blowout] victory is correct. That's not going to happen though.
Either Trump or Harris could easily win 300 plus electors. Every single swing state is within the margin of error. I will only strongly disagree that Texas, Florida and Ohio are in play.
And I'l stick to my prediction that Harris will lose unless she wins MI and WI, though I think she'll win Pennsylvania.
Anyhow, we are---thankfully---running out of time to argue about it.
Consider this recent article on how easily "betting markets" are manipulated ...
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/dont-trust-the-political-prediction-markets
It reminds me of that time in High School when I was an unwarned participant of a game of chicken on a street out West as a passenger in a rusty Impala...
Reply to 180 Proof
What I liked about Selzer is that she refused to speculate how her method would work in other States. Her groove was "try it and see what you find."
The signs look good, and I think Trump will lose, but he should be losing women by 90 points. I don't understand women who would vote for him. Is it brainwashing?
Well. I am cautiously optimistic. But you can never tell. Hopefully we will be able to see what the heck most pollsters got wrong in assumptions, IF they were wrong, which seems likely given so many .2, .4 and 1% margins.
We will see on Tuesday. But, you made it alive out of that chicken game :)
I love that Trump is having conniptions because A POLL puts him behind in Iowa. One poll. Sure, an influential and well-regarded poll, but all his staffers are running around trying to appease the Emperor and putting out press releases that that pollster is wrong. Imagine the scene if he ACTUALLY loses (as I hope and believe.) Therell be more than ketchup on the walls. Imagine the staff. (I wouldnt change places with Ed Exley now for all the whisky in Ireland ~ LA Confidential.)
This suggests that "the West blocked it" is just Putin's propaganda.
Yet many here enthusiastically and repeatedly promote these falsehoods. And notably simply disregard every other aspect, like the russification and things like Putin declaring more Oblasts to be part of Russia, not just the now occupied territories. Yet but selectively picking your narrative one can say nearly anything.
The Ukrainian situation might have started in some (out of sight) way between 1991 and 2009.
It surely started then. We just didn't notice as first the restoration/reconquest of the Empire wasn't so evident, even if many especially in the Baltics and in Eastern Europe warned about this. Perhaps we thought that Russia could move on like Great Britain or Austria once the empire collapsed.
Certain people wouldn't accept a wholly independent Ukraine. That independence itself meant that Crimea wasn't for the Kremlin to control, and their empowering influence over Ukraine would diminish. Loss. "Must regain."
At first, this was rather delusional and talk that fringe politicians could say. Until it wasn't anymore.
But of course, this is for another thread.
Yet the obvious issue here is to understand that the objective of Russia is the reconquest of lost territories and to break the link of Atlanticism between the US and Europe. Russia's hostility towards the EU is logical consequence of this. The more broken and disunified Europe is, the more influence Russia has here. This is a far more hostile attack towards the US and the EU than China has ever done (at least after the involvement in the Korean War). How this isn't seen as overtly hostile and people have these delusional hallucinations of Russia and the US getting together against China is incredible. Russia's hostile policies are clear and have been long term. And similarly Trump's idea that he can end this war immediately is silly campaign talk just for on niche of voters.
That North Korean troops are now at the Ukrainian front is extremely telling just where things are going.
I don't understand women who would vote for him. Is it brainwashing?
Echo chambers, conspiracy narratives, christian evangelism, low education and so on.
The general human condition is that we are always prone to bias and avoid complex thought. It takes effort to stay educated and informed, to think and be vigilant.
Everyone is like this, which means that the general public are inclined to follow the herd, follow what emotionally feels right, and with the right narrative, truth and reality does not matter. It is relative.
To generalize... everyone is basically stupid and populists and demagogues take advantage of this by both constructing false narratives, appeal to emotion and flood elections with so much conflicting information that truth doesn't matter anymore.
It's why it's impossible to use rational arguments with these people. Within these groups, truth has eroded so much and been replaced by emotional chanting that it basically is a fundamentalist religion. If you listen to his crowds, they're chanting as a cult. Meaning, they don't even seem to understand what they're chanting, what the implications are of the words they say. They blindly follow him.
It's the same mechanics that transformed morally good people in Germany to follow Hitler into death.
And with online social media, the speed at which this stupidity spreads, there's no wonder we've seen an uprising of this type of mindless cult behavior in many countries around the world.
If you are a person with power and you reach out your hand to stupid people and tell them that they are the best people in the world, you're giving them dreams and hopes they have never felt. They don't understand world politics, they don't understand economics or the justice system, they are fundamentally lost in their existential struggles and then this powerful figure, who's name is on many things in society, who's up there at the top, but behaves just like them, reaches out a hand... it's like a divine experience to them.
It's the SAME mechanisms as cults. Someone with power who "sees you" and tells you that you are chosen to be the new elite and that everyone who called you stupid in your past will be punished. Every family member who cut ties with you will return back and tell you they're sorry for not believing you. You're part of the promised people, the kings and queens in the new world order.
I have no problem understanding why people follow Trump, regardless of his behavior. People are more stupid than they think and it demands effort to always be vigil of your own biases. These people have no such abilities and thus are open to a total annihilation of their inner agency, making them into zealots and drones.
If 2016 was any indication, people know what will happen should Kamala lose. I wager she will win, but better safe than sorry when the participants of a moral panic still have a chance to receive that last, crushing blow to their psyche.
The bipartisan Trump team is a big FU to the establishment uniparty, but also the inevitable result of the political triangulation made popular by bill Clinton and its most recent representative, Kamala Harris. The two parties were nearly indistinguishable since then until now. Whatever the results, new parties are emerging from the old ones.
[ ... ] I have no problem understanding why people follow Trump, regardless of his behavior. People are more stupid than they think and it demands effort to always be vigil of your own biases. These people have no such abilities and thus are open to a total annihilation of their inner agency, making them into zealots and drones.
So its obvious to anyone paying attention, but just so its explicit and can easily be referenced:
If Trump loses (and I think he wins), he will claim victory before all votes are counted, scream about fraud and cheating without evidence, claim early votes or delayed counts (which are totally predictable) are illegitimate, and that the election was stolen from him again. Why? Because Trump is not psychologically capable of losing; that would make him a loser.
Given how obvious this is, and the fact that Im calling it right now, you would think everyone would take these claims with a huge grain of salt if not ignore them completely (the rational choice). The 2020 behavior is also quite enough to warrant waving it off as nonsense. But just watch IF he loses, this is what will happen, and his gullible, irrational followers will go along with it.
Let it be noted. Quite pathetic, but clear as day. Id bet anything on it.
Reply to Mikie Women got pro-choice amendments passed in Kansas and Ohio, of all places. I think they're going to turn out in droves to put one of their own in and send a message to the pussygrabber and his mouthbreathing supporters.
[quote=Benjamin Franklin, 17 September 1787]A republic, if you can keep it.[/quote]
In America on the ballot today there is a simple, yet fateful question: FOR TYRANNY (Trump-Vance) OR AGAINST TYRANNY (Harris-Walz)?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Tyranny
Roevember is here! :fire: :party: :hearts:
javi2541997November 05, 2024 at 08:41#9448610 likes
Oh buddy, I hope women just help this one out, as you hope they do.
ChristofferNovember 05, 2024 at 14:22#9448800 likes
I have a bad feeling people are just redoing the same mistake as 2016. I'm seeing a lot of "Trump is screwed" kind of material that just comes off as denial. As far as I can see, I'm seeing a lot of this day leaning in favor of Trump. So I'm already setting my expectations for a Trump victory. I'm not even sure I can end it with "if I'm wrong that's a nice surprise", which feels like a cop out. I can only hope that this time around, the Trump voters will suffer enough to understand that Trump doesn't give a shit about anyone but himself. The christian evangelists won't care, they're zealots, but he's not winning because of them, he's winning because of people who fall for propaganda narratives.
Actually, why does anyone ever think that their elected president is going to fix their life? So far, elections over decades just show how society swings back and forth. It's usually just about people having hope of change and getting disappointed. So they swing back and forth, without a thought in their head that their lives are unimportant to any president. That they're just meat to be herded.
The problem is direction, vision. There are no visions. True visions. There are just scam narratives. A true visionary president who has a real plan for making society better and people agreeing to that vision not out of propaganda, but out of a will to work for a change that is properly thought through. That will change things to the better.
But the system is set up to rewards scammers and narcissists, because those people knows how to play around with people's emotions rather than being forced to confront their intellect through systemic guardrails.
How I'd wish democracy was in actual serious trouble. To the point of people seeing that danger head on, not in some abstract analysis by experts, but in society. That way people would want to change the system because they would realize what the current system can lead to.
People are too comfortable at the moment.
javi2541997November 05, 2024 at 14:44#9448830 likes
Actually, why does anyone ever think that their elected president is going to fix their life?
They do not vote wishing their lives would be fixed but saved. The political slogans have mottos such as 'democracy is in danger' 'save America', 'Israel or Palestine existence', and the delicate topic of abortion and pro-life. One side of the voters thinks that if their opponents win, their lives are at risk. So do the others otherwise.
ChristofferNovember 05, 2024 at 14:52#9448850 likes
They do not vote wishing their lives would be fixed but saved. The political slogans have mottos such as 'democracy is in danger' 'save America', 'Israel or Palestine existence' and the delicate topic of abortion and pro-life. One side of the voters thinks that if their opponents win, their lives are at risk. So do the others otherwise.
Doesn't matter. The principle I described is the same. Swing voters goes back and forth expecting change, but their lives do not change. All they're doing is lowering the propaganda narratives down to even further polarized language.
People don't know what they want in life, or what they need, people just dream nightmares or utopias and fall into the narratives of those who can scare or give them hope.
My point is that democracy isn't in danger... it's in some ways already dead. And people need to realize this in order to rebuild it.
Todays the day we get 4 more years of the old degenerate climate-denying corporatist con man. Itll do irreversible damage and lock in 50 years of a reactionary Supreme Court and judiciary generally and put the brakes on the little climate policy we managed to pass but hey, Americans are fairly stupid and easily brainwashed, and the Democrats should have known better. The lesson theyll take away from this is that they should move farther to the right, which is insane.
Of course, we may not know the results tonight.
ChristofferNovember 05, 2024 at 15:27#9448890 likes
People do not learn lessons on a sociological scale. Individuals learn lessons, if the population is inclined and willing to listen to those who learned lessons about past events, they can change. If they reject these lessons, they will repeat history.
Society didn't learn any lessons from WWII, individuals did and their lessons were taught to the rest. Fortunately those lessons shook enough to form a consensus on where history should go.
Today, however, people do not seem to listen to individuals who want to teach. People are so called, "fed up with experts". They will only listen when they, themselves, face the consequences that would gives the lessons the experts already learned.
For something like climate change, this is what will happen. People won't want any change until storms and catastrophes absolutely destroy their lives. When the heatwaves, hurricanes, floods and stuff keeps coming and don't stop. When relatives and friends die because of this, then they will start to learn the lessons. And when the rest of us have said "we told you so" and they finally agree, only then will change come into play... far too late to make a difference.
And seen as more and more individuals who learned lessons from WWII disappear, there's no wonder that the mechanics of what enabled WWII to happen will start to appear again.
The fundamental stupidity of humanity as a whole and over history is staring back at you.
My point is that democracy isn't in danger... it's in some ways already dead. And people need to realize this in order to rebuild it.
I agree. But a large number of Americans think otherwise. I was watching the news, and experts on this matter said Trump supporters really believe that if Kamala wins, American democracy and security are in danger, when they are already flawed, as are most of the Western countries. Maybe spreading fear in the eventual lack of national security and individual freedom is a successful political strategy. I can't imagine the individual rights and freedom of people like Elon Musk and WASP families at risk, but surprisingly, millions of voters do.
Yes. Very poor sentence, I meant to say, I don't think there are many similarities between Clinton and Harris' situation. The only surprise was turnout for Trump in states assumed to be blue, that went for him.
This time, there is no such complacency in the "blue wall" states. Furthermore, I think that pollsters may for once be over-estimating Trump.
Finally - Selzer's poll aside - it's been a brutal week for Trump.
RelativistNovember 05, 2024 at 22:31#9449990 likes
I saw this cartoon this morning:
Just before 5PM, Trump wrote on Truth Social:
"A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!"
Voters in this election were overwhelmingly concerned about the condition of democracy and the economy as they cast ballots. Americans put democracy first, with 35% stating it was the most important factor in selecting how to vote for president, followed by the economy at 31%, an NBC News exit poll revealed. Abortion (14%) and immigration (11%) were the second most important issues for voters, with only 4% naming foreign policy.
This sounds hopeful for Harris supporters.
ChristofferNovember 05, 2024 at 23:10#9450160 likes
Its amazing that when listening to Trump voters who are actually trying to make a rational case for their vote, most of them vote because of the economy. They blame Biden and Kamala for the increased prices. No one seems to understand why inflation spiked, why gas prices spiked and prices went up and no one seems to understand that Biden helped mitigate the effects of inflation and that the central bank is acting independently from the government to adjust the economy.
:shade:
RelativistNovember 05, 2024 at 23:26#9450240 likes
I really wonder on what people base their predictions, including myself actually. To me there is no shadow of a doubt that Trump will win. There are authoritarian tendencies rising in the world and the economy is hurting many people. Those two tendencies lead me to think Trump will win and there is a high turn out among republicans... Of course, the polls are even and I am not even American so what do I know. Still, not a shadow of a doubt... My feeling must be based on instinct, a hunch, some sort of worldview perhaps, but cannot be fully rational. So, my question to you, on what information / knowledge / feelings do you base your confidence that either Trump or Harris will win?
ChristofferNovember 06, 2024 at 00:07#9450550 likes
I agree, I don't understand how so many people are calling Harris a winner at this stage. There's nothing that really points towards it. Remember that there's a lot of Trump voters who don't want to be open about it.
And usually, authoritarian people gain power when the world is in turmoil. People are gullible and believe that someone will come in and just "fix things" without any negative consequences.
So at the moment I think people need to come back down to earth and don't get the hopes up too much.
creativesoulNovember 06, 2024 at 00:08#9450560 likes
Very interesting early exit polls showing what's most important to voters...
I am the first to admit that the feeling is not entirely rational, also not philosophical... So I wonder, I have that feeling based on gut instinct, but have we all? Or is there something I have maybe missed that others do see? The meta question here might be philosophical or psychological, on what do we base our predictions of future events?
I am derailing actually, just wanting to say that, no, my feeling is not rational. It is very firm though :smile:
This is the NYT election predictor based on the current info. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/results-president-forecast-needle.html#
The only question is control of the house. But thats not looking great either. So looks like complete control of the federal government for two years and the judiciary for 40 or 50 years.
More extreme climate disasters are also now locked in. Enjoy.
The average American doesn't want to be ruled by a woman. I never expected their sexism to be that severe.
You can't say it's because she's black because Obama was in office two terms, so if you can't call the average American racist, you've still got misogyny to argue.
javi2541997November 06, 2024 at 05:08#9451590 likes
Reply to Hanover I would not call it misogyny. It is just that most of your fellow compatriots might not feel goodor comfortableabout having a woman in the White House, as well as that we don't feel comfortable if we turn into a republic. These factors tend to be intrinsic in the soul and mindset of every nation more than we thought.
He'll burn down the system. That's what people want. They're tired of politics, tired of being responsible for the world's ills, tired of worrying about climate change or foreign policy, tired of the current state of capitalism (though the latter they don't identify as the problem).
The solution is to burn it all down. Elect someone obviously hated by politicians and the media. Someone who is "unfit for office", which to their ears means he's a danger to the status quo. He's a danger to "democracy"? Great that means he'll change the system which doesn't work for ordinary Americans.
This is not meant as an indictment. There's stupidity and cultish behaviour around Trump, but their feeling that something is deeply wrong is understandable. It's not limited to the US either. I see a lot of the same sentiment in Europe now.
He'll burn down the system. That's what people want. They're tired of politics, tired of being responsible for the world's ills, tired of worrying about climate change or foreign policy, tired of the current state of capitalism (though the latter they don't identify as the problem).
The solution is to burn it all down. Elect someone obviously hated by politicians and the media. Someone who is "unfit for office", which to their ears means he's a danger to the status quo. He's a danger to "democracy"? Great that means he'll change the system which doesn't work for ordinary Americans.
This is not meant as an indictment.
I totally agree with this. This is the real reason why Trump is elected (or if he get's through to get the second term). And thus it really doesn't matter what a debacle the whole Trump II administration turns out to be, as long as the media is offended and the elites are angry, Trump voters are happy. Because he is tearing down the rotten system. The smug media/Hollywood apparatus doesn't simply understand this and because it fully has gone with the Democratic narrative, it helps Trump to be the contender (and possible winner) he is.
Anyway, these so-called liberals don't understand how hypocrite bigots they are when they talk about white-trash, hillbillies and flyover country and then uphold the woke narrative. Somehow, when it's your own race, whites talking about whites, in the US you can be publicly as offensive as ever. All what this does is that it shows the actual bigotry in the American system.
First thing in a democracy is to respect your fellow citizens who disagree with you and vote differently. And never, ever, ridicule them.
RFK Secretary for Health. Elon Musk, Secretary for Government Expenditure. Steve Bannon, chief press officer. Like when your jetliner starts to fall from the sky - buckle your seatbelts, put your head between your knees, and kiss your ass goodbye.
Some relevant iconography:
This icon is ubiquitous in Buddhist cultures. They are called 'the three poisons', responsible for all human misery. Snake represents hatred. Pig represents greed. Rooster is ignorance. They're running the show now.
Kind of accepted the possibility of Trump winning since Israel started their war in Lebanon in late September so the result tonight isn't surprising to me. Well we get what we voted for. We'll see if prices now magically go down to 2019 levels now that Trump is in office again.
And Harris could still carry the popular vote. But she's a weak uninspiring candidate is the problem.
I still blame Biden ultimately for tying his party's hands like this. Even Harris herself is incapable of distancing herself from him because she's a part of his administration. His decision to run again and his (even now) stubborn belief that he's capable of winning is the biggest reason why the Democrats lost.
I always feared the worst, but I think this is going to be a lot worse than I feared. I think I'm going to get my head out of news broadcasts and go back to just studying philosophy and Buddhism.
And now he's protected by the Supreme Court decision that he's granted immunity for 'any official acts'. The Project 2025 ideologues are lined up to purge the bureaucracy and, quote, 'take down the deep state leadership.' He's promised 11 million deportations and massive tarrifs. He has a hit list of his 'enemies within'.
Isn't Trump just another celebrity, virtue signalling, identity policies wanker (albeit of the right)? Do you think that he and Vance and Musk and RFK and Bannon will be able to agree on anything and not end up derailing themselves in acrimony in a few months? Seems to me that Musk, Bannon and RFK will need to take out Trump in '25 so they can get to the real work.
javi2541997November 06, 2024 at 07:24#9451970 likes
Do you think that he and Vance and Musk and RFK and Bannon will be able to agree on anything and not end up derailing themselves in acrimony in a few months?
Musk says he wants to slash government spending and bust unions, while RFK undermines vaccines. Both of these people could've pushed for climate action on the right given their backgrounds, but why make things better when you can make everything a hell of a lot worse?
Isn't Trump just another celebrity, virtue signalling, identity policies wanker (albeit of the right)?
who happens to now be the most powerful man in the world. The Republicans now control the White House, Senate and House. Forget about environmental policies and climate targets. Forget about all the lawsuits and indictments he was facing, he'll walk away scot free. It's a disastrous outcome.
Todays the day we get 4 more years of the old degenerate climate-denying corporatist con man. Itll do irreversible damage and lock in 50 years of a reactionary Supreme Court and judiciary generally and put the brakes on the little climate policy we managed to pass but hey, Americans are fairly stupid and easily brainwashed, and the Democrats should have known better. The lesson theyll take away from this is that they should move farther to the right, which is insane.
So a reminder of those confidently predicting a Harris win/landslide:
Allan Litchman (never wrong in 40 years 13 keys guy)
Michael Moore
Bill Maher
Nate Silver (barely)
James Carville
anyone else care to add to this?
The polls turned out fairly accurate still underestimating Trump but not by as much.
Now itll be fun watching the Republicans try to govern and yet still blame democrats when everything goes to shit, as it always does under their leadership.
Todays the day we get 4 more years of the old degenerate climate-denying corporatist con man. Itll do irreversible damage and lock in 50 years of a reactionary Supreme Court and judiciary generally and put the brakes on the little climate policy we managed to pass but hey, Americans are fairly stupid and easily brainwashed, and the Democrats should have known better. The lesson theyll take away from this is that they should move farther to the right, which is insane.
Mikie
Some of my friends keep telling me that Trump is what happens when the liberals have lost their way. What do you think are the lessons for Democrats here?
Reply to frank I saw Max Richter in concert last night. He played the album, Blue notebooks, which he wrote 20yrs ago in protest against the Iraq war.
Sublime experience.
What do you think are the lessons for Democrats here?
Not to run an empty, establishment candidate who runs away from every popular progressive policy there is, and who has no principles. They played this one by the book and failed yet again. Didnt help that she, like Clinton (and, to a degree, Biden), was essentially anointed by the DNC.
It gets tiresome having to exclusively vote AGAINST something thats extremely uninspiring. Despite all the gaslighting, I never felt the so-called energy, and I imagine millions of others didnt either. It all felt rather bland and formal and forced and coached. Like Hillary all over again: machine-like; robotic. I still voted against the worst, as we all should, but eventually you have to offer something as well. Biden, pressured by Bernie (as he needed that large cohort to get elected), ran on several of his policies. Kamala immediately ran to the middle, which every bozo pundit in their infinite wisdom said to do. You see the obvious result.
What will they actually learn? Nothing, probably. Maybe blame Russia again, or run even MORE to the right next time.
Musk indeed had been a democrat. Why the Biden administration snubbed Musk, like for example praising electric car makers other than Musk, who has been the leader and the newcomer, is basically typical Democratic fumbling. Yes, Musk may not have been a supporter of trade unions, but still. And likely the real cause is him buying Twitter and not being the DEI supporting political line tower as the other internet corporations.
Hence the outcome was logical and Trump got a great backer for his new administration.
It gets tiresome having to exclusively vote AGAINST something thats extremely uninspiring. Despite all the gaslighting, I never felt the so-called energy, and I imagine millions of others didnt either. It all felt rather bland and formal and forced and coached. Like Hillary all over again: machine-like; robotic. I still voted against the worst, as we all should, but eventually you have to offer something as well.
That makes perfect sense to me. Thanks. Yes, I said to a friend yesterday that there wasn't a genuine bone in her body and, perversely, by contrast, Trump appeared spontaneous and real, even if he is a carny barker and quite obviously a cunt. What do they say? Shit has its own integrity...
Medicare for all, $15 minimum wage, Green New Deal, free public college, student debt cancellation, the PRO Act (unions), free child care and child tax credit, raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, gun control, police reform, etc etc. She ran from all of it. Not only does it energize the base, but most of it has broad appeal. Not to mention shes a war hawk and genocide supporter like Biden.
If George Washington was the father of Americas democracy, Donald Trump is its undertaker
[quote=Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald] George Washington notably declared American democracy to be an experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.
The American people are now abandoning it as a failed experiment.
In word and in deed, Donald Trump for years has made plain that he does not respect the results of elections, unless he is winning.
Yet most American voters, in full knowledge, cast their ballots for him in this election.
In case anyone had forgotten his autocratic instinct, Trump issued a reminder just two days before election day.
He has never accepted the outcome of the 2020 election, fomented a riot to try to stay in the White House, and on Sunday said that I shouldnt have left it.
Seven in 10 Americans understood the risk, telling CNN pollsters last week that they didnt expect Trump would concede defeat if he lost. Yet most voters willingly handed him power.
If Washington was the father of Americas democracy, Trump has auditioned to be its undertaker and is now positioned to duly deliver.
He didnt have to seize power. America, the modern worlds greatest champion of democracy for the past eight decades, has lost faith in its calling.
That is the true uniqueness of this election not the candidates, not the policies, not the pageantry. They matter. And, in a democratic system, the power holders and their policies can be replaced, renewed, reviewed.
But in an autocracy, an absolute leader is not interested in being replaced nor his policies reviewed. The great advantage of democracy is not that it produces the best possible government but the bloodless removal of a bad one, as Karl Popper said.
Trump has made clear, over and again, that, if given power, he will not surrender it. As he said to an audience this year, vote for him just this time, you wont have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? Itll be fixed, itll be fine, you wont have to vote any more.
When Joe Biden took power, he said he would try to save American democracy.
From the very beginning, nothing has been guaranteed about democracy in America, he said in 2022. Every generation has had to defend it, protect it, preserve it, choose it.
Until now. Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, failed.
Democracy has been in retreat on planet Earth since the democratic recession took hold at the time of the global financial crisis 16 years ago. Only 24 full democracies survive among the worlds 200 nations, according to The Economists Democracy Index.
And now the centrepiece of the system, the hub of a network of democratic allies embracing more than 40 nations, has collapsed in on itself.
American democracy was hollowed out by a failure of its promise to its people. Most Americans believe that their country is riddled with corruption, most believe that government serves the elites and not the people, and nearly half of all voters are sceptical that the American experiment in self-governance is working, to summarise a New York Times poll published last month.
And now they have delivered the death sentence to the system they feel betrayed them.
Not because they expect Trump to actually fix a broken system. In her landmark work, The Politics of Resentment, political scientist Katherine Cramer described how she took regular part in a wide range of community groups in her home state of Wisconsin, one of the swing states in deciding elections and part of the great swath of left-behind, fly-over America.
When Kramer asks groups of Trump supporters how they expect he will improve their lives, they are surprised at the question, she reports. They dont expect Trump to be the vehicle for their improvement but for their disenchantment and anger.
When Trump said last year for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution, he spoke for those voters. They have given up on their system, feeling abandoned by smug big-city elites, but have confidence in Trump to offend the elites and damage their system.
The US, the nation that kept liberty alive in the face of a fearsome axis of autocracies eight decades ago, seems to be losing confidence that its worth the effort.
Will Trumps America be prepared to confront the rising partnership of autocracies in their fast-forming new front Xi Jinpings China, Vladimir Putins Russia, the ayatollahs Iran and
Kim Jong-uns North Korea?
It must be in question. A former Trump national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, explained why Trump prefers the worlds worst dictators to Americas traditional allies. Its part of his struggle for self-worth. If hes accepted by so-called strongmen, he might convince others, and especially himself, that he was strong.
Benjamin Franklin said that America was a republic, if you can keep it. He might be surprised to know that, in the end, it just gave democracy away.[/quote]
ChristofferNovember 06, 2024 at 10:33#9452330 likes
Let's see how long it will take for the gullible voters to realize that Trump doesn't give a shit about them.
Because now they own everything and will have no problems installing whatever policy they like.
The rational concept is to never treat his voters as stupid. To listen and understand why they vote for him. But listening to voters outside the voting halls, in interviews that weren't pre-planned democratic hit pieces trying to find the bottom of the barrel... they're still not convincing me that they aren't stupid. It's just not as blunt as the Maga trumpsters being portrayed so far; it's more that they simply either do not understand the basics of economy or have any actual insight into the actual policies and politics that's been done.
So many people just don't understand why there's inflation. Some people think the Trump tariffs will grant them more income because they believe it's the other nations who pay them. Or that Biden's strategies to fight inflation was the cause of the inflation, not the Ukraine war and it's energy politics, and the pandemic screwing around with the global market.
I know children in school who learn this shit when they're around 12, who understand the basics of it.
If anything, this just confirms the notion that people are gullible and stupid. What's the point in listening to these people complaining in ways that have no relation to the real world? It's just emotional garbage reasoning, it's just biases and fallacies and a basic inability to have integrity towards manipulators. It's impossible to meet their wants and needs since they live on another planet.
We've had 80 years of processing "why the German people where so stupid in following Hitler", there's been literature, shows, theatre, movies and even video games handling the concepts and intellectual discussion with the public about why people follow charismatic leaders who doesn't give a shit about them.
Hell, THIS YEAR we had one of the biggest stories about this turn into a massive cinematic hit in Dune part 2, that is primarily about this concept. But in hindsight... there are so many people who just shouted "Lisan al Gaib" when watching the movie, believing in Paul in the same way as the fremen people. How the point of the story went right over the heads of the gullible... again.
No, these people deserve the sledge hammer of reality to the face. Maybe this time, when Trump policies aren't blocked by democrats in other sectors of the government; the people will actually, finally, open their fucking eyes.
Reply to 180 Proof Too much noise to do any predicting. I was hoping along with you.
As Mao said: "All is chaos under the heavens, the times are excellent." The EU is too inflexible to take advantage of this but we know Russia, India and China will. And of those I'd rather have India do well than the other two.
Too much noise to do any predicting. I was hoping along with you.
But the world is globally moving in the direction of post-truth behaviors. And in such a climate, you can't have an election if there are no laws preventing lies. Lies and opinions aren't the same thing. A post-truth world thrives in lies because voters doesn't care what is true, reasonable or good even for them, they go with the narrative that is emotionally good for them. This is what fuels people like Trump.
So there's no surprise that we see more of this. Economic turmoil and world uncertainty almost always generates a populist response.
The problem people have when trying to analyze the world is that their political bias also produces a cognitive bias. People leaning towards the left have been living in a delusional idea that things can't get worse. They believe that the good will prevail.
If there's one position where I've been trying to be for a long time, it's on the side of truth, to the best of my ability. That doesn't make me an unmoving static centrist, no, I think that this political categorization and labeling of everyone around us needs to fucking stop.
There's only two sides right now. The side of the lies, filled with populists, criminals, corruption, war and hate. And the side of truth, filled with rational reasoning, scientific methods and thinking, problem solving, humanism and collaboration.
What the post-truth world needs is better ways of streamlining how we reach truth. Better ways of how to cut through the noise of lies and bullshit in order to collaborate for a better future for all.
Right now, there are no tools of a democratic society to handle post-truth representatives and their followers, because the very thing that a democratic society was founded on were that people followed actual truth. When truth disappears because the tools of rationality and reasoning gets demolished, we also lose the foundation for a democratic nation to function properly.
In essence, democracies of the world today aren't equipped to handle a post-truth movement. It doesn't win on arguments for truth, it doesn't win on policy that are meant to improve society, it wins on noise, lies and a people who don't care about truth anymore.
What good is a democracy when no one votes based on truth and politicians don't have to fear any truths? In which you only have to be charismatic and make noise to win. Then the actual politics doesn't matter anymore. It's not an election about what matters for people, it's a popularity contest that risk people's lives.
I think the democratic world needs to wake up and look at the system itself. To stop thinking that just having a democratic system, regardless of its quality, is as good as it gets.
The world needs to politically evolve into caring more for truth. Otherwise we will all live in the utter chaos of a fully post-truth society where nothing matters to people and no one knows where to even begin to find answers to what's actually going on.
ChristofferNovember 06, 2024 at 12:36#9452490 likes
Never act in panic. This was a big mistake the democrats did this year. In panic they replaced Old Joe with laughing Kamalahaha.
I saw that June debate between Biden and Trump and to tell you the truth I saw Joe being too old, but I sympathized with him for the reason that Joe Biden was putting effort to answer the questions of the journalists, whereas Donald Trump was not answering any questions.
Kamalahaha believed that "kindhearted democrats" need good vibes, not answers. That was a big mistake and I hope Pelosi, Clooney and Kamalahaha fire themselves from the Democratic Party, cause they will be complicit in this crazy comeback of climate-change deniers, gun-loving, god-fearing, republicans.
Stop blaming middle-class Americans for this ugly outcome! Democrats should blame themselves and their corporate media only. One of the very few things I came to agree with JD Vance is that corporate media are the biggest threat to American democracy on this day.
I saw Max Richter in concert last night. He played the album, Blue notebooks, which he wrote 20yrs ago in protest against the Iraq war.
Sublime experience.
I'm so envious! I listen to Max Richter at least once a week. Also Nils Frahm.
Trump's vice president leans toward project 2025, which is about removing opposition to Trump from the federal government. Plus he favors dictatorship, so the coming years might be pretty interesting. More isolationism, maybe a transition to dictatorship by the end of the century?
ChristofferNovember 06, 2024 at 13:33#9452600 likes
Trump's vice president leans toward project 2025, which is about removing opposition to Trump from the federal government. Plus he favors dictatorship, so the coming years might be pretty interesting. More isolationism, maybe a transition to dictatorship by the end of the century?
I don't think so. Post-truth can only survive as a society so far as to give people nothing for their devotion to bullshit. And any attempts to install authoritarian leaders by ripping the constitution and dismantling guardrails of democracy will lead to civil war before any such authoritarian regime takes place.
Another scenario is that the nation gets divided so much it actually breaks apart. With a Christian fundamentalist society spread across the deep red states making up a new nation, while the rest and blue states form their own. It's usually what happens if a divide gets too polarized and doesn't lead to civil war. So, in your scenario of dictatorship, it would be a nation with an authoritarian leader built upon Christian fundamentalism akin to Islamic fundamentalism in the middle east.
It could very well end up in a similar image of Margaret Atwood's Gilead.
While something like this shouldn't be brushed off as pessimistic fear mongering, I do think that such a future is unlikely. Primarily because there are enough people who don't want it and they are only passive about it until it seriously threatens them. If Trump tries anything drastic these four years, I believe there will be enough republicans who are rational enough to block it, since not all are Trump fundamentalists. And the blowback from these coming four years will likely spark a major return for the democrats in which they might realize how in danger the nation is, installing enough protections from leaders like Trump and maybe even reforming the democratic process nationwide to fit more up to date democratic systems in the world.
If there is a crisis, or civil war happening in the next 50 years, I think that the US will transform into a proper parliament and abandon the old system. The bipartisan system is so broken that it's not a democracy anymore and people are fed up with this "voting for the least bad" type of election.
People will get fed up with idiots running things, especially when the real consequences kick in.
Deleted UserNovember 06, 2024 at 13:40#9452610 likes
This user has been deleted and all their posts removed.
A historic campaign and the greatest political comeback in history. Not even bullets could stop the Trump train!
Sadly, the live-action-roleplay of his opponents continue. Fighting an imaginary fascism involves erecting an actual one, so I suspect political violence, institutional subordination, and a captured press will be working diligently to disrupt the Trump regime. Luckily the people arent buying it anymore.
To me there is no shadow of a doubt that Trump will win. There are authoritarian tendencies rising in the world and the economy is hurting many people. Those two tendencies lead me to think Trump will win and there is a high turn out among republicans..
A fair point, but I actually thought this pointed in the other direction. Trump won after Brexit, with the Fac Five all winning or most winning right around that time.
Theresa Mayhem and Mo Mojo Bojo
2Dirty Dueterte
Majorly Magnificent Modi
Make Europe Great Again Le Pen (didn't quite win, but making it to the final was an unexpected win)
Outlandish Orban
:cool:
And we might also include Big Boy Bolsonaro and the apparent strength of Rootin Tootin Putin.
But since then the right wing waves have largely broken. Most of those people are out. The UK just had a hard shift the other way, and Modi lost a ton of seats, while Bibi is also looking in very rough shape. Xi is facing a Chinese economy facing a major, potentially sea change slow down. Meanwhile, Putin, the sort of arch mascot led his country into a disastrous war that destroyed and badly embarrassed his military, and had to flee his capital due to a mercenary coup.
To be sure, the anemic Western response in Ukraine (sending a handful of tanks years after it has become clear that sending actually meaningful numbers won't cause a catastrophic escalation, being unable to match Russian and North Korean shell production, etc.) is also embarrassing.
Yet in general, Trump's win seems more against the (short term) currents than with it. TBH, the exit polls make it seem like this is more of the Democrats than anything else. Biden had no business running for a second term and Harris was a bad candidate. That exit polls suggest that Trump lost significant support from white voters and yet seems likely to win the popular vote (the first GOP non-incumbent to do so in almost 40 years) should be a wake up call on Democrats. It seems to me that immigration is the number one issue carrying the far-right across the West and so far the liberal establishment in North America and Europe has largely refused to budge on it.
Of course, when far/further right parties win elections in Western countries they also don't really change immigration either. Trump seems to have the House and Senate, so we'll see. I think they will be far more interested in cementing systems or minority rule, cutting taxes, and removing various regulations than actually cutting off the supply of cheap labor or fixing the debt.
RelativistNovember 06, 2024 at 18:59#9452970 likes
Trump won because he got more votes. That sounds simplistic, but my point is that people did not vote for the principles Trump represents. They didn't vote for fascism, and most don't understand what rule-of-law means. Trump was good at telling them what they wanted to hear: simple explanations and solutions for the perceived negatives in their lives. Trump amplified and leveraged pessimism. Few voters make an effort to understand the impact of policy proposals.
Deporting millions of immigrants sounds appealing to those who buy into scapegoating them for some problems in society, but it ignores the negative consequences. I don't think anything good can possibly come of it, if it actually comes to pass. It will fix no problems, it will just make some people happy that these "others" are out of our midst. It can't solve the real problems - that would require changing the laws, and Trump has told that's not necessary - his "extreme power" is all that's needed.
Deficit spending is a big concern for many, so slashing $2T from the budget sounds like the right thing to do. That exceeds the total amount spent on discretionary spending, so it would have to entail cuts to "mandatory" spending, including Social Security, Medicare, Veterans benefits, and the military. Wherever the cuts are made, that will negatively impact the recipients. On a macro level, decreased government spending will be contractionary to the economy - there will be less money in circulation, decreasing GDP - thus negatively impacting the economy as a whole.
Huge tarriffs will increase the prices of imported goods - so it will be directly inflationary. It is likely to result in retaliatory tarriffs that will decrease demand for US goods, so that will negatively impact manufacturing jobs - this will be balanced against the increased demand for domestic manufacturing, so there will be this win - but it's an macro balancing, not a micro one: some individual producers will do better (adding jobs) while others will do worse (losing jobs).
Removing taxes on Social Security income will benefit only higher income recipients (this includes me, BTW), and it will deplete the SS Trust fund 2 years earlier (from 10 to 8 years). Deporting undocumented immigrants, who pay into SS but will never receive benefits) will hurt it even more.
I don't know if Trump will actually do the things he promised. I hope not. But if he doesn't, his voters will be pissed. If he does, there will be serious negative impacts. That's the problem with simplistic proposals for complex problems. So it seems to me Trump is in a lose-lose situation. The good news: this bodes well for the next election cycle.
All i can really say is, hehehe. This was the obvious outcome. It seemed clear to me at least a year out. I very much hope Mikie is getting the help he needs right now. Hands across America.
javi2541997November 06, 2024 at 19:49#9453100 likes
I don't know if Trump will actually do the things he promised. I hope not. But if he doesn't, his voters will be pissed. If he does, there will be serious negative impacts. That's the problem with simplistic proposals for complex problems. So it seems to me Trump is in a lose-lose situation. The good news: this bodes well for the next election cycle.
He doesn't need to do them and would be better off not doing them. Things won't change but he can bullshit his way into telling people they have gotten better and alot of people may buy it. Of course I think he probably will do alot of them unfortunately. He sounds very passionate about tariffs as the solution to everything and he did do a trade war with China the last time around (though this time will be way more widespread and intense). Will people be swayed by his statements that he solved inflation despite prices likely increasing from the tariffs and them criticizing the Dems for being out of touch in the past 4 years? Maybe, I really cannot say, but it doesn't really matter at this point since they'll be dealing with it all the same.
Never act in panic. This was a big mistake the democrats did this year. In panic they replaced Old Joe with laughing Kamalahaha.
I can point to alot of things that Dems did wrong (like running with the Cheneys while snubbing the Palestinians in their base) but replacing Joe was one of the only reasonable things they did this election cycle. Joe Biden was ultimately the biggest drag on the party even after dropping out and his connection to Kamala was what doomed her more than anything.
The problem with the Dems was what we saw these past few election cycles: the Dems never listen to their base. They could've let the voters decide who should best represent them but why do that and risk someone who the party establishment can't control when they can have one of their goons be nominated instead? The last time they didn't do that was in 2008 with a dark horse named Obama and look how that turned out for them. Clinton, Biden, and Harris were all terrible candidates. Clinton was massively unpopular when she ran in 2016, Biden couldn't even win the first few primaries despite being the frontrunner, and Harris didn't even get any votes in any of her primaries. But they were all nominated anyways and often through some shady tactics that undermined any opposition. Maybe next time they will let the party decide, but who knows if there will be a next time.
Yesterday more Americans chose rather than rejected tyranny. To wit:
make Apartheid great again make Antisemitism great again make Anti-women great again make Anti-immigrants great again make Anti-labor great again make Anti-intellect great again make Anti-democracy great again make Above-the-Law great again make Assholery great again ...
prevails 'DJT is vox populi!' the culmination of the last half-century of bipartian Neoliberal de-industrialization 'It's the structurally exploitative-systematically discriminatory Plutonomy, stupid!' aided and abetted by corporatist Reality TV, WWE & Social Media which has groomed (radicalized) the precariat for reactionary populism???
Fuck me.
creativesoulNovember 06, 2024 at 21:52#9453620 likes
The problem with the Dems was what we saw these past few election cycles: the Dems never listen to their base. They could've let the voters decide who should best represent them
Bernie. From the establishment's silencing of the right candidate for working class Americans came Trump's possibility to do what he's done.
It's a non-trivial matter to distribute culpability here. Clearly, lots of people are gullible and vote against their interests. Yet there is also manifest stupidity and ignorance.
How to make sense of this? For now, answers are pending.
creativesoulNovember 06, 2024 at 22:05#9453820 likes
the culmination of the last half-century of bipartisn Neoliberal de-industrialization 'It's the structurally exploitative-systematically discriminatory Plutonomy, stupid!' aided and abetted by corporatist Reality TV, WWE & Social Media which has groomed (radicalized) the precariat for reactionary populism???
I'm going to try to become more indifferent to US politics as it tends to dominate the news, and I have become too concerned with it. My family gets annoyed with me 'shouting at the television'.
But I will note that the Trump phenomenon has normalised mendacity. It is indisputable that Trump lies continuously, about matters large and small, some of which concern issues of extreme national and global importance.
But with this victory, these lies have now become normalised - for example, the lie that Trump's many indictments were based on 'weaponising' politics and politicisation of the Department of Justice. The lie that the January 6th insurrection was anything other than a vile assault on democracy and law and order. All of this is now going to become normalised in public discourse.
There's a term, I think it's associated with Marxist philosophy, although I'm not highly familiar with it - 'false consciousness'. This is what I think the whole Trump phenomenon crystallises in the electorate. An entire national identity that has lies as part of its identity. It can't be good.
Bernie. From the establishment's silencing of the right candidate for working class Americans came Trump's possibility to do what he's done.
Yep. Bernie would have won, in 2016, in 2020, in 2024. But the DNC made sure that didnt happen. So this outcome isnt surprising which is why I called it weeks ago.
Trump is still the stupidest choice, but this will come with a lot of good things like giving yet another wakeup call to the Democratic Party and the inevitable infighting and finger pointing. Itll be fun watching what nonsense excuses they come up with. :lol:
A simple question I ask is: how many times did Harris rally with Bernie?
My family gets annoyed with me 'shouting at the television'.
My family was annoyed that I was calling it for Trump :lol:
But yeah, its good to take some time away. Most people I talk to really dont follow any of this that closely. What they end up with is whatever simple soundbite or slogan happens to make its way into their brains.
Political hobbyism, thats all this is really. Dont lose any sleep over it. Use whatever you feel to get involved locally. Itll reset your perspective a bit.
ChristofferNovember 06, 2024 at 23:02#9454030 likes
I will note that the Trump phenomenon has normalised mendacity.
In a post-truth society, the public have stopped pursuing truth, stopped listening to experts and scientists. Rather they let themselves follow whatever is emotionally satisfying, be it their own opinion or someone else's opinion.
Liars, scammers and manipulators have always existed, but the public have generally been able to arrive at the truth together, fighting back at the ones trying to scam their ways into power.
But in a post-truth society the public is in an intellectual disarray. They aren't able to organize around a truth or around some facts and thus will fail to keep demagogues and authoritarian grifters away.
This is why Trump is elected. The noise of post-truth society let's people like Trump do whatever they want and people will never be able to align around what they think about him. Only the ones who sees him for what he is are able to, but as we're seeing globally, more and more people are unable to do this.
It's one of the reasons why I am so focused on research, scientific methods and such in other arguments on this forum. Because people have lost touch with what rational reasoning really is. Whenever I see someone, in their argument, target scientists and their research with a vague concept of science changing all the time, and therefor "scientific research and findings can't be trusted", I know that I'm dealing with someone who has succumbed to the post-truth world.
It blocks any ability to progress ideas, to have proper discussions. Facts and truth are called into question so often that any attempt to form actual knowledge is futile.
The challenge, globally, is how we get rid of this post-truth bullshit. How research, experts, proper discussions, scientific methods and facts return back to normalcy and popularity again.
Instead of teaching people that all their opinions matters, teach them that facts and truth matters and their opinions are worthless without them. Make it embarrassing again to utter stupidity. Something that people look down on enough so that it hurts sociologically.
This inclusion bullshit of everyone's opinion mattering has shaped everyone into their own little expert who knows everything about everything.
It needs to stop, because this is what fuels the post-truth world that grifters like Trump feeds on. They won't disappear as symptoms until the root cause is treated.
How? I have no clue, but it's up to society to solve this. It's this that needs to happen. Everything else is just barking up the wrong tree.
Reply to Christoffer Yes, I do wonder how much of factor fantasy is in all of this. I think Trump lives in a fantasy world of his own making. He plainly believes whatever he likes, and has all the apparent trappings. I've stood under Trump Tower in Chicago, and it really does convey astounding wealth and power. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny, of course, because in reality Trump has many business failures, and started out, not with the million that his Dad bequeathed him, but 400 million. But any kind of scrutiny applied to Trump, he simply denies and lies, and the projects all his weaknesses onto those who accuse him. And now the electorate has validated all of that.
[quote=Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post]when a country deliberately rejects decency, truth, democratic values and good governance, the problem is not a candidate, a party, the media or a feckless attorney general. Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires a virtuous people devoted to democratic ideals. Whether we can recover the habits of mind what we used to call civic virtue will be the challenge of the next four years and beyond.[/quote]
Personally, I doubt it. I feel a grave crisis is imminent, but we'll see.
Count Timothy von IcarusNovember 06, 2024 at 23:42#9454150 likes
I don't know if Trump will actually do the things he promised. I hope not. But if he doesn't, his voters will be pissed.
Trump ran on immigration last time and he had the House, Senate, and Court for 24 months and they didn't even a single vote on migration, not even token changes, not even during the lame duck session. And he oversaw a 13 year high in illegal crossings. His base didn't get upset with him then. They would get upset if there were major disruptions in the economy, so he might not do much of anything.
Same for repealing Obamacare.
Maybe I'll be unpleasantly surprised, but I am thinking it's more of the same.
Maybe I'll be unpleasantly surprised, but I am thinking it's more of the same.
Yep. Extending tax cuts, no national abortion ban, some dressed up nonsense on the border (packaged as something new, but basically continuing whats been done with some murmurs about a wall), maybe some tariffs on Chinese goods (as Biden has done), and otherwise a bunch of hot air. Hell be even worse on the Middle East, but will possibly stop funding the proxy war in Ukraine (perhaps the one bright spot).
The real shame will be 4 years of environmental deregulation, and the gutting of science. Hell try to repeal the IRA, which may be possible now that theyll have a trifecta (although a lot of republican districts have benefited, and with a slim house majority that may not fly).
Also, and equally damaging, is the free reign of appointing judges, which will further the courts to the right for a generation. I imagine Alito or Thomas will retire, and Sotomayer is in poor health I hear so he may get another 3. Hell have a full 4 years of a Republican Senate too, because 2026 theres no chance Dems take it back, given the map.
But itll all likely swing back in 28. That is, if the party moves towards Bernie and away from the Clinton-Obama establishment neoliberal crowd.
The real shame will be 4 years of environmental deregulation, and the gutting of science. Hell try to repeal the IRA, which may be possible now that theyll have a trifecta (although a lot of republican districts have benefited, and with a slim house majority that may not fly).
The IRA was the only reason why I wanted Harris to win since she literally has nothing on climate for me to care about. She would've continued the funding at least. It's fate is largely on the House now though as you say a slim GOP majority will likely not repeal the IRA given it's benefits to red districts. The great thing is that the Republicans don't really care about the debt so whatever tax cuts they have planned will likely just be subsidized through more borrowing.
Also, and equally damaging, is the free reign of appointing judges, which will further the courts to the right for a generation. I imagine Alito or Thomas will retire, and Sotomayer is in poor health I hear so he may get another 3. Hell have a full 4 years of a Republican Senate too, because 2026 theres no chance Dems take it back, given the map.
There's always the possibility of the Dems getting rid of the filibuster and passing all the court proof laws they want. I don't care about the argument that this gives Republicans the same power. If they want to use it to enact some of their preferred legislation like a federal abortion ban then they're more than welcome to try. Maybe we'll see politics actually be about a clash of ideas again.
But itll all likely swing back in 28. That is, if the party moves towards Bernie and away from the Clinton-Obama establishment neoliberal crowd.
What names do you have in mind to pin our hopes behind? Bernie is too old now (older than Biden) and alot of the names floated before Harris became the nominee like Shapiro and Whitmer aren't really appealing. AOC also lost alot of her luster too since her initial victory in 2018.
I'm hoping for Jon Stewart personally. He's antiwar so he'll be way better on issues like Gaza and he's Jewish so the Israelis can't call him an anti-Semite. He's an outsider but a big enough celebrity that he can't be dismissed out of hand by the MSM. Plus he's funny and as Trump has shown being funny overrides literally everything in politics.
RelativistNovember 07, 2024 at 00:31#9454270 likes
Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus In his first term, Trump circumvented the law by issuing executive orders. This included leveraging Title 42 (restricting entry into the US during an epidemic), and his "Remain in Mexico Policy", which denied entry to the US to prevent triggering asylum law (the law requires keeping asylum seekers in the US until there is a court hearing to either grant or deny asylum. This is the true enabler of immigrants staying here). He also engaged in family separations to discourage people from attempting to immigrate.
Title 42 is no longer available, per court ruling, but I expect he'll come up with some quasi-legal basis to duplicate what he did before. He explicitly said no changes to law were needed; all he needed to do was to exercise his "extreme power to shut down the border" (i.e. skirt the law).
Reply to javi2541997 This doesn't make much sense, and I have no idea what you're getting at.
Anyone paying any attention to the temperature of the USA over the last 12 months would have seen this coming a mile off. As i did. Perhaps be less pedantic.
Yes, but his party had full control of government and didn't even hold a vote on migration. To vastly oversimplify, Big Business wants migrant labor. They want wages down, rents up, and unions out, all of which are supported by more or less staying the course on current policy. Some headline grabbing moves that "trigger the libs," (e.g. family separation) is all the base seems to need.
Trump's senior citizen base wants their home values to keep always trending upwards and price stability for goods and services. Major shifts in migration levels, let alone removing large numbers of people, would cause huge problems for both. So I doubt they change much for the same reason that they ran on repealing Obamacare for 10+ years and didn't touch itbecause as much as the base likes the idea of doing it they would hate the consequences.
Total immigration was higher under Trump than under Obama for most years and deportations were lower than under Obama as well, it's just that Trump adopted high profile, needlessly cruel family separation policies. But his general lack of competence and inability to pick competent leaders meant the CBP was in some ways less effective even as it widened its scope for who it would deport.
Anyone paying any attention to the temperature of the USA over the last 12 months would have seen this coming a mile off. As i did. Perhaps be less pedantic.
I don't think there was any temperature. Male Latinos didn't back Harris the way they had Biden. One swing state elected a Democratic Jew for governor, but Trump for president. Latino sexism maybe.
Count Timothy von IcarusNovember 07, 2024 at 03:40#9454700 likes
Mike Duncan, who did the History of Rome and Revolutions podcast and put out a few popular histories, had a very good analogy back when he was covering Rome during the Obama-era.
When Rome still had rivals, it needed civic virtue to keep the fragile Republic going. It needed to levy large conscript armies from a willing and patriotic populace, particularly after the disaster at Cannae where Rome lost 65-80,000 men in a single day to Hannibal. It needed competent leaders, as well as at least some level of meritocracy to be able to overcome its many rivals.
After Rome finally defeated Carthage, they were left without any unifying adversary or real threat. Persia/Parthia was a rival, but a limited one, not an existential threat. At most they would take away a few provinces for a few years. Even when Rome took what is now Iraq, it wasn't particularly committed to sprawling out [I]that[/I] far.
So, there was nowhere left to expand too. The Atlantic, Sahara, Persia, and the undesirablity of the north bracketed in the Republic. Thus, in the moment of Rome's great triumph, it suddenly became apparent that there was more to gain from trying to control what Rome already controlled then in trying to build up or expand the state.
That's the big parallel. With the USSR/Carthage gone, elites turned inward and began sharpening their knives. At the same time, for both, the military goes from a citizen force of conscript levies to a professional armyas Gibbon puts it in the Decline and Fall "elevating war into an art, and degrading it into a trade."
China is a decent parallel to Parthia. And the large scale migrations to the West creates a similar set of problems to those faced by Rome due to the huge influx of slaves after their rapid expansionmost notably soaring economic inequality.
Rome faced a decline in all their institutions, and likewise America sees its unions wither away, its social clubs going extinct, its churches empty, etc.
But I don't think Trump is anywhere near competent enough to play Caesar, let alone Augustus. He's old and unfit, and he might not live out this term, let alone any additional ones (which he has no hope of engineering). This is probably more our Gracchi Brothers moment, or at most our Marius and Sulla.
Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus I wonder if these kinds of historical parallels really are an accurate portrayal of this moment. I've said this often, and of course there is endless blather about Trump, but I think the single, biggest social factor in his rise is television (and the various new media it has given rise to). Modern entertainment media is so incredibly vivid and real-looking that I honestly think a lot of people can't differentiate reality from illusion at all; they honestly believe that existence is a movie. And Donald Trump is a kind of fantasy figure in that world. After all it's widely acknowledged that the TV show The Apprentice was a major factor in keeping his business and image alive after many business failures. And that show was all fantasy: the opulent suites where the show was set were presented as being Trump's but in reality, they had to be built by the network because the actual offices were pretty dingey. So Trump's never-ending refrain of 'Fake News' is more descriptive of him than of any actual media (with the exceptions of those media trying to be part of his fantasy world). Trump is the demagogue that modern media enabled, allowing tens of millions to vicariously inhabit his fantasy, rich man's world, while thumbing his nose at the Government and the law. As I said, with this victory, all of his Big Lies will now become part of the fabric of US culture. It's extremely warped, and it will have consequences, when the sets come tumbling down and reality barges in. But that won't be in the form of electoral defeat so much as the catastrophic consequences of greed, hatred and delusion.
javi2541997November 07, 2024 at 05:28#9454840 likes
It was sexism, frank, indeed. But it is very surprising when Latino countries such as Argentina had Cristina Kirchner or Eva Perón; in Honduras, Xiomara Castro is the President, etc. It is mind-blowing that they prefer to vote for a man who is clearly against Hispanic culture rather than a woman. As I said yesterday, I didn't think the sexism was that severe.
But it is very surprising when Latino countries such as Argentina had Cristina Kirchner or Eva Perón; in Honduras, Xiomara Castro is the President, etc.
It's just that Latino women didn't switch from Biden to Trump, but a significant number of Latino men did, so people figure it was sexism, I guess because they can't think of what else it would have been.
Wikipedia on enfant terrible :Jacques Chevrier emphasizes the singularity of such "terrible children" in West Africa culture, despite what the phrase "enfant terrible" can evoke among European readers.[1] He explores the fact how initially the enfant terrible although seen as a destructive and malevolent figure can often become the savior.[1] This paradox is explained by the fact that the enfant terrible are from the non-human or divine world and that their actions, no matter how absurd, must be interpreted as signs of superior knowledge.[2]
javi2541997November 07, 2024 at 16:30#9455700 likes
Reply to frank What I always understood enfant terrible as this: One whose startlingly unconventional behavior, work, or thought embarrasses or disturbs others.
It is up to each of us to interpret whether it is good or bad. :smile:
Let's see how long it will take for the gullible voters to realize that Trump doesn't give a shit about them.
I doubt many Trump voters actually count on Trump doing anything for them. Because the worldview of these people is typically rugged individualism. I surmise they see Trump as a role model, as a type of person they themselves aspire to be. They don't see him as a father figure or someone who will help them, they despise such figures.
I was very surprised so many women would swallow the insults from Trump/Vance and vote for the pro-life sexual predator. If Harris had talked about protecting men whether they like it or not and bragged about grabbing dick, she would have gotten about 0% of the male vote.
ChristofferNovember 07, 2024 at 21:12#9456670 likes
Here's a good take on the failures of the democrats.
As mentioned, the biggest problem with the democrats is catering to right wing voters just granting them a miniscule increase in voters, rather than forming a strong left narrative around things that a majority actually wants.
Most usually just talk about Trump and his people being stupid, but when it comes to marketing and forming a cohesive and strong marketing narrative to campaign on, the democrats are fucking amateurs.
The democratic party needs a total changeover. Take these four years and get rid of the centrist stupid people, find a candidate who's charismatic and gathered around just basic left leaning politics in economy and welfare. Produce a STRONG narrative in marketing with slogans that are quotable and that resonate with the voters who don't understand policy or politics in general.
It's like, minor parts of the democratic party that agree with this should just do a hostile takeover and put all the old demented idiots in retirement homes... except for Bernie. :sweat:
The rest of us need to look at this result with humility. American voters are not always wise, but they are generally sensible, and they have something to teach us. My initial thought is that I have to re-examine my own priors. Im a moderate. I like it when Democratic candidates run to the center. But I have to confess that Harris did that pretty effectively and it didnt work. Maybe the Democrats have to embrace a Bernie Sanders-style disruption something that will make people like me feel uncomfortable.
David Brooks
Gee thanks David. Glad youre realizing this NOW.
Him, Bret Stephens, and the rest of the anti-Bernie crowd can just shut up now.
ChristofferNovember 07, 2024 at 22:30#9457130 likes
The rest of us need to look at this result with humility. American voters are not always wise, but they are generally sensible, and they have something to teach us. My initial thought is that I have to re-examine my own priors. Im a moderate. I like it when Democratic candidates run to the center. But I have to confess that Harris did that pretty effectively and it didnt work. Maybe the Democrats have to embrace a Bernie Sanders-style disruption something that will make people like me feel uncomfortable.
David Brooks
Gee thanks David. Glad youre realizing this NOW.
Him, Bret Stephens, and the rest of the anti-Bernie crowd can just shut up now.
:up:
Imho populism + sexism also among Democratic voters = Trump defeats Harris: in 2016 Hillary received 66m votes and 2020 Joe received 81m votes (W) and 2024 Kamala received [s]68m[/s]74m votes. Apparently, regardless of candidate quality, we 21st century Americans prefer a lawless president / "dictator" (tyranny) to a neoliberal woman president (quasi-liberty). :confused:
Reply to 180 Proof I think the crucial, and depressing, point is that the voters dont think it matters, and/or they dont believe these things about Trump. Polls show even disapproval of the Jan 6th outrage became muted over the intervening years. The point is, it has been clear from day 1 that many people swallow Trumps lies wholesale, which is why he puts so much effort into denigrating the media. Fox audiences believe Trump over the NY TImes and WaPo. If the electorate mainly comprised those readers Trump would have been walloped.
We had some people here (in the Philosophy Forum) who argued that only stupids can vote for Donald Trump. I told them that though I am an immigrant myself, I would never call stupid someone who voted for him.
Nonetheless, you don't need to be enthusiastic about the future. I mean, Donald Trump and his voters have my respect right now, but I doubt that this country is going to get any better.
My problem with the democrats are not big spending and high taxes. My problem with them is that they use this money in order to divide families (when you promise 1.7 trillion US dollars to single mothers, in order to buy groceries, is like you are encouraging women to get divorce and their children to be cared by the government), make young people less productive (cause truth be told if someone asks me why I never married I would tell her/him that in the years when I was more fertile like a man, I was looking to get my PHD, instead of making some kids), help out corporations, enable genocides and civil wars, and so on.
Four years with Trump, if we are really lucky, we might see less wars, but there's nothing revolutionary in him. The guy is still promising people cheaper oil & coal (because this is what his friends want him to do in the 21st century, when countries like China and South Korea are leading the total electrification of a new fusion-energy-oriented world), and I am wondering what will happen when his friends in the farming and various industries tell him that with 20 million illegals being deported some of these businesses and industries may collapse. I mean the guy may build a wall and have his ICE officers look tough in front of the cameras, but he won't stop the diversification of this country (which will make USA, UK and Western Europe look like the Balkans or Brazil for centuries to come), he always will have an ear for his rich friends, and he won't transform news outlets, social media, schools, corporations, the judiciary, etc.
In the best case scenario, you will have less wars in the four next years and a big, beautiful wall in the border with Mexico, but you shouldn't expect anything else to change in this country. Inequalities will keep rising, media outlets and social media will keep brainwashing the youth, higher education will make US population older (like is already doing in Europe, where Italians are the nation with the most diplomas and with the less kids), the judiciary will be controlled by the two major parties, our planet will become warmer, dirtier and less habitable year by year.
Elections make many Americans feel better (through releasing some of the anger they have been experiencing), but nothing will get better till we see a real/big revolution in this country and/or in the world. MAGA is not a revolution. MAGA is just a trend to release anger and keep life going on, till the day when the real problems will become irresolvable and will hit all of us in the face.
The democratic party needs a total changeover. Take these four years and get rid of the centrist stupid people, find a candidate who's charismatic and gathered around just basic left leaning politics in economy and welfare. Produce a STRONG narrative in marketing with slogans that are quotable and that resonate with the voters who don't understand policy or politics in general.
Also ditch all the social stuff while you're at it. Nobody cares about identity politics or whether someone says mean words.
The solution isn't that hard, it really isn't. However I worry that the problem isn't that the Dems are incompetent but that they're incompetent by design. It's not like there weren't opportunities these past few election cycles, but the party always made sure that the candidate that was nominated was the candidate that wouldn't rock the boat. Maybe they'll let the party decide next time, though to be honest I'm hoping for more of a dark horse candidate like Obama than some of the obvious options on the table like Newsom.
We had some people here (in the Philosophy Forum) who argued that only stupids can vote for Donald Trump. I told them that though I am an immigrant myself, I would never call stupid someone who voted for him.
The U.S. elections seemed to be an IQ test, and look at the results. Now it depends on the way each of us sees it. Are we entitled to call more than 73 million voters crackpots? There are more voters for Trump than citizens in my country.
Within those 73 million voters, there are women, Latinos, and probably LGTBQ too. What if those voted against Kamala because of a sexist bias?
Latinos are very sexist; that's 100% accurate.
I see that feminism is not strong enough as it is in Europe.
I will not understand if Trump obtained some LGTBIQ votes. That would be reckless and crazy, but are they stupid? No, I don't think so.
LeontiskosNovember 08, 2024 at 07:24#9457730 likes
The solution isn't that hard, it really isn't. However I worry that the problem isn't that the Dems are incompetent but that they're incompetent by design. It's not like there weren't opportunities these past few election cycles, but the party always made sure that the candidate that was nominated was the candidate that wouldn't rock the boat.
The parties are in disarray. 2016 saw two populists make waves, Trump and Sanders. If I recall, when Sanders was checked by the powers of the DNC, 4/10 Sanders voters moved to Trump. Of the two populist hijackings of 2016, one worked and one didn't, and the effects were predictable. The Democrats paid a price in votes and palatable candidates, and the Republicans paid a price in policy. There is pressure to reshape the two parties. For the Republicans the reshaping is already well underway; for the Democrats it looks inevitable.
But Trump moderated the conservatism of the Republicans and he now holds the center. So I don't agree that "the solution isn't hard" for the Democrats. Concede to Trump and adopt the same core positions? Move left and abandon the center? Oddly, the Democrats find themselves in a strange pickle just 8 years after Obama left office. Their only grievous mistake was running Clinton in 2016.* I don't think they would've won the election any other way in 2020, given Sanders' head start. (Cue the Bernie Bros' protestations...)
* And perhaps letting Sanders run as a Democrat in 2020. But they did not want to risk him running as an independent.
What if its just because Harris sucked as a candidate, was never voted on to be the nominee, ran towards the right and away from Bernie, couldnt talk without a teleprompter and endless coaching, and had no vision or policy to offer other than a pathetic $25 thousand down payment for homebuyers and that she wasnt Donald Trump.
Now she, like Hillary, can also fuck off forever. Along with Biden.
But Trump moderated the conservatism of the Republicans and he now holds the center.
I disagree that Trump has moderated alot of his positions. In fact he seems to be moving to the extremes on issues like immigration (where he wants mass deportations) and trade (where he wants to impose a global tariff on all goods). The only area where he's moderated is on abortion and social security but apart from that he's a standard Republican and governed like one in his first term.
Concede to Trump and adopt the same core positions?
The Democrat platform isn't the problem since it remains popular (while Trump's ironically enough isn't) but Democrats aren't able to sell it as well as Trump is able to sell himself which goes back to the main problem I see for Democrats.
Last I checked Harris in the closing stretch of the election avoided going into any policy specifics while using the same old "Trump bad" line of attack that's been used since 2016. It's not surprising why she lost.
I suppose if I were to look on the bright side of things it's better off for the Democrats that Trump won this time since they were in major need of rebranding anyways. Even if Harris won, I would imagine she'd be a mediocre president who wouldn't accomplish anything and likely lose reelection putting the party in the same spot in 4 years. Losing to Trump twice after barely eeking out a win in 2020 when they ran their "safe" candidate should be a clear sign that what they're doing isn't working. Also puts them in a good position if Trump inevitably screws things up now that he's in power again.
javi2541997November 08, 2024 at 08:58#9457920 likes
Reply to Mikie It is true that Kamala's nomination was awful, and everything happened very fast. But it was that, or continuing with Biden, and the result would have been even worse, honestly.
I think it is important to do self-criticism, but on the other hand, I think we should look at what the people really have as values. They voted against a system. Donald Trump is charged with multiple felonies, but surprisingly, people decided to believe that the problem is the judiciary system and not him. Let's see what happens in the next four years. Time passed by more quickly than we thought. But, in my opinion, the key would be to switch the mindset of the people and help them to believe and respect the system again.
Speaking for myself, I didn't bother to vote Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, but I would love to vote Jill Stein, Elizabeth Warren and maybe Ocazio-Cortez.
However, I agree with you on that sexism does play a big role. Telling from UK, Germany, Israel, and Italy, there's only one path for women to lead countries: they need to be (very) conservative women.
It seems that men need to see a mother model when they vote. This is why conservative women have more chances to get the male vote, than the liberal ones. So, either Ivanka or Tulsi might become our first female president :rofl:
I've heard that people used to call "moma" Catherine the Great, Golda Meir and Angela Merkel (though I don't know if that is correct).
Finland and New Zealand were able to elect female liberals as their leaders. Both women received a lot of attention, but their stardom didn't pass the 12 month threshold :rofl:
I detect curious amounts of resentment towards men in the comments. :chin:
That's something dems have to deal with. If you apply feminist and black rhetoric in an election, you should expect patriarchal and white identity responses.
I have no idea how democratic countries can be run with women or men assuming to be different from the rest, but there's definitely going to be a lot of resentment if countries become California and promise people reparations (because 8 generations ago some of their ancestors were slaves).
Did anyone tell these liberals that serfdom in Europe ended with the French Revolution? Who is going to pay for reparations when 90% of the world population are the descendants of peasants who (till two centuries ago) used to be either slaves or serfs?
Trump got roughly the same number of votes this year that he did in 2020 about 74 million. Harris got about 10-11 million less than Biden in 2020. Thats the real story, despite some inroads made among certain demographics by Trump. The turnout for Harris, like for Hillary, was low.
Theres no surprise as to why they would be. There was no reason to vote FOR her, and the motivation to vote AGAINST Trump, though still the correct move, wasnt good enough.
This wasnt a landslide, and wasnt a mandate. But thatll be the takeaway from the cult. But thats a great thing I hope they continue believing the whole country has gone maga.
Theres no surprise as to why they would be. There was no reason to vote FOR her, and the motivation to vote AGAINST Trump, though still the correct move, wasnt good enough.
I'm pretty sure campaigning with the Cheneys while snubbing the left on Gaza contributed to that. Perhaps stop trying to court this mythical sane Republican voter next time.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 08, 2024 at 20:35#9459390 likes
By all means, the Democratic Party is welcome to move further to the left next election. Openly embrace the anti-American, anti-Israeli marchers. Make Palestine and bringing down capitalism their main focus. Definitely a winning strategy -- people will be motivated and will vote in droves!
If they move any further to the left, they would just be centrist or maybe center-right. They would not be left in any European country. Not even the right in Europe would dare privatize health care.
As for Israel, you better be thankful the US donor class "supports" it, because it has no friends left and is a pariah state, for good reason. And your friends those fanatical Evangelicals are the most anti-Semitic of them all
I disagree that Trump has moderated alot of his positions. In fact he seems to be moving to the extremes on issues like immigration (where he wants mass deportations)
The only area where he's moderated is on abortion and social security but apart from that he's a standard Republican and governed like one in his first term.
Abortion, social security, IVF, LGBT... Trump is also moving the party towards non-interventionism. RFK and Gabbard are former Democrats, to name two within his administration.
The Democrat platform isn't the problem since it remains popular (while Trump's ironically enough isn't) but Democrats aren't able to sell it as well as Trump is able to sell himself which goes back to the main problem I see for Democrats.
This seems backwards to me. Trump's public persona was a liability in this election, not a boon. The Democrat platform was bad enough to strongly neutralize that liability. I am amazed at how completely it was neutralized.
Losing to Trump twice after barely eeking out a win in 2020 when they ran their "safe" candidate should be a clear sign that what they're doing isn't working.
So what needs to change if "the platform isn't the problem"? A more impressive candidate and a focus on the policy proposals? I am not sure what golden policy proposals the Democrats are supposed to have in their back pocket.
It's a complex subject. The way it is currently structured is based on a system which basically gives German banks the power to control the value of the Euro based on German elite financial needs.
In an ironic twist, the European Central Bank is worse than the Fed. The only mandate the ECB has is to control inflation. At least the Fed attempts to keep unemployment low as one of its mandates, in addition to controlling inflation.
So yes, it is an Oligarchy - as everywhere else, but it has a very strange dynamic to it.
LeontiskosNovember 08, 2024 at 21:10#9459540 likes
Not economically no. Now, or as of the removal of Roe, not even socially. If they manage to get Roe back in, then we can speak about the Democrats being left on world standards.
Of course, the US is not Europe. The US is an outlier in first world countries, failing to provide healthcare as right to everyone, among other scandals.
So yes, the US is to the right of the developed world by these standards. Doesn't mean the people are, but the system is. If you remove comparisons between developed countries, then there is no metric to say what's left or right or anything else.
I mean, for reference, anything to the right of Trump is called "radical left". That's insane.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 08, 2024 at 21:37#9459670 likes
Of course, because it was the evangelical Christians who lynched Jews on the street of Amsterdam last night. We must blame modern day anti-Semitism on the Christians or Israel itself. One group must not be named. :rofl:
I live among the evangelicals in one of the most conservative, evangelical states in the US. I understand the left likes to point the finger at them for anti-semitism but that just hasn't panned out in my experience. This group is highly pro-Israel and often quite philo-semitic.
javi2541997November 08, 2024 at 21:51#9459790 likes
As for Israel, you better be thankful the US donor class "supports" it, because it has no friends left and is a pariah state, for good reason.
:100: :clap:
Más alto pero no más claro si quieren.
One of the main problems on the horizon after US elections is how the artificial state will wipe out Gaza and erase towns and cities in Lebanon, legitimately, because his best friendUncle Samallows him to do so. :sad:
It's a complex subject. The way it is currently structured is based on a system which basically gives German banks the power to control the value of the Euro based on German elite financial needs.
In an ironic twist, the European Central Bank is worse than the Fed. The only mandate the ECB has is to control inflation. At least the Fed attempts to keep unemployment low as one of its mandates, in addition to controlling inflation.
So yes, it is an Oligarchy - as everywhere else, but it has a very strange dynamic to it.
I've been reading about it and find myself confused. Even proponents of the EU claim there's a lack of accountability.
javi2541997November 08, 2024 at 22:07#9459950 likes
I've been reading about it and find myself confused. Even proponents of the EU claim there's a lack of accountability.
Very confusing, Varoufakis and Modi have good books on the EU, but it is a bureaucratic mess. Not all of it is bad by any means, but still, highly perplexing.
As Ive said before, the most moronic of analysts will show up claiming that Harris didnt go far right enough. Theyll act as if moving left is unpopular (it isnt), and a guaranteed loss (it wont be). At least David Brooks isnt such an idiot as to claim that.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 08, 2024 at 22:37#9460110 likes
Mikie, I'm agreeing with you. The Democratic Party needs to go further left and actively embrace the anti-Israel, anti-American masked marchers terrorizing synagogues. Gotta double down. Motivate people to the cause.
I'm pretty sure campaigning with the Cheneys while snubbing the left on Gaza contributed to that. Perhaps stop trying to court this mythical sane Republican voter next time.
Exactly. Turns out sending billions to aid a genocide isnt as popular as zionist imbeciles think it is.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 08, 2024 at 22:46#9460200 likes
"Majority of Americans support mass deportations" (CBS).
Out of all the proposals, as with tariffs, it's popular, but the least popular out of the other options. Polls often also show a bigger support for a pathway to citizenship according to this Pew poll for instance. Trump has no interest in that.
Trump's love of tariffs is idiosyncratic from all political angles, true. But because of that it is not polarizing in any partisan manner.
Not really. There's still a partisan split on it but apart from that yes it's a pretty controversial proposal, and I've even found his own supporters expressing concerns about it. Their answer is usually that it's one of those non-promises that he says he's gonna do but not really (despite doing it in his first term), somehow to be distinguished from those promises that they like that he will 100% do without question.
RFK and Gabbard are former Democrats, to name two within his administration.
I mean RFK is his own case on things like healthcare and vaccines, which is apparently the one thing he's gonna have influence on in a Trump administration. Calling that "moderating" is a bit of a stretch to say the least...
This seems backwards to me. Trump's public persona was a liability in this election, not a boon. The Democrat platform was bad enough to strongly neutralize that liability. I am amazed at how completely it was neutralized.
I can only speak to my own personal experience, but when I hear people say they "liked Trump's policies" they usually refer to how they felt about the state of the economy 4 years ago and they think Trump being in office will bring that back. They never really go into specifics about his actual policies even when I persistently press them. They think he will bring down prices but I bet they won't be able to tell you how he would do it because Trump himself is unable to tell you how he would it when he's asked. His actual stated policies include the tariffs and mass deportations I mentioned, tax cuts, and harassing the Fed to cut interest rates again, all inflationary BTW.
It's not policy proposals but rather nostalgia and in this election the latter took precedence over the former. Very little in this election was really about both candidate's actual plans, making meaningless stunts like Trump working at McDonalds the only other thing on voter's minds when they go to the voting booths. Say what you want about his personality, but he is a funny and charismatic guy, and people like Harris are not and when the latter refuses to go into details about what she believes in, and says she'll just continue Biden's legacy, then voters decided accordingly.
So what needs to change if "the platform isn't the problem"? A more impressive candidate and a focus on the policy proposals? I am not sure what golden policy proposals the Democrats are supposed to have in their back pocket.
Messaging means alot which goes back to what I said about Trump being a great salesman and the Democrats being lousy at it. Trump is able to latch on to people's discontent in 2016 and this year about how bad everything is, even if he offered little in the way of solutions in the latter. Harris offered nothing.
Of course we shouldn't discount the self-imposed disadvantages the Dems had too going into this election. Fact is, we're analyzing an election loss where the Democrat ran a 3 month presidential campaign after taking over their 80 year old incumbent who was already incredibly unpopular during a time where people felt like the current economy wasn't so great.
Perhaps the reason for the election results are as simple as running a half-baked candidate in a year where the incumbent party was unpopular, especially given how widespread the shifts to the right are. As much as people like to make personal abandonment stories about certain demographics feeling left out it may be more a case of "inflation bad and Trump fix inflation" that affected and moved people this time around. Both could be easily fixed come 2028 if Trump ends up messing something up and the Democrats actually run a proper primary next time.
Not economically no. Now, or as of the removal of Roe, not even socially. If they manage to get Roe back in, then we can speak about the Democrats being left on world standards.
Who cares about your "world standards" (which conveniently and arrogantly exclude most of the world)? The point you were responding to had to do with the U.S. electorate's view of a DNC which moves left. You responded with a non-sequitur about European standards.
LeontiskosNovember 09, 2024 at 00:44#9460820 likes
I explicitly referred to developed nations. I don't think it makes much sense to compare Germany to Ecuador. You can do so if you want to, but it would be better to compare Germany to France or to Japan.
If you want to compare the US to other countries, then it is most sensible to do so with a Western European countries or Canada. On economic and social issues, the democratic part is to the right of every developed country, so the Democratic party could not run with the platform they have and call themselves "the left".
That's just a fact.
If Roe got re-introduced as law, then you can argue, with some reason that the US is to the left of other countries on social issues.
That's up to people's consideration as to what counts as left or not.
That's my arrogant view.
LeontiskosNovember 09, 2024 at 00:51#9460850 likes
The point you were responding to had to do with the U.S. electorate's view of a DNC which moves left. You responded with a non-sequitur about European standards.
If Roe got re-introduced as law, then you can argue, with some reason that the US is to the left of other countries on social issues.
There are only 13 states that have banned abortion. There are 8 states that have no restrictions at all. The rest are about par with European countries, so I guess you could say the US is mostly socially progressive, with a touch of hyper-progressive, and a bit of retrograde.
True, but before no states had abortion bans. It's fine for individual states to get that right, for sure. Sucks bad for those women who can't do much in those 13 states.
If not for the federal ban, then as you say, it is quite progressive in many social aspects, most notably and most importantly, freedom of speech.
That is one area in which the US clearly has the upper hand compared with most other countries. It's an impressive win vs. the state.
I dont see anything significantly changing things will remain the same crappy situation for most people. Theres a lot of hysterics, but the most damaging and the most consistent will be continued tax cuts, deregulation, and climate denial. In other words, right back to a stupider and more vulgar neoliberalism.
Any chance of success went out the window in 2021, when the 3.5 trillion dollar Bernie-backed reconciliation bill was killed by Manchin and Sinema. That would have been very good for the country. Instead we got crumbs and some baby steps in climate policy. Not good enough, not impactful enough.
Any chance of success went out the window in 2021, when the 3.5 trillion dollar Bernie-backed reconciliation bill was killed by Manchin and Sinema. That would have been very good for the country. Instead we got crumbs and some baby steps in climate policy. Not good enough, not impactful enough.
Well, I mean if Trump just completely cuts most (if not all) climate regulation and accelerates oil extraction then it is most certain we will not reach 1.5 nor even 2c by 2030, essentially guaranteeing the end of civilization. Granted, this is somewhat medium-ish term, but that's big.
As for the rest, well, I hope you are right in this case. I shudder to think things will change to the significant worse. But your prediction is bad enough if it comes to fruition.
Well, I mean if Trump just completely cuts most (if not all) climate regulation and accelerates oil extraction then it is most certain we will not reach 1.5 nor even 2c by 2030, essentially guaranteeing the end of civilization. Granted, this is somewhat medium-ish term, but that's big.
Well it will accelerate emissions, yes. Itll send a poor message to the world, and will generally be taking us backwards in myriad ways when were already out of time and not doing enough domestically or globally. Thats gravely stupid. But thats what an ignorant electorate just thrust into power for 4 years. I fully agree.
But your prediction is bad enough if it comes to fruition.
Not much to figure out, its right there in what they say and what theyve already done. So I think my prediction, if you call it that, is fairly certain yeah.
Well, I mean if Trump just completely cuts most (if not all) climate regulation and accelerates oil extraction then it is most certain we will not reach 1.5 nor even 2c by 2030, essentially guaranteeing the end of civilization.
Nobody who's serious thought we'd reach 1.5C anyways even if we collectively got our act together. The 2030 goals are unrealistic too given how we like to flirt with electing climate denying idiots half the time. On the bright side, civilization won't end but we're gonna be way worse off than we would otherwise. The age of endless growth is gonna probably come to a halt at some point, one way or another.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 09, 2024 at 04:25#9461190 likes
Yeah because it cant be that college kids dont like genocide. The 60s protests were USSR too, etc. typical rationale for delusional apologists of genocide. But yeah, go with that. I go with the China boogyman myself.
True, the 1.5 goal was already surpassed this year, but the important issue is to avoid going much further beyond that.
Now it will be almost impossible to stop maybe even 2 degrees, and that's a disaster.
I mean, we don't know until we get to it (with 100% certainty anyways) but growing food will become much harder, a huge percentage of marine life will vanish, living in many parts of the world will become unfeasible.
That's pretty bad.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 09, 2024 at 05:10#9461260 likes
5.4 million killed in Congo. - Silence
500k killed by Assad in Syria. - Silence
500k killed in Sudan. - Silence
400k killed in Yemen. - Silence
~40k killed in Gaza - extreme outrage
But that aside, if youre so dense that after 100s of pages on the Israeli thread you still dont understand why there would be more outrage and protesting about Gaza than Congo or Sudan, I wont even bother answering in any serious way. Instead, heres the answer: antisemitism. Its always been your answer, so Ill play along.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 09, 2024 at 05:32#9461280 likes
Yes, silence. Where are the protests against Assad? Or Yemen? Or Sudan? Americans don't care. No Jews, no news. Now if it was Jews killing those Arabs the college campuses would take notice.
No one cares when Muslims kill thousands of muslims, but a Jew kills a few Muslims? We lose our heads.
I will never understand that level of destruction. What is the point of dropping nuclear attacks in a territory? Japan suffered the consequences, but they came back fast. After the end of WWII, every conflict should have been resolved diplomatically. We failed regarding this point. Europe is also guilty, absolutely. We just looked the other way, and our passivity is also reportable. I hope I am just overreacting, and the world will not look that bad for the next lustrum, but my expectations are low right now.
No one cares when Muslims kill thousands of muslims, but a Jew kills a few Muslims? We lose our heads.
Nope. You lose your heads if the US is really involved in the fight. Conflicts were the US is absent simply don't exist to you. Those conflicts are like the trees in the forest that fall that nobody hears.
Was the US involved in the First and Second Congo War?
Not much, even if many African countries were.
Was the US involved in Yemen?
With a few drones, notably killing during the Obama years an under aged US citizen, because his father (another US citizen) had supported muslim extremists after a stint in an Egyptian prison. But otherwise, this was a Saudi debacle before the attacks on shipping.
Was the US involved in Syria?
With a puny force that withdrew. Anyway this wasn't a real commitment as Americans were too afraid to back anybody in Syria, because they're Muslims and hence possibly Muslim extremists. (As the minorities like Christians basically support the regime as they fear reprisals on them)
But good that we heard from you that 40 000 is a few according to you.
I mean if Trump just completely cuts most (if not all) climate regulation and accelerates oil extraction then it is most certain we will not reach 1.5 nor even 2c by 2030, essentially guaranteeing the end of civilization. Granted, this is somewhat medium-ish term, but that's big.
But that's not all! His tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy are going to spell disaster for government debt, while expenditure czar Musk does to public services what he's already done to Twitter, albeit on an astronomically larger scale. So, co-inciding with climate catastrophe, economic apocalypse. A perfect storm. Once the euphoria of change is over, the awful reality will begin to dawn.
Reply to Manuel My eldest son lives and works in Wisconsin, where he moved ten years ago after marrying a girl from there. So I have two American grandchildren (dual citizens both). Her family is died-in-the-wool Democrat, albeit often highly disgruntled with their party. But he and I can barely speak about the politics. He's just accepted a new executive role in biotechnology. I hope to Christ the political situation doesn't turn out as badly as I know it probably will, for him and for everyone.
Another of those 'wisdom of hindsight' articles - a WaPo OP from March this year, saying the Dems really had better find a candidate other than Harris, and pronto. I think they needed a bigger personality - male (sorry to say), loud, opinionated, brash, telegenic, and anti-Trump. Although damned if I can think of one in Democrat ranks. But it's too late now, the horse has well and truly bolted.
Your son is Australian right? He will be fine if he's white, most likely. It's black and brown people that will have an issue, sad to say.
Maybe another candidate could have won. Maybe not. Hard to say. Biden being so old and being the current president makes it difficult to campaign criticizing him harshly, which is what I suspect most Dems would have liked.
On the one hand, there is no doubt this was the Democrats race to lose (they have more registered voters). On the other, so many people in the US are just clueless and very badly informed.
Reply to Manuel It's not that I expect him in particular to be singled out, or anything, but only if the political climate becomes so hostile, and the economic consequences so severe, that it affects everyone.
I've spent some time with him in Wisconsin, in the Lakes district. Actually a beautiful and serene part of the world, and overall quite genteel. But there are dark forces beneath the placid surface.
Something I will add - our first visit to the US, in 2009, for the inaugural Science and Nonduality conference in San Rafael. In the cafeteria on the first day there, a young guy opined that the Republicans were facing long-term electoral oblivion, because their major constituency, old and white, was diminishing, and the multi-cultural younger generation hated their brand. I think that was something like the accepted wisdom - but it is precisely what this election has proven wrong. Trump was elected by those very multi-cultural young voters whom the Democrats had assumed they could count on.
[quote=WaPo;https://wapo.st/3CkNI0Z]Its very simple: If you try to win elections by talking to the elites of this country, youre going to get your ass kicked there are not enough Beyonces, Oprahs or Hollywood elites to elect anyone, said Chris Kofinis, former chief of staff to Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-West Virginia). Trump is not the disease. He is the symptom. The disease is political, cultural, and economic elites who keep telling the public what they should think, feel and believe and guess what they told them on Tuesday: Go to hell.[/quote]
Bernie's attitude and behaviour is admirable. He's Good with a capital g. He's not the only one. Add to that that Bernie was right at the time - when no one else was or very few others were - on several very important impactful issues throughout recent history.
If only the world could be ran by people like him. Shame he's nearly censored across the board. That's no accident. Shame that there are so many people with strong unfounded opinions and feelings... all waiting to erupt at the sound of the word "socialist".
Reply to Echarmion True, that, but it's also the phemenon of turning against incumbency. If the Regime doesn't deliver, it'll be a revolving door as far as the electorate is concerned. And everyone knows, Trump is far better at complaining than delivering.
"Incumbency" seems to increasingly be defined not as any specific government, but as the entire socio-political (though curiously not the economic) status quo.
Reading what people say in right-wing spaces, they're mostly convinced that they're facing an ideologigally motivated group across politics, the media and civil society which will destroy western society unless they're stopped by an overwhelming counter-movement.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 10, 2024 at 13:57#9463870 likes
The point stands that many more much larger humanitarian crises exist around the world yet none generates the attention of Israel-Gaza today. It's not about sheer number of lives lost. It's clearly ideological. A narrative has been developed unlike in other (much larger) humanitarian crises that fits perfectly into the hot button issues of today.
Reading what people say in right-wing spaces, they're mostly convinced that they're fading an ideologigally motivated group across politics, the media and civil society which will destroy western society unless they're stopped by an overwhelming counter-movement.
Given the number of kids identifying as LGBT and choosing to sterilize themselves and undergo surgeries I wouldn't say they're too far off. Public trust in higher education has plummeted and anti-semitism has risen. We live in scary times where very basic questions like "what gender am I?" are now suddenly up for question. Not a good sign.
Public trust in higher education has plummeted and anti-semitism has risen. We live in scary times where very basic questions like "what gender am I?" are now suddenly up for question. Not a good sign.
And do you think we're looking at the cause here or the symptoms?
My personal explanation, which admittedly is typically pretentious armchair philosophy, is that what we're seeing is the result of a lack of avenues for (systemic) progress.
We've lived through the "end of history", but now on the other side we realise we're facing all the same problems, plus a couple of new ones. But at the same time we've lost all faith in utopia. There's no longer anything out there we can strive for without reservation.
One thing that strikes me in conversations is that everyone is pessimistic. Whether it's the climate or islam, the looming disaster is a common thread.
ChristofferNovember 10, 2024 at 15:24#9464030 likes
Given the number of kids identifying as LGBT and choosing to sterilize themselves and undergo surgeries
There's however a great deal of statistical shifts due to the very fact that with an increasing tolerance towards a group that previously were stigmatized, more people feel secure in opening up about who they are.
It was the same during the 80s and 90s, as society started to believe that there was a sudden increase in homosexuality, when in fact, the higher tolerance and raising inclusion of homosexuality in society meant that people could open up more about their homosexuality. So the statistical numbers went up based on the hidden statistics that were invisible due to stigma.
This is why I don't think the public is able to understand statistics correctly and make accurate assessments about reality. Because it's not just math correlating with society on a 1 to 1 alignment, but many factors that need to be incorporated in order to actually know if something has changed or if it's affected by other factors.
Many researchers have basically concluded that a large portion of the perceptive increase is because the number of people were always there, hidden under years of traumatic and violent suppression of their sense of self, in which they could never tell anyone what they felt. The agony of not being able to tell anyone and not being able to live aligned with who they are.
In my perspective, all I see that's happening right now is that transsexual people are the new black people, the new homosexuals, the new hated group that society can use in their ill-constructed and uneducated reasoning about a world and society falling into ruin.
It's once again the herd mentality and echo chambers of the public believing they understand statistics, biology, psychology and history when in fact they don't, and only push themselves into lesser and lesser ability to interpret the world through a functioning empathy.
Nearly 30% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+. Aside from this, the number of minors seeking gender affirming care nearly tripled between 2017 and 2021 from 15,000 to 42,000 and the trend has continued.
My main concern is with child transition though. We can't be asking children to determine their gender and then load them up with sterilizing hormones and permanent & quite painful surgeries. They simply don't have the mental capacity to make those sorts of decisions: How is it that children cannot buy alcohol or weed, yet they can apparently consent to permanently altering their bodies and destroying their fertility?
I certainly believe society should be nice and civil to transgenders. I also understand that transgender life is inherently difficult and expensive and painful.
More sinister is the idea, floating around in some radical circles, that we have no essential gender identity and it's entirely up to the individual (including the child) to self-define. Nature apparently gives us nothing; we are our own Gods. That scares me.
ChristofferNovember 10, 2024 at 17:01#9464210 likes
Nearly 30% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+. Aside from this, the number of minors seeking gender affirming care nearly tripled between 2017 and 2021 from 15,000 to 42,000 and the trend has continued.
How do you know that this isn't a natural number? On which basis are you making the argument and at which percentage do you know is the "correct percentage" for society?
It's culture and society that has educated you into certain classifications and categorical ideas. If people are to classify the "natural" percentage among the human species, then how do you classify this? Seen as it may be affected by herd tribe sizes and procreation habits over time, changing sociological dynamics.
Until you have a measure stick, you can't know what the actual percentage is. What kind of measuring stick do you have?
My main concern is with child transition though. We can't be asking children to determine their gender and then load them up with sterilizing hormones and permanent & quite painful surgeries. They simply don't have the mental capacity to make those sorts of decisions: How is it that children cannot buy alcohol or weed, yet they can apparently consent to permanently altering their bodies and destroying their fertility?
This recommendation for being careful I can agree with. However, it's not just asking them what they think that determine things. In most cases there's a long investigation before determining if it's a sociological confusion or actual. There's an idea that children merely say they want to change sex and doctors pull out the tools, that's not how these things go.
There's also actual physiological aspects of gender that puts things into further perspective:
Robert Sapolsky:...would have this part of the brain the size, not the sex they were born with, but with the sex they insisted they always actually were
The problem is that the pushback from adults stuck in traditional thinking makes it harder for actual investigation to take place and once again a stigma that often makes these children grow up in agony and social confusion because no proper investigation was done as it gets stuck in outdated morals and stigma.
transgender life is inherently difficult and expensive and painful.
Only for those who live in areas that don't accept or don't fully commit to accept their existence. It's actually the opposite for many who transitioned and getting what they need, they have much better mental and physical health. The one's in pain, especially not getting subscriptions they need, live in areas with transphobes running the ship. The usual shit.
More sinister is the idea, floating around in some radical circles, that we have no essential gender identity and it's entirely up to the individual (including the child) to self-define. Nature apparently gives us nothing; we are our own Gods. That scares me.
This is the normal simplification that's going around. There are physical indicators (like in the Sapolsky lecture) making some cases actual physical and medical in nature. But the core problem that people, for some reason, never understands about gender science and philosophy, is that there's a difference between medical sex and gender. Gender is a construct that society has made up rules and culture around.
Most behavioral differences between women and men are superficial, programmed by culture and social norms rather than incorporated in our chromosomes and genes. Most of the genetical and biological differences have to do with certain hormonal behavior differences, chemical differences, but very little actually affect identity to the point it is a fundamental difference. Most notable difference is mainly muscle mass and seen as sexual orientation doesn't seem to correlate that much with some basic sex, not even that is inherent to the biological sex.
While it's important that society and culture adapts to new knowledge about ourselves as humans, it's important that this is done without harming people. But so far, the foundation on which people make decisions and definitions about others seem to be primarily made up by people not educated or knowledgeable on the subject, rather than following the actual research and science being done, and in so hurts far more than believing they protect. Not only does the science show that most opinions are just culturally programmed, the discourse itself surrounding the sciences and research shows to be culturally affected and limiting the ability for people to understand the conclusions being done by people who actually study these subjects. The bottom line is that most people in society do not actually know what they're talking about, but they sure have strong opinions anyway.
I have been writing about these things for 20 years, and I have begun to doubt that any combination of financial disaster or electoral chastisement will ever turn on the lightbulb for the liberals. I fear that 90s-style centrism will march on, by a sociological force of its own, until the parties have entirely switched their social positions and the world is given over to Trumpism.
Can anything reverse it? Only a resolute determination by the Democratic Party to rededicate itself to the majoritarian vision of old: a Great Society of broad, inclusive prosperity. This means universal health care and a higher minimum wage. It means robust financial regulation and antitrust enforcement. It means unions and a welfare state and higher taxes on billionaires, even the cool ones. It means, above all, liberalism as a social movement, as a coming-together of ordinary people not a series of top-down reforms by well-meaning professionals.
That seems a long way away today. But the alternative is what? To blame the voters? To scold the world for failing to see how noble we are? No. It will take the opposite sentiment solidarity to turn the world right-side up again.
Lets pray that the Republicans eliminate the filibuster at long last. Theyre in the majority, they should be able to do what they want.
Trump has been pushing it and still continues to, and thatll be great news if it succeeds. Bad news for the country and the world in the short term, but very good news going forward.
But the core problem that people, for some reason, never understands about gender science and philosophy, is that there's a difference between medical sex and gender.
Exactly. Transsexualism use to claim a medical basis, but the new wave of trans advocacy seems to be pushing to eliminate that, and I can't say that I blame them. Why should an adult even need to go through a medical screening (to determine whether s/he is "really" trans) to be prescribed HRT when gender is a social phenomenon?
Especially with the idea of "non-binary" today -- are we going to now claim a scientific/medical basis for that? What biological markers would determine that? Absurdity. Let adults live their own lives, but it is criminal in my opinion to permit children to sterilize themselves (and set them on a life path of marginalization) when any decent society acknowledges the need to place rules on children and make decisions for them.
A child can still take steps to transition without HRT and surgeries.
Why should an adult even need to go through a medical screening (to determine whether s/he is "really" trans) to be prescribed HRT when gender is a social phenomenon?
The investigation is primarily for children, not adults. Adults have to rather go through dealing with a long line of other adult assholes who question their agency as human beings.
Especially with the idea of "non-binary" today -- are we going to now claim a scientific/medical basis for that? What biological markers would determine that? Absurdity.
Non-binary has to do with gender identity, not biological sex.
Let adults live their own lives, but it is criminal in my opinion to permit children to sterilize themselves (and set them on a life path of marginalization) when any decent society acknowledges the need to place rules on children and make decisions for them.
This is not what's going on. That is a conservative-held and marketed narrative that skews how these processes are actually done. The investigation into transsexuality in children is not just saying yes or no. There are both medical and psychological evaluations, very extensive. On top of that the statistics on regret among surgery sex change is around 1%. Compare that to knee replacements and nose-jobs where the regret rates are much higher but there's no evaluation before. Conclusion on that is that parents and doctors aren't just letting kids do anything without proper investigation.
As I've said, the "increase" can simply be that modern society understands and listen to transgender people much better and it enables more to open up about their situation, compare to before when sometimes there were even the risk of violence against them by both family and their social sphere.
A child can still take steps to transition without HRT and surgeries.
Depends on the situation. Many still hold on until they grown past puberty. But for many who are really medically confirmable, such puberty without hormon treatment can be extremely distressful. Among transgender children, thoughts of suicide exist in around half the group and almost a quarter have made attempts. The reason for it primarily links to how they're treated by family and people around them, while the lack of help and gender-affirming care are also factors.
Bottom line, while there is a ratio of detransitioning, the regret-ratio is much lower than the harm caused by the lack of support these children get. And that support is not in the way of talking them out of it, but rather in support of their gender identity. A big problem is the time it takes for a proper investigation, in which hormone therapy comes into play too late. It's also not common they get this therapy without being diagnosed with gender dysmorphia.
So calling it "criminal" in the way you did is not a proper way to deal with this topic. The only criminal thing is the high suicide rates among LGBTQ+ due to the still existing stigma and behavior against them. A behavior that will just become worse with Trump and Musk at the helm spewing their bullshit to mindless zealots.
The only criminal thing is the high suicide rates among LGBTQ+ due to the still existing stigma and behavior against them.
The world is bending over backwards to affirm trans people in what is clearly a delusion (that men can become women and women can become men), so I'm not sure what more can be expected.
Some people are always going to refuse to accept what is in their view clearly a lie (and a harmful one, at that), and such is their right.
What happens when youthful beauty fades, biological realities set in and people realize they have mutilated their own bodies, sterilized themselves, committed themselves to a life-time of medication on the basis of a fantasy that can never be realized? People get suicidal.
It's extremely sad, but unsurprising.
ChristofferNovember 11, 2024 at 11:15#9465810 likes
I'm not surprised to see the usual transphobic reactions as soon as the topic is raised. It's not a delusion, especially when the neurological research on the topic shows there are physiological differences in transgender people's brains showing attributes that misaligns with their medical sex. But I'm not surprised that your knee jerk reaction ignored that material I provided.
What happens when youthful beauty fades, biological realities set in and people realize they have mutilated their own bodies, sterilized themselves, committed themselves to a life-time of medication on the basis of a fantasy that can never be realized? People get suicidal.
This is how you prove that you've not read a thing about the topic.
The only thing that is extremely sad and unsurprising is how people like you come to these conclusions without having a anything else than an emotional knee jerk reaction to the topic; calling transgender people liars and delusional, ignoring the research and have zero ability to understand statistics on the subject.
It's basically just transphobia. The new fad among people who need an outlet to blame problems on. As it was with black people, homosexuals, jews, and so on. We're seeing the same kind of behavior against transgender people; calling them delusional and liars, purring them through the same kind of treatments. All while scientists are finding evidence that the phenomena isn't at all a construct, but has physiological attributes and signifiers.
I mean, the echos of old talk is telling:
Anita Bryant, 1970:"What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that their way is acceptable."
"I know that homosexuals (transgender people) cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children."
Jesse Helms, 1994:Homosexuality (transsexualism) is abnormal, a perversion, and a disease.
"The homosexual (transsexual) movement threatens the very foundation of our society."
Mary Whitehouse, 1980s:The risk of children being influenced into homosexuality (transsexuality) is unacceptably high.
Pat Buchanan, 1992:There is a religious war going on in this country. It is a cultural war for the soul of America.
Paul Cameron, 1989:The gay (transsexual) agenda is destroying the moral fabric of this country.
James Dobson, 2004:The institution of marriage and family is being attacked by those who want to redefine these foundational concepts.
Phyllis Schlafly, 1970:"The ERA would lead to unisex bathrooms and homosexual marriages society is meant to keep men and women in different roles.
I mean, we could go on, but historically we're just witnessing the echoes of past behaviors.... again.
Maybe part of this modern rise of the old racist, homophobic and misogynic behaviors is because the conservatives are running out of people to blame? Since history has gone through its hate against most groups in society already, and they are once again losing their transphobic stance, it starts to become a sort of "then, let's hate everything then".
Going to be interesting to see what the next group these people will hate and put blame on.
Not really. I don't hate or fear trans people - I support any adult's right to choose.
However, when you start blaming a society that's bending over backwards to accomodate trans people, I am not going to sugar coat things.
When this thing that on the surface looks like it would destroy your mental health starts actually destroying people's mental health, how is that in any way surprising?
Theyre not liars or delusional. The claim is that what is delusional is the belief that you can change sexes. Ive seen no convincing evidence to counter that argument but Im open to hearing one.
Reply to Tzeentch It's not accurate to consider regret a major factor. It's 1 to 2%.
There was an extensive and interesting discussion about transgenderism between @fdrake and @Isaac here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13830/positive-characteristics-of-females/p1
It's not accurate to consider regret a major factor. It's 1 to 2%.
I straightforwardly mistrust those statistics (Zembla made some interesting programs about the topic). But then again, I'm not saying adults shouldn't be allowed to live in whatever way they desire.
I'm simply taking issue with blaming high suicide rates on "society" when that society is doing everything it can to be accomodating, while people are subjecting themselves to these kinds of extreme and irreversible procedures.
But yea, this is getting off-topic.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 11, 2024 at 16:16#9466540 likes
Being trans places one on the margins even if everyone is nice to you and you suffer no employment hurdles. Trans folk will watch their cis peers get married and have children while they have sterilized themselves and likely engage in some form of polyamory given monogamy doesn't really make sense. And then there's the issue of what happens when the beauty fades.
I still support an adult's right to choose and acknowledge that this actually could be the best path for some people. But I would not promote it. It is wrong to tell a child that they are the sole determiners of their identity.
However, when you start blaming a society that's bending over backwards to accomodate trans people, I am not going to sugar coat things.
Suger coat what? An argument you still haven't supported with anything other than that you think this is how it is? Who's really coming off as delusional?
When this thing that on the surface looks like it would destroy your mental health starts actually destroying people's mental health, how is that in any way surprising?
Can I see some research and statistics on this destroying people's mental health or are you just gonna continue pointing out things you have no support behind?
This is your emotions speaking, and since it's an argument out of emotion, it is transphobic. Just like if someone wants to limit freedoms for homosexuals based on nothing more than they're "not gonna suger coat truths about how society accommodates homosexuals too much". Just like a racist cannot just say they aren't racists and then they're not, it's the behavior, rhetoric and conclusions made that defines who someone is.
If you have nothing but unsubstantiated causation without evidence statements and pathologizing remarks about transgender people, then that is simply transphobia.
And why not let a neutral analytical system (GPT-o1) review what you wrote and see what it finds when I ask it "How accurate is this text?"
GPT-o1:Conclusion
The text contains several inaccuracies and misconceptions about transgender individuals and the effects of gender-affirming care. Current research supports that acceptance and appropriate medical treatment generally lead to positive mental health outcomes for transgender people. It's important to approach this topic with empathy and rely on evidence-based information to foster understanding and support.
So, basically you're just pushing the same unsubstantiated ideas that can be found in conservative ideologies.
I'm simply taking issue with blaming high suicide rates on "society" when that society is doing everything it can to be accomodating, while people are subjecting themselves to these kinds of procedures.
What you might not understand is that you are exposed to an observation of society through media. I absolutely doubt that you actually talk to or have insight into the perspective of transgender people and their experiences in society. Just because Disney+ makes shows with lots of LGBTQ+ characters in it, does not mean that society is doing everything it can to accommodate. Most of society consist of people like you, just like people during the 80s and 90s who believed whatever emotional nonsens they could think of and criticized society for accommodating gay people and that this would lead to mental health issues for these people.
This happens every time there's a societal shift into acceptance of previously stigmatized groups.
It starts out with raging hate, public outcries against the groups, then it transitions to official channels being more inclusive, while the public slowly change into what we see many do now; people who say similar things like "they can do whatever they want but not close to me", while later it goes into a false form of defense of these people, a stage in which the societal norm is to accept the group and in doing this, the previous anti-people will do what you do now, talk like you care about them, but still retain the same false claims and judgements as before. The dissonance becomes so obvious.
Theyre not liars or delusional. The claim is that what is delusional is the belief that you can change sexes. Ive seen no convincing evidence to counter that argument but Im open to hearing one.
Gender identity and medical sex are two different things. But even so, if you check the Sapolsky video you can see how even medical sex is more complex than just what you have between your legs. Anyone who boils this down to purely their culturally biased ideas about gender and sex and who ignores the vast amount of research on this subject is clearly not engaging with it honestly. Putting the conclusion of "delusion" before the cart of actually doing the argument.
For instance, what Sapolsky talks about is that areas like the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) and the amygdala shows a size and neuron density of the BSTc in transgender women have been found to resemble those of cisgender women. There are actual differences to our brain that has to do with our brain in relation to our bodies and in transgender people it's found that even if the chromosomes and organs align, their brain have conflicting functions, meaning, the brain and body have different perceptions of what sex it actually is. The XX and XY chromosomes direct the development, but since male and females are more similar than not, people fall on a form of gradient between the two, heavily influenced by the chromosomes.
If someone develops a brain that comes in conflict with the body's perception of its sex, is it delusional that the brain, which regulates emotions and is the seat of our consciousness is drawn to wanting a correction to get rid of the resulting dysmorphia?
What I see is, especially in relation to the topic within the election and conservative media is the same old dusty story of them looking at this as they did on homosexuality when it became more commonly accepted in society, and they believed this was a delusion that would corrupt children and societal values. All while none of them actually engaged with either research on the subject or ever even engaged with the gay community in a way of attempting to understand it.
What is more delusional, people who make absolutist conclusions without research backing it up, or people who follow what the research suggests and talk to the people it affects?
Open a new thread if you want to continue discussing.
It's related to Trump's stance and the conservative narrative that will become more common in the next four years. People like you will continue to spread further bs and be part of that transphobic movement. Your ignorance here is the proof enough.
Non-binary has to do with gender identity, not biological sex.
Yes, and gender identity is the subject here not biological sex. We're moving past transsexualism (now often considered an outdated term) into transgenderism. Or are we going to insist that those seeking to transition possess the correct biological markers before allowing them access to HRT?
Conclusion on that is that parents and doctors aren't just letting kids do anything without proper investigation.
Proper investigation into what? That they're "really" transgender? That they were "really" born in the wrong body? The medical community creates the criteria. The question is really just whether they get their HRT. The surgeries come later.
ChristofferNovember 11, 2024 at 17:24#9466760 likes
This is probably the most highly-esteemed platform for investigative journalism in the Netherlands.
The documentary is takes a critical look at the treatments, primarily focused on the Dutch treatements. It doesn't lead to the generalize conclusions you are making. The problem is that things like this becomes a foundation for conclusions that doesn't correlate with the specifics of the criticism.
Yet there is still a screening for adults who seek to transition.
Yes, and why do you think that is? Why do people who want a nose job get none such treatment but adults who want to transition need to go through years of investigation? Any other decision an adult makes about their bodies require much less investigation. Shouldn't people who do plastic surgery also go through a psychological investigation about their self-image, seen as this is a very existing problem in society? It needs to go in one or the other direction, make screenings of everyone looking for any changes to their bodies, or don't treat some different than others. Which way do you suggest?
Yes, and gender identity is the subject here not biological sex. We're moving past transsexualism (now often considered an outdated term) into transgenderism. Or are we going to insist that those seeking to transition possess the correct biological markers before allowing them access to HRT?
Non-binary can rely on an underlying bias towards a certain sex, but it's not equally common they do transitions. The foundation for transitioning is still based on the same experience of either alignment or not.
Proper investigation into what? That they're "really" transgender? That they were "really" born in the wrong body? The medical community creates the criteria. Do we allow a child to transition if their parents say no?
The investigation is both medical and psychological. Most children have some confusion about their gender, it's part of growing up. Investigation is about trying to differentiate if this is such common confusion or being a more fundamental case of transgenderism. I'm not sure what makes you think children are put into transitioning just haphazardly.
What criteria do you suggest we follow other than the most up to date research?
ChristofferNovember 11, 2024 at 17:59#9466920 likes
For example, let's stop the ongoing trend of nose jobs. The regret rate among patients is at an average 16.4%. Since this leads to mental health issues such as "Body Dysmorphic Disorder", depression, anxiety and "Post-Surgical Dissatisfaction" with many returning for correction that only deepens the problems, I suggest that we should ban nose jobs in society.
Why isn't this an equal issue in society seen as how many go through with it? Why aren't we looking into these mental health issues? Why is it that transgender people gets this much critique? Why is it that the dissatisfaction rate or regret gets unproportionally large empirical room compared to almost all other treatments? Why is the satisfaction rate and the mental health improvements among transgender children ignored or overlooked while the extremely low regret rate gets all the attention? The critical examination has only concluded the lack of extensive long term data. It's not at all enough for the kinds of conclusions you make. Especially seen as the data so far points in the other direction.
This specific sub-topic started with the fact of the general public's inability to make reasonable conclusions based on their lacking ability of statistical understanding. The interpretations of statistical data leads to the conclusions they want to make, primarily because it is focused in on specific numbers, not within context or with surrounding factors taken into consideration. In this case, the lack of long term data in research becomes empirical evidence for why children shouldn't get treatment. Even though we have observations of declining mental health among children who didn't get treatment. The regret rate among the group going through treatment is around 1%. A 0% rate is statistically impossible, but 1% is remarkably low in statistics. If you focus in on the 1% and get their regret voiced out, you can make a good case against treatment through emotionally loaded arguments, but it would be a skewed argument that do not portray the general reality of transgenders situation.
BitconnectCarlosNovember 11, 2024 at 18:15#9467010 likes
but adults who want to transition need to go through years of investigation?
Now that is cruel. In the US you can get HRT after a 45 minute consultation (although it varies state by state). Making a suicidal population wait years to be "trans-vestigated" before given access to HRT is cruel.
Non-binary can rely on an underlying bias towards a certain sex, but it's not equally common they do transitions. The foundation for transitioning is still based on the same experience of either alignment or not.
Ok but non-binary people do transition and they have just the same right to as transwomen or transmen. They just want to feel more in accordance with their non-binary gender identity and I don't see the problem with that.
And virtually all of us have male characteristics and female characteristics.
Most children have some confusion about their gender, it's part of growing up.
Now that is surprising to me if true. I wonder whether this is true across time. I don't recall this being much of a thing decades ago. We've always had feminine boys and masculine girls.
Investigation is about trying to differentiate if this is such common confusion or being a more fundamental case of transgenderism. I'm not sure what makes you think children are put into transitioning just haphazardly.
You ever consider maybe there's no clear cut line between the two? I've seen experiments where children take a sleeve of oreos over $10,000. I simply don't trust their judgment especially when it comes to very major life issues like going through puberty and maintaining their fertility. A child simply can't look decades down the line like an adult can. A child can see the here and the now. They can regurgitate ideas that have been taught to them and appeal to them. They cannot understand themselves because the brain doesn't stop developing until the mid 20s and they are not fully formed.
EDIT: It is different if we are talking about a child of 16 or 17 rather than 6 or 7.
For example, let's stop the ongoing trend of nose jobs. The regret rate among patients is at an average 16.4%. Since this leads to mental health issues such as "Body Dysmorphic Disorder", depression, anxiety and "Post-Surgical Dissatisfaction" with many returning for correction that only deepens the problems, I suggest that we should ban nose jobs in society.
Why isn't this an equal issue in society seen as how many go through with it?
Yea, why isn't it? I would say the normalization of cosmetic surgery is a serious issue, actually. I can't think of anything more damaging to say to a young person than "You are, indeed, not good enough and we should mutilate you to make you better".
Do note that I said nothing about bans, but I'm glad my argument sounds authoritative enough that it would merit a ban. Just something to think about...
Its compelling. But who really knows? I dont. I feel like Bernie would have done better, but he would have had the entire Democrat establishment after him twice as much as that short window in early 2020 when he looked like he would win the nomination after Nevada, and there were 3 or 4 op-eds in the NY Times every day just trashing him, with idiots like Bret Stephens losing their shit about him being the nominee and vowing never to vote for him EVER, even voting for Trump if he were nominated.
Given that, who knows if he would have pushed through?
I agree. Bernie would probably have comfortably won against Trump, even back in 2016, just because he is a normal man with normal views and seems to possess a moral backbone (a rarity in politics).
I spent some time wondering why the Democrats went with circus candidates instead of him, but then the obvious conclusion came: Bernie is just as big of a threat to the neocon establishment as Trump is.
Reply to Michael What? And end up with the same insanity as the USA? No thank you. We do need to make some hard choices on industry. Vertical integrated industries for anything space- and self-defence related. Import duties on anything not produced in line with our sustainability and human rights practises as that simply creates an unfair competitive advantages compared to EU producers; and simply start producing a lot more ourselves again with no reliance on anybody else but the EU states.
Well, he certainly can't be elected again. That would require a constitutional amendment which ain't happening.
A grey area is if he is nominated as Speaker of the House (which doesn't require being a congressman), and then having the President and Vice President resign.
So don't worry, there might be a way to get Obama back.
ChristofferNovember 15, 2024 at 12:02#9475160 likes
Well, he certainly can't be elected again. That would require a constitutional amendment which ain't happening.
Trump basically has dominance over most parts of the US government. So why won't that happen if people support him in it? It's not a natural physical law that it wouldn't happen and right now it seems he doesn't have much blocking him if he wanted to change it.
A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of both houses and three quarters of the states.
What governs that ruling? I mean, what governs the form in which amendments are decided?
I'm just saying, what would stop someone if they would do anything to stay in power? What rules actually applies, especially having the supreme court in your pocket and hints at uprooting other fundamentals?
Well, if you're talking about practical enforcement then it's whoever the armed forced listen to.
Basically, I'm wondering, how far can Trump stretch his power until the population and other government authorities had enough. Around 27 years ago, a blowjob was too much for the public and politics to handle, but now we have a president that seems to push things further and further. So when will people say enough is enough? What's the line? The actual line that is. At which crossing it would result in removal by force.
So when will people say enough is enough? What's the line? The actual line that is. At which crossing it would result in removal by force.
By that time it may be too late to remove him by force or any other means. He has made it clear that he will be firing military leaders who do no demonstrate sufficient "loyalty", that is, obedience to him. He will have eliminated government agencies, made the Department of Justice an instrument of his will, effectively curtailed the powers of Congress to act against him, and have a Supreme Court that promotes theocratic rule and an even larger majority if there is an opening.
ChristofferNovember 15, 2024 at 14:20#9475370 likes
By that time it may be too late to remove him by force or any other means. He has made it clear that he will be firing military leaders who do no demonstrate sufficient "loyalty", that is, obedience to him. He will have eliminated government agencies, made the Department of Justice an instrument of his will, effectively curtailed the powers of Congress to act against him, and have a Supreme Court that promotes theocratic rule and an even larger majority if there is an opening.
So, where is the line being drawn? There are many instances in that description where I would think that people had enough and remove him by force.
Or are people that gullible, naive and blind that it would get so far before people act? Disregarding the status of Hitler within the context of history, if we look at his rise to power, it was a long line of exploiting democratic institutions in order to gain power legally. All while the opponents struggled within their own parties. The narrative of Trump's rise to power is similar to Germany in the 30s. Like then, the depression produced an extremely dissatisfied group of working class people, which is similar to the post 2008 financial crash. On top of that, the pandemic and economic turmoil at the moment, most people viewed Hitler as a savior.
The interesting thing is how no one opposed Hitler until it was too late. So when is too late? How far is a line drawn until people realize that things have gone too far?
Most of Trump's worst statements are dismissed as jokes. In the same way as Hitler's opposition dismissed him as a buffoon. So maybe Trump just is a buffoon and we just get 4 years of shenanigans that can be laughed at while his support sinks and we get another 2020 election with some half-assed democrat that the people don't really like or support.
Or, with the much greater grip on power this time around, he slowly installs ways to hold on to power and step by step dismantle the institutions that are there to block anyone from gaining authoritarian power.
People generally don't notice the small steps until its too late. But even if many notice it and talks about it, when is it enough to organize any kind of removal by force against him?
When is the line so crossed that a large portion of the population is organized and standing behind a coup removal of him because the normal process of removal has been dismantled?
The US seems to naively think that fascism and totalitarian power is a thing that simply "don't happen here". Something that happens elsewhere. But when taking into account how most aspects of Trumpism looks eerily similar to how other states went from free democracies to authoritarian, the pieces are on the board.
If that is just a coincident that this buffoon of a clown happens to have similar pieces on the board as authoritarian leaders who took power, remains to be seen.
But the question remains... where is the line drawn?
But the question remains... where is the line drawn?
I don't think there is one. He was elected for a reason: because he represents what the majority of Americans want the USA to be. This isn't evil or unnatural. History repeats itself.
ChristofferNovember 15, 2024 at 15:57#9475490 likes
I don't think there is one. He was elected for a reason: because he represents what the majority of Americans want the USA to be. This isn't evil or unnatural. History repeats itself.
it was a long line of exploiting democratic institutions in order to gain power legally.
He could very well dismantle everything through legal means until it grants him the power to take the next steps. Seen as many Maga zealots would fight for him, he could install them as his own agency/force to do his biddings.
Him being elected were for reasons that, if we listen to the voters, are all fair game. I'm not talking about the election, there wasn't anything illegal or wrong with that. I'm talking about how he will wield his power over the next four years. Where is the line drawn if he goes too far? When would people, hypothetically, realize a line has been crossed and action needs to be taken so as to prevent things from escalating into a situation in which it's impossible to take action at all?
He could very well dismantle everything through legal means until it grants him the power to take the next steps. Seen as many Maga zealots would fight for him, he could install them as his own agency/force to do his biddings.
That's Project 2025, which is a plan for removing all opposition to Trump in the government. His VP endorsed it, but Trump hasn't. His VP embraces "dark Enlightenment" principles, which basically says the Enlightenment was bullshit and we need to go back to monarchy.
For some years now I've also believed the US has problems that would best be addressed by a dictator, such as changing social norms that result from neoliberalism. I'm starting to understand why Lenin was opposed to democracy. Lenin was a monster, btw, I'm just saying I'm seeing the dimensions of the challenges he faced.
For many voters the lines have already been crossed and Trump will get us back on the right side. For others Trump crosses the line. With Trump the line continues to move. The US survived Trump the first time around and so many think we can survive Trump 2.0. That there is no real danger. We can survive this or that, and one thing after another it is no longer clear where the lines are. This is authoritarian creep.
Or are people that gullible, naive and blind that it would get so far before people act?
The majority of voters think things are bad and blame the government. They want change and destroying the government as it is will bring change. A demagogue steps in, with promises he won't keep, and scapegoats to be eliminated as the solution.
The Clown did something he's good at, "drag others down to his level and beat them with experience" (paraphrasing Twain or whoever). Why play his game? That's his circus.
That's Project 2025, which is a plan for removing all opposition to Trump in the government. His VP endorsed it, but Trump hasn't. His VP embraces "dark Enlightenment" principles, which basically says the Enlightenment was bullshit and we need to go back to monarchy.
Partly why I'm not so worried about Trump, but more worried about what he's bringing with him. What he is legitimizing.
For some years now I've also believed the US has problems that would best be addressed by a dictator, such as changing social norms that result from neoliberalism. I'm starting to understand why Lenin was opposed to democracy. Lenin was a monster, btw, I'm just saying I'm seeing the dimensions of the challenges he faced.
I think such thoughts are young thoughts of rebellion. The allure of quick fixes in frustration of the status quo. In reality, people need to be careful constructing the new house, and see to it being properly built with the care of wise builders.
For many voters the lines have already been crossed and Trump will get us back on the right side. For others Trump crosses the line. With Trump the line continues to move. The US survived Trump the first time around and so many think we can survive Trump 2.0. That there is no real danger. We can survive this or that, and one thing after another it is no longer clear where the lines are. This is authoritarian creep.
Yes, and so far no lines are crossed. The potential scenario of Trump taking authoritarian power in a way that crosses the line of what the US generally stands for; pushing the boundary of what people generally deem normal for what the US is, might be pushed so far that people don't realize it's already over.
But for the ones who notice, when is the line crossed? Because there has to be line clearly drawn and people knowledgeable enough to know when its crossed.
Well, so far he is not the president. Although it is within the powers of the office, his choice of people like Gaetz, Kennedy, and Musk, and threats to remove military leaders who are not sufficiently "loyal" crosses a line. Replacing people who are competent and can serve as a check against his self-serving interests and destructive tendencies with people who are not but are willing to do whatever he wants is crossing a line.
Sam Harris said voters don't like seeing women boxers punched in the face by men. He's right. Biological men in women's sports is a minor issue in the scheme of things, but it's indicative of a mindset Americans find abhorrent. It's also stupid policy. Biological men should not be in women's sports.
Well, he certainly can't be elected again. That would require a constitutional amendment which ain't happening.
Ahahaha, rule-based thinking has never stopped dictators. If he's so inclined he will look for other ways. I personally think he's in it for himself, vanity, greed, etc. and therefore don't think there's a particularly high chance but even so "culture eats rules for breakfast".
ChristofferNovember 17, 2024 at 13:32#9479880 likes
I think it might be you who discounts the possibility of a US dictatorship, not Americans. A lot of Americans want it now.
What I meant was that the idea of speed running society to preferable changes by overthrowing democracy is what childish minds think leads to a better world. I'm not saying that such childish minds exist all over society, but it says something about the knowledge and intelligence of the population if such ideas remain into adulthood.
Well, so far he is not the president. Although it is within the powers of the office, his choice of people like Gaetz, Kennedy, and Musk, and threats to remove military leaders who are not sufficiently "loyal" crosses a line. Replacing people who are competent and can serve as a check against his self-serving interests and destructive tendencies with people who are not but are willing to do whatever he wants is crossing a line.
Exactly, the line seems to exist all over the place, pushed and pulled by the preferences of the one evaluating its placement. But the interesting thing is when a line gets crossed that fully rally the people against an authoritarian leader.
When I hear Trump "joke" about a third term, I'm thinking of the movie Civil War in which part of the reason why that fictional conflict started was both the president dismantling the FBI and going for a third term. It eerily echoes what Trump is talking about. As I said, he's most of the time just bullshitting for likes and attention, it's part of his shenanigans, but even so, if he were to act on his authoritarian fantasies, when would the people be like "that's too far" and arm up a coup?
The only thing that makes a civil war unlikely is if Trump is bullshitting. If he's not, all he says are grounds for how such a conflict would happen. I don't think that the population would just stay silent and take it if it were to happen that he acts in violence against the people. I don't think the military would follow orders of it either. But it is interesting to speculate at which point the people would collectively wake up into organized rebellious opposition against him.
Primarily since the people of a nation like the US are so far in thought from such actions. If something like this would have happened in France, a person like Trump wouldn't be able to sneeze in the wrong direction before the people storm against it.
Amazing to watching the GOP manufacture issues by taking non-problems and statistically insignificant events and blowing them up into a crisis, and the inevitable see everyone gradually jump on board.
Trans issues, the border, immigrants, Iran, Muslims, critical race theory, ESG, DEI, voter fraud, the national debt (only while Democrat in office), etc. All complete bullshit. Theyre masters of proposing solutions in search of problems. I remember how each one of these started, in the infancy of their propagandic journey its been enlightening watching the evolution.
Then its fun to watch the lemmings in the press, the Democratic Party, and all the way down to goofy internet posters on Reddit, Twitter, and even here, tacitly accept the framing and react accordingly all while the planet burns and wealth inequality gets wider.
What I meant was that the idea of speed running society to preferable changes by overthrowing democracy is what childish minds think leads to a better world. I'm not saying that such childish minds exist all over society, but it says something about the knowledge and intelligence of the population if such ideas remain into adulthood.
I'm not sure why you think this. All ancient democracies ended in tyranny. What makes you think we would be different?
Amazing to watching the GOP manufacture issues ...
They would not be nearly so successful if not for Fox and more recently the proliferation of podcasts that cynically treat politics as a rule free, fact free competitive sport.
I'm not sure why you think this. All ancient democracies ended in tyranny. What makes you think we would be different?
Not sure what you mean, I'm agreeing with you on the point of people craving for a form of tyranny. As long as that tyranny takes the shape of being on their side it is an alluring idea for the simple minded ones.
I would say though, that there is one form of tyranny that is required even though people have problems with handling the parameters of such ideas. And that's the tyranny against intolerance and anti-democracy. I think that there should be an absolute intolerance against even the slightest notion of change that does not aim to improve democracy and the quality of it. Any attempt by an individual or small group to increase their own power outside of democratic means should be a straight to jail situation. A rigid form of system that can only be changed by a large amount of all its citizens, say 90% of all people need to be behind it to make substantial changes. Because any change that is substantial cannot be by the tyranny of the minority.
In such a system, Trump would be removed long before he's even close to running for president, by the reason of how he talked about the US and its politics alone. If any politician even utters any form of anti-democratic idea to the public they should be disqualified and banned from halls of power.
I'm of the opinion that a government should be run by only the competent and one way to make sure of it is to ban anyone who can't form policy and politics that aren't for the benefit of the people and the nation. They need to show that they are stable individuals who work as actual representatives of their voters for the purpose of steering the ship with confidence and not malice. If people are angry about something, it does not help them whatsoever to align with someone who wants to basically take their voting power away from them. Sorry to say, but people are generally gullible and stupid and the only way to guarantee that they don't shoot themselves in the foot is to make sure that there's never ever any candidate who can take advantage of their gullible nature.
If people cannot imagine a society in which both freedom of speech, and an intolerance against the anti-democratic authoritarians can co-exist, then they're not really thinking beyond the shallow.
RelativistNovember 17, 2024 at 21:00#9480930 likes
I'm also inclined to ban people born male from participating in female sports, as a general rule, because they had the benefit of testosterone after they reached puberty. I was curious about the testosterone of pre-pubescent boys and girls and was surprised to discover that girls have more testosterone than boys (see this).
It also leaves open the problem of intersex people like Caster Semenya - she was classified as female at birth, but has internal testes that produce testosterone. IMO, she should not be allowed to participate in female sports.
A rigid form of system that can only be changed by a large amount of all its citizens, say 90% of all people need to be behind it to make substantial changes.
Flexible governments survive where rigid ones fail.
I'm of the opinion that a government should be run by only the competent and one way to make sure of it is to ban anyone who can't form policy and politics that aren't for the benefit of the people and the nation. They need to show that they are stable individuals who work as actual representatives of their voters for the purpose of steering the ship with confidence and not malice. If people are angry about something, it does not help them whatsoever to align with someone who wants to basically take their voting power away from them. Sorry to say, but people are generally gullible and stupid and the only way to guarantee that they don't shoot themselves in the foot is to make sure that there's never ever any candidate who can take advantage of their gullible nature.
It's strikes me as very strange that you think you're a supporter of democracy when you think people are too gullible to make their own choices.
If people cannot imagine a society in which both freedom of speech, and an intolerance against the anti-democratic authoritarians can co-exist, then they're not really thinking beyond the shallow.
Maybe. Monarchy is a very robust form of government, even more so when linked to a state religion. We'll pretty much all go back to monarchies as climate change sets in. Democracy is just a tool. It's not a good in itself.
Monarchy is a very robust form of government, even more so when linked to a state religion. We'll pretty much all go back to monarchies as climate change sets in. Democracy is just a tool. It's not a good in itself.
Flexible governments survive where rigid ones fail.
Yes, but I didn't say government, I said system, as in the system that protects the democratic process. Rigid enough so that no one could overthrow the system just by being elected.
It's strikes me as very strange that you think you're a supporter of democracy when you think people are too gullible to make their own choices.
People are gullible to make choices if manipulated. Real choices are reliant on truth and honesty from the people giving out that choice. This gullible nature has been established by enough research into both psychology and social psychology. If we can agree on this being true about people, especially in social groups, then it should be obvious that for democracy to function as it is intended, there shouldn't be any possibilities of political actors to manipulate this gullible nature and instead force politicians to stand by truth and facts.
If all political agents do this, then we focus society to democratically function by the idea of Wisdom of Crowds. Rather than become a demagogy.
It is naive to not recognize the gullible nature of people while forming protections against those wanting to destroy democracy. Otherwise we risk being blind to those who use democracy to destroy democracy.
Maybe. Monarchy is a very robust form of government, even more so when linked to a state religion. We'll pretty much all go back to monarchies as climate change sets in. Democracy is just a tool. It's not a good in itself.
Democracy is a form of power. The problem is that people can only think in binary or extreme forms. It's either authoritarian or it is democratic etc. We are either under full control of one or a few or we are absolutely under the tyranny of the gullible morons of the masses. But I don't think that is true at all, that kind of absolutist thinking is for the shallow simple minded people who think in polarized forms.
Democracy is far better than authoritarian systems as the authoritarian systems easily becomes corrupted or form abuse of power. But democracy needs to have a system that does not collapse onto itself. It needs to get rid of grifters and manipulators, get rid of psychopaths and power hungry career politicians. The only politicians who should be allowed in such halls of power should be those with absolute interest in caring for the people, humanity and society. Anyone of them who's just there to gain their own power should be defeated in a show of societal force that prevents people to even dare to try and seize power.
It should be dangerous as hell to try and seize power in such a system. To the point of absolute annihilation. If that is true for all in such a society, then no one can wield power for their own benefit against anyone, and society truly governs itself with representatives rather than individuals.
Yes, but I didn't say government, I said system, as in the system that protects the democratic process. Rigid enough so that no one could overthrow the system just by being elected.
For Americans "government" does refer to the system. We use "administration" to refer to the people who occupy the executive branch at a certain time.
The whole population of the USA watched as Trump attempted to override an election, going so far as to contact the Pentagon for help. Those same Americans re-elected Trump. As the US heads further and further toward right-wing authoritarianism, it's not gullibility, it's not childishness, and it's most certainly not the work of one man. It's that the political pendulum is swinging toward something that's always been native to the US ever since Hamilton arranged for the president to have direct access to the Treasury. There's nothing that can stop Trump except maybe a bullet.
Democracy is far better than authoritarian systems as the authoritarian systems easily becomes corrupted or form abuse of power.
It usually takes a few generations for that to happen. New monarchies can be very beneficial to society as the new dictator seeks to establish legitimacy.
What are the forces behind the movement today? Dissatisfaction and the desire for change play a role, but is authoritarianism the only option? Of course one man's authoritarianism is another's New Deal. From that perspective some see MAGA is a correction.
Is the demagogue or a plutocracy or kleptocracy the natural consequence of democracy?
Reply to Fooloso4 With any historical event you can play a game. Find the causal factors in
1. The moments just prior to the event.
2. The previous three decades.
3. The previous three generations.
4. The unfolding narrative of the culture spanning 1-2 millennia.
5. Human nature.
I'm not mad at MAGAs, a majority of white women and "low information" citizens for again voting for The Clown. Instead, I'm pissed at the ten-plus million of Dems who didn't bother to vote for the second time in 8 years (2 out of the last 3 general elections) most likely because the Dem candidate for president was female.
Lesson: (If I'm not profoundly mistaken) many working class, non-college educated men & women would rather not vote than vote for an "Alpha Woman" to be POTUS.
It is the assumption that I question. I think it has more to do with dissatisfaction with the economy, the way they believe the country is going, and a belief that Trump will fix it; or, that any change will be better than what we have now.
Reply to Mikie It's stupid policy to have 11 million undocumented people living in this country. It's stupid politics on the Democrats part to tolerate/enable that and label anyone who disagrees as racist. It's also evil to let people stream into the country illegally so we can benefit from their exploitation.
A pundit once said if Americans are faced with a choice of a Democrat who won't enforce borders and a fascist who will, they'll pick the fascist. I hope Democrats learn from this shellacking.
It is the assumption that I question. I think it has more to do with dissatisfaction with the economy, the way they believe the country is going, and a belief that Trump will fix it; or, that any change will be better than what we have now.
I've watched this from a distance, so I don't really know what happened. A lot of comment on this election result seems to focus on questions of perception. It's payback for the neoliberal elites, sneering at the uneducated in the fly over states; it's perceptions of the economy tanking when it is actually doing ok; it's moral panic - a nation at risk of transgender reassignment; It's a choice between more neoliberalism or embracing an exciting wrecking crew that will dismantle the entrenched old guard.
To what extent was this election driven by a declining faith in established systems and a demand for bold, culture-busting reforms symbolized by Trump? And, if this is the case, is this driven by intensifying polarization and a clash of worldviews?
perceptions of the economy tanking when it is actually doing ok
For many the economy is a matter of what they can and cannot afford. For some there is real hardship and financial insecurity. For others it is being able to afford a house or what their parents had. And for still others it is resentment that they can't afford a big house or fancy car or luxury vacation.
Unfortunately Trump will take credit for an improving economy, just as he did last time around.
I don't think payback for liberal elites, transgender issues, and "wokeness" are that important. It is more a matter of what people see and hear in the media than these things having a significant effect on their lives.
To what extent was this election driven by a declining faith in established systems and a demand for bold, culture-busting reforms symbolized by Trump?
I think people are fickle. The Founders were well aware of this and tried to minimize it.
... intensifying polarization and a clash of worldviews?
It certainly seems as if this is the case, but I think the whole thing might be to a greater or lesser extent exaggerated. People are growing weary of it. The sport of "owning the libs" is getting old and tired. It takes time to adjust to change, and things continue in significant ways. Often acceptance comes with a new generation.
Or... maybe I'm full of shit and we are all fucked.
Reply to Fooloso4 Maybe that explains why non-MAGA cultists voted for The Clown but does not explain why about 7 million Democratic voters who had voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote for Harris (or The Clown) this year.
At least in part because they too chose change. She did not do a good job of articulating how her administration would differ from his. At one point she said she would not have done much differently She later attempted to walk that back.
Trump painted her as a radial progressive. In response she attempted to appear as a moderate maintaining the status quo.
Maybe that explains why non-MAGA cultists voted for The Clown but does not explain why about 13 million Democratic voters who haf voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote for Harris (or The Clown) this year.
Perhaps it was a little harder to pull off a steal this time.
I think, for worse or better, this is it. There's no inherent bigotry or biases to people involved. Its to types of information, and styles of presentation.
I don't know a single person who supports Trump who cares Kamala is a woman. They care she's a hypocrite, panders and has next to nothing to offer in the current climate (in their view).
The reason Dems didn't vote for Harris is simply: She did not inspire their vote. Adding in some form of bigotry is a fully-on cope.
Looks like Trump will get under 50%. Hillary did better than he has this time in the popular vote, winning by more.
So much for a landslide and a mandate. But were witnessing the peak of Trumpism, regardless. And what amazing leadership picks so far Dr. Oz, a supplement-peddling charlatan; Matt Gaetz, a Dr. Seuss-looking teenage girl enthusiast; Linda McMahon, straight from the world of wrestling obvious pick for education; and of course several climate deniers to lead the EPA, Energy, and Interior. Perfection.
4 years of this clownshow and people will be begging for literally anything else. Which is good.
4 years of this clownshow and people will be begging for literally anything else. Which is good.
Problem with that is that then the Democrats won't make much effort to do anything and we will have four years after that both cleaning up after Trump and not doing politics that actually benefit the people.
Democrats need a strong counter to what Trump offers, not in "spirit", but in actual work. As mentioned earlier, Bernie had the support of the people, so that's a good hint at what type of Democrat the people actually want. They now have four years to find and build up a candidate that can inhabit his abilities and policies. Form a good marketing campaign for it and tour around listening to people who will get screwed by Trump politics.
Bernie had the support of the people, so that's a good hint at what type of Democrat the people actually want.
We really don't know how many people would have voted for him. The label "socialist" still scares a lot of people. I do think, however, that targeting wealth disparity might be a winning message.
ChristofferNovember 20, 2024 at 15:48#9489760 likes
We really don't know how many people would have voted for him. The label "socialist" still scares a lot of people. I do think, however, that targeting wealth disparity might be a winning message.
The map over donors from the public towards candidates is a pretty clear indicator of what the people want. What the Democratic party then does is just ignoring this and go for the elite at the top (those criticized for being out of touch with the people).
The fear mongering using "socialist" is just the right playing their cards. Sanders modell his politics after Scandinavia and people buying into the socialist fear mongering gets quite the cognitive dissonance when living conditions in Scandinavia are brought up to be among the world leading. But they're not socialist nations.
What Sanders is capable of doing is to sell in the politics and policies to the people with just basically asking them what they want and then telling them that's what these policies will do. "You can't take care of your sick relative and need to have three jobs to even support basic living conditions? Here's the welfare system to support it, free health care, sick leave, vacation weeks, constitutional workers rights etc."
He says things as they are and gives people what they ask for. The problem in the US is that Democrats are too afraid of losing voters on the right, who themselves want better living conditions and they do it by just catering in to the same lies and narratives of the right rather than go harder into left economics and give people what they want.
And we see more and more people just saying the same things that the Democrats have been following for years now: "do the same tactics as the right", "try to speak the Maga language" and more of such nonsense, pushing the party more and more to the right by the day.
Instead of just facing reality and distinguish themselves as a left leaning party. Here's the left economics focused on supporting the people.
The absolute hilarity of the right trying to cater to the working class while still increasing the people's living costs while funding the military to such an excess it nearly breaks the economy, much rather than taking a microscopic part out of that to fund a really functioning and good health care system, better education, support for the conditions of the working class etc.
...things that overall, over time, produces the foundation for future industry, entrepreneurs, engineers and workers who can build an improved future.
This short-term self-indulging elitist politics need to stop and it will stop when parties like the Democrats choose someone with a properly intelligent vision that the people can gather around. When are people going to realize that politicians go by their own interests, in the direction of money ans building their own wealth of power rather than caring anything for how to actually care for a nation and the world?
This is why I want to ban anyone from halls of power who's not a true representative of the people and who constantly lies. Statements in politics that aren't factual should lead to removal of their power. It would get rid of not just clowns like Trump, but all clowns on both sides.
The fear mongering using "socialist" is just the right playing their cards.
I am not sure that is entirely true. It may be that people do not understand Sander's proposals, but a proper understanding of a candidate's position has never been a requirement for voting.
Unless I am missing something, if donations are any measure then Harris would have won.
How do you figure that? It's not about winning the election but who's the Democrat's candidate running for office. Without Sanders, she's third, and that's including all the public exposure she's got as a VP.
I am not sure that is entirely true. It may be that people do not understand Sander's proposals, but a proper understanding of a candidate's position has never been a requirement for voting.
He's being countered and bullied by both the Republicans AND the Democrats. He doesn't get as big of a stage and he's never been an elected candidate that gets all the attention to speak nationally. And it's not about understanding his position, it's about understanding his politics. The people actually understands him and likes his proposals because of it, every time he's spoken it's relatively crystal clear. Compare that to the non-vision gobbledygook that the other Democrats constantly spew out. And he has the ability to change his rhetoric depending on the crowd. When he speaks to working class voters he's doing the most basic 1 to 1 logic of policy to result based on their questions.
Yes, I'm more in favor of democracy than most, that's why a representative democracy should actually work as one and have true representatives, not manipulators, liars and demagogues. To force the representatives to form policy out of facts, research and what the people ask for, pitting that against other politicians who have other conclusions about how to solve issues. What we see in politics, especially in the US today, is not actually democracy and everyone who thinks that, are fools.
... a representative democracy should actually work as one and have true representatives ...
But that is not what we have. The question is how to democratically make it a representative democracy? Banning people from the halls of power is anti-democratic.
ChristofferNovember 20, 2024 at 18:24#9490020 likes
Donors who gave to Bernie over other Democrats only shows that Democratic donors favored him, not that he had the support of the people.
The map shows people's donations. There's no candidate voting by the people, the people can only vote on what the Democratic party puts forward. If the people were to vote for a candidate, it would have been Sanders.
But that is not what we have. The question is how to democratically make it a representative democracy? Banning people from the halls of power is anti-democratic.
Banning people who actively lie is a protection of the democracy. Banning people who try to manipulate and abuse their power is protecting democracy. If you tolerate the intolerable, it's going to erode everything and you lose democracy. You're not banning representation of the people, you're not banning based on political leaning or politics, you ban people who abuse their power and through that focus politics to function as representative of the people's vote.
Just reacting like that to the concept of "banning people" is like the freedom of speech ticks that people misuse as some kind of defense for whatever they like. You need to have context, otherwise it's like when someone is banned off this forum, people would complain that this is anti-democratic, disregarding that censorship has to do with state censorship, banning people off this forum is there to protect the standards of quality that this forum has. It's the same principle. Getting rid of the demagogues require getting rid of the people who act as demagogues. And that requires laws and regulations to do it in order to protect the quality of democracy that should be considered obvious. It's not rocket science.
You do not know that. The approval of Democratic donors is not the same as the approval of "the people".
It's as much representative of the people as an election itself. You think they would donate to someone they wouldn't vote for? And on top of that, what other metric do you have to measure this?
Not unless it is done democratically. How would that work?
By checking against facts. For example, politicians inflate numbers all the time to make their statements sound better, only to retract when stakes are less high. By demanding facts to be represented correctly you can install a strike method to make sure continuously lying politicians stay to actual facts.
Demagogues can win democratically by just playing the part, scheme and hide problems. "Democratically" doesn't mean anything if there's no protection of truth surrounding it.
How would you make sure that anything "democratically" is handled with care to protect itself? Hitler got to his power "democratically".
It is anti-democratic! I don't know what the forum would look like if it were democratic, but my guess is that I would prefer it the way it is.
While there's no democratic election of the moderators, I would say that if some mod were to abuse his power and people rise up to that, the other mods would surely democratically decide to strip that mod of those powers. And for bannings, they're done together with a stated reason for it, and if that reason isn't according to the rules, then that too could be contested. So far the reason why things on this forum works is because to become a mod you need to show that you have the virtue of keeping the quality of this forum. And it works well.
But then, apply that to the scale of society, it's impossible to keep it from being infested by corruption and bad actors. Through democracy it works better to cycle leaders and make the people decide who they trust. But such trust can be manipulated.
So how do you get similar quality, but through a democratic system, without having the ability to safeguard against bad actors? Banning the ones who lie and scheme, taking down the leaders who try to manipulate the masses to hide the fact they're not on their side.
It is not the same principle. One is a government regime the other is a forum.
You don't know what an analogy is? We are talking about different governing systems, on how to improve the quality of representative democracy. We ban people on the forum in order to not infest the place with low quality trash that's only there to feed the ego of the person behaving like that.
In the government, politicians should not be there to feed their ego, to work for themselves, they are there for the damn people, to represent the people who put them there. That's the whole point of democracy. And if politicians lie and cheat people to get votes, then it's not a democracy anymore, it's a demagogy.
To argue for better protection of the democratic system is to argue for a way to keep such manipulators and liars out of halls of power. To effectively ban them from being there. The people they were supposed to represent can choose another one who can behave according to the rules and regulations of such a protection system, just like we have rules on this forum. Banning such people do not remove the representative power of the people, it protects the whole system from abusers of power.
Right, it is not. Rocket science is much less complicated.
I don't think so, I think people are lost in definitions and ideologies. People seem unable to look at a system without wearing lenses of their personal value systems infecting how they read certain words.
Democracy is not a single thing that cannot be evolved. There's lots of room to improve a democratic system to rid itself of corruption, demagogues and improve the quality of its people-representative function as a governing power.
So the teenage girl-screwing creep is out of the mix oh, what high standards the GOP has!
It's very telling of the entire republican party being so ignorant and bad at speaking out against these creeps and behaviors of Trump and his closest circle of people that the entire party is immoral.
How much proof is needed?
If you are a republican, are you supporting this or not? If not, then speak up, if so, then you're just as immoral as them. And if you're against it, but fear them, then bite the damn bullet and organize together into a new party. Take the loss if that leads to a loss in the next election through diluting the voters between the two factions. Eventually your moral faction of the republican party will gain in popularity and snuff out the immoral trash of the other. The Lincoln Project already tries this, support them, gain their strength instead.
Republicans turning a blind eye towards the immorality makes them complicit in the immorality. Either take a stand against it or embrace it, either way, the current state of republicans is that of immoral bad people. Doesn't matter where you stand politically, that conclusion is solid.
It's very telling of the entire republican party being so ignorant and bad at speaking out against these creeps
Yeah, theres really no parity. Both parties are bought by corporations and are comprised of wealthy people educated at Ivy Leagues, generally but anyone not locked in the go team red/blue tribalism can still see the differences. These nominees are beyond satire.
Its just that people have stopped caring. They dont trust anything, they dont know anything, and theyve now been influenced by something even worse than mainstream media social media influencers and memes. :vomit:
Theyre isolated on their information islands, transported there by big tech algorithms, addicted to their phones all for profit. Not a great situation. You see it in polls where its asked if the stock market is doing well and Republicans say its awful, when its at record highs. I assume the same can be done with Democrats.
Were no longer in the neoliberal era, its claimed. Well see. Biden was neoliberalism lite, Trump is just an idiot so anything is possible. But what eventually emerges will be interesting to see. And how it disseminates to the masses via this strange media landscape.
ChristofferNovember 24, 2024 at 07:44#9498200 likes
Were no longer in the neoliberal era, its claimed. Well see. Biden was neoliberalism lite, Trump is just an idiot so anything is possible. But what eventually emerges will be interesting to see. And how it disseminates to the masses via this strange media landscape.
I think post-truth-ideals have taken over from neoliberalism. It's not a value system, but a sign of neoliberalism breaking down. The values of neoliberalism have programmed everyone to only be looking out for themselves; both as a sense of having a strong identity standing against the world, as well as stopping to care for anything. Everyone is in a bubble thinking they can exist without having to interact with anyone else but who they choose to. That they're not affected by climate change, economics, war and so on.
Communism was something that previously stood as a counter-weight to the neoliberal change. But since the fall of the Soviet union and placing communism's tyranny on full display as a failed system, it's more or less died out and neoliberalism could rage freely. We have the playbook for communism, we know how it played out, but we haven't truly for neoliberalism until now. We're starting to see the terrors of what it really did to our culture. And in the hindsight of the future I believe we will look back at the peak of neoliberalism just as we look back at the peak of failed communist empires obscuring the tyranny and terrors at its core. We will have an historical context showing identity enforcement and the tyranny of isolation that failed to organize people into movements for the betterment of humanity. Failing to organize the world into dealing with something like the climate change for instance.
Trump's authoritarianism is a clear sign that neoliberalism is ending. I'm only hoping it inspires a new world order to form around less authoritarian views as people get fed up with that form of fallout from the ending neoliberalism. And that the world finds a better equilibrium between the liberal values of freedom and the necessity of collaborative collective projects and systems that help people and improves life for all.
I don't think that's really a dream scenario, because I'm seeing how fed up people are with how things have been run over the past 50 years. No one wants a communist state, people don't want authoritarian leaders, they don't want a state boot, but they also don't want the soulless capitalist neoliberal machine just grinding them into mindless dust in which the existential dread of being reach a climax of absolute meaninglessness. People crave for a system that actually works, something well-planned and intelligent.
It might not look like it with all the trash and unintelligent brain rot that's going around, but you can see it in people's eyes... they're tired. They want meaning. Some go back to religion, only to find themselves in the same mess of incoherent ideas that it had. But some look for more collective coherence, something that connects people beyond the superficial realm of online trash that is algorithmically controlled social media.
People need big projects, big movements, stuff that connects and builds towards something profound or that gives a sense of it.
One example of how neoliberalism has reached its end and is about to fall is young people's interest in only short form TikTok-style media. The entertainment industry became democratized with the rise of YouTube and short form media to the point that it took the formula of commercials as the main media format. TikTok and Instagram reels functions like commercials, one after another of short form content. It flipped the idea of watching a show with commercial breaks into the commercial format being the main form of entertainment. But there's very little substance in this format, not because it's uncreative, but that it doesn't have the time to form deeper meaning. It's like looking for answers to existential questions in the commercial breaks on TV.
But young people have started to behave lost, finding themselves dissolution and without a sense of actual meaning. We're seeing a peak of this soulless consumption of the neoliberal market and that soullessness is beginning to become clear to everyone. There's a reason why we see trends like the vinyl records making a comeback. It's not because of some hipster-nostalgia, but for the purpose of slowing down and be more personal with things like listening to music. People are leaving social media or don't care for it as much anymore; they're mostly using it as a main form of communication with friends and family, but not as an identity sign post.
This form of anti-behavior against the plastic shallow nature of neoliberalism will build something new, it's a movement that is yet to have a specific form and core idea, it's a reaction that I think is the seed for what's to come after neoliberalism as a system of values truly crash down.
Absolutely true. But theres still a majority in this country that isnt into Trump. They didnt turn out for Harris like they did for Biden, and theres good reasons for that too. Thats the other side of the coin.
Also, Fox and friends are entertaining, like The Jerry Springer Show. Has been referred to as entertainment, for that matter.[sup](thedispatch, logicallyfacts)[/sup] Compare to more sober, boring, ordinary news channels.
The source-memes and whatever it all is (plus the amount of that stuff around), begs the question of where they came from and who wrote them. Determining (and perhaps poking at) their murky origins might be worthwhile.
Compare to more sober, boring, ordinary news channels.
Tik Tok and all the rest something like 50% of users aged 18-29 use it to catch up on politics are much flashier than Frontline or 60 Minutes, let alone reading a paper. Thats just the way it is right now. Itll change, but whether for better or worse I have no idea.
So, Biden pardons Hunter. Me, I think it was perfectly justifiable, but what's the bet that within a New York minute, you know who will be citing it in support of pardons for January 6th felons.
A pretty face, and some 634K followers on x/twitter as of typing, networked.
An example of what mad dis/mal/misinformation/bullshit campaigning can look like:
At a glance, it looks like noisy satire, except a couple of classes below The Onion.
I wouldn't want to impede their right to post nonsense, though some accountability would be great.
Reply to Benkei, well, now and then I get a notice, a way to keep tabs on what's going on.
Becoming informed is not the same as taking the notices/stories seriously.
I'm guessing those propagandists/influencers are having an impact, but it's unclear how much.
What's up with Matt Gaetz? Can we now rest assured every time the democrats are accused of something ludicrous like a pedophile ring, it's projection in its purest form and it's Republicans actually doing this?
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
Again, less than a majority of "We the Sheeple" have ignorantly voted for the Felon-in Chief (FOTUS) "they deserve" shame! So now the hostile takeover of this moribund 'constitutional republic' (1787-2024) is on the verge of fully establishing an oligarchic kakistocracy (with "tech bro" stooge Vance-in-waiting with his finger on the "Twenty-fifth Amendment trigger). :mask:
Though a speculativesingularitarian, IRL as a Black American activist I've never been tempted/persuaded by accelerationism (why?); but ...
[quote=nails in the republic's coffin] Carter-Mondale's Legacy
Reagan (& Bush), 1981-1993
Clinton-Gore's Legacy
"Dubya", 2001-2009
Obama-Biden's Legacy Trump The Clown, 2017-2021
Biden-Harris' Legacy
[b]Trump The Convict[b], 2025-TBD[/quote]
In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. . . .
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
If this does not describe the current political climate, I don't know what does.
Former illegal immigrant from White South Africa and so-to-be trillionaire welfare queen & wannabe Bond-villain Elon Muskbought the US Presidency and took a huge step closer to MakingApartheidGreat Again. Will there be blood after all? TBD.
update:
Far-right wingnut (racist, nativist) groups in both North America and Europe praise Elon Musk's "salute" ...
I don't think that white supremacists liking his salute means he himself is a nazi. I just think he's stupid and don't know what he's doing. Paying people to paint him as a smart man, as a leader. He was just outed to have paid some other gamer to play a character in a game to a point of being the best game character in the world, then trying to act like he was responsible for it, which other experts of that game saw through.
He spends a lot of time on crafting an image of himself as this super smart individual who think above society, but he's an insecure incel-type who gets high on power. Here's what I wrote in the news thread about his salute:
These new incel-type billionaires and celebrities do whatever it takes to frame themselves as masculine hard men, but they're like those insecure kids in school who tried too hard to be cool and tough but when cornered they could lash out in pathetic ways, while sometimes truly dangerous ways. In the US I'd argue it's those personalities who are more often than not the school shooting types.
Elon Musk seems to be such a person. He's not smart, but he spends a lot of money on trying to show the world that he is. He's radicalized into other people's ideologies because he's not smart enough to spot his own biases. He pays people to play his video games so that he can show his progress being that of the best players in the world.
It's all a show to fill that craving for attention. And up on that stage he doesn't know what to do. He dances around like an awkward drunk and he tries to interact with the audience in this euphoria of power, and in that moment he strikes a greeting that he doesn't understand looks like something else.
I don't think he did made that salute intentionally. I think it's being used by everyone online and in media to craft this narrative.
But I'm not sure this other explanation is any better. It just shows he's an insecure, emotionally unstable and stupid man who is easily drawn into ideologies with whoever gives him power and attention of a crowd.
A nazi we can deal with and fight, but a stupid man with too much power can be more dangerous. That's what no one seems to get in all this. Stop putting people in boxes and realize the actual issues, otherwise it's impossible to fight the real dangers.
If you fight him with the pretense that he is a nazi, then you will probably fail as he probably isn't and all the offense you used up with that pretense ends up being a weakness in the critique.
The public, on all sides, are so ill-equiped to deal with stuff like this today, everyone jumps deep into any polarized depth at the first glance of anything that can enforce their ideas.
Of course white supremacists will take advantage of this, but I don't think Musk is a nazi, I think he's just stupid and in over his head. He gets so high on the attention of the crowd that he doesn't know what he's doing.
Just look at his awkward dance; is that a man who is knowledgeable about, and controls his own body with enough self-knowledge to know what salute he's making?
I don't think he's a nazi either (btw, why does it matter?), just an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur.
Which is why I think it's important to know why he's an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur. We can't criticize and fight labels; they are incapable of being criticized as they describe themselves. A nazi is just as much of a label as a sociopath and über-rich. We cannot criticize a sociopath for being a sociopath, since it just underlines what is already known.
But we can criticize what's underneath. Why is he a sociopath? A racist? Über-rich? Doing so opens up to actual critique and means of fighting against these types.
One interesting reveal of this was that after years of trying to criticize Trump for being, what he's already being, nothing stuck. Except when people started calling him "weird". That somehow affected him more than anything else. Because it's not a label, it was calling out his behavior as being at odds with the norms.
That such a basic description of Trump rattled his emotions and senses more than calling him a racist underlines how labels are meaningless when dealing with these people.
Calling Musk "an insecure boy" I think carries more weight to him than calling him a sociopath. He made a twitter tantrum over the fact that gamers called him out as having faked his success in the video game. In a way much more childish than he usually does.
Because just calling these people labels ends when they deny it. Not because they're right, but because the discussion won't be able to move past such blunt denial.
But it absolutely matters if he is a nazi or not. If he is, then that's what's being fought against. If he's not, then trying to fight him as someone who does a nazi salute will just backfire as the reasons for it is something else than being a nazi.
Reply to Benkei Ah, right. No need to listen to anything they're saying, because we already know they're nazis. We've been told as much by the Media, and they never lie to us about anything.
Elon isnt a Nazi and this whole thing is kind of silly, on the one hand. On the other hand, hes got the intellectual capacity of a 10 year old, and has devolved into a Twitter addict so who knows where it leads. I didnt think Kanye loved Hitler years ago either.
These guys are so open minded that they can be convinced of anything. Maybe the earth is flat? Who knows. Look at how Rogan has become a Trumper and climate denier. A real 180 in just a few years. A lot of it is audience capture and opportunism, but still anything is possible in social media land.
javi2541997January 24, 2025 at 11:30#9632920 likes
Reply to Mikie Ditto. I am not entitled to criticise him because I am aware of his development regarding space and other engineering stuff, but he reminds me of toddlers when he starts to rant about politicians or whoever decides to delete their 'X' account. I recall when the Brazilian Supreme Court banned X in Brazil, and he began to harshly condemn and rave against Brazilian judges.
Crazy on the one hand, but cringe, embarrassing, and pathetic on the other.
In American life, a better life often involves compromise. Developing good skills in compromising will lead to a better life. Over three hundred million Americans used their lived experiences to decide our countrys political future. No matter what percentage of Americans actually voted, their families and friends make up 100% of America. I encourage us to respect ourselves.
Every two years we get to choose what kind of country we are.
Respect that.
Many countries do not get that chance.
Comments (2443)
Really? Why do you say that?
She has a much better shot at that than the Presidency.
Oh. I didn't realize that. Who are they backing?
Then America is doomed! A leader is chosen for leadership qualities and there's no correlation between the color of one's skin, gender too for that matter, and how well you can manage a country's affairs. :smile:
Seemingly, the masses go to vote just for trivial aspects rather than asking to the politicians more effectiveness. We live in a period of time where it is more important for a politician to have a good spotlight than a great rethoric.
Précisément!
I've generally never seen it much different than this, it's just that each generation's trivialities seem more grotesque that the last.
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm not across this issue - living elsewhere - but this seems on the money. Trump still has a hold of a significant chunk of the GOP. Do you think De Santis will be a bigger problem than Trump - being more disciplined and focused?
We can argue that is our fault and probably one of the most sensible decisions could be not go to vote at all...
In the WH, yes; but I don't think DeSantis will get that far precisely because his reactionary populist fascistic, racist, mysogynist, public health-denying policies in Florida amply demonstrate how much scarier he'd be than Individual-1.
I suspect Biden will announce in the fall that he's not running in 2024. Kamala Harris is already DOA (and good riddens). Watch California governor Gavin Newsom for President (with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer for VP). Now that's a MAGA-killing ticket! Not nearly as far left as I'd like or this country needs but consistently more firmly progressive than Biden-Harris (or Obama-Biden or Clinton-Gore).
Intriguing thought. I could easily get on board with that (from the bleachers, not that Im a voter.)
But Ann Coulter is an idiot. I think Haley will appeal to swing voters because she seems to have a moral center. DeSantis comes across as a slug after what he did with shipping immigrants all over the place.
Yup, but she reflects what a significant number of MAGA folks think
Quoting frank
That may be so, but apart from Romney and a few isolated others the Republican Party has no moral center. I could be wrong (happens on a regular basis) but I don't see any scenario in which Haley can win in the primaries.
0%
Or "US Election 2024" in case another democracy comes into being in the solar system somewhere.
Famous last words, though. If you're thinking that just because of racism, I think you might be mistaken. I don't think the average Republican is racist.
:up:
Whitmer for President with running-mate Newsom for Veep works just as well for me too maybe even better!
The first female president will be a Republican. People can't handle liberal and female at the same time. Think Margaret Thatcher.
A joke guys. Just a joke.
Makes sense.
Maybe a Republican woman President, before Sarah Palin helped sink McCain's candidacy, had a good chance but in this post-Tea Party & MAGA-insurrectionist era I expect it will be two or three more Presidential elections before "Republican primary voters" throw up a nominee man or woman who will have an even chance to win enough of Independents and former-GOP voters to get back into the WH. My guess is that the fallout from Individual-1 & co's indictments, convictions and consequent civil unrest / political terrorism will have catastrophic electoral consequences for the GOP that will last for at least a generation.
I think it just depends on who looks the best on tv. The reason I'm keeping my eye on Haley is that she managed to be elected governor of SC, but at the same time doesn't show up as a complete sycophant or psycho.
I'll admit that it's also because DeSantis makes my stomach turn, he's such a slug, and Biden definitely looks weak.
How did that movie end?
Four terms? Imagine, he'd be a spry 98 years old at the end of it, our own Mugabe.
More seriously, I don't even think he should run for one more term. Age isn't just a number, and he'll be 82 before his second inauguration. The Democrats have plenty of good candidates to run and I can certainly see it benefiting them to put a new face out there given prevailing economic conditions.
Trump will probably win the GOP primary. Desantis is polling well for the same reason almost every Republican in the huge field in 2016 polled well for short periods. He isn't Trump and people don't know much about him. Trump has already opened up a 14 point lead on him and we haven't even seen Desantis embarrass himself by explaining why he is running against Trump even though he claims to believe Trump won the last election in a landslide.
But Trump-lite doesn't bring the out the enthusiasm like the Orange Augustus himself. The "hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory," crowd isn't going to go for anyone else. Like, are they going to vote for Mike Pence? They were chanting about hanging him in 2021. Plus, it looks like the GOP establishment will sabotage themselves by having too many candidates to split votes between again. MTG will quite likely be the VP.
The more frightening thing is that I can totally see Trump beating Biden, probably while losing the popular vote by 9-10 million votes this time, and his platform of revenge policies, for example, making almost the entire federal civil service political appointees, would be disastrous.
Plus, what a cruel irony it would be to see the first female President and for it to be MTG. That is the type of irony fate seems to like delivering lately.
Trump not getting the candidacy of the GOP and then going third party and making sure that the Dems win would be a very likely, logical way how things would unfold. I agree that this is a genuine possibility.
Let's see in 2024 if you are a fortuneteller, @Maw.
(Page 2 of this thread is allways easy to find, even when it's running in over hundred pages).
Of course, he needs to stay out of prison until November 2024 to do that, which could prove difficult.
This might happen if the Republican populace simply grows tired of the Donald. And that can happen. Otherwise, imagine the life of the judge afterwards who puts Donald Trump into jail.
Perhaps Donald can have a ghostwriter then writing his "My Battles" book while in prison!
See George Carlin on "He happened to be."
The election is roughly 17 months away; Nikky Haley and others ??? may be irrelevant way before then.
I find it difficult to get aroused about 2024. I expect the process and result to leave me underwhelmed, very disappointed, deeply chagrined, highly annoyed, and more!
It isn't just that the existing political process will fail to solve our significant -- even existential -- problems. It IS the case that the existing political process CAN NOT solve our problems.
We still have to have a president, though. If we have no head of government, somebody will invade.
Yes, because The Prez stands at the Gates of America very much like Gandalf stood before the Gates of Minas Tirith, and by his power turned away the servant of Sauron. EVEN Donald Trump was able to thwart invasions from the Bahamas and bird-like aliens from a distant star system, just by standing resolutely in front of the the urinal in the oval room powder room.
Iceland is waiting for a lapse in our powerful presidency, as is Lichtenstein, Morocco, and Sri Lanka.
Can the POTUS by force of his high office turn back ICBMs? Apparently -- otherwise the Soviet Union would have long since buried us, as Nikita Khrushchev foretold. Unfortunately, coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was able to slip past the Great Guardian and Guarantor of Freedom.
Well now it appears law enforcement is prepping for an indictment announcement next week. This is a New York indictment, but a Georgia one also seems quite likely.
Maybe he can stretch it out long enough to win and we'll have the crisis of a President with multiple state warrants out for his arrest in felony charges.
This sounds slightly sarcastic.
:smile:
:up:
:gasp:
we'll see, my DeSantis 2024 stock is decreasing week by week although it's also not clear what Trump's future holds.
MAGA nation seems riled up. Lots of Twitter posts, oh no!
All because their criminal hero is throwing a toddler tantrum over (maybe) being held accountable for one of his many crimes -- this one being fairly minor compared to others.
NBC
I guess this is a Soros-DA:
"Bragg is from Harlem, and grew up on Striver's Row.[2] In an interview with The American Prospect, Bragg noted that he had been "deeply affected by the criminal justice system most directly through three gunpoint stops by the NYPD."[3] He graduated from the Trinity School[4] before attending Harvard College. He graduated from Harvard cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in government in 1995[2][5] and earned his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Civil RightsCivil Liberties Law Review.[5][4]"
-wikipedia
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/opinion/trump-feud-ron-desantis.html?unlocked_article_code=SiN4KOS05wzoE-zRiB4tCndC8Y4VT0L-xYpQ4aQmsueCtVMCAHPk-_0sRtLQ4etTj8LuuRUBIn_Ja7u9-KPcfljTX4b4kunJwW0gqeIMfulSiOpxyTZx3bIIMUSjW1OG4zjjWJNpmEV2Du-xuVE3G1sKY9Ff-KvJ3qtspBY_2OX9U4IIgBgvSN5Z2PqFTtZRV_czxs5N41yX6VZi2XTk6LSuEkUaw3B0L1dTTRBJQTt_hdINERMmR25S_t_Bh-48DrusQejDdNmXOqOMbzsrXX_7fxx5P9aCshYJnwkRJtAAHB-Nki4AHXUer6hUgWrEUzZDOJk-tUMB0-QE-1a9QWY&smid=url-share
In the US of Absurdia, this shitstorm might get even more furious in the next few months.
Nice move, Rupert. :shade:
Sort of. They are accused of pushing woke ideology for a variety of reasons, which in turn makes them a target for "cancellation." It is surprising though, given Disney has very much catered to the Evangelical right in its content production over the past decades.
But it is less shocking then the new right wing trend of attacking the US security apparatus (the FBI, the intelligence community) and the military. This would have been unthinkable in the W. Bush Era, but now memes like this are quite common:
It's a very weird thing that the radical far-right, with their proclamations of an immanent "Boog," or "second civil war," has decided to attack the military as insufficiently righteous. Apparently, the new utopia/minority rule will be brought about by legions of amateur, majority senior citizen revolutionaries.
I can't say I recall a single revolt in history with a median age of 55, but if you look at armed protests in the US that would be my low end estimate for age. It's weird, especially since half the nation's budget is transfer payments to seniors. I suppose it is more about social control, not economic factors though.
Maybe it's a red state thing where aging militias aren't being replaced with younger members?
I would like to see some statistics to this effect. That would not be my guess.
Ageism is still considered fair game, while other forms of discrimination may be declining.
I don't think anything like "statistics," for that exists. You'd be hard pressed to get people arming up to protest tyrannical government to fill out surveys for you.
However, armed right wing protests since 2020 have generally been photographed in detail, so you can take a look for yourself. That the crowds are majority male, by a large margin, majority White, by an even larger margin, and skew older seems readily apparent.
And I was making a comparison to other revolutionary movements and the compositions of militaries. The maximum age to enlist or receive a commission is 35 for the Army, 28 for the Marines for example. It's a historical anomaly for such a movement to include more men with grey hair than ones you could mistake for undergraduates. That said, it's not particularly surprising since Donald Trump, still mostly a hero in far-right circles, lost voters under 30 by a landslide 29 points (by contrast, W. Bush split 18-24 voters almost even). https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184426/presidential-election-exit-polls-share-votes-age-us/
Not that there is any definite overlap between people who vote for Y candidate and those who bring assault rifles to their governor's front lawn, but I'd have to imagine the recruiting pool is a subset of the larger whole for any set of political radicals.
I don't know, maybe that sort of thing will become more common as society ages overall. Anyhow, I wasn't trying to be ageist. Certainly there have been plenty of older, very successful revolutionaries. It's just strange for the entire cohort to be older. Normally it's the young people who get all hot headed and want to tear institutions down without fully thinking through what that means. I don't think the small subset of people marching around state houses with rifles particularly represents any age bracket as a whole.
That's not even the wild part. Generally if you want to take control, especially as a minority, you want the military on your side. And this has always tended to be more true of right wing groups. The far-right turning on the military is the truly bizarre part.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781912
I had thought Newsom would have a good chance, but news out of CA has not been good lately.
Bernie ran two very important campaigns. His policies are now in the mainstream discussion, and his supporters have helped push Biden farther than he would have otherwise been.
So Biden versus Trump, again. What a pity. An easy choice, though. Vote against Trump again. Prevent him from getting into office. Then keep grinding on with local/state work.
That should be the extent of the mental energy used these next 16 months. But I'm guessing it won't be. Because when it comes to the US, we have to turn it into an overwhelming spectacle. Talk about overcomplicating.
Maybe they could run as a geriatric team. But which one is Gandolf?
Early days yet. I'm sure 2023 has many surprises in store.
One hilarious example shows Biden needs guidance for even the most basic of tasks.
Just like his last campaign the whole presidency is a complete sham. The man is not under control.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/26/biden-cheat-sheet-shows-he-had-advance-knowledge-of-journalists-question/amp/
Tucker, is that you?
Don Lemon, do you like that your president needs instructions on how to enter a room and say hello?
Itd be fine if it wasnt coming from a Trump apologist and Ayn Rand cultist. That just makes it hilarious.
I'd think you'd just be indifferent to all the various politicians out there. None of them really represent you, you know? None of them.
The idea that a politician can represent me is an obsequious one, especially if theyve never met me or considered my concerns. So I dont look at it as someone representing me as if he was carrying out my will.
Here the leader of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen cannot even face a reporters questions without a cheat sheet and a public relations team. Its all a scripted show. I prefer reality television.
Most powerful the world has ever seen? Eh, that's more likely the British Empire.
One carrier would destroy the entire Royal Navy at the height of the empire. Anyways, it was besides the point.
And if we had a wayback machine we could go back to 1915 and kick some ass. As it is, we're constrained by other well armed powers.
The idea that any Republican would vote for Trump just to get Republicans into power is a ridiculously desperate need for power. It's like: "Let the world burn, as long as I can have the slightest seat of power".
If that is their ambition, then there's no moral soul left in that party whatsoever. I'd like to see the more functioning, stable, and intellectual Republicans break off from Trump and start their own party or seriously try and take over the Republican party by outing all the stupid morons who infected it. How far does it need to go before Republicans do this for real? Or are there so many morons in the Republican party that it's a doomed case?
It wasn't an answer to that post of yours specifically, I just entered the discussion based on the topic.
The republicans are no longer a political party. Here I agree with Chomsky.
But what theyve left behind is hardly admirable the intellectual republicans are still neoliberals through and through. All their talk of small government always was a pretext for vicious class warfare and their complete obedience to corporate power. Even more savage than the Wall Street democrats, who at least throw a few crumbs to the 80-90% of the population struggling to keep up once in a while, and believe in things like climate change.
Unfortunately theres no choice anymore for anyone thinking rationally about the world. The Democratic Party is currently the place to push for changes. Weve seen that in the old bones of Biden, who doesnt have the foggiest idea of whats going on, but who has been far more progressive than Obama or Clinton, largely due to activist pressures and the strength of the Sanders campaign in 16 and especially 20. His advisors know that many voting blocks simply wont accept the policies of his predecessors whole hog.
But thats national stuff, where we dont have much impact other than in how we vote. What matters more isnt really any party, but what we do locally and how we organize i.e., how we increase our power. Theres a great book on this called Politics is For Power, by Eitan Hirsch. I think this is where our focus should be; the choice for who to vote for in 24, in contrast, should take 5 minutes of brain power.
What's up with these mad
Quoting Jan 27, 2023
in the US anyway?
Bernie at least comes through as a better choice of a representative (of course labeled an evil commie), and I'm sure there must be many others, regardless of party, but then those...people rise and the circus comes to town.
EDIT
Wasn't intended to discredit JFK. Englitch being my 2nd language shows.
I thought that type of thing would be looked upon more favorably here.
Okay boys, how much are we wagering?
Im saying hell be the nominee, almost certainly. Ill give you 5:1 odds.
(1) by the end of 2023, the jury in NYS civil lawsuit will find him responsible for over a decade of state tax fraud, putting him and his children on the hook for damages $500million $1billion and effectively shutting down the Trump Organization, etc by preventing the family from doing business in NYS SP-1 will be so broke that campaign mega-donors will completely abandon him (as his buddy Rupert Murdoch already has) as well as Russian Oligarchs & the Saudis ...
(2) by the end of 2023, SP-1 will be indicted for dozens of RICO felonies in Fulton County, Georgia, with a trial set to begin in the summer/fall of 2024 Senate Minoriry Leader "Moscow Mitch", in order to protect the GOP's slim chances of winning back the US Senate in 2024, will lead GOP senators to begin to openly withdraw their support during the GOP primaries and even openly criticize SP-1 as a serial electoral "LOSER" just as former GOP governor Chris Christie is already doing ...
(3) lastly, also by the end of 2023, a Federal Grand Jury and the DoJ will indict SP-1 for Seditious Conspiracy & Insurrection, among several other charges, and this will trigger legal challenges in State & Federal courts to remove SP-1 from ballots for president (or any federal office) pursuant to the prohibitions specified in the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 of the US Constitution without GOP big money or his own financing, without the support of GOP senators and live wall-to-wall 24/7 media chatter about legal challenges to officially disqualify Seditionist-1 from any federal office including the presidency, the GOP will abandon him next spring (or sooner) in order to begin saving itself as a viable party for the 2026 midterms abd 2028 general election.
Out of spite and malignant narcissistic dementia, Seditionist-1 will run as a third party spoiler to punish the GOP for abandoning him siphoning off enough voters to guarantee a Democrat wins the presidency (not Biden) as well as violence by MAGA terrorists leading up to and around the election next fall. And all this in the political context of the collapse of FOX Noise (re: Smartmatic & shareholders' lawsuits plus Tucker Carlson's retaliation) and demise of the right-wing SCOTUS (re: Thomas & wife, et al) as well.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781991
So I'll be happy to take your money, Mikie. :wink: :up:
Youve laid out a good case. I think some of it is wishful thinking (like how soon there will be a verdict in the NY civil case, and the extent to which donors and senators abandon him), but its not out of the realm of possibility.
I dont think it matters to his voters, who will double down as they always do, will send him millions of dollars, and will rally around him as a victim of left wing conspirators. They will also destroy any challenger, as we see already with DeSantis, who was supposed to be the shoo in.
I wouldnt put it past him to run as an independent or Patriots Party or something like that, but there will be no need: the voters will vote him in as a Republican.
Also, when you say it wont be Joe Biden as the nominee care to bet on that too?
In both cases I wouldnt mind losing money.
Rubert Murdoch has already abandoned him. I suspect other far less well-known to the public mega-donors already have as well (which is why Loser-1 has veen grifting so hard since his failed coup attempt).
Senators Mo Brooks & Mitt Romney released separate statements today declaring Loser-1 is unfit to be president. More to come, Mikie. Let the avalanche begin ...
Keep in mind, the voters only matter get a say once 'the establishment' (mega-donors, party leaders, politicians & pundits) has signed-off on the candidates. Loser-1, while still the front runner today, is hemorraging the establishment support he needs so that his MAGA maniacs can get a chance to vote for him in the primaries. Yeah, I get it, they don't care about his past or pending civil, criminal & financial troubles but, all indications are, the GOP establishment cares about winning / regaining power in Washington DC and Loser-1 looks more and more to them like an obstacle to power. MAGA morons be damned, there aren't enough of them 'without Never Trumpers, suburban GOP women, under 35 years olds and most Independents for Loser-1 to win a general election. This has been obvious and confirmed since 2018 and confirmed again in 2020 & 2022 (remember the Trumpy "red ripple"?) :smirk:
Lastly, Desantis is sabotaging himself even as he throws red meat at MAGAts. Also, between getting punk'd by Mickey Mouse and being Loser-1's first and easiest rival to attack, Desantis has offered himself up as a tag-team practice dummy.
Quoting Mikie
Like taking candy from a baby. :yum: :up:
How? I wish the verdict were today. I'd be very happy to see it. I just have a feeling it'll be protracted, as these things always are.
Quoting 180 Proof
Again, I hope so. But so far every time it looks as though the Republicans are going to get away from Trump -- the apex being the week after January 6th -- he comes back, again and again. And it's obvious why: the voters.
Quoting 180 Proof
But he's beat the establishment, over and over again. The establishment never liked him. They've tolerated him because he still gives tax cuts, deregulates everything, etc. So they put up with almost anything else, as long as he continues to win and give them what they want. Only trouble is, now he's not really winning.
The voters will apparently follow him into a volcano. Take a look at the polls. It's absurd. You have well over half believing the election was "stolen," simply because he says so.
Quoting 180 Proof
True. But again, they're in quite a dilemma, because the voters still love him and he refuses to pass the baton. He's destroying DeSantis before he's even declared himself a candidate. The establishment doesn't like this, of course, but they're stuck with him. The megadonars simply don't matter if he remains the frontrunner in the polls and has a massive campaign war chest largely funded through small donations from the faithful.
I'm not saying any of this is good for the Republican party -- it isn't, as was seen in 2020 and 2022. He is bleeding suburbia and independents. But even at that, it was still very close. In a sane world, all of them should have been blowouts. (Including 2018, which people forget was not a blue wave. Dozens won by shockingly few votes.) But the point stands: he's still the frontrunner, and very likely the Republican nominee.
Quoting 180 Proof
All right then, you're on. I bet $10 at 5:1 odds. So $50 to you if you're right in either case. And yes, I'll be VERY happy to pay it, because I hope you're right on both counts.
[Edit: personal bets are probably looked down on here, so how about this instead: I'll donate $50 to TPF if you're right, and you donate $10 if I'm right. Deal?]
US$10.00 payable to charity of your choice :up:
Hypocrisy, thy name is GOP.
//although should note some exceptions:
[quote=NYTimes]Other Republicans were less merciful, particularly Mr. Santoss fellow New Yorkers. Representative Anthony DEsposito, who represents parts of Nassau County, called Mr. Santos a serial fraudster who should resign from office. Representative Mike Lawler of the Hudson Valley said Mr. Santoss conduct had been embarrassing and disgraceful, and he should resign.[/quote]
:clap:
lol what a dumbass
These two really deserve each other. :lol:
I'm so proud.
Putin's Bitch goes on trial in NYC for 34 felonies (so far) on 25 March 2024 during the middle of the GOP primaries. By then the NYS Attorney General and E Jean Carroll (et al) will have bankrupted Loser-1 with punitive damages fines. His "presidential candidacy" is DOA. :lol:
Addendum.
(Update pending on imminent US Federal indictments for Obstruction of Justice, Espionage, etc.)
Maybe Elon should invite him on a rocket launch next.
(Its probably that sense of harbouring a grudge that makes him most like Trump. (He would resent that.))
Ny Times
I agree with this. It benefits Trump.
Maybe the RNC takes a page from the DNC playbook and consolidate around one person once its clear that the non-Trumps are splitting the votes.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/810514
If you think his campaign is DOA, youre not paying attention. Hell be the Republican nominee. Ill wager money on it.
Like taking more filthy lucre from a baby! :smirk:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/807026
With Trump it's worse. Nothing can mobilize the Dems better to vote than Trump being the GOP candidate. Anybody else, and the GOP has a good chance to win. Now other candidates can change and thinking of them can change, but this will stay.
If Trump becomes the GOP candidate, again the country will look like it's breaking apart.
A massive dumpster fire then that election. Something that I'm not keenly looking forward to.
Yes. It's going to suck. If the number of people running in the Republican primaries is high, that helps Trump. His base is solid, so the others just split the 70% that's left. If Republicans really don't want Trump representing them, they'd have to get their shit together and stand united behind an alternative. I don't expect that to happen.
So really, if a Republican doesn't want Trump, it would be best to become a swing voter.
"America ... threatened by the scumbaggery of a man and his family...."
update:
Putin's Bitch was indicted by the US DoJ today ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/814066
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/minnesota-miracle-democrats-progressive-bills_n_6484afe4e4b025003eddd498
Quoting 180 Proof
No longer "pending" ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/814066
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/814765
It's only a matter of time, @Mikie, before Traitor-1 buckles under the crush of criminal indictments & civil lawsuits. :victory: :smirk:
Then Ill owe you $10 to the charity of your choice, or whatever we agreed on. Happily.
Sleepy Joe's family:
Hunter Biden
e.g. 2013 energy industry (China) & 2014 "Burisma" (Ukraine) more than $10 million (investigated by DoJ special counsel since 2018 that has resulted in guilty plea (pending as of 20Jun2023) to two misdemeanor tax charges plus five years probation on an unrelated firearm charge)
Traitor/Seditionist-1's family:
Ivanka & Jared Kushner
e.g. $640 million jointly reported "investment" income while both were employed by the WH 2017-2021 (re: deals in China, etc yet to be investigated)
Jared Kushner
e.g. $2 billion from Saudi Arabia in 2021 for ??? (yet to be investigated)
Ivanka Kushner, Donald Trump Jr & Eric Trump
e.g. along with their father, they are principles of the Trump Organization, currently facing civil lawsuit by NYS AG for over 200 documented cases of (state & federal felony) tax fraud, etc from 2011-2015 for at least $250 million (trial begins 2Oct23)
@NOS4A2 Like Hillary's emails, IDGAF about Hunter Biden's laptop. :victory: :mask:
@Hanover @Wayfarer @Maw @Mikie @frank
Trump's father Fred lived to 93, so it looks like maybe Donald will actually live through all these trials.
You may get to vote for an actual person this time, Americans. Don't disappoint please.
I'm not sure the world can handle another four years of muppets and puppets on the throne.
I think maybe he's going to jail for real this time.
Most of the Republicans running for president say they'll pardon him if elected. :confused:
Complete waste of time, as has no chance of passing the Senate, only serving to illustrate the mendacity and corruption of MAGA Republicans.
Adam Schiff said, for his part, You honor me with your enmity. You flatter me with this falsehood. You who are the authors of a big lie about the last election must condemn the truth tellers, and I stand proudly before you.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/819011
Not seeing that leftward shift in independents yet.
I like Cornel West very much. I think more serious parties is a good idea and would be an improvement in our two party system.
On the other hand, third party votes in swing states are a waste and, essentially, a de facto vote for ones least preferred candidate. Thats simple arithmetic, so its always puzzled me why some people push for not voting given the importance of the election in a country like the US, where even small differences between parties make a big difference in the world.
However, Im trying to give the idea more weight. Chris Hedges, a person I admire and have much to learn from, seems to advocate for this position. Hes helping Cornel West. He seems to believe that the only way out of this cycle is to make the Democratic Party afraid, to the point where theres real reforms.
I need to think more about it, but it still seems to me misguided.
Btw, Putin's Bitch & MAGA GOP candidates have lost in 2018, 2020 & 2022. Despite media hysteria (which is needed apparently to keep the rabble mobilized), MAGA GOP prospects in 2024 are even bleaker in no small part due to SCOTUS' 2022, 2023 (& probably 2024) rulings.
Quoting Mikie
Neither do I. Be patient. Remember "the red tsunami" of 2022? The GOP "sweep" was predicted it had seemed by everybody (except me).
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/756539
Thanks, "Independents". :smirk:
True no doubt itll tighten up as time goes by. Always does. Nominating Trump is probably a mistake, but I cant underestimate the electorates ability to do silly things.
I don't remember this. What I do remember is that an incumbent vice-president during a time of (domestic) 'peace & prosperity' lost both the popular incumbent president's home state AND his own home state, which put in play Florida which was controlled at the time by the Bush family. Maybe as a Green Party activist from the late 80s throughout the 90s and supporter of Nader three times for president my recall is biased, but nonetheless Gore lost both Arkansas & Tennessee (and had refused to let Bill Clinton unquestionably the best retail politician of his generation campaign for him in the weeks before election day) contributed significantly more to him losing the election than a very marginal third party candidacy (IIRC, even Pat Buchanan, the far right Reform party candidate, received more votes than Gore had in some Dem precincts according to Florida election officials ... which even got chuckles from Buchanan on cable news). Blaming Gore's loss in 2000 on Nader is, it seems to me, as deluded and/or disingenuous as blaming HRC's loss in 2016 on "Bernie Bros". In both cases losing the electors for states which, but for the Dems, wouldn't have been in play while also winning the popular vote (a feat which hadn't happened since the late 19th century) poorly run campaigns of unlikeable candidates, aided and abetted by the DNC no less, threw away those elections.
Sometimes democracy just doesn't work for the people. Democracy isn't an inherent good. It lasts as long as it provides minimal stability. Once things actually start breaking down, dictatorship is likely the next step since that's the only kind of government that can act swiftly and effectively to re-establish stability.
And fragile.
Jesus
I see their new fossil fuel-approved slogan is China and India need to reduce their emissions FIRST.
And I bet their other slogan is "We can't reduce our emissions because we'll be reliant on Chinese technology now that they somehow got a head start in the industry"...
...Or some other reason why we shouldn't do anything. I've sort of heard them all at this point.
Thats exactly what was said as well! I think Burnham raised that point that we get our batteries and EVs from China manufacturing. Its just a joke.
Haley:
Quoting Mikie
Is that how it was phrased? Like asking, "do you believe in God?" There are other forces at work on the climate. A more delicately composed question, like,"do you think human behavior is as responsible for climate change as natural causes?" might have gotten a few positive responses. Maybe not. Going all in and declaring a non-believer a heretic worthy of belonging to a "basket of deplorables" will win few converts.
What does that say about the American electorate? That they want to vote for an outlaw as President?
Brian Tyler Cohens (democrat) take - https://youtu.be/Bqj-Doe_EzU?si=F8GCZ4xFs7nCOQh9
- Vivek Ramaswamy being applauded for calling climate change a hoax
- 6 out of 8 candidates saying they would support Trump (you can see de Santis glancing around to make sure others were doing it first)
When the autopsy on the death of Western democracy is written, these will be mentioned in the pathologists report.
On the plus side, at least Hayley supported Ukraine.
Jesus
Why are they allowing this man to continue? Its not like theyll lose the seat. How bizarre.
Caitlin Johnstone
More like Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn. She's got my vote. Well, if it were possible for an Aussie- born to run for office. :smile:
From four months ago, my predictions have been on track and in some ways better than I'd imagined ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/807006
New York attorney general sends cease-and-desist letter to group accused of voter intimidation
[sup] Anthony Izaguirre · AP · Sep 21, 2023[/sup]
Dems crushed MAGA^^ in
Ohio (reproductive rights & recreational ganja)
Kentucky (governor)
Pennsylvania (supreme court justice)
Philadelphia (mayor)
Virginia (senate & house!)
:cool: :up:
^^ making autocracy great again
But certainly politics couldn't be that dumb right? Right? :scream:
The MAGA "base" is a massive hate-cult that comprises only about a third of the electorate; 2024 will be Biden's / Dems' election to lose (much like Hillary in 2016) because Donald (even IF he somehow trundles through the GOP primaries despite by then (1) having lost his business "empire" and (2) being on trial for 'crimes against the United States') can't' win. So far, Benkei, Biden / Dems don't give any indication he is / they are careless enough to buck the trend and throw away next year's election.
My view is that DJT is leading the entire MAGA cult off an electoral cliff, lemming-like, and that his lead in the polls will basically amount to giving them enough rope to hang themselves (scary though it might seem in the meantime :yikes: )
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/19/trump-colorado-presidential-ballot-disqualified-14th-amendment :victory: :cool:
This ruling will force SCOTUS to decide the issue for all 50 states ... soon after they decide Putin's neoNazi Bitch Joe Biden, Barack Obama & George W. Bush does not have "absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution".
For the Trumpist, more proof that the system is rigged against Trump. :razz:
And notice from the article:
On the plus side: Trump "only" has about 50% support among GOP. If the field narrows down to 2 (e.g. Trump vs Haley), early enough, there's a fair chance Trump won't get the nomination. Then, I agree, he'll run as a 3rd party and doom the election for the GOP.
Happy Holidays :sparkle:
The election results say otherwise. Republicans have under-performed in every election since Trump's initial win. Then everyone forgets about that in the meanwhile and Trump leads the media on a wild goose chase into conspiracy theories and grievances. And come the next actual election, the results for the Republicans, as distinct from the fevered fantasy of a Trump presidency, will be abysmal. The real shame of the matter is that theres a whole lot of really important legislative work that needs doing, there are enormous economic, political, and environmental challenges to deal with, whilst MAGA are totally absorbed in what can charitably be designated a circle jerk.
I predict low voter turnout. I think that will help Trump. GOP voters are old and reliable.
"The Coming Biden Blowout"
by David Frum
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/gop-republicans-2024-election-biden-trump/673856/
I would vote for them.
So, do you think if Trump is convicted in the January 6th Trial, where he's charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding etc, and sentenced to prison (pending appeal), that he will nevertheless remain a viable candidate? (The trial is scheduled for 4th March this year.)
The New York Times says yes. Being convicted doesn't automatically disqualify him. If the majority of states wanted to disqualify him they could, but they won't. That means he'll probably be the Republican candidate, whether he's convicted or not.
Do you think that if he is convicted of those crimes there's a possibility that the Supreme Court will uphold the Colorado Supreme Court judgement of 'disqualification because of insurrection'?
I really don't know. He won't take the popular vote, but as for the electoral college, it comes down to what the swing states do. Biden is the incumbent, and the economy is doing ok. Both of those give him an advantage. The voters turned against Trump in 2020. It's possible that they'll do that again. It will be close, though.
Im just praying you come out of it still a democracy! Sorry, but Im just saying what many other people around the world are thinking about, some rubbing their hands together and waiting with smug looks on their faces, thinking that its only a matter of time, and others, like me, praying you lot pull together because we could really do with you putting your differences aside and showing a united front right now! Okay, rant over. (Im still quietly praying though.)
Could you explain why?
Because we would really like you to stay our democratic ally.
I see. :up:
If only ranked choice voting were possible! That would make such a ticket truly viable - no one would fear wasting their vote on a candidate with virtually no chance of winning.
Mike Huckabee - 2008
Rick Santorium - 2012
Ted Cruz - 2016
None of them went on to become the GOP nominee for president. :up:
Thats my plan.
And none had to run for president just to stay out of prison because they had been indicted with 91 felonies, or had been found civilly liable of sexual assault (rape in most other jurisdictions) or had been sued by their home states and found civilly liable for massive tax, bank & insurance fraud either. :mask:
We've reached a new low, where even the few areas of agreement between the parties end up getting wed to hit button domestic issues. Now aid to Ukraine has been made contingent on an immigration deal during an election year (one packed with administrative poison pills as well), making it 50/50 at best if anything gets passed before November. Unfortunately, this is going to have very real consequences on the battlefield, especially as air defense munitions run low.
The adults in the room are going to need to recognize that they have to be willing to pass legislation without their party's most radical members or America's already battered credibility as a partner (or even an adversary) on the world stage is completely ruined.
At this rate, it's only a matter of time until the country defaults on its debt, sparking a huge crisis. If anything, the GOP losing big over the next 10 years or so will probably only make this more likely, as they lose any share in wanting to see success.
The only consolation is that, given how polarized things are, it seems fair to assume that very few voters are going to switch parties for the Presidential ticket. Demographics being what they are, this probably means Trump loses by 9-11 million votes this time instead of just 7.5 million, although this hardly precludes him taking office again. That's probably the worst case scenario, especially if there are some Florida in 2000 style shenanigans surrounding his victory.
I'm not so sure. No Democrat wants to see a debt default. I would guess most independents don't, either. Same with moderate Republicans. For the foreseeable future, there's going to be enough Democrats and moderate Republicans to avoid a default.
I don't want to believe that. I mean, it is easy to believe, but at the same time, this forthcoming election may well be a circuit-breaker. I'm convinced that Trump will loose, even if he is the nominee, which I think is highly dubious. The 'Red Wave' never materialised at the half-terms. The Republicans now have a majority of only three after Santos' expulsion, it's conceivable that the Democrats might win the House, Senate and White House. And the House Republicans are basically split between moderates and the MAGA fringe, who are detested by a lot of people on both sides.
Despair and cynicism are part of the MAGA narrative - 'everything is broken, only we can fix it'. If I wanted to go and do the research on Biden's legislative and economic wins, I'm sure I could find it, although I don't want to spend the time. And yes, they're doing a very poor job of communicating those wins, but then Trump continues to suck all the oxygen from the room.
Agree the Ukrainian stalemate is disgraceful, and I'm sure there are Republicans who agree with that, but they're over a barrel held by halfwits like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan. The rot really set in with Gingrich and the Tea Party fundamentalists, and they are carrying it forward. But I refuse to give up hope.
Additionally, Biden has been found to have fabricated his educational history in public, among other things. There is absolutely no basis to be pretending Biden is a clean-handsman. He made plenty of utterly absurd votes throughout his career, including opposing desegregation efforts that were working.
https://www.mic.com/impact/the-moments-from-joe-bidens-political-career-that-have-aged-the-worst-22914332
https://macleans.ca/politics/washington/taking-stock-of-those-47-years-of-joe-biden-that-trump-keeps-mentioning/
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-10-worst-things-president-biden-did-in-2023/
I may have to duck out, because you are clearly committed to a certain view, and while i respect that, I don't, overall, respect approaching politics in the way you are. It seems to be counterproductive, and at times outright ridiculous (not you; the approach). My take; that's all. I can conceive of choosing to lionise a politician. If, for whatever reason, you are convinced Biden is not, as a career politician, an absolute crank, I don't know what to say.
Ftr, i think both are precluded from being reasonable candidates. They are both, for different reasons, completely inadequate to be in charge of anything reasonably important.
Don't kill the messenger. I too wish things were different.
Quoting Hanover
Yeah well, I just can't help but seeing things a little differently (or clearly), making me a broken record predicting the coming Biden blowout ...
(June 2023)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/819018
(June 2023)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/819276
(Nov 2023)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/851623
(Dec 2023)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/865050
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/820342 (i.e. the way the investor class prefers things)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Not in our lifetime, Count. IMO, the sovereign wealth of the G-20 nations (including the BRICS) and their IMF, World Bank & GATT-affiliated central banks the investor class (bond market-makers) won't "allow" a petrodollar-denominated US default. Probably not in our grandchildren's lifetimes either. Bretton Woods still has all of the world's major economic powers by the short-n-curlies. :eyes: :mask:
Octogenarian Politicking at it's finest LOL
Blame the Democrats for running a corpse for President.
To be fair I don't think anybody did that in 2020 either.
I thought the problem was he was asleep at the wheel. :roll:
I do actually think Trump will win.
Not sure if you're following the prosecution of Trump in Atlanta over the Georgia election. The DA hired her lead prosecutor, not by doing a nationwide search for the best and brightest to take on the man who is vying for the most powerful position in the world, but by rolling over in bed and finding the guy that just fucked her and asking him if he'd be interested in the job. She then pays him over $600,000 (which no ADA makes ever, and is more than she makes) and then they use that money to go on trips.
Then she goes in front of her church and tells them the scrutiny over this guy is because he's black and not over the two white guys she appointed also, as if this might have more to do with selecting your secret boyfriend for the job and not much to do with race. And she still hasn't admitted or denied the allegation she's fucking her chief prosecutor.
It's just so disappointing to have these unforced errors and to feed right into the Trump narrative that everyone else is more fucked up than he is. Trump calls the Georgia Secretary of State and asks him to go get him a bunch of votes, and Trump is going to get away with it because the hacks can't keep the train on the rails.
I don't know where I am anymore on any of this. They all live lives so different from me I can't compute any of this. I wouldn't let my wife work in my law firm and I'm a partner here. Can they not compute that a sexual partner will control the entire work environment and will be entirely unmanagable if allowed authority? And can't you be self-aware enough to know that your belief in the brilliance of your boyfriend might not be an objective evaluation? My rule is that if you call someone your boo boo or punkin, you can't hire them to lead your battle against the potential next leader of the free world.
It's so fucking stupid. Trump's going to win and she's going to lose whenever she is up for election. Follow that bullshit: A guy will try to steal an election for the highest position in the world and the prosecutor against him is going to pay the highest political price for it.
Part of me says that the world deserves Trump.
In terms of foreign policy he can hardly do worse than the Biden administration.
An isolationist America might actually produce a peaceful putting asleep of the American empire, rather than a world war which is what the US is coursing straight towards under this clownshow of an administration.
I don't want to vote for Biden, but I'll crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump, and I'm not going to throw my vote away on a hopeless third party candidate.
Biden is one health emergency away from being pressured to drop out. All it would take is one McConnell-esque freeze up.
Quoting Hanover
Do we have confirmation on that, though? CNN ran a story on that, but it was skimpy on details.
Sorry, but Trump was looking for illegal votes, which if found would have put him in the lead. He wasnt telling the governor to fabricate votes or find hidden Trump votes. So Not only are they corrupt, but theyre misinforming you, persecuting innocent people, and making a mockery of the justice system while doing so.
I accept your apology.
This is why it isn't reasonable to get such an arched back over these things. Everything is f'd. LOL
Quoting RogueAI
I respect that position. I would waste my vote though, if I chose to.
Thank you, Mr Surge the Borders President. :roll:
Even Harvey Specter left Specter Litt Wheeler Williams when he got with his secretary :lol:
I'm wondering though, would this be sufficient to vote Clown?
From my spot, nope, but I'm no Denverite.
Quoting Hanover
:smirk:
Quoting Hanover
Whether or not Loser-1, if past elections & special elections (2016-2023) are prologue, Dems, Indies, Never Trumpers & pro-choice suburban GOP women voters will significantly out-vote "anti-women" MAGA-GOP voters all the way down the ballot this fall. Follow the numbers (like I did in 2020), my friend, they don't lie. :mask:
I'm following like a hawk and it looks to me like another sideshow that's only fodder for cable infotainment talking heads. Yeah, "what the hell was she thinking?" Worse case scenario: DA Willis recuses and her office goes on with their slam dunk prosecution of Criminal Defendent-1 & co. What I'm really watching for is Judge McAfee scheduling DA Willis' RICO trial to begin in June after Trumper-stooge Cannon, in March or sooner, postpones the Mar-a-Lago Obstruction & Espionage trial until after the general election. "Wishful thinking?" TBD.
Part of me agrees with you.
If you live in an area where children are removed from school buildings on occasion to make room for illegal immigrants, or hospitals shut down, then perhaps Clown doesn't look so bad.
What was the worst thing he did in his first term, prior to January 6th?
I am prepared for a deluge . . . . . . :scream:
Biden Accedes to Tougher Immigration Policy to Deflect Criticism, Secure Ukraine Aid (Tarini Parti, Michelle Hackman · WSJ · Jan 18, 2024)
I'm admittedly still not seeing it, Clown because Mexican border...? Maybe it's just me.
Seems easy enough: take one minute, see who the worst candidate is, vote against that candidate, and get back to doing actual work.
The rest is sports-like political hobbyism.
[I]Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.[/i]
Why do you think the world deserves Trump?
Yes, why on Earth would you have candidates debating in the first place? :wink:
Wonder if this will continue forward, when it's Biden vs Trump: why even give the respect for the other candidate by debating him face to face?
Perhaps both old men would like it that way.
I think Trump is eager for a debate with Biden. He's much more quick-witted and energetic than Slow Joe. Biden's cabal may keep him from debating.
Every time Trump speaks, he says the same things - the Government is evil/leftist lunatics, I'm victim of a plot/unfair persecution, all the charges against me are lies. He has no policies as such, only talking points which spill out of his constant monologue. And, he lost the election.
I watched him for awhile in the recent town hall meeting in Iowa and he looked quick witted and vibrant. We'll see where all this goes. Curious times. I still think Michelle Obama could be chosen at the convention, with Biden retiring. She would have my vote.
Well, I hope the ticket of either Gavin Newsom & Gretchen Witmer or Gretchen Witmer & Gavin Newsom comes out of the Dem's 2024 convention. They would electrify this dead-ass electorate and blowout Loser-1 or any other MAGA-GOP stooge this fall. :victory: :smirk:
:up:
Quoting jgill
:lol: Come on.
Yeah so much time is spent on election deniers that this significant little fact is often overlooked. Trump lost, and lost big. 7 million votes or so. Rather than question why, Trump made up fairytales which his cult swallowed and continues to believe/defend. Then the MAGA crowd failed in Georgia, then failed in 2022.
Theyll likely fail again in the fall. But they wont even scratch their heads about it because theyll claim it was rigged. The problem is obvious: even against a weak candidate like Biden, independents and most of the American electorate hate Trump, and for very good reason.
I might be wrong. I had just watched a clip from a Biden press conference.
:smile:
Perhaps compared to Joe Biden, yes. Trump is at least energetic when talking about himself.
And anyway, usually American debates between candidates is just a "Gotcha!"-seeking moment with the candidates simply speaking pest about the other candidate. Policy hardly comes up. Only perhaps in some 5 second memorized quick lines. And Trump of course has the "best": everything will succeed when he's in charge. Just as like, uh... last time.
Quoting Mikie
The big question is how many American will just stay home.
So much as they do and hand Trump a second term it won't be like in 2016 where everyone was assured that Clinton would win. Not only are Democrats and anti-Trump independents (with the exception of Biden apparently) convinced that Trump could win, but they think he's likely to at this point in time. Maybe that will light something under them or maybe not, but it's certainly not an easy decision to make.
Quoting ssu
The more Trump keeps up his ridiculous scare-talk, the bigger the chance of a sizeable protest vote. A lot of the younger electorate hate and fear him, and hate and fear are good antidotes to apathy.
That dumpster fire was billowing a year ago ... my 2 bits from Feb 2023:
Quoting 180 Proof
Are you sure this isn't just that half the country agree with things you don't - and that's in line with whomever they are seeing as 'leader'?
It seems, when the roles are reversed, the assertion is the same...
Youre dead wrong about this moral equivalence. Only one party is supporting a leader who deliberately and demonstratedly attempted to overthrow the result of the last election, whos minions brought 60 lawsuits against the result, all of which failed. You dont understand, or dont want to know, what is at stake - I cant discern why. It might be cynicism - that all political parties are corrupt - or wishful thinking - that the Republican Party cant have become this corrupted by one individual. But in either case, youre mistaken. But Im not going to debate it with you further, you can believe whatever you like, life is too short for pointless internet arguments.
Nothing you just said has much at all to do with why I asked, or what i asked you about..
I asked you a simple question, importing zero opinion of my own (which you already know doesn't comport with your comments here). I am interested in your answer - I have no debate to ascend to, or even an oppositional opinion to lay out. There is no 'moral equivalence'. It's a psychological question that I'm interested in your answer to.
Please, for the love of Philosophy, stop importing entire belief systems into my posts to avoid answering a simple question. If it is the case that you cannot speak in a political thread without doing so, please let me know immediately as I wont bother asking for your takes anymore. I sought to explore your thought on the matter, and nothing else. Assume whatever you want, but do not lay your assumptions on me. The plain fact is, I am interested as to why you see that psychological condition as one-sided. The facts don't get me there (which I don't deny).
Quoting AmadeusD
That is asserting 'moral equivalence'. That there are 'two sides', and 'one side' just happens to be the one 'I don't agree with'.
Is that not what you were implying?
What i asked was exactly as you quoted - Are you sure this isn't just that half the country agree with teh things you dont (they may be blatantly wrong - it's not relevant) and that what they believe is in line with whomever they see as a leader (who could be a murderous psychopath - it simply doesn't matter to the question i'm asking).
You: Agree with Biden (i assume) and Disagree with Trump (let's assume you're 100% in the right, there's no debate or 'other side' to be seen. I know you do). Therefore, to live under Trump would be to be required to live under a leader you vehemently disagree with on just about everything - which would feel like a Dictator.
Others: Agree with Trump and disagree with Biden. Same as above, in reverse.
Are you sure that your take here:
Quoting Wayfarer
is not, in fact, the exact same thing the other side claims is the case, but in reverse? The facts of the matter are literally irrelevant. I want to know hwo you frame that opposedl psychologies when they are claiming the same thing. Most Republicans of the kind you're highlighting believe Biden is the Dictator (and, unless you've lost your mind, there's some extremely minor truck to that if you think the COVID measures were out of line - doesn't matter if you're right, it just explains the psychology of it, in that extremely minor way that it can) for the same reasons.
I literally said nothing that could possibly import the notion that I think you're inaccurate in your position on the facts.
The facts are not irrelevant. This is not a hypotherical, like 'the trolley problem' in undergraduate tutorials. Real politics is at stake. Only one side is lead by someone who has tried to subvert the election. It doesn't matter how I or they feel about that. Everyone has a right to their own opinon, but nobody has a right to their own facts. It is a fact that Trump has said he wants to suspend the Constitution, jail his critics and purge the civil service. It is also a fact that neither Joe Biden nor any other Democrat has said any such thing.
Once again: I am not, have not, and will not lay out my opinion on this. I am asking you about yours. You seem to be really, seriously, entirely missing the point of what I'm asking here. The facts are completely irrelevant to my question.
Quoting Wayfarer
Except this is exactly what I'm asking you about. So, yeah, this is literally the only thing that matters. I am not engaging you in a political debate. I am asking you a personal psychological question. If you don't care to answer, that's fine, but is an entirely different response to what you've, so far, jumped headlong into.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. Those things seem to be clearly true. I never denied any of this, or intimated that I did/would (though, as a matter of curiosity I have heard talk from Dems of doing away with the Electoral College... It's no matter, don't get stuck on it. Just in passing).
Quoting Wayfarer
Not in the question I asked. Not quite sure why you're hell-bent on bringing up the most dire and intense version of this. I haven't asked about any of that.
What the heck is going on my dude? This is so bizarre. Let me rephrase the question in a way that is politically expedient, and will massage your political leanings:
Why you think (some)Republicans feel exactly the same way?
The last year of speculation and hand-wringing was a complete waste of time. This was predictable.
Was that not the vibe in other quarters?
Theyre complete lies. These sorts of lies are just another reason people are abandoning the sinking ship that is establishment politics.
But the lies obviously work as we can watch in real time as people repeat them. At this point its just a question how well they work.
Well, no, all four are plainly true. Their implication is another thing. But I'd hazard a differing between us there too.
Well, look at the thread title. :roll:
My question comes squarely under 'General Discussion', does it not?
I also find that a really odd retort to my having parsed out exactly what I'm asking, through your emotional response.
Can you just let me know fi you don't care to answer the question please? I have no issue with that, if so. It would've just been easier to have an "I don't care to answer" earlier in this exchange :smile:
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting Wayfarer
There is no moral equivalence between the two ;)
Quoting Wayfarer
There may well be, but unless you can point me to where I said this, intimated this, or said something that could, without insanity, be interpreted as this, in line with the discreet question i asked, I have to assume you're not really trying to do anything but argue with people. Each time i make it clear you've gotten something well wrong (including pointing out hte thread title) you just move to another tactic to make it seem unreasonable. Hard to work with..
Theyre not only plainly false, theyre obvious lies. And they follow the same pattern of propaganda, namely, contextomy.
Theyre provable lies, Im afraid, and on a level that makes newspeak look like childs-play. But thats the sort of discourse were forced to deal with here.
But, as an example - the fact is, Trump quite directly noted that the 'Fraud' of the 2020 election justified the suspension of 'rules' including 'parts of the constitution' via Truth social. This is inarguable. The implication (and motivation, I guess) you could argue - but you wouldn't have much fun I don't think.
This is contextomy. It would be proper to quote in full instead of picking and choose which words you want to include and fill in the blanks with your own. It would be proper to include any clarifications. So there is no fact here.
"A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution, ; and
Our great Founders did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!"
There's your context, and the exact quotes. As noted - inarguable. It is a fact that this was done by Trump. That you do not accept this fact, despite its obtaining, isn't really that interesting.
Massive fraud allowing for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution is a far cry from Trump wanting to suspend the constitution. So thanks for the demonstration.
Talk about Trump derangement syndrome.
P1: Trump believes the 2020 election was a Fraud
P2: Trump believes a fraudulent election justifies suspension of the Constitution *which is the correct reading of "the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles...found in the Constitution"
C: Trump doesn't want to suspend the Constitution?
Could you kindly try to make sense of that for me
Your problem is the contextomy.
P2 ought to be: Trump believes A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.
Upon any confusion, good faith demands you seek clarification, not assume motives and attribute to him words he never said.
Quoting AmadeusD
Of what type do you think he was referring? Tax fraud? Or could it be, that I am well aware of the context and I am accurately portraying the situation here? because that's the case.
Im just wondering how one gets from what is quoted to Trump wants to suspend the constitution or Trump calls for the termination of the constitution. What leads you to take that leap?
P1: Trump believes a Massive Fraud justifies the suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution"
P2: Trump believes the 2020 Election was a Massive Fraud
C: Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified (the idea that this doesn't imply he wants it to happen is bogus, and not a real argument).
So again, what type of Fraud do you think he was referring to?? I will take a second brush past this question as a fair estimate that you understand exactly that he's talking about the election, which he believed was a Massive Fraud
Now, the above is clear any not really amenable to massage. However, lets leave it aside. I know what you're doing. I tend to do the same, when it's actually happening. JPB is a prime example of someone being taken out of context, lied about, interpolated until his entire persona appears to those who know nothing about it, as if a fully-fledge and technicoloured monster. I get it. But...
You would read the same thing that we are out of a Biden statement similar. You would not be so indolently pedantic as to deny the basic and obvious meaning of the statement, as if you didn't get it. So why with Trump?
Of course hes talking about election fraud. What Im wondering is how you can get from this quote:
To this assumption regarding his motives:
Trump wants to suspend the constitution.
Or his beliefs:
His clarification directly disputes both assumptions. His absence from any position of power directly disputes even the possibility. So how do you get from one to the other, if not by way of the propaganda of his opponents?
That's not a motive.
His own words say this, directly, with absolutely no middle man. Bizarre that you're asking. I didn't need to do anything to 'get there'. It is what he said he believes.
Quoting NOS4A2
My position (the second of your quoted objectionable quotes) is not disputed by anything he has subsequently said that isn't a direct contradiction of what he... said. So, I can accept he misspoke perhaps.
Quoting NOS4A2
I have outlined, twice, how this is a purely logical and sensible conclusion to draw. If you don't see it, that's within you to fix.
Not possible. Trump doesnt misspeak and doesnt lose. When he said Obama was the literal founder of ISIS, repeatedly, he both meant it and didnt mean it. Its sarcasm.
Concerning the constitution comment:
That comes from Trump, so it has to be true.
Your belief otherwise is just falling for liberal media propaganda. Yada yada contextomy and boom, all good. Make America great again.
Ah, I see. LOL.
Tbf, liberal media is absolutely awful. But that has no bearing here - just wanted to give at least one opinion here haha.
Sometimes I wonder whos crazier Wokesters or Trumpers. Then I remember the real question whos more dangerous? And it becomes pretty obvious.
But, its totally understandable that someone is comfortable in your position. The GOP, and Trumpers more specifically (i.e the Trumpers in their capacities in teh GOP before Trump) have been the same type of dangerous for several decades at the least.
The newer 'woke' problems have been inching on us for only about 15 years, in my estimation. Easy to miss. However, I was chest-deep in it for a time(And i do mean.. DEEP.. I thought I was morally obliged to literally hand a job offer to a female if i got one, as an example of how deranged i was) and must conclude from my experiences they have an equal potential for social destruction unfortunately :(
Eh, I think its clear that the Trump crowd are far more dangerous. But in many ways the woke crowd is more obnoxious.
But, that said, I have just heard some lines from a podcast about the Conservative/Republican movement in the USA which are.. to my mind.. utterly bizarre and clearly an interpolation from someone who is extremely biased.
Yet, i know that isn't hte case, in this particular case. So i assume i am underinformed :)
She comes through as "no-nonsense" personality-wize (if that means much). She's given no good indication of stepping up though, or what her programme would be, i.e. why to vote for her. I can see her as US president anyway.
His words explicitly and directly say something else than what youve consistently claimed it does, namely, A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.
You said: Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified.
So why make such sweeping alterations, and pretend he said one and not the other?
So Im just curious why you feel the need to pick and choose what parts of the quote you want and supply your own words to the rest? Logic and sense?
I've quoted them in full. You are out-right lying. The kind of lying I cannot do anything with but tell you you are lying. Because you can read. So you know you are lying.
Quoting NOS4A2
I've not. I literally quoted him. Directly. No interpolation whatsoever. You are lying. And you know you are lying.
Quoting NOS4A2
They don't. I quoted him, so I know they don't. You are lying. Told you you wouldn't have any fun.
The only possible point you could conceivably make that doesn't require you lying, is that you think 'allow' and 'justify' in this context are somehow materially different, in that they indicate different attitudes or intentions about the objects in question (the rules, articles etc.. of the Constitution).
How you could possibly think that is, I think, not something a sane person could understand.
Did you not say this? Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified.
Is this a full direct quote?
Trump believes suspension of "all rules, regulations and articles... of the constitution" is justified.
You quoted him at a point of your choosing, filling in the rest with words of your own choosing. I can quote you again if youd like.
It was what's called a proposition, within a syllogism. I'm unsure you're really understanding what's going on here.
Quoting NOS4A2
No. The direct full quote is. You cannot possibly be this stupid.
Quoting NOS4A2
I can do you one better - I quoted him. Which, you know, anyone who can read (you) can see. This is how i know you're lying. Nothing i can do with it, but point htis out as it happens.
Your snark doesnt change the fact you removed most of his argument and filled it with your own assumptions. Thats the way propaganda works, and I was only hoping you wouldnt allow yourself to be misinformed, and worse, to pass it off as unarguable fact. My apologies.
Cool thing is, I didn't. And it's right there as proof positive that you've just lied.
Quoting NOS4A2
that i was an absolute moron. I know. You were wrong.
Fair enough
Trump is ahead, as the polls predicted, but it's hardly a blowout.
Anyway, she better keep going. The Republicans are soon going to require a spare ;-)
Virtual Hatred: How Russia Tried to Start a Race War in the United States
[sup] William J Aceves · California Western School of Law · 2019[/sup]
Vladimir Putins plan to tear the US apart during 2024 election exposed
[sup] Charlie Bradley · Express · Dec 23, 2023[/sup]
Russias War on Woke
[sup] Mikhail Zygar · Foreign Affairs · Jan 2, 2024[/sup]
My only comment is that I think you'd get a huge amount of pushback on Pacifica, as this would be seen as an aggressive appropriation of Pasifika :)
And Canada might build a border wall. :)
EDITED
:up:
I am old and my memory fades, but did we become a Banana Republic during 2016-2020?
Maybe this time around . . . :chin:
Mr Trump will be in middle of a rally or debate, in full harangue, and despite being in excellent physical condition and of serene disposition, will suffer a massive heart attack and/or stroke in front of a huge audience. He falls to the ground, and gawking onlookers hear him say Ivanka is soooo hot
Whether or not he survives depends on whether prayers on his behalf are directed toward the correct deity. (There are so many gods these days. They are harder to get a hold of, and even harder to understand, than tech support from India).
I myself am praying fervently to Jupiter that this tragedy may be averted!
If Biden were to declare a war, it would probably improve (isolationist)Trump's chances.
:cool: :cool: :cool:
ROFLMAO!
Ironically, right now Trump seems to be holding up an immigration bill in the Senate that would help address the border that the GOP seems to approve of.
Then again I don't expect people to blame him. After all he got off scot free for the recent spike in oil prices despite pulling out of the Iran deal and cutting their supply off from the rest of the world.
Thanks! Haha, that was an attempt at some subtle irony or British-style dry humour. :nerd:
It's not 'ironic', it's a deliberate tactic. He's furious that if the bill goes any way to addressing the problem, then it will reflect positively on Joe Biden. He wants the problem to be as bad as possible, so he can use it against Biden and then take credit for solving it himself.
Quoting Mr Bee
The Senate Republicans and the moderate Republicans in Congress are all furious about it.
A fair assessment. I despise the two candidates. I keep hoping a third candidate will materialize.
Do you equally "despise" what Biden & Trump represent? Are their respective parties (coalitions) equally bad for the majority of communities in the US or equally detrimental to US interests vis-à-vis international relations (e.g. trade agreements, political treaties, strategic alliances)? Do you believe, jgill, the adverse difference between them is one of degree or a difference in kind? :chin:
I put more trust in him than any of the usuals, that's for sure -- a better constant than anyone else! :D
Oh I understand very well his intentions. He's also on record saying he wants the economy to crash and the US to default on it's debt if it means he can score political points. The man doesn't care about anything apart from staying out of prison.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm talking about the average American voter.
With all due respect, sir, if you believe Biden in anyway represents "the far left" (i.e. to the left of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi, Ralph Nader, et al), then you've not been paying attention for the last half century to Biden's political career.
So in your mind, woke corporate welfare-statism IS JUST AS BAD FOR YOUR COUNTRY AS autocratic ethnonational populism? Biden the neoliberal EQUALS Trump the neofascist?
(I guess, jgill, it's reasonable to assume, based on your reply, that in sum your answers to my previous post are: yes, yes, & difference in degree.)
Quoting Tom Storm
:up: :up:
Quoting 180 Proof
Not what I said. Doesn't logically follow. And this is a forum dedicated to logical arguments?
Quoting 180 Proof
When I watch sanctuary regions in our country struggling to absorb, medically treat, educate and bring into our culture vast numbers of illegal immigrants; some if not many of whom who escape capture cartel affiliated, it gives me pause to consider what you have so emotionally described. Is the establishment of cartels that grow so powerful they essentially control governments better than a neofascist who moves to destroy them?
This is all hypothetical. I still hope for a moderate candidate to arise from the quagmire in which we wallow.
Any more "moderate" than Biden would be useless, a complete corporate tool. I'm hoping for (at least) a solid left-liberal like Gov. Newsom or Gov. Witmer if Biden drops out.
... aka "FOX Noise Pollution" :mask:
My wife and I watched Bill Maher interview Newsom last week. She is more conservative than me, but we agreed he was very, very impressive and that we would vote for him under different circumstances.
And now...
Jan 26, 2024: Speaker Mike Johnson calls Ukraine-immigration deal dead on arrival in House
"Former president Donald Trump criticised the potential agreement being brokered in the Senate on his Truth Social site. The former president said we need a Strong, Powerful, and essentially PERFECT Border and, unless we get that, we are better off not making a Deal"
It appears to me that Trump wants the "border" problems to persist, because it's to his political benefit.
Spot on.
The republicans in congress have not supported border policy put forth after Trump voiced his opposition to it. Prior to that they were preparing to take action on the border issues. So, what we have is someone who is not an elected official influencing those who are to such a degree as to have them not take action on things they themselves loudly claim needs to be taken.
Why?
Because Trump wants to campaign on the 'border' and if there are bi-partisan actions taken to help correct the problems, then Trump's case is weakened, his plan is short circuited. So, just like Trump wants an economic crash to happen, he also wants the border to be a problem.
The Republican party is deliberately not taking action to correct illegal entry into the United States, because Trump wants it to be as big of a problem as it can be right now. That is to put Trump's political interests in front of what's in the best interest of America.
Are you claiming that if not for an election we would not go to war against Iran?
Is what Iran and its allies doing of no consequence?
This would only be a successful strategy if Congress approves the war. Does this mean that Congress wants to salvage his chances?
If this is a winning strategy wouldn't Trump also advocate for war?
It's no secret that the neocons and Israel want the US to go to war with Iran. The MIC wants war, period - any war will do.
And Joe wants to get re-elected. Or, more accurate, the people who control Joe don't want Trump to be elected.
It's one of those perfect storms of perverse incentives brewing. A shit blizzard, if you will.
Quoting Fooloso4
It might be of consequence, but going to war with Iran is another type of crazy. The US would get stuck in the worst quagmire thinkable, not to mention what it would do to the rest of the Middle-East, and it would dumpster what is left of the US empire in a single swoop.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't know who controls congress. Probably it's a melange of the worst lobbies imaginable, and thus war with Iran to save Biden's campaign is definitely in the cards.
Quoting Fooloso4
Nah, Trump is running squarely against the neocon establishment with his isolationism. It was never really an option for him. Besides, why would they choose wild card Trump over puppet Joe?
You have not answered my questions.
Here is another one: If the primary motivation is to eliminate Trump then why not simply eliminate him?
Are you predicting Biden will go to war with Iran before the election? Are you also predicting this would help his chances of getting elected?
Oh, look - "radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq", directed by and/or supporting the election of Biden, attacked and killed three American soldiers.
I thought this was unlikely, but after today..
What tends to get obscured in such speculation is the question of motive. There is an important difference between declaring war in response to the actions of an Iranian backed militia or other group and declaring war as a means of uniting the country against a common enemy. It may be that the latter is a consequence of the former but that does not mean it would be correct to attribute it as the motivating reason for it.
I agree. I don't think it will help Biden if we get plunged into another MidEast adventure. Quite the opposite.
This isn't rocket science.
War is often divisive. Since Vietnam American wars have not united us. Just the opposite. One reason some cite for their support of Trump is that they think he is responsible for keeping us out of war.
[s]Biden supporters[/s], aka Republicans in Congress, are now saber rattling, calling for attacks on Iran.
Quoting Tzeentch
And yet, still easy enough to get it exactly wrong.
Oh, sweet summer child.
Quoting Fooloso4
(2021)
US courts will deny that a president or former president has "absolutely immunity" from criminal prosecution.
By March/April, SCOTUS will uphold the "states' rights" to individually decide whether or not to disqualify Insurrectionist/Criminal-Defendent/Rapist-Defamer/Fraudster-1 from appearing on the 2024 federal election ballot pursuant to the 14th Amendment, Sec. 3 (Insurrection Clause) of the US Consitution.
By 31Jan24, the Trump Org will be effectively dissolved in NY State by order of Justice Engoron and no less than $300 million USD (re: "ill-gotten gains") will be disgorged as well as Fraudster-1 (maybe Beavis & Butthead too) will be barred for life from the real estate industry in NY State. NB: Liquidations to commence soon in order to put up a $300 million or more cash bond that's required by law to Appeal the civil judgment Loser-1 clearly isn't that liquid (thanks, Ms. Carroll! :clap: :kiss: :flower: Loser-1 also has to put up a total of $88.3 million in order to Appeal both her judgements too) otherwise, without that combined half-billion in cash (USD), the collection agencies for NYS will slap enforceable liens on all defendents' personal & real properties asap and savage TF out of them like piranha. :wink: :party:
As of 1Feb24 the "great business man" will be, in effect, cash poor whining squatting & shitting his old man diapers on a pile of fire-sale depreciating assets & compounding civil lawsuit debts ... So suddenly the upcoming GOP primary races are going to look pretty shaky even to the RNC, GOP senators & even a larger share of GOP-MAGA voters who might just stay home allowing Nikki Haley to be competitive in SC, etc.
Btw, the J6 Conspiracy criminal trial in Wash. DC will conclude with a guilty verdict on all 4 felony counts by the end of August 2024 or sooner. I'm guessing (soon to be) Felon-1 will not be the GOP candidate by the Fall (or even by July).
The fact is: Republicans in Congress are saying we should attack Iran while Biden is looking for a diplomatic solution. Please explain how this is a cynical plot by Biden and/or Israel and neocons to get him elected.
It is not the neocons but the Evangelical Christian Right who are the most influential advocates for Israel. They are also the most influential advocates for Trump. For Christian Zionists Israel's war is all about the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Biden, like the rest of us, can get things wrong. The claim that I am responding to, and it is not one that you made, is that Biben will go to war in order to win the election. For example:
Quoting Tzeentch
Next, you must understand that Trump is anti-establishment, and neither the neocons nor Israel (or the lobby) want him as president because of his isolationism. Of course these parties will happily use Trump to pressure Biden. Especially because the Israel lobby doesn't like Biden to begin with, so Trump isn't completely off the cards. Playing both sides is standard for these interest groups.
But Biden is clearly the easier one to control, and he's a neocon. Trump is a wild card and isolationist.
The Biden administration are the ones who gave Netanyahu cart blanche, and have been pointing fingers at Iran non-stop since the start of the conflict. Further, they've even circumvented congress to continue weapon sales to Israel, making the US complicit in Israel's crimes, which may very well be genocidal.
So it's clear Biden is trying to appease Israel, which may very well be what causes him to start this war - to cement support from the notoriously capricious lobby. If he acts like a stooge, the lobby will play him like a stooge and milk him for what he's worth.
If he refuses, the lobby will pressure him, quite possibly along with other interest groups who desire wider war, like the MIC, etc. And of course then the question is whether he caves or not. I think there's a good chance he does.
If Biden's incentive is to win the election by waging war, the attempt to carry that plan out would be a cynical plot.
Quoting Tzeentch
Trump is anti anything that will not be to his benefit. Support of Israel is to his benefit when it comes to his base.
Quoting Tzeentch
The neocons no longer play a significant role in American politics.
According to Wikipedia:
The footnoted Wikipedia source is Fox News.
If you do not understand the importance of the Religious Right you cannot give a plausible analysis of the part Israel plays. They are pro-Israel Zionists.
With the indiscriminate killing in Gaza Biden is well aware that support for Netanyahu's Israel may be working against him with liberal, moderate, and independent voters.
No, that's too simple. Any American president has to "support" Israel. The question is what that support looks like.
It's not very likely Trump would support Israel in its current actions, simply because it would almost guarantee that the US will get embroiled in various wars in the Middle-East, and thus not serve Trump's isolationist views.
Israel/the lobby know that full well. They might use Trump, but the chance that they'll actually support him over Biden is very slim. But they will use Trump to pressure Biden for sure.
In fact, the Trump phenomenon may give the Biden administration room to get away with a lot, including another war in the Middle-East against Iran and/or its proxies.
Quoting Fooloso4
:brow: Disagreed. What do you think the US is doing in Ukraine?
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes. The Israel lobby consists of various uncouth interest groups including Zionist Christians. I'm well-aware.
Quoting Fooloso4
The question is whether that will weigh heavier than the lobby's influence. But yes, Biden is obviously between a rock and a hard place in that regard - that's part of the aforementioned perfect storm.
How do you know his views aren't more aligned with Russia's? There may not be outright "collusion", but it damn sure looks like it on paper.
Quoting Tzeentch
So this is a canard of the Left. Why is it that Leftists support Islamist causes? It's a rhetorical strategy to malign any policy against hostile actors in the region as Israel's bidding. Why wouldn't America want to support an ally, while at the same time support their own interests (shipping/cargo/trade/resources) in the region? It would be foolish to let Iran make mischief unabated. Iran is trying to show people like yourself how powerful they are, and Leftists go weak in the knees rooting for it, but in a "Because Israel is bad" sort of rhetorical ploy. If Israel is bad, then Iran's actions must go unattended, is pretty odd argument as whole, but fits right in with a certain worldview for sure. I call it Lefitst. Call it whatever you want. It's certainly not "Idealist", unless you mean the corrupt UN (which lets countries with human rights violations unironically cry foul).
Quoting Tzeentch
I mean, this could go the other way. If Biden doesn't do anything in the Middle East, Trump will use it as a case that he is the backchannel savior (ala Nixon during Vietnam).
The Biden administration is doing what Israel wants - giving Israel cart blanche, blocking Security Council resolutions and continuing to funnel weapons and ammunition to Israel, even circumventing Congress if it has to, etc.
The "pressure" the administration puts is not actual pressure at all. It's simply what Biden has to do to avoid looking like a complete stooge, and Israel understands this is how it works.
Trump seems to me very much against this type of 'final solution' business in the Middle-East, so I personally find it very hard to believe he would try to profile himself as an even greater Middle-East hawk.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration hasn't stopped pointing fingers at Iran since the Oct. 7th attacks, so there's probably a lot of people wondering why he hasn't gone to war with Iran yet. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Why do you assume the US cares what the Security Council says? Or why do you think it is by default supposed to?
Quoting Tzeentch
The fact is that the US has interests in the region, and support their ally in the region. You don't have to look for old-school conspiracy theories of AIPAC for this. It's a worldview of balances of power. Iran represents something against US interests, especially with their use of proxies. Netanyahu is certainly an asshole, I grant that, but Biden simply doesn't want to make that kind of decision in the midst of this. I will say too that Israel has to get its shit together by finding a new strategy. Biden can only work with who he has got. Other than getting the hostages back, I see no way Israel will want to keep Hamas as a neighbor with their threat, and the US gets this threat.
Quoting Tzeentch
I would bet Trump would do anything he can to win Evangelical support.. So if Biden looks weak, he will just say that he can do better, whatever the case may be. Also, he is besties with Netanyahu. Don't count him out either for using war for his gain. He hasn't done it yet, but I wouldn't count it out. Saying that he is strictly an "isolationist" is believing he is principled or ideological to a fault. He is self-serving to a fault- there is a difference. Nixon went to China when it suited him. Nixon was virulently anti-communist when it served him. Etc. In fact, Nixon was able to stop the North Vietnamese delegation from taking the offer at the Paris Accords in '68 because Nixon wanted to look like the person who stopped the war. Trump isn't Nixon. No, he's worse.
Also, you didn't address any of this:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Remember the "Trump Peace Plan"? It was a proposal "negotiated" by Jared Kushner and Netanyahu, that gave Netanyahu what he wanted, and virtually nothing for Palestinians. Further, a large majority of evangelical Christians are Trump supporters, and they are extremely pro-Israel because of their view that God gave them this land.
You are talking about Trump as if he is someone with principles. He is isolationist only to the extent he thinks it benefits him. He has not taken a clear stand on what he would do in the face of escalating conflict.
Quoting Tzeentch
The Religious Right, the most powerful faction of this lobby is guided by revelation not reason. They are actually eagerly looking forward to this final prophesied holy war.
Quoting Tzeentch
What you do not seem to be aware of is just how much power and influence they have over Trump and what is no longer the Republican Party but now the Christian Party of Trump. They have been willing to look the other way when it comes to what Trump says and does, but this may be non-negotiable.
You got this much right: it is not rocket science. Unlike rocket science there are too many variables and indeterminacies to calculate.
And also, while the Right doesn't have a whole lot of fondness for Jews, they really don't like Muslims, so the enemy of their enemy is now their friend.
I haven't figured out if Trump is fully "self-serving" in foreign policy or "Russia-serving". If it is Russia-serving, indeed he may have to tone down against Russia's interests in the Mid East. If he is self-serving, then any strong man (including Netanyahu) is fair game to admire and support.
Nope. I don't know what will happen and do not know what if any role Trump will play.
What I do know is that you have left out some key players that play an important role in determining what will happen.
Perhaps he thinks they are the same.
He says that he likes winners. If it is strong man against strong man he likes whoever he thinks is winning. Unless he thinks this is against his interests.
The whole thing is very peculiar. The Evangelicals have be seduced by power. Apparently, they do not think that the power of God is enough. Not ever their Saviors - both the old one and the new improved version are not enough. They have long desired and plotted to seize power. Israel is nothing more than a means to that end. They have no regard for the Jews. Together with the Muslims and liberals and LGBT and everyone else who is not what they themselves pretend to be will be left behind in the Rapture.
Speaking of ridiculous...
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/30/media/taylor-swift-super-bowl-right-wing-conspiracy/index.html
Unfortunately it doesn't seem as surreal to me these days in the US, as it would have seemed to me before 2016.
"You know, we've got a lot of theories, we just don't have the evidence."
~Rudy Giuliani, Co-Conspirator-1
"You gotta be kidding ... This is the clown show!" ~Rusty Bowers, former Arizona Speaker of the House of Representatives & Trump supporter
How will Trump influence whether Biden goes to war with Iran and its proxies or not?
A non sequitur. Why would you think or think that I think Trump will influence Biden's decision?
You are lost and I am not going to draw a map for you or make the connections from one post to the next.
SCOTUS will deny a former President has absolute immunity
Trump will be cash constrained at some point this year (not as early as you say)
I disagree:
that Engeron will dissolve the Trump Org in NY; I expect only a fine, commensurate with his savings on interest due to receiving interest rates more favorable than his finances warranted. This will contribute to Trump's cash constraints.
that Trump won't be the GOP nominee. This is because 95% of delegates to the GOP nominating convention are committed to vote based on the primaries. They would be freed only if Trump were to drop out of the race - and that won't happen.
that the J6 conspiracy trial will have concluded before the election, but even if it is - pending appeals will keep him out of prison. If he's elected, he'll pardon himself and put an end to that.
He can't do that for the Georgia case.
We shall see soon enough. :up:
Suggestion: let's vote against him, so these things don't come to pass.
Would that I could.
Then he will appeal to a higher authority - Donald J Trump.
From a video on Truth Social he posted, "God Made Trump". The narrator begins:
If they do not side with Trump and God the Supreme Court will have revealed that they too are wolves in sheep's clothing. Only those who stand with Trump/God, pledging absolute fielty to him/Him, will have any authority on Earth or in Heaven.
This is said in jest, but only in part. Even if he complies with the Court's decision he will continue his seditious rants. How far is the flock willing to follow in undermining law and order and replacing it with the Law and Order to be engraved on the tablets of Trump? The Word in its new and improved incarnation?
[quote=Washington Post;https://wapo.st/3UgbylB]Democrats... criticized the impeachment proceedings as politically motivated, pointing out that GOP lawmakers were trying to oust Mayorkas for supposedly neglecting to secure the southern border, while at the same time opposing a bipartisan package under negotiation in the Senate that would seek to improve border security.[/quote]
It's astounding, the levels of hypocrisy, doubletalk and duplicitiousness the MAGA will sink to.
In case you haven't been paying attention:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/877051
How about grilling the CEOs of the very many major gun manufacturing companies about the horrors wrought by their wares? You know, Remington, Smith and Wesson, and the others? In addition to gun suicides there are also the many thousands of 'young people' shot and wounded or killed, many while attending school. But no, strangely enough- guns don't kill people, but social media kills people. And a much less controversial target, to boot.
It may seem improbable but THIS
may the writing on the wall of what is to come from the Republican Party:
Governor Greg Abbott issued a declaration arguing he has the legal power to overrule federal authorities in case of an invasion. What this means in practice is that he is claiming and acting on premise that the state and not the Supreme Court gets to interpret Federal law.
At what point does a citizen reinterpret the flow of illegal immigrants into the USA as an "invasion"?
Possibly when they cannot be admitted into a hospital for treatment because the medical system is flooded with non-citizens. Or when a mayor or governor asks the population to take these people into their homes. Or when the Tijuana cartel runs a major California city.
Until then, its merely a political issue. Or a humanitarian issue.
At no point. The question of the interpretation of the law is to be left to the courts. Otherwise the law becomes whatever any citizen interprets it to be. What else might an individual or state regard as an invasion? There are many private citizens and in government who believe that this is a white Christian nation. What they might consider "too many" of those who are not white Christians to be an invasion and an existential threat to their God given rightful way of life.
I do agree that there is a serious problem at the border that must be dealt with but it cannot be solved through lawless disregard of the courts.
So, lets call it what it really is: Racist fear mongers blaming a Democratic administration for an overblown problem.
You misinterpret what I am asking. I'm not speaking of a citizen advancing a legal opinion. Only when does anyone begin thinking of the border problem as an invasion? When does a mother feeding her family a meal hear the latest news report and think, "Wow, sounds like an invasion!".
Quoting Mikie
OK, now I know what it really is. Thanks.
https://www.voanews.com/a/democratic-mayors-renew-pleas-for-federal-help-over-migrant-crisis-/7415519.html
See above.
These is an important difference between someone thinking it sounds like an invasion and acting to secure the border in a way that courts have determined is illegal. If she claims that she is within her rights to act this way because of an invasion she is advancing a legal opinion.
I've spoken with her and she is shocked to hear that people think she is grabbing her shotgun and joining a convoy to the Border. What the court rules, she will follow . . . but reluctantly. Poor thing.
The number of illegal migrants bussed or flown to Denver has reached roughly 6% of the existing population. There was a piece on the news of a busload being driven to Colorado Springs, NOT a sanctuary city. The Springs has enough of a problem housing the homeless already there.
Those few from Venezuela are able to get work permits, but most are not.
Now THAT'S a majority. The kind of majority Trump felt entitled to in New Hampshire and Iowa (but *didn't* get).
I do hear you on the alarm about undocumented arrivals. It's definitely a serious issue, but again, requires bipartisan support as it's bigger than either party. And that support is being jeopardised by Trump and his congressional minions for purely political reasons. He has no interest in solving it, only in exploiting it.
This issue is so muddled with money for Ukraine and Israel - entirely separate concerns.
Yeah and who did that muddling, eh? Who was it, exactly, that tied them together. Hint: it wasn't Joe Biden.
6Feb24: DENIED by Federal Appeals Court, Washington DC Circuit. The order of the Federal District Court is upheld and affirmed. Criminal Defendent-1 has to appeal to SCOTUS by 12Feb24, otherwise the district court can proceed with the "J6 Conspiracy" trial.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68026175
i.e. Affirmed:
[quote=Judge Tanya Chutkan of Washington DC Federal District Court]Whatever immunities a sitting President may enjoy, the United States has only one Chief Executive at a time, and that position does not confer a lifelong 'get-out-of-jail-free' pass. Former Presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability.[/quote]
It would help if he chose another VP this time around. Gavin Newsom, perhaps.
:up: Or Gretchen Witmer.
He also brings "not Republican" to the table, which entails (among other things) the expectation he'd block attempts to further restrict women's reproductive rights. It also entails appointment of judges that are more apt to have a more expansive view of civil rights.
Not always going to be a good thing. But hte former is definitely true, and good (in the sense that its worse to have a Republican swaying reproductive legislation).
Quoting 180 Proof
Apparently, an Appellate-proof (restrained) judgment of over $450 million (disgorgement + interest), barred for (only) 3 years from doing business in NYS & borrowing from NYS chartered banks, an (enhanced) independent financial monitor & corporate compliance officer straitjacket for 3 years, but no "corporate death penalty" (yet?) ...
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/16/politics/takeaways-donald-trump-fraud-ruling/index.html
Still a BFD, Frauster/Loser-1 is butthurt. :kiss:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/881709 :eyes: :rofl:
Quoting Bill Maher (Feb 17, 2024)
The Trump family doll collection.
https://x.com/Roshan_Rinaldi/status/1759088710627299375?s=20
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68407054
:clap: :mask:
Will Putin bail out Fraudster/Loser-1? Maybe MBS? or Elon Musk? No bank or bond company will ... :rofl:
So he's both a super-successful multi-billionaire, and a person who can't afford 450 million dollars. What a fraud.
Time to sell Trump Tower. Probably can't get much for it though.
Well, I got the date right but the decision wrong: (maga-wingnut) SCOTUS is in the effing tank for (former) SCROTUS aka "Insurrectionist/Criminal Defendant/Fraudster/Rapist/Loser-1" ... making up stoopid ahistorical-ad hoc shit (like they did to overturn Roe v. Wade i.e. to jackboot curbstomp 'stare decisis') in order to further accelerate the bananafication of the US Republic.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/feb/08/14th-amendment-insurrection-disqualify-trump
What?! "States Rights" for forced pregnancy but NOT for ballot qualifications (or e.g. vote recounting re: Bush v. Gore)?!! :shade: :down:
@Ciceronianus @Hanover @Maw
It seems conservative justices are perfectly willing to be activists when it pleases them.
This isn't to contend that what is (or at least should be) the actual holding of the court, that Colorado cannot disqualify someone from being on the ballot for the presidency under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, wasn't agreed to by all the Justices. It was. But as the concurring opinions point out, the decision goes beyond what was required to resolve the issue before the court, generally a no-no, and also assets that Congress must adopt legislation before Section 3 is enforceable at all. It hasn't done so, and there's no assurance it ever will. In which case, it seems Section 3 is superfluous until that occurs. Usually, it's also considered a no-no to construe a law in such a manner as to render it ineffective.
We can be thankful that the court didn't hold that there was no insurrection while it was at it.
The striking down of Roe v. Wade had to do with the Court's rejection of the Constitutional right of a woman to have an abortion up to a certain point in her pregnancy. It was not based upon there being a federal statute that guaranteed the right to an abortion that the Court decided violated the individual states' rights to regulate it.
That is, the Supreme Court's striking down Roe v. Wade wasn't based upon a violation of Constitutional federalist principles. It was based upon their reversing their view that the Constitution itself protected a woman's right to an abortion. It wasn't a state's rights decision.
I didn't read the recent Trump elections case, but I fully expected the decision to be supportive of keeping him on the ballot. From a practical perspective, I think the Court did the left a favor. The quickest way to get a hesitant Trump voter to commit to Trump is to make him think the other side has their thumb on the scale. That's actually why Trump's numbers keep rising with every new lawsuit brought against him.
It also doesn't hurt him that the Democrats are running someone who is brain dead and they think if they deny it everyone will think he's sharp as a tack.
The Democrats have yet to master the art of the lying.
The US is a very stupid country, you see. Or, better, extremely ignorant and desperate.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/rankings
Commentary by establishment conservative attorney George Conway on 4March24 SCOTUS' tr45h decision ...
@Ciceronianus @Hanover @Maw
And ?
Nevermind, Ill make it easy: most people dont go to universities, and of those who do, few get into the best ones. Of that small group, most are morons.
"Both national and swing state polls show Haley is a dramatically stronger candidate than Trump in the general election. (A new Marquette University poll has Haley beating Joe Biden by 16 percentage points, while Trump and Biden are in a statistical tie.)"
As there is now a murmur that she might consider running as an independent. In the very unlikely event that she was elected as a third-party candidate, which party would she be more likely to be able to negotiate policies with, in light of the dysfunction that characterises the MAGA-GOP? I think she would get no traction with the Republicans, who would be apoplectic at loosing, and that she would, in effect, be forced into a coalition with Democrats to pass any actual policies.
(Trump is even giving a pretence of presenting policies or ideas for governing any more. He's just ranting.)
It's not confined to people that are extremely ignorant, though. Intellectuals may find faults all over (+ focus/magnify), and hence stoke fires all over. Fault-finding isn't that hard anyway.
So, choosing the right battles matter.
(Incidentally another reason that mudslinger-politicians are a turn-off, to me, more so than politicians that focus on what their programs are.)
Anyway, if the US was significantly weakened on the international stage (which could happen by domestic division or foolery), then others would just jump right in. In the present environment, I'm not all that optimistic in case that was to happen, but I guess we'll see (or might).
I'm not entirely sure how the details of these things go, but wouldn't she align with the Lincon Project and draw together the Republicans who don't want to be part of the MAGA cult?
Would it be so bold as to predict that at some point, the Republican party will split and the new faction will be called "New Republicans" or something like "True Republicans" or similar? Gathering momentum among normal people who usually vote Republican. That they would acknowledge that it's problematic to gain traction at this time in history, but that their goal is to build up a sense of trust that voters will get a stable Republican party by voting for them and their internal goal is to clean house and rid themselves of any MAGA supporters. That way, the MAGA cult will probably soon evaporate since they cannot get enough traction by numbers alone and the gullible cult folks who soon get tired of not being represented will move on and just vote for the new republican party while the core MAGA cult will just gather together in some remote location and shoot beer cans or whatever mindless trash they find meaningful.
I don't know either, but I've been following US politics pretty closely - probably too closely - and it seems obvious the current Republican party is incapable of governing. As you will know, two weeks ago they sunk a bill that their own delegates had spent months working on, purely because Trump said it would make Biden look good. They're wasting massive amounts of time on the faux 'impeachment enquiry' on Biden just to help Trump settle imagined scores. Trump, meanwhile, is reduced to near-complete confusion and incoherency - he doesn't know who is President, he keeps confusing all of his many legal cases and simply babbling on stage. He's a complete mess and plainly incapable of governing anything whatever. So if an independent candidate DID win (it's a thought-experiment, not an actual prediction) he or she would have to turn to the Democrats because the Republicans can't manage a piss-up in a brewery.
I don't think any independent candidate would win, but they would split the votes so much if there were three options available that the democrats would win simply by the lack of enough votes on either side of the Republicans.
However, if, by some miracle, a stable Republican outlier wins instead as an independent, I think that she would gather everyone siding with the Lincoln project and build up a proper party through them. And they might even push out many of the MAGA cult members infesting the other halls of power in congress over time.
Regardless, I think the only way out and away from Trumpism is to have an independent option during election. Too many Republicans who hate Trump hate the Democrats more and they would vote for the independent voice and drag all the ones who's opting out entirely. It would divide the Republicans, but the smart ones would know it's their only option forward as the MAGA cult could very well spell the end for the Republican party as a whole. Soon or later the normal Republicans will have to take some home cleaning action. It's like they've been infested by cockroaches and have given up trying to solve the issue, but if they grow into too much of a problem they will have to start stomping them out and call exterminators.
The only possible 'stable Republican outlier' is, in fact, Nikki Haley. From the same source I quoted yesterday:
You can imagine the MAGA group pelting Halley's followers with rotten fruit and excrement. That's about the level that they've sunk to.
In my view, the net effect of Trump's inevitable victory in the Primaries, is to lead the entire party off a cliff, lemming-like. That it will become obvious between now and the Republican Convention in July that, having won the mantle, there's no way he can actually execute, being so mired in legal problems, and so addled in his thinking.
Quoting Mikie
LOL. I have to agree, in the Political arena anyway. It's all a bit of a joke from outside.
Should take 30 seconds: vote Biden. 30 minutes to go vote. 30 minutes and 30 seconds. Thats all the time one needs. In a rational world.
Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice may be gone within the decade.
As an American I believe this observation is only true of less than half of the half of the population who bother to vote. :mask:
'More than a majority' of RNC members want to help pay Trump's legal bills: insiders
[sup] Travis Gettys · Raw Story · Mar 6, 2024[/sup]
Bloodbath at RNC: Trump team slashes staff at committee
[sup] Alex Isenstadt · POLITICO · Mar 11, 2024[/sup]
The Clown supporters I've chit-chatted with don't think about or care that their efforts add to efforts beyond their neighborhood against them
Oh well
AI Trump: The Second Campaign Ad (2024 Mar 6 · 1m:29s)
AI Biden: The REAL State Of The Union (2024 Mar 7 · 1m:31s)
Yeah, Putin's Bitch f*cked around and is finding out! :lol:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/politics/trump-464-million-dollar-bond/index.html
F*cking pathetic, gaslighting brokester!
"I'm really rich." :rofl:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/889817
*Biden-Harris 2024*
Quoting Mikie
Quoting Mikie
Quoting Mikie
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting 180 Proof
Alrighty boys ready to pony up that $10 each to TPF?
Im sad I won that bet. But Im often right about these things :razz:
Trumps candidacy is not official until the Nominating Convention in July in Milwaukee. And a lot could happen between now and then. At the 2016 convention there was a last-minute push by Never Trumpers that almost made it to a floor vote, and if you havent noticed, hes picked up a lot of Republican enemies since then.
So if he comes out of the Convention the nominee, then I pay up.
Have it your way I can wait a little longer :lol:
Quoting Wayfarer
If hes convicted before then, this is exactly what will happen. Theyll stick with him.
The chances that hell be the nominee are practically 100%, in my view. Barring his death.
I dont write the rules.
Yeah, but come on. Its over. Hes secured the nomination. The rest is formality.
But this wasnt really meant too seriously. I dont really care about the money or the bet. Just thought it was funny.
I get it. Im far from a supporter, of course. But I have no faith in the Republican Party, and am beaten down with the facts which is that his supporters are large enough and loyal enough to push him through almost anything.
The Republican National Committee has been taken over by Trump. Party Chairman Michael Whatley was picked by Trump. Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, will serve as the co-chair and was elected by unanimous vote.
If there has been nothing so far that has distanced the party from Trump I don't know what would. His trials are being treated as an asset. Us against everyone including the whole judicial system that they are claiming has treated him unfairly.
Last few weeks so many legal YouTubers were explaining how Trump's ask to the court of appeal had basis in law whatsoever, never been done etc.
Likely Trump will be able to secure this smaller bond; it is at least claiming he will. Definitely easier than half a billion.
Seems all these legal cases are going to be dragged out until the election, since as long as Trump can post bond then the appeal processes can go on for quite some time.
I think the main thing is that Trump will likely now avoid the embarrassing seizing of his properties. That would have been a near fatal blow, as it would just look "weak" which is not a good look for him as a rich "strong man" type (as far as his base is concerned).
Again, here's an undisputable Conservative, ex-GOP campaign consultant/operative you (& @NOSA2) can learn something from (other than "alternative facts") ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/890305
Please do provide a definition of liberal and explain how you aren't a liberal and aren't in a liberal echo chamber at the moment.
You post that Trump is losing support, I go check the polls (maybe it's true) and get back to you that he's in fact gaining support, and then you respond that polls aren't predictive until within 2 months of the election but continue to insist that Trump is losing support due to random pundit hot takes.
That's called being in a echo chamber of only considering what you want to hear.
As for FOX News and MAGA, I'm not American, I don't live in the US. I live in a country that has free health care, free upper education, sends pregnant women a box of essential baby supplies (while paying maternity leave even if you've never worked). I happen to be a citizen by one of my parents, but I choose to live here because it's about as far democratically left as you can get on the planet, and I want to go even further to the left supporting salary caps, nationalization of any monopoly, UBI to replace the patch work of social security, direct democracy and so on.
Although studious of Marx, I wouldn't call myself a Marxist for the simple fact Marx believed industrial capitalism brought some good things, whereas I view industrial capitalism as a grave error from the start that has brought nothing but industrial wars, loss of humanity, loss of community and loss of nature.
So I'm no ally of Trump or the Maga movement.
However, because of the total corruption of the American elites I do see why Trump is appealing to a lot of Americans (appealing enough to win the presidency once and win the latest primary).
It's just objective fact needed to understand US politics, which as a Canadian, it's a national sport to follow and shake our heads at.
I also honestly don't see how the neocons are better than Trump, and I honestly think Trump is better for the world than Biden and the usual suspects (of a long list of war crimes, including participation in this latest literal genocide).
Although I do not believe the dictum that 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' holds true in all cases, I do think it's worth entertaining when it comes to Trump. Trump is in a fight with some of the most powerful and evil networks of people the world has seen in arguably over half a century.
I say: let them fight.
And you are entitled to your conspicuously uninformed, spectator's opinion, sir/mam. :victory:
The old fat orange f*cker's latest grift launched during Holy Week no less is a $60 "Trump Bible" for gullible, faux-Christian, "Trump sneakers"-wearing MAGA cultists. You can't make this stooopid stuff up. :lol:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-god-bless-usa-bible-greenwood-2713fda3efdfa297d0f024efb1ca3003
*Biden-Harris 2024* :cool:
Again, you state that Trump is losing support, I go check the polls to inform myself whether this is really true or not, and turns out he's not losing support.
Information that you then dismiss in favour of random pundit hot takes because polls aren't predictive.
... Well are random pundit hot takes based on Republican primary voting more predictive?
Feel free to inform us, to use your language.
As for spectator opinion; we all participate in the American empire, so it's hardly spectating. But even if it was a spectators position, you'd still need to justify why it's less worthy to consider. In more than a few cases spectators can far more easily discern what's going on than participants.
:rofl:
Checked the polls again just now.
YouGov has Trump leading by 1.
HarisX has Trump +2 in one poll and even in another.
Leger conducted two polls both with Trump +4.
Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research has Trump +6, +5 and +5 in three polls.
Quinnipiac University has Trump +1 in one poll and Biden +3 in another concurrent poll.
The numbers could be different, could be exactly as you say that Trump is losing support and I'd go check and see the polls confirm what you say and come back and be all like "yep, Trump is tanking".
However, what the polls actually say, what multiple expert groups in trying to gauge public opinion conclude based on data, is that Trump is gaining support.
I understand you don't like it, but welcome to the real world.
Here's the "real world", kid
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/890076
a historically-informed US voter's perspective on the pending US presidential election of 2024.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/892493
You continue to astound.
And you continue to bore.
Take acid. Buy a hooker.
Says the bore who goes around commenting on discussions hes not involved in to demonstrate his self-righteousness as an empathic communicator. That existence must be a healthy one indeed, Im sure.
I shall collect the rent next time.
Brilliant observation.
True, I like to respond to banal, sanctimonious bullshit when I see it occasionally.
Oh look, a sanctimonious Twitter troll giving advice. Cool! :up:
And further, why have you taken Twitter speak "Oh look, ..." and imported it to a comment where you apparently denigrate Twitter trolls? Bizarre.
I'd have takenthe advice.
Riveting.
Pro-PRC DRAGONBRIDGE Influence Campaign Leverages New TTPs to Aggressively Target U.S. Interests, Including Midterm Elections
[sup] Mandiant · Oct 26, 2022[/sup]
Pro-CCP Spamouflage network pivoting to focus on US Presidential Election
[sup] Elise Thomas · ISD · Feb 15, 2024[/sup]
Much Ado About Somethings
[sup] Max Lesser, Ari Ben Am, Margot Fulde-Hardy, Saman Nazari, Paul J Malcomb · FDD · Mar 27, 2024[/sup]
How effective are these campaigns anyway? When I encounter these stories (or effects thereof), it's almost always from US MAGA'ers.
The conversation is:
1. You claim Trump is losing support
2. I go check your claim against the polls
3. Your claim doesn't check out, so you move the goal posts to polling doesn't matter but Trump is still losing support because a large, but still minor, amount of Republicans didn't back Trump in the primaries.
4. I point out you're obviously living in a liberal media bubble where claims.
5. You then deny being in anyway a liberal, but refuse to provide a definition of liberal of which you are not, all while trying to accuse me of being an American conservative (which I'm happy to not only deny the charge but actually explain what I am instead of being an American conservative).
6. Instead of learning something from being totally wrong, you then just move your ad hominem to me being a spectator and that somehow disqualifies my participating on this forum (mostly run and maintained by Europeans, from what I gather); not clear why being not-American is disqualifying, just does for some reasons (aka. random walls you erect to maintain your echo chamber, instead of going out and building a real wall that matters to protect America!! Shame on you.).
7. I point out that your new claims have nothing to do with your first claim; if polls don't matter much until 1-2 months before the election, ok, but what's your evidence that primary votes do matter? Considering Trump won in 2016 with an important faction of Republican #Nevertrumpers. To which your evidence to explain this hodgepodge of inconsistent claims is random YouTubers that represent said liberal media bubble.
So ok, I get it, you want to live in your self-identified not-liberal echo chamber where Trump has no chance of winning and you feel the need to bring your echo chamber into this forum for further validation.
But feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.
I initially expected better of this type of forum, but politics gonna politic i guess. Twitter nonsense is inescapable when its political talk.
There are few threads like this one on the Forum. Lots of others concern one very dead philosopher vs another very dead philosopher. Those are milder.
I'm keeping track.
Not out of personal or philosophical interest, but moral and civic duty.
And not because anything said on this forum is of any monumental political consequence, but rather to develop strategies for dealing with bad faith debate.
We are, in my view, repeating the circumstances of the original development of Western philosophy arising out of, and in opposition to, sophistry.
Precisely due to democratization of the public sphere in Greek democratic traditions (though none of them are actually democratic in a modern definition, more just large aristocracies, still far more democratic than top down rule).
This democratization of the public sphere in the Greek context was due to the Agora where all citizens could talk. For us cause of this is the internet. In between similar accrued with the printing press and pamphleteering.
Whenever the public sphere is democratized there is first dominance of bad faith tactics because people haven't learned yet to deal with them. In the greek context philosophy emerges; anyone can say anything but there are methods to separate truth from falsehood, better than no method. In the renaissance journalism emerges; anyone can write anything about what's happening anywhere, so we need people and institutions that build up a reputation to have an a priori set of probable facts (not all true, but at least a starting point to apply the reasoning methods bequeathed to us).
Today, anyone can copy and paste what the reputable journalistic institutions write, destroying their business model and undermining the entire system of public discourse built up since the invention of the printing press. Likewise, anyone can make an audio / visual emotional appeal promoting anything directly to the entire public.
This is a short summary of the history (there's also radio and television), but the point is that we're in a discursive environment where bad faith arguments dominate, exactly as you say everything political is just a snow ball fight.
In the previous philosophy forum, in the "before times" of the internet where television talking heads were still referring to everything on the internet as "blogs" and noting what was on "blogs" simply to post of it's irrelevant whatever it is, I focused on philosophical topics. This was literally 20 years ago and I was in my formative years, so genuinely didn't know if my beliefs held up to scrutiny (and of course they didn't and required a lot of reformulation). I then went off to accomplish my purpose and unfortunately the forum was disappeared from the internet.
This new forum emerged, public discourse degraded due to the above processes, and I just so happened to have gained considerable amount of experience debating with bad faith actors as corporate board director and oft times CEO. People will come up with the craziest shit when they want to under-deliver, underserved money or intellectual property, and managing corporations involves dealing with a considerable amount of bad faith.
Discerning good from bad faith, and how to deal with each, I would go so far as to say nearly entirely summarizes what management is about. Ipsofacto, seemed an additional dutiful purpose to join this forum to further develop and demonstrate methods of debating bad faith actors.
For the strategies appropriate to good faith and bad are not the same. The first thing a bad faith actor will do is take advantage of your ill adapted good faith habits. For example, if you're only accustomed to good faith debate (with friends and family and class mates and colleagues and so on) which is most of the time in real life, you'll likely have all sorts of bad habits when it comes to dealing with bad faith actors. For example, in good faith debate you assume your opponent seeks the truth as much as yourself, has at face value as credible premises as your own, and is speaking what they genuinely believe to be true. In short, in a good faith debate you pay a significant amount of respect to your interlocutor. Once you get into a management position of any significance, you immediately realize that a bad faith actor will take advantage of all of these good faith debate habits to harm you and people you're responsible as well as the entire world. It is not an intellectual debate, it is a conflict in which winning is important.
How do you win against a bad faith actor (often highly paid lawyers in a corporate context)?
First rule: respect is earned. Respect is earned by being good faith. If someone's good faith with me, I'll be good faith with them. If someone's bad faith with me, I will not be bad faith with them but I won't give them the benefits I extend to those of good faith either. Rather, I will, entirely legally and metaphorically, get my thumbs into their eyes and squeeze until they desist from attacking me, and the interests I represent, any further. I won't give them any ground whatsoever (i.e. I'll make them do the work of proving even those things that I know to happen to be actually true), I won't give them any respect (i.e. I won't assume their positions are on face value as credible as my own and continuously call out their bad intentions and deceptive practices), and above all I will make them understand I will never stop (i.e. they can't tire me out and I'll go to what would be, for many, irrational lengths in any quarrel: time, effort, pain, suffering, is of no consequence compared to satisfaction).
In short, if you want to deal with the bad faith actors of the world you must be, to them, a monster from the deep.
Transposing these methods to political public debate is my project here. We are in a time where everyone must become CEO's, unless we are to be ruled by our inferiors.
Quoting boethius
Yeah, but this is a weirdo forum for weirdos.
Been there, done that. :lol:
.
Well, whenever someone denigrates the forum, I am always skeptical of these claims of irrelevancy. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. You're here, I'm here, a bunch of other clever people are here, we can't know who's lurking in the shadows. Honest clever people do seek out analysis that can withstand scrutiny from opposing view points, and I always ask where there is a better forum of such debate and I never get an answer. Of course you have to be peculiar to actually participate in the debate, but maybe less peculiar and more important people, the non-weirdos as you say, come and watch and learn something. Maybe not, who knows.
However, my project isn't simply to engage with bad faith debaters here but to build up examples of the method of dealing with bad faith debaters in the context of political discourse.
I suppose the next step is to write a book or something and try to make the knowledge more accessible. For now, the forum permits creating material for the project in a reasonable amount of time, due to the stewardship of the moderators. And why does the moderators work make these sorts of discussion feasible to begin with? Because they get rid of bad faith actors (without purging their good faith political opponents and so create an echo chamber) that would simply destroy the space of discussion as their next bad faith tactic as a retort to being demonstrated to be and faith. So, the mere example of there being entirely opposed views "allowed to exist" here on the forum and the world doesn't end and actual debate between people who disagree can then take place, is as valuable a lesson as what approach to bad faith tactics are effective within the discursive battle field.
I'm not sure how this relates. My point is that this Forum is not a good indicator of the real world.
Quoting boethius
More power to you. That's a good project!
Quoting boethius
Im unsure why this is nested in the rest of hte comment. I agree, but didn't cover anything around this in my reply earlier.
"The Wall Street Journal, late last night:
The poll of the elections main battlegrounds shows Trump holding leads of between 2 and 8 percentage points in six statesPennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolinaon a test ballot that includes third-party and independent candidates. Trump holds similar leads when voters are asked to choose only between him and Biden.
The one outlier is Wisconsin, where Biden leads by 3 points on the multiple-candidate ballot, and where the two candidates are tied in a head-to-head matchup."
That seemed to me your point: that the forum is populated by weirdos and therefore that undermine my project, either due to a lack of reach or then engaging with weirdos is not representative, and so missing the mark of relevancy due to either or both.
My retort to that is that who knows what relevance the forum in itself has to global society, who visits and where those visitors then go and what they do and butterfly effect and all that. Perhaps it's irrelevant in any direct impact on society and policy makers, perhaps not. And my second point being that the project is anyways intended to have a second phase of writing a book or blog more accessible to the general public in anywise.
Quoting AmadeusD
Then we anyways agree on this second point, and I appreciate the moral support.
Quoting AmadeusD
This wasn't in retort to you, just emphasizing what I presume is common ground.
I also am not claiming my project will have some profound effect on society. It's entirely possible our civilization is completely doomed and talking at this point in history will have little effect on outcomes. Again, I think we'd agree that to what extent that's likely, and regardless of whether we agree at all on how likely it is, that it is anyways our duty to try to solve our collective problems best we can.
"After Virtue" by Alasdair MacIntyre is probably the best analysis that I've encountered of the discursive collapse of Western society, and his conclusion is basically the problem is unsolvable. He makes a compelling case but I suppose we should try to solve it anyways; give it a go, at least verify he is in fact correct.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/890076
Im not sure I agree that we have any duty at all. But that is a much larger topic.
In this specific discussion, I think it's fairly easy to loo at the West and say it's succeeding. On what grounds could it be 'collapsing'? Too many ideas?
Certainly could be good to discuss that in another topic. Nevertheless, you'd really hold the position that there is no duty, or then you are uncertain about it, to report evidence of child sexual abuse that you encounter?
There's of course a difference between refuting duties one does not see do any good or then outweighed by other considerations or then one would perform the duty if there was reasonable incentive and disincentive binding everyone to do likewise; there's a difference between these positions and refuting all duties altogether. Usually when duties are discussed we're talking about things that are debatable on these various grounds, but the position of no duties at all is quite extreme: there'd be no duty of any kind to children under any circumstances such as the example above, no duty to stop the Nazis carrying out a genocide, no duty to refrain from serial murder and rape for that matter, and so on for all the most heinous acts that we may list and agree upon.
So, agreed we could continue on this topic on another thread, but I am curious if your position really is doubting all duties of any kind.
Quoting AmadeusD
I do not think the West is succeeding, so again perhaps a discussion for another conversation, but to summarize my view I do not view an unsustainable system as successful. Trading short term performance for long term survival is not a successful strategy, but entirely illusory.
For example, if you take methamphetamines to outperform your peers at work, it may appear you are very successful in the short term by working nearly 24/7, but as soon as the drug takes its toll and let's say you don't quit but just keep increasing the meth dose to keep performing until an overdose resulting in death or permanent disability, no one would consider this a "success"; no one would make a speech at your wake explaining that you were extremely successful and exemplary due to performing at a high level for a short period of time and everyone should do likewise.
The West, in creating and leading industrial civilizaton, is likewise unsuccessful, trading short term performance for long term viability.
Again, a discussion for another thread, but where it relates to Trump (and equally Biden for that matter) is in representing exactly why the West is unable to solve our long term problems; coherence doesn't matter and partisans are irreconcilable and political discourse is simply a short term power struggle and mostly, and most damning, no one cares, seeing no duty to even try to understand any topic of importance, much less do anything about it.
I'll try to transcribe some key points from "After Virtue" to illuminate this point of view and what the problem is, but the title itself may give some impression of the core thesis.
Quoting AmadeusD
The problem is not too many ideas but rather an inability to convert good ideas to good policy.
To give one of the most significant examples, in the 1960s to the 1980s it was not in dispute the "polluter pays" principle. Even Milton Friedman taking the pretty extreme "greed is good" position, agreed that the polluter should pay, that if a power station over here is dirtying your shirt over there then the power station should pay to clean your shirt.
There was a general agreement in principle of how society should respond to facts. If a given pollution is factual then certainly the polluter should pay for the clean up. And it's even easy to see why this principle was not even controversial as obviously you can't just dump trash on your neighbours property and have them pay to clean it up (regardless if it was an accident or on purpose or a side-effect of doing some legitimate thing like pruning your tree): you'll need to pay to clean up your trash. Simple and obvious and a widely agreed principle in which social policy can be implemented and updated.
The dispute at that time was on the facts. All while agreeing the polluter should of course pay, Friedman simply didn't agree that things like power stations produced pollution that did any harm: smog was. a natural phenomenon that even the native Americans talked about.
Likewise, even more generally, 50 years ago there was general agreement that we of course due have a duty to care for the earth, and therefore the disagreements on what to do were factual: how best to care for the earth?
The breakdown of these agreements in principle result in society unable to resolve problems and implement long term coherent policy.
The proximate cause of this erosion of "bare minimum social cohesion" is lobbies that go to work leveraging money to prop up a position that is simply intellectually lost. No one today repeats Friedman's theory that smog is a natural phenomenon that simply has nothing to do with coal power generation, but the fossil lobby can just replace one terrible unfounded theory with 3 new ones.
However, the ultimate cause of the situation, what lobbies are able to exploit, is the loss of generally agreed virtues that were previously supported by religion.
And Trump is a pretty good example of this theory playing out, as in the before times where generally agreed virtues were important to society there would be simply no way a person like Trump could compete in the political sphere, but "After Virtue" it is entirely feasible as there is no longer any expectation for anyone to be virtuous; for example if you pay a porn star for sex and then pay for her silence with campaign money ... well, why wouldn't you pay a porn star for sex and then pay for her silence with campaign money? We all want sex don't we? We all want to coverup our indiscretions don't we? The empathy of Western society today, at the end of the day, is with Trump being "a boss" and using money to satisfy his desires. Trump is the penultimate consumer: willing and able to consume even the immaterial political prestige that is the foundation of civil society.
I can confidently say I would report it, but not on moral grounds (assuming, as I think is warranted, that your/our use of obligation here is a moral term). I want it to stop. That's all. If I didn't want it to stop. my moral outlook wouldn't matter anyway. I can't get further than that. I don't have to do it. I don't think claiming I 'have to' or 'ought' to do it makes any sense. Based on? *insert any possible non-supernatural answer* Okay, thank you. Well, I reject that premise. I can't think of response to this which isn't a reiteration of the *insert..* portion.
Quoting boethius
I just cannot understand how one could think this about the West. *shrug*
Quoting boethius
Given I think there isn't a duty, take this with a grain of salt - I think you're making a huge mistake.
The political sideshow, is a really bright shiny sideshow. It simply does not represent most people.
Regarding the balance of your post, firstly, thank you for illustrating a number of those ideas from MacIntyre. Interesting. Partially, i dismiss some of the heat in those passages due to the above (politics=/real life in some sense) but moreover, I don't think this is a bad thing.
Western Culture would, surely, allow for an adaptation and evolution of society following the, lets say, dismantling of a current paradigm. This seems to have happened several times in the last 500 years or so. Major, major changes in governance and infrastructure seems inevitable. We're in the midst of a Kuhn revolution!
FWIW: my 2024 "election predictions" (based on (A) electoral trends 2017-2023 completely favoring Dems; (B) SCOTUS & MAGA-GOP taking away women's reproductive rights / criminalizing abortions; (C) consistent trend of 20% of GOP primary voters rejecting Loser-1 even after Haley, DeSantis & Christie suspended their campaigns; (D) Criminal Defendant-1 convicted in NY by June/July; (E) benefits of Biden's economy broadly felt by September; (F) etc):
1. Biden-Harris reelected
-gets 5-7 million more votes than Loser-1 again (even with lower turnout than 2020)
-gets more (suburban) women voters
-gets more under 35 year old voters
-gets more minorities voters
-gets more independent voters
-wins 4-5 out of 7 "swing states" (plus 1-2 more "red states" (e.g. NC))
2. Dems wins US Senate (+2 seat gain)
3. Dems win US House (+20 seat gain)
update:
Third-party candidates RFK, J. Stein & C. West collectively will be a non-factor in the outcome of the 2024 election.
In terms of independents, Im not so sure anymore. But the question is will it be enough, given the goofy electoral college?
Im thinking he loses NC and Georgia, and probably Arizona. But he wins the blue wall making swingy states like New Hampshire and even Nevada very important. Id watch Florida too, although I dont think theres a great chance there anymore.
Youre way off with the senate. Looks like the Dems are gonna lose that chamber, unfortunately. Manchins seat is an easy flip, and Montana and Ohio its very hard to say but looks like Republican edge. Not to mention Arizona. I see republican +2 but if not then democrats 50-50 at best.
The house I agree I think dems take it. New York being de-gerrymandered alone should do it.
(Writing this out now so you can throw it at me later if Im wrong.)
:smirk: :up:
I'm not quite sure you fully appreciate the implications of your position: that a police officer could plant evidence on you to make his job easier, a surgeon could just walk out mid surgery leaving to slowly wake up in excruciating pain and a slow death, anyone could just randomly torture you death for their amusement, and they have done you no moral wrong, they had no duty to do otherwise; of course you may not like any of these things and want them to desist but that would just be your own feelings about the matter which are no better than theirs.
I will make a thread outlining and defending MacIntyre's critique of this sort of emotivist position and we could discuss if further , but if there's some obvious nuance to your position feel free to briefly clarify it.
Quoting AmadeusD
The Western enlightenment project has failed. Again, MacIntyre I think succinctly explains why. And it is no coincidence that he appears in my response here again, as it is basically because of emotivism (do what you feel) that virtues become lost and society falls apart.
I disagree with MacIntyre on a few pedantic points, but that the West has entered a new dark ages he clearly foresaw before I was even born.
I don't now have time to transcribe all I would like, but I'll do so for one passage I think particularly apt for this conversation:
Which doesn't contain or summarize all of MacIntyre's criticism of Western society, just particularly topical.
More fundamentally, I do get that Western society allows you to do what you feel like most of the time, even enjoying the pleasure of a sort of general Western enthusiasm or even patriotic warm glow of a sort all while feeling bound by no duties towards it.
When I have more time I shall make a thread dedicated to the topic, but I hope it seems at least evoked from the above passage that a society in which there are no virtues or duties genuinely felt by the majority of the citizenry, is a society that a society that is not going to be able to perpetuate itself (without severe crisis in which duties and virtues sufficient for the maintenance of the institutions of society and the natural habitat reemerge).
For now, it is to me truly remarkable that people manage to pedestalize the West for making relatively few people "feel good" for a relatively short period of time while destroying entire ecosystems and species, not to mention both the foundation within and continuing practice of extractive colonialism.
Quoting AmadeusD
That's why I mentioned the larger majority of people of whom "no one cares, seeing no duty to even try to understand any topic of importance", so we definitely agree that most people don't pay much attention to politics and have checked out from any political cause.
Where we differ is that you seem to feel this is laudable, perhaps even wise, whereas I characterized it as "most damning" of all (as in worse than the people at least engaged on one side or another).
Again, I can completely empathize that as long as the institutions of society are taken for granted, then as soon as politics "sours" it is far more pleasant to simply ignore politics altogether. However, if enough people paying attention and acting in good faith is required for the maintenance of those institutions (not to mention the natural world) and the consequences of their destruction (and the natural world) is quite enormous and unpleasant, I hope it's clear that from this point of view ignoring politics altogether is a form of collective suicide as deranged as any cult (of course excusing who ignore politics for legitimate reasons, such as being wage slaves pushed to the extreme they genuinely have not a moment or calorie to spare on considering the institutions that put them there).
Quoting AmadeusD
Glad my contribution is appreciated.
However, what you are responding to is but the briefest summary of the problem MacIntyre is addressing, basically his starting point.
MacIntyre also doesn't require virtues to be based on religious sentiment, just that obviously it was for thousands of years. Of course it's a debatable point as such, but MacIntyre's account of the virtues is not religious but a tradition starting historically in heroic society (i.e. those kinds of society's that existed at the start of written history). MacIntyre is explicitly Aristotelian.
Now, what is a virtue and vice, and whether an individual should be virtuous or not, is one debate, but what should be clear is that a society devoid of all duties and virtues cannot possibly last.
For example, let's say there's an invasion and you're feeling is that best someone deal with that, well that's going to require soldiers who happen to feel bound to their duties as soldiers as well as sufficient discipline, fortitude, craftiness, bravery and self sacrifice necessary to win any battles. If no one in society felt any such duty nor possessed the prerequisite virtues then no matter how many people feel it would be preferable that someone deal with the problem of the invasion, it won't be dealt with.
Point being, even if you don't personally feel bound by any duties, and even view the great achievement of Western society as creating the condition for people so disposed to lazily go about their day contributing nothing to the general welfare, certainly you can recognize that maintaining such conditions requires honest good faith people performing various duties with sufficient virtues to be successful at them, and once there are too few of these people to hold in check the bad-faith and dishonest people with virtues only sufficient enough to execute on their vices, society will collapse in relatively short order.
Quoting boethius
I do. Sincerely apologies if, at any point, I seem a bit short. I have heard just about all of the infantalising responses to my position (despite recognizing they aren't intended that way!!). I have thought about this. I have read a lot on it. I have discussed it with laypeople and philosophers. I have fully embraced the consequences. They don't strike me the way they strike you. That's all. I still have good reasons to act or prevent acts, that I am sure you would, overall, agree with teh results of.
Quoting boethius
Correct. This is not a problem to my mind, other than because It makes me uncomfortable. Not sure how it could be 'wrong' in any other sense.
Quoting boethius
They do, but you've named instances that include the other reasons I've alluded to. Suffice to say at this stage that I formulate in these scenarios (though, I'm not yet at a fine-grained version of this view, so bear with) that hte actor has, in fact, chosen to accept hte subject's emotional position, rather than a moral obligation.
Quoting boethius
Not at all. I just think you're making an obvious mistake.
Quoting boethius
Which entirely invalidates the claims made above, so I'm unsure where to go from here. Your accepting this premise says to me you can't support your previous claims. Odd feeling, tbh.
Suffice to say: Quoting boethius
This is seems laughably wrong, and nothing you've provided seems to move the compass. He's an impassioned writer that seems to ignore two or three fundamentally important aspects of what he's talking about (one, being the above - the vast majority of people (who consittute the culture!!!) simply are not involved in this side-show - it goes on, in spite of hte ridiculous Political stupidity. This seems true in most cultures, and the West is not unique in that way.
Quoting boethius
I would point you toward Heydel-Mankoo for a perspective on this aspect that seems to me inarguable, and exposes the preening nonsense of anti-colonial sentiment in te 21st century. But we are likely to almost violently disagree here.
Quoting boethius
Not at all. It seems clear to me that these lines of yours are somewhat unhinged. *shrug*.
Quoting boethius
I think the bolded in sufficient, but apparently you do not. That said, If no one in the country wants to defend it - Okay. That's the situation.
Quoting boethius
What's hte issue? That's the choice that Nation made. Forcing the populus into a War seems to be a much, much worse thing to do.
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
I can only roll my eyes at the baked-in biases here.
I have to be entirely honest in that the type of vibe your views encompass a little bit funny. I'm sorry for that coming through as I know you're good faith and being honest with me. It just seems childish and I have a hard time. This is likely a flaw in me, but wanted to be clear about why some responses might seem flimsy. I think that's what they call for. I mean no offense.
Quoting boethius
I think the idea that a critical mass of a population would act against not only their own self-interest, but their own relations in the world is far-fetched enough to simply not care about this potential. The West is not cogent (ideologically) enough for this to matter anyway. The only 'duty' the West actually imposes is to not interfere with others against their will. I'm quite absolute in this regard. People should be allowed to hurt themselves, and contract into self-disinterested behaviour.
How we deal with things like Mental Illness is where it gets interesting, imo. We might have something very interesting to discuss there.
Quoting AmadeusD
I don't know about you but I came here for an argument.
Be at ease, you're clearly debating in good faith, which warrants respect.
My disrespect is reserved for people arguing in bad faith, which I define in a philosophical or political context arguing positions they do not actually believe; i.e. not arguing on substance but simply deploying a wide range of propaganda tactics to manipulate perceptions of said substance.
I ask you to clarify your position to both be confident you're arguing in good faith but also to understand your position. Most emotivists or moral relativists, in my experience, generally have moral absolute limits and are just arguing plurality within a limited "nice and acceptable" moral terrain. Which is a perfectly coherent view to have, I am myself an emotivist and moral relativists in this sense, but it is clearly a moral absolutist position in which some plurality and diversity and various internally consistent positions, even if at odds, are perfectly acceptable; as you are clearly aware, it is the moral absolutist framework which is the far more important foundation in such a theory in which adding some compatible plurality can be pretty trivial; such as, in stoicism (my moral point of view), if moral goodness is the effort towards the good then pretty much any expressed moral system in attempting to do so, as either a linguistic / notional system or then simply doing things expressing the moral content, is morally laudable, whatever it is (however wrong it is from some epistemologically omniscient point of view) as long as it's the result of genuine moral effort towards the good (taken as either or revelatory a priori knowledge in stoicism: i.e. once one is ware of there are better and worse decisions, one is duty bound to try to make good decisions resulting in a moral journey throughout the cosmos in which advancing on one's journey, regardless of the starting point of present situation, is what is of moral worth)to show my cards, as it were, in reciprocity to you showing yours.
Quoting AmadeusD
I ask for clarification just to be sure my understanding of your position is correct.
The best way to clarify a moral position is to consider the social consequences (as morality is mostly, though not entirely, socially contingent).
However, social consequence is only a clarifying and cannot possibly be an evaluative factor of moral positions and theories. For, obviously we cannot evaluate what social consequences are good or bad without first committing to a moral theory to make such an evaluation. To say this moral or political scheme is wrong because it has these or those social consequences is not a complete argument without first establishing the moral scheme required to make such an evaluation, which if we happen to already know is true then it is trivial that anything incompatible with it claimed to be good will be evaluated to be bad.
Of course, it just so happens that the vast majority of people operate this way as they are unconscious of their foundational moral or evaluative framework in which they evaluate any new moral claims. Therefore, if you take a moral scheme for granted the fastest way to resolve the acceptability of any new moral claim is to work out it's social consequences and decide if they are good or bad based on what one already believes.
The reason I ask so much clarification of emotivist and moral relativistic positions is that most people in modern society explicitly believe they have such a theory while implicitly believing in moral absolute limits (in which case those moral absolute limits are far more interesting and the actual heart of the debate in such a case).
Quoting AmadeusD
I think it's pretty clear we'll need a new thread to go deeper here. I should have time this week to transcribe MacIntyre's core objections to emotivism / moral relativism, as I'm sure you'd agree his position is worth considering and it would anyways benefit the forum to gain insight into such a powerful thinker. I do not actually agree with MacIntyre's overall framework, but my own position is only a slight upgrade in strength of several of MacIntyre's statements; basically in some foundational places MacIntyre hesitates to simply make an absolute claim all while denying he's simply made moral relativism more complicated. His sort of "riding the line" and very Buddhist "neither is true but it is true" I think is worth considering (and his whole argument is a brilliant insight into how society works and I am 100% convinced by his epistemological claim that moral content can only develop and make sense within a moral tradition), but at the end of the day I'm simply not convinced it's possible to avoid "we have a duty to the good of society" for the virtues MacIntyre promotes to be actual virtues and even if it is possible as MacIntyre sets out to do that there is any need to do so.
Quoting AmadeusD
If you mean by mistake using social consequences to evaluate moral positions (i.e. that moral consequences I find unsavoury for exterior reasons is a valid argument against a moral claim, without first establishing my moral theory can be taken to be true to begin with), then I hope that has been clarified above.
If the social consequences of a position are accepted (what MacIntyre refers to as "paying the price") then of course that "I don't like those consequences" or "people don't like those consequences" is not an argument. It's only an argument if you also agree that those consequences are unacceptable and you are not assigning equal moral merit to those consequences as compared to others.
Quoting AmadeusD
Well if your invoking some sort of social contract that is to me a moral absolutist position (that people should do what they give their word to do, as a moral duty): i.e. the cop should fulfil his duty of honest impartiality and not plant evidence because he's accepted that duty, the surgeon should finish the surgery because of the hypocritical oath, and serial murderer has (probably) entered into all sorts of explicit or implicit agreements with society to respect the law and not go around murdering people.
If there are no duties, then there are no duties to keep one's word either. You can give your word because you feel like it and are of equal moral weight in breaking your word because you feel like that too.
Quoting AmadeusD
This seems to me nearly a tautology. Even if we could imagine a society that "just so happens to function" even if no one is doing anything that can be described as "political" eventually an existential crisis will arise and the only solution is "doing politics" which if no one is willing to do then society will end, being the definition of existential crisis.
Which you seem to accept in your very next sentence:
Quoting AmadeusD
In my experience, this is the main problem emotivist have to contend with as there's all sorts of institutions requiring duties to be performed to maintain any sort of comfortable life that "feels good". Generally, at least in my experience, emotivists want others to perform social duties so that they can feel good while denying those duties actually exist.
Libertarian oriented emotivists will usually try to solve this problem with hazard payfighting a war is dangerous and so soldiers are compensated for itwhile ignoring that obviously this wouldn't work in practice for two reasons: first, if every soldier demanded market based hazard pay it would simply be unaffordable to have an army, but second, and more problematic, hazard pay in the market deals with risks in which the plan is not to die (there are no jobs in which the advertisement is "you'll definitely, probably be killed" but we'll compensate you for that), but for a war to be prosecuted successfully almost always involves plans where the risk of death is acute and so a market solution would require increasing the hazard pay as the risk increases. Not only is any actual military far from being hazard pay based, but nearly all states reserve the right of conscription which is as far from compensating soldiers for risk as is possible. If people have no duties then of course they should abandon their posts as soon as the risk to their person warrants it.
This may not be your case, but at least for libertarians "free riding" they view as a bad thing and it usually causes them problems to become aware they are free riding on other people willing to self-sacrifice for their security and comfort all while they claim any self-sacrifice (even in the form of taxation) is not only not a duty but many go so far as to say is evil. In other words, for the market to exist in the first place requires a long list of institutions and whole host of individuals dedicated to refuse economically rational choices (abandon the battlefield as soon as the hazard pay doesn't cover the risk; take a bribe to rule in one party's favour as soon as soon the reward outweighs the risk of being caught by people equally rational and willing to take bribes, and so on).
I'm not sure this sort of criticism applies in your case (libertarians generally have plenty of morally absolute positions such as theft is wrong and contracts are sacred and they are doing "good" by being self interested, and so on, and the cause of the problem above is in relying on soldiers doing in their view "bad" and entering into non-market based labour exchanges and willing to self-sacrificing, paying a life tax, for the benefit of the state and moochers, including people enjoying the fruits of market relations due to the maintenance of the state that makes those market relations possible).
Quoting AmadeusD
We literally have actual settler colonialist genocide happening right now fully supported by Western governments, and you seriously believe that considering that as a moral failure of the West (along with the destruction of the natural world and the habitat we depend on to continue the whole civilization project) is "preening nonsense".
However, by "sentiment" are you also referring to all the colonialism in the past? Aka. that the current distribution of wealth and power globally has nothing to do with colonialism at all, neither now nor in the past?
Quoting AmadeusD
This is MacIntyre's starting thesis, so I will transcribe the key parts hopefully this week.
However, insofar as I've represented MacIntyre's position accurately, it seems bold to dismiss an argument of a pretty well respected philosopher as laughable. He's received criticism from many different schools and many other well respected philosophers and I have yet to hear the criticism that his arguments are laughably wrong. So we'll see if your claim here holds up.
As for the substance of your rebuttal, it's equally bold to simply assume society will simply muddle on despite ridiculous political stupidity. For example, if there was a general nuclear exchange started by the United States due to ridiculous political stupidity, would you evaluate this as a success?
Now, if your definition of success is just whatever happens (for example a nation is invaded, no one bothers to defend it as no one feels like it, they're all killed and this is successful because it happened), then seems there's no content in success or failure; anything that exists or ceases to exist represents success.
More fundamentally, if you have no moral standard, which seems implied in a position in which there's no duties to do anything, then how are you even judging success? So my first charge here is that you seem to be invoking some moral absolutes in critiquing my statements, whereas if we're basing morality on feelings then my position is equally valid to yours as I clearly feel Western society, the enlightenment project, has failed whereas you feel it's successful, and my feeling is just as good as yours. Even if you proved me to be factually wrong based on invoking a shared reality neither of us have a duty to accept is real, I would still have no duty to accept any particular facts about it.
Quoting AmadeusD
I didn't say anything about forcing.
The alternative to no one defending the interests of society and forcing people to, is a society in which duties are really believed to exist; soldiers feel bound to their duties because they think those duties are morally binding on them, not contingent on insofar as they feel like it or then their hazard pay (insofar as things aren't too hazardous and it makes economic sense). As described above, the moral tensions is if there's expectation soldiers (or anyone taking any risk to protect the interest of society) carry out duties all while denying there are any such duties.
Quoting AmadeusD
What's childish?
This is "the debate" when it comes to moral relativism v moral absolutism. If every point of view is valid and there are no absolute moral claims, then the Nazis were and are equally valid and the holocaust is as laudable social project as creating a health care system. Obviously Hitler felt he was doing good and so if no moral feeling is better than another, then Hitler was doing as much good as anyone else.
It's easy to argue moral relativism if the only moral positions under consideration are those pre-selected by the society you live in as acceptable. However, that's no the implication of moral relativism. If every position is equally morally valid (or invalid, but result in equality) then implication is that a serial killer has just as valid a moral position as a honest and compassionate doctor.
You've claimed no one has duties ... Ok, well that clearly means no one has duties to not engage in serial killing nor then stop anyone from doing so. People who "feel like" stopping the serial killer are just as morally justified as the serial killer and anyone who would do likewise, obviously they feel like serial killing.
Where you get pluralism, which to me clearly seems your comfort zone, is when you allow for a wide range of faiths and goals, but place absolute moral limits on what is morally acceptable in pursuit of those goals. Pursuing pleasure by skipping a stone on a lake: acceptable, approved. Pursuing pleasure by torturing little children to death: unacceptable, not approved.
The position that there are no duties (as you say, you'd report child sexual abuse only if you felt like it and wouldn't consider it wrong to not-report it if you didn't feel like it; there's no duty to report crimes against children as there are no duties at all).
Now, if you're willing to "pay the cost", as MacIntyre put it, and just flatly say that though you are happy people perform various duties to maintain your situation of comfort that you feel good in but they are simply wrong if they performed those duties because they thought those duties were real and not because they "happened to feel like it", which seems to be what you're saying, then I fail to see how its childish to point out the consequences.
Obviously a society in which no one performs any duties (no one keeps there word, no one tells the truth, no one protects any social institution required for society to function) wouldn't be comfortable society to live in.
Insofar as people "feel compelled" to actually perform duties due to the social consequences it is because of a history of society repeating to itself those duties are real: you should actually do them, you should actually reject a bribe as a judge and tell the truth as a witness. If those duties aren't real and people shouldn't feel compelled by them and people hear your message which clearly you are happy to share and then they see the light, then what's childish is to then simply assume that things would go on as before.
The adult position is to just accept that indeed society would basically fall apart if no one performed any duties and that's perfectly acceptable to you as an outcome. Which in one comment you seem to accept, that no one has a duty to defend the country and so if no one happens to feel like doing that then there's no way to defend the country and so be it, but then here with similar considerations the retort is it's childish.
If no one has any duties, then it's clearly perfectly morally acceptable to just lazily go about your day and contribute nothing to the general welfare just as it's perfectly morally acceptable for soldiers to abandon their posts as soon as they don't feel like risking their lives any more. The only difference in the soldier case is your invoking the false dichotomy that the only alternative is to force people to serve (the alternative you leave out is people serving their country because they feel a duty to do so, that they believe is very real and if they didn't believe that they wouldn't continue on based on merely happening to feel like it).
If you fall back to social norms (that we expect a judge to refuse bribes and soldiers to follow orders) and so there's negative consequences for failing to do what people expect, well the big incentive to conform to social norms that maintain society (not well by any stretch of the imagination, but not yet totally destroyed either) is the belief of others that those norms are real moral precepts. So, to say those norms aren't actually moral precepts, no one should believe them truly binding in any moral sense, but people act like they are real because other people think they are real and so impose a cost for violating those norms, obviously doesn't work anymore once enough people sees the truth that those norms aren't real. Which in a long list of cases is a good thing (according to the new norms of society) because it turns out the basis of those norms (slavery, racism, killing homosexuals, wife and child beating, and so on) weren't well supported: feelings changed and so what people felt compelled to do by social pressures also changed (in a process that is far from complete). However, the feelings changed (historically) not because people started to believe there are no moral truths at all but rather due to the consequences of debates about what those moral truths are.
Quoting AmadeusD
As I just explained, this is the philosophically naive position.
If you aren't concerned about the consequences of no people believing they have any duties (as, according to you, they should believe because that's the truth) then you're basically in the free riding problem as above. A critical mass of people won't agree with you and so you don't have to worry about that happening.
However, there's a lot more fundamentally wrong with your statement here.
First, you're clearly bait-and-switching individual self-interest with collective self-interest. It is in the collective self-interest for a soldier to self-sacrifice (by explicitly jumping on a grenade or then just taking on extreme risk) but it is obviously not in their own self-interest (as their dead now).
This is the core problem of politics, essentially before any other as maintaining any political system whatsoever requires a significant amount of self sacrifice, starting with both facing extreme risk (risking life and safety for the "self-interest" of society) as well as refusing advantages (bribes and favouritism and so on) but is a tension that goes far deeper (for example we not only expect the judge to refuse bribes, we also expect the judge to put in the work required for a fair trial even if that goes against his self-interest to have a pleasant life or is in conflict to important, but not as important, duties to his own family, such as disappointing his spouse or children due to late nights considering the merits of the case at hand).
"Self-interest" in your statement above is actually referring to collective-interest which may or may not be compatible with self-interest. It maybe in your self-interest and also the collective-interest to get a job, but it's in your self-interest and not the collective-interest to steal from your job, as a general rule (even if you are guaranteed to get away with it).
Economists just randomly invent abstracted entities (families, companies, organizations, government and the like) and then just randomly say those abstracted entities will act in their self interest to describe how society "should work", but any entity that represents a collection of individuals has collective-interest and not self-interest. Collective is a bad word in Neo-liberal economics so they just ignored what they're doing: confusing collective-interest with self-interest to solve the problem of self-interest being in conflict with collective-interest in the first place; this problem is not solved by simply stating:
"a critical mass of a population would act against not only their own self-interest".
This is just wrong. A critical mass of a population, in pursuing their individual self-interest, can definitely act against their collective interest of both themselves and dependents. That is exactly what are environmental problems are: we have no collective interest to have a system in which pollution can be externalized, but we each have an individual interest to externalize the costs of our pollution in pursuing our own pleasures. We could solve the problem but that would require a critical mass of people acting against one's self interest to ignore the political process altogether (something you see as perfectly fine, even morally superior to the many "rediculously stupid people" engaged in politics) because one's effect on outcomes is lower than the cost-benefit of the resources it requires (mostly time and brain calories).
Quoting AmadeusD
Ok, well all this discussion to come to the fact you are a moral absolutist, exactly as a suspected.
Why say things like:
Quoting AmadeusD
When you are perfectly sure, quite absolute, in that people have a duty to not interfere with others against their will.
So ok, "feelings" mean nothing, we have a quite strict absolute moral rule to abide by.
Fortunately, all the criticism above is still completely relevant, as your absolute moral rule doesn't really mean anything unless we (aka. a critical mass) have a duty to violate our own self interest in applying this standard to others on behalf of others violated by it (aka. maintain a government, police, prosecutors, judges or then analogous law-enforcement system), which in order to function require a long list of duties that go far beyond simply avoiding interfering with someone. Indeed, if that was the only rule then police and judges wouldn't interfere with the lives of people interfering with people (and there would be no police and judges).
Anyways, you could just say "I'm a libertarian" and so believe the rules that maintain market conditions are absolutely inviolable, the original acquisition of resources that created market conditions being unjustifiable is a "myth", and I want to free ride on soldiers sacrificing their self-interest without market based hazard pay, praise them to keep going all while knowing I (and others) are cheating them of just market relations by manipulating their naive natures.
We've had plenty of debated on libertarianism already, but it's always refreshing to have another: see how you solve the issue of taxes and democratic participation and corruption and externalities and so on without people having a duty to the collective interest under any circumstances (except of course to stop anyone interfering with you, then of course the entire mechanism of the state must be taken for granted to stop that).
Now, I still think we should discuss MacIntyre, but his argument is with actual emotivists and / or moral-relativists where there is no claim to absolutes whatsoever, they "pay the cost" as I've mentioned and simply accept the Nazis had as good claim to moral goodness as anyone else.
Libertarianism is basically agreeing with MacIntyre's framework, just joining the libertarian tradition instead of MacIntyre's Aristotelian "heroic society" tradition, which has prima-facie equal claim to moral justification in MacIntyre's framework. Where we could evaluate one tradition as "better than another", for example in this case libertarianism with Aristotelian heroic virtuism, would be in demonstrating inconsistency in one or the other position or then being able to solve moral dilemmas in one tradition that are insoluble in the other tradition.
Therefore, it is 100% MacIntyrish to pit MacIntyre's preferred moral tradition to yours (something similar to if not exactly libertarianism), or to mine (stoicism), and see if one seems superior to another and we may switch from or then amend our own tradition, all while avoiding moral relativism (we really did believe our tradition at the start was the best available and if that changes at the end then we really do believe that's an even better moral tradition).
I would think so too.
Quoting boethius
As I don't know A.Ms work, I'll take your word for it - but this actually exemplifies exactly what Im talking about. Taking a moral framework pigeon-holes the positions you're allowed to take, and what consittutes a virtue under it. I take no such position so it's somewhat Hard to respond. It all seems incoherent to me without first accepting that Morality is invented and obtains only between the margins of those frameworks.
Quoting boethius
Agreed. I largely reject the usefulness of thought experiments for this reason, within moral discussions.
Quoting boethius
It has. But the mistake in the previous seems to still be live, despite your acknowledgement. But, as with the bit you quoted, I could just be misunderstanding, so it's not too important.
Quoting boethius
I'm unsure this has to do with my position. I would, in general, agree, but the social consequences have v little to do with my moral position. My intuitive reaction to them is what informs my moral position on any given act. I couldn't predict what I would think morally correct in a novel situation, for example. My intuitive reaction might include some consideration of the social consequences, but that doesn't support my moral, lets say, claim. The claim is just that it makes me uncomfortable, so I wouldn't do it and prefer others didn't. Because It makes me uncomfortable. No other reasons.
Quoting boethius
I am not. I am invoking the (probably, largely ignored) fact that the surgeon has taken on the patient's emotional position. If they have not, and are a sociopath, your point would be apt for them. In this way, my personal moral position is just don't hire sociopaths as surgeons to avoid this problem. But that's mechanistic, not moral. The problem is moral and only exists in that I, personally think it sucks the surgeon did that.
Quoting boethius
No, there is not. I don't invoke one. There is no duty. There is the fact that, upon hte patient's emotional state, completing the surgery successfully would be preferable. If the surgeon actually didn't go in sharing this state, then fine. Walk away. I don't care.
Quoting boethius
I don't understand this passage, or it's genesis apparently. Suffice to say, I disagree. It might be another discussion, once I get across what you're doing with this part of your response.
that society might end. And that might be good.
Quoting boethius
Not at all. The quote you present immediately after this is my denying that it matters, or that there would be a 'crisis'. The society would end. So what?
Quoting boethius
If people choose, collectively to do things, Great. I don't ascribe any duty to it at all. Society is cool. I have no other thoughts on it really.
Quoting boethius
I would say so, as all these objections sit well with me. I'm not a Libertarian. Quoting boethius
Yep. I also 100% disagree with your framing of the situations you refer to. But, obviously, this is not hte place Apt for it**. I did anticipate this type of disagreement :P
Quoting boethius
This is a bit bad-faithy-sounding. I said nothing of the kind, and intimated nothing of the kind. I spoke about hte emotional undercurrent of the discussions. Obviously it 'has to do' with past colonialism. Heydel-Mankoo covers this from the perspective of a colonised minority (maybe not hte right kind, though ;) ).
Quoting boethius
I disagree ;) Particularly that these issues aren't really philosophical. He's ignoring empirical facts about the political state of most countries - the majority of people take no part, and are not involved. But, as I've not read him, I await your thread/s to discuss that bit further **
Quoting boethius
No. This is, exactly, what is actually happening as has happened for the majority of definitely Western Culture - perhaps, all culture.
Quoting boethius
Im not sure why you're asking this. I don't think society 'succeeds' or not. It seems odd that your next passage is somehow a reductio to this position. Its not absurd at all. There is no objective measure of success, and I don't have the (socio-political) framework in place to assess the same way you do. Simple :) I could "simply" be wrong about that.
Quoting boethius
;) You'll need to figure out where I assessed 'success' in moral terms. I can't see it! If i have implied that, please explicitly point it out because I am uncomfortable with that, if it's the case.
Quoting boethius
This is wrong in terms of my position. I think it is. It isn't successful or unsuccessful. There is no ultimate goal or aim of Western society. It continues to move (forward, backward, whatever). Maybe you can use that as a yardstick in which case my position holds anyway. But that's not me. That's just a suggestion. I don't think it success or doesnt succeed. It just is, or isn't. I admit, entirely, that my asking your view on this was more a poke-the-bear than anything. Defend it failing. I don't think you did, on your own terms. But, that's because I don't recognise what would constitute success or failure in your account/s thus far.
Quoting boethius
Yep. I've not called you 'wrong'. I think you're making a mistake in moral reasoning. That doesn't make you wrong - and in fact, could only be true if you were convinced of my position - which would negate that conviction :P This is why my position is consistent. It doesn't apply to anything but me and my actions.
Quoting boethius
If no one is willing, and it's morally right to defend the country and you're not inferring that conscription is morally acceptable there... then... What are you suggesting? That seems a dead end.
I take the rest of that passage to be incoherent in light of the above, so I wont touch it yet. Could entirely be me.
Quoting boethius
What I'm reading as childish, is that it seems your passionate responses presuppose your moral framework. It seems your framework has to take account of your emotional positions. It seems you are enacting the exact same, let's say, discontinuity in your position, that you outlined about moral relativists near the top of the post.
Quoting boethius
This is the childish mistake you are making. Your underlying point, I would reply to with "Yes. That's correct".
But the fact you've entered a value judgement on the part of your interlocutor is worrisome. I don't think it was laudable, or detestable. It happened. Does it make me, personally, extremely uncomfortable? Even repulsed? Yep. Which is probably what you want to know. But that's nothing but an emotional reaction to hearing certain information. For me that is absolute, in the sense that I can't, currently, feel another way. But that is a state of affairs. Not a moral claim.
Quoting boethius
Correct. No issues. It makes me uncomfortable. I have nothing to appeal to in telling them no to do it, other than the potential consequences for them - reason with them. Would I bother? Maybe. If i were uncomfortable enough.
Quoting boethius
I don't. I haven't presented any. You seem to be importing some upper-limit to your conceivable moral behaviour matrix and ascribing those limits to my position. I don't share them. I have limits of my comfort and pursuit of comfort occurs. These are arbitrary, as far as another person is concerned. But, by-and-large people share the same limits of comfort within a society, and so 'getting on with it' can occur without a shared 'moral' framework. This is, probably, what the West does well, compared with many other societies.
Quoting boethius
I don't, other than to say 'Well, this is what's going on". The norms are the norms and tell me about a collective emotional status of the society.
Quoting boethius
This one is troublesome because, prima facie, there shouldn't be. At least not beyond social consequences - which are pretty much arbitrary - and policy is just this, after collective deliberation. BUT, i would freely let you know that the idea of there being no consequences for certain actions makes me uncomfortable. Again, that's just a state of affairs. Not a moral claim. So, I dislike this, and it makes me uneasy, but I take it wholesale to be the case. Legal and social consequences are arbitrary, other than that they meet a collective emotional benchmark.
Quoting boethius
I don't know. It might be. But this has nothing to do witht eh position. It's just another speculative state of affairs. I might not like that society. So what?
Quoting boethius
So, arbitrary proclamation served by a historical emotional attitude. Gotcha ;)
Quoting boethius
Please refrain from intimating that not sharing your position is somehow akin to be less developed. NOt becoming.
If that happens, it's perfectly acceptable. I don't think you're right, though. I didn't intimate that a society where no one performed duties would be good, or comfortable for me. I don't think anyone is obliged to do so and noted that we're lucky only humans are moral agents - this being because we appear to share the emotivist basis for our moral claims, being of the same species (I presume - brainstates being similar, or within a certain possible range)
Quoting boethius
I really don't know what you're referring to here. My position is as you stated, and nothing else. If i've intimated some other position, ignore it. I don't see that I have, though.
Quoting boethius
It isn't a difference at all. It was baked-in to what you had said - I've tried to clarify this earlier in this comment reply, so I shall leave this. But, prior to any addressing my response, this is just plain wrong in terms of my position. Quoting boethius
This is perfectly fine, but 'feeling a duty' doesn't mean on exists. That's a self-implication, and not at all a moral claim. I feel the duty not to let my sons die. That motivates me to act. I do not believe such a duty exists outside of what I just said about myself. If I cease to feel that way, the duty doesn't continue to obtain (well, sure, legally it does...)
Quoting boethius
Yes, it does. I understand what collective agreements are, and I see the consequences of not adhering to some of them. So I adhere to some of them, because I dont want the consequence. There is no duty to achieve it, it's what i want. But this isn't part of the discussion we're having. If I am right, then I am right. You need to explain cogent societies in my terms, rather than saying that my terms don't work because of a speculated failure.
Quoting boethius
Quoting boethius
I reject, quite strongly, that incongruent suggestion. I don't think this is historically accurate or even reasonable. We've not really had these conversations without Divine intervention.
Quoting boethius
This is entirely wrong. I am concerned about the consequences, for myself. I don't care if it doesn't affect me. And if all the people involved have the same view I do, great!
Even if I did, I would not be int he free-riding group. That requires, on your own terms, that I hold hold absolute moral limits. I do not.
Quoting boethius
Not at all. If you've conflated them, or I've misspoken sure. I have been very clear - neither issue changes the moral considerations I hold. There is no bait and switch. THe same reasoning holds for both. This may actually be what you're missing: If the collective emotional position on something is X, then policy will be X and that's fine. It's not a moral proclamation other than to say "most people here think this is wrong". Cool man. That's what actually happens in life. What do you think referenda are for?
Quoting boethius
That's true, but this is not synonymous with 'society' and says nothing about morality. Its a state of affairs. A small-enough society would not require this. If everyone's moral outlook aligns, no one sacrifices. They are all doing what is right, on their own terms, to protect that society. This is exactly what I am discussing as is the case. This goes directly to the heart of my position: That whicih makes one uncomfortable, one would avoid. If one is comfortable with the duty to defend one's country, at extreme risk, then great. No sacrifice made. You are doing the correct thing, in your own terms, making you comfortable. Your life isn't a sacrifice in this context. It would be for me, because I don't owe that duty (on my terms, that is).
Quoting boethius
Any case I can't think of where this is actually true (rare) yep. That's fine. Don't see the issue. Quoting boethius
Unless what you're trying to say is that any individual who comprises a collective has no self interest what do you think the Collective interest is? What does it consist in? Purely the survival of the collective? That can't be right. I hear you, and Im not muddling the two 'interests' up here, I just cannot work out how you're getting 'collective' interest abstracted from the interest of the collected individuals. Emergence doesn't seem to me to be apt for that.
Quoting boethius
Yep ahah agree there. Goes to the above retort about collective interest (what even is that?). Getting a little confused with how some of these responses run in to each other.. .
Quoting boethius
Is not a collective in this sentence. It is merely a number of individuals pursuing their self-interests . You are arguing against something I did not say. The 'critical mass' is not intended to 'represent' society. It is just more than 50% of the individuals within it (or, whatever the critical mass would be for the moral outlook of the society to change). It doesn't speak about any collective interest. But also, I don't care. Taken in your terms, the rest of the quote defeats the objection anyway. That possibility is so incredibly infintessimal I can't take it seriously. No significant portion of any society will start raping and pillaging because there are no laws. But if they did, fine.
Quoting boethius
This seems to indicate you are now just making things up about my positions? I recognise nothing of myself here. I don't see that hyte problem needs solving. If enough people want it solved, nice. Im in that camp.
Quoting boethius
I read this quote (what you quoted of me) and it made me cringe. I reject that entirely. I think it is the way things are. I do not think it is a requirement. I was wrong to say that and entirely reject it now. Not sure how I came to type that though. It is not my position. I may have been saying that this is what Western Culture requires, absolutely. Idk. But its wrong on my account anyway. The discussion didn't 'come' there, anyway. That's clearly antithetical to everything else i've said.
Quoting boethius
We don't. But i apologise for the waste of time this last part has been for you.
Quoting boethius
Correct. That is the end of my direct replies, because the rest rely on the above being my position, which I hope is now clear, it is not. I misspoke and I'm sorry you went to the effort of responding to something that, fairly, would have appeared to be bad-faith. Aside from direct responses...
If it hasn't become obvious by this stage, let me spell one thing out that might be a puzzle piece objectors look for, and can't find:
We have good reason to enact the rules and laws that we do to achieve stated aims. Agreement gives us this reason. Does it oblige us? No. But that doesn't mean that agreement, while i surives, isn't a good reason to act. It states aims. Those aims being arbitrary doesn't negate that we have collectively deliberated and agreed to certain things. We need not consider them 'duties' but 'rules'. Arbitrary, subject to change, but, regardless, they are the rules. I don't see how this isn't 'good enough' to be getting on with. We don't need morally-perfected concepts to get here. Its a hodge-podge. Why's that a problem? We simply do not need morality to do these things 'well' in the sense of achieving stated aims.
Quoting Marjorie Taylor Greene · Apr 5, 2024
[tweet]https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1776282144416972941[/tweet]
So they just clinched a Biden win in Arizona. Cool. :up:
Unfortunately.
He won Arizona in 2020.
:ok: A+
I posted an article about the decision by the Arizona Supreme Court and said this decision will clinch this battleground state (in which the polls are currently even/showing Trump leading) for Biden.
You respond with that seems unlikely given the 2020 results. But he won in 2020, so why his winning in 2024 seems unlikely given the winning results in 2020 makes no sense.
But maybe you meant something else, like given the small margins Biden won by its unlikely he wins this time, given the current polls, or whatever. Just lazily worded, and misses the point.
Clear enough? Cool.
11April24 ("4-11")
Today in Trumpenfreude:
Given that over 60% of the electorate (re: 2020 & 2022 elections) are women AND that Criminal Defendant-1 & his MAGA-GOP circus clowns are campaigning on a promise to implement a nationwide "Federal Abortion Ban" (including e.g. The 1873 Comstock Act by presidential executive order) in stark contrast to pro-choice President Biden and the Dems' campaign promise to pass a nationwide "Federal Right to Choose Law", [b]we anti-fascists have to thank ...
SCOTUS[/b] (Catholic right wing, MAGA majority) for overturning Roe v Wade in 2022 and thereby
(1) depriving over half of the US population and electorate Constitutional protections of access to safe, reproductive healthcare that also permits (so far 17) states to ban abortion (even without medical exceptions) and to criminally prosecute both women seeking to terminate pregnancies and their doctors et al
(2) causing GOP to underperform in 2022 midterms losing instead of gaining the US Senate and gaining only 9 out of projected 20-30 House seats to make their "red tsunami" into a "red ripple" ... and
(3) causing MAGA-GOP in 2022 to lose anti-abortion ballot measures in Kansas, Kentucky, & Montana, failed to even get on the ballot in Oklahoma and then, in 2023, failed to stop a pro-choice state constitutional amendment from passing in Ohio all ruby red states with majorities of trumpers, evangelicals, "poorly educated" rural blue collar white men and women.
thank Arizona (swing state) for total abortion ban
thank Florida (barely red state) for total abortion ban after 6 weeks
thank North Carolina (swing state) for pro-"abortion ban" and pro-"repeal women's right to vote" MAGA-extremist candidate for governor
thank Georgia (swing state) for total abortion ban after 6 weeks
thank Nevada (barely blue state) for pending pro-choice ballot measure to amend state constitution
thank Pennsylvania (swing state) for pending anti-abortion ballot measure to amend state constitution
for mobilizing
Almost All Liberal,
Most Moderate &
also Many Conservative
Woman Voters which, IMO, increases the likelihood of a *blowout* worse than 2020 and reelection of Biden-Harris along with the Dems holding the US Senate, regaining the US House and, at least, 1 governorship (re: North Carolina). :clap: :mask: :party:
addendum to ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/894200
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/890076
Can a brutha get an AMEN?! :sweat: :up:
@Benkei @jorndoe @Wayfarer @jgill @Fooloso4 @Mikie et al
Quoting Wayfarer
Politics... it isn't about logic and intelligence, it's a religion.
Quoting ssu
Behold the *Jihad of Estrogen* :strong:
AMEN. But I still ain't placing any bets.
:lol:
Now that's the spirit!!!
I hope youre right. Im not so convinced about the senate though.
We definitely agree on this point so I will try to synthesize the debate so far as well as transcribe some key passages of MacIntyre.
My position is essentially MacIntyre's position except with a Kantian "boost" as it were to upgrade some of his claims to categorical imperatives.
For example, MacIntyre doesn't like manipulative social relationships, I would simply upgrade that not-liking to a categorical imperative: we can disagree, we can be at odds, we can compete in different contexts, we can try to convert each other to our own view, we can fight, we can come to blows, maybe even kill each other to resolve our differences, but I view it as a categorical imperative not to manipulate you; i.e. deceive you into acting against your own objectives by making you believe falsehoods (which is not required for coercion, which I still view as necessary for society to function, but we can be coercive without being manipulative), which of course is Kant's central thesis: treat people as ends in themselves, as echoes in many religions: do onto others as you would have them do onto you.
That being said, MacIntyre's description of contemporary Western society and how we got here and where it's headed, and his own proposed program I fully agree with; it's all quite brilliant so I will try to do my best in finding the best passages to present it.
Quoting AmadeusD
I have not yet really presented MacIntyre's argument, but his starting point is exactly that you need a moral tradition in which moral ideas and decisions even have meaning, and it only from the standpoint of one tradition that it is even possible to comprehend the claims of another tradition; one can not be traditionless. I'm not sure that's exactly compatible with "obtains only between the margins of those frameworks", but we can get into that when I make a thread presenting MacIntyre's After Virtue positions.
Quoting AmadeusD
As mentioned, the purpose of developing the social consequences is claritive.
All these sorts of questions are with the purpose of understanding your position.
As you may appreciate, a significant amount of moral-relativists (whether emotivist or straight nihilists or some other flavour) essentially operate by "grandfathering in" a long list of moral rules and social opinions that they take for granted. The fact that in normal situations it's "off limits" to advocate those positions (such as torturing children) they take to mean it's therefore off limits as criticism (i.e. that they are only defending what is already socially acceptable); however, if someone makes the claim "there are no moral obligations whatsoever" of then "all moral positions are as good as another" what's entailed by that is there is no moral obligation to not torture babies nor interfere with someone so engaged.
Quoting AmadeusD
I strongly disagree here; thought experiments are the primary tool of developing a moral theory.
Of course, I understand you would want to avoid that if you're theory is simply based on spontaneous emotional reaction to situations that arise ... but one such situation that arises is someone putting to you a thought experiment in which you'll have an emotional reaction too.
However, the examples I've provided are not even really thought experiments, they are real examples: people really do torture, murder, rape, extort and take bribes.
Quoting AmadeusD
It is not a mistake if a question is honest and not a criticism.
It is not a gotcha. If you propose no moral claim is better than another and are willing to "pay the cost" as MacIntyre says about people who take this to it's logical conclusion, then the debate would proceed from there.
Of course, in normal society a debate is "won" when a proponent (from their point of view of course) leads a position to a conclusion which society already disagrees with (at least in their opinion), ideally some taboo (such as Nazis and pedophiles and so on). But of course, even if those premises are all correct, it simply begs the question of whether "society" really is correct about that moral position. Maybe Nazis were right after all.
An authentic criticism would thus require an actual justification that society is correct on that particular point to form a sound and valid argument.
Which I have not done yet, as I want to fully understand your position before critiquing it.
Quoting AmadeusD
Well this is quite important to know in order to understand your point of view.
Quoting AmadeusD
We certainly agree it is better to avoid the situation, but the issue is what duty does the surgeon have to the patient.
In a world of no duties, then the surgeon has no duty to perform the surgery to the best of their ability and obviously until completion.
Obviously in our society the surgeon would be convicted of gross negligence and likely murder, but that process is completely predicated on society's existing belief the surgeon has a duty to perform the contractual engagement, perform as best he can, and certainly "do no harm". However, if the truth is there is no duties then there's no foundation upon which society could legitimately demand any of this and no way to maintain a system (with detectives, prosecutors, judges all performing their duties) to enforce accountability to those demands.
Quoting AmadeusD
Obviously we both prefer no one to be needlessly harmed, so we agree on what is preferable.
The disagreement is on whether what's preferable can also be morally obligatory.
Your view is quite clear on this topic.
It will take another thread to actually critique your view.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting AmadeusD
Again, just trying to understand your position.
All the duties I will argue along with MacIntyre are real actual duties ultimately aim to continue humanity.
If you're ambivalent to the continuation of humanity then that is likely the very heart of the difference.
Quoting AmadeusD
My points were derived from what many moral relativists do which is to deny there are any moral truths (in one way or another) but then continuously argue that society will continue on being "good", which makes no sense if there is not good and bad.
All points of mine on this theme is not only in relation to what moral relativists usually do, but also people in general in Western society: moral relativists language is used to avoid criticism of one's own actions ("don't criticize my diet I can eat what I want!! It's my life!!"), while moral absolutist language is used to criticize opponents ("I condemn my political opponents!! This is a violation!!").
Now clearly this doesn't apply to you, but I spent some time on this post to be sure of it as well as for the benefit of anyone following our discussion.
Quoting AmadeusD
We definitely agree here.
Quoting AmadeusD
We definitely will need to go deeper in another thread, so we can maybe return to this point and contrast framings.
Quoting AmadeusD
Again, I'm asking a question to better understand.
But as with above, if you're not arguing for some sort of market utopia but we just ignore the initial distribution of wealth, then this isn't too relevant to you.
I've argued a lot with libertarians so all these points are easy to retrieve from memory. However, if you're not a libertarian then markets, today or in the past, isn't really a core issue of contention. However, I have also been thinking of a thread critiquing Western imperialism (as a lot of the differences in other political threads basically come down to "Western imperialism good or bad"), so taking up Heydel-Mankoo would perhaps be more relevant there.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, you may reevaluate your position on MacIntyre after debating the specifics.
MacIntyres historical account is not one of individual political agency, in which case definitely most people have very little and certainly don't perceive themselves as involved in politics (although I would strongly disagree they are not actually involved); he is more concerned with how the moral frameworks in which the political debate of the day occurs develop and are changed. These more fundamental moral changes are mostly a critical mass issue, often happening against the will of the elites; an example of this sort of major change is the reformation.
From this perspective, normal people under feudalism would perceive themselves and be perceived as having even less political involvement that normal people now in Western society, but then they start to rebel against the Catholic Church and consequences are profound. The reformation was certainly not the Catholic Church's idea, nor would it have worked if it was just "an idea" a few intellectuals and nobles had; normal people getting involved, taking significant risks, was absolutely fundamental. This sort of change is what MacIntyre is more concerned with.
Quoting AmadeusD
Certainly has happened until now.
What I am claiming is bold is that ridiculous levels of political stupidity do not now pose an existential risk to humanity. Of course, if you are unconcerned about humanity continuing, as you say above, then seems an irrelevant point to you either way.
Quoting AmadeusD
These points are in relation to your criticism of my claim that Western society is failing.
There is definitely an objective measures of social success, such as people having enough to eat and society at least continuing.
Objective and quantifiable.
You may have no problem with society ending, but I don't see why you wouldn't agree that would indeed be society failing in whatever it was trying to do.
Quoting AmadeusD
Then you are using the word success in pretty unusual way.
In its usual meaning, success requires some goal which requires some moral framework to formulate.
Your intuitive-spontaneous moral framework is still a moral framework from which you derive your objectives.
Quoting AmadeusD
Seems incongruous to laud Western society in one place and then claim is has no goal or aim in another.
But again, if society destroys itself that is clearly failing.
Your position seems to be that you're fine if it fails as well as humanity as a whole, simply fails and comes to an end.
To argue the more fundamental point that we have a duty to try to avoid humanity failing, will of course take another more dedicated thread to elaborate the argument.
However, my point here is that the assumption that Western society, humanity as a whole, will simply muddle on is a false one; society can end and so cease to muddle.
Quoting AmadeusD
It's good to see you are advanced enough in understanding your own position to realize it is inconsistent.
And this would be the fundamental moral duty I would put forward: a duty to try to be consistent.
Now, if you are committed to an inconsistent position there is not "arguing against you" per se as you can simply be comfortable with any inconsistency, comfort is your guide, and so there is no problem.
So, perhaps at best we can exchange views, but you clearly like to argue so with enough of it perhaps you simply become uncomfortable with inconsistencies and so convert to my avoid-inconsistencies moral code.
Quoting AmadeusD
Since we've already established you aren't concerned with social consequences, these considerations aren't so relevant.
However, in your framework people can obviously conscript other people and force them to fight at the end of a gun, if they're comfortable doing that.
My goal here is not to debate conscription (I happen to be also against conscription, though not against taxing people who do not server higher for life, to avoid the free rider problem), but again to simply understand your position.
The underlying purpose of questions on this theme is your view of the state. Seems clear you're ambivalent, and don't really care what happens to the state, which is very much compatible with being ambivalent to what happens to society as such.
Quoting AmadeusD
My questions and examples are the logical enquiries.
If someone says they don't view any act as morally better than another, then before debating first principles I want to be sure they really are taking that view.
If you're ambivalent to anyone doing anything at all, just more comfortable with some happenings over others but that's just you're own feeling of comfort and doesn't give rise to any moral claims (including claims about conscription for example), then I want to be sure you really are ambivalent.
As I've mentioned, most people who use moral relativist language are not actually moral relativists, they still want to condemn Hitler and assume that's given to them: but obviously it's not, if no one is right or wrong, Hitler is as right as anyone else.
Quoting AmadeusD
I said "as laudable" to just mean they are equal (which you can say "equally good" or "equally bad").
Which seems very much your position, you have no particular gripe with Hitler and the Nazi project: happened, they were clearly comfortable with what they were doing so doing right by their own comfortableness (certainly comfortable enough to carry out their project).
Again, it's not childish, it's the adult question to ask: when someone says they see no better or worse morality, then clearly the obvious and logical point is make is that entails Nazism is thus no better or worse than any other ism.
Quoting AmadeusD
This is exactly why I develop the consequences of society changing its view of right and wrong, that "you shouldn't do X because society will hold you accountable and there will be consequences" is not a valid argument.
When you say "consequences for them" clearly the negative consequences to serial killing personally to the serial killer would be getting caught. But why would anyone catch you if no one thinks serial killing is bad?
Quoting AmadeusD
You just rejected, above, any measure of success or failure in evaluating societies, but say here that Western society does something well. You just said Western society has no goal.
However, it's simply wrong that there is no shared moral framework.
There's a shared core moral framework: such as serial killing is evil and justifies a very large effort in stopping, law enforcement shouldn't take bribes and so on.
It is this core moral framework that is overwhelmingly dominant that allows Western society to function (at least until now and certainly for at least some time further).
Obviously you are well aware of the reaction to serial killing or child torturing of the vast majority of people: that their position is that it's an absolute moral wrong, evil, must be stopped and transgressors put away for some time. Likewise, the reaction to a judge taking a bribe.
This is a shared moral framework.
Of course, even if there's an absolutely dominant consensus on some core values that make civil society possible, there can be visceral disagreements on less-core things, such as abortion. Whether abortion is legal or illegal, society does not simply all apart (such as if murder was made legal).
Where society can afford to muddle is in policy choices that are not existential to the formation of civil society or then any society at all.
Quoting AmadeusD
Your position is getting pretty confusing to me.
In some places you seem to hold a total ambivalence to what happens and are not concerned with the social consequences whatsoever, and not only are you unconcerned for what happens to society but there is no way to measure the success of society as such (you're ambivalent to society succeeding or failing and moreover assert there is no measure of success or failure anyways), and in other places you seem to argue society, in particular Western society, is doing well.
You seem, at least give the vibe, of being pleased with Western social norms.
Quoting AmadeusD
Again, arbitrary is a strong word, even your framework is not arbitrary but founded on your spontaneous sense of comfort.
Social consequences are also clearly even less arbitrary. The consequence of going to prison for murder is not arbitrary; if you can just get what you want by killing who you want when you want, then society quickly ceases to function much at all (certainly nothing remotely close to Western society is feasible if murder is permissible).
Likewise, claiming "other than that they meet a collective emotional benchmark" is another way of saying they aren't arbitrary.
Now, it will take another thread to develop an alternative position to your view. To broadly describe it, I will be arguing that emotions are not foundational. For example, even in your own system you are clearly making the claim that "you should do what you're comfortable with"; there's a logical moral structure you're ignoring that takes emotions as inputs and is not therefore by definition itself emotional. However, this would be simply a starting point.
There is not enough space here even to finish responding to your points, so I will have to in another comment.
No amen yet. Still hoping for a different Dem ticket. "Surge the Border Biden" deserves defeat.
Yeah, good.. and fair enough. I reject the categorical imperative, which will do some heavy lifting in justifying my responses further down the post. This is not to say that I think employing hte categorical imperative is erroneous. I think it is inadequate and necessarily simplistic - to a level lower than required to cover actual behaviour.
Quoting boethius
I do not. People can have objectives against their own interest, and I do not think any obligations prevents us from acting on our own intuitions around that. I don't think we have any obligation to do so, but if someone who suffers from sexomania (lets assume that's a real thing) is going around 'harming' others, my discomfort with seeing that happen will motivate me to stop them. This is me enacting a private moral opinion publicly.
But, I accept that if humans were on-the-whole less capable of assessing this, viz we had some chaotic, inconsistent system of analysis whether mentally ill people should handle their own affairs, and this resulted in huge amounts of 'harm' in the way noted above, my position might be different. To me, the facts matter. There aren't principles that can be universally applied.
Quoting boethius
Personally, coercion seems on the whole a worse way to deal with things. At least lying to someone accepts what you're doing on it's face. I can't see how these would be morally different on a Kantian framework. But, he accepted lying is possibly acceptable in some circumstances, but wasn't too direct about it.
Quoting boethius
This is, to my mind, someone pretending their doing something other than trying to convince others of their own values. One can certainly be traditionless on my view. Assuming the bolded is to me read "It is only from..." I think thats absurb, on its face, and upon reflexion. We can understand the solar system from teh confines of the surface of hte Earth.
Quoting boethius
I tend to not see this in anyone who has reviewed their positions, but in the general population, yes, that's pretty common.
Quoting boethius
absolutely. And, i think the important aspect in the problem you're outlining is a lack of review/reflection. I think it would be hard to miss these complete contradictions upon reflection.
Quoting boethius
My view is that they are helpful in getting the discussion going, but serve no real purpose in ascertaining the 'real' moral position one might have. One can make whatever claims they like when not faced with the position their advocating for in real life.
Quoting boethius
They do. I take those as thought experiments, nonetheless. I accept that they aren't particularly interesting in terms of 'experiment' but giving real-life examples that do not pertain to me is still, I think a thought experiment. I have to think about it, not remember.
Quoting boethius
I'm unsure these two can go together. Duties in pursuit of that aim? IF that's the inference, yes, sure, that's the position I am essentially saying morality comes down to. Choose an aim, and run with it from there. This is the 'one free miracle' i've, other places, spoken of. Choose your aim, and the math works from there.
Quoting boethius
Hmm, perhaps i'm not quite getting how you mean mistake. I think you have erred. Dishonesty not required for that. Just, mistake heh.
Quoting boethius
Yes. I think this agreement is viable as a means for organising society. There's no obligation to do so , but when most people agree on the above, we can come to terms, as they say and write legislation. When everyone agrees, it seems irrational rather than 'wrong' not to do what everyone is agreeing to. It seems natural, not obligatory. I think this is hte real reason for the success of society, in self-survival as it were. To that aim, we're going pretty well by my lights.
Quoting boethius
Precisely why I think the above is the case.
Quoting boethius
I agree, and think this is true. However, I am quite happy most people share the same sort of discomfort with neglect as I do. I have no right to will others do so, though, and if this were not the case I do not believe I could change my moral position that people should share that position. But, I like it, as is.
Quoting boethius
Whatever one he has internally assented to. I think you are able to oblige yourself to your own intentions. This doesn't seem to me the same thing as expecting something from someone else. I expect that I will not tap out simply because I'm out of breath in a Jiu jitsu round. I stick to this. It's a obligation i put on myself. If i do not meet this obligation, I deal with it. There's no moral valence imo.
Quoting boethius
Agree. And think this is the case. We are mistaking common agreement, for obligation.
Quoting boethius
ambivalent is probably an unfair framing here. I care. It matters to me (though, in an expected way im sure) - but I don't think anyone else should, or needs to share my opinion (for their sake, it may be better that they dont (this will make sense if you ask what my position is lol)).
Quoting boethius
For sure. That's almost all he's relevant for, publicly speaking.
Quoting boethius
I will forego responding to all of what this relates to, but yes, I think that's the case. Nonetheless, really appreciate your elucidations.
Quoting boethius
I may be missing a trick - the underlined seems to imply this issue is irrelevant to any moral outlook? Was there a typo there?
Quoting boethius
For sure, and I suppose this would be 'my version of moral progress' in action, in that its purely a mechanism of common agreement. You could, here, employ 'empathy' as the guiding light. But due to trauma, and the way my mind works, I suffered from sociopathy for several years. I could not accept the above, at that time, and it would be very very strange to say that the rest of society had a right to enforce that norm on me. Apart from anything, 'ought' always has to imply ' could' - and I 'couldn't'. I was lucky in that it was transitive. Most sociopaths are not this lucky.
Quoting boethius
That (and others, obviously) parameter is measurable, and if the bold is your aim it measures success. But consider a society with an aim that can be completed. To reforest a certain portion of hte Earth's surface. What's the use of society beyond that completion? I think it is irrational to have an aim which is forever changing, unless we're going to accept that morality has nothing to do with it. More below..
Quoting boethius
I havent used it. That's what Im asking you to point out. THis response seems to be senseless in terms of what I've said to you here.
Quoting boethius
Consider, again, a society with a time-restricted aim. The World Lover's Society of 1999. Once it flips over to 2000, the aim is complete, and society no longer has a moral, or practical aim. And it seems to me irrational to claim that a society can have a indeterminate aim, yet be beholden to it. If you're saying merely survival of the society is the aim, how you do deal with evolution of societies? Is British society now inherently different in a way that matters from British society circa 1823? It is the same society, no? But wait... they had entirely different Moral precepts to current British Society. Heck, that's true of 1920s British society vs now. How does this sit? I'm not trying to imply much here. Just curious.
Quoting boethius
This is wrong. And you seem to have misread the quote you have used.
Quoting AmadeusD
I believe it is. This, though, In light of the fact I actually reject something I said earlier. Once that's taken into account, no inconsistencies that I can ascertain.
Quoting boethius
Roughly, but obviously I wont be 'fine'. I'll just 'not be'. No valence, again, to have a moral view on. Things end all the time. Humanity is not special.
Quoting boethius
It is quite alright to claim this. I don't think I can argue with it as stated. But it is a non-static framework, if so. This is novel, and so I find it hard to believe it could be consider among other frameworks. It doesn't operate the same way. I reject that there are moral facts, or propositions apt for truth claims.
Quoting boethius
To me, that's nonsensical. Obviously, I don't accept that there are moral duties. C'est la vie, :)
Quoting boethius
I am not. In any way. I have no idea where you've come up with that. That comfort is the guide, in all cases, is what the consistency consists in( Hehe. that was a great sentence). To clear, I care about things, and people. I do not, though, think this matters to anyone else. And morally, I don't think it can. I think people, under their framework, insist this is true. But, that is not true. It is a requirement of their framework only. That choice, though, is arbitrary (or, as I posit, and stand by - it is informed by their comfort level with said framework).
Quoting boethius
I like to discuss. Arguments suck. And I already meet you criteria :)
Quoting boethius
This is not quite coherent. Ambivalence has to do with valence, not morality. Ambivalence would indicate i have conflicting feelings about whatever it is. Sometimes, this true. Mostly, it is not. I have a clear feeling and emotional response. This does not give rise to any moral position and they aren't particularly connected, unless you accept that people's emotional response to situations is what, without some intervening reasoning, informs their morals. That is my position, because most people have never even tried to review their moral positions outside of the 'moment'. The 'moment' is clearly an emotional one.
Quoting boethius
He's not to me, but I agree. There is no way to understand that anything he did is actually worse in any objective sense, without a particular aim (not killing people, for instance - which it can be very hard to walk back from, when it is such a deeply-held intuition that one ought not do this. But I do).
Quoting boethius
If so, fair enough. Laudable infers praise, above ambivalence (hehehe). This is also most often, and most apt applied to aims and desires, not states of affairs. So, I see a number of inconsistencies in your language at this stage.
Quoting boethius
This is a little bit misleading. I can have opinions on other people's opinions. But they do not relate to anything but my opinion of those opinions. This may be hard to follow, but it is consistent. I can think what I want. That means nothing about whether those other people are right or wrong in their actions, or thoughts. I am extremely uncomfortable with the Nazi project. I do not believe I have the right to insist they are wrong. I can insist, and attempt to reason with them, that their project is ill-conceived. Luckily, they had specific aims to which I could relate these reasons. This is a mechanistic conversation at that stage, not a moral one. If you have aim A, regardless of its morality, you can do 1, 2 or 3 and they will have different outcomes, corresponding to different degrees of success toward your arbitrary aim. This is not inconsistent with my position.
Quoting boethius
I can't quite grasp what you're saying here - the sentences don't quite string together - so apologies if I get something wrong:
This would be the only possible public notion I could appeal to in trying to change anyone's behaviour or views. And I might do this, If i were uncomfortable enough. "Oh dad, please don't kill the dog. You will probably be arrested and charged. That would suckfor you". But that is speculation, unfortunately. 50/50 whether anyone would care what I've got to say. Maybe less.
Quoting boethius
Because they're uncomfortable, and erroneously think that gives them the right to do stuff to other people. Nothing stopping them either, but this would motivate them to do it.
Quoting boethius
"getting on with it" is no a goal. It is a fact of the society i am observing. We 'get on with it' to degrees of success higher than other societies. We also produce more single-use plastics. Nothing in that suggests a moral valence or social goal. I also didn't reject that the West has a social goal. I'm trying to tease out what your aim is, in instantiating your moral outlook. It seems you're not able to necessarily lay that out.
Quoting boethius
It is not. The quote directly after this shows why. YOu have confused some facts about people's emotional reactions to events, and 'morality'. You are, slowly, sliding into accepting that people's emotions are their moral framework.
Quoting boethius
It can afford it anywhere. It seems this is an indication of where you would become uncomfortable, if society did this. That's fine, and again, exemplifies the above assertion.
Quoting boethius
This is entirely wrong, and all the reasons why have been canvassed through the above responses.
You've used ambivalence incorrectly. I am not ambivalent. I have levels of comfort and discomfort which I clearly apprehend - making ambivalence not possible. I will ignore this subsequently.
UNderline: Entirely false. Not sure where that's come from. I've been extremely clear that I, personally, care about what happens to society. I think society is nice. It is what it is, and I like how its going (in the West). This does not give you the correct ammunition for the assertions here. The only thing I have said Western society does well, was pursuant to a specific, arbitrary aim. This is not inconsistent in any way with the rest of what i've said.
Quoting boethius
No, it's not. It's just naming hte arbitrary benchmark used. The benchmark is arbitrary. It's results are just so.
Quoting boethius
Absolutely not. I am saying i should do what I am comfortable with. It does not pertain, or have anything to do with anyone else. This seems to be a misapprehension you are making quite often here. It is wrong.
Some of you responses are really confusing, in the sense that you directly contradict things i've said int he quotes you've used. Interesting... Till the next one!!
:rofl:
Hint: Who do you think he voted for in 2020? :mask:
Haha never heard that one before. Made me chuckle a little, especially after just watching the Godfather.
I don't think they ask WWJD because they think they know what Trump has done, will do, and what has been done to him. While they may not regard him as The Messiah the do believe his is a messiah and like all messiahs persecuted by the enemies of God.
NASDAQ (DJT) :rofl:
26March24 $57.99 per share :gasp:
15April24 $26.61 per share :down:
Or perhaps the only apparent option to remove the Biden cabal. Don't forget, Joe told immigrants to "Surge the Border", and gave Afghanistan back to the Taliban - where recently the supreme Poohbah stated he is bringing back stoning certain women to death.
Quoting Tzeentch
Looks like we're still on.
The US may appear reprehensive about a war with Iran on the surface, but the truth is that they have been planning for such a war since at least 2009.
It wouldn't be the first time Israel drags the US into a war, and I can assure you that Israel has a lot more reason to want to do so today than it had back in 2003.
[quote=Kamala Harris, VPOTUS] All across the country ... These are
Trump abortion bans.[/quote]
Do you remember the "red tsumani" that didn't happen in 2022? :mask:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/895573
There may be some who feel this way, but this does not obviate the fact that there are Evangelical Christians who see him as a messiah in a battle that is playing out on a cosmic scale of the end times.
16April24 $22.84 per share
I watched the video, and read the Brookings report. The person in the video grossly misrepresents the report. Brookings does not state a plan, it lists options - and identifies potential negative and positive consequences of each. The author's premise is that there is some secret plan to go to war with Iran, and he interprets points in the Brookings document to in light of this premise. The fact that certain events have unfolded with some of the anticipated consequences is a testament to Brookings' analysis, not an implication that one particularly nefarious path has been chosen by the US, among all the permutations of paths outlined by Brookings.
I thought he represented the report splendidly.
Whilst Trump only told the Proud Boys to storm the Capital building. Biden is obviously by far the greater miscreant.
It'll be interesting to see how the funding s***fight unspools on Saturday. 'Moscow Marge' is going all in for Putin. If she rolls Johnson there's a possiblity the house will end up with Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker. That ought to learn 'em. :rofl:
@jgill
What's starting in Australia?
Well, James Lankford, a Republican senator, worked with a bi-partisan committee to come up with a solution to stop the flow, including many of the measures the Republicans had been demanding for years. And Donald Trump ordered that they drop it, before even debating it on the Senate Floor, because if it were implemented, it might work, and it would make Joe Biden look good. And the Republican Party acceeded to his request, of course, meaning the problem isn't solved, so that people, like those on Internet Forums, can go on blaming Joe Biden for it.
It's here that the question of democracy becomes muddied. If actions are done not for the people but for the sake of power and winning elections, then there's no true representative democracy anymore, but a pseudo-democracy.
The need to simplify everything down to calling pseudo-democracies real democracies because people seem to be unable to understand what is and what isn't a true democracy makes it impossible to progress past the problems of these kinds of pseudo-democracies.
The US is just a patch work of a democracy, barely on the side of being for the people, mostly just operating under similar ideals as religious fundamentalistic nations around the world; probably the only nation working under Christian fundamentalism in the world, and it infects their democracy and produces demagogues and pseudo-democratic practices.
The WA GOP put it in writing that theyre not into democracy
[sup] Danny Westneat · The Seattle Times · Apr 24, 2024[/sup]
Maybe? I've seen worse. Besides ...
The Seattle Times: mediabiasfactcheck, adfontesmedia, biasly
Not really, those are your words.
For one, some ? all.
For another, they're squabbling over ehh "taboo words". :zip: :lol:
Quoting 2024 WSRP Resolutions Page 2 of 15
John Adams is quoted but his position if far more subtle than this naked attempt at a power grab.
In John Adams' "Thoughts on Government" he asks:
and answers by:
That is, not by a political party but by those who are wise and good,.
He goes on to say:
If the people at large favor policies that are progressive and socialists then the Republicans are not representatives of the people.
Adams also says:
As the greatest leader of the Republican Party said, this nation is a government:
It is a mixed regime with elements of aristocracy and democracy.
Quoting https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/republic/summary-and-analysis/book-viii
In a letter to John Taylor he says:
The two parties at that time were the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. He was a member of the Federalists. This would raise doubts for the those who wrote and supported the Republican resolution @jorndoe cited above, if only they knew where Adams stood.
According to his wife he was an avid reader of Plato, but I think his views on democracy were shaped in part by his own experience and observations regarding human nature. A Democratic republic differs from the Athenian democracy in important ways.
Young voters are part of Democrats natural base of support, but Biden is actually 11 percentage points behind Trump among young voters 18-34 in a head-to-head match in a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released over the weekend.[/i]"
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/29/politics/biden-young-voters-what-matters/index.html
I always suspected young peoples' commitment to fighting climate change was paper thin. Drill, baby, drill.
@Relativist
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/02/us/biden-trump-campaign
So when he loses a clean election again (2020 was probably the most clean and fair in US history), and comes up with some nonsense reason to reject it which is a given despite being able to predict this 6 months out, his supporters will be right there with him and the media will be shocked at the fact that he wont concede the loss.
Its likely that hell make something up even if he wins, as he did in 2016 regarding the popular vote.
:death:
:fear:
So a complete ignoramus about this too. Im shocked. :scream:
Trumps own officials say 2020 was Americas most secure election in history
Mexico's elections are far securer than whatever has been happening the past years in Cheeseburgerland. The article is already wrong on the title, or Trump's officials.
Looking into the article, no such thing as "Trump officials" confirmed anything. It was Burgerland's election officials that did so, who happened to be under Trump administration because Trump was the current president.
I am not trying to have a discussion with you by the way, because you literally have no soul/subjectivity. I am just pointing it out in public.
Quoting Benkei
Vox isn't a source. Weren't you the same guy threatening terrorism in some other thread? Go drink your soy latte.
Edit: Yes, you were. Cringe.
Quoting Benkei
Q.e.d.
The rest is a red herring.
Repeating the same mistake again. We can go on infinitely.
Quoting Benkei
Not what that means. Turn off your brain from the debate-bro fallacy-spotter OCD.
No.
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news/joint-statement-elections-infrastructure-government-coordinating-council-election
They were Trump officials.
Also:
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2018-01-10/trump-commision-on-election-integrity-found-no-evidence-of-voter-fraud
Back in 2018, when he also claimed there was widespread voter fraud. Which everyone with a brain cell knows is bullshit anyway.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/resources-voter-fraud-claims
Which is why Trump has lost literally every court case on this. Its conjured out of thin air to excuse his loss, which he was telegraphing months in advance.
Again, quite shocking that one of our resident clowns is a believer in such stupidity. The general level of a mind that supports Trump, though
Right. Just lazy, boring bullshit from people who feel obligated to talk when they both know nothing about the subject and have nothing interesting to contribute. But it makes them feel like theyre participating.
I laughed. A mixture of soy and political dopamine fuels the rage. One thing you wont find is any principle.
True. Comparing Mexico to the Disunited States of Drag Kwain is so comedic that the thought ought to be laughed off and ignored.
These people literally have no soul. You think you are talking to a human being like oneself but it is a mindless automaton whose sole purpose is to slightly annoy you.
Quoting RogueAI
Where did you see me saying that? It is just that the statement that an election where thousands of tourists and dead people voted being the fairest and cleanest of all time is dumb. But again, his purpose on Earth is to be mildly annoying through stupidity.
After this Palestine thing dies off (like Ukraine did, that thread is very dead), watch him support the new Twitter-approved opinion. 100% guaranteed. It is basically a dumb Python script with an in-built LLM.
:rofl:
Not a shred of evidence; not one reference. But yeah, Vox is the problem.
Your deep mental absence forces you to ask to be spoonfed instead of looking obvious stuff up yourself.
Obvious on 4Chan; delusional in the real world.
https://apnews.com/article/elections-arizona-donald-trump-phoenix-government-and-politics-e11fb4726ee010e4d031a63acff939cd
Same is true in Georgia, Michigan, and nationally. Voter fraud of any kind is extremely rare. Despite your idiotic claims.
Just Google it, its so obvious = not a shred of evidence, not one reference.
Youre embarrassing.
It used to present some good journalism. It no longer does.
Your response just tells me how tribal you must be at-base.
Bringing up 4chinz doesn't make you web-savvy anymore, normie.
Quoting Mikie
"Hurpt durpt I looked up the first article that confirms my views therefore I am right". It surprises me you even completed Middle School. But when it came to my attention that your schooling systems teaches sex fluidity before Europe not being a country and writing skills, it is unshocking that you graduated. The perfect cosmopolitan drone to send taxes to Israel and eat grass.
Yes, just one dead voter lol
Quoting Mikie
Voter fraud that is caught is extremely rare, which is a given in your failed State.
:rofl:
Oh I see. So theres obvious widespread voter fraud but no evidence of it because its never caught, despite Trump and his idiotic followers like you screaming about fraud for years and more intense scrutiny on voting than ever before. But we know there is, because Trump says so. So its obvious. No need for evidence we can feel it.
No surprise you hold yet another stupid, stupid position. And why you still cannot provide one shred of evidence. Are you a Creationist as well?
Quoting Lionino
:chin: This was almost coherent. Almost.
Keep taking your English-as-second-language courses though. Youre doing great. :up:
Quoting Lionino
Like it is.
:rofl:
In other words: I find this obvious because of a feeling I picked up somewhere from 4Chan about trans kids or something.
Morons: except for the THOUSANDS of dead voters and tourists and immigrants!
What evidence? None, its just obvious.
Did it affect the election? No, not saying that.
Apparently some people need a course in probability and statistics.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/widespread-election-fraud-claims-by-republicans-dont-match-the-evidence/
I guess 0.000096% is a lot when dealing in feelings. To the rest of the world, its not worth mentioning any more than the epidemic of getting stuck by lightning (which is more likely).
No, you didn't say it, but you're certainly insinuating something. Was Biden the rightful winner or not?
I am not insinuating, I am stating US elections are full of holes, 2020 included.
Quoting RogueAI
I don't know, I am not all-knowing, off the top of my head I would give 70% chance that he is. Poor guy still has dementia though, so it is not his merit.
You're stating that there have been a lot of US elections where there's a 30% chance massive fraud was involved in the outcome?
Let's go with this then. What does "full of holes" mean? Was there also only a 70% chance that Obama was the rightful winner in either of his elections?
The possibility of fraud, whether it is caught or not.
Quoting RogueAI
Dunno, didn't pay attention to that one. Obama won by a landslide (2008), so any fraud to secure such a win would be impossible not to expose. Were there also vote spikes late into the game in 2008? https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN27Q304/
Quoting Lionino
:rofl:
Is Biden actually an alien from Neptune? Dont know Im not all knowing! I give it a 20% chance that he is. Because I read Twitter.
Quoting Lionino
And then links to an article completely debunking the stupid, stupid claim that vote spikes (for both Trump and Biden) are somehow evidence of fraud.
What a complete embarrassment. But please keep speaking of things for which youre humiliatingly ignorant. It goes in line with literally everything else you post.
That is your domain.
Quoting Mikie
You would have noticed I am aware of that and don't think vote spikes prove fraud if you weren't so quick to have oestrogen-filled hissy fits.
Quoting Mikie
I wonder whether you are so hysterical with people in real life. The answer obviously is no. TPF is your venting mechanism for having to deal with being 5 foot 5 in your town where the average male height is 6 feet, which is why you are so feminine (imagine using ellipsis!) and volatile when people disagree with you.
Speaking of, you sure enjoy talking about the climate with confidence. I take it you'd feel comfortable answering some basic questions about metereology and thermodynamics?
Quoting Lionino
:lol: Not even aware we can go back and find what was said.
Quoting Lionino
:lol:
The 4Chan incel mentality strikes again. Obsessed with goofy ideas of masculinity and their own latent homosexuality. Thank you for displaying your insecurities about your height and manliness. Keep up with those protein shakes.
Anyway good job deflecting away from your imbecilic claims about voter fraud. Still waiting for the evidence oh wait, its just obvious. Nevermind. :ok:
'MAGA communism' derided as 'deranged fringe movement' but it's winning converts
[sup] Travis Gettys · Raw Story · May 24, 2024[/sup]
It's almost like those guys make an effort to choose so that you can rely on choosing differently. :D
I guess their livelihoods are somewhat limited, comedic entertainment, run for office, ...
Addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/895573
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/907663
2. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
3. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
4. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
5. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
6. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
7. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
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10. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
11. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
12. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
13. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
14. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
15. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
16. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
17. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
18.Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
19.Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
20. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
21. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
22. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
23. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
24. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
25. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
26. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
27. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
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29.Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
30. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
31. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
32. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
33. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1
34. Convicted Whiny Bitch Felon-1[/b]
Not playing on Fox Noise, OAN, RT, Alex Jones or anyother MAGA/Putin propaganda outlet:
:smirk: I'm fever dreaming ...
(1) After SCOTUS delay tactic decision to, in effect, kick "absolute immunity" pleading back down to the federal district court at end of June and sentencing drops on July 11 in NYC, Judge Chutkan in DC should revoke Convict-1's pre-trial release for violating its terms with 10 citations of criminal contempt of court and have Felon-1 sit in a Washington DC jail until his "January 6th Conspiracy" trial begins.
(2) "October Surprise": in a prime time televised press conference, POTUS should offer a full pardon to Convicted Felon-1 two weeks before the general election IFF Convicted Felon-1 admits his guilt for both sets of federal crimes in Washington DC and South Florida ... "so that the people, not the courts, can decide the election", etc. Of course, Loser-1 won't accept such a pardon either way he'd lose more support on the margins, especially among Independent voters in several critical "swing states".
:victory: :cool:
Another excellent explainer by Vox. Goes to show how silly the US's system is.
Its prices that matter to people, apparently the cost of living. Not inflation, despite whats claimed.
But mostly just media consumption shaping ones feelings.
Would his SS protection be placed in his cell, also? :cool:
Must all be rigged, judge was a republican, were a banana republic, etc.
Oh wait no one cares. And Joe Biden says hell respect the ruling.
Opinion | The shocking truth behind the GOP's MAGA lie machine (via msn)
[sup] Thom Hartmann · Raw Story · Jun 19, 2024[/sup]
the GOP lie that were in a recession (were in better shape, in most ways, than any time since the 1960s and inflation last month was zero while Ronald Reagan never got it below 4.1% in his entire eight years);
Republican lies about crime being up (its down dramatically since Trump);
their lies that Democrats want elective abortion up to the moment of birth (none have ever said that);
Trumps lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by voter fraud;
GOP lies that the southern border is wide open;
the Republican lie that Social Security is on the verge of bankruptcy and must be saved by privatization or benefits cuts;
their vicious lie that queer people are pedophiles targeting Americas schoolchildren; and
their NRA lie that more and more deadly guns will keep our kids safe.
[...]
Are we talking a "post-truth" type thing? (also 2024Apr18) A BS epidemic? :D
This concern was raised when Trump descended the golden escalator. He is a pathological liar. While it is true that all politicians lie, the extent of his lies is far beyond the norm. Backed by his red tie sycophants this became the new norm. He lies and they either support the lies, deny it said it, or claim that he meant something else. The distinction between true and false has not simply been blurred, it has been destroyed.
That certainly is older than Trump. The US has been plunging regions of the world into chaos over fabrications like it is the national pastime.
Opinion | A neuroscientist explains why stupidity is an existential threat to America (via msn)
[sup] Bobby Azarian · Raw Story · Feb 20, 2023[/sup]
Cognitive neuroscientist explains why stupidity is an existential threat to America
[sup] Bobby Azarian · Alternet · Feb 21, 2023[/sup]
(? Lauren Boebert is featured in photos :grin:)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/06/20/trump-rages-about-trash-fox-news-survey-showing-biden-winning/ :mask: :up:
https://youtu.be/lV_09uObx0I?si=84CpW1RX4Oq6nnQW
A reminder on the 2nd anniversary of SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/895573 :fire: :mask:
:cool: Dark Brandon's swing state BLOWOUT is coming in Roevember. "Be there, will be wild!"
Not that this should matter much, but such is the way of things.
[sup] Lee Moran · HuffPost · Jun 27, 2024[/sup]
I guess the response would have been that she wouldn't accept the election not going her way? Already planned to cry "Rigged" in that case? Go Ferguson. :)
The Clown wins, no need to debate again this fall. He dodged a bullet. Biden campaign over-prepped POTUS to "debate" (pander to the base) rather than to take out The Clown (moving swing state independents toward Dems).
The one bit of good news is that this debate was really early (perhaps intentionally) and now that we see that Biden can't do it, there is enough time for a change in leadership. Literally anybody else would be better and likely win given how Trump is intensely disliked.
Unfortunately, I have to agree. Trump undoubtedly makes for better television, which is what counts, now that truth no longer matters. :brow:
There were fantasies some time ago for Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer to run on the Democratic ticket, as Mr and Mrs America.
Oh, I wish.....
(Newsom says he's sitting this one out and is anticipated to run in 2028. Except that, if Trump wins in 2024, there probably won't be an election in 2028, as Trump will have declared himself President for Life.)
Thats not going to happen. Its bad enough that hell appoint more judges and trash the environment without making things up about what hell do.
Watch the 'we defeated Medicare' meme... :lol:
(addendum to )
Yeah, damn Dems fucked up bigly :shade:
Even so, Sleepy Joe at his worst is still a better candidate and a better POTUS than The Fascist Clown (aka "Fraudster-Ra(p)ist-Insurrectionist-Convicted Felon-1").. :mask:
Sure, as a Californian I would vote for his campaign...
This is elderly abuse and more.
Mostly Joe himself because he's the only person on the planet insisting he's the "best person to beat Trump".
How is it possible that the dems have no other candidate that can just swoop in and take the reigns in a way that makes people actually hopeful about the future? Where there no other backup plan among the dems if Biden were to fail, go full demented or die?
Everything about US politics is just stupid. It's an entertainment machine. We have more presidents depicted in movies and television that acts better than what actually exists.
The US is a joke trying to act like adults in front of the world. Redo the entire political system, let intelligent philosophers and historians write a new constitution and rebuild a better nation. Right now it's just a patch-work of stupid interpretations of old politics, with a population who's suffering in both education, health and financial stability while at the same time being so indoctrinated into believing that the enlightened ghosts of the founding fathers inhabit the candidates running for president.
:vomit: Fire everyone, ban lobbyists and manipulating narcissists, hire intellectuals who are humble educated experts without any interest in prestige or glory; rebuild everything.
Who is the real president? Obama? Jill? This is a dangerous moment for the country. There is no one leading it, and now even the true believers have given up denying it. If there was ever to be an attack on the most powerful country on Earth or her allies, now is the time.
The Earth is under attack! :scream: ...
Jill has gone for a weekend at Bernie's!! :fire: :rage: :death:
Maybe Im wrong. Perhaps the cope is still going hard.
Biden could have been sucked into a black hole at any point of his presidency and it would have made close to zero difference in how the country is (mis)led. I am happy the Dems are in turmoil. They fully deserve that and more. But there is no new problem and no new solution.
:rofl:
If only this werent coming from a Trump bootlicker. Then it wouldnt be so cringey and hilarious.
I admire the ability to see one phenomenon clearly and totally bury ones head in the sand with another. Way to compartmentalize!
[tweet]https://twitter.com/VincentOshana/status/1806385043620905322[/tweet]
No, it was you. And you continue to do it. Which is why youre a laughingstock.
But by all means carry on with your totally non-partisan views. :lol:
Oh dear. Ive never claimed to be non-partisan. Meanwhile, you voted Biden and told people to vote for Biden. No need to pretend.
Yes and they should again if the choice is between him and Trump. In fact, they should vote for a plastic bag over Trump. To those incapable of thinking outside political parties, I suppose this would mean Im carrying water for the plastic bag but who cares what bootlicking hacks think anyway?
The oestrogenic hissy fits are always impressive. How did this respectable xir (xem?) ever become mod?
Fair enough. I appreciate the honesty.
:ok: :hearts:
Oh sure. Vote for cow manure over Trump, that's easy.
But what an embarrassment. Trump is just garbage, and Biden is senile. Hard to believe that out of so many people, these are the two that are forced on to the voters - though this applies more to Biden than Trump.
In any case, this performance will hurt Biden. Let's hope there's time for a miracle.
[deleted]
In the immediate aftermath the momentum for forcing Biden out felt overwhelming. But now with enough authority figures in the DNC rallying behind their man, it might be faltering a bit.
It would be a horrific mistake to keep Biden after last night. Already, he was one of the few candidates that could lose to Trump. He literally has no chance now, the optics were that bad, and fed right in to the very strong preexisting narrative that he is too old and feeble. My hope is that the next batch of poll numbers will be so bad that there will be no choice.
Shame on the Fucking DNC for cancelling primaries and foisting this "choice" on people.
Quoting Baden
Not their problem. Another 4 years of great donations where they can play "Resistance". They are not and cannot go anywhere, thanks to our totally broken electoral system. No, the problem is entirely ours.
.
Yes the fact that we have a two party system sucks, and these two candidates suck. But the president doesnt matter that much his cabinet does.
Trump doesnt know anything and his decisions are stupid and based on nothing but his instincts, which are dogshit when it comes to policy. Biden is a weak, tired, senile old man who doesnt have the foggiest idea about whats happening. But some of his cabinet and administrative appointments have been surprisingly good at the FTC, EPA, and NLRB in particular. Even Gary Gensler at the SEC has made some admirable attempts at undoing Reaganite destruction.
So administration and policy matter, not the figurehead people vote for because hes tall or you want to have a beer with him. And honestly, the debate was the worst performance Ive seen in my life, but in a week no one will really care.
Biden will not be replaced. The DNC wont do anything and Biden is too egotistical to back down. So they likely lose the election but they probably would have even without a debate. He simply didnt do enough and the compromises appealed to no one. Despite plenty of good things coming out of this administration, and a second Trump term likely being a death knell for the environment (and therefore life as weve known it), perhaps itll wake people up again and get them organizing. Four years of Trump through 2028 will be terrible but hopefully survivable, and may lead to better days. Who knows.
I think theres less than a 5% chance that happens. Theyre sticking with Biden.
Yeah, what you describe looks to me like the most likely scenario. It's very bad. Insane even.
One is kind of at a loss for words to see these two guys being the candidates. Well, we shall see what happens now...
I think that the administration is of central importance. We have a good picture of what the Trump administration this time around will look like. It is outlined in the Heritage Foundation "Project 2025". It is a playbook to establish a Christian theocratic authoritarian regime. If enacted it will give the Trump administration powers that circumvent the balance of powers of the government. Its ultimate goal, however, goes far beyond Trump. Trump himself, however, may prove its undoing.
Ceding life as we know it to the incorrigible morons is bad enough. Ceding it to senile bitch Biden? It's too much. Biden has to go.
Quoting Mikie
I think not. All Trump's pathological stupidities, outrages, and crimes have apparently slid down the memory hole already. But Repubs remind us incessantly of shit they just make up. This debate was an audio visual GOLD MINE for them. No one will be forgetting any of it before November. Even without their help, it was too emotionally visceral, too memorable, it will stay burned into people's heads. The painful cringe was enough to ensure that, it was downright traumatic watching it live. This was a death blow to an already flawed, faltering campaign.
Here is the "Dean Scream" that doomed Howard Dean's campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6i-gYRAwM0&ab_channel=CNN
2004 Howard Dean, scream and all, would LANDSLIDE Trump. NO CONTEST. Keep the scream, add some wet nasty hot mic'd farts, a commando dropped fly, I don't care. That scream was a M80 firecracker next to Biden's H-BOMB of a performance.
Ive already largely forgotten it. Although it was funny and cringey and sad at the time.
:roll: Stop being hysterical. Biden's competent, effective administration is not populated by "senile bitches"; however, The Clown's "Project 2025" will be populated by a fanatically loyal horde of "incorrigible morons" just like him. Neofascist autocracy is far far worse than the neoliberal status quo, and whoever can't see that will no doubt F-A-I-L the national IQ test in Roevember. :mask:
We know this, but does America? Administrations are largely unseen. What was seen was a doddering old fool, next to which the malignant moron seemed sharp. It is America, not you and me, that is set to fail the national IQ test. Again.
Hysterical? As it stands, Trump's victory is all but guaranteed. Even before this, Bidens polling was terrible, losing every swing state. Now, it's over. The arrogant whim of a single, senile bitch is what is guaranteeing neofascist America, to run or not is his prerogative alone.
Yeah, good for me and the millions of others who arent political hobbyists that think a silly debate will be decisive and memorable.
I did find out that the name Nosferatu is Romanian for the insufferable one.
Lol, then what do you think you are?
It's not just a silly debate, or the silly impression it made, it's what it indicated. The man is senile, there is no denying it, we cannot count on anything better from him in the rest of the campaign. Cognitive decline goes one way only. Peoples assessment that he is unfit is correct, to lead a campaign, let alone a country.
Quoting Wayfarer
Lol, it's true
Same goes for the other guy. I mean both are really old after all.
The way he would become lost, dazedly fumbling between unrelated topics, gazing vacantly, can be explained either by severe anxiety at the enormity of the moment -- what you or I might experience, but not a lifelong politician with his career -- or mental impairment. Given his age and other worrying signs, senility is the most natural and likely explanation.
He's never been a fluent speaker and has often been prone to verbal slips. I presume as the President that he's is subject to regular medical examinations, right? And that if he were displaying symptoms of senile dementia, this is something that these examinations would detect? And that, were it detected, the responsible medical officers would report it and not try to conceal it? So, no, I don't believe he's technically senile, that is another slur that is used by his political opponents. But he is clearly affected by (as I said, enfeebled by) age, so it probably doesn't matter as far as the electorate is concerned. Many will regard him as senile, regardless.
The substance won't matter, though. Perception is everything, especially in this media-driven landscape. If he's perceived to be senile, then no reassurance from doctors will change that view. And Trump's health or mental stability or lack of it also won't matter. He is going to have to be beaten at the ballot box, there's no credible alternative. And I'm now agreeing with many others, that I don't think Joe Biden is the man who's going to do it.
He's also fat and eats a bunch of junk food which goes great with being 78. If he gets a heart attack or chokes on a BIg Mac that wouldn't surprise me.
Doesn't matter since the public perception is that Biden is too old to run. If it's a good report his opponents will claim they falsified it and if it's not then they will run with it.
This is of course putting aside the fact that Trump when he was president released an incredibly dubious health report from his physician, who at the time claimed he could "live to be 200 years old". I don't know where that physician is now, but rumor has it that he is serving in the US congress as a Republican.
Again - hope you're right :pray:
The disgraced puke (former US Rear Admiral) Dr. Ronny Jackson is a MAGA (morons against great america)-stooge congressman from Texas.
Doesn't really matter in this post-truth world. We live in an age where Trump can shoot someone on fifth avenue, claim he didn't, and alot of his supporters would take his word.
Quoting 180 Proof
That's my solution honestly, for Biden to step aside like he should've months ago.
I actually don't think the convention floor fight would be as divisive as some may fear. The Democrats have proven they are capable of unifying very quickly when necessary. That's actually how Biden became the nominee in 2020 after all, where in the span of 3 days they managed to get all the moderate candidates to drop out and endorse Biden before Super Tuesday in a desperate attempt to block Bernie Sanders from the nomination.
I feel like if they are gonna go through with a new convention all the leaders should simply agree beforehand to fall in line behind whoever the candidate is given the urgency of the situation. That's where I suspect any potential divisions could come from. As for the voters themselves... honestly I'd imagine most would just be happy that they don't have to vote for either Trump or Biden.
Just off the top of my head, Beshear won deep red Kentucky as a Democratic governor so handily that the election was called almost as the polls closed, and has long be one of the most popular national level politicians with his own constituency. I am sure there are other good options. You could even get creative and see if Charlie Baker, a Republican who handily won two terms in liberal Massachusetts would take the VP spot as a sort of unity ticket.
But nothing like that is remotely possible from what I understand. One of the key reasons Biden isn't stepping down is because Harris seems even less popular, and Harris seems to have indicated to people in a position to know that she won't let the nomination pass to anyone else without a significant fight. Indeed, if "sources close to Biden" in all the papers are to be believed, Biden is using Harris's commitment to receiving the nomination if he backs out as his main argument for staying.
They clearly can't think it's really that dire, at least not as respects their own futures. From the reporting I saw, the way Biden got everyone to fall in line behind him in 2020 was basically by playing chicken and declaring he'd stay in no matter what, split the vote, and give Bernie the nomination. If that's true, I think there is probably no chance he backs out now.
Unfortunately, I do not think he will win, and even worse for the country, he probably will still carry the popular vote by some small margin.
To make this thread more interesting, here are some questions/statements that should stir up some debate.
- Polarizing figures like Biden and Trump are instrumental to keeping the US public divided (thus weak), bickering over subjects that don't matter to the US elites, so said elites can push their own agendas in the background.
- Maintaining a roughly 50/50 split makes it easy for the elites to manipulate the outcome of the election.
- Maintaining a roughly 50/50 split significantly increases the influence of lobbies and voting blocs. (In case anyone is wondering where for example Israel's lobbying power comes from)
- That Biden was going to lose the debate was obvious. Therefore, whoever put him up to it must have had this as their goal.
Let's hear what you have to say.
At Biden's last physical, a cognitive test was not given. The doctors gave him a clean bill of health. It seems to me that the doctors didn't look for what they didn't want to find. If your loved one slurred their words and glitched out and fell down, you'd have the doc give them the test. That's why many think Jill's guilty of elder abuse.
From NPR:
Biden just got a physical. But a cognitive test was not part of the assessment
President Biden got his latest physical on Wednesday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center an evaluation that the White House said drew on the expertise of 20 doctors but did not involve a cognitive exam.
Quoting Wayfarer
It follows, therefore, that the doctors were being political, and not responsible. Biden's shown signs of age-related cognitive impairment for five or six years. It's gotten much worse the past two years, and much much worse the past several weeks.
As I watched the debate, I said to myself that Biden is relatively lucid tonight. Because he was no worse than he's been for the past couple of months, and at least he didn't glitch out for a minute at a time, as he did at the Juneteenth event.
I was shocked to find all the Dems and liberals horrified to see his condition, and the very next day to see the New York Times calling for him to step out of the race. It seems that a lot of people on the left have only been watching MSNBC and reading the NY Times, which as recently as June 21 was calling Biden's cognitive decline a right wing conspiracy theory.
How Misleading Videos Are Trailing Biden as He Battles Age Doubts
A flurry of recent clips, many of them edited or lacking context, laid bare a major challenge for the president as he tries to persuade voters he has the energy for a second term.
It's all a right wing plot according to the Paper of Record. Six days later their editorial board called on him to quit. And when Biden loses the New York Times, it's like LBJ losing Cronkite over the Vietnam war.
When Robert Hur called Biden, "an elderly man with a poor memory," did you think he was just one of Orange Hitler's minions? (Fess up, you probably did). When Joe glitched out at the G7, did you believe KJP when she called the video a cheap fake? It still looked every bit as bad when you saw the version with the parachutist in the frame.
Wayfarer, you and your fellow Dems and liberals have been gaslighted by the media. Those of us who read alternative media and even (gasp) scurrilous right wing media, have been watching Biden glitch out for months. We've noticed that he doesn't do interviews except with the most friendly journalists. That he gets cheat sheets at his infrequent press conferences, telling him who to call on and what questions they're going to ask. We watched him campaign from his basement in 2020, which he got away with due to covid. Even during the 2020 primaries, when he was doing badly before the Clyburn deal (when everyone else dropped out), he was showing early signs of age-related cognitive impairment.
To those of us no longer on the Dem plantation (for the record, I used to be), Biden's sad decline has been blatantly obvious for years. I'm amazed he made it this far.
All I can say to the millions of liberals who saw Biden's infirmity for the first time the other night is, where have you been? The real point is not just that Biden's that far gone. The real point is that Biden's been that far gone for a long time, and the Democrats and media have been lying to you about it all along. Those close to him surely knew. The world leaders he met at G7 surely knew. Everybody knew except for the people who get their news from the New York Times.
Quoting Wayfarer
Brother you've got it bad. A smart guy like you getting played by the New York Times and Rachel Maddow for years. How'd that happen? Aren't you even a little angry that everyone around the president knew about Biden's condition, and lied to you about it? Not just the pols, but the media too. "BIden's got a stutter." "Biden's always talked slowly." "Biden's sharp as a tack." And now? Every one of those pols and media jackals is sticking a knife in the man's back.
You mean Ronny Jackson, Obama's physician as well as Trump's. Currently a Congressman from Texas. Former Rear Admiral of the Navy.
Well, what now for the Dems? They could have dealt with the Biden situation last fall, when his infirmity was clear and there was time to have a serious primary contest. Now? Every option looks bad.
According to party rules, the delegates that Biden won during the primaries (no actual primary competition allowed, and how's that decision looking today?) are bound to Biden. They can't vote for anyone else at the convention unless Biden releases them. And Biden says he's staying, and more importantly, Doctor Jill is not going out quietly. She likes the power and Joe does what she says. Did you see her praising him after the debate? "Joe you got all the questions right! You knew all the facts!" Someone said that's how they talk to their cat.
Kamala's unpopular. Newsom's male and pale, can't leap over Kamala. Pritzker, Whitmer? I've heard talk about Pennsylvania governor Shapiro, but it's not a good year for guys named Shapiro in the Democratic party. Not popular with the Hamas wing. And by the way, why does your party even have a Hamas wing? Aren't you embarrassed about that? Queers for Palestine, baby, Up the Revolution!
There is only one Democrat who could leap over Kamala and not split the party in two. You know who I mean. SHE Who Must Not Be Indicted. Yes the Hildebeast herself, Hillary Clinton.
Trump versus Hillary. The inevitable denouement of our long national psychodrama.
You read it hear first. It's Hillary. She's got a brand new book out last week. You think she's not ready to rumble? She could win. God knows Trump's a flawed man.
No, but I think it was cherry-picked by many of them. As you probably know, Jim Jordan has tried to take the Justice Department and Attorney General to court to get his hands on the original recordings.
Quoting fishfry
We'll see. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Agree with you there, long way to November.
Bobby Jr! Another long shot idea.
Plato couldnt have said it better.
:up:
The 70 year old anti-vax conspiracy theorist who has dealt with literal brain worms... we really have a great slate of candidates this year.
You should probably listen to what the guy has to say first, instead of parroting slogans peddled by political rivals.
This is exactly why you don't get better candidates, you see?
In fact, this whole thread seems to be a microcosm for why that is. Many here seem to deem themselves above all the bullshit, yet are playing the exact same game as the masses.
Look at this point I just want somebody who's not insane, not a criminal, and below the expected retirement age. Is that too much to ask?
All of it reads to me like it assumes some modicum of cunning and foresight. I dont think there is a conspiracy of any sort because most are too dumb to pull it off. What were watching is simply the result of the insane and self-interested (and now dementia-ridden) in their natural state when theyve achieved a little bit of power. The state of the world is the result of their choices, sure, but I dont think theyre trying to divide people, for instance.
It is obvious for every neutral party. The world knows the president of Yankees has pathological cognitive decline. It is only those coping with their political affiliation that must deny it no matter what.
Everybody who has been around dementia patients will see what is going on. The patient's regress to a child-like state is symptomatic of dementia:
The occasional moments of lucidity are not, as some think, proof that Biden is fine. On the contrary. People in the earlier stages of Alzheimer's and dementia oscillate in their cognitive state, have moments of clarity to then relapse.
Dumb and no conspiracy, yet they keep managing to send people's children off to wars no one asked for.
Wow. Its quite embarrassing that the president of the United States must be spoken to like a child, but his stupid grin says it all.
It was funny because during the debate someone from the Biden campaign ran to the media and told them he had a cold. They reported it dutifully. His whole presidency has been a blizzard of lies, but this particular one was perfect as it encapsulates how Biden has gotten away with it for so longplausible deniability.
And droning innocent families and lying about it. Remember ISIS-K?
But doesn't that imply ruthless cunning and a double agenda, though?
I dont think they could coordinate on such a level. Its just blind and stupid instinct at this point. Lying is easy, but coordinating the division of the entire West is something I dont think they could execute. Thats to give them too much credit.
At any rate, I havent seen much evidence of conspiracy. In the United States, for instance, those who put together crossfire hurricane and duped a swath of true believers into pretending the president coordinated with the Kremlin to subvert the United States were acting like teenagers who just so happened to have a little power and influence. Reading their emails, text messages, testimonies etc. revealed blind emotion and poor reasoning. They believed the most obvious nonsense and were equipped with enough hubris not to question their own susceptibility.
Are the things being described the product of non-conspiratorial dummies?
Manufacturing Consent describes a time over 40 years ago, from before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when information wasnt as prevalent. The freedom to persuade, which Chomsky argued was in the hands of the few, isnt as possible as it once was. Im speaking of a generation or two later.
What would you point to as evidence that people are trying to keep other people divided, with malice and not stupidity, so as to push their own agenda in the background?
In terms of proof, obviously I don't have anything that qualifies as actual proof. Though, it seems self-evident to me that US domestic politics is just an inflammatory clownshow to keep people distracted and occupied with things that don't matter.
The malice is self-evident when we view the genocidal levels of mayhem the US wreaks on various parts of the world with the tacit approval of its citizenry.
Lastly, the fact that the US government has been successfully pulling this trick for decades shows that they're not stupid; their citizenry is stupid.
... playing into the hands of hungry foreign powers? There's evidence to contend with. [sup](2019Sep11, 2020Oct15, 2022Oct26, 2023Nov6, 2024Jan2, 2024Feb9, 2024Feb15, 2024Mar27, 2024Mar27, 2024May2)[/sup]
The rise of dumb is real enough. [sup](2024Apr8, 2024Apr26, 2024Jun20)[/sup] :D
Evidently, some of this crap isn't just the US, by the way.
Yeah, he has dementia.
Edit: the press is actually pushing that Biden has a "stutter"? That is braindeadly funny.
Edit 2: Older but recent clip of Biden explaining he doesn't stutter https://x.com/cedrichohnstadt/status/1807232341644837112 he stuttered as a kid from nervousness of speaking publically. Obviously Biden does not have a speech disorder. People have never been around dementia patients, but now they also have never been around people who actually have pathological stuttering. Surprising lack of lived experience.
Perhaps the Democrats should have thought of this last fall, when there was a chance to have a robust series of primary contests.
Biden's age-related cognitive impairment has been on display in his public appearances since at least 2019. Why did the Dems go down the path of denial, instead of dealing with the issue far sooner?
It's a valid question. I'm not the only one asking it. The question many Americans are asking themselves is: What did the media know, and when did they know it?
That clip is heartbreaking. Jill is a monster.
The US is the quintessential hungry foreign power.
Also, wasn't the whole Russia-gate thing proven to be bullshit, just like 99.9% of everything that's written in the media?
Time to wisen up folks.
If you mean the Müller enquiry then no, it wasn't Bullshit.
Doesn't really matter though if Biden doesn't want to step aside. If he does, then things will probably move quickly.
SCOTUS rules, in effect, that POTUS is a "King" with Absolute Immunity from criminal prosecution for Official Acts.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-supreme-court-immunity-1.7251423
So, as an official act of National Security, POTUS aka "King Joseph I" SHOULD "decree" by Executive Order (A) immediately strip US citizenship and Secret Service protection from, (B) immediately freeze and then seize all domestic and foreign assets from, and (C) immediately incarcerate in The Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp Trump and his MAGA gang of January 6 & Russian Collusion co-conspirators indefinitely.
But will "King Joseph I" do this?
No. Even though, as of today, it's (apparently) legal for POTUS to do so. :angry:
Absolute immunity for constitutional acts and the presumption of immunity on other official acts, and non on non-official acts.
Seemed fairly obvious they would do this. The real decision was already known: delay as much as possible so theres no trial before the election.
Good point there. The DNC screwed Bernie in 2016 and 2020.
(edit) The least democratic institution in the country is the Democratic national committee.
I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, but trust in US government and media is at very low levels, whereas trust in the EU is at high levels. That's really all I need to know about a stupid citizenry.
As for Russia-gate, I totally agree, and it was proven to be bullshit. The Mueller report, which was transferred from a failed and and highly-criticized investigation called Crossfire Hurricane, was fruit from the same poisonous tree. It turns out they ended up investigating the wrong campaign. Subsequent investigations implicated no one but the Clinton campaign and the FBI. As you can see that debacle is still having its effect on pliant minds.
:fire: :mask:
I wouldn't say trust in the EU is at high levels. That's why right-wing populism is currently sweeping the EU. But I wouldn't say the EU citizenry is much better than the US, though Europeans are definitely less ignorant.
The difference is that the US government gets up to shit that's several orders of magnitude worse.
Given that Europe is the crucible of the worst wars in history, the breeding ground of communism, fascism, and nazism, the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire into the Middle East, Im curious as to what might be several orders of magnitude worse than what Europe has been up to. Perhaps worse is the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, but I cannot think of much else.
Sure, specify a time frame and give an example.
Yeah, because there are few misdeeds that Europe was not involved in.
If there is the involvement of other states, why would you not mention their misdeeds as well?
The part where you have yet to give an example.
I just wanted one example, actually, and for the reasons Ive already mentioned. Its common to think of the US as the great Satan, but when it comes from some panty-wasted fief in Europe Im reminded of the hellish conditions hoisted upon the Earth by many countries there. But if you dont want to do it, Ill leave the issue alone.
Sure, you name the timeframe and the example. Im just curious.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/biden-campaign-debate-inner-circle-00166160
Sounds like the sort of dynamic that often leads to autocracies' great blunders. Perhaps it's not as extreme as the "yes-man" problem described vis-á-vis Putin's inner circle, but there seems to be an apt analogy in Biden's decision to run for a second term being his "let's go invade Ukraine," moment. Now there is nothing left but to keep doubling down and everyone with any influence to stop it doesn't want to risk losing their influence by actually trying to stop it.
There was a similar dynamic reported in Trump's cabinet, but there at least many cabinet members did eventually jump ship and begin publicly blasting their old boss (fat lot of good it did lol). But obviously the provocations there were even greater.
Hunter Biden has joined White House meetings as he stays close to the president post-debate
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/hunter-biden-white-house-meetings-president-debate-rcna159975
According to the story Hunter Biden has been helping the elder Biden with his duties, for instance his most recent speech fear-mongering about the Supreme Court decision.
With all this rhetoric about convicted felons, it sounds like a convicted felon and drug addict is advising the president of the United States of America. These sort of ironies make politics fascinating to watch, even hilarious, if the stakes werent so high.
https://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/pelosi-biden-s-mental-fitness-is-legitimate-question-recommends-interviews-with-serious-journalists-214089797740
I'm much more confident now that he'll be replaced before the election.
So much for democracy. Why do editorial boards believe they can speak for the voters?
But if he drops out, its another losing scenario: Kamal Harris is the person who will likely get the delegates. Shes about as popular as colonoscopies.
They have no one to blame but themselves. If they happen to pull it off, itll be only because Trump is that bad which he is.
Really you can blame Jim Clyburn for that. He stepped in to save Biden's campaign in the South Carolina primary because he feared Bernie winning the nomination and then insisted on a black woman diversity pick for Biden's running mate, giving us Harris. He essentially gave us the ticket we see today.
That being said it's probably better for the Dems to go with Harris at this point and have her pick an actually talented running mate. Biden's campaign is about as dead as he is but at least with Harris you can see some potential room for improvement and a restart.
Quoting Mikie
Indeed. A generic candidate who is neither Trump nor Biden would win in a landslide against either of these people.
Too bad the Democrats couldn't put up a candidate that isn't as unpopular as Trump. Shouldn't be a low bar to pass but yeah let's just run the 80 year old man who the majority of the country didn't want to run again.
It strikes me as sheer egotism at this point.
It should be a walk in the park to stand up against the fascist MAGA movements, authoritarian republicans and Trump, but it's a special level of incompetence that the Democrats weren't able to do this with the mountain of shit that has been piled up against Trump.
Maybe now they will simply put an age limit on their future candidates? And maybe be better at preparing younger party members for future candidate material. Like, get them started in their 30s, really build up their reputation in their 40s and let them run for presidency in their 50s. With enough work they would have 10-20 candidates to put forward and really nail home not only a candidate people like, but also have a number of backups that are also liked. Against the republicans, it would become easy.
But I guess, since Gen Z doesn't seem to care about politics and just want some magical solution to everything, there won't be any young people available to be prepared for future presidency. We're not doomed because we have senile old people running the show, but that we have no young people actually caring for politics. Maybe when the fascist boots step on their throats they might get the memo to actually do something for real and not just continue their slacktivism thinking that accomplishes anything.
Politics should be conducted by dusty, boring, old people - people from whom there is little to gain from corruption, and people who have children and grandchildren whose futures they care about.
50 isn't old. 50 is a good age in which the maturity of ideas settle down. And since 40 year old's today act like they're still children, with immature handling of philosophical concepts and ideology, they have to get ten more years of maturing before they have the calm to act on their convictions and ideas.
20-30 is the age in which people explore who they want to be as an adult. 30-40 they explore the validity of such aspirations. 40-50 they manifest the true aspirations, solidified as their true identity. 50+ is when a person has manifested who they really are, a stability matured by years of exploration in which they find wisdom rather than just knowledge.
A presidency requires wisdom and it's something lacking these days.
Of course, all this requires a sane psychology and proper introspection throughout life. Most people can live to their dying days without ever thinking an original thought or questioning themselves properly. But for a president, a leader, someone who's supposed to work for the people, it should be a requirement.
I find democracies today to be pretty lackluster in their defense against those taking advantage of it. Just because democracy demands a representative of the people to be the person who wins an election, shouldn't mean that any dipshit should be able to. I rather think that a representative in a democracy should have demands of competence like any other job in society.
A president do not stand above the staff of representatives for the people, they should be in service of it. They should be the ones taking the raw emotions, wills and wants from the people and fine-tuning it into working policy, law and national practice. They should be in service of the people.
That's not what's going on in the US. The US president is a pseudo-king. It's a plastic kingdom similar to Disneyland. The US does not have a good structure of politics, there's no actual parliament. The congress is just a big funding party for lobbyists rather than a place to evaluate strategies for the nation and international politics.
Democracy is still in need of philosophical progress, it needs further work. The term has become some plaque and adjective to describe a "good nation", but since none of the "good guys" in our world seem to know in what way to actually describe how democracy is producing "good nations", we end up with sham democracies and representatives of the people who can just con everyone into believing these representative are kings and religiously elevated deities. Until people see them as they are and goes for the next plastic king.
Democracy today is in a hyperreal state of what democracy could be. And we lack the framework to produce actual leaders because we haven't thought through what is actually required to end up with stable, good leaders who are competent at their job.
The entertainment industry that is democracy today must end and be replaced by democracy that has evolved past this shallow plastic shell of "a good nation".
One of the more hilarious aspects about the tantrums one finds in American politics is that they are largely self-inflicted. The schemozzle about Biden's absent-mindedness, for instance, is the direct result of them lying to themselves. When a wasteful and fraud investigation didn't turn up Kremlin influence in the presidency, and implicated the opposing campaign, they blamed their victim and not their own lies. The recent Supreme Court rulings would not have happened had they not weaponized the justice system to go after their political opponents. The classified documents case might have occurred before the election had they not bungled it, tampered with evidence, or tried use it to influence the election.
Of course, there is always someone else to blame. Right at the moment when the delusion ought to be replaced with honest self-reflection, a new one takes its place, and the process begins all over again. No doubt, if/when Trump's felony conviction gets overturned for being a travesty of justice, they'll blame the ones who overturned it, and not the ones who brought and judged such a shit case. With this they can always remain in the delusion.
This is a false representation of the Müller report. Stop lying.
Quoting NOS4A2
Not sure what you're referring to. Has there been a decision on this or are you just parroting Trump lawyers verbatim?
His name is Mueller, not Müller.
Sorry, but the investigation did not establish that the
Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.
What Kremlin influence on the presidency are you speaking about?
Of course youre not sure. Im referring to evidence and quotes as recorded in the case files. What are you referring to?
There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans, prosecutors wrote, adding in a footnote: The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/03/mar-a-lago-trump-classified-documents-00156124
Thats spoliation of evidence or mishandling of classified documents. What do you call it?
It's Müller where I'm from since we actually know how to spell a German name, so tough luck. In any case, Müller has repeatedly refused to exonerate Trump and he did so for a reason. So it's a misrepresentation on your part because you fail to include the fact that while the investigation doesn't prove it, it's because they were frustrated continuously in their investigation. In other words it was neither wasteful or fraudulent and should've been investigated further.
Quoting NOS4A2
Irrelevant. If you think the order of the files in a specific box has any relevance as to the evidence of the content of that box then please make a cogent argument to that effect but on the face of it, it's just another delay.
Thats right, you cant name any evidence of Kremlin influence. You might want to stop lying about it.
In fact, its a double lie because you refuse to mention (even suspiciously removing it from the sentance you quoted) the failings of that investigation as discovered in subsequent investigations.
If the files arent as one found there is no way to know the contents are accurate. Not only that but they lied to the court about it. Looks like youre parrottting Jack Smith verbatim.
That's a dumb comment for a variety of reasons. How do they know the order changed? Because the FBI records. So we have a record of what was in it before the contents were shuffled. It's legally an inane point as to establishing what was kept and therefore no more than a delaying tactic. This was all from your link by the way. Maybe you should just learn to read instead of jerking off and getting excited because you think you're onto something everytime you read something critical about the government.
Quoting NOS4A2
First of all, I'm only quoting you so far. I assume you remember what you wrote a few hours ago so not sure what you're going on about. Whatever failings the investigation had, none of them gave rise to indictments, and none of them discount the multiple crimes Müller established in his investigation. The lie was yours to pretend the Müller report was fraudulent and didn't establish any crimes. It did. Multiple ones.
Youre parroting the government verbatim. Youre a lawyer, apparently, and you think the spoliation of evidence and lying about it to the court in one of the most unprecedented cases in the history of the country is irrelevant.Your readiness to believe everything you read has long been proven, so your characterizations dont mean much to me. Maybe you shouldnt feel so duty-bound to defend their actions every single time, for whatever reason.
You quoted one clause out of an entire sentence, afraid to quote me in full, clearly trying to hide the context for whatever reason. Probably to draw attention away from the fact that you, like your fraudulent investigation, were duped by Clinton-campaign opposition research, which to this day a fact you refuse to mention. You, like Mueller, refuse to mention exculpatory evidence, or anything else that might point to how stupid the whole charade was.
The investigation was fraudulent, as is your continued parroting of it.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/trumpdailyposts/status/1809249601595318585?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
They forgot that his agenda is called Agenda 47.
Another Trump LIE, more than half the Authors of project2025 worked in his administration. (Karma is coming · Jul 5, 2024)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/subvertquo/status/1809265356491661542[/tweet]
Here is Trump Senior Advisor and former appointee John McEntee, who helped draft Project 2025, explaining to Steve Bannon last July how Trump plans to implement the plan immediately after taking office. But Trump doesnt know these people or anything about it. (Ron Filipkowski · Jul 5, 2024 · 2m:26s)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1809274690239603031[/tweet]
I think the groundwork is forming for a shift in the US toward greater authoritarianism. The trigger for the change would be something like a war. The population is presently split between people who want that to happen (on both the right and left) and people who are apathetic.
Did you see the poll that said Trump is particularly popular among people 18-29? It was reported by The Hill. Like 61% prefer Trump.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/DarrenWheels/status/1809532107829457045/video/1[/tweet]
Not nearly good enough. "Trying my best" and "Promise I'll go to bed early". I think it's obvious that the gig is up, let's just hope the man himself comes to realise it.
If the pressure can be sustained, there may yet be a chance hes replaced a much better chance than I once thought but Id still give the chances 1 in 5 or so. The ABC interview didnt do much to reverse the tide.
But this has been interesting. Theyre really panicking and for good reason.
Axelrod on Biden, CNN.
Well I hope youre right, because the situation is sad. But who wants Kamal Harris? Oof
I think that could work. Maybe a Josh Shapiro but its really all just fantasy. I think if Biden steps down the natural candidate is Harris, for multiple reasons including the large amount of money donated to their campaign.
Reading between the lines - and there's lots of lines - it looks as if Biden agrees to transition, it might result in an 'open convention'. It's happened before, and didn't work out well for the Democrats. But this situation is different. Sure, Trumpworld has its rusted-on supporters, but many of those who don't like him really hate him, but think Biden is too old. (I mentioned before, Steve Bannon said just as he was turning himself in, the Trump Campaign is betting on beating Biden - hey nice alliteration there - if someone else is the candidate, it's a wild card, things could shift very quickly.)
True. All the polls up to that point mean very little. The whole environment changes.
Quoting Mr Bee
Not a good year for Shapiros in the Dem party as long as Michigan's in play.
Quoting Wayfarer
What do people in this thread plan to do about Biden? The biggest wildcard is that he's dug in. He is on record as saying, "No one is pushing me out of the race." He's made this perfectly clear. And Jill is fierce. You can talk Kamala and Gavin and Gretchen and Michelle all you like, but Biden's not budging.
Are Democrats ready to either impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment? If not, how are you going to dislodge him?
Nothing I can do about it, Im not even an elector (although my son lives in the US and is a dual citizen.) Im still holding out hope that Biden will see reason (and rather uncharitably wishing hed have a mild stroke which would take the matter out of his hands.) But if he stays the candidate, Im now convinced that Trump will win, and that it will be an unqualified disaster for America and the rest of the world (but thats not something Im going to debate outside the Trump thread, of which Im steering clear.)
Michigan is in play in large part because Biden is the nominee and pissing off Arabs with what he's doing in Gaza. That's why I think Whitmer is an ideal candidate since she can take any stance on Israel and win Michigan easily but apart from his age, Biden's foreign policy is a big drag on the ticket.
Quoting fishfry
I've heard there's also a "good conscience" rule the DNC can add for delegates to not vote for Biden, but right now the Dems are trying to convince grandpa that he is perhaps not the best driver in the world and relinquish his car keys voluntarily. Next week will probably see the dam breaking.
Opinion | Why the sociopaths are winning and the obvious thing were not doing about it ( Jeremy Sherman · AlterNet · Jul 6, 2024)
Quoting whoever
Either way, some worthwhile observations/ethics can be found
Some (post-rationalizing) individuals gravitate naturally towards conflict, which can empower the demagogue. Anyway, nutn' much new here, jus'sayin.
, you think there's a large number of people in the US that want war (civil or wider)? A US civil war would play straight into the hands of hungry foreign forces, which might just come back to haunt them.
The Democratic party has long ago degenerated into complete worthlessness. In a functioning democracy they would have been swept away long ago. It is our winner take all electoral system that makes a third party impossible, and therefore keeps the existing two parties entrenched, no matter how awful they become. This will be America's downfall.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/axios/status/1809934405181333571?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Biden campaign will no longer feed questions to media after being outed by radio host: source
https://nypost.com/2024/07/06/us-news/biden-campaign-will-no-longer-feed-questions-to-media-after-being-outed-by-radio-host-source/
Id say pretty big.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-government/the-executive-branch
Good point, Whitmer is popular in Michigan and can withstand the Palestinian-supporting component of the left. Makes sense. Still tricky to leapfrog Kamala. Do you mean Whitmer for veep or prez? Kamala has a constituency within the party.
Quoting Mr Bee
Oh I see I hadn't heard that. Internet says that "DNC rules encourage but don't specifically require delegates to vote for the candidate they're pledged to support. Instead, the rules say, All delegates to the National Convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them ..."
That does seem like an out. I thought the delegates were firmly bound, but evidently not.
My take on this situation is that the Dems are in denial when they say, "Dems are trying to convince grandpa that he is perhaps not the best driver in the world ..." In fact Joe has stated that he's in it to win it, and he has Jill and now Hunter on his side. And he's President of the United States. There's a lot of power in that. The Dems are going to have to force Joe out. And I don't think they'll be up for it. The unseemliness of the Dems trying to destroy their own president.
My take -- my out-on-a-limb prediction -- is that in the end, the Dems will not persuade him to drop out. They will either need to impeach him, or invoke the 25th Amendment. And I predict the Democrats will not have the stones to do that. And besides, if they do move to impeach or invoke 25A, the Republicans will oppose them! Imagine the hilarity that would ensue. The GOP would love to run against Biden. Without GOP support the Dems can't get rid of Joe.
I think the Dems made their bed last year when they decided not to have an open, competitive primary. They are stuck with Biden until Jill says so. And she didn't come this far to give up now.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is my thesis again. The Dems are hoping Joe will quit. But Joe has said he's not quitting, and he and Jill and Hunter are circling the wagons. In the end the Dems are going to have to act; by impeaching him, 25A-ing him, or deliberately incapacitating him.
Quoting Wayfarer
Can you see the irony, dare I say depravity, of hoping fo such a thing? In a candidate you supported five minutes before the debate?
I'm struck by the viciousness of the Dem and left response. All those who had Joe's back five minutes ago, and are now stabbing him in the back. And why is the response so emotionally intense? Because these are all of the people who didn't say anything a year ago, when they could have called for open and competitive Democratic primaries. They didn't say anything in 2020, when Biden was doing badly in the polls and the DNC did the Clyburn deal to install Biden. Along with Kamala, who'd dropped out of the 2020 race in 2019, polling in single-digits in her own home state. She got taken apart by Tulsi Gabbard in a debate, and never recovered. The media are pumping her up this week, but her negatives aren't going away.
Now the bill's come due, and the Dems are hoping Biden strokes out soon. You're not the only one. Perhaps that stroke won't come along by itself, ya know? Slip Joe a little something in his bowl of ice cream. That's what the Dems have come to.
Is that extreme? Just look at what you wrote. You are not the only Dem thinking that way. But a year ago when the DNC decided not to have real primaries, you said nothing. This is a fiasco of the Dems' own making.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's been clear a long time, and even from before the general public found out about his tragic age-related cognitive decline. Biden's policies are unpopular. You can't fix that with a younger candidate. Of course I'll stipulate that you disagree with me on policy, and I'm not here to argue that. Many voters are not happy with how things have been in the Biden administration and swapping in a younger candidate with the same policies is not going to change that many votes.
Quoting Wayfarer
I understand your feelings about that. No need to discuss the respective merits of the candidates. The scandal is what's interesting. This Biden mess is going to be the biggest political scandal in my lifetime, bigger than Watergate. Just swapping in a new candidate is not going to solve the Dems' problems, It's raise a whole host of new ones, starting with fundamental democratic legitimacy. Will voters stand for yet another last-minute DNC back-room deal?
People keep saying this but contested conventions have happened. Isn't that a process where it can be taken from him?
Yeah, him doing so would be the only possible positive outcome other than taking the chance at him winning, but that feels more far fetched the closer to the election we get.
Yeah a Harris/Whitmer ticket would be more realistic. That being said Harris will more likely go for Shapiro because he's a white man.
Quoting fishfry
Yep, and the delegates are not very eager to nominate him right now. We'll see if it snowballs into something.
Quoting fishfry
Sure, but everybody adamantly says they're in it until they aren't. I think it's too late for Biden to stop the dam from breaking within his own party. Too many different groups from the donors to the representatives to the senators are already saying he should step aside and likely this week (as congress reconvenes) this will lead to a large number of public statements for Joe to step aside. At some point such a situation becomes untenable.
But who knows how he'll react. Is Joe selfish enough to stay in anyways even if it means the total collapse of his party? Perhaps but it's clear his attempts to quiet any dissent through a mix of stubbornness and finally getting out there have been completely unsuccessful so far. A normal politician would've taken drastic action immediately after that debate, doing numerous interviews, town halls, and unscripted events in order to assure people that they can do this. Biden instead went back to hiding for a week and later did a 20 minute interview where he still sounded rambling and delusional, and well we can sort of guess why. I think the video I linked to where he said he will be content with losing to Trump and ending democracy because all that matters to him is his reelection attempt will turn his critics off more.
Preparing the rhetorical environment for "Who cares if the president is a disabled vegetable? There are many people in executive functions besides just the president!!".
AI already surpassed the average person in that it runs on a much more interesting and unpredictable script the similarity is that both are soulless automatons.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1810301614965604827?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Is there really any universe in which the events of the last week could transpire if the purpose wasn't expressly for Biden to lose? Is there really any universe in which a senile old man is allowed to hijack the fate of the most powerful country in the world?
Personally, I don't think so.
Day seven of the American Monarchy (7 AM)
So who would you vote for (if you could / will vote in the 2024 election): (A) the old man who (usually) tells truths despite his stutter or (B) the old swine who only squeels (& farts) lies just to keep breathing?
It seems clear that Biden can't be forced out of the race - unlike in a parliamentary democracy such as Australia's or Great Britian's, there's no provision for the 'vote of no confidence' of the kind which brought down Boris Johnson. The only two things that can change that is that he changes his mind, or is declared unfit on medical grounds (which seems not altogether impossible.)
Trump is unanimously designated 'the worst US President' by a board of academic historians. If Biden runs and looses, he will be relegated to the place just behind him on that ladder, for having paved the way for the MAGA overthrow of the constitutional order (even despite his policy achievements and accomplishments.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/us/politics/parkinsons-expert-white-house.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/08/biden-physician-oconnor-family-business-00166934
They installed a corrupt vegetable to save us from the figments of their own fever dreams.
Quoting 180 Proof
With Trump out there, theres a very good chance Biden wins.
Michigan and Pennsylvania. Thats all you have to focus on, and you win.
Fear of a second Trump term and Project 2025 is the only thing keeping the Dems alive at this point. Would've been nice if they just ran some generic 50 year old or somebody that didn't massively turn off voters nationwide.
Quoting RogueAI
Then they'll re-nominate the same guy who lost again 4 years later.
Like I say. Shapiros are not in style in this year's Democratic party. Which reminds me that in 2020, the Dems had an excellent black female VP candidate, Val Demings. But she was a cop, and cops were not in style in the Democratic party of 2020. Live by identity politics, die by same
Quoting Mr Bee
I looked this up. Biden has 3896 delegates, and everyone else has 43 combined. Biden is the overwhelming choice of Dem primary voters, and that's one of his advantages.
Just found this, which is just one article and doesn't prove anything, but it's still of interest.
Democratic convention delegates say theyre loyal to Biden and balk at other options
[i]
Democrats urging President Joe Biden to end his campaign and allow the party to select another nominee before or during Augusts national convention are unlikely to find allies in the ranks of Chicago-bound delegates, who are increasingly closing ranks around Biden.[/i]
In fact now that Biden's dug in, some Dems are coming around. House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries is for Joe. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out for Joe today. Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer came out for Joe. And surprisingly Senator John Warner, who the other day said he was gathering a group of anti-Joe Senators, today came out for Joe.
I believe that once Joe said he's staying in, people realize that he's going to be virtually impossible to dislodge. He has the power of the presidency, which is huge. He has Hunter and Jill on his team. And drug and hooker jokes aside, Hunter appears to be a capable ally at the moment. Joe has all those delegates. And the Democrats risk looking very anti-democratic if they swap in a last-minute candidate chosen by the party insiders. Joe looks stronger today than he did a few days ago when everyone thought he was toast.
And a lot of the backstabbers look unseemly, a point I've been making. You love a guy yesterday and knife him in the back today? That says more about the backstabber than it does about Biden. Looking at you, New York Times, Washington Post, Joe Scarborough, etc.
Quoting Mr Bee
I'm on record that the Dems are not going to dislodge him as long as Jill and Hunter want him in. The Dems do not have the stones to impeach him or invoke he 25th amendment. My bet's a long shot, I'll give you that. Joe looks like toast. But what are the Dems really going to do if he refuses to step down?
There's a full-on civil war in the Democratic party. The inevitable result of decisions they took in 2020 and 2024. People were saying Biden was cognitively impaired as early as 2019. The Dems could have avoided this. Now they're stuck.
Quoting Mr Bee
Like I noted, prominent Dems are also stepping up to support him. They realize that panicking right now could well come out worse than just getting behind Biden.
Quoting Mr Bee
Oh yeah. Biden and his family are out for themselves. The stories about the family corruption are not "right wing propaganda" any more than his cognitive decline was. Biden's for Biden, and his family wants him to have pardon authority as long as possible. That dam might break too, and when it does, the family's going to want Biden in power.
Quoting Mr Bee
Not so. The tide began to turn today (Monday evening US time as I write). Lot of Dems came out for Biden, even some who'd been against him just a day or two ago.
Quoting Mr Bee
Of course Biden is incapable of doing any of that. But we started seeing it in 2019! They hid the guy all during the 2020 campaign. People have been talking about Biden's tragic age-related cognitive impairment for years. Media types have admitted they covered it up so as not to help Trump.
Biden has of course done what he can. He called in to Scarborough's program. He's given some teleprompter speeches. It's all he can do.
But that is not the point. The point is: Who is going to dislodge him, and how?
Quoting Mr Bee
Agreed, of course. But again: Who is going to dislodge him? The parallel's been made with Nixon, when his advisors came to see him and told him it was all over. But he was facing certain impeachment and conviction. What leverage to the Dems have over Biden? A strongly worded letter? They have nothing. Let's see if they'll start impeachment or 25A proceedings. Of course they will not do it.
So it's advantage Biden, no matter how compromised his mental state.
This is the greatest political scandal of our lifetimes. This thing is just getting started. A full-on civil war in the Democratic party just four months from a highly consequential election. Anything can happen.
Perhaps Biden will have that stroke @Wayfarer is hoping for. Something to see, actual Biden supporters hoping for that. End stage Trump Derangement Syndrome. If the Dems had just ignored Trump and had a real primary season, Newsom or Whitmer would be beating DeSantis right now.
Quoting Wayfarer
From a few weeks ago. I was struck by your extreme partisanship back then -- and now you are hoping your own preferred candidate will have a stroke.
What side are YOU on?
Can you not see your own moral corruption brought on by your extreme hatred of one man who was already president for four years and didn't do any of the things you claim he'll now do?
You don't even wish Trump would stroke out. With his diet and lifestyle it could happen. But no. You have worked yourself into such a state of anger and hate that you hope your own guy will have a stroke. And why? Because you are angry at yourself for going along with the lies. You and all the other Dems who are shocked, shocked that Biden's suffering the age-related cognitive impairment that was apparent in 2019. Do you have any self-awareness at all?
Your remarks got to me a few weeks ago. In case you're wondering why I'm addressing you about this.
Whatever side represents the rule of law and upholds the constitution. The side which didnt attempt the overthrow of the Government and the subversion of the election.
I believe Biden has lost the confidence of many in the electorate and that the Democratic party ought to have selected a younger candidate. That said, though, Ive never believed that Trump ought to have been allowed to run, considering his obvious malfeasance.
I mean Kamala was a prosecutor. I don't think either were gonna be popular with the Democrat base in 2020 due to the BLM riots, but Biden decided on Harris.
Quoting fishfry
I'll wait until tomorrow since alot of other congressional Dems are kind of staying silent and clearly are not just falling in line like the president wanted. I'm assuming you meant Mark Warner there, and his statements are also very noncommittal. Nobody except one representative came out today against Biden, and my guess is that the dissenters are currently keeping quiet so they can present a united front when they meet later.
From what I can tell the House Dems are planning a meeting in the morning to discuss the matter privately, while the Senate is also doing the same at noon. Whether they'll decide to confront the president and whether any of that will be made public is anyone's guess.
Quoting fishfry
That's Biden's intended play here, but given that nothing he's done in the past week has assured worried Dems about his reelection prospects, and his complete dismissal of the concerns being thrown his way, I think he's only infuriated and emboldened his critics more. He couldn't convince them that he's not senile so now he's trying to say "don't oppose me or else I'll make it ugly for all of us" to get them to fall in line. Could be a sign he really is hopelessly stubborn or it could be a last ditch attempt at keeping the dam from breaking. Whether the Dems speaking tomorrow will act or not will depend on how they read what he said, but it's clear the president is daring them to oppose him.
Quoting fishfry
Biden isn't at all a beloved figure. That was why he was thrown under the bus so easily. He's doesn't command a cult like following like Trump so it's easy for them to do so. He was nominated in 2020 purely for his perceived electability and now in an election where he seems to be losing that by being down against a convicted felon the Dems have largely soured on him. I mean they'll still vote for him to stop Trump but they have no support for Biden himself.
Quoting fishfry
What are they gonna do if he stays in? It seems at this point he's dragging the entire party down for his own selfish goals. At this point they might as well try to make it untenable for him and hope he isn't gonna stubbornly let his own party collapse under his hubris.
Quoting fishfry
It's kind of a mixed bag at this point. Alot of them have "concerns" as well. May be a civil war situation but who knows, some of the supporters may believe deep down that Biden isn't the right guy for the job. Reportedly you have folks like Don Beyer saying in private that Biden should resign and let Harris be president while openly supporting him for instance.
Quoting fishfry
Like I said, I'll wait until Tuesday to see if Biden has weathered the storm. The critics have been silent until they meet and gather. Here's a Politico article from Monday evening suggesting that things aren't necessarily over.
Quoting fishfry
Yeah I was one of the people who noticed it back then too (comparing it unfavorably to his 2012 debate performance), but it's way worse now. He could at least debate and do a forceful interview in 2020.
Quoting fishfry
Yeah I understand that ultimately it really is on Biden to step aside unless the Dems are brave enough to take stronger measures. The hope I guess is to make the situation as untenable to Biden as possible because clearly he is out of touch with the reality of the situation, and also hope that the supposed good man in Joe will make him realize how destructive his political ambitions are to a party and country that's lost faith in him. Who knows, maybe he will let the party crumble before he steps aside, but even he should realize that he can't win an election if even his team lacks any confidence in him.
And I dont believe that for a minute. Biden was quite capable of executing his first term, and did so with distinction.
I ask you to introspect about your sentiments regarding Biden. I'll stipulate that you have your political opinions, which are shared by many and opposed by many. No point in arguing those since as you yourself recently noted, we're not in the Trump thread. I'm more interested in the psychological reaction to Biden, the vicious backstabbing and, in your case, the hope for a terrible physical malady to befall him.
The viciousness toward Biden from his own side -- that's a psychological reaction to years of going along with the lies about his condition. No other explanation fits. Who, honestly, was shocked by his debate performance? I said to myself during the debate, "Biden's reasonably lucid tonight." I actually said that. He was no worse than he's been for months, and actually a little better. He didn't glitch out like at Juneteenth. He didn't wander off like at the G7. He didn't head-butt the Pope. He didn't raise his fist and start insulting people as he frequently did in 2019.
I was literally shocked that so many people were shocked. Biden has been like this for a long time. Dems and the media and those who hate Trump have been lying -- to themselves, mostly -- and covering it all up. And now that it's exploded, are they angry at themselves? No. They're angry at Biden. And you hope he'll stroke out, to save you the cognitive dissonance of your own years of enabling the Democrats' fraud on the American people.
It's something to behold.
I only made the remark about medical factors causing Biden to retire, because I think he ought to retire. Like a lot of people, I think the public perception of him being 'too old' is a factor which might cause him to loose. If I were an American elector, and Biden was the candidate, I'd vote for him. I'm just concerned that many others won't, and as I've already said, I believe the re-election of Donald Trump would be an unqualified disaster for the United States and the rest of the world. Nobody's been 'covering anything up' about Biden. He's never been an orator, he often had verbal stumbles and gaffes throughout his career. So what? The Washington Post kept a daily tally of Trump's lies in his first term which topped out at some number around [s]38,000[/s] (correction, 30,583) so don't talk about 'deception'. Anyway Im not going to discuss it with you, if you can't see Trump's obvious malfeasance then there's obviously no point.
Quoting fishfry
:lol:
"I just need 11,686 votes".....
Then review The Whitehouse For Sale report which found Trump made $6 million in emoluments from Chinese and Arabian interests while in office.
There were three pivotal one-on-one debates Biden was in and he won all three. One against Bernie and two against Trump.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-debate-poll/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-sanders-debate-poll/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/poll-final-presidential-debate-biden-trump-432052
I watched all three of those debates (and the numerous primary debates) and thought Biden did fine. If he was in bad shape, as you claim, he wouldn't have won any of them.
The Democratic Party Must Speak the Plain Truth to the President
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/08/opinion/editorials/democrats-biden-truth.html
The arrogance of the media class is palpable, even more so when colliding against the arrogance of the Biden crime family. The best part is that this is the world theyve made together. This is their vision, the product of their handiwork. And they can do no better than the dystopian future they imagine everyday in the midst of their moral panic.
Actual tears.
If opposition to Biden has not managed to coalesce into a united front until now, then it will not. Fear of uncertainty and sheer inertia will keep him in the race.
As far as I am concerned, this is a damning indictment of the democratic party as a vehicle of political action. They allowed the Republicans to run rings around them during Obama. They mishandled Hillary's campaign. They allowed Trump to gain absurdly outsized importance during his term. They then made the most conservatice choice possible by going with Biden, narrowly managing to win. Then instead of immediately planning for his replacement, they decided to just stick it out, simply crossing their fingers that Biden would be well enough 4 years down the line to beat Trump.
And now that it turns out he isn't, they made a panicky and half-assed effort which has practically ruined Biden's chances to win without actually having any chance to replace him.
Really the party (at the federal level) should just be dissolved at this point.
Like the Republicans with Trump, the Democrats in congress are cowards who would rather stay the course then try and do what they know is the right thing.
Quoting Echarmion
Hopefully to be replaced by a party that actually gives it's base a voice instead of forcing candidates that they prefer on them, like Hilary in 2016 and Biden in 2020 and 2024. The voters made it very clear that they didn't want Joe to run again due to his age, and they ran him again.
I don't agree with this. There was no appetite for replacing Biden. He sailed through the primaries and his one credible challenger got almost no votes.
This is a good way to put it, but it begs the question: How the hell is it that the republican party despite it's large and obvious fractures is able to put together a brazen but coherent bid for power while the democrats are asleep?
Yes good point. I remember that conversation now. I thought Demings was a great choice. As a Californian I never liked Kamala. Well it's a done deal now. And she has the inside track. Nobody's talking about Gavin or Gretchen lately.
Quoting Mr Bee
They had a meeting today. A reporter asked an attendee if they were on the same page, and he said, "We're not even on the same book." Reports that some people were in tears. Lot of misery in the Dem party. Pretty much anything could happen.
Yes John Warner was the one married to Elizabeth Taylor. I always get them confused
Quoting Mr Bee
Right. Rumors they're all pretty upset and no solution in sight.
Quoting Mr Bee
Right again. Nate Silver has an article out implying that Biden is bluffing. Maybe he is. He was at NATO today, didn't embarrass himself. He's hanging in. A politician who's been running for office for fifty years or more isn't going to go out easily.
Quoting Mr Bee
Yes good point. He was always kind of a joke, then in 2020 he seemed like the best option to beat Trump. But why didn't the Dems do something sooner? If they'd just have had a competitive primary they'd have replaced him already.
Biden's status, or lack thereof, in the Democratic party cuts both ways. They clearly don't have loyalty to him, but he also has no loyalty to them. That's another reason he's hanging in. He's not thinking of the good of the party, he's taken a lot of disrespect from his fellow Dems over the years. It's the Bidens versus the world at this point.
Quoting Mr Bee
Well, he was doing badly in the polls and had a high unpopularity rating even before the debate. Just another reason for them to have dealt with this during the primaries. Dems have no good options.
Quoting Mr Bee
Love to be a fly on the wall in the Dem meetings. Kamala's playing it cool, supporting Biden in public. Someone mentioned that of all the Democrats, Kamala is the only one who had a Constitutional duty to notify people that Biden wasn't all there. Especially with the Parkinson's story in play. I wonder if that will come up. A lot of people have been covering up this situation for a long time.
Quoting Mr Bee
Definitely not over. This thing's just getting started. Even if they swapped in Kamala, it would not be smooth sailing. The public would have a lot of questions about "What did they know, and when did they know it," as they used to say during Watergate.
Quoting Mr Bee
He's gotten much worse just in the past few months. It's heartbreaking at a human level. Especially since none of us are immune. I kind of admire his stubbornness. I'd like to see him stay in and stick it to the party. According to the polling he was losing on the issues anyway. Not clear a last-minute swap would help. Not entirely clear that Biden's condition is the only reason he's behind in the polls.
Quoting Mr Bee
They'll never impeach or invoke the 25th. They won't do it. And I don't know if pressure will be enough. I don't see Jill giving in "for the good of the party."
When the GOPs came to Nixon, they told him he was certain to be impeached and convicted. The Dems have no such leverage. This really is a day-by-day situation. Next week is the GOP convention, that might take some of the media attention off the Dems.
Quoting Mr Bee
BIden is not a good man. His lunchbucket Joe act is just for the public. I've heard he's always been a very nasty guy in private. Of course you're right, if he would gracefully bow out and endorse Kamala, that's the best the Dems can hope for.
Quoting Mr Bee
I think the Dems should crumble for what they've done. They had three years to deal with this. Instead they've been lying and gaslighting the country. It was all "cheap fakes" and right wing propaganda right up until the debate. By rights, the voters should punish the Dems severely for all this. But of course Trump has his negatives. People who hate Trump are not going to suddenly vote for him.
I think if the Dems coalesced behind Joe that gives them their best chance. Then Kamala can take over shortly after the inauguration if Joe should win. It's going to be a close election either way. It's very unclear if swapping out Joe actually improves the Dems' chances.
Ok. You and I can agree to disagree on many things, and this is another such.
But don't you know that he's been getting the questions ahead of time at his infrequent press conferences? And making errors and telling falsehoods for the past three years? I guess people see what they want to see.
Are you saying you were genuinely shocked at his condition at the debate? Believed everything else was "cheap fakes?" How can that be? If you say so, I believe you ... but I've seen Biden's cognitive decline since 2019. Even at the Dem primaries in 2020 Cory Booker and others were making fun of his failing memory.
Distinction? Well I am trying to focus on the politics and not the policies because we all know each other's talking points on policy. But the inflation, the direct result of the massive printing and spending? The open borders that are costing LA and Chicago and NYC billions? Two new wars? Trump had none. If you call that distinction, we can agree to disagree on that too. I'll stipulate to all well-known talking points and rebuttals on both sides, not intending to argue policy. But a lot of Americans are quite unhappy with the Biden admin totally apart from Joe's personal condition.
Which by the way, is one reason swapping out Joe for Kamala might not be the panacea the Dems think it is. Same policies with less mental confusion. Not clear that's an electoral winner.
If you are backing off the stroke remark, I'll be glad to give you a pass on that. I did take it as representative of the massive anger that Dem suddenly feel towards Biden, when they'd been supporting him five minutes earlier.
Quoting Wayfarer
I understand that you feel that way. But Trump was already president for four years. He didn't put people in camps. He didn't do any of the bad things the Trump haters are afraid of. In fact he got rolled by the administrative state and most of the people who worked for him. Some dictator.
And no new wars started on his watch. That is something. That is a lot. And it was no accident. Trump was the peace candidate in 2016 and 2020, and he's the peace candidate today. The left used to be for peace. One of the factors in my defection from the left.
Quoting Wayfarer
That is just not true. He's been bumbling and stumbling in a frankly heartbreaking manner for several years now. It's not possible to have not seen it. The wandering off stages, the mis-statements that had to be cleaned up by aides the next day ... ok I won't go on. If you claim to have first seen Joe's infimity at the debate, I'll believe you. Because you say so; not because such a claim is credible.
When Joe wandered off at the G7, froze up at Juneteenth, and head-butted the Pope, did you believe KJP when she called those "cheap fakes?" Curious to know.
Quoting Wayfarer
He has always been corrupt and a rather stupid man. But he was always verbal. Nothing like the last few months and the last few years. The slurring of words. After the debate I was shocked that everyone else was shocked. He seemed to me the same as he's been for quite some time.
Quoting Wayfarer
The point is not that Orange Hitler is worse than the cognitively-impaired husk. That's a political judgment and politics is not about purity. But look what you're doing. You are denying Joe's cognitive impairment on the grounds that Trump is a terrible person. How does that even make sense? Trump is Trump, I get you don't like the guy. That has nothing to do with the fact that the Dems have indeed been covering up Biden's increasingly worse cognitive issues.
Do you even see your bad logic? You are saying that Trump is evil THEREFORE the Dems have not been covering up Biden's cognitive issues. Surely you can see the flaw in that argument.
You can't even discuss Biden's sad state of mind because you hate Trump so much. What kind of sense does that make?
Quoting Wayfarer
You can't discuss Biden's cognitive issues because you hate Trump. This is exactly how the Democratic party got itself into the pickle it's in! Five years of denial, gaslighting, and coverups.
Ok let me say this another way. If I am understanding you, you claim that you cannot discuss the Democrats' current cognitively-impaired Biden pickle with me, because I don't agree with you about how evil Trump is.
Some people see politics purely in partisan terms. I can discuss a pickle whether the pickle is on one side or the other. The current situation is unprecedented in US history. It's nothing like when LBJ dropped out in 1968 over the Vietnam war, or when Truman chose not to run in 1952 due to his unpopularity.
To me, politics is a partisan affair, to be sure. But it is also a spectator sport. I don't have to love Trump or hate Trump to be enjoying the spectacle. But from your point of view, you can't even have a conversation with me about politics if I don't hate Trump the way you do.
In that case I'm sorry I troubled you. I enjoy talking politics. I don't have to love or hate the people involved. You can vote for Biden (if you were a US voter) regardless of his mental state; and in theory, you could have a conversation about politics with someone whose politics are different than yours. I've always been able to do that. Not everyone does that, sadly. Political conversation is polarized these days, but it can be otherwise.
If the GOPs were in a pickle this week I'd discuss that. I've seen GOPs and Dems in plenty of pickles over the years. I love a good political scandal. That's just me.
I recall being amazed that Biden made it alive through those debates. I was not the only one with that expectation. I never thought he'd make it to election day. I saw an unwell man. And you are right, he did surprise me by surviving. Guess it was just me. What do I know, I liked Tulsi. Still do.
It clarifies once again that the USA doesn't qualify as a democracy. If the political system cannot produce choices beyond a vegetable and a criminal then quite obviously other people are in control what you get to vote on. We call that banana republics.
I hardly see the GOP as authoritarian. Going back a ways, which of these postwar GOP presidents were authoritarians? Ike, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, Trump. Feel free to explain to me what these folks did that was authoritarian. I opposed the hell out of 43's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those wars never could have happened without the enthusiastic consent of the top Dems such as Hillary, Schumer, Biden, et. al.
In theory, the GOPs should be for free enterprise. Not that they really are, but that's more of libertarian sensibility. But I'm open to understanding you observation. When Obama ruled "with a pen and phone," was that the unitary executive? Or when the Supreme Court told Biden he couldn't transfer student loans to the taxpayers and he did it anyway, was that the unitary executive?
Quoting Benkei
Every election I can remember has been that way. Bush (I'll do two wars) vs Kerry (I'll just do them better). What kind of choice was that?
Quoting Benkei
YouTubers Eric Hunley and Marc Groubert of America's Untold Stories awarded the US eight bananas (out of ten) following Bragg's conviction of Trump. What of it? Some of us don't think this country's had a legitimate government since the deep state killed JFK in 1963. We have a country of, by, and for the military-industrial complex.
$200 billion to Ukraine, and barely $330 million to Maui after their fire. And that was under the Biden administration. Care to defend that? I'd send $200B to Maui and send the corrupt Nazi Zelinsky money-laundering operation straight to hell. But that's just me. Peacenik from way back, like the left used to be.
Trump started no new wars, the only president in my lifetime to have managed that. Yet he's universally hated by the "good people." Why is that? Why do the good people love the warmongers?
What is on your mind about this? Who's the authoritarian and what have they done? Biden has been quite the unitary executive.
Yeah the dam didn't break for now, but clearly nobody is eager to unite behind Biden just yet. Bennet's comments recently indicate that Biden isn't gonna be able to ignore and move on from the problem as he usually likes to do.
Quoting fishfry
Courage is a rare thing among elected officials which is why Trump wasn't banished from the GOP, despite their occasional concerns about him post Jan 6 and 2022 midterms.
Quoting fishfry
I'd say call the bluff. Biden isn't exactly a guy who embodies strength as we saw during the debate and how he's been handling the Gaza situation. I mean sure he has alot of angry stubborn grandpa energy but Netanyahu has been crossing his red lines repeatedly and he has not done anything to stop him.
At this point I don't know what the congressional Dems have to lose either so they might as well try to improve their party's situation and place themselves on the right side of history in case Biden stays in, Trump wins, and he ends democracy.
One interesting aspect of Biden's ABC interview was that he never really specified how he would react if the congressional Dems turned on him. He outright refused to answer the question and acted like there's no revolt going on. If he was really delusional you would've thought that he would give a non-assuring answer like, "I would sit down and tell them 'We will win'," or something to that effect. That will probably hang over the Dems minds as they contemplate what to do next.
Quoting fishfry
Arrogance. They thought they could probably roll with Biden into the next election and dismissed people's concerns about his age. I mean they got pretty far before we saw what happened a week ago... putting aside all those viral videos of Biden having senior moments.
Quoting fishfry
Sounds like great qualities to have in a leader, both for the party and the country.
Quoting fishfry
Yeah, but that would be much better than well, trying to convince the public to vote for a soon to be 82 year old man who clearly has cognitive issues to serve another 4 years in office.
Quoting fishfry
Depends on your political affiliation but as someone who doesn't want Trump winning I have no sympathy for an old man who is selfishly staying in and gambling with his party and country simply to try and get a second term in his 80s.
Quoting fishfry
At this point I can see way more upsides to a new candidate than running with Biden. Biden can't do anything to fix the fact that he's down in the polls but another candidate can.
As Nikki Haley said, in a race between two incredibly unpopular geriatrics, the first party to get rid of their candidate wins the election. Polling seems to back that idea up, showing that a generic Dem or Rep running against either Trump or Biden respectively will easily win. It'll be interesting to see if that theory holds true.
Quoting fishfry
Yeah but they can severely harm and embarrass him, which at this point Biden frankly deserves. As a narcissist that's something he probably cares deeply about. Leverage isn't the same as having complete control over someone.
Quoting fishfry
Yeah doesn't seem like it so far. He's become oddly Trumpian in just about every respect since the debate happened. That being said it could all be a bluff and he may fold if his party lost faith in him. Biden's recent attempt at painting his problems as the elites trying to get rid of him as Trump usually does just isn't believable coming from him, a man who has been propped up by the elites all his life.
Quoting fishfry
They're likely gonna coalesce if Biden lasts until the convention, and the party and the media will never bring up the age or replacement issue again.
Or... maybe they will continue bringing up the issue of replacement if it's possible to swap him out post nomination, though at that point it'd just be Kamala who would be the nominee. Could be possible (apparently there was discussion of Pence taking over the GOP ticket in October of 2016 after the Access Hollywood tapes came out after all). Biden is likely to have a major senior moment in the next 4 months especially during the next debate which may reignite the discussion, or he could just die of old age. He's 81 after all, so it's not a possibility you can definitively rule out.
Seems like you're not the only one:
Only Michelle Obama bests Trump as an alternative to Biden in 2024 (Chris Jackson, Annaleise Azevedo Lohr, Charlie Rollason · Reuters/Ipsos · Jul 2, 2024)
One in three Democrats think Biden should quit the race, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds (Jason Lange, Scott Malone, Howard Goller · Reuters · Jul 2, 2024)
Wouldn't she need a sufficiently detailed political program? And present it for all to see? Or is that no longer relevant? :)
Judging by what I've seen of/from her, I can see her as US president. Surely a whole class above the Clown. From memory, she had some qualms about a normal life with/for their kids.
What did Trump do that was authoritarian? Seriously? He tried to pressure the Republican Georgia secretary of state to "find" exactly the number of votes he needed to win. He tried to pressure his own VP to not certify the election (Pence had to call Dan Qualye, of all people, for moral guidance), and he spread and continues to spread lie after lie about the election he lost. You should listen to Bill Barr's testimony about the aftermath of the election. Total banana republic stuff. We dodged a serious bullet. Had Pence not certified, or had Raffensperger gone along with the attempt to steal the election (he says he felt threatened by Trump), it could have gotten a lot uglier than it was. And then there's the fake elector scheme, and of course Jan 6th.
I think we've long since past that this election cycle.
Quoting jorndoe
Honestly I still don't see the obsession people have with Michelle Obama, especially since she doesn't seem to have any political ambitions or policies of her own. Like is it purely because people miss Barack Obama that much?
She comes across as a smart, nice, honest person. Since she was First Lady, she's intimately familiar with the job. She's been the in the public eye for a long time and not even a whiff of a scandal. If her politics is somewhat moderate, she would wipe the floor with Trump. And Barack would be back in the White House. It's a wonderful fantasy, but that's all it is. Although the betting odds have her at 7%...
That being said if Jgill's prediction about Biden stepping aside (which is more likely now after the debate) and endorsing Michelle Obama that will certainly be Trump's worst nightmare. Plus the optics of passing over Kamala for another black woman wouldn't be as severe. Michelle just needs to last 4 months and the election is in the bag. A wonderful fantasy indeed.
His policy of splitting migrant families resulted with many children being interred away from their families.
Quoting fishfry
My liking him or not is irrelevant. His danger to democracy is not a matter of opinion. Hes not only a terrible person, hes a dreadful leader, his only policy is retribution. His speeches are horrific and contain nothing about policy as such, only threats and fear-mongering. How you can fall for his schtick beats me.
Biden is not a husk. Hes been an effective senator and president, but he needs to pass the torch.
//
I note today that Gavin Newsom is acting as party whip for Biden. I believe hes totally sincere in so doing, but also that hes ideally positioned to step up if the torch is passed.
Nostalgia for Barrack.
I think that even if Biden bowed out gracefully (unlikely) or the Dems forced him out (quite unseemly, also unlikely) and elevated Kamala, whose popularity is below Biden's (I haven't checked that lately) life would NOT suddenly be a bed of roses. A lot of Dem voters would be unhappy and confused. And the policies are no different. Biden had a bad approval rating and was losing the election to Trump even before the debate. Many of the Dems' policy results such as inflation, unchecked immigration causing blue cities to be overrun with a humanitarian and financial disaster; the two wars, etc etc, are quite unpopular. And Kam is to the left of Joe. I don't see how this solves the Dems' electoral problems.
Quoting Mr Bee
Verily I say unto you, and unto all the fervent Trump haters on this forum:
Trump is 100% the Democrats' fault
Back in early 2022, people were tired of Trump. I was tired of Trump. He has all his negatives, the bluster, the bullshit, the thin skin, the midnight tweeting, the lack of understanding of how the government works. I was ready for a new GOP candidate to challenge the Dem orthodoxy that's not working for a good portion of the people in this country.
If you remember, DeSantis was running neck-and-neck with Trump in the polls. Then Biden, Garland, and Wray raided Mar a Lago. The very next day, DeSantis was obliged to come out in support of Trump. From that moment onward, Trump started rising in the polls and DeSantis sank out of sight.
With every new lawfare case, Trump became more popular. Because the Trump haters see these cases as righteous applications of the law; but the other half of the country sees them as bad faith politicization of the American system of justice, one of the best things we (used to) have going for us.
And so now, Trump is all but unstoppable, and then there was the debate, and here we are.
I say this: If the Dems had done two things: (1) Totally ignored Trump; and (2) Had an open, competitive primary; then at this very moment, Gavin or Gretchen would be beating the stuffing out of DeSantis.
The Democrats created all of this. They made a martyr then a hero out of Trump; and they refused to confront reality about Biden's condition. The Dems did this. Not the GOP. Most of the GOP hate Trump, they'd love an alternative. The Democrats forced the GOP to rally around Trump.
Quoting Mr Bee
I wouldn't mess with Jill and Hunter.
Quoting Mr Bee
I truly do not understand that talking point. Trump was already president for four years and he didn't end democracy. On the contrary, he got rolled by the bureaucrats and most of the people who worked for him.
I think what people mean is that Trump is going to do to the Dems exactly what they did to him. And frankly, some of that would be a good thing. Garland and Wray are thugs. The country may never recover from their abuse of the justice system.
But Trump "ending democracy?" Nonsense. Most of that is projection on the part of the Democrats. We're having an election. That's democracy, imperfect as it is.
Quoting Mr Bee
He's the president of the United States. He doesn't have to do or say a damn thing. He said something the other day I really liked. He said, "If someone wants to challenge me at the convention, let them." He's a tough old bird. I don't like the guy but this might be his finest hour!
He's the president. He has Jill and Hunter, two pit bulls. He has 3896 Democratic delegates.
What do the Dems have? A strongly worded editorial from the New York Times?
The Dems have no hand to play.
Quoting Mr Bee
Cheap fakes. Like I say. The Dems are in a pickle entirely of their own making. Trump didn't make the Democrats ignore the Biden situation for the past three years. Whose bright idea was it to anoint Joe with their non-primary primary? If they'd had a real primary, Gav and Gretch would have been all over it. The 1968 Democrats had a wild primary that ultimately drove LBJ out. They could have and should have done exactly the same thing.
Arrogance, I guess that's as good a word for it as any. Short-sightedness. They tried to keep a lid on it and now it's blown up in their faces.
Quoting Mr Bee
I'm likin' Biden more this week than I ever have in my life. I like this stubborn old coot telling the DNC and the New York Times to stuff it.
Quoting Mr Bee
Wouldn't have to. He can run then turn it over to Kam in 2025. Would have made his point. Kam is not any more likely to win the election than Biden. Kam has high unfavorability. She's a lousy politician, the 2020 primaries showed that. She had to drop out in 2019. She is not the Dems' savior.
Quoting Mr Bee
I'm making a nonpartisan point. Say you hate Trump. I am making the point that Biden arguably has a better shot than Kamala. The party will look like a clown show if they throw over Joe after telling us he was "sharp as a tack" for three years. People will not like that. They don't have to vote for Trump, but enough of them might just stay home.
The message would be, "We said Joe is sharp as a tack but we were lying, so here, vote for highly unpopular Kamala." I don't think that's a winning message for the Dems. Not a partisan point. Biden has a better shot to win than Kamala. It doesn't matter that his mind is gone. He's not Trump, AND the DNC isn't pulling a last-minute switcheroo.
I don't think the voting public is going to like a switcheroo on top of the fraud they've already seen. Hope I made my point that I'm not talking partisanship. I think Kam's a terrible candidate. Her negatives don't go away if they elevate her.
Quoting Mr Bee
Ok, so that's a point we disagree on. But not a partisan point for me. If Trump didn't exist, the Dems should still run Joe. The swicheroo factor, I'll call it. People will feel that they've been played.
Quoting Mr Bee
LOL. Well you know, maybe you are convincing me a little. I could be wrong. I give my own theory only about 75% credence. Maybe people are more horrified at Joe's condition than I realize. All the people who were genuinely shocked by the debate.
Quoting Mr Bee
I am pretty sure Biden is way beyond embarrassment at this point. And Jill and Hunter surely have no shame. But I see your point. At some point he'll cave to the political pressure of being so unliked. Could happen. Or it could just make him dig in more. He's been in politics over 50 years. Survival is an instinct. We see it all the time. His body knows how to be a politician even if his mind is gone.
Quoting Mr Bee
Either way, I'm enjoying the show. I'm one who always enjoys a political show. If the GOP were having a fiasco this week I'd enjoy that just as much.
Quoting Mr Bee
Chicago! The Palestinian wing of the party riots. "The whole world's watching!" 1968 here we come!
Quoting Mr Bee
Could happen. And Trump is no spring chicken either. One more Big Mac could do it.
I have followed southern border politics for decades. Here's how it works. I am going to explain some things to you now.
An adult shows up at the border with a kid. The adult says, "This is my child." The kid is tired, hungry, scared, and doesn't say a thing. The adult has no documentation.
You are the administration in charge of border policy. What do you do?
If you say, "Ok, you can both come in," then you turn a lot of kids over to traffickers.
So what do you do to avoid turning children over to traffickers? You separate the kids from the adults until you can contact the authorities in their claimed home country, and find out who they are. If they are a legit family, you reunite them and send them on their way. If not, you just stopped a trafficker and saved a child.
Now, what do you do with the kids? If you put them in a big dormitory, they will be assaulted by sexual predators. So you put chain link around the kids to protect them.
In 2014, Obama had a huge refugee crisis. He "put kids in cages." Photos circulated on social media of the kids in chain link enclosures, with each kid wrapped in a space blanked looking like a baked potato in foil. The images shocked people.
So what did Obama do? Well, optics are everything in politics. They started separating fewer families, stopped putting "kids in cages," and turned a hell of a lot of children over to traffickers. The Washington Post wrote a story about Obama's trafficking problem, but mostly the story got no play.
Fast forward to Trump. Trump does not like traffickers. He tried to protect the kids. He did separate families, to determine if they really were families. Photos were circulated on social media -- the same Obama kids in cages photos. Liberals were outraged till they found out those were Obama's kids in Obama's cages. More photos circulated. Again -- Obama's kids, Obama's cages.
Bad optics. "Trump put kids in cages." So fucking ignorant. A lot of liberals -- ok a lot of people in general -- lead with their emotions, especially when they are ignorant of the facts. So "kids in cages" became the attack on Trump, when in fact the whole idea is to separate traffickers from children and keep the children safe from sexual predators until the true family status can be sorted out.
Now Biden comes in, rescinds all of Trump's border policies including Remain in Mexico. Biden now has a massive immigration crisis on his hands. But the optics are the most important thing. So what does Biden do? He just lets all the adults stay with the kids and lets them in to the country.
What is the result? Biden has lost track of 85,000 children. Most likely turned over to traffickers as sex and work slaves, as you and I speak tonight. Here, read this.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Did-Joe-Biden-Lose-85000-Migrant-Kids
The House Oversight Committees National Security Subcommittee held a hearing this week on the Office of Refugee Resettlements Unaccompanied Alien Children Program. Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the office, appeared, but if you watch that hearing youll learn a lot more from the questions than the answers because there werent many answers on key issues, such as the fate of 85,000 children the office has apparently lost contact with. Someone needs to put a up a large Help Wanted sign in Washington, because the American people are desperately in need of accountability on migrant children both in the government and in the media.
I told you a few posts ago, in a post you never replied to, that Joe Biden is running the largest child trafficking operation in the world. It is true. It is a moral outrage. Nobody gives a shit.
Now you know what "separating families" and "kids in cages" are all about. You separate kids from adults until you can determine who's a parent and who's a trafficker. And you keep the kids behind chain link fences to protect them from sexual predators.
But kids in cages makes for bad optics. So Biden just turns the kids over to traffickers, and ignorant liberals know nothing about it, and STILL THEY BITCH ABOUT TRUMP'S CAGES.
Liberals still do not know that those were Obama's cages, Obama's family separation policy, and that once the optics got bad, Obama just said fuck it, and turned the kids over to traffickers. No more bad optics. And that's Biden's policy too. No cages. Just trafficked children.
Get a clue, brother. Get a moral clue. I explained this to you two weeks ago and you never acknowledged the post. Joe Biden is a child trafficker. Because the optics are better than "kids in cages," which upsets ignorant liberals.
Quoting Wayfarer
Ok. I could, for sake of argument, stipulate to all that. I can still talk politics! I can still talk about Joe Biden's mental impairment. I do believe you said to me earlier that you can't even talk about the Biden pickle unless I hate Trump as you do. Some people feel that way. Myself, I'll talk politics to talk politics. I don't have to love or hate Trump to talk about the mess the Dems got themselves into this week.
I would be glad to explain to you "how I can fall for his schtick," but that's more for the Trump forum. In this thread I'm trying to focus on the topic, the 2024 US election. Or as Joe Biden puts it: "I'll beat Donald Trump again in 2020." It would be funny if it weren't so tragic, and if old age and sickness didn't eventually catch up with us all.
I'll be happy to argue the merits of Trump with you if you'd like, but it's not really all that productive. I did write you a long-assed post a couple of weeks ago about my journey from dedicated liberal to the politically homeless, reluctant Trumper than I am today. I could write more. It's been decades in the making. It started when Teddy Kennedy killed a girl and the left rallied around him. It was my first sense of a disturbance in the liberal force. There were many other such moments over the years. This Biden fiasco is just the latest.
Quoting Wayfarer
Man even the New York Times thinks he's a husk. I don't even have to make the case. Biden's own "friends" are making that case with sharp knives. Julius Caesar never got it so bad on the floor of the Roman senate. George Stephanopoulos said today that he doesn't think Biden can make it another four years. Et tu, George.
Quoting Wayfarer
Newsom is too smart and too ambitious to touch the current mess with a ten foot pole. Whitmer too. Any Dem who's viable for 2028 is going to show loyalty to Biden and stay out of 2024. Why go down with this sinking ship, when a brand new ship is arriving in four years?
I appreciate the opportunity to chat. I really did take it to heart a few weeks ago when you expressed disappointment in my political sentiments, in light of my math-related content. I'm always willing to talk politics with people who don't share my opinions. I'm not blind to Trump's many flaws, but IMO he really is not the monster the Dems have made him out to be. I'm always happy to explain myself.
Bottom line: The Dems and the left have deeply lost their way; and Trump is the only alternative. I'm not for Trump. I'm against what the Dems and the left have become. I saw what the Dems had become in 2002, when Hillary made an impassioned speech on the Senate floor in favor of the war in Iraq. The Democrats could have stopped that war. They were looking to Hillary for leadership. She chose the path of war. So when 2016 showed up and it was Trump or Hillary, I chose Trump. And why did the Dems nominate a corrupt, warmongering, unlikable, lousy politician like Hillary? As Obama said when he destroyed her in 2008: "You're likable enough, Hillary."
And as I pointed out in my latest reply to @Mr Bee, Trump is a monster of the Dems' own making. If the Dems had (1) Totally ignored Trump starting in 2022: no lawfare, no rhetoric; and (2) run open, competitive primaries; then today, as we speak. Gavin or Gretchen would be handily beating DeSantis.
The Democrats turned Trump in to a martyr. I was sick of the guy myself before the Dems turned the apparatus of the American justice system on him. That Mar a Lago raid put Trump into the White House.
Ok so it's all J6. Bunch of unarmed people are invited in by the Capitol cops, and Pelosi and the hysterical Dems whip up a national hysteria. In the end, it's J6. A Reichstag fire for our times. I find myself wondering what the left will do if Trump wins in November. I expect the left to riot, as they do whenever they don't get their way. Maybe you missed the George Floyd riots. $1-2B in damages, "the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history" according to Wiki. And who supported a fund to bail out the violent rioters? Kamala Harris.
So if that's all you got, what about the rest of Trump's four years in office? "Republicans are authoritarians," is what you said. I list all the postwar GOP presidents and all you've got is J6. As a matter of logic, can you see that you have not made your point?
Quoting Benkei
Quoting Benkei
:100: :up:
You hardly see because it's a feature not a bug. But some things that have me grimace in distaste are the ability of US Presidents to:
Yes, this is absolutely authoritarian from the view of a European democracy. Unitary executive theory would take this even further.
What are and were the substantial policy differences between other GOP candidates and Trump? What exactly was the choice there?
Apart from general Democrat programs, she hasn't aired much I know of, though she's associated with her husband and his administration. Yep, she comes across as smart, knowledgeable, strong, present, "heart in the right place", not a serial bullshitter (or liar for that matter), she could stand up to, and be respected by, the world. I don't think that's an obsession, more like a contrast that perhaps many would welcome.
She'd get under the microscope, though, face extreme scrutiny, whether from political opponents, foreign (covert) campaigns, tabloids seeking to make a buck, mudslingers, 1-shot magnification of some issue, heck racists even, ... (From memory, there was one bullshit story about one of their kids narrowly escaping that horrible horrible family; OK, I'm exaggerating, yet that's the kind of thing associated with that crap.) I can see why she wouldn't want to put her and her's through that.
Actually I'd say alot of them would be relieved if Biden were replaced right now. Like I said alot of Dem voters didn't want Biden to run again and the debate has been spread around so much that people know what's going on with Biden. Most of the in person takes from Democrats I've seen seem to be "yeah I'll vote for Joe over Trump because Trump, but honestly I think I will prefer anything else".
Quoting fishfry
Part of what makes me see the debate as a blessing in disguise. I thought Biden's campaign was a dying campaign that was gonna lose before anyways so a disastrous debate performance was just the sort of jolt needed in desperate times. I mean Biden may still stay in but if things were going in a bad direction already then hey gotta take a chance right?
Quoting fishfry
I'm not gonna argue policy but politically Kamala would be wise to try to distance herself from the unpopular policies of Biden's administration and tie herself to the more popular aspects. The Gaza issue for instance is something that is splitting the base right now for Biden, so another candidate who isn't as tied to Biden's actions would be better, if simply for the fact that they won't be seen as having Palestinian blood on their hands as the chief director of an administration's foreign policy.
Quoting fishfry
I don't think alot of Democrats would disagree with that, particularly on the progressive left (the "Bernie would've won" types). The Dems utter incompetence in running an effective candidate against an easily beatable buffoon like Trump is what got us here and may get us to another Trump term. Hilary was unpopular but the DNC decided it was her turn and she was the nominee. Biden was also uninspiring but the DNC decided it was his turn and pulled alot of strings to get more popular candidates like Buttigieg to drop out and endorse him before Super Tuesday, winning him the nomination. And now the DNC is again ignoring the will of it's voters by putting up a man the majority of the country think is too old.
It's funny how apart from Biden the two candidates who won the general elections since 2008 were dark horse candidates in Obama and Trump who genuinely built up a base of support from the ground up. Maybe the Democrat party should take some lessons from that or maybe they'll try to force Kamala down our throats in 2028 since it's her turn next.
Quoting fishfry
I'd say the GOP also bears some of the blame too for what happened post Jan 6. They condemned Trump and what he did, rightly so. They could've impeached and gotten rid of him forever but they chickened out, perhaps because they thought that he was gonna go away on his own. The Dems thought the same and also did nothing too.
You may have your own ideas on why it took Garland so long to start an investigation into Trump but I think it's just because they had the same mindset as the GOP: That Trump would simply go away and disappear because there's no way the people would flock back to a loser who tried to pull off that, right? There was no need to start a politically charged investigation into a highly controversial figure which would probably just anger the people at Jan 6. It was just pure incompetence and trust in the public to move on when they clearly seem unable to.
Like I said before, courage is a rare thing for elected officials, and nobody has the guts to actually go after Trump effectively and snuff him out for good, causing him to come back as he always has. It's not that Trump is invincible but everyone else is a coward.
Quoting fishfry
Well at this point they have to talk as much sense into Jill as they do to Joe.
And just now we have Pelosi coming on to Biden's favorite show Morning Joe and laying out that this issue is clearly not over right to Joe's face. She is still saying Biden "needs to make a decision" after he decided to stay on, which is essentially code for "we'll let you do it on your own terms, but get the hell out or else more people will lose confidence in you".
Quoting fishfry
Well that's the idea. He clearly has a tendency for dangerous ideas given Jan 6, but was stopped by some of the people who were working for him like Mike Pence. I guarantee you whoever he picks for his running mate and his administration won't be professionals who would keep him in check like last time.
I assume we probably are gonna disagree here but I'll just leave things there. I'm not looking to debate Trump's policies or Project 2025 right now.
Quoting fishfry
Similarly nobody in the Biden White House can truly stop the congressional Dems from coming out and distancing themselves from the president, which is clearly something Biden is working hard to avoid. Both sides are lobbing threats at each other and Biden according to one article is promising mutually assured destruction if he is attacked. Of course if the Dems are in a sinking ship anyways then why not pull a mutiny?
Quoting fishfry
LBJ stepped aside and a chaotic primary ensued where RFK was assassinated.
Quoting fishfry
The average voter just cares about who is at the top of the ticket and a bit about who is running with them. They're not gonna think that far ahead like you are. In fact I imagine alot of them are ignorant of how succession works. Plus it's very unlikely a narcissist like Biden would just hand over the presidency to Kamala as soon as he is inaugurated. He will be in the office most likely until he dies partway through the term at 85.
Quoting fishfry
I don't think the party will spin it that way. Biden won't make a speech saying "Yeah I've been lying about having dementia for 2 years now so I'm stepping aside", but probably saying something along the lines of "I believe I can serve another 4 months, but not another 4 years, so I'm renouncing my candidacy". The GOP will probably continue with the narrative but as far as the Dems are concerned, they didn't lie and they Biden is just making a personal decision about his next 4 years.
Also more would stay home if given the choice between Biden and Trump. Sure people hate Trump but the DNC is essentially making them walk through glass to vote against him by making the alternative just as despised and with crippling flaws of his own.
Quoting fishfry
My perception is people would just be relieved that they won't have to vote for a criminal geriatric and a senile one. You can say the scandal and the coverup is a bad look and the right wing circles will certainly go wild with that, but in an election full of conspiracies and scandals about laptops and documents that people seem to care very little about, at the end of the day the inattentive swing voter will just care about who they're voting for at the top of the ticket. Kamala isn't great, but she's not a corpse or a convicted felon.
Quoting fishfry
Yeah Biden has been in politics for 50 years but that has made him an institutionalist. Unlike Trump, he is a man who highly values norms, running on "restoring normalcy" as his 2020 pitch. The idea of running without the full support of your party is certainly breaking one of those norms and sure he may continue to soldier on as the donor network and congressional support dries up, but that is not easy for someone who's been a lifelong Dem. Trump certainly would since he never was a traditional politician, but as much as he tries to imitate him would Biden?
Quoting fishfry
If the lord almighty visited Biden and Trump the same day that would be the greatest day in American history where we're saved from this nightmare of an election.
Trump pressured Raffensperger to find the illegal votes, that is, he pressured him to find crime, as per his duty and mandate.
Imagine that.
George Clooney: I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/10/opinion/joe-biden-democratic-nominee.html
Thats not how this works. Even though Democrat insouciance regarding democracy is well known, it becomes quite glaring when it is held against their rhetorical defense of it, something theyve used to great effect in the ears of their base over the last few years.
Is it advisable for elites like Clooney to subvert the will of the voters at the same time they feign to protect us from threats to democracy? Probably not. But thats the unprincipled and wind-sock mentality of that party in particular. Now that their great dictator isnt operating at full steam, power escapes their grips, and power is the only thing theyve wanted this whole time.
The Trump admin separated kids from families as a deterrent. All families were separated. It wasn't for the good of the kids. The policy ended a short time later when the public found out.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump/trump-says-family-separations-deter-illegal-immigration-idUSKCN1MO00C/
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/12/16/trump-administration-knew-family-separations-harm-migrant-children/
It sounds like you're getting your information from places like Townhall, TheFederalist, Breitbart, and Redstate. Am I correct on that?
It was a Republican primary. They were all Republicans. Therefore, they all had pretty much the same political views. America runs a primary election before the general election so the people can vote for which candidate will represent their party.
Some tend to conveniently forget that. Trump made an attempt to control the border, then when Biden came into office he made that infamous comment, "storm the border". And don't forget the Afghanistan debacle.
Many of these were because of the failed government right after the Revolutionary War. See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapolis_Convention_(1786)
And then called the more famous Constitutional Convention in 1787 which was held in secret:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(United_States)
The powers and growth of the executive branch over time. This started because a weak executive branch failed on various fronts. Also, arguably, it was Europe and WW1 that pulled America onto the world stage beyond, though a strong case can be made with the Spanish American war and gunboat policy.
So you'd know the name Senator James Lankford, and why he made news a couple of months back.
Quoting fishfry
So you think Mike Pence should have hung?
Quoting Fooloso4
I'm convinced that most of Trump's backers are not in because they like Trump or think that he's any good but because they can use him to pursue their own nefarious ends. And the only way that works is by sucking up to him and telling him how great he is. That's how Putin and Kim Jong Un have played him like a fiddle. Works every time, but only if he thinks you're someone who's opinion counts.
Ok. You started out saying that Republicans are authoritarians. Then you reverted to Trump alone, and only because of the American Reichstag fire that Democrats seized upon to go on yet another of their post-2016 Trump hysterias.
And now you make a very different point. You say that the American executive, as defined by the US Constitution, is inherently authoritarian.
Now this of course is an interesting theses that we could discuss in a forum on political philosophy. Perhaps in a different thread. Quite a bit has been thought and written about the subject since we yanks tossed King George's tea into Boston harbor.
But we are in the thread on the US election. Two men are vying to be president, unitary or not, morally-defined presidency or not.
So I think you've undermined your own point. Although in the end, you came to a very interesting subject. In theory the three branches of the US government are co-equal. But in recent decades the president has become way too powerful. I tend to agree with you. But that's not what we were talking about. It's not even what you were talking about. You wanted to bash Republicans, or Trump; and in the end, it's the role of executive power in theory and practice under the US Constitution.
I sure as hell opposed Bush's torture. And I equally strongly opposed Obama's coming into office and, by not holding the Bush administration accountable for their many abuses, institutionalizing the torture.
That was, by the way, yet another of my many data points along the way to being a disaffected liberal Democrat. Bush was a criminal when he tortured people. But Obama was worse, because when he chose (for good political reasons) not to hold Bush accountable, he turned the US into a torture regime.
I agree with you about all your particulars. The Constitution does not allow the president to start wars without a declaration of war from Congress. But the last time the president got a Congressional declaration was in World War II. Every single war since then has been illegal. I'm quite unhappy about that. But it's a bipartisan affair, hardly limited to one party.
And in our lifetimes, what president started no new wars? It was Trump. A point totally lost on the "Orange Hitler" brigade. I just don't know what happened to my former fellow liberals. Trump's victory over Saint Hillary drove them quite insane. They now love the national secuity state, the wars, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the lying, the spying. Back in the day they opposed all that. I still do.
False. Look it up. Military intervention and threat was his primary foreign policy tool.
And yes, Republicans are more authoritarian than Democrats even if they both are. Only Republicans have had sitting presidents and advisors argue in favour of it and the unitary executive theory. Most recently in court. Or did you miss that?
Chuckie Schumer is said to be "privately" open to opposing Biden. Pelosi gave an ambiguous statement coded to mean she's sticking in the knife, but very subtly.
But the big news of the day was that the Democrats brought out their big gun. Their nuclear weapon. Their neutron bomb. Yes, I mean George Clooney. A few weeks ago Clooney organized a $30M fundraiser for Biden complete with Julia Roberts and all the other beautiful people. Today, Clooney stabbed Biden in the back with a NYT op-ed. I tell you it's sickening to watch. I hope never to have "friends" like that. And Clooney said that when he saw Biden three weeks ago, Biden was not the same man as he was in 2010 or even 2020. So Clooney knew. And Clooney still raised the thirty mil. And today Clooney jumped on the Judas bus and stabbed his former friend in the back. These people are lower than low.
But in the end, the Dems have no leverage. And as I say, they can swap in Kam and they'll have a whole new set of problems.
Quoting Mr Bee
Right. Some say the Dems deliberately set him up to get him out. But it's not quite working the way they thought it would. I don't think they planned on Joe digging in and daring them to move him out.
Quoting Mr Bee
She's way further left than Biden, and Biden has governed from the left. Are you saying Kamala should turn into Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand? Ain't happenin'. She's a hard core leftist and would be a disaster for the country.
Quoting Mr Bee
No, they'd have Israeli blood on their hands. Kamala is married to a nice Jewish guy but she's a Hamasnik all the way. Just yesterday she said she "understands" the Gaza protesters. That's code for Death to Israel in my book. By the way I stand with Israel, just so you know. And I will say, this issue has split a lot of people. Some of my favorite political commentators have horrified me with some of their rhetoric. Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Aaron Maté. The Gaza war has been a terribly divisive issue. And Kam is way on the wrong side of it IMO. But we can agree to disagree on that. I don't talk about it much, it's just so emotional and so divisive for everyone. The Middle East has been a bloody mess all my life and I don't have any answers.
Quoting Mr Bee
I wish that were true. The TDS brigade would not take any responsibility for the Trumpenstein of their own creation. I wish Bernie and his supporters had been a lot more vocal when the DNC screwed them over in 2016 and again in 2020.
Quoting Mr Bee
It's funny. In 2016 the Dems found the only candidate in the country who could lose to Trump. In 2024 they're about to do it again.
Quoting Mr Bee
They didn't think he was too old when they gave him 3986 delegates. And why not? Because the Dems and the media gaslit the hell out of them. And again -- my ongoing thesis -- Kam would be worse. And nobody can leapfrog Kam. So in the end they stay with Biden. There is no alternative.
Quoting Mr Bee
By then Gavin and Gretchen will be fresh and ready. Kam will be yesterday's news. She's never been very popular and she's a terrible politician.
Quoting Mr Bee
I better take a pass on J6. I regard it as the Democrats' Reichstag fire. Bunch of unarmed, peaceful protesters were invited in by the Capitol police, things got out of hand and a riot ensued. What ever happened to, "A riot is the voice of the unheard?" That was the Dem line when the Floyd protesters caused $2B in property damage and killed 20 people. The Pelosi and Cheney J6 psy-op was a fraud. Trump has called for military tribunals. I disagree about that. In this country we use the civilian system of justice. But I do hope Trump gets some revenge on the Dems who have so abused our system of justice. Garland and Wray for two. The impeachments were totally fraudulent. It was Biden who was seen on video extorting the Ukrainians to get rid of the prosecutor investigating his money laundering scheme there. We better not get onto this topic, you know how I feel now.
Quoting Mr Bee
I want Garland and Wray in jail. Let's agree to disagree on that. J6 was a psy-op, a fraud, a Reichstag fire for our time and place. You can't have an insurrection with a bunch of unarmed people peacefully wandering around an office building. Compare and contrast to the Floyd riots. Voice of the unheard and all that. If anyone's unheard in this country it's the rank and file middle Americans. The people Trump has activated and drawn to him.
Quoting Mr Bee
The Democrats have disgraced themselves. Trump is a reaction to that. He has many flaws but he is the only alternative to the corrupt, warmongering status quo that the Democrats (and Republicans!) have turned into. Let's agree to disagree again. We're not doing policy here, only the politics of the Biden dilemma.
Quoting Mr Bee
Jill does not strike me as someone amenable to logic. Or political pressure. She's dug in. The Dems can impeach Joe or 25A him or they can pound sand. George Clooney's not going to do it.
Quoting Mr Bee
Right. Caught that. But she's wrong too. Joe is not "making a decision." He's made his decision. Now the Dems have to make theirs. Impeach, 25A, or stab him to death on the floor of the Senate à la Julius Caesar. Strongly worded editorials and vaguely worded statements on Morning Joe aren't going to cut it.
And George Clooney. That really cracked me up today. What a slime ball. Joe's best friend three weeks ago.
Quoting Mr Bee
I'd hang Mike Pence AND the fly he rode in on. 'Nuff o' J6.
Professionals? Milley is a treasonous bastard who belongs in prison. Mattis, useless. Barr, useless.
The reason the Dems are afraid of Trump is that they realize he's probably learned a few things about how Washington works. I truly hope so.
Quoting Mr Bee
Likewise. I really do try to avoid policy in this thread. But P2025 is not Trump's platform. P2025 is yet another TDS hysteria. Trump's platform is his actual platform. And it's surprisingly centrist, moderate, and popular. Here's Brit right-of-center website Spiked on the subject:
The truth about Trump? Hes a moderate
And here's The Guardian making the same point.
The Republicans new party platform is scary because it can win
They made the point that Trump's platform is very 1990's Democrat centrist in nature. Jobs. Border control. Peace.
P2025 is another left wing hysteria. It's not Trump's platform at all.
Quoting Mr Bee
Attacks on Biden weaken him if he's the eventual nominee. Some Dems see that. Kamala is no panacea.
Quoting Mr Bee
That was a bad bad day. If one is conspiratorial-minded, one would say that they killed Bobby because as president, he was going to get to the bottom of his brother's murder at the hands of the CIA. I'm conspiratorial-minded in that regard. More shots were fired at Bobby than Sirhan's gun held. The coroner said he was shot at close range from behind, but Sirhan was several feet away, in front.
Terrible day. Awful. So many hopes were on Bobby. Making me sad now for what might have been.
Quoting Mr Bee
Yeah you're right. A career politician does not give up power willingly.
Quoting Mr Bee
I don't think they'd say it out loud, but many voters will read it that way. They shut down competitive primaries, foisted Joe on the Dem voters, and now this? What a mess.
Quoting Mr Bee
Anything can happen.
Quoting Mr Bee
The TDS crowd thinks Trump's a criminal. The other half of the country sees the Bragg prosecution as totally illegitimate. Nelson Mandela spent 28 years in jail but they didn't call him a felon when he became president. They recognized the legal process against him as unjust. Trump same, for half the country.
But I do agree that Trump is old and leads an unhealthy lifestyle. He could keel over too. I wonder what this is like for the young people of this country. They must be appalled.
Quoting Mr Bee
In 2020 a poll showed that 17% of the electorate would have changed their vote if the'd known that the laptop was authentic. And that's another thing. "51 former intelligence officials" said the laptop was Russian disinformation. It wasn't.
Why do people support Trump? Because he is the only alternative to the culture of official corruption that's seized this country. When the CIA and the FBI lie to the public to help a political candidate, that is a very serious problem. Trump stands opposed to that. A lot of people, such as myself, support Trump for what he stands for, not for who he is. He stands in opposition to this massive corruption of our government.
Quoting Mr Bee
Biden campaigned on normalcy, then ran as a corrupt leftist authoritarian. Lot of people see that.
Quoting Mr Bee
I'm kind of enjoying it. Just want to see the Dems get their comeuppance.
Decades of interest in Mexico, traveling in Mexico, living in Mexico, paying attention to border politics. If you don't know about Biden's trafficking operation, hardly anyone does. If you don't care now that I've drawn people's attention to it, you should demand more of yourself re this moral atrocity.
I haven't read Townhall in years. Redstate, maybe the occasional article if it's linked from an aggregator. Don't recall last time I read it. Breitbart most definitely never writes about the cages and separation policy the way I've explained it. Don't recall The Federalist writing on immigration. Most of my political orientation these days comes from the disaffected liberals (like I am). Greenwald, Dore, Maté, lot of Substackers. They don't write about border issues either.
In the immigration issues as I explained them -- the cages and the separation policy -- I got that on my own from factual reporting on the subject. I was living in Mexico in 2014 when Obama had a terrible humanitarian crisis down there and built the cages. I followed the issue. I don't recall where it got reported. The MSM barely reported on it till the photos of the kids in cages covered in foil blankets started hitting social media. A lot of information not in the MSM is nonetheless true. That's a problem in itself. You can always say, "Well XXX is a scurrilous right wing rag." And maybe it is. But a lot of alt media covers stories the MSM won't touch.
Such as Biden's senescence. People were calling Jill Biden Edith Wilson in 2020. But in the alt media, not in the New York Times. But the alts were correct, and the MSM were lying. I hope there's a reckoning about that soon. You can't run a decent society without a truly free press.
And if the New York Times doesn't tell the truth about the border (or anything else), why is that? I read very widely, from the left-wing wackos to the right-wing wackos. But my knowledge of the border comes from a very long personal interest and involvement with the subject.
From the Reuters piece you linked: "In June, Trump abandoned his policy of separating immigrant children from their parents on the U.S.-Mexico border after images of youngsters in cages sparked outrage at home and abroad."
Exactly the same reason Obama and Biden decided to stop the caging and just turn the kids over to traffickers. Cages generate bad optics. Nobody sees the trafficked kids. That scandal's waiting to explode.
I'll stipulate that Trump said what the Reuter's piece says. Not a good look, I agree. It doesn't detract from my point. Obama put kids in cages till the optics got bad. Trump put kids in cages till the optics got bad. Biden just let everyone in and is running a massive trafficking operation. He'll be out of office before people come to find out what he's done.
Had to look that one up, perhaps I missed your point.
Quoting Wayfarer
Along with the fly.
Threat. He's a negotiator. He lobbed a few missiles at Syria. Drone strike against Soleimani. No new wars. He used threats to keep the peace. I didn't call him a milquetoast. I called him a peacemaker. Big difference. Based on results. No new wars. First prez in my lifetime who can say that. No new wars.
I do not believe he initiated any military interventions. You say that's false. Names and dates please. Trump started no new wars. As far as I know, no new military interventions at all. Did a quick lookup, couldn't find any.
Quoting Benkei
Unitary executive is a little inside baseball. It doesn't mean "all powerful president." According to Wiki: "The unitary executive theory is a controversial legal theory in United States constitutional law which holds that the president of the United States possesses the power to control the entire federal executive branch."
It does not say anything about going to war. It says essentially that the prez is in charge of the people who work for him. I think you might be conflating different things. If you're referring to the recent Chevron decision, it's a good thing. The underlying case was a fisherman who had to pay $700 per day to have government inspectors on his boat. If Congress wants to pass a law to make him do it, let them pass a law. The agencies don't have the right, so say the Supes. Tell it to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, she's the one who stayed too long, expecting Hillary to win. Not my fault, not Trump's fault.
Who can argue with who's more authoritarian? The Supreme court told Biden he couldn't transfer student loan debt to the taxpayers. He did it anyway. Obama bragged about ruling "with a pen and phone." He held weekly Kill List meeting where he decided which American citizens to drone-bomb without due process. Going back in time, LBJ lied the country into the Vietnam war. There was no attack on a US ship in the Gulf of Tonkin and that was known at the time. Reagan sold arms to Iran to fund his secret war in Nicaragua. Ok a GOP you got me there. I mean, you look at recent history, it's hard to tell one authoritarian from another. Trump was arguably less authoritarian than any of them, simply because he knew so little about how the government works that he got rolled by the bureaucrats and betrayed by the people who worked for him.
Senator James Lankford is a strict conservative GOP member who was on a bipartisan committee tasked with addressing border issues. He drove a very hard bargain and got many more concessions out of the Democrats than anyone had expected, getting them to agree to what many of them thought were overly harsh measures that the GOP had been demanding for years. But then before it went to a vote, Trump got wind of it and said he didnt want it to go ahead. Why? Because it would take away his talking points about the country being flooded with Mexican rapists. So Lankford was then pressured to vote against his own hard-fought legislation, rather than bring it to the floor - because it might have been a solution. Trump would rather keep his talking points than actually solve the problem. For his trouble, Lankford was then censured by the Oklahoma Republican Party, for the mortal sin of working with Democrats.
Quoting fishfry
That probably also explains why 24 previous aides and allies went on the record saying he was unfit for office and a danger to democracy.
:rofl: I see you're thoroughly misinformed nowadays.
Quoting fishfry
Love the cavalier attitude to the use of armed force. This really underlines my point. Let's pretend it's not a war and then it's ok. No matter that "war" isn't the appropriate legal term any more. No matter that the President can unilaterally decide to put soldiers, e.g. US citizens, into harm's way because "technically" it isn't a war. No matter that it's still armed aggression, which is prohibited under the UN Charter so the President is unilaterally deciding to breach treaties Congress signed up to. It's authoritarian and it was his primary M.O. with respect to international relations. Of course, other US Presidents have done the same thing but presenting Trump as a peace candidate is silly and not borne out by the facts.
Motives matter. Separating families for the good of the kids is one thing. A zero tolerance policy separating all families to deter would-be immigrants is evil, unprecedented, and was quickly stopped when the public found out what was going on. And yes, Biden's record on the border is awful. We're not doing people any favors when we make it easy for them to come here illegally and then live in the shadows and be exploited.
I agree. I think they are mistaken however. Trump's own ends begin and end with Trump. They cannot control him. When their ends conflict with his ... Well I hope we will not have to find out.
:lol:
You really do come up with amazing twaddle.
Thanks for that summary. I apparently missed this story. I did a quick search and evidently the GOP Senators rejected his bill. I looked at a couple of articles and they didn't mention Trump's influence, even though "Trump" was one of my search terms.
If you happen to have a reference to Trump's influence on the GOP abandonment of Lankford's bill I'd appreciate it. Pending that, and taking your word for it, I'll grant you your point. I've never said Trump isn't a flawed man. I've only said that he's the only alternative to the wrong turn the Dems have taken the past couple of decades and especially the past eight years.
I agree that the GOP are useless. They get nothing done at all. I'm saddened but not surprised to learn they killed a chance at sensible immigration reform, with or without Trump's pressure.
Quoting Wayfarer
The word authoritarian is lacking in your talking point. For sure he's a danger to the status quo in Washington, so it's not difficult to find people to throw rocks at him. I just don't see how a guy who got so easily subverted by his underlings could be an authoritarian. Joe Stalin was an authoritarian. He killed his enemies and friends alike. His critics didn't go to the press, they went to the Gulag.
Trump says border bill very bad for Lankfords career
[quote=Feb 2024] Former President Trump on Monday railed against the bipartisan border agreement and took aim at Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a key negotiator, for his role in brokering the deal.
In an interview on The Dan Bongino Show, Trump denied endorsing Lankfords candidacy in 2022 despite doing so publicly and did not rule out endorsing a primary opponent when Lankford is up for reelection in 2028. ...
Ahead of the bill texts release, Trump had attacked the prospect of the legislation, branding it as a political victory for Democrats ahead of the 2024 election a message he repeated in Mondays interview.This is a gift to Democrats, and this, sort of, is a shifting of the worst border in history onto the shoulders of Republicans. Thats really what they want. They want this for the presidential election, so they can now blame the Republicans for the worst border in history, Trump said.[/quote]
As mentioned, Lankford was then censured by his own party. This for a straight up-and-down Republican who has toed the party line on every single issue.
Quoting fishfry
And I just don't know how you can say that. He's on the record suggesting, for instance, that the constitution ought to be suspended, that he plans to purge the civil service and stock it with his operatives, and intends to use the Department of Justice against his enemies. The last few weeks, there's been a lot of press over Project 2025, which likewise plans to implement plainly authoritarian policies - Trump has been trying to disassociate himself from it, but it is almost entirely composed of ex-Trump aides and staffers, and he's spoken at the Heritage Foundation on a number of occasions. But then, you know, but seem to downplay or rationalise, that Trump sicked his mob on the Capital Building, leading to multiple deaths and hundreds of arrests and jail sentences, one of the darkest days in American history. Why you're OK with that I can't fathom.
Perhaps you can explain what I'm misinformed about re the family separations and cages.
If I'm understanding you correctly, when Obama separated families and put the kids in cages, he did it for saintly reasons, him being Saint Obama. And when Trump separated families and kept the kids in the very same cages Obama had built for that purpose, he did it for dastardly reasons, because he's Orange Hitler.
That is the only way I can interpret your claim that I am "misinformed" regarding widely known matters of fact. If you didn't know about Obama's cages in 2014 that's understandable, because the story was not widely reported in the MSM. If you claim it's not true today, it's you who are misinformed.
I'm open to your explaining exactly what I am misinformed about regarding this situation.
Quoting Benkei
Not cavalier at all. If you can't see the difference between lobbing a few missiles onto an airport tarmac (if I recall the details correctly, didn't bother to look it up) and starting new wars, as every president of both parties since Ike has done; then I just don't know what to say. You draw an equivalence between the tarmac bombing and Biden's two major proxy wars? Or Clinton's bombing of Serbia, a war Clinton's voters ignored because it was a Dem war. It bothered me, and I was a big Clinton fan and voter at the time. Yet another one of the datapoints in my growing estrangement from the Dems. The antiwar left is strangely silent when they're Democratic wars. The left hated Bush's torture program but they didn't mind that Obama institutionalized it by failing to hold the Bush regime accountable (for understandable political reasons, to be sure).
So Trump bombed a tarmac and killed one Iranian. That's a remarkable lack of bloodshed for an American president of any party. I don't see how you can pretend not to understand that point.
Quoting Benkei
The tarmac and the terrorist. That's it. You don't seem to be able to understand the difference between using massive violence, as most president do; and bluster and the threat of violence to avoid violence, as Trump did.
I think you actually do understand; but just want to pretend you don't to make a partisan point.
You know that Trump on multiple occasions has sucked up to Putin? That he stood on the world stage with him and said he trusted Putin above his own intelligence agencies? That he thinks Kim Jong Un is a really neat guy, even saying once that they were 'in love'? Why is it that the only political leaders he's ever expressed admiration for, if not because they're role models for him? Not that he's got anywhere near the guts or the guile to actually pull it off. Fortunately.
You made my point for me. In 2014 when Obama was separating families and putting kids in cages, the MSM did not widely report the story. People were not outraged because they didn't know it was happening. When images of kids in cages covered in foil space blankets "like baked potatoes" started circulating on social media, Obama dialed back the cages and loosened the vetting of families. Even the WaPo was forced to report on the kids Obama was losing to traffickers.
I have already conceded to you that if Trump said what you you say he did, that was not a good look. Trump is a very flawed man, but the only alternative to the wrong turn the Dems have taken the past couple of decades and especially the past eight years. So if he did bad, I'll grant you the point.
But as I mentioned in another post just now, if your point is that Obama put kids in cages it was good because he's Saint Obama; and when Trump put kids in the exact same cages Obama had built for that exact purpose it was bad, because he's Orange Hitler, you are just being partisan.
How do we know Trump wasn't just being Trump, and saying something inartfully that could be twisted by his opponents? Maybe just trying to send a message to prospective immigrants? As the saying goes, Trump 's opponents take him literally but not seriously. And his supporters take him seriously but not literally. Like when he jokingly asked Putin to find Hillary's emails. I thought that was hilarious. The left went hysterical; and for the most part, disingenuously so.
Also, a little off-topic: Like the taco bowl tweet. I thought that was hilarious too. "Trump is a brilliant performance artist and troll." That was my reaction. The left went hysterical over that too. For whatever reason, Trump's personality doesn't trigger. me. I get the guy. He's Queens, the establishment is Manhattan. They look down on him, and he is alternately insulting them and enviously wishing he could belong, which he never will.
When a Dem says, "Oh Trump put kids in cages," I know I'm talking to someone utterly ignorant of the issue. Which includes pretty much everyone on the left.
Quoting RogueAI
Ok, well I'm glad you see that. But I'm not even talking today about Biden's open borders and the massive humanitarian crisis he's dumped on blue cities like NYC, Chicago, and Denver. I'm talking about the lesson Biden's administration learned about the separations and cages. Those are bad optics; turning kids over to traffickers keeps the issue out of the MSM. That's a moral outrage. I do predict this story will eventually become known. Like Biden's cognitive condition became known. Way too late, and only when it became impossible to keep covering up.
Quoting RogueAI
We leave them to die of thirst in the desert, and then give them driver's licenses, social welfare programs, and jobs if they make it over alive. A bipartisan moral atrocity that got started with FDR's Bracero program in the 1940s. I'd love to see some sensible immigration reform in my lifetime. I'm not holding my breath.
We saw the videos. Unjustly locking people up for three years does not a crime make. It makes an illegitimate DOJ. Shamefully so. Else how explain the leniency to the Floyd rioters who killed 20 people and did two billion dollars in documented, insurance-covered damage, and cheered on by the left? "A riot is the voice of the unheard." Except when the unheard are the deplorables. There's a reason Trump is about to be reelected in the greatest political comeback in American history. Enough people see what's been going on.
Oh it turns out I DIDN'T miss this story. This was the bogus border bill that would have codified Biden's disastrous border policies, while bringing the Republicans on board so they could no longer criticize Biden over it.
I do remember this completely, did not realize this originated with a Republican, for some reason hadn't registered the name Lankford with it.
So I was with Trump on this. This was the bill that would have allowed in, what was the number, 5000 or something undocumented crossers every day, massively exacerbating the humanitarian crisis at the border and in the blue cities that have to absorb the newcomers, while giving the Dems the ability to blame it all on the Republicans.
I was massively opposed to this bill at the time. It codified the ongoing disaster and made the Republicans complicit.
So that was the Lankford bill. Somehow I missed that detail, but I definitely followed the story of the bill. Very glad the Dems blocked it. Bad bill as I understand it.
I will grant that if I have been misinformed about the details of this bill, I could be wrong. But the high-level bullet point was that 5000 a day would come in, a massive number that was far more than what Jeh Johnson, Obama's Homeland Security secretary, said would lead to humanitarian disaster. So this bill deserved to go down.
Thanks for the update, anyway. I recalled this bill as being a couple of months ago, but it was February. Time flies.
Quoting Wayfarer
I will concede that it is POSSIBLE that I may be misinformed about the badness of this bill. I confess that my media diet is a little skewed to the right these days. I've actually gone back to reading the NYT lately. So it's possible that you are right and I'm wrong on this issue.
But now that you've refreshed my memory about which bill this was, I most definitely remember that I had the impression that it was a bad bill, because it codified a lot of the bad stuff that was already going on, while making it impossible for the GOPs to complain. So AFAIK Trump was right on this issue.
Poor Lankford, though. No good deed goes unpunished, and the GOP are a hopeless and confused lot these days.
Quoting Wayfarer
If only.
It won't happen. You know what I think is going to happen? The massive financial crash that people have been predicting since 2008 is finally going to happen on Trump's watch, and he's going to go down in history as the second coming of Herbert Hoover. Trump is being set up to take the fall for the coming economic crash.
Exact revenge on his enemies, put Pelosi and Cheney and Garland and Wray in prison? I wish. Never going to happen.
Suspend the Constitution? More TDS. Where do you get this stuff?
Again: You confuse suggesting with actually doing. They are not the same. As is typical for the left, you confuse Trump's style of rhetoric with his actions. Watch what the guy does, not what he says. You know the saying: Trump's opponents take him literally but not seriously. His supporters take him seriously but not literally. Liberals overreact to his words and never notice what he actually does.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah yeah yeah, Project 2025. Another TDS hysteria. You know Trump put out his ACTUAL platform, and it's extremely middle of the road, basically 1990's Clintonian policies. I posted this link recently. Here's Brit right-of-center website Spiked on the subject.
The truth about Trump? He's a moderate
That's Trump's platform. Project 2025 is yet another leftist hysteria. TDS is a genuine psychological disorder. Trump is not going to suspend the Constitution, he's not going to be a dictator. And if he does get a measure of justice for the wrongs that have been done to him and to the J6 political prisoners, I support him in that.
Here's NPR's take on Trump's platform, along with the platform. Why don't you read it and comment on Trump's ACTUAL platform, not the Project 2025 boogyman the liberals are using to distract from their laughable yet incredibly dangerous for the country Biden fiasco.
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/08/nx-s1-5033015/rnc-republican-party-platform-2024
Quoting Wayfarer
What happened to "A riot is the voice of the unheard" as the Floyd rioters killed 20 people and caused two billion dollars in documented insurance payouts?
Most of the J6'ers were invited in by the Capitol police and wandered around peacefully, and now they're sitting in prison for three years. It's a shameful incident in American history. If there is any justice in this universe of ours there will someday be justice for the wrongly imprisoned J6'ers.
The J6 committee was a fraud on the American people. Why did they destroy their records? Why are thousands of hours of video still under lock and key?
And
Quoting fishfry
The first statement explains the second. And, its more than a little. But theres no way to make someone see what he or she doesnt want to see, so lets leave it for now. (Although how a forensic retelling of an attack on the American people could be a fraud on the American people beggars logic.)
Although as this is the Election thread, not the Trump thread, Ill add I still dont believe Biden will be the eventual Democratic nominee. I just wish folks would say that he should pass the baton. It sounds a lot less hostile than that he should resign or quit. It is really what he must be persuaded to do, and, I believe, will be.
Ah, Russia Russia Russia, another symptom of TDS. Let us take a brief walk through history.
FDR joined up with brutal dictator Stalin to defeat the Nazis in World War II. I do not recall anyone criticizing FDR fo "sucking up" to Stalin. Well actually some people did. I read once that Herbert Hoover said at the time that the US should stay out of the war and whichever of the Nazis or the Soviets were winning, we should help the other one till they both destroyed each other. So I imagine that at the time, there must have been some voices questioning FDR's alliance with the bloody commie dictator Stalin. But it's not the prevailing view of history. It's regarded as a pragmatic decision to beat the Nazis, in retrospect a very good thing.
After the war Truman and the Dulles brothers got the cold war started, no sucking up to Russia there.
Ike had a summit meeting with Khrushchev in 1959. Why not? They were trying not to blow up the world. They were going to meet again in 1960, but Francis Gary Powers got shot down in his U-2 spy plane and the meeting got cancelled. Was Ike "sucking up" to the Soviets? Or negotiating with his geopolitical opponent with the aim of achieving peace? As a soldier of war, he knew the importance of peace.
JFK famously met with Khrushchev; and towards the end they had back-channel communications to establish peace. In his American University speech on June 10, 1963, JFK called for peaceful coexistence with the Soviets, saying:
So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
Five and a half months later he was dead. Killed, some say, by the CIA on behalf of the very warmongers whose profits were threatened by peace. Or if you prefer the Lone Nut theory, the warmongers just got lucky. Somehow they always do.
Would you say JFK was "sucking up" to the Soviets? Or seeking peace, with deep wisdom?
I could go on. A lot of presidents met with their ideological opponents. Nixon went to China, for gosh sake. The arch anti-communist of the Alger Hiss case, the man who built his entire political reputation on fighting the Godless commies. "Only Nixon could go to China." Sucking up, I guess, is that how you would put it?
And so we come to Trump. He's a businessman. He doesn't have mortal enemies. He has competitors. He negotiates with his competitors. You call that sucking up. I call it international diplomacy, the only alternative to nuclear war. Biden comes in, and we're today closer to WWIII than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
When, exactly, did talking to our geopolitical rivals become sucking up in the leftist worldview? The left used to be for peace. Now they regard geopolitical negotiations as sucking up.
Quoting Wayfarer
Indeed. Not the most politic thing to say in public, but surely true. Reminds me of another story from the JFK days. The JFK assassination and the history and politics of that era are an interest of mine.
When French president Charles de Gaulle survived an assassination attempt by the right wing OSA (see the film The Day of the Jackal), de Gaulle knew that the OSA was closely allied with the CIA. De Gaulle called Kennedy and asked if the US was behind the assassination plot. Kennedy said that he certainly had nothing to do with it; but that he could not vouch for or control his own CIA.
So its hardly news that American presidents can't trust the CIA and don't trust the CIA. The only thing that's new is that Trump said it in public. Probably shouldn't have. You'll note that in the past couple of weeks, Trump has learned to keep his mouth shut. He may be starting to learn how to play the game of politics. If so, that's why the left is frightened. Imagine Trump being Trump, but no longer his own worst enemy.
Quoting Wayfarer
You just don't like the guy's negotiating style. As someone said, as a New York City builder Trump always thinks he's negotiating with the sheet rock union.
Instead of lobbing missiles and starting a war, Trump went over there and buddied up with the leader of one of our country's "enemies." Are the North Korean people really the enemies of you and I? Or are they merely a tool for the military-industrial complex to keep the bucks flowing? Trump is a man of peace. He's a negotiator. No wonder the establishment hates him.The establishment gorges on the profits of war. Trump is dangerous to them.
The only thing I don't understand is why the left, with whom I marched against the war in Vietnam long ago, has now aligned itself with the defense contractors and the intel agencies in the cause of war.
If I had one wish, it would be for every leftist in the world to snap out of their trance and see how they are being played by the war machine. Hate Russia! Hate Russia! Hate Russia! A horde of mindless TDS-addled zombies.
Peace, man, Peace. Ike was a man of war and he worked for peace. JFK worked for peace, you see where that got him. Nixon worked for peace. Every president works for peace.
And when Trump works for peace? The left hates him for it.
I pray to the deities that be, for the liberals to snap out of their warmongering, deep-state loving trance and recognize that malignancy in our government; and that Trump, for all his flaws and faults, is trying to fight that malignancy.
Quoting Wayfarer
Like I say. You just don't like the guy's style. Why don't you look at his results? Only prez in my lifetime not to start any new wars. Look at the dangerous condition of the world with senile Biden and his feckless, incompetent, and neocon-influenced foreign policy team that have us on the brink of nuclear war.
Wake up. Peace is possible. But not by worshipping the neocon deep state that has a stranglehold on the Democratic party.
You do.
You should read what I wrote. And take it to heart.
And I do thank you for the writing prompts. I've had these thoughts in mind for a long time. You wondered how I could be for Trump. I'm explaining.
Perhaps you should stick to the part I quoted?
Well, actually, Donald Trump called Kim Jong-Un "little rocket man" in more than one occasion. Why is it that the only political leaders he mocked, if not because he really despises what they stand for?
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/11/biden-zelensky-president-putin-nato
[tweet]https://twitter.com/cspanjeremy/status/1811522008741519673?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Glorious.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1811460525077016947?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Except when its about racism and some property is damaged. Then its screamed about for years. Meanwhile, a few months later a bunch of white people storm the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the electoral college vote, and they were let in and after years of spin, we should deny what we all saw that day and tell ourselves its no big deal.
Because if it were the Black Lives Matter crowd, Im sure wed be saying the same thing. And Im sure only one insurrectionist would have been shot.
The hypocrisy is laughable.
Sure, it looked bad, but the two cases are not the same. Obama was not separating every family. The Trump Admin was. Obama was not doing it as a deterrent. The Trump admin was. Those are crucial differences, don't you agree?
You have swallowed the psyop. The J6 committee was a total fraud.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes back on topic. The election. I don't see how the Dems have much leverage. Biden is president. Biden is dug in. Biden has 3896 pledged delegates, with only 1,991 needed to win. Biden has Jill and Hunter in his corner; and crack and hooker jokes aside, Hunter is a smart and tough ally.
The Dem civil war is also a race war. All the Dem pols coming out against Joe are whitebreads (except for Obama in the background). Joe has the support of the Congressional Black caucus. AOC and Omar came out for Joe. Tellingly, black NYT columnist Charles Blow just came out with support for Joe. The Strongest Case for Biden Is His Resilience in the Face of the Onslaught. This is noteworthy because the Times editorial board and many of its other (white) opinion writers have called for Joe to "pass the baton" as you say.
Labor is behind Joe. Old people are behind Joe. I read that after the debate, his poll numbers went UP with women. They must have felt sorry for him.
Is the DNC going to screw over all the Biden supporters and primary voters? Dumping Joe is fraught with risk.
Also, Kamala has many negatives. As a former northern Californian I've watched her finger-to-the-wind brand of politics for a couple of decades now. She polls about the same as Biden against Trump. She's been a worthless VP and her approval ratings have been terrible. She is no panacea. And of course nobody else can leapfrog her because of Democratic identity politics.
There are also technical issues. Some states have strict filing rules that limit how long the Dems can wait. The WSJ published a story today saying that Biden can't transfer his campaign account to Kamala until he's formally nominated.
When Nixon was told by the party honchos that he had to resign, he was facing certain impeachment and conviction. What leverage have the Dems got? A strongly worded editorial from George Clooney, who just raised $30M for Biden three weeks ago and publicly claimed Biden was fit as a fiddle when he privately saw Biden's infirmity? Well today Rosie O'Donnell called for Biden to "pass the torch." That oughta do it.
I'm on record saying Joe is the nominee. Biden's press conference was not good enough to quell any doubts, but it wasn't bad enough to make his position any worse. He made some flubs but he also made his foreign policy points. He bought himself more time, and time is of the essence for the anti-Joe Dems. They are stuck. Nobody can make Joe leave but Joe. And he is a stubborn, selfish old guy who, despite his sad recent cognitive decline, was always pretty much like this.
The Dems made their bed and now they have to lie in it.
I was influenced by your kind words and I did my best to at least explain and justify my political feelings. Especially since I'm no Republican nor a conservative, but rather a fallen liberal. Still a registered Democrat. One of the seven to ten million Americans who voted for Obama and then Trump. The Democrats have no interest in who we are, which has been a great frustration these last eight years. The left just stopped listening. Just Russia Russia Russia and then J6. Lawfare and propping up Biden, both of which have failed spectacularly. It's the Dems who are a threat to the American republic, and I did not used to feel that way. They talked me into it over the past couple of decades and especially in the past eight years.
I enjoyed our Trump chat, and as I said, I appreciate your writing prompts so that I could express some of my thoughts. For some reason, Trump just doesn't trigger me the way he does others. And I do believe that if the Dems had totally ignored Trump, skipped the lawfare entirely, and held a competitive primary, Newsom or Whitmer would be beating DeSantis today.
Now it's up to the American people, such as they are, and our electoral system, such as it is.
I am actually confused about what you wrote. I outlined the basic facts about the sepaations and the cages, and you responded by complaining about my reading habits (and getting it wrong. Breitbart yes, RedState and Townhall no). I fail to see how what I read alters the fact that Trump put kids in the cages Obama built for the same purpose. All the rest is partisan rhetoric. You say that when Obama put kids in cages he was noble, and when Trump put kids in the same cages he was Orange Hitler. I fail to understand your point beyond partisanship.
If am missing your point, feel free to clarify.
Racism? Not catching the reference. The Floyd riots? J6? Something else.
Quoting Mikie
Maybe you didn't see the videos of them being let in. I did.
Quoting Mikie
Um ... what? The Floyd riots killed 20 people. A black cop shot unarmed Ashli Babbitt. Reverse the races and the left would still be hysterical about it.
Quoting Mikie
On your side, most certainly.
Absolutely. Obama is a saint and a lightbringer. Trump is Orange Hitler. That's the distinction you are making.
I knew about Obama's cages in 2014, so when the left went wild over Trump putting kids in the same cages, I recognized them for the ignorant hysterics that they so often are. Eventually Jeh Johnson, Obama's Homeland Security guy, had to explain to reporters that those cages were had indeed been built by Obama. The left literally did not believe it. Willful denial of reality along with hysteria. Not a good look for the side I'd always considered myself to be part of.
As always with Trump, you conflate his often artless rhetoric with reality. The truth is you don't actually know that his motives were different than Obama's. Only that Obama can do no wrong, and Trump can do no right. And that Trump's words often inflame the left. I think he does it on purpose, like the taco bowl tweet. He's a troll. I watched the cage story develop from 2014 to 2018 and it does not reflect well on the left. Ignorance and hysteria. That's their style.
I have no clue why you started talking about cages. Maybe you have more in common with Biden than you think? :wink:
Did I get my convos crossed? My bad. No matter. It's all the same, really. Whatever it was, I can let it go.
https://www.axios.com/2018/06/19/sessions-says-he-hopes-child-separation-policy-will-serve-as-a-deterrent
Isn't it time you folks got off the clown car?
Yeah, maybe watch less Sean Hannity.
Quoting fishfry
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_police_violence_incidents_during_George_Floyd_protests
Ask yourself how the Capitol police would respond to black or brown people. I doubt very much theyd be letting them in, to the extent that that even happened (you know, apart from breaking windows and ramming down doors).
But nevermind just go on pretending it the insurrection was nothing. Years from now Im sure itll be remembered as a tour in conservative media anyway.
It is okay when we do it. Get the memo, Mikie-chan.
(Day 13 of the American Monarchy)
FWIW, my guess is that The Neofascist Criminal Clown will announce he's selected either Kari Lake of Arizona or Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina to be his running mate. :meh:
But we all know what will really happen. Get ready for conspiracy theories and fundraising, folks.
Prosecute their political opponents, excise their political opponents from the ballot, attempt to remove their own democratically-elected candidate from the race, violate the bill of rights and constitution from every corner. Assassination was all they had left. They failed even that.
The hysterics are amazing.
Surely the only person whose fault it is is the shooter?
And who do you even mean by they?
Not the guy who thinks the world will end because of combustions engine cars.
Apparently, so did a registered Republican nutjob (allowed to be?) on a rooftop with an AR-15. :mask:
First the SC giving Trump very wide ranging immunity.
Then Biden exposing his mental decline at the debate, followed by a disastrously uncoordinated response in the democratic party. Weeks on the democrats have still not managed to form a united front, but did manage to further damage their (current) candidate.
And now a failed assassination attempt, leaving him hurt but only lightly injured. His reaction to this was also very good. He managed to show some restraint and called for unity, which is an unusually savvy move.
Not to be callous about the assassination attempt (I'm glad he survived) but it's hard to imagine a bigger boon for his campaign than the image of a martyr.
If I was religious I'd be denouncing my own faith about now to be honest.
Well America good luck with your new king I guess. At this point I'm just trying to find a nice seat for myself to watch as society continues to burn itself to the ground.
Or Luck of the Devil?
They tried censoring him, removing him from the ballot, putting him in jail. They wanted Trump to be assassinated. That much is clear. But now we have to watch their solemn play-acting as they deplore political violence and murder.
Its as if theres no consistency or principle whatsoever. :chin:
Anyway criminals should be in jail and insurrectionists probably shouldnt be on the ballot and private companies can censor anyone they want, particularly those who incite an insurrection. But nice Gish gallop.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/11/pence-trump-endangered-my-family-on-jan-6-00086664
"I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable."
Everyone has a right to contest or doubt an election, unless it was Biden, of course.
As usual you confuse what Trump SAYS from what he DOES.
He's a negotiator. He puts up skyscrapers in Manhattan. How do you know he wasn't expecting his statement to go out to prospective migrants, and make them decide to stay home/
You can't prove otherwise. You can't actually cite statistics on what was in Obama or Trump's heart for each of the families separated and kids caged.
Instead you choose to judge Trump on his words, and not on his actions, which were in fact no different than Obamas. He used Obama's cages for God's sake, you can't say with a straight face that they were Lightbringer cages when Obama stuck kids in them and Orange Hitler cages when Trump did it.
You're operating from emotion, choosing to overreact to Trump's words, because you can't cite facts in his actual actions.
You have no credibility when you do this, because the left has been doing this for eight years. Just think taco bowl tweet. The left went ballistic. I took one look at that, cracked up laughing, and said, "Trump is a master troll and a brilliant performance artist!"
That's the deal. I get Trump. If he does something wrong, he did something wrong. I'm just not emotionally trigged by the guy, and many on the left are. And that clouds their, and your, judgment.
You mean when a black cop shot an unarmed young white woman to death? If the races were reversed we'd still be having riots.
Quoting Mikie
Time will tell. If there's justice in the universe, there will be justice for J6.
:lol:
Why anyone bothers talking to Trumpers is puzzling. But I puzzle myself as I keep doing it.
Quoting fishfry
No, I mean how the Capitol police would respond to black or brown people. I doubt very much theyd be letting them in, to the extent that that even happened (you know, apart from breaking windows and ramming down doors).
So your best argument against me is a hypothetical scenario you just made up. If you had actual facts, or an actual argument, you'd make it.
Well I'm taking the day off from partisanship so thanks for the chat.
"Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Monday that he hopes the administration's new policy that separates children from their parents will serve as a deterrent to other immigrants considering crossing the border illegally."
To recap: the Trump Admin started a new zero-tolerance policy to separate all families as a deterrent. This had never been done before and was ended just a few weeks after the public found out. Do you see how that is different than what Biden and Obama were doing?
False.
Some cages were built by Obama and some children were separated under exceptional circumstances. Trump wrote a blanket policy to prosecute all illegal border crossers which resulted in a blanket separation of kids from their families. A lot more cages were build. There's your "action" to judge.
That's not how justice works. You have to actively work for it but I guess if you vote in the US you have to pretend justice is released like manna from the heavens because your political system is currently incapable of protecting it.
:D I wonder how Gore would have fared.
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting NOS4A2
:D
Oh, and theyre criminals.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/15/judge-dismisses-trump-classified-documents-case
Saw this graph. Not sure if it is true
:D "They" are out to get'im. Crooks certainly was (he fits in a US pattern). "They" didn't miss John Lennon. :/ (by the way, surely Gore has more wits than Bush)
(Day 15 of the American Monarchy)
Roevember 2024:
POTUS Biden & VP Harris
(plutocratic neoliberals) :zip:
versus
The Criminal Clown DJT & MAGA-bitch J.D. Vance
(autocratic neofascists) :down:
Oh well.
The last three days have been wild. Trump will win. It will be a fun watch, and its a shame there are dickheads across the USA who think it's such a dire situation that some kind of "society burning down" is going to occur.
It's utterly bewildering that people as intensely dull as is required to make that type of comment are in fact, capable of operation modern technology. But here we are. 180. Mikie. Benkei. The whole crew! I implore all of you to remember that you can actually speak to other humans without being dimwits.
(2020Jul11)
JD Vance. Goofy choice.
Anyway remember when I said this would die down in a week? Well make its a few days, because once Trump gets up to talk, were right back to normal. Polls are still close.
Trump has everything going his way right now, against a weak opponent and hell still likely lose. Too bad the RNC have no values or principles.
I don't know about them, but I sure did.
Still hoping Biden passes the torch.
Not because hes an awful human being and did irreversible harm to the United States and the world but because he wasnt stupid enough. Didnt go along with the fantasies of a stolen election and J6 being a peaceful tout and Trump being an innocent man. Booo!!
The Republicans are the party of idiots. But they are the party of creationists and climate deniers, so this should have been known years ago. The transition to the MAGA cult was only natural.
Again, you are upset about words, something Sessions said on a right wing talk show. You can't prove he wasn't just saying that to (a) deter immigrants, or (b) suck up to the FOX news base. You are upset about what he SAID and you have once again presented no evidence about what he DID.
You just assume that Obama's heart is pure and Trump's is impure, and that causes you to not even realize that you are not making a substantive argument.
In the 1990's the Dems wanted to look tough on immigration, so they hardened and militarized the border (Hillary was front and center on that), leading to desperate immigrants dying of thirst in the desert. If you seek to paint Trump as lacking in human compassion for immigrants, you will have to come to terms with the Democrats' own cruelty. The Dems forced Mexico to run a war on the cartels in order to receive American economic aid, leading to many tens of thousands of deaths of Mexican citizens. The Democrats have an appalling human rights record regarding Mexico.
Quoting RogueAI
Your proof consists only of verbal statements, no proof as to what was actually done.
The Democrats have an absolutely appalling human rights record in Mexico. And you want to give Joe Biden as an example of human decency in Mexico? Motherf*cker is a child trafficker, I have repeatedly pointed this out. He doesn't waste time separating families, he just turns the kids over to their traffickers at the border.
You are just being a partisan shill, your argument is devoid of logic. "Orange Man say bad thing on television." That's the extent of your argument. While being willfully ignorant of Democratic human rights abuses on the border and within Mexico for decades.
Can be 100% sure, without a shadow of a doubt this is not a politically savvy group.
That said, NOS is still being a supreme weirdo too.
I'll see your Trump cages and raise you Clinton and Obama's militarization of the souther border, which has caused untold human misery. The Dems have a terrible human rights record re Mexico.
As you know, people go to prison all the time over "words". The words of the Attorney General matter, regardless of where he's talking. The whole country was upset by the zero-tolerance immigration policy (the action behind the words), which is why the policy ended just weeks after people found out. Discussing this with you is pointless. You're beclowning yourself now.
We shall see. As Martin Luther King said, The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Of course it can take a long time. Stalin sent a lot of people to the Gulag before the Soviet Union finally collapsed. There was justice, but not in time to help many individuals.
What did the guy do, other than being personally disliked by you, that makes him deserve to be assassinated?
The country got upset because the MSM hysterically broadcast Trump's border crisis. I personally watched the same MSM be silent during Obama's identical border crisis in 2014.
What you think you are measuring is not national outrage, but media coverage. Protecting Obama in 2014 and attacking Trump in 2018. Pretty much the same humanitarian crisis.
Quoting RogueAI
You're quite ignorant about the southern border and the striking difference in media coverage of Democratic versus Republican humanitarian crises on the border. You're ignorant of decades of Democratic militarization of the border leading to so much human misery both on the border and inside Mexico. All you care about is your little talking point. In the end you have no knowledge and no argument so you sling insults.
Nice chatting with you. All the best.
Even Fox Noise ... :sweat:
I ain't worried about the MAGA Circus (or "Project 2025") ... just the next assassination attempt. :zip:
What's hilarious is that JD Vance, Trump's choice for Vice President, once likened Trump to Hitler.
There are also dickheads in the USA who are hoping and actively planning for society burning down.
And whatever one may think about Donald Trump as a person, the trajectory of the republican party as a whole is quite stark. There doesn't seem much of a doubt that the majority of active politicians in the republican party of 2024 is willing to use all legal and legalistic means available to deepen and secure it's power. Moderates have an increasingly hard time in this environment.
I mean they are endorsing a candidate who still refuses to accept the result of the last election. Sure Trump is popular and that's part of the reason. But it's also a conscious choice to engage in power politics without regards to democratic niceties. The outlook is no longer a classical liberal one.
I don't think he's like Hitler. I'm just one of the millions of people who wish that shooter hadn't missed. Or how about just badly injured him so he'd have to be in rehab during the election, and after that, he'd be just fine. :halo:
Point at something Trump did that makes him deserve to be assassinated. What illegal wars did he start? Which countries did he ruin? Which regions of the world did he plunge into chaos?
I doubt you'll get much further than "he said some words I didn't like." Compared to previous US presidents and even the current one, he's a lightweight when it comes to wanton destruction.
I don't think he deserves to die. Like many, I just wish someone would assassinate him. I never claimed to be a saint.
Except the irreversible damage to the environment and taking us backwards on climate mitigation which is already doing innumerable harms. Appointing a fossil fuel lawyer as head of the EPA probably does deserve the death penalty, morally but Im not in favor of assassination.
Of course none of that matters to his supporters, who are outright climate deniers. Including you. So I dont pretend like reality matters to you.
Also take a look at his one legislative achievement: a massive tax break for corporate America, who hes always slavishly served.
Or letting thousands die of Covid because he didnt want to deal with it, saying it would be gone by Easter.
But other than that he was great.
Sean OBrien thanks ex-president for opening RNCs doors, breaking with most major unions who have backed Biden
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/15/teamsters-union-president-sean-obrien-rnc-trump-speech
I wager that the Democrats blue-collar support is bleeding out. I imagine theyre tired of that power hungry cult thieving their money for more boondoggle policies, and all thats left are panty-wasted and woke soys. That party wants nothing to do with workers anymore unless it comes election time. Its fun to watch.
Equally as hilarious are stalwart Republicans, like Trumps would-be assassin, who have to watch as their former party gets invaded by instagram models and union bosses and the lgbt. Trump is reordering American politics, so its glorious to watch the party apparatchiks seethe.
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting NOS4A2
President Joe Biden says it was a mistake to say he wanted to put a bulls-eye on Donald Trump ( Seung Min Kim, Mary Clare Jalonick, Aamer Madhani, Lisa Mascaro, Zeke Miller · AP · Jul 15, 2024)
Depending on who "They" are (again), it's not "clear".
Quoting Mikie
It's a bit ironic, having been put forth as the Messiah for "the little man". Well, the Clown cult operates differently.
They is people like you, except plural.
The Trump cult, and most of the right wing, are obsessed with gender. Woke soys lol. I had to google what soy means in this context.
Obsession with whatever goofy ideas of masculinity they have almost always a sign of latent homosexuality and subsequent fear. So it goes.
Our resident Trump cultist has exactly no principles or values. Just unadulterated party politics. And watered down Ayn Rand. But its always there for a laugh!
Nothing. He desires to die very slowly in excrutiating agony while fully aware of Sleepy Dark Brandon's 2nd inauguration, then mercifully expire a world-class loser on 21January25. That's what The Clown & his cult of worshipful idiots deserve.
Sorry, I dont believe you. Perhaps you should post more links.
"If you point how I am oestrogenated it means you are obsessed with masculinity!"
Awful argument as always, Mikie-chan.
Strange though, is that supposed to be a bad thing?
He probably does deserve to die, given the irreparable harm and deaths he has and will cause. But unlike the Trump cult, there are still principles worth adhering to. Like not assassinating people.
For a religious conservative? Yes.
Not sure that'd improve matters for those opposed to Trumpism oder the republican platform to be honest.
I think a sufficiently ruthless politician armed with the spirit of Trump might end up much more effective at getting their way than Trump will ever be.
Odd, Mikey doesn't come across as one.
Yea. I just don't want to have to hear his big mouth for the next four years. Either way, I think the US is headed for some kind of political shift.
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/georgia-democrats-kennedy-jill-stein-presidential-ballot-election
Dark Enlightenment:
"The ideology generally rejects Whig historiography[2]the concept that history shows an inevitable progression towards greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy[2]in favor of a return to traditional societal constructs and forms of government, including absolute monarchism and other older forms of leadership such as cameralism.[3]". wikipedia2
This is the shift I was talking about.
Its not good, but putting a conservative spin on it like this is NOS territory. Its also worth noting that Fox sources always add their slant.
But yeah, definitely worse than storming the Capitol to overthrow an election you didnt like the result of.
What a fucking joke.
re: MAGA Freak Show (American idiocracy)
Just pointing out a double standard. There's nothing conservative about it. If the Republicans tried to block the Libertarians from the ballot because they knew it would consume much needed Republican votes I'd say the same thing.
The right trying to make it hard for Democrats to vote is anti-democratic. If more people want Biden, then Biden should be President.
Yeah, so saying it makes January 6th look like childs play is simply pointing out a double standard.
Fair and balanced.
January 6 wax obviously different in that it involved crimes against people and property and the intentions were to upset the results of a fair election, but the likelihood of success was minimal and there was no actual success. It was at the end of the day violent and malicious theater.
The Democrats' removal of a name from the ballot is real and will impact an election.
One is a street level blue collar crime and the other an organized white collar crime. The results are typical. With the former, a bunch of people get hurt and things get destroyed. The other is more precise.
I'm not seeing anything criminal in Dems pursuing legal challenges.
There is nothing criminal in that for sure. And there's nothing criminal in carving out districts that give advantage to one party over the other, to putting polling places in unreachable locations by those without transportation, to closing polling places at earlier times to benefit one party over the other. These are the games the parties play to interfere with the will of the people being expressed.
It's the way it always works. A sophisticated player creates rules to benefit him (like regulations, tax code, or whatever) and makes out like a bandit. An unsophisticated player kicks open a door a busts heads.
The question then isn't one of legality, but morality. If you place a moral value on the successful candidate being the one who the public most wants to win, then you won't try to enforce rules that do the opposite.
I will also repeat that there is a difference between the morality of injuring persons or damaging property versus manipulating social procedures like voting. That is, I do beleive its worse morally to bust someone's head open and to set fire to his property in an effort to obtain an unfair result than to do the same through a more peaceful and calculating means.
The point I made in comparing January 6 to the efforts to remove RFK from ballots wasn't to suggest an equivalency in terms of how rogue and violent they both were. It was to point out that in terms of the specific harm we were pointing to - impeding the democratic will - what the Democrats are doing exceeds what the Republicans have done. I get that the Democrats didn't go about it by throwing chairs through windows or wearing viking hats, but their result has been more successful.
Right. I don't necessarily like Democrats trying to keep third parties off the ballot, but I know they're no different than any other political party that would do the same thing. The GOP would not hesitate to keep third parties of the ballot if they thought it would help their chances.
Jan 6th and the GOP's rallying around Trump after the stolen election drama are quite different, though. I like to think that in a parallel universe, where Trump is just as awful a person as he is now, but a champion of climate change, medicare-for-all, and high taxes on the rich, the Democrat party would still have nothing to do with him. What do you think?
LOL. Wikipedia and MSM truly are Cocomelon for politics-brained Millenials and Gen-Xers.
They even had a mock gallows that could hang pence if only he was 2 feet tall.
Mike Pence is 20 inches tall. Like a hobbit.
Republicans say democrats are a clear and present danger, etc. But thats mostly crap although you could argue that theyre taking us close to nuclear war with their foreign policy. In that case, democrats are an existential threat.
Republicans are the party of climate denial. Thats also an existential threat. More likely to cause widespread damage and suffering, given that its already happening and the threat of nuclear war is low.
Not a fun choice.
That's one of the factors, but there are others. The perils are environmental, economic, political and military, and each one, or a combination of them, could pose a threat to the Western democratic social order. It's going to take very much higher orders of problem-solving and political management than the Republican clown-car have demonstrated since Trump took the wheel.
BUDDY IS A GONER
I doubt that. I think the removal of a competitor from the race is about as anti-competitive and anti-democratic as it comes. You won that race in the back room without a single vote cast.
Did you see Vance's back story? He's isolationist and skeptical about democracy.
They couldn't kill Trump so they're going to kill Biden. Bring in Andrew Cuomo and give him the old ventilator treatment.
Quoting Wayfarer
Remind me why your party (technically still mine) chose not to have competitive primaries, where they could have solved their Biden problem in an open and democratic manner?
Isn't it ironic that the Dems are the victims of their own failed machinations?
And when they swap in Kam in a back room deal to avoid an open convention, will the rank and file just fall into line like they always do? Probably.
I have to admit I've been on record saying they won't be able to move Joe out. But he's looking pretty shaky right now. Lot of party heavyweights are against him.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/axios/status/1813943622863143080?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Trump's going to win, then Vance. Vance will change the presidential term limits and rule for the rest of his life.
If Harris runs in his place, she'll lose.
Pelosi told Biden this. He pushed back.
His party is telling him to step aside because hes doing bad in the polls, and for no other reason.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/17/politics/nancy-pelosi-biden-conversation/index.html
Trump isnt going to win. Biden campaigned from his bunker, drew crowds of max. 50 people at his rallies, was the first virtual candidate, and for some strange reason got the most votes in US history. Never underestimate the corrupt abilities of his party.
No other reason? Do you think the NYTimes is telling him to drop out simply because he's "doing bad in the polls"? Biden is unfit to run. He's unfit to be president. The debate was horrifying.
It isnt up to the New York Times who runs, is it?
Im not sure what youre getting at when you start speaking in questions. The NYT argued Biden should step aside because he might lose to Trump, not for any democratic reason.
There is no "democratic reason" for Biden to step aside, except maybe that 70% of Democrats wanting him gone, but that wasn't the Times' point. The NYTimes wants him out because he's in such bad shape:
"The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trumps provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence."
Which was my point. This isn't just about polls. Biden is unfit.
Thats just not the case. They werent describing his fitness; they were describing his debate performance. They dont seem to care that no one is leading the country, that a dementia patient holds the nuclear codes. They want him out because they think hes going to lose.
But the Democrats have really a problem even this way, because in this age of DEI, they simply cannot bypass a black female vice president.
Well, the Democrats will loose just like the Conservative party lost in the UK. Perhaps it's not going to be such a loss as the Conservatives had (worst election defeat in 190 years), but still.
So you predict a Biden win. I'll take it. Trump isolated himself until he was just flailing. Biden at least can gather a group capable of doing the job.
[quote=NOS4A2]Trump isnt going to win.[/quote]
Yeah, buddy! JD Vance is the *misogynistic gift* that will keep on giving. More of the Ultra-MAGA Hillbilly speaking in public, please. :clap:
Roevember is coming! :victory: :mask:
I dont get why the Republican shakes womans hands and in the Democrat cartoon there are apartments. Does this imply that Republicans are as friendly with women as Democrats are with town planning?
Quoting frank
Finally. Total Vance dictatorship. Yay!
I suspect they will cheat or assassinate or jail their opponent in Stalinist fashion.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/politico/status/1814008851219571169?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
The world is full of angry, bitter people. Each one thinks his cries mean something. :razz:
No one knows what will happen. Least of all political hobbyists.
The whole platform is based on delusions. Examples:
There is no invasion at the border, and immigrants are a net good for the country. Youll hear exactly the opposite.
The economy is as good or better than under Trump but youll hear the opposite.
Crime is down, not up.
Climate change is real, not a Chinese hoax.
Were pumping more oil and gas now than ever, not less. (Unfortunately.)
The 2020 election was one of, if not the most, secure in history.
January 6th was an insurrection the crowds goal was to stop the counting of electoral votes, based on the lie that it was a stolen election (see above).
Donald Trump was one of the worst, if not the worst, president in history.
Just some basic facts. But in Trump world, where literally everything is inverted, Trump does nothing wrong, the election was stolen, the January 6th criminals are heroes, etc.
So whats left? Tax cuts and destroying government (besides the parts that corporate America likes)? Ugh
It seems the gig is up for Biden, he's going to announce 'the passing of the torch' this weekend (to put a positive spin on it.) For the time being, the nominee designate will probably remain Kamala Harris, but if the Democratic National Committee so decides, there will be an open convention beginning Aug 19th and another Presidential nominee might be chosen. Me, I don't think Kamala Harris would be a winning choice, but I can think of some. As I've said before, I think the electorate is crying out for an alternative to Trump v Biden, and if a credible candidate is presented, it might generate a big uptick.
I hope, anyway.
Isn't that the most democratic reason you can have?
He already won the primary election, meaning he has already been chosen to be the candidate. That simply cannot be erased because he is not winning in the general.
You're talking about the procedure.
But the [i]reason[/I] given does sound entirely democratic to me. People don't want to vote for him, therefore he shouldn't run.
No, it sounds stupid. If people dont want to vote for him, they shouldnt vote for him. But they did. Nullifying peoples votes is anti-democratic.
Interesting. :chin:
Like 2020, don't vote for the man (or the woman); vote for the mission in Roevember 2024 which is to defeat The Neofascist Crininal Clown & his rabid MAGA junta-in-waiting. :victory: :mask:
Informed, intelligent commentary is welcome:
@Mikie @Wayfarer @Benkei @jgill @ssu @frank @jorndoe @Mr Bee @RogueAI @tim wood
Although I was not included in your illustrious list I will comment anyway.
I agree with him regarding "democracy by the polls", but the concern about Biden's current abilities is not simply a matter of what the polls say. I also agree with his criticism of the press, but the press plays a less significant role when a propaganda machine has a significant portion of the population believing that what it tells them is the news and the truth. Lichtman's track record on prediction election outcomes is impressive but I am not confident that Biden will win or that the attempt to get him to step down is self-destructive.
Based on his evaluation of this administration's performance his prediction might have been right up until the debate, Biden's past performance does not matter if he is no longer capable of performing as well as he once did.
And I agree with Lichtman that Democrats are shooting them into the foot, but then again no incumbent running for the second term has been ever so senile (at least in the open). So even Lichtman is unsure of the outcome and waits for the Democratic convention.
However, even if Trump wants to follow the Orban model, as Lichtman says, what this great populist orator lacks is the needed leadership qualities. We already know this from the last time. And the idea that Trump can wreck American democracy, well, just look what happened on January 6th:
Trump wanted to go with his supporters to Capitol Hill, but his own security team simply drove him to the White House. There he watched mesmerized from television how his supporters took over the Capitol Hill building and finally, after calls from his inner circle and family, he just said to his supporters to go home.
Now, sincerely, ask yourself: is a person that acts in this way even capable of overthrowing one of the oldest democracies in the World, if he actually wanted to do it? Because you don't get a better chance ever for an autocoup like January 6th, with your supporters breaking into Capitol Hill. Democrats were totally stopped in their tracks as a deer in the headlights on that day. But then you would have to have a real plan, you would have to have people that support you, understand it's either they go through all the way or they face a life sentences, even capitol punishment. Nothing like that happened.
Then ask yourself: is now the Republican party really intent on wrecking democracy? All of them?
Or does JD Vance, a former marine that wrote in 2016 "Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nations Highest Office" among other comments, wants to now wreck democracy of the US? Isn't the last VP of Trump a clear example of the Trump team not having these kind of thoughts?
If you think that the intent of Republicans is this, I disagree with you. I think you taken in too much of the rhetoric which causes the political polarization in the US.
Hence in my view in 2028, even after a Trump presidency, there will be a democracy in the US. What kind of ride would it be to 2028 is a different question.
Its a tough one. I have to respect Lichtmans record, so I listen to what he says carefully. Its true people always say this time its different, and it certainly looks like the last few years truly have been. The keys will be right until theyre not.
I cant help but have the feeling like theres a bit of luck involved with his predictions. But who knows? Thats the point: I dont. And no one here does either.
You're assuming they think of it as "wrecking democracy". They might instead consider it safeguarding democracy from the mob.
Consider some of the rhetoric right wing pundits have been putting out there: how the USA are not a democracy but actually a republic. And they mean to imply by this that only certain people - true Americans - should be allowed a say. It's a take that relies on very old concerns about the tyranny of the majority, only adopted to feature new villains.
Biden has to go because he's unfit. Trump never should be the nominee but the GOP has been shit since Reagan.
Well said. And arguably the state of the democratic party is more worrying than the state of President Biden. That the party is not able to coordinate an effective response to Biden's flagging mental state is damning, especially since it's an entirely predictable scenario.
In retrospect it seems like warning signs have been accumulating since Obama's second term that the democrats are no longer able to effectively coordinate responses to challanges - like the refusal to allow Obama to fill a SC seat.
It may be more of a matter of not having yet coordinated a effective response than of not being able to, but that is not a prediction.
It's still uncertain since Biden could very well stay in or drop out at this point but what more do you think could be done here? The donor money has dried up, the polling has gotten even worse for him, the media is completely dogpiling the Biden campaign now, and members of the party have been defecting en masse and increasingly so.
Of course if you're talking about their inability to foresee Biden's age problems after RBG and even Feinstein months before he started running again, then yeah it is entirely a failure of leadership though that ship has already sailed. Complacency and arrogance from the ones at the top are what gave us Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2024.
:up:
The fact people don't get decent choices reflects the USA is simply not a democracy. I would add complacency and arrogance also got you Biden in 2020. Entirely uninspired. They deserve the dog piling and the whining it's bad for Biden is not the media's fault but a direct consequence of their own arrogance. Democrats should just rename themselves to "never Trump" because that's what it's been about since Hillary.
Yet, as someone pointed out, Trump was a wild card for the RNC in 2016, and still is until he likely is reelected.
There are plenty of reasons why the US isn't a democracy and alot of them involve the SCOTUS, particularly their decisions in 2000, 2010, and this year. Of course the primaries are also pretty terrible too and the way general elections have locked out serious third party contenders since the 90s.
Quoting Benkei
It was actually fear that got us Biden in 2020, not of Trump but of Bernie Sanders. In 2020, there was a point where Sanders was about to run away with the nomination and the entire establishment rallied behind Biden in a matter of a few days before Super Tuesday in order to stop him. Biden wasn't the best candidate but he was the one they settled with because he's the easiest one to rally behind. If Biden ends up dropping out this year then we will see the exact reverse of that, as all the anti-Biden forces will likely coalesce around Kamala this time around, not because she's the best candidate but she's the easiest one to rally behind. The lord almighty have giveth and the lord almighty will have taketh away, to use some of Biden's own words.
Fair enough, but they're running out of time.
Quoting Mr Bee
I think what I'm missing is some kind of action plan. Everyone seems to be content with voicing their concern but then the Biden circle has already made plenty clear they're not going to step aside.
So either there is some avenue to remove him, in which case they need to pursue it. Or there isn't in which case further complaining just hurts them. But what it looks like is they simply cannot figure out what to do.
Quoting Mr Bee
I wonder why there hasn't been a grassroots movement to reform the party structure after 2016. Perhaps going after Trump was too easy and allowed the party to deflect the attention. It would explain the willingness to give Trump all the attention all the time.
I think there's starting to become a more organized movement here as more time passes and Biden continues to not reassure his party while pissing them off with his arrogance. It's clear that leadership is not happy with him and are not letting things move on as much as the Biden campaign would like to pretend like nothing happened.
Quoting Echarmion
There's always challenging him at the convention and putting up somebody else which is an extreme measure that's very unlikely but who knows with a party that finds Biden's presence increasingly unacceptable. One could argue that it may hurt Biden's chances if they continue to complain, but as more and more polling suggests he's a goner anyways and will drag the entire party down with him, then there's also reason to think that it won't matter much anyways so might as well complain.
Quoting Echarmion
Well like I told Benkei, Bernie tried to run in 2020 but was stopped by the establishment that gave us Hilary in 2016 and Biden in 2024. If Trump ends up winning again because of their shenanigans then hopefully we will see such a reformation. I don't blame the Democrat voters for what is happening because the problem really was they never had a say in the process.
He's out.
:party:
Living through some extraordinary stuff. The 2020s are looking a little like the 60s/70s in terms of unprecedented events.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/21/us/trump-biden-election
Quoting Shawn
Affirmative action.
1968 redux? (re: VP Humphery loses to gaslighting "silent majority, law & order, peace candidate" former VP Nixon) :brow:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/21/biden-drops-out-election-00169980
from 2023 ...
Quoting 180 Proof
"Defeat from the jaws of victory?" TBD.
edit:
also from 2023 (if & when POTUS drops out) ...
Quoting 180 Proof
Not a chance
Fine. My standards are pretty low by this point.
I do not think she will be a strong candidate though. I think she would be a significantly stronger candidate if she hadn't been VP, because Biden's administration is not particularly popular.
There are several people who make better candidates, Dems who have won in deep red states.
If she wants it she can probably get it though because this is the Democratic Party so who is going to want to say: "we need to pass over the Black woman candidate?" All the speculation I've read sort of centers around this.
I think the only way she isn't the nominee is if she pulls herself out.
There are a handful of very moderate Republicans who have won is very Democrat-leaning states who would be good to throw on the ticket to offset the "California liberal" vibes she gives off, but I don't know if either side would be willing to do that. It would be a brilliant move IMHO though. These folks are already exiles for failing to say the election was stolen though, so they might go along with it.
There isn't much to like about Harris.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/politico/status/1815098672113402138?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
1. VP Harris-Gov Whitmer (likely)
2. Gov Whitmer-Sen Warnock (less likely)
3. Gov Whitmer-Gov Newsom (very unlikely)
Nevertheless, MAGAts Roevember is coming! :party:
She is a woman, and thus automatically at a disadvantage. She's also of color, so the DEI-hire narrative writes itself. In fact if you ask in more right wing leaning circles, she's universally reviled already for being a supposed DEI-hire who allegedly has zero qualifications, and is stupid because her laugh sounds weird. That's unfortunately the level of political discourse we can expect.
Apart from that she seems solid, if nothing more. She has attracted significant left wing criticism for her policies as DA but that probably won't matter against Trump and is not something that I think most voters would care about deeply.
Really it's all about whether she can effectively deal with the fact that she is a woman.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I guess the deciding question would be whether the administration is popular enough among swing state voters.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Probably, yeah. She'll be hard to get past if she decides to push it. Nor Do I think the democrats could afford another public pressure campaign.
Edit: So I just read that she reacted to Biden's endorsement by saying she hopes to "earn and win" the nomination. So she considers herself in the race, but not the heir apparent. This leaves her space to back out, so at least she apparently does not intend to run come what may.
Honestly overall I think at this point the democrats should embrace chaos and focus on making the most grassroots-based choice possible. Find some way to let the base vote for a candidate, take the hands off the convention and just make it really, really obvious that you're not pushing anyone and whoever makes the best case wins.
I think such a spectacle might energize voters who are on the fence, but what do I know.
I don't know if she would be the best candidate in terms of electability or capability but she is certainly preferable to Orange Jesus.
The political discourse "there" is right as usual. Hillary got millions of votes for being a woman, Obama for being black. Odds are that, if Hillary were Hilbert and Barack Obama were Barry O'Bryan, they wouldn't have won.
[hide]Yes, Hillary won the popular vote.[/hide]
Thats encouraging. Ive been reading that theres the chance of an open convention, but that in the past these havent been very successful. But if it is an open convention, I hope another candidate comes of it.
:100:
Self brainwash much?
The negatives are that as long as he's President, Karine Jean-Pierre is going to be asked:
1) If Joe Biden is too cognitively impaired to run for President; then isn't he too cognitively impaired to BE President? And since Joe is clearly not running the country and hasn't been for some time, who has been and IS running the country? Obama? Jill "Edith Wilson" Biden? And remember, the media smell a wounded politician like a herd of rabid jackals. Have you noticed the tone shift in the White House briefing room lately? KJP is under attack like she's never experienced before.
2) Is Joe going to preemptively pardon son Hunter, brother James, and other members of his family, for Federal felonies they may be subject to regarding the Biden family's decades of grift, bribery, and influence peddling involving foreign countries? This family business is a well known open secret in Washington, and is denied by the Dems in exactly the same way that they denied Biden's progressive cognitive impairment. Meaning, they'll deny it everyone finds out about it, then they'll all pretend to be shocked and they'll savage him. So he has to issue the pardons before he leaves office, and he might as well get it over with fast.
But there's a huge positive and beneficial reason he should resign the presidency first thing tomorrow morning.
It makes Kamala the incumbent. The "historical" incumbent. Incumbency by itself is a huge advantage, easily worth five or ten percent of the vote. And just as in 2008, centrist-minded Republicans might have said, well, McCain's a corrupt wamongering jerk, war hero nothwithstanding; and I don't want to have to think of myself as a closet racist. So I'll vote for Obama. A lot of votes went that way. If you were any kind of independent or centrist who was not a doctrinaire Republican, you voted for Obama for the historical symbolism of a black man becoming President in this country.
Kamala would get those same independents. She'd energize all the women in this country. As bad a politician as she is, she could win on symbolism. Symbolism has a lot of power among us humans, like the Trump bloody fist flag photo.
So I say that if Biden pardons his family and drops out tomorrow morning, that is the Dems' best shot at an electoral victory in 2024. Get it all over wish and by election day the public will have forgotten Biden entirely. The longer this fiasco goes on, the more the American people are reminded every single day of the massive fraud the Democrats ran on the nation. The sooner they get past that the better.
Personally I hope he doesn't do it. Let the press ask KJP every day. Let the party civil war continue. Already Pelosi and the Obama have not endorsed Kamala, calling for an open process. Under the circumstances a non-endorsement is equivalent to an anti-endorsement. The Clintons and the Bidens are behind a Kamala coronation, for the third consecutive DNC back-room deal rammed down the throats of their own voters. Saving democracy indeed.
Now you can see why the Dems forced Bobby Jr. to leave the Democratic party. Else he'd be the heir apparent and the DNC hates Bobby Jr.
I'm just curious, I get that some people just hate Trump. But aren't the liberals getting sick and tired of getting shafted by the DNC? They could have held a competitive primary this year, Joe's condition would have been exposed, and Gavin or Gretchen would be a strong candidate. The Dems did this to themselves. And to the fourteen million Democratic primary voters who voted for Joe, while the media were telling them Joe's sharp as a tack. Aren't any liberals righteously angry about all this chicanery going back to 2016 and 2020 and now 2024? The DNC does not give a hoot about the will of their own voters, or "democracy." The centrist warmongers pick their candidate no matter what their voters think. How long will Dem voters just fall into line behind whatever corrupt hack the central party coronates? After Trump is gone and Trump hate is no longer a factor, what will hold the Dem party together?
What happened to Sanders during 2016 was pretty wild. Hands down he would have won, but, the Clinton's wanted it their way and look what we got...
absolutely. More jokes in the clowns show.
Yes it's funny that the other day Biden himself said, "That's how we got Trump in 2016," meaning the Dems letting the party insiders override the will of the voters. He still has political instincts. It's very unclear whether the Democrats have improved their situation or not.
An apt comparison, but even rabid jackals, never mind healthy ones, form 'packs' or 'tribes'. As in 'a pack of wild dogs'. Jackals are canids.
Quoting fishfry
The question should be, "Is he too cognitively impaired to BOTH run for president and be president?" There's a big difference between managing the job for the 5 months and managing the job for 53 more months, should he have been reelected.
I was in favor of him NOT running for another term before the famous debate. Both Biden and Trump are too old, and Trump has even more cognitive problems, particularly with the reality situation, than Biden.
Kamela has more than enough on her plate successfully campaigning, never mind trying to become an experienced incumbent in just a few months.
I'm not quite that generous. Significant brain damage, but recoverable after at least 4 years of intensive therapy for people who have brain injuries. Additional therapy will be needed to rehabilitate his faulty morals and his poor comprehension of the reality situation. Since his misfortunes are self-induced, he would need to pay for this out of his own funds. Once he's impoverished by the medical industry, Medicaid will kick in to cover some (???) level of services.
:rofl:
Coming from the same people who until last week denied that JB has dementia
[hide="Reveal"]
Welcome back, Mr. President.[/hide]
I wonder if the September debate is still on. Of course Trump may dip out of it like he did during the primaries now that he's going up against someone who's not a senile old man but we'll see.
Alright I was dead wrong. Either that or this really was an unlikely event, but ended up happening anyway. But its more likely I underestimated the chances.
Its nutty how ruthless the DNC is compared to the RNC, which couldnt even stop a Trump.
Well, if Harris winds up the nominee ...
:lol: :up:
Roevember is coming!
I believe he did not resign. I believe he dropped out of the running for nomination for reelection. A party matter, not an official presidential matter.
Still, it would have been far better had he made the decision before the primaries. Regardless, its still imperative that the MAGA cult is thwarted.
How dare you squash my conspiracy theory.
Of course representing certain parts of the electorate is relevant, I did not want to dismiss that. Nevertheless, Kamala Harris wasn't randomly swept off the street because she fit a certain profile.
:lol:
This seems so obvious that should not need to be said ... but evidently and unfortunately it does.
Thank for that. A powerful, factual based ad. I don't know how effective it would be today. The Trumpsters just don't care. They believe he is their savior and either overlook his faults or think it is all liberal lies. Those who are less fanatical may regard it as a trade-off they are willing to accept. Perhaps there are still enough voters who have not made up their mind who might be swayed.
To be fair, Trump earned his nomination in 2016 while Biden didn't in 2024. As much as he brags about 14 million votes in the primary he was running as an incumbent against an anti-vaxxer, a hippie lady, a progressive talk show host who wasn't even born in the country, and a no-name guy named Dean Philips. He has no true base of support and because of that it's far more rational to just push him out. The RNC can't do the same with their candidate lest they piss off the cult.
It is not at all clear that Bernie would have won. He is a "socialist" and this scares lots of voters. To them the qualification 'democratic' socialist does not matter. Although Clinton won the popular vote, the states in which she lost are the states that are strongly opposed to socialism.
The irony is that many of the same people who oppose socialism because they equate it with government control are if favor of autocracy. The power of the demagogue to persuade the people!
I forget how she did in the debates. It seems like it should be easy to bait and trigger Trump into a meltdown. I would just pull out all the quotes from his own cabinet members calling him incompetent. Then when he called them "RINOs" point out that he was the one who appointed them and promised to "pick the greatest people."
He even whiffed his core issue, illegal border crossings hit a 13 year high under his administration and he didn't get his party to old even one vote on migration the whole time he had the House, Senate, and Court, showing how the GOP just uses the issue for votes. Oh, and almost quadrupling government borrowing during an economic expansion.
Virtually any Democrat would have won in 2008. Bush was historically unpopular and the GOP had just overseen a military disaster and the entire economy imploding. Dems had the House handily and a super majority in the Senate, no way they lose up ticket. Obama won both his elections so handily they were called almost as soon as polls closed and almost certainly would have won handily again in 2016. Aside from Reagan, who had dementia issues, he's the only guy who could have realistically been confident in getting a third term since term limits became a thing.
As usual.
Are the guy that lost his mind and started punching himself in the head in their car on tik tok when Biden announced this? Same vibe from you throughout htis thread.
https://nypost.com/2024/07/22/us-news/top-dems-threatened-to-remove-biden-unless-he-resigned/
Remember these pieces of shits as they deny the will of their voters.
Always a gold mine of cringey laughs.
Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro would be good choices.
Quoting NOS4A2
What 'election' has been overturned? The votes from the primaries are not formally attached to a candidate until the Convention. It would be quite possible for a winning candidate to be injured or fall ill and so not be the final choice at the Convention. This is no different, the candidate in question has simply, and sensibly, decided to retire rather than seek another term.
And although obviously a close-run thing, I would have thought that any candidate who DID NOT try and overthrow the 2020 election would have a clear advantage.
Exactly. Your entire political philosophy.
The rest is projection on your part.
Quoting Wayfarer
Care to bet? So far Im one for two. I dont think theyll want two people from California, and waste a chance to make inroads with swing states. Shapiro would be a better choice. Would shore up PA, which is a must win. More electoral votes.
Contesting an election is quite common in the 21st century, but removing a presumptive nominee, forcing him to step aside, and replacing him with someone else isnt. Do you think the primaries mean nothing? Why bother going to the booth if your vote is null and void?
Better than your fascism. The only standards you have are double standards.
Quoting Mikie
Case in point. Biggest fascist and hypocrite on the site projects yet again. No wonder Trump is your master.
Oh dear. Accusation in a mirror. All you can do is accuse others of that which you are guilty. No case in point because you can neither make a case or point. Sorry, friend.
No :yikes: It's only that he's always struck me as telegenic and articulate. Whoever it is, I think it's an absolutely crucial choice.
Quoting NOS4A2
He wasn't removed, or threatened with the noose :rage: He was persuaded to retire rather than contest and made a principled decision in the interests of the greater good (although in my view about 6 months too late.)
I think it's utterly hilarous that Mike Johnson is threatening to sue the Democratic Party to force them to bring Biden back. They're upset over the $10million they spent on Biden attack ads and want their money back. Hilarious.
He was threatened with the 25th amendment if he didnt drop out, according people close to the family. The party bosses and donors were mad he got trounced by Trump in that debate. It had everything to do with pure political power and cold hard cash, not principle, and especially not some concern for any greater good.
The last thing he said was that he is in the race to win it. Then we saw him creaking slowly up a flight of airplane stairs, and then someone posts his resignation letter on his X account, which is known to be run by staffers and not personally used by Joe. An image is flying around social media of his signature on his four recent executive actions, which do not match the signature on his letter. The letter does not bear the presidential seal. No photograph or video exists of him signing it. Then he disappeared totally for five days, officially recovering from covid.
This raises another question. If he's too sick to even have his picture taken signing a letter, is he too sick to fulfill his presidential duties. In November, 201, Biden was placed under general anesthesia fo his colonoscopy, and Kamala officially assumed presidential authority for an hour an a half or so.
If Biden is too impaired, even temporarily, to perform the duties of his office, the public has a right to know. And if he's not impaired, why haven't we even seen a still photograph of him in five days, let alone live video.
Some people online are snarkily asking for proof of life, which is what you typically demand of kidnappers to show that their hostage is still alive before you pay the random. And it's not a bad question. Where is Joe, and who is acting as president? Is he even alive? And if he is too cognitively impaired to run for president, how on earth can he continue to BE president? With two war going on? Who's in charge?
It's entirely possible that he has no idea that he's dropped out of the race. Nothing is being told to us, and the Democrats are so happy to be rid of their Biden problem they aren't asking any questions.
Kamala's got the Dems thrilled. It's very similar to her 2020 campaign launch in Oakland, California, in 2019. She drew 20,000 people and immediately became the rock star candidate. Calling Biden a racist and selling "That little girl was me" T-shirts turned out to be her high point. The next debate she got taken apart by Tulsi Gabbard, and never recovered. She dropped out in 2019, never even making it to the first primary election. She was polling badly in her home state of California.
That's Kamala. On paper she looks terrific, checks all the right boxes. The more people get to know her the less they like her. Also she has a big negative. She owns all of the Biden-Harris administration's problems. The inflation, the wars, the immigration disaster. Especially the latter, as Biden appointed her immigration czar and she was an utter failure, only managing to humiliate herself telling Lester Holt, "I've never been to Europe," when he challenged her on not going to the border. That's Kamala. She flusters and screws up when she has to go off-script under even mild pressure.
Biden was polling badly on the issues before the public saw his humiliation at the debate. It's Biden's policies the public doesn't like, and Harris owns those policies herself.
If she gets traction the Dems will go all-in behind her. If not, they'll give her the hook and trot out the next contestant. They have four weeks from today till the start of their convention.
I do congratulate the Dems for getting their act together and settling on a provisional candidate they can all live with. I can see why they don't want an open convention. Too much risk and potential chaos. Kamala's nice and safe for now. She appeals to a lot of Dems. She delivers scripted lines and speeches very well. And she can stay up past 4pm, a big upgrade from Biden.
But what did happen to Biden? The Dems propped him up for three years, then rigged their own primaries to get him nominated with only token opposition (anyone remember Dean Phillips?) and now they throw him over when he's polling badly. Reportedly Nancy Pelosi went to Joe and said he could go "the easy way or the hard way." This is the guy who got fourteen million votes in the Democratic primaries, and allegedly eighty one million in the 2020 general election. No American has ever cast a single vote for Kamala Harris for president.
I don't want to hear anyone ever again telling me that Donald Trump is a threat to Democracy. The Democratic party wouldn't know democracy if it bit them in the donkey. The back-room honchos decide what they want, and screw their own voters. 2016, 2020, and now 2024. Will the public punish the Democrats for lying to us about Biden's condition for four years and now running a coup to install a candidate chosen by the inner party and not their voters? Whether or not it ultimately succeeds, it's not democracy. It's not the will of the people.
A lot of people hate Trump and Kam has some strengths. She's got a great angle, a former DA who prosecuted sex crimes versus sexual assaulter Trump. She's strong on abortion. She will be a tough candidate if she can overcome her known issues. I'd give her a 25% chance to win. It could happen.
In other news, the condemnation of Kimberly Cheatle is savage and bipartisan after her train wreck testimony today. We still don't know how many shots were fired, what directions they came from, who killed the 20 year old. Usually when a crime occurs, the cops hold a press conference and tell us what they know. Why are we being stonewalled on the attempted assassination of Trump, not even allowed to hear the most basic facts? I caught some of the hearings this morning, it was bad. Even Dems Ro Khanna and AOC lit into her for incompetence and stonewalling.
Biden made that same point the other day, noting that the same kind of Dem chicanery that they're using on him is how they ended up losing to Trump in 2016. And speaking of Joe, where is he? Hasn't been seen for five days since posting his resignation letter on an X account run by staffers, on letterhead missing the presidential seal, and bearing a signature that appears not to match his signatures on several recent executive orders.
If this happened in a corrupt foreign country it would look like a coup. Since it's happening right in front of our faces in our own country, a lot of people take it all at face value. I do not personally believe anything going on lately, from the Trump assassination attempt to Joe dropping out of the race but remaining our invisible president, is to be taken at face value.
Not entirely sure I caught that. Was I right or wrong to analogize the media to a pack of rabid jackals?
I'm always struck by the way the narrative turns on a dime. One day, news videos of Joe's decrepitude and senescence are cheap fakes. The next day everyone turns and stabs the guy in the back. It's ugly to watch.
Quoting BC
It's a good question if he's doing the job today. Missing in action for five days. He signs a letter dropping out of the race and he's too ill to have his picture taken. But he's perfectly fine to do his job?
Quoting BC
If the Dems had just held competitive primaries, Biden's problems would have been exposed and they'd have a younger and stronger candidate right now who was actually chosen by the Democratic voters, and not by the party insiders.
As to whether Trump or Biden are farther gone, we can agree to disagree. I will agree that Trump's lost a couple of steps from eight years ago. Look at what he's endured. Whether you think he's guilty or not, all those court cases must have taken a lot out of him.
This is not the first election where people had to hold their nose and vote for the candidate they hate a little less thanthe other one.
Quoting BC
I can see your point. But I still think that incumbency is very powerful. And if Joe is in as bad shape as he appears to be, it would be better for the country and certainly better for Kamala to just 25A the guy and be done with it. Or have Nancy get Joe to resign the presidency. Report is that she told Joe he could drop out of the race "the easy way or the hard way." Nancy seems to be the one running things in the Dem party.
Some are saying the earth is flat.
Quoting fishfry
Last I checked, the US government is still the same.
Quoting fishfry
Why would it have been necessary to forge a resignation letter if he is incapacitated anyways?
Quoting fishfry
They faked his voice but faking a still photograph is a step too far for the conspiracy? Or is this one of those conspiracies that is masterfully manipulating dozens of world leaders but leaves easily traceable evidence for random guys on the internet to find?
Quoting fishfry
Old age.
Quoting fishfry
Oh so you believe the numbers that fit your view but the ones that do not are only "alleged"?
Quoting fishfry
Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.
Quoting fishfry
Ok so the democrats rigged the primaries to get Biden the nomination, but also these primaries are now the legitimate will of the voters? That's having your cake and eating it.
Quoting fishfry
What difference does it make to the country? The net result is the same.
I do not care one bit whether or not the party organization or its nominating primary process is democratic.
I only care that the Democratic Party is as ruthless, disciplined and united going forward to victory in Roevember 2024 as it was in 2020.
I don't care how they engineered ("forced" "bullied") POTUS to step aside ("palace coup"?) so long as the outcome is a candidate to replace him who can curb stomp The MAGA Cult Clown to Electoral College defeat in just over a hundred days.
In the UK, the Tories were just given their worse electoral beating in two centuries. In France, the right-wingnut populists were defeated by a concerted unity of centrist and leftist parties. The US Democratic Party with moderate independents and "Never Trump" suburban college-educated Republicans together, can do the same thoroughly rejecting the neofascist MAGA-GOP again just like 2020.
THIS ELECTION IS NOW ABOUT TRUMP, LIKE 2020, AND NO LONGER ABOUT BIDEN. :clap:
VPOTUS Harris isn't my first choice by a long shot, but I am confident that with a well-funded, united coalition and superior ground game (especially in the SWING STATES), aided and abetted by the deranged, angry-whining babbling bilge of bullshit The MAGA Cult Clown will continue to senilely spew and sputter this fall after Labor Day when the other 80% of the potental electorate will finally be paying attention, VP Harris (or whomever the nominee is) will win the 2024 election. Civil unrest by MAGA brownshirts & GOP shitheads notwithstanding. :fire: :mask:
Roevember is coming! :victory:
Quoting NOS4A2
Exactly right. Good empathetic listening.
Quoting fishfry
:lol:
I love watching the right wing loons go even more crazy over this. Fantastic.
I knew it. Power at all costs. Thats the guiding principle. Fascism 101.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1815713593351909434?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
It really is funny. The fascist, Trump worshipping, election denying partisan hack says No, u r. :lol:
Edit: which is why the Democrats are still perfectly positioned to fuck up again because they're neither progressive or collectivists but those that are see the Democratic Party ad the only viable ticket at the moment.
I include on that your state collectivism, legal positivism, Keynesianism, activism. Your prevalence for organization is simply the manifestation of the fasces as you engage in politics.
I would like to be sent the link of that. Same vibe:
Chris Hedges
Ironically, everything that the "grotesque, marginal" Göbbels said about Burgerland 100 years ago still applies today, and the entire planet would agree:
If someone who is grotesque and marginal can reproduce correct moral judgement of you, there is a lot of soul searching you should, but yet:
Get off Reddit and pick up a book.
Oh, can you pinpoint for us when Hitler went from an anti-shemale-bar-campaigner to the guy who wanted to remake Europe according to his racial ideology?
Quoting Lionino
Of all the things I did not expect to read to today, a reverent recitation of Goebbels (his name is actually written without the Umlaut), is probably the thing I expected the least.
Lol, is that guy still posting here? Good god. Dont waste your time buddy. Ignore extension all the way!
Statism is collectivist. Not collectivism is statist. At least try to get it right.
I think this is somewhat misleading. The demagogue taps into the dissatisfaction of some portion of society and promises to fix things. In part he does this by setting up a scapegoat. Eliminate the scapegoat and you eliminate the problem.
Unfortunately, and I think inadvertently, Hedges contributes to the problem when he says such things as:
Is there a generally agreed upon cause of deindustrialization? Has it been clearly shown that Biden and the Democratic party are responsible? Why does Hedges blame the Democrats?
Elsewhere he says:
When he blames democrats for becoming republicans I take it he is doing two things. The first is historical analysis. The second is to tell democrats that they have lost their way and need to reorient themselves. But things might look quite different when he places the blame at the feet of the Democratic party. This might be taken and used as a sound bite endorsement of the Republicans.
Right. Incumbency IS very powerful, BUT as the calendar says, the November election is a little over 100 days away. No matter what the POTUS or VPOTUS does or doesn't do from July 23 onward, it's going to be a tough scramble.
No surprise here: our economy and politics are run by overlapping elites. That fact provides so much of the story behind the headlines. That, and the rocket-engine personal drive of people who want to be at the top, be they Democrats or Republicans. It takes a lot of drive to get to, and stay at, the top anywhere.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the prime example of holding on to his high office when he was in seriously failing health. Wilson planned on a third term, too, but had a stroke in October, 1919. Nixon held on till he faced impeachment and probably forced removal from office. Reagan served with diminished faculties. Trump has a now very familiar problem with the reality situation.
It ain't no laughing matter to beat this senile fat fascist Clown, yet already I love her happy warrior's laugh. Roevember is coming! :victory: :lol:
And there we have it.
You are not a serious person.
Unfortunately, this isn't the source i Had - just one I can find by Googling, but it's a TikTok, that i THINK appeared on LibsofTikTok but im unsure.
Coming from you, lil troll, I wear your grunt like a badge of honor. :up:
No, but he lays out his case in his books. I dont completely agree with Hedges, but I admire his consistency and principles.
Yeah, I'm very cynical when it comes to why no one has just put the facts out there. It seems even the lots of the 'left wing' so called 'liberal' mainstream media see neutral to positive Trump coverage and the repetition of propaganda as a means to an end. Profit is the sole motive. The more viewers the better in those terms.
I'm not sold on Harris' motivations. Or should I say, I'm not very confident that she has the best interest of the overwhelming majority of Americans at heart. That said, Trump and the republican congress members who were/are complicit in his committing fraud against the United States of America need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There were many of his actions that were not performed under the recent protective language of SCOTUS's immunity decision.
A very large share of Germans cooperated with the Nazi regime because non-cooperation (let alone opposition) was a high-risk choice. Yes, Post-WWI Germany was hungry, bitter, and resentful and was ready to punish somebody for their loss in the war and their further humiliation in the peace agreement. And yes, after WWII, many Germans sang the I Was Not a Nazi Polka
Deindustrialization began long before Biden won his first local election. The leather, shoe, and woven textile and clothing industries in New England started outsourcing manufacturing before WWII, and continued after WWII. Other industries followed suit over time. Cheap, non-unionized labor was irresistible. Other factors also contributed to job losses, among them automation. It took fewer workers to run a new, more efficient steel mill. Automation increased the per-man-hour of productivity, so fewer workers were needed. Moving unskilled manufacturing to benefit from extremely cheap labor costs picked up speed in the 1970s.
I don't want to let the political and economic elites off the hook -- their policies devastated broad swathes of America. Did Biden behave any differently than other elite operatives? No. Will Trump behave any differently than other elite operatives? No. Ditto for Harris.
Old news. He already peaked, and too early. All downhill from here. Could still pull it off, but what a difference a week makes from the hysterics.
Whatevs.
He's the old one now. Kam at least has put some youth into our political process. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
A lot more are calling it a coup than are claiming the earth is flat. What would you call it? The Dems lied for three years to hid Biden's infirmity, then stabbed him in the back. When Nancy Pelosi comes to you and says, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way," and a letter is put out that you clearly didn't write, that's a coup.
Biden did make a brief appearance today. So the narrative has gone from "Sharp as a tack" to "Remarkably lifelike." Still no idea who is running the country.
Of course the MSM spin is that Joe is a patriot for gracefully putting his country first. Caesar stepped down gracefully the same way.
If anything we can now test the theory of whether replacing one of the two unpopular candidates would ensure their victory. I mean Kamala is far from a generic Democrat, but it seems like voters don't really know much about her apart from her being VP and both sides are scrambling to define her right now so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
I don't think it was intentional but Biden dropping out right after the RNC when the GOP was doing a victory lap with Trump's vanity VP pick was probably the worst time for that to happen to them. The race is reset and the party is now stuck with a flawed running mate, a wasted convention, and thousands of carefully crafted Biden dementia ads that will probably never see the light of day.
[quote=WaPo;https://wapo.st/3WkjWzM]Kellys credentials begin with his dazzling biography as a combat-tested Navy pilot and NASA astronaut who commanded shuttle missions aboard both the Discovery and Endeavour and traveled more than 20 million miles in space.
He has also turned out to be a supremely skillful politician in a tough state where the Biden-Harris ticket has been running behind. Kelly won a close race in 2020 to fill the unexpired term of John McCain (R) and then turned around to win it again two years later this time, with a more comfortable five-point margin against a hard-right Republican election conspiracy theorist endorsed by Donald Trump.
Border Politics: When I first got to Washington, it didnt take me long to realize that there are a lot of Democrats who dont understand our southern border and a lot of Republicans who just want to talk about it, dont necessarily want to do anything about it, just want to use it politically, he told me shortly after his 2022 victory. So my approach has been to the extent that we could and can to make progress on securing it, but also doing it in a way thats in accordance with our ethics and our values, not to demonize people.[/quote]
A public pressure campaign? Why insist on a loaded word like "coup" when this is about who the candidate for the next election will be.
Quoting fishfry
They stabbed him in the chest, not the back. It was very visible and very public. Nothing hidden or conspiratorial about it.
Even before the debate the common refrain was that Biden must demonstrate that he's not senile. He didn't. Biden had a lot of support at the time but he was not unassailable as the candidate. And in fact he failed to weather the storm. Nothing about this resembles a "coup", no organised group seized power in an orchestrated operation. One man lost his backing and the best placed person moved into the resulting vacuum.
Quoting fishfry
I mean probably the same people who run it most of the time? It's not like the president is required for day to day decisions.
I had to go and look that up, but that's absolutely crazy. Mob level shit.
if only the Indians would've had a more stringent immigration policy, the US wouldn't be such a mess today.
I wager that this little story is not over. The 25th amendment is invoked by the vice president and the cabinet. The vice president is Kamala Harris. Now she is the candidate for president. Thats a real, third-world coup, and thats how desperate they are.
Imagine Rutte saying something along the lines of "We can do this the easy way or the hard way" to get Yesilgöz to drop out of the seat of party leader. (Doesn't translate perfectly to Dutch politics, but I think you catch my meaning)
Basically unthinkable. It would be political suicide if something like that became public.
Why? What do you think "the hard way" implies that makes it unthinkable? Power struggles within parties do happen, and they do often get pretty ugly, though not as often publicly ugly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/politics/biden-harris.html
https://archive.ph/n12XY
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/875000650/pressure-grows-on-joe-biden-to-pick-a-black-woman-as-his-running-mate
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/15/biden-woman-vice-president-131309
She was, in fact, a "DEI hire.
So?
People should not be appointed to office based on their race and gender.
Why not?
It's racist and sexist.
You cannot be seriously encouraging hiring practices which are overtly racist and sexist, diminishing the value and achievement of those marginalised groups in the crosshair? Tbf, you openly wish Trump had been assassinated successfully. It's a shame that otherwise intelligent people let their brains fall out their ass and become moral monsters within politics.
You can't.
They don't think so. Why does your opinion matter when it's not even your county?
Back then Johnson backed out of the race, supposedly due to his poor showing in the primaries. The assassination of potential candidate RFK had left supporters disillusioned with the prospects. Given the recent statement of BLMs opposition to the way Harris was coronated, against their democratic principles, can we expect to see some fireworks at the convention like they had in 1968?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention
https://blacklivesmatter.com/black-lives-matter-statement-on-kamala-harris-securing-enough-delegates-to-become-democratic-nominee/
You dont care about a race and gender-based selection process in politics?
Once again, proving the above. At least attempt not to be ethically disgusting.
Why do you care? It's not even your country.
You could stand to grow a sense of humor, Amadeus. :razz:
I have a conscience. What does yours say about giving people power on the basis of their race and gender?
Your conscience is telling you to be outraged at American politics? For real?
I am outraged that people are given power based on race and gender, yes. Youre not?
So you're outraged. Why should other people live by your rules?
I didnt say they should. Ive never imposed any rules. Why do you think it is ok to give someone power based on their race and gender?
Cool. You're quite ready to live and let live.
No answer, then?
The evasion is only a sign that you do not want to answer, but I suspect it is to hide a contradiction. The dissonance you feel occurs when two contradictory values are colliding, and I suspect these values are your love of power and party versus your sense of justice. In order to rid yourself of that dissonance you need to align them, either by ridding yourself of one of them, or to continue lying to yourself. The change will occur, but I hope it benefits your sense of justice more than your love of power and party. You only really need one of them.
And you're happy to let Americans live however they like. :up:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1816196970546930079?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
:smirk:
Quoting NOS4A2
We agree for once, NOS. Here in America we've been "outraged" about that since 1619 ... 1701 ... 1787 ... (1791-1804) ... 1857 ... 1896 ... 1954 ... 1963 ... and now in 2024 this "outrage" may culminate again (like 2008) in another (merely symbolic?) step up and forward out of America's white male caste system. TBD.
Hes declined over the years, looked too old, and feeble, and donors were panicking. The polls didnt look great either, even though theyre useless this far out. The Republican attacks would have been too easy after the disaster of a debate. So that was that. Im surprised the pushback was as intense and sustained as it was.
The DNC and their rules arent, and never have been, democratic. Theyre about as democratic as the electoral college. In the end, they and their delegates can do whatever the fuck they want. Biden doesnt have the loyal following that Clownshoes has. The money and the nomination will go up Harris whether Trump and his worshippers like it or not.
Let them scream about democracy they lost all rights to even talk about it back in January of 21. They can pretend to care about it all the want and we have the right to laugh in their faces.
Looks like Kamala Harris is the nominee. So far I'm cautiously optimistic. The campaign ought to concentrate on Trump as not a fit and proper person, as he's obviously not, and also on the legislative wins and prospects for the Biden period. I really do think Harris will run rings around Trump on the debate stage but I wouldn't be surprised if we never see that. Trump has reverted to form, hurling insults and incomprensible grievances. How anyone can think he should be electable will forever be beyond me.
Mr Bee, I saw your post last night. As I processed my news stream today it was "top of mind," as KJP once said. I found six items to help people process the Kamala phenomenon. This did come out a bit long, my apologies in advance.
For the record I lived in the San Francisco bay area since the mid 1970s (no longer there) and have followed her career since before she became DA. I'm a seasoned observer of all things Kamala.
So, six recent stories to put Kam in perspective.
1) Brett Stephens questions the rush to coronation.
In yesterday's New York Times, columnist Bret Stephens wrote an essay titled, Democrats Deserved a Contest, Not a Coronation.
I've heard that some people can't read past the Times paywall, but it always comes up for me. I'll supply some quotes.
Stephens is described by Wikipedia as a conservative, which perhaps mitigates my point a bit. Still, what he has to say is interesting. It gives people permission to think about putting the brakes on the runaway Kamala train.
[quote=BrettStephens]
The last two times Democrats attempted to stage a coronation instead of a contest in choosing a presidential nominee, it did not go well. Not for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Not for Joe Biden this year.
So why would anyone think its a good idea when it comes to Kamala Harris the all but anointed nominee after barely a day?
Maybe the answer is that a competitive process, either before or during the Democratic convention, would have been divisive and bruising. Or that Harriss fund-raising advantages over any potential rival were already insuperable. Or that Democratic Party big shots (though not Barack Obama, at least not publicly yet) genuinely think the vice president is the best candidate to beat the former president.
But the one thing the Democratic Party is not supposed to be is anti-democratic a party in which insiders select the nominee from the top down, not the bottom up, and which expects the rank and file to fall in line and clap enthusiastically. Thats the playbook of ruling parties in autocratic states.
Its also a recipe for failure. The whole point of a competitive process, even a truncated one, is to discover unsuspected strengths, which is how Obama was able to best Clinton in 2008, and to test for hidden weakness, which is how Harris flamed out as a candidate the last time, before even reaching the Iowa caucus. If theres evidence that shes a better candidate now than she was then, she should be given the chance to prove it.[/quote]
A point he makes is that she is a bad manager. Later in the piece he notes:
[quote=Stephens]
The Washington Post reported in December 2021, following a series of high-level staff exits. Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared."[/quote]
She doesn't put in the work. This point will be echoed in my next link.
2) Kam missed an opportunity today to be seen as the next US president by everyone in the world.
Not ready for prime time: Kamala Harris chooses to give a sorority speech over meeting a head of state. This piece is from right-leaning aggregator American Thinker, but it makes some insightful, nonpartisan points.
Israel's prime minister Bibi Netanyahu addressed Congress today. Kamala did not attend.
Many Democrats, particularly those on the left, are upset with Israel at the moment and want to make a point of insulting the leader of one of America's strongest allies. That is their right. About half of Congressional Dems chose not to attend.
But Kamala is running for president. She COULD have risen above her partisanship and seized the opportunity to represent herself as the head of State at a moment when there is a power vacuum at the top. (Biden gave speech tonight. I've seen more convincing hostage videos).
Imagine Kamala had gone to the airport to meet Bibi. If she had, every newspaper in the world would have published a front page photograph of Harris, representing the United States, greeting a close ally. One she has differences with, to be sure ... but she'd be seen as rising above politics to perform the duties of a head of State.
Everyone in the world would have seen her as the acting US president.
Instead, here's what she did. She decided to go express her partisanship and boycott Bibi. Instead, she went off to give a speech to a council of black sororities.
The article makes the point, amplifying the reports that she doesn't put in the work, that she doesn't actually want to be bothered with doing the work of being president. She just wants the title and the perks.
In the end she leaned into the you-go-girl feminism that's driving her recent popularity; at the expense of an incredible missed opportunity to present herself to the world as the acting president of the United States.
She demonstrated her terrible political instincts and her unsuitability to be the leader of the free world. She is not up to the job. She doesn't know what the job is. In her mind she's still a leftist making a political point, not a head of State.
This was a very telling episode to understand Kamala Harris.
3) Jamal Trulove.
A black man in San Francisco was wrongly convicted of a murder. As Wiki puts it:
[quote=Wiki]
After he was framed by police for the 2007 murder of an acquaintance, Trulove was convicted in 2010, sentenced to 50 years to life, and imprisoned for six years.
A California appeals court overturned his conviction in 2014 and he was retried in 2015 and acquitted. In 2016 he sued the city of San Francisco. In April 2018 a jury found the two officers accused of framing him guilty of fabricating evidence and failing to disclose exculpatory evidence. In 2019 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to approve a settlement of $13.1 million.[/quote]
The prosecutor on that case was Kamala Harris.
It's very worth noting that Wikipedia does not mention her involvement in this case. Wouldn't it be useful for readers to know that a candidate for president framed a black man for murder and fought against his exoneration?
That's why Wikipedia is not to be trusted on political issues. You see this kind of thing over and over.
A detailed account of the case appears here. San Francisco Is Paying For Jamal Truloves Wrongful Conviction. Will Kamala Harris?.
[quote=Appeal]
At last weeks Democratic primary debate, Harris rightly won plaudits for confronting Joe Biden on his history of opposing busing. But Harris cannot escape her past as San Francisco DA and California attorney general, which includes wrongful convictions like Truloves and inaction in other cases of law enforcement misconduct, including an informant scandal that consumed the Orange County DAs office and its sheriffs department. If Harris does not reckon with her failures in the criminal legal system, she could find herself in Bidens position at the next debate: defending the indefensible. [/quote]
4) A Facebook meme is going around to the effect that as California Attorney General, Harris put 1500 black men in jail for smoking pot.
In fact-checking this before I repeated it here, I found a "debunking": Misleading claim says Harris jailed 1,500 Black men for marijuana
The article went on to admit that she imprisoned 1974 people for weed ... but that some of them might not have been black men. Some were women or whites.
You call that a debunking?
After she was no longer Attorney General, she told black radio host Charlamagne tha God that "I have. And I inhaled I did inhale. It was a long time ago. But, yes"
That's Harris in a nutshell. When she wants to look tough on crime, she throws pot smokers in prison. When she wants to look cool, she tells a black radio host she smoked weed.
She stands for nothing. She has no beliefs, no principles, and no convictions. She says and does whatever she thinks will bring momentary advantage to her ambition.
5) BLM agrees with Bret Stephens.
People who've followed Harris's career know her record of incarcerating black men. That's why today, Black Lives Matter came out against her un-democratic coronation.
[quote=BlackLivesMatter]
Black Lives Matter demands that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) immediately host an informal, virtual snap primary across the country prior to the DNC convention in August. We call for the Rules Committee to create a process that allows for public participation in the nomination process, not just a nomination by party delegates. The current political landscape is unprecedented, with President Biden stepping aside in a manner never seen before. This moment calls for decisive action to protect the integrity of our democracy and the voices of Black voters.[/quote]
They go on to enumerate complaints similar to ones I've made recently. That the DNC rigged their primaries. That "the DNC Party elites and billionaire donors bullied Joe Biden out of the race."
Black women tend to like Kamala. Black men often don't. I don't have the statistics but there are a lot of black people coming out against Kamala online today. In her disastrous 2020 campaign (that ended in 2019), she polled badly with blacks.
6) Two striking instances of Orwellian retconning of her past.
- A study by GovTrack, "an organization that tracks congressional voting records," showed that in 2019 Kamala Harris was the most liberal Senator.
Today, that web page is gone. "But the web page with the ranking, which was widely covered in news reports during the 2020 election, was recently deactivated. The link now displays a "Page Not Found" message. The Internet Archive shows the page was deleted sometime between July 10 and July 23, with some on X claiming the page was still up on July 22."
- In 2021 Biden had a crisis on the border, the result of his overturning all of Trump's policies that were keeping a lid on the problem. Biden appointed Kamala border czar. She did nothing at all except humiliate herself in an interview with Lester Holt. When he called her on her lie that she'd been to the border, she said "I haven't been to Europe, either." Classic Kamala. Great with a scripted line, but defensive and careless when speaking off the cuff. You know the clip. People were shocked when they saw it. Liberals especially. They had no idea.
The border is therefore a legitimate line of criticism from the Republicans. So what are the leftist media doing? Denying she was ever the border czar. If you claim Kamala was ever the border czar, you're repeating Republican propaganda.
Axios ran a story today (Wednesday) that Harris "never actually had" the title of border czar.
Of course numerous critics quickly pointed out that they had indeed claimed exactly that. Axios said, "After being called out, Axios issued an editors note to acknowledge that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a border czar back in 2021.""
Of course they were not incorrect in 2021. They were caught lying today when they claimed she wasn't the border czar. There are dozens of news videos showing Dem politicians and MSM reporters calling her the border czar at the time.
This Orwellian retconning is exactly what Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, did for a living. He made news accounts of the past conform to the ever-changing party narrative of the present. In the digital age it's all too easy.
Well that's my curated list of Kamala miscellany this evening.
It's possible that Hollywood and the media will sanitize her past, coronate her, and get her over the top. She could win. I still give her a 25% chance. She's having a Brat summer dontcha know.
Or, the Kamala scam could blow up the way the Biden scam did, and the American people will hand the Democrats a defeat for the ages.
In which case they'll blame it on racism and sexism and learn nothing.
As I understand it, he is not quitting the race for any particular reason; only "for the good of democracy." Meaning ignoring the will of fourteen million Democratic primary voters and replacing it with the decision of some Hollywood actors and big party donors.
With respect only to his speech; that is, if you woke up from a year long coma and just saw his speech on tv tonight; why is Biden quitting the race? Can a president really get away with competing in primaries rigged for his nomination; keep insisting to the end that he is running; and then drop out while giving no reason at all?
Are people going to buy this Soviet-level plot? Have we at last come to this?
And then they call Biden a great patriot for gracefully stepping aside for the good of his country. Just like Caesar did.
As I said, if you saw this play out in a corrupt foreign country, you'd call it a coup.
Quoting Echarmion
Not conspiratorial? Perhaps you should look up the word. They stabbed Caesar in public too. That wasn't a coup?
Quoting Echarmion
They rigged their primary to get him nominated. They've been running a scam for three years. It blew up. But he is the legitimately nominated candidate. The insiders threatened him with God knows what, and he gave in. That's a coup.
Quoting Echarmion
So we don't actually have a president, just a figurehead run by an invisible cabal? We all knew that was true, but isn't it significant that this has now been demonstrated in public?
And in a crisis, is there or isn't there an executive decision maker? And who, exactly, is that right now?
It's half a coup. There's no president. This is very unseemly and there are great risks to this country right now. The Dems have arguably committed treason. They didn't lawfully 25A him. They did something unlawful. You want to defend that, knock yourself out.
They won't 25A him. They've just humiliated him, forced him to make a hostage video, and left a huge power vacuum at the top of the government. This could blow up very badly in the next six months.
Never so obvious before. Propping up Biden for four years then swapping him out in a humiliating operation, if someone doesn't want to call it a coup. There will be repercussions from all this that are hard to see at the moment, but they won't be good.
I think we just don't agree on what a coup is. To me, not every power struggle that the incumbent loses is a coup.
To me, a coup is an organised movement using illegal or at least extra legal means to seize power swiftly, creating a fait accompli that pre-empts organised resistance. Usually by isolating the centre of power and preventing it from rallying it's supporters.
The slowly building pressure on Biden under which his campaign ultimately collapsed doesn't fit, imho.
Quoting fishfry
I don't really understand the show of indignation here. I'm sure you didn't just realise that the USA have a huge bureaucratic apparatus and that the president isn't actually required to make day to day decisions?
The cabal is less invisible than ignored. Most people just don't really think about how the government actually runs.
Quoting fishfry
That is a much better question. It's impossible to know without having information from within the "war room". But even being in a situation where you're no longer sure whether the president is still capable of making emergency decisions is bad.
Quoting fishfry
I agree it's unseemly. I'm not as worried though. At the end of the day there have always been weaker and stronger presidents. Under a weak president, power will tend to devolve to the VP, department heads and advisors. The fact that Biden's weakness is age related doesn't in and of itself make it more dangerous.
I remember that everyone agreed that GW Bush was a fucking idiot. But noone called it treason.
Even ultra-lib Joy Reid called it a coup.
Biden was not removed by lawful means.
Quoting Echarmion
If there were a crisis, there's nobody making executive decisions. That's very dangerous for all of us.
Quoting Echarmion
Glad you take my point.
Quoting Echarmion
I'm glad you're not worried.
Quoting Echarmion
Cheney and the neocons arguably committed treason. Many said so at the time. And if they didn't, they should have.
Which law was broken?
He wasnt removed at all. He decided not to run.
Im not particularly swayed by the euphoria sorrounding Harris today. Lets see how it plays out over the weeks and months ahead (although theres not that many of them.) I think it is true to say that its the politics of hope against the politics of hate and fear. All Trump has, is hate and fear. Harris is a psychopath, the country is being overrun by Mexican rapists, Democrats are radical communists. He has nothing positive to say - no policies, no ideas, no real platform. In the end it will probably come down to the progressive/diversity vote vs the scared old white guys vote (which is why the Republicans have been frantically gerrymandering the last ten years). But I hope and believe the former will have the numbers in the end.
:up:
If Harris does make a major misstep in the next few weeks, I wonder who the powers that be will replace her with so that I can know who to vote for. I think the total vote count for the candidate of the party that hails itself as the protector of democracy is zero, as in exactly zero people voted for her to be the Democratic nominee.
What happened has nothing to do with love for country and selflessness. It has to do with the Democrats having selected Biden as the nominee, blocking any other candidate from running against him, denying he had become mentally incompetent over objections by the right, finally being exposed and realizing they couldn't win with him, and then forcing him out and finding someone they thought might be able to win.
I'm not saying anything positive about the Republicans here. I'm just refusing to pretend that some higher ideals drove the Democrats, that there is anything particularly democratic about the Democrats, or that either side is interested in anything other than maintaining power.
You're going to vote Democrat?
I don't even see why being President would be in Biden's interests. It's a lot of work and responsibility. Retirement is the much better option.
At least in Trump's case it benefits him because he can then try to pardon himself of his crimes, or at least shut down all his prosecutions.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/banned_bill/status/1816581620704641271?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1816863742899925370?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Is a strong interest in keeping a scumbag out of power, the same as an interest in maintaining power?
I know theyre going to win the election. The rigging and cheating has already begun. Not a single person has voted for Harris and shes already the nominee.
Ive been doing the same thing for years, but now its entertaining. Now you feel the need to fake laugh about it for some reason. Is something wrong, Benkei?
The cracks are emerging. That feeling in your brain is the cognitive dissonance. Its when two contradictory values collide. You know whats going on is wrong but you dont want to admit it because it makes your tribe look bad, so naturally, you try to deflect it on someone else. But thats your body telling you to quit lying. The stress of it all is too much. It isnt healthy. Its ok to let it go.
What talk?
If you need someone to talk to, let me know. Youre not alone.
Says the Trump worshipper. No self awareness whatsoever.
Trump is a tribe. You heard it here first.
Could Trump replace JD Vance? Experts explain how it would work
Trumps Shortest-Term Official Predicts When J.D. Vance Is Out
I Hope Trump Kept the Receipt
Can Trump Replace JD Vance As Kamala Harris Gains Momentum? Experts Warn It Could Be 'Extraordinarily Disruptive
Polls Show Vance Is Deeply Unpopular Could the RNC Remove Him From the Ticket?
So no one has actually talked about replacing him.
No, whatever you sayweird speculation derived from Anthony Scarammuci?
It's that Vance's approval rating sucks and he doesn't balance the ticket. People think it was a mistake. Trump isn't known for loyalty, so maybe he'll ditch the guy.
I wonder if Vance, at the behest of the donor class and GOP apparatchiks, will pull a coup on him and take over his campaign.
Not likely.
He didnt. As predicted. Right back to the old self.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/potus/status/1817926652388905079?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
This sounds like something a cat lady would say. Do you have a cat?
You cant keep me out of your head, cant you?
Cat lady.
Hopefully its not a fatal attraction.
I have no idea what that means
It means youre approaching stalker territory.
Sorry. I was just bored.
Im just kidding, frank. What do you think about Bidens proposal?
Well, having no term limits on the SCOTUS means that it reflects the way Americans have been voting over the span of a generation or so. That's the reason the Court is now so conservative, because Americans have leaned conservative for several decades. Historically, it works for us to have that temporal anchor. Democracy can be flighty, so it's nice to have built-in drags on the mob.
I wouldn't change it just because we're irritated by where we landed with the court. For democracy to work, you need to have a little faith in it.
That's also true with trading. Once you settle on a strategy, you need to have the discipline to let your strategy work. Sometimes you lose, even with a good strategy. You have to accept that and think about the long term
The reason the Court is now so conservative is because McConnell blocked Obama's nominee and Trump, who lost the popular vote, went with the Federalist Society's recommendations.
According to Politico:
According to the Pew Research Center, favorable views of the Supreme Court have fallen to an historic low.
Quoting frank
The Founders worked to prevent a tyranny of the majority, but a tyranny of the minority can be just as dangerous. And when lifetime appointments reflect the will of that minority we are all dragged down by a mob calling itself "patriots" and "the people".
A term limit of 10 or 15 years combined with staggered start dates seems long enough to counteract changing whims.
What's 'the average American' in a two-party system? The undecide centrist?
Thats a good take, thanks.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/461370
Could you explain how misinformation works? Is it supposed to be picked up by bots? Is it supposed to become part of a cloud of misinformation so that people don't trust anything anymore?
It doesnt work. Those with some modicum of governing power use the phrase as an excuse to censor information, which does work. But it does have some technical use insofar as it distinguishes between various types of information, for instance false info, knowingly false info with intent to mislead, and so on.
Survivor of an FBI entrapment case, more like it. It was planned by paid FBI informants. More deep state crooks elevated by deep state dupes.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2022/4/13/23023950/michigan-governor-gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-plot-acquittal-fbi-entrapment-jacob-sullum-column
https://theintercept.com/2024/03/06/gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-informant/
:lol: The only "deep state" is Project 2025 (i.e. The Heritage Foundation + The Federalist Society). Take your meds, dude. Roevember is coming! :victory:
Spread the propaganda as far and wide as you can, friend. But one day youll get tired of being lied to. Count on it.
Two women on the ticket is, unfortunately, a loser.
LOL. Like Caesar decided not to be head of the Roman empire.
Where do you get such nonsense? Seriously, you actually believe what you wrote? That Biden, the great statesman, woke up and decided not to run of his own volition? At the end of the USSR, the people stopped believing Pravda. You still believe.
Famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has reported that Obama called Biden and told him that Kamala was on board using the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.
Hersh's Substack is behind a paywall, but his information has been widely repeated.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/obama-instigated-anti-biden-coup-25th-amendment-threat-sy-hersh-reports
https://thepostmillennial.com/seymour-hersh-obama-and-kamala-threatened-to-invoke-the-25th-amendment-on-biden-before-he-dropped-out#google_vignette
https://x.com/RandyEBarnett/status/1818033920845431113
Hersh's original paywalled article is here.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/leaving-las-vegas
Quoting 180 Proof
IMO, not "a loser" versus two misogynists who advocate a National Abortion Ban (i.e. criminalizing women's reproductive healthcare) if elected.
At some point his public speaking style changed from that of a fifth grader struggling to do a report on a book he had not read to that of a third rate comic doing borscht belt shtick.
Unfortunately Seymour Hersh has been on a downward trend for 10 years now, with increasingly fanciful takes on events which, unlike his previous work, have not later been corroborated. I would not take his word as gospel these days.
I take your point that Hersh, for all his achievements, has had some misfires over the years. He's certainly no spring chicken. He broke the story of the My Lai massacre in 1969.
I mentioned Hersh to show that there is an alternative narrative in the news to @Wayfarer's claim, stated as fact though it's nothing of the kind, that Biden left of his own free will.
But I don't need Hersh to make my point. Biden was forced out. Wayfarer's claim that "He wasnt removed at all. He decided not to run," is opinion, not fact. And on its face, it's not even a particularly well-informed opinion. The facts reported by the mainstream outlets like the NYT and WaPo support the forced out narrative.
Following the debate debacle, first the low-level Dems came out against Joe. Then George Clooney. I don't remember voting for George Clooney to be the arbiter of when the duly nominated candidate may be shoved aside. But he looks good on camera and speaks words written by others. Good enough for me.
Then the big dogs, Jeffries and Schumer. And in the end, the REALLY big dogs. Pelosi and Obama. And Joe finally gave in.
If he even did give in. On Saturday he reiterated that he was dug in and staying. Then they announced he had covid. There were unconfirmed reports that he suffered a medical emergency.
Then on Sunday someone posted to X a letter bearing a signature clearly not Biden's, saying he was dropping out of the race. And then a few minutes later another letter endorsing Kamala.
Can we even convince ourselves that he knew he was dropping out? More likely they posted the letters then presented Joe the facts of life as a fait accompli.
Five days then go by with no sighting. Then he shows up for his 11 minute hostage video. And since then, if what little we've seen of Biden is supposed to constitute proof of life, I would not pay the ransom.
The day after the greatest humiliation of his political life, his wife flits off to Paris to lead the US Olympic delegation. She's been all over the news cozying up to hunky athletes and hobnobbing with the Macrons and the other beautiful people.
And we're supposed to sit back and accept all this. The Democrats do, but that's only because they've abandoned their critical thinking in favor of momentary political gain.
I think it's perfectly fair to say Joe was forced out. I don't claim to know what really happened behind the scenes. Only that the evidence that's been reported supports what Josh Hammer, writing in Newsweek, called a "bloodless coup."
[quote=Newsweek]
The Democratic Party ruling class's bloodless coup of their own democratically elected presidential nominee, who also happens to be the nominal sitting president of the United States, is one of the most astonishing political developments of my lifetime. Joe Biden, though clearly physically and mentally impaired, has sought the presidency for quite literally longer than I have been alive. Biden had been defiant ever since the June 27 presidential debate debacle that he was not going anywhere, despite overwhelming pressure from party elites and sycophantic media lapdogs demanding he do precisely that. He has a Lady Macbeth-like wife who craves power, and he has a felonious son in desperate need of a presidential pardon.
[/quote]
https://www.newsweek.com/bloodless-coup-joe-biden-will-not-work-out-well-democrats-opinion-1930493
Overwhelming pressure from party elites and sycophantic media lapdogs. That's what it means that Joe was forced out. Whether there was a little good-old fashioned extortion at the end, and exactly what that extortion consisted of, seems beside the point.
I did say earlier that Biden's exit was not by "lawful means." I retract that. It was lawful. At least they didn't give him the Julius Caesar treatment on the floor of the Senate. Unless they already have and we just don't know it. Perhaps Wayfarer was only reacting to that over-statement of mine, in which case he's right. But he said, "He wasnt removed at all. He decided not to run."
Nobody believes that.
And not that it matters, what with a hot war between Israel and Hezbollah about to break out ... but where's the President? Who's minding the store? And why isn't anyone but me worried?
You think Anthony Blinken has a freaking clue? You're more sanguine than I.
DonOLD The Clown adjudicated¹ ra[c/p]ist, MAGA-GOP candidate for "dictator-for-a-day" who is very afraid of a much younger & stronger, incredibly smarter, and charismatic black woman (who happens to be the current VPOTUS) and too chickenshit must be them ol' "bonespurs" to debate her in the fall.
¹1973 & 2023 respectively
Roevermber is coming for you, Bonespurs! :victory: :mask:
:100: Exactly.
The worst is they lied and covered for Bidens condition for years. So not only did they nullify the primaries and deny the votes of tens of millions of people with their palace coup, they did so only because they couldnt keep up the charade any longer.
Votes and elections and so-called democratic institutions mean very little to them in principle. Its probably why they dropped the threat to democracy schtick and went with calling their opponents weird. But remember all this when they avail you of the sanctity of elections.
I think that one works. It doesn't come off as bullying because Trump is such a bully himself. Plus it's true, Trump and JD are weird.
I dont think it sticks because it implies those who say it are in some way normal. For instance they just had a whites-only Harris rally. The years of child-sniffing and gender ideology and hoaxes kind of renders it hilarious.
But the speed with which the phrase was downloaded and installed in pliant brains was quite extraordinary. Its like Skynet.
You're right on both counts. It highlights the way Harris is normal compared to Trump and Vance. And it's catchy. Trump is probably secretly applauding it. It's something he'd be proud of.
The whole weird thing was fine, coming out of Waltzs mouth. Now that its become a thing, its cringey and pathetic.
It was awesome. The rude journo, recycling DNC talking points, was roundly handled and came off looking like a sour apparatchik. The other two were at least professional. But the whole thing was sabotage from the get-go, and it made them and their organization look like a shit-show. Kamala avoided it like the plague.
At any rate, nativists and racists would be unhappy about Trumps statements.
I'm sorry, but in a normal candidate, this might make sense, but Trump spews nasty rhetoric every day of his public life, when someone calls him out on it, he shouldn't act as if he doesn't deserve to be called out. Ridiculous. I would have supported you if it was your average politician, but then again, the amount of vitriol read back to that person would not be the same in the first place, so wouldn't even be an issue.
Politicians use critical rhetoric against their opponents all the time, and rightfully so. Personally I see nothing wrong with it, especially when it's defensive in nature, as it was against most of the comments she mentions, painted as they were in identity politics. Of course if one wants bromides, platitudes, and euphemisms he can find another politician.
Journalism is meant to inform us, not to repeat an opponents criticism or otherwise engage in the politics of a guest's opponents. That wasn't what was going on with that one particular journo. What she did was campaign for the opposition, using their own talking points, in an effort to smear her guest. The journalist in the middle was far more graceful in both insult and substance, both subduing Trump and asking him questions he seemingly could not answer, and making him look rather silly in the process. But because of the organization's failures we, as listeners, were robbed of any fruitful info because of it. At least we got the show, though.
Yeah, Trump's rhetoric is just "normal" political rhetoric. No difference in content or style whatsoever from other US politicians running in the last 60 years or so :roll:.
Quoting NOS4A2
But it's not, do I have to do one of those montages of all of his "rallys"?
Quoting NOS4A2
Yeah, what it was "identifying" was Trump's use of identity politics ;).
Quoting NOS4A2
Or how about just a politician and not a crazy juvenile-sounding name-calling reality show host/failed real estate celebrity using xenophobic/bigotted language to whip up his base?
Quoting NOS4A2
In this case, it's informing us of Trump's rhetoric and why some might take offense to it, understandably. Of course he can get away with anything, right? As long as he pivots and says "I love (put identity group here)". As long as he does that anything he says before that is okie dokie, is that right?
Quoting NOS4A2
Trump's whole existence is about smearing. Obama wasn't born a US citizen, if you remember? Now Kamala is not half black? WTF? Trump is above identity politics. Sure is.
Quoting NOS4A2
Well, that shouldn't be hard, he is a silly, unserious person. Frankly, any journalist should be able to make him look silly.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, any other politician, probably a fair point. He acts like a belligerent asshole, who is reckless with his rhetoric, he should be treated like one.
Yeah, thats definitely what it looks like. :rofl:
"And when [DJT] attacks, he reveals a bit of himself; and what we saw was an elderly, obese, orange-tinted racist with a comb-over." ~Steve Schmidt, Never Trumper & former GOP campaign official :up:
Yeah, keep running your trashy, gutter mouth, DonOLD The Clown. :sweat:
Roevember is coming! :victory: :mask:
"This" meaning the post I wrote? Or the Newsweek article I quoted? Unclear whether I need to defend what I think, or what Newsweek thinks. Suffice to say many observers saw Biden get shoved aside by an intra-party coup, or a "palace coup," as some described it. Of course not a violent or government-changing coup. So a soft coup. I can live with that. The word coup seems to bother you, I don't know why. You saw the same escalating pressure on Biden that I did. You saw that he was dug in right up to the Saturday before the Sunday he dropped out. You saw that his announcement was posted to X, was accompanied by no public statement or even a photograph, and bore a signature arguably not Biden's.
You saw him disappear for five days. You saw his 11 minute hostage video, full of platitudes about democracy and the good of the country. And since then we've barely seen him at all. Like I say, if that's all we get in the way of proof of life, I ain't payin' the ransom.
You can spin this all you want as "statesman Joe" being a great patriot. That's the public face of a nasty back room business. Anyone with eyes and a knowledge of history and politics knows that.
Quoting Benkei
Democracy has many meanings. Democracy as in the vote of the people, or an abstract word casually applied to our political system. But we are not a direct democracy, we are a representative democracy. Our system is designed as a Constitutional republic, a Federal system of (in principle) autonomous states with rights and powers that sometimes supersede those of the Federal government.
Of course you know all this. You are playing fast and loose with the word democracy as if it's a talisman against anyone who holds a different opinion.
Quoting Benkei
He won fourteen million primary votes. He won over 3800 delegates, to his collective opponents' 43 or so. He had twice the number of delegates needed to win the nomination.
Kamala Harris, by contrast, got zero delegates when she was forced, by lack of popularity, out of the 2020 primaries before the elections even began. She did not run in the 2024 primaries, which were rigged for Biden, only for the Dems to shove him aside when they could no longer hide his cognitive troubles.
It's not only Republicans and fallen liberals like myself who see the irony of the Democrats bleating about "democracy," when they so profoundly fail to exemplify it. It's like the line in the film Patton, where George C. Scott as Patton says, "We defend democracy here, we don't practice it." But he was talking about the Army. The Democratic party does not do democracy. They swindled their voters in 2016, as even Biden pointed out recently; saying that he could have beaten Trump, and that Hillary, whom the party insiders elevated against the will of the voters, couldn't. And didn't.
They swindled their voters again in 2020 with the Clyburn deal, elevating Biden over several more popular liberals.
Here's Barrons. Harris Skipped the Primaries. Was It Undemocratic?.
It's an opinion piece. I don't claim they're right or wrong. Only that prominent observers see what I see, and ask the same questions. I have no investment in these links, they just popped up near the top when I put in my keywords about democracy and the coronation of Kamala.
Here's a legal site with a provocative title on-topic to our conversation:
Confused Appeals to Democracy, the Surprisingly Strong Harris Candidacy, and a Fair Assessment of Biden
Confused appeals to democracy. Exactly what you just did. Kamala's ascent was anything but democratic. It's you who "barely understands what a democracy is ..." if you think there was anything democratic about the Biden/Kamala swapout. Not to mention the ascension of Biden in 2020 with his basement campaign and three and a half years of gaslighting the country about his deteriorating (and for the record, tragic) cognitive health.
Quoting Benkei
Haha. I admire your pluck in pressing a point that I personally know to be absurd.
But tell me, why do you bother to insist on the point? The Dems won. Everyone thought they had an insoluble Biden problem on their hands. They moved Biden out and the party and the mainstream media fell into line. Saint Kamala it is.
And Trump, I'm the first one to admit, has been stumbling lately. That "Kamala's not black" line was a freaking disaster. The man is his own worst enemy. Likewise Vance, he's also a disaster. It's a highly gendered election and Vance is very nasty towards women. Trump and Vance are busy repelling the centrist voters they need to attract. It's as if they didn't get the memo that the primaries are over and that the general election is about winning the center.
So Benkei, your side won this round. Kamala's ascendent and Trump is struggling to regain his footing.
We don't know how long this will last, and how exogenous events (Israel-Iran war, anyone?) will affect the race.
But in the past two weeks the Dems are kicking the GOP's butt. You should be happy. Give it a rest. You don't like the word coup, so be it. You think Biden was a statesman who willingly stepped aside, I say he all but got a shiv in the back; and for all we know, he got one for real.
So be happy, allow me to call a coup a coup. It won't do you any good to say it wasn't, because it was. Bloodless coup, palace coup, intra-party coup, soft coup. But a coup, regardless.
If you disagree, that's ok. Be happy, you won the last two weeks of the news cycle.
By the way, when's your gal Kam going to hold a press conferene or sit for an interview? 11 days and counting. She does scripted appearances with Megan Thee Stallion. You go girl.
I yearn for the American people to punish the Democratic party for the fraud they've perpetrated on us these past four years. It's not going to happen.
Quoting NOS4A2
They're hardly in a position to talk about democracy! And of course the weird line is stupid, but if they repeat it often enough it might stick with some voters. Politics is a dirty business and the Dems are united with new found enthusiasm and hope. Solving their Biden problem has energized them incredibly. Trump and Vance are back on their heels. They better smarten up soon or it's going to be president Kamala.
Finally, I didn't appeal to it being democratic but that it would've been a breach of trust by the Democratic Party to let a doorknob run for the presidency. Learn to read.
I didn't say it was necessarily bad. Clearly it's been a big win for the Democratic party. Every coup is bad for the coup-ee and good for the coup-er. Julius Caesar had a bad day, but the fifty Roman senators who conspired against him were no doubt pleased with their handiwork.
I already conceded that nothing illegal happened.
You are locked in to the word. I'll leave you to it.
Quoting Benkei
I'm getting dizzy just watching you spin.
Power shifted like Mario Andretti at the Indy 500. Biden had and still has many supporters among the Democrats. They got shafted along with his fourteen million primary voters. They've had to go along with the coup now that it's a done deal; but they are not necessarily happy about it.
Quoting Benkei
Then why did they promote someone whose door knobitude was already evident in 2019? That's how long this breach of trust, this massive fraud on the American people, has been going on. And they only did something about it because their little fraud blew up in their faces. Else it would still be going on.
You are impute virtue to the Democrats in this corrupt charade? You don't even believe what you're writing. It's all partisan spin.
Quoting Benkei
You were blathering about democracy a couple of posts back. I do read what you write. Perhaps you should.
What power of authority did Biden have as the presumptive nominee at the exclusion of everybody else? None. He had no power as presumptive nominee especially if at the convention, entirely in line with democratic party rules, his nomination could be taken. The appeal to his primary votes are irrelevant as party rules are also what they voted for. In fact, within their vote is included the possibility the nominee cancels their candidacy, drops dead, becomes ill, mad, is assinated or removed in accordance with party rules.
The only reason so many people like you are making such a huge issue about it is myopic politics. This is simply not a big deal and anybody who keeps insisting on it make a living out of having dumb opinions.
I think my problem with this is that it implies that Biden had power or control taken away from him. Which in this context (since he's still the President) could only mean his power within the party.
But to me it looks more like Biden's power within his party had been on a downward trajectory for several months, which probably is why he did the early debate in the first place. Which then just rapidly accelerated the collapse of his constituency within the party.
Quoting fishfry
Is there evidence for this?
Quoting fishfry
What's the argument here? That Biden is dead? Held hostage in some secret facility? They replaced him with a body double?
Are we really in ancient aliens territory here?
Quoting fishfry
And what would the democratic move have looked like?
Quoting fishfry
If that's the argument, then neither are republicans after all the undemocratic shit they pulled since at least Obama's presidency.
But usually we call this "whataboutism", since your opponent's faults don't entitle you to repeat them.
I see nothing wrong with a firebrand, and in fact prefer them. And the argument there are or were no firebrands in American politics is simply false. But your complaints about name-calling and smearing is betrayed when you seem quite comfortable with the smearing and name-calling yourself, and in Trumpian fashion no less. So whats really the problem? Something else must be bothering you.
My guess is you are yearning for the placating platitudes, euphemisms, and bromides that tend to lull the public to sleep. It serves to disguise a politicians actual thoughts and intentions behind an opaque cloud of political play-acting, so that they may get away with murder or convince you to war. This sort of language is designed so that you dont have to think about politics, so its no strange wonder that one might resent when he sees its opposite. Its the kind of rhetoric that makes Orwell turn in his grave, and the daily Two Minutes Hate we see at little shows like that one make it all the more egregious.
Isnt this so? Or is it something else?
Firebrand? What do you mean by that? You can have politicians with enthusiasm with out being race-baiters, promote conspiracies and misinformation if elections don't go your way (thus destroying the very platform of government itself), and violent rhetoric (bloodbath if you don't win..). Yeah there's being a fiery, inspiring speaker, and there's being a juvenile hack that barks out loud the (previously) less pronounced alt-right echo chambers.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yeah the major difference is I AM NOT RUNNING FOR OFFICE. :lol:. Yeah, if I was running for office, I wouldn't be speaking in public speeches like a casual debater from a relatively obscure internet forum.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's called decorum and there was a reason these norms came about. It allows for shared space of differences without leading to inflammatory rhetoric that gets increased until it tears the system itself apart.
Quoting NOS4A2
If you are saying there should be more transparency for decision making in executive actions and legislative policy (as well as financial aspects of interest groups and campaigns), then I am totally in agreement. But do not make the false equivalency that this kind of systemic transparency is the same as carnival barker/inflammatory rhetoric. Also, just because Trump OPENLY tries to break or subvert the system (asking for votes, promoting pressure for Pence to throw the votes out, etc.), doesn't make the corruption any better! His one trick is to do the quiet part out loud and shock the people into daring to stop him. Luckily, they did and are trying to.. except for the immunity given to the office of President so that he can get away with whatever he wants.
Quoting NOS4A2
You mean like Orwellian ideas like "If I lose, then the election was corrupt" or kissing up to dictators as an international relations strategy? You mean the pithy slogans like "Lock her up!", and "Trump Derangement Syndrome"? This is all laughable rhetorical strategies that work for a segment of the population that has been primed from the 80s/90s by other carnival barkers like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, and almost all of Fox News apparatus.
Oh yes all the talking points have returned. You almost got all of them fit into one post. Bravo.
Don't you all realize how petty this shit is compared to actual things that are happening in the world as a result of your out-of-control government?
This thread is a living testament to how "they" win.
And before you ask who "they" are: have you ever wondered where all these wars keep coming from that no one ever asked for and were part of neither party's campaign?
poor innocent haniyeh :cry:
murdered by those evil zionists :rofl:
But to respond seriously to your remark: Imagine paying people for that. Propaganda lesson #1 is to get people emotionally invested to such an extent that they will parrot bullshit willingly.
Great speech. :clap: Now back to the endless apologetics for the Trump cult.
Not a shred of irony detected.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/02/us/harris-trump-election
Oh joy.
Interesting you took offense...
Are you the expert then? Is this admission ;)?
I guess I'm asking, what are you talking about? My comments to @NOS4A2? The irony of the meta-narrative here...
The old narrative of not being (at least openly!) narcissistic, non-empathetic, authoritarian, xenophobic, etc. and holding some decorum...
The new framework that has been "normalized" under Trump (@NOS4A2's odd brand of propaganda).
The CON- that the old narrative is "parroting bullshit" willingly, because "as we all should know now" the Trump new framework is just the way it is now, and ironically asking for the old framework is extremely regressive, because it asks for politicians to have civility and normalized leadership styles for a world leader (one that doesn't act like a carnival barking petty-dictator/cult leader).
Yeah Trumps rhetoric is normal shit a leader should be saying :ok:.
If nothing else, his association in trying to find any way to thwart election results and peaceful transfer of power should give you pause. But I know, I know, Im just parroting the clearly biased left wing media, even though as you look into it more and more, even though he literally needed immunity from the Supreme Court to give him an out :lol:. What a joke.
Right, contesting an election is wrong in your strange world or at least only when Donald Trump does it. Yeah, the Supreme Court had to shut down a politicized Justice Department and prove the unconstitutionality of their politicized indictments, but its all Trumps fault.
Right, because organizing fake slates of electors, organizing (but with just enough plausible deniability!) violent mobs at the capitol to pressure the VP to do the right thing and making an openly blatant call to Georgias SoS to find him votes and overturn the election results have nothing to do with Trump. Nothing to see at all, right?
Find illegal votes because he was concerned about illegal activity, like a president ought to be. Democrats objected to Trumps election first by trying to impose faithless electors, and also by claiming Trump was working for the Kremlin. Their constituents took over entire cities, and burned many to the ground, including laying siege to the whitehouse. All of this of course passes your norm test, Im sure, but if course I never saw you raise any objection.
That's because Democrats are always heavily armed.
Trump killed 14 people in South Dakota.
They were. four shootings and several alleged sexual assaults in the span of weeks.
Plus they looted several Walmarts, sneaking away with large amounts of baby diapers.
The man said OUTRIGHT before the election that if he loses it will be because of fraud. He literally said what he was going to do before anything happened, and then DID IT. He did everything out in the open. He pulled one over on you with his neat trick ;).
So when he asked for the votes, it wasn't just that he was voicing "concern" over (in that case, boo-hoo, and so what), it was the nature of his request to overturn the election results. When the wording is "find him some votes- 11,700), he is a man in search of a desperate ploy to get as much as needed to win and subvert the system. I can't imagine even Nixon would do something that blatant!
The "faithless electors" thing is a non-issue being that it was not supported or carried out by Democratic leadership in 2016, if that's what you are talking about. There was also no coordination with attempting to not recognize the legitimate electors for fake ones. And with this case there's more a few moving parts with the conspiracy to defraud the public from a position of power in the federal government.
As far as election collusion with Russia, not only was Trump asking Russia to help him publically, but even the Muller Report pointed out people in his campaign like Paul Manafort directly having ties with Russia, even if the supposed "Steele Dossier" was incorrect. That is to say, why was he even dealing with the Russians at all in this campaign, being that, you know, Russia is not on friendly terms with the US, and it is a CLEAR conflict of interest in sharing things like internal polling data to people associated with the Kremlin.
As for the violence regarding the BLM situation, I am actually against any violence that rioters were doing in the name of the cause, especially when the cause itself is regarding violence. I am with MLK's non-violence strategy regarding this. Clear destruction of property doesn't help anyone's cause. However, all that being said, it is a false equivalency to to say that the BLM movement was subverting the democratic process, rather than various protest groups protesting a social cause.
:rofl:
:up:
It was very easy to predict that Trump, if he lost, would claim it was stolen. Hes been doing it since Ted Cruz won Iowa.
And he only lost the popular vote in 16 because of millions of illegal votes, of course.
Imagine believing this stupid shit? I thought the Russia thing was silly, but this takes the cake. Especially from those who are quick to agree about the Russian narrative being silly.
A "Black job"? Madame POTUS ...
Roevember is coming! :victory: :mask:
I myself just try to talk some sense into people. It is a thankless job that I wish I got paid for. :lol:
IMO the best alternative to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (from the short list of "six prospective running-mates" according to press reports) is Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Of course, the Harris campaign has nothing to worry about selecting her running-mate since almost any elected mouth-breather with a working brain will embarrass the hell out of MAGA Mini-me Vance ...
:smirk:
I read in The Hill a few years ago that 65% of girls in US high schools and colleges declare to be "progressive", whereas only 28% of boys do that.
This thing has started to trouble me a little, since in my family I know that we share similar opinions regardless of gender. We are all leftists and once upon a time I was the only theist/religious in my family, till that day when I became a copy of my parents: another proud agnostic.
So I guess I need to go back to high school in order to find out how come gender will have a saying on one's probability to be a democrat or a republican, a theist or an agnostic, etc.
Do schools nowadays (and/or social media) have more impact on young people than their own parents? I don't know how kids are brought up in other parts of this planet, but in Europe and US (which I know enough) I thought parents do not tell sons different stories from those they tell their daughters.
So it is a big puzzle to me how sisters and brothers do not think the same anymore. Are parents the real educators of their kids nowadays? I really can't imagine a mom telling her daughter Kamala is great and then telling her son Donald is great.
Good point Rogue Al, but I think is true for certain countries. In the US the suicide rate for men is four times greater than for women (biggest difference in the whole world I think). In Asia and Africa there are countries where the suicide rates between men and women are different and there may be a few countries where female suicides slightly surpass those of men (maybe Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, but I am not sure on this).
Lately, I have started thinking that something might be really rotten with schools and social media. It seems that females and males are targeted differently by education, models, ads, electoral campaigns, policies, etc., to come to this outcome where a brother may be "far-right" and his sister "anti-fascist".
I respect people's choices, but someone needs to convince me that gender should play a role in this. From history books I know that certain cultures had different rules for women and different rules for men, but I also know that communist and fascist regimes (and all religions) had equal support among women and men, insofar as both women and men were "educated" properly by these regimes.
I'm an elementary school teacher, and I can tell you the education system was not designed for boys. I incorporate a lot of breaks throughout the day because I know my boys need to get up and move. I've been criticized for this my whole career. I'm told I should teach "bell to bell", but I'm tenured, so fuck those people. I do what I want. My school even banned football, because it led to fighting. I let my boys do it on the sly.
So, I think right from the start, boys sort of know the education system is biased against them. But before I go any further, I want to see if you agree with me that support for someone like Trump is an aberration that needs to be explained. That to a "normal" person (however we define that) someone like Trump is loathsome and reviled.
Quoting Eros1982
In places where women have not reached parity with men, I would expect the suicide rate of women to be much higher. Who wants to live as a second-class citizen?
Very interesting. To the best of my knowledge there is one single country in the western world that has accepted that "traditional elementary schools" are failing boys and that country is Finland. Finland, to the best of my knowledge, is thinking seriously to make a few reforms so that elementary schools will stop failing boys.
Quoting RogueAI
I see your point here. Although a leftist, I do not agree with all the ways democrats have chosen to keep power and I have seen so many times that they shift priorities after they come in office. I am a green-new-deal supporter (in general, not in every detail), but I saw how Biden administration did nothing in that direction, I saw how black lives did not improve within four years, and I saw that gun violence did not fade. So, I support some democrats, but I consider it really weird when some young women ask me what I think about Trump, before they make any other questions. That really makes me ask if I am living in George Orwell's 1984, where everyone uses newspeak and is brainwashed time after time :) And Orwell, to the best of my knowledge, was a leftist too, but he was courageous enough to see how ideology may take a turn towards the darkest sides.
Since I vote democrats (sometimes) for a few causes I consider good (not for all the causes democrats say are good), I personally would never mock a person for voting Trump (cause I don't know all the reasons why he makes Trump important, as he doesn't know all my reasons for voting some democrats).
But we are living in strange times and the strangest of all things is having so many young people to believe that other people will love and educate them better than their own families.
I have been surprised with CNN, the Guardian, NY Times and a few liberal outlets that seem to have forgotten what they used to write about Kamala Harris just three or two years ago. Whereas three years ago all these outlets seemed to agree that something is really wrong with Kamala Harris (she had a few scandals in her office, she was eclipsed by Biden, she made gaffes and there were times none knew her whereabouts in the White House), now all these liberal outlets post only positive things on Harris and do not make any references to their own old posts about her.
Does any democrat here feel good with that? I mean it seems as CNN, The Guardian, NY Times, etc., have forgotten their older articles on Kamala Harris. Is that normal for you guys or is just the way journalists use to do their work?
(I remember well, by the way, in 2011 when The NY Times ran an article were some Syrians praised ISIS for doing better work in their town than Bashar Al-Asad!!! Just six months or so after that article, I heard again about ISIS. This time isis invaded Iraq and started making videos with human heads being cut. So, I guess that ISIS article in the NY Times, in 2011 or 2012, was a good example of never being enthusiastic about the people these outlets will praise. I better wait to see Kamala in her debates with Trump, before deciding if she deserves my vote.)
My fuckin' hero! :clap: :cool:
Quoting Eros1982
I think so. However, are both parents in the home? or in the daily lives of their children? Are the parents mature, stable, healthy, educated? or immature, unstable, addicts/drunks, mis/un-educated? Are they sectarian or secular? bigoted or cosmopolitan? Is the home run by a single mother raising boys? Etcetera ...
My guess is, having been neither a parent nor teacher, that schools and social media only reinforce, even amplify, what the parental / family home cultivates in children in the first place. Just like getting drunk doesn't make people a-holes, alcohol only takes away the sober inhibition to expose their a-holery. Reactionary culture and politics, imo, is like booze and "boys" learn to be resentful a-holes to a social order increasingly stabilized by 'pro-female' policies and institutions not unlike the single mother / wife-dominated households they were (mis)raised in.
In contemporary (US) society there are at least three institutions in particular which, again imo (never having belonged to any of them myself), mostly tend to (but do not always) feminize males: religion, marriage & prison. Not (primarily) schools though RogueAI might disagree. Thus, males react violently against the first two and embrace the pack-animal, alpha dominance of the third (à la gang / thug-life ... or as enlisted military).
According to exit polls, in 2016 & 2020 more women overall voted for The Clown than against him. In 2022, those same women lost their reproductive healthcare rights; whether or not they still like The Clown, I'm confident most will against him this year to get back what was taken from them, their daughters and even their granddaughters.
That said, some "sons" want a surrogate daddy to rule the country the way their absentee or divorcee fathers did not rule their single mom-dominated homes. Quite a few "sons" are easily triggered by their deep-seated "mommy-issues" which is why jackbooted reaction appeals to many of them as a cartoon-masculine, hyper-caffinated, faux-expression of manhood (e.g. alt-right, incel misogyny & homophobia).
Quoting Eros1982
This hypocrisy doesn't bother me at all because Kamala Harris in fact, any (moderate) neoliberal candidate for president is not the clear and present danger to US national security, the constitutional rule of law, all civil rights & the US economy, so the proper emphasis should be on promoting whomever can/will eliminate that danger: DonOLD The NeoFascist Clown.
Roevember is coming! :victory: :mask:
This was the most funny part. It sounds like an abortionist revolution being cooked behind the curtail lol
With regard to the other things you said, the only difference between genders in my view is volume, nothing else.
Democrats are right in saying gender does not matter, but they are wrong in using gender in order to gain votes (and they are wrong in implying that genes do not matter as well). History and science can verify that only volume divides the genders, but in the case of genes, that's a kind of prohibited debate at this moment. In the future maybe people and scientists will feel more free to discuss genes.
If my mother is great with numbers and my father great with words, and I am great with numbers too, but weak with words, then there's a big probability that I took after my mom's genes. Schopenhauer, also, loved his dad and hated his mom, but I guess he got his love for the letters from his poetical mom, not from his entrepreneur dad (from the second he inherited enough money to become a great intellectual).
Women and men long for the same things, but with different volumes. A woman may think about sex 12 times a day, a man 270 times. A woman may want to pull the hair of the woman who takes her husband, a man may want to kill that who touches his wife. There may be many women who have higher IQ than Kant or Einstein, but the reason why these women will not become Kant or Einstein in my view is volume (or call it will). Though these women may have enough brain cells, intelligence and skills to become Einstein, if they don't do so, then they somehow lack that "male volume" or "male will" which enable many men to annihilate their egos in order to achieve their goal/task.
That's my view and that's what brain science seems to support. Female and male brains work the same, but male brains seems to consume more energy always ;)
I do this too. It's one of the quickest indexes of character I can think of. If I find out someone is a Trump supporter, I keep my distance.
A few years ago I was thinking to register with the Green Party, but then listened to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and came with the wrong opinion that democrats will fix this country and the whole world (which would follow the US example of Green New Deal).
Now, I have been convinced that the only difference between democrats and republicans is in words; they just use different vocabularies and do the same exact thing (rewarding whomever supports/votes them, with federal money).
Should I consider Stein now or is she another traditional politician whose only concern is to get sponsors and to reward only the people who vote for her? Will her name appear on the ballot in NYS?
Speaking for myself, I only vote for a third party presidential candidate when living in a state that's safe for either Democrats or Republicans. I live in Washington state so I'll vote for Cornel West this year. In 2020 I lived in Georgia and decided early in 2020 to vote for whomever the Democratic candidate wound up being because polling trends showed Georgia to be a swing state for the first time since 1992. Biden won Georgia and I voted for him (only the second time since 1982 I'd voted for a Democratic candidate for president). As a non-partisan "progressive leftist" (who, like Bernie Sanders and most thoughtful leftists, abhors "identity politics"), I've considered the last sixty years of the Democratic Party policy agenda (i.e. neoliberal sodomy of the working class with lube (less harmful) the lesser evil compared to that of the Republican Party policy agenda (i.e. plutocratic / autocratic sodomy of everybody south of the upper middle class without lube (more harmful)), and therefore I always support the Democratic candidate when I live in a swing state. Btw, in 2016 I voted for Jill Stein because polling trends suggested HRC would lose Georgia (which she did by just over 5%).
This 'biological determinism' is too reductive to be meaningful at the complexity of level social practices and electoral politics. After all, it doesn't explain at all (e.g.) decades of robust male support for democratic market socialism in Scandanavian countries.
There are commonalities to the two parties and major differences. Some of the major differences:
- gay/trans rights
- abortion
- subsidies for green energy (majority of Republicans reject the science of climate change)
- raising taxes on rich
- gun control
- environmental regulation
- border control
- immigrants' rights (Dems want amnesty/pathway to citizenship, Repubs want to deport tens of millions of people)
- healthcare
- education (Dems are for public schools, Repubs favor charter schools and vouchers for private school)
- minimum wage
Now, why is it that Biden struggled to get a lot of that done? In our system, if you don't have 60 of your people in the senate, the other side can filibuster and stop legislation, and it's very hard for either party to get 60 senate seats. The last time the Dems had 60 senators, they used their political capital to pass Obamacare, for which they suffered catastrophic losses in the next election.
So youve settled on the tired, fossilized view that passes as sophisticated but is in fact lazy and absurd which absolves you of having to know anything in detail. Not the great progression you think it is.
That view may have been tenable at some point, but its simply ridiculous now. The Democratic Party, for all its faults (and I have always been critical of them), are radically different than Republicans. Plenty of examples; guns, abortion, climate change, etc. If you cant see that, youre not paying attention.
Yes, they mostly agree on military spending but even that is showing cracks (on both sides) and apparently in panicking about China, but that hardly makes them only different in words.
The destruction of Roe, the Inflation Reduction Act, the raising of corporate taxes, budgetary priorities, appointments of administrative heads (Lina Kahn at FTC, Jennifer Abruzzo at NLRB, Regan at EPA, Gensler at SEC, and so on), appointments to the Supreme Court these things actually matter. To throw up our hands and say Well theyre all the same anyway is just aggressively ignorant.
Edit:
Missed this. :up:
:up: If I lived in a safe state, like Massachusetts, Id vote for West as well. But since I dont (Im in swingy New Hampshire), Im not throwing my vote away and, mathematically, putting Trump +1, Ill be voting for the awful Harris. But I envy you.
Funny fact: I met a girl on a dating app and she deleted me after I wrote those things about the Democratic Party lol So, I don't blame you for considering untenable those views.
I just follow some kind of "economical thought processing".
Although I know that I was born a prodigy with very high IQ and gifted stature, same as Don the Clown, and if I wanted I could become Schopenhauer, Einstein, Michael Jackson, Leon Messi, Rocky Marciano, Shakespeare, and so on, life taught me that the whole universe (out of jealousy, surely :) ) would conspire against me.
Hence, though I never doubted myself (for the sake of this debate, you know) I found out that (because the whole universe is jealous about me and about Hillary Clinton) there's a hope that I may achieve a couple of things in this life, but not everything.
That kind of economical thought processing seems totally absent among Democrats and this thing has started to make me suspicious about their intentions in general. Democrats want growth, equality, peace, free education for all, reforms, gun control, better infrastructure, general welfare, thriving American families, women rights, trans rights, Muslim rights, Natives rights, technological progress, control of the space, etc. etc. and their ever expanding list of "priorities" makes me sometimes ask if these people are serious or they just create as many priorities and needs as they can in order to appeal to all those groups who take these "priorities" seriously.
Lately I have started believing that it is a leftist tactic (around the world) to imagine as more needs and problems as you can in order to make more and more people feel that they need to be protected by the leftists. So, if I travel to Luxembourg or San Marino and see how different these countries are from the US, I am sure that a 10 mins talk with a Luxembourghian or Sanmarinian leftist would instill in me the feeling that in Luxembourg and San Marino people have the same problems like here in the States. But that feeling, I insist, will not come from what I see and experience there, but from a political discourse that sounds the same among the politicians around the world.
Though the left traces its history in those workers unions who fought for the working classes in Europe and US, we see how the change in living standards and working ethics has made leftists change priorities as well. It is hard to attain today that leftists care more about EU/US majorities than right wing politicians, for the simple reason that the leftists will keep talking about poverty and working conditions, even though in the 21st century labor has been radically transformed and poverty is not as widespread as it used to be in the beginning of the 20th century. Democrats want to speak about the poor and the rich, forgetting that 70% of people in this country are neither poor nor rich.
But I think I know why they do it now. Most of the people in this country do not care to vote at all and in these circumstances both Democrats and Republicans have discovered that they may keep power through appealing to the few, not to the many. If they really cared about majorities they would set a couple of priorities that majorities seem to care (like crime, inflation and infrastructure) and they wouldn't invent so many needs and priorities.
I lost faith in Democrats when they gave people 3 trillion in covid relief, but they could afford only 800 billion for the infrastructure. They put the blame on the Republicans for that too, but this absence of economical thought processing among the Democrats has started to trouble me.
Not untenable stupid.
IMO Christianity does have a more feminine ethic, but this is not the case for Judaism or Islam. Certain branches like Eastern Orthodoxy are more patriarchal. Still, I would say that the Christian ethic as expressed in the gospels could reasonably be considered a more feminine one -- not a weaker one, but a more feminine one.
You are focussed on this one word, which really is not important in the scheme of things. Many interesting things are going on in this election and perhaps we can talk about them some time.
[/quote]
The only reason so many people like you are making such a huge issue about it is myopic politics. This is simply not a big deal and anybody who keeps insisting on it make a living out of having dumb opinions.[/quote]
Coup, coup, coup, coup, coup!
But of course he did. You might as well argue the sun rises in the west.
Quoting Echarmion
Which is exactly why I used the phrases "palace coup" and "intra-party coup." Making your point for you.
But you are hung up on the word coup. If I call it a coup and you prefer to call it a not-a-coup, I'm fine with that. It's unimportant in the scheme of things. As I told @Benkei, I'm happy to talk about the latest developments in this unprecedented election as we live through this very dangerous moment in history. You can call it a coup or not. I'll keep calling it a coup.
Quoting Echarmion
No doubt. But they covered it up in the hopes of swindling the American people. I fervently hope the people will hold them accountable and punish them for it at the ballot box. But it won't happen.
Quoting Echarmion
Yes. Fourteen million voters. Many Biden supporters were reported even in the MSM right to the end. Clyburn and many blacks in fact. I am not sure why you're questioning widely reported facts.
Quoting Echarmion
All I'm sayin' is I'm not payin' the ransom till I see proof of life.
Did you see him at the hostage press conference? Man has one foot in the grave. And Kamala tossed out word salad and she doesn't even have the excuse of being senile.
Quoting Echarmion
I can't read you the news.
Quoting Echarmion
Having a competitive 2024 primary so that BIden would have been exposed, and a strong, popular candidate, nominated by democratic means, would have been chosen.
The Dems pulled off their swaparoo. But don't call it democracy. It's anything but. It was a coup -- pardon the word -- by the party insiders.
Quoting Echarmion
Trump was nominated in a spirited and competitive primary. You're just flailing with the rest of it. "But he's ORANGE HITLER, whatabout that??"
That all you've got? Many commentators, not just me, are remarking on the Democrats' highly undemocratic manner of swapping in a new candidate with no popular electoral support whatsoever. Then having the MSM whitewash and scrub her actual record. Then having her avoid press conferences and interviews in the hopes of running another 2020-style basement campaign.
Liberals should be ashamed of supporting this charade.
The definition of a "far right" protest is anger at the stabbing death of three little girls as young as 6. Apparently if you're against stabbing little girls, you're a right winger. So says Keir Starmer, new PM of the UK.
I heard he studied philosophy. Will be be a philosopher king? :rofl:
You're telling me you're very, very sure that's what happened but you haven't told me why I should believe that - i.e. what the evidence is for someone who doesn't already believe what you believe.
Quoting fishfry
I'm questioning your claim that he "still has" many supporters. The public support of Biden got progressively weaker. And even that support was of the "well it's better to not create chaos" kind. I don't see how you can be confident that this indicates a large amount of internal support.
Quoting fishfry
But you did. You're just dismissing the evidence as insufficient. What further evidence do you require? A personal meeting with Biden?
Quoting fishfry
I'm not calling it democracy. But if your only remedy is a retroactive plan that can't possibly be executed without a time machine your complaints sound kind of hollow.
Quoting fishfry
Don't put words in my mouth please.
Quoting fishfry
No. I've got a whole list.
When Mitch McConnell declared that the republican party would do everything to stymie Obama, that was undemocratic.
When republicans under his leadership refused to allow Obama to fill a SC seat, that was undemocratic.
When Trump claims that every election he is or was in (regardless of outcome) is rigged against him, that's undemocratic. Arguably you can't blame the rest of the Republicans for all of this, but you can blame them for supporting it to the point of ostracizing his opponents.
When Trump refused to make an official concession in 2020, that was undemocratic. When the republican party, after some hand-wringing, ended up wholeheartedly backing it they became complicit.
Those are just the obvious, highly public events. I'm not including any of the "controversial" events. I'm also not including all the lower level procedural steps like gerrymandering (a "both sides" issue that republicans pioneered).
So even if I accept all your claims as to this "coup", it merely moves the democratic party closer towards the republican party in terms of power politics.
Quoting fishfry
US politics has moved far beyond being ashamed of your side several cycles ago. You're asking liberals to sabotage themselves in favour of an ideal that their political opponents have long since thrown by the wayside. That is at best naive, at worst it's a cynical attempt to get your chosen candidate into power with less of an opposition.
Uh oh, even MAGA media has begun to wake up and smell the gourmet black coffee:
https://nypost.com/2024/07/29/opinion/trump-and-vance-need-to-woo-women-voters-to-win/
Roevember is coming, @NOS4A2 :kiss:
@fishfry @Mikie @Wayfarer @Benkei @Fooloso4
I would very much like to believe its over, but I don't. I doubt that the continued focus on Trump will sway voters. Outside of the MAGA cult most who will vote for him will do so despite who he is and what he says. The Dobbs decision will play a role. Beyond that the key factor will be the voter's own financial well-being, both in fact and perception. The case can and I think will be made that Trump failed on his economic promises and Biden did more and Harris will continue to do more for American industry, small business, infrastructure, and jobs.
Wow, she actually made the best choice. Im surprised, but Im happy she did it. Now I can spell his name correctly (Walz).
Because some of the biggest donors to the Republicans are fossil fuel giants. Not only that, but they own think tanks and election infrastructure as well. The propaganda was so strong that it lingers even today, when were seeing the effects of a warming planet all around us.
Because it was associated with liberals (thanks in part to Al Gores involvement), its become politicized and thus Trumpers would rather die, literally, then face the reality. So goes US politics.
How is Musk's behavior explained?
The most educated people in this country buy his very expensive Tesla cars, and Elon Musk says now that he is going to give a 42 million check per month to a climate change denier. :vomit:
My running theory is that Musk is just chasing the adulation of the most willing sycophants, and those just happen to be in the Trumpist camp.
Thats part of it. Hes also very Twitter-minded, and the biggest voices on there are Trump trolls and the alt-right. If it were SNL, it would have been different.
The more cynical view is that he wants to sell cars to the Trump crowd. Which as you see now, Trump has changed his tune on EVs a bit, and was just recently gifted a Cybertruck by some online influences which he praised. Good publicity for Tesla.
The most simple theory is that Musk is basically an idiot, and always has been. Thats the most likely case, I think.
kind of crazy when you compare VP choices. Kamalas choice is smart and strategic. Trump picked a phony sycophant, presumably only because he intends to surround himself with weak yes-men.
There is an article in the NYT: "JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman" Until recently the book, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) could be be dismissed as too far to the extreme right to be taken seriously, but with Vance's endorsement and a forward by Stephen Bannon, it has entered the Republican mainstream. The author, Jack Posobiec, promoted the conspiracy theory that Democrats ran a satanic child abuse ring beneath a popular Washington pizzeria.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him as:
Roevember 2024:
VP Kamala Harris & Gov Tim Walz
("pro-democracy" Democrats) :victory: :mask:
versus
The Criminal Clown & MAGA Mini-me
(neofascist "weirdos") :lol:
A five star review of the book on goodreads.com:
From what I gather the book glorifies Franco. Not sure if the suggestion is that his way is the way to end the scourge. In any case, I don't think MAGA is big on reading books.
I absolutely understand that you believe, deeply and powerfully and to the ends of the earth, that I am wrong.
I acknowledge your right to feel this way. I'm very pluralistic about ideas, and favor free expression.
I reiterate my use of the word coup. A lot of online commentators are talking about it. It's an interesting touchpoint of political conversation. It's not a religious war. I could even argue that it wasn't a coup. It's such a small thing. I have no idea why this is important to you.
I respectfully exit this interesting conversation. Thank you for the chat.
But to change the subject:
Hey man aren't you watching this wild election? Kamala just screwed up her vp pick. She's been tacking to the center and now Walz pulls her back to the left, ties her to the Antifa/BLM riots that she supported.
That's what I find interesting. Joe's coup, or non-coup -- you haven't actually told me what word you prefer. Someone suggested that it was all Biden's idea. That is false to the point of hilarity. Biden hasn't had an idea past licking his ice cream and smelling prepubescent girls in years.
But either way, Biden's exit from the race (but not from the presidency) is yesterday's news. Although he is still allegedly the president, as war is breaking out in the Middle East. But never mind all that.
My meta-point is that I am wondering if anyone here likes to talk politics! Not just argue semantics or yell partisan talking points at each other. This is the craziest election I've ever seen.
Seems like a trivial thing. If you search around you can find Democrats discussing whether this was the best process they could have done. Of course everyone has gotten into line. The Democrats have indeed shown tremendous party discipline. They turned on a dime and all got marching in the new direction. So when you say support, of course they're all on board the Kam train in public. It was a brilliant political operation, the Kam switcheroo. Biden's gone, Kam's coronated, the media are swooning, the past is being digitally retconned in a manner that Orwell can only envy.
So the Dems pulled it off.
But surely you can't actually believe that the millions of people who did support Biden to the end, aren't personally disappointed that things didn't go their way. You can't seriously tell me that you don't understand this point. That if you support the guy who ends up losing, you line up behind whoever the party chooses. But still, you support your guy and maybe dislike the extreme hardball politics that have been played on them.
Some of them might even be resentful. It's only human nature.
You seem to be denying all of that, and saying that overnight what was in their hearts changed in lockstep with what's on their Kamala signs. I hope you'll clarify this point.
Quoting Echarmion
Saying I'm not paying the ransom is a way of drawing attention to his obvious near-death condition, in a slightly humorous way. Not payin' the ransom. I suppose humor, if there was any at all, does not translate over this medium. No matter, I enjoyed it even if you didnt. I don't literally think Biden's dead. I do think he is in terribly bad shape, and that we are being lied to.
It's unusual, and suspicious, when a political leader disappears from public view for days at a time, then posts this fishy letter, then disappears for more days at a time, then gets wheeled out to mumble and look like a standing corpse for a few minutes, as he did the other night.
It reminds me of nothing so much as Chernenko and those other end-time Soviets, guys who were alive in strict biological terms only, very little actual life left in them. They'd sit in the big chair, or be propped up in it, till they died, and the next near-corpse was put in charge.
Will you assert to me that you have not seen this, that I am lying, that I am the victim of Republican propaganda? That when you saw Biden at the hostage presser, you thought to yourself, "That guy looks fit as a fiddle, probably beat me at chess while running the world." Is that your view? Or do you see the same far gone man I do?
Will you grant me the right to call out the massive swindle being played by the Biden administration and the Democratic party: to pretend that the president is fit to do his job; when everyone in the entire world knows he's not.
I have the right to call that out. I am calling that out. And if my saying "I wouldn't pay the ransom," doesn't strike you as a light-hearted reference to the entire issue ... well, I guess not everyone appreciates my fine sense of humor.
But still. You have to say that, partisanship aside, this is a very dangerous state of affairs, with war breaking out in the Middle East. Who is in charge of the country? Who is commander in chief of the military?
So yeah. I ain't payin' the ransom.
Franco and Pinochet are regarded as heroes.
The article quotes from the book:
Of course if the "unhumans" are not regarded as human they need not be treated as human. As such things go, it is likely that just who is or will be counted as unhuman will be a growing group that will include everyone that does not support their revolution.
Actually, hes a great pick and the one thing shes gotten right so far.
Maybe lay off the Fox News.
Idk, seems to me like Madame VP just took another page out of Obama's winning campaign playbook. :smirk:
Quoting Mikie
:smirk:
Walz speaks Mandarin. I guess that will be handy. Still wish it was Shapiro, tho
Quoting Mikie
Let me explain why she hurt herself with this pick.
I am not making a partisan point. I'm just analyzing this as I would a sporting event that I don't have a rooting interest in. Or, if I do, I'm not allowing that to bear on my observations. I know you are a bit partisan, but you're the one who claims she made a good choice and I disagree, so I'll tell you why. I'd say this if I were for Trump, which I am; but especially if I were for Harris, which I'm not. But the analysis goes either way.
Or to put that another way: I don't know if you'll understand what I'm going to say. But perhaps someone else will.
Kamala made the exact same mistake that Trump did!
A few weeks ago, Trump was asked his position on abortion. Many of his supporters are rabid pro-lifers. But Trump did something he rarely does, think strategically. He simply said he'd leave it to the states and he'd say no more. That angered his pro-life base, but where else are they going to go? And he was smart enough to realize that he blunted the worst attacks of the left. They can't say he's against abortion. He just said he's agnostic and to leave it to the states.
So Trump makes this clever strategic tack towards the center; something every politician has to do after they win their primaries. (Well, assuming one is in a political party that actually bothers to hold primaries, unlike certain UNdemocratic parties I could name).
Then what does he do? He selects Vance, who is in favor of a nationwide ban on abortion, wants to arrest women who cross state lines for an abortion, makes snide remarks about women in a highly gendered election.
His VP choice completely undermined his own clever strategy! So he screwed up with Vance.
Now Kamala has been doing the same thing, tacking back to the center. Her MSM minions are busy scrubbing the Internet so that she was never a leftist, was never against fracking, never supported a bail fund for violent BLM/Antifa rioters, never wanted to defund the police.
The Dems have been brilliant at this. Most people don't really follow politics, they don't know that she was named the most leftist Senator in 2019, especially because that Web page got taken off the Internet. Orwell would be proud.
So the Dems have pulled it off. They solve their Biden problem, they coalesce around Kam, they rebrand her as a centrist.
Then what does she do? For veep, she picks a leftists who is tied to the BLM/Antifa riots. She puts the very issue that the tacked away from, right dead center in her path. Now her role in bailing out violent felons who went on to offend again will come out. Now Walz's 48 hour delay in calling out the National Guard will come out. Kamala was trying to paint herself as a centrist, and Walz reminds everyone of her leftist greatest hit.
That's the exact same error Trump made. They both tacked cleverly to the center, then picked veeps that undermined their own strategy.
There's a quote from Walz's wife.
I could smell the burning tires. That was a very real thing, and I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening,
https://dailycaller.com/2024/08/06/tim-walz-gwen-smell-burninig-tires-2020-riots/
Pardon the Daily Caller link, the New York Times didn't deign to report this information to their readers.
In other words she sat in the safety of the governor's mansionm protected by armed guards no doubt. And she play-acted in her mind being a great revolutionary, inhaling the smell of the uprising of the people; when what she was doing was fetishizing a poor black neighborhood being burned to the ground to give her a little thrill.
Believe me, Walz is going to wear that quote, and his delay in getting control of the situation, for the next three months. And every day it's going to remind people that Kamala supported a bailout fund for the people who set the fires.
It's all the rest of Walz's extreme liberalism. He supports abortion up to the moment of birth. That's an extreme position supported by a small minority of Americans. He has said "socialism is like neighborliness," a lie that will not play with the very same midwestern voters he's supposed to appeal to.
In short, Kam rebranded herself as a centrist, then picked a leftist that undermines her rebranding. It shows she has bad judgment. She just stalled the two weeks of momentum she'd had, and she's given Trump and Vance a potent avenue of attack. Many such avenues.
You might think you like Walz's politics. That is not at all the point. I hope you can see that. The point is that from an electoral standpoint, Walz shines a light on the very leftism that Kamala was trying to hide.
That's why Walz was a bad pick.
Not to mention the talk, true or not, that she couldn't pick Shapiro because it would upset the Hamas wing of the Democratic party, especially in Michigan.
Terrible pick. Kam just blunted the momentum of her terrific last two weeks, and breathed new life into the Trump/Vance campaign.
ps -- A GOP never-Trumper just wrote a piece in The Hill making the same points I did, but with better writing.
Rather than counterbalancing the narrative that suggests Harris is a San Francisco liberal, Walzs selection reinforces that left-wing brand.
Picking Tim Walz was Kamala Harriss first campaign mistake
:clap: :rofl:
Actions speak louder than words (and who, outside MAGA, believes Trump anyway?). People will remember it was his judges that got Roe overturned and know he will pick the same kind of judges in the future.
As far as words go, Trump said women who get abortions should be punished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n-SgCndBWE
Not disagreeing. Just saying that he wisely tacked toward the center, at least in rhetoric. Talking campaign tactics, not abortion policy. His VP pick undermined his centrist move. I mentioned that to compare it to Kamala doing the exact same thing ... tacking to the center and then undermining herself by picking a leftist. Remember in 2008 Obama was a leftist trying to brand himself a centrist, and he picked Joe Biden, a Washington fixture everyone thought of as a centrist. Obama didn't pick Liz Warren or Bernie Sanders. That's my point.
You haven't even begun to address the points I raised so you reducing this to mere opinion reflects your inability to actually have a converation. It's not just semantics, which is a ridiculous reduction of the discussion. You are claiming to analyse the situation but in fact are just repeating dumb shit from Fox News. No power has transferred, no rules were broken. No coup. Having actually lost this discussion since you fail to provide a rebuttal to actual arguments you first try to gaslight me and now pretend it's just another opinion. Only reason you're doing it is because you're incapable of investigating and challenging your own opinions on the matter.
Quoting fishfry
I've repeatedly stated what it was: he withdrew his candidacy. And no, it doesn't matter who's idea it was.
It's quite clear, also in your interactions with other posters you don't want to talk politics at all. You're only here to display your unswerving loyalty to a buffoon. That's fine but don't expect anyone here to take you seriously.
I don't see how they turned on a dime when they spend weeks publicly agonising what to do.
Quoting fishfry
I just don't believe Biden ever had much personal support. He was the incumbent and the default choice with no serious opposition.
Quoting fishfry
Well I am glad we agree on the basic facts.
I've always wondered how Republicans would try to run against a Bernie like figure, which Walz does remind me of. He's a progressive who not only supports but has enacted a number of left policies and more importantly doesn't seem to shy away from it. Hell he even kind of looks like him. The only difference is that instead of a being a grumpy old man he comes across as a relatable dad (plus being more on the large side).
Of course the problem for the GOP is that once you get into the details of his ideas, they're actually pretty popular based on most polling I've seen. I mean the right will still try to paint Walz as a "radical" who would try to turn the Midwest into Venezuela but then again they would literally say for any Democrat even if the VP pick were Joe Manchin. I think there's a good chance such a move could very well backfire on them if they're gonna try saying that popular policies like free school lunches are a bad thing.
From what Ive read, democracy is the best form of government for the people. Not that theyre trying to be honest, of course.
I wish I could say that its shocking for a US VP nominee to endorse a book like that.
I saw an attack ad about him yesterday, the words painting him out to be a Stalinesque monster, but the photo they used was an adorable snapshot of him holding a piglet at a country fair with a big smile on his face. Hilarious.
The demagogue appears to be the champion of the people, but with his rise to power reveals what he is, an autocrat. The rhetoric of the book is transparent. The "innocents" versus the "unhuman". Only some of the people are truly "the people". At a minimum the unhuman should have no role in government.
Quoting fishfry
Can we do away with the Im not biased, Im just a straight shooter. No one believes that. Its ridiculous.
Im not a member of either political party, but Im certainly against Trump. That will undoubtedly bias me in Harris direction, and will creep in unconsciously, however much I try not to let it. Youre no different.
Anyway thats silly enough, but the fact that youre actually for Trump basically disqualifies you as someone worth taking seriously, Im sorry to say. Your judgment is awful. Its rooted in ignorance and failure to recognize or prioritize basic problems in our society.
Quoting fishfry
Which according to you is tacking to the center. This is what I mean by silly, shallow analysis. I can hear this on CNN and Fox too. As if Harris isnt anything but a right-of-center candidate to begin with. I wish she were centrist because that would mean shes more left.
Quoting fishfry
Totally expected, actually. No need to pretend like you get your opinions and analysis from anywhere else.
Quoting fishfry
Whats hilarious is that you feel this is somehow hard to understand. Not something Ive heard about 1,000 times from every political analyst out there who pretends to be non-partisan. Way to go! Youre officially the forums right-wing Chuck Todd.
Quoting fishfry
You have to be fairly delusional to believe this.
Hes an excellent pick. And not just because hes well liked and well regarded, but because his policies in Minnesota have been fantastic. I hope he runs on that strength non-stop. Theyre extremely popular both in Minnesota and the US generally.
But thanks for providing watered-down versions of what Fox News and Tucker Carlson told you to believe.
Yeah, "heroes, but Spain couldnt be a member of the European Union until Francos death, and Chile was forgotten in its little corner of South America for decades.
How simple it is to exalt a despot when you are constantly on the side of a prosperous, rich and democratic country. The eternal incongruity of some Americans.
Franco and Pinochet were puppets of the White House. It would be interesting to put those authors and lovers of freedom in a country where you cant vote, you are forced to go to church, your daughter counts zero because she is just a reproductive machine, the incomes are shite and you dont have most of the amenities because the rest of the world turned its back on you, and it is impossible to have a TV, washing machine, light, modern cars, etc.
What bothers me the most is that they fantasize about such an authoritarian model, but only far away from their territory. Lets see if it works in the Hispanic countries. We are already happy, developed, and modern in our democratic country called USA.
I agree but the territory in question is not just geographical. It is a growing threat in the U.S. and Europe. Those who favor authoritarianism want change, but change in itself is not good. They cannot see that change can be for the worse.
Yeah I'm actually surprised how much the party has unified around him like they did Kamala. Walz sounds like a more effective, relatable, and most importantly younger Bernie, even down to the lack of actual presidential ambition and brushing off the accusations of the "socialism" label (for the record he doesn't adopt it explicitly like Bernie but he seems more focused on whether the policies discussed help people, which I like). I have no idea where the Democrats got him from. People who have been saying that Kamala just picked a younger Biden because he's an old white man are way off, same with the people who compare him to Tim Kaine.
We watched the very chilling Civil War movie the other week. The most chilling scene in that disturbing movie was when the group of journalists who were at the centre of the plot were asked by a menacing militia fighter, at gunpoint, what kind of Americans are you? The implication clearly being, which side of the civil war youre on determines whether youre going to be killed or not. Obviously a fictional exaggeration, but a similar dynamic underwrites a great deal of the rhetoric of the extreme wing of MAGA.
This shouldn't be on anyone's list of anything worth promoting.
Yeah; but, why give the sound-byte? Concepts like these really ruin reputations if not elections...
Jill Stein will not be on the ballot. RFK Kennedy is still fighting his way, but I don't think the guy has any good qualities. He is in the center of all bizarre stories: he had wombs in his brain, he dumped a dead bear in Central Park, he seems to have a taste for roasted dog meat, and his wife committed suicide (maybe she couldn't bear living with him anymore).
It has become very hard to find any good politicians nowadays. The more mediocre, weird and stupid one is, the bigger the probability he considers himself the center of the universe and (as a result) he wants to become the next president.
Agree - even supporters might think.. hmm, not under my banner.
Yeah I think there's one problem with that:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/KamalaHQ/status/1821285528504877347[/tweet]
This wont have much effect on voters if the see the former issue in stark lighting.
Trump has always been hypocritical - including calling Republicans the dumbest people in the world three decades ago (roughly) and that this is why he'd run as one. No one cares, it seems.
dispatches from the ex-GOP bunker:
I haven't seen him speak, except for the short clip where he says that socialism is just neighborliness. Expect to see that in Trump ads.
I do hear that he's folksy and comes off as regular folks. Good all-American dad resume, soldier, teacher, etc. But just below the surface are many exploitable flaws. He bailed (legally, but still) on his National Guard service just before he was to be deployed to Iraq. Then lied about it, saying he's carried weapons of war into battle (not exact quote) when in fact he never served in a war zone. So there are character issues and political weaknesses that cast doubt on Kam's judgment.
Of course that's just politics. Not claiming a monopoly on truth; only noting the political attacks that he's vulnerable to.
Quoting RogueAI
Now here I disagree. Walz is up to his eyeballs in the burning of Minneapolis. That brings that whole issue back into play; and reminds everyone that Kamala supported a bail fund to release violent arrestees who used their new found freedom to commit worse crimes.
So the choice of Walz puts the spotlight on Kam's leftist acts during the Floyd riots. Putting the focus right on her. I do therefore disagree that he takes the focus off her. By putting the riots into play, he spotlights one of her biggest vulnerabilities.
Quoting RogueAI
Yes. Correct. Agreed. So why does Kam pick a hard leftist who will reminds us all of the 2020 Minneapolis riots, and Kamala's role in them? It totally undermines her tack to the center.
Quoting RogueAI
Not true. Look at all the powerful black woman politicians these days. White guys are yesterday's news, have you not noticed?
Quoting RogueAI
No I do not believe so. Harris signals the takeover of the Democratic party by the northern California political machine of Pelosi, Feinstein, Willie Brown, Newsom, and father and son governors Pat and Jerry Brown, backed by the powerful family money of the Gusts and the Gettys. A lot of Democrats are not happy about this, even though they're on board her candidacy. Her ascent has long been planned. She is no accident.
There would be no point in running Walz at the top of the ticket. Harris is a much more attractive candidate. It's funny how a nation that elected Obama twice is suddenly so full of racists. Weak liberal talking point IMO, if you don't mind my saying.
I haven't got an inability to have a conversation. I have a disinterest in having this conversation. You are hung up on a word regarding an event that's already two weeks out of the news cycle.
If you don't like the word coup, suggest a different word and if it makes you happy I'll tell you I can live with it, and we'll move on. This is such a fascinating election, I don't see why you want to just lock onto that one word to the exclusion of all the other things of interest in the entire world.
Quoting Benkei
Ok, I get that you feel that way.
Quoting Benkei
I'm happy to allow you to have the last word on that subject.
Quoting Benkei
I disagree. Have a nice evening.
You didn't see the media and the Dems turn on a dime from fretting about Kamala to coronating her? Ok. People see what they see.
Quoting Echarmion
Clyburn and the Congressional Black Caucus were strongly behind him. Many millions of voters were behind him.
Quoting Echarmion
Ok. So you agree with me that Biden is in very bad shape and that we're being lied to.
So I wonder, as an American, are you ok with that? The world is blowing up and the president is out to lunch. How do you think this plays out in an international crisis? I really want to understand your point of view on this. Personally, I'm concerned.
I agree that he comes off as likable and folksy, that's the word that gets used a lot. I believe his leftism draws attention to the very leftism that Harris is trying to move away from. In fact it's Walz's association with the Floyd riots that draws attention to Kamala's role in them. That's why I think he's a mistake. But time will tell on that. Voters may like him. It's clear that Kam and Walz win the likability contest.
In fact I read somewhere that if the voters decide on likability, Harris and Walz win; and if they decide on the issues, the economy and immigration and so forth, Trump and Vance win. Clearly Trump and Vance are the grumpy pair and Harris and Walz are the happy pair. I agree with that and likability goes a very long way in politics.
Quoting Mr Bee
Ok. My understanding is that he used to be more of a centrist and his policies have moved left. He did say that socialism is like neighborliness. I expect the GOP to put that on endless loop. In recent years he does have a pretty liberal record. We'll have to see how all this plays out.
Whatever. That's a stupid talking point which you repeat endlessly.
You have a disinterest because you were wrong and are unwilling to admit it. That's called not being able to have a conversation.
Yeah I think I saw that somewhere. Guess the Dems will put that on a loop. So it goes.
Quoting Benkei
Brother, give it a rest.
ps -- You are a lot like your profile pic!
She's certainly moving right on some issues but not others. One example is the border where she's clearly just attached herself to the bipartisan border bill Trump killed. Walz it seems is going along with that pivot. Same with her pivot on fracking. That being said, she's still in favor of alot of the things that Walz did and is clearly not choosing to moderate on every single issue. I guess she's betting on labels being less important than the actual policies themselves.
Quoting fishfry
I do think Harris and Walz are better on the issues if you go into detail about them, which is why I think it could backfire if the GOP start attacking Walz for legalizing weed or giving Minnesota paid family leave. Trump and Vance are able to win on the issues if it's more vibes based though. People feel like the economy sucks because of high prices. What does Trump actually plan to do about it? Apparently drill more and flood the global market in oil to crash gas prices but that isn't gonna bring grocery prices down obviously. One thing that may make it worse is his idea for a 10% tariff on all imported goods (and 60% on Chinese goods), which if you believe that higher taxes means higher prices for the consumer as it trickles down, would obviously be inflationary to the average voter. Trump assures us that it's not inflationary somehow but...
Quoting fishfry
Yeah that answer specifically was why I compared him to Bernie. He doesn't adopt the label like he does but he certainly doesn't shy away from it either.
Typical Trump cultist response: the guy repeating Fox News talking points accuses his opponent of wait for it repeating talking points.
Predictable. :yawn:
I love how the US simply skips fascism and goes right back to medieval fedualism including witch hunts and book burning.
EDIT: and Lolita from Nabokov is still on there. As well as the Pillars of the Earth which sex scene definitely gave me a boner when I was a teenager.
Ive heard nothing from him so far, but as you know he has no principles, so like with project 2025 if it becomes a political liability he may just dump it. But hes tried to ban books himself, so I dont think he cares one way or another.
Red states do that. Blue states like California and New York are quite different.
That bill is a total fake. It's designed to codify the ongoing disaster but get Republicans to sign on to it. They wisely declined. And then Biden turned around and issued the executive orders he'd had the power to issue all along, and the numbers of crossers are being reduced just in time for the election, and showing that he didn't need the bill after all.
Quoting Mr Bee
She was never against fracking. It's a Republican lie that she was ever against fracking. Also she was never the border czar. LOL. Orwelling retconning.
But you are agreeing with my point. Yes she is trying to tack to the center and renounce or deny many of her former leftist positions. So why pick a leftist as veep? That undermines her centrism.
Quoting Mr Bee
Both Trump and Kamala are appealing to their respective bases, and nobody's making a play for the center. Whichever one of them figures out that elections are decided in the center will win.
Quoting Mr Bee
I think it's the tampons in the boys' room that's triggering some on the right. I actually don't even know much about his actual policies in office.
Quoting Mr Bee
All those new jobs are going to immigrants. That's why the job numbers look good but the workers are grumpy. It comes down to immigration, Trump's strongest issue and Kamala's weakest.
He should be hitting her on immigration. Instead he's yammering about her race. And the other day at a rally he attacked the Republican governor of Georgia. He's so undisciplined. He just can not focus on what's important. I think he's lost a step too. In 2016 when he insulted people he was funny. Now he's just angry. This race could go either way. The guy is 78 and he's looking every day of it lately.
Quoting Mr Bee
It'll bring energy prices down. Biden's energy policy, which is also Harris's, has been terrible. Americans know that.
Drill more and crash gas prices? You say that like it's a bad thing. It's not. It's a very good thing.
Quoting Mr Bee
I'm on record against Trump's tariffs. They hurt American consumers, and then when other countries put tariffs on our goods in response, it hurts American producers.
Quoting Mr Bee
Like I say ... Kam tacks to the center and she picks a proud socialist as her veep. Bad pick. Not to mention today's Stolen Valor brouhaha. Walz is technically in violation of a Federal felony, one that he himself voted into law. Which by the way is a bad look for Kam's campaign in that the issue caught them by surprise. They should have vetted him more closely and been prepared to deal with the military stuff.
I hear it's about 50-50 in the betting markets. Kam's had a bad week because of Walz, but Trump's not really capitalizing.
I'm actually quite concerned for the country no matter who wins.
What's weird isn't that you think I watch FOX News. It's that you think ANYONE watches FOX News. That's not where alt-news comes from, hasn't been for quite some time. There's a huge media ecosystem out there.
Quoting Mikie
So YOU'RE the last one watching CNN!
So some say on the right, but the bill is pretty popular based on the polling I've seen and some swing voter focus groups seem to be upset at Trump for what he did. Harris was smart to use it. They'll be running ads of Lankford saying it's a good bill from now until November. They're not gonna win on the issue of course but they can always muddle it and weaken an attack line.
Quoting fishfry
Because labels don't matter as much over policies. She's getting rid of the unpopular policies while keeping the popular ones. People care about border security more but they probably don't want kids to starve in school. That's the problem with using a single label to describe a large set of unrelated beliefs.
Quoting fishfry
That implies that centrists always win which is certainly not true. The centrist coalition of Macron collapsed in France just recently to both the far-right and the far-left.
Quoting fishfry
It's a pretty extensive record (just coped and pasted a list I found online):
- universal free school meals
- legal weed
- carbon free electricity by 2040
- tax rebates for the working class up to $1,300 (making under $150k per year)
- 12 weeks paid family leave
- 12 weeks paid sick leave
- banned conversion therapy
- red flag laws for guns
- universal background checks for guns
- automatic voter registration
- free public college (under $80k)
- ban on PFAS (forever chemicals)
- $2.2 billion increase in k-12 school funding
- sectoral bargaining for nursing home workers
- opposed Wall St bailouts in 2008
- voted against outsourcing deals
- supports lifting a moratorium on nuclear energy in Minnesota
- 100% rating from Planned Parenthood
- banned non-compete clauses
- raised minimum wage for small businesses
- raised taxes on multinational corporations
- protected gender affirming care
- banned medical providers from withholding care over debt
- protected construction workers from wage theft
- massive Minnesota infrastructure bill
- backed the Iran deal
I don't think you'll like all of them but there's a reason why progressives wanted him.
Quoting fishfry
In 2016 he was a new face and people at the very least loved that he shook up politics. Nowadays he's old news which is why I think he's likely to lose. The fundamental contrast in this race where it's old vs. new just doesn't work out to his benefit where it did with Biden when it was strength vs weakness or with Clinton when it was the outsider vs the corrupt insider. Kamala may not be the best candidate but she's a new face in a race where people wanted anything but Biden or Trump again, and that will probably be what will convince those undecided swing voters at the end of the day. People hated the status quo in 2016 and thought they had nothing to lose if they elected Donald, even if they had serious reservations about him.
Quoting fishfry
People aren't complaining about that as much now. They're complaining about the price of groceries which haven't really gone down with gas and likely won't if it goes down any further.
Quoting fishfry
Certainly seems like they moved on from tampons and the BLM riots, though we'll see how effective this line of attack is. As a layperson who understands nothing about the military, this whole tactic just comes across as a little gross. If this were a case of Walz just outright lying about being in the military entirely then I can understand but it seems like they're splitting hairs about whether he was in combat or not and seemingly undermining the decades of service he's done otherwise. That and the fact that their guy actively avoided the Vietnam draft due to bonespurs yet feels like he can attack war heroes for what they've done.
But forget grass-roots. The Harris campaign and the media have worked together to form a movement of pure astroturf. Her free concerts dressed up to look like rallies proves she has a lot of money to toss around, and she can garner what appear to be supporters so long as the payoff is worth it, but the sponsor of the infamous Green New Deal is not much different than the once-failed presidential candidate of 2020 except that this time shes the anti-Trump movements last hope. Like how quickly Harris believed Jussie Smollete, that movement will swallow anyone and anything to keep their folk devil out of office.
So far no leaks, no policy, no hard-hitting interviewsfor all we know shes the great communo-fascist Trojan horse weve all been waiting for. But they can only keep a lid on it for so long.
Shocking.
We can only hope she's a communist.
Why?
History is the greatest argument against communism. Get back to me when you have learned some.
Youre telling me to go read Marx while accusing me for being unable to think for myself. Ive read Marx Ive read his critics, and his critics won. But I also know history and everyone except you has watched your communism fail spectacularly in every instance. So can you give me any reason besides reading Marx that one might want a communist to rule?
Looks like she has a good chance of winning. Whodda thunk it?
Concise summary: wealth inequality (wealth or capital versus income) is high and rising,
What is to be done: global agreement to tax the rich.
Obviously, this is the exact opposite of what the Party formerly known as "Republican" advocates and practices.
.
I used to think in those terms too: property tax on the wealthy. Now I'd say there's just no way to do that. I'm presently reading a book about the early Iron Age. Time goes by, revolutions happen pretty regularly, either from external or internal events. Our world will be the same
I asked why you hoped Kamala would be communist, and you told me to go read Das Kapital to come back with some arguments. Now youre chastising me for equating Marx with communism.
I think that incremental change is possible. We already have a global economy. We may not be able to get to the point of global agreement but we can impose tariffs and wealth taxes on those who move capital from place to place in order to avoid paying taxes.
Tariffs?
If there cannot be global agreement to tax the rich, individual countries can impose taxes through tariffs. It might be argued that this puts the burden on those who are not wealthy, but if a company is going to pass on costs to the consumer it will do so whether that tax is in the form of a tariff or not.
Placing tariffs causes tariff wars. That's partly how the Great Depression started. That did redistribute wealth, but not for long.
My point was not to defend tariffs. It was an example of a way to gain compliance without the unreasonable expectation that people will change.
There are plenty of examples of people trying to bring it about, though. They turned out to be all shit-holes.
:up:
Same old arguments: communism has killed 100 million people. Capitalism has killed more people and responsible for slavery, but thats not really capitalism. So that doesnt count. But Pol Pot counts. Stalin counts. China counts except for the part where theyre now a superpower with several economic measures better than the US. That part is capitalism though. Etc. etc.
Anyway even if communism was tried, and failed, its still the morally correct system. Weve certainly given capitalism a shot or tried to bring it about and the track record is pretty grim. Maybe some people still love Pinochet though, who knows?
No one really cares what kind of companies and associations you like. In fact Id hope youd join one. But none of your evasions change the fact that the countries mentioned have communist governments, run by communist politicians from the dictates of a communist party, all of whom wrote the party and government constitutions that explicitly state their aim to bring about communism. None of it changes the fact that you said you hope Kamala is just like them, a communist.
All of the horrible things these people did and still do in order to realize their goal proves only the lengths they are willing to go through to get it, and also the types of behavior you are willing to put up with all because you believe an old and out-of-fashion theory.
What proof? Empty assertions and evasions is all youve ever given.
First you hope for a communist politician and now you are trying to distance yourself from them.
Oh, a real communist. None of the other ones were real.
Do you know why someone would abuse the No True Scotsman Fallacy? To avoid valid criticisms of his argument. But to understand what I mean youd have to have a shred of self-respect and decency.
It is a fallacy. And youre telling me you hope Kamala Harris is a real communist while arguing that the entire Chinese communist party arent real communists. How can you dig a deeper hole?
It was as if the Democratic Party had rediscovered a power that it had never used, maybe never even been aware of; far from being a coup, it was the execution of the essential task of a political party: The use of formal and informal power to protect itself from political disaster.
Within a matter of two weeks, voters now faced a reality that had previously seemed impossible: You dont want to vote for Biden or Trump? Now you dont have to! You want change? Here she is! The flood of money, volunteers and crowds toward Harris testifies to the power of that sentiment.[/quote]
I said months ago that the replacement of Biden would completely changed the dynamic of the election - and it has. Thats why MAGA is kvetching about it, waxing sentimental for poor old Joe, when really all they wanted was an easybeat.
What is "bad faith" is having liars claim they know what they're talking about without having studied Marx and then having an idiot weigh in with a judgment out of the blue that nobody really cares about.
If so, then vote against him in the most effective way based on your situation: if you live in a swing state (i.e. polling trends are within the margin of error so that there is a reasonable chance for Trump to win your state), then vote "Harris-Walz"; if, however, you live in a safe state (i.e. Trump can't either lose or win that state), then vote for a third-party candidate who most aligns with your policy preferences (e.g. I will write-in "Cornel West" here in Washington state).
The common ownership of the means of production sits as a dream in the heads of communists, just like the dictatorship of the proletariat, the labor theory of value, class struggle, and a litany of failed communist predictions.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1823016427680358790?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
What a bizarre level of irony. That said, it's clear you have an axe to grind. I'm sure you'll continue through several more failed states.
I made a long list of Walz's leftist positions, from making Minnesota a sanctuary state for underage trans surgeries, to meeting five times with a Muslim cleric who admires Hitler. But there isn't much point. You're only here to argue a position, not have an intelligent discussion. Let me know if you ever have a substantive point to make.
IMO the Dems have been able to spin the defeat of the bill as the Republicans blocking immigration reform. I did read the details of the bill at the time, and it would only have codified the existing mess, and made the GOP complicit in it. So the GOPs were right to block the bill, whether or not the public understands that. That would be my take.
Quoting Mr Bee
I don't deny that it is a talking point for the Dems. The GOPs have a hard time getting their point of view out. As I recall, Jeh Johnson, Obama's head of Homeland Security, said that more than 1500 illegal entries a day is a disaster. The bill allows up to 5000 before they even begin to do anything. More than three disasters a day. Why should the GOP sign on to that?
Quoting Mr Bee
Nonetheless, positions get classified as left or right. I agree with many liberal positions and disagree with many of Republican and conservative positions. Most of them, actually, as a fallen liberal. Matt Taibbi referred to himself the other day as a disaffected liberal. Of course he gets called a right winger too. Any liberal who strays off the plantation gets smeared as a right winger. In England you're a right winger if you object to little girls being stabbed to death. Ugly doings in Brit politics these days.
Quoting Mr Bee
Yes I agree. Someone noted that both Trump and Kamala are appealing to their respective bases. A "turnout" election rather than a "persuasion" one. Instead of trying to persuade the middle, both sides just want to whip up their base. The worst kind of brain dead politics on both sides IMO. Remember when Trump survived his assassination attempt (or it was all a massive psyop of some kind, but never mind that for the moment) and he came to the convention calling for Unity? That didn't last five minutes. He picked Vance, who's on the ticket to throw red meat to the base. I hate it. I was really hoping Trump would try to be a unifier. I wish SOMEONE would.
Quoting Mr Bee
Thank you so much!!!! I think I'll cc my friend @Mikie. Hey Mikie this is the list I'd have posted to you if I felt like looking it all up. Thank you Mr Bee, much obliged.
Quoting Mr Bee
I agree with some of those positions. Especially that fraudulent 2008 bailout. As the kids at Occupy said -- remember Occupy? -- Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!. Truer words never spoken.
The point, anyway, isn't agreement or disagreement with the positions. After all Democrats are perfectly happy with most of those. The point, as I think you agree with me, is that Walz is a leftist ... and why'd Kam pick a leftist if she's frantically paddling toward the center? Was against fracking now she's for it. Enabled Biden's open borders now she pretends to be an immigration hawk.
Seriously, who believes Kamala's an immigration hawk? She's on record wanting health care for illegals, and saying that illegal immigration isn't a crime (it is). So she's lying her ass off. But she may get away with it. We shall see.
Quoting Mr Bee
Agree. Also in 2016 when he insulted people he was funny as hell. At least he was to me. When Megyn Kelly asked him at the first GOP debate if he was a demeaning asshole to women (not the exact words), he said, "Only to Rosie!" I just cracked up.
These days he's just angry and resentful. He won't let go of 2020. He's clearly not the man he was in 2020. I think he may well have a touch of the same kind of cognitive issues Biden's got. Trump is 78 and he's been through enormous stress the past four years.
I agree with you that he has a very good chance to lose. He could improve his chances of winning by staying focussed on the issues, but he's completely incapable of doing that.
Fraudulent media-protected campaign or not, Kam is out-working and out-hustling him. She could win.
Quoting Mr Bee
Yup. Trump carries enormous baggage. And Kam's better than Hillary. I personally do not dislike Kamala as much as I dislike Hillary.
Quoting Mr Bee
It's Trump's job to remind them of energy policy and the wild Biden-Harris overspending. Instead he's snarling about her rally crowds being faked. Maggie Haberman in the NYT reported that he's privately called her a "bitch." Seems Kam really has thrown Trump off balance.
That's actually what none of us foresaw. With all her weaknesses, Kamala is uniquely able to flummox Trump. She draws a big crowd and he fumes and throws out insults, instead of reminding people of the price of gas when he left office. He just can't find his groove. He used to be able to insult people to beat them but he can't do that with Kamala, it just makes him look small.
Quoting Mr Bee
We will be hearing much more about that after the Dem convention I imagine. I hope, anyway.
Quoting Mr Bee
He's repeatedly shown bad character, lying about his service, lying about his combat experience, lying about his rank, leaving (admittedly as was his legal right) just before his unit was to deploy to Iraq. A lot of his fellow soldiers are speaking out against him over that.
Of course Bill Clinton notoriously ducked out of military service, and it didn't hurt him. So it's just one issue out of many.
Quoting Mr Bee
That's why Trump lets Vance do the attacking on the military issue.
Substantive points like
Quoting fishfry
Yeah, you let me know too.
Youre the one that said you arent very familiar with his policies. So why youre now arguing about it is odd.
Quoting Mr Bee
Sounds good to me. So your point is that Mr Bee can make substantive points, but that you could too if you tried. Cool. Guess you really showed me.
I thought the Fed was apolitical and does whatever it wanted? Their one job is to not let the economy crash regardless of the political narrative it creates. I mean Trump and the Republicans will be mad at a booming economy if it helps their enemies but let's be honest Trump would be harassing the Fed every day to cut rates if he were president right now.
I'm skeptical. Not so much that there are neat ideas to be found, but of the implementation. Lenin, Mao and others might have thought they had it, but that turned out differently. How would it go? And in a larger, diverse environment?
(ok, don't want to side-track the thread, should perhaps be moved elsewhere)
Co-ops are communist. Think of it that way. Far closer to anything in the USSR or China.
Simplified a bit, but its one way to think of the matter if its a struggle to get your mind around.
Trump has made it clear that if he is elected it will have to answer to him.
Perhaps too scared to face hard-hitting question, whether about Harris flip-flopping or questions about Waltzs stolen valor, Harris and Waltz interview each other!
Its all an opaque act, a virtual candidacy, like Biden: the election of a figure head to represent the US in world political pageantry.
No, dont be fooled, communism is not cooperatives and more democracy. These little tales are what they tell you to trick you into giving up your freedoms. Next thing you know youre in a labor camp.
:smirk:
I watched 10 minutes of the Harris and Waltz chat just now and if its an act theyre good actors. They come off as warm, approachable, and down to earth. The script is on-brand too, with compelling creation stories and showcasing their middle-class backgrounds. A masterclass in branding. Isnt Trump supposed to be the branding expert?
It also presented a stark contrast to the cold elitist labor-hating and weird chat between Trump and Elon.
Theyve been doing it their whole lives. No doubt theyre good at it, if branding is your principle upon which to judge. With an army of campaigners and millions of dark money in your pocket, we wouldnt expect anything less. But there is no better to hide your lack of interviews and lack of transparency behind such a fake exchange.
Why do you think its fake? I wouldnt think that you would even watch it.
Yes. They still try to avoid screwing with the economy when an election is close.
Quoting Mr Bee
He'd have to install mechanisms for overriding the chairman. I guess he'd give it his best shot.
I think an impartial viewer would disagree that the exchange is sickly sweet, cartoonish, and ingenuine.
You think they're being plainspoken and nice so they won't be canceled? That would be a moronic strategy.
While over in the clown car show that is MAGA, theyre pleading with Dear Leader to at least try and appear to be saying something policy-related and sensible, even if their party has wasted the last legislative session on wild-goose chases about impeaching Biden and advanced zero legislation.
But no - Dear Leader says he has every right to be mean about Harris, because shes trying to put me in jail and then reverts to his stream-of-addled-consciousness rants. Business as usual.
Well as one, that's how they come across. I couldn't give a squirt of piss who wins - I'm just calling it like I see it. They come across as cartoonishly saccharine and dishonestly bubbly.
Quoting praxis
Probably not in the sense that they've strategised in those terms, no(though, who knows - more brazen political horseshit has happened). But I didn't suggest that. I suggested that what comes across. I am not alone, and ths is not an unreasonable reading of such twaddle as they've used for their talking points imo. It boils down to this:
Quoting AmadeusD
Anyone who is trying to win your vote shouldn't be taken at face-value anyway. Unsure why this wouldn't apply to the ticket who had to pick up on a race they(i.e Biden/Harris) were sorely losing.
Nice little op-ed.
Roevember is coming! :fire:
So true. Campaigns are about "messaging", consisting of (distorted) narratives, and "defining" themselves (in an appealing way) and the opponent (in a negative way). It's show business.
I sometimes watch a daily show/zoom-call on youtube called "2-way". Mark Halperin hosts, and he usually has both a Democratic and Republican campaign strategist (Sean Spicer is on there frequently) with him. They evaluate the previous day's campaign action like a sports talk-show: what's working and not working, and opining about what each campaign should be doing. It helps give me perspective on the game that it is.
Well I'd prefer it if they focused on not screwing over the economy because they're worried about the political optics. I suspect that that was the reason why Trump has been getting a pass legally for his multiple crimes. Both the Republicans and Democrats were too chicken to shut him down permanently after Jan 6 and now here we are.
Quoting frank
Quoting Fooloso4
Apparently he wants to override the Fed so yeah.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1823875755232911821[/tweet]
Just a very stable genius, with the best words.
Is anyone (with the exception of the MAGA cult) foolish enough to take what a politician says at face-value? Anyway, you have a remarkably low tolerance for human sweetness.
Its not about policy at all, is it?
I am wondering who are more stupid now, those who vote for Trump or those who think that the evil in this country may come only from the "far-right", but never from the left?
I stand for social justice, gun laws and environmental protections (things that Trump never takes into consideration), but if Democrats bankrupt this country the only sure thing is that progressives won't see any of their plans/dreams realized, and they will deserve to be blamed for failures which they often use to charge their opponents with.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13751313/Kamala-Harris-rolls-economic-plan-1-7-TRILLION-handouts-bungles-revealing-ban-grocery-store-price-gouging.html
Maybe stop reading and regurgitating the Daily Mail.
Several of your numbers are wrong, and its obvious to any reader that youve bought into the tired right-wing talking point about debt and spending which youll only hear about when its a Democrat in office. Never mind that Trump jacked up the debt as well by trillions.
For me no big difference between democrat politicians and republicans, apart from appearance (republicans dress and look trendier than democrats, democrats are better orators).
Trump reduced taxes in order to satisfy his voters. Harris says she will give handouts to those in need. Is it not the same thinking, with different targets? Trump targeted businessmen and self-employed people, Harris is targeting those in need, mostly single mothers and minorities (though she uses the word "middle-class" for promotional purposes).
In contrast with republicans, I believe in government spending and government intervention. But I don't see why there are no other ways of doing it, apart from just giving money to people.
Trump did that too (he told people "vote me, so you save money" and he kept his word). Most of my friends were happy for saving from their taxes during Trump's presidency, and Biden did something similar in a time of urgency.
It is not an accident that 2020-2022 coincide with the US cryptocurrency craze. Just from the people I know, I may tell you that many of these relief paychecks ended up in crypto investments (wasted money, which in one or another way our children will have to repay).
But you should see it that Kamala Harris is doing the same thing with Trump: vote me, so I give you money. I, Kamala, speak about USA and Americans, but in the way and in the moment I do it, I don't care for the future or the role of this nation, I just want you (my potential voter) to know that money is coming for you.
We have some moral dilemmas now:
Should the voter consider money and personal benefit as the foremost criterion in casting his vote? Democrats and republicans will say yes. (Truth does not matter to them.)
Should our generation borrow money that the next generation will have to repay?
Democrats and republicans will say yes. (The only future they know is from one election to the next.)
How should we use the money that our children will have to repay?
Democrats and republicans will say these money should be used in the way that satisfies best those voters which brought us to power. (Again, the only future they know are those periods from one to the next election.)
To conclude, we are not talking only about debt and sums here. We are talking about the morality of doing politics and spending money in this way. You don't blame your neighbor who takes a loan to upgrade his old house and buy a car, but you will definitely blame you neighbor if he takes loans to pay sex-workers, buy drugs, go to see Dubai, etc. In this country so much money is paid, but the results are poor and some people will always pay the bill (without a detailed receipt). I can't vote republicans when they reject science, but I have lost faith in democrats too. Either they have to be frank with Americans and tell them some big sacrifices are needed to save our country and/or the whole world, or they just will keep satisfying their voters every four years and always will blame their opponents for that never-happening-revolution.
Yeah, I dont get it. Now abortionists get to vote for the policies they want.
I just removed my party affiliation with democrats, and I never plan to vote climate-change deniers (republicans), but I am just trying to better understand how democracy works in this country and within the social media. This is why I am asking about Youtube.
Thank you.
No doubt he is stupid and very anachronistic (in order to balance the cost of foreign tariffs, he thinks to reduce the prices of local energy, through making coal and oil cheaper, at a time when the rest of the world is trying to free itself from carbon emissions and countries like South Korea and China are leading all other nations in batteries and electrical devices), but Kamala is not better.
Price gouging is not coming only from big companies, is coming mostly from small and medium businesses. Many of these businesses will close or file for bankruptcy if the government tells them how to limit prices. (Walmart and Amazon will profit again.)
This is going to be a very difficult election. You have to choose one of the two extremists. The one is the extremist of the rich and evangelicals, the other the extremist of the poor and identity politics.
If Kamala wins that will happen only because many Americans hate Trump. In other circumstances she would have been the worst choice for the democrats. In conclusion, whoever wins the only sure thing is that this country will become more divided.
That being said I do think that alot of Harris' policies won't be done at all if only because congress (especially if Republicans keep the Senate as they look likely to do) won't allow it. The issue with Trump's plans on deporting millions of immigrants and imposing a 20% tariff on all imports is that he can do it unilaterally. I'm not worried about him gutting Obamacare because the GOP congressmen are smart enough to not play along with his schemes. He would do it if he had a big red button on his desk to press, but he can't, however such a button does exist for starting a trade war like he did in his first term.
Policy ought to be a big part of it, but it doesn't capture everything. Better: we predict a future that is entailed by each candidate, and choose the candidate that we believe will deliver the better future.
https://www.youtube.com/live/alKit5q7iVU?si=-80UJ08luJm5v1Y0
It's typical of the ones labelled "morning meeting" that discuss what I was talking about. Other episodes have different sorts of topics, all related to some aspects of politics.
This one features a Jordan Peterson interview: https://www.youtube.com/live/Tgy4bsS3tM8?si=GnvRCOefpTF9WQAK
Peterson makes a ton of debatable claims, but still much food for thought.
Here's one featuring a panel discussion of media bias: https://www.youtube.com/live/k0xCB1J0SOk?si=s2xyYWlfjwklM9fj
Very interesting.
Quoting 180 Proof
16August24 $23.06 per share :down:
(NASDAQ 17,631.72) :up:
Loser The Clown's pump-n-dump scam is down 40% in five months. Not bad for an OG grifter who even 3x BANKRUPTED A CASINO. :clap:
*
Biden-Harris DIJA "Boom Market":
6Nov20 $28,325.53
16Aug24 $40,659.76 :up:
Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:
Luckily the past can give us a hint. Both were heavily involved in past and current administrations. No predictions required.
Give us a hint on what? The future? Then you are essentially making a vague, general prediction of the future.
Their record. If given power, what will they do? Harris has been vice president for the past three years and I can not name one thing she has done, for instance. If she wants to enact price controls, give 25000 to first time home-buyers, why hasnt she done so?
That's political nonsense. You know as well as I that a VP doesn't have the power to implement policy. For that matter, there are limits to what a President can do.
I wasn't trying to debate policies or candidates, I just wanted to point out that it may, or may not, make sense to assume policy-promises are likely to become policy. For example, executive orders are easy, but transient; laws are long term, but need 60 votes in the Senate. Willingness to compromise matters, and you can have a positive or negative view of that.
Maureen Dowd, the queen of the liberal chattering class, sets you straight on this point.
Her opinion column in tomorrow's Sunday New York Times on the eve of the Democratic convention:
The Dems Are Delighted. But a Coup Is Still a Coup
[quote=MoDo]
Top Democrats are bristling with resentments even as they are about to try to put on a united front at the United Center in the Windy City.
A coterie of powerful Democrats maneuvered behind the scenes to push an incumbent president out of the race.
It wasnt exactly Julius Caesar in Rehoboth Beach. But it was a tectonic shift and, of course, there were going to be serious reverberations. Even though it was the right thing to do, because Joe Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve as president for another four years, in a fully vital way, it was a jaw-dropping putsch.[/quote]
Not every day that Maureen Dowd makes my point for me.
I did not engage with your arguments for the same reason I don't engage with flat earthers.
It's perfectly well known that Biden was pressured and shoved out. It's not rationally possible to argue the contrary. I get that you're sincere, but so are the flat earthers. Since we talked a week ago, stories have come out about Biden's seething resentment at the way he was treated. Here's one such.
[url=https://nypost.com/2024/08/11/us-news/biden-specifically-names-nancy-pelosi-in-first-interview-about-why-he-dropped-out-of-presidential-race]Biden admits he was pushed out of presidential race, name-drops Pelosi in first interview since exit
[/url]
It's simply not possible to look at the facts -- Biden was in it all the way on Saturday, then they announce he's got covid, then on Sunday a letter comes out under a forged mechanical signature without any of the standard official notices of withdrawal as required by the FEC.
You just can't spin this any other way than hardball political pressure from the Dem insiders. I absolutely do not understand how you can even pretend otherwise. To be honest I don't recall you making any rational arguments.
I did think it was amusing that MoDo spent her Sunday column the day before the Dem convention to make the point that it was a coup.
But if you want to think Joe Biden woke up on Sunday morning and dictated and signed the letter of his own free will ... you are entitled to your opinion. It is just too silly and unsupportable an opinion to be worth much in the way of discussion.
Haha. Good one Mr. Bee. When do you think that will happen? It's her official campaign strategy to never say an unscripted word. We all know what happens when Kam goes off script.
Price controls. Of all the hare-brained schemes. Even WaPo and CNN are against the idea. Price controls inevitably create shortages and bread lines. Nixon's price controls failed. Price controls always fail. They constrain supply and increase demand. Exactly the opposite of what you want.
Well 100,000 Antifa goons and Hamas-loving maniacs are planning to exercise their free speech rights in Chicago. The store owners are boarding up the windows just in case. "The whole world's watching" as they chanted in '68.
Quoting Eros1982
The Democrats are now the party of the rich. The GOP are now the party of the working class. Exact opposite of how it used to be.
:rofl: sure buddy. Keep telling yourself that. I suppose a high level of delusion is necessary to be a Trump supporter.
This is also funny.
Politically it will probably work out for her because of how uninformed voters are which is what I suspect her play here is. Say what you want about how viable her policies are but polling does show that people blame corporate price gouging for alot of the inflation and they want the government to do something:
Populism sells and when people see the "experts" at CNN and WaPo balk at these ideas and you have folks like Larry Kudlow on Fox saying that corporate greed is a myth they just see the establishment defending the status quo. I mean if CNN is gonna bring on people like this:
It's hard to see them as not being out of touch with the concerns of consumers. I'm not saying they're wrong but if you're worried about the price of beef this week then that's the last thing you want to hear.
The same goes for her housing policy where first time homebuyers will probably be more excited about direct subsidies over building more housing (though Harris says she's doing both). Remember your average voter doesn't understand the difference between cooling inflation and deflation (what they would call an actual decrease in prices) and still needs to be lectured on how marginal tax rates work. At the end of the day none of these policies will get implemented simply because of how dysfunctional congress is but like her adopting Trump's stance on tips and one upping Vance's $5000 CTC idea with a $6000 CTC, Harris is trying to win an election by promising alot of nice things. Same for Trump too, to be honest. It's all about the vibes.
Executive orders are interesting. I dont think theyre so transient when it comes to the institution of government itself. They can direct the executive agencies and the military, for example.
Have you been reading this and the Trump thread? Not only are mainly democrats partial to this thinking, its a pick-and-choose situation. Though, remove the partisan remark - and just the question - and my incredulity remains :P
Quoting Eros1982
True. And true for both - Trump would normally be one of the worst Republican candidates. Its just the conflict aspect that has him preferred (and, possibly not preferred, just a better choice that Harris to many Reps). Neither had a shot in hell of being a Good President
Show instances of this in this or the Trump thread.
https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/2024.08.19-Report-of-the-Impeachment-Inquiry-of-Joseph-R.-Biden-Jr.-President-of-the-United-States.pdf
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/eu-hails-sacking-of-ukraine-s-prosecutor-viktor-shokin-1.2591190
Figures. It contradicts what I believe so I better stop reading it.
19August24
Harris-Walz 2024 :point: taking out the tr45h!
Roevember is coming. :victory: :cool:
What are you talking about? :brow: Steve Schmidt is a thirty-year Republican and a political and corporate strategist. He is best known for working on Republican political campaigns, including those of President George W. Bush, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arizona Senator John McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign.
The source is irrelevant unless you want to talk about bias in picking one's sources (even more obvious there, in the main as Ground News shows with statistical analysis of most articles it posts as to who is publishing/reading those stories/takes).
Are you suggesting that this doesn't happen in general? I have given an example (which more starkly illustrates this, as the source doesn't align, but the content does, with expectation).
Heres another
And another
Another
More
This seems a fairly obvious phenomena no? I'm not using this to impugn anyone in particular.
Were not communicating for some reason.
Dems have Swift and Beyonce GOP have Hulk Hogan and Chachi. Theres a drop-off here.
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Sorry buddy I just dont see it. Most of these speeches are lame. But it doesnt really matter.
Everywhere else.
Everywhere and nowhere.
You didnt watch White Dudes for Harris? The only things missing are the white pillowcases.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/white-dudes-harris-fundraiser-zoom-call
I was referring to Biden's farewell speech in particular. But then, I admit I'm emotionally attached to the outcome of the election in a way that, if it were any other time and any other pair of candidates, I woudn't be.
:up: I get it. Trump bring re-elected would be a disaster. I very much hope he loses and will be voting against him. But I still very much dislike these silly conventions. Compared to the RNC, its boring. But thats a compliment.
Hes sporadically trying to be teleprompter Trump on the podium from time to time, but Truth Social Trump will always, well, trump the effort. I expect the more he lags in polls the more desperate, spiteful and vindictive he will become. A truly vicious circle.
But for a really lame speech, the NDC can't compete with the Orange Baby recently declaring himself the defender of law and order, (you have to smile, surely?) and giving a purported 'economic speech', both in a monotone of sleepy dreariness that even Fox gave up on following. I won't give links to spare the blushes of the apologists, but you can find them I guess if you want to.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/20/biden-speech-dnc-2024-harris/
In other news, One of the biggest revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the United States added 818,000 fewer jobs between April 2023 and March 2024.
This is all par for the course for the Potemkin administration, a blizzard of lies and deceit, with its vice president and second in command now taking up the mantle as its next virtual president.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/08/21/job-gains-revisions-federal-reserve/
The unemployment rate was still at historic lows during that time, which wasn't really a good thing from a neoliberal pov.
True.
If Trump can be believed this is good news because he reported that those jobs were filled by illegal immigrants. Good news or part of a blizzard of lies and deceit?
Its not typical to have your former press Secretary tell people to vote against you, no. Even in this country. Trump is just that awful.
What makes this so extraordinary is that Republicans under Trump regard Democrats as the enemy and do not dare cross party lines. If Trump loses we are much more likely to see Republicans return to the idea, if not the practice, up putting country before party.
Shows what a spineless weirdo he always has been, and now solidifies his place as having one of the worst judgments in history.
Given Stephanie Grisham's record--including her previous defence for Trump calling Never-Trumpers "human scum"--it seems highly unlikely she is doing anything other than using the DNC as a free advertising platform for her book. Wealthy establishment conservatives, like those on the Lincoln project, I guess, realize Trump threatens instability and the Democratic same ol' works better for them. I doubt any of the objectors are concerned with actual corruption or lack of morality as there is no morality to be found anywhere in American politics and corruption is systematic and desirable for both parties.
Its been that way for a while. Its the establishment vs. the outsiders. Many warmongering neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, David Frum, Michael Steele, and other Bush/McCain worshippers have fled the GOP to find their rightful place among their DNC allies. Meanwhile establishment and deep state critics like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK have seemingly fled that backstabbing cabal for the Trump camp.
There's some truth in that, but it doesn't make the outsiders the "good guys". Stephanie Grisham was right when she said Trump has no morals. She just left out the bit about her and the Democrats also having no morals.
True enough. But the fracturing of these parties and the subsequent realignment is very interesting to watch. Who knows what will become of them over the next few administrations?
True but money-grubbing conservatives existed during Romney and McCains and Bush and Reagans time too. Didnt see them at the DNC. Then again, those guys werent (rightfully) demonized like Trump is.
I dont pay much mind to the theatrics. The whole convention is ridiculous. And I have costal real estate to sell to anyone who gets teary-eyed over these speeches.
:up:
How much?
I'm not too interested in the gory details but the political shifts that are being experienced are symptomatic of social fractures that may signal the inherent unsustainability of neoliberalism and the delusion of the "end of history" paradigm. I'm not sure that leads anywhere good in the short term.
I suspect Europe, as the crucible of the worst ideologies, will have more of an issue than over here and much quicker. Same with whats left of the commonwealth. But I also suspect the US isnt far behind.
Sell it now! Next year it might be territorial waters, or at least uninsurable.
House collapses on the outer banks:
They got RFK's endorsement though. According to polymarket, they are (very slight) favourites to win now.
I wonder if they're calculating that by the popular vote or by predicting how the swing states will go. Probably by swing states.
It's a betting market, so it's sentiment based. I think Harris will still win but just barely.
Funny how he went from being a "useful chaos agent" according to Steve Bannon to ultimately being a drag on the Republicans so much that they had to hang him up. I'm guessing the right by propping him up so much in the media wanted to recreate the Bernie magic that divided the left and got us Trump in 2016. Fortunately they had no idea what actually made Sanders popular and ended up making someone who was more likely to peel votes away from the right instead. The anti-vax stuff wasn't gonna appeal to anyone except the far right who still obsesses over COVID to this day, and although Kennedy could've adopted a more pro-Palestinian stance to contrast with Biden, he ultimately ended up being more pro-Zionist than Genocide Joe.
Yeah. I at least applaud that he takes climate change as the existential threat that it is. Maybe that brings some sanity to the Republicans, if only at the margins. Otherwise hes useless.
In all likelihood Trump probably promised him a position as the Secretary of Health and Human Services which is where he would likely have influence. So add anti-vaxxer leading the department of health to the growing list of dangers of a second Trump term.
The free market. The deus ex machina of all crypto-plutocrats. That wonderful abstract bullshit reason given whenever you dont want the government to regulate your pet industry.
The free market. Doesnt exist, but the closer we get to it, the worse things become. Probably the stupidest concept there is but so many people believe in it as if it were God. Another one of those indicators you can use to determine just he how big of an idiot you interlocutor is as soon as they bust that one out, you know. That and the climate is always changing :lol:
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Not only does this show a complete inability for diplomacy, but also a complete unwillingness - much like what we have seen during the Biden administration.
This doesn't bode well for the rest of the world.
I don't think the world is ready for Joe 2.0.
Hes dedicated to truth, democracy, and saving Americans from being poisoned by big agriculture/pharmaceuticals so he endorses Trump. :chin:
Just another slimy politician doing whats best for himself.
The integrity and independence candidate.
Probably the worst thing about him is the fusion of antisemitism (e.g. his veiled suggestion that the Jews and Chinese got together to launch COVID), his staunch support for Israel's war on Gaza, and a central pillar of his platform being that he's anti-war. The hypocrisy / opportunism combo there is audacious even for an American politician.
That's quite literally what the Biden/Harris administration is doing right now, though.
They threaten Israel with menacing finger-wagging and taps on the wrist, while literally supplying the bombs they are throwing on schools in Gaza.
Absolutely. I think I've made clear before there are no morals to be found on any side. I can understand Americans having practical reasons to prefer one over the other though.
Looks like the libertarians won't be flocking to Trump considering how RFK shat on them for some as yet unrevealed promise from the Orangeutan. I doubt they'll go Dem either though.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1827173323098226721?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
:lol:
24 hours later: totally forgotten.
You know as I remember it -- I didn't go back to check -- you and I were going back and forth about whether it was a "coup." And you were claiming Biden stepped down willingly. At some point I didn't feel like arguing about it any more. Especially since neither of us are privy to what actually happened. Nancy and Barack and George Clooney didn't share their innermost thoughts with me; and I assume not with you either. So we're both guessing. The evidence support the proposition that Biden was forced out is pretty strong. The other day Pelosi said, "I did what I had to do." Another data point for my opinion.
I don't think you have much in the way of a supportable point based on the widely-reported pressure that was brought to bear on Biden. And I don't think it's that important a hill to die on. So I withdrew from the conversation. This seems to make you unhappy. I regret that.
Quoting Benkei
No doubt. But I came by it honestly, as a lifelong liberal Democrat and currently a disillusioned one. One of the seven to ten million Americans who voted for Obama and then Trump. You don't want to engage with us and that's sad.
The Biden-Harris admin was a disaster and now Kamala is actually running against her own administration. A Martian watching the Dem convention would have had no idea that Kamala has been running the country (in the stead of the non compos demented Biden the past three and a half years. She actually said she's going to fix the border. She's been in charge of the border all this time. I just read that 70% of the voters don't know any of her past policy positions. She may yet get away with it.
Oh yes I quite agree. Price controls are popular. It's not till a ways down the road that the shortages and lines (queues for my British cousins) begin.
An old article has been making the rounds. (pdf link)
Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls
Price controls have been failing for 4000 years. But yes you are absolutely right. They are very popular. Nixon's wage and price controls were popular till they failed.
I'm old enough to remember when liberals considered that a virtue.
And there weren't any new wars while Trump was president. The world didn't blow up till Iran and Russia saw Biden's weakness. Some of us out here credit Trump and blame Biden for that. But don't worry about the defense contractors. Kam shouted out her strong support for the continuation of the wars. Yippee.
Orangeutan-see, Orangeutan-do: batshit RFK, Jr replaces fake-redneck JD Vance as VP canditate in MAGA-GOP bait-n-switch (instigated by Kelly Ann Conway) in the days or weeks to come. Will this trumpster fire blow up into a flaming hellscape by Kamala's September 10th debate beatdown? TBD.
Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:
Really?
Not what I said. So either you can't read or your memory is a sieve.
Just a speculation, more hope than worry.
Got it. Well, polymarket has flipped Dem again, so I guess the RFK bump has been fleeting.
My apologies either way.
Imagine JD sharing a platform with his non-verbal son, and having the presence of mind and care to pull that son aside when he was about to walk into a teleprompter screen?
I can't imagine JD being open and honest and caring at all. I can't imagine him wanting to show his mixed race family off to the maga racists anyway. But they better get used to a lot more disabled kids of all sorts as abortion becomes more rare.
Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.
Tunbridge Wells knows the value of brand equity. :lol:
Vance already showed his family off with his wife giving an amazing speech, putting to bed your little race fantasy once again. As for abortion, now people can vote for the laws they want. I know people having more power is anathema to the authoritarian, but youll get used to it.
Hill Dems try to tamp down backlash to Harris grocery price gouging pitch
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/25/harris-grocery-price-gouging-backlash-00176266
The women in many states dont have the power to choose now. Arent you supposed to be some breed of libertarian?
I dont think the feds should have any say in the matter. Do you?
Quoting 180 Proof
26August24 $21.72 per share :down:
(NASDAQ 17,725.77) :up:
You think that states should have the power to deny women their freedom to choose, right? If so, doesn't that make you a stinking statists?
I do not think that. Now women can vote for the policies they want. Isnt that what you want?
The freedom to vote trumps the freedom to choose I dont even know what that means. I was saying people can now vote for the legislation they want in their own states rather than having zero opportunity to do so.
And enforcing stances and opinions on others via the democratic process is (unfortunately) the normal way in which states function.
'Degenerate' is a strong term, and I think you're being unreasonable in its use.
There are still plenty of places in the country where it is legal to kill a fetus. In any case, it was a shaky legal precedent, not a right. Now everyone can go about it the right way.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/axios/status/1828413016477495464?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/bbcworld/status/1828446955212570763?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Is that true? According to polls in Texas, most favor some access to abortion, and as far as I can tell it hasnt been on a ballot.
If youre right then there is an opportunity for you or some other abortionist to run on such a platform.
I think it's the typical way that actually BOTH Republicans and Democrats would do this:
When corporations ask for simple rules they ought to then adhere to (by legislation), naturally the political establishment doesn't give this (which actually would be their job). Why? Because there's Freedom of Speach, of course!
What the government wants is to have in secret a watchdog system where they will inform the corporations which isn't tolerated and who should be banned. And if the corporations themselves won't follow, it's be trouble for them. And as they are free companies, they can decide who to ban and who not!
And if you think that the Republicans are different, well, it's simply other issues than the progressive wokester's see inappropriate.
Yup, the people always have to fight for their liberty.
Despite all this, it's still far better than the system they have in the EU, where in some countries they are arresting people for what they post onlinefreedom of speech there is no longer a human right, despite what history has taught them.
UK isn't in the EU, btw.
Nikki Haley Says Donald Trump Has My Strong Endorsement, Period In Republican National Convention Speech
The Criminal Clown is running like a raped ape but he still can't hide ...
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4850566-superseding-indictment-trump-election-subversion-case/
Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:
"On the whole, I wish I'd stayed in Tunbridge Wells."
-- Claude Rains character at the end of Lawrence of Arabia.
Couldn't find a shorter clip but it's at 4:18 here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZdLM2ENld8
Quoting NOS4A2
I'll take the other side of that for sake of discussion.
I have heard over the years that Roe was bad law. Even some liberal, pro-choice legal scholars made that argument.
But as a moderate pro-choicer (safe, legal, and rare as Bill Clinton put it), I say that Roe was working. It kept abortion off the ballot. It's analogous to Obergefell. Before Obergefell, gay marriage was an issue in every election. Now, whether you support or oppose gay marriage, it's the law of the land. You can blog your opinion, but it's never on the ballot. It never affects an election.
In the same way, Roe kept abortion off the ballot. It may have been bad law in the eyes of legal scholars, and it upset the pro-lifers, but politically it was working.
I say that if the so-called conservative justices were secretly working for the Democrats, things couldn't have turned out worse than they are now. Abortion kept the 2022 red wave from happening. It's an issue in 2024. It's Kamala's strongest issue. I've seen her give pro-abortion speeches and she is really, really good at it. She has her heart in the issue and she has her talking points straight.
Dobbs has been an electoral gift to Democrats and it is going to continue forever. It's worth a few points in every election from national to local and it's going to be till Congress does something about it, and they never will.
And it brings out the worst in the pro-life forces. This idea of arresting women who cross state lines is completely insane. I've "crossed state lines" from California to Nevada to visit gambling casinos. Nobody ever objects to that, even though laws against gambling used to be rooted in moral arguments.
Dobbs has unleashed the worst impulses on the right. It's just a disaster for the GOP.
More than 200 former Bush, McCain and Romney staffers endorse Harris
The alumni of the three Republican presidential nominees sought to reiterate their opposition to Trump's 2020 re-election in an open letter.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna168363
A lot of things work, for a while. But whether it is just or unjust, legal or illegal, wrong or right, are far more important to this particular issue.
Roe never worked politically. It has always been a seriously divisive decision. And now we know it was doomed to fail under the lightest scrutiny. If people want a political solution, it needs to be done politically, not through judicial activism.
Being pro-life isn't degenerate. Thinking you have a right to decide for others is.
But my original point was that the attack on Walz's treatment of his son, and the accusation of violence, like the attack on his son earlier, was a lie being perpetuated on these pages without refutal; and the contempt shown for the disabled seems too often to go along with the supposed "pro-life" stance, which more usually turns out to be a parallel contempt for women, than a real valuing of all life.
Youre the big government, anti-freedom guy. Dont you want the government to have all the power and make the decisions? This is one way to navigate the situation should one want to kill her child.
Doesn't anyone who engages in the democratic process think they have a right to decide for others, and are they not actively trying to get the government to impose their opinions on society?
I'd say the human right to bodily autonomy weighs quite heavily here, but by that same logic are people who advocated for vaccine mandates degenerates as well?
Quoting Tzeentch
No, the political question is to act or not to act. The basic assumption is to not act unless there's a clear benefit that increases positive freedom. Increasing choice, eg. positive freedom, is therefore the moral position.
Edit: in fact, acting here limited negative freedom by introducing a prohibition, limiting personal choice.
And don't get me started on the retarded method of interpretation in the USA that leads to dumb rulings to begin with.
Former Trump administration staffers also support Harris in this election. Not a great look.
Several spoke at the DNC, including Stephanie Grisham. She reported that Trump said his diehard supporters, people like you, were basement dwellers. How does that make you feel?
You keep talking about me to disguise the fact you cannot speak to the issues. That you seek for some law to decide the issue suggests you want to leave it up to the government. Is that not so?
The architects and propagandists of the Bush regime join your campaign. Not a great look, but good good riddance nonetheless.
I think Grisham is an idiot, but she's right. It was Clinton who insinuated Bernie supporters were basement dwellers in her leaked audio, and Trump accepted them with open arms.
Quoting NOS4A2
Isn't this a wee bit hyperbolic? Whatever you want to call it, "one" = "her", "one" isn't someone/something else, yes? Are you thinking of a slippery slope? Either way, abortion ? killing a child here.
A couple of months in, a fetus is a lump of cells about the size of a cherry, something like that. Not a person. My neighbor's kid is. It's more like a cyst. No more a person or conscious than pre-conception sperm and egg cell. ? bio-facts
I'll readily admit to having an emotional attachment to life. It's not like abortion is a positive thing or to be encouraged (anti-natalists not invited at the moment :grin:), it's a rough enough decision.
Every human being who walked the earth began that way. They are not like cysts. Abortion, infanticide, homicide they all involve the same act: causing the death, or killing, of a human being.
The MAGA term is RINO. Anyway, whos more neocon than Nikki Haley, whose wealth seems to be tied to defense contractors. No Republican is rejecting her endorsement of Trump. In fact, many Republicans wanted to elect her president in this race.
If thats what you believe then shouldnt you want a national ban? As it is, the abortion rate hasnt decreased by much, if at all. Most abortions are performed with drugs, and as you pointed out earlier, women can travel to states where its legal. It seems that the most vulnerable women, those with the least resources, in red states are hardest hit.
Trump is attempting to side-step the problem by leaving it up to the state. This makes it a matter of choice. It is a form of pernicious relativism - arbitrarily permissible if and when the individual state says it is. No true "pro-life" advocate should find this acceptable. It undermines the moral claim and cedes its ground to choice.
This is not to say I oppose choice, but rather oppose the choice being made one way or another by someone other than the individual.
Exactly. Trump is currently saying hed be great for women and their reproductive rights. If he doesnt lose the support of pro-life advocates it just further demonstrates that the issue is little more than politicization.
I have a feeling the toddlers ? would make it every time, outside of rather special(ized) scenarios.
OK, what it there were, say, 10 times as many sperm + egg cells and fetuses as toddlers? 100? 10000 as many sperm + egg cells?
In terms of bio-facts, only the toddlers ? are conscious persons children.
I suppose we could craft the details of a scenario (or more) and run a poll if you like.
Pro-forced birth / anti-woman's autonomy aka "pro-life" will be the critical dealbreaker for the majority of women voters across the political spectrum this year like it was in 2022. :fire:
Roevember is coming! :mask:
I think prohibition is a terrible idea, and states that enact it ought to feel the repercussion of it. The act is no ones decision but the womans. But, since the government has involved itself, the issue is now whether the matter should be settled by some judiciary in Washington or on a more local level. To those who want the government to set the bounds of their lives, the change required to set those bounds is easier attained at the local level. Activists get to ban it in some places while celebrating it as a human right in the other. In short, state governments ought to have more right to determine their own laws than a federal judiciary.
You say abortion is no ones decision but the womans, and then go on to say that the state ought to have more right to determine womens choice because its easier to restrict or liberate at the local level. This is contradictory. If you think abortion is a womans choice then the state ought not restrict that choice on any level and no matter how easy or difficult.
Well said.
So now Trump is pushing for being the best on womens reproductive rights :rofl: because hes losing in the polls and its generally an issue theyre being crushed on. If he had any principles or soul whatsoever (or any balls), hed be calling for a national ban on the murdering of babies (which is what these nutjobs actually believe). But theres no chance of that. Instead hell mumble some nonsense and his ass-kissing slaves like our resident Trumper and Ayn Rand devotee will endlessly defend it, pretending it all makes perfect sense.
Dont waste too much time on it.
In other news: Harris has her first interview tomorrow. I think she should do several interviews, not just one big one. Too easy for Fox News to demonize if even the slightest phrasing is off.
Ayn Rand made strong arguments for choice. Whadaya bet she would have argued differently has she been a he.
Places like Fox are inevitably gonna move the goal posts no matter how many interviews Harris does but I agree she should be doing more of them if just to clarify her positions. Or get Walz out there doing interviews since he's a better speaker. Apparently he never read from a teleprompter until hitting the national stage which is a very welcome trait considering who the Dems were/are running up to this point.
Yeah, it always struck me as funny how Trump gets credit for his ad libs and general off-script remarks. The truth is he sucks at it; hes an awful speaker. Mostly incoherent, and almost always the same lines, 99% of which are lies (the country is going to hell, everything is being destroyed). Its easier to talk extemporaneously when you can make things up, unbound by reality.
In any case, I hope he continues doing it.
Thats a lie and misrepresentation of my view. I knew it would come to this because you are often unable to argue in good faith. Oh well.
https://archive.ph/Foy8A
It is a shame that in the US judges and district attorneys are party candidates or independents supported by parties and billionaires like George Soros, when democracies are supposed to have three independent branches: executive, legislative and judicial. Since in the US the judicial branch is not independent from the executive, US justice is flawed and divisions have become more difficult to heal.
It is a shame also to put the blame on the Republicans (who control SCOTUS) only, when the real problem are the laws and standards pertaining to the US judicial system.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-09-23/how-european-countries-create-ideologically-balanced-courts
He was invited. Where was Biden and Harris?
While I agree with the need for judicial change I think the blame for the current blatant judicial activism rests squarely on McConnell, Trump, and the Federalist Society. Project 2025, written largely by Trump's people, will take things much further if he is elected.
I honestly have no idea what the lie is supposed to be.
It's easy to blame Republicans, since they had the majority in the Senate, in the last 40 years or so. But the problem seems to be the laws and standards pertaining to the judicial system.
Most of European countries do not appoint judges for life, but only for ten years. There are countries like UK where judges are appointed by some non-political commissions and countries like Germany, Spain, France, etc., where judges are elected by politicians BUT only if they get the 75% of approval in local parliaments/assemblies. So, in these countries there is only one way to become a judge: you should be almost apolitical, cause no party ever controlled 75% of parliament seats and the only way these countries can have judges is through wide consensus and through making sure that the judge is almost impartial.
From history books and legends this is what we are told: you can become a judge only if you are impartial. In the US judicial system that's not the case anymore.
I didnt say what you claimed I did.
Thats not helpful. Assuming that you want to clarify where I allegedly lied, can you explain what you mean when you say, The act is no ones decision but the womans.?
This appears to mean that you think the state should not to have the power to restrict a womans choice.
He was saying that our present approach to abortion is more libertarian than it used to be because states can decide what they want to do.
No, conservative libertarians dont think that women should have the liberty to choose.
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/refutal
Thats right. Then you claimed I said the state ought to have more right to determine womens choice because its easier to restrict or liberate at the local level. It appears you made that up. What I said was state governments ought to have more right to determine their own laws than a federal judiciary.
https://pasteboard.co/PYcv579vrqwX.png
What would your thought process look like with out all the fantasy?
Technically a lie, my bad, though a more generous interpretation would be that I was paraphrasing.
The contradiction remains unresolved. To repeat myself:
Quoting praxis
Well, you knew what I wrote and then changed it to suit whatever it is youre trying to do, pretending the whole time that I said one and not the other. Thats pure deception.
There is no contradiction. If I think a state ought to determine its own laws that does not mean I think it ought to prohibit anything it wants.
We werent talking about anything were we? We were talking about abortion.
Anyway, I hope you work out the contradiction some day.
It's a plank of the Libertarian party platform that abortion shouldn't be legislated. here
Brent DeRidders opinion is the opinion of all members of the libertarian party of North Carolina, and the opinion of all Libertarians in the US? I wouldnt have thought that libertarians would relinquish their freedom of opinion so completely to one man.
His main argument suggests that abortions will happen irrespective of legal restrictions, advocating instead for imposing religious beliefs through avenues other than legislation.
The first paragraph is Plank 1.5 of the Libertarian Party platform. Libertarians oppose abortion legislation. This is not rocket science, praxis.
Its an opinion regarding the principle. The principle is:
1.5 Parental Rights
Parents, or other guardians, have the right to raise their children according to their own standards and beliefs, provided that the rights of children to be free from abuse and neglect are also protected.
Ok.
Many women will say that men hate Democrats only because they love equality more than Republicans, but that would not be a strong argument at all (since it is essentially saying that from birth men are inimical towards women, when I am more inclined to believe that all humans are born equal, unbiased and free, till they are manipulated by "educators" and politicians).
https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/have-democrats-given-up-on-men/
Ive never heard one woman say that. Bullshit strawman.
Good. Fuck Elon Musk and his fake free speech absolutism. The same guy who caved to Modi and is now suing advertisers he once said could go fuck themselves and Dont advertise to is now crying about not being allowed to manipulate an entire country with his right-wing propaganda.
All the brain-dead teenagers will be outraged Im sure. Now they can pretend to care about free speech and be victims at the same time. Cool.
You don't read The Guardian.
After the MeToo movement, there are many articles on The Guardian which supposedly show how (white) men have started a campaign of revenge against women. White & old men are taking revenge and punishing intelligent women (according to The Guardian columnists) simply because white men hate the truths and injustices exposed by the MeToo movement.
In some of these articles you get the impression that all white and old men hate women and their anger towards women is an inborn thing that all women should be aware of:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/29/men-women-workplace-study-harassment-harvard-metoo
PS: am I the only one to suspect that Kamala Harris and democrats are targeting single mothers with their 2024 ticket, and whenever Kamala speaks about middle class she doesn't mean American families/couples with median income and small businesses, but she speaks about single mothers (like those she used to advocate for when
she was involved into CA politics and activism)? If I am right in believing that democrats target certain groups in their 2024 campaign, aren't they therefore investing in divides in order to hold power? If that is the case, aren't there any moral dilemmas for people who will vote/support/sponsor a party that bets in divisions simply because it loves power?
Well then your impression is wrong. Im sure sexism exists, but this cartoon version wont get you anywhere.
Quoting Eros1982
So targeting different demographics is surprising to you? Have you been living on Mars?
Bets in divisions. Right and its somehow the Democrats that should give us pause over this. Not the fact that Trump and his MAGA slaves have single-handedly polarized this country to levels not seen since the civil war, targeting young men, rural people, evangelicals, whites, and the elderly along with the usual sexists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and xenophobes that have become a fixture.
But yeah, targeting single women is the real problem.
You might be right about Trump, but after Biden's victory all BLM protests in the US stopped and we got some peace from the fireworks craze. Since none in this country believes that black lives improved with Biden, the logical conclusion is that the democrats signaled their gangsters to stop protests and fireworks. These things may resume again if Trump wins and that's one good reason to not wish a Republican victory. Nonetheless, there is so much evidence that the democrats may be behind BLM, women, and Muslim protests. It is not surprising that the millions given to BLM & diversity issues came from the same billionaires who sponsor the democrats.
Democrats pretend to be saviors and angels and for this reason they should not compare themselves to the Republicans. Democrats are supposed to abide by higher standards lol
Pledging 1.7 trillion to the very poor, as Kamala did ten days ago, turns the US into a kind of charity organization that gives without expecting any worldly things in return. It is not that I am against helping. Morally speaking I feel a duty to help the incapable. But here again you have some moral dilemmas: What vision do I have for a country where inflation is taken more seriously than climate change, wars and violence? Should we bill the future generations for misfortunes (covid and inflation) that happened to us? What kind of culture you create when you nourish a whole nation with the idea that for every hardship you can bill future generations with more debt? What is the best way to use debt? Is it better to invest in progress and development or to use it for food and leisure? Do democrats have any visions for our children and the future? If so, how they will materialize those visions if this country becomes bankrupt and people are encouraged to abstain from family and work?
In conclusion: Democrats and Republicans have become very Machiavellian lately. Their aim is to take power regardless of the means and the people they use. I decided to vote for Biden in 2020 because of Trump's ridiculous response to covid19 and, mostly, because Trump withdrew US from the Paris Climate Treaty. But there are many moral dilemmas pertaining to the Democrats now that I think it is morally advisable to vote for third party candidates or to not vote at all.
It's always been so. They are in a vicious competition for power in a two-party system. It's just there used to be agreed-on conventions that are now being disregarded, so the viciousness is closer to the surface. A truly moral politician can only be at a disadvantage re power, as morality imposes limitations on action.
I wouldn't say that's the logical conclusion. Riots do start and end, emerge and fade, for whatever reasons. For that matter, they need not have a (single) "puppet master". But maybe the rioters were predominantly Democrats, if that counts as "the democrats".
Quoting Eros1982
Well, at least fringes of party members. Polarization has come with opportunism, noise, calculation, "mood swings", contrarianism, zeal, the usual. Game of Thrones and The Boys aren't to be emulated, and conspiracy theories should be taken with a grain of salt (make that two). :) Additionally, foreign interests are trying to nudge in whatever direction.
Trump is still absolutely terrible on the environment. If its something you truly care about, this issue alone is motive enough for keeping him from office. That happens to mean pushing a button for Harris fine. But to claim one should throw away ones vote (which is all that is) or not vote at all is literally insane, given the professed values.
And most of your claims amount BLM, etc., are straight from right-wing media. Worth analyzing.
That's true. But, as you say, some claims need more analysis (before you dismiss or approve those).
I don't wish Trump to win. Another thing that bothered me back then was that almost all of his family members became advisers in his Oval Office (that really made this country look like Saudi Arabia). Even fanatic Republicans were bothered with the culture Trump brought into the White House. Clint Eastwood, to mention one of them, got really nuts when Trump posted those Goya-cans pictures from the Oval Office lol
Anyway, right now 36% of males in this country despise both parties. Kudos to them! It is time for independent minds to make their voices heard. They should leave behind the notion that the least bad is the best choice for independents. Cause none can predict the future, and what you make the least bad right now, in the future it may turn into the worst choice.
https://www.americansurveycenter.org/featured_data/young-men-distrust-both-parties/
Independent men and women who still care for this country should push for judicial and electoral reforms. I do hope that judicial and electoral reforms may make us less independent on the two major parties. Reforms may help both republicans and democrats, also, to become more sensible and less Machiavellian.
As hinted to, many institutions and standards in the US (I am adding UK also) for a few centuries were based on (unspoken/unwritten) conventions. But we see a cultural/mental shift in the US (and UK) lately --and for this reason reforms are becoming indispensable. Nothing should remain unwritten and unforeseen anymore.
This is really silly.
Some folks can't tell the difference between eating a shit sandwich and starving themselves (due to low IQ/poor education, ethnonationalist hatreds and/or disingenuous venality). Fortunately, in this moment, they aren't (yet) the majority in the US. :mask:
Roevember is coming! :fire:
Bad example. I think Id rather starve than eat shit. :lol:
Quoting 180 Proof
31August24 $19.50 per share :down:
(NASDAQ 17,713.62)
No doubt only "poorly educated" "suckers & losers". :mask:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1829915590468731167?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
This paltry move was underscored by the fact that Harris, the last person in the room when it comes to one of the worst events in US history in Afghanistan, had never contacted any of these grieving families. Trump did, so he was invited to Arlington on the anniversary of their death. At any rate, theyre pissed at Harris, who not only didnt phone any of the families, but also did some campaign propaganda at Arlington herself, the exact same thing she accused Trump of. Its always projection when it comes to Trumps haters.
Trump posted some of their responses to X and theyre quite devastating to Kamalas joyful veneer. This, in combination with the accounts of Harris own staff, proves shes just dog shit in lipstick.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1830044664688165285?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Hummuna hummuna hummuna
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1830033436683215146?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
All of this personal marketing stuff is calculated and generally works. It's unlikely Harris has anything to do with it.
I have neurolink so Im basically on auto update.
(1) Trump was the worst president in history (or close), a traitor to the country, a degenerate con man, and pathological liar on top of being an empty narcissist with no ideas other than personal branding. A climate denier and plutocrat lover, to boot.
(2) Trump is rightfully hated and extremely unpopular. Currently losing in the polling, which is no surprise.
(3) Harris is a boring, establishment candidate. And is now likely to win, given the choices.
What a shame the Republican Party and their slaves have no souls. Its sad. But at least it makes it easier for them to lose, as theyve been doing the last 8 years. Given that theyre the party of climate denial and pro-pollution, Im at least happy about that.
Incidentally, it looks like North Carolina is now in play which is interesting.
I think they want to get elected, and the environmental vote is getting larger and more vocal.
You think Trump and the republicans give two shits about abortion? No. But they sure did scrap Roe v Wade. Its not always lip service. Sometimes you have to deliver, even if its too little (IRA was biggest climate investment in history and yet still too little; would have never happened under Trump.)
Suppose they did nothing. Would you then vote Trump? My guess would be no, so why expect anything other than lip service?
I just don't get the overly vigorous defense for what is a shit sandwich either way.
The "establishment" is a nebulous term. There are elected and appointed officials who are active in their support on the environment. They are as much a part of the "establishment" as those who are indifferent or opposed. The "establishment" is not one side or the other.
Yeah.
Quoting Tzeentch
If Trump were offering something better on other issues, yes. Nuclear weapons, healthcare, education, guns, anything. His stopping funding for Ukraine would be a bright spot, but for the wrong reasons and its uncertain whether he would. On Israel hes even more hawkish than Biden.
Quoting 180 Proof
So even before they had announced JD Vance ...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/03/rfk-jr-trump-vice-president :mask:
@Baden @Mikie @Wayfarer @Fooloso4 @Benkei @unenlightened @frank
The US is fucked, I guess, but it is the UK that is falling apart. Public services are on the brink of collapse. The gov is at the point where they are arresting people for social media posts, which is authoritarian, but also stupid because the prisons are too full. A shithole.
Yes indeed, the UK is ahead of the pack as usual. That is one of the ways I can foretell your future. But I love authoritarianism in the service of peace and non-violence.
An authority must monopolize violence and use violence in order to institute non-violence. Just another contradiction among many. At any rate, speech is not violence, so Ill just have to remain suspicious of such admissions.
Yes. Pax Romana.
Quoting NOS4A2
A sheepdog gone rogue can herd a flock of sheep over a cliff without touching them.
How do they do with apes?
Vietnam War. Iraq War. Consent to remove workers' rights. Consent to dismantle/defund public schools. Jan. 6 2021. Etc.
Pretty well, if the sheepdog is also an ape, or a few of them.
To herd or control apes you have to commit violence against them, or proceed with the threat thereof.
Such articles of faith are what you use to control people. It doesn't work in every case, but it works on average, and not even a threat is required.
Give it a try.
That contradicts both, current and historic facts. See the last post for the beginning of a list of things that happened, and/or are currently happening. It negates the statement quoted above.
Look at the spread of wealth around the world after WWII. Pay particular attention to the flatline in real blue collar wages. Watch the power of their dollar wane over time. Watch the under 100k blue collar lifestyle require more than one income. Watch the companies who treat their workers worse obtain a financial advantage for having done so. Much easier to do without legal enforcement of binding arbitration agreement. Ronnie Raygun started that. Much easier to do if enough people portray working folks' unions in nothing but a negative light. Do it long enough and vwahlah. Magic. People are convinced that one of the best things for them is not. Watch the birth of many ghost towns, replete with walking zombies.
No, sir. You're wrong. The smartest bipeds known to man are capable of being happily led to their own slaughter. No physical violence or threat thereof necessary for that to happen.
Quoting 180 Proof
4Sept24 $16.98 per share (-36% past month) :down:
(NASDAQ 17,084.10)
:lol: :point: Sell-off erases Trump Media shares' 2024 gains
Then it should be easy to demonstrate. Manufacture my consent, or anyone elses. I am willing to read any argument, marketing, or propaganda you can provide, and well see if I willfully consent to any of it.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/fbi/status/1831422641288159284?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
But Putin is all in on Kamala.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1831678549020807350?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Meanwhile a Chinese spy was found to be working for the Governor of New York.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1831102256332083281?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
You're kind of like Sisyphus.
Harris will beat Trump, says election prediction legend Allan Lichtman
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/05/harris-trump-lichtman-election-prediction.html :victory: :cool:
Quoting frank
Syphilis.
I actually did lol at this.
Herpes
These laws against foreign inference in US election make little sense in a country that spent 7 billion in 2016 election campaigns. We are 6 times bigger than UK, but in 2016 we spent like 100 times more then UK in electoral campaigns.
The biggest problem in this country are the money from NRA, Oil Industry, Pharma, all kind of CEOs, the Zionists, and so on.
It doesn't make sense anymore to vote for candidates who take billions from people you and me do not know at all. The only thing we know about the "legal" billions is that they come from US citizens (though their hearts may belong to Izrael, to Texaco or to some utopia).
If democracy has a circus, USA is that circus nowadays.
Right, American elections are unique in that respect, and in the way theyre conducted. Personally, I love the circus for sheer entertainment value, but the amount of money thrown around is obscene. Dark money from undisclosed sources kind of make the whole foreign influence rhetoric a huge sham. I rather some American oil company or lobby group have influence than a shell company company who need not disclose where the money is coming from.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2024/03/unprecedented-surge-in-dark-money-floods-2024-elections/
By the way, in UK there's no limit how much to give to the parties, but there is a clear limit on what the parties can do with all that money. This is why many won't bother to donate in UK lol (cause they know that 70 million are enough for palm cards, billboards, and this kind of stuff).
https://qz.com/1743234/the-three-main-differences-between-us-and-uk-elections
So now, I come with this question: let's suppose that we know the people who give X money in the US, what do we know about the way X money is used?
Can Pier Morgans, to take an example, receive X money in order to write a good article about Trump? Another example: can Kamala use D money in order to pay "volunteers" to attend an event?
[sup] Pekka Kallioniemi · Vatnik soup · Sep 5, 2024[/sup]
Meet the right-wing Canadian influencers accused of collaborating with an alleged Russian propaganda scheme
[sup] Jonathan Montpetit, Aloysius Wong · CBC · Sep 6-7, 2024[/sup]
How much influence do such campaigns have anyway?
I just finished listening to PBS "On the Media". They were discussing this. Pool, Rubin and others claim that they did not know the money for their propaganda platforms was coming from Russia. But this much is clear - they made a lot of money and it is not difficult to trace it back to the source. But why look a gift horse in the mouth when it is offering you so much money, even if it is a Trojan horse?
Regarding the question of how much influence they have :
Forbes is a good place to start:
The Russian influence canard returns. We now know they are using it as a pretext for surveilling American and Canadian citizens, which is the true crime.
You may opine on what to do about them, but not their existence.
They've increased during the time of the present Kremlin, and, in addition to effects/efficiency, we might ask the same old question: To what end?
Fact? Its complete bullshit, itself an influence operation. Its just a list of trigger-words to activate the drones. Putin, Russia, Trump, right-wing, influence, and Kamala gets some help with her campaign.
(Some of the more heavy-duty ones aren't run against the US, though, but smaller, more "manageable", areas.)
You can also find some in Europe and Africa, and you can also find some run by US agents.
Odd that you first deny such activities only to turn around and instead call the reports of them such activities, first denying then claiming their existence.
I dont believe any of it, and Im certainly not scared of social media and tic-toc videos. I mean, who cares?
Its a nonsensical pretext to censor and control social media, spy on Americans, and if the past is any indication, to gaslight the electorate.
Russia and China want to influence the election as much as possible of course they do. The US does it all the time. (The difference is that well support a coup or invade.)
But the Russian influence is mostly social media. Why wouldnt they do so? Theyll fund people who are already saying things they like, unleash a bunch of bots, etc. But whats the actual impact? I doubt its very much. The claims are overblown. Just as they were in 2016. Hillary didnt lose because of a Russian bot farm; she lost because she sucked.
Its still interesting to see what theyre rooting for. In Chinas case, mostly just chaos and division. For Russia, mostly undermining support for Ukraine. Not rocket science to see why this would be the case.
I dont doubt there are such activities. People try to make money by getting views on social media all the time, often by making political propaganda. What makes it a campaign or something nefarious?
Trump is his usual rambling, incoherent buffoon self repeating his rally lines reflexively. But he looks more natural doing it.
Man, it would have been nice to have Bernie up there with Trump just once.
Her "opportunity plan" is a disaster in the making (a big blow to the already tortured middle-class Americans). Nonetheless, since Trump did not offer any other plans apart from deporting immigrant slaves, she had a greater appeal.
The big loser tonight was ABC News. That Fbi report the journalist mentioned, about lower crimes on national level, is a total bs if someone keeps in mind that liberals tend to make legal many things conservatives make illegal (so when you legalize cannabis and abortion you definitely may have 40 million less "criminals" in the whole nation). Definition is also the reason why US looks much better than Europe when it comes to corruption (cause in some European countries if a mayor receives a sandwich from a voter that's called corruption, whereas in the US you may receive millions in donations and you may be considered the most ethical mayor). In short, Americans do not care what Fbi and Abc will report. For as long as they see armed robberies and murders in their towns, they do think that crimes are a serious problem.
Thanks to ABC bad journalism and Trump's irrelevance, too little attention was paid to Kamala's "opportunity plan" (that as I said here is not directed to the middle class, but to the poorest people and single mothers). Urban living, farming, life expectancy, food industry, general health issues, labor ethics, AI, education and infrastructure were not mentioned at all. Crimes were not taken seriously by the ABC. The national debt was not mentioned, whereas on environment Kamala Harris said the biggest lie: i.e. Joe Biden and she have spent trillions on stopping climate change, when the truth is that they spent 3 trillion on covid relief, they passed a bill of 800 billion on infrastructure and to this day less than 20% of that bill has been invested by the US government. Surely, the ABC journalists did not bother to fact check Kamala's big lie tonight. She even promised to produce more local oil.
I won't bother to vote, but it would be unfair to blame only republicans or democrats if this country becomes less democratic and less thriving. A lot of blaming should go to our journalists as well.
Harris could have been replaced with a mannequin and still win.
Clear lines in the sand are Bernie's strongest suit. That would have been reeeeel nice.
She was nervous, but delivered okay. Trump can sling a lot of shit around in a short amount of time.
The Haitian immigrant fiction is particularly interesting to me. Against what the city manager says, Trump presupposes he is somehow, in some way, privy to much greater knowledge about that city than the guy who manages it. This is akin to his claims that he knows more than the generals in the armed forces. Unbelievable...
Its over.
:sweat: :up:
What lies and hoaxes? Be specific instead of vague aspersions.
You consider 9/11 an attack on American democracy?
Bloodbath was a lie, the very fine people hoax, that he is going to implement Project 2025, that he wants a national abortion ban, that he wants to ban IVF, that he incited a crowd to storm the capitol, that police died on that day, that J6 was the worst attack on America since the civil war.
People may seek to keep Psychopath [Orange] out of the Oval Office, but everyone ought to understand it'd be a pyhrric victory at best.
The US political establishment is still the enemy of all things good and just.
Had I lived in the States, I wouldn't vote. There is no lesser evil. Just different flavors.
Yeah, actually there is. Trump is the greater evil. Dont overthink it.
To pick one: environment. The IRA was meaningful, and has (and will continue to have, unless somehow dismantled if Trump is elected) meaningful impacts on a transition to less emissions yes, despite current levels of oil production.
To say nothing about actions at the EPA, SEC, FTC, and NLRB which have been surprisingly good. Oh and the education departments canceling of student debt has been fantastic, despite the courts blocking much of that effort.
It takes effort not to see differences, unless theres some real partisan skewering of perception.
I know environmentalism is very important to you. The Biden administration's colossal failures of diplomacy vis-á-vis Ukraine and Israel are very important to me.
The abortion issue is a political tool for him, he wants whatever benefits him the most and thats why he refused to answer when asked if he would veto a national ban.
What national abortion ban?
Understandable. It's important to me too, and Biden has been an utter failure in that respect. It's the one area that Trump may (accidentally) be better for the world. I don't see how he'd be any better on Israel, but perhaps I've missed something.
A ban can be enacted under the Comstock Act, if the DOJ (at the president's direction) so chooses. I doubt the Supreme Court would stop it. It's a very real possibility. The fact that Trump is backing away from the rhetoric because he sees at as the political liability that it is means exactly nothing.
"There's no reason to sign a ban because we have gotten what everyone wanted," Trump said.
Im pretty sure that the 170,000 women who were forced to travel out of state for abortions last year didnt want what Trump gave them.
Im certain that all the pro-life folks arent pleased with the fact that the abortion rate hasnt decreased by much if at all since the Dobbs decision.
Neither do I, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the Biden administration carries responsibility for things going to hell in a handbasket on their watch.
:up:
In that case it wouldn't matter one wit that you'd lived here. :mask:
Quoting NOS4A2
:victory: Yes, the next POTUS sure did.
Quoting Mikie
:up: :up:
Like Ronald Reagan (whom I loathed), Kamala Harris is, if anything (besides highly competent), a happy warrior. :strong: :cool:
At the Shanksville Fire Station, @POTUS spoke about the country's bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that'. Bates added: 'As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2024/sep/12/joe-biden-dons-trump-hat-in-show-of-unity-at-event-commemorating-911-video
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-will-end-all-taxes-overtime-2024-09-12/
Kamala's political triangulation suggests she will be stealing this pledge in due time.
Quoting 180 Proof
13Sept24 $16.12 per share :down:
(NASDAQ 17,395.53) :up:
Quoting ClowardPiven strategy · Wikipedia
Quoting An Essay on Liberation · Herbert Marcuse · 1969
Interesting! I work overtime. So, that's great!
Why do they lie? ( Carol Off · Human Rights Hub @ Instagram · Sep 13, 2024)
We've probably all heard it, "But they all lie", hence the worst can keep getting away with it.
Random paraphrases of the day...
To a hammer everything is a nail.
To a radical much else is a radical problem.
Choosing the right battles matter.
If democrats had majority control of congress Trump could pass legislation supporting workers.
Yeah right.
True but thats assuming he wants to help workers; his entire business and political life says otherwise.
Its obviously an act of desperation. Next week hell be promising to eliminate taxes altogether.
Yes. Fun to watch the corporate-owned trickle-downers try to navigate all this.
Yeah, hell pretty much say anything at this point. Taxes, abortion, electric cars (now that Elon is on his side, he likes them), anything.
And always remember: theyre EATING the DAWGS.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/15/trump-likelier-winner-unless-harris-tackles-two-failings-says-ex-ambassador
With regard now to what are you saying about eliminating overtime taxes, it seems that you have missed the point. The point is not preserving inequalities, the point is making people to work more.
A Green New Deal promised by the democrats would have brought more jobs and innovations to the USA and to the whole world, but since the democrats spent more money in covid relief and armaments, the only countries that have really seen some kind of green/electrical revolutions lately are China and South Korea. Harris seems to have totally forgotten the democratic green hive of the previous elections and her only pledge about improving economy is to help single mothers with the groceries.
Yeah, eight hours a day isnt enough. Make America healthy again!
NPR is supposed to be a public radio, but since August it has become like another democratic parrot. With this kind of daily coverage, many public and private media will keep making people suspicious that this country is really controlled by the democrats and anti-Trump billionaires.
Most of the liberal media (viz. the majority of the US media outlets) have found nothing wrong with Kamala the last two months, and they won't bother to fact check her. The same media are implying that the election has been already decided from the presidential debate on Sept 10th, though very little substance was seen on that debate (i.e. Trumps' constant rambling on immigrants, Kamala's strong support for cheap groceries and US made oil, and the candidates' views on Israel & Ukraine.... all other issues were left to the imagination of the voters).
Another "assassination attempt"(?) today. I hope The Old Fat Fascist Clown lives long enough to see Kamala Harris sworn in as the 47th POTUS on 20January25. :victory: :party:
If the investigators, reporters, and producers at NPR have, based on the facts, concluded that he is a serious danger to the US democracy and groups of people don't they have a journalistic responsibility to say so?
Quiz:
Who said the above?
A) a random troll on Instagram
B) a 9-year-old boy
C) a young girl who couldnt get tickets
D) a 78-year old former United States president
Any guesses?
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/08/05/practical-accuracy-of-the-ak-in-7-62-and-5-56-by-9-hole-reviews/
But I see now they are describing it as an AK-47 style weapon, so could be a 103 or M version, which are a bit more accurate at longer distances but still not enough for 400 yards.
So yes, definitely within maximum effective range.
Maybe it's their right to do so.
To tell you the truth I think we will be better without Trump. But I do worry for our journalism. Turning Kamala into a hero overnight, crediting her with qualities she does not have, etc., will turn people away from liberal media outlets. These media do not sound serious or sincere every time that election approaches. There is a bigger probability to read something negative about Trump on conservative media, than reading something negative about Kamala on liberal media. The latter are really making Trump look like a victim in the eyes of millions of people.
That was very stupid of him. But, I am wondering: does this guy take any advices from other people?
He used to be advised by Ivanka and Jared when he was in office, but now I am not sure whom he listens to. (If I remember well, when he was president there were a couple of times when Ivanka made him deactivate his Twitter --but I am not very sure on this).
Three days before the presidential debate, a columnist in The Guardian wrote that Trump is so sure about himself that he won't bother to prepare for the debate with Harris. I laughed when I read those things, only to find three days later that the columnist was 100% right.
Say we were to give the man in the video a modern AK with a scope and several months to train with the rifle. Then you get to sit in the place of the 'torso-shaped target' at 500 yards.
Would it count as a nothing burger to you?
PS: I actually found a picture of the rifle he was carrying. Looks more like an SKS than an AK. Almost certainly longer-barreled than a regular AK.
It is not a question of their right but of what is right.
Quoting Eros1982
The public response to her campaign is news worthy. Perhaps there is some gushing from some sources but this is not as serious an issue as Trump's being unfit for office.
Quoting Eros1982
The line between news and entertainment has been blurred.
And these are stationary targets, the gunman is stationary and in a supported position, where he knows the distance to the target and can adjust sights accordingly.
Travel distance where the bullet can kill is several kilometers for an AK-47, but that's not what effective range is. Effective range is the maximum distance at which a weapon may be expected to be accurate and achieve the desired effect. Missing stationary targets more often than not means it cannot be expected to be accurate and achieve a kill. So 300y is more or less the max. for this type of AK-47, probably less since the targets were stationary and the gunman in an optimal position.
Again, say this person were to be given a modern AK platform with a scope and several months to familiarize himself fully with the rifle, would you think it a 'nothing burger' to take the place of the torso-shaped target? Would you say "Oh, don't worry, they can't hit us from here" (which is what you would be saying had you deemed yourself outside of the weapon's maximum effective range).
No, clearly not. You'd be shitting thick bricks.
Not what maximum effective range refers to.
Quoting Tzeentch
You don't understand what MOA is then because a scope doesn't change it. You can aim with a scope all you want, the bullets are simply going all over the place within the MOA.
Have you ever touched a gun, ?
'Just a nothing burger', mhm.
Anyway, I honestly don't know how you could argue that when you have a video infront of you of a shooter delivering accurate fire at up to 500 yards without a scope with a gun that's not his.
Could you provide a link or two to negative stories about Trump on conservative media?
A page ago you were arguing an AK can't hit shit at 200m 'because of MOA'. Do you stand by that?
He does but that doesn't mean he listens to them. He even said it himself in one of his rallies that they keep telling him to focus on policy instead of personal attacks... before going on personal attacks.
The problem with trying to give him advice is that he ultimately rejects the very premise of it. It implies that 1) other people know something he doesn't and 2) he has to follow what they say. For someone with his ego, it's completely unacceptable.
That presentation is also a vital part of the call and response that unfolds at his rallies. He polls the crowd to ask how he should respond to his 'managers'. He gets to stand inside and outside of the operation at the same time. Using one register for x and the other for y. Ventriloquism of the highest order.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/13/springfield-ohio-bomb-threat
It turns out all 33 of these threats were hoaxes from overseas. The medias incessant reporting on the topic appears to give those who would wish to hoax Americans an angle of attack, in this instance fake bomb threats in Springfield Ohio. Hilarious.
The damage done to the community falsely vilified by a Presidential ticket is reprehensible regardless of whether it leads to violence or not. The fear is real enough.
Falsely protecting them does nothing for the concerns of everyday voters who live there. Springfield is not a sanctuary city and when an estimated 20,000 people show up in a town of 60,000 rumors are the least of your worries. The damage is done and its the administrations fault.
You follow the lack of concern for people exemplified by your Leader. Amplifying lies is not moral behavior, especially while holding a large megaphone.
And then there is Vance who openly admits lying in order to get attention.
I cried "fire" in the theater because I need to clean up the mess in the first three aisles.
Good analogy!
Vance knows full well that the problem with such lies is that the MAGA - nauts will believe it and act on it. Vance may be unscrupulous but he is not stupid.
Yet when Biden, Clinton, the FBI, the media, or Kamala does it youre silent. Your concern is so sporadic it shows up only when it benefits you.
I don't recall when any of those people slandered a specific community in this way. It is the degradation that you keep ignoring.
Relaying the concerns of voters is what politicians should do and is entirely moral. Its not Trump bringing up specific communities and subjecting them to any degradation. He never mentioned where they were from, who they were, that they were a specific community. So thats a lie.
Quoting azcentral press
Trump changes the denigration of the first message to match the defense Vance is giving for lying about it. They are a team now. Try to keep up.
[sup] Alan Suderman, Ali Swenson, Garance Burke, Rhonda Shafner · AP · Sep 5, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Sep 8, 2024
Russia focusing on American social media stars to covertly influence voters
[sup] Christopher Bing, Katie Paul, Raphael Satter · Reuters · Sep 9, 2024[/sup]
Blinken accuses RT of being worldwide Kremlin intelligence network
[sup] Andrew Roth · Guardian · Sep 13, 2024[/sup]
Quoting Sep 17, 2024
Altogether, some US commentators/voters are adding their efforts to efforts beyond their neighborhood against themselves, it works to some measurable extent. The resourcefulness and organization of the Kremlin's machinery remains impressive in this respect. The possibility of such influences is inherent in relatively open/free societies, while others just thoroughly outlaw them.
[quote=The Old Fat Fascist Clown's speech to MAGA suckers and losers]Vote for Trump what do you have to lose?[/quote]
Roevember is coming! :victory: :lol:
Quoting 180 Proof
19Sept24 - $14.70 per share :down:
(NASDAQ 18,013.98) :up:
Oof. Thats less than the IPO. :rofl:
Donald Trump and other insiders can now sell shares of DJT, just as stock hits new low
He's peddling Crypto now. Act now! Don't wait! What do you have to lose? @180 Proof
I must admit to being rather miffed today. Things started off well. I was relaxing on my lawn in Philadelphia, watching the Dodgers game, sipping on a can of Butt lite, and stroking my tabby cat, as one does when one is a wholesome salt-of-the-earth American man like me, who is six feet tall with closely cropped hair, has a direct mode of speaking, and is a member of the Teamsters union. But and so anyhow suddenly I saw a HAITIAN approach my front yard and before I could initiate defensive maneuvers, the HAITIAN had reached over the fence, grabbed my cat, Tabitha, and put her in his mouth. By that time, I had my semi out, but the HAITIAN retreated up the road at max speed before I could get a head shot off, and had taken between his massive jaws the whole of Tabithas head and full half of her torso. It was unlikely that even my highly skilled veterinarian would be able to save whats left. This is why I will vote Trump. It is because of the HAITIANs killing our pets through deployment of their unnaturally large oral cavities and super sharp pet-killing canines as well as skills of strategic retreat when under fire, all of which are, as is common knowledge, genetic traits of the HAITIANs. On the positive side, the Dodgers won the game and, because of the support of me and my fellow Teamsters, Donald J. Trump, Pet Saver and General Hero of the Working Class Universe, will win the election against Camel Harris (who is suspected of being half HAITIAN--though the genetic tests have yet to be carried out, I trust Trump will force that scientific experiment on her when he becomes President and reveal the truth). Thank you. Drink Butt lite.
Voiceover 1: Shaunie O Rourke here, head of the Teamsters Union. I approve this message.
Voiceover 2: Drink Butt lite.
What the fuck are you saying here, Jim?
We can still do smile but all elements of personality have been erased.
Since fucking when?
Hard to say. According to some engineers, there were at some point personality traces but no one gave a shit when she was VP. No one listens to the friggin VP, Marty.
Yeah right, but now
But now some Americans want personality.
But she dont got it.
Fucking Zip.
Just the smile then.
The smile and talking points.
Will it be enough? Are we worried here? Can we do anything?
Weve got an engineer in giving her lessons, but it's... making it worse.
Shes trying
Yeah, but its obvious shes trying. Which is
Even worse right.
Replacement with avatar?
Its being considered. Keep her inside. Do most of the shit online or TV. The networks will play ball. Avatars can do personality pretty good. But she cant and it looks like she never will. And we gotta let her out sometimes.
Can you smile your way into the White House?
Well find out, Jim. Well find out
I like it. But no scientific experiments needed; shell be sure to tell you all about it. But I am a little disappointed there is no accompanying Baden cartoon.
Unfortunately, comrade @Jamal would probably delete it. So, I am stuck with words for now. :sad:
Hello, yes, *ahem*, haha, welcome to my lecture. So, lets get straight, um, to the point. Tonight we will examine the current U.S. presidential election from the general angle of plastic and fruit with specific reference to lego bricks and marmalade.
Let us begin by problematising the respective notions involved in terms of their likely referents. So, for example, despite being of a similar colour and luminosity to Donald Trump, I will contend that marmalade cannot be said to clearly distinguish him, nor can a lego brick, though being as equally dull, lifeless, and, in isolation, useless as Kamala Harris, clearly distinguish her.
The no doubt controversial truth of the matter is that the respective candidates inhere properties of both marmalade and lego bricks. For example, Trump is often considered thick as a brick and Kamala, slimy and bitter-sweet, such that they trespass on each others ostensible conceptual territories from the get-go. And this is just the beginningas we delve further, the lego brick / marmalade dichotomy becomes blurred to the extent that through the mechanisms of Trump and Harris these ostensibly distinct concepts, I will argue, actually tend towards unification.
This is a startling and bizarre result, but one that I believe can lead to an understanding of the importance of political polarities in dissolving rather than exacerbating social antinomies. There is nothing less than the future of intra-social harmonic relations at stake here, and the good news is that the humble, discreet and not oft remarked upon aforementioned social atoms are the key to unlocking this heretofore obscured potentiality.
So, let us explicate in more detail the dissolution of apparent polarities by highlighting the intrusion of the obverse candidate along the following five physical and abstract axes considered to be the sole purvey of the opposition: Taste, texture, function, key political goals, and social class.
Taste: Marmalade=Bitter-Sweet: >> Kamalic intrusion (Kamalas emotive orientation)
Texture: Lego Brick=Thick and Inflexible>> Trumpic intrusion (Trumps intellectual limitations)
Function: Marmalade=To add a smile to toast and similar wheat based products >> Kamalic intrusion (Kamalas debate habits)
Key political goals: Lego Brick =A part of a larger construction>>Trumpic Intrusion (Build the wall!)
Social Class: Marmalade =Middle class delicacy >> Kamalic intrusion (appeal to the middle class)
And etc.
What we see here is that through the employment of these candidates as a conceptual lens, the apparent differences between lego bricks and marmalade disappear. The two, in fact, turn out to be the same thing. Whats more, it can be shown that, as a matter of principle, any two opposing social atoms can be de-dichotomised through the employment of the Trump/Kamala political polarity deconstructive method.
This is revolutionary as it shows us how, far from destroying society, the extreme antagonisms of the current American political scene point a way towards the unification of all opposing linguistic concepts and thus of language itself, which amounts to a path towards the unification of spirit along Schopenhauerian lines and a utopic end to conflict and strife in a final nirvana of universal non-self that has been, up until now, undreamed of *ahem*.
Well, thats it, really. I hope you enjoyed my talk *burp * *fart*.
Good night!
I think we will not find a more detailed analysis than yours, honestly. I always knewand told myself talking to the pillowthat 'el trompas' and Kámala are the same thing, but I didn't want to share this thesis because I was hesitating on whether I dreamt it or not. It is clear that the compulsive hysteria of Trump and emotional fear of Kámala would join together and transform into a new subject. He, she, or 'it' will be the next President of the United States of America.
Is this the end of the US? Will people be able to register to go vote in time? What would happen if they did not mould together finally? There are a lot of answers that only time could answer. Just wait, sitting next to me, son, drinking coffee, and see what happens. People will embrace together, and poppies will flourish again. Time is a circle, not a scary line with no way of turning back.
The Lego brick will be moulded on the mermalade. Never a thick material was that manageable before. The best we could do? Stay away from both of them, rent a red Volkswagen van, and drive in the dawn until we meet the tan-coloured sun. Free as the wind. :sparkle:
Love it, lol. :heart:
(April 2024)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/894200
Quoting 180 Proof
Addendum:
Race to 270 electors via swing states*
Harris-Walz
blue states 229 electors > needs 41
wins: *AZ, MI, NC, PA, WI = 71 (44) electors :party:
Big Clown & Lil Clown
red states 219 electors > needs 51
(probably) wins: *GA, NV = 22 electors :cry:
I predict Harris-Walz will win the 2024 Presidential Election with at least 300 electors (Biden-Harris won 306 electors in 2020). I also guesstimate that Texas [40], Florida [30] & Ohio [17] are in play and any or all three might be flipped from Red to Blue and add 17 to 87 electors to the Harris-Walz victory: 317 to 387 electors. Yes, I'm predicting a Roevember blowout!
IMHO, that's a reasonable and low estimate, nowhere near a landside (like 486 electors for Johnson in 1964, 520 electors for Nixon in 1972 or 525 electors for Reagan in 1984).
So, living in a progressive town, I can't help wondering: how is it possible for these people to defend progressive taxation, all kinds of handouts to single moms, to never stop attaching "tax the rich" stickers on every car and window, and at the same time these (progressive) people will propose nothing about the mentally ill and the homeless who increase in numbers every single year?
Seeing how the homeless and the mentally ill are becoming more and more (making this town look like taken out from a zombie movie), I can't help thinking that the problem will not be taken seriously by the democrats for the simple reason that democrats cannot classify the mentally ill as a voting bloc. So, they are deaf to their plight for the reason that whether you help or you do not help a mentally ill person, he/she won't vote for you. In contrast, the democrats have an ear for struggling single moms and students burdened with stupid debts, because they see the latter as voting blocs.
The rate of homelessness in most places is significantly proportional to the cost of housing. Real estate markets are strongest in "blue" states because of the influx of capital that permits very high paying jobs. The curve is flatter where the wealth gap is not as exponential. That is one of the reasons why "red" states receive more from federal funding than they pay out in taxes. Nice work if you can get it.
The problem with mental health care is a part of the deconstruction of the hospitals and other state institutions that has been done under the idea that such work could be redirected to community level support. This process has been under way for decades. The fallout is perhaps now forcing itself into a wider public awareness. To be clear, this does not resolve into any particular political agenda. It is an intellectual failure of our society as a whole.
Quoting 180 Proof
23Sept24 - $12.15 per share :down:
(NASDAQ 18074.52) :up:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4897015-judge-rejects-trump-request/amp/ :smirk:
Happy 100th, President Carter! :party:
Tonight JD Vance will embarrass himself even more and Tim Walz will move the Harris-Walz ball closer to the end zone: "first and goal!" :point:
Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:
I am very frustrated with a democrat candidate who supports more local oil (Harris), and a vp who was an NRA supporter (Walz). I don't know why should I vote them.
I am just glad that Vance did not refuse global warming; he even blamed democrats for not having done enough with renewables :rofl:
I give Gov. Walz a solid B Grade. :up:
I give Sen. Vance a C-minus Grade.
Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:
No he didnt. He rambled a bunch of nonsense and then threw in a lie about nuclear. He also said if you believe emissions are causing climate change. An absolute joke.
The fact that you give him a pass while criticizing the Democratic ticket, and yet claim you care about climate change, shows how unserious you are or how fake. The choice is clear for anyone truly concerned about that issue. Should take about 10 seconds.
Quoting 180 Proof
Yeah, nothing great. They were polite. Walz stumbled with the Hong Kong answer Vance stumbled with January 6th and gave ridiculous answers on guns, Climate change, abortion, child care and healthcare. Should have been a slam dunk for Walz too bad.
https://nypost.com/2024/10/02/us-news/doug-emhoff-accused-of-forcefully-slapping-nyc-girlfriend-for-flirting-with-other-man-at-ritzy-gala-in-2012-report/
This is the same guy who got his nanny pregnant, so it's hard to put it past him.
I wish they win, not because I have high hopes in them, but I do fear Trump may make things worse.
However, I think Democrats' strategy is not working. They are trying to be appealing to the majority (people who don't want the second amendment to change, people who don't want to make sacrifices for the environment, people who think USA should stand by the side of Israel, etc.), but in this way Democrats will lose the support of grassroots groups: those who want to end the war in Middle East right now (mostly American Muslims), those who take environment seriously, those who want stricter gun laws, etc.
I am afraid that in their attempt to sound moderate, Harris and Walz will lose support among some groups, and they will try to stick with an economic plan that does not sound popular to the majority (middle class) they are trying to appeal to in other ways.
So, I wish Democrats had taken the opposite route: they didn't stick with that "opportunity economy", and they were radical on things like gun control, environment, and ceasefire now.
November 5 will show whether I got everything wrong.
:mask: :up:
Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen!
By rumors on the street, guy slaps girlfriend in public (she slaps too, they say).
12 years later, it hits the news like a supposed :fire: bomb. :D
Might'a taken some efforts to dig that one up.
Gotta' wonder what happened in the 12 years after. Anything serious?
I think thats a disaster too. But not surprising.
:lol: The Insurrectionist-Fascist Clown is shitting the bed (& his XXL man-baby diapers) ...
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/10/jack-smith-donald-trump-filing-immunity/
>>> Roevember 34.
I thought we were supposed to care about such things. At least thats what I was taught. I was supposed to feel outraged when Trump said grab them by the pussy decades ago. Are we finally past that?
Are you past that? Do you condone Trump's behavior in that regard?
Your brand of libertarian ethos does not engage with such questions on a personal level. Are you living the Trump life?
Do you include "grabbing by the pussy" in that category?
Insofar as it was ever taken up as a slogan, yes.
So, you add it to the ledger of your disaffection.
Trump said that while thinking he was alone with his interlocutor. It was never a slogan.
I was never stuck on it on the first place. In fact I thought it was hilarious. The only thing I do not condone was the gossip and ink shortage that resulted from it.
I dont know if I condone getting drunk and slapping women. Not a good look.
Revealing comment.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yeah, wtf are you talking about my dude. You 'don't know' if you condone this? What's hte hold up?
I was about to say the same thing...
You thought Trump "grabbing women by the pussy" was hilarious or that he said that or what? And what's hilarious about it?
I had no idea. I must be using the wrong locker rooms.
Im not sure he grabbed women by the pussy. The phrase You can do anything only means I did everything in clown world. What was hilarious, however, was the speech, how it was used, and the reaction. Like I said: clown world.
But there is nothing funny about slapping a woman in a drunken rampage.
Thanks for clarifying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/02/us/fema-floods-north-carolina.html
fu45 :clap:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-job-growth-surges-september-unemployment-rate-falls-41-2024-10-04/
*
[quote=Cornel West, 2020]An anti-fascist vote is NOT an endorsement for the Democratic party.[/quote]
>>> Roevember 32
The Trump team plays both sides of that:
Trump FEMA Claim Debunked: Agency Not Running Out Of Money Because Of Migrants.
In the report:
Congress determines how much money goes to FEMAs disaster fund, and the fund faces issues after lawmakers declined to allocate additional funding for FEMAs efforts in the stopgap funding bill it passed last month, only extending FEMAs existing funding level and allowing it to draw from $20 billion in funds more quickly.
It was the MAGA minions, of course, who pushed for that.
Some find the glorification of being able to use one's status as a means or excuse for committing sexual assault hilarious... evidently.
Quoting Paine
Yup. A concerted effort began in the early seventies to manufacture consent to eliminate social programs meant to help the less fortunate people in society, and lower taxes on the wealthiest.
It was tremendously successful and is still in effect. Hence, loads of Americans are still convinced to vote for people who vilify social welfare programs, public schools, publicly owned entities, organized labor, American manufacturing, self-sufficient practices, and the like. A commonly occurring theme is to treat the US government as though it is a privately own business. You hear people talk all the time about it. Hence, it was part of the groundwork laid for Trump. People believed a good businessman would be a good president by virtue of having the skills necessary. Well... it's a completely different skillset, for starters, nevermind the serious questioning regarding whether or not Trump id s good businessman. Plenty believed he was/is. The US government is not in the business of being profitable. Etc. All this amounts to a vote against what's in their own best interest.
Welcome to an America that once had the funds and infrastructure to take care of those incapable of taking care of themselves, of those who were mentally ill in ways that they needed caregivers... but stopped doing so and gave the resources back to the richest of Americans who could not care less about less fortunate people and mentally ill folk having no safety net. Let em loose. I don't live around em.
Looks like they were right. From what I can see the only people saving anyone is private, state, and local people. Remember Katrina?
Then it should be easy to show me a photo or video of FEMA doing something.
:up: :up:
I did. Very easy. Its not looking good. Its starting to look like Katrina. Remember that?
Your link failed.
It won't mean much to the Trump pooper scooper but here is an update:
FEMA deploys to rough terrain after Helene as it faces criticism, fights misinformation.
How do these problems fit into your libertarian vibe that nothing can be done by the state?
Nothing can be done by the state? What do you mean?
Your often repeated idea of the "state" is that it is a shared misconception rather that an existing thing. You are now asking that illusion to perform better.
FEMA is an illusion? Jesus christ.
That is not what I said. You have said the state is an illusion..
Any quote or context?
I could do that sort of thing, given what you have said in the past.
Your lack of interest in supporting any of that stuff for the sake of forcing me to repeat it is not the mark of a gentleman.
I dont remember saying that and I think youre imagining things. If Im wrong Id like to know what I said and in what context. Forgive me.
You have the same resources I have on the site. Use them if you are genuinely curious about past interchanges.
Apparently even Elon Musk is going to be there. So if they wanted to destroy two folk devils in one they might just try to do so.
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/oct/05/us-politics-donald-trump-kamala-harris-joe-biden
[tweet]https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1627310164398276608[/tweet]
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting Oct 2, 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/06/palestinian-us-friends-job-opportunities-humanity-gaza
The double standard involved with discussing cruelty is there. As a matter of public discourse, the language of complete vindication is different than what the U.S. should do as a polity.
Your choice to not choose between possible administrations ignores the extreme rhetoric from the Trump side that has been going on for years. As citizens, these differences appear in outcomes in our communities. Don't gnash your teeth in self-imposed silence.
Just being supportive to Palestinian-Americans (and human dignity in general) who aren't going to vote for Democrats this year.
I would love to vote the Green Party, but in NYS we have only two parties in the ballot and makes me wonder: why should it be this way?
Anyway, I do recognize that Trump may make things worse and he already contributed to this mess when he moved the USA embassy to Jerusalem (among many other things he did, with help from Nikki Haley in the UN General Assembly).
God, help us with these politicians! (Praying, I guess, is the only thing I can do now :confused: )
Yes.
If I had to go before a tribunal and defend my choice of voting for Harris, it would give me pause. But it isnt that serious. People want to believe its their only political power to fill in an oval every 4 years and thus all the hand-wringing.
Its overthinking it. Vote against Trump and keep at the local work organizing, striking, protesting, lawsuits, unionizing, boycotting, etc. Thats it. Will a Trump or Harris administration make achieving goals easier or harder? I think the answer is clear.
The one area I understand feeling bad about: support for Israels genocide. Seems like Harris is all-in for Israel, just as Biden has been. True enough. Its also true, however, that Trump is an even bigger supporter. So not only do we make it worse with him in office, we get all the other terrifying, horrible, shitty things along with it.
A vote against the worst candidate when theres really just two options isnt an endorsement of the less bad candidate, nor the two-party system. Sitting out or voting third party, particularly in a swing state, is helping to elect the worst candidate. This is true if you believe Harris is the worse candidate too.
Cool so youre irrelevant.
I'm irrelevant too because I don't get to vote. But I notice that Dump has become of late a magnet for flies - so he seems to report and comment on in his campaign speeches of late. I immediately thought of "The Lord of the Flies', or ...
Tell all your fundamentalist Christian friends not to vote for this antichrist. Signs and wonders, people!
Not to judge your voting intentions since I can sympathize with your frustration but it's not really a question whether Trump will be worse (he will), so you might as well be honest and own the decision.
:up:
Youre always relevant in this thread, at least.
Trump wins.
Which is unbelievable and sad, but so it goes. Looks like men arent ready for a woman president, yet again. But its more than that its that she has no message.
She could have run with a strong and consistent message of taxing the rich to pay for popular programs. Instead shes raced to the middle, on the advice of the most pathetic intellectual weaklings known to man, and desperately tried to appeal to conservative voters. Shes done so with climate change and fracking, on guns, and on war. She doesnt answer questions directly. She regurgitates the same lines like hopes, ambitions, and desires. Theres barely been any policy proposals, and the ones that have been proposed are eh. Theyve once again left Bernie and progressives in the cold and theyll pay for it, especially among the Gaza crowds.
The DNC strategy at this point is to lay low, appeal to the middle, say as little as possible (see any of the uninspiring, friendly interviews shes done), and bring it back to how bad Trump is and was. Its a terrible strategy and a terrible candidate. They even defanged Tim Walz, who is now left with endlessly talking up school lunches which is all the party allows him.
So the democrats put up another loser in the 4th quarter and will blow it try again against the worst candidate and former president in history. 4 more years of Trumps climate denial and federal judges (given that republicans are going to win the senate), which will do generational damage, and the further destruction of institutions that do any good for regular people.
It feels like 2016 again: no real enthusiasm for the Democrat. There was none in 2020 either, but it was a pandemic and we were sick of Trump. That was motivation enough plus Biden, a man, also hadnt fully degenerated into the shell he is today, and still had a little Obama fairy dust on him from his years as VP. The electorates memory is also poor and rose-colored, and usually rebel against whoever is in office.
So despite what the polls, or Allan Lichtman, or Bill Maher, or Nate Silver or anyone else says, I think Trump will win at least one of the blue wall states Michigan? and that will be all he needs, as he will carry Georgia and North Carolina and Arizona.
Maybe some good comes out of it. Who knows. I hope Im wrong but I wont be.
Ps. Sorry @180 Proof. Ill put money on it.
That would be my analysis too. Very close but Kamala seems to be blowing it.
I think it was a mistake for Harris to keep the Biden people on her campaign team for this reason. These are the same idiots who thought it was a good idea to hide a candidate with a 35% approval rating and hope for the best when people vote. They're still acting like they're running with a guy who must be covered in bubble wrap until election day. Either because these people are that incompetent or they think that changing strategies with a new candidate is an implicit acknowledgement of their own failures is unclear but they're not changing their strategy and taking advantage of a more energetic candidate like they should be. Of course, the Republicans haven't really adapted to running against someone who isn't Biden either. They still believe for whatever reason that Harris cannot finish a sentence and that she needs notes or a teleprompter to say anything.
That being said this strategy isn't that really much different from Trump's to be honest (apart from arguably the laying low part). He's not doing as many events as he did in 2016 (though he is making up for it in other ways), he's trying to appeal to the middle with regards to abortion, his statements always lack any substance, he's doing uninspiring friendly interviews with right wing podcasters and Fox, and every time he speaks he has to talk about how bad the Democrats are.
Quoting Mikie
:ok: You stick with those MAGA-GOP talking points and I'll stick with my 22Sept24 prediction¹ that Harris-Walz will win the upcoming Roevember 5th presidential election. :victory: :party:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/934008 [1]
Quoting 180 Proof
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/05/harris-trump-lichtman-election-prediction.html [2]
(2022)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781991
(2023)
Quoting 180 Proof
I (technically) have won this bet but lost the other one that Diaper Don wouldn't be the GOP nominee. The latter, however, no doubt contributed to the former. :up:
===========
NB: Fwiw, since Labor Day I think it's reasonable to have read "mainstream" news media polls as follows
Given that Diaper Don The Fascist Clown & his MAGA-GOP Circus Cult have pissed-off the majority of (likely) women voters so much since 2018 (then doubled down on the blatant misogyny in 2022 and again this year), I guesstimate (not counting Dems campaigns' huge money & get-out-the-vote ground game advantages) woman voters' preference for Harris-Walz & Dems is undercounted by 2% and The Clown is thereby generally overcounted by 5% in "national polls" and overcounted by 2% in swing state polls, and so I read them accordingly [adjusted]; for example:
swing states [T -2%]
Forbes 11Oct24 (latest, best #s for T)
AZ - T 51% [49] v H 46%
[b]GA - T 49% [47] v H 48%
MI - T 45% [43] v H 47%
NC - T 46% [44] v H 45%
NV - T 47% [46] v H 48%
PA - T 46% [44] v H 45%[/b]
WI - T 48% [46] v H 46%
Electors - T216 + 21 (max) v H229 + 72 (min) :cool:
&
national [T -5%, H +2%]
FiveThirtyEight 12Oct24 national polls (avg.)
T 46% [41] v H 48.5% [50.5]
NYTimes 12Oct24 national polls (avg.)
T 46% [41] v H 49% [51]
The Economist 12Oct24 national polls (avg.)
T 46.4% [41.4] v H 50.2% [52.2]
Fox Noise 12Oct24 national polls (?)
T 48% [43] v H 50% [52]
===========
To date all (quality) polling trends favor Harris-Walz +270 Electoral College victory. Hyping election anxiety is great for motivating Democratic, Independent & GOP/suburban white women voter turnout / particpation. :strong: :mask:
>>> Roevember 24
That is called wishful thinking, not analysis. If you bet money on it, you'll lose big. But let's take a different tack. If 538 overestimates Trump by 5% (or more) and underestimates Harris by 2% (or more) in their last national poll before the election, I will post a picture of myself here on this thread naked apart from a diaper with a crybaby face and sucking on a pacifier. Why? Because I believe in science and not making stuff up to make myself feel better. So, what are you going to do if/when you turn out to be wrong and the national polls turn out, let's say, to be within 1% either way of being right? Show me you actually believe what you're saying...
I'm just sayin' I'll do that if you're right about the national polls; what'll you do if I'm right that you're completely wrong?
I'll live in the US struggling against a neofascist regime while you and the rest of the world will be wagging your fingers and saying "I told you so." :mask:
In 2020 Biden-Harris won the national / popular vote by 51.3% (or margin of +4.5%) against an incumbent POTUS who actively compromised the election system. 306 electors vs 232 electors (by flipping two Republican states and winning the very same three states lost by a combined 0.7% due to HRC's arrogant neglect in 2016)! My ELECTORAL COLLEGE prediction (and reasoning for it) does not deviate significantly from the 2016, 2018, 2020, 2022 trend. If I was merely "wishful thinking", mate, I wouldn't rely on center-right to right wing news media polling (and the best stats for T therein).
But hey you go right on bloviating from the cheap seats, my friend; I'm looking forward to that photo (the more lurid the better). :smirk:
I'm not doing anything other than calling you out for making a ridiculous unsupported prediction. And putting my pacifier where my mouth is. :wink:
We shall see soon enough.
There are too many variables for there to be a scientific determination based on the polls of the outcome of the election.
Rather than bet, I'll hold on to my money. I might need it.
I don't know who'll win. The polls could change. Trump might do or say something disastrous. But the chances of 538 being off by that margin by polling day are small enough to stick to my commitment.
It does not seem as though there is anything he might say or do that would significantly change the polls. It is not as if, even with the evidence, Trump supporters, backed by his propaganda machine, will believe it or not discount it because they think other things are more important.
According to FiveThirtyEight
Youre right. It isnt fair, really, but because hes been a lying degenerate clown for so long, any bullshit he spews is shrugged off.
Quoting 180 Proof
Well theres no need to get nasty. :gasp:
Quoting 180 Proof
Yeah, you did. I was as shocked as anyone. What did we end up betting? $10 to charity of choice? Let me know and Ill pay up. Id forgotten about that.
Needless to say, I hope youre right here too.
Anyway hes within the margin of error in swing states and is down with black men by a lot compared to 2020. Women could save the day if they come out strong but will they? Will it be enough? I have doubts.
National Security Leaders for America Endorses Kamala Harris for President of the United States (Sep 22, 2024)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1845993766441644386?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1846228061173256714[/tweet]
As others might fathom, this is going to be an Obama 2.0 president.
https://www.cookpolitical.com/survey-research/2024-swing-state-project/02Oct2024-toplines
Likely Voters in 7 swing states (Oct 2024):
"H 49% v T 48%"
If T overcount (re: women) 2%, then
H 49% v T 46% :victory: :mask:
"Wishful thinking?" TBD.
>>> Roevember 21
What does this mean?
21 days until Roevember election day (i.e. the Harris-Walz blowout).
:up:
I don't get what you mean by 'Roevember' instead of November. I understand the quid has to do with Roe, but I have no idea what you mean, honestly. :sweat:
Edit: Take for instance Brett's story about the "Devil's Triangle". That's apparently a game of quarters with three cups arranged in a triangle. The rules are unknown because the inventor of the game, Brett Kavanaugh, could not explain them under oath.
It's also commonly known as a threesome involving two men and one woman.
Ah, as Macron said to Trump and Melania: ménage à trois.
It's Scooby Doo saying "November".
What I was saying earlier.
When Trump wins they have no one to blame but themselves.
Trending ...
:victory: :mask:
I wonder if Diaper Don The Fascist Clown will watch the FOX Noise interview with VPOTUS tonight? :smirk:
>>> Roevember 20
@Wayfarer @Fooloso4 @Benkei @jorndoe
Baier's need to control the message is the message.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/940299
part 2:
>>> Roevember 19
@Baden @Mikie @Wayfarer
:rofl: :lol: :rofl:
There's a buck or two to be made selling Dem Kool Aid, apparently.
The race is a toss up as it stands. A "blue tsunami" would require a major shift. Which is possible, but it would have to be very big news.
Oh, the suspense is palpable.
What "suspense"? "Muppet B" is crashing and burning today even worse than he did from early voting in 2020. :victory: :mask:
https://www.wsj.com/finance/betting-election-pro-trump-ad74aa71?mod=mhp
Article is behind a paywall. It's 40/60 on Polymarket. I'd say bet Kamala but US citizens aren't allowed to use the site.
I don't see how Polymarket is anything but a betting market for bettors looking to earn a buck.
Thats really all it is. I dont see how they have any special insight otherwise.
We don't need polymarket as a primary source anyway. It just reflects the polls. When Kamala was about 3% ahead nationally, polymarket read 50/50. She is now about 2% ahead, so it reads 60/40 Trump. She probably needs to be more than 3% ahead nationally to win, considering the Republican advantage in the electoral college set up (e.g. HRC won by over 2% and lost). People betting large amounts most likely know that, so more of them are likely to be betting Trump. 60/40 is still a toss up. But leans Trump. That`s also your most recent evaluation. It's not rocket science.
Maybe the polymarket crowd slightly over fancies Trump, but it's in broad agreement with what the polls suggest and has been all along. And maybe people are confused because a small movement in the polls causes a larger movement in the betting markets. Those literate in basic mathematics should understand why that is and don't need polymarket to tell them what aggregate polls are already saying.
Yeah but it isnt for that reason. Its actually due to about four people. Hence the article I posted. 60/40 is a lot by this elections standards.
Whether Harris needs 3% to win is disputable now, given inroads Trump has made in Florida, New York, and California. Nate Cohn has written about this well. His electoral edge is probably slipping.
Yeah I still think hes going to win, but its because Harris is a dud. Not because of the polls.
No, it's not. His odds have been going up rapidly across betting markets generally since the start of October. Averages about 59% overall now. Maybe polymarket very slightly overestimates relative to the average but it's hardly detectable. The "four people controlling this" story is kind of a silly distraction. The betting odds are increasingly favouring Trump because Kamala is sinking in the polls and the polls are the most reliable means of figuring out odds.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/10/18/betting-markets-presidential-election-odds-trump-harris/
Of course, if the polls are wrong, the betting odds will be even more wrong, like they were in 2016. But then it was state level polls that were mostly out. The last aggregate national poll on 538 was right within the margin of error.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/cbp/status/1847027336324985169?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Something, I guess, we can all agree on.
Seems others have followed suit.
Harriss lead has gone from roughly 2.8 to 2.4, with nearly every serious forecaster calling it a coin flip. Nate Silver has Trumps odds at 50.6% or something like that. Little reason for the 60% number if not for manipulation. If they were truly following the polls, unless they have some secret knowledge, theres little reason to put the chances at 60%. True, they could be imbeciles but I think the WSJs argument is convincing. Even though I think hell win, I wouldnt bet on it and certainly not give it those odds.
I think you're not taking into account how both sides feel after 2016 and 2020. Even in an objectively toss-up race the left, after having been burned by the polling errors in the previous elections, are way more likely to be pessimistic and believe that there is some unknown factor in Trump's favor this time. Hell that is the sense I get from reading your earlier prediction. Even in 2020 as the polls were showing Biden solidly ahead they always had most people expecting that Trump will win anyways. Unless Harris is up by double digits at this point I'm not surprised that the markets will go in that direction.
:up:
I voted today against fascism! :victory: :mask:
>>> Roevember 17
:up:
I voted three days ago against fascism.
Thats two more says earlier than you, so
I've been wondering what Musk is up to, and this analysis makes perfect sense. Considering what an utter tool Musk is, despite his unarguable engineering and business genius, it is something to be very, very scared of.
Yes. He comes across as a fuckwitt with some of the things he says, but if you just look at how it's all functioning, it makes sense.
re: Diaper Don The Fascist Clown (a convicted felon as well as an adjudicated rapist & fraudster, who 'self-described racists' believe is also a racist, and who everyday wears more make-up than a drag queen) another character reference from a former senior Republican:
[quote=John Kelly, retired 4-Star General USMC and former Trump WH Chief of Staff][i]Well, looking at the definition of fascism: Its a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.
Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, hes certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.[/i][/quote]
>>> Roevember 13
John Mearsheimer: My guess is Harris wins popular vote but Trump eeks out a victory in the seven swing states.
Guess Im not so crazy after all :rofl:
What I find weird is that looking from the outside, Harris seems to be doing well while Trump seems to get less coherent every day, while waxing poetically about nazi generals and using the military against the enemy within.
Yet the voters don't seem to care. It's confusing, and that means some part of my model of the world is faulty.
Is all of this not about Trump after all? Everyone talks about the cultishness but maybe that's just a front that hides the real desire to just burn it all down.
Its close because of the electoral college, which is a stupid and anti-democratic system, as the US constitution itself is mostly anti-democratic.
But the other reason its so close, in my view, is that a good portion of the electorates lives are crappy, which makes them angry and they look for reasons and someone to blame. They want explanations and to make sense of the world, as we all do. The media fill that role now, where family friends and religion once did, and cater messages to these people, depending on where they live and what their interests are and how they get their information (radio? TV? Newspaper?).
So theres huge gaps between women and men, rural and urban people, college educated vs not, etc. The left demonizes Trump (although they have a much better case for doing so), and the right demonizes liberals (and do it much more effectively). Both are devils to the other side.
Since the advent of social media, distrust in literally everything and anything that doesnt conform with what your preferred information pipeline is telling you has become rampant. Thus Trump can say almost anything even trying to overturn an election and saying he won even when he lost and many millions will go along with it, or shrug it off.
If CNN says hes a threat to democracy or whatever, or if theres reports about some crazy thing he said, itll be ignored because those sources have been undermined and discredited in their minds (fake news, witch hunt, etc), mostly by Trump himself.
If the Democratic Party offered something real and started talking to working people, theyd break through a lot of this stuff as Bernie did. But since theyre also a party of corporate America, theres little chance of that.
I mean they saved a bunch of the Teamster's pensions and yet alot of their members would still vote for the billionaire who's last administration has been terrible for labor. In fact I imagine alot of them would somehow believe Bernie is terrible for labor too while praising Musk as a hero for the working class. For sure Democrats often take their voters for granted and rarely deliver on their promises, but there are moments where I just feel like none of that really matters anymore and we've all just gone insane. For sure it mattered in 2016 when Trump ran on a populist message and won, but he's not even doing that anymore and that doesn't seem to have changed a thing.
:halo:
Not crazy, just cynically mistaken. The 2024 US election is about (1) whether or not this should be the last US election and (2) whether or not women in the US should have the inallienable right of bodily autonomy (i.e. unrestricted access to reproductive healthcare); this election is not principally about mere policy preferences (re: taxes, immigration, foreign policy, military spending, climate change, etc). As a Bernie Bro since the '90s, I ask you, Mikie: Why else would both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez & Liz Cheney, both Bernie Sanders & Dick Cheney endorse Harris-Walz?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/941886
:victory:
>>> Roevember 12
I think Cheneys endorsement is revenge for being attacked and thrown out of office, which in turn was done because shes as establishment as they come and thus one of the few who voted impeachment. Why? Because prior to this Trump attacked Bush and Cheney why? Because Jeb Bush ran against him and never made nice afterwards. Etc. Its like asking why Megan McCain is against Trump. Theres personal reasons. This praise for Cheney is ridiculous. Fuck the Cheneys.
Abortion and democracy may be what motivates people to get out and vote but you dont really know that, nor do I.
But as always, I hope youre right about this.
You've not been paying attention, bro. I know: 2017*, 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023* ... :victory: :mask:
*special elections, referenda lost by MAGA-GOP, etc
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/940625
Accused Iranian hackers successfully peddle stolen Trump emails
:lol:
Yeah, Trump will probably win. :meh:
Hopefully I'm wrong.
And it's likely going to be worse than last time, because now he can demand to be surrounded by yes-men. Not like he will take a lot of generals into his cabinet, which naturally don't veer off from US policy where it has been on since WW2. He'll bring on people that he took on the last years of his prior administration.
Lame duck president for four years?
Also, a Trump victory may expedite European populism so we can get rid of our tragically incompetent and corrupt political establishment.
And since many in Europe hate Trump, a Trump-led America is likely going to motivate Europeans to start using their own brains again (assuming those haven't completely atrophied by now...).
If he actually manages to end the war in Ukraine that'd be a bonus.
:mask: :up:
>>> Roevember 9
I believe that too. In Europe people should understand that it is matter of time till they get divorce from the US. Trumpists are isolationists, but a diverse (democrat led) America will also lose its interest in Europe and Middle East. If that won't happen, then it will not be normal & democratic at all.
Harris-Walz needs 41 electors (in addition to the 229 electors from the solidly "Blue" states the campaign begins with) to reach 270 electors and win the presidency. I'll be watching the following states for results on 5Nov24 (by 3am EST 6Nov24):
[b]Georgia [16]
North Carolina [16][/b]
Florida [30]
Ohio [17]
Texas [40]
& on 6Nov24 (by 10pm EST):
[b]Michigan [15]
Wisconsin [10][/b]
I expect Harris-Walz to win the bolded states for 57 electors by Wednesday night and that can mathematically decide the eleclion.
If a majority of people in the states named above vote their interests rather than their fictions, next week will culminate in a Harris-Walz blowout.
If any or all of the other states above flip from "Red" to "Blue", the election could be a landslide.
>>> Roevember 8 :up:
The worst thing for him is to pull out the rug from the Ukrainians and weaken NATO while getting more entangled in the Gaza genocide and with the war with Iran in the Middle East. And yes, he can do both, even if it's not the likeliest outcome.
Let's remember that he has done already a huge Dolchstoss to one allied nation, that collapsed immediately and he did it without even negotiating with his allies. I bet that Kim il Sung would have immediately jumped to a peace offer during the Korean war if Trump would have been there to give a surrender paper like he gave to the Taliban. Yeah, I bet that Kim Il Sung would have promised not to attack mainland US and then squashed with Chinese support the back stabbed South Koreans. Then no Korean electronics or K-pop, just larger famines in the Korean peninsula.
But naturally nobody talks about Afghanistan, the longest war the US fought, because both parties have played a role in that disaster.
That June, after the way the DNC & Obama had systematically undermined Bernie Sanders in the primaries, I had predicted that the only way HRC could lose such a "rigged campaign" was to suppress demoralize her own voters by being the shitty candidate that she was. Well, she did just that 20% fewer Dems showed up to vote for her than in 2012 for Obama by not campaigning that Fall in the three Midwestern swing states won in both 2008 & 2012 by Obama which decided the election by .07% ... The polls weren't "wrong": the candidate favored to win had arrogantly thrown the fucking election (NB: "Russian interference", "Jim Comey reopening investigation of the email scandal", "misogynistic Bernie Bros" & "fucking Jill Stein") had nothing to do with it).
Notice how Biden in 2020 and Harris this year have focussed like a laser beam on midwestern swing states. Also, The Clown himself and candidates he's endorsed have lost general elections (2020), special elections (2017, 2019, 2021, 2023) & midterm elections (2018, 2022) MAGA is a ethnonationalist populist cult of 30-40% of the electorate and The Clown has been hemorrhaging pro-business GOP & suburban college educated white women since 2021 which made up 5-7% more (transactional) support in 2016 & 2020 (c47% each election). I'll be very surprised if The Clown gets more than 42% of voters this time.
What's weakening NATO is the fact that we're trying to drag Ukraine in even though it would lead to endless conflict with the Russians, undermining the security of everyone involved.
The only ones who would be weakened are the clowns who got us into this mess in the first place - good riddance I say to that.
And yea, Ukraine is hardly the first disaster Washington has created, but that's their problem.
Agreed. There is a strong conservative interest in those groups who vote for their perceived interests even if it aligns them with people they otherwise do not like. They can tear down a tent as quickly make one.
Unfortunately, most Americans regard everything about Hispanic countries as 'trash' or 'poor.'
Now it makes sense. I now understand why some representatives of Puerto Rico submitted a petition to the Congress of Spain requesting the chance of being part of the kingdom again. I can't see it possible, honestly. But Puerto Rico and Cuba should never have separated from Spain. We feel like they are naturally part of us, and we have huge connections with them culturally. I don't understand why in the 1898 war Washington attacked us with the aim of freeing them if they will be treated that badly by the same country in the future.
They can't vote in general estados unidos elections, but they could when they were part of Spain. Benito Pérez Galdós who closely won the Nobel Prize of Literature was a congressman elected by puertorriqueños. It was a hoax the 1898 war.
Maybe, but they don't call him "Teflon Don" for no reason.
Some of Trump's supporters agree with the sentiment that Puerto Rico is garbage (they were the one's fired up by Trump's assertions that immigrants are "poisoning our blood"). This fires them up. These are the "deplorables" that Hillary correctly mentioned (although her math was wrong; it's probably less than half). Others will simply point to the fact that it wasn't Trump himself who made the "garbage" statement, and his campaign disavowed it. But maybe it will turn off some who are on the fence. We'll know next week.
Quoting javi2541997
Puerto Ricans who have moved to one of the fifty states can vote. 8% of the population of Pennsylvania is Puerto Rican. Pennsylvania is a must-win state for Harris, so maybe this will help.
Just wanted to acknowledge the congressional element of your observation. A group who has voted reliably is suddenly in play.
¡Se acerca el 5 de Roeviembre! :victory: :flower:
Really??? :yikes:
Oh I get. Just like Trump threatening to take out the US ground forces out of Europe would strengthen NATO...because European countries should then really commit to their defense. Or something like delusional like that.
Quoting Tzeentch
This is really crazy, really. Somehow you seem not to understand that it's an European objective to not let Russia defeat and conquer Ukraine (or take the parts it wants and put a "denazified" puppet regime in the carcass state that is left). How cannot you fathom this? NATO members simply would be worse of if Russia wins the war. The Baltic States would be worse. Finland and Sweden would be worse off. Something as totally evident like this comes somehow to be blurred in this anti-Americanism. Or Trumpism, for that matter. That Trump gave Afghanistan on a platter to the Taleban seems not to matter at all.
Russia wants to destroy the link between the US and Europe. Russia is against the European Union. Somehow you don't see this reality.
This is really the deafeatism that causes the West to lose it wars and emboldens Russia to annex territories from it's neighbors (which apparently you don't care about). The selectivity of anti-Americans is just incredible: somehow they can be against Israel's actions, but when it comes to Russia doing similar annexations it's OK, reasonable, realpolitik... and it's basically the fault of the US. Countries simply can do some things right and some things wrong.
Quoting Tzeentch
And this is the cause of this delusional thinking. The sheer hubris to think everything evolves around the US and that everything happening in the World because of the West is the real problem here. This creates the World where the West loses. Because for you the US is the reason for all the troubles in the World. And other countries don't matter... especially if they agree on something with the US.
What United States has done has also actually has helped. I would prefer a South Korea to exist rather have it to be a part of North Korea. Yes, I'm fully aware that South Korea wasn't a democracy until the late 1980's, but it's still totally something else than North Korea. Something else that should be helped to survive if attacked. In the same fashion was the correct thing for the US to oppose such thing as Soviet Union taking over Eastern Europe. And Ukrainians have the right to their country, it's not an artificial country that ought to be part of Russia and isn't ruled by nazis. Supporting their struggle is the correct thing.
Yet somehow being critical at US foreign policy becomes this incoherent crazy anti-americanism where the perpetrators and aggressors like Russia become victims of evil US. Poor, poor Russia.
Of course this is the election thread and even if this is an important factor in US foreign policy, it isn't important to the Americans who vote.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1851928782896009450?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
It's obvious that the US/NATO insistence on a military rather than a diplomatic solution is a guarantee for Ukraine's eventual collapse.
So either US/NATO decisionmakers are utterly incompetent, or they are pursuing a completely different agenda that has nothing to do with the survival and well-being of Ukraine.
Of course, the absolute funniest situation is one where Trump wins the popular vote and loses the Electoral College, since the cognitive dissonance will be overwhelming.
But maybe he won't outperform his polls the same way. I sometimes wonder if there is a "punishment effect" in polls where supporters of a candidate they are unhappy with lie about who they support as consequence free way to voice dissent. This seems at least plausible to me because primary voters are vocal about doing this, and they sometimes do it in large numbers (e.g. over the Gaza War this cycle). So perhaps Harris can make it a short night. I sort of doubt it though.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
:rofl:
Consider this recent article on how easily "betting markets" are manipulated ...
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/dont-trust-the-political-prediction-markets
@Baden @Mikie @Benkei
Addendum to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/940625
>>> Roevember 5 :victory:
Lol.
As if there would be a "diplomatic solution" for the artificial state that ought to be part of Russia (or at least parts that are Novorossiya) and is ruled by nazis.
But coming back to the thread.
European green parties are demanding that Jill Stein would not run, because it favors Trump.
First, it's none of their business and second, this is the utter stupidity that continues the stranglehold of the two dominant parties in US politics (which is one cause of the stagnation and corruption).
Also shows just how much "comradeship" there's in the green ideology.
Lol, Biden just showed again why the Democrats sidelined him (or the people who sponsor the party). Yet how could he remember the classic gaffe made by Hillary Clinton?
Best way to get people to vote for Trump.
In March/April 2022 there was a basis for peace, agreed upon and signed by the Ukrainian delegation. The West blocked it.
In other words, the West is the pink elephant in the room that does not want peace. It's obvious once you simply look at their actions rather than their words.
Oh and ermm.. Lol!
Ermm... You might start doing that with Russia. :wink:
That's a fact you'll somehow have to deal with if you want to argue the Russians cannot be reasoned with.
Where are you getting this? I've read this and it says:
This suggests that "the West blocked it" is just Putin's propaganda.
White House altered record of Bidens garbage remarks despite stenographer concerns
Trying to rewrite history and dupe posterity is the end result of their brand of political correctness, so it is no surprise.
https://apnews.com/article/biden-garbage-transcript-puerto-rico-trump-326e2f516a94a470a423011a946b6252
Well I can't wait for the cognitive dissonance freakout here on this thread when Harris-Walz wins (possibly declared as soon as next Wednesday night). :wink:
>>> Roevember 4
This was already reported on earlier by Israeli mediator Naftali Bennett, but the Ukrainian diplomat confirmed it.
You mean this?
I wish I had your confidence. I've been stuck waiting with time to kill all day and been feeling an increasing sense of doom looking at the analysis. Nate Silver's op-ed in particular.
Bizarrely, polling suggests Democrats will do better where they need to do good to win if turnout is low.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1852448089157595643?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Trump says war hawk Liz Cheney should be fired upon in escalation of violent rhetoric against his opponents
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/11/01/politics/donald-trump-liz-cheney-war-hawk-battle
Did he say she should be fired upon? Of course not. But Headline-readers have fallen for it, of course.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/stuartpstevens/status/1852347667726147826?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
But wait!
He meant to say that the porn star would not be so saucy if she had gone to Vietnam.
Why would there be a freakout? Almost everyone here and elsewhere has said the race is at best about 60/40 in favour of Trump. A 40% probability coming true isn't going to cause anyone to freak out or even bat an eyelid.
There would only be a freakout if your prediction of Harris winning the popular vote by nine points or so and a blue tsunami carrying her to a landslide victory is correct. That's not going to happen though.
It will be close with Harris carrying the popular vote by between 1 and 2.5 %. Trump will get at least 46%. @180 Proof's prediction of Trump at about 42% is way off in my view. Not long to go and things could still change, but it will take something dramatic to reset the race now.
I think you are betting too heavily on women. It may be more conducive to appeal to independent voters, yet I haven't seen VP doing it yet.
If only she would vow to do away with student loans, which seems like a rallying point... :chin:
The Ukrainian situation might have started in some (out of sight) way between 1991 and 2009.
Certain people wouldn't accept a wholly independent Ukraine. That independence itself meant that Crimea wasn't for the Kremlin to control, and their empowering influence over Ukraine would diminish. Loss. "Must regain."
The sentiment might be older, but sometime after the cold war it apparently came into focus, became important to a number of (let's say) "concerned citizens", important enough to solidify the collision course of which we're seeing the results.
Operatives deployed, people friendly/susceptible to "the cause" rallied + more hired, "little green men" sent, Ukrainian "red lines" crossed, takeover, invasion, bombing, grab, all the while utilizing that suppress-rinse-revise machine (including domestically). Hostilities (+ elsewhere).
As far as I can tell anyway, the "root cause" was that seemingly inevitable collision set in motion by a number of "entitled", influential people asserting ownership, and rejecting a friendlier course, or democratic course for that matter. The Ukrainians (and most of the world) said "No".
Might be worth noting that the Kremlin's course of action hasn't resolved (maybe can't resolve) their supposed fear of NATO. To keep NATO at bay, are they going to make Donbas a minefield with anti-missile installations or something?
[sup]? there's plenty more evidence to this story (which is what it is) coherent, plausible, straightforward enough[/sup]
Bennett's comments were obviously highly controversial, which is probably why he was pressured to backtrack on them.
However, Ukrainian diplomat Alexander Chaly who was part of the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul gave a first-hand account that confirmed Bennett's initial statements.
All I can find about him is this:
He doesn't seem to know what happened. But the above is consistent with what I posted earlier:
Quoting Tzeentch
Or, as explained above, the original remarks were badly translated and misrepresented, and he wasn't being pressured to backtrack at all.
I think you're falling for Russian propaganda. The very notion that "the West" wants the war to continue is simply ridiculous.
Answer: yes, it was possible, and this is confirmed to us first-hand by a Ukrainian account no less.
It is clear as day.
If you want to believe my views, based on neutral, Western and Ukrainian sources are a product of propaganda, I think that says more about your own biases than mine.
That diplomatic solution was giving in to absurd Russian demands.
All you really seem to be saying is that surrender is possible. And yes, it is, but Ukraine shouldnt surrender. Theyve been unjustly invaded by a foreign nation. The best diplomatic solution is Russia fucking off and paying reparations.
Nope. The Ukrainians put their signature under the draft, so unfortunately this narrative doesn't work.
They agreed to an initial deal but then Russia unilaterally changed the deal to include ridiculous terms that Ukraine was right to object.
Instead, they mention a certain British clown traveling to Kiev, after which the negotiations are mysteriously aborted even though all signs were that an agreement was close.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/ronpaul/status/1852493942283239458?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
:smirk:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/934008 :victory:
>>> Roevember 2
Either Trump or Harris could easily win 300 plus electors. Every single swing state is within the margin of error. I will only strongly disagree that Texas, Florida and Ohio are in play.
And I'l stick to my prediction that Harris will lose unless she wins MI and WI, though I think she'll win Pennsylvania.
Anyhow, we are---thankfully---running out of time to argue about it.
So many margin calls on either side. Selzer's poll was bold if anything, let's see how she stacks up this time. Quite nerve racking honestly...
:smirk:
Consider these 'more grounded' (re: historical-social context) guesstimates:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/10/11/why-this-highly-accurate-market-based-election-indicator-seems-to-be-predicting-a-kamala-harris-win/
https://www.scrippsnews.com/politics/america-votes/historian-allan-lichtman-standing-by-harris-victory-prediction-despite-polling
https://fortune.com/2024/11/03/presidential-poll-iowa-selzer-donald-trump-warning-kamala-harris-surge-midwest-blue-wall/
addenda to
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/934008
nota bene:
Quoting 180 Proof
Roevember is here! :victory: :smile:
@Mikie @Wayfarer @Benkei @Shawn @Count Timothy von Icarus
It reminds me of that time in High School when I was an unwarned participant of a game of chicken on a street out West as a passenger in a rusty Impala...
What I liked about Selzer is that she refused to speculate how her method would work in other States. Her groove was "try it and see what you find."
Aside from the truth US elections are there for Democrats to lose, we can probably add the GOP doesn't understand women.
Oh sure - there are good indications she can win, maybe by a margin which shatters most of the deadlocked polls.
But - it needs to get done and we can't take anything for granted. He *could* win. So, hedge your bets just in case.
Hah!
Well. I am cautiously optimistic. But you can never tell. Hopefully we will be able to see what the heck most pollsters got wrong in assumptions, IF they were wrong, which seems likely given so many .2, .4 and 1% margins.
We will see on Tuesday. But, you made it alive out of that chicken game :)
Yet many here enthusiastically and repeatedly promote these falsehoods. And notably simply disregard every other aspect, like the russification and things like Putin declaring more Oblasts to be part of Russia, not just the now occupied territories. Yet but selectively picking your narrative one can say nearly anything.
It surely started then. We just didn't notice as first the restoration/reconquest of the Empire wasn't so evident, even if many especially in the Baltics and in Eastern Europe warned about this. Perhaps we thought that Russia could move on like Great Britain or Austria once the empire collapsed.
Quoting jorndoe
At first, this was rather delusional and talk that fringe politicians could say. Until it wasn't anymore.
But of course, this is for another thread.
Yet the obvious issue here is to understand that the objective of Russia is the reconquest of lost territories and to break the link of Atlanticism between the US and Europe. Russia's hostility towards the EU is logical consequence of this. The more broken and disunified Europe is, the more influence Russia has here. This is a far more hostile attack towards the US and the EU than China has ever done (at least after the involvement in the Korean War). How this isn't seen as overtly hostile and people have these delusional hallucinations of Russia and the US getting together against China is incredible. Russia's hostile policies are clear and have been long term. And similarly Trump's idea that he can end this war immediately is silly campaign talk just for on niche of voters.
That North Korean troops are now at the Ukrainian front is extremely telling just where things are going.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/944276
WHETHER THE MAGA CIRCUS LIKES IT OR NOT, WE'RE GOING TO REJECT THE CLOWN. :mask:
>>> Roevember 1
Echo chambers, conspiracy narratives, christian evangelism, low education and so on.
The general human condition is that we are always prone to bias and avoid complex thought. It takes effort to stay educated and informed, to think and be vigilant.
Everyone is like this, which means that the general public are inclined to follow the herd, follow what emotionally feels right, and with the right narrative, truth and reality does not matter. It is relative.
To generalize... everyone is basically stupid and populists and demagogues take advantage of this by both constructing false narratives, appeal to emotion and flood elections with so much conflicting information that truth doesn't matter anymore.
It's why it's impossible to use rational arguments with these people. Within these groups, truth has eroded so much and been replaced by emotional chanting that it basically is a fundamentalist religion. If you listen to his crowds, they're chanting as a cult. Meaning, they don't even seem to understand what they're chanting, what the implications are of the words they say. They blindly follow him.
It's the same mechanics that transformed morally good people in Germany to follow Hitler into death.
And with online social media, the speed at which this stupidity spreads, there's no wonder we've seen an uprising of this type of mindless cult behavior in many countries around the world.
If you are a person with power and you reach out your hand to stupid people and tell them that they are the best people in the world, you're giving them dreams and hopes they have never felt. They don't understand world politics, they don't understand economics or the justice system, they are fundamentally lost in their existential struggles and then this powerful figure, who's name is on many things in society, who's up there at the top, but behaves just like them, reaches out a hand... it's like a divine experience to them.
It's the SAME mechanisms as cults. Someone with power who "sees you" and tells you that you are chosen to be the new elite and that everyone who called you stupid in your past will be punished. Every family member who cut ties with you will return back and tell you they're sorry for not believing you. You're part of the promised people, the kings and queens in the new world order.
I have no problem understanding why people follow Trump, regardless of his behavior. People are more stupid than they think and it demands effort to always be vigil of your own biases. These people have no such abilities and thus are open to a total annihilation of their inner agency, making them into zealots and drones.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/penguinsix/status/1853139558252040626?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
The bipartisan Trump team is a big FU to the establishment uniparty, but also the inevitable result of the political triangulation made popular by bill Clinton and its most recent representative, Kamala Harris. The two parties were nearly indistinguishable since then until now. Whatever the results, new parties are emerging from the old ones.
:100:
Nice. I resemble that remark.
If Trump loses (and I think he wins), he will claim victory before all votes are counted, scream about fraud and cheating without evidence, claim early votes or delayed counts (which are totally predictable) are illegitimate, and that the election was stolen from him again. Why? Because Trump is not psychologically capable of losing; that would make him a loser.
Given how obvious this is, and the fact that Im calling it right now, you would think everyone would take these claims with a huge grain of salt if not ignore them completely (the rational choice). The 2020 behavior is also quite enough to warrant waving it off as nonsense. But just watch IF he loses, this is what will happen, and his gullible, irrational followers will go along with it.
Let it be noted. Quite pathetic, but clear as day. Id bet anything on it.
In America on the ballot today there is a simple, yet fateful question: FOR TYRANNY (Trump-Vance) OR AGAINST TYRANNY (Harris-Walz)?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Tyranny
Roevember is here! :fire: :party: :hearts:
Are you nervous?
Do you think there will be surprises in the so-called swing states?
Oh buddy, I hope women just help this one out, as you hope they do.
Actually, why does anyone ever think that their elected president is going to fix their life? So far, elections over decades just show how society swings back and forth. It's usually just about people having hope of change and getting disappointed. So they swing back and forth, without a thought in their head that their lives are unimportant to any president. That they're just meat to be herded.
The problem is direction, vision. There are no visions. True visions. There are just scam narratives. A true visionary president who has a real plan for making society better and people agreeing to that vision not out of propaganda, but out of a will to work for a change that is properly thought through. That will change things to the better.
But the system is set up to rewards scammers and narcissists, because those people knows how to play around with people's emotions rather than being forced to confront their intellect through systemic guardrails.
How I'd wish democracy was in actual serious trouble. To the point of people seeing that danger head on, not in some abstract analysis by experts, but in society. That way people would want to change the system because they would realize what the current system can lead to.
People are too comfortable at the moment.
They do not vote wishing their lives would be fixed but saved. The political slogans have mottos such as 'democracy is in danger' 'save America', 'Israel or Palestine existence', and the delicate topic of abortion and pro-life. One side of the voters thinks that if their opponents win, their lives are at risk. So do the others otherwise.
Doesn't matter. The principle I described is the same. Swing voters goes back and forth expecting change, but their lives do not change. All they're doing is lowering the propaganda narratives down to even further polarized language.
People don't know what they want in life, or what they need, people just dream nightmares or utopias and fall into the narratives of those who can scare or give them hope.
My point is that democracy isn't in danger... it's in some ways already dead. And people need to realize this in order to rebuild it.
Of course, we may not know the results tonight.
People do not learn lessons on a sociological scale. Individuals learn lessons, if the population is inclined and willing to listen to those who learned lessons about past events, they can change. If they reject these lessons, they will repeat history.
Society didn't learn any lessons from WWII, individuals did and their lessons were taught to the rest. Fortunately those lessons shook enough to form a consensus on where history should go.
Today, however, people do not seem to listen to individuals who want to teach. People are so called, "fed up with experts". They will only listen when they, themselves, face the consequences that would gives the lessons the experts already learned.
For something like climate change, this is what will happen. People won't want any change until storms and catastrophes absolutely destroy their lives. When the heatwaves, hurricanes, floods and stuff keeps coming and don't stop. When relatives and friends die because of this, then they will start to learn the lessons. And when the rest of us have said "we told you so" and they finally agree, only then will change come into play... far too late to make a difference.
And seen as more and more individuals who learned lessons from WWII disappear, there's no wonder that the mechanics of what enabled WWII to happen will start to appear again.
The fundamental stupidity of humanity as a whole and over history is staring back at you.
I agree. But a large number of Americans think otherwise. I was watching the news, and experts on this matter said Trump supporters really believe that if Kamala wins, American democracy and security are in danger, when they are already flawed, as are most of the Western countries. Maybe spreading fear in the eventual lack of national security and individual freedom is a successful political strategy. I can't imagine the individual rights and freedom of people like Elon Musk and WASP families at risk, but surprisingly, millions of voters do.
I don't think Trump will win. And I don't think his stolen claims get as much traction, though tensions will arise, no doubt.
Let's see how my comment ages. My feeling is that he will get trounced in the EC.
Clown on me if I am wrong, as I should deserve it.
I wont. I hope youre right.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/942675
People seems to forget that everyone said the same in 2016.
That is correct. And he could win. It's merely anecdotal and vibes based, which is as good as useless.
But - we are here to talk. EDIT: I think the similarities between Clinton's situation and Harris situation are an exaggeration.
Again, we will see in a few hours.
That sentence doesn't really make sense but I still understand what you're saying; for one, people actually like Harris.
Yes. Very poor sentence, I meant to say, I don't think there are many similarities between Clinton and Harris' situation. The only surprise was turnout for Trump in states assumed to be blue, that went for him.
This time, there is no such complacency in the "blue wall" states. Furthermore, I think that pollsters may for once be over-estimating Trump.
Finally - Selzer's poll aside - it's been a brutal week for Trump.
Just before 5PM, Trump wrote on Truth Social:
"A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!"
Voters in this election were overwhelmingly concerned about the condition of democracy and the economy as they cast ballots. Americans put democracy first, with 35% stating it was the most important factor in selecting how to vote for president, followed by the economy at 31%, an NBC News exit poll revealed. Abortion (14%) and immigration (11%) were the second most important issues for voters, with only 4% naming foreign policy.
This sounds hopeful for Harris supporters.
:shade:
I agree, I don't understand how so many people are calling Harris a winner at this stage. There's nothing that really points towards it. Remember that there's a lot of Trump voters who don't want to be open about it.
And usually, authoritarian people gain power when the world is in turmoil. People are gullible and believe that someone will come in and just "fix things" without any negative consequences.
So at the moment I think people need to come back down to earth and don't get the hopes up too much.
You are right, he may well be the winner. For sure.
But beyond a shadow of a doubt, in political philosophy?
That's more than we can know.
Instincts are another matter.
I am derailing actually, just wanting to say that, no, my feeling is not rational. It is very firm though :smile:
:wink: Follow me down these rabbit holes to Wonderland, my friend ..
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/944276
Women. losing rights by changes in law. The U.S. is suddenly the new Tehran.
It shows 78% chance Trump wins.
Not going to call it for Trump until Harris loses one of MI, WI, or PA.
That is the prudent thing to do.
But it does not look good in most of those states.
You are technically correct.
Also, I am a total and complete clown. Never take my US political predictions seriously. smh
Since you weren't going to call it, I got to do it.
Data looks bad for Harris for sure. She's even winning less women than Biden... Dems never gonna learn.
More extreme climate disasters are also now locked in. Enjoy.
But I don't understand why people think Trump does anything for them.
I don't know what to say, frankly.
The average American doesn't want to be ruled by a woman. I never expected their sexism to be that severe.
That's likely an important element. What % that covers is not entirely clear, but yes, it is a factor.
You can't say it's because she's black because Obama was in office two terms, so if you can't call the average American racist, you've still got misogyny to argue.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 though. Only lost due to electoral college set up.
Quoting Baden
True! And still...
He'll burn down the system. That's what people want. They're tired of politics, tired of being responsible for the world's ills, tired of worrying about climate change or foreign policy, tired of the current state of capitalism (though the latter they don't identify as the problem).
The solution is to burn it all down. Elect someone obviously hated by politicians and the media. Someone who is "unfit for office", which to their ears means he's a danger to the status quo. He's a danger to "democracy"? Great that means he'll change the system which doesn't work for ordinary Americans.
This is not meant as an indictment. There's stupidity and cultish behaviour around Trump, but their feeling that something is deeply wrong is understandable. It's not limited to the US either. I see a lot of the same sentiment in Europe now.
I totally agree with this. This is the real reason why Trump is elected (or if he get's through to get the second term). And thus it really doesn't matter what a debacle the whole Trump II administration turns out to be, as long as the media is offended and the elites are angry, Trump voters are happy. Because he is tearing down the rotten system. The smug media/Hollywood apparatus doesn't simply understand this and because it fully has gone with the Democratic narrative, it helps Trump to be the contender (and possible winner) he is.
Anyway, these so-called liberals don't understand how hypocrite bigots they are when they talk about white-trash, hillbillies and flyover country and then uphold the woke narrative. Somehow, when it's your own race, whites talking about whites, in the US you can be publicly as offensive as ever. All what this does is that it shows the actual bigotry in the American system.
First thing in a democracy is to respect your fellow citizens who disagree with you and vote differently. And never, ever, ridicule them.
Some relevant iconography:
This icon is ubiquitous in Buddhist cultures. They are called 'the three poisons', responsible for all human misery. Snake represents hatred. Pig represents greed. Rooster is ignorance. They're running the show now.
I still blame Biden ultimately for tying his party's hands like this. Even Harris herself is incapable of distancing herself from him because she's a part of his administration. His decision to run again and his (even now) stubborn belief that he's capable of winning is the biggest reason why the Democrats lost.
I always feared the worst, but I think this is going to be a lot worse than I feared. I think I'm going to get my head out of news broadcasts and go back to just studying philosophy and Buddhism.
Isn't Trump just another celebrity, virtue signalling, identity policies wanker (albeit of the right)? Do you think that he and Vance and Musk and RFK and Bannon will be able to agree on anything and not end up derailing themselves in acrimony in a few months? Seems to me that Musk, Bannon and RFK will need to take out Trump in '25 so they can get to the real work.
Yeah, it is crazy. Surprisingly, he beat the odds.
Musk says he wants to slash government spending and bust unions, while RFK undermines vaccines. Both of these people could've pushed for climate action on the right given their backgrounds, but why make things better when you can make everything a hell of a lot worse?
who happens to now be the most powerful man in the world. The Republicans now control the White House, Senate and House. Forget about environmental policies and climate targets. Forget about all the lawsuits and indictments he was facing, he'll walk away scot free. It's a disastrous outcome.
Around the time he bought Twitter.
@180 Proof?
Allan Litchman (never wrong in 40 years 13 keys guy)
Michael Moore
Bill Maher
Nate Silver (barely)
James Carville
anyone else care to add to this?
The polls turned out fairly accurate still underestimating Trump but not by as much.
Now itll be fun watching the Republicans try to govern and yet still blame democrats when everything goes to shit, as it always does under their leadership.
Some of my friends keep telling me that Trump is what happens when the liberals have lost their way. What do you think are the lessons for Democrats here?
Sublime experience.
Not to run an empty, establishment candidate who runs away from every popular progressive policy there is, and who has no principles. They played this one by the book and failed yet again. Didnt help that she, like Clinton (and, to a degree, Biden), was essentially anointed by the DNC.
It gets tiresome having to exclusively vote AGAINST something thats extremely uninspiring. Despite all the gaslighting, I never felt the so-called energy, and I imagine millions of others didnt either. It all felt rather bland and formal and forced and coached. Like Hillary all over again: machine-like; robotic. I still voted against the worst, as we all should, but eventually you have to offer something as well. Biden, pressured by Bernie (as he needed that large cohort to get elected), ran on several of his policies. Kamala immediately ran to the middle, which every bozo pundit in their infinite wisdom said to do. You see the obvious result.
What will they actually learn? Nothing, probably. Maybe blame Russia again, or run even MORE to the right next time.
Quoting Wayfarer
Musk indeed had been a democrat. Why the Biden administration snubbed Musk, like for example praising electric car makers other than Musk, who has been the leader and the newcomer, is basically typical Democratic fumbling. Yes, Musk may not have been a supporter of trade unions, but still. And likely the real cause is him buying Twitter and not being the DEI supporting political line tower as the other internet corporations.
Hence the outcome was logical and Trump got a great backer for his new administration.
That makes perfect sense to me. Thanks. Yes, I said to a friend yesterday that there wasn't a genuine bone in her body and, perversely, by contrast, Trump appeared spontaneous and real, even if he is a carny barker and quite obviously a cunt. What do they say? Shit has its own integrity...
Forgot to ask - what progressive policies are you referring to?
Medicare for all, $15 minimum wage, Green New Deal, free public college, student debt cancellation, the PRO Act (unions), free child care and child tax credit, raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, gun control, police reform, etc etc. She ran from all of it. Not only does it energize the base, but most of it has broad appeal. Not to mention shes a war hawk and genocide supporter like Biden.
Also, for the record: Bernie would have won.
[quote=Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald] George Washington notably declared American democracy to be an experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.
The American people are now abandoning it as a failed experiment.
In word and in deed, Donald Trump for years has made plain that he does not respect the results of elections, unless he is winning.
Yet most American voters, in full knowledge, cast their ballots for him in this election.
In case anyone had forgotten his autocratic instinct, Trump issued a reminder just two days before election day.
He has never accepted the outcome of the 2020 election, fomented a riot to try to stay in the White House, and on Sunday said that I shouldnt have left it.
Seven in 10 Americans understood the risk, telling CNN pollsters last week that they didnt expect Trump would concede defeat if he lost. Yet most voters willingly handed him power.
If Washington was the father of Americas democracy, Trump has auditioned to be its undertaker and is now positioned to duly deliver.
He didnt have to seize power. America, the modern worlds greatest champion of democracy for the past eight decades, has lost faith in its calling.
That is the true uniqueness of this election not the candidates, not the policies, not the pageantry. They matter. And, in a democratic system, the power holders and their policies can be replaced, renewed, reviewed.
But in an autocracy, an absolute leader is not interested in being replaced nor his policies reviewed. The great advantage of democracy is not that it produces the best possible government but the bloodless removal of a bad one, as Karl Popper said.
Trump has made clear, over and again, that, if given power, he will not surrender it. As he said to an audience this year, vote for him just this time, you wont have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? Itll be fixed, itll be fine, you wont have to vote any more.
When Joe Biden took power, he said he would try to save American democracy.
From the very beginning, nothing has been guaranteed about democracy in America, he said in 2022. Every generation has had to defend it, protect it, preserve it, choose it.
Until now. Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, failed.
Democracy has been in retreat on planet Earth since the democratic recession took hold at the time of the global financial crisis 16 years ago. Only 24 full democracies survive among the worlds 200 nations, according to The Economists Democracy Index.
And now the centrepiece of the system, the hub of a network of democratic allies embracing more than 40 nations, has collapsed in on itself.
American democracy was hollowed out by a failure of its promise to its people. Most Americans believe that their country is riddled with corruption, most believe that government serves the elites and not the people, and nearly half of all voters are sceptical that the American experiment in self-governance is working, to summarise a New York Times poll published last month.
And now they have delivered the death sentence to the system they feel betrayed them.
Not because they expect Trump to actually fix a broken system. In her landmark work, The Politics of Resentment, political scientist Katherine Cramer described how she took regular part in a wide range of community groups in her home state of Wisconsin, one of the swing states in deciding elections and part of the great swath of left-behind, fly-over America.
When Kramer asks groups of Trump supporters how they expect he will improve their lives, they are surprised at the question, she reports. They dont expect Trump to be the vehicle for their improvement but for their disenchantment and anger.
When Trump said last year for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution, he spoke for those voters. They have given up on their system, feeling abandoned by smug big-city elites, but have confidence in Trump to offend the elites and damage their system.
The US, the nation that kept liberty alive in the face of a fearsome axis of autocracies eight decades ago, seems to be losing confidence that its worth the effort.
Will Trumps America be prepared to confront the rising partnership of autocracies in their fast-forming new front Xi Jinpings China, Vladimir Putins Russia, the ayatollahs Iran and
Kim Jong-uns North Korea?
It must be in question. A former Trump national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, explained why Trump prefers the worlds worst dictators to Americas traditional allies. Its part of his struggle for self-worth. If hes accepted by so-called strongmen, he might convince others, and especially himself, that he was strong.
Benjamin Franklin said that America was a republic, if you can keep it. He might be surprised to know that, in the end, it just gave democracy away.[/quote]
Because now they own everything and will have no problems installing whatever policy they like.
The rational concept is to never treat his voters as stupid. To listen and understand why they vote for him. But listening to voters outside the voting halls, in interviews that weren't pre-planned democratic hit pieces trying to find the bottom of the barrel... they're still not convincing me that they aren't stupid. It's just not as blunt as the Maga trumpsters being portrayed so far; it's more that they simply either do not understand the basics of economy or have any actual insight into the actual policies and politics that's been done.
So many people just don't understand why there's inflation. Some people think the Trump tariffs will grant them more income because they believe it's the other nations who pay them. Or that Biden's strategies to fight inflation was the cause of the inflation, not the Ukraine war and it's energy politics, and the pandemic screwing around with the global market.
I know children in school who learn this shit when they're around 12, who understand the basics of it.
If anything, this just confirms the notion that people are gullible and stupid. What's the point in listening to these people complaining in ways that have no relation to the real world? It's just emotional garbage reasoning, it's just biases and fallacies and a basic inability to have integrity towards manipulators. It's impossible to meet their wants and needs since they live on another planet.
We've had 80 years of processing "why the German people where so stupid in following Hitler", there's been literature, shows, theatre, movies and even video games handling the concepts and intellectual discussion with the public about why people follow charismatic leaders who doesn't give a shit about them.
Hell, THIS YEAR we had one of the biggest stories about this turn into a massive cinematic hit in Dune part 2, that is primarily about this concept. But in hindsight... there are so many people who just shouted "Lisan al Gaib" when watching the movie, believing in Paul in the same way as the fremen people. How the point of the story went right over the heads of the gullible... again.
No, these people deserve the sledge hammer of reality to the face. Maybe this time, when Trump policies aren't blocked by democrats in other sectors of the government; the people will actually, finally, open their fucking eyes.
Quoting Mikie
I was wrong. :zip:
As Mao said: "All is chaos under the heavens, the times are excellent." The EU is too inflexible to take advantage of this but we know Russia, India and China will. And of those I'd rather have India do well than the other two.
But the world is globally moving in the direction of post-truth behaviors. And in such a climate, you can't have an election if there are no laws preventing lies. Lies and opinions aren't the same thing. A post-truth world thrives in lies because voters doesn't care what is true, reasonable or good even for them, they go with the narrative that is emotionally good for them. This is what fuels people like Trump.
So there's no surprise that we see more of this. Economic turmoil and world uncertainty almost always generates a populist response.
The problem people have when trying to analyze the world is that their political bias also produces a cognitive bias. People leaning towards the left have been living in a delusional idea that things can't get worse. They believe that the good will prevail.
If there's one position where I've been trying to be for a long time, it's on the side of truth, to the best of my ability. That doesn't make me an unmoving static centrist, no, I think that this political categorization and labeling of everyone around us needs to fucking stop.
There's only two sides right now. The side of the lies, filled with populists, criminals, corruption, war and hate. And the side of truth, filled with rational reasoning, scientific methods and thinking, problem solving, humanism and collaboration.
What the post-truth world needs is better ways of streamlining how we reach truth. Better ways of how to cut through the noise of lies and bullshit in order to collaborate for a better future for all.
Right now, there are no tools of a democratic society to handle post-truth representatives and their followers, because the very thing that a democratic society was founded on were that people followed actual truth. When truth disappears because the tools of rationality and reasoning gets demolished, we also lose the foundation for a democratic nation to function properly.
In essence, democracies of the world today aren't equipped to handle a post-truth movement. It doesn't win on arguments for truth, it doesn't win on policy that are meant to improve society, it wins on noise, lies and a people who don't care about truth anymore.
What good is a democracy when no one votes based on truth and politicians don't have to fear any truths? In which you only have to be charismatic and make noise to win. Then the actual politics doesn't matter anymore. It's not an election about what matters for people, it's a popularity contest that risk people's lives.
I think the democratic world needs to wake up and look at the system itself. To stop thinking that just having a democratic system, regardless of its quality, is as good as it gets.
The world needs to politically evolve into caring more for truth. Otherwise we will all live in the utter chaos of a fully post-truth society where nothing matters to people and no one knows where to even begin to find answers to what's actually going on.
In what way?
I guess. He kind of did some of this during his last term too.
Well, four more years for them to see everything burn.
Those are plentiful! Liberals cry about everything. :)
Nah, hold your machiavellian ass. If you truly think they will get destroyed by their own idiosyncrasy, well, that is unlikely to happen.
Never act in panic. This was a big mistake the democrats did this year. In panic they replaced Old Joe with laughing Kamalahaha.
I saw that June debate between Biden and Trump and to tell you the truth I saw Joe being too old, but I sympathized with him for the reason that Joe Biden was putting effort to answer the questions of the journalists, whereas Donald Trump was not answering any questions.
Kamalahaha believed that "kindhearted democrats" need good vibes, not answers. That was a big mistake and I hope Pelosi, Clooney and Kamalahaha fire themselves from the Democratic Party, cause they will be complicit in this crazy comeback of climate-change deniers, gun-loving, god-fearing, republicans.
Stop blaming middle-class Americans for this ugly outcome! Democrats should blame themselves and their corporate media only. One of the very few things I came to agree with JD Vance is that corporate media are the biggest threat to American democracy on this day.
I'm so envious! I listen to Max Richter at least once a week. Also Nils Frahm.
I don't think so. Post-truth can only survive as a society so far as to give people nothing for their devotion to bullshit. And any attempts to install authoritarian leaders by ripping the constitution and dismantling guardrails of democracy will lead to civil war before any such authoritarian regime takes place.
Another scenario is that the nation gets divided so much it actually breaks apart. With a Christian fundamentalist society spread across the deep red states making up a new nation, while the rest and blue states form their own. It's usually what happens if a divide gets too polarized and doesn't lead to civil war. So, in your scenario of dictatorship, it would be a nation with an authoritarian leader built upon Christian fundamentalism akin to Islamic fundamentalism in the middle east.
It could very well end up in a similar image of Margaret Atwood's Gilead.
While something like this shouldn't be brushed off as pessimistic fear mongering, I do think that such a future is unlikely. Primarily because there are enough people who don't want it and they are only passive about it until it seriously threatens them. If Trump tries anything drastic these four years, I believe there will be enough republicans who are rational enough to block it, since not all are Trump fundamentalists. And the blowback from these coming four years will likely spark a major return for the democrats in which they might realize how in danger the nation is, installing enough protections from leaders like Trump and maybe even reforming the democratic process nationwide to fit more up to date democratic systems in the world.
If there is a crisis, or civil war happening in the next 50 years, I think that the US will transform into a proper parliament and abandon the old system. The bipartisan system is so broken that it's not a democracy anymore and people are fed up with this "voting for the least bad" type of election.
People will get fed up with idiots running things, especially when the real consequences kick in.
I love his soundtrack for The Leftovers.
me too. :heart:
Sadly, the live-action-roleplay of his opponents continue. Fighting an imaginary fascism involves erecting an actual one, so I suspect political violence, institutional subordination, and a captured press will be working diligently to disrupt the Trump regime. Luckily the people arent buying it anymore.
Yeah, most people were I think. But this scenario wasnt outside possibility just sucks when it actually happens.
A fair point, but I actually thought this pointed in the other direction. Trump won after Brexit, with the Fac Five all winning or most winning right around that time.
Theresa Mayhem and Mo Mojo Bojo
2Dirty Dueterte
Majorly Magnificent Modi
Make Europe Great Again Le Pen (didn't quite win, but making it to the final was an unexpected win)
Outlandish Orban
:cool:
And we might also include Big Boy Bolsonaro and the apparent strength of Rootin Tootin Putin.
But since then the right wing waves have largely broken. Most of those people are out. The UK just had a hard shift the other way, and Modi lost a ton of seats, while Bibi is also looking in very rough shape. Xi is facing a Chinese economy facing a major, potentially sea change slow down. Meanwhile, Putin, the sort of arch mascot led his country into a disastrous war that destroyed and badly embarrassed his military, and had to flee his capital due to a mercenary coup.
To be sure, the anemic Western response in Ukraine (sending a handful of tanks years after it has become clear that sending actually meaningful numbers won't cause a catastrophic escalation, being unable to match Russian and North Korean shell production, etc.) is also embarrassing.
Yet in general, Trump's win seems more against the (short term) currents than with it. TBH, the exit polls make it seem like this is more of the Democrats than anything else. Biden had no business running for a second term and Harris was a bad candidate. That exit polls suggest that Trump lost significant support from white voters and yet seems likely to win the popular vote (the first GOP non-incumbent to do so in almost 40 years) should be a wake up call on Democrats. It seems to me that immigration is the number one issue carrying the far-right across the West and so far the liberal establishment in North America and Europe has largely refused to budge on it.
Of course, when far/further right parties win elections in Western countries they also don't really change immigration either. Trump seems to have the House and Senate, so we'll see. I think they will be far more interested in cementing systems or minority rule, cutting taxes, and removing various regulations than actually cutting off the supply of cheap labor or fixing the debt.
Yes, Nils Frahm too, of course.
Yes, likewise.
Deporting millions of immigrants sounds appealing to those who buy into scapegoating them for some problems in society, but it ignores the negative consequences. I don't think anything good can possibly come of it, if it actually comes to pass. It will fix no problems, it will just make some people happy that these "others" are out of our midst. It can't solve the real problems - that would require changing the laws, and Trump has told that's not necessary - his "extreme power" is all that's needed.
Deficit spending is a big concern for many, so slashing $2T from the budget sounds like the right thing to do. That exceeds the total amount spent on discretionary spending, so it would have to entail cuts to "mandatory" spending, including Social Security, Medicare, Veterans benefits, and the military. Wherever the cuts are made, that will negatively impact the recipients. On a macro level, decreased government spending will be contractionary to the economy - there will be less money in circulation, decreasing GDP - thus negatively impacting the economy as a whole.
Huge tarriffs will increase the prices of imported goods - so it will be directly inflationary. It is likely to result in retaliatory tarriffs that will decrease demand for US goods, so that will negatively impact manufacturing jobs - this will be balanced against the increased demand for domestic manufacturing, so there will be this win - but it's an macro balancing, not a micro one: some individual producers will do better (adding jobs) while others will do worse (losing jobs).
Removing taxes on Social Security income will benefit only higher income recipients (this includes me, BTW), and it will deplete the SS Trust fund 2 years earlier (from 10 to 8 years). Deporting undocumented immigrants, who pay into SS but will never receive benefits) will hurt it even more.
I don't know if Trump will actually do the things he promised. I hope not. But if he doesn't, his voters will be pissed. If he does, there will be serious negative impacts. That's the problem with simplistic proposals for complex problems. So it seems to me Trump is in a lose-lose situation. The good news: this bodes well for the next election cycle.
Now it seems that 'It seemed clear to most people at least a year out' since he won Pennsylvania twelve hours ago. :roll:
He doesn't need to do them and would be better off not doing them. Things won't change but he can bullshit his way into telling people they have gotten better and alot of people may buy it. Of course I think he probably will do alot of them unfortunately. He sounds very passionate about tariffs as the solution to everything and he did do a trade war with China the last time around (though this time will be way more widespread and intense). Will people be swayed by his statements that he solved inflation despite prices likely increasing from the tariffs and them criticizing the Dems for being out of touch in the past 4 years? Maybe, I really cannot say, but it doesn't really matter at this point since they'll be dealing with it all the same.
I can point to alot of things that Dems did wrong (like running with the Cheneys while snubbing the Palestinians in their base) but replacing Joe was one of the only reasonable things they did this election cycle. Joe Biden was ultimately the biggest drag on the party even after dropping out and his connection to Kamala was what doomed her more than anything.
The problem with the Dems was what we saw these past few election cycles: the Dems never listen to their base. They could've let the voters decide who should best represent them but why do that and risk someone who the party establishment can't control when they can have one of their goons be nominated instead? The last time they didn't do that was in 2008 with a dark horse named Obama and look how that turned out for them. Clinton, Biden, and Harris were all terrible candidates. Clinton was massively unpopular when she ran in 2016, Biden couldn't even win the first few primaries despite being the frontrunner, and Harris didn't even get any votes in any of her primaries. But they were all nominated anyways and often through some shady tactics that undermined any opposition. Maybe next time they will let the party decide, but who knows if there will be a next time.
Yesterday more Americans chose rather than rejected tyranny. To wit:
make Apartheid great again
make Antisemitism great again
make Anti-women great again
make Anti-immigrants great again
make Anti-labor great again
make Anti-intellect great again
make Anti-democracy great again
make Above-the-Law great again
make Assholery great again ...
prevails 'DJT is vox populi!' the culmination of the last half-century of bipartian Neoliberal de-industrialization 'It's the structurally exploitative-systematically discriminatory Plutonomy, stupid!' aided and abetted by corporatist Reality TV, WWE & Social Media which has groomed (radicalized) the precariat for reactionary populism???
Fuck me.
Bernie. From the establishment's silencing of the right candidate for working class Americans came Trump's possibility to do what he's done.
It's a non-trivial matter to distribute culpability here. Clearly, lots of people are gullible and vote against their interests. Yet there is also manifest stupidity and ignorance.
How to make sense of this? For now, answers are pending.
Yup...
:gasp:
But I will note that the Trump phenomenon has normalised mendacity. It is indisputable that Trump lies continuously, about matters large and small, some of which concern issues of extreme national and global importance.
But with this victory, these lies have now become normalised - for example, the lie that Trump's many indictments were based on 'weaponising' politics and politicisation of the Department of Justice. The lie that the January 6th insurrection was anything other than a vile assault on democracy and law and order. All of this is now going to become normalised in public discourse.
There's a term, I think it's associated with Marxist philosophy, although I'm not highly familiar with it - 'false consciousness'. This is what I think the whole Trump phenomenon crystallises in the electorate. An entire national identity that has lies as part of its identity. It can't be good.
Yep. Bernie would have won, in 2016, in 2020, in 2024. But the DNC made sure that didnt happen. So this outcome isnt surprising which is why I called it weeks ago.
Trump is still the stupidest choice, but this will come with a lot of good things like giving yet another wakeup call to the Democratic Party and the inevitable infighting and finger pointing. Itll be fun watching what nonsense excuses they come up with. :lol:
A simple question I ask is: how many times did Harris rally with Bernie?
and how many with Liz Cheney?
Thatll tell you everything you need.
My family was annoyed that I was calling it for Trump :lol:
But yeah, its good to take some time away. Most people I talk to really dont follow any of this that closely. What they end up with is whatever simple soundbite or slogan happens to make its way into their brains.
Political hobbyism, thats all this is really. Dont lose any sleep over it. Use whatever you feel to get involved locally. Itll reset your perspective a bit.
In a post-truth society, the public have stopped pursuing truth, stopped listening to experts and scientists. Rather they let themselves follow whatever is emotionally satisfying, be it their own opinion or someone else's opinion.
Liars, scammers and manipulators have always existed, but the public have generally been able to arrive at the truth together, fighting back at the ones trying to scam their ways into power.
But in a post-truth society the public is in an intellectual disarray. They aren't able to organize around a truth or around some facts and thus will fail to keep demagogues and authoritarian grifters away.
This is why Trump is elected. The noise of post-truth society let's people like Trump do whatever they want and people will never be able to align around what they think about him. Only the ones who sees him for what he is are able to, but as we're seeing globally, more and more people are unable to do this.
It's one of the reasons why I am so focused on research, scientific methods and such in other arguments on this forum. Because people have lost touch with what rational reasoning really is. Whenever I see someone, in their argument, target scientists and their research with a vague concept of science changing all the time, and therefor "scientific research and findings can't be trusted", I know that I'm dealing with someone who has succumbed to the post-truth world.
It blocks any ability to progress ideas, to have proper discussions. Facts and truth are called into question so often that any attempt to form actual knowledge is futile.
The challenge, globally, is how we get rid of this post-truth bullshit. How research, experts, proper discussions, scientific methods and facts return back to normalcy and popularity again.
Instead of teaching people that all their opinions matters, teach them that facts and truth matters and their opinions are worthless without them. Make it embarrassing again to utter stupidity. Something that people look down on enough so that it hurts sociologically.
This inclusion bullshit of everyone's opinion mattering has shaped everyone into their own little expert who knows everything about everything.
It needs to stop, because this is what fuels the post-truth world that grifters like Trump feeds on. They won't disappear as symptoms until the root cause is treated.
How? I have no clue, but it's up to society to solve this. It's this that needs to happen. Everything else is just barking up the wrong tree.
[quote=Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post]when a country deliberately rejects decency, truth, democratic values and good governance, the problem is not a candidate, a party, the media or a feckless attorney general. Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires a virtuous people devoted to democratic ideals. Whether we can recover the habits of mind what we used to call civic virtue will be the challenge of the next four years and beyond.[/quote]
Personally, I doubt it. I feel a grave crisis is imminent, but we'll see.
Trump ran on immigration last time and he had the House, Senate, and Court for 24 months and they didn't even a single vote on migration, not even token changes, not even during the lame duck session. And he oversaw a 13 year high in illegal crossings. His base didn't get upset with him then. They would get upset if there were major disruptions in the economy, so he might not do much of anything.
Same for repealing Obamacare.
Maybe I'll be unpleasantly surprised, but I am thinking it's more of the same.
Yep. Extending tax cuts, no national abortion ban, some dressed up nonsense on the border (packaged as something new, but basically continuing whats been done with some murmurs about a wall), maybe some tariffs on Chinese goods (as Biden has done), and otherwise a bunch of hot air. Hell be even worse on the Middle East, but will possibly stop funding the proxy war in Ukraine (perhaps the one bright spot).
The real shame will be 4 years of environmental deregulation, and the gutting of science. Hell try to repeal the IRA, which may be possible now that theyll have a trifecta (although a lot of republican districts have benefited, and with a slim house majority that may not fly).
Also, and equally damaging, is the free reign of appointing judges, which will further the courts to the right for a generation. I imagine Alito or Thomas will retire, and Sotomayer is in poor health I hear so he may get another 3. Hell have a full 4 years of a Republican Senate too, because 2026 theres no chance Dems take it back, given the map.
But itll all likely swing back in 28. That is, if the party moves towards Bernie and away from the Clinton-Obama establishment neoliberal crowd.
The IRA was the only reason why I wanted Harris to win since she literally has nothing on climate for me to care about. She would've continued the funding at least. It's fate is largely on the House now though as you say a slim GOP majority will likely not repeal the IRA given it's benefits to red districts. The great thing is that the Republicans don't really care about the debt so whatever tax cuts they have planned will likely just be subsidized through more borrowing.
Quoting Mikie
There's always the possibility of the Dems getting rid of the filibuster and passing all the court proof laws they want. I don't care about the argument that this gives Republicans the same power. If they want to use it to enact some of their preferred legislation like a federal abortion ban then they're more than welcome to try. Maybe we'll see politics actually be about a clash of ideas again.
Quoting Mikie
What names do you have in mind to pin our hopes behind? Bernie is too old now (older than Biden) and alot of the names floated before Harris became the nominee like Shapiro and Whitmer aren't really appealing. AOC also lost alot of her luster too since her initial victory in 2018.
I'm hoping for Jon Stewart personally. He's antiwar so he'll be way better on issues like Gaza and he's Jewish so the Israelis can't call him an anti-Semite. He's an outsider but a big enough celebrity that he can't be dismissed out of hand by the MSM. Plus he's funny and as Trump has shown being funny overrides literally everything in politics.
Title 42 is no longer available, per court ruling, but I expect he'll come up with some quasi-legal basis to duplicate what he did before. He explicitly said no changes to law were needed; all he needed to do was to exercise his "extreme power to shut down the border" (i.e. skirt the law).
Anyone paying any attention to the temperature of the USA over the last 12 months would have seen this coming a mile off. As i did. Perhaps be less pedantic.
Yes, but his party had full control of government and didn't even hold a vote on migration. To vastly oversimplify, Big Business wants migrant labor. They want wages down, rents up, and unions out, all of which are supported by more or less staying the course on current policy. Some headline grabbing moves that "trigger the libs," (e.g. family separation) is all the base seems to need.
Trump's senior citizen base wants their home values to keep always trending upwards and price stability for goods and services. Major shifts in migration levels, let alone removing large numbers of people, would cause huge problems for both. So I doubt they change much for the same reason that they ran on repealing Obamacare for 10+ years and didn't touch itbecause as much as the base likes the idea of doing it they would hate the consequences.
Total immigration was higher under Trump than under Obama for most years and deportations were lower than under Obama as well, it's just that Trump adopted high profile, needlessly cruel family separation policies. But his general lack of competence and inability to pick competent leaders meant the CBP was in some ways less effective even as it widened its scope for who it would deport.
Trump supporters spent years fomenting concern about election integrity. On Tuesday, they set it all aside.
Lol what a shocker! Who would have thought?! Its almost as if it is, and always was, complete bullshit.
I don't think there was any temperature. Male Latinos didn't back Harris the way they had Biden. One swing state elected a Democratic Jew for governor, but Trump for president. Latino sexism maybe.
Mike Duncan, who did the History of Rome and Revolutions podcast and put out a few popular histories, had a very good analogy back when he was covering Rome during the Obama-era.
When Rome still had rivals, it needed civic virtue to keep the fragile Republic going. It needed to levy large conscript armies from a willing and patriotic populace, particularly after the disaster at Cannae where Rome lost 65-80,000 men in a single day to Hannibal. It needed competent leaders, as well as at least some level of meritocracy to be able to overcome its many rivals.
After Rome finally defeated Carthage, they were left without any unifying adversary or real threat. Persia/Parthia was a rival, but a limited one, not an existential threat. At most they would take away a few provinces for a few years. Even when Rome took what is now Iraq, it wasn't particularly committed to sprawling out [I]that[/I] far.
So, there was nowhere left to expand too. The Atlantic, Sahara, Persia, and the undesirablity of the north bracketed in the Republic. Thus, in the moment of Rome's great triumph, it suddenly became apparent that there was more to gain from trying to control what Rome already controlled then in trying to build up or expand the state.
That's the big parallel. With the USSR/Carthage gone, elites turned inward and began sharpening their knives. At the same time, for both, the military goes from a citizen force of conscript levies to a professional armyas Gibbon puts it in the Decline and Fall "elevating war into an art, and degrading it into a trade."
China is a decent parallel to Parthia. And the large scale migrations to the West creates a similar set of problems to those faced by Rome due to the huge influx of slaves after their rapid expansionmost notably soaring economic inequality.
Rome faced a decline in all their institutions, and likewise America sees its unions wither away, its social clubs going extinct, its churches empty, etc.
But I don't think Trump is anywhere near competent enough to play Caesar, let alone Augustus. He's old and unfit, and he might not live out this term, let alone any additional ones (which he has no hope of engineering). This is probably more our Gracchi Brothers moment, or at most our Marius and Sulla.
It was sexism, frank, indeed. But it is very surprising when Latino countries such as Argentina had Cristina Kirchner or Eva Perón; in Honduras, Xiomara Castro is the President, etc. It is mind-blowing that they prefer to vote for a man who is clearly against Hispanic culture rather than a woman. As I said yesterday, I didn't think the sexism was that severe.
Seems gratuitous since you've just been fucked by several million of your countrymen.
These people are no more stupid or ignorant than those voting for Democrats.
:rofl:
:sweat:
.
I'll do it. I mean, I'm not American, and don't know anything, but then that's probably a good thing.
I won't golf, because golf sucks, but I will sleep in till at least 10am. I'm not a morning person.
The destruction of the Earth's climate? Tax cuts for the super wealthy? Increased hostility towards China, including trade wars?
There is ignorance everywhere. But some of it is quite worse for people at large.
It's just that Latino women didn't switch from Biden to Trump, but a significant number of Latino men did, so people figure it was sexism, I guess because they can't think of what else it would have been.
If Donald Trump is a metaphor for something, what is that something? I mean to you, not Americans.
Good question.
I would say Trump is a metaphor for Enfant terrible, but in an American context.
Is that bad or good?
It is up to each of us to interpret whether it is good or bad. :smile:
It's like the Fool. Ambiguous and possibly holy.
I doubt many Trump voters actually count on Trump doing anything for them. Because the worldview of these people is typically rugged individualism. I surmise they see Trump as a role model, as a type of person they themselves aspire to be. They don't see him as a father figure or someone who will help them, they despise such figures.
This is hte kind of comment that gets a scoff and a 'piss off' from me, sorry mate.
Oh no. I'm deeply wounded now. :groan:
:up:
As mentioned, the biggest problem with the democrats is catering to right wing voters just granting them a miniscule increase in voters, rather than forming a strong left narrative around things that a majority actually wants.
Most usually just talk about Trump and his people being stupid, but when it comes to marketing and forming a cohesive and strong marketing narrative to campaign on, the democrats are fucking amateurs.
The democratic party needs a total changeover. Take these four years and get rid of the centrist stupid people, find a candidate who's charismatic and gathered around just basic left leaning politics in economy and welfare. Produce a STRONG narrative in marketing with slogans that are quotable and that resonate with the voters who don't understand policy or politics in general.
It's like, minor parts of the democratic party that agree with this should just do a hostile takeover and put all the old demented idiots in retirement homes... except for Bernie. :sweat:
David Brooks
Gee thanks David. Glad youre realizing this NOW.
Him, Bret Stephens, and the rest of the anti-Bernie crowd can just shut up now.
Watch the video I posted, he references it.
Quoting Mikie
:up:
Imho populism + sexism also among Democratic voters = Trump defeats Harris: in 2016 Hillary received 66m votes and 2020 Joe received 81m votes (W) and 2024 Kamala received [s]68m[/s]74m votes. Apparently, regardless of candidate quality, we 21st century Americans prefer a lawless president / "dictator" (tyranny) to a neoliberal woman president (quasi-liberty). :confused:
We had some people here (in the Philosophy Forum) who argued that only stupids can vote for Donald Trump. I told them that though I am an immigrant myself, I would never call stupid someone who voted for him.
Nonetheless, you don't need to be enthusiastic about the future. I mean, Donald Trump and his voters have my respect right now, but I doubt that this country is going to get any better.
My problem with the democrats are not big spending and high taxes. My problem with them is that they use this money in order to divide families (when you promise 1.7 trillion US dollars to single mothers, in order to buy groceries, is like you are encouraging women to get divorce and their children to be cared by the government), make young people less productive (cause truth be told if someone asks me why I never married I would tell her/him that in the years when I was more fertile like a man, I was looking to get my PHD, instead of making some kids), help out corporations, enable genocides and civil wars, and so on.
Four years with Trump, if we are really lucky, we might see less wars, but there's nothing revolutionary in him. The guy is still promising people cheaper oil & coal (because this is what his friends want him to do in the 21st century, when countries like China and South Korea are leading the total electrification of a new fusion-energy-oriented world), and I am wondering what will happen when his friends in the farming and various industries tell him that with 20 million illegals being deported some of these businesses and industries may collapse. I mean the guy may build a wall and have his ICE officers look tough in front of the cameras, but he won't stop the diversification of this country (which will make USA, UK and Western Europe look like the Balkans or Brazil for centuries to come), he always will have an ear for his rich friends, and he won't transform news outlets, social media, schools, corporations, the judiciary, etc.
In the best case scenario, you will have less wars in the four next years and a big, beautiful wall in the border with Mexico, but you shouldn't expect anything else to change in this country. Inequalities will keep rising, media outlets and social media will keep brainwashing the youth, higher education will make US population older (like is already doing in Europe, where Italians are the nation with the most diplomas and with the less kids), the judiciary will be controlled by the two major parties, our planet will become warmer, dirtier and less habitable year by year.
Elections make many Americans feel better (through releasing some of the anger they have been experiencing), but nothing will get better till we see a real/big revolution in this country and/or in the world. MAGA is not a revolution. MAGA is just a trend to release anger and keep life going on, till the day when the real problems will become irresolvable and will hit all of us in the face.
Also ditch all the social stuff while you're at it. Nobody cares about identity politics or whether someone says mean words.
The solution isn't that hard, it really isn't. However I worry that the problem isn't that the Dems are incompetent but that they're incompetent by design. It's not like there weren't opportunities these past few election cycles, but the party always made sure that the candidate that was nominated was the candidate that wouldn't rock the boat. Maybe they'll let the party decide next time, though to be honest I'm hoping for more of a dark horse candidate like Obama than some of the obvious options on the table like Newsom.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/cbsnews/status/1854760849291829688?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
The U.S. elections seemed to be an IQ test, and look at the results. Now it depends on the way each of us sees it. Are we entitled to call more than 73 million voters crackpots? There are more voters for Trump than citizens in my country.
Within those 73 million voters, there are women, Latinos, and probably LGTBQ too. What if those voted against Kamala because of a sexist bias?
Latinos are very sexist; that's 100% accurate.
I see that feminism is not strong enough as it is in Europe.
I will not understand if Trump obtained some LGTBIQ votes. That would be reckless and crazy, but are they stupid? No, I don't think so.
The parties are in disarray. 2016 saw two populists make waves, Trump and Sanders. If I recall, when Sanders was checked by the powers of the DNC, 4/10 Sanders voters moved to Trump. Of the two populist hijackings of 2016, one worked and one didn't, and the effects were predictable. The Democrats paid a price in votes and palatable candidates, and the Republicans paid a price in policy. There is pressure to reshape the two parties. For the Republicans the reshaping is already well underway; for the Democrats it looks inevitable.
But Trump moderated the conservatism of the Republicans and he now holds the center. So I don't agree that "the solution isn't hard" for the Democrats. Concede to Trump and adopt the same core positions? Move left and abandon the center? Oddly, the Democrats find themselves in a strange pickle just 8 years after Obama left office. Their only grievous mistake was running Clinton in 2016.* I don't think they would've won the election any other way in 2020, given Sanders' head start. (Cue the Bernie Bros' protestations...)
* And perhaps letting Sanders run as a Democrat in 2020. But they did not want to risk him running as an independent.
What if its just because Harris sucked as a candidate, was never voted on to be the nominee, ran towards the right and away from Bernie, couldnt talk without a teleprompter and endless coaching, and had no vision or policy to offer other than a pathetic $25 thousand down payment for homebuyers and that she wasnt Donald Trump.
Now she, like Hillary, can also fuck off forever. Along with Biden.
I disagree that Trump has moderated alot of his positions. In fact he seems to be moving to the extremes on issues like immigration (where he wants mass deportations) and trade (where he wants to impose a global tariff on all goods). The only area where he's moderated is on abortion and social security but apart from that he's a standard Republican and governed like one in his first term.
Quoting Leontiskos
The Democrat platform isn't the problem since it remains popular (while Trump's ironically enough isn't) but Democrats aren't able to sell it as well as Trump is able to sell himself which goes back to the main problem I see for Democrats.
Last I checked Harris in the closing stretch of the election avoided going into any policy specifics while using the same old "Trump bad" line of attack that's been used since 2016. It's not surprising why she lost.
I suppose if I were to look on the bright side of things it's better off for the Democrats that Trump won this time since they were in major need of rebranding anyways. Even if Harris won, I would imagine she'd be a mediocre president who wouldn't accomplish anything and likely lose reelection putting the party in the same spot in 4 years. Losing to Trump twice after barely eeking out a win in 2020 when they ran their "safe" candidate should be a clear sign that what they're doing isn't working. Also puts them in a good position if Trump inevitably screws things up now that he's in power again.
I think it is important to do self-criticism, but on the other hand, I think we should look at what the people really have as values. They voted against a system. Donald Trump is charged with multiple felonies, but surprisingly, people decided to believe that the problem is the judiciary system and not him. Let's see what happens in the next four years. Time passed by more quickly than we thought. But, in my opinion, the key would be to switch the mindset of the people and help them to believe and respect the system again.
Though, what meaningful change could have been expected from an establishment candidate?
The US establishment has grown so problematic that its interests run diametrically opposed to anything that could be seen as meaningful change.
Let's hope this is the final nail on their coffin, but after four years of Orange Doofus I'm sure Frankenstein's monster will rise again.
Kamala is no deal. She made Trump look genius.
Speaking for myself, I didn't bother to vote Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, but I would love to vote Jill Stein, Elizabeth Warren and maybe Ocazio-Cortez.
However, I agree with you on that sexism does play a big role. Telling from UK, Germany, Israel, and Italy, there's only one path for women to lead countries: they need to be (very) conservative women.
It seems that men need to see a mother model when they vote. This is why conservative women have more chances to get the male vote, than the liberal ones. So, either Ivanka or Tulsi might become our first female president :rofl:
Like Margaret Thatcher, yea. I've long thought that the first female president would be a Republican, but I thought Harris would prove me wrong.
I couldn't have said it better. :up:
Gee, I wonder why people don't vote for that.
I've heard that people used to call "moma" Catherine the Great, Golda Meir and Angela Merkel (though I don't know if that is correct).
Finland and New Zealand were able to elect female liberals as their leaders. Both women received a lot of attention, but their stardom didn't pass the 12 month threshold :rofl:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1854850516242563072?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Enjoy the moment buddy. :grin:
That's something dems have to deal with. If you apply feminist and black rhetoric in an election, you should expect patriarchal and white identity responses.
I have no idea how democratic countries can be run with women or men assuming to be different from the rest, but there's definitely going to be a lot of resentment if countries become California and promise people reparations (because 8 generations ago some of their ancestors were slaves).
Did anyone tell these liberals that serfdom in Europe ended with the French Revolution? Who is going to pay for reparations when 90% of the world population are the descendants of peasants who (till two centuries ago) used to be either slaves or serfs?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom
Collapse in Democratic Turnout Fueled Trumps Victory
Theres no surprise as to why they would be. There was no reason to vote FOR her, and the motivation to vote AGAINST Trump, though still the correct move, wasnt good enough.
This wasnt a landslide, and wasnt a mandate. But thatll be the takeaway from the cult. But thats a great thing I hope they continue believing the whole country has gone maga.
I'm pretty sure campaigning with the Cheneys while snubbing the left on Gaza contributed to that. Perhaps stop trying to court this mythical sane Republican voter next time.
As for Israel, you better be thankful the US donor class "supports" it, because it has no friends left and is a pariah state, for good reason. And your friends those fanatical Evangelicals are the most anti-Semitic of them all
I've started speculating that the EU is actually an oligarchy. Thoughts?
"Majority of Americans support mass deportations" (CBS).
Quoting Mr Bee
Trump's love of tariffs is idiosyncratic from all political angles, true. But because of that it is not polarizing in any partisan manner.
Quoting Mr Bee
Abortion, social security, IVF, LGBT... Trump is also moving the party towards non-interventionism. RFK and Gabbard are former Democrats, to name two within his administration.
Quoting Mr Bee
This seems backwards to me. Trump's public persona was a liability in this election, not a boon. The Democrat platform was bad enough to strongly neutralize that liability. I am amazed at how completely it was neutralized.
Quoting Mr Bee
So what needs to change if "the platform isn't the problem"? A more impressive candidate and a focus on the policy proposals? I am not sure what golden policy proposals the Democrats are supposed to have in their back pocket.
It's a complex subject. The way it is currently structured is based on a system which basically gives German banks the power to control the value of the Euro based on German elite financial needs.
In an ironic twist, the European Central Bank is worse than the Fed. The only mandate the ECB has is to control inflation. At least the Fed attempts to keep unemployment low as one of its mandates, in addition to controlling inflation.
So yes, it is an Oligarchy - as everywhere else, but it has a very strange dynamic to it.
"If the Democrats move left they would only be centrist in Europe, therefore such a move would not make them left."
The U.S. is not Europe. This is not a good argument.
Not economically no. Now, or as of the removal of Roe, not even socially. If they manage to get Roe back in, then we can speak about the Democrats being left on world standards.
Of course, the US is not Europe. The US is an outlier in first world countries, failing to provide healthcare as right to everyone, among other scandals.
So yes, the US is to the right of the developed world by these standards. Doesn't mean the people are, but the system is. If you remove comparisons between developed countries, then there is no metric to say what's left or right or anything else.
I mean, for reference, anything to the right of Trump is called "radical left". That's insane.
Of course, because it was the evangelical Christians who lynched Jews on the street of Amsterdam last night. We must blame modern day anti-Semitism on the Christians or Israel itself. One group must not be named. :rofl:
Wow.
You are missing the point big time.
Should've expected it.
And ignore the evangelicals at your risk.
I live among the evangelicals in one of the most conservative, evangelical states in the US. I understand the left likes to point the finger at them for anti-semitism but that just hasn't panned out in my experience. This group is highly pro-Israel and often quite philo-semitic.
:100: :clap:
Más alto pero no más claro si quieren.
One of the main problems on the horizon after US elections is how the artificial state will wipe out Gaza and erase towns and cities in Lebanon, legitimately, because his best friendUncle Samallows him to do so. :sad:
It's understood that Trump will back an Israeli attack on Iran.
I've been reading about it and find myself confused. Even proponents of the EU claim there's a lack of accountability.
He will back a lot of Netanyahu's reckless actions for the next four years.
It will be a nightmare.
Lo que nos toca ahora es muy jodido....
Quoting frank
Very confusing, Varoufakis and Modi have good books on the EU, but it is a bureaucratic mess. Not all of it is bad by any means, but still, highly perplexing.
Go back to the thread where you cheer a genocide your delusions are irrelevant here.
Quoting Manuel
Yep. But dont tell that to genocide apologists, because its anti-semitism to oppose the murder of 15,000 babies.
Mikie, I'm agreeing with you. The Democratic Party needs to go further left and actively embrace the anti-Israel, anti-American masked marchers terrorizing synagogues. Gotta double down. Motivate people to the cause.
:rofl:
Exactly. Turns out sending billions to aid a genocide isnt as popular as zionist imbeciles think it is.
You don't think the marchers are anti-American? How many more American flags need to be burned for that to be the case?
:rofl:
Yes yes, theyre all anti-America. Probably a Red China conspiracy. Back to bed now grandpa.
Could be a nuclear war. We haven't had one of those in a while. :smile:
If you believe these mass protests are purely organic I've got a bridge to sell you.
Out of all the proposals, as with tariffs, it's popular, but the least popular out of the other options. Polls often also show a bigger support for a pathway to citizenship according to this Pew poll for instance. Trump has no interest in that.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not really. There's still a partisan split on it but apart from that yes it's a pretty controversial proposal, and I've even found his own supporters expressing concerns about it. Their answer is usually that it's one of those non-promises that he says he's gonna do but not really (despite doing it in his first term), somehow to be distinguished from those promises that they like that he will 100% do without question.
Quoting Leontiskos
I mean RFK is his own case on things like healthcare and vaccines, which is apparently the one thing he's gonna have influence on in a Trump administration. Calling that "moderating" is a bit of a stretch to say the least...
Quoting Leontiskos
I can only speak to my own personal experience, but when I hear people say they "liked Trump's policies" they usually refer to how they felt about the state of the economy 4 years ago and they think Trump being in office will bring that back. They never really go into specifics about his actual policies even when I persistently press them. They think he will bring down prices but I bet they won't be able to tell you how he would do it because Trump himself is unable to tell you how he would it when he's asked. His actual stated policies include the tariffs and mass deportations I mentioned, tax cuts, and harassing the Fed to cut interest rates again, all inflationary BTW.
It's not policy proposals but rather nostalgia and in this election the latter took precedence over the former. Very little in this election was really about both candidate's actual plans, making meaningless stunts like Trump working at McDonalds the only other thing on voter's minds when they go to the voting booths. Say what you want about his personality, but he is a funny and charismatic guy, and people like Harris are not and when the latter refuses to go into details about what she believes in, and says she'll just continue Biden's legacy, then voters decided accordingly.
Quoting Leontiskos
Messaging means alot which goes back to what I said about Trump being a great salesman and the Democrats being lousy at it. Trump is able to latch on to people's discontent in 2016 and this year about how bad everything is, even if he offered little in the way of solutions in the latter. Harris offered nothing.
Of course we shouldn't discount the self-imposed disadvantages the Dems had too going into this election. Fact is, we're analyzing an election loss where the Democrat ran a 3 month presidential campaign after taking over their 80 year old incumbent who was already incredibly unpopular during a time where people felt like the current economy wasn't so great.
Perhaps the reason for the election results are as simple as running a half-baked candidate in a year where the incumbent party was unpopular, especially given how widespread the shifts to the right are. As much as people like to make personal abandonment stories about certain demographics feeling left out it may be more a case of "inflation bad and Trump fix inflation" that affected and moved people this time around. Both could be easily fixed come 2028 if Trump ends up messing something up and the Democrats actually run a proper primary next time.
I risk a reply out of annoyance. But it's best not to waste time with people who believe this
Who cares about your "world standards" (which conveniently and arrogantly exclude most of the world)? The point you were responding to had to do with the U.S. electorate's view of a DNC which moves left. You responded with a non-sequitur about European standards.
I explicitly referred to developed nations. I don't think it makes much sense to compare Germany to Ecuador. You can do so if you want to, but it would be better to compare Germany to France or to Japan.
If you want to compare the US to other countries, then it is most sensible to do so with a Western European countries or Canada. On economic and social issues, the democratic part is to the right of every developed country, so the Democratic party could not run with the platform they have and call themselves "the left".
That's just a fact.
If Roe got re-introduced as law, then you can argue, with some reason that the US is to the left of other countries on social issues.
That's up to people's consideration as to what counts as left or not.
That's my arrogant view.
Quoting Leontiskos
There are only 13 states that have banned abortion. There are 8 states that have no restrictions at all. The rest are about par with European countries, so I guess you could say the US is mostly socially progressive, with a touch of hyper-progressive, and a bit of retrograde.
Like I said probably Chinese communists.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/bbcworld/status/1855068507290956271?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
True, but before no states had abortion bans. It's fine for individual states to get that right, for sure. Sucks bad for those women who can't do much in those 13 states.
If not for the federal ban, then as you say, it is quite progressive in many social aspects, most notably and most importantly, freedom of speech.
That is one area in which the US clearly has the upper hand compared with most other countries. It's an impressive win vs. the state.
Let's hope Trump doesn't squash those freedoms.
I dont see anything significantly changing things will remain the same crappy situation for most people. Theres a lot of hysterics, but the most damaging and the most consistent will be continued tax cuts, deregulation, and climate denial. In other words, right back to a stupider and more vulgar neoliberalism.
Any chance of success went out the window in 2021, when the 3.5 trillion dollar Bernie-backed reconciliation bill was killed by Manchin and Sinema. That would have been very good for the country. Instead we got crumbs and some baby steps in climate policy. Not good enough, not impactful enough.
:up: :up:
Well, I mean if Trump just completely cuts most (if not all) climate regulation and accelerates oil extraction then it is most certain we will not reach 1.5 nor even 2c by 2030, essentially guaranteeing the end of civilization. Granted, this is somewhat medium-ish term, but that's big.
As for the rest, well, I hope you are right in this case. I shudder to think things will change to the significant worse. But your prediction is bad enough if it comes to fruition.
Interesting times indeed...
Well it will accelerate emissions, yes. Itll send a poor message to the world, and will generally be taking us backwards in myriad ways when were already out of time and not doing enough domestically or globally. Thats gravely stupid. But thats what an ignorant electorate just thrust into power for 4 years. I fully agree.
Quoting Manuel
Not much to figure out, its right there in what they say and what theyve already done. So I think my prediction, if you call it that, is fairly certain yeah.
Nobody who's serious thought we'd reach 1.5C anyways even if we collectively got our act together. The 2030 goals are unrealistic too given how we like to flirt with electing climate denying idiots half the time. On the bright side, civilization won't end but we're gonna be way worse off than we would otherwise. The age of endless growth is gonna probably come to a halt at some point, one way or another.
Iran, Qatar, and others. Don't take my word it's what leaders in US intel say. Follow the money. Of course Iran has a hand in it.
Yeah because it cant be that college kids dont like genocide. The 60s protests were USSR too, etc. typical rationale for delusional apologists of genocide. But yeah, go with that. I go with the China boogyman myself.
True, the 1.5 goal was already surpassed this year, but the important issue is to avoid going much further beyond that.
Now it will be almost impossible to stop maybe even 2 degrees, and that's a disaster.
I mean, we don't know until we get to it (with 100% certainty anyways) but growing food will become much harder, a huge percentage of marine life will vanish, living in many parts of the world will become unfeasible.
That's pretty bad.
5.4 million killed in Congo. - Silence
500k killed by Assad in Syria. - Silence
500k killed in Sudan. - Silence
400k killed in Yemen. - Silence
~40k killed in Gaza - extreme outrage
Why is that, Mikie?
Nope.
But that aside, if youre so dense that after 100s of pages on the Israeli thread you still dont understand why there would be more outrage and protesting about Gaza than Congo or Sudan, I wont even bother answering in any serious way. Instead, heres the answer: antisemitism. Its always been your answer, so Ill play along.
Yes, silence. Where are the protests against Assad? Or Yemen? Or Sudan? Americans don't care. No Jews, no news. Now if it was Jews killing those Arabs the college campuses would take notice.
No one cares when Muslims kill thousands of muslims, but a Jew kills a few Muslims? We lose our heads.
Yep, thats it. Nailed it. Run along now.
I will never understand that level of destruction. What is the point of dropping nuclear attacks in a territory? Japan suffered the consequences, but they came back fast. After the end of WWII, every conflict should have been resolved diplomatically. We failed regarding this point. Europe is also guilty, absolutely. We just looked the other way, and our passivity is also reportable. I hope I am just overreacting, and the world will not look that bad for the next lustrum, but my expectations are low right now.
Hopefully any use will be limited. It would be nice if Iran would stop instigating conflict though.
Nope. You lose your heads if the US is really involved in the fight. Conflicts were the US is absent simply don't exist to you. Those conflicts are like the trees in the forest that fall that nobody hears.
Was the US involved in the First and Second Congo War?
Not much, even if many African countries were.
Was the US involved in Yemen?
With a few drones, notably killing during the Obama years an under aged US citizen, because his father (another US citizen) had supported muslim extremists after a stint in an Egyptian prison. But otherwise, this was a Saudi debacle before the attacks on shipping.
Was the US involved in Syria?
With a puny force that withdrew. Anyway this wasn't a real commitment as Americans were too afraid to back anybody in Syria, because they're Muslims and hence possibly Muslim extremists. (As the minorities like Christians basically support the regime as they fear reprisals on them)
But good that we heard from you that 40 000 is a few according to you.
You know, I suppose the only silver lining here, quite literally (for me), is that I think Trump is right on Ukraine IF he is honest about it.
That view triggers the hell out of libs. But he's right about it, gotta say it.
Everything else (Israel included) will be much worse.
But that's not all! His tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy are going to spell disaster for government debt, while expenditure czar Musk does to public services what he's already done to Twitter, albeit on an astronomically larger scale. So, co-inciding with climate catastrophe, economic apocalypse. A perfect storm. Once the euphoria of change is over, the awful reality will begin to dawn.
It should be evident very soon. The people saying I regret voting for Trump" will come put so quickly. It is so predictable and maddening.
Along with all else mentioned, yeah, we're fucked.
Another of those 'wisdom of hindsight' articles - a WaPo OP from March this year, saying the Dems really had better find a candidate other than Harris, and pronto. I think they needed a bigger personality - male (sorry to say), loud, opinionated, brash, telegenic, and anti-Trump. Although damned if I can think of one in Democrat ranks. But it's too late now, the horse has well and truly bolted.
Your son is Australian right? He will be fine if he's white, most likely. It's black and brown people that will have an issue, sad to say.
Maybe another candidate could have won. Maybe not. Hard to say. Biden being so old and being the current president makes it difficult to campaign criticizing him harshly, which is what I suspect most Dems would have liked.
On the one hand, there is no doubt this was the Democrats race to lose (they have more registered voters). On the other, so many people in the US are just clueless and very badly informed.
I've spent some time with him in Wisconsin, in the Lakes district. Actually a beautiful and serene part of the world, and overall quite genteel. But there are dark forces beneath the placid surface.
[quote=WaPo;https://wapo.st/3CkNI0Z]Its very simple: If you try to win elections by talking to the elites of this country, youre going to get your ass kicked there are not enough Beyonces, Oprahs or Hollywood elites to elect anyone, said Chris Kofinis, former chief of staff to Sen. Joe Manchin III (I-West Virginia). Trump is not the disease. He is the symptom. The disease is political, cultural, and economic elites who keep telling the public what they should think, feel and believe and guess what they told them on Tuesday: Go to hell.[/quote]
It's hard to say. We can only hope for the best and try to help out whatever way we can to combat this right-wing plague surging everywhere.
Bernie's attitude and behaviour is admirable. He's Good with a capital g. He's not the only one. Add to that that Bernie was right at the time - when no one else was or very few others were - on several very important impactful issues throughout recent history.
If only the world could be ran by people like him. Shame he's nearly censored across the board. That's no accident. Shame that there are so many people with strong unfounded opinions and feelings... all waiting to erupt at the sound of the word "socialist".
Sad world.
I'm very lucky.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/945770
:up: :up:
That's not just an US phenomenon either. Young male voters are making a sharp turn to the right in the west.
"Incumbency" seems to increasingly be defined not as any specific government, but as the entire socio-political (though curiously not the economic) status quo.
Reading what people say in right-wing spaces, they're mostly convinced that they're facing an ideologigally motivated group across politics, the media and civil society which will destroy western society unless they're stopped by an overwhelming counter-movement.
The point stands that many more much larger humanitarian crises exist around the world yet none generates the attention of Israel-Gaza today. It's not about sheer number of lives lost. It's clearly ideological. A narrative has been developed unlike in other (much larger) humanitarian crises that fits perfectly into the hot button issues of today.
Quoting Echarmion
Given the number of kids identifying as LGBT and choosing to sterilize themselves and undergo surgeries I wouldn't say they're too far off. Public trust in higher education has plummeted and anti-semitism has risen. We live in scary times where very basic questions like "what gender am I?" are now suddenly up for question. Not a good sign.
I don't know the number. I have always assumed though that it's not a relevant amount of people.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
And do you think we're looking at the cause here or the symptoms?
My personal explanation, which admittedly is typically pretentious armchair philosophy, is that what we're seeing is the result of a lack of avenues for (systemic) progress.
We've lived through the "end of history", but now on the other side we realise we're facing all the same problems, plus a couple of new ones. But at the same time we've lost all faith in utopia. There's no longer anything out there we can strive for without reservation.
One thing that strikes me in conversations is that everyone is pessimistic. Whether it's the climate or islam, the looming disaster is a common thread.
There's however a great deal of statistical shifts due to the very fact that with an increasing tolerance towards a group that previously were stigmatized, more people feel secure in opening up about who they are.
It was the same during the 80s and 90s, as society started to believe that there was a sudden increase in homosexuality, when in fact, the higher tolerance and raising inclusion of homosexuality in society meant that people could open up more about their homosexuality. So the statistical numbers went up based on the hidden statistics that were invisible due to stigma.
This is why I don't think the public is able to understand statistics correctly and make accurate assessments about reality. Because it's not just math correlating with society on a 1 to 1 alignment, but many factors that need to be incorporated in order to actually know if something has changed or if it's affected by other factors.
Many researchers have basically concluded that a large portion of the perceptive increase is because the number of people were always there, hidden under years of traumatic and violent suppression of their sense of self, in which they could never tell anyone what they felt. The agony of not being able to tell anyone and not being able to live aligned with who they are.
In my perspective, all I see that's happening right now is that transsexual people are the new black people, the new homosexuals, the new hated group that society can use in their ill-constructed and uneducated reasoning about a world and society falling into ruin.
It's once again the herd mentality and echo chambers of the public believing they understand statistics, biology, psychology and history when in fact they don't, and only push themselves into lesser and lesser ability to interpret the world through a functioning empathy.
I love all this fortune-telling. Why would black and brown people have an issue?
Nearly 30% of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+. Aside from this, the number of minors seeking gender affirming care nearly tripled between 2017 and 2021 from 15,000 to 42,000 and the trend has continued.
My main concern is with child transition though. We can't be asking children to determine their gender and then load them up with sterilizing hormones and permanent & quite painful surgeries. They simply don't have the mental capacity to make those sorts of decisions: How is it that children cannot buy alcohol or weed, yet they can apparently consent to permanently altering their bodies and destroying their fertility?
I certainly believe society should be nice and civil to transgenders. I also understand that transgender life is inherently difficult and expensive and painful.
More sinister is the idea, floating around in some radical circles, that we have no essential gender identity and it's entirely up to the individual (including the child) to self-define. Nature apparently gives us nothing; we are our own Gods. That scares me.
How do you know that this isn't a natural number? On which basis are you making the argument and at which percentage do you know is the "correct percentage" for society?
It's culture and society that has educated you into certain classifications and categorical ideas. If people are to classify the "natural" percentage among the human species, then how do you classify this? Seen as it may be affected by herd tribe sizes and procreation habits over time, changing sociological dynamics.
Until you have a measure stick, you can't know what the actual percentage is. What kind of measuring stick do you have?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
This recommendation for being careful I can agree with. However, it's not just asking them what they think that determine things. In most cases there's a long investigation before determining if it's a sociological confusion or actual. There's an idea that children merely say they want to change sex and doctors pull out the tools, that's not how these things go.
There's also actual physiological aspects of gender that puts things into further perspective:
The problem is that the pushback from adults stuck in traditional thinking makes it harder for actual investigation to take place and once again a stigma that often makes these children grow up in agony and social confusion because no proper investigation was done as it gets stuck in outdated morals and stigma.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Only for those who live in areas that don't accept or don't fully commit to accept their existence. It's actually the opposite for many who transitioned and getting what they need, they have much better mental and physical health. The one's in pain, especially not getting subscriptions they need, live in areas with transphobes running the ship. The usual shit.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
This is the normal simplification that's going around. There are physical indicators (like in the Sapolsky lecture) making some cases actual physical and medical in nature. But the core problem that people, for some reason, never understands about gender science and philosophy, is that there's a difference between medical sex and gender. Gender is a construct that society has made up rules and culture around.
Most behavioral differences between women and men are superficial, programmed by culture and social norms rather than incorporated in our chromosomes and genes. Most of the genetical and biological differences have to do with certain hormonal behavior differences, chemical differences, but very little actually affect identity to the point it is a fundamental difference. Most notable difference is mainly muscle mass and seen as sexual orientation doesn't seem to correlate that much with some basic sex, not even that is inherent to the biological sex.
While it's important that society and culture adapts to new knowledge about ourselves as humans, it's important that this is done without harming people. But so far, the foundation on which people make decisions and definitions about others seem to be primarily made up by people not educated or knowledgeable on the subject, rather than following the actual research and science being done, and in so hurts far more than believing they protect. Not only does the science show that most opinions are just culturally programmed, the discourse itself surrounding the sciences and research shows to be culturally affected and limiting the ability for people to understand the conclusions being done by people who actually study these subjects. The bottom line is that most people in society do not actually know what they're talking about, but they sure have strong opinions anyway.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1855331430613880939?s=46&t=IakyLvDoU1iHVTU4X-LNfg[/tweet]
Glad to be one and not the other.
He has it basically right.
Frank states it better:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/opinion/democrats-trump-elites-centrism.html
Trump has been pushing it and still continues to, and thatll be great news if it succeeds. Bad news for the country and the world in the short term, but very good news going forward.
I have seen your political posts and discussions here and elsewhere.
I frankly don't think there would be any point in discussing these matters with you.
Exactly. Transsexualism use to claim a medical basis, but the new wave of trans advocacy seems to be pushing to eliminate that, and I can't say that I blame them. Why should an adult even need to go through a medical screening (to determine whether s/he is "really" trans) to be prescribed HRT when gender is a social phenomenon?
Especially with the idea of "non-binary" today -- are we going to now claim a scientific/medical basis for that? What biological markers would determine that? Absurdity. Let adults live their own lives, but it is criminal in my opinion to permit children to sterilize themselves (and set them on a life path of marginalization) when any decent society acknowledges the need to place rules on children and make decisions for them.
A child can still take steps to transition without HRT and surgeries.
I get it: you cant substantiate your beliefs. You dont want to see your errors collide with truth.
The investigation is primarily for children, not adults. Adults have to rather go through dealing with a long line of other adult assholes who question their agency as human beings.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Non-binary has to do with gender identity, not biological sex.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
This is not what's going on. That is a conservative-held and marketed narrative that skews how these processes are actually done. The investigation into transsexuality in children is not just saying yes or no. There are both medical and psychological evaluations, very extensive. On top of that the statistics on regret among surgery sex change is around 1%. Compare that to knee replacements and nose-jobs where the regret rates are much higher but there's no evaluation before. Conclusion on that is that parents and doctors aren't just letting kids do anything without proper investigation.
As I've said, the "increase" can simply be that modern society understands and listen to transgender people much better and it enables more to open up about their situation, compare to before when sometimes there were even the risk of violence against them by both family and their social sphere.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Depends on the situation. Many still hold on until they grown past puberty. But for many who are really medically confirmable, such puberty without hormon treatment can be extremely distressful. Among transgender children, thoughts of suicide exist in around half the group and almost a quarter have made attempts. The reason for it primarily links to how they're treated by family and people around them, while the lack of help and gender-affirming care are also factors.
Bottom line, while there is a ratio of detransitioning, the regret-ratio is much lower than the harm caused by the lack of support these children get. And that support is not in the way of talking them out of it, but rather in support of their gender identity. A big problem is the time it takes for a proper investigation, in which hormone therapy comes into play too late. It's also not common they get this therapy without being diagnosed with gender dysmorphia.
So calling it "criminal" in the way you did is not a proper way to deal with this topic. The only criminal thing is the high suicide rates among LGBTQ+ due to the still existing stigma and behavior against them. A behavior that will just become worse with Trump and Musk at the helm spewing their bullshit to mindless zealots.
:rofl:
Satire couldnt be as good.
The world is bending over backwards to affirm trans people in what is clearly a delusion (that men can become women and women can become men), so I'm not sure what more can be expected.
Some people are always going to refuse to accept what is in their view clearly a lie (and a harmful one, at that), and such is their right.
What happens when youthful beauty fades, biological realities set in and people realize they have mutilated their own bodies, sterilized themselves, committed themselves to a life-time of medication on the basis of a fantasy that can never be realized? People get suicidal.
It's extremely sad, but unsurprising.
I'm not surprised to see the usual transphobic reactions as soon as the topic is raised. It's not a delusion, especially when the neurological research on the topic shows there are physiological differences in transgender people's brains showing attributes that misaligns with their medical sex. But I'm not surprised that your knee jerk reaction ignored that material I provided.
Quoting Tzeentch
Please provide the evidence for this lie and a solid argument on who benefits from it.
Quoting Tzeentch
This is how you prove that you've not read a thing about the topic.
Quoting Tzeentch
The only thing that is extremely sad and unsurprising is how people like you come to these conclusions without having a anything else than an emotional knee jerk reaction to the topic; calling transgender people liars and delusional, ignoring the research and have zero ability to understand statistics on the subject.
It's basically just transphobia. The new fad among people who need an outlet to blame problems on. As it was with black people, homosexuals, jews, and so on. We're seeing the same kind of behavior against transgender people; calling them delusional and liars, purring them through the same kind of treatments. All while scientists are finding evidence that the phenomena isn't at all a construct, but has physiological attributes and signifiers.
I mean, the echos of old talk is telling:
I mean, we could go on, but historically we're just witnessing the echoes of past behaviors.... again.
Maybe part of this modern rise of the old racist, homophobic and misogynic behaviors is because the conservatives are running out of people to blame? Since history has gone through its hate against most groups in society already, and they are once again losing their transphobic stance, it starts to become a sort of "then, let's hate everything then".
Going to be interesting to see what the next group these people will hate and put blame on.
Not really. I don't hate or fear trans people - I support any adult's right to choose.
However, when you start blaming a society that's bending over backwards to accomodate trans people, I am not going to sugar coat things.
When this thing that on the surface looks like it would destroy your mental health starts actually destroying people's mental health, how is that in any way surprising?
Theyre not liars or delusional. The claim is that what is delusional is the belief that you can change sexes. Ive seen no convincing evidence to counter that argument but Im open to hearing one.
Probably a topic for another thread though.
Posted in the wrong thread.
There was an extensive and interesting discussion about transgenderism between @fdrake and @Isaac here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13830/positive-characteristics-of-females/p1
I straightforwardly mistrust those statistics (Zembla made some interesting programs about the topic). But then again, I'm not saying adults shouldn't be allowed to live in whatever way they desire.
I'm simply taking issue with blaming high suicide rates on "society" when that society is doing everything it can to be accomodating, while people are subjecting themselves to these kinds of extreme and irreversible procedures.
But yea, this is getting off-topic.
Being trans places one on the margins even if everyone is nice to you and you suffer no employment hurdles. Trans folk will watch their cis peers get married and have children while they have sterilized themselves and likely engage in some form of polyamory given monogamy doesn't really make sense. And then there's the issue of what happens when the beauty fades.
I still support an adult's right to choose and acknowledge that this actually could be the best path for some people. But I would not promote it. It is wrong to tell a child that they are the sole determiners of their identity.
In what way is society "bending over backwards"?
Your rhetoric and reasoning suggests otherwise.
Quoting Tzeentch
Suger coat what? An argument you still haven't supported with anything other than that you think this is how it is? Who's really coming off as delusional?
Quoting Tzeentch
Can I see some research and statistics on this destroying people's mental health or are you just gonna continue pointing out things you have no support behind?
This is your emotions speaking, and since it's an argument out of emotion, it is transphobic. Just like if someone wants to limit freedoms for homosexuals based on nothing more than they're "not gonna suger coat truths about how society accommodates homosexuals too much". Just like a racist cannot just say they aren't racists and then they're not, it's the behavior, rhetoric and conclusions made that defines who someone is.
If you have nothing but unsubstantiated causation without evidence statements and pathologizing remarks about transgender people, then that is simply transphobia.
And why not let a neutral analytical system (GPT-o1) review what you wrote and see what it finds when I ask it "How accurate is this text?"
So, basically you're just pushing the same unsubstantiated ideas that can be found in conservative ideologies.
Quoting Tzeentch
How convenient it must be to just ignore what doesn't fit your opinions.
Quoting Tzeentch
What you might not understand is that you are exposed to an observation of society through media. I absolutely doubt that you actually talk to or have insight into the perspective of transgender people and their experiences in society. Just because Disney+ makes shows with lots of LGBTQ+ characters in it, does not mean that society is doing everything it can to accommodate. Most of society consist of people like you, just like people during the 80s and 90s who believed whatever emotional nonsens they could think of and criticized society for accommodating gay people and that this would lead to mental health issues for these people.
This happens every time there's a societal shift into acceptance of previously stigmatized groups.
It starts out with raging hate, public outcries against the groups, then it transitions to official channels being more inclusive, while the public slowly change into what we see many do now; people who say similar things like "they can do whatever they want but not close to me", while later it goes into a false form of defense of these people, a stage in which the societal norm is to accept the group and in doing this, the previous anti-people will do what you do now, talk like you care about them, but still retain the same false claims and judgements as before. The dissonance becomes so obvious.
Quoting Mikie
Gender identity and medical sex are two different things. But even so, if you check the Sapolsky video you can see how even medical sex is more complex than just what you have between your legs. Anyone who boils this down to purely their culturally biased ideas about gender and sex and who ignores the vast amount of research on this subject is clearly not engaging with it honestly. Putting the conclusion of "delusion" before the cart of actually doing the argument.
For instance, what Sapolsky talks about is that areas like the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc) and the amygdala shows a size and neuron density of the BSTc in transgender women have been found to resemble those of cisgender women. There are actual differences to our brain that has to do with our brain in relation to our bodies and in transgender people it's found that even if the chromosomes and organs align, their brain have conflicting functions, meaning, the brain and body have different perceptions of what sex it actually is. The XX and XY chromosomes direct the development, but since male and females are more similar than not, people fall on a form of gradient between the two, heavily influenced by the chromosomes.
If someone develops a brain that comes in conflict with the body's perception of its sex, is it delusional that the brain, which regulates emotions and is the seat of our consciousness is drawn to wanting a correction to get rid of the resulting dysmorphia?
What I see is, especially in relation to the topic within the election and conservative media is the same old dusty story of them looking at this as they did on homosexuality when it became more commonly accepted in society, and they believed this was a delusion that would corrupt children and societal values. All while none of them actually engaged with either research on the subject or ever even engaged with the gay community in a way of attempting to understand it.
What is more delusional, people who make absolutist conclusions without research backing it up, or people who follow what the research suggests and talk to the people it affects?
It's related to Trump's stance and the conservative narrative that will become more common in the next four years. People like you will continue to spread further bs and be part of that transphobic movement. Your ignorance here is the proof enough.
No, there are actually large reservations to be had with the figure posted.
This is probably the most highly-esteemed platform for investigative journalism in the Netherlands.
But of course I am just a "transphobe", blablabla... :yawn:
Yet there is still a screening for adults who seek to transition.
Quoting Christoffer
Yes, and gender identity is the subject here not biological sex. We're moving past transsexualism (now often considered an outdated term) into transgenderism. Or are we going to insist that those seeking to transition possess the correct biological markers before allowing them access to HRT?
Quoting Christoffer
Proper investigation into what? That they're "really" transgender? That they were "really" born in the wrong body? The medical community creates the criteria. The question is really just whether they get their HRT. The surgeries come later.
The documentary is takes a critical look at the treatments, primarily focused on the Dutch treatements. It doesn't lead to the generalize conclusions you are making. The problem is that things like this becomes a foundation for conclusions that doesn't correlate with the specifics of the criticism.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yes, and why do you think that is? Why do people who want a nose job get none such treatment but adults who want to transition need to go through years of investigation? Any other decision an adult makes about their bodies require much less investigation. Shouldn't people who do plastic surgery also go through a psychological investigation about their self-image, seen as this is a very existing problem in society? It needs to go in one or the other direction, make screenings of everyone looking for any changes to their bodies, or don't treat some different than others. Which way do you suggest?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Non-binary can rely on an underlying bias towards a certain sex, but it's not equally common they do transitions. The foundation for transitioning is still based on the same experience of either alignment or not.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
The investigation is both medical and psychological. Most children have some confusion about their gender, it's part of growing up. Investigation is about trying to differentiate if this is such common confusion or being a more fundamental case of transgenderism. I'm not sure what makes you think children are put into transitioning just haphazardly.
What criteria do you suggest we follow other than the most up to date research?
For example, let's stop the ongoing trend of nose jobs. The regret rate among patients is at an average 16.4%. Since this leads to mental health issues such as "Body Dysmorphic Disorder", depression, anxiety and "Post-Surgical Dissatisfaction" with many returning for correction that only deepens the problems, I suggest that we should ban nose jobs in society.
Why isn't this an equal issue in society seen as how many go through with it? Why aren't we looking into these mental health issues? Why is it that transgender people gets this much critique? Why is it that the dissatisfaction rate or regret gets unproportionally large empirical room compared to almost all other treatments? Why is the satisfaction rate and the mental health improvements among transgender children ignored or overlooked while the extremely low regret rate gets all the attention? The critical examination has only concluded the lack of extensive long term data. It's not at all enough for the kinds of conclusions you make. Especially seen as the data so far points in the other direction.
This specific sub-topic started with the fact of the general public's inability to make reasonable conclusions based on their lacking ability of statistical understanding. The interpretations of statistical data leads to the conclusions they want to make, primarily because it is focused in on specific numbers, not within context or with surrounding factors taken into consideration. In this case, the lack of long term data in research becomes empirical evidence for why children shouldn't get treatment. Even though we have observations of declining mental health among children who didn't get treatment. The regret rate among the group going through treatment is around 1%. A 0% rate is statistically impossible, but 1% is remarkably low in statistics. If you focus in on the 1% and get their regret voiced out, you can make a good case against treatment through emotionally loaded arguments, but it would be a skewed argument that do not portray the general reality of transgenders situation.
Now that is cruel. In the US you can get HRT after a 45 minute consultation (although it varies state by state). Making a suicidal population wait years to be "trans-vestigated" before given access to HRT is cruel.
Quoting Christoffer
Ok but non-binary people do transition and they have just the same right to as transwomen or transmen. They just want to feel more in accordance with their non-binary gender identity and I don't see the problem with that.
And virtually all of us have male characteristics and female characteristics.
Quoting Christoffer
Now that is surprising to me if true. I wonder whether this is true across time. I don't recall this being much of a thing decades ago. We've always had feminine boys and masculine girls.
Quoting Christoffer
You ever consider maybe there's no clear cut line between the two? I've seen experiments where children take a sleeve of oreos over $10,000. I simply don't trust their judgment especially when it comes to very major life issues like going through puberty and maintaining their fertility. A child simply can't look decades down the line like an adult can. A child can see the here and the now. They can regurgitate ideas that have been taught to them and appeal to them. They cannot understand themselves because the brain doesn't stop developing until the mid 20s and they are not fully formed.
EDIT: It is different if we are talking about a child of 16 or 17 rather than 6 or 7.
The foundation of my opinion is intuition, and I am unashamed to admit it.
I don't expect anyone to take it seriously, but alas here we are.
Intuitions lead to investigations, and, lowe and behold, investigations lead to indications that something is fishy.
Quoting Christoffer
Yea, why isn't it? I would say the normalization of cosmetic surgery is a serious issue, actually. I can't think of anything more damaging to say to a young person than "You are, indeed, not good enough and we should mutilate you to make you better".
Do note that I said nothing about bans, but I'm glad my argument sounds authoritative enough that it would merit a ban. Just something to think about...
Quoting Christoffer
I don't remember the last time "society" was being blamed for the high rates of suicide among recipients of cosmetic surgery.
That, and the fact that transgender viewpoints are finding their ways into children's classrooms which is obviously not where they belong.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/336888
FeelTheBern
https://theintercept.com/2024/11/12/trump-harris-democrats-working-class-voters/ :fire:
:up:
Its compelling. But who really knows? I dont. I feel like Bernie would have done better, but he would have had the entire Democrat establishment after him twice as much as that short window in early 2020 when he looked like he would win the nomination after Nevada, and there were 3 or 4 op-eds in the NY Times every day just trashing him, with idiots like Bret Stephens losing their shit about him being the nominee and vowing never to vote for him EVER, even voting for Trump if he were nominated.
Given that, who knows if he would have pushed through?
I spent some time wondering why the Democrats went with circus candidates instead of him, but then the obvious conclusion came: Bernie is just as big of a threat to the neocon establishment as Trump is.
e.g. 53% of White women again chose a "Your Body, My Choice" misogynist by playing the "White Power" (MAGA) race card.
addendum to:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/945715
@Amity @Mikie @Benkei @Maw @Wayfarer @Fooloso4 @Vera Mont @Baden
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/945323 [1]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy [2]
I'd support a USE.
It's cool, we're better than them. I'd suggest letting the Scandinavians take the lead, they seem to know what they're doing.
https://people.com/donald-trump-mentions-third-term-house-gop-meeting-8744857
Well, he certainly can't be elected again. That would require a constitutional amendment which ain't happening.
A grey area is if he is nominated as Speaker of the House (which doesn't require being a congressman), and then having the President and Vice President resign.
So don't worry, there might be a way to get Obama back.
Trump basically has dominance over most parts of the US government. So why won't that happen if people support him in it? It's not a natural physical law that it wouldn't happen and right now it seems he doesn't have much blocking him if he wanted to change it.
A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds of both houses and three quarters of the states.
What governs that ruling? I mean, what governs the form in which amendments are decided?
I'm just saying, what would stop someone if they would do anything to stay in power? What rules actually applies, especially having the supreme court in your pocket and hints at uprooting other fundamentals?
Well, if you're talking about practical enforcement then I suppose it's the armed forced which has the final say.
Basically, I'm wondering, how far can Trump stretch his power until the population and other government authorities had enough. Around 27 years ago, a blowjob was too much for the public and politics to handle, but now we have a president that seems to push things further and further. So when will people say enough is enough? What's the line? The actual line that is. At which crossing it would result in removal by force.
By that time it may be too late to remove him by force or any other means. He has made it clear that he will be firing military leaders who do no demonstrate sufficient "loyalty", that is, obedience to him. He will have eliminated government agencies, made the Department of Justice an instrument of his will, effectively curtailed the powers of Congress to act against him, and have a Supreme Court that promotes theocratic rule and an even larger majority if there is an opening.
So, where is the line being drawn? There are many instances in that description where I would think that people had enough and remove him by force.
Or are people that gullible, naive and blind that it would get so far before people act? Disregarding the status of Hitler within the context of history, if we look at his rise to power, it was a long line of exploiting democratic institutions in order to gain power legally. All while the opponents struggled within their own parties. The narrative of Trump's rise to power is similar to Germany in the 30s. Like then, the depression produced an extremely dissatisfied group of working class people, which is similar to the post 2008 financial crash. On top of that, the pandemic and economic turmoil at the moment, most people viewed Hitler as a savior.
The interesting thing is how no one opposed Hitler until it was too late. So when is too late? How far is a line drawn until people realize that things have gone too far?
Most of Trump's worst statements are dismissed as jokes. In the same way as Hitler's opposition dismissed him as a buffoon. So maybe Trump just is a buffoon and we just get 4 years of shenanigans that can be laughed at while his support sinks and we get another 2020 election with some half-assed democrat that the people don't really like or support.
Or, with the much greater grip on power this time around, he slowly installs ways to hold on to power and step by step dismantle the institutions that are there to block anyone from gaining authoritarian power.
People generally don't notice the small steps until its too late. But even if many notice it and talks about it, when is it enough to organize any kind of removal by force against him?
When is the line so crossed that a large portion of the population is organized and standing behind a coup removal of him because the normal process of removal has been dismantled?
The US seems to naively think that fascism and totalitarian power is a thing that simply "don't happen here". Something that happens elsewhere. But when taking into account how most aspects of Trumpism looks eerily similar to how other states went from free democracies to authoritarian, the pieces are on the board.
If that is just a coincident that this buffoon of a clown happens to have similar pieces on the board as authoritarian leaders who took power, remains to be seen.
But the question remains... where is the line drawn?
I don't think there is one. He was elected for a reason: because he represents what the majority of Americans want the USA to be. This isn't evil or unnatural. History repeats itself.
As I mentioned...
Quoting Christoffer
He could very well dismantle everything through legal means until it grants him the power to take the next steps. Seen as many Maga zealots would fight for him, he could install them as his own agency/force to do his biddings.
Him being elected were for reasons that, if we listen to the voters, are all fair game. I'm not talking about the election, there wasn't anything illegal or wrong with that. I'm talking about how he will wield his power over the next four years. Where is the line drawn if he goes too far? When would people, hypothetically, realize a line has been crossed and action needs to be taken so as to prevent things from escalating into a situation in which it's impossible to take action at all?
That's Project 2025, which is a plan for removing all opposition to Trump in the government. His VP endorsed it, but Trump hasn't. His VP embraces "dark Enlightenment" principles, which basically says the Enlightenment was bullshit and we need to go back to monarchy.
For some years now I've also believed the US has problems that would best be addressed by a dictator, such as changing social norms that result from neoliberalism. I'm starting to understand why Lenin was opposed to democracy. Lenin was a monster, btw, I'm just saying I'm seeing the dimensions of the challenges he faced.
For many voters the lines have already been crossed and Trump will get us back on the right side. For others Trump crosses the line. With Trump the line continues to move. The US survived Trump the first time around and so many think we can survive Trump 2.0. That there is no real danger. We can survive this or that, and one thing after another it is no longer clear where the lines are. This is authoritarian creep.
Quoting Christoffer
The majority of voters think things are bad and blame the government. They want change and destroying the government as it is will bring change. A demagogue steps in, with promises he won't keep, and scapegoats to be eliminated as the solution.
Because he's the president elect of the United States.
Partly why I'm not so worried about Trump, but more worried about what he's bringing with him. What he is legitimizing.
Quoting frank
I think such thoughts are young thoughts of rebellion. The allure of quick fixes in frustration of the status quo. In reality, people need to be careful constructing the new house, and see to it being properly built with the care of wise builders.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, and so far no lines are crossed. The potential scenario of Trump taking authoritarian power in a way that crosses the line of what the US generally stands for; pushing the boundary of what people generally deem normal for what the US is, might be pushed so far that people don't realize it's already over.
But for the ones who notice, when is the line crossed? Because there has to be line clearly drawn and people knowledgeable enough to know when its crossed.
I think it might be you who discounts the possibility of a US dictatorship, not Americans. A lot of Americans want it now.
Well, so far he is not the president. Although it is within the powers of the office, his choice of people like Gaetz, Kennedy, and Musk, and threats to remove military leaders who are not sufficiently "loyal" crosses a line. Replacing people who are competent and can serve as a check against his self-serving interests and destructive tendencies with people who are not but are willing to do whatever he wants is crossing a line.
:up:
Ahahaha, rule-based thinking has never stopped dictators. If he's so inclined he will look for other ways. I personally think he's in it for himself, vanity, greed, etc. and therefore don't think there's a particularly high chance but even so "culture eats rules for breakfast".
What I meant was that the idea of speed running society to preferable changes by overthrowing democracy is what childish minds think leads to a better world. I'm not saying that such childish minds exist all over society, but it says something about the knowledge and intelligence of the population if such ideas remain into adulthood.
Quoting Fooloso4
Exactly, the line seems to exist all over the place, pushed and pulled by the preferences of the one evaluating its placement. But the interesting thing is when a line gets crossed that fully rally the people against an authoritarian leader.
When I hear Trump "joke" about a third term, I'm thinking of the movie Civil War in which part of the reason why that fictional conflict started was both the president dismantling the FBI and going for a third term. It eerily echoes what Trump is talking about. As I said, he's most of the time just bullshitting for likes and attention, it's part of his shenanigans, but even so, if he were to act on his authoritarian fantasies, when would the people be like "that's too far" and arm up a coup?
The only thing that makes a civil war unlikely is if Trump is bullshitting. If he's not, all he says are grounds for how such a conflict would happen. I don't think that the population would just stay silent and take it if it were to happen that he acts in violence against the people. I don't think the military would follow orders of it either. But it is interesting to speculate at which point the people would collectively wake up into organized rebellious opposition against him.
Primarily since the people of a nation like the US are so far in thought from such actions. If something like this would have happened in France, a person like Trump wouldn't be able to sneeze in the wrong direction before the people storm against it.
Trans issues, the border, immigrants, Iran, Muslims, critical race theory, ESG, DEI, voter fraud, the national debt (only while Democrat in office), etc. All complete bullshit. Theyre masters of proposing solutions in search of problems. I remember how each one of these started, in the infancy of their propagandic journey its been enlightening watching the evolution.
Then its fun to watch the lemmings in the press, the Democratic Party, and all the way down to goofy internet posters on Reddit, Twitter, and even here, tacitly accept the framing and react accordingly all while the planet burns and wealth inequality gets wider.
I'm not sure why you think this. All ancient democracies ended in tyranny. What makes you think we would be different?
They would not be nearly so successful if not for Fox and more recently the proliferation of podcasts that cynically treat politics as a rule free, fact free competitive sport.
:up:
Very true although liberal leaning establishment media go right along with most of it too. The border crisis especially.
There is no border crisis, and there never was.
Not sure what you mean, I'm agreeing with you on the point of people craving for a form of tyranny. As long as that tyranny takes the shape of being on their side it is an alluring idea for the simple minded ones.
I would say though, that there is one form of tyranny that is required even though people have problems with handling the parameters of such ideas. And that's the tyranny against intolerance and anti-democracy. I think that there should be an absolute intolerance against even the slightest notion of change that does not aim to improve democracy and the quality of it. Any attempt by an individual or small group to increase their own power outside of democratic means should be a straight to jail situation. A rigid form of system that can only be changed by a large amount of all its citizens, say 90% of all people need to be behind it to make substantial changes. Because any change that is substantial cannot be by the tyranny of the minority.
In such a system, Trump would be removed long before he's even close to running for president, by the reason of how he talked about the US and its politics alone. If any politician even utters any form of anti-democratic idea to the public they should be disqualified and banned from halls of power.
I'm of the opinion that a government should be run by only the competent and one way to make sure of it is to ban anyone who can't form policy and politics that aren't for the benefit of the people and the nation. They need to show that they are stable individuals who work as actual representatives of their voters for the purpose of steering the ship with confidence and not malice. If people are angry about something, it does not help them whatsoever to align with someone who wants to basically take their voting power away from them. Sorry to say, but people are generally gullible and stupid and the only way to guarantee that they don't shoot themselves in the foot is to make sure that there's never ever any candidate who can take advantage of their gullible nature.
If people cannot imagine a society in which both freedom of speech, and an intolerance against the anti-democratic authoritarians can co-exist, then they're not really thinking beyond the shallow.
I'm also inclined to ban people born male from participating in female sports, as a general rule, because they had the benefit of testosterone after they reached puberty. I was curious about the testosterone of pre-pubescent boys and girls and was surprised to discover that girls have more testosterone than boys (see this).
It also leaves open the problem of intersex people like Caster Semenya - she was classified as female at birth, but has internal testes that produce testosterone. IMO, she should not be allowed to participate in female sports.
Flexible governments survive where rigid ones fail.
Quoting Christoffer
It's strikes me as very strange that you think you're a supporter of democracy when you think people are too gullible to make their own choices.
Quoting Christoffer
Maybe. Monarchy is a very robust form of government, even more so when linked to a state religion. We'll pretty much all go back to monarchies as climate change sets in. Democracy is just a tool. It's not a good in itself.
Quoting frank
e.g. Dune.
Yes, but I didn't say government, I said system, as in the system that protects the democratic process. Rigid enough so that no one could overthrow the system just by being elected.
Quoting frank
People are gullible to make choices if manipulated. Real choices are reliant on truth and honesty from the people giving out that choice. This gullible nature has been established by enough research into both psychology and social psychology. If we can agree on this being true about people, especially in social groups, then it should be obvious that for democracy to function as it is intended, there shouldn't be any possibilities of political actors to manipulate this gullible nature and instead force politicians to stand by truth and facts.
If all political agents do this, then we focus society to democratically function by the idea of Wisdom of Crowds. Rather than become a demagogy.
It is naive to not recognize the gullible nature of people while forming protections against those wanting to destroy democracy. Otherwise we risk being blind to those who use democracy to destroy democracy.
Quoting frank
Democracy is a form of power. The problem is that people can only think in binary or extreme forms. It's either authoritarian or it is democratic etc. We are either under full control of one or a few or we are absolutely under the tyranny of the gullible morons of the masses. But I don't think that is true at all, that kind of absolutist thinking is for the shallow simple minded people who think in polarized forms.
Democracy is far better than authoritarian systems as the authoritarian systems easily becomes corrupted or form abuse of power. But democracy needs to have a system that does not collapse onto itself. It needs to get rid of grifters and manipulators, get rid of psychopaths and power hungry career politicians. The only politicians who should be allowed in such halls of power should be those with absolute interest in caring for the people, humanity and society. Anyone of them who's just there to gain their own power should be defeated in a show of societal force that prevents people to even dare to try and seize power.
It should be dangerous as hell to try and seize power in such a system. To the point of absolute annihilation. If that is true for all in such a society, then no one can wield power for their own benefit against anyone, and society truly governs itself with representatives rather than individuals.
For Americans "government" does refer to the system. We use "administration" to refer to the people who occupy the executive branch at a certain time.
The whole population of the USA watched as Trump attempted to override an election, going so far as to contact the Pentagon for help. Those same Americans re-elected Trump. As the US heads further and further toward right-wing authoritarianism, it's not gullibility, it's not childishness, and it's most certainly not the work of one man. It's that the political pendulum is swinging toward something that's always been native to the US ever since Hamilton arranged for the president to have direct access to the Treasury. There's nothing that can stop Trump except maybe a bullet.
Quoting Christoffer
It usually takes a few generations for that to happen. New monarchies can be very beneficial to society as the new dictator seeks to establish legitimacy.
What are the forces behind the movement today? Dissatisfaction and the desire for change play a role, but is authoritarianism the only option? Of course one man's authoritarianism is another's New Deal. From that perspective some see MAGA is a correction.
Is the demagogue or a plutocracy or kleptocracy the natural consequence of democracy?
Or is our system robust enough to self-correct?
1. The moments just prior to the event.
2. The previous three decades.
3. The previous three generations.
4. The unfolding narrative of the culture spanning 1-2 millennia.
5. Human nature.
It's fun. Try it with the civil war.
I'm not mad at MAGAs, a majority of white women and "low information" citizens for again voting for The Clown. Instead, I'm pissed at the ten-plus million of Dems who didn't bother to vote for the second time in 8 years (2 out of the last 3 general elections) most likely because the Dem candidate for president was female.
Lesson: (If I'm not profoundly mistaken) many working class, non-college educated men & women would rather not vote than vote for an "Alpha Woman" to be POTUS.
So will the DNC learn this lesson? :mask:
I doubt it ... TBD.
What is the lesson? Not to nominate a woman?
Do you think a man would have won?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/946060
It is the assumption that I question. I think it has more to do with dissatisfaction with the economy, the way they believe the country is going, and a belief that Trump will fix it; or, that any change will be better than what we have now.
A pundit once said if Americans are faced with a choice of a Democrat who won't enforce borders and a fascist who will, they'll pick the fascist. I hope Democrats learn from this shellacking.
I've watched this from a distance, so I don't really know what happened. A lot of comment on this election result seems to focus on questions of perception. It's payback for the neoliberal elites, sneering at the uneducated in the fly over states; it's perceptions of the economy tanking when it is actually doing ok; it's moral panic - a nation at risk of transgender reassignment; It's a choice between more neoliberalism or embracing an exciting wrecking crew that will dismantle the entrenched old guard.
To what extent was this election driven by a declining faith in established systems and a demand for bold, culture-busting reforms symbolized by Trump? And, if this is the case, is this driven by intensifying polarization and a clash of worldviews?
Neither does anyone else.
Quoting Tom Storm
For many the economy is a matter of what they can and cannot afford. For some there is real hardship and financial insecurity. For others it is being able to afford a house or what their parents had. And for still others it is resentment that they can't afford a big house or fancy car or luxury vacation.
Unfortunately Trump will take credit for an improving economy, just as he did last time around.
I don't think payback for liberal elites, transgender issues, and "wokeness" are that important. It is more a matter of what people see and hear in the media than these things having a significant effect on their lives.
Quoting Tom Storm
Yeah, I agree. What they don't think about is what happens after the destruction. What replaces it.
Quoting Tom Storm
I think people are fickle. The Founders were well aware of this and tried to minimize it.
Quoting Tom Storm
It certainly seems as if this is the case, but I think the whole thing might be to a greater or lesser extent exaggerated. People are growing weary of it. The sport of "owning the libs" is getting old and tired. It takes time to adjust to change, and things continue in significant ways. Often acceptance comes with a new generation.
Or... maybe I'm full of shit and we are all fucked.
That gave me a good laugh. Thanks.
Case in point.
Quoting Fooloso4
Maybe. :smirk:
Trump painted her as a radial progressive. In response she attempted to appear as a moderate maintaining the status quo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_border_crisis#
Perhaps it was a little harder to pull off a steal this time.
I think, for worse or better, this is it. There's no inherent bigotry or biases to people involved. Its to types of information, and styles of presentation.
I don't know a single person who supports Trump who cares Kamala is a woman. They care she's a hypocrite, panders and has next to nothing to offer in the current climate (in their view).
The reason Dems didn't vote for Harris is simply: She did not inspire their vote. Adding in some form of bigotry is a fully-on cope.
I don't either. I guess we've moved on from sexism. That's cool.
:lol:
So much for a landslide and a mandate. But were witnessing the peak of Trumpism, regardless. And what amazing leadership picks so far Dr. Oz, a supplement-peddling charlatan; Matt Gaetz, a Dr. Seuss-looking teenage girl enthusiast; Linda McMahon, straight from the world of wrestling obvious pick for education; and of course several climate deniers to lead the EPA, Energy, and Interior. Perfection.
4 years of this clownshow and people will be begging for literally anything else. Which is good.
Problem with that is that then the Democrats won't make much effort to do anything and we will have four years after that both cleaning up after Trump and not doing politics that actually benefit the people.
Democrats need a strong counter to what Trump offers, not in "spirit", but in actual work. As mentioned earlier, Bernie had the support of the people, so that's a good hint at what type of Democrat the people actually want. They now have four years to find and build up a candidate that can inhabit his abilities and policies. Form a good marketing campaign for it and tour around listening to people who will get screwed by Trump politics.
:up:
Quoting Christoffer
:up:
We really don't know how many people would have voted for him. The label "socialist" still scares a lot of people. I do think, however, that targeting wealth disparity might be a winning message.
The map over donors from the public towards candidates is a pretty clear indicator of what the people want. What the Democratic party then does is just ignoring this and go for the elite at the top (those criticized for being out of touch with the people).
The fear mongering using "socialist" is just the right playing their cards. Sanders modell his politics after Scandinavia and people buying into the socialist fear mongering gets quite the cognitive dissonance when living conditions in Scandinavia are brought up to be among the world leading. But they're not socialist nations.
What Sanders is capable of doing is to sell in the politics and policies to the people with just basically asking them what they want and then telling them that's what these policies will do. "You can't take care of your sick relative and need to have three jobs to even support basic living conditions? Here's the welfare system to support it, free health care, sick leave, vacation weeks, constitutional workers rights etc."
He says things as they are and gives people what they ask for. The problem in the US is that Democrats are too afraid of losing voters on the right, who themselves want better living conditions and they do it by just catering in to the same lies and narratives of the right rather than go harder into left economics and give people what they want.
And we see more and more people just saying the same things that the Democrats have been following for years now: "do the same tactics as the right", "try to speak the Maga language" and more of such nonsense, pushing the party more and more to the right by the day.
Instead of just facing reality and distinguish themselves as a left leaning party. Here's the left economics focused on supporting the people.
The absolute hilarity of the right trying to cater to the working class while still increasing the people's living costs while funding the military to such an excess it nearly breaks the economy, much rather than taking a microscopic part out of that to fund a really functioning and good health care system, better education, support for the conditions of the working class etc.
...things that overall, over time, produces the foundation for future industry, entrepreneurs, engineers and workers who can build an improved future.
This short-term self-indulging elitist politics need to stop and it will stop when parties like the Democrats choose someone with a properly intelligent vision that the people can gather around. When are people going to realize that politicians go by their own interests, in the direction of money ans building their own wealth of power rather than caring anything for how to actually care for a nation and the world?
This is why I want to ban anyone from halls of power who's not a true representative of the people and who constantly lies. Statements in politics that aren't factual should lead to removal of their power. It would get rid of not just clowns like Trump, but all clowns on both sides.
Unless I am missing something, if donations are any measure then Harris would have won.
Quoting Christoffer
I am not sure that is entirely true. It may be that people do not understand Sander's proposals, but a proper understanding of a candidate's position has never been a requirement for voting.
Quoting Christoffer
So, you are not in favor of democracy.
How do you figure that? It's not about winning the election but who's the Democrat's candidate running for office. Without Sanders, she's third, and that's including all the public exposure she's got as a VP.
Quoting Fooloso4
He's being countered and bullied by both the Republicans AND the Democrats. He doesn't get as big of a stage and he's never been an elected candidate that gets all the attention to speak nationally. And it's not about understanding his position, it's about understanding his politics. The people actually understands him and likes his proposals because of it, every time he's spoken it's relatively crystal clear. Compare that to the non-vision gobbledygook that the other Democrats constantly spew out. And he has the ability to change his rhetoric depending on the crowd. When he speaks to working class voters he's doing the most basic 1 to 1 logic of policy to result based on their questions.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, I'm more in favor of democracy than most, that's why a representative democracy should actually work as one and have true representatives, not manipulators, liars and demagogues. To force the representatives to form policy out of facts, research and what the people ask for, pitting that against other politicians who have other conclusions about how to solve issues. What we see in politics, especially in the US today, is not actually democracy and everyone who thinks that, are fools.
Donors who gave to Bernie over other Democrats only shows that Democratic donors favored him, not that he had the support of the people.
Quoting Christoffer
But that is not what we have. The question is how to democratically make it a representative democracy? Banning people from the halls of power is anti-democratic.
The map shows people's donations. There's no candidate voting by the people, the people can only vote on what the Democratic party puts forward. If the people were to vote for a candidate, it would have been Sanders.
Quoting Fooloso4
Banning people who actively lie is a protection of the democracy. Banning people who try to manipulate and abuse their power is protecting democracy. If you tolerate the intolerable, it's going to erode everything and you lose democracy. You're not banning representation of the people, you're not banning based on political leaning or politics, you ban people who abuse their power and through that focus politics to function as representative of the people's vote.
Just reacting like that to the concept of "banning people" is like the freedom of speech ticks that people misuse as some kind of defense for whatever they like. You need to have context, otherwise it's like when someone is banned off this forum, people would complain that this is anti-democratic, disregarding that censorship has to do with state censorship, banning people off this forum is there to protect the standards of quality that this forum has. It's the same principle. Getting rid of the demagogues require getting rid of the people who act as demagogues. And that requires laws and regulations to do it in order to protect the quality of democracy that should be considered obvious. It's not rocket science.
You do not know that. The approval of Democratic donors is not the same as the approval of "the people".
Quoting Christoffer
Not unless it is done democratically. How would that work?
Quoting Christoffer
It is anti-democratic! I don't know what the forum would look like if it were democratic, but my guess is that I would prefer it the way it is.
Quoting Christoffer
I agree.
Quoting Christoffer
It is not the same principle. One is a government regime the other is a forum.
Quoting Christoffer
Right, it is not. Rocket science is much less complicated.
It's as much representative of the people as an election itself. You think they would donate to someone they wouldn't vote for? And on top of that, what other metric do you have to measure this?
Quoting Fooloso4
By checking against facts. For example, politicians inflate numbers all the time to make their statements sound better, only to retract when stakes are less high. By demanding facts to be represented correctly you can install a strike method to make sure continuously lying politicians stay to actual facts.
Demagogues can win democratically by just playing the part, scheme and hide problems. "Democratically" doesn't mean anything if there's no protection of truth surrounding it.
How would you make sure that anything "democratically" is handled with care to protect itself? Hitler got to his power "democratically".
Quoting Fooloso4
While there's no democratic election of the moderators, I would say that if some mod were to abuse his power and people rise up to that, the other mods would surely democratically decide to strip that mod of those powers. And for bannings, they're done together with a stated reason for it, and if that reason isn't according to the rules, then that too could be contested. So far the reason why things on this forum works is because to become a mod you need to show that you have the virtue of keeping the quality of this forum. And it works well.
But then, apply that to the scale of society, it's impossible to keep it from being infested by corruption and bad actors. Through democracy it works better to cycle leaders and make the people decide who they trust. But such trust can be manipulated.
So how do you get similar quality, but through a democratic system, without having the ability to safeguard against bad actors? Banning the ones who lie and scheme, taking down the leaders who try to manipulate the masses to hide the fact they're not on their side.
Quoting Fooloso4
You don't know what an analogy is? We are talking about different governing systems, on how to improve the quality of representative democracy. We ban people on the forum in order to not infest the place with low quality trash that's only there to feed the ego of the person behaving like that.
In the government, politicians should not be there to feed their ego, to work for themselves, they are there for the damn people, to represent the people who put them there. That's the whole point of democracy. And if politicians lie and cheat people to get votes, then it's not a democracy anymore, it's a demagogy.
To argue for better protection of the democratic system is to argue for a way to keep such manipulators and liars out of halls of power. To effectively ban them from being there. The people they were supposed to represent can choose another one who can behave according to the rules and regulations of such a protection system, just like we have rules on this forum. Banning such people do not remove the representative power of the people, it protects the whole system from abusers of power.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't think so, I think people are lost in definitions and ideologies. People seem unable to look at a system without wearing lenses of their personal value systems infecting how they read certain words.
Democracy is not a single thing that cannot be evolved. There's lots of room to improve a democratic system to rid itself of corruption, demagogues and improve the quality of its people-representative function as a governing power.
:fire: :death:
It's very telling of the entire republican party being so ignorant and bad at speaking out against these creeps and behaviors of Trump and his closest circle of people that the entire party is immoral.
How much proof is needed?
If you are a republican, are you supporting this or not? If not, then speak up, if so, then you're just as immoral as them. And if you're against it, but fear them, then bite the damn bullet and organize together into a new party. Take the loss if that leads to a loss in the next election through diluting the voters between the two factions. Eventually your moral faction of the republican party will gain in popularity and snuff out the immoral trash of the other. The Lincoln Project already tries this, support them, gain their strength instead.
Republicans turning a blind eye towards the immorality makes them complicit in the immorality. Either take a stand against it or embrace it, either way, the current state of republicans is that of immoral bad people. Doesn't matter where you stand politically, that conclusion is solid.
Yeah, theres really no parity. Both parties are bought by corporations and are comprised of wealthy people educated at Ivy Leagues, generally but anyone not locked in the go team red/blue tribalism can still see the differences. These nominees are beyond satire.
Its just that people have stopped caring. They dont trust anything, they dont know anything, and theyve now been influenced by something even worse than mainstream media social media influencers and memes. :vomit:
Theyre isolated on their information islands, transported there by big tech algorithms, addicted to their phones all for profit. Not a great situation. You see it in polls where its asked if the stock market is doing well and Republicans say its awful, when its at record highs. I assume the same can be done with Democrats.
Were no longer in the neoliberal era, its claimed. Well see. Biden was neoliberalism lite, Trump is just an idiot so anything is possible. But what eventually emerges will be interesting to see. And how it disseminates to the masses via this strange media landscape.
I agree with everything there. Trump and everything we see is the symptom of the modern condition.
Quoting Mikie
I think post-truth-ideals have taken over from neoliberalism. It's not a value system, but a sign of neoliberalism breaking down. The values of neoliberalism have programmed everyone to only be looking out for themselves; both as a sense of having a strong identity standing against the world, as well as stopping to care for anything. Everyone is in a bubble thinking they can exist without having to interact with anyone else but who they choose to. That they're not affected by climate change, economics, war and so on.
Communism was something that previously stood as a counter-weight to the neoliberal change. But since the fall of the Soviet union and placing communism's tyranny on full display as a failed system, it's more or less died out and neoliberalism could rage freely. We have the playbook for communism, we know how it played out, but we haven't truly for neoliberalism until now. We're starting to see the terrors of what it really did to our culture. And in the hindsight of the future I believe we will look back at the peak of neoliberalism just as we look back at the peak of failed communist empires obscuring the tyranny and terrors at its core. We will have an historical context showing identity enforcement and the tyranny of isolation that failed to organize people into movements for the betterment of humanity. Failing to organize the world into dealing with something like the climate change for instance.
Trump's authoritarianism is a clear sign that neoliberalism is ending. I'm only hoping it inspires a new world order to form around less authoritarian views as people get fed up with that form of fallout from the ending neoliberalism. And that the world finds a better equilibrium between the liberal values of freedom and the necessity of collaborative collective projects and systems that help people and improves life for all.
I don't think that's really a dream scenario, because I'm seeing how fed up people are with how things have been run over the past 50 years. No one wants a communist state, people don't want authoritarian leaders, they don't want a state boot, but they also don't want the soulless capitalist neoliberal machine just grinding them into mindless dust in which the existential dread of being reach a climax of absolute meaninglessness. People crave for a system that actually works, something well-planned and intelligent.
It might not look like it with all the trash and unintelligent brain rot that's going around, but you can see it in people's eyes... they're tired. They want meaning. Some go back to religion, only to find themselves in the same mess of incoherent ideas that it had. But some look for more collective coherence, something that connects people beyond the superficial realm of online trash that is algorithmically controlled social media.
People need big projects, big movements, stuff that connects and builds towards something profound or that gives a sense of it.
One example of how neoliberalism has reached its end and is about to fall is young people's interest in only short form TikTok-style media. The entertainment industry became democratized with the rise of YouTube and short form media to the point that it took the formula of commercials as the main media format. TikTok and Instagram reels functions like commercials, one after another of short form content. It flipped the idea of watching a show with commercial breaks into the commercial format being the main form of entertainment. But there's very little substance in this format, not because it's uncreative, but that it doesn't have the time to form deeper meaning. It's like looking for answers to existential questions in the commercial breaks on TV.
But young people have started to behave lost, finding themselves dissolution and without a sense of actual meaning. We're seeing a peak of this soulless consumption of the neoliberal market and that soullessness is beginning to become clear to everyone. There's a reason why we see trends like the vinyl records making a comeback. It's not because of some hipster-nostalgia, but for the purpose of slowing down and be more personal with things like listening to music. People are leaving social media or don't care for it as much anymore; they're mostly using it as a main form of communication with friends and family, but not as an identity sign post.
This form of anti-behavior against the plastic shallow nature of neoliberalism will build something new, it's a movement that is yet to have a specific form and core idea, it's a reaction that I think is the seed for what's to come after neoliberalism as a system of values truly crash down.
https://apple.news/AEToGjqpLR4aQxsRScVmgVA
Absolutely true. But theres still a majority in this country that isnt into Trump. They didnt turn out for Harris like they did for Biden, and theres good reasons for that too. Thats the other side of the coin.
:up:
Also, Fox and friends are entertaining, like The Jerry Springer Show. Has been referred to as entertainment, for that matter.[sup](thedispatch, logicallyfacts)[/sup] Compare to more sober, boring, ordinary news channels.
The source-memes and whatever it all is (plus the amount of that stuff around), begs the question of where they came from and who wrote them. Determining (and perhaps poking at) their murky origins might be worthwhile.
Tik Tok and all the rest something like 50% of users aged 18-29 use it to catch up on politics are much flashier than Frontline or 60 Minutes, let alone reading a paper. Thats just the way it is right now. Itll change, but whether for better or worse I have no idea.
An example of what mad dis/mal/misinformation/bullshit campaigning can look like:
Liz Churchill
[tweet]https://twitter.com/liz_churchill10[/tweet]
At a glance, it looks like noisy satire, except a couple of classes below The Onion.
I wouldn't want to impede their right to post nonsense, though some accountability would be great.
Does it work, are they making a difference?
[sup]2023Aug21 | 2023Oct20 | 2023Dec18 | vatniksoup | vaxopedia[/sup]
Becoming informed is not the same as taking the notices/stories seriously.
I'm guessing those propagandists/influencers are having an impact, but it's unclear how much.
Heed Bernie's warning
Exactly. The problem isn't one party or the other. The problem is both parties.
Abolish political parties. Abolish group-think and group-hate.
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
20January25 (am)
Again, less than a majority of "We the Sheeple" have ignorantly voted for the Felon-in Chief (FOTUS) "they deserve" shame! So now the hostile takeover of this moribund 'constitutional republic' (1787-2024) is on the verge of fully establishing an oligarchic kakistocracy (with "tech bro" stooge Vance-in-waiting with his finger on the "Twenty-fifth Amendment trigger). :mask:
Though a speculative singularitarian, IRL as a Black American activist I've never been tempted/persuaded by accelerationism (why?); but ...
[quote=nails in the republic's coffin] Carter-Mondale's Legacy
Reagan (& Bush), 1981-1993
Clinton-Gore's Legacy
"Dubya", 2001-2009
Obama-Biden's Legacy
Trump The Clown, 2017-2021
Biden-Harris' Legacy
[b]Trump The Convict[b], 2025-TBD[/quote]
Quoting George Washington's Farewell Address (1796)
If this does not describe the current political climate, I don't know what does.
20January2025 (pm)
:fire: :death:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/963735
Sieg Heil 2025!
Former illegal immigrant from White South Africa and so-to-be trillionaire welfare queen & wannabe Bond-villain Elon Musk bought the US Presidency and took a huge step closer to Making Apartheid Great Again. Will there be blood after all? TBD.
update:
Far-right wingnut (racist, nativist) groups in both North America and Europe praise Elon Musk's "salute" ...
https://apnews.com/article/musk-gesture-salute-antisemitism-0070dae53c7a73397b104ae645877535
I don't think that white supremacists liking his salute means he himself is a nazi. I just think he's stupid and don't know what he's doing. Paying people to paint him as a smart man, as a leader. He was just outed to have paid some other gamer to play a character in a game to a point of being the best game character in the world, then trying to act like he was responsible for it, which other experts of that game saw through.
He spends a lot of time on crafting an image of himself as this super smart individual who think above society, but he's an insecure incel-type who gets high on power. Here's what I wrote in the news thread about his salute:
Quoting Christoffer
Of course white supremacists will take advantage of this, but I don't think Musk is a nazi, I think he's just stupid and in over his head. He gets so high on the attention of the crowd that he doesn't know what he's doing.
Just look at his awkward dance; is that a man who is knowledgeable about, and controls his own body with enough self-knowledge to know what salute he's making?
I don't think he's a nazi either (btw, why does it matter?), just an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur.
Which is why I think it's important to know why he's an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur. We can't criticize and fight labels; they are incapable of being criticized as they describe themselves. A nazi is just as much of a label as a sociopath and über-rich. We cannot criticize a sociopath for being a sociopath, since it just underlines what is already known.
But we can criticize what's underneath. Why is he a sociopath? A racist? Über-rich? Doing so opens up to actual critique and means of fighting against these types.
One interesting reveal of this was that after years of trying to criticize Trump for being, what he's already being, nothing stuck. Except when people started calling him "weird". That somehow affected him more than anything else. Because it's not a label, it was calling out his behavior as being at odds with the norms.
That such a basic description of Trump rattled his emotions and senses more than calling him a racist underlines how labels are meaningless when dealing with these people.
Calling Musk "an insecure boy" I think carries more weight to him than calling him a sociopath. He made a twitter tantrum over the fact that gamers called him out as having faked his success in the video game. In a way much more childish than he usually does.
Because just calling these people labels ends when they deny it. Not because they're right, but because the discussion won't be able to move past such blunt denial.
But it absolutely matters if he is a nazi or not. If he is, then that's what's being fought against. If he's not, then trying to fight him as someone who does a nazi salute will just backfire as the reasons for it is something else than being a nazi.
https://youtu.be/NjWl_RNDMSA?si=DgDuAl14WOuubUhh
Was there anything in that interview that struck you as particularly nazi?
These guys are so open minded that they can be convinced of anything. Maybe the earth is flat? Who knows. Look at how Rogan has become a Trumper and climate denier. A real 180 in just a few years. A lot of it is audience capture and opportunism, but still anything is possible in social media land.
Crazy on the one hand, but cringe, embarrassing, and pathetic on the other.
Like what? Ive never been impressed by Elon. His engineers and developers are amazing people. The fact that he owns companies isnt impressive.
Bring a billionaire doesnt make you a genius.
25January25
:death: :fire:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/962520
31January25
Re: Dunning-Kruger populism ...
update:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/966525
In American life, a better life often involves compromise. Developing good skills in compromising will lead to a better life. Over three hundred million Americans used their lived experiences to decide our countrys political future. No matter what percentage of Americans actually voted, their families and friends make up 100% of America. I encourage us to respect ourselves.
Every two years we get to choose what kind of country we are.
Respect that.
Many countries do not get that chance.