2024 Presidential Election
This topic was continued by 2024 Presidential Election ~ 2.
TalkPro and Con
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1margd
The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln | 4:53 PM · Nov 19, 2020
“Call them whatever you like, but don’t call them leaders”
1:00 ( https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1329543428082954241 )
“Call them whatever you like, but don’t call them leaders”
1:00 ( https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1329543428082954241 )
2margd
And Rs say BIDEN is inarticulate!!
Trump: Energy is so expensive today. A gallon? You take a look at your, forget about it. The pump. You take a look at a barrel now. It will be two dollars. It could be, people are saying it’s going to go up to thre— Think of this, people are saying…
0:28 ( https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1507883623596265474 )
- Acyn @Acyn | 8:54 PM · Mar 26, 2022
Trump: Energy is so expensive today. A gallon? You take a look at your, forget about it. The pump. You take a look at a barrel now. It will be two dollars. It could be, people are saying it’s going to go up to thre— Think of this, people are saying…
0:28 ( https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1507883623596265474 )
- Acyn @Acyn | 8:54 PM · Mar 26, 2022
3Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/donald-trump/trump-teases-potential-2024-run-ran-twice-...
Trump Teases Potential 2024 Run: ‘Ran Twice’ and ‘Just May Have to Do It Again’
***
The life-long con man continues to play one of the most lucrative con games he has ever devised.
Trump Teases Potential 2024 Run: ‘Ran Twice’ and ‘Just May Have to Do It Again’
***
The life-long con man continues to play one of the most lucrative con games he has ever devised.
42wonderY
>3 Molly3028: But if he already won two elections… doesn’t that make him ineligible for a third go?
5aspirit
Trump 2024 signs are already up where I live. Many potential voters care more about that election than everything happening now.
Maybe that means Trumpsters will be too preoccupied to vote in this year's elections?
Maybe that means Trumpsters will be too preoccupied to vote in this year's elections?
6DugsBooks
>3 Molly3028: Exactly, he is continuing to use the political process as a cash cow propping up his properties in Florida. I find it hard to believe how many republicans are still kissing his bloated ass.
7margd
Russia Airs Its Ultimate ‘Revenge Plan’ for America
Julia Davis | Apr. 11, 2022
...Last week, American intelligence officials reportedly assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin may use the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine as a pretext to order a new campaign to interfere in U.S. elections. Though AP reported that “it is not yet clear which candidates Russia might try to promote or what methods it might use,” Russian state media seem to be in agreement that former U.S. President Donald Trump remains Moscow’s candidate of choice...
...If state television is any indication, the real agenda of the Kremlin’s operatives was never limited to boosting any particular candidates, but rather aimed to harm America as a whole. (Malek Dudakov, a political scientist specializing in the U.S.) stressed: “With Europe, economic wars should take priority. With America, we should be working to amplify the divisions and—in light of our limited abilities—to deepen the polarization of American society.”...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-state-media-airs-its-ultimate-revenge-plan...
Julia Davis | Apr. 11, 2022
...Last week, American intelligence officials reportedly assessed that Russian President Vladimir Putin may use the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine as a pretext to order a new campaign to interfere in U.S. elections. Though AP reported that “it is not yet clear which candidates Russia might try to promote or what methods it might use,” Russian state media seem to be in agreement that former U.S. President Donald Trump remains Moscow’s candidate of choice...
...If state television is any indication, the real agenda of the Kremlin’s operatives was never limited to boosting any particular candidates, but rather aimed to harm America as a whole. (Malek Dudakov, a political scientist specializing in the U.S.) stressed: “With Europe, economic wars should take priority. With America, we should be working to amplify the divisions and—in light of our limited abilities—to deepen the polarization of American society.”...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-state-media-airs-its-ultimate-revenge-plan...
8margd
Opinion: The Republican blueprint to steal the 2024 election
J. Michael Luttig* | April 27, 2022
...The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.
From long before Election Day 2020, Trump and Republicans planned to overturn the presidential election by exploiting the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Constitution, the Electoral College, the Electoral Count Act of 1877, and the 12th Amendment, if Trump lost the popular and Electoral College vote.
The cornerstone of the plan was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little known "independent state legislature" doctrine, which, in turn, would pave the way for exploitation of the Electoral College process and the Electoral Count Act, and finally for Vice President Mike Pence to reject enough swing state electoral votes to overturn the election using Pence's ceremonial power under the 12th Amendment and award the presidency to Donald Trump.
The independent state legislature doctrine says that, under the Elections and the Electors Clauses of the Constitution, state legislatures possess plenary and exclusive power over the conduct of federal presidential elections and the selection of state presidential electors. Not even a state supreme court, let alone other state elections officials, can alter the legislatively written election rules or interfere with the appointment of state electors by the legislatures, under this theory.
The Supreme Court has never decided whether to embrace the independent state legislature doctrine. But then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in separate concurring opinions said they would embrace that doctrine in Bush v. Gore, 20 years earlier, and Republicans had every reason to believe there were at least five votes on the Supreme Court for the doctrine in November 2020, with Amy Coney Barrett having just been confirmed in the eleventh hour before the election.
Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.
These cases eventually wound their way to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2020, and by December, the Supreme Court had decided all of these cases, but only by orders, either disallowing federal court intervention to change an election rule that had been promulgated by a state legislature, allowing legislatively promulgated rules to be changed by state officials and state courts, or deadlocking 4-4, because Justice Barrett was not sworn in until after those cases were briefed and ready for decision by the Court. In none of these cases did the Supreme Court decide the all-important independent state legislature doctrine.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court's indecision on that doctrine, Trump and the Republicans turned their efforts to the second stage of their plan, exploitation of the Electoral College and the Electoral Count Act.
The Electoral College is the process by which Americans choose their presidents, a process that can lead to the election as president of a candidate who does not receive a majority of votes cast by the American voters. Republicans have grown increasingly wary of the Electoral College with the new census and political demographics of the nation's shifting population.
The Electoral Count Act empowers Congress to decide the presidency in a host of circumstances where Congress determines that state electoral votes were not "regularly given" by electors who were "lawfully certified," terms that are undefined and ambiguous. In this second stage of the plan, the Republicans needed to generate state-certified alternative slates of electors from swing states where Biden won the popular vote who would cast their electoral votes for Trump instead. Congress would then count the votes of these alternative electoral slates on January 6, rather than the votes of the certified electoral slates for Biden, and Trump would be declared the reelected president.
The Republicans' plan failed at this stage when they were unable to secure a single legitimate, alternative slate of electors from any state because the various state officials refused to officially certify these Trump-urged slates.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court in the first stage, foiled by their inability to come up with alternative state electoral slates in the second stage, and with time running out, Trump and the Republicans began executing the final option in their plan, which was to scare up illegitimate alternative electoral slates in various swing states to be transmitted to Congress. Whereupon, on January 6, Vice President Pence would count only the votes of the illegitimate electors from the swing states, and not the votes of the legitimate, certified electors that were cast for Biden, and declare Donald Trump's reelection as President of the United States.
The entire house of cards collapsed at noon on January 6, when Pence refused to go along with the ill-conceived plan, correctly concluding that under the 12th Amendment he had no power to reject the votes that had been cast by the duly certified electors or to delay the count to give Republicans even more time to whip up alternative electoral slates.
Pence declared Joe Biden the 46th President of the United States at 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, January 7, roughly 14 hours after rioters stormed the US Capitol, disrupting the Joint Session and preventing Congress from counting the Electoral College votes for president until late that night and into the following day, after the statutorily designated day for counting those votes.
Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states began readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that very same day and they have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Today, they are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.
Trump and Republicans are preparing to return to the Supreme Court, where this time they will likely win the independent state legislature doctrine, now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the Court and ready to vote. Barrett has not addressed the issue, but this turns on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and Barrett is firmly aligned on that method of constitutional interpretation with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, all three of whom have written that they believe the doctrine is correct.
Only last month, in a case from North Carolina the Court declined to hear, Moore v. Harper, four Justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) said that the independent state legislature question is of exceptional importance to our national elections, the issue will continue to recur and the Court should decide the issue sooner rather than later before the next presidential election. This case involved congressional redistricting, but the independent state legislature doctrine is as applicable to redistricting as it is to presidential elections.
The Republicans are also in the throes of electing Trump-endorsed candidates to state legislative offices in key swing states,** installing into office their favored state election officials who deny that Biden won the 2020 election, such as secretaries of state, electing sympathetic state court judges onto the state benches and grooming their preferred potential electors for ultimate selection by the party, all so they will be positioned to generate and transmit alternative electoral slates to Congress, if need be.
Finally, they are furiously politicking to elect Trump supporters to the Senate and House, so they can overturn the election in Congress, as a last resort.
Forewarned is to be forearmed.
Trump and the Republicans can only be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this point if the Supreme Court rejects the independent state legislature doctrine (thus allowing state court enforcement of state constitutional limitations on legislatively enacted election rules and elector appointments) and Congress amends the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress' own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency.
Although the Vice President will be a Democrat in 2024, both parties also need to enact federal legislation that expressly limits the vice president's power to be coextensive with the power accorded the vice president in the 12th Amendment and confirm that it is largely ceremonial, as Pence construed it to be on January 6.
Vice President Kamala Harris would preside over the Joint Session in 2024. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have any idea who will be presiding after that, however. Thus, both parties have the incentive to clarify the vice president's ceremonial role now.
As it stands today, Trump, or his anointed successor, and the Republicans are poised, in their word, to "steal" from Democrats the presidential election in 2024 that they falsely claim the Democrats stole from them in 2020. But there is a difference between the falsely claimed "stolen" election of 2020 and what would be the stolen election of 2024. Unlike the Democrats' theft claimed by Republicans, the Republicans' theft would be in open defiance of the popular vote and thus the will of the American people: poetic, though tragic, irony for America's democracy...
* Michael Luttig, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, formerly served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years. He advised Vice President Mike Pence on January 6.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/opinions/gop-blueprint-to-steal-the-2024-election...
** Michigan: Republicans just chose Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo as nominees for attorney general and secretary of state. Both are vigorous election deniers, and Karamo has identified Beyoncé́, Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, and the practice of yoga as tools of satanic influence in America today. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/27/republican-primaries-off-the-...
J. Michael Luttig* | April 27, 2022
...The last presidential election was a dry run for the next.
From long before Election Day 2020, Trump and Republicans planned to overturn the presidential election by exploiting the Electors and Elections Clauses of the Constitution, the Electoral College, the Electoral Count Act of 1877, and the 12th Amendment, if Trump lost the popular and Electoral College vote.
The cornerstone of the plan was to have the Supreme Court embrace the little known "independent state legislature" doctrine, which, in turn, would pave the way for exploitation of the Electoral College process and the Electoral Count Act, and finally for Vice President Mike Pence to reject enough swing state electoral votes to overturn the election using Pence's ceremonial power under the 12th Amendment and award the presidency to Donald Trump.
The independent state legislature doctrine says that, under the Elections and the Electors Clauses of the Constitution, state legislatures possess plenary and exclusive power over the conduct of federal presidential elections and the selection of state presidential electors. Not even a state supreme court, let alone other state elections officials, can alter the legislatively written election rules or interfere with the appointment of state electors by the legislatures, under this theory.
The Supreme Court has never decided whether to embrace the independent state legislature doctrine. But then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in separate concurring opinions said they would embrace that doctrine in Bush v. Gore, 20 years earlier, and Republicans had every reason to believe there were at least five votes on the Supreme Court for the doctrine in November 2020, with Amy Coney Barrett having just been confirmed in the eleventh hour before the election.
Trump and the Republicans began executing this first stage of their plan months before November 3, by challenging as violative of the independent state legislature doctrine election rules relating to early- and late-voting, extensions of voting days and times, mail-in ballots, and other election law changes that Republicans contended had been unlawfully altered by state officials and state courts in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Michigan.
These cases eventually wound their way to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2020, and by December, the Supreme Court had decided all of these cases, but only by orders, either disallowing federal court intervention to change an election rule that had been promulgated by a state legislature, allowing legislatively promulgated rules to be changed by state officials and state courts, or deadlocking 4-4, because Justice Barrett was not sworn in until after those cases were briefed and ready for decision by the Court. In none of these cases did the Supreme Court decide the all-important independent state legislature doctrine.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court's indecision on that doctrine, Trump and the Republicans turned their efforts to the second stage of their plan, exploitation of the Electoral College and the Electoral Count Act.
The Electoral College is the process by which Americans choose their presidents, a process that can lead to the election as president of a candidate who does not receive a majority of votes cast by the American voters. Republicans have grown increasingly wary of the Electoral College with the new census and political demographics of the nation's shifting population.
The Electoral Count Act empowers Congress to decide the presidency in a host of circumstances where Congress determines that state electoral votes were not "regularly given" by electors who were "lawfully certified," terms that are undefined and ambiguous. In this second stage of the plan, the Republicans needed to generate state-certified alternative slates of electors from swing states where Biden won the popular vote who would cast their electoral votes for Trump instead. Congress would then count the votes of these alternative electoral slates on January 6, rather than the votes of the certified electoral slates for Biden, and Trump would be declared the reelected president.
The Republicans' plan failed at this stage when they were unable to secure a single legitimate, alternative slate of electors from any state because the various state officials refused to officially certify these Trump-urged slates.
Thwarted by the Supreme Court in the first stage, foiled by their inability to come up with alternative state electoral slates in the second stage, and with time running out, Trump and the Republicans began executing the final option in their plan, which was to scare up illegitimate alternative electoral slates in various swing states to be transmitted to Congress. Whereupon, on January 6, Vice President Pence would count only the votes of the illegitimate electors from the swing states, and not the votes of the legitimate, certified electors that were cast for Biden, and declare Donald Trump's reelection as President of the United States.
The entire house of cards collapsed at noon on January 6, when Pence refused to go along with the ill-conceived plan, correctly concluding that under the 12th Amendment he had no power to reject the votes that had been cast by the duly certified electors or to delay the count to give Republicans even more time to whip up alternative electoral slates.
Pence declared Joe Biden the 46th President of the United States at 3:40 a.m. on Thursday, January 7, roughly 14 hours after rioters stormed the US Capitol, disrupting the Joint Session and preventing Congress from counting the Electoral College votes for president until late that night and into the following day, after the statutorily designated day for counting those votes.
Trump and his allies and supporters in Congress and the states began readying their failed 2020 plan to overturn the 2024 presidential election later that very same day and they have been unabashedly readying that plan ever since, in plain view to the American public. Today, they are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024, whether Trump or another Republican candidate wins the election or not.
Trump and Republicans are preparing to return to the Supreme Court, where this time they will likely win the independent state legislature doctrine, now that Amy Coney Barrett is on the Court and ready to vote. Barrett has not addressed the issue, but this turns on an originalist interpretation of the Constitution, and Barrett is firmly aligned on that method of constitutional interpretation with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, all three of whom have written that they believe the doctrine is correct.
Only last month, in a case from North Carolina the Court declined to hear, Moore v. Harper, four Justices (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) said that the independent state legislature question is of exceptional importance to our national elections, the issue will continue to recur and the Court should decide the issue sooner rather than later before the next presidential election. This case involved congressional redistricting, but the independent state legislature doctrine is as applicable to redistricting as it is to presidential elections.
The Republicans are also in the throes of electing Trump-endorsed candidates to state legislative offices in key swing states,** installing into office their favored state election officials who deny that Biden won the 2020 election, such as secretaries of state, electing sympathetic state court judges onto the state benches and grooming their preferred potential electors for ultimate selection by the party, all so they will be positioned to generate and transmit alternative electoral slates to Congress, if need be.
Finally, they are furiously politicking to elect Trump supporters to the Senate and House, so they can overturn the election in Congress, as a last resort.
Forewarned is to be forearmed.
Trump and the Republicans can only be stopped from stealing the 2024 election at this point if the Supreme Court rejects the independent state legislature doctrine (thus allowing state court enforcement of state constitutional limitations on legislatively enacted election rules and elector appointments) and Congress amends the Electoral Count Act to constrain Congress' own power to reject state electoral votes and decide the presidency.
Although the Vice President will be a Democrat in 2024, both parties also need to enact federal legislation that expressly limits the vice president's power to be coextensive with the power accorded the vice president in the 12th Amendment and confirm that it is largely ceremonial, as Pence construed it to be on January 6.
Vice President Kamala Harris would preside over the Joint Session in 2024. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have any idea who will be presiding after that, however. Thus, both parties have the incentive to clarify the vice president's ceremonial role now.
As it stands today, Trump, or his anointed successor, and the Republicans are poised, in their word, to "steal" from Democrats the presidential election in 2024 that they falsely claim the Democrats stole from them in 2020. But there is a difference between the falsely claimed "stolen" election of 2020 and what would be the stolen election of 2024. Unlike the Democrats' theft claimed by Republicans, the Republicans' theft would be in open defiance of the popular vote and thus the will of the American people: poetic, though tragic, irony for America's democracy...
* Michael Luttig, appointed by President George H. W. Bush, formerly served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for 15 years. He advised Vice President Mike Pence on January 6.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/opinions/gop-blueprint-to-steal-the-2024-election...
** Michigan: Republicans just chose Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo as nominees for attorney general and secretary of state. Both are vigorous election deniers, and Karamo has identified Beyoncé́, Cardi B, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, and the practice of yoga as tools of satanic influence in America today. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/27/republican-primaries-off-the-...
9margd
>8 margd: contd... The American SOS (Secretary of State) Project
Amy McGrath launches new effort to fight election lies (10:09)
MSNBC | April 28, 2022
Former Kentucky Senate candidate and retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Amy McGrath and former Time Magazine managing editor Rick Stengel discuss with Nicolle Wallace the former Senate candidate's new effort (The American SOS Project) against the disgraced ex-president’s attempts to hand pick election deniers for secretaries of state.
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/amy-mcgrath-launches-new-effort...
Amy McGrath launches new effort to fight election lies (10:09)
MSNBC | April 28, 2022
Former Kentucky Senate candidate and retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Amy McGrath and former Time Magazine managing editor Rick Stengel discuss with Nicolle Wallace the former Senate candidate's new effort (The American SOS Project) against the disgraced ex-president’s attempts to hand pick election deniers for secretaries of state.
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/amy-mcgrath-launches-new-effort...
10Molly3028
https://dnyuz.com/2022/04/30/what-to-know-about-tucker-carlsons-rise/
What to Know About Tucker Carlson’s Rise
As Tucker goes, so goes Fox (a segment of the long report)
Mr. Carlson forged a relationship with Lachlan Murdoch, heir apparent of the Fox empire, and cultivated a perception within the network that the two men were close. As his show became the highest-rated cable news program in prime time, Fox looked to its success as a model for a broader transformation.
Inside the network, journalists and commentators clashed over what many saw as a creeping invasion of the news division by allies of the higher-rated, pro-Trump prime-time hosts.
While Mr. Murdoch and Fox executives have often couched their defense of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” as a protection of free inquiry and controversial opinions, Mr. Carlson’s on-air provocations have long been something else: part of a painstaking, data-driven experiment that has succeeded wildly in bolstering Fox’s profit machine against the long-term decline in cable news subscriptions.
According to three former Fox employees, Mr. Carlson was among the network’s most avid consumers of what are known as minute-by-minutes — ratings data on an audience’s real-time ebb and flow. “He is going to double down on the white nationalism because the minute-by-minutes show that the audience eats it up,” said a former employee who worked frequently with Mr. Carlson.
Network executives soon began applying the approach to the daytime news shows. They pitched it as “Moneyball” for television: an audience-first approach to deciding what to cover and how to cover it.
Journalists on Fox’s daytime shows discerned a pattern to what the audience didn’t like: segments featuring Fox’s own reporters, stories deemed unfavorable to Mr. Trump, left-leaning or independent guests. Immigration, on the other hand, was a hit.
Network executives ordered up so much coverage of illegal immigrants or nonwhite Americans caught in acts of crime or violence that some employees referred to it by a grim nickname: “brown menace.”
***
2022/2024 ~ FOX News viewers are being used as lab rats in Murdoch's mission to improve the networks' profit-making machine. Boosting the spread of white nationalism in America appears to be another goal of both Lachlan Murdoch and Tucker. Sadly, the despicable LM will be taking over the running of the network when his father passes on.
What to Know About Tucker Carlson’s Rise
As Tucker goes, so goes Fox (a segment of the long report)
Mr. Carlson forged a relationship with Lachlan Murdoch, heir apparent of the Fox empire, and cultivated a perception within the network that the two men were close. As his show became the highest-rated cable news program in prime time, Fox looked to its success as a model for a broader transformation.
Inside the network, journalists and commentators clashed over what many saw as a creeping invasion of the news division by allies of the higher-rated, pro-Trump prime-time hosts.
While Mr. Murdoch and Fox executives have often couched their defense of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” as a protection of free inquiry and controversial opinions, Mr. Carlson’s on-air provocations have long been something else: part of a painstaking, data-driven experiment that has succeeded wildly in bolstering Fox’s profit machine against the long-term decline in cable news subscriptions.
According to three former Fox employees, Mr. Carlson was among the network’s most avid consumers of what are known as minute-by-minutes — ratings data on an audience’s real-time ebb and flow. “He is going to double down on the white nationalism because the minute-by-minutes show that the audience eats it up,” said a former employee who worked frequently with Mr. Carlson.
Network executives soon began applying the approach to the daytime news shows. They pitched it as “Moneyball” for television: an audience-first approach to deciding what to cover and how to cover it.
Journalists on Fox’s daytime shows discerned a pattern to what the audience didn’t like: segments featuring Fox’s own reporters, stories deemed unfavorable to Mr. Trump, left-leaning or independent guests. Immigration, on the other hand, was a hit.
Network executives ordered up so much coverage of illegal immigrants or nonwhite Americans caught in acts of crime or violence that some employees referred to it by a grim nickname: “brown menace.”
***
2022/2024 ~ FOX News viewers are being used as lab rats in Murdoch's mission to improve the networks' profit-making machine. Boosting the spread of white nationalism in America appears to be another goal of both Lachlan Murdoch and Tucker. Sadly, the despicable LM will be taking over the running of the network when his father passes on.
11Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/confidence-in-supreme-court-swings-whopping-40...
Confidence in Supreme Court Swings Whopping 40 Points Since Amy Coney Barrett Joined: New Poll Finds
***
If another Electoral College hands a GOPer the keys to the White House, we could eventually see a 7-2, and maybe, an 8-1 court. A lot of American's rights will most likely be nuked by this 1700's-type court.
Confidence in Supreme Court Swings Whopping 40 Points Since Amy Coney Barrett Joined: New Poll Finds
***
If another Electoral College hands a GOPer the keys to the White House, we could eventually see a 7-2, and maybe, an 8-1 court. A lot of American's rights will most likely be nuked by this 1700's-type court.
12lriley
Amy McGrath was the democratic challenger to McConnell in 2020 who told Kentuckians that she could do more for them to get Trump’s agenda passed in the Senate than Mitch could. She raised a lot of money from McConnell haters all over the country but Mitch easily beat her. She was a bad and a wrong candidate that much of the Democratic Party fawned over.
13Molly3028
>12 lriley:
A majority of people in Kentucky have a 1950s mindset. That is not going to change for many decades. People in that state and others in flyover country were brainwashed by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk for 10, 20 and 30+ years.
A majority of people in Kentucky have a 1950s mindset. That is not going to change for many decades. People in that state and others in flyover country were brainwashed by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk for 10, 20 and 30+ years.
14Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/esper-defends-himself-on-fox-news-as-reagan-republic...
Esper Defends Himself on Fox & Friends as 'Reagan Republican' Who Opposed Trump's 'Offensive' Style and Failed Elections
***
Trump wanted to do things which were not presidential, but which would solidify his power over clueless Hooterville-type voters around the country.
Esper Defends Himself on Fox & Friends as 'Reagan Republican' Who Opposed Trump's 'Offensive' Style and Failed Elections
***
Trump wanted to do things which were not presidential, but which would solidify his power over clueless Hooterville-type voters around the country.
15margd
DeSantis spokeswoman belatedly registers as agent of foreign politician
Isaac Stanley-Becker | June 8, 2022
A spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) this week registered as a foreign agent of a former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, belatedly detailing work she performed for the politician between 2018 and 2020.
The spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, made the disclosure following contact from the Justice Department, according to her attorney, Michael Sherwin. She began her work in 2018 as a volunteer in the post-Soviet country, Sherwin said, and was ultimately paid $25,000 over the course of two years. She received her first payment, of $10,000 in October 2018, in cash, according to her filing. She stayed for free for six weeks in an apartment owned by a Saakashvili associate.
“Her efforts included writing op-eds, reaching out to supporters and officials, and advocating on his behalf in Georgia and in the United States,” Sherwin said. “The work ended in 2020. Ms. Pushaw was notified recently by the DOJ that her work on behalf of Mr. Saakashvilli likely required FARA registration...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/08/christina-pushaw-desantis-for...
Isaac Stanley-Becker | June 8, 2022
A spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) this week registered as a foreign agent of a former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, belatedly detailing work she performed for the politician between 2018 and 2020.
The spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, made the disclosure following contact from the Justice Department, according to her attorney, Michael Sherwin. She began her work in 2018 as a volunteer in the post-Soviet country, Sherwin said, and was ultimately paid $25,000 over the course of two years. She received her first payment, of $10,000 in October 2018, in cash, according to her filing. She stayed for free for six weeks in an apartment owned by a Saakashvili associate.
“Her efforts included writing op-eds, reaching out to supporters and officials, and advocating on his behalf in Georgia and in the United States,” Sherwin said. “The work ended in 2020. Ms. Pushaw was notified recently by the DOJ that her work on behalf of Mr. Saakashvilli likely required FARA registration...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/08/christina-pushaw-desantis-for...
16Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/news/nbc-reports-belief-trump-could-be-indicted-over-ja...
NBC Reports ‘Belief’ Trump ‘Could Be Indicted’ Over Jan. 6 Fuels 2024 Republican Insiders: ‘The Fear Factor is Gone’
***
The money guys are going to start steering the GOP in the direction its lunatic members have not had the guts to take. Thanks to Cassidy, the snowball is gaining speed and size as it heads down the mountain.
NBC Reports ‘Belief’ Trump ‘Could Be Indicted’ Over Jan. 6 Fuels 2024 Republican Insiders: ‘The Fear Factor is Gone’
***
The money guys are going to start steering the GOP in the direction its lunatic members have not had the guts to take. Thanks to Cassidy, the snowball is gaining speed and size as it heads down the mountain.
17Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/jonathan-swan-trump-already-preparing-to-purge...
Jonathan Swan: Trump Already Preparing to Purge DOJ, FBI, and Pentagon to Install Loyalists in 2025
The plan, based on a controversial last-minute executive order from Trump in 2020 known as “Schedule F,” would aim to purge from the government what Trump has deemed the “deep state.”
“Trump signed an executive order, ‘Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,’ in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees,” writes Swan.
“Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as ‘Schedule F’ employees. Upon reassignment, they would lose their employment protections,” Swan notes.
Jonathan Swan: Trump Already Preparing to Purge DOJ, FBI, and Pentagon to Install Loyalists in 2025
The plan, based on a controversial last-minute executive order from Trump in 2020 known as “Schedule F,” would aim to purge from the government what Trump has deemed the “deep state.”
“Trump signed an executive order, ‘Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,’ in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees,” writes Swan.
“Tens of thousands of civil servants who serve in roles deemed to have some influence over policy would be reassigned as ‘Schedule F’ employees. Upon reassignment, they would lose their employment protections,” Swan notes.
18Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/utterly-failed-and-unworthy-for-office-both-murdo...
‘Utterly Failed’ and ‘Unworthy’ for Office: Both Murdoch-Owned Newspapers Turn on Trump
WSJ
The WSJ Editorial board published a piece titled “The President Who Stood Still on Jan. 6,” the lede of which read, “No matter your views of the Jan. 6 special committee, the facts it is laying out in hearings are sobering. The most horrifying to date came Thursday in a hearing on President Trump’s conduct as the riot raged and he sat watching TV, posting inflammatory tweets and refusing to send help.”
More damning to Trump was its conclusion: “Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”
NEW YORK POST
The more populist New York Post also hit out at Trump on Friday in a similar jeremiad that concluded with, “It’s up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.”
***
In life, timing is everything ~ history is going to extol Pence for stepping up on the day our democracy's existence was in grave danger.
‘Utterly Failed’ and ‘Unworthy’ for Office: Both Murdoch-Owned Newspapers Turn on Trump
WSJ
The WSJ Editorial board published a piece titled “The President Who Stood Still on Jan. 6,” the lede of which read, “No matter your views of the Jan. 6 special committee, the facts it is laying out in hearings are sobering. The most horrifying to date came Thursday in a hearing on President Trump’s conduct as the riot raged and he sat watching TV, posting inflammatory tweets and refusing to send help.”
More damning to Trump was its conclusion: “Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”
NEW YORK POST
The more populist New York Post also hit out at Trump on Friday in a similar jeremiad that concluded with, “It’s up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.”
***
In life, timing is everything ~ history is going to extol Pence for stepping up on the day our democracy's existence was in grave danger.
19Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/news/obama-and-bush-were-looped-in-on-zawahiri-strike-b...
Obama and Bush Were Looped in on Zawahiri Strike By Biden Administration – But Was Trump?
***
Either Trump was not on Biden's speed dial, or Trump was too busy picking the pockets of his clueless 2024 cult followers to answer the call.
Obama and Bush Were Looped in on Zawahiri Strike By Biden Administration – But Was Trump?
***
Either Trump was not on Biden's speed dial, or Trump was too busy picking the pockets of his clueless 2024 cult followers to answer the call.
20margd
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Trump is now under investigation for tax fraud, election fraud, insurrection and violating the Espionage Act. And he's the Republican frontrunner for 2024
...And rape.
- David Lazarus @Davidlaz | 7:43 PM · Aug 27, 2022
Emmy-winning money guy for KTLA Channel 5. Former LA Times.
ETA:
George Conway🌻 @gtconway3d | 1:04 PM · Aug 28, 2022:
Also bank fraud, insurance fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of official proceedings, obstruction of justice, theft of official documents, and racketeering.
...And rape.
- David Lazarus @Davidlaz | 7:43 PM · Aug 27, 2022
Emmy-winning money guy for KTLA Channel 5. Former LA Times.
ETA:
George Conway🌻 @gtconway3d | 1:04 PM · Aug 28, 2022:
Also bank fraud, insurance fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of official proceedings, obstruction of justice, theft of official documents, and racketeering.
21lriley
>20 margd: he’s had a charmed life. He’s never had to pay for anything. Until they haul his ass away with handcuffs on I’m still skeptical even with this slam dunk investigation that he’ll be charged with anything. You would think though that at this point they cannot do nothing. Even so………our justice system sucks and rich, famous, white, privileged and former POTUS with millions of rabid followers some of who will resort to violence against perceived targets and enemies is a step that prosecutors are hesitant to take.
22margd
Document reveals identity of donors who secretly funded Nikki Haley’s political nonprofit
Alex Isenstadt | 08/26/2022
An unredacted tax return filed by Nikki Haley’s nonprofit shows that the group’s funders include a wealthy New Jersey family and some of the GOP’s biggest donors.
...The disclosures provide the clearest picture yet of how a prospective 2024 presidential candidate is cultivating a secret network of high-dollar contributors as she builds a political apparatus. And the names of her donors demonstrate the deep connections Haley has formed at the top levels of the Republican Party, with some of the GOP’s biggest super PAC donors among those who gave money to fund the launch of her organization after she left the Trump administration.
Haley is among at least a dozen other would-be White House hopefuls— including former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence — who also have allied nonprofits bankrolled by donors whose identities have remained under wraps.
“It’s very rare that the public has the opportunity to see the identities of the donors who are providing five- or even six-figure contributions to a dark money group. It’s called dark money for a reason. Typically, the public does not know who is financing these groups, and this is a rare exception,” said Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of Documented...
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/donors-secretly-funded-nikki-haleys-non...
Alex Isenstadt | 08/26/2022
An unredacted tax return filed by Nikki Haley’s nonprofit shows that the group’s funders include a wealthy New Jersey family and some of the GOP’s biggest donors.
...The disclosures provide the clearest picture yet of how a prospective 2024 presidential candidate is cultivating a secret network of high-dollar contributors as she builds a political apparatus. And the names of her donors demonstrate the deep connections Haley has formed at the top levels of the Republican Party, with some of the GOP’s biggest super PAC donors among those who gave money to fund the launch of her organization after she left the Trump administration.
Haley is among at least a dozen other would-be White House hopefuls— including former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence — who also have allied nonprofits bankrolled by donors whose identities have remained under wraps.
“It’s very rare that the public has the opportunity to see the identities of the donors who are providing five- or even six-figure contributions to a dark money group. It’s called dark money for a reason. Typically, the public does not know who is financing these groups, and this is a rare exception,” said Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of Documented...
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/26/donors-secretly-funded-nikki-haleys-non...
23margd
A Second Trump Term Would Be a Scary Rerun of the First
Remember those “Jurassic Park” velociraptors learning how to open the door?
Susan B. Glasser* | September 15, 2022
{senior national security official} "He will seek vengeance and vindication. He will run the same plays again and again. He will find aides and advisers who will do his bidding, unlike the faithless traitors who surrounded him before. The velociraptor will have learned to open the door."
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/a-second-trump-term...
* Susan Glasser @sbg1
Staff writer, NewYorker . CNN global affairs analyst. Proud wife of @peterbakernyt
and coauthor, Kremlin Rising, The Man Who Ran Washington & soon: The Divider
Remember those “Jurassic Park” velociraptors learning how to open the door?
Susan B. Glasser* | September 15, 2022
{senior national security official} "He will seek vengeance and vindication. He will run the same plays again and again. He will find aides and advisers who will do his bidding, unlike the faithless traitors who surrounded him before. The velociraptor will have learned to open the door."
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/a-second-trump-term...
* Susan Glasser @sbg1
Staff writer, NewYorker . CNN global affairs analyst. Proud wife of @peterbakernyt
and coauthor, Kremlin Rising, The Man Who Ran Washington & soon: The Divider
24margd
Ted Nesi @TedNesi | 12:17 PM · Sep 15, 2022:
Politics/business editor + investigative reporter at CBS station @wpri12 in RI and MA.
VIDEO: Just spoke with @USRepKeating who represents Martha's Vineyard - he says island officials told him Gov DeSantis sent a videographer with the migrants to capture footage of them on MV
Also praises @MassGovernor response
More of our interview at 4p on @wpri12
1:58 ( https://twitter.com/TedNesi/status/1570446786657144832 )
Politics/business editor + investigative reporter at CBS station @wpri12 in RI and MA.
VIDEO: Just spoke with @USRepKeating who represents Martha's Vineyard - he says island officials told him Gov DeSantis sent a videographer with the migrants to capture footage of them on MV
Also praises @MassGovernor response
More of our interview at 4p on @wpri12
1:58 ( https://twitter.com/TedNesi/status/1570446786657144832 )
25margd
VIDEO: Former Speaker Paul Ryan says former President Donald Trump won’t be the Republican nominee in 2024, when the RNC gathers in Milwaukee: “We all know he’s much more likely to lose the White House than anybody else running for president on our side of the aisle.”
0:49 ( https://twitter.com/JasonCalvi/status/1580978323483942913 )
-Jason Calvi @JasonCalvi | 1:46 PM · Oct 14, 2022
0:49 ( https://twitter.com/JasonCalvi/status/1580978323483942913 )
-Jason Calvi @JasonCalvi | 1:46 PM · Oct 14, 2022
26margd
Trump Lost the Midterms. DeSantis Won.
If the Florida governor ever intends to wrest control of the GOP from David Frum | 9 Nov 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/now-ron-desantis-has-wrest-gop...
_______________________________________
Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law) tribelaw | 9:01 AM · Nov 9, 2022:
Mr. Attorney General, It’s Too Late to Appoint A Special Counsel — but now that the 60-day window has closed, it’s time to indict Donald Trump for espionage and related federal felonies including obstruction
Mr. Attorney General, It’s Too Late to Appoint A Special Counsel
Appointing a special counsel triggered by the Trump's announcement of his 2024 candidacy would itself appear to put politics over principle.
Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut | November 9, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/now-ron-desantis-has-wrest-gop...
If the Florida governor ever intends to wrest control of the GOP from David Frum | 9 Nov 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/now-ron-desantis-has-wrest-gop...
_______________________________________
Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law) tribelaw | 9:01 AM · Nov 9, 2022:
Mr. Attorney General, It’s Too Late to Appoint A Special Counsel — but now that the 60-day window has closed, it’s time to indict Donald Trump for espionage and related federal felonies including obstruction
Mr. Attorney General, It’s Too Late to Appoint A Special Counsel
Appointing a special counsel triggered by the Trump's announcement of his 2024 candidacy would itself appear to put politics over principle.
Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut | November 9, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/now-ron-desantis-has-wrest-gop...
27Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-white-supremacist-nick-fuentes-praises-confi...
WATCH: White Supremacist Nick Fuentes Praises/Confirms Reporting on Trump Dinner — Rambles About His ‘Hero’ For Seeming Eternity
***
Trump knows his peeps are loving reports about this attention-getting dinner. His cult voters have always known the true mission of the MAGA movement. They back DJT and it 100%.
WATCH: White Supremacist Nick Fuentes Praises/Confirms Reporting on Trump Dinner — Rambles About His ‘Hero’ For Seeming Eternity
***
Trump knows his peeps are loving reports about this attention-getting dinner. His cult voters have always known the true mission of the MAGA movement. They back DJT and it 100%.
28Molly3028
Who would work in a Trump 2.0 Administration? Would DJT bring back all the people he pardoned? Would he bring back Rudy and the Pillow guy? Kellyanne would most likely be thrilled to flush her family down the toilet again in order to join her favorite con man in the Oval Office. She recently stated that during the 2020 election cycle Trump put a large amount of his $1.6B war chest into Trump election merchandise and Trump entities. The Trump entities most likely garnered a huge portion of the free money.
29Molly3028
It appears that the GOP is afraid Trump will run a revenge third-party race if they don't nominate him. They seem to be hoping someone or something is going to take him down between now and summer 2024. They fail to realize that Trump was born under a very lucky star and he has nine lives. Fate always finds a way to boost his chances in the game-of-life he plays out in his head.
30lriley
There are toxic candidates out there and Trump certainly tops the bill of toxic candidates now. That doesn't mean he can't get millions and millions of voters but he will drive even more voters to whoever his main competitor is whether those voters like that competitor or not. Keeping in mind that Biden through the first several primaries was running behind pretty much the entire wannabe democratic presidential field. It was people like Obama, Pelosi and Clyburn who enticed several of those candidates to drop out and throw their entire support behind Biden and Joe got the nomination more than less because of that. Biden wasn't popular then and his favorable numbers haven't really been good ever since his election but my money would be on Joe winning against if Trump is running against him.
31Molly3028
Are a majority of Americans looking forward to having Trump 47 in the White House & Oval Office during America's 250th birthday celebration???
32kiparsky
>31 Molly3028: I think the results of the last election, and events since, have shown that the vast majority of Americans look forward to never hearing from that sad-sack sucker ever again. And it's not just Americans - Republicans are sick of him too!
33Kuiperdolin
No better man for the occasion.
Although there would be a certain irony in seeing the "Jan 6 committee" scumbags and their ilk pretend they would not have been lobstermen bootlickers back in the day. Messing with good King George's tea? So uncouth!
Although there would be a certain irony in seeing the "Jan 6 committee" scumbags and their ilk pretend they would not have been lobstermen bootlickers back in the day. Messing with good King George's tea? So uncouth!
34margd
Trump’s Killing Spree: The Inside Story of His Race to Execute Every Prisoner He Could
Before 2020, there had been three federal executions in 60 years. Then Trump put 13 people to death in six months
Asawin Suebsaeng, Patrick Reis | Jan 27, 2023
...Trump had signed perhaps the lone broadly popular major initiative of his presidency: a bipartisan criminal-justice reform bill. By 2020, however, his political calculus had changed. As he geared up for another election {2019}, Trump White House sources say, the president was telling advisers that carrying out capital punishment would insulate him from criticism that he was soft on crime. And in his attorney general, Bill Barr, a longtime death-penalty advocate, he had the perfect accomplice.
The executions, carried out in the name of law and order, took place at a time of peak lawlessness within the White House. While his administration killed prisoners at an unprecedented clip, Trump spent his final months attempting to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the Jan. 6 ransacking of the U.S. Capitol. And though Trump did show some mercy on his way out the door, it was largely reserved for political cronies such as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
The killing spree ended with Trump’s first term, as President Biden suspended capital punishment on the federal level, but it may only have been a pause. The former president is running again — and opened his 2024 campaign with a speech that promised more executions if he wins: “We’re going to be asking for everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said in his November campaign announcement. “Because it is the only way.”...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-capital-punishment...
Before 2020, there had been three federal executions in 60 years. Then Trump put 13 people to death in six months
Asawin Suebsaeng, Patrick Reis | Jan 27, 2023
...Trump had signed perhaps the lone broadly popular major initiative of his presidency: a bipartisan criminal-justice reform bill. By 2020, however, his political calculus had changed. As he geared up for another election {2019}, Trump White House sources say, the president was telling advisers that carrying out capital punishment would insulate him from criticism that he was soft on crime. And in his attorney general, Bill Barr, a longtime death-penalty advocate, he had the perfect accomplice.
The executions, carried out in the name of law and order, took place at a time of peak lawlessness within the White House. While his administration killed prisoners at an unprecedented clip, Trump spent his final months attempting to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the Jan. 6 ransacking of the U.S. Capitol. And though Trump did show some mercy on his way out the door, it was largely reserved for political cronies such as Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.
The killing spree ended with Trump’s first term, as President Biden suspended capital punishment on the federal level, but it may only have been a pause. The former president is running again — and opened his 2024 campaign with a speech that promised more executions if he wins: “We’re going to be asking for everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said in his November campaign announcement. “Because it is the only way.”...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-capital-punishment...
35Molly3028
It appears some people prefer a prez who treats women like sh*t ~ E. Jean Carroll / Stormy / ????? / Melania. Sadly, Melania seems to be a happy bought-and-paid-for wife and mother.
36margd
Russian state TV mocks Trump's statements (1:43)
Russian Media Monitor | 2 Feb 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr_cAWGFW1U
Russian Media Monitor | 2 Feb 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr_cAWGFW1U
37margd
Trump Won’t Commit to Backing the G.O.P. Nominee in 2024
The former president faces several potential Republican challengers in his bid for the White House.
Michael C. Bender | Feb. 2, 2023
...In a radio interview on Thursday, the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt asked Mr. Trump if he would support “whoever” wins the party’s nomination next year...“It would depend,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “It would have to depend on who the nominee was.”
No paywall. "Gifted":
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/politics/trump-2024-nominee-support.html?u...
The former president faces several potential Republican challengers in his bid for the White House.
Michael C. Bender | Feb. 2, 2023
...In a radio interview on Thursday, the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt asked Mr. Trump if he would support “whoever” wins the party’s nomination next year...“It would depend,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “It would have to depend on who the nominee was.”
No paywall. "Gifted":
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/politics/trump-2024-nominee-support.html?u...
38prosfilaes
>37 margd: If Trump doesn't win everything, he knows it's because it was rigged, and why would he support that?
39Kuiperdolin
Wise to keep a critical and if necessary censorious outlook of his own camp, especially as it's infested with RINOs.
Stark contrast with the Demonrats' uncritical Juche-like worship of their gloopy ganglords.
Stark contrast with the Demonrats' uncritical Juche-like worship of their gloopy ganglords.
40lriley
I suspect if Trump does not get the republican nomination he will at the very least kick the tires on running independently which is fine if it happens. Split up the conservative/right wing vote and let his loyalists have at it against Kuiper's RINO's all around the country in other elections. I mean if the McCarthy's etc. want to disloyally get behind one of those so called RINO's let the McCarthy's etc. pay for it too----get primaried or have a % of MAGA voters sit it out on them. MTG will have to choose then between what she likes best.....Kevin feeding her prime committee slots or Donald's presidential hopes. A real quandary for her.....but hey life always gives us paths to take......it's just deciding which is the right one.
41margd
Michigan Republicans tap election denier to lead state party
Nathan Layne | 18 Feb 2023
Republicans in Michigan on Saturday selected Trump loyalist Kristina Karamo (unsuccessful run for state attorney general, not supported now by Trump) as their next state chair, elevating an election denier to a critical leadership role in a sign of the growing clout of far-right and grassroots members over the party in the battleground state.
...Some top donors have said they would not financially back the party directly under the leadership of a chair who uses divisive rhetoric or promotes election lies.
...so-called America First Republicans taking control of local leadership positions from more moderate members in more than half of the state's counties...
https://news.yahoo.com/michigan-republicans-tap-election-denier-011716553.html
Nathan Layne | 18 Feb 2023
Republicans in Michigan on Saturday selected Trump loyalist Kristina Karamo (unsuccessful run for state attorney general, not supported now by Trump) as their next state chair, elevating an election denier to a critical leadership role in a sign of the growing clout of far-right and grassroots members over the party in the battleground state.
...Some top donors have said they would not financially back the party directly under the leadership of a chair who uses divisive rhetoric or promotes election lies.
...so-called America First Republicans taking control of local leadership positions from more moderate members in more than half of the state's counties...
https://news.yahoo.com/michigan-republicans-tap-election-denier-011716553.html
42Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/georgias-former-republican-lt-governor-it-might-take...
Georgia’s Former Republican Lt. Governor: ‘It Might Take a Decade to Undo’ Harm Done By Fox to GOP, Elections
Speaking with Pamela Brown on CNN’s State of the Union, the Republican and former Lt. Governor of Georgia argued that Fox News hurt the Republican party by enabling ex-president Donald Trump and repeating his attacks on the process, despite their own privately shared misgivings.
On-air talent and Fox News executives and staff, it was revealed in documents that were made public as part of the Dominion lawsuit against the network, privately mocked, disagreed with, had doubts about, and otherwise exhibited their skepticism or outright rejection of false claims of fraud or other conspiracy theories put out by Trump, while nevertheless treating them as credible or even, in the case of opinion hosts like Tucker Carlson, purporting to buy in.
Duncan went on to remark and expand on the idea that Fox News was pandering and catering to their audience to benefit the corporation’s bottom line, saying that all news media must find a “better balance” between the for-profit business model and the telling of real news.
***
The released emails shed light on the greed exhibited by Murdoch and his three prime-time hosts, etc. The hosts lied about election fraud to their clueless, blue-collar viewers on a daily basis for many months. Tucker continued the drum beat after the email info was released a few days ago.
And the brown demographic wave keeps moving up the voting-age brackets!
Georgia’s Former Republican Lt. Governor: ‘It Might Take a Decade to Undo’ Harm Done By Fox to GOP, Elections
Speaking with Pamela Brown on CNN’s State of the Union, the Republican and former Lt. Governor of Georgia argued that Fox News hurt the Republican party by enabling ex-president Donald Trump and repeating his attacks on the process, despite their own privately shared misgivings.
On-air talent and Fox News executives and staff, it was revealed in documents that were made public as part of the Dominion lawsuit against the network, privately mocked, disagreed with, had doubts about, and otherwise exhibited their skepticism or outright rejection of false claims of fraud or other conspiracy theories put out by Trump, while nevertheless treating them as credible or even, in the case of opinion hosts like Tucker Carlson, purporting to buy in.
Duncan went on to remark and expand on the idea that Fox News was pandering and catering to their audience to benefit the corporation’s bottom line, saying that all news media must find a “better balance” between the for-profit business model and the telling of real news.
***
The released emails shed light on the greed exhibited by Murdoch and his three prime-time hosts, etc. The hosts lied about election fraud to their clueless, blue-collar viewers on a daily basis for many months. Tucker continued the drum beat after the email info was released a few days ago.
And the brown demographic wave keeps moving up the voting-age brackets!
43proximity1
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/2024_republican_presi...
Trump leads every poll of (presumably) Republican voters by from +5 to +58 points.
That seems fishy. I suspect that some De Santis supporters are padding Trump's figures.
What's the Dem. Party's plan this time to ensure that voters don't mark their ballots incorrectly by indicating a preference for Trump? More ballot-stuffing?
Trump leads every poll of (presumably) Republican voters by from +5 to +58 points.
That seems fishy. I suspect that some De Santis supporters are padding Trump's figures.
What's the Dem. Party's plan this time to ensure that voters don't mark their ballots incorrectly by indicating a preference for Trump? More ballot-stuffing?
44Molly3028
>43 proximity1:
While millions of poor souls have been following Trump down the white rabbit hole, the brown demographic wave has been riding up the voting-age brackets for close to a decade. FOX News has most likely turned that one lost decade into two lost decades for Trump’s cult followers.
While millions of poor souls have been following Trump down the white rabbit hole, the brown demographic wave has been riding up the voting-age brackets for close to a decade. FOX News has most likely turned that one lost decade into two lost decades for Trump’s cult followers.
45prosfilaes
>43 proximity1: So what's the Republican party's plan to convince the public they plan to participate in democracy? Because acting like Clinton and Biden didn't win millions more votes than Trump isn't working.
46margd
Yikes! Excerpt from DeSantis's new book "The Courage to be Free", published by HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corps ( https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1630171469329178624/photo/1 ):
DeSantis book: How the Florida blueprint can work for the whole US
Ron DeSantis | February 18, 2023
https://nypost.com/2023/02/18/desantis-book-how-florida-blueprint-can-work-for-t...
DeSantis book: How the Florida blueprint can work for the whole US
Ron DeSantis | February 18, 2023
https://nypost.com/2023/02/18/desantis-book-how-florida-blueprint-can-work-for-t...
47kiparsky
>46 margd: What a load of vacuous nonsense. The phrases "be willing to lead, have the courage of your convictions, deliver for your constituents" clearly all tested well in his focus groups.
48margd
>47 kiparsky: The title was what really gave me chills...a blueprint of anti-education, anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-women... Brr.
49kiparsky
>48 margd: Really gives a new meaning to the word "free", doesn't it?
51kiparsky
>50 proximity1: Meh, can't be arsed. What have the pothead and the coke fiend got to say that's worth hearing?
52prosfilaes
>51 kiparsky: From the title Rogan is going to vote for Trump. Meh, big whoop.
53Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/al-sharpton-floats-his-new-nickname-for-anti-woke-re...
Al Sharpton Floats His New Nickname For Anti-Woke Republicans: ‘Well What’s The Opposite?’
If you don’t fall into the “woke” column, then you belong to a separate “sleep” group, as nicknamed by Al Sharpton during a Friday MSNBC appearance.
***
In other words, the GOP prefers clueless voters who are asleep and/or unconscious.
Al Sharpton Floats His New Nickname For Anti-Woke Republicans: ‘Well What’s The Opposite?’
If you don’t fall into the “woke” column, then you belong to a separate “sleep” group, as nicknamed by Al Sharpton during a Friday MSNBC appearance.
***
In other words, the GOP prefers clueless voters who are asleep and/or unconscious.
54kiparsky
I don't mean to run down the man's creativity, but I was under the impression we'd all been using that one for a while now... hardly seems like something you'd send out a press release about.
55Molly3028
>54 kiparsky:
I'm a news and information junkie, but I never came across this particular way of using a single, simple antonym to bring the "woke" issue into focus. The picture it brings to mind is worth a thousand words, and Dems should be using it incessantly. Frank Luntz has been the master of this kind of political game.
I'm a news and information junkie, but I never came across this particular way of using a single, simple antonym to bring the "woke" issue into focus. The picture it brings to mind is worth a thousand words, and Dems should be using it incessantly. Frank Luntz has been the master of this kind of political game.
56margd
Maybe Sharpton was reacting to clumsy title of Ted Cruz's new book, "Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America". Unwoke? You mean asleep, comatose, dead?!
57craigfermr0
This user has been removed as spam.
58kiparsky
>55 Molly3028: Okay, cool. I know I've used that term here, as well as elsewhere, and I'm sure I've seen others using it out in the world. But great, the more the merrier! Certainly, if you're against being "woke", it seems like you're calling yourself "sleepy", or perhaps "drowsy". (For the Irish trad music fans, I suppose that would make Rep. Greene "Drowsy Maggie"?)
59John5918
>55 Molly3028: Dems should be using it incessantly
Of course I don't really understand US politics, but I would have thought that Democrats should be marshalling convincing arguments for their own policies and against their opponents' policies rather than competing for childish ad hominem insults.
Of course I don't really understand US politics, but I would have thought that Democrats should be marshalling convincing arguments for their own policies and against their opponents' policies rather than competing for childish ad hominem insults.
60Molly3028
>59 John5918:
Dems must fight fire with fire in this era. Modern-day GOPers have no interest in governance or policies that the majority of people in the country care about. They want to keep the grievances flowing. I was in elementary school during the first McCarthy era back in the 1950's.
Dems must fight fire with fire in this era. Modern-day GOPers have no interest in governance or policies that the majority of people in the country care about. They want to keep the grievances flowing. I was in elementary school during the first McCarthy era back in the 1950's.
61John5918
>60 Molly3028:
Maybe so, but if your elections are being decided on the basis of who can invent the best meaningless slogans, then God help the USA. In my own native land, the Brexit vote was decided on that basis, on empty promises, populist slogans and downright lies, and look at the misery and chaos that has caused.
Maybe so, but if your elections are being decided on the basis of who can invent the best meaningless slogans, then God help the USA. In my own native land, the Brexit vote was decided on that basis, on empty promises, populist slogans and downright lies, and look at the misery and chaos that has caused.
62kiparsky
>59 John5918: I think both are needed. In a rational world, yes, people would only pay attention to rational arguments, but that would be a world in which today's Republican party could not exist, because there are no rational arguments for their policies. In the world we actually live in, Republicans use childish ad hominem insults because they work, that is because they get votes, and Democrats must, as >60 Molly3028: says, respond in kind. They should certainly make the rational arguments, for example that the reflexive hatred of immigrants is an idiotic policy in a country that depends on immigrant labor, that the attempt to enslave half of the population is both inconsistent with the claim to be a party of individual liberties and morally filthy, and that we absolutely must eliminate all use of fossil fuels and also capture carbon on a massive scale or none of these questions will matter at all to the remnants of a population as they focus their attention solely on the business of migrating northward as fast as they can manage. But in order to actually take effective action, they must use effective tools for messaging, which as we have clearly seen, include the use of carefully crafted coded symbolic language to counteract the Republican ivory-tower political class's messaging machine.
Take someone like Prox, for example. This is not someone who can possibly be moved by a rational argument, because they have insulated themselves against them. The left has not been able to create this sort of automaton, and as a result is caught in a perpetual stalemate with a party that they have decisively outnumbered for decades. This cannot continue. The left is winning the rational argument, because there is no competition from the right whatsoever. They must also win the messaging war, and that means using the Republican's toolkit against them.
Take someone like Prox, for example. This is not someone who can possibly be moved by a rational argument, because they have insulated themselves against them. The left has not been able to create this sort of automaton, and as a result is caught in a perpetual stalemate with a party that they have decisively outnumbered for decades. This cannot continue. The left is winning the rational argument, because there is no competition from the right whatsoever. They must also win the messaging war, and that means using the Republican's toolkit against them.
63kiparsky
>61 John5918: I would argue that if rational arguments alone were a winning strategy, then Remain would have won in a walk. They had all of the rational arguments, and they lost - to what? To irrational nonsense.
64John5918
>63 kiparsky:
Fair comment, but I would argue that those favouring remaining in the EU lost largely because they didn't focus on all the positive benefits of being in the EU but instead got dragged into a reactive zero sum game of trying to counter the lies and fatuous objections being promoted by the leave campaign.
Fair comment, but I would argue that those favouring remaining in the EU lost largely because they didn't focus on all the positive benefits of being in the EU but instead got dragged into a reactive zero sum game of trying to counter the lies and fatuous objections being promoted by the leave campaign.
65margd
Rick Wilson (Lincoln Project) says Rick DeSantis has a (glass jaw?) in debates.
Below, John Oliver gives a couple of examples in which DeSantis doesn't like (women, esp.?) correcting him, starting about 5:10:
Ron DeSantis: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
John Oliver discusses Ron DeSantis, his track record as the governor of Florida, the pitfalls of comparing him to Donald Trump, and the supposed dangers of “woke math.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M81-GM0mTc4
Below, John Oliver gives a couple of examples in which DeSantis doesn't like (women, esp.?) correcting him, starting about 5:10:
Ron DeSantis: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
John Oliver discusses Ron DeSantis, his track record as the governor of Florida, the pitfalls of comparing him to Donald Trump, and the supposed dangers of “woke math.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M81-GM0mTc4
66lriley
DeSantis has gone about centralizing power in Florida pretty much like any historical tyrant of note such as Lenin or Mussolini. Everything he does to play to a base that's fine with him consolidating as much power as he can. He throws out people who question his covid beliefs, he replaces elected school board members with people he appoints, he takes over for Disney because of differences over LGBTQ people who are a particular target of his, he yaks about 'woke' every chance he gets. He's pretty much a classic fascist and FWIW many of the people who vote for him in Florida are fine and dandy with that.
67proximity1
LOL!
68proximity1
Biden, everyone's favorite White house-idiot, appeared, robot-Zombie-like to read his teleprompter's text in front of the house-idiot press-corps gathered to listen.
The supposed point was to show that his rechargeable batteries still work and that the failure of Silicon Valley Bank was just one of those things--nothing to worry frantic investors. Wall Street's market indicies responded by falling. Investors holding bank shares deserve to be worried. What were they thinking? The Biden economy is a haunted house--just what the zombies ordered.
When reporters began to pose questions, Biden shuffled to the door and somehow opened it and went out --as though he had not been aware of the questions. He probably had not.
The supposed point was to show that his rechargeable batteries still work and that the failure of Silicon Valley Bank was just one of those things--nothing to worry frantic investors. Wall Street's market indicies responded by falling. Investors holding bank shares deserve to be worried. What were they thinking? The Biden economy is a haunted house--just what the zombies ordered.
When reporters began to pose questions, Biden shuffled to the door and somehow opened it and went out --as though he had not been aware of the questions. He probably had not.
69prosfilaes
>67 proximity1: >68 proximity1: This is anti-democracy. Democracy demands communication about political topics by means other than mockery; demagogues prefer ranting in preprogrammed phrases. "Four legs good, two legs bad!", as Orwell put it.
>68 proximity1: The Biden economy is a haunted house
Word salad indeed, as well as demonstrating the complete failure to understand the economy. Even the most grasping dictator finds the economy hard to control, though the crushing dictatorship of North Korea comes close. That a federal system with an elected president distinct and independent of the legislative branch that controls the budget would have the economy controlled by the president is ludicrous.
>68 proximity1: The Biden economy is a haunted house
Word salad indeed, as well as demonstrating the complete failure to understand the economy. Even the most grasping dictator finds the economy hard to control, though the crushing dictatorship of North Korea comes close. That a federal system with an elected president distinct and independent of the legislative branch that controls the budget would have the economy controlled by the president is ludicrous.
71prosfilaes
>70 proximity1: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-silicon-valley-bank-collapse/ There's many causes but hey look there's a 2018 bill signed by Trump that bears some fault.
It's not really covered in the article, but there's a link to a Twitter thread making a case that it was good old-fashioned poor communication that brought the bank down; that the bank should have told its customers what was going on with a decent spin, instead of letting fearful messages without counterbalance from the bank drive their customers into a run on the bank.
It's not really covered in the article, but there's a link to a Twitter thread making a case that it was good old-fashioned poor communication that brought the bank down; that the bank should have told its customers what was going on with a decent spin, instead of letting fearful messages without counterbalance from the bank drive their customers into a run on the bank.
72lriley
It's turning out that Silicon Valley Bank was in large part funded by crypto-happy pro-Trump billionaire Peter Thiel. Let's call him the George Soros of the right. Thiel is also known for funding the campaigns of numerous Republican Senate candidates almost all of which failed in 2020. It's also turning out that Thiel led the run on those taking their money/finances out of SVB that led to that bank's collapse.
73margd
>66 lriley: Sounds like Disney's not done yet!
Ron DeSantis' plan to take control of Disney's land backfired spectacularly because of a loophole in the agreement that may reduce his appointees to powerless functionaries
Lloyd Lee | March 29, 2023
...For close to six decades, Disney has operated its expansive theme park and resort in Florida under a specially designated district that lies between two counties. A board, previously known as Reedy Creek Improvement District, oversaw the area and had free reign of development processes, such as zoning and infrastructure, and even control of its own fire department, essentially operating like a separate municipal government. Disney also had the authority to appoint district board members.
This special status came under threat when Disney entered the fray of DeSantis' culture war last year, after the company publicly objected to Florida's proposal to ban the discussion of sexual orientation in K-3 public classrooms.
In a show of political force, DeSantis, who is a likely contender for the 2024 Republican nomination, attempted to dissolve the Reedy Creek district. But the dissolution would have placed the burden of paying for a fire department and road maintenance, among other services, onto taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties. Residents would also have had to pick up the district's hefty $1 billion debt.
Instead, Florida lawmakers passed a bill in February to end "Disney's self-governing status" and give the governor the authority to appoint new board members to the district. Reedy Creek was renamed to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, and DeSantis appointed five supervisors, including a parents' rights activist and three Republican donors.
But the new supervisors are now saying that previous board members entered an agreement that effectively stripped them of their powers...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ron-desantis-plan-control-disneys-025925759.html
Ron DeSantis' plan to take control of Disney's land backfired spectacularly because of a loophole in the agreement that may reduce his appointees to powerless functionaries
Lloyd Lee | March 29, 2023
...For close to six decades, Disney has operated its expansive theme park and resort in Florida under a specially designated district that lies between two counties. A board, previously known as Reedy Creek Improvement District, oversaw the area and had free reign of development processes, such as zoning and infrastructure, and even control of its own fire department, essentially operating like a separate municipal government. Disney also had the authority to appoint district board members.
This special status came under threat when Disney entered the fray of DeSantis' culture war last year, after the company publicly objected to Florida's proposal to ban the discussion of sexual orientation in K-3 public classrooms.
In a show of political force, DeSantis, who is a likely contender for the 2024 Republican nomination, attempted to dissolve the Reedy Creek district. But the dissolution would have placed the burden of paying for a fire department and road maintenance, among other services, onto taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties. Residents would also have had to pick up the district's hefty $1 billion debt.
Instead, Florida lawmakers passed a bill in February to end "Disney's self-governing status" and give the governor the authority to appoint new board members to the district. Reedy Creek was renamed to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, and DeSantis appointed five supervisors, including a parents' rights activist and three Republican donors.
But the new supervisors are now saying that previous board members entered an agreement that effectively stripped them of their powers...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ron-desantis-plan-control-disneys-025925759.html
74margd
Yikes...
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. files paperwork to run for president as a Democrat
Rashard Rose, Eric Bradner and David Wright | April 5, 2023
Environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in 2024 as a Democrat.
...Kennedy Jr. is a longtime vaccine skeptic. He has promoted discredited claims linking vaccines and autism and founded the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He has also railed against the coronavirus vaccine and has criticized the federal government’s handling of the pandemic.
...As an environmental lawyer, Kennedy worked with a group that led the Hudson River cleanup. He also worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-founded an environmental law firm...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/politics/robert-kennedy-president-democratic-nomi...
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. files paperwork to run for president as a Democrat
Rashard Rose, Eric Bradner and David Wright | April 5, 2023
Environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in 2024 as a Democrat.
...Kennedy Jr. is a longtime vaccine skeptic. He has promoted discredited claims linking vaccines and autism and founded the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He has also railed against the coronavirus vaccine and has criticized the federal government’s handling of the pandemic.
...As an environmental lawyer, Kennedy worked with a group that led the Hudson River cleanup. He also worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-founded an environmental law firm...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/05/politics/robert-kennedy-president-democratic-nomi...
75margd
>74 margd: contd.
Robert Costa @costareports | 6:39 PM · Apr 5, 2023:
Chief Election & Campaign Correspondent for @CBSNews, co-author of “Peril” with @realBobWoodward, Center4Politics
Scholar at the University of Virginia
Per several people familiar, Steve Bannon had been encouraging this for months and believes RFK Jr. could be both a useful chaos agent in 2024 race and a big name who could help stoke anti-vax sentiment around the country…
Anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr. challenging Biden in 2024
Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, has announced he will run for president. Kennedy filed a statement of...
apnews.com
Robert Costa @costareports | 6:39 PM · Apr 5, 2023:
Chief Election & Campaign Correspondent for @CBSNews, co-author of “Peril” with @realBobWoodward, Center4Politics
Scholar at the University of Virginia
Per several people familiar, Steve Bannon had been encouraging this for months and believes RFK Jr. could be both a useful chaos agent in 2024 race and a big name who could help stoke anti-vax sentiment around the country…
Anti-vaccine activist RFK Jr. challenging Biden in 2024
Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, has announced he will run for president. Kennedy filed a statement of...
apnews.com
76Molly3028
As of the first week of April in the year 2023, the evidence is irrefutable ~ the modern-day GOPers have the rights of women and blacks in the crosshairs of their gun scopes.
78margd
$200. Penalties for the rich and powerful are ~ that of a traffic violation, if that...
Time's up: Election officials order Trump to stop stalling and file his financial disclosures
Trump just blew past a March 15 federal deadline.
Matthew Chapman Dave Levinthal, Editor-in-Chief | March 16, 2023
...Trump had previously applied for, and received, two extensions on the filing deadline as he runs for president ahead of the 2024 election. Then, in a letter dated March 15, Trump lawyer Derek H. Ross asked for an additional 30-day extension for Trump, citing "complexities of his financial holdings."
But the FEC denied his most recent request, saying he had reached the maximum of 90 days allowed under law.
"As no further extension of time is available, Mr. Trump’s deadline for filing his personal financial disclosure report remains March 15, 2023," acting FEC general counsel Lisa Stevenson wrote back to Ross on March 16. "Under section 104(d) of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, as amended, 'any individual who files a report required to be filed under this title more than 30 days after the due date, as extended shall … pay a filing fee of $200.'"...
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-finances/
Time's up: Election officials order Trump to stop stalling and file his financial disclosures
Trump just blew past a March 15 federal deadline.
Matthew Chapman Dave Levinthal, Editor-in-Chief | March 16, 2023
...Trump had previously applied for, and received, two extensions on the filing deadline as he runs for president ahead of the 2024 election. Then, in a letter dated March 15, Trump lawyer Derek H. Ross asked for an additional 30-day extension for Trump, citing "complexities of his financial holdings."
But the FEC denied his most recent request, saying he had reached the maximum of 90 days allowed under law.
"As no further extension of time is available, Mr. Trump’s deadline for filing his personal financial disclosure report remains March 15, 2023," acting FEC general counsel Lisa Stevenson wrote back to Ross on March 16. "Under section 104(d) of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, as amended, 'any individual who files a report required to be filed under this title more than 30 days after the due date, as extended shall … pay a filing fee of $200.'"...
https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-finances/
79margd
Lee Aronsohn @BennyAce | 10:52 AM · Apr 9, 2023:
Co-creator of 'Two and a Half Men' / EP of 'Big Bang Theory. Director of '40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie'
...I don't care what your policy preferences are. Who... WHO looks at this and says "Yeah, let's give nuclear weapons to the guy on the right!!!"?
Quote Tweet
MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch · 22h
This really does say it all
Biden Easter greeting ( https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1645075487017033729/photo/1 )
Trump EASTER GREETING ( https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1645075487017033729/photo/2 )
Co-creator of 'Two and a Half Men' / EP of 'Big Bang Theory. Director of '40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie'
...I don't care what your policy preferences are. Who... WHO looks at this and says "Yeah, let's give nuclear weapons to the guy on the right!!!"?
Quote Tweet
MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch · 22h
This really does say it all
Biden Easter greeting ( https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1645075487017033729/photo/1 )
Trump EASTER GREETING ( https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1645075487017033729/photo/2 )
80Molly3028
>77 proximity1:
Modern-day GOPers have no shame. They have been showing us who they are for four plus election cycles. Ignoring the obvious has become detrimental to the health and well-being of every person and family in the country.
Modern-day GOPers have no shame. They have been showing us who they are for four plus election cycles. Ignoring the obvious has become detrimental to the health and well-being of every person and family in the country.
81margd
Maggie Haberman | @maggieNYT | 3:49 PM · Apr 15, 2023:
NYT/CNN/Author CONFIDENCE MAN: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America
A major donor finally goes on record with what has been a whisper: {DeSantis} donors are getting worried
https://ft.com/content/9fa26170-5533-4e0b-a852-238b0ef15118
Text excerpt ( https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1647326414293590020/photo/1 )
NYT/CNN/Author CONFIDENCE MAN: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America
A major donor finally goes on record with what has been a whisper: {DeSantis} donors are getting worried
https://ft.com/content/9fa26170-5533-4e0b-a852-238b0ef15118
Text excerpt ( https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1647326414293590020/photo/1 )
82margd
Tessa Stuart {sr writer Rollingstone} tessastuart | 8:36 PM · Apr 13, 2023
As GOP lawmakers push increasingly aggressive bans at the state level, internal polling done by ‘24 GOP candidates shows abortion is not even among the TOP FIVE issues to Republican voters…
‘We’re Getting Killed on Abortion’: Inside Trump’s Secret Meetings With the Religious Right
The ex-president expects anti-abortion activists to line up behind his presidential campaign, but his bid for their support is off to a rocky start
Tessa Stuart, Asawin Suebsaeng | April 13, 2023
...Trump isn’t the only Republican candidate caught between hardcore supporters demanding new curbs on legal abortion and a majority of voters who continue to reject an anti-abortion agenda at every available opportunity. Rolling Stone also spoke to half a dozen longtime GOP strategists working on races for next year, almost all of whom say they are advising their candidates to talk as little as possible about GOP abortion proposals at this time. And party operatives are hoping anti-abortion voters won’t notice or won’t care. According to a Republican operative working on 2024 Senate races and another source who’s pored over the private data, recent GOP internal polling in multiple states has shown that abortion doesn’t even rank as a top-five issue right now among those Republican primary voters.
While the intra-party debate rages, the losses are piling up...
...Roger Severino, vice president at the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank says the hand wringing about election results is all for naught. “The last election, you could consider it the high-water mark for the side in favor of abortion because they were angry, and anger is a big motivator,” Severino says. “It doesn’t get better for them. They can’t keep up the anger forever.”
The Heritage Foundation is advocating for a national ban on abortions after roughly six weeks.
https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-abortion-2024-primary-...
As GOP lawmakers push increasingly aggressive bans at the state level, internal polling done by ‘24 GOP candidates shows abortion is not even among the TOP FIVE issues to Republican voters…
‘We’re Getting Killed on Abortion’: Inside Trump’s Secret Meetings With the Religious Right
The ex-president expects anti-abortion activists to line up behind his presidential campaign, but his bid for their support is off to a rocky start
Tessa Stuart, Asawin Suebsaeng | April 13, 2023
...Trump isn’t the only Republican candidate caught between hardcore supporters demanding new curbs on legal abortion and a majority of voters who continue to reject an anti-abortion agenda at every available opportunity. Rolling Stone also spoke to half a dozen longtime GOP strategists working on races for next year, almost all of whom say they are advising their candidates to talk as little as possible about GOP abortion proposals at this time. And party operatives are hoping anti-abortion voters won’t notice or won’t care. According to a Republican operative working on 2024 Senate races and another source who’s pored over the private data, recent GOP internal polling in multiple states has shown that abortion doesn’t even rank as a top-five issue right now among those Republican primary voters.
While the intra-party debate rages, the losses are piling up...
...Roger Severino, vice president at the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank says the hand wringing about election results is all for naught. “The last election, you could consider it the high-water mark for the side in favor of abortion because they were angry, and anger is a big motivator,” Severino says. “It doesn’t get better for them. They can’t keep up the anger forever.”
The Heritage Foundation is advocating for a national ban on abortions after roughly six weeks.
https://rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-abortion-2024-primary-...
84lriley
>82 margd: I get that would be Republican Presidential hopefuls think that they're going to need the anti-abortion vote to win the nomination but after that it's just all downhill---it's a losing proposition. Whether the Supreme Court decided it was not settled law when they pulled the rug out....to the public at large it was settled and it was something that the majority of the public favored. Lol at this fucking Severino guy that he thinks the anger of his minority of anti-abortionists is going to somehow overcome the anger of the majority who fall on the pro choice side of this. They didn't (want to) believe it was going to be an issue in the mid-terms either.
85margd
Why GOP culture warriors lost big in school board races this month
Juan Perez Jr. | 04/17/2023
Amid all the attention on this month’s elections in Wisconsin and Illinois, one outcome with major implications for 2024 flew under the national radar: School board candidates who ran culture-war campaigns flamed out...
...The results from the Milwaukee and Chicago areas are hardly the last word on the matter. Thousands more local school elections are set for later this year in some two dozen states. They are often low turnout, low profile, and officially nonpartisan affairs, and conservatives say they are competing aggressively...
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/17/gop-school-board-races-midwest-00092232
Juan Perez Jr. | 04/17/2023
Amid all the attention on this month’s elections in Wisconsin and Illinois, one outcome with major implications for 2024 flew under the national radar: School board candidates who ran culture-war campaigns flamed out...
...The results from the Milwaukee and Chicago areas are hardly the last word on the matter. Thousands more local school elections are set for later this year in some two dozen states. They are often low turnout, low profile, and officially nonpartisan affairs, and conservatives say they are competing aggressively...
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/17/gop-school-board-races-midwest-00092232
86Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-sources-say-hes-looking-for-tv-ready-and...
Trump Sources Say He’s Looking for ‘TV Ready’ and ‘Loyal’ Woman to be 2024 Running Mate: Report
A photo of Trump and Kari Lake is prominently displayed.
***
If the GOP plays its cards right, it can have two of the whackiest people in the country at the top of the party's 2024 ticket. This is more entertainment for the clueless MAGA masses to enjoy.
Trump Sources Say He’s Looking for ‘TV Ready’ and ‘Loyal’ Woman to be 2024 Running Mate: Report
A photo of Trump and Kari Lake is prominently displayed.
***
If the GOP plays its cards right, it can have two of the whackiest people in the country at the top of the party's 2024 ticket. This is more entertainment for the clueless MAGA masses to enjoy.
87margd
Whoa!
Andrew Wortman @AmoneyResists | 10:45 PM · Apr 18, 2023:
HE/HIM. Democratic Activist. Gay AF. ...
https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1648518134507380738
Republicans are so flabbergasted over their inability to connect with young voters it’s almost comical. You wanna know why they hate you and upwards of 90% of them will never vote for you GOP? I’ll break it down for you (Thread)
1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.
2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.
3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.
4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.
5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.
6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.
7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day
8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.
9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.
10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.
11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.
12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.
13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.
14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.
15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors
16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age
17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed
Trump's impeachable offenses thread ( https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1120555910630342657 )
18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS
Chief Justice John Roberts thread ( https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1569048112584601601 )
19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.
20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:
—Universal background checks
—An assault weapons ban
—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act
—The ERA & Equality Act
—The Climate Action Now Act
—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act
—SCOTUS expansion
21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.
This is one of those threads I could probably continue indefinitely, but I’m gonna leave it for now. Thank you for sharing and welcome new followers! If you liked this thread, you’ll like my content. I write threads that obliterate the GOP on pretty much every topic quite often.
22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.
Trump COVID accountability ( https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1248473670604881926 )
______________________________________________
ETA:
Iowa Senate passes child labor bill in pre-dawn session
Griffin Wright and Kelly Maricle | 18 April 2023
...The bill allows 14-year-olds to work six-hour night shifts, allows 15-year-olds to work in plants on assembly lines moving items up to 50 pounds, and allows 16 and 17-year-olds to serve alcohol...
https://who13.com/news/politics/iowa-politics/iowa-senate-passes-child-labor-bil...
Andrew Wortman @AmoneyResists | 10:45 PM · Apr 18, 2023:
HE/HIM. Democratic Activist. Gay AF. ...
https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1648518134507380738
Republicans are so flabbergasted over their inability to connect with young voters it’s almost comical. You wanna know why they hate you and upwards of 90% of them will never vote for you GOP? I’ll break it down for you (Thread)
1.) Your Reagan-era “trickle-down economics” strategy of tax breaks for billionaires that you continue to employ to this day has widened the gap between rich and poor so much that most of them will never be able to own a home, much less earn a living wage.
2.) You refuse to increase the federal minimum wage, which is still $7.25 an hour (since 2009). Even if it had just kept up with inflation, it would be $27 now. You’re forcing people of all ages but especially young people to work multiple jobs just to afford basic necessities.
3.) You fundamentally oppose and want to kill democracy; have done everything in your power to restrict access to the ballot box, particularly in areas with demographics that tend to vote Democratic (like young people and POC). You staged a fucking coup the last time you lost.
4.) You have abused your disproportionate senate control over the last three decades to pack the courts with religious extremists and idealogues, including SCOTUS—which has rolled back rights for women in ways that do nothing but kill more women and children and expand poverty.
5.) You refuse to enact common sense gun control laws to curb mass shootings like universal background checks and banning assault weapons; subjecting their entire generation to school shootings and drills that are traumatizing in and of themselves. You are owned by the NRA.
6.) You are unequivocally against combatting climate change to the extent that it’s as if you’ve made it your personal mission to ensure they inherit a planet that is beyond the point of no return in terms of remaining habitable for the human race beyond the next few generations.
7.) You oppose all programs that provide assistance to those who need it most. Your governors refused to expand Medicaid even during A PANDEMIC. You are against free school lunches, despite it being the only meal that millions of children can count on to actually receive each day
8.) You are banning books, defunding libraries, barring subject matter, and whitewashing history even more in a fascistic attempt to keep them ignorant of the systemic racism that this nation was literally founded upon and continues to this day in every action your party takes.
9.) You oppose universal healthcare and are still trying to repeal the ACA and rip healthcare from tens of millions of Americans and replace it with nothing. You are against lowering the cost of insulin and prescription drugs that millions need simply to LIVE/FUNCTION in society.
10.) You embrace white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other groups that are defined by their intractable racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and intolerance. You conspired with these groups on January 6th to try to overthrow the U.S. government via domestic terrorism that KILLED PEOPLE.
11.) You oppose every bill aimed at making life better for our nation’s youth; from education to extracurricular and financial/nutritional assistance programs. You say you want to “protect the children” while you elect/nominate pedophiles and attack trans youth and drag queens.
12.) You pretend to be offended by “anti-semitism” while literally supporting, electing, and speaking at events organized by Nazis. You pretend to hate “cancel culture” despite the fact that you invented it and it’s basically all you do.
13.) Every word you utter is a lie. You are the party of treason, hypocrisy, crime, and authoritarianism. You want to entrench rule by your aging minority because you know that you have nothing to offer young voters and they will never support you for all these reasons and more.
14.) You’re so hostile to even the notion of helping us overcome the mountain of debt that millions of us are forced to take on just to pay for our post K-12 education that you are suing to try to prevent a small fraction of us from getting even $10,000 in loan forgiveness.
15.) You opened the floodgates of money into politics via Citizens United; allowing our entire system of government to become a cesspool of corruption, crime, and greed. You are supposed to represent the American people whose taxes pay your salary but instead cater to rich donors
16.) You respond to elected representatives standing in solidarity with their constituents to protest the ONGOING SLAUGHTER of children in schools via shootings by EXPELLING THEM FROM OFFICE & respond to your lack of popularity among young people by trying to raise the voting age
17.) You impeach Democratic presidents over lying about a BJ but refuse to impeach (then vote twice to acquit) a guy whose entire “administration” was an international crime syndicate being run out of the WH who incited an insurrection to have you killed
Trump's impeachable offenses thread ( https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1120555910630342657 )
18.) You steal Supreme Court seats from democrats to prevent the only black POTUS we’ve ever had from appointing one and invent fake precedents that you later ignore all to take fundamental rights from Americans; and even your “legitimate” appointments consist of people like THIS
Chief Justice John Roberts thread ( https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1569048112584601601 )
19.) You support mass incarceration even for innocuous offenses or execution by cop for POC while doing nothing but protect rich white criminals who engage in such things as tax fraud, money laundering, sex trafficking, rape/sexual assault, falsifying business records, etc.
20.) You are the reason we can’t pass:
—Universal background checks
—An assault weapons ban
—The ‘For the People/Freedom to vote’ Act or John Lewis Voting Rights Act
—The ERA & Equality Act
—The Climate Action Now Act
—The (Stopping) Violence Against Women Act
—SCOTUS expansion
21.) You do not seek office to govern, represent, or serve the American people. You seek power solely for its own sake so you can impose your narrow-minded puritanical will on others at the expense of their most fundamental rights and freedoms like voting and bodily autonomy.
This is one of those threads I could probably continue indefinitely, but I’m gonna leave it for now. Thank you for sharing and welcome new followers! If you liked this thread, you’ll like my content. I write threads that obliterate the GOP on pretty much every topic quite often.
22.) Ok, last one. You are trying to eliminate social security and Medicare that tens of millions of our parents rely on and paid into their entire lives. And you did everything to maximize preventable deaths from COVID leaving millions of us in mourning.
Trump COVID accountability ( https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1248473670604881926 )
______________________________________________
ETA:
Iowa Senate passes child labor bill in pre-dawn session
Griffin Wright and Kelly Maricle | 18 April 2023
...The bill allows 14-year-olds to work six-hour night shifts, allows 15-year-olds to work in plants on assembly lines moving items up to 50 pounds, and allows 16 and 17-year-olds to serve alcohol...
https://who13.com/news/politics/iowa-politics/iowa-senate-passes-child-labor-bil...
88lriley
>87 margd: Good list. Absolutely accurate.
89margd
Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski | 11:26 AM · Apr 22, 2023:
Attorney, Marine, Fmr Fed Prosec & Repub; now Def Att & Dem. Chair of Normal Caucus, Track & Report on the Right-Wing. Seen on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Al-Jazeera
Schedule F. They aren’t bluffing either. Groups are busy compiling an army of right-wing ideologues and unqualified grifters to replace career civil servants.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1649796787564167172/photo/1
Attorney, Marine, Fmr Fed Prosec & Repub; now Def Att & Dem. Chair of Normal Caucus, Track & Report on the Right-Wing. Seen on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Al-Jazeera
Schedule F. They aren’t bluffing either. Groups are busy compiling an army of right-wing ideologues and unqualified grifters to replace career civil servants.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1649796787564167172/photo/1
90margd
David Frum @davidfrum | 6:09 AM · Apr 25, 2023:
A notable thing to me about that Bideo re-elect video*: the speed of the edited video. There are probably more different images in those 3 minutes than in 6 months of Fox News B-roll. Oldest president ever launches with a video aimed direct at the TikTok generation.
See this classic Reagan 1984 "Morning in America" ad - and notice the huge speed-up in pace vs the 2024 Biden video. The generations are speaking different visual languages.
Reagan 1:01 ( https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1650804334291046402 )
Ah for the good old days of issue-rich campaigning
Eisenhower( https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1650807092809277440 )
Another point about the Biden election announcement video: the message the Biden-Harris team has selected - "freedom" - tells me that Trump and DeSantis have already thoroughly and completely rebranded the GOP as the party of "bossing around women, minorities, and young people."
* Joe Biden Launches His Campaign For President: Let's Finish the Job (3:04)
24 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChjibtX0UzU
A notable thing to me about that Bideo re-elect video*: the speed of the edited video. There are probably more different images in those 3 minutes than in 6 months of Fox News B-roll. Oldest president ever launches with a video aimed direct at the TikTok generation.
See this classic Reagan 1984 "Morning in America" ad - and notice the huge speed-up in pace vs the 2024 Biden video. The generations are speaking different visual languages.
Reagan 1:01 ( https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1650804334291046402 )
Ah for the good old days of issue-rich campaigning
Eisenhower( https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1650807092809277440 )
Another point about the Biden election announcement video: the message the Biden-Harris team has selected - "freedom" - tells me that Trump and DeSantis have already thoroughly and completely rebranded the GOP as the party of "bossing around women, minorities, and young people."
* Joe Biden Launches His Campaign For President: Let's Finish the Job (3:04)
24 April 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChjibtX0UzU
91proximity1
Re-un-Elect champion White House Morons and rank fraudsters, the doddering Biden/and (if Biden's handlers are actually stupid enough to keep the even-more-moronic Harris on the ticket) K. Harris--America's most deplorable White House electoral frauds.
----------------------------------
The United States of America, a failed, disgraced, nation-state.
----------------------------------
The United States of America, a failed, disgraced, nation-state.
92prosfilaes
>91 proximity1: Biden won by 51% to 47%, with seven million more votes, and nobody has really alleged otherwise. But Trump & co. have claimed that around 43,000 votes were somehow bogus, and thus Trump should have won despite losing by seven million votes. That would be pretty undemocratic even if he had legitimately got those 43,000 votes.
93proximity1
Who's up for the 2024 version of Dem-Party electoral fraud and corruption of the electoral processes? Let's review, courtesy of a commentary by Matt Taibbi, that party's efforts, since the 2016 electoral campaign, to snow and bullshit the American public on matters of foreign and domestic politics:
It's very far from clear that the country can reverse the damage done or even stop or slow down its continuing poisoning of the nation's political and electoral processes. What's been done are the kinds of civil-society-wrecking harms which bring national ruin and downfall and have done that in other countries throughout history. A great part of the American public still thinks that the country "dodged a bullet" when, Biden/Harris took office. They have no idea. No bullet was dodged. Instead, it ripped right through the nation's heart. While Dems nervously celebrate their mistakenly held belief that they can repeat the tricks and fraud by which they stole the 2020 election and tried and nearly succeeded in stealing the 2016 presidential election, the country is bleeding to death, shot through the heart. That doesn't get "undone", "reversed".
Just read the this little bubble's majoritarians' shit appearing daily in this thread--the conventional, conformist view of the majority of those who post comments here. These people are completely lost in their fantasy world and have no idea of the damage they've cheered on.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Time to Get Spies Out of Politics | The Michael Morell story demonstrates that the intelligence community needs sweeping reform, beginning with getting spies all the way out of domestic political life | by Matt Taibbi | Apr 25, 2023 from Taibbi's substack.com site, Racket News.
... The 2016 article gave new weight to Trump-Russia claims. The term 'unwitting agent' appeared in headlines all over, from Reuters to Politico to NBC to The Washington Post to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. As my colleague Walter Kirn eloquently put it, 'In that statement, we have the seed of seven years of bullshit.'
There may not be a specific law enjoining intelligence officials from spreading lies in mass media to further electoral aims, or against politicians using intelligence personnel to mesmerize the flaccid brains of corporate reporters, but I’d argue such behavior goes against the spirit of the CIA’s 1947 charter prohibiting domestic spycraft.
These people — all of them — need to get out of domestic politics, leave cable, and go back to living off overpaid no-show jobs at the Rand Corporation or Raytheon as God ordained. They are exactly the direct threat to democracy they keep claiming other groups are, and it’s increasingly clear our survival as a nation will depend on finding a way to expunge them from the domestic political arena. It’s their remorseless fascistic rhetoric I think I hear when I see people like Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan say about the Tucker Carlson story, 'Now they just need to take out the rest of the trash.'
Who’s they? To what higher cabal is a member of congress referring when he talks about sweeping away the rest of America’s human trash? That sounds like Travis Bickle waiting for a 'real rain to come and wash all the scum off the streets,' except in modern America that’s not a lone outcast’s fantasy but mainstream cult demand. They want the rabble washed away, and can’t (wait) for an excuse (for it) to start raining.
(emphasis in the original text)
It's very far from clear that the country can reverse the damage done or even stop or slow down its continuing poisoning of the nation's political and electoral processes. What's been done are the kinds of civil-society-wrecking harms which bring national ruin and downfall and have done that in other countries throughout history. A great part of the American public still thinks that the country "dodged a bullet" when, Biden/Harris took office. They have no idea. No bullet was dodged. Instead, it ripped right through the nation's heart. While Dems nervously celebrate their mistakenly held belief that they can repeat the tricks and fraud by which they stole the 2020 election and tried and nearly succeeded in stealing the 2016 presidential election, the country is bleeding to death, shot through the heart. That doesn't get "undone", "reversed".
Just read the this little bubble's majoritarians' shit appearing daily in this thread--the conventional, conformist view of the majority of those who post comments here. These people are completely lost in their fantasy world and have no idea of the damage they've cheered on.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
94prosfilaes
>93 proximity1: A great part of the American public still thinks that the country "dodged a bullet" when, Biden/Harris took office.
A great part? Like how great? Like 50% of the voters great? You're looking at two elections where Republicans outperformed the polls, and act like the only way Democrats could have done as well as they did is by fraud.
You accuse us of being majoritarian, conventional, conformist, and don't understand how we could win a contest of who could get the most votes. You seem to be the one in a fantasy world, not understanding the rules by which this one is played.
A great part? Like how great? Like 50% of the voters great? You're looking at two elections where Republicans outperformed the polls, and act like the only way Democrats could have done as well as they did is by fraud.
You accuse us of being majoritarian, conventional, conformist, and don't understand how we could win a contest of who could get the most votes. You seem to be the one in a fantasy world, not understanding the rules by which this one is played.
95lriley
Trump has always had concerns about his own legitamacy. He lost the popular vote by almost 3 million in 2016 and almost right off he was alleging without any proof that 3 million or so undocumented immigrants had voted. At his inauguration more bullshit about crowd size that went on for weeks ad nauseam because the size of his crowd had to be larger than anything previous. It all feeds into this mania he has about having the mostest and the bestest. His 2020 claims would still have left him way behind in the popular vote if he could have somehow salvaged the seven states he disputed. The truth is he's never been popular with the majority of voters nationwide. His only hope ever has been to win enough of the smaller states to win enough electoral votes or while in power try to stage a coup.
96proximity1
>95 lriley:
and my only hope is that creaking, stumbling, demented sack of criminal shit--head of the Biden Crime Family-- somehow staggers his way to election-day--and with all that, despite the fresh machinations to rig and defraud the election anew, he lives to see Trump defeat him with a margin which cannot be waived off as a fluke.
Re-un-Elect champion White House Morons, Bumbling Biden/Hilarious Harris.
Trump's "imposter syndrome" worries are nothing compared to those of the Biden Mafia family's. Grifter Papa Joe never had a forward step in his career except what he got through sham and deviousness.
and my only hope is that creaking, stumbling, demented sack of criminal shit--head of the Biden Crime Family-- somehow staggers his way to election-day--and with all that, despite the fresh machinations to rig and defraud the election anew, he lives to see Trump defeat him with a margin which cannot be waived off as a fluke.
Re-un-Elect champion White House Morons, Bumbling Biden/Hilarious Harris.
Trump's "imposter syndrome" worries are nothing compared to those of the Biden Mafia family's. Grifter Papa Joe never had a forward step in his career except what he got through sham and deviousness.
97kiparsky
>96 proximity1: Joe never had a forward step in his career except what he got through sham and deviousness.
This is an intriguing confession by accusation. Obviously, it does not apply to Biden in any way, but just as obviously, it's perfectly applicable to Trump - though, to be perfectly fair, we should also include the massive inheritance that he received and squandered through his massive ineptitude.
It's odd that you somehow think that nobody notices this.
This is an intriguing confession by accusation. Obviously, it does not apply to Biden in any way, but just as obviously, it's perfectly applicable to Trump - though, to be perfectly fair, we should also include the massive inheritance that he received and squandered through his massive ineptitude.
It's odd that you somehow think that nobody notices this.
98Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/election-2024/gop-megadonor-peter-thiel-wont-fund-candi...
GOP Megadonor Peter Thiel Won’t Fund Candidates in 2024 Because He’s Sick of the Culture War: Report
He won't fund ANY candidates.
***
For the sake of America's democracy, I hope other GOP mega donors follow this dudes lead.
GOP Megadonor Peter Thiel Won’t Fund Candidates in 2024 Because He’s Sick of the Culture War: Report
He won't fund ANY candidates.
***
For the sake of America's democracy, I hope other GOP mega donors follow this dudes lead.
100proximity1
You people crack my shit up.
This culture war --and, remember: you demanded it--is now going on like it or not. It's now following an insane "logic" of its own and neither Peter Thiel nor anyone else, mega-bucks donor or not, is more than an innocent "observer". You're in this, he's in this, we're all in this insane mania until it runs its own course and, in doing that, it's going to grind up and destroy, leave in ruins numerous other people and institutions which, when it has finished with them, won't resemble their former selves or be fit for those former selves' purposes.
A recent commentary from Byron York in The Washington Examiner raises the most bizarre and macabre aspect of this Hollywood-style "Slasher"-movie spectacle unfolding right before our eyes:
Here's the measure of this precipice to which we've come by a blind stupidity's following its logical course: Many readers are so inured to the partisan blindness which keeps them in thrall to a sole objective, keeping a fair election from producing an electoral victory for Donald Trump, that they'll rudely shrug off what their own common sense would otherwise tell them about Kamala Harris succeeding Joe Biden in the White House to finish a term his own life's health won't last through.
In no other circumstances--not even with the hardly-to-be-believed precedent of a Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate-- at no other time in U.S. history, barring open warfare, has anyone or any nightmare scenario brought the country to so low a bar as this one.
And that won't matter to Trump's adversaries because nothing can matter to them as long as they can find in their desperation a belief, however fanciful, that this time they'll put a stop to Trump as an electoral threat--for that is all he represents to them, not a legitimate candidate whose supporters have a right to find him worthy of election but only a threat to their shakey political house-of-cards. It's Biden and Harris by pathetic, desperate default.
-----------------
This culture war --and, remember: you demanded it--is now going on like it or not. It's now following an insane "logic" of its own and neither Peter Thiel nor anyone else, mega-bucks donor or not, is more than an innocent "observer". You're in this, he's in this, we're all in this insane mania until it runs its own course and, in doing that, it's going to grind up and destroy, leave in ruins numerous other people and institutions which, when it has finished with them, won't resemble their former selves or be fit for those former selves' purposes.
A recent commentary from Byron York in The Washington Examiner raises the most bizarre and macabre aspect of this Hollywood-style "Slasher"-movie spectacle unfolding right before our eyes:
"THE MOST IMPORTANT VICE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIME.
It is commonplace on the campaign trail to hear a presidential candidate declare that the current campaign is 'the most important election of our lifetime.' That is usually not the case. Many of them end up being not terribly consequential at all.
"But now that President Joe Biden has declared his candidacy for reelection, it is possible to call the 2024 race the most important vice presidential election of our lifetime. Why? Because the president will be 82 years old. That fact alone places the spotlight on the presumptive 2024 Democratic nominee for vice president, current Vice President Kamala Harris." ...
Here's the measure of this precipice to which we've come by a blind stupidity's following its logical course: Many readers are so inured to the partisan blindness which keeps them in thrall to a sole objective, keeping a fair election from producing an electoral victory for Donald Trump, that they'll rudely shrug off what their own common sense would otherwise tell them about Kamala Harris succeeding Joe Biden in the White House to finish a term his own life's health won't last through.
In no other circumstances--not even with the hardly-to-be-believed precedent of a Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential candidate-- at no other time in U.S. history, barring open warfare, has anyone or any nightmare scenario brought the country to so low a bar as this one.
And that won't matter to Trump's adversaries because nothing can matter to them as long as they can find in their desperation a belief, however fanciful, that this time they'll put a stop to Trump as an electoral threat--for that is all he represents to them, not a legitimate candidate whose supporters have a right to find him worthy of election but only a threat to their shakey political house-of-cards. It's Biden and Harris by pathetic, desperate default.
Treasonous Trump Must Be Barred From Running | Robert Reich, The Guardian
Biden Team Works To Finalize 2024 Bid Despite Tepid Polls | Phil Mattingly, CNN
Two Cheers for Biden Running Again | Matthew Cooper, Washington Monthly
How Dems Cast Aside Fears and Embraced Biden 2024 | Shane Goldmacher, New York Times
What If Biden Can't Finish the Race? | Shane Harris, AMAC
------------------------------
*(uh, no: the question is "What if Biden Can't Finish His Term?--assuming he's re-elected" !!!)
Do Democrats Really Want Biden To Run Again? | Washington Examiner
-----------------
101Molly3028
Someone here reminds me of the 'culture war warrior' who was just jettisoned from his on-air job on FOX News because the Murdochs decided he was more trouble around the workplace than he was worth to them on the prime-time show he hosted for many years.
The people who attended revival tent meetings in the past are most likely the ancestors of the present-day MAGA rally attendees. Their lots in life have not improved over the many decades that separate them from each other. No 21st Century cult leader is going to change that.
The people who attended revival tent meetings in the past are most likely the ancestors of the present-day MAGA rally attendees. Their lots in life have not improved over the many decades that separate them from each other. No 21st Century cult leader is going to change that.
102prosfilaes
>100 proximity1: keeping a fair election from producing an electoral victory for Donald Trump, ... not a legitimate candidate whose supporters have a right to find him worthy of election
We don't like Donald Trump, therefore we're going to vote against him and push to have other people vote against him. When an election went against the will of the people as defined by the plurality of votes, you ignored questions of fairness and ragged on electoral victory, and when in the next election, a majority of votes and the electoral college went against Trump, you cried foul and attempted to overthrow the election.
Anyone is a legitimate candidate whose supporters have a right to find them worthy of election. (Unless, of course, they've violated the Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3.) But he had no experience in government, was incompetent as president, and cause a coup attempt when he lost election. Complain all you want, we aren't obliged to find anyone a good candidate or support them running.
at no other time in U.S. history, barring open warfare, has anyone or any nightmare scenario brought the country to so low a bar as this one.
She is a legitimate candidate whose supporters have a right to find her worthy of election.
I really, really don't get why you keep making these posts. You could try and argue Kamala Harris is a bad candidate, and use facts and arguments that might change the minds of the people you're talking to. Instead you bloviate in a way that will convince no one.
We don't like Donald Trump, therefore we're going to vote against him and push to have other people vote against him. When an election went against the will of the people as defined by the plurality of votes, you ignored questions of fairness and ragged on electoral victory, and when in the next election, a majority of votes and the electoral college went against Trump, you cried foul and attempted to overthrow the election.
Anyone is a legitimate candidate whose supporters have a right to find them worthy of election. (Unless, of course, they've violated the Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3.) But he had no experience in government, was incompetent as president, and cause a coup attempt when he lost election. Complain all you want, we aren't obliged to find anyone a good candidate or support them running.
at no other time in U.S. history, barring open warfare, has anyone or any nightmare scenario brought the country to so low a bar as this one.
She is a legitimate candidate whose supporters have a right to find her worthy of election.
I really, really don't get why you keep making these posts. You could try and argue Kamala Harris is a bad candidate, and use facts and arguments that might change the minds of the people you're talking to. Instead you bloviate in a way that will convince no one.
103proximity1
"You could try and argue Kamala Harris is a bad candidate, and use facts and arguments that might change the minds of the people you're talking to."
In a million years of her trying, she'd never remotely approach rising to the level of a "bad candidate". She's like Joe Biden, unfit mentally and morally for office, but,--much worse: she's intellectually so stupid that, by contrast, she makes Sarah Palin look like a Rhodes Scholar; though voters do, yes, have a right--the right Donald Trump's supporters have been assiduously denied by people like you!--to vote for Harris, that's only because their right to do that goes with their right to prefer a patently incompetent candidate and ignore the peril of such a choice.
But, voters have a legal right to be insanely stupid, not merely unjustly accused of being so as were Trump's supporters by the other half of the electorate which labelled them a "basket of deplorables."
What they don't have a right to do is what Biden's and Harris's supporters have made an obsession for six years--trying to discredit and undermine and reverse a legitimate electoral outcome which was contrary to their partisan desires. That's what Biden's and Harris's supporters did. You have a hell of a nerve to dare to come here and claim the sort of electoral respect for Harris's re-election which, in Trump's case, was refused by so many just like you. A Hell of a nerve! They set a disastrous precedent in doing so and, now, the way is open for any other candidate's partisans to do that same thing. Voters could not do more harm to the country if they were to somehow put every American man, woman and child aboard a single passenger airliner and then put Kamala Harris into the cockpit alone and clear the plane for take-off. That is what a re-election of Biden/Harris represents. Only an inconceivable miracle could avert a disaster in such a case.
Following is a fresh example of the kind of incredible idiocy I've referred to as the source of this country's pathetic bewilderment:
(Newsweek Magazine) | Opinion | Biden's Reckless Gamble on Himself | David Faris , Associate Professor, Roosevelt University | 4/26/23
... "while the president (Biden) is unlikely to draw a serious challenger in the primaries, nominating an unpopular octogenarian is a potentially catastrophic risk for Democrats, and for the country. If he (Biden) stumbles, we will all pay the price of four years of reactionary Republican governance that could entrench minority rule forever." ...
"If he stumbles..." ?
What does this moron professor think President Biden has been doing since he was installed--other than stumbling?
"Reactionary Republican (party) governance"? As opposed to what?-- FFS!!
Again, if you would know how bad things are now, just consider:
..."entrench(ed) minority rule forever" is the long-shot up-side of our country's prospects over the coming years just ahead. Wild stupidity from an associate professor-- of "political science"!
--------------------------------------------
104prosfilaes
>103 proximity1:
I would have responded to that post in more detail, but I have no idea what you're ranting about. Are you complaining that the Democrats used their constitution-given power to impeach a president for using his office for personal gain? That they spent time investigating if the Russians influenced the election? That they had the audacity to claim that the person who got more votes in a state won, and thus Trump lost? Or just pissed we didn't kneel down at the golden statue of Trump?
Also you have failed to tell me a thing critical about Harris, beyond that you think her "unfit mentally and morally for office", which your support of Donald "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV." "Grab 'em by the pussy" Trump leads me to dismiss off hand. (Did you notice I actually mentioned specific instances of why Trump is unfit mentally and morally?)
I would have responded to that post in more detail, but I have no idea what you're ranting about. Are you complaining that the Democrats used their constitution-given power to impeach a president for using his office for personal gain? That they spent time investigating if the Russians influenced the election? That they had the audacity to claim that the person who got more votes in a state won, and thus Trump lost? Or just pissed we didn't kneel down at the golden statue of Trump?
Also you have failed to tell me a thing critical about Harris, beyond that you think her "unfit mentally and morally for office", which your support of Donald "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV." "Grab 'em by the pussy" Trump leads me to dismiss off hand. (Did you notice I actually mentioned specific instances of why Trump is unfit mentally and morally?)
105Molly3028
The voting public is 49% Independent at this juncture. The normal majority is the target group a winning candidate must capture to gain a seat in the White House. That leaves out the nuts on both ends of the political spectrum.
106proximity1
Commentary | Miranda Devine | at The New York Post | "If the GOP can’t figure out how to beat old Joe, they’re useless " | 26 April, 2023
One day after he announced he was running for a second term, our cognitively challenged commander in chief was spotted clutching a cheat sheet with the exact wording of a question he was about to be asked at a press conference.
It’s bad enough that the Los Angeles Times agreed to submit questions in advance and collude in this Emperor’s New Clothes-style defrauding of the American voter, but Joe Biden can’t even get it together enough to hide the cheat sheets.
Honestly, if Republicans can’t figure out how to beat this corrupt, divisive, addled, old man, who has wrought so much damage in half a term, then what use are they?
Biden’s prerecorded announcement Tuesday that he wants to “finish the job” at 82 should be God’s gift to his political opponents, especially when his cackling backup is a vice president whose every public utterance seems to be written by Cheech & Chong. ...
...
107prosfilaes
>106 proximity1: Quotation, instead of response.
a vice president whose every public utterance seems to be written by Cheech & Chong
Still amazingly fact free.
a vice president whose every public utterance seems to be written by Cheech & Chong
Still amazingly fact free.
108kiparsky
>107 prosfilaes: You have to admit, it's sort of hilarious that prox wants to say that the president isn't capable of forming his own sentences, but he can't manage to come up with his own words to say so.
110proximity1
" Biden's Cheat-sheet Again Raises the Question of Who Is Really in Charge" | The American Spectator | Daniel J. Flynn | 27 April 2023
Despite the paucity of presidential pressers, Biden, as clearly shown by a photograph, carried with him a cheat sheet. On it (was) contained the name and picture of Courtney Subramanian, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and a question: “How are YOU squaring YOUR domestic priorities — like reshoring semiconductors manufacturing — with alliance-based foreign policy?”
One wonders if Subramanian or Biden suffered the greater professional embarrassment. Even schoolchildren know that possessing the questions in advance amounts to a big no-no. ...
111John5918
>110 proximity1:
Is it really so uncommon to receive advance notice of some questions, particularly on relatively obscure technical topics such as "semiconductor manufacturing"? No president is likely to have all the facts at their fingertips, and a briefing by technical staff would seem to be the natural process if a comprehensive response is expected.
Is it really so uncommon to receive advance notice of some questions, particularly on relatively obscure technical topics such as "semiconductor manufacturing"? No president is likely to have all the facts at their fingertips, and a briefing by technical staff would seem to be the natural process if a comprehensive response is expected.
112Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/analysis/fox-news-bleeds-viewers-in-prime-time-amid-vie...
Fox News Bleeds Viewers in Prime Time Amid Viewer Fury Over Tucker Carlson Ouster
***
The shedding of the clueless MAGA-type viewers 18 months before the next presidential election is going to be good for FOX News and America in the long run. It is time for the return of fact-based info 24/7. Alternative-fact info ~ via Kellyanne Conway and her ilk ~ has been very bad for our country's political well-being.
The white nationalists, white supremacists and authoritarian-types will be gathering at Tucker's new home-base cave sooner or later.
Fox News Bleeds Viewers in Prime Time Amid Viewer Fury Over Tucker Carlson Ouster
***
The shedding of the clueless MAGA-type viewers 18 months before the next presidential election is going to be good for FOX News and America in the long run. It is time for the return of fact-based info 24/7. Alternative-fact info ~ via Kellyanne Conway and her ilk ~ has been very bad for our country's political well-being.
The white nationalists, white supremacists and authoritarian-types will be gathering at Tucker's new home-base cave sooner or later.
113lriley
The problem for this knucklehead is he could go to OANN or Newsmaxx but they just don't have the same distribution. I'm guessing he use to have an hour of prime time. It's not likely this character is going to want to increase that if at all. So then these media organizations if they got him on board would have to figure out how to lead up to him and also is he going to take a big pay cut? I'm thinking probably. FOX already had everything in place for him....had all the other goofballs to keep their viewership kind of fired up until he went on....and they're all making millions of dollars. Logistically FOX has all their competition on the right beat in just about every conceivable way. They have the money and the reach that OANN and/or Newsmaxx can only dream of.
114kiparsky
>110 proximity1: It's also hilarious that someone who's pulling for Trump is talking about "professional embarrassment". I mean, can you name a worse president than Trump? You'd have to go back to Reagan (who, like Trump, was in a state of advanced cognitive decay and unable to even remember the last thing he'd said, or the names of members of his cabinet)
You seem to be suggesting that Biden's press team planted a question with a friendly reporter. I'm pretty sure this is not the first time that's happened, and I'm pretty sure Trump's team tried to do this as well - but since Trump wasn't able to read his notes, they resorted to purging the press pool to get rid of unfriendly reporters. I don't remember you pitching a lulu over that one, though.
You seem to be suggesting that Biden's press team planted a question with a friendly reporter. I'm pretty sure this is not the first time that's happened, and I'm pretty sure Trump's team tried to do this as well - but since Trump wasn't able to read his notes, they resorted to purging the press pool to get rid of unfriendly reporters. I don't remember you pitching a lulu over that one, though.
115proximity1
Another evacuation/refugee disaster-crisis. Sudan. Again. Quick! Somebody tell Jill Biden to get Hunter to call in a favor. We've got to stop Trump and Tucker Carlson from making a come-back!
NOTE:
This last cardinal point is much better understood and more properly rendered as, (amended part in bold-face) :
"No Longer the Unforgivable Sin" | (from RealClearPolitics) COMMENTARY | By Mark Corallo | 28 April 2023
I was told early in my career that lying to reporters was the unforgivable sin. Spin was accepted and expected, but lying was a career ender. Lie to a reporter and not only would that reporter never trust you again but would ensure his fellow scribes knew of the transgression and would avoid you as a source.
Case in point: As director of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice in February 2004, I was routinely asked by reporters if the department had opened an investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. On Friday, Feb. 6, I informed them that no investigation was open, only to learn the criminal division had opened one late that night without notifying anyone. Even the attorney general’s office was caught unaware.
When the story about the investigation was leaked and broke Tuesday morning, I arrived at my office to a crowd of angry reporters led by USA Today’s Toni Loci, who berated me with a barrage of four-letter words which were enthusiastically endorsed by her colleagues. And then she branded me a bleeping liar.
When she finished and the grumbling subsided, I explained the timeline and that I hadn’t lied, and the career attorney who launched the investigation vouched for me. I was forgiven, but it’s not an experience anyone on either end of the government-media relationship wants to experience. At least that’s what I thought.
I have defended reporters my entire career because I believed an adversarial press was important to accountability and transparency – that an adversarial press was this republic’s last line of defense against government tyranny. I’d always considered myself a middleman, the conduit of information from the people’s government to the free press who deliver it to the American people – the rightful owners of that information. ... (my elipsis here)
A lot about journalism has changed in 20 years, and perhaps I was naïve, but what should not have changed is the fundamental principle that reporters should expect sources to tell the truth and should impose severe penalties when sources violate that principle. And yet here we are.
How else can the press explain their ongoing relationships and use of intelligence officials as named sources in their reporting who flat out lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop bearing the “classic hallmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign? Former CIA Director Michael Morel lied. Former CIA Director James Brennan lied. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied.
These liars lied to the press to prop up the political campaign of Joe Biden. These former intelligence chiefs lied to the press fully expecting reporters would lie to the American people. Yet these liars still hold lucrative gigs on the cable networks as expert commentators, are regularly used as on-the-record, and no doubt off-the-record, sources to the entire cadre of Beltway journalists. These liars will frequent the White House Correspondents Dinner and all the exclusive cocktail parties this weekend hosted by news organizations.
They are liars, the reporters know that they were deceived by them and …* nothing has changed. (*elipses in the original text)
... ...
“But Trump!” is not a legitimate excuse to be complicit in lies and disinformation to the public. If in your arrogance you believe we, the people, will make the wrong decision if we have the full set of accurate facts, then you are the problem and have rightly earned our scorn and with it, your eventual obsolescence.
NOTE:
This last cardinal point is much better understood and more properly rendered as, (amended part in bold-face) :
If in your arrogance you believe we, the people, will make the wrong decision if we have the full set ofaccuratedisputed facts, then you are the problem and have rightly earned our scorn and with it, your eventual obsolescence.
(italics added)
116margd
David Frum @davidfrum | 5:00 PM · Apr 28, 2023:
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1652055574861758464
The DeSantis campaign has just dropped a quasi-announcement video. You can watch it here.
Winner: Never Back Down ( https://youtube.com/watch?v=bHM0aj_fLMo )
Here's what I noticed as I watched ...
In scene after scene, voters are shown interacting with DeSantis indirectly, through screens, via media.
EG...
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1652055574861758464
The DeSantis campaign has just dropped a quasi-announcement video. You can watch it here.
Winner: Never Back Down ( https://youtube.com/watch?v=bHM0aj_fLMo )
Here's what I noticed as I watched ...
In scene after scene, voters are shown interacting with DeSantis indirectly, through screens, via media.
EG...
117proximity1
In an opinion article at FOX News's website, entitled, "It's time for a competency test for politicians. Here's why" candidate Nikki Haley explains to us why she thinks so.
The head-line's text goes on to summarize her thesis:
"Voters deserve to know whether their leaders can pass a very basic mental exam."
Her "solution" or response is just as ill-conceived as is what she set's out as "the problem".
First of all, voters need no such proof-by-mental-exam in order to be quite aware of the fact that addle-pated nit-wit Joe Biden is not up to the job of the office his party stole. It's so painfully obvious to everyone that the voters certainly know this already--and they were among the first to know it. The corrupt media is obviously and, of course, in denial. Columns of commentary have been written about their trying, clumsily, to cover up for Biden. They can no more cover up for Biden's dementia than they can cover up their own complicity in corruption.
So Haley's proposal won't help alleviate any problem. But it shall significantly worsen some.
Our electoral politics are corrupt to the point of being putrid. Mental competency tests? There was such a thing: it was known as a free and fair election by voters at the ballot-box. They determined with their ballots who they deemed mentally-competent to serve in elected office. But that vital process has been corrupted out of all recognition and imposing a specialist mental-competency test shall do nothing to correct it. Any party which can game the federal presidential election processes and see a fraudulent result ratified can also easily game and corrupt ("fix") any conceivable mental-competency test-- and then, with the national press corps to second the results, shamelessly lie in attestation of them.
Haley's proposed "solution" is another slap in the face of voters--more reason for them to look with despair on their country's corrupt political scene and their systematic removal from a decisive and respectable role in determining its electoral outcomes.
Before sending them off to a Gulag, the Soviet system "tested" its political opponents' sanity and, amazingly!, invariably found them mentally insane and in need of confinement in a psychiatric prison. The same tests which can be corrupted to show a drooling Biden's fitness for office can also be corrupted to show that his most electorally-threatening opponent is mentally unfit.
Once thoroughly corrupt, an electoral process cannot be saved or rehabilitated by such gaming nonsense as a mental-competency test; it is merely more of the same "Emperor's New Clothes" bullshit.
But this proposition does help demonstrate what some of us already recognized: Nikki Haley can't think things through very well. Unlike Biden, she's not demented. She's just not very "bright".
The head-line's text goes on to summarize her thesis:
"Voters deserve to know whether their leaders can pass a very basic mental exam."
Her "solution" or response is just as ill-conceived as is what she set's out as "the problem".
First of all, voters need no such proof-by-mental-exam in order to be quite aware of the fact that addle-pated nit-wit Joe Biden is not up to the job of the office his party stole. It's so painfully obvious to everyone that the voters certainly know this already--and they were among the first to know it. The corrupt media is obviously and, of course, in denial. Columns of commentary have been written about their trying, clumsily, to cover up for Biden. They can no more cover up for Biden's dementia than they can cover up their own complicity in corruption.
So Haley's proposal won't help alleviate any problem. But it shall significantly worsen some.
Our electoral politics are corrupt to the point of being putrid. Mental competency tests? There was such a thing: it was known as a free and fair election by voters at the ballot-box. They determined with their ballots who they deemed mentally-competent to serve in elected office. But that vital process has been corrupted out of all recognition and imposing a specialist mental-competency test shall do nothing to correct it. Any party which can game the federal presidential election processes and see a fraudulent result ratified can also easily game and corrupt ("fix") any conceivable mental-competency test-- and then, with the national press corps to second the results, shamelessly lie in attestation of them.
Haley's proposed "solution" is another slap in the face of voters--more reason for them to look with despair on their country's corrupt political scene and their systematic removal from a decisive and respectable role in determining its electoral outcomes.
Before sending them off to a Gulag, the Soviet system "tested" its political opponents' sanity and, amazingly!, invariably found them mentally insane and in need of confinement in a psychiatric prison. The same tests which can be corrupted to show a drooling Biden's fitness for office can also be corrupted to show that his most electorally-threatening opponent is mentally unfit.
Once thoroughly corrupt, an electoral process cannot be saved or rehabilitated by such gaming nonsense as a mental-competency test; it is merely more of the same "Emperor's New Clothes" bullshit.
But this proposition does help demonstrate what some of us already recognized: Nikki Haley can't think things through very well. Unlike Biden, she's not demented. She's just not very "bright".
118margd
David Frum @davidfrum | 5:20 PM · Dec 3, 2020:
{Canadian-American political commentator and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, who is currently a senior editor at The Atlantic as well as an MSNBC contributor. In 2003, Frum authored the first book about Bush's presidency written by a former member of the administration. (Wikipedia)}
Share of vote 21st c. presidential candidates
1) Obama 2008 52.9
2) Biden 2020 51.3
3) Obama 2012 51.1
4) Bush 2004 50.7
5) Gore 2000 48.4
6) Kerry 2004 48.3
7) Clinton 2016 48.2
8) Bush 2000 47.9
9) Romney 2012 47.2
10) Trump 2020 46.9
11) Trump 2016 46.1
12) McCain 2008 45.7
{Canadian-American political commentator and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, who is currently a senior editor at The Atlantic as well as an MSNBC contributor. In 2003, Frum authored the first book about Bush's presidency written by a former member of the administration. (Wikipedia)}
Share of vote 21st c. presidential candidates
1) Obama 2008 52.9
2) Biden 2020 51.3
3) Obama 2012 51.1
4) Bush 2004 50.7
5) Gore 2000 48.4
6) Kerry 2004 48.3
7) Clinton 2016 48.2
8) Bush 2000 47.9
9) Romney 2012 47.2
10) Trump 2020 46.9
11) Trump 2016 46.1
12) McCain 2008 45.7
119Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/election-2024/shocking-75-of-trump-supporters-say-theyl...
Shocking 75% of Trump Supporters Say They’ll Vote For Him Because They Believe Fantasy That He Won the 2020 Election
***
Sad, but NOT shocking ~
Thanks to the brainwashing techniques used by Limbaugh and his long-time a.m. radio ilk, modern-day charlatans like Trump and Carlson have been able to capture the minds, hearts and souls of poor, disenchanted Americans. These poor souls continue to be pawns in the lives of dudes who are on personal power and enrichments trips. The faces and eras change, but the tale has been the same throughout history.
Shocking 75% of Trump Supporters Say They’ll Vote For Him Because They Believe Fantasy That He Won the 2020 Election
***
Sad, but NOT shocking ~
Thanks to the brainwashing techniques used by Limbaugh and his long-time a.m. radio ilk, modern-day charlatans like Trump and Carlson have been able to capture the minds, hearts and souls of poor, disenchanted Americans. These poor souls continue to be pawns in the lives of dudes who are on personal power and enrichments trips. The faces and eras change, but the tale has been the same throughout history.
120proximity1
>118 margd: , >119 Molly3028:
I truly pity you two and I pity the United States for what people like you
have done and are continuing to do it.
121John5918
>120 proximity1:
Why would you "pity" someone for posting a list of actual facts? Unless you wish to challenge the facts in >118 margd:, in which case some evidence would seem to be called for. It's interesting to see Obama and Biden at the top of the list, and Trump pretty much at the bottom.
Why would you "pity" someone for posting a list of actual facts? Unless you wish to challenge the facts in >118 margd:, in which case some evidence would seem to be called for. It's interesting to see Obama and Biden at the top of the list, and Trump pretty much at the bottom.
122proximity1
Yesterday I tried to point out the remarkable nonsense behind a commentary by Nikki Haley, a woman who imagines herself fit for the office of president of the United States. Now I take up another load of nonsense published by a writer under the pseudonym "Carpe Diem", who was, according to the publisher (the website American Greatness: "The GOP Has a Gen Z Problem" ), "a speechwriter in the Trump Administration."
What we're told is supposed to alarm those who care about the prospects of the Republican Party and, with it, the welfare of the U.S. in general, for
"According to the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2028, Millennials (those born between 1981-1996) and Gen Z (those born between 1997-2012) will represent a plurality of eligible voters. By 2036, those two cohorts will represent more than 60 percent of would-be voters.
In other words, the most uninformed group of voters—those with the least amount of life experience—will soon be deciding who sits in the Oval Office and who controls Congress over the course of the next several elections."
Or, in "other" other words, those born between 1981 and 2012 shall, in 2036, be between the ages of 24 and 55.
It's implied in the author's thesis but not stated expressly--perhaps because, to have stated it expressly it might have been regarded as a preposterous assumption-- that these 24 to 55 year olds in 2036 should be considered a "voting bloc." Never mind that we do not today regard the 24 to 55 year old population as a voting bloc. Nor do we regard the 55 year olds as being, on average, as naive and inexperienced in the affairs of the world as the average 24 year olds. It is not explained how or why we are to assume that "older & wiser" shall mysteriously cease to apply over the course of the next dozen years. But, that, too, is implicitly assumed. Over the next twelve years, we're to suppose that nothing (further) comes to light in the already shocking and sordid saga of the Biden family's signature business, namely, corrupt influence-peddling, or, if it does, these Millennials and GenZers shall either not notice--being their still-too-young-and-mentally-spaced-out selves--or they simply won't mind what the intervening experience shows them.
Broken down by race, ethnicity, or sex, the figures look even worse for the GOP among young adults.
Consider that in the last election, 58 percent of white Americans ages 18-29 voted for the party that says a person is racist solely for lacking melanin. Meanwhile, 89 percent of African Americans ages 18-29 voted for the party that wants to defund the police. And 68 percent of Latinos ages 18-29 voted for the party that condescendingly refers to them as “Latinx.”
I do and I have. And, yes, that says plenty about the present amazingly stupid state of U.S. politics and the opinions of these now-still-young Americans. What it does not reliably tell us is much of anything about how these same people shall be thinking and behaving electorally in 2036.
Not surprisingly, Republicans fared equally as bad among young female voters in the 2022 midterms.
To which I reply, first, did a former White House speech-writer actually write, "equally as bad"?! Really?
Then, to return to the point, even if so, so what? Why should young women of 2022 be appreciably less naive and inexperienced --i.e. politically rather dim-witted-- than their male counterparts in age? That is not explained. Maybe it's left unexplained because there's nothing to it.
In 2022, 65 percent of white female voters ages 18-29 voted for the party that wants to let biological men compete against female athletes. Eighty-nine percent of African American females ages 18-29 voted for the party that celebrates abortion on demand, and 80 percent of Latinas voted for the party that can’t even define what a woman is.
The numbers will likely only get worse in future elections. It’s not hard to understand why the Right does so poorly with young voters each election cycle.
Why shall the numbers "only get worse" with the passing of time? They might, of course-- assuming that we go on as a society learning little or nothing as hard experience
kicks more and more people in the ass for their stubborn refusal to wake up and look around themselves. We might even go the way of the Wooly Mamouths--extinction, after all, is what these geniuses of worldly experience, the Millennials and GenZers, of today, have already predicted as a virtual foregone conclusion--- unless we adopt their desperately drawn up regimes for the salvation of the contemporary world.
It’s tough to compete with the Left when they offer up a Bernie Sanders socialist goody bag of free college, free healthcare, a guaranteed universal basic income, and the Green New Deal, all paid for by us.
No. Really, it isn't. First, the aging and ever-more-moronic Bernie Sanders, like his idiot peer, Joe Biden, shall not even be likely to be alive in 2036. (I don't count it for myself.)
The elderly--both clever and dim-witted--shall pass away to be replaced by fresh generations of clever and dim-witted elderly. Elon Musk shall take his place among the clever elderly and Bill Maher (unless his dope-smoking and boozing kill him first) and Nikki Haley, though younger, shall take their places among the dim-witted elderly.
Is it any wonder that the pink-haired gender studies majors are down for the cause when their party believes merit-based achievements are immoral, allows individuals to identify any one of 568 genders, thinks illegal immigration is wonderful, and insists that men can get pregnant?
In these remarkably stupid times? No, it's no wonder.
Conversely, the Right offers up patriotism, lower taxes, fewer regulations, law and order, clean streets, energy independence, a secure border, and removing wokeness from our institutions.
Those might sound appealing to the commoners, but they aren’t exactly the type of issues that will excite any Che Guevera-worshiping, marijuana-loving atheist who spends her spare time scrolling TikTok and railing against the inhumanity of fracking as yet another manifestation of the late-capitalist patriarchy.
As it ought to do. "patriotism, lower taxes, fewer regulations, law and order, clean streets, energy independence, a secure border, and removing wokeness from our institutions" are likely to be more and more appealing to those who, though today at the age of 24, shall be fourteen years nearer to the age of 55 in 2036 and to those who, today at the age of 40 or 41, shall be 55 years old in 2036, unless something kills them in the meantime.
Good luck boasting to a cohort that is likely still supported by their parents that a vote for Republicans means a lower corporate tax rate, a wall along the southern U.S. border, the end of the “environmental, social, governance” movement, a strong stance against Russia, China, and Iran, and the dismantling of the Deep State.
So what can Republicans do to appeal to our disenchanted youth?
For one, stop calling them “snowflakes” and similarly derogatory names, even if that is exactly what they are. Would you vote for a candidate that constantly mocks and demeans you? Of course you wouldn’t. Why would young voters choose a party they believe is out of touch and holds them in contempt?
There are good chances that they'll be looking back at their youthful selves and self-describing as "foolish", "naive" "snow-flakes" which they were called by others at the time.
To worry that this maturation shall not and somehow cannot occur is to stupidly borrow trouble from imagination's bottomless-pit.
In the present circumstances of 2023, none of the following
is likely to cut much ice with the as yet remarkably naive, inexperienced and very foolish cohort under consideration here.
Instead, speak to them about the necessity of having strong families and how the Left wants to destroy the nuclear family in favor of big government and soulless, statist control.
And, despite their social-media-infected views of capitalism, it’s worth explaining that capitalism nevertheless remains the greatest system for lifting the highest number of people out of poverty.
Yes, most college-aged people have no sense of economics, or how the world actually works, but explain to them that it is not generous for pious politicians to tell us how we should spend our money. No one should be penalized for earning too much, if the market dictates there is a demand for their services.
Talk to them about American exceptionalism and the idea that our rights do not come from government but from God. And, in any case, government exists to protect rights, not hand out rights like candy to well-behaved children.
Speak to them about American ingenuity and about how our country has an unparalleled system that allows for creativity and entrepreneurialism, not one that stifles innovation like Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.
Tell them about the importance of being a striver, and an independent thinker, and the value of having a strong work ethic—not one where laziness, government handouts, and victimization are celebrated.
The bottom line: Unless and until Republicans figure out a better messaging strategy accompanied by sound policies to court younger voters, the Stupid Party will have a terrible time winning elections anytime in the foreseeable future.
We'll see. My concerns are rather that, in a system which has seen its presidential election balloting processes so badly corrupted and done little or nothing about preventing the same or similar fraud from being repeated in 2024, it's silly to worry about the voting behavior in the next election of this still relatively small and not-very-engaged-at-the-polls group of young people.
123prosfilaes
>117 proximity1: A mental competency test is probably too problematic to be useful. But it is nice to know things about a candidate, and just the fact alone that Trump refused to release his taxes is quite notable. Candidates should release tax data and college transcripts and other data for the journalists to natter over, just so we know some things they have to be honest about.
Oh, and Biden won, fair and square. The fact that no one is looking at the "rigged" elections and wondering about the legitimacy of the other people on the ballot is clear evidence of that.
Oh, and Biden won, fair and square. The fact that no one is looking at the "rigged" elections and wondering about the legitimacy of the other people on the ballot is clear evidence of that.
124prosfilaes
>122 proximity1: The link to the article, missing in this post, is https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/02/the-gop-has-a-gen-z-problem/
The article is at least interesting. Your mind-numbing assumption that today won't have an effect on tomorrow and that once they grow up they'll be just like their parents is absurd; is "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" still the battle-cry of the (now Republican) south?
The article is at least interesting. Your mind-numbing assumption that today won't have an effect on tomorrow and that once they grow up they'll be just like their parents is absurd; is "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" still the battle-cry of the (now Republican) south?
125prosfilaes
https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/02/the-gop-has-a-gen-z-problem/ is interesting, but I don't think it understands the issues well enough to discuss them. All its descriptions of the Left and Democrats are caricatures, and none of its descriptions of the Right and Republicans approach how Gen Z sees Republicans.
Gen Z, like most Americans, believes that abortion should be legal at least for the first 20-24 weeks, and Republicans have been banning abortions. College students and those who remember college find it disturbing that the GOP is trying to stop college students from voting and voter suppression in general. They all have gay friends; Republicans are seen coming down on gay people. Republicans are seen as "law and order" when it comes to oppressing minorities, but they're fine with the Capitol Insurrection and are pounding on the FBI; how dare they investigate Russian interference in the election! Saying "a strong stance against Russia, China, and Iran" is worth a laugh; Biden is much harder on Russia than Trump was. China is more complex, but Biden hasn't been soft on it and Trump comes off as playing political games with China instead of meaningfully opposing them.
I don't think Gen Z likes Iran's government; it reminds them too much of Republicans. (BURN). Republicans and Iran are a bit weird; John Bolton was all ready for bombing them, and Trump pulled back on that some. I suspect that many Republicans would have done the Iran nuclear deal if Obama hadn't done it, which lead them to oppose it. Personally, I think the US opposing Iran the way we do does nothing to change Iran; we actually provide them a clear external enemy that serves to support the Iran government.
Gen Z, like most Americans, believes that abortion should be legal at least for the first 20-24 weeks, and Republicans have been banning abortions. College students and those who remember college find it disturbing that the GOP is trying to stop college students from voting and voter suppression in general. They all have gay friends; Republicans are seen coming down on gay people. Republicans are seen as "law and order" when it comes to oppressing minorities, but they're fine with the Capitol Insurrection and are pounding on the FBI; how dare they investigate Russian interference in the election! Saying "a strong stance against Russia, China, and Iran" is worth a laugh; Biden is much harder on Russia than Trump was. China is more complex, but Biden hasn't been soft on it and Trump comes off as playing political games with China instead of meaningfully opposing them.
I don't think Gen Z likes Iran's government; it reminds them too much of Republicans. (BURN). Republicans and Iran are a bit weird; John Bolton was all ready for bombing them, and Trump pulled back on that some. I suspect that many Republicans would have done the Iran nuclear deal if Obama hadn't done it, which lead them to oppose it. Personally, I think the US opposing Iran the way we do does nothing to change Iran; we actually provide them a clear external enemy that serves to support the Iran government.
126proximity1
>123 prosfilaes:
"A mental competency test is probably too problematic to be useful."
Quite right. Think about it: this is a country so at-daggers-drawn that it can't even manage to agree on childishly simple things. The idea that there could be agreement on some meaningful mental-competency exam as a prerequisite for being a candidate for the office of president of the United States is something out of "The Outer Limits".
It would have to be made obligatory--because a "voluntary" submission to the exam should either make a farce of the term "voluntary" or the exam would be shrugged off and refused by anyone who wasn't in agreement with it --whether that was on principle (which I find compelling as a ground to refuse) or not. To make it mandatory would require an amendment to Article II, section 1 of the Constitution. If you think that's going to happen, you've just demonstrated mental unfitness for the office of president of the United States under a mental-fitness test. The list of "Things Americans Show Themselves Incapable of Doing in Political Life" is growing and becoming more obvious.
Again, it shall be a partisan war-zone. We know that because it already is one. Show me someone who stoutly insists that Joe Biden, today, is mentally fit for his office, let alone for a subsequent term, and I'll show you a Dem-party-favoring partisan; he or she might lie and deny being that, but it would be the case, despite the lying denial.
--------------------------------------
Racial segregation --in various parts of the territory-- was coeval with the settlement of the North American continent by European colonists and the advent of plantation economies in the southern colonies where cotton was a major crop. So it endured, despite the opposition to it of some, since its earliest days, for over three hundred years. Formal codified racial segregation's undoing, abolition, was many generations in the making. So, to take that as an example of "of course things change! Progress marches on!" is rather lame one when the time frame I consider--and in which you imagine your supposed re-making of youths' commonly observed maturation characteristics-- is a mere 14 years. My "mind-numbing" assumption is that something as comparably momentous and important as the eradication of segregation in the United States was from the 1500s to the late 1960s, probably shall not be produced in today's youth's political assumptions over the course of the next 15 years--even taking into account the far more rapid pace of change generally today.
"A mental competency test is probably too problematic to be useful."
Quite right. Think about it: this is a country so at-daggers-drawn that it can't even manage to agree on childishly simple things. The idea that there could be agreement on some meaningful mental-competency exam as a prerequisite for being a candidate for the office of president of the United States is something out of "The Outer Limits".
It would have to be made obligatory--because a "voluntary" submission to the exam should either make a farce of the term "voluntary" or the exam would be shrugged off and refused by anyone who wasn't in agreement with it --whether that was on principle (which I find compelling as a ground to refuse) or not. To make it mandatory would require an amendment to Article II, section 1 of the Constitution. If you think that's going to happen, you've just demonstrated mental unfitness for the office of president of the United States under a mental-fitness test. The list of "Things Americans Show Themselves Incapable of Doing in Political Life" is growing and becoming more obvious.
Again, it shall be a partisan war-zone. We know that because it already is one. Show me someone who stoutly insists that Joe Biden, today, is mentally fit for his office, let alone for a subsequent term, and I'll show you a Dem-party-favoring partisan; he or she might lie and deny being that, but it would be the case, despite the lying denial.
--------------------------------------
"Your mind-numbing assumption that today won't have an effect on tomorrow and that once they grow up they'll be just like their parents is absurd; is "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" still the battle-cry of the (now Republican) south?"
Racial segregation --in various parts of the territory-- was coeval with the settlement of the North American continent by European colonists and the advent of plantation economies in the southern colonies where cotton was a major crop. So it endured, despite the opposition to it of some, since its earliest days, for over three hundred years. Formal codified racial segregation's undoing, abolition, was many generations in the making. So, to take that as an example of "of course things change! Progress marches on!" is rather lame one when the time frame I consider--and in which you imagine your supposed re-making of youths' commonly observed maturation characteristics-- is a mere 14 years. My "mind-numbing" assumption is that something as comparably momentous and important as the eradication of segregation in the United States was from the 1500s to the late 1960s, probably shall not be produced in today's youth's political assumptions over the course of the next 15 years--even taking into account the far more rapid pace of change generally today.
127prosfilaes
>126 proximity1: to take that as an example of "of course things change! Progress marches on!" is rather lame one when the time frame I consider
How does this affect the concept that younger voters aren't going to magically give up all their opinions and revert to the opinions of their parents? Republicans are going to move towards the opinions of the new voters, or lose.
How does this affect the concept that younger voters aren't going to magically give up all their opinions and revert to the opinions of their parents? Republicans are going to move towards the opinions of the new voters, or lose.
128proximity1
>127 prosfilaes: non sequitur. (a.k.a. "gibberish")
Once more, you cannot read and parse plain English. Ask someone else to explain it to you. "The buses don't run where you live."
Once more, you cannot read and parse plain English. Ask someone else to explain it to you. "The buses don't run where you live."
129kiparsky
>126 proximity1: Show me someone who stoutly insists that Joe Biden, today, is mentally fit for his office
Joe Biden, today, is mentally fit for his office. And indeed, there is every indication that he will be as fit to hold office as anyone who's held it in the last fifty years, on the last day of his second term.
And don't call me stout.
(Mine's a bitter, if you don't mind)
Joe Biden, today, is mentally fit for his office. And indeed, there is every indication that he will be as fit to hold office as anyone who's held it in the last fifty years, on the last day of his second term.
And don't call me stout.
(Mine's a bitter, if you don't mind)
130Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/election-2024/chronically-unemployable-losers-former-tr...
‘Chronically Unemployable Losers’: Former Trump Advisor Says Trump 2024 is Run by ‘Lying’ Hypocrites From ‘Swamp’
Jenna Ellis, the former senior legal adviser to 45th President Donald Trump, accused her former employer of staffing his 2024 presidential campaign with “chronically unemployable losers” from the Republican “swamp” in a series of Twitter posts on Wednesday.
***
Another one of Trump's lowlife enablers is resurfacing for the 2024 election cycle. The grifters are returning to the political stage again because that is where clueless Trump voters are sending their hard-earned money.
‘Chronically Unemployable Losers’: Former Trump Advisor Says Trump 2024 is Run by ‘Lying’ Hypocrites From ‘Swamp’
Jenna Ellis, the former senior legal adviser to 45th President Donald Trump, accused her former employer of staffing his 2024 presidential campaign with “chronically unemployable losers” from the Republican “swamp” in a series of Twitter posts on Wednesday.
***
Another one of Trump's lowlife enablers is resurfacing for the 2024 election cycle. The grifters are returning to the political stage again because that is where clueless Trump voters are sending their hard-earned money.
131prosfilaes
>130 Molly3028: staffing his 2024 presidential campaign with “chronically unemployable losers” from the Republican “swamp”
Uh, yeah, isn't that what he did for his time as president? John Bolton still annoys me; it's clear his goals weren't aligned with Trump's, and it appears he may have deceived Trump at one point to get him to bomb Iran. I preferred President Trump to President Bolton; Bolton wanted war with Iran, and has made that clear for 40 years. Trump should have been able to see this, especially if he were the master businessman he claimed to be. Instead he put a Republican hanger-on way too close to starting the war with Iran Bolton dreamed of.
Uh, yeah, isn't that what he did for his time as president? John Bolton still annoys me; it's clear his goals weren't aligned with Trump's, and it appears he may have deceived Trump at one point to get him to bomb Iran. I preferred President Trump to President Bolton; Bolton wanted war with Iran, and has made that clear for 40 years. Trump should have been able to see this, especially if he were the master businessman he claimed to be. Instead he put a Republican hanger-on way too close to starting the war with Iran Bolton dreamed of.
132proximity1
>131 prosfilaes:
..."John Bolton still annoys me;
He annoyed me, too. Now I don't give him a thought.
..."it's clear his goals weren't aligned with Trump's,"...
I thought so, too.
..."and it appears he may have deceived Trump at one point to get him to bomb Iran."
If true, that wouldn't surprise me, However, if so, why are so many just exclusively blaming Trump?
..."I preferred President Trump to President Bolton;"...
So did I.
..."Bolton wanted war with Iran, and has made that clear for 40 years."...
The Iranian junta did its part, too: for 40 years clearly looking for any means to deal blows to U.S. people and interests which were as frequent as possible and as lethal as possible. Had then nuclear weapons status been in Iran's favor, rather than in that of the U.S., Iran would clearly have used them to launch an unprovoked attack on the U.S.
..."Trump should have been able to see this,"...
He certainly should have --and, if he didn't, that's a grievous failing. However, I don't know that he didn't recognize it. I don't even know that he didn't say it--whether in public or in private--whether as president or a private citizen before or after his term in office--such was and is the shitty state of the nation's press corps. He'd have said many things in the confines of the WH Situation Room which were not aired in public. And he could easily have conceivably had very sound reasons for having chosen not to say this such that we'd be aware of it. We aren't necessarily going to know those reasons, are we? How about this: people who'd give Joe Biden insanely wide latitude by their "benefit of the doubt" give Donald Trump none at all.
..."especially if he were the master businessman he claimed to be. ...
Your lilies, when you manage one, just sink under the weight of all the guilding.
..."Instead he put a Republican hanger-on way too close to starting the war with Iran (which) Bolton dreamed of."
What "hanger-on" was this?--- John Bolton?! According to you, if Bolton could have started such a war, he'd have done that. It seems to me, then, that if he didn't, it was because Trump, then president, was actually in charge--- what a refreshing idea! And, that "way too close to starting ('the') war with Iran" is merely your absurd fantasy. Only those who join you in drinking your Kool-Aid shall fret about that. Trump, rather than any "hangers-on" made such decisions himself--unlike Joe Biden, who isn't sufficiently aware of his surroundings to know who's making the decisions unless he's given that information by them.
The following, if true, would be more damning of Trump -- alleging, weakly, that Bolton "held him (Trump) back" from doing what he'd (Trump) have done otherwise:
But I give exactly zero face-value confidence to Politico as a news source. Like others, it's to be discounted as bullshit without other sources' support.
Ultimately, Trump dismissed Bolton. And Bolton, to save face, lied and claimed he'd "quit". LOL!
..."John Bolton still annoys me;
He annoyed me, too. Now I don't give him a thought.
..."it's clear his goals weren't aligned with Trump's,"...
I thought so, too.
..."and it appears he may have deceived Trump at one point to get him to bomb Iran."
If true, that wouldn't surprise me, However, if so, why are so many just exclusively blaming Trump?
..."I preferred President Trump to President Bolton;"...
So did I.
..."Bolton wanted war with Iran, and has made that clear for 40 years."...
The Iranian junta did its part, too: for 40 years clearly looking for any means to deal blows to U.S. people and interests which were as frequent as possible and as lethal as possible. Had then nuclear weapons status been in Iran's favor, rather than in that of the U.S., Iran would clearly have used them to launch an unprovoked attack on the U.S.
..."Trump should have been able to see this,"...
He certainly should have --and, if he didn't, that's a grievous failing. However, I don't know that he didn't recognize it. I don't even know that he didn't say it--whether in public or in private--whether as president or a private citizen before or after his term in office--such was and is the shitty state of the nation's press corps. He'd have said many things in the confines of the WH Situation Room which were not aired in public. And he could easily have conceivably had very sound reasons for having chosen not to say this such that we'd be aware of it. We aren't necessarily going to know those reasons, are we? How about this: people who'd give Joe Biden insanely wide latitude by their "benefit of the doubt" give Donald Trump none at all.
..."especially if he were the master businessman he claimed to be. ...
Your lilies, when you manage one, just sink under the weight of all the guilding.
..."Instead he put a Republican hanger-on way too close to starting the war with Iran (which) Bolton dreamed of."
What "hanger-on" was this?--- John Bolton?! According to you, if Bolton could have started such a war, he'd have done that. It seems to me, then, that if he didn't, it was because Trump, then president, was actually in charge--- what a refreshing idea! And, that "way too close to starting ('the') war with Iran" is merely your absurd fantasy. Only those who join you in drinking your Kool-Aid shall fret about that. Trump, rather than any "hangers-on" made such decisions himself--unlike Joe Biden, who isn't sufficiently aware of his surroundings to know who's making the decisions unless he's given that information by them.
The following, if true, would be more damning of Trump -- alleging, weakly, that Bolton "held him (Trump) back" from doing what he'd (Trump) have done otherwise:
But I give exactly zero face-value confidence to Politico as a news source. Like others, it's to be discounted as bullshit without other sources' support.
President Donald Trump on Thursday again claimed former national security adviser John Bolton, well-known for his hawkish impulses and inclination toward military intervention, was “holding me back” on certain matters of foreign policy.
“In fact, my views on Venezuela, and especially Cuba, were far stronger than those of John Bolton,” Trump tweeted. “He was holding me back!”
The president’s post was in response to a message from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who wrote online Thursday morning that he had spoken with Trump regarding Venezuela.
“It’s true he disagreed with some of the views of previous advisor,” Rubio, a fierce critic of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, had reported of his conversation with Trump.
“But as he reminded me it’s actually the DIRECT OPPOSITE of what many claim or assume,” Rubio continued. “If in fact the direction of policy changes it won’t be to make it weaker.”
Among his other international priorities atop the National Security Council, Bolton had championed Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó's attempted overthrow of Maduro — a regime change that remains unfulfilled eight months after the administration formally recognized Guaidó as the South American nation’s legitimate “interim president.”
Trump, who announced Bolton’s resignation on Tuesday, asserted to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday that he regularly backed a more hard-line brand of foreign policy than his ex-aide.
“Frankly, he wanted to do things not necessarily tougher than me,” Trump said, later adding that Bolton “wasn’t in line with what we were doing, and actually, in some cases, he thought it was too tough what we were doing.”
But Trump also denounced Bolton’s advocacy for the 2003 invasion of Iraq from within President George W. Bush’s administration, mocking him as “Mr. Tough Guy” and remarking: “He’s so tough, he got us into Iraq.”
The president’s statements this week are at odds with his previous assessments of Bolton’s counsel. At a news conference in May, Trump shrugged off reports that he was losing confidence in his national security adviser and said he also receives input from “other people that are a little more dovish” than Bolton.
“He has strong views on things, but that’s OK,” Trump said. “I actually temper John, which is pretty amazing.”
Ultimately, Trump dismissed Bolton. And Bolton, to save face, lied and claimed he'd "quit". LOL!
133proximity1
Meanwhile, let's do anything possible to distract attention from this sort of thing--- I mean, 2024 is supposed to be an election year , and related matters are the topic of this thread.
(NY Post) House subpoenas FBI file on Biden role in ‘criminal scheme’ as new whistleblower emerges | By Steven Nelson | 03 May 2023
From two days ago!
No attention given to it here--before I posted this. "Go 'figure'."
134proximity1
"Media’s long con to bury Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal" | The New York Post | Eddie Scarry | 5 May 2023
It’s the biggest con ever perpetuated by the national media.
For all of their hysterics over “disinformation” and “collusion,” we know now that they were indisputably the most guilty of both.
Recent reports show how the Washington ruling class, including career intelligence officials, the media and Big Tech, plotted well in advance to suppress and discredit the fully authentic and legitimate Hunter Biden laptop story, solely for the purpose of influencing the 2020 election.
The greatest offense was on behalf of the news media, the constitutionally protected institution charged with holding the powerful to account.
In 2020, they abandoned that mission to do the complete opposite.
Journalist Matt Taibbi laid out in meticulous detail Thursday how the influential left-wing Aspen Institute, with events attended by members of every major news publication, literally coached the media in the months leading up to the election on how to handle materials that would cast the Biden family in a negative light. ... ...
-----------------------------------------
(DISCLAIMER: I don't regard Rasmussen polling as in any sense independent or journalistically reliable and trustworthy, and, for that reason, would normally dismiss it and all it touts as useless bullshit. The following, however, is, I think, despite that view, indicative of what is genuinely "not good news" for the demented President Biden.)
Washington Examiner |
For the first time, Rasmussen Reports said a majority believe that Biden is not in charge and that others are pulling the strings for him.
"MAJORITY BELIEVE BIDEN IS NOT IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT"
A huge majority of voters believe President Joe Biden’s age will be a serious problem to overcome in his reelection, and a majority, for the first time, do not believe he’s making the decisions in the Oval Office.
In the latest Rasmussen Reports survey, 55% said “others are making decisions for him behind the scenes.” Only 38% said the president is “really doing” his job.
TRUMP-DESANTIS TICKET HAS BIG LEAD OVER BIDEN-HARRIS
“For the first time, a majority of U.S. voters say Joe Biden isn't in the driver's seat,” Rasmussen tweeted.
Chief pollster Mark Mitchell said he has repeatedly asked likely voters about Biden’s command, and the new findings are the worst yet.
For the first time, a majority of US voters say @joebiden isn't in the driver's seat.
55% now say others are calling the shots behind the scenes.
Only 32% of Independents say he is really doing the job of President.
135Molly3028
RFK Jr. and Tucker Carlson appear to be deeply damaged dudes who, unfortunately, are becoming main players in the coming presidential election cycle. RFK Jr.'s father was assassinated. Tucker's birth mother abandoned her family when Tucker was a young child. Their inner demons are the last thing we Americans should be forced to deal with in 2024.
136margd
Alyssa Farah Griffin (CNN) @Alyssafarah | 3:16 PM · May 9, 2023:
Let’s be clear: the GOP frontrunner for President has been found guilty of sexual abuse & defamation. The Republican Party must walk away from this man. It is beyond morally indefensible.
Quote Tweet
CNN CNN · 1h
Jury in federal civil case finds Donald Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and then defamed her when he denied it
https://cnn.it/3VMCUyu
Let’s be clear: the GOP frontrunner for President has been found guilty of sexual abuse & defamation. The Republican Party must walk away from this man. It is beyond morally indefensible.
Quote Tweet
CNN CNN · 1h
Jury in federal civil case finds Donald Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and then defamed her when he denied it
https://cnn.it/3VMCUyu
137Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/news/breaking-tucker-carlson-relaunching-his-show-on-tw...
BREAKING: Tucker Carlson Announces He’s Bringing Show to Twitter — Likely Walking Away From Millions to Escape Fox Contract
Ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted a video to Twitter on Tuesday, saying, “We’re back.” In the clip, while accusing the media of telling lies, Carlson announced he will be bringing his show to Twitter, which he called the only “free speech” platform left in the world.
***
Unfortunately for our democracy, two men with money, time and white nationalist leanings have found a place to hookup during this all-important election cycle.
BREAKING: Tucker Carlson Announces He’s Bringing Show to Twitter — Likely Walking Away From Millions to Escape Fox Contract
Ousted Fox News host Tucker Carlson posted a video to Twitter on Tuesday, saying, “We’re back.” In the clip, while accusing the media of telling lies, Carlson announced he will be bringing his show to Twitter, which he called the only “free speech” platform left in the world.
***
Unfortunately for our democracy, two men with money, time and white nationalist leanings have found a place to hookup during this all-important election cycle.
138proximity1
There is nothing left to do now but watch as the Biden family's scandals overwhelm them in their remorseless unfolding. No matter which way they turn, the damning facts are going to meet them and undo them and as this goes forward, hosts of their conspirators, those who lied under oath to support the ever-burgeoning fraud and failing cover-ups, are going to fall to prosecutors' criminal charges.
John Durham is going to do what William Barr wasn't able to do or interested in doing.
------------------------------
"'Thermidor, c'est l'horreur."
For the vast majority of Americans, including many college-educated Americans, the terms "Thermidor" and "Jacobin" mean nothing at all and, being devoid of significance, in the present helter-skelter of relentless mass-media product, these terms are likely to prompt many browsers to simply "move on", "nothing to see here". Hanson has done a good job of describing the utter horror and insanity which became their mark. But I suspect that for many Americans, unless they're already devoted readers of Hanson, this resemblance to the madness of our times shall be shrugged off, denied, dismissed as "too remote", to "foreign" to apply to us. Some may even say, "But we have their example." No, we don't. Exams have again illustrated that Americans are ignoramuses in history, including their own. Much less are they acquainted with details of a foreign bloody revolution which happened more than two hundred years ago in France. If you ask them whether they've heard of the French Revolution, they'd likely answer "Yes". But they could not relate any details about its course or key events and many could not even correctly identify the decade in which it happened, much less how and why.
"Don't knowmuch shit about History."
..."more than three-quarters of students don't have the intellectual tools to understand the functions of government, legislatures and the judiciary," ... | 5 May, 2023
--------------------------------
At this rate, Biden shall be faced with a choice between his resignation or a successful vote of impeachment in the House and the commencement of a trial in the Senate before the end of this year. Biden shall be out of office -- and under indictment by the end of December 2023 or well before then. And, from now until that time, official Washington shall be utterly consumed with this matter, the phones "burning white-hot"
John Durham is going to do what William Barr wasn't able to do or interested in doing.
------------------------------
"'Thermidor, c'est l'horreur."
For the vast majority of Americans, including many college-educated Americans, the terms "Thermidor" and "Jacobin" mean nothing at all and, being devoid of significance, in the present helter-skelter of relentless mass-media product, these terms are likely to prompt many browsers to simply "move on", "nothing to see here". Hanson has done a good job of describing the utter horror and insanity which became their mark. But I suspect that for many Americans, unless they're already devoted readers of Hanson, this resemblance to the madness of our times shall be shrugged off, denied, dismissed as "too remote", to "foreign" to apply to us. Some may even say, "But we have their example." No, we don't. Exams have again illustrated that Americans are ignoramuses in history, including their own. Much less are they acquainted with details of a foreign bloody revolution which happened more than two hundred years ago in France. If you ask them whether they've heard of the French Revolution, they'd likely answer "Yes". But they could not relate any details about its course or key events and many could not even correctly identify the decade in which it happened, much less how and why.
"Don't know
..."more than three-quarters of students don't have the intellectual tools to understand the functions of government, legislatures and the judiciary," ... | 5 May, 2023
The Impending Thermidor Reaction in Jacobin America | by Victor Davis Hanson | at American Greatness | 7 May 2023
... "The sometimes moderate Girondins, who favored constitutional government, were mostly executed by their former friends among the Montagnards. In turn, the latter were soon deemed too conservative for the emerging crazy Jacobins. So they, too, had to be decapitated. The ensuing year-long reign of terror guillotined thousands of innocents, deemed guilty of being guilty of something.
"By 1793, the revolution had turned nihilist and suicidal. The foundational date of France was recalibrated (not as 1619 but) as 1789—or “year one.”
"Jacobins sought to wipe out religion, both materially and spiritually. They replaced God, first, with the atheistic “Cult of Reason” and then a stranger still “Cult of the Supreme Being”—a dreamed-up, living, humanistic god that only the murderous Robespierre could fully envision, but eerily similar to our own Green New Deal deity.
"The months of the year themselves were renamed, the days of the week renumbered and relabeled. Statues were toppled, first at night, later in shameless daylight. Place names were erased and renamed. The original revolutionary heroes were not to be mentioned; their uncouth successors deified. Money was printed to “spread the wealth”—until it was worthless.
"Murderous cancel culture ran unchecked. Yesterday’s French revolutionary became today’s counterrevolutionary—and tomorrow’s decapitated.
"Almost everyone who originally had opposed the absolute monarchy, and, like the Americans, wished for a constitutional replacement, was eventually executed by revolutionaries who were then executed by more radical revolutionaries. The longer and more radical the revolution ran, the meaner, dumber, and more deadly the revolutionaries who emerged from the woodwork.
"Finally, what could not go on, did not go on, as French society unraveled. Then the so-called Thermidors put an end to the madness of the Robespierre brothers and their sidekick, the 26-year-old Saint-Just, and did to them what they had done to thousands.
...
The explosive new evidence of Biden family's breathtaking corruption :
The alleged actions of Joe Biden may rise to the level of an impeachable offense
By Gregg Jarrett | Fox News | 10 May 2023 |
... "The explosive new evidence seems to confirm what has long been suspected — Joe Biden and his family aggressively exploited his public office to confer benefits and favors on foreign entities or governments in exchange for money. If this was done to the detriment of our own interests as a nation — as it surely seems so — these schemes could well constitute a variety of crimes that include bribery, fraud and felony violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The use of multiple accounts to conceal cash activities would qualify as money laundering." ...
--------------------------------
At this rate, Biden shall be faced with a choice between his resignation or a successful vote of impeachment in the House and the commencement of a trial in the Senate before the end of this year. Biden shall be out of office -- and under indictment by the end of December 2023 or well before then. And, from now until that time, official Washington shall be utterly consumed with this matter, the phones "burning white-hot"
139kiparsky
>138 proximity1: These "Biden family scandals" you keep referring to - are they scandals that other people can see, or are they ones that you need to take your special pills for?
140Molly3028
The Trump Town Hall ~ Trump spoke to his base. He reminded Indies how crazy the Trump era actually was day in and day out. Calling Collins a “nasty person” is not going to win the votes of Indie men and women late next year. Trump does what ad agencies do 24/7 on TV and the Internet ~ sell crap to clueless people.
>139 kiparsky:
Prox lives in the Twilight Zone Dimension Rod Serling created back in the middle of the LAST century. The small, hard-to-see embers of the so-called Biden scandals refuse to co-operate with the GOPers.
>139 kiparsky:
Prox lives in the Twilight Zone Dimension Rod Serling created back in the middle of the LAST century. The small, hard-to-see embers of the so-called Biden scandals refuse to co-operate with the GOPers.
141proximity1
DOUGLAS MURRAY | N.Y. POST | "Liberal Media Circles the Wagons Around Bidens" | 11 May 2023
--------------------------------
A New York jury found that Donald Trump had sexually abused and defamed the woman and ordered him to pay $5 million damages.
You may have heard about this.
After all, the story was splashed on the front page of The Post the next day.
It also led the news around the world.
Although Trump denies the charges it will be up to American voters to decide what they think about this. Is this the sort of thing they´ve already factored in with Donald Trump?
Or will they deem it yet another mark against him in a long list that anyone – of any political stripe – could now compile?
It’s up to the American public.
...
I listened to Wednesday morning´s report of the House Oversight Committee on the Biden
family´s business dealings with amazement.
It has been perfectly clear for some time that while Joe Biden was Vice President his son Hunter and brother James enriched themselves through various pay-to-play schemes.
But the House Committee´s findings revealed far worse than even those familiar with the story had expected.
The range of foreign donors included a corrupt Romanian businessman who gave the Biden family over $1 million.
But more scandalous was the revelation that as many as nine members of the Biden family were benefiting from the money that came from this influence-peddling scheme.
New revelations included the claim that even one of Joe Biden´s grandchildren had received six-figure wire-transfers from a foreign national.
As readers of this paper know, this all suggests a very serious form of political corruption.
It is a story that has been suppressed for almost three years and which much of the rest of the media have only recently, and reluctantly, started to admit is true.
If they started late, they also stopped early.
Because after the press conference on Wednesday you might have expected some of the Democrat media to at least acknowledge something awkward had taken place.
But no.
Although the story was splashed on the front page of this paper, most of the rest of the media seemed intent on continuing to cover over the story of the Biden family´s business dealings.
But what did papers like the New York Times and Washington Post instead go big on?
Well both decided to splash their front pages yesterday with photos and stories about crazy Congressman George Santos.
Specifically the fact that the serial fibber now faces a federal indictment.
And while it is obviously a story, here is some news for the NYT and Washington Post.
George Santos is not running for President.
In no universe is it remotely likely that he will even retain any position of power.
He will be lucky to keep the shirt on his back after the end of this process.
But of course the Democrat media love Santos.
Because they can suggest that somehow the Congressman is not an embarrassment to the GOP, but in fact some kind of poster-boy of the party.
...
Santos may be a figure of fun but he is someone of almost zero national political significance.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, has made it clear that he would like to once again run – or at least stumble – for the office of President next year.
Do sections of the media believe that they can keep covering for him?
It seems so.
Yesterday the New York Times buried a story deep in its paper about the Biden family corruption allegations.
And how did they headline it?
“House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden.”
In other words, they completely misrepresented (or what used to be called “lied about”) the facts. MSNBC and other left-wing media followed suit.
And here is the thing.
When this country next goes to the polls the public should know the pros and cons of every candidate. If Donald Trump ends up as the Republican candidate there will be no shortage of opinions and information about him.
But the same will not be able to be said about Joe Biden.
Because half of the country are being kept in deliberate darkness.
By a media class that believes its job is not to report on candidates but to cover-up for certain of them. It´s a disservice to the name of journalism.
More importantly it's a disservice to the American people-- ..."
143Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/radio/howard-stern-defends-cnns-trump-town-hall-it-was-...
Howard Stern Defends CNN’s Trump Town Hall: It Was ‘Really F*cking Interesting and Entertaining’
***
I have come to the conclusion that MAGAs continue to adore Trump because he is the adult, human version of childhood cartoon characters they watched religiously during their formative years.
Howard Stern Defends CNN’s Trump Town Hall: It Was ‘Really F*cking Interesting and Entertaining’
***
I have come to the conclusion that MAGAs continue to adore Trump because he is the adult, human version of childhood cartoon characters they watched religiously during their formative years.
144Molly3028
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/greg-gutfeld-says-democrats-really-193525025...
Greg Gutfeld Says if Democrats Really Believe Trump Is ‘Worse Than Hitler,’ They Have a Moral Duty to Rig Elections: ‘You Should Cheat’
***
Gutfeld and his ilk are examples of why Trump is such a dangerous dude. DJT's jovial style and I-care-deeply-about-the-MAGAs act has allowed way too many people to believe he is just a harmless, hapless and charming billionaire. Women who have come into contact with him throughout his adult life have learned the hard way just how dangerous and creepy he has always been. It appears that Melania has been his bought-and-paid-for cult member for all of her married life. Nothing he has done, or ever will do, in the USA is going to permanently improve the lives of his diehard cult voters or any of the rest of us.
Greg Gutfeld Says if Democrats Really Believe Trump Is ‘Worse Than Hitler,’ They Have a Moral Duty to Rig Elections: ‘You Should Cheat’
***
Gutfeld and his ilk are examples of why Trump is such a dangerous dude. DJT's jovial style and I-care-deeply-about-the-MAGAs act has allowed way too many people to believe he is just a harmless, hapless and charming billionaire. Women who have come into contact with him throughout his adult life have learned the hard way just how dangerous and creepy he has always been. It appears that Melania has been his bought-and-paid-for cult member for all of her married life. Nothing he has done, or ever will do, in the USA is going to permanently improve the lives of his diehard cult voters or any of the rest of us.
145Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/uncategorized/election-interference-in-2024-trump-pivot...
‘ELECTION INTERFERENCE IN 2024!’ Trump Pivots from Stolen 2020 Election Claims — to Suggesting 2024 Election is Being Rigged
***
Trump is reinforcing what his clueless cult followers already believe. They feed off of each other. He appears to be on a mission to destroy the GOP's chances with moderate suburban voters (that works for me!). FOX News prime-time hosts will be adding their versions of this rant going forward.
‘ELECTION INTERFERENCE IN 2024!’ Trump Pivots from Stolen 2020 Election Claims — to Suggesting 2024 Election is Being Rigged
***
Trump is reinforcing what his clueless cult followers already believe. They feed off of each other. He appears to be on a mission to destroy the GOP's chances with moderate suburban voters (that works for me!). FOX News prime-time hosts will be adding their versions of this rant going forward.
146Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-declares-he-is-the-only-2024-candidate-who-c...
Trump Declares He is the Only 2024 Candidate Who Can ‘Prevent World War 3’
***
Visions of grandeur!
Goodbye Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, etc. Putin would take over many countries via the A-OK of Trump #47.
Trump Declares He is the Only 2024 Candidate Who Can ‘Prevent World War 3’
***
Visions of grandeur!
Goodbye Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, etc. Putin would take over many countries via the A-OK of Trump #47.
147Molly3028
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/21/trump-2025-vision
Trump's 2025 vision, revealed
What they're saying: "What Trump is proposing for 2025 ... is the trappings of a democracy. ... But it's a Potemkin village," said Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
***
Is Trump's long list of "to dos" what a majority of Americans want to see happen on the cusp of our 250th birthday???
Trump's 2025 vision, revealed
What they're saying: "What Trump is proposing for 2025 ... is the trappings of a democracy. ... But it's a Potemkin village," said Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
***
Is Trump's long list of "to dos" what a majority of Americans want to see happen on the cusp of our 250th birthday???
148Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/watch-tim-scott-goes-full-howard-dean-in-annou...
WATCH: Tim Scott Goes Full Howard Dean in Announcing Run For President
WATCH: Tim Scott Goes Full Howard Dean in Announcing Run For President
149Molly3028
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/24/politics/elon-musk-ron-desantis/index.html
The DeSantis-Musk alliance was a year in the making
***
America's Founders never envisioned this 21st Century outcome. Another foreign-born billionaire is going to be controlling the dissemination of political info Americans have to wade through in order to vote responsibly. Apparently, Musk's goal is to be a Murdoch-type puppeteer during this coming election cycle. And Tucker Carlson is most likely going to be the third member of this anti-American gig. I doubt that a majority of Americans want to live in the United States of Florida they envision.
The DeSantis-Musk alliance was a year in the making
***
America's Founders never envisioned this 21st Century outcome. Another foreign-born billionaire is going to be controlling the dissemination of political info Americans have to wade through in order to vote responsibly. Apparently, Musk's goal is to be a Murdoch-type puppeteer during this coming election cycle. And Tucker Carlson is most likely going to be the third member of this anti-American gig. I doubt that a majority of Americans want to live in the United States of Florida they envision.
150lriley
I don't think Musk is the big get that both he himself and DeSantis might think he is.
I also think that unless Donald is in a jail cell he wipes the floor with DeSantis. That said if somehow DeSantis becomes the republican nominee I think Donald very easily upends his presidential campaign if for no other reason than spite. Maybe DeSantis is strong enough with republican voters in Florida but it's still a base that's loyal to Donald.
I also think that unless Donald is in a jail cell he wipes the floor with DeSantis. That said if somehow DeSantis becomes the republican nominee I think Donald very easily upends his presidential campaign if for no other reason than spite. Maybe DeSantis is strong enough with republican voters in Florida but it's still a base that's loyal to Donald.
151Molly3028
>150 lriley:
https://www.mediaite.com/news/disaster-desantis-musk-twitter-announcement-cuts-o...
‘Disaster’: DeSantis-Musk Twitter Announcement Repeatedly Crashes, Shuts Down Before It Even Starts
The Twitter Space eventually shut down after some 20 minutes of technical failures.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/disaster-desantis-musk-twitter-announcement-cuts-o...
‘Disaster’: DeSantis-Musk Twitter Announcement Repeatedly Crashes, Shuts Down Before It Even Starts
The Twitter Space eventually shut down after some 20 minutes of technical failures.
152lriley
>151 Molly3028: Meanwhile Trump has a new ad out targeting the Florida Governor and nicknaming him Ron DeSalestax.
153kiparsky
>150 lriley: I don't think Musk is the big get that both he himself and DeSantis might think he is.
I dunno about that, he's an awful git if you ask me.
I dunno about that, he's an awful git if you ask me.
154Molly3028
htthttps://boingboing.net/2023/05/25/after-racking-up-7-8-trillion-in-public-debt-trump-tells-congress-not-to-pay-it.htmlps://boingboing.net/2023/05/25/after-racking-up-7-8-trillion-in-public-debt-trump-tells-congress-not-to-pay-it.html
After racking up $7.8 trillion in public debt, Trump tells Congress not to pay it
***
The public debt increase during DJT's era cancels out any "good" things his MAGA voters think he accomplished. The debt increase "fix" is going to nail them and their children going forward via the GOP's new "we must cut spending going forward" mission.
After racking up $7.8 trillion in public debt, Trump tells Congress not to pay it
***
The public debt increase during DJT's era cancels out any "good" things his MAGA voters think he accomplished. The debt increase "fix" is going to nail them and their children going forward via the GOP's new "we must cut spending going forward" mission.
155Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/fox-news-host-mark-levin-gets-blasted-by-maga-...
Fox News Host Mark Levin Gets Blasted by MAGA Twitter After Posting Link to DeSantis Donations Page
***
The Trump era fortune-gathering rats are leaving the sinking ship!!!
Fox News Host Mark Levin Gets Blasted by MAGA Twitter After Posting Link to DeSantis Donations Page
***
The Trump era fortune-gathering rats are leaving the sinking ship!!!
156Molly3028
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/desantis-says-hell-consider-pardoning-jan-6-de...
DeSantis Says He’ll Consider Pardoning Trump AND Jan. 6 Defendants as President
***
GOP presidents and Congressional members of the 20th Century must be spinning in their graves.
DeSantis Says He’ll Consider Pardoning Trump AND Jan. 6 Defendants as President
***
GOP presidents and Congressional members of the 20th Century must be spinning in their graves.
157kiparsky
>154 Molly3028: The public debt increase during DJT's era cancels out any "good" things his MAGA voters think he accomplished. The debt increase "fix" is going to nail them and their children going forward via the GOP's new "we must cut spending going forward" mission.
This is in fact the point of the whole exercise, of course. The Republican brand, which is swallowed whole by the True Believers, is that Republicans are Good On the Economy and Democrats are Bad On the Economy. This is why they do everything they can to trash the economy every chance they get: if their voters are having a miserable life, can't pay their rent or mortgage, and feel like they're never getting anywhere, this gives the Republican a chance to sell themselves as saviors. If their voters are doing fine, then Republicans lose their main selling point.
Yes, this is going to hurt MAGA voters. That's exactly the goal. And, if history is any guide, it's going to work.
This is in fact the point of the whole exercise, of course. The Republican brand, which is swallowed whole by the True Believers, is that Republicans are Good On the Economy and Democrats are Bad On the Economy. This is why they do everything they can to trash the economy every chance they get: if their voters are having a miserable life, can't pay their rent or mortgage, and feel like they're never getting anywhere, this gives the Republican a chance to sell themselves as saviors. If their voters are doing fine, then Republicans lose their main selling point.
Yes, this is going to hurt MAGA voters. That's exactly the goal. And, if history is any guide, it's going to work.
158lriley
Biden being POTUS--the object also is to make him out as the guy to blame for their miserable economic status.
That said you have Matt Gaetz talking about holding the debt ceiling hostage. The Democrats need to make it clear at least to independent voters what the Republican Party is up to.
That said you have Matt Gaetz talking about holding the debt ceiling hostage. The Democrats need to make it clear at least to independent voters what the Republican Party is up to.
159kiparsky
Just catching up on the news, I see that the Former Guy was making fun of Santis for holding an after party at the "uber-elite Four Seasons resort".
I'm wondering if this was Santis' staff's subtle dig at Trump - who, lest we forget, tried to book the "uber-elite Four Seasons resort" for a press conference, but were not able to do so. If so, I have to give credit where credit is due, someone on his staff has a bit of a wit to them. And of course, Trump trod in the turd they left for him, but there's nothing surprising there.
I'm wondering if this was Santis' staff's subtle dig at Trump - who, lest we forget, tried to book the "uber-elite Four Seasons resort" for a press conference, but were not able to do so. If so, I have to give credit where credit is due, someone on his staff has a bit of a wit to them. And of course, Trump trod in the turd they left for him, but there's nothing surprising there.
160John5918
Not directly connected with the topic, but perhaps relevant to Twitter's woes which have cropped up in this thread.
Why a Small Change at Twitter Could Have Big Consequences for Deadly Conflict (International Crisis Group)
Why a Small Change at Twitter Could Have Big Consequences for Deadly Conflict (International Crisis Group)
Twitter's decision to limit access to its “application programming interface” or API means that researchers will be deprived of information that sheds light on political hate speech and incitement to violence. What might seem like a small change will have real-world implications for tracking election meddling, disinformation campaigns and human rights abuses. Since Twitter was founded in 2006, its free API policy has allowed millions of users to extract data from the platform, facilitating researchers' ability to analyse the influence of social media in politics. New restrictions fail to mitigate Twitter’s own shortcomings, and create new risks for global public safety and security.
161jjwilson61
Why isn't Biden out there every day calling Republicans deadbeats who refuse to pay their debts?
This topic was continued by 2024 Presidential Election ~ 2.
